Just about everybody knows this game and either loves or hates it. You play as a godlike destroyer Kratos and you annihilate everything and everyone in your path. It's like a nihilistic 14 year boy hopped up on steroids on the loose in the world of Greek Mythology. Athens is under attack by the god ARes and it's up to Kratos to wade thru a river of blood to stop him.

The graphics are stunning especially the whole part with the titan Chronos and the temple on his back. I was re-playing it recently and enjoying myself till I reached the Hades level. This level is what mars the game other than the repetitive fighting. Apparently the game designers confused difficult and challenging with annoying and aggravating. You've got spinning logs with blades that one false move can send you hurtling to your death. Then there's floating platforms that move quickly while archers shoot at you from a distance. And there's the not one but two rotating towers of knives that you have to climb that if you just barely touch one from below will send back to the bottom to start over again. Yay! What fun! I hate it when game designers do that. It's like when they run out of ideas they stick some annoying jump game in their to disguise their lack of ideas. And the Challenge of the Gods - OMG! I hope whoever was responsible for that level and the Hades level end up in a ditch somewhere.

Another annoying thing is the so-called mini-game when a large enemy has a circle above his head. You have to mash the right button which randomly appears on the screen. Some enemies you can only kill this way and makes for an annoying experience when you hit the wrong button or turn analog stick the wrong direction. There's skill or strategy just be quick - I hate that!

You go thru the game getting weapons and magic weapons which you can power up by collecting red orbs from chest and killing bad guys. The more combos and special tricks you use the more orbs you get. However despite all the weapons and magic, the final battle you are stripped of these - huh? What was the point then in collecting all that stuff when in the end you lose it? I swear some game designers rode a short bus to school.

Despite these maddening and sometimes incomprehensible flaws, God of War is a good game especially for just good ole hacking and slashing.

I heard a lot of things about God of War and trying it out for the first time I ran the gamut from amazed, bored, optimistic and then finally utterly infuriated.


God of War really does a superb job of hooking the player with the first level. It's got the action, the scenery, the whole cinematic appeal is perfect. You really get this feel of the old Ray Harryhausen fantasy films, with a Hydra constantly attacks you through-out the level as you battle around a doomed fleet within a storm. It's all perfectly done and based on that level alone I would've given the game 5/5 stars no question.

Then the game takes you to the next stage, or rather set of stages, the besieged city of Athens and then the game appears as if it had exhausted itself from the first stage and needed to lie down a bit because it becomes incredibly underwhelming. It does nothing wrong gameplay wise, it's all very competent but it just loses the whole cinema feel in exchange for total mediocrity. And that's it, that's nearly half the game right there. Even the boss within Athens is just a beefed up common enemy that you can wail on and beat in less than a minute.

After finally leaving Athens you have to make your way through a desert to Pandora's temple which is borne upon the back of a fallen Titan. The premise feels as though it is attempting to re-establish the over-the-top feeling of the first stage but unfortunately the fact that the whole temple is upon the Titan really has no bearing on the gameplay, not even much in a visual aspect since you're indoors most of the time. The good part is though Pandora's temple is actually fun unlike the Athens stages, it has all these death traps and puzzles, pretty entertaining really. Though probably because of the very nature of it being a dungeon you start to really get sick of it, especially considering this right here is the largest portion of the game, nearly half of it. The Temple levels not as overly amazing as the single first level but it is miles better than the Athens levels.

Now after you've completed the Temple you have another singular stage (like the first) and that is the Underworld, at first the concept strikes you as a cool concept then upon playing it you find yourself truly cursing as loud as possible, perhaps even inventing some new ones on the way. The Underworld stage is chiefly composed not of fighting but jumping puzzles and not just any jumping puzzles but 'you screw up and die' jumping puzzles and how could I forget to mention the camera constantly works against you at this! Coupled with the fact that the level is just a bunch of tan colored floating platforms over a blood ocean you wonder how this level even made it past the alpha stage.

However even passing that trial and finally getting to the last fight the game just doesn't work for me. As if sensing my burning hatred the game right as the final boss fight comes just doesn't kick in. The game doesn't lock up it just doesn't play and just hangs there indefinitely. The game disc itself is flawless, no scratches, not even a faint thumbprint on it and this is on a new slim PS2 too! Even after cleaning the same problem occurs and searching online I've found that this problem has occurred with a few other players as well with no solution. That's really totally unacceptable with a console game, it may fly on PC games where your patches are free but on a console game this is just incredibly poor.

I've wrestled with how to score God of War 1, The first stage is fantastic, the Athens stages are boring, the Temple stages are good, the Underworld stage is dog awful and with the whole game just up and crapping out on itself I find that the game seems almost all over the place with its quality. I've settled with a score of 3.5 because while the overall product quality is probably only average the fun parts of the game really are honest good fun. I will say this the game has gotten me eager on God of War 2 which I have started playing just this minute.