God of War on the go. It's as good as it sounds!
God of War is really about killing things with large swords chained to your body. That and pushing a system to it’s absolute maximum capacity. God of War: Chains of Olympus is no exception and by all means a great addition to the series.
The God of War series have always had solid stories, and give you enough incentive other than combat to keep you playing. The story takes place before the events of the first God of War and it ends right around the time the first game starts. While it doesn’t really expand on the time line that God of War Two left off with, but it adds to Kratos’ character and answers a few questions about him. The story doesn’t really have one straight direction, but it takes it’s self seriously but also never forgets it self. It works, but it isn’t quite as good as God of War One or God of War Two. So it’s a solid story that mostly works because of the addition to Kratos’ character.
God of War: Chains of Olympus’ combat is extremely fun, with the amount of depth you would find in the PS2 counterparts, with four spells, tons of combos, and two weapons. And while the spells and weapons are new to the series, they feel right and make the story actually make sense towards the end of the game. The controls for hitting guys is the same, and they make the spells and roll-dodging work on the PSP even though a PSP has less buttons than the PS2. The quick time events return, and the work well on the PSP, mostly. The analog nub isn’t great for doing precise quick time movements. It will take a few tries to get used to it but at first it can be frustrating, luckily there really aren’t that many of those kind of events. When you aren’t ripping the heads off of the zombie army, you’ll be completing puzzles. There are plenty of puzzles in the game. But the puzzles are extremely easy and will take up to ten minutes of you’re time, and you’ll be your merry way. So the game play in the game is surprisingly good since it has everything the PS2 games had and in some cases it ends up being better.
The game on the default setting took me about eight hours to complete, and for the most part is pretty easy. It’s a perfect length for a portable game since it’s short and the game also has enough content to keep you coming back on your way to work or what have you. After you complete the game you get the hardest difficulty setting, bonus video, bonus play, and the challenge of Hades. The Challenge of Hades is killing a bunch of people with a certain power or move and ends up being a decent time waster. You can replay the game on Bonus play which is playing with bonus content, and all your abilities leveled up to where you left them off. There is plenty of content in the game with all the bonus content and there are some cool videos to watch after the game has been completed.
Consistently the God of War series have pushed the system it’s to the absolute maximum and this game looks fantastic on your PSP. The graphics in the game are on a par with the PS2 counterparts, and that is a feat in it’s self. The audio is also very good, and a recommend a good set of ear buds to crank this game out with. The game also runs very fast, with almost no chug on my play through. I did encounter a few small bugs like not opening boxes at first or one where I climbed through a wall that I was climbing across. But other than that, the game looked and sounded fantastic.
This is the ultimate PSP game, it’s fun, theres a lot to do, and it looks fantastic doing it. If you have a PSP you really owe it to yourself to pick this game up. I’m probably going to go start playing God mode as soon as I post this review up.
