"The greatest story never told!"

It's odd that I don't remember hearing anything about Kratos in high school. He was never mentioned in World History or any recent translations of the works of Homer. One would think that Kratos would have left a dark, blood colored stain of shame on the history of Greece and/or its mythology. His story is so grand as to be impossible to expunge from historical records. Perhaps records of the deicidal warrior were lost with the destruction of the great library of Alexandria.

Yeah…even ancient mythology couldn't rock this hard! Sure the core influence of the God of War series is Greek mythology, but the style is pure Marvel comics' house of ideas. Kratos slices into our imaginations with Lee/Kirby style sprinkled with some Frank Miller angst. God of War 2 is an action-adventure epic in the vein of Devil May Cry. God of War 2 takes the bombastic style of the first game and gives it bovine growth hormones.

Most games…most good games of this genre have a Japanese sensibility God of War 2 is aesthetically an American comicbook with very little subtlety, and exclamation points on every sight, sound, and play mechanic!

God of War 2 follows the fallen God of War, Kratos. He earned his godhood by killing to former God of War Ares. However the rage that seethes inside him has only grown. The Greek gods are afraid of him and so they betray him and strip him of his godly power. This is the Epic story of Kratos's journey to make the fates change his destiny. This is all just a background against which Kratos can splatter blood. That is not to say that the story isn't grand. It is so epic that I don't see how it can be topped in the context of Greek mythology. The story is not quite as textured as the story from the 1st game though.

In the first game Kratos was an antihero. He was the like the Hulk, an unstoppable rage machine, but living in ancient Greece. He was selfish and destructive, but you felt for him and you understood his goals. In God of War 2 Kratos is just angry and perhaps insane. He's the kind of Guy who would kick a puppy… and then curb stomp it's head into pudding. There are plot elements shoehorned in to make Kratos seem like a more heroic figure than he is, but ultimately Kratos is not very likable. You have to love being him though! He is designed to be the ultimate badass and he is. Playing as Kratos fulfills the barbarian fantasies living deep inside fanboys everywhere.

There are several anachronous guest appearances by Greek heroes and Demi-gods. Don't expect a comic style team-up though. Anyone with a voice in the game is just making an appearance so that Kratos can murder someone …with a voice. The story is told through a combination of prerendered and in-game movies. The prerendered movies are fantastically stylistic, yet realistic. The in-game movies are technologically some of the best ever seen on the PS2 and redeem the hit or miss in game movies from the 1st game.

As I said before, God of War 2 falls into the Devil May Cry genre of gaming. This means one part combo laden hack and slash, one part environmental puzzles and a dash of platforming are the basic parameters for the gameplay. The combo system is robust and the attacks are visceral. As with other types of games in this genre more attacks become available as you make your way through the game. By the end of the game Kratos can use several weapons.

He can use his main weapons, the blades of Athena. He also has a secondary weapon that can be switched on the fly, making for some beautiful crazy combos in God of War 2's open combo system. There are four types of magic to use, several creative, incidental abilities related to fighting and platforming and somewhere around thirty-plus different attacks that can be strung together. He also has the ubiquitous “rage” mode in which Kratos gains increased attack power for a short period of time. On the defensive end Kratos is able to block, parry and dodge attacks. He also gains a new projectile deflection ability that is extraordinarily useful. All of this is brought together by a butter smooth animation system. The base animation is perfect and now there are full animations for all of the move transitions.

What sets the attack system apart besides the brutal aesthetic of the attacks is the Shenmue style QTE system during combat. Basically during combat if you hit the correct button while that buttons icon is flashing above the enemies head you will do a savage, flashy enemy specific attack that will do extra damage. There are at least twenty types of basic enemies in the game and many, many bosses. All of them have unique attacks and they are mostly visually appealing. Although graphically sharper than their previous incarnations, there are sub-classes of an enemy that are conspicuously absent from God of War 2. In the 1st God of War there were many types of Cyclops'. In God of War 2 there is one type of Cyclops, and it is visually boring. There are however more basic enemy types in this second game.

Fallen foes yield one or a combination of four types of “energy.” You will be given life energy, upgrade energy, rage meter energy or magic energy. There are also chests in the game that yield those same types of energy and life and also yield health bar and magic bar upgrades.

The next element of the gameplay is the puzzle solving. The puzzles are even more delightful than the fine combat. God of War 2 does environmental puzzles better than any other game in this genre. There are a lot of push this, pull that, find the key type of puzzles. However, they are executed so well and in such a novel fashion that they seem innovative. The puzzles are not quite as intuitive as the ones in God of War, but there are many more of them. The best thing about these puzzles, however is that they almost completely do away with directionless backtracking.

I despise video game puzzles because they often make no sense and involve the previously mentioned directionless backtracking. God of War 2's puzzles are simultaneously clever and logical in that you are constantly wowed by the ingenuity of the design, but seldom hopelessly stuck. Best of all, if you have to travel a ways to find an item to solve a particular puzzle the game leads you back to the primary area. I think that the puzzles offer a easy- to fair amount of challenge for player's new to the series. As I loved the first game and was familiar with the cross game consistency of style with the puzzles I found some of them ingenious, but most of them easy.

The platforming in the game is mostly about enabling the puzzle solving, and hence it is spectacular. You can now glide with the wings of Icarus. You can stop time temporarily. The blades of Athena are even more useful in this gameplay area than before. You can use them to climb walls, hang from ceilings, pull down structures and grapple swing. Yes, the ubiquitous grapple swing makes an appearance here. The situations that you use it in later in the game will make your jaw drop though.

There is also a new gameplay style. There are a couple of levels where you can ride Pegasus. They are beautiful levels and killing things in the sky is a nice change of pace from ground based genocide.

Graphically God of War 2 is the most technically and aesthetically impressive game on the PS2. The character model's are superbly detailed, especially Kratos(although I believe he might have fewer poly's in this second showing.) The ancient Greek themed environments are epic, rich and active. You can't possibly understand what this game can do until you see it doing it. Can you imagine driving a realtime team of horses, each one the size of an aircraft carrier, or pushing a house sized marble temple into a marsh, or climbing a Titan as big as the Empire State building? God of War 2 is visually sharper, with more fine polygonal and textural detail than God of War, the former “best looking PS2 game of all time!”

God of War 2 shows off every graphical buzzword that the PS2 generation has to offer. We get to see normal mapping (with the Colossus), HDR lighting effects, large scale multitexturing, real-time reflection, aggressive streaming, huge number of highly detailed assailants on screen, complex particle effects (mmmm, dust particles' in shafts of light)and dynamic LOD. The most amazing thing is that all of this is being done at a fairly consistent 60 fps.

There are some V-synch issues, but this issue is not at all a deal breaker and fairly common in games operating at the edge of a system's capabilities (I even say some examples of V-synch tearing in Xbox's Ninja Gaiden.)

One effect that they took away from the 1st game is the realtime shallow water surface deformation. It was probably technically expensive and so it's been replaced with a fine looking animated specular water surface texture. The deformation was better. As I said before the in-game cinemas have increased in quality several times over.

You can really get into the gameplay because of a flawless camera. It moves cinematically and gives you a wide view in combat as to never block your view. You don't have any control over the camera, but you rarely feel that you need to.

As in most 1st party Sony games God of War can be played in progressive scan mode and supports Dolby Prologic II surround sound. It also supports THX sound and a 1080i resolution. Speaking of the sound, the aural effects are appropriate for this kind of game, but the music rocks. It's “ancients Greeks rowing a trireme,” Hollywood style music.

The producers have also provided quite a few unlockables and lots of bonus material. You have a “making of” featurette, internet trailers, an extra difficulty levels (for a total of four,) Extra costumes, a peek at some deleted levels, a bonus survival game and lots of other stuff. In fact there is an entire disk of extras.

When it's all said and done God of War2 is a great sequel and it is well worth the price of admission. It is more than that though, God of War 2 is the literal, perfect realization of the the American fanboy aesthetic made playable. Because of that it is in my book the greatest game of the sixth Generation of gaming!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/23/07, Updated 04/02/07