June 24, 2008

Chains of Olympus

I'm a huge God of War fan, and both the kids have a Sony PSP which I've found myself borrowing a lot for those 'wait in the car/lobby/etc' moments lately. So, when it was announced that Sony was releasing a PSP God of War bundle, I was stoked. It showed up and I've spent a lot of time playing with it already. I had been kicking around the idea of importing a white PSP Slim (or PSP 2000 as they are known (the originals are PSP 1000)) but the red PSP that is a part of this bundle is stunning. And the white screened image of Kratos on the back is just killer.

The new 'slim' version of the PSP is very thin and light. However, I actually prefer the 'bulk' of the original PSP. I have this constant feeling that I'm going to crush or drop/fling the thing and it bothers me. However, I do prefer the new weight as I've found that marathon gaming sessions don't tire the wrists nearly as bad as the original PSP. And speaking of marathon gaming, the battery life on the Slim is amazing. Like, "wow" amazing. I can play solid for over three hours easily on this thing (unless I'm using the wifi to play against someone, then it drops a bit). I totally love how the Slim has a switch right on top to turn off the wifi. I don't like how the Slim doesn't 'open' to remove/insert the UMD like the original did. It feels /way/ too fragile for my liking. The bundle didn't include the headphones that the original PSP did (no loss really) and /still/ doesn't include a memory stick (wtf are you thinking Sony? This is a 'bundle' for $diety's sake! You get the unit, a battery, and a game... everything you need to play from the get-go but you can't save ?!). All in all, I'm really pleased w/ the unit and have taken it along on a lot of 'sit and wait' moments already.

Now, for Chains of Olympus. This game is a prequel to the original GoW and GoWII. And it quite nicely slots into the storyline and does a wonderful job of explaining the back-story and 'filling out' things for us fans. It translated to the PSP really well and is smooth as butter in action. The game also does a really good job of avoiding the UMD as I hardly ever notice it spinning the disc up which means the play is nice and smooth and battery life is excellent. About my biggest complaint is that on 'normal' the enemies don't seem to take a lot of punishment before being dead. Perhaps I'm mis-remembering, but it seemed like they were a hell of a lot harder to kill in GoW. However, that just means you can get a little more creative with the killing, IMHO.

In short, I love everything about this bundle. If you were thinking of getting a PSP, you won't be disappointed w/ this at all. If you have a PSP, then you won't go wrong w/ getting Chains of Olympus either (assuming you're into the genre).

Two thumbs up

Posted in at 07:42:23