At a friend's just yesterday, I got the opportunity to play God of War. My impressions are as follows:

The game started out with a man who appeared to have grey skin and red paint on him. This is Kratos. A narration runs in thebackground, and then he jumps.

The game flashes back to several weeks ago after pulling a Quentin Tarantino, aboard a ship upon stormy seas. Kratos is attacked by several creatures. It turns out that Kratos is very far from helpless as he easily and brutally rips through the enemies. The first thing one may notice is the controls: they're set up well. Not being able to control the camera angle is frustrating (and even makes some parts such as the balancing acts more difficult) at first, but you get used to it. The controls didn't feel quite so smooth to me, but that could be because I'm accustomed to a Gamecube controller.

After destroying (literally) the enemies, Kratos finds himself facing a serpent-like creature called the Hydra inside the ship. This isn't too difficult and the Hydra is taken down without mercy. Eventually, as Kratos fights his way from ship to ship, he comes to a door. It seems several women are inside, shouting to be let out; the door is locked. On another ship, Kratos witnesses the killing of several men by Hydras (three, to be exact, and one of them appears to be the leader since it's the largest), one of which has a key. Strangely, no blood when he's eaten. Hmmm.

Anyway, the two smaller Hydras are taken care of by driving spikes into their necks and Kratos climbs to the ship's mast to face off against the larger Hydra. This fight heavily relies upon context-sensitive moments, which I gather are used throughout the game. To me, they felt a bit overused. But I finished off the Hydra and climbed down its gullet. Somehow, the man who had the key is still there, hanging on. Kratos pulls him up, takes the key, and drops him back down the creature's throat. As you may have guessed by now, Kratos is one bad dude.

A bloody cutscene and two topless women later, Kratos is in Athens. And that's where I stopped. Overall, it was fun. I don't think it was as great as people were telling me it was, but it was pretty good.