God of War II week, day 1: ancient history

God of War II is about to arrive in stores, and you’re probably champing at the bit to disembowel another army of Greek monsters by now. But before you delve into Kratos’ second neck-stomping adventure, we thought you might appreciate a quick refresher on what came before. (And we’ll just put a big fat spoiler warning right here, so that you can’t whine later about how we ruined the game for you.)

Just ruining the ending wouldn’t do the game justice, of course, so we’ve got much more than that in store in the coming pages. But it’s still a good place to start. While Kratos’ fate at the end of God of War is revealed in the opening seconds of the sequel, you won’t see the full details of his climactic fight with Ares and his ascension to godhood. So if you’re curious about what happened or you just want to relive your old moment of glory, here it is:

Now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the meaty stuff.

Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.