God of War

DO YOU LIKE MASHING BUTTONS AND BLOODZ AND SEXY TIME?

A game for easily amused people who like mindlessly pressing buttons and seeing blood fly everywhere.  My most hated type of game and perfect for this blog.  Of course, this is just one of those that I was all but forced to play by all of my friends who said it was AWESOME (retards) and shoved it down my throat.  Already knowing that it was a hack-and-slash, I wasn't looking forward to starting it by the time I bought it.  However, I freaking love Greek mythology and saw critical reviews raving about the story, so I certainly tried venturing into to it with an open mind.  In fact, I went through all five of them (the PSP games included) with an open mind.  Well, let's just say there is one positive here: I won't have to write a separate blog post for each one because they're all the same fucking game.  Or maybe I will just to be an asshole.  I haven't decided.

Kratos is pissed off. All the fucking time.

All right, let's get to the core reason as to why this game sucks, as do all of its sequels (God of War III pictured above).  You get your main weapons and learn attacks throughout the game that are highly simplistic (even the later ones) with their button combinations.  You get other weapons which can also be upgraded (through souls you receive from chests and killing enemies) to learn equally simplistic attacks.  Then you get a magic bar so you can learn - you guessed it - simplistic magic attacks.  Then there are other items and shit but none of it matters because it's all simplistic like everything else.  So like many games of the last two generations, God of War can be easily enjoyed by the mentally retarded.  And it's not even so much the simplicity of the game as it is that you're constantly button-mashing throughout 75% of the game.  How you can play this game for more than an hour before caving your own face in I don't know.  They do mix up the action better in the sequels, but the original is just lackluster in this regard.  

 DURR!! BLOOD!!

The other fourth of the game will see you doing two things: solving puzzles and fighting giant boss battles.  The latter sucks in the original God of War.  All the bosses are almost the same fucking fight (until Ares, which is admittedly epic), doing the same shit you've been doing the rest of the game.  Not to mention laughably easy unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty (in which the god-awful hit-detection will become strikingly obvious).  The puzzles in this game are actually pretty solid; even a veteran puzzle-solver like me was stopped for a few moments on a couple of occasions.  I'll give them props here, as God of War II holds a similar strength.  But why the fuck did they simplify the games in this regard for the sequels?  Because they already knew 99% of their audience was retarded?  And I'm not even going to discuss the platforming.  I don't count making a few jumps every now and then as such.

 Kratos is so badass he runs across the sky to rip that thing's eye out.

But ok, we know why this game is so laughably simple: to appeal to people who are amused by blood flying and sexual themes (the majority of gamers, especially so for Americans).  The entire selling point of this game is blood and sex.  They don't want the game rated AO, so of course you only get one brief scene per game with some whores, which you can't even see on screen while Kratos goes to work (games today like Red Dead Redemption are lolzing).  How this is so infinitely amusing to some of you... well, you get the picture.  It's just amazing that nerdy virgins play through the majority of a game, hands wringing like a grandma with cerebral palsy, just to press some buttons and see the screen shake.  Oh, and about the QTEs: almost always the sign of a weak game when they have to resort to timed button pressing so much.  The story is solid and I love the Greek Mythology, but you're going to need a lot more than that to impress The Gaming Connoisseur. 

6/10