Don’t mess with Kratos. Its a simple rule that everyone seems to forget, which fortunately for us means another installment in the God of War franchise with the Chains of Olympus. This is the first game of the series set on the PSP and actually takes place before the first God of War game while Kratos is still in service to the gods.

The level we played was a bit further on in the game than the demo released a few weeks ago. In it Kratos is facing some soldiers along with a mini-boss which looked like a giant minotaur. Just like in the previous titles, the regular mobs can be dealt with quickly with a few hits from your blades, and if you choose you can grapple them and do a finishing move that varies depending on the mob. Also you get an all new set of magical attacks to use on your enemies. As for the mini-bosses, after you do enough damage to the minotaur, you can perform the special finishing move on them which requires you to hit the buttons in the order they come up on the screen. In this case you wind up taking the sword away from the minotaur and impaling him through the head with it, and lets be honest…you’d be disappointed if Kratos didn’t right?

I’m constantly suprised with the God of War titles for their ability to squeeze the most possible visually from their respective platforms and this game is no exception. Graphically this is the best looking PSP game I’ve seen. It has the same look and feel as the previous titles, and the gave me the same sense of the epic battles that I experienced on the PS2.

The controls remain mostly unchanged and you really don’t miss the right analog stick (evading, which is now handled by L+R and the left analog stick) or the L2 and R2 buttons, with their functions being mapped to other keys (R2 used to be magic attack which is now R and the face buttons). If you played the other games at all you’ll be able to jump right in.

God of War: Chains of Olympus is scheduled for a March 2008 release and its looking like it will be another great title in the franchise.