The suspension of disbelief: an acceptance of doors that for some bizarre reason require a button to be depressed at the other end of the courtyard by means of a statue or corpse – for our entertainment. The guys over at Persian Security must be making a mint. A trap isn’t your actual proper trap if you don’t have the intruder running horizontally across the wall to get to his destination.

But, a game isn’t a game without some fun eh?

God of War has been a series that I’ve relished each instalment of. As stated at the end of the last manic hack-and-slash fest God of War 2 I said “I can’t wait for the next one!". I really hadn’t expected it to be on the PSP. When you look at my previous points about how a PSP really works when you develop to it’s spec, God of War: Chains of Olympus came along and special-moved the limits of my expectations.

GoW: CoO (a silly abbreviation) is set 10 years before the first game where the Gods have sent Kratos to the city of Attica to help defend it from the Persian army. The Persians in their infinite wisdom decided to bring along their overgrown pet lizard a.k.a. basilisk. This, although being your first major encounter, isn’t the only problem as per usual – a giant flaming ball of flameyness is seen falling towards the Earth. Kratos fights his way over to the crash site through a miasma created by Morpheus, the God of Dreams, made possible by said falling ball of fire as you later find that the crash site is in fact the Sun Chariot. Without the Sun, Morpheus can spread his influence across Olympus putting even the Gods to sleep.

*Cue sharp intake of breath*

For those of you familiar with the series you might wonder how such a game would transfer to the PSP. It does, and it does it well. Not only does the game look great and still have a fantastic score to accompany it, but the lack of PSP’s second analogue stick (a feature which is a secondary concern once you’ve down-spec’d the game) affects gameplay little. While it may not have short levels, or the pickup-putdown ability that some titles might have, it means in short that you’d just better book the day off to give it a good blat.

The control system is very much the same, other than using shoulder buttons to dodge. You still have your Blades of Chaos to twirl around in some kind of Morris dance out of a Tim Burton flick, as well as some familiar magical tricks from the previous 2 games. So for those of you who have played the previous 2, you’ll settle in quite nicely. For those of you who haven’t, well, what were you thinking? I appreciate your enthusiasm in jumping onto the prequel assuming you won’t miss out on the storyline, but you need to play the others. Really you do, it helps fund Ready at Dawn Studios to bring another Dawn of War to our doorstep – and if that doesn’t happen I’ll get angry, and you won’t like me when I’m angry!

Ahem…anyway.

Morpheus, having a subscription to “Olympus Henchmen R Us” proceeds to send a multitude of familiar enemies in your general direction to progressively slow you down, if only for a short while. Another nice point to be duly pointed at is how the QTE (Quick Time Events), as in the killing blow cutscene where you have to press a series of buttons or execute rotations on you analogue stick, have been generally made easier to follow and pull-off. So, at least that’s one check off the frustration list.

In addition to the improved QTE, the challenges that you face tend not to repeat themselves too much as with the previous titles (oh no another rope to cling onto as a series of monsters try and hit me off, whatever will I do). A few more QTE versions of these situations would’ve been a welcome addition but that wasn’t particularly an issue in the long run. Aside from these additions we’re still presented with the core God of War environment. You still collect red orbs to power up your weapons and magical attributes, blue orbs for magic and green for health. You’ll still get to pick up an additional couple of items along the way, including Zeus’ gauntlet which provides, in effect, a new weapon style for Kratos to master. As this weapon comes in the hand-to-hand flavour, like Marmite® you’ll either love it or hate it. Still it has to be said that, GoW: CoO’s gameplay in general ran with more fluidity than a well-oiled mermaid.

Of course, even great titles have their setbacks. These were few, quite frankly, after such a great experience throughout, saying that any of the minor downsides affected the games balance would be like saying you like Cheddar but the yellow wasn’t up to standard. A personal grievance I had was that you’re given the option to parry, by hitting block at the same time as the enemy makes contact, which is fine. However, there’s also a move you’ll get by holding block and hitting square – the Cyclone of Chaos. If in going from one transition to the other you don’t release block fast enough and want a single attack, you’ll pull this move off which is not only longwinded, but you can’t cancel it either. If you were to do this in large crowd situations you’ll simply get mobbed as the enemies get hit, stagger and then do their attack while you’re still flailing around like possessed ballerina. This feels like a change over previous titles where you could take on a lot of enemies at once without fear of being hit by some highly resistant critter.

But hey, you know, that’s it. Other than perhaps a steady progression towards the end boss, with a few slightly repetitive encounters (never follow an eerie laughing child that goes from room-to-room without answering your call. Ever. It just doesn’t ever end well) and a boss that’s perhaps a tad abnormally hard in comparison to it’s predecessors – we’re talking trivial things. All the mad and bloody violence we’ve come to expect and love is there, unabashed and ready. A few nipples here, a sprig of severed limbs there and we once again have a fantastic title that’s undoubtedly a must-buy!