Most people have already heard about the first God of War, but if you haven’t here’s a quick recap:

Normal Game – Hit something with a bunch of attacks till it dies
God of War – Beat something mercilessly until you can do a finisher on it ranging from something as mundane (relative to this game anyway) as ripping something’s wings off and stomping its head in or ripping its arm off and beating it to death with it to the more spectacular using your swords to scale an ogre like a fucking mountain and ripping its eye out.
Which would you rather play? Yea.
Gameplay
God of War 2 picks up shortly after the first one left off. After defeating Ares, Kratos is the new god of war, and quickly proceeds to piss off the rest of gods of Olympus by being his dickish Spartan self. The first level of the game sees Kratos become mortal and get chased across an entire city by a colossal statue. And after that it goes on at a pretty similar pace. I think this PA strip sums it up best. It has all the standard features that you have come to expect from this type of game, mostly combat and a few puzzles, but even the puzzles are pretty fucked up (I can’t get past these gears…better throw this guy in there to stop them). The controls have remained the same, and a couple of new moves have been added to Kratos’ blades. Also new in the game are a couple of new magic spells and weapons. Overall the game plays almost identical to the original, and has a really epic feel to it, which is appropriate since its Kratos vs Olympus.
Also, it comes with a second dvd, that contains a lot of behind the scenes extras.
Graphics
The game manages to squeeze every ounce of performance possible from the PS2, and the graphics are even better than the original. There are virtually no load times, and the levels are huge, as well as plenty of cut scenes. The detail in a lot of the levels is staggering. It’s a great sendoff for the PS2…not that it’s the last game that will be made for it (they were still releasing games for the PS1 last year)…its just the lat one that anyone will buy.
Sound
The soundtrack rocks, and the voice acting is very well done. Every battle sounds and feels like something out of 300 or Lord of the Rings.
Overall Review
I dont have an arbitrary system for rating games yet, so lets just close on this…you need to play this game, unless of course you’re this douchebag.