The "Mature Zelda"? Not exactly, but still great.
God of War has a mature rating because it’s marketed towards the mature audience. It’s not because of the language, in fact, there is pretty much foul language at all in this game. The visuals on the other hand, are not for the weak of heart or for minors. This game is very brutal, and even has some sexual themes in it as well.
While many people describe this game as the “Mature Zelda,” I highly disagree with that analogy. Zelda games usually promise huge worlds, lots of exploring, and usually multiple choices in the paths you want to take. I will tell you what God of War delivers to you though. God of War has tons of fighting, more then you would find in a Zelda game, but less then you would find in Devil May Cry 3. The combo system is simplistic, yet deep enough to make it fun. As you upgrade your weapons, you learn more combos so that the fighting won’t get as repetitive either. There is a lot of platforming involved in this game. It keeps the game play balanced out instead of being overwhelmed with only fights. And there is very little backtracking in this game. You will revisit a few places, but your time won’t be consumed by walking all the time while you are doing this. There is a good amount of puzzles to keep your mind challenged. So pretty much, unlike Zelda, this game is a lot more linear and has a lot more fights.
I touched a little bit on the game play. You start off with a few basic moves in the beginning, which is enough for you to have fun with it. Similar to DMC, you upgrade using red orbs. And as you upgrade your weapons, you learn new attacks each time. This can keep things intriguing and less repetitive. You also learn spells/special attacks along the way as well, which are usually most helpful when you are completely surrounded by enemies. Also, when you weaken up most of the bigger enemies, an icon of the O button appears above their head. This indicates that you can begin a mini game, which will be either copying a pattern or mashing a button as fast as you can. This will result to you killing the monster in an even more gory way. I personally found it disappointing that there were very few boss fights in this game. So if you enjoy boss fights, you may become disappointed by this fact as well.
The graphics look great, and are extremely smooth. Especially the cg scenes, they have an excellent frame rate. Kratos’s design looks very great, and so do many of the monsters. Ares himself doesn’t look to great through; I personally thought he looked like a knock-off of Gannondorf. Also, the graphics have some glitches in a few scenes in the game as well as some clipping problems. I tackled down a minotaur-like monster, and we were both floating in the middle of the air. So while the graphics look pretty great, they aren’t perfect.
Sound is excellent. All the voice acting sounds like it’s done very professionally. The music is very cinematic, like something you’d hear in Lord of the Rings or the jedi fights in the new Star Wars movies. The only problem with the sound in this game is that certain songs are to play in certain places. So lets you fall off a plat form, and go to an area with different music. It might take you 30 seconds to get back to where you were, but you might encounter 3 or 4 songs while getting back up. This isn’t exactly a problem nor is exactly annoying, but just one flaw that’s present. Otherwise, the sound department of the game is great.
This game is also extremely addictive. It’s very easy to get into the game if you like action games or platform adventure games. And since there are no levels/missions in the game, and very few breaking points, it is very hard to let go of this game. You might find yourself wanting to play “just a little bit longer” each time you reach a new section, because you want to know what’ll happen next.
Overall, God of War truly is what it’s hyped up as, a great Action/Adventure game. It may not exactly have as much action as Devil May Cry 3, nor does it have the exploration of Zelda, but it has a good mixture of both. If you are mature enough to handle this game, I’m positive you won’t be let down from playing this title.