Gift from the gods

by ERIK LEIJON

For those who remember high school Greek mythology class, the Playstation Portable (PSP)’s up-and-down history bears similarities to the tale of the cyclops Polyphemus.

Born of the Gods and condemned to life on a stranded island while his more famous father, Poseidon, stalked the high seas for wayward vessels, Polyphemus never got a chance to shine on his own. He’s a massive beast, packing a major punch and one large, very impressive eye. Unfortunately, he’s blinded by a two-eyed mortal with a stake and everyone ignores the poor monster and his cries for help.

If you haven’t picked up on the allegory yet, Poseidon is the mammoth Sony, Odysseus is the Nintendo DS and the stake is a copy of Brain Age.

If this tenuous correlation holds up, then God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP/SCE, Ready at Dawn) is Polyphemus’s revenge; karma for Nintendo symbolically boasting “Nobody didn’t hurt you, Nintendo did!” The PSP has always sold well and has an extensive library, but God of War is a different beast—it’s the PSP getting a chance to make its own waves on the ocean.

This God of War prequel again stars Kratos, a half-immortal Spartan killing machine forced to do the Gods’ dirty work in the hopes of being reunited with his daughter Calliope. The Sun God Helios is god-napped and the Earth falls under darkness, so it’s up to Kratos to hack and slash his way through the ancient world to set him free.

The game is played from a third-person perspective, and Kratos can use three types of attacks to kill the undead enemies that spawn around him. Eventually Kratos learns a host of magic attacks and even gets a new, insanely powerful weapon later in the game.

Also returning are the context-sensitive attack sequences, placing Kratos in an animated cutscene against an enemy where players must press the correct buttons in time to activate a spectacular and bloody kill scene.

Hack and slash games can become monotonous over time, but Chains of Olympus—as with the other God of War games—is constantly throwing new situations in Kratos’s way. Each type of enemy has their own weakness, and there are dozens of ways to kill a bad guy.

Chains of Olympus is a completely original God of War game (not a port), and it equals its predecessors despite a short length of about five hours. Consider it a gift from the gods.

Paradise revisited

Burnout Paradise (PS3, X360/EA, Criterion) is an ambitious sequel that ultimately doesn’t succeed in matching previous Burnouts because the developers unknowingly removed what made the original game so special. Burnout 3 was the best game of the XBox 1/PS2 generation and each sequel contained minor improvements that made revisiting the brand enjoyable, but Paradise borrows more from sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto.

Gone are traditionally timed races, linear race tracks, aftertouch takedowns, unlimited crashes, grand prix races and the ability to restart a race at any time (a very important feature in the previous iterations)—instead, the game takes place in a humongous open world called Paradise City. You drive around looking for challenges and other secrets such as billboards and chop shops.

It’s not a bad game, it’s just that the world is so big and the tracks so ambiguous in terms of direction, most of the game is spent staring at the mini-map display in the bottom corner.

A GTA-style Burnout is a cool idea and developer Criterion clearly put a lot of effort into making Paradise—it just doesn’t feel like Burnout anymore.