1. The one thing Sony always tried than its competition to do is bring its franchises onto its handheld systems whole hog. They did this to greater and lesser success but in the case of Chains of Olympus, there is remarkably little compromise.
2. The question then is are God of War games any good? The answer to that question is: yeah, they are pretty good.
3. You play as an angsty red-painted fellow named Kratos who is some kind of Greek god (or not depending on where you are in the series's timeline). The other gods are making you do stuff and its pissing you off so, while you do continue to do what they ask, you stoutly refuse to do it w/o periodically stopping to yell at the sky about how angry you are.
4. The main appeal of God of War games is the combat and Chains of Olympus is no exception. It's got a certain button-mashing flow which feels to me like it's cribbed straight from old bit-era arcade and console games. Think Streets of Rage or Final Fight. You definitely get better the more time you put in but there is a sense where you are not executing each move consciously, just playing through by feel.
5. This does lead us to what I feel is the most major compromise made for PSP: the controls. There are other changes but the biggest one is it moves dodge from the right stick to a combo of both shoulder buttons and the left stick, I found this made it much less useful and I was constantly doing it accidentally or I would dodge straight into whatever attack I was trying to avoid or any number of upsetting surprises. It was frankly no big deal but it's something you are gonna notice coming to this game from other titles in the series.
6. The overall presentation though: very impressive. This is a handheld game from 2008 and in 2018, it does not feel at all like an old game to me. Or, maybe I'm what's old. Don't know, afraid to check.
7. Graphically, I dunno, if you count frame rates or ever talk about anti-aliasing w/ your boring-ass friends, maybe you will care about the loss of fidelity vs. the home console releases. I personally think this shit looks great and it gives you everything you want out of the series: giant set pieces, massive bosses and realistic violence (Rated M for Mature). If you are worried about the number of pixels hitting your optic nerve in a given time frame, I am not sure that you are reading the right list-based review blog.
8. The one main issue I find as far as visuals is actually something Chains of Olympus has in common w/ every release in the God of War series is that it is so dedicated to its cinematic vistas that it does not give you any control of the camera. For the most part, the camera is mostly very well scripted but this just gets a rebellious rise out of me. Don't tell me what camera angle to use, Dad!
9. Also in common w/ the console version of the game: an absolutely infuriating overabundance of quick time events. The number of times I died during combat is actually far less than the number of times I died as a result of repeatedly failing quick time events. Yeah, I know I am bad everything but screw that. I get you are trying to get some player involvement into scripted sequences but I don't care. I hate it.
10. Number 9 is absolutely why I called God of War games "pretty good" rather than "really good" in number 2. I mean, yeah, there is a lot of stuff that's less than stellar about it. The story is completely uninteresting and the voice actor who play Kratos is unintentionally hilarious but neither of these things gets in the way of the games doing what they do well. The quick time events spoil the flow of the action and it can be pretty egregious at times.
11. In addition to combat, Chains of Olympus mixes it up w/ a bit of very mild exploration and puzzle solving. This is on the order of, "Oh that door is locked? Find a switch" or the first and easiest block moving puzzle in a Zelda game. It kind of irks me when developers include these kind of things without fleshing them out properly but it really works to give you a breather in this case.
12. The exploration is tied into an RPG-mechanic where you find things to give Kratos a bit of extra oomph. You can upgrade weapons, magic, maximum life, etc. based on things you find along with rewards from killing enemies. This is a bit superfluous if you ask me. If you are making a game based on combat, why not make it so all your combat options are unlocked at the start and then rather than having later portions require the existence of a certain skill have them require the mastery of it? This I just don't know.
13. I can easily recommend this game to anyone who likes action games. If you are knew to God of War, Chains of Olympus provides as good an introduction as any game in the series. If you've played some and just want more, Chains has you covered too. What can confidently say is if you want to be in direct control of an unintentionally hilarious character that rips apart a bunch of Greek shit, this is the game for you.
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