God of War as Played By Someone Several Years Too Late to the Party

So, for everyone who doesn't know, when I grew up, mine was a Nintendo household. I grew up playing an NES, an SNES, and a Gameboy (followed by the Gameboy Pocket and Gameboy Color). Then the great divide came; Sega Saturn was flailing about like the dying fish it turned out to be, and there was a choice to be made (in poor poor one-console households anyways): Do we jump ship and go to these shiny newcomers, Sony; or do we stick with our guns and stay with Nintendo?

At least that's how I viewed it. I knew that the system I wanted was the Nintendo 64, though, and that I wanted to skip out on the Playstation 2.

Fast forward to the generation of Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox, where I stayed true to my Nintendonian leanings. I know that I missed out on a lot of extremely important games from the other consoles, notably (bonus points for reading the title) God of War and God of War II. I knew that these were good games according to the critics and all my friends, but I also knew I had no access to it. I could only judge the game by second-hand re-tellings of how awesome it was. The most memorable thing I read about the series comes from Tycho of Penny Arcade:

"Imagine that there is a Harpy swooping overhead, and that you have become perplexed by said harpy. Let me break it down for you:
Other games: Hit harpy with weapon.
God of War: Grab each leathery wingtip, yanking the creature out of the sky. Place your boot on the back of the neck and pull off the Goddamn wings with a strong upward motion."

After reading that, how could you not be sad that your only exposure to the game has been secondhand? I later played the game over a period of several visits to my cousin's house. I got to see how awesome it was, and I made it about halfway-ish through the game, to the point where I saw Kronos in the desert. I was hooked, but I couldn't play the game any more after that.

Now fast forward to today. I am lucky enough to have a roommate with a Playstation 3 and several great games from the PS2 era, including (who could guess?) God of War and God of War II. I have a lot to say about them, so it would be pertinent to end this post here and leave another more edible chunk later.

(Spoiler Alert: I really liked them)