The End Begins...
When I first heard about "COO" I was oozing excitement. However, after some pondering I mainly just feared seeing Kratos' badass-ness diluted and handled poorly. I'm looking at you Prince of Persia: Sands of Time PSP port. But then the game turned out to have been made by the gods themselves. For only they could have captured the feel and grand scale of the two previous games. Let's break it down.
- Story: Epic. (No Spoilers) The Story is epic. It manages to set up the following stories seamlessly. Rarely does a prequel not feel wedged into the plot of it's sucessors. I never felt bored or distracted during cut scenes. At one point I opted not to save so that I could go back and watch a cutscene that one of my friends felt the need to interupt. *Yes I know I could have made another save slot, I just didn't know that at the time.
- Control: Fantastic. By far the best controls of any of the God of War series. Upon going back for another go at the PS2 GoW games I was noticiblely dismayed by not having the same control scheme of COO. Magic attacks are handled by button combos. As is the block and dodge manuver. The new scheme is so tight and fluid. If GoW 3 doesn't adopt these controls I will be quite disapointed.
- Graphics: Jaw Dropping. The new benchmark for PSP games. With amazing CG cutscenes and near PS2 quality in game graphics this is the one to beat. However, I did encounter some enemies getting stuck in the walls. Also, I would have liked some more variations with the brutal kill animations of weaker enemies.
- Camera: Perfect. It does what it needed to do. Managed to capture that epic feel. and always gave me a general idea of where to go. Very rarely did I have problems where there was an unseen enemy or Kratos was out of vision. These instances are infrequent enough to be negligible.
- Sound: Spot on. The music was great. Very much of what you would expect from a GoW game. I didn't have any trouble with sound dropping out on me or anything of that nature. Although, it would have been nice if Kratos had some more variations of grunting noises.
- Final: Must Buy. If you have a PSP and have ever complained about not having many "worthwhile" games for it then you are obligated to buy it. Right now. Don't pirate it either or the gods will punish you!
*Note- Played on a PSP-2000 and am unaware of any changes that may occur to playing this on a PSP-1000