God Of War: Chains Of Olympus comes damn close to
recreating the experience of playing an action game on your couch. But part of
the problem with simulating the console experience on a handheld is holding up
the comparison all the way. God Of War II was a shot of slick, blockbuster goodness
mainlined into players' bloodstreams like a videogame speedball. God Of War:
Chains Of Olympus
feels like a mere taste.
Everything is scaled back a hair. The variety of
beasties, vastness of the temples, and epic scope of the story are all dialed
down. It isn't like Kratos is stuck killing rats out behind his neighborhood
gyro shack: The ghost of Sparta is tasked with the suitably Herculean task of
returning the sun to the sky. The guy even goes toe-to-toe with Charon, the
ferryman on the river Styx. But at this point, excursions to the underworld are
like trips to Trader Joe's for Kratos. No biggie. Just don't forget the
Two-Buck Chuck.
This time, Kratos' motivation is his long-lost
daughter Calliope; the storyline leaves his contentious relationship with
Olympus only loosely sketched. In the first two games, Kratos had righteous
fury on his side; here, he's beginning to sound like a petulant whiner. Still,
the game does, for the most part, exactly what it sets out to do. It empowers
players to eviscerate mythological creatures, explore the temples of the gods,
and serve said gods a knuckle sandwich. The game's aforementioned technical
prowess is itself godly. The game looks brilliant and plays as smooth as
Kratos' shaved dome.
Beyond the game: Persians remain the enemy
du jour. If you thought their army in 300 was fearsome, wait until you get a load of
their basilisk. And just like their cinematic counterparts, the invaders in Chains
Of Olympus
always bring a harem of exotic love slaves on the road.
Worth playing for: Screw the sexcapades,
though. The best mini-game here is the one that translates button-mashing into
physically, forcibly shunning Kratos' clingy daughter. The bit where players
snap the necks of spirits in the Elysian Fields to regain their lost powers is
pretty awesome too.
Frustration sets in
when: The
locked-in-a-room-until-you-kill-all-the-monsters thing is starting to get a
little old.
Final judgment: Do we detect a hint of
mortality?