God of War II

Most action games save their giant for the end. Here the Colossus of Rhodes tears itself off its plinth in the first hour, and by the time Kratos has climbed it, been crushed by it and driven the Blade of Olympus through its chest, the game has already spent what a lesser sequel would have hoarded for its finale. That escalation is the whole design philosophy. Santa Monica's follow-up assumes you played the first one, knows exactly which beats impressed you, and sets out to top each of them in order.

The combat is the 2005 template refined rather than rebuilt: the Blades of Athena on chains, a rhythm of light and heavy strikes broken by grabs, a parry-and-dodge layer that rewards reading animations instead of mashing. New toys arrive at a steady clip — the Barbarian Hammer for crowd control, the Spear of Destiny, magic that ranges from a Medusa-style petrifying gaze to a summoned juggernaut. What holds it together is how legible the enemies are. Every gorgon, cyclops and undead legionnaire telegraphs, and the context-sensitive finishers give you a reason to keep fighting close.

The quick-time prompts are still there, still divisive, and time has not been kind to the ones that appear during the biggest spectacles. Watching Kratos ride a Pegasus through a griffin fight while the game asks for a circle button is the seventh generation's original sin in embryo. But the puzzles between the arenas are better than the first game's — the Sisters of Fate temple, with its time-rewinding chambers and rope-swing geometry, is genuine level design rather than a block-pushing tax on your patience.

What makes this one remarkable is when it arrived. March 2007, months after the PlayStation 3 was on shelves, and it still looks like a machine being pushed past what anyone thought it had left. The draw distances on the Titans, the scale shifts from a corridor brawl to a climb up a living god, the fact that it holds a steady frame while doing it — this is a team that had learned every trick the hardware had.

A farewell performance that refused to act like one.