Kratos finally makes his triumphant return to portable gaming and there is no disappointment here. A follow up to the excellent GoW: Chains of Olympus, Ghost of Sparta looks to remedy the very few shortcomings that plagued his first title. Ghost is a great story that even further explains the epic life of Kratos and offers amazing gameplay and graphics for a handheld. And yes, there is a sex mini-game to end all mini-games.

If you have played any God of War game, then you know what to expect. Combat remains entirely unchanged and no one will have a problem with that. What Ghost of Sparta does really well is that it minimizes the game to a smaller screen without making the game seem smaller. Let me explain. You will not find that many puzzles sequences here, especially the ones that require a large area to complete because the viewing area is small. Most puzzles are of the block moving/lever pulling type. This makes the frustration meter very low. The developers did not want to go too big here and that was a great idea. You will be able to unlock through the story new weapons and magic to aide in your quest. How they keep coming up with new ideas for these I have no idea. As far as graphics, absolutely beautiful for a handheld.

The two major takeaways from Ghost of Sparta are the length of the game and the story. This is a 10 hour game on Normal. That is what I played it on and beat it. I didn’t over explore or get stuck on too many parts. Compared to Chains, this is almost twice as long. (That’s what she said.) This will rank up there as one of the best stories to date about Kratos’ life before he was a God. Chronologically, the game takes place just after GoW1 and right before GoW2. The revelations you will uncover here are major and I will let you discover that yourselves. The people of Sparta both fear and love you. You will feel like the God of War through some very cool almost first person interludes.

This is a great game. It is everything you would expect from a GoW game on a handheld. The camera is not an issue, the game doesn’t ask you to do things as you would on a larger screen, and the overall difficulty is slightly lower than consoles. The game is not as epic in scale, but that was on purpose. This is the perfect pick and up play game. There is a Challenges of the Gods and an Orb Sacrifice mode which ramps up the replayabilty. The boss fights are not as memorable, but the ending will leave you very satisfied and wish the game was not over. That is the true marking of a great game when you are actually bummed out it has ended. Living up to the hype once again, Ghost of Sparta continues the tale of our fallen hero and while it answers some questions, even more are raised. I can’t wait until we can answer them.

[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]