With that said, this is also a deservedly M-rated game. Blood is the name of the game in God of War, and from cutscenes to in-game action, you'll spill a whole lot of it as you go. For some, it might be a little bit much, but if you enjoy some good gore, God of War absolutely does not disappoint. The one area where the game does feel a little off in terms of its sense of "maturity" is with the sort of random flirtations with sexuality that appear from time to time. Mostly, it's just a few benign scenes of bare-breasted women that are hardly worth noting, but there is one sequence where you can actually engage in one of the contextual minigames to have sex with a pair of women. You don't see any of it on camera, and it's actually done in sort of a comical fashion, with just a framed shot of a jar on a table continually bumping around until it finally falls off the table and breaks at the end. Most people probably won't be offended by this at all--it's just kind of a goofy aside to the otherwise dark tone of the game--but it does seem a little out of place.

Sorry, bud. Sacrifices have to occasionally be made in the name of opening locked doors.

Greece, as shown through the eyes of the game, is a pretty fantastic place. Even the most mundane aspects of the city of Athens seem impressive in scope, and when you get to levels like the huge, sandstorm-filled desert and the massive Pandora's temple (which happens to be chained to the back of a humongous titan), it's pretty hard to not be floored by how cool it all looks. Though the levels are fairly linearly designed, there are plenty of opportunities for exploration, so you'll find all sorts of little hidden health bonuses and tunnels if you just take the time to look. Even without the exploratory elements, the levels just look so impressive, thanks mostly to the way the game's fixed cinematic camera moves. As cinematic cameras go, this is really one of the best ones ever designed, as it almost never, ever trips you up at all, and it always seems to frame the most impressive shot available. Occasionally it would be nice to be able to move the camera, but as it is, the way God of War captures the action with its camera is quite impressive.

Even from a technical perspective, God of War really carries its weight, making excellent use of the PS2 hardware's capabilities. The best part of the game is the animation, which is practically seamless, no matter what you do. The developers evidently went out of their way to make sure every possible scenario was animated in a realistic fashion. As a result, you won't find any herky-jerky movements between getting hit and going into another combo move. Everything transitions beautifully, and save for a few glitches you might run into here and there (most of which are minor), this game is just about as polished up as polished up gets. There are practically no loading times (save for a few brief ones), so practically every changeover from level to level is totally seamless. The only real technical issues you might run into involve the frame rate, which has an occasional tendency to hitch up during some very specific scenarios. Generally, the game can handle a lot of enemies onscreen at once, but if you couple a lot of enemies with, say, a water-covered ground surface, then things get a smidge choppy; but even when this does happen, it's never much of a problem, and it's really just a minor blemish on an otherwise excellent-looking game.

See that building chained to the back of that big, ugly thing? Yeah, you need to get up there.

The audio may, in fact, be God of War's greatest achievement, both technically and stylistically. The orchestral score is simply one of the best ever put onto a console game, mixing energetic, epic music--the likes of which compares to any top-grade Hollywood production--with low-key, ethereal tones that set the mood for the quieter moments of the game wonderfully. All the music is placed so well within the context of the game that you'll never see a moment where something doesn't fit. It's just phenomenal stuff. The voice acting is almost as good, too. Kratos is voiced to near perfection, providing the kind of gruff, guttural delivery that such a hardened warrior would demand. Even the side characters pull off their characters wonderfully. However, the narrator is perhaps the best of all. The story is told by an elderly village oracle, and her tone is so perfect for the role that you're instantly sucked in the moment she begins to speak. Even the sound effects really couldn't conceivably be better. Every sword slash, every splash of blood, and every roar of a monster feels just as it should. To sum it all up, you just couldn't ask for a better audio experience from this game.

When all is said and done, God of War is simply a high-class production in every single facet of its package. From the finely balanced gameplay, to the magnificent presentation, to the great roster of unlockable extras, you can't help but be impressed by what this game has to offer. It's simply a marvelously executed experience that's fun from beginning to end, and anyone with a taste for mature content and the action adventure genre would be foolish to pass it up.