God of War: Chains of Olympus

Porting franchises over from the PS2 to the PSP seems to be the rage nowadays. In recent times Rockstar has successfully managed to churn out PSP versions of both GTA III (Liberty City Stories) as well as GTA: Vice City (Vice City Stories), and both have been extremely well received. In fact both these games did so well that Rockstar decided to port them back to the PS2... with not-so-favorable results.While this sort of franchise milking does sicken all of us to a certain extent, I’m glad Sony decided to give God of War (GoW) the PSP treatment since this not only allows the game to attract a larger audience but also lets us rabid fans get a quick glimpse of the events that transpired before the first GoW game.

We already gave you the gist of the game in our hands-on preview but if you’ve come in late, here’s a quick recap. The game takes place before the events of the first GoW game, and we have Kratos loyally serving the Gods of Olympus in exchange for freedom from his messed-up past. As in most GoW games, the story unfolds via well made cut scenes and flawless Oscar-winning voice acting executed by series veterans TC Carson (Kratos) and Linda Hunt (the narrator).

Do you wanna lose that one eye as well?

Chains of Olympus (CoO) plays out exactly like its elder brother(s), which means nothing's been compromised during the transition to the small screen. Kratos can deal out severe pain through light as well as heavy attacks courtesy of the blades of Chaos, and mix it all up with magic and hyper-violent context-sensitive actions that generally involve tearing someone or something in two, stabbing Cyclops in the face, ripping heads off, and so on. Though there aren’t many boss fights in this game, the few that do exist are pretty epic in scale (especially the very first one). The game does have certain platforming elements as well, but there's nothing that'll make you smash your PSP in frustration. In true God of War style there are tons of pull this lever, place statue on tile trigger (you know the ones that open up certain doors) kinda puzzles found all over the place, but if you're played previous GoW games you'll figure them out very easily; in fact there wasn’t a single puzzle in this game that actually requires you to tax the gray matter.

One of the biggest doubts people had regarding this game was how evading enemy attacks would play out, since the PSP has just one analog stick. Give it up for Ready at Dawn since they’ve successfully implemented an extremely intuitive control scheme that has you dodging incoming attacks by pressing both Left and Right bumpers. While this may take a couple of minutes to get used to, it’ll become second nature after the very first boss fight itself.

Kratos is afraid of no one

Just as in God of War 2 everything about CoO is near perfect, be it save points placed perfectly all over the game, rock solid frame rates that don't dip even while Kratos battles with a beast ten times his size, and set pieces that feel like they’ve stepped out of a high budget Ridley Scott flick.The only minor grouse I had is that the game's way too short and just as you’re getting into the groove of things…BOOM! It ends. And once you complete the game there’s really not much to do except play it all over again at a higher difficulty level, or indulge in a couple of challenges that involve eliminating a certain amount of foes using certain weapons/magic and so on.

If you can get past that (and you should), CoO is one of the few games out there that actually manages to justify buying the PSP. If you have one, buy it without even batting an eyelid, and if you don’t a PSP in the first place, beg, borrow, steal, or perform favors for a friend to play this game… it’ll be worth it.