I haven’t played God of War yet, but I know I should, and not just because it’s one of the most critically aclaimed games for the PS2. The fact that a major debate is running over the merits of its sequel, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the arguments of who wrote the better issues of Spider-Man (correct answer: sorry, Stan Lee, but Gerry Conway’s the one who realized the most interesting thing Gwen Stacy could do was die) whether George Lucas deserves more or less credit for Empire Strikes Back than Irvin Kershner (correct answer: I don’t care how much you dislike the prequels, but at least they’re not RoboCop 2) or whether Virgil’s Aeneid truly outshines Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey (correct answer: Dante’s Comedy owns both their epic poetry spouting asses, bitches). It’s on that last example that I probably take the most amount of pause, though, because of what I’ve read in the past about God of War. Being a lifelong fan of Greco-Roman mythology (or, as we like to call ourselves, avid Ovid readers) I couldn’t help but notice something a bit amiss whenever I read about the game’s hero taking on the Hydra, Medusa or the Minotaur, to say nothing of Ares himself. Almost as immediately as my interest had been piqued, I swore off the game entirely, because in my book it had committed the most cardinal of sins, one for which there could be no forgiveness in even the most merciful reaches of my Roman Catholic heart, and one for which I would always rue the sound of its title and carry its legacy within my breast with a bleak and cloudy hatred:
They fucked with Greek mythology.