For example, in the Colossus of Rhodes boss fight it’s natural to assume you’re the hero taking out the big bad guy. There’s even some fun subtlety in the way Kratos is presented here. But the God of War II Kratos finely threads the needle between the thinly sketched angry bald dude of the original game and the genuine monster we see in God of War III (using a woman as a doorstop is not cool). I mean, what more do you really want from a boss?įrom a modern perspective, and with 2018’s God of War having given this franchise a heaping dollop of emotional maturity, looking back at the original Kratos kinda feels like finding an old Polaroid of yourself as a teenage goth in a Marilyn Manson hoodie. The fruits of their labour can be seen in the still-impressive opening battle against the Colossus of Rhodes, with the gigantic statue smashing apart a city as you battle through the ruins, shatter its metal plating, and eventually clamber up inside its guts and bash apart its magical brain.
![god of war ii god of war ii](https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/god-of-war-2.jpg)
He’d walk away saying, ‘Did I just agree to do that again? I told him I wasn’t going to do it.’ But to his credit, he found solutions to problems we thought were unsolvable, where on God of War I we thought, ‘This is it. This is way too big.’ Somehow I would convince him – drug him, give him a beer – that this would be possible. Occasionally, the art director would come to me and say, ‘Dude. Barlog was asked just prior to the game’s release about why they’d stuck with PlayStation 2 and how it impacted development: These ambitious demands clearly caused consternation during development.
![god of war ii god of war ii](https://images.pushsquare.com/d6446a532ae08/god-of-war-2-sequel-ps5.original.jpg)
![god of war ii god of war ii](https://wallpapercave.com/wp/wp1959940.jpg)
This proved a smart move, though the doddering PlayStation 2 works up a sweat as it renders the scenery-smashing action at a reasonable frame-rate.
#GOD OF WAR II FREE#
It’s notable that director Cory Barlog considered making this an early PlayStation 3 exclusive, though decided against it on the basis that a 100 million strong player base is nothing to sniff at and familiarity with the hardware would free them up to focus on gameplay. By this time first party developers like Santa Monica Studio knew the hardware inside and out wew able to push it to its absolute limits. The game was released in April 2007, seven long years into the console’s life (and six months after the PlayStation 3’s US release). Kratos’ second adventure is also something of a victory lap for the PlayStation 2. The scale is bigger, the bosses are nastier, the locations are prettier and the exploration/combat/puzzle rhythm is so polished you could eat your (bloody, screaming) dinner off it. Think Assassin’s Creed 2, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Silent Hill 2 and, yup, God of War II.Ģ005’s God of War was no slouch when it came to violent thrills, but it was with this sequel that the franchise hit the bullseye.
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Games don’t seem to suffer that problem, with sequels allowing developers to refine gameplay systems, squeeze more performance out of hardware, and zero in on what players enjoy the most. All the writers’ best ideas were used up into the first movie, there’s a struggle to top the last film’s conflict, and the novelty has evaporated. You can find David at and on twitter as God of War II (Sony, PlayStation 2, 2007) [ After another bit of a gap from guest posts, I’m very happy to introduce one again! I’m once more welcoming David C James, whose previous posts here include State of Emergency and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow.