"Thanks for helping me move, Kratos"

We all have those games that we miss the first time around. With the busy release schedule of modern gaming, no one has time to play everything. That is why we at WingDamage present to you “Fashionably Late Reviews“. This is our series on games from the current generation of consoles that we may have missed on their initial release, but have gone back to experience now.

The transition of God of War from console to hand-held was as smooth as one could possibly hope for.  The design of the PSP lends itself so well to this bloody platformer that it easily ranks high on the ‘Must-Have’ of any starter PSP game collection.

“God of War: Chains of Olympus” acts as a sort of prequel to the main games, fleshing out Kratos as a character and giving a bit more back-story. The actual plot involves quite a bit of mystery, so not much can be said without spoiling, but pressure of the ‘everyone-in-the-world-will-die’ variety is certainly on you.

Meanwhile, you, the player, learn of his daughter as her specter haunts him throughout the game, especially when he enters the Underworld.

That’s right. The Underworld. One of the greatest things about this game is the level locations. You almost literally ride the sun, go down into Tartarus, and all of the levels, though containing familiar items like pots and columns, are drastically different, making each one fun to explore.

There is very little graphical detail lost; the game looks almost identical to the Playstation 2 precursors and plays the same way. The only difficulty I had was the analog (joystick / nub) proved a bit harder to maneuver than the toggles of a PS2 controller. This only really came into play during the mini-games, which come with a bit more frequency than I recall from the original two. Be warned: If you do not like the events that may be timed or have to be executed in a specific manner, you may not enjoy this game as much.

The only real failing point of this game is the learning curve. I saw someone beat the entire game on Easy mode in less than five hours. Move it up one level to Normal and you’re going to spend a lot of time dying… over and over again. It got so bad, the game itself asked me if I wanted to switch to Easy Mode. Failsauce.

If you’re thinking of picking up a PSP, I strongly suggest making this one of your first games. It’s gratifying and fun, easy to pick up, easy to pause and come back to, has a strong plot, intriguing and challenging puzzles to solve, and of course, a crazy cool main character.