Top 5 Coolest Things in God of War II

When the original God of War descended from the heavens like a gaming gift from the gods, it brought with it some of the most frenetic, exciting and visceral action on the PS2. It was equal parts adult and outstanding, and it never once pulled any punches - crazy sex mini-games, extreme violence, a eminently cool lead character embodied in Kratos, and a handful of Spartan boobies. We were fans from the opening moments. Now, with God of War II just around the corner, it's time to dive back into battle, walk with the gods and sample the controller-ambrosia on offer.

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Cool Thing Number 5: New Weapons Kratos, the 'god of war' and all things sharp and bloody, is already a bad-arse; of course, that doesn't mean he couldn't use a few deadly tools of forceful negotiation to fool around with. On that front, God of War II has you covered.

How about the Sword of Zeus? Imbued with the powers that Kratos sacrificed early in his second adventure, it is as deadly as it is cool looking. In fact, it's so large that we might be inclined to think that Kratos is compensating for something if he weren't so skilled with the ladies as it was. Like his dual-wielded blades, the Sword of Zeus is capable of tremendous combos - only significantly more powerful, and with a very cool blue glow effect. Tasty.

Of course, the Sword of Zeus doesn't remain in your possession for that long - it is, in essence, a major reason for your journey. You must retrieve the blade that contains your godly powers in order to return to the demigod you once were. So it's a good thing, then, that there are a heap of other cool weapons that you can collect along your path of gory destruction.

Among the earliest and most useful of these is Titan's Bane - a bow that you yank out of somewhere very uncomfortable on a gigantic titan. The bow automatically targets enemies and destructible objects all around you by holding down L2. Letting fly a couple of magical arrows with square, you can simply and smoothly knock out pesky longbowmen from a distance.

Cool Thing Number 4: More Graphical Goodness Okay, so in console terms the PS2 is a bedridden geriatric, capable of comparatively little when up against its PS3 sibling or Xbox 360 nemesis. But someone over at SCE Studios, Santa Monica has injected this hardware with growth hormones or something because God of War II looks like a low-resolution next-gen title. Seriously. In fact, despite the 480p picture over component cables, it looks about on par, in terms of environments and character design, with some PS3 titles. The textures are a little blurry, this is true, but there is so much going on and so many graphical delights to be seen that you'll wonder how more developers haven't been able to harness the PS2's clearly hidden abilities.

Levels are brilliantly designed to take advantage of Kratos' abilities. There are tons of scalable surfaces, piles of rubble to climb, points to slingshot across and towering titans to scale. What is more, there is nary a load screen to be seen and very rarely does the framerate falter.