E3 '07: God of War: Chains of Olympus Hands-On

Kratos may be in the palm of your hand in God of War: Chains of Olympus, but the action is anything but. At least, that's the impression we came away with after spending some time with a playable demo of Kratos' upcoming handheld adventure. The game is a prequel to the events found in the two PlayStation 2 God of War games, telling the tale of Kratos' odyssey between the time of his family's death and the events of the first game. After having spent a bit of time playing Chains of Olympus at E3 2007, this looks to be every bit as impressive and brutal as the game's console forebears.

The demo we played began inside a war-torn seaside area. The environment was being besieged with enemy ships, fighting soldiers, and flaming arrows all over the place. Initial combat began inside a building against a series of enemy soldiers. If you've ever played any of the previous God of War games, the controls should be immediately familiar to you. All of Kratos' attacks are the same and look just as incredibly brutal as they did on consoles. Kratos was armed with his default chain blades, and as he sliced his way through the rather pitiful enemies, they bounced and flew around in spectacular fashion, periodically hitting the ground just long enough to be grabbed and then brutally shanked by our kinda-sorta hero. It's immediately striking how well the game seems to run. The frame rate held steady the entire length of the demo, and the action flowed beautifully. The game is looking like a real technical marvel for the PlayStation Portable.

After dispatching the soldiers, we moved to a nearby door that required a bit of mashing on the circle button in order to lift open. However, before we could mash it all the way up, a huge Cyclops came busting through the door and began thrashing about. Just as it seemed that we were going to have to fight our way past this thing, an even bigger creature burst through the wall and took a big, honking bite out of the Cyclops. This was what we were ultimately going to have to fight.

If you've played God of War, think of the first fight with the Hydra early on in the game. This creature had several fewer heads (only one, in fact), but the head that was attacking us alternated between trying to eat us for lunch and breathing fire in our general direction. After wearing it down with standard attacks, we launched into the now-famous context-sensitive combat, where button icons appear over the head of the creature, and by pressing them quickly, Kratos began bouncing around like a lunatic, swinging from the rafters and periodically diving in to land a painful blow. Finally, we picked up the large club that the downed Cyclops had left behind and gave a healthy swing toward the stunned creature's head. That was enough to send him tuck-tail out of there, and off over the wall of a nearby fortress.

After this sequence, Kratos headed out after the creature, running into minor skirmishes with more soldiers as time went on. Eventually we came across some minor puzzles, which, again, mimic the style of earlier God of War games. We were tasked with rotating a door switch while simultaneously trying to fend off nearby soldiers, and had to grab onto, move, and use a large battering ram on a nearby door. This took us to a cutscene that showed the horrid creature off in the distance, wreaking havoc. Then, in standard God of War E3 demo fashion, the demo ended.

Such a painful tease, considering how incredibly fun the demo proved to be. We're still intensely curious to see how the storyline of this game is going to shape up, but many of the other questions we had about how God of War is going to play on the PSP were all but answered by this demo, and we're more excited than ever for it. Stay tuned to GameSpot for more coverage of Chains of Olympus in the near future.