God of War has long held a special place in my heart. It was about 3 years ago that I decided to finally see what all the fuss was about, upon which I went out of my way to buy a PS3 off ebay. I bought the original so I could still play PS2 games, as I had never touched any GoW game (to the point I believed GoW stood for Gears of War). I always knew they were gory and violent, but looked on them as a DMC clone, how wrong I was. The first game took me about a week of on/off gaming to complete, the second took me 2 days, the third: 1 day. I became obsessed with the fantastic story and fiction, and the graphical improvements of each game kept me hooked. Unfortunately there wasn’t much more out there, and I haven’t touched a GoW game since. I still look back on those games with fond memories, and that’s what made me buy Chain of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta.
I bought these in the PlayStation Plus sale for GoW to celebrate the release of GoW:Ascension. £2.87 per game was a fantastic deal in my eyes. They were downloaded straight to my PS Vita within a couple of hours and I was set to go.
Chains of Olympus starts out like any of GoW game, with a lovely close up of Kratos’ face with a main menu of options to chose from. Upon selecting new game, the camera pans out to show Kratos amongst a battle in some Greek city. Nothing has really changed here, it feels the same as other GoW games, which isn’t a problem, just a criticism that much of the GoW formula has been left unchanged.
Controls are the same as any other GoW, allowing a limited number of strikes on enemies. It’s hard to be skilful/strategic in a game like this when you only have a few attacks to chose from. Overall though the combat is satisfactory, and it does expand past the initial attacks, but barely. It’s more timing that you have to overcome, which can be frustrating when most of your attacks don’t have a cancel option, and take a few seconds to process.
One thing I shall note about playing this on the Vita; it looks fantastic! I don’t know how anyone could have played this on a PSP, but on the Vita the resolution and colours are fantastic. The upscaling isn’t noticeable, and the bilinear filtering works a charm. So if you ever want to revisit classic games, get them on the vita, it’ll breath new life into your collection.
Pros:
- Compelling portable game with console origins
- Keeps you hooked for duration of story
Cons:
- Same game you’ve played before, just scaled down
- Graphics not up to par with console companions
- No replay value
In summary, GoW: Chains of Olympus is a good portable version of the fantastic series, but the scale and scope are affected due to the graphical prowess of the original PSP.
3/5
