Day 71, Game 71 - God of War: Chains of Olympus

---

So tonight I dove in to the handheld games of the God of War series, if only to break up the order in which you probably thought I would write about these games this week. At first, I really considered playing the games in chronological order to the story (not the release dates), as this series has jumped around more than Kriss Kross in a bounce house.

But, after I realized that the very first game in the story line was Ascension, which didn't actually come out until today, there was no way I was going to be able to start my week like that, yesterday - especially since I'm not privileged enough to get access to new releases early, apparently. So that pretty much screwed up any grandiose plan of having some rhyme or reason as to how I am playing the God of War series.

Instead, I just decided on this order: Console game, handheld game, console game, handheld game, console game, handheld game, NEW console game. Got that? Did you take notes? I hope so, because there will be, in fact, a test later on (Pizza Guy, I'm looking at you, buddy).

To reiterate, I chose to play the first of three hand held God of War games tonight, which is technically second in the chronological order of the storyline (but was the first for years until today's release), the prequel to the original game in the franchise, the fourth game actually released in the series and the second handheld game to be released. I really hope I got all that correct, because I got confused just writing it - I can't imagine what's it like to read it.

I tend to think that Sony Santa Monica had pretty much this whole storyline roughly written out for a while now. Maybe not from the beginning, but at least once they got the green light to make the second game. If not, they are doing a wonderful job of filling in storyline holes - not with DLC, webisodes or anything else that games these days use to answer unanswered questions - but by just saying, "Ehhhhh, let's just make a full game about it."

There are no complaints here.

So, to try and stay true to God of War: Chains of Olympus being released for the PSP, before it was remastered and brought to two different PS3 collections, I wanted to play it on a handheld. Since I have the guy via a download, not on am actually PSP, I was forced to try to play it on my Vita. You know, that thing that Sony promised would be capable of great things, like being able to remotely play PS3 games on it? So that's what I did. Well, that's what I tried, I should say. Apparently, while the remote play function works for the God of War 1-3 games in the Saga, they decided it wasn't logical to make the handheld games, the downloadable titles in the Saga, able to utilize the remote play function of the Vita. Seriously. I can't make this up if I tried.

That is one of Sony's new promises with the upcoming PS4 system, the ability to stream any and all games directly to your Vita for remote play. Seeing as how they can't figure it out now, you can see why I have my reservations about this guaranteed feature of The Future, the PS4.

Disappointed, I was backed into a corner and brutally forced to play my PS3 game on my PS3. Thankfully, that's where the disappointed ended and the fun began.

I actually sank several hours into the game tonight, just because of how fast paced and fun the action was. The story line didn't grab me right off the bat, but there are a few new elements I haven't seen in the little big of time I have spent with the franchise. The Morpheus, or the electric fog, or whatever you called it, is an interested concept for sure. The game play, the buttons, the menus, everything are very familiar and takes no time getting familiar with them, especially because I just played another God of War game last night.

While the game is pretty tough on the eyes at first glance, the textures are actually smoother than you would think and the overall graphics aren't that bad. It's obvious the HD rendering has helped it out greatly, but seriously, it could have looked a lot worse. It is quite clear why this game was so highly regarded and dubbed the best PSP game. I could imagine how awesome this would have looked, booting it up for the first time your PSP. And that is why Sony is successful with their exclusive IPs. They always seem to have that "WOW" factor (usually early on in the games), and they hold up well over time.

Unlocking a whole bunch of new trophies was pretty fun to, if I might say so myself. That might be one of dark horses on the race track this week for you gambling fans, as far as what will end up being my favorite part of spending the week with Kratos himself. We will see as the week progresses though, won't we?

---