I'VE AMENDED MY REVIEW!! Click below to see why!!
User Rating: 9.3 | God of War (Greatest Hits) PS2
I’m going to do something for this game that I’ve never done for any other game before it. I’m going to amend my review. But first, here’s what I originally wrote in its entirety, verbatim… “An open letter to David Jaffe... Dear Mr. Jaffe, I love you. Okay, sure I’m a heterosexual married man. And I don’t anticipate “switch hitting” any time soon. But if I ever choose to “play for the other team” then you can “Come Sail Away” with me anytime big boy!!! Alright then. Homoerotic humor now out of the way…seriously. I love David Jaffe. Or at least I love his remarkable genius as a videogame developer. And you will too once you play this game. It’s Outstanding. You’re going to read that a great deal in the coming weeks from tons of other GameSpot members like myself. But you have to understand something – we’re coming off such extreme highs after playing this game that it’s nearly impossible not to want to tell the world about how truly great God of War is. I only bought the game a few days ago and there’s no way I’m even halfway through it yet. But I am so damned excited about it that I wanted to say something right away. Therefore, if the rest of the game ends up taking a turn for the worse, I’ll amend this review. If it doesn’t, then I’ll leave it be in all its simplicity. Just keep in mind that no other game has ever made me want to give it a great review faster than God of War has. And a serious note to Mr. Jaffe – you haven’t simply created an outstanding game; you’ve created an entirely new genre. Many other developers are probably already hard at work trying and recreate your magic. Whether they come close is irrelevant. You’ve set the bar. This game is head and shoulders above just about anything else out there. It’s what Prince of Persia: Warrior Within wanted to be. Thank you. Sincerely, Boogy Shnoog” First of all, you need some perspective about this “review”. It was my humorous approach to give you, the reader, a glimpse at the sheer glee I received from playing the game for a couple of days. I have since finished it and though I said I would only amend my review if things took a turn for the worse, I’ll tell you now – by and large they didn’t. However, I feel I should mention a few additional things. This glee that I received is in large part due to the fact that the game begins with one hell of a bang. You’ll watch a quick intro movie and be instantly tossed into flawless and very, very rewarding control. The good news here, it never gets worse. From beginning to end you’ll likely walk away feeling that the combat in this game is quite rewarding. Additionally, Mr. Jaffe knew what he was doing by tossing a very engaging boss battle into the mix early on. It was intense, very intense. From the animations to the button mashing – you’ll have to check it out yourself to truly appreciate it. And…AND I was utterly taken off guard after seeing the first set of nekid boobs in a videogame. Look, I’m not a teenager here, who’s…heh-heh…enamored by...heh-heh-heh...the sight of boobies. But I just wasn’t expecting it and found it to be a testament to Mr. Jaffe's desire to break a few conventions. Luckily, in the end, this sexual angle didn’t become a focus of the game. It remained true to its core theme of raw, hard as nails combat with a smattering of puzzles. All this said, I have to mention that this awestruck feeling I had initially waned over time. Like anything, you grow accustomed something’s effects through repetition. However, I stand by that gaping awe I had at the beginning – if you’re not blown away by it, you should check your pulse to make sure you're alive. It’s intense. Also, as the game settled in and the cutscenes’ violence began to become routine, I was able to approach the game more evenly. This amended review is my attempt at tempering this initial zeal with the flaws the game proved to have. Flaw #1 – There were a couple of times that I felt utterly lost in the game, not knowing where to go or what to do next. I actually had to check a walkthrough here on GameSpot, not because I couldn’t beat a boss or master a technique, but because I had no inkling as to where to go. Flaw #2 – At some points (though, thankfully not many) I had to do a bit of backtracking. There wasn’t so much that I ever came close to becoming bored, but there was enough to include in this review. However, don’t get me wrong – this isn’t the sort of game that will force you to play through a bunch of levels in their entirety multiple times. Most of what you’ll see, you’ll only see once. But it does happen a bit. Flaw #3 – There are a few areas that were simply too difficult. I almost scored this as “hard” but changed my mind since the difficulties I’m about to mention only happen in a few instances. One was in an area where I had to swim quickly while avoiding a much quicker wall that rushed at me from behind and had the propensity of killing me instantly. The problem with this area was that Kratos only has one quick-lunge maneuver and pauses each time before he pulls it off…otherwise he's a sluggish swimmer (by the zippy-fast wall’s standards, anyway). Finding the perfect timing for this seems, to me, to be sheer luck. I spent more than fifteen minutes, swimming, lunging and ultimately dying so much that I cursed the game and shouted at my TV. In the end I somehow got past this, but to be honest, I have no idea how I did. Another area had me precariously hopping along rotating logs equipped with sharp blades. This part wasn’t so much of a problem and in fact I actually liked it a lot. It forced me to really focus on my hand-eye coordination in a way that most games have not in recent years. The problem with this particular area, however, was that when I tried to collect all the red orbs, I had to navigate through a series of these logs and then backtrack to my original starting point. If I made even one misstep along the way, the game forced me to respawn at an earlier point as if I had never collected any of the red orbs in the first place. In the end, I went on my merry way and left the orbs behind. My only complaint here was that I was not afforded the luxury of keeping my precious orbs because of what I perceived to be a respawning flaw in the game’s design. However, the area just after this simply drove me nuts. More logs with lethally sharp blades, though this time instead of climbing over them I had to climb up them. Here, the problem was that the game was far too unforgiving. The blades kept slicing toward me and while I thought I was avoiding them, the game begged to differ. In fact, even if my man’s little pinky finger ever so much as grazed one of the blades, well it was time for yet another plummeting to the ground – while every other stupid blade beneath me got in a good whack or two. Again, I’m not exactly sure how I ended up passing this area, but in the end I did. So, these are my complaints with the game. My manic zeal has now been tempered. And when all is said and done, the game’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses…flaws and all. It’s not a holistically perfect game, but at times it comes damn close. From the incredible beginning; to the engaging storyline and, most importantly, the incredibly visceral combat; to unlocking all the extras at the end – God of War came through on what it set out to do. I said it before and I’ll say it again…this game is what Prince of Persia: Warrior Within wanted to be. It took rage and violence and a really bad attitude and did it right, never coming off as catering to the younger, rebellious teen crowd. But rather, it proved to be one hell of a mature thrill ride that anyone who doesn’t mind a few dozen gallons of simulated blood and richly textured boobs won’t love. 
