A satisfying game experience. Just leave morality at home.
The story in God of War is simple, and you don't really have to pay much attention to it. Kratos is a brutal and savage anti-hero on a mission to kill a god. He is pitted against mobs of harpies, minotaurs, medusas and other creatures more or less loosely related to Greek mythology. Aiding Kratos are a few choice gods from Greek mythology, chief among them Athena, granting him new abilities and boons in select areas of the game. Your ultimate goal is to save Athens from destruction at the hands of the bloodthirsty minions of Ares, but Kratos isn't helping out from the goodness of his heart, his goal are his own, and the means to get them matter little. His character develops throughout the game with the aid of some, in my eyes, very pretty cinematic sequences, narrated by an elderly-sounding woman.
This is an action game, and has all the gameplay ingredients to be a really good one. You start out with really cool looking weapons, and moves that may tear your enemies apart and send them flying into the air. Grabbing a weakened opponent and ripping it in half, or throwing it forcefully into another enemy are some of the split second decisions you will have to make throughout the game, battling your way through mazes and rooms crowded with enemies. As you defeat our enemies, you collect orbs that allow you to level up your abilities to do greater damage and unlock new, vicious attacks. The occasional puzzle in the game gives you a little break from mindless slaying, and on a few rare occasions lets you stop and think about your next move. Mostly, though, puzzles equal trick jumping or dodging (often with a time limit) posing new challenges that can be very frustrating indeed. The game gets harder as you progress though the levels, and the pace at which the difficulty goes up is set just about right for my taste. There are a few instances in the game where I got stuck and killed just a few too many times though, as the difficulty went from challenging to ridiculous, with no little steps to take you through it. But it's all part of the game, and I suppose it can be viewed as boss stages with no boss, since the game is kinda lacking in the boss department. It's also very linear, you need to get from point A to point B, and try not to die going there. It would have bee nice to see some more choices being made available. Most of the time when you get a choice, it's really a matter of taking one route to unlock the other one. Off the top of my head, I can remember one instance where you can take two different paths to get to the same place. Apart from that, it's all just laid out in front of you.
Now, as I hinted above, the graphics look really good, and the game really likes to keep you awed with the crisp clear views of landscapes and cinematics. In the extra materials you get the developers ranting about how they couldn't do this, and they couldn't do that because of limitations with the graphics, but I really didn't find anything to be unhappy about, maybe somebody who's not used to 8-bit graphics can see flaws in it... The camera angles are fixed though, a pet peeve of mine since there is always going to be at least that one instance in the game where you wouldn't have died if the camera hadn't been positioned just so. Not that I can see a lot of opportunities for the developers to put in controls for rotating the camera, it already seems like the controller is just a little bit too small for all the moves, abilities and rolls they put in there. As it is, there are just too may moves or you to figure it all out, and thinking back on it, I know that there is at least one major function of the game (Rage of the Gods) that I never even activated.
Now that I think I've covered most of what you might want to know about the game, I'll try to detail my main reservation. The game is brutal. A little bit too brutal and coldly ruthless for my taste, in fact. Most of the time, you really are just killing savage and vicious beasts, that are trying to tear you limb from limb, but early in the game, there is a sequence where you fight off mobs of harpies while innocent people scramble over the decks of your ship. As far as I could tell, all the innocents were good for was replenishing your health when you were low as they would invariably drop health orbs as you severed their heads from their shoulders, or put your blade through their backs. That sequence didn't bother me nearly as much as the next one I'm about to describe and which took some of the joy out of the game for me. There is puzzle part where the gods demand "the ultimate sacrifice", obviously referring to human life, for you to be able to continue your journey. Solving this puzzle involves burning a caged man alive, no questions asked, no explanation given (not that an explanation would have helped any). The cold and matter-of-fact taking of a human life churned my stomach to the point where I took no joy in the game for several hours past that point. I'm squeamish perhaps, and yes, the action fits the character of Kratos well, but I feel that it was out of line.
Anyway, to sum it up, it's a really good game, with a few pretty minor details that will leave you slightly frustrated and unsatisfied. But the awesome action, well-rounded battles and fast-paced gameplay more than make up for any flaws in the game experience. Just leave morality at home.