Smash!

In 2005, SCEA released one bad mother of a game called God of War, representing what was their liberal yet convincing take on Greek mythology. This game would later receive ranting and raving reviews from all of the gaming industry scene. I personally have a natural affinity for such nerdy ventures as video games and the like, so it amazes me that it took me almost 3 years to finally purchase and play this game for myself. Before I go any farther, I must admit that the rest of this post will mostly be verbal nerdgasmic fun.
Now, normally, one would write a review about a game to rant about how it excels in every aspect imaginable, but I realize that whoever reads the P.Pole on any kind of regular basis is probably not a nerd and will have lost interest in the topic at hand about two sentences ago. Nevertheless, I'm going to do a brief summary of this game (not unlike a review) minus any quantitative (haha, that's a dirty word) judgements--I'm not qualified to decide whether the noise the minotaur makes as it dies is quite worth 5 nail clippings out of 5 or not.
God of War has a story revolving around a man's insatiable thirst for power. There are a hell of spoilers in here, but I doubt anyone reading this will care or be the type to play games anyway. I just want to discuss the story a bit, so if discussing video games sounds too nerdy for you, treat it as if I were doing a movie review or something.
I found the pacing and flow of the game were quite brilliantly done. I found myself sitting there and gaming my time away (hours at a time) not because I had nothing better to do (I did have other things to do, believe it or not) but just because I was so thoroughly engrossed in the matter at hand. This is one area where I do believe the gaming industry has a serious upper hand over the television or film industries as entertainment substitutes. Video games, by definition, involve their audiences. I don't consider myself someone particularly easy to fascinate and I don't consider myself picky either. From smashing monsters to solving puzzles to scaling cliffs, Kratos (the tragic hero of GoW) does it all. Never did I find myself tired of repetition or annoying tasks (like having to speak with every single person in the town before one damn bartender will give me a quest... if you're giving me a "WTF?!" look, it's a video game/RPG nuance).
The plot of God of War is basically this: Kratos, a mortal man, is saved by Ares (the god of war according to Greek myth) from his enemies, and becomes his servant/weapon. After pillaging a village with his loyal army in the name of Ares, Kratos enters the village's temple and massacres everyone in it. Only after killing a woman and a girl does he realize that these were his own wife and daughter (see? spoilers). This, of course, was planned by Ares who wanted Kratos to become the strongest warrior ever, to "become Death itself." Bad move. Kratos vows that from that day forward, his only enemy would be the one who saved his ass ages ago, Ares the God of War.
As you can see, this Kratos character must be one messed up guy, a real "product of the system" if you will. I will. I'm telling you, this character is a beast. He spends most of his journey amputating limbs, breaking bones, smashing skulls, busting spines, gouging eyes, and basically eviscerating everything between him and vengeance for his wife and kid. Isn't that sweet? Well if that isn't, the graphics showing him doing it are. Having two blades on chains helps this process of not-so-systematically destroying stuff. Freaking awesome.
So after having beat this game twice (once on normal difficulty and once on hard), I reassure you, this behemoth of a game is just as amazing as people have said. If you ever need anything to get you to bed, this game's not going to do it. What it will do is give you a place to be as violent, gory, and disgustingly brutal as you want. Oh, and enjoy the wonderfully tragic story behind Kratos. Lovely stuff, really. My favourite part about this game must be upgrading my swords to max level about 10 minutes into a new game and exploding everything else in the remainder of the game (yeah, I'm one of those gamers....).