Gow II and Batman Arkham Asylum (SPOILERS!)

I just beat God of War II last night for the 1st time at 10:45pm. I had the game before, but that was when my PS2 was on the verge of dying so it couldn't read the disc and I had traded it in for Persona 3 and MGS1, but then my PS2 died completely while on my 1st playthrough with P3.

I bought the GoW collection on Black Friday for about $10 and I've started playing it a little while afterwards. After beating GoW and jumping off to II, I saw how they really improved on the first game. How the game started off was just so unique to me. You start off just about as powerful as you were at the end of GoW and face off against one huge boss battle. You already die and come back from Hell all in the first hour. The game slows down a bit after that and picks up again. Everything in GoW was improved: the combat, the platforming, the storytelling. One thing that disappointed me in GoW was that there were only 3 boss battles in the whole game. There's at least ten in this game. The way you defeat the bosses is also more varied. They were pretty simple to defeat in GoW. The first two just had you beat them up until they were dizzy and then proceed to hit them with a large object. In this game you may have to do the same thing, but you might also need to deflect projectiles back at them, fly up into the air to dodge an attack that covers the whole floor, slow down time to destroy two appendages at roughly the same time, etc.

There are more puzzles in this game too and they're more varied and take more thought. I think GoW one only had about three or four puzzles. There's at least 15 in this game. Another thing is that they increased the length of the game greatly. GoW I was pretty short and the variation in the locations was very small. Gow II is much longer and you explore a good amount of locations in this game. GoW had one dungeon this game has you exploring at least four.

Another major thing with this game is that they toned down (not eliminated) the amount of enemies you fight. During those sequences when you're locked in a room and have to fight a number of monsters, those were toned down in Gow II. in GoW I felt exhausted with those sometimes. Sometimes it seemed like the wave of monsters never ended. That happened to me a couple of times in GoW II. I also half recommend play on Hard difficulty for this game. This game really challenged me and it had me cussing at some parts. Towards the end of the game you have to go down a long ass hall fighting tons of enemies and if you die anywhere you have to start at the beginning. I must've died about ten times. You have to have a specific strategy and quick reflexes to make it through that. I was tempted to put switch the game on Easy, but since I made it that far I was going to give up then.

That last boss battle was incredible I have to say and I can't wait to play GoWIII. I just had to post this. It was such an improvement to the first game.



I had also bought and beaten Arkham Asylum too and I was going to post my thoughts on it, but typing out my reactions to GoWII took so long that I'll just link you to the review I posted on my gamespot profile. DepressionMoon's reader review of Batman: Arkham Asylum for PlayStation 3

Arkham Asylum to me was like Assassin's Creed with a batman theme. It felt exactly the same and it also got boring and repetitive after the same amount of time. Hopefully the second one will be as much of an improvement as AC2 was.