Review: God of War: Chains of Olympus

Fighting/Action/Adventure

A reason to pick up that PSP that you never use.

Mark

Using mythological tales as an inspirational basis for a videogame is nothing new. Myth, Age of Empires, Actrasier and even Final Fantasy to some extent have all taken queues from tales of yore with this the third instalment in the God of War series borrowing heavily from the Greek pantheon of legends with the various gods of Olympus and monsters like Basilisks, Minotaurs, Cyclopes and Gorgons all making an appearance making it look like a digital Ray Harryhausen movie.

Taking the roll of Kratos a bald, tattooed, monosyllabic beefcake action hero come demigod with all the personality baggage you’d expect from an a modern American hero: problems with authority, amnesia, an overabundance of testosterone (that would explain the lack of hair) and an insistent need for pussy.

Tell them about the giant snake.

The plot as told with an abundance of cut scenes has Morpheus the god of dreams putting the other gods to sleep (I’m getting sleepy just thinking about the plot here) and covering the lands of Sparta in perpetual night by destroying Helios the… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Poopytrim! Sorry about that. Well that’s enough of the plot how does it play, is it a bronzed Adonis or pasty media student? Well despite the obvious constraints of being on the PSP and the accompanying eye strain and sore thumb that comes with that it plays just as it does on the original PS2 that is to say a Grecian Devil May Cry without poofy hair but a good line in loin cloths and nubile waifs.

Combat has you using Kratos’ patented Blades of Chaos for the majority of the game these twin swords fixed to chains that Kratos can flail around with a mix of quick or strong attack combos along with grabs for up close and personal damage and a standard block and dodge manoeuvre for damage avoidance and prevention. As the game progresses you defeat foes and collect red orbs to improve your range of moves along with green orbs that replenish your health and blue orbs to power any spells you acquire like a flaming Efreet punch or Charon poison cloud.

Yes, but you're no Chuck Liddell.

Along with orbs the claimed from fallen foes there’s a multitude of hidden chests all filled with orbs and collectable tokens that boost your health/magic bar and even good old fashioned breakable boxes and barrels filled with goodies for the diligent explorers to loot. Most of these are easily found through the course of the game with it leading you down a linear path with a repeated mix of combat, switch and button puzzles, key and door quests and everyone’s favourite quick time events.

The God of War series has never been strangers to these mini reflex tests that require you to complete a ‘Simon’ style sequence of button presses in short succession to progress but the ones here have taken this simple premise too far and suck the fun out of what should be a brief interlude in the frantic gameplay. For example with many of the tougher enemies require a QTE to kill them after wearing down their health.

This sounds simple with all you have to do to trigger the QTE is get next to them and tap O to start the sequence and tap say X X O X before you run out of time or hit the wrong button, sounds simple yes? But then they start adding rotations to the sequence. Rotations? What’s the big deal you might wonder, have you tried to rotate the PSP’s analogue nub it’s hard to do at the best of times but when you have 0.25 seconds to perform one accurately it sucks what little fun there was out of them and makes completing such sequences near impossible first time turning them into memory tests rather than a brief reflex test.

Rich Secondary Review God damn it. This is exactly the type of game I hate having to review. Not because it isn’t enjoyable but because it’s so hard to score it. In PSP terms this is a solid nine out of ten. Graphically it’s fantastic with gutsy cinematics that push the handheld to near-PS2 levels of quality and has some huge enemies and beautifully crafted levels. The game also, for the most part, gets the best out of the usually horrible PSP controls although some concessions are made to Sony’s one-analogue-sticked wonder. At times it is so unbelievably polished you almost expect the PSP to slip out of your hands but once you get past that the truth is that this is marginally less good than Conan on the 360. The combat isn’t as well-developed (although GoW does have its share of upgrades and new moves), there are more QTE’s than is healthy (and none of them are good) and it’s slightly less varied. And whilst it’s lovely by PSP standards, it even fails a little on this score by placing the save points a little too far apart for bus/toilet/desk-whilst-boss-isn’t-looking shenanigans. If you’ve got the choice I’d say get Conan on the 360 (or a PS2 God of War game) but if you absolutely must buy a new PSP game, you probably won’t do much better than this. Secondary Score: 7/10

Even dressing up these QTEs as sex scenes don’t make them any more palatable and if you’re the kind of person who thinks pixelated breasts are sexy then you’ll get your fill here with Kratos taking time out to plough some babes. Although you don’t see the act Hot Coffee style the camera pans across to a candle that drips more wax as the humping speeds up along with the porno moans and groans. What should be something to help sell the game to the one handed gamers market makes the game seam ridiculous to anybody with a mental age of ten or higher. So if you are planning to play this in public be sure to keep your headphones plugged in.

The mandatory unlockables and challenges help encourage replays but when you know that most of that replay is going to be you beating the same four enemies who die and then spawn four more of the same type who need killing to get access to a new area with four enemies… you see where this is going right.

The repetition in the basic gameplay with the bad guys Zapp Brannigan style tactics (wave upon wave of men) that have to be defeated before a gate opens or the basic block pushing puzzles or switch pulling chores and it gets old very quick despite the games short running time. Save points are plentiful as you would want in a handheld game but if you sit down and cane it in the privacy of your own home rather than on the bus to work don’t be surprised if you see the back end of it in less than eight hours.

Now don’t get me wrong this is a really playable game with super high production values both in terms of graphics and sound but the QTE woes and laughable sex scenes drag it just below the level of a must have title for me. If you don’t mind squinting to see what way Kratos is facing or having to memorise when the rotation moves come up in the QTEs you can get a lot of bang for your buck but don’t make the mistake of thinking its epic in terms of length only in scale.

Rating:

8/10