When the God of War becomes a new Tomb Raider
Nevertheless after the price dropped I finally got it and decided to write a little review:
Well, I loved the first GOW. Everything was good about it – the graphics, the story, the relation between puzzling and fighting was well balanced. It was an exciting game with which you hardly got bored.
GOW 2 never gets this great, even though many people have a different opinion about that. But often those unanimous agreements remind me of this fairytale - the emperors new clothes, where people just follow blind.
GOW 2 has its moments and some good ideas – for example I like the faster wallclimbing with the blades a lot. Pole-swinging is also a good addition. But unfortunately the negative parts weigh more heavily than the others.
In the beginning of the game there is this scene, the mini-game where Kratos grabs the 2 naked girls and the player has to push certain buttons to get red orbs. It's this mini-game that determines the route of march for the rest of the game – I call it the "button-wanking" experience.
No matter if you open doors, kill minotaurs or try to escape the hands of a colossus. You are forced to hammer on the circle-button (or sometimes the shoulder-buttons which is a variety I absolutely don't understand because it's an unnecessary one – well, maybe it is there for selling more controllers). Can anyone explain, why a door falls down behind you and you have to hammer buttons again when you want to go back?
Either way, after 1 hour of doing so you will be in urgent need of a good orthopedist.
Storylike GOW 2 has become quite shallow compared to the epic predecessor but I think you can't make this a serious accusation because it's always hard to step into the footsteps of a great debut. The Ending though is a bit like a soap opera: It's like "Cliff Barnes is your father, J.R.!" And when Zeus and the other gods run to the balcony to look for the oncoming Kratos they look like a bunch of queers – unintentionally funny.
The graphics are great and the greek mythology setting is unmatched. The only thing bothering is the tearing now and then. The sound is good even though the music and the repetitive moanin of certain enemies gets enervating sometimes (as well as the one-hit-kills when you meet with gorgons).
Worth mentioning is the fact, that the german language version gets stuck from time to time. Anyway you better start with the english setting, otherwise you'll miss the really great cameo of Harry Hamlin.
What drags down the game completely for me is the relation between puzzling and fighting. As I said before it was well balanced in the first game, but GOW 2 made me tear at my non-existing hair of my shaking head.
I would name 2 benchmarks for comparison: Regarding to puzzles I recall the early Tomb Raider games, for the second example of an ideal and varied combat system I would refer to "Prince of Persia – Warrior Within".
Unfortunately the combat system in GOW 2 has become extremely poor. You can get through the whole game simply by combining the L1-button with the square button – it's button wanking extreme, only interrupted by those mini-games for finishing enemies off. Which becomes pretty bleaky after a while. And by the way: where has the "air evade/attack" from the first game gone? Pretty useful if you ask me.
Instead of offering a varied combat system the developers decided to go into a more "Tomb Raider" – direction. That is, in other words : a whole lot of puzzles. Too many for my taste. I can't hardly remember the time when I turned so many switches, moved so many statues and opened so many chests. Is this the God of war or the riddler?
The relation between puzzling in addition to the poor fighting system feels completely unbalanced. Whereas they tried to outweigh the quality of the combat system with the quantity of the appearing enemies. Nevertheless slaughtering through hordes of opponents with only 2 buttons makes me drowsy.
The nearer you get to the end of the game the puzzles become more annoying and the fighting more boring. Personally I hope that they change things for the third part or else the God of War will meet the same fate as Lara Croft did when she became the "Angel of Darkness".