2007/05/23

God of War 2

One of the most anticipated games of the year and one of the final epic games for the PS2, God of War 2 pretty much picks up where the first game left off, and by the end of it will leave you wanting more.
First off, the game has a great story to it as you battle to reach the Sisters of Fate in hope of changing Kratos's destiny and get his revenge on Zeus. The downside is that when your done, it feels like it was over pretty quickly and there should have been more. That's the general feeling I got when I beat the game.
The graphics look amazingly good and is actually one of the few games where the actual game looks as good as the pictures you see in magazines, etc. The audio and voice acting is also nicely done with the music giving you that epic feel when doing battle.
The gameplay isn't perfect, but gets the job done since Kratos has some new moves in his arsenal as well as new weapons and abilities he can pick up along the way. The Blades of Athena always seem to be the best weapon of choice though. The only complaint about the gameplay would be that the game can be really difficult at times. Difficulty of the puzzles range from "too obvious" to "I need a friggin' FAQ!". I'm not exagerating on the FAQ part as some puzzles leave you almost no clue as to what your supposed to do.
And once you beat the game on Normal mode, you still have God mode and the insanely difficult Titan difficulty to look forward too if you thought the main game was too short. I think I'd recommend going straight to God mode if you mastered the first game.
Overall, a worthy sequel to the original, and here's hoping that the ending of this game means that a third is in the works.

Game Ratings:
Graphics - 10
Sound - 8
Gameplay - 9
Lifespan - 9
Overall - 9

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2007/05/10

Final Fantasy XII

So I finally finished this massive adventure after about 2 months of playing, and I must say the story is what kept me going, which is a good thing since if the story sucked I would have given up on it a long time ago. And most of us play epic games like this to watch how the story unfolds, am I correct?
The graphics are easily some of the best I've ever seen on the PS2, and the music and most of the voice work are good.
The gameplay takes a bit of getting used to, but is actually rather simple to understand. Everybody in your party can use any weapon in the game, and it's up to you to set up the characters the way you want them to be. Sometimes it evens pays to have a few extra long range weapons handy as some areas have a lot of annoying flying enemies to deal with.
The gambit system is a rather interesting idea that's suppose to help you out by giving automatic commands to your CPU controlled party members instead of having to constantly open a menu to manually give a command. I still found myself going to the menu more though.
Overall, the only dissapointment I had with this game was that there weren't any bonuses or extras given for beating the game, though you could definitely want to play through the game again just to find all the hidden gems and such in this epid adventure.

Game Ratings:
Graphics - 10
Sound - 8
Gameplay - 8
Lifespan - 8
Overall - 8

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