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GameOnYou, the wily tricksters that we are, have managed to get hold of a copy of the US version of God of War for the PSP.

It was a dark night when we strapped instructions to the back of our underlings and sent them westwards, toward the USA to find us a copy of the much coveted GoW: Chains of Olympus. Sadly only one returned, reporting back that the half of the group had to crash land as a result of achy-breaky pelvis, a severe illness which can only be contracted by underlings within a 100 mile radius of an earthquake. We figured that they would be safe in their natural habitat, Yorkshire, but we predicted wrong. It turns out that the other half went to Hollywood in order to pursue the American Dream. 4 died of Heroin overdose and one of them is starring in a piece for television. He plays the role of the ‘Before’ in an exercise machine informercial. The remaining underling held out the box then collapsed. I later snapped his neck.

Half an hour into the game I briefly wondered to myself whether it had been worth the deaths of all those underlings, as underlings cost money and money is important, after an intense battle with a monstrous Basilisk I realised that it was,indeed worth it. Only half an hour in and I had single handedly defended Sparta from an impending Persian army, made sexy time with a pair of grateful lesbians and entered the haunting nightmare world of Morpheus.

So far we have been playing on normal mode. We’ve completed the first level and are halfway into the second, and while we’ve come across two or three impressive set pieces it feels as if we’ve barely scratched the surface. This may be good news or it may be bad. Either it means that we aren’t very far or that they’ve paced it badly, giving us a small amount of large levels rather than a more balanced overall game.

On the subject of balance, the difficulty of the normal mode seems to be well crafted, providing a reasonable challenge while not being too hard although those who have played the original two games may want to start on the next level of difficulty as normal will prove too easy for them.

God of War has got the nicest 3D graphics we’ve seen on the PSP yet, bordering on PS2 quality and the game appears to always have a lot going on screen at a time, be it henchman-type enemies or over-sized boss-type enemies and with the addition of a variety of combos within it’s combat system this is also arguably the most action packed PSP game to date (until we get a portable Devil May Cry). There is a bad side to this however as there are occasional frame-rate drops but they are small and don’t happen too often, usually happening only for a few minutes once you start or load a game.

Pros:

• Epic battles and bosses
• Balanced Difficulty
• Atmospheric music with little noticeable repetition
  

Cons:

• Occasional frame-rate drops
• Normal difficulty may be too easy for some people

Tags: God Of War, psp, Ready at Dawn, Underlings

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under preview, psp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.