God of War: Chains of Olympus Review

Wow. Where do I start. Well first let me say that this is my first ever God of War game, my introduction to the series. I had always been interested in playing them but had gotten rid of my PS2 before they game out. I went into this knowing that it was the prequel to two of the best PS2 games ever made, one of which only came out a year ago, when the 360, PS3, and Wii were already out. That's a lot to live up to.

Developer Ready at Dawn nailed it. I've never seen a prettier came on the PSP. While I was playing I swore I was staring at a game from the early life of the PS2, it looked that good. The backgrounds, lighting, blood effects, animations, everything was crisp and perfect. Even the camera angles were fantastic, it was very cinematic and at some moments would scale back as you were still running forward to show the epic scale and architecture of the structure you were running towards. It was truly impressive. The weapons and magic attacks were very fun to use and felt awesome when you connected a hit. The sound and music in the game is also some of the best I've heard on the PSP, or any console for that matter. The production levels were through the roof for this game, it is one of the most polished games I've ever played.

All in all in was a short game, taking me about 6.5 hours to beat. However I cannot wait to jump back in and play it again on Hard, then on God mode. I found some of the boss battles to be pretty easy, and I'm terrible at games, so Hard mode should be fun. I can't wait to go back and play the earlier God of War games now, and am greatly looking forward to God of War 3 on the PS3, which was teased at on the back of the PSP manual for the game. I'd like to see Ready at Dawn do some more work on the PSP, but they said they're moving on to home consoles now, including the Okami port for the Wii. After putting Daxter down for a while, another Ready at Dawn game for PSP, I think I might start playing it again just because they blew me away with God of War.

Labels: Reviews, Sony