At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here last month on what an online multiplayer aficionado like himself thinks about the decidedly single-player game Crackdown. Today, he temporarily forsakes his beloved Xbox 360 for a blast from his past.

Until now, Dear Gamer, I've stayed "in the now" and written only of the time spent with my beloved Xbox 360. However, we all have a past, and I want to be honest with you: I was in a long relationship with another console. From a competing company. And recently, we've been back in touch, my PlayStation 2 and I. I've dusted off the controllers, untangled the cords from the headset that shipped with the first SOCOM, powered up the machine (Lucasarts' Secret Weapons Over Normandy was still in the tray) and popped in my first new PS2 title since 2004: Sony's God of War II.

I think N'Gai took my distaste for the current state of single player gaming as a challenge to find something to make me reconsider my eschewing of plot for straight-up run-and-gun online multiplayer. The deftly re-imagined pantheon of Greek gods had captured his imagination, and it seemed like a good time for me to revisit my old Sony friend in its waning days. To my surprise, it hasn't been the plotting of Kratos' descent from Olympus that has intrigued me, but the skilled audiovisual storytelling throughout the game--portions of which compare favorably to some of the best graphic novels and genre movies.

The opening sequences with the Colossus of Rhodes--brought to life and put in a destructive mood by Athena--are arresting, thanks to the giant's intimidating presence. The visual composition of the scenes where the Colossus tries to slap Kratos across rooftop balconies or crush him into wood pilings reminded me of Wolverine taking on a Sentinel in the pages of the X-Men, and it's hard not to imagine hearing the "SNIKT!" of Wolvie's claws as you rush along the Colossus' arms to puncture his glowing eye. The camera frames each sequence with elegant motion, from a simple long distance tracking shot of Kratos walking down a palace hallway to a genuinely hair-raising climb up a wooden wall being perforated by the screaming behemoth's fists--think of the deafening foghorn bellow of the marching tripods in Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" and you've got the idea. GOW II also shares with the movie adaptation of Frank Miller's "300" a fluid, multilayered approach to depicting hand-to-hand combat. The game's careful use of slow-mo, along with the saturated hues and bright particle trails of Kratos' swirling blades are on par with the way "300" speeds up and slows down when Leonidas breaks out from the Spartan shield wall formation and slices his way through the first wave of Xerxes' army.

Despite the immense artistry on display, I felt that familiar twinge of annoyance at seeing the repetition of enemy behavior as I try, fail and try again to work my way through certain sequences. Also, as a admitted first-person shooter addict, I expect to be able to control the camera angle as a gameplay element. It took me longer than it should have to get out of an indoor pool area simply because the angle that the developers chose just wouldn't give me a 360 degree view of the room. I found myself wondering what a game like GOW II could have been were it more like Oblivion, where I could survey any part of a room and plan my attack carefully, instead of button-mashing my way through a line of guards. Even better would have been a feature similar to Burnout 3:Takedown's "aftertouch ," where you could deliberately enter slow-mo and rotate the action at critical points to inflict even more damage

I've enjoyed getting back in touch with my PS2 this past week. It's nice that we can still be friends. But don't worry, it's probably just a phase. I just need a little time to figure things out before I get back together with my 360.