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Omar L. Gallaga writes about technology culture for the Austin American-Statesman. He's worked for more than nine years at the Austin American-Statesman and edited Technopolis, the newspaper's personal tech section, and ¡ahora sí!, Austin's Spanish-language newspaper. He's been a writer and performer with Austin's award-winning Latino Comedy Project and is a contributing writer for Television Without Pity, MSNBC.com's books section and The Almost Late Show with Bobby Bones. He writes a comic strip, "Space Monkeys!" with his brother, Pablo, and lives in New Braunfels with his wife and three technologically savvy cats.

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The entry titled "Digital: 'God of War: Chains of Olympus'."

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Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2008 > April > 14 > Entry

Digital: ‘God of War: Chains of Olympus’

By Omar Gallaga | Monday, April 14, 2008, 03:27 PM

‘God of War: Chains of Olympus’
$40, Sony PSP
Rated M for Mature

Fans of Kratos, the buff, soul-patched anti-hero of the Sony “God of War” series, won’t want to miss “Chains of Olympus,” a new game for the hand-held Sony PlayStation Portable system. A prequel to the PlayStation 2 “God of War” games, “Chains” explains why Kratos has such a chip on his red-striped shoulder (it involves his daughter, Calliope) and offers the same kinds of fast fighting and puzzle solving as the previous games.

Remarkably, though, the game loses almost nothing in the move to a portable console. The graphics are gorgeously moody, the scale is epic and the controls are snappy.

The game moves along at a good clip, requiring no more than a few dedicated hours to complete, and, though some kinds of enemies reappear often, “Chains” has plenty of great cut scenes to move the story along. It’s never boring.

It also loses none of the gore, implied sex and gloom of the other games (much of the game is set in Hades). It’s definitely not for kids, but adults will appreciate the stellar production values.

Until “God of War III” comes to the PlayStation 3, this is as much Kratos action as fans can expect for the time being. That’s all right. It’s a great technical achievement for the PSP.