Okay, some thoughts on God of War II now that I’ve run through it the first time. Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil anything for those who haven’t played it yet.

For a game that’s so thoroughly soaked in testosterone, it actually treats women fairly well. Sure, there’s a reprise of the sex minigame from the first iteration, and the chubby-little-boy-peeing statue is kind of weird, and the women look strange, not sexy. (”Are they robots or something?” asked the wife. Considering how smooth the rest of the game is, it’s odd how not smooth these women are.) Of course they’re glad to see Kratos, no matter that he just fell in through the roof of the bathhouse. But the immediate goal of the minigame is to make sure the ladies get theirs: if you screw up the sequence, they complain. “Aww, I wasn’t finished yet.”

Yeah, it’s weird.

They also veer away from the ‘all women are thin and pretty’ trap. Euryale is a gorgon, top half woman, bottom half serpent, more snakes for hair. She’s also built like a barrel, but moves like lightning despite the heft. I have no idea what they were thinking when they designed Clotho, but she’s nobody’s idea of thin or pretty. Or even vaguely attractive. It’s just plain ugly, which goes with their horror in Classic Greece theme.

What don’t go with the horror in Classic Greece theme are some of the men. Specifically, the male titans. Apparently terrified of Teh Weener, not a one of them has a penis. Smooth as a Ken doll and just as anatomically incorrect. I kind of get what they’re afraid of, but they would have gotten double extra super bonus points for putting some dick in the game. If you look at the art from that period, there’s dick everywhere.

No matter what misgivings I might have with some of the men and women in God of War II, for Gaia, All Is Forgiven. ZOMG she’s gorgeous. Take the Venus of Willendorf, make her many hundreds of feet tall, and plant a forest on her skin, and you’ve got Gaia. Linda Hunt gives her voice. I’m so in love.

Oh, and the game? The controls are seamless, even for an inveterate button-masher like me. Only the platformy stuff bothered me, but considering how well they integrated a platformer into what is really a brawler on a cosmic scale, it’s not that bad. I’d still give it a 10 if I were the sort of person that rated things on a scale from 1 to 10.

Moira posted this entry on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 2:42 pm and filed it under Reviews, Sony (PSX), Women in Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.