I played through the first, E306, demo of God of War 2 so many times that if it had been on a tape it would have broken.

Fortunately, SCEA just sent me their second, brand-spanking new demo to play with. The Colossus Battle Demo focuses on, though it doesn't let you complete, the colossus boss battle. That's right, the one in the vid we posted earlier.

I'm told this is the first of many boss battles, which is pretty amazing, since it is so involved. Hit the jump for my impressions. I don't think I really ruin any plot points, seeing as there aren't any in the demo, but I might ruin some of the experience of first enjoying it. (OK, there sorta is one plot point.) So if you don't want that, then just sit around staring at this... last... pre-spoiler... sentence. Yeah.

Spoiler-ish Alert
Demo two drops you down just as an army of Spartan warriors and Kratos is about to wreak some more vengeance as the God of War on the city of Rhodes. Athena decides she sick of his wrath and such and brings a gi-normous statue of the Colossus of Rhodes to life, then strips away some, if not all of Kratos' god powers.

The no-longer-big K gets dumped into a room with a bunch of warriors who you can quickly turn to bits of dessicated meat with your twirling blades and chains.

After roaming around for a bit you make your way outside of the building to be confronted by one very large, very pissed-off statue.

This first encounter with the colossus is what you see in the vid we posted. There's much rolling about and trying to dodge giant-sweepy arms, and of course dispatching of normal-sized bad guys. Finally, you can hump it over to a nearby ballista which you can use to first attack the big statue guy and then to launch yourself on to him.

Once you mount the statue, the battle turns into timed button pushes which do some amazing bits of damage and really flexes the graphics muscles of the Playstation 2. My favorite it here was the eye-gouging. You gotta love that.

Funny little aside. While I'm scrambling all over these giant statue, poking out his eye, tearing glowing blue lines through his cheeks and in general making a pest of myself, my son wanders in and asks if the game takes place in New York.

Wha? No, why do you think that?

Because you're fighting the Statue of Liberty....

Excelleeent!

Anyway, after bringing some god-like pain to the colossus it gets pissed and flings you halfway across the city. You land and fall into the building.

Then you have to make your way through more troops, around some puzzles and back outside to another area where you once more cut the crap of the colossus' arms and face.

This happens a third time, but the demo ends when you catching the colossus trying to looking through a window at you and you stab him in his last good eye.

I really like how the developers turned this boss battle into more of a stage unto itself, instead of making it this one event that is sort of separated from the rest of the game. More games should do this. In a way it's almost like Shadow of the Colossus, which is essentially a collection of boss battles, but the army of less-boss-like baddies you have to fight sorta get in the way.

Of course, I love the graphics, the cinematography of the game and the level design, in particular the design of the boss battle really lives up to all of my expectations. The game still has that amazingly fun feel to it.

Trust me, you're going to love this game. Brian Crecente