PixelVixen707

I don’t get what Kratos sees in his daughter. Poor little Calliope, killed by her unwitting father in a murderous rage, died too young. I get that. But cast into the Elysium Fields to wander around swatting at butterflies, she’s lost some of her charm. In fact, she’s a creepy little thing – tweeting on a wooden flute and running through empty hallways with a ghostly giggle, like a million little girls in a million cheap horror flicks. By the time Kratos reunites with her, we’re already ready for her to go away – and of course, no sooner does Kratos join his beloved daughter than he has to forsake her to save the world. Is it such a loss?

Let’s start at the start. Kratos didn’t just show up to save the world: he also has to save the Sony PSP – that nifty and powerful little piece of gear that’s come up short on system-sellers. The planned God of War edition with a silk-screened image of Kratos’ face, locked in its “I will fart” sneer, will look great when all you grown-ups play this in business class on your next flight. And of course, only grown-ups should play God of War, which is so mature it has blood-fonts, decapitations, and most dangerous of all, boobies, with nipples and all! In a video game!

And they look just as perky on the handheld as on your TV, because God of War: Chains of Olympus has a single mission: to take the epic monsters and battles of the franchise and make them look awesome on the small screen. Sure, they suffer: the endless stone hallways look like the Museum of Natural History, and you’ll spend more time bashing open chests and fretting about power-ups than solving puzzles or ripping off heads. And the mythology is less Edith Hamilton than Desmond Davis. The Greek myths endure because they feature giant monsters bashing each other to leather. Subtler stuff, like the origin of the world and the nature of tragedy, tends to get short-shrift.

And that’s a shame, because as I said, this game has a plot: it tells the story of Kratos finally reaching his daughter, only to realize the whole thing’s a con played on him by the gods. Or specifically, one god, Persephone, who has a really lengthy scheme to end her own life but puts up a fight when Kratos tries to end it for her. There’s also a titan, Atlas, who you can chain to the bottom of the world with a few well-timed button clicks. And the rest of Olympus gets namechecked, to build up Kratos’ core motivation: he really, really frakkin’ despises the gods for what they’ve done to them, and one of these games, he’ll do something about it.

But there are two problems with the story. One is the ham-handedness with which it’s constructed, with awkward motivations and a muddled, nonsensical conflict. Kratos has to give up his daughter in order to stop Persephones, who would crush Hades and everyone in it. But the fact that Kratos’ daughter would be permakilled if he stayed with her makes the decision to leave a little less wrought.

Then there’s the denouement. The downer about the PSP, as compared to my favorite purse essential, the Nintendo DS, is that you can’t just touch the screen. How would the separation scene – where Kratos pries himself away from the one thing in creation he still loves – have played if you could have poked her in the head with a stylus? What if the game had given a real choice – to stay with Calliope but forfeit the finale, or let the player give in to their own blood lust as they damn Kratos to an eternity of boss battles and finishing blows? What if Kratos actually had to kill Calliope again?

But instead, we suffer through the cheapest gameplay dodge in this otherwise brilliant bloodbath of a franchise: pounding a little button with a shape on it. With a twirl of the thumbstick, you can rip a griffin’s head off. Thumping the “O” button lets you upend a gigantic marble pillar. And in the case of Calliope, the series hits a new low. As your dire little sexfruit hangs on to your leg, you have to tap the “O” button – gently if you want – to shunt her aside. She keeps clinging; you keep tapping that button. Keep at it, and finally she shears away from you, crying, wailing.

If only the “X” button could shut her up for good.