God of War

I finally got around to playing God of War, a PS2 game from 2005 that received nearly universal acclaim and praise. And while I know this particular ship has sailed, I'll still do my best to jump aboard. Very few games manage to do so many things so well, but God of War was both one of the best hack-and-slash combat games I've ever played and also one of the games with the best level design. The plot is simple enough, as is the characterization; you are Kratos, a Spartan chieftain serving a life debt to Ares, the god of war. But Ares has wronged you, and now you seek to kill him. To do so you'll need to power up and receive aid from the other gods, which allows for a rudimentary sense of level progression. The game plays out fairly linearly - it's no sandbox and no open world Metroid or Zelda - but you still do just enough backtracking, and your path converges with a previously used path just often enough for the environment to feel wholly and totally realized. The fierce and powerful musical score really underlines the epic feel of the game as you slay mythical Greek creature after mythical Greek creature. From the Hydra to the Minotaur to Medusa to Ares himself, I racked up quite an impressive list of kills. The game was worthy of all its praise and I'm looking forward to playing both of its sequels (particularly God of War III, the HD offering on PS3). That said, I don't know if I want to just rush right into those games. My video game backlog remains large and filled with games of varying quality; if I blaze through all the great ones first, I'll be all the less motivated to finish off the rest of them. Still, if I want to maintain the pace on beating fifty video games this year, I shouldn't wait very long to move forward.