God of War Chains of Olympus Review

BY Saad Zafar | POSTED: 15 March 2008

The Man-GOD has a past.



God of War Chains of Olympus, is the exclusive prequel to the God of War series on the Playstation 2. Even though the original series was a SCEA Montana project, the PSP game has been developed by Ready at Dawn studios, the same guys who did the award winning JAX game on the PSP. Handing over the reigns of such a mammoth franchise to another developer might seem worrying, but it’s apparent that the trust has paid off.

Before we begin the tale of the Chains of Olympus, here’s a reiteration of what sets the story to the entire series. God of War is about Kratos (power – Greek), a general in the forces of the Spartan army. He followed orders of the Gods of Olympus (Zeus and family), killed many and established the Olympian way of things - no objectivism. He was ruthless in his ways with years of bodies and blood behind him and a penchant of doing the impossible, he had become cold and as pale as death itself, hence very aptly named, the Ghost of Sparta. The Gods obviously figured the need of such an avid worshipper, and he was soon hailed as the Champion of the Gods. For every problem that the Gods had in this world which was worth killing for, Kratos was put to service.

Not to establish any spoilers, in the first two parts of the series, Kratos is seen fighting for the Gods then later to become a God, and then afterwards to kill the God and be the ultimate supreme power. What actually unfolds in the series is for you to experience and find out, but what makes Kratos the Champion of the God’s is reiterated in this prequel.

Kratos only wanted one thing in life, to forget his past. His sins had been forgiven since he served the Gods but they never took away the reminiscences of the death of innocent people that he had caused, more so of his own wife and daughter. The game sets from the point where Kratos had already received the Blades of Chaos (enchained to his arms by the God of War, Ares) and also murdered his family and desperately wanted to get rid of the memories he had of them. Surely, the Gods had other things planned for him.

While he slaughtered the Persian Basilisk to hell (the first level), something more sinister brew in the skies, as Helios (aka SUN) came pelting down to Earth and into the Underground. Soon enough the world was covered with darkness of Morpheus (God of Dreams) and the Gods commanded Kratos to save the mankind from extinction. They required Kratos to pull the Chariot of Helios across the sky again; for if he completes the task, his sins would be forgiven and his past forgotten.

Keeping true to the story, there are a number of settings for the game. From the hills of Persia to the bowels of the earth, however most of the game is set in the Underworld, ruled by Hades where the God of Death and After life has enchained Titans to his will to hold the entire earth on their shoulders. Some of the more memorable settings include the Groves of Persephone (The wife to Hades and the Queen of the Underworld) where you need to kill souls to regain your powers and the Temple of Helios, which included some mega structures and lightning effects from the sun itself.

All said and done, most of the game’s soul lies in the combat system and this had been a very critical area when GOW COO was in production. The unavailability of a secondary analogue stick and the R2 L2 buttons looked like things could get quite out of hand but surprisingly they don’t. To roll now, you use R and L button together with the analogue, and it actually works better over the course of the game as you realize that since you’re already pressing the analogue button in the required direction, you don’t need to particularly think about where you need to roll, where as if you had another analogue stick you’d need to worry about which side you’re rolling on. Secondly since your thumb never moves from the face buttons it is easy to pull off a very quick attack after the roll. The lack of secondary shoulder buttons actually made it easier to access your magical powers, since now they’re all mapped to the face button and R in congruency. R + Triangle would unleash the Efreet (a Persian fire technique), R+Square would unleash the powers of light etc.

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