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Man Rage the Video Game
Seriously, in all my years of playing video games I have not seen a protagonist as bitter and rage driven as God of War's Kratos. There is not a man or beast who have crossed paths with that man that have not immediately regretted their decision. To be fair, he does have a lot to be angry about, and has absolutely nothing to lose, so he always goes balls to the wall in everything he does.
Just like the first game, God of War 2 really earns its M rating. It's one of the most brutal and violent video games I've played in a long time. It's one of those games that would really help relieve stress if you just had a crappy day. Trust me, you forget all of your troubles when you're ripping zombie soldiers in half with your bare hands. Or stabbing a dude in the face with his own sword that's still in his arm that you just ripped off. This happens frequently.
The game itself is a mixture of action and puzzle solving, some of which can actually be quite tricky. More than once did I have to sit back and think about how to proceed, but it never got so bad that I got frustrated. Wouldn't matter, though, because I could just take out those frustrations after the puzzle was solved, here's where the action comes in. It's really in two forms, just straight up beat the hell out of anything that gets in your way, or timed button presses, AKA: quicktime events. A lot of monsters in the game are destroyed by the use of both. You weaken a monster till a circle appears above its head, then press the circle button to finish it off in the most brutal way possible. The same goes with bosses.
Much like the first game, the boss battles are some of the best of any game. Many of these are against creatures many times the size of Kratos, such as the Colossus of Rhodes. I'm not spoiling much as this happens in the first two minutes of the game, but Kratos loses his god powers and Athena breathes life into the Colossus, and it's out for Kratos' blood. The boss fight is pretty much stretched out over the entire first area of the game. It's pretty intense.
God of War 2 was released near the end of the Playstation 2's life cycle. Oh sure, the system is still technically alive, but there really haven't been any major releases for a long time. Anyway, it really does push the aging platform to it's limits. There were times I actually stopped and stared at the background in awe. It's almost better than some current gen games I've seen. You'd be hard pressed to look for a PS2 game that looks better than God of War 2.
If you're a fan of action games, there is no real reason why you shouldn't pick up this game. It's a blast from start to finish. It's not very long, but it also doesn't cost very much anymore. You can pick it up for $20. It's also gonna be on the God of War collection that's coming to Playstation 3 soon. I can't really endorse that one, as I haven't played the version that's on there, but it's supposed to be the same with just upscaled graphics. Well either way, this game is the perfect example of how to make a video game.
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System: |
Playstation 2
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| Genre: |
Action
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| Experience: |
Finished the main story
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