BREIFLY LOOKING AT TWO OLD GAMES WITH NEW SEQUELS

I've been playing a lot of PS2 games lately, because I missed a great many of the platform's best games during the bulk of its' lifecylce. I didn't have access to one until 2005, really, because I had fully invested myself in the Gamecube. I mean, completely fanboy nuts invested myself. I went so far as to convince myself that Star Fox Adventures was among the best adventure games I'd played -- my God, was it not -- and that there were enough quality RPG's to satiate my appetite for that genre. Why, it even had a Final Fantasy game! It was a janky Diablo clone that had very few ties to canonical Final Fantasy motifs, sure, but it was a Final Fantasy game.

Yep. I really did think that game was good, once.

I could convince myself of a great many things between 2002-2004, as those of you who know me personally can attest.

Also, I see no reason to (re)enter this hardware generation until I've gotten an HDTV, because I've played Ubisoft games on the 360 in SD and strained my eyes something awful just reading on screen text.

Most importantly, I haven't been able to find my DS in a few weeks. That thing might actually be my favorite console of all time, honestly. I left it somewhere creative, no doubt. Etrian Odyssey was still in the cartridge slot, too.

Hopefully, the DS will show up again soon, because I'd rather not fork out another $160 dollars and countless hours of my life remapping all those dungeons and getting slaughtered by FOEs just to say I finished one of the hardest games I've ever attempted to play. Although it might be worth all that money to hear that glorious Yuzo Koshiro score again...

Anyway, back to the PS2 games I've been gorging myself on -- two of which, God of War and Devil May Cry 3, I have to discuss right here right now. It's almost timely, too, with a new game in each franchise recently released on different systems that I don't own. That makes this post a New Sku first!

God of War is a solid action game with absolutely stunning production values. It also has a certain aesthetic style that I completely loathe, and it's killing a lot of the enjoyment I could see myself enjoying were this not the case. And the game balance is slightly off. On the default difficulty setting, there are a few different attacks that feel crazily overpowered and make the game a breeze to play.

Basically, God of War feels like a Mortal Kombat of character action games, big and bloody and stupid and mean spirited. It's more balanced and technical than any MK game I've spent time with (there's nothing as overpowered as, say, Scorpion's spear toss/uppercut combo here), but some of the attacks are just ludicrous. Whenever you see a group of enemies, just Hold L1 + Square or Triangle. You'll kill 'em all in no time.

The game also forces you to do some pretty morally repugnant things and treats them as if they were just the raddest most brutal and awesome ideas ever thought up by anyone. I'm thinking specifically of a puzzle that requires Kratos to murder a screaming prisoner in some crazy fire-spewing vice thing to continue advancing in Pandora's Temple. I got the feeling that David Jaffe and his team in San Diego were hoping to elicit the following reaction: "Dude, this game is so brutal you have to listen to a dude scream for minutes as you kick him towards his death!"

It's brutal and violent, and that's sometimes kinda cool, but there's no soul behind that violence. It's like some callow thirteen year old telling you about how Hostel was the greatest movie of all time because some dude gets his nuts cut off and the camera doesn't cut away at all.

Devil May Cry 3 (I'm playing the Special Edition, with it's readjusted difficulty settings and improved continue mechanic, btw) has a completely different, insane style that I like a lot better than the style in God of War. For example, there's a boss battle in DMC3 against a prostitute made out of bats who, when defeated, turns into an electric guitar that Dante plays like fucking Steve Vai while fireworks explode all around him. I find stuff like that extremely awesome.

I also really enjoy the lite RPG aspect of the game. Kill enemies, collect red orbs. Use red orbs to buy shit between levels. It's just like Dragon Quest, but with guns. In addition, you're given the choice between four different "styles," before each level starts (more become unlocked later on). As you kill stuff, you gain experience in whatever style you've chosen. This lets you tailor your game to the style you most enjoy playing, and that rocks.

However, there is no way to beat this game without some good old fashioned RPG-style grinding. You have to return to levels you've beaten already to collect more red orbs and more experience if you hope to stand a chance in the 17th level, because you're going to need a lot of life orbs. Killing a prostitute made out of bats is radical once; killing her again, along with every other boss in the game one after another with no real money to stock up on health items between each fight, is not.

I haven't finished either game yet (although I think I'm fairly close to the end in God of War, and if I have to face a gauntlet of every boss in DMC I'd say it's safe to assume that I'm pretty close to the finale), so I'll reserve final judgment until then. Also, it's 3:00 AM. I'm going to bed.

Happy Easter, everyone.