Kratos come to Sony’s portable, smaller in size, but equally great, with God of War: Chains of Olympus. While it has not been made by the usual team, but Ready at Dawn, they did have the experience from Daxter.

The game tells the story of events before the first God of War, still in the beggining of Krato’s services for the Olympian Gods, staying close to the PlayStation 2 versions with gameplay, action, and thanks to a primorous work from Ready at Dawn, graphics.

The story is a little confuse, with Kratos fighting against the persian army at Attica, evolving into a battle against Gods and a decision of saving himself or saving the world of men. Any more details and it would spoil some of the best moments in the game.

The controles may not be exactly the same as on the PlayStation 2, but the basics are there. The lack of a second analog can be felt during longer sessions of play, since you now dodge by holding L & R and using the main analog, but holding the PSP like that for too long may be unconfortable, not really felt at the easiest modes where you don’t have to dodge as much.

At some moments the action seens a little empty but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it anyway, but more in a portable way, with little enemy variety and not as many bosses as I’d like, specially, the giant ones. Just like in previous games, you collect orbs to upgrade your weapons, which helps on keeping you glued to the screen until you get your next upgrade to destroy your enemies with ease. You can tell that the number of skills and abilities is also more focused on a portable adventure.

If you’ve played God of War before, you know that some action scenes trigger a minigame that produce incredible damage by pressing the right button at the right time. Chains of Olympus is no differenct, offering those moments and working well with the PSP analog disc.

Talking about graphics, they’re by far the best on PSP, maybe some effects are not as good as in Syphon Filter, but they are superior in so many other factors. Kratos is incredibly well modelled and animated, fighting at locations that are huge and against several enemies, with no loading screens in the middle of the game and no slowdown.  Details on textures and the stages are of a proportion rarely seen on a portable game. The music is proportionally epic, spicing the action sequences with the help of sound effects perfectly ported from the bigger versions.

Even with a considerable smaller size on the PSP disc, Ready at Dawn still managed to squeeze some tradition into the extras, including a making of. There’s also some challenges to fight and costumes to dress Kratos on, but nothing really as interesting as the main game, which is worth it to finish on higher difficulty levels.

The main point here is that Chains of Olympus is a compact God of War, altough short, it’s intense. It’s not too heavy on replaying it cause some scenes can’t be skipped and that can easilly kill some player’s patience.

While God of War 2 was a real banquet for the fans, God of War: Chains of Olympus is a nice meal, it’ll still taste it like God of War, but in smaller portions. Except, of course, action, which is still the series selling point.