Game journalists were half right about God of War. Kratos was just a shallow, 1-dimensional, revenge-lusted, angry and loud, power fantasy that weak men aspired to. He had no real character in these first two games. Everything about him was surface level. It was not until Chains of Olympus, and the subsequent writing improvements that came along with God of War III, Ghost of Sparta, and even Ascension, that Kratos starting gaining some real depth to his character.

PS2 God of War is the epitome of "Spectacle over Substance," and no amount of obnoxiously funny screaming will ever change that.