God of War: Chains of Olympus Review

Game: God of War: Chains of Olympus
System: PSP
Genre: Action-adventure
Developer: SCE Santa Monica, Ready at Dawn
Release date: March 4, 2008


Pros: Great production values, excellent control scheme
Cons: Screen tearing, simple puzzles


Smaller disc, smaller screen, same great experience. God of War may have been shrunken down for Sony's portable system, but very little of the series' greatness was lost in translation. Ready at Dawn did an excellent job recreating the console God of War experience on PSP, even improving the formula in some areas, most notably play control. The game looks great, it sounds great, and it performs well despite a few technical hiccups. All in all, it's a worthy addition to the God of War franchise and one of the best titles on PSP.

Chains of Olympus is a prequel to the original God of War. It tells the story of Kratos' servitude to the gods of Olympus and his mission to rescue the sun god Helios. Although the larger plot of Chains of Olympus is tangential, rarely intersecting with the main God of War mythology, there are several moments and scenes that fill in the gaps left over from God of War and God of War II. The writers at Ready at Dawn did a good job of making their game fit neatly (and naturally) into the main storyline.

Kratos explores a temple.

Speaking of Ready at Dawn: they did an excellent job bringing the world of ancient Greece alive on the PSP. Using an expanded version of its Daxter engine, Ready at Dawn made Chains of Olympus shine with outstanding graphics, water effects, light and shadow effects, and enemy artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, the game suffers occasionally from frame-rate drops and screen-tearing.

Ready at Dawn's greatest achievement, however, is its control scheme for Chains of Olympus. Moving from a control scheme using two analog sticks to a scheme with only one stick could have been a disaster for Chains of Olympus. But it's not. On the contrary, the PSP control scheme is arguably superior to its console counterpart.

Weapon and magic attacks are mapped out well around the PSP control setup.

One area where Chains of Olympus falters is puzzle-solving. Puzzles appear infrequently in the game. When they do appear, they are far too easy to conquer. Apparently several puzzles, along with characters and multiplayer options, were cut from the final game due to time restraints. Had they been added, Chains of Olympus might have been a fuller, more complete game. Even without, however, the game is excellent and easy to recommend.