I just finished a game - The Official Thread.

[CommonMan]

Just finished God of War 2 (in the collection)

Thoughts: Amazing Game! Seriously, my favorite of the series. Even though the first game does the best job of telling a story, the gameplay in this game is the best. I really can't tell you why I liked it the best, but it just felt great. On the story side, well, Kratos is an unabashed dick. He really is an anti-hero of the first magnitude, and not someone that I can personally root for. So the lack of coherent story in this one was actually a net positive.

9.5/10

Also finished God of War 3 this weekend

Thoughts: Very, very good. I loved the Nimean Cestus, and there were a couple of great set piece battles that are pretty epic (I'm thinking of Cronos for some reason). The graphics in places are the best I've ever seen, but like Heavy Rain there are some weird inconsistencies. Kratos looks so real that it's completely obvious when there are flatter textures around him (there are not "flat" textures in the game, it really is a graphical masterpiece in that regards. The scale is so huge in some of the game, it boggles the mind.

Gameplay wise it's a small step down from 2, however. The weapons except the aforementioned Cestus are all interchangeable and never made me really want to switch out from the Blades of Exile, there's just no point. Also, unless I got magically a lot better between ejecting 2 and putting in 3, the game is quite a bit easier. I died about 5 times at the hands of enemies (as opposed to probably 15 in 2, at normal level in both games) and had the obligatory 40 or so run through by ground spikes, didn't land right after swinging, etc. That's my biggest gripe with the GoW series, the platforming flat out stinks. Give Kratos about 50% of Nathan Drake's climbing and jumping skills and I would be a happy CommonMan.

Storywise, Kratos surprised me for a bit, when dealing with Pandora he acutually acts like a person for 15 seconds. It was a great break from yelling "I WILL have my vengence!" every 3 minutes, and I wanted more. Good wrap up to the series, and Kratos killed everyone, so that was to be expected.

9.0/10