Actual game dialog: Titan: "Death is for cowards." Dead Guy: "I am no coward!"

[mrcomfypants]

We've been playing God of War 2 lately. For those who don't know, God of War is the best platform-type video game ever. So we had high hopes, but 2 is extremely disappointing. There are some improvements -- a better controller configuration, fancier graphics, new special abilities, that sort of thing. But the game design is shameful. For instance, there will be a ledge that you have to walk on to get through, but in another part of the game the same sort of ledge will be background and you'll fall to your death if you try to walk on it. That sort of thing. And there's a lot of tedious stuff, like flying around on a Pegasus (which, incidentally, they gave flaming wings, just in case the adolescent boys playing the game mistook flying horses for sissy -- I like that), which basically boil down to repeatedly pushing a button while watching a bad cut scene.

But what really gets me is the save points. There is typically about 20 minutes of game between each save point. Why would they do that? I think they're deliberately fucking with me. At one point, after a long tedious sequence, followed by another tedious sequence, they let you see the save point but put up a force field in front of it before you can get to it. I'm just waiting for the ps2 to crash 19 minutes after my last save.

All in all it's not a terrible game. When they're not jerking you around it's quite good. But I was having more fun re-playing games we already have.