God of War: Chains of Olympus

The GOW series is one of my favorite once of all time, I love the main character Kratos, I love Greek mythology and I love fighting games that features blood, big-ass set pieces and epic music. GOW 1-3 had all that and lots of it. Santa Monica has always been able to push the boundaries of what the ps2 and ps3 are capable of, the graphic and so on, things that should not be able to be on a small system like the psp. So when I finally sat down with my GOW Chains of Olympus it was with fear in my chest. That it wouldn't give me the same kind of bloody, awesome adventure as the previous games. But as I started playing that fear flew away.

GOW CoO is an awesome psp game, it looks and feels just like the GOW on the ps2 system, which shouldn't be possible. The gods and Titans are in it. The controls are greatly ported, the pacing is top notch. The story is good. The only sad thing is the absence of epic boss battles, just one to be exact. And as I and all GOW fans out there know, big ass boss battles is a big part of the GOW experience. But it's still good, good game that is a must if you're a GOW or a fan of great fighting/ adventure games for that matter. The only game on the psp that surpasses Chains of Olympus is Ghost of Sparta, the GOW game that was released later on the psp. But you should still play both games and begin with CoO.

Thank you everybody and good night!

Chains of Olympus is usually lumped in with Ascension as being the series' weakest entry which I thought I would agree with seeing as it was initially a PSP title as well as a prequel to the numbered entries on home console; but let me tell you that I was absolutely stunned to find a game that looked, played and felt just like it's bigger siblings. Let me first preface by saying this is a short game, only about 4 to 5 hours long depending on your play speed; where a lot would see this as problem, I actually found it provided a bit of respite coming off the back of the 12 plus hours God of War II had to offer. Chains of Olympus also brings back the more emotionally charged story telling of the first game which was a smart move seeing as the scale of the second could not be achieved as well as the fact that it is a prequel to that first game anyhow, it just feels right. Speaking of scale, the epic boss battles have been toned down a bit with the exception of the first encounter being exactly what you'd expect from a God of War intro; that being said the rest of the bosses are for the most part designed brilliantly and make up for what they lack in scale in fun. It's also worth noting that Chains of Olympus maintains God of War II's quality of life changes making it arguably easier to go back to than even the original.

Verdict: An 8 out of 10

GoW:CoO is a really nice game, but it has some serious flaws.

At first, I must say the graphics are beyond awesome. It's pure PS2 quality on your hand-held, you have to see it to believe it! Nothing wrong with this part. The story is really nothing special, it's about Kratos who wants to get rid of his visions, but the Gods don't let him, and he must fight. That's it. No twists, no turns, and at the end you get a somewhat disappointing conclusion.

Now, we got to the crucial point of the game: the controls and the gameplay. During your adventure, you will encounter many enemies (but the fights are in more than 60% of the cases are blatantly staged!), and you have to use your weapons and magic. Now the control scheme is brilliant, considering that the PSP lacks a second analog stick. I've never played any GoW games before on PS2, so I thought it was meant to be this way. And the guys did a splendid job with the port. So you won't be suffering to make Kratos do what you want him to do. But you will be suffering when you will find out that you don't have complete control over him! And this is the greatest flaw of the game. Although the gameplay isn't too inspiring (puzzle solving, staged fighting, puzzle solving, staged fighting, and so on, ad infinitum), the beautiful graphics will blow you away as you discover new areas, and because of this, you won't mind the mediocre gameplay schemes, trust me. But there are serious problems in the area of controls. You can launch your heavy attacks with the triangle, your light attack is on the square, jump is X, and sometimes the game will prompt you to press circle. You can chain your attacks, launching multiple hit combos on your opponents, and that's nice, BUT... and here it is, the big BUT, which ruins your experience: once Kratos started a combo, you can't get him out of it! This is especially frustrating, when you trying to play the "one hit and you're dead" challenge, where you have to abuse the L trigger + triangle combo to win. No, seriously it's about the only way you can defeat them in that challenge! Whenever I tried to play it skillfully, I've always seen 2-3 seconds before I got hit that I will get hit. And this is wrong! Being able to see that you're about to get hit and not being able to do something about it is the worst video game experience you could ever have. Except for playing a really bad game, of course, but that's beside the point. The point is: there are combos that last for 10-15 seconds, and once you've started them, Kratos will do it, no matter what you push when you realize that the enemies will strike you. And yes, it's the same with the enemies too! So once they've started the attack animation, you can do nothing to prevent them from hitting you - and this is just bullshit! Sorry for being this harsh, but this is a really poor combo system. You have to have some kind of combo breaker move, for Christ's sakes! But no. You don't.

So all in all, when playing on medium, this is not really an issue, because the game isn't that hard. Your frustration begins on hard and god mode and when you play through the challenges. When there's no room for errors, this game fails to give you the results of your skills. Even if you're the best reflex-gamer of the world, you won't be able to enjoy your reflexes, because you cannot use combo breaker moves. This ruins the gameplay when you want to beat the game in god mode, and sadly it ruins any more experience with this game, because after you've realized this, you can't just look away. And Kratos' moves are beautiful, and some combos are like a dance, so this game really deserved a better combo system! I'm sad, but this game really isn't that good. It's worth playing through once, but then you can forget all about it. It's a real pity...

I would've given it a 6/10, but the great graphics saved the game, so it's 7/10 now. Rent or buy? RENT, definitely.

Much better than Ascension!

God of War: Chains of Olympus is yet another near-masterpiece in the series! The fact that they managed to put this on the PSP is INSANE; having a game like this in your pocket felt like such a privilege in 2008.

I still need to get around to Ghosts of Sparta sometime.