Another great game with a cliffhanger ending
Reviewed by Cannon Fodder on or around 15th Sep 2007
God of War 2 is a great game.
With improved controls (they addressed some of my complaints from the first game), better boss fights, better powers for Kratos (the Icarus wings are awesome), and a more forgiving difficulty curve, God of War 2 is in many ways better than the original. So, why did I give this one a slightly worse score?
I don't like Kratos any more. In the first game, he was a sympathetic character: I felt for him and understood his motivation to... kill Ares. Sure, he was a brute who cared for nothing but his vengeance. But that vengeance was noble and just, so I was in his corner the whole way through. In God of War 2, Kratos is more arrogant and devoid of noble purpose from the very beginning. When Zeus takes him down, I'm on Zeus's side. Aside from the character development and motivation, the game is technically superior to the previous game. However, because I spend the entire game playing a character I don't particularly like any more, GoW2 gets a lower score. I'm all for playing anti-heroes, but the developers need to write some true motivation into the character and not simply expect me to be in his corner because I'm controlling his moves.
Another reason for the lower score is the ending. When I beat a game, I like it to end. I'm not a big fan of the cliffhanger, buy-the-next-installment-in-two-to-three-years endings. And that was just the cutscene. Before that cutscene is a boss fight that ends with the game requiring very fast, specific button presses. You'll fail this the first few times you play it, which wouldn't be so bad (you're fighting the final boss after all) if not for the lengthy un-skippable in-game cinema that you watch leading up to where you get to try again. I didn't think this kind of mistake was made in video games any more . . . yet I spent about a half hour trying to finish off the final boss, most of that time was spent watching the last in-game cinema over and over.
It's only fair that I point out that the voice acting is amazing, especially for the main characters (Zeus, Kratos, Gaia). The level design, while linear, was a perfect mix of puzzles and combat. The developers had Kratos doing some crazy Spider-Man stunts which I wasn't initially impressed with, but it grew on me over the course of the 20 or so hours I played. In the end, it's a great game and I'll play the sequel (although I don't know if I'll play the PSP "prequel").
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