God of War and Heavenly Sword

My PS2 Past
 
When I was younger I owned a PS2. I had a few good games for it but unfortunately it was an early model and the laser died after a few years and I just decided to get rid of all the games I had. Soon after I got rid of it a bunch of really good games came out for it, and a few classics went on sale. One of those games was God of War. Recently I got a PS3 from a friend of mine, and my dream had finally came true, I was going to play God of War, and God of War 2. Two games that I heard so much about but had never myself played.
I wasn't living under a rock, I knew what God of War was about (or at least the basic story) and I knew what kind of game it was. I had also seen friends play parts of the series, but I my self had never played it.

I realize the game is relatively old (PS2 remember), and I know that there are a bunch of reviews of the series already, but I wanted to get out there what my opinion of it was, pros, cons, and then compare it to another game that is similar which is Heavenly Sword for the PS3 (again the comparison has probably been made)

Spoiler Alert!!!

Okay spoiler alert, this game is 6 years old, and so I will hold nothing back. You start the game by killing yourself, jumping off a cliff, with an ominous voice talking about how "it hadn't always been like this" then a flash back to a few weeks earlier. This scene is the last one of the first GOW (God of War) game. Throughout the game we learn that the lead character Kratos was the leader of an army, and that during one battle with barbarians, his men were being slaughtered. He cried out to the god of war Ares to save him. From then on Kratos served Ares, but his men were saved. Kratos became more of an animal after being enslaved and would kill without question. He was then tricked into killing his own wife and son. After that he said he would serve Ares no more and he vowed to kill him. As an added "F-you" the ashes of his family were tied to his body, which is why Kratos is white.

Now in the present day, the city of Athens is being destroyed by Ares, and Kratos goes, guided by the other gods, to kill Ares. He does this by acquiring Pandora's Box. After eventually killing Ares, Kratos decides to kill him self by jumping off the cliff we saw at the beginning of the game. The gods save him and make him the new god of war. (end of GOW 1)

God of War 2

GOW 2 continues where the first left off, where Kratos is the god of war, helping wage wars where he sees fit. Kratos resents the gods for the torture he still has of nightmares of killing his family. The gods end up working together, and Zeuz tricks Kratos into giving up his god like powers. GOW 2 is basically the journey Kratos goes through to get his powers back, in his attempt to kill Zeuz. He tries to accomplish this by finding the Sisters of Fate, who control time essentially. The idea is Kratos can go back in time to where he had his powers and kill Zeus. Kratos does not succeed at the end, but instead uses the powered granted by the sisters of fate to go back in time and save all of the Titans before they were killed, (there was a battle between the gods and the titans, in the end almost all the titans died or were tortured). GOW 2 ends with Kratos climbing Mount Olympus with the titans, who both share a common enemy of Zeus.

GOW Likes

What I loved about the GOW series (the 2 I played) is the story, and the back story. I wanted to know more about Kratos, where he was from, what he did while enslaved to Ares, more about his battles as a mortal. It was all very epic, and very theatrical. The game it self had a 300 feel, which was good, not necessarily accurate but good. The game play was great, very violent, over the top in some places, but still very rewarding. It makes it almost believable that I single person could take down a huge monster, if done in stages like the game does. The quick time events were good, but at times made it difficult to enjoy the action going around, I was just concentrated on pressing the button at the right time. One other thing I loved was the bonus content. There were making of videos, and other behind the scenes videos that shows all the work that went into the game. The graphics were not that bad either for a 6 year old game, upgraded to HD graphics. The puzzles are challenging, but are doable. The extra challenges and God mode difficulty on the other hand were too much for me on my first play through. The music was very well done, it always set the mood for what every is coming. And the voice acting is pretty good. As I said earlier it is more of a theatrical experience when it comes to the videos and cut scenes.

GOW Dislikes

What did I not like about the GOW series? For me there isn't much, but others may not like it.  I understand the game is very violent, very violent. And the game isn't accurate to the Greek mythology, not that I'm into that kind of thing. The second GOW is a little more boring, partially because there wasn't much new information about Kratos's past because we explored so much of it in GOW 1. And the replay value is a little lacking, but it always will be for these kind of linear games. There is added difficulty after you beat the game, but the second play through is the same as the first, with the exception of GOW 2 where you can turn on special cheat codes if you've earned them.

Heavenly Sword

After beating GOW 1 and 2 I choose to play Heavenly Sword, a game that I knew would be similar to GOW but I didn't know too much about it. I played the demo in game stores when it first came out, so I knew the gameplay would be similar.

Throughout the game alot of things remind me of GOW. But I discover and enjoy some of the differences. In HS (Heavenly Sword) you play as one of two characters and switch back and forth throughout the game.  When you play as Nariko the game play is similar to GOW in that it has button combos and you swing around your swords in acrobatic moves.  But HS differs from GOW in that there isn't a magic bar with spells, instead you hold a button for quick attacks, a different button for powerful attacks, and no buttons for normal attacks.  This becomes critical because to block an enemy you need to be holding the appropriate quick button, or hard buttons.  HS also has you playing as Kai, who doesn't attack with swords, but instead a crossbow.  The neat thing is that you can control her arrow in mid air, and you can turn off the 6-axis controller so you can just use the analog stick.

HS starts in a similar way to GOW.  You start the game at the end, then work your way back.  You begin with a huge army around surrounding you.  After mashing some buttons huge waves of guys start dying, and flying around like rag dolls.  After a little while you die for seemingly no reason, then you get taken over by this sword with odd writing all of you, then you are apparently in Heaven, where you begin the game 5 days earlier.

In HS you are a member of a clan that protects the heavenly sword.  A sword that a warrior brought out of the heavens in the time of the great need.  Once the warrior defeated the enemy he left his sword.  The clan that you are a part of has the responsibility to protect the sword because of its great power.  However anyone that uses the sword will have their life drained.  So Nariko ends up using the sword in an attempt to save her father from the evil King Bohan, who is using her father to get to the sword.  As she works her way closer to him she meets and defeats several of his lackeys.  As mentioned before you also play as Kai some of the time as well which is good for variety.  Eventually King Bohan catches up to the clan, and he sends all of his army at you.  With the power of the sword Nariko takes out wave after wave of men until she falls to the sword's draining powers (this is the opening fight where she dies).  Nariko then reasons with the sword, which is now more like a god, and explains how she can beat him and that she needs time, and that the sword would just be taken up by Bohan as a trophy never to be used again.  So Nariko gets another chance and goes down to finish off Bohan.  Nariko saves the village and then dies, leaving the clan in peace with Kai.

HS Likes

Some of the things I love about HS is again the bonus content.  There are some making of videos, and interviews with the game designers that is very interesting.  The game is beautiful.  The environments are very huge and you can see for a very long distance making it easier to appreciate the beauty in the game.  The models contain tons of details.  During the cut scenes you see so many different ways that the faces are animated to look so life like.  HS is very epic in that it feels like a movie, like a high budget production, with high quality music composure, sound effects and top notch acting.  The actors they used had to go through some of the most in depth motion capture I've ever seen.  The number of enemies on the screen at one time can be in the thousands.  It is the best graphics I have seen in a video game ever, but they are only 720 not 1080.

 
There are also some puzzles (not as many or as complicated as GOW), but still rewarding.  I have to put this in one of the things I liked.  Nariko is alot nicer to look at for several hours than Kratos, just saying.

HS Dislikes

Things I don't like?  The bulk of the fighting is done by Nariko, and most of her battles can be won with simple button mashing.  I like the whole block and counter mechanism but I still would have liked having some kind of magic meter with spells like GOW.  HS has quick time events, but here they are alot less forgiving.  I found my self some times messing up the quick time event in a boss battle, and every time I got it wrong the enemies health would fully replenish.  It also felt a little short, I think I beat it in around 7 hours.  The game started getting repetitive because of the fighting mechanic so I'm kinda glad it didn't drag out for 30 hours, but the story and cut scenes were interesting enough that they were like little rewards, and it could have been twice as long and it would have been okay.  Both GOW and HS had great story telling, but I was more drawn to GOW possibly because of all the back story and mystery around Kratos.

Conclusion


GOW and HS are both great games.  The amount of time and money that went into them were no doubt tremendous.  They both make great games, in terms of their story telling and game play.  If I had to recommend one over the other it would be for GOW no doubt.  But that is partially because there is a running series with GOW, while the HS squeal has not had any serious discussion.  Also to be fair, the genre that HS was likely made popular by the GOW games that came before it.  Some have even said that HS was attempting to copy GOW in some of the game's mechanisms.  I think other games are more blatant rip offs of GOW (I'm looking at you Dante's Inferno), which don't add much of anything to the genre, where at least HS has some new game play mechanics, and new story telling methods.