GOWCOO Impressions
March 6th, 2008So I picked up Chains of Olympus yesterday, which has been my first chance to really play through the God of War franchise by myself. COO has been the subject of some handwringing in the industry, with Gamespot’s 8.5 review being called out as a sign of “bias” by Sony fanboys amid a ton of overheated opinions. Even GameLife’s Chris Kohler didn’t love the game. So who’s right?
I’m going to split the difference and say both of them. COO definitely “feels” like a God of War game; the controls are great, and really capture the original game’s combo strength and battle system. Although a slight grain to the image lets you know that you’re playing this on a portable system, the graphics are incredibly solid and at times even rival the PS2’s more recent iterations. It’s true that there aren’t as many amazing set pieces or boss battles as in prior versions; at the same time, though, I never felt like the game was dumbed down for the PSP.
So why my ambivalence? I think part of it is the price tag. COO is MSRP’d as a premium title, and will cost you $40 at most retail outlets. While production values are indeed high, you’re just not getting enough of an experience in an action title to compensate for the stiff entry price: something like FF Tactics is pretty scalable, and will give you a lot of gameplay for your dollar. But all signs indicate the COO is just (as Kohler puts it) “really, really short.” You’ll enjoy every minute of it, but you’ll probably finish the game wishing it was 50% longer. In the same vein, I’m not willing to penalize COO simply because it doesn’t do something “new,” as not every game needs to innovate to be good. But innovation in some way might have distracted me somewhat from the length.
In general, I would compare COHO to Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters. R&C was a scaled-down version of a popular franchise, and it was excellent. It gave you the R&C feel in a bite-sized package. So does Chains of Olympus. But it doesn’t necessarily feel like a great value, because of the pricing and the basic structure of action games, and that’s going to turn people off.
Posted in Geoff, Impressions, PSP |
March 9th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
To be honest i’m not bugged about the short length of COO. I own a ps3 and I’m used to 5 hour games. At least this game has an excuse.
I still marvel at how Ratchet TOD could score as high as it did when in every major way aside from graphics it was smaller and less ambitious than ratchet 3. portable games have an excuse for being small….they are portable. I don’t rip on Phantom hourglass for being short (well ok I do just a little bit) so why should I bitch about GOW for the same?
I do however wag my finger at anyone taking sony fans allegations of media bias seriously. it’s like a goddamned mantra for those people. And I say this as an owner of all 3 playstation platforms.
If you’ve ever been to gametrailers, there’s a neat little phenomenon you can observe. Watch for a review about a sony exclusive product, or one fo their frequent multiplat comparisons. You can tell how well sony made out by the score the video has. without fail, the score will be lower if the game was not well recieved (menaing got less than a 9) or was said to perform better on the 360. Without fail.