God of War II = Love

I have to admit it... I'm a bit of a Kratos whore. I simply love that dude to death and I can't get enough of his 'tude and killing sprees. Since the first screens and info were released of the original God of War, I knew that the gaming world was about to be blessed with something truly special. To this day, the demo for that game remains one of the finest pieces of interactive entertainment that this industry has seen and easily eclipses the entire experience of many other games, next-gen or not. It really was that amazing and cemented Kratos as one major bad-ass, while simultaneously making the player feel amazingly cool.

I have a sort of intimate relationship with Kratos in that I had to truly analyze his adventures for a former project I was working on. Unfortunately, that project won't ever be released, but it did put me on a path to understanding GoW at a level that most people (even huge fans of the game) aren't even aware of. The underlying design of that title is simply amazing and while I don't understand why the development team did certain things the way they did, such as how the face buttons function in relation to grabbing enemies, I can easily acknowledge that they did way, way, way, way, way more things right than wrong. It certainly wasn't an easy journey for them, I know that, but the end result - in my opinion - definitely was worth it.

Jumping ahead to this past Tuesday, I almost had a heart attack when my local EB called up and told me that they just got in the demo for GoW II. I immediately rushed over, grabbed it and drove back home as fast as humanly possible. (My apologies to the lady at the crosswalk :-) I then proceeded to pop the disc in my PS3 and began my first steps into a bold, new adventure. To say the least, the demo was spectacular but I do have to say that I still feel the demo from the original GoW was actually better. It had a larger variety of gameplay mechanics and had a nice balance of challenges. The GoW II demo just feels a bit flatter with mostly just combat and a few chain swings thrown in for good measure. The boss fight is still quite amazing, though.

I urge all of you to go out and pre-order your copy now. The game even looks great on the PS3, though you will have to deal with the whole 'no rumble' thing. Frankly, I have a sneaking suspicion that GoW II could very well end up as Best Game of the Year and we're still only in March!!!

Man, I love this game so much that if Sony released a console that only played the games from this series, it would be my favorite console of all time (Sorry, SNES). This game and the large variety of other Sony-published games is why I got entranced by the PlayStation brand in the first place. Hmmm... maybe I'll write a blog post about that later on.

Summary: Pre-order GoW II and play the demo to death. It will prepare you for what many consider one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences out there.