Sony
God of War

I rarely agree with the PEGI ratings we find on video game covers, but "God Of War", which indeed bears a nice 18+, fully deserves it, as with dismemberments, disembowelments, and sex scenes one can’t help but say "this game is definitely not for children". And it's perhaps for this reason that I consider it a cornerstone of the action/adventure genre for PlayStation 2. Few games on the black monolith had ventured so far into violent content and plots so inspired that you’d say, "they should make a movie about this".

God Of War is all of this: violence, action, adventure, a fabulous plot, and graphics that still withstand the test of time. Starting with the plot, the protagonist is Kratos, a former Spartan general who, to redeem himself from his sins, becomes a servant of the gods, the only ones capable of freeing him from the terrible nightmares that haunt him at night. On his journey, he must find the only weapon capable of killing a god, the Pandora's box, to stop the army besieging Athens, led by Ares, the god with whom Kratos has a score to settle. I won’t reveal the rest for the obvious reason of not spoiling the splendid plot that acts as a backdrop for this video game.

Moving on to the mechanics, the adventure is played in third person and our hero has a series of combos that can gradually be unlocked as the game progresses. Kratos's main weapons are the Blades of Chaos, two swords attached to retractable chains that will be our primary weapons of attack. Additionally, there are spells, which will also be unlocked and upgraded as the game advances, and they will become increasingly devastating. Up to this point, it may seem like just a decent game, but it's the quick time events that make it splendid. Many enemies can indeed be finished using a combination of buttons to press in time to complete the execution that varies depending on the enemy faced and sometimes even based on the buttons pressed. Bodies opening in ten different ways, heads flying and dropping, the possibilities are vast, and the enemies to fight are even more so: harpies, centaurs, minotaurs, gorgons, Cerberi, cyclopes. God Of War exploits the beasts of the entire Greek mythology and offers us truly epic battles.

The sound section does its job, supporting the dismemberments with excellent sound effects and immersing us in the adventure with music suitable to the context. Among behind-the-scenes content, secret clips, and alternative costumes, the player certainly won't be bored after concluding the adventure. I mean, can you measure the thrill of pressing the circle button frantically to stab a sword into a minotaur's throat? Or the brilliance of using a ship's mast as a spear to kill a gigantic hydra? Years go by, but God Of War doesn't age, even after being copied endlessly and after introducing mechanics that will remain fixed in adventure games, it remains an inimitable work and will stay in the hearts of all players who fell in love with it after watching Kratos tear the wings off a harpy.