God of War: Chains of Olympus Hands-On

By Shaun Hunter

Kratos is set to make his much anticipated arrival onto the PSP. With developer Ready at Dawn at the helm, God of War: Chains of Olympus will take one of the most popular PlayStation 2 series and make it portable. While many PS2 to PSP ports haven’t had the best success, God of War works incredibly well and is extremely fun to play.

God of War: Chains of Olympus acts as a prequel to the previous God of War games on the PlayStation 2, and tells the story of the years Kratos spends attempting to appease the Gods after being saved by Ares. Those new to the series should not be put off however, as the game acts as a solid standalone story, which can then be built onto later.

The first thing you’ll notice with Chains of Olympus is the presentation. Right from the main menu, and then jumping into a game, it’s apparent that the utmost care has been taken in packing as much visual quality in as possible. This is easily one of the best looking games on PSP. From the wall textures to Kratos’ character model, no corners have been cut to create an engaging atmosphere.

Perhaps more impressively, however, is the complete lack of loading. With the exception of one screen while a saved game loads, you can progress through the stages without encountering any waiting around.

The gameplay is essentially very similar to how the past games work. You start off with your basic Blades of Chaos, which can be upgraded to learn new combos by collecting red orbs mainly through defeating enemies, or - if you’re much like me - destroying every single pot or box you come across. In addition to levelling up your blades, you also learn a variety of magic throughout the game, and spending the orbs on these will increase the abilities available to you.

The core of God of War has always been the combat. It’s a huge relief then that the PSP version packs in as much action and blade-swinging as its big brother counterparts. Chains of Olympus, in fact, boasts an increased focus on combat and pure gameplay with reduced story telling and cut scenes, something that is welcomed on a ‘pick-up and play’ portable system.

It’s the simplicity of how you perform attacks, with square, triangle, and circle doing the majority of the blade attacks, that keeps the combat feeling easy to use and effective. Special attacks are able to be performed by pressing the circle button when prompted, and at times provide varying ways to end an enemy's life. For bosses, this often involves pulling yourself up onto the creature to attack it from above. Fewer bosses, however, mean that these sort of attacks aren’t as prevalent as they were in past games. Magic abilities are available for high damage attacks at the cost of your magic power, and these are handled by holding down the R button and hitting one of the four face buttons.

One gripe with the game are the puzzles, or lack thereof. While puzzles played a fairly decent role in previous God of War titles, they do appear to have been stepped down a notch and now usually consist of pulling a lever or two and pushing a box around. A few more different puzzles could have helped the slight feeling of repetitiveness when travelling from one room to another to defeat another group of enemies.

The game is also impressively packed full of unlockable extras, such as challenge modes, bonus costumes, an insanely hard God mode, behind-the-scenes and making of videos, and image galleries. Many of these extras give an extra incentive to not only beat the game, but to play through multiple times, perhaps even justifying the God mode.

Our preview code unfortunately misses out on the last few levels, but the game still looks incredible nonetheless.

If you own a PSP and are looking for a solid action title, be sure to check out Chains of Olympus when it hits NZ shores. The engaging atmosphere, excellent gameplay and replay value make this set to be one of the best titles to hit the PSP in not only recent times, but in the entire PSP catalogue.

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