In beating the second God of War game, I've finished off the God of War Collection for the PS3 (the games originally came out on PS2). I have to say, anyone with a PS3 that didn't play these two classics should pick this collection up soon. Not only were these two of the best games on the PS2, but they got fancy updated HD graphics and play damn well on the PS3. But I've covered what was so great about the first, let's talk about the second. I suppose what I like about it is that the game never took the easy route, and consistently made things bigger and better. The opening battle against the Colossus at Rhodes is widely regarded as one of the greatest openers in video games. From then on nearly the entire game is one giant level, which I always loved- there's a cool feeling in leaving a room in one direction, progressing for an hour, then eventually being led back to that original room with the ability to go in a different direction. To me it breaks up the linearity that a lot of games suffer from. The abilities here are all completely new- the weapons and magic are all different from the ones Kratos had in the first game, but to me they felt much better integrated. In the first God of War I rarely strayed from the trusty Blades of Olympus (Kratos's opening weapon) but in the second installment I was using everything in my repertoire to fight. The story made sense as a continuation of the first game- Kratos is the new God of War, and a lot of the other gods don't really like him, so he's betrayed and killed. From then on, Kratos uses the help of Gaia to seek out the Fates, go back in time to the betrayal, and set things straight. The only real downside here was the lame plot twist at the end- it even seemed like the game realized what an unnecessary turn it was, and it was hardly mentioned again after the first time. Oh well. That's one of only two small knocks on the game, the other being that combat can get kinda button-mashy at times. But that's no reason not to give this a play. The blend of badass fights and challenging puzzles make it one of the best games of the PS2 era.
The problem with having so many games in my backlog is that I have so many games that I have yet to play. Gyah! These are definitely near the top of the list, but when the list is seventy deep, I mean, it could still be months until I get to them. Anyway, the concept of an awesome PS2 game with some subpar combat brings to mind PoP: Sands of Time. I've reviewed a whole lot of video games so far on Back-Blogged, but that one is definitely in my top three with BioShock and - yes - Shadow Complex. Give it a shot, for sure. Of course, I'd expect you to do so no sooner than I get around to God of War.
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