God of War: Chains of Olympus [PSP]

The acclaimed God of War series is leaping from PS2 to handheld, and it might be easy to write off Ready at Dawn's God of War: Chains of Olympus as merely "Kratos on PSP." That's not a totally unfair comparison, but it doesn't do the new game justice. Chains is a leaner and more compact experience than its console cousins in many regards. It's also one of the best titles available on any handheld system right now.

CoO takes places at some point between the death of Kratos' wife and daughter and the events of the first God of War. As the action kicks off, Kratos' story starts in the ancient Greek city of Attica, where he's defending against an onslaught of Persian forces. That's just the beginning, though, as he moves from Attica to Marathon, where Helios, the sun god, has been weakened, and the god of dreams, Morpheus, is putting Greece to sleep so that he can loosen Olympus' grip on the nation.

Ready at Dawn utilizes the PSP's full capabilities in ways that past titles haven't, making CoO one of the best-looking PSP titles yet. As the first game to use the PSP processor's maximum speed setting, CoO's action runs at a blistering speed. Textures look as detailed and epic on the tiny screen as they looked on the PS2. The art design pulls off an effective compromise between the familiar and the primal -- this is a prequel, after all. Kratos looks marginally younger, and some creatures look like prototypes of their console counterparts. It goes a long way toward fostering the idea that chronologically, Kratos hasn't reached the point at which he's ready to kill Ares.

One of the other reasons that CoO works is thanks to its control scheme. Some things, like accidentally setting off magic spells, can initially be off-setting, but after an hour of gameplay the controls feel natural. Beyond those small hiccups, CoO functions wonderfully because it almost perfectly mimics the PS2 games' button layout. It's got the fundamental combat system of the first game with flourishes from the second, such as wall-climbing. One can only hope that future PSP versions of other big action franchises capture their progenitors' essential gameplay with this level of twitchy fidelity.