Just when you thought it was the end of the PS2 Sony come along and drop God of War 2 in our laps. The original GoW was one of the best (if not the best) action games released on the PS2 back in 2005 and this is no mere update; bigger, better and bloodier, Kratos is back and this time he’s pissed at Zeus…

The first thing you’ll notice while playing the game is that bugger me does GoW 2 look amazing! It’s not just the textures on the characters but every environment is on such a grand scale that it makes you life feel puny and insignificant. The camera angles always shift around to look up on imposing Titans, or zoom out to show how tiny you look amongst the biggest stone horses I’ve ever seen! The cut-scenes are also stunningly beautiful; using the PS2’s full potential.

You start the game as a bored Kratos up on Mt. Olympus, who decides to head down to Rhodes to help his Spartans out. At the beginning you’re simply a scaled-down God so you’re pretty much invincible and combat is essentially just pressing a few combos and mouthing ’wow’ a lot as the sparks and blood fly about all over the place. Eventually you’ll lose your Godly powers and end up having to take down a Colossus single-handedly, which was possibly the best first level I’ve played in any game.

A lot of thought has been put into the sequel as when I started playing I thought ’this looks amazing, but how long can you slash stuff for?’. A lot more puzzles have been included in GoW 2 and bar a couple near the end they’re pretty much spot-on. I’m terrible at puzzle games and get frustrated really easily but all the puzzles require logic rather than clairvoyance and you won’t be stuck on one for too long before you get back to slashing stuff.

The slashing has been given much more depth than I’ve seen in any similar action game, too. Although GoW 2 has the familiar ‘combos-for-orbs’ levelling system as you progress you pick up more and more weapons and abilities (like a hammer that looks like a HUGE meat tenderiser!) which you can all level up individually to increase power and unlock new combos. This changes the game from a simple stringing together of the four main buttons, as you’ll constantly be switching between powers and weapons to take down the different enemies they send at you at once.

I find it hard to find things annoying about the game - I thought if the puzzles didn’t get to me then the boss battles would but again everything’s simple logic and doesn’t take long to figure out the patterns to attack. And the game isn’t over that quickly either - on normal difficulty it isn’t too hard so you can get through in about 13 hours if you’re not rushing. For those who found the original easy there’s a Titan mode that’ll certainly give you a run for your money!

God of War 2 is a very, very good game. It’s not too short, it has the right balance of puzzles and action and the gameplay is varied enough to keep on slashing. It just misses out on the big 10 because at times (although briefly) it was terribly frustrating and the shearing (v-sync is turned off to stop the on-screen action from slowing the frame rate down) really does spoil the game. Nevertheless, anyone who does still own an operating PS2 should buy this game, and be ready for a AAA gorefest you’ll never see again on PS2.