God of War II
God of War II is an action adventure role playing game that was released in early 2007 exclusively for the Sony Playstion 2.
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Developer: SCE Studios Santa Monica Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Release Date: March 13, 2007 Platforms: PS2 JustRPG Score: 94% Pros: +Impressive combat system. +Thrilling story line. +Great visuals. Cons: -Repetitive. |
Overview
God of War II Overview
God of War II for the Sony Playstation 2 is an action adventure role playing game that continues the story of Kratos from the original God of War. The story of ancient Greece continues and players yet again battle god and myths to gain new abilities and get revenge. The game, just like the original, still has an impressive combat system similar to games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. The visuals are also still amazing and even have improved since the last game. Overall God of War II is a must play for any serious console gamer.
God of War II Screenshots
God of War II Featured Video
Full Review
God of War II Review
By, Josh Ferguson
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
| When God of War hit the PlayStation 2 in 2005, the game became an immediate hit, with its great presentation, fun gameplay, gruesome combat, and badass lead character. As great as the original was, there is only one possible way the sequel could go, and that’s down, right? Well, you’ll have to read on to find out. |
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The last time we saw Kratos, he had just defeated Ares and become the new God of War. It is said that Kratos was a far more ruthless God of War than Ares ever was and his lack of obedience toward Zeus had angered the God of Olympus. While I won’t reveal the full storyline, I will say that the game follows Kratos as he travels to meet the Sisters of Fate so that he can alter the one thing no man nor God has ever changed, his fate. |
| God of War II features an excellent storyline. The game features Kratos, one of the most badass and ruthless characters in the history of gaming, and a bunch of other memorable characters along the way. As Kratos, players will travel to many different and enormous locations and take on a wide variety of enemies along the way. Whether or not this installment of the series is better than the original game is debatable, but if you enjoyed the original storyline, there is little doubt you will have any problems with this. One of the biggest issues concerning the storyline, which really isn’t that much of an issue, is that the ending of the game is fairly sudden, and it is obvious that it is supposed to follow directly into a third adventure for Kratos. |
| Okay now, let’s be honest, while the storyline of God of War was great, most people really don’t play the game because of that, but instead for the gameplay. Am I right? The combat in God of War II is basically identical to that of the original, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In God of War II, Kratos will come across many different weapons including the ever-popular Athena’s Blades, a massive Barbarian Hammer, the Spear of Destiny, and the sword that Zeus used to defeat the Titans, the Blade of Olympus. Each of these weapons can be upgraded to increase the amount of damage that can be dealt out and the number of combos that can be performed using that specific weapon. While the original game had a number of different combos that could be performed, this time around the developers significantly increased that number, so players can dish out even more combos while they rip their enemies to pieces. While it is nice to see an increase in combos, many of which are downright awesome, the fact of the matter is that most players probably won’t be using too many of these different combos and will stick with the more traditional button-mashing approach. In all honesty, most players will probably find a few different combos that they enjoy or just merely mash the different attack buttons over and over until they kill the enemies. Whether you mash your way through the game or use the different combos, either method works, really, but the thing that’s great about God of War is that even while mashing the buttons, the game feels like so much more. The combat is so fulfilling, with the different weapons, large amounts of brutality, and the different methods of defeating your enemies varying so often, including the context-sensitive attacks (which I will get into later) or merely just slashing your way through your enemies, the game really doesn’t even feel like you’re simply mashing buttons over and over. |
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Similar to the original game, God of War II features a number of different enemies that can’t be defeated by merely beating repeatedly with your weapons, but instead will need to be killed by performing a context-sensitive attack, which will usually take out an enemy or dish out a great deal of damage. These types of attacks can’t be performed on all the enemies and usually aren’t available until after you have dished out a significant amount of damage to the enemy. After dealing out enough damage, and if it is possible to perform it on the specific enemy, a circle will appear above that individual’s head, and then you will just need to press the different button combinations that appear, whether it be the face buttons or moving the analog stick in a certain direction. |
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| This time around, God of War II features a larger amount of enemies than were present in the original game. Also, many of the enemies from the original game make their return for the sequel, including one character who had been taken out by Kratos in the original. I won’t reveal who it is, but anyone familiar with the original game should get quite a chuckle once they see who I’m talking about. God of War II also features a larger amount of boss battles than were available in the first game. In actuality, I believe there to be about twice the amount that were seen in the first game, and many of which are freakin’ awesome. |
| If you have seen a trailer for the game, then chances are you have some knowledge that God of War II features some griffins and the Pegasus. At certain points found in the game, Kratos will have to ride aboard the Pegasus and battle his way through griffins that are trying to, obviously, take him out. As Kratos, you will basically have to catch up to some of the griffins and use Athena’s Blades to swipe them as they get near. Once the enemy has sustained enough damage, players can then perform the context-sensitive attacks, which consist of Kratos jumping off the back of the Pegasus onto the enemy griffin and basically cutting the wings off, and then diving back on the Pegasus. There aren’t too many of these battles found in the game, and they don’t last very long, but these are some ways to mix up the gameplay, and they look pretty good too. |
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Aside from the new weapons that Kratos can possess, there are also some completely new magic powers at his disposal. Sadly, though, a few of the powers are quite a bit similar to those that were seen in the original game, but that still doesn’t mean that they aren’t fun to use. Similar to the weapons, the magic powers can be leveled up by collecting enough orbs, which will increase the damage and so forth. Kratos will also come across a few different relics while on his journey, including the Icarus Wings, which were originally wanted in the original but never made it, and the Golden Fleece, which if timed right can allow you to block certain enemy attacks and perform a powerful counterattack. These two relics are great additions to the game, and can be quite fun to actually use. |
| If it was the brutal ruthless combat that you loved so much in the original game, then the sequel shouldn’t disappoint. The intense blood and gore of the original game returns for the sequel, and it features some really interesting animations, including one of my personal favorites where Kratos is able to pull off a context-sensitive attack and rip the eye right out of a Cyclops’ head. Some of the killing animations that were around in the original are still here in the sequel, including ripping the head off of Medusa, but there are also a whole lot more animations in this one that look great and are fun to pull off. |
| Aside from a heavy focus on combat, the original God of War also had elements of platforming and puzzle solving. In the sequel, the game also focuses quite a bit on these two elements, and with the newly acquired Wings of Icarus, there’s also quite a bit more platforming to be found in this game. God of War II also features a new platforming technique where Kratos is able to use his chain blades to swing from different locations (think Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones) and climb across ceilings. The puzzle solving, which usually isn’t the most difficult to complete, is also back in this installment, and what’s there can be fun and works quite well. |
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Graphically, God of War II is one of the most impressive-looking titles to be found on the PlayStation 2. The game features a wide variety of environments that are not only enormous, but also detailed and look downright amazing. Character models throughout the game are also quite gorgeous, with Kratos and even the enemies looking awesome. Plus, with the increased amount of enemies in God of War II, players will truly be able to appreciate the amount of work that has gone into making each of the game’s enemies truly great. As I said earlier, the animations of Kratos look great, are fun to pull off, and have increased since the last game. The game continues to feature a fixed camera, which doesn’t give the player any control over the camera views, but this doesn’t affect the game at all because the camera is dang near perfect. Rarely will players encounter any sort of camera trouble throughout the adventure. In other words, yeah, God of War II is an impressive-looking game. |
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| The sound department in God of War II is almost as impressive as the graphics department–almost. For the most part, the voice work is top notch, with the voice actor of Kratos and the narrator of the original game both returning to their roles, which both sound great. The only voice that really stands out as kind of flat is Michael Clarke Duncan as Atlas. The actor does have a commanding voice, and you could picture him portraying Atlas, but his voice sounds rather dull and almost boring when he speaks. The soundtrack in the game is equally impressive, and features an epic-like sound that you would hear from a major motion picture. The sound effects throughout the game are also great, whether it be the sound of your chain blades smashing down on your enemies, the collapsing of rocks, the screams of dying soldiers, and so forth. |
| Once you finish God of War II, what’s left to do? Well, similar to the original God of War, the sequel has several difficulty levels that players can go through. Some of these difficulty levels can be ridiculously hard, and chances are it is going to take players a lot of time and effort to actually complete these. Aside from other difficulty levels, the game allows players to unlock other costumes for Kratos. There are a few different costumes, with my personal favorite being the Cod of War outfit, which is unlocked by merely beating the game, and shows Kratos in a large fish costume.. Heh.. He looks so intimidating that it is hard not to laugh. Similar to the original, the game also features a sort of coliseum where players go through and try to defeat different levels of enemies. Aside from that, players can go back and watch all the different videos that they originally viewed throughout the game. This is nice, seeing as how cool some of these videos really are. Something else included with God of War II is an entire DVD that features trailers and other videos about the development of the game. Die-hard God of Warfans should really enjoy watching some of the creative minds behind the game, and seeing as how this is included for free, you can’t really complain. |
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Not only is God of War II one of the best titles to be released for the PlayStation 2, but to be released for any console in a long time. If you own a PlayStation 2 or a PlayStation 3, then there is no reason that you should not add this to your collection. God of War II is an amazing game and has everything from great graphics and great sound, to fun combat and an exciting story that make this one of the most epic titles in a long time. |
| Final Grade: 94% |
Screenshots
God of War II Screenshots
Videos
God of War II Videos
God of War II Trailer