God of War: Chains of Olympus

God of War : Chains of Olympus : An action game set in a vengeance-driven version of Greek mythology, where the player controls a black, white character named Kratos, the gods’ personal army-slayer.

Story : Actually a prequel to current God of War games, Chains of Olympus (which doesn’t actually have anything to do with any sort of “chains of Olympus” and is presumably some kind of metaphor for Kratos being the gods’ personal bitch) depicts Kratos back when he killed whatever gods Olympus told him to kill, before later installments when he discriminated against all gods equally. Taking a cue from the popularity of 300, Kratos begins the adventure merrily slaughtering Persians before Morpheus decides to do evil things and must be punished.

God of War : Chains of Olympus joins the ranks of other handheld epics such as Zelda : Link’s Awakening, Super Mario Land, Sonic The Hedgehog : Triple Trouble, Metroid Prime Hunters, Metal Gear Solid : Portable Ops, New Super Mario Bros and Ratchet And Clank : Size Matters. By “handheld epic”, I mean an installment of a major franchise brought to handhelds that adds nothing but perhaps the most minute character developments and story revelations, and whom the gameplay is identical enough to its bigger brothers that if you decided to live your life without ever playing said game, you wouldn’t really be missing anything important.

But I would also argue that Chains of Olympus is a much stronger game than any of the above mentioned titles, if just because it narrowly avoids the feeling of being “watered down”. To get any other “cons” out of the way, the magic attacks aren’t particularly interesting and you’re only alternate weapon to the swinging chain-blade…thingies is some giant fist that you get late in the game. Oh, and say you’ve just bought your PSP and you’re not used to your fingers being so cramped with the shoulder buttons and that odd little analog …object, you’ll probably be feeling more anguish in your hands than Kratos does at the loss of his family.

But those faults aren’t going to cause nightmares, and otherwise Chains of Olympus holds up favorably well to its big, murderous brothers on the PS2. The same false sense of scope is there, using fixed camera angles and such to trick the player into thinking they’re exploring a giant temple and such. The same linear progression of areas that was very much welcome after people stopped demanding every game have a Grand Theft Auto-style overworld because doing so turned most of the in-game missions into fetch quests. The same manner in which enemies throw themselves at you, begging to all be sliced up at once with your blades-on-a-string. Lets be honest here, God of War games aren’t too deep when it comes to combat. They’re not completely mindless button-mashers, but they walk that fine line, tilting to the edge ever so slightly.

Well there may be one more “flaw” to the game, but I would argue that such a “flaw” is more of an advantage here. Chains of Olympus clocks in at about 6 hours of playtime, which I’m sure by many people’s inhumanly high standards is too short. I would argue that 6 hours is the perfect length for a game like that. As I had mentioned above, the actual gameplay isn’t the most in-depth you’ll find, and odds are you won’t find people writing essays on Gamefaqs on how to successfully handle a herd of basic enemies. GOW : COO (what a bad acronym) doesn’t overstay its welcome, and doesn’t get old like other installments, in particular God of War 2. The game has no filler, no fetch quests, very little in the way of repeated environments and no drawn out battle sequences. In being so short, I found it to be the one God of War game that I was replaying after I finished it. Also keep in mind that this is a handheld game and thus your longest play session tends to be as long as the bus ride, or at least the part of the bus ride where you can either sit down or lean on the board next to the back exit (annoying everyone who gets off the bus). Save points in this game are just frequent enough that you’ll be able to get some sort of enjoyment out of the ample time you get on the bus, but not frequent enough to insult your intelligence.

So unless you’ve got some sort of mentality where every single game you play, portable or otherwise, must be original content, then pick it up. Granted, it’s not a life-changing gameplay experience and your life will function perfectly without it, but then again, your life will function perfectly without a PSP or a DS or whatever too. Odds are, you bought your PSP so you can play something on the road (whether or not you bought it for the possibility of playing said things for free is another discussion) but in any event, this is one of the better games that you can carry around in your pocket.

Pros : Successfully translates moments of extreme emotional anguish into novel gameplay mechanics near the end. Less embarrassing to play on the bus than Patapon.

Cons : Won’t win over the crowd of people that thought 300 was racist. Like any PSP game, purchasing a copy requires a homebrew-fighting firmware update.

4 stars