Gaming Sunday: God of War

Introduction

Finally, my first PS3 game finished! Yippee! Ignore the big Playstation 2 in the above picture, that was just a placeholder. The one I played was part of the God of War Collection. Talking about PS3, yes I finally bought one. Woohoo! A Gran Turismo 5 bundle. Although I must say I am lacking in terms of financial ability to buy new games, so I'm stuck with GT5 and GoW Collections for the time being. I guess you could say that I'm a God of War fan, having played two games prior to this and a great fan of Greek mythology.

Sweet Child O' Mine

Story

Athens is under sieged by the God of War, Ares. Unsatisfied by the way Zeus has favored Athena over him, Ares launch an attack on the city whose patron Athena is - Athens. After battling a Hydra for no apparent reason in the middle of the Aegean Sea, Kratos, our antihero, is summoned by the gods of Olympus to defeat Ares as some dumb rule states that a god cannot wage war with another god. Hello? Ares? So they send their servant instead. Kratos, wanting redemption from his nightmare and sins, agrees. Kratos's first mission is to reach the City of Athens(duh!), and find the Oracle. Once our great barbaric hero finds Oracle, he is sent to the Desert of Lost Souls to recover Pandora's Box, an artifact that will grant Kratos the power to kill a god. 

Long story short, Kratos succeeds but is killed by Ares, who knows of the gods' plan to defeat him. On the plunge to Hades, Kratos struggles and climbs back to Athens with the help of the mysterious Gravedigger. Now revived and back for battle, Kratos reclaims the Pandora's Box and uses it's power to defeat Ares. The gods forgives Kratos's of his sins, but are unwilling to remove his nightmares. Despairing, Kratos plunge from the highest point in Greece to end his misery. However, Athena stops him and tells him that the gods have decided to award him with a seat at Olympus, as the new God of War.

Why do we suffer so much for so small a thing?
(in all truth, i was expecting something bigger, with big Titan and big Temple and all)

Gameplay

God of War is first and foremost a hack and slash game. Enemies appear and you hack and slash them to oblivion. It also has it shares of puzzles and platform jumping which I assure you has lead me to many a headaches compared to Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta. Especially the parts involving Hades, both in the Challenge of Hades part of the Rings of Pandora and the part that Kratos was in Hades itself. It makes me feel like Hades, not Ares, is the main antagonist of the game. Frigging "tightrope" walking with blades whipping around.

As the first game in the series, some features that were present in later games was not available. This included leaping up ladders or sliding down walls. But the main thing that got to me was the fact that Kratos was scaling sheer walls with his bare hands. For gods' sake, use your frigging Blades of Chaos! Overall, it was interesting to experience the game that started it all. Ares himself was, by and large, a big letdown. Even the Hydra (the first boss), had more to offer. Speaking of which, only three boss come to mind, Hydra, Pandora's Guardian and Ares. Oh my.... Ares's battle was so straight forward that it paled in comparison to Hydra's multipart battle in different environments and Pandora's Guardian's battle, where you needed to think a tiny bit to slay it. 

Graphics

I would not comment on the quality of the graphics, since I am a bit handicapped when it comes to that. I'm using a 14 inch CRT TV, which is not suitable for PS3 games. Graphics will look watered down because of that. Instead, I'll talk about the designs. The first thing that really did not sit well with me was the Hydra. It looked like something out of a 1960s Horror Movie. Invasion of Dinosaur or really Clash of the Titans. It felt, somehow, fake. And the Cyclops looked like a certain cave troll from the first movie of a certain trilogy. I actually thought it was a troll until it hit me that trolls were unlikely to be in a Greek Myth game. Lastly, Ares looked uncannily like a certain prince turned undead king, no? It felt that way to me. The first time I saw Ares I was like, hell, that's Ar**** with red hair.

Conclusion

I am sure God of War will be a very good experience on a HDTV, since it was already a good experience on a 14" CRT TV. It certainly has an engaging gameplay, that attracts you to play it again and again, until to hit a difficult puzzle, whereby you will leave it for a few days and think of some way to solve it before continuing to hack and slash your enemies into oblivion.