If the last few blog posts and the fact that I own all of the games in the series are any indication, then, yes, I God of War much. Whatever that means.

GOD OF WAR COLLECTION
Just as DuncanR2N figured early yesterday in a reply on twitter, later that night I was done with God of War. As I've said before, this game is still a lot of fun as it was when it was released.

I managed to obtain every trophy that you can get in one play through. The only two left are for beating the game in under five hours and completing the Challenge of the Gods. I would love to platinum this game and it seems like a possibility for me. The plan would be to beat the Challenge of the Gods to unlock the special ability costumes, select the Dairy Bastard costume with infinite magic, play a new game on Easy, and only fight when needed and pass the rest.

So my final stats are 33 of 36 trophies at a completion time of 7 hours and 25 minutes making God of War my 45th game finished this year. If you're interested in see what the other 44 games are with date details, then check out this list on Giant Bomb.

KLONOA 2 RETURNED
Yesterday I returned the non-working copy of Klonoa 2 and I was looking around and spotted State of Emergency for the PS2. It's an easy to find game that I've passed up before even though it has interested me. Well, I passed on it again when I thought about looking for and finding an original black label version of God of War: Chains of Olympus. I bet you're not surprised at all that I managed to redirect this topic back to God of War.

I would've had the black label version when it was released, but I was waiting for the GoW themed PSP system to come out. It's the only set of games where I'm slightly anal about the label color. Otherwise I'm pretty sane.

My progress in all of the games that I've been playing, namely Ratchet: Deadlocked and Big Bang Mini, have come to a halt because of the ability of God of War to pull me in once again. It's the sign of a real classic.

I really like the game to the point where I was right before the Minotaur boss (about 5.5 hours in) and I decided to restart to work my way back to places where missed trophies were earlier in the game. The two that I missed were Don't Leave Her Hanging (Rescue the Oracle with 10 seconds to spare) and Splash (Kiss the Nyad).

The former trophy was interesting in that the first time I did it I only had three seconds to spare. This time I had 30 seconds left!

I remember so much more of the game than I thought that I did from playing it in 2005. I couldn't tell you where secrets were beforehand, but once I get to an area with one it comes right back to me.

I only have two problems with the game at this point. The look of the in-game engine cutscenes where the size from 4:3 to 16:9 looks fine, but the resolution went untouched. It's a big contrast from the CG cutscenes which still look fantastic.

The other problem is with the controls. Overall excellent as they've always been. In all of the newer games the Circle button is used for opening doors, but the original game used R2. I liked it that way, but it's a little more difficult on the Sixaxis controller because of it being a trigger instead of the normal button it used to be on the Dualshock 2.

Enough of my gushing for now. Enjoy these current stats of my newer save and have a good day.

Trophies: 19 / 36 (53%)
Desert of Lost Souls - 2h30m

INFAMOUS
Since the last time I checked in with you all I was close to finishing Infamous on the evil side. I can now report that the goal has been accomplished. I also beat the game on Hard difficulty to obtain the corresponding trophy.

Playing it on Hard made for less XP for each kill or stunt I did and that's currently why I don't have the trophy for powering up fully on the evil side. I played on Easy the first time through on the good side and a normal kill would net 10 XP, but this time it was just 7 XP. I may get it eventually.

My final stats are as follows.

Trophies: 45 / 50 (90%)
Infamous; 92%; 280 Blast Shards
Hero; 83%; 337 Blast Shards

BIG BANG MINI
The progress made was small, but I've cleared another 10 stages. When I last played the battery on my DS ran out and I haven't charged it yet. I'm currently on Level 5-5 Savannah.

RATCHET: DEADLOCKED
I've played this game the least as of late. It has nothing to do with not liking it because I certainly do even if it's less than the previous three games.

I've beaten Shellshock and the next main missions are back on the DreadZone Station. 2 hours into the game so far.

GOD OF WAR COLLECTION
Yesterday I picked up the newly released God of War Collection. At $40 it's well worth picking up. All of the extras for both games are still included as they originally were. So the making of videos are available too!



I didn't expect to really care to start playing these games again already, but I did start up God of War and was pulled back into the fun. I've played the original game for an hour and 48 minutes today and at over four years later this game still kicks all kinds of ass! The added trophy support and included God of War III E3 demo are icing on the cake.

Two of the trophy names are pretty amusing: 1.21 Gigawatts (Acquire Poseidon's Rage) and Zero Heath = Bronze Trophy (Open a Health Chest when your health meter is already full).

KLONOA 2: LUNATEA'S VEIL
I already have a copy of Klonoa 2, but when I was told by Usagi704 that a local Gamestop had a complete copy for $5, I was all over that.

There was a problem, however. When I started it up the disc spun much more loudly than any other game before it. Even my other copy of Klonoa 2 didn't do this. I noticed that the disc has been resurfaced before. Maybe one too many times.

As you'll see in this video, the PS2 system recognizes this disc as PS2 media, but doesn't play and just returns to the systems browser. No doubt that I'll be returning it soon so that it can be put back on the shelf for another person to be disappointed later on.