Monday, May 30, 2011

On The Paper Trail: God of War


Welcome back folks, on this installment of the Paper Trail I am going to be talking about the God of War novel. I am in a sprinting mode with my pile to get to the meat of the Connecticon Panel so I used my 3 day weekend to finish this book. Now I should mention that if you have played the first God of War game for the PS2, this book is exactly the same to it.

No kidding, this is the entire first game, and that is it.

Now you may be wondering to yourself, "Hey I liked the first God of War game, does this book add any insite into character development or allow tangential things to be explained?" My answer to you is no, it is the first game and nothing more.

This book attempts to be filled with the greek gods and stuctures itself similiar to the game where Act 3 begins the story, then we go into Act 2, with Act 1 coming to us in painful flashbacks of Kratos. Now for a game this clearly works since the game wants to go right for the action and allow the player feel like they are doing something.

As for a novel it tends to leave you hanging in the first half and until you actually get to Pandora's Box does not really take hold to keep a passing reader interested.

The authors managed to do something in the book that I question, and that is explaining the fight scenes of God of War. Now have you ever tried to explain a quick time event to someone who never played the game before and only had words to describe the actions? If you have you might have realized it is next to impossible to paint the appropiate picture without a frame of reference to draw off of.

This book just feels like a cash in to a popular game that gives the reader nothing more then what was presented to them in the game. Sure the inner monolouge of Kratos as he goes from set piece to set piece is supposed to be entertaining but it comes off more as a bore that I willed myself to get to the end of the book.

Next stop on the Paper Trail I think we are going to go close to the end of time, see you then.

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