God of War: Chains of Olympus

So, Keith wasn't lying. This took me two nights to beat, and on the first night - last night - I only played it for a scant half hour. I was a bit late to the God of War games, having only just beaten the first one earlier this year, and I still haven't played the second or third games in the series. But I found the God of War: Origins Collection recently for only twenty bucks or so, and what with both of them coming chronologically before God of War II and III I figured I might as well treat myself to one of these two PSP games. Specifically, the first one, Chains of Olympus, a game which takes place prior even to the first God of War. Kratos is in the midst of his ten-year tour of duty as the gods' personal go-to guy for fucking their enemies' shit up. After dispatching an entire Persian army and a basilisk trying to invade a Greek city (in a classic God of War intro level that is awesome and memorable but extremely unrelated to the rest of the game), Kratos sees the sun fall out of the sky. Looks like the titans have kidnapped Helios, god of the sun, and the world will be cast into eternal darkness unless our boy Kratos can, you know, fuck those titans' shit up. The game is much quicker than the original PS2 title, and there were no parts whatsoever that I found to be tedious or frustrating, Of course, given the shorter runtime and the simpler plot, it's also not quite as memorable as said original game. That's fine; it was still an absolute blast to play from start to finish, once again a perfect blend of hack-and-slash, adventure game, and dungeon puzzler. The game looked beautiful, and I can thank the HD remastering for that. There was once again a fittingly epic score and an impeccable sense of level design that somehow made these ancient mythological worlds seem vast and wide open while at the same time limiting you to a very linear and straightforward path through the game. My only fear is that now that I've played a newer and HD God of War game, I'll think less of God of War II once I finally go back and play that one on PS2. But I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, which probably won't be very soon anyway.