Croal vs. Totilo - The God of War 2 Letters 28
I've mentioned previously how much I enjoy the writing of Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and MTV's Stephen Totilo. All this week, then, it's been a pleasure to enjoy their witty exchange on the PS2's most recent blockbuster, God of War 2. The conversation is spread across both Croal's LevelUp column and Totilo's Player Two blog, and features ruminations on the title from a number of viewpoints. If you have some time this afternoon I highly recommend you give their full correspondence a look. More than just a discussion about a single game, they manage to capture some of the greatness of the medium, with their conversation ranging across genre, time, and content to get at some of the most fundamental elements of videogaming. From N'Gai's final post: "I've said before that we 'see' videogames with our hands. Extending that analogy further, the way cutscenes are used today is the film equivalent of title cards during the silent film era: even though the audience came to the movies to watch people move, they had to do a fair bit of reading to get the full measure of the filmmaker's vision. Similarly, cutscenes leave gamers watching when they should be playing. Sure, cutscenes can communicate critical information; they allow for dramatic and spectacular sequences that might be too difficult to pull off interactively; they provide a nice breather or bookend to lengthy gameplay sections. But just as silent film gave way to the talkies, cutscenes need to keep giving way to gameplay so that our eyes--excuse me, our hands--are constantly engaged."
Great Game (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been playing GOW II recently and I have to say it's a FANTSTIC game. It looks great on my TV at widescreen and 480p, and it's a blast to play. Despite the fact that they to handicap Kratos (he was a god at the end of the last game, they had to do SOMETHING) they've done an excelelnt job in the parts I've played so far and handling his abilities, story telling, and keeping me hooked. The camera works great (because it's scripted). Loads are fast. For the most part, it's a textbook case of how to do a great game.
The only complaint I have is the visual tearing which is by no means infrequent. It looks like VSYNC was turned off. It is rather annoying. I'm really sorry that made it through QA (probably done to keep the frame rate up, but in a game like this with so much fast moving stuff it is quite noticeable).
Still, games like this and Shadow of the Colossus have come out of the PS2. I'd be happy with God of War II on a next-gen console if it was just anti-aliased. I can't wait to see what people can pull out of the PS3 and 360 4-5 years from now. Can you imagine what people would have said if you had Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, or God of War (1/2) near the PS2 launch. That would have blown people's minds of what "next-generation" could be at the time.