God of War Collection (God of War I) - PS3

I had never played any of the God of War games, except a bit of the first level. It never really appealed to me. But when the collection edition came out, I figured it was a pretty good deal for two games.

I really liked them both and it's also nice to play the sequel right after I was done with the first one. No waiting two-plus years for me! Hahahah!

Anyway on to the first one, being Gow I:



The updated graphics are really nice. They kept it simplified and cartoony, which makes it very appealing to the eye. The shapes seem a bit stylized, which is good to keep that "epic story" look, in my opinion.

The gameplay was gleefully over the top, with Kratos hacking and slicing skillfully with his many combos and weapons. Which utlimatelty were lost on me, since I used my basic weapon upgraded to max and used the same reliable combo. :P

Although, as much as Kratos is proficient with the slicing, he's not so much with the platforming. He pretty much handles like a big ham with knives. Especially when negotiating beams. A few sequences requiring skills were an exercise in frustration.

Speaking of frustration, two parts of the game made me temporarily hate the game and want to throw the controller at my cat. And not in the spirit of Kratos' anger.

There's a part towards the end, in the Cliffs of Madness where you have to push a block to make you jump to a ledge before spikes on a timer come up and kill you. Fair enough, that's nothing new. But the frustrating thing is they give you very little time to do it. So much little that I wasn't even sure if that was what I was supposed to do, even though it seemed evident. I thought I was doing something wrong, since I was dying all the time SO MANY TIMES!!! It even made me look at a walkthrough (something rare that requires me being stumped). And when even that failed to help, except to confirm that I was indeed trying to do the right thing (one FAQ even had the gall to say that you had plenty of time to do it!!!! NO!!!!) I had to look up a video that SHOWED me how to do it. Bah!!! I finally did it after A FEW HOURS of the same crap. ANGER!

The second part wasn't angering as it was tedious. When you're at the end, climbing out of Hades, there is a part where you have to climb a rotating column with blades on it. It becomes a tedious pattern memorization as you go up. And make one mistake, you come tumbling down and have to redo the entire thing. No forgiveness. So, after close to two hours, I make it up the damn thing. Finally, I think! And then I come to another ... AUUUUGH! And by that time, I had to turn in for the night and of course there were no save points. So I had to turn it off, knowing that I  would have to do it all over again. Bah!

I did like that boss monsters had lifebars. There's nothing I hate more then fighting for a while and discovering that the whole time I was actually not doing any damage. At least that makes results evident and I like that.

The story was satisfying. I found it perfectly greek.
The tricked-up mythology creatures were also very cool. At first, I thought they're gritty look would bother me, but it didn't. They ARE monsters after all, I realized. And this isn't Disney. And I loved the end, which is rare for me in games.

All in all, I really loved GoW I except for the couple of parts and I was looking forward to playing the sequel.