God Of War: Ghost Of Sparta

It’s time once more to start chopping off heads and ask no questions later! Ready At Dawn and Santa Monica Studio are gearing up to release the sixth iteration of everyone’s favorite psychopath.

God Of War: Ghost Of Sparta is the second game in the franchise being exclusively released for the Playstation handheld. It already looks like it will sell big, but is the name alone worthy of such praise? The demo now available through the Playstation Network should give you a good idea of whatever Ghost Of Sparta (GOS) has in store for you and yours.
 

After choosing your difficulty (Easy is for tree hugging hippies), the game drops you dead center onto an assaulted fleet. With no explanation whatsoever, angry mermen board the ship Kratos is residing on and start swinging at him. It’s just another day on the job for our bald buddy, but the game does imply you are now already aware of whatever it offers. You make short work of your enemies to proceed onto some cutscenes of mayhem all around you, before moving on to more of said mayhem. Without spoiling too much, you can be certain of one thing: GOS is action packed as it ever was and chaos, death and severed heads will once again be omnipresent in the game.

This hack and slash extravaganza is much more of the same things that made the franchise great. The powerful graphics and visuals are still present and even seem to be spruced up a little since last time. In its previous installment, Chains Of Olympus, there seemed to be something off with the appearance of Kratos, but this time around he looks just as he should.  They’ve also implemented various cutscenes and specific death animations into every aspect of the game, which flow fluently and never break off a second of the fast pace and action at hand. This constant visual marvel as you slash away truly keeps your adrenaline at an all-time high, and before you’ll know it, you’ll be grinding your teeth in rancor, just like your protagonist.

But they’ve also updated a lot more things, such as the combat system. While still much of the same, there’s some new features present, such as forcing and enemy to the floor and pummeling him to death. It’s also quite funny to see Kratos swim around like Ecco the dolphin, but that’s not the main aspect. The biggest implementation comes from your secondary weapons “Arms Of Sparta”. Explaining some of the background Kratos has, this Spartan sword and shield give Baldylocks the ability to try his hand at some ranged combat. But even more fun than chucking spears at enemies, is the ability to time your shield in such a way, you fling back an enemy’s weapon at his face. Whenever you have time, you should try to own as much people as you can with their own weapon; it doesn’t get more satisfying and humiliating than that.

You’ll also see an update in magic items, with powerful Artefacts to help you cause massive damage to your surroundings. In the demo, you’ll get to use the Eye Of Atlantis, which unleashes a devastating electric attack towards anywhere you point it.

 

 

It might seem a lot to handle at once, but the demo does offer a lot of small tutorial texts, which will already explain a load of the features available to you. This makes playing this challenging game a little easier on you and it is welcoming for newer users, even if GOS does expect you to know Kratos already.

In addition, the demo gives premise to the fact GOS has much more to offer than its predecessor. Not only is it considerably longer than the previous demo, with a good 15 minutes of your life killed, it also contains more boss battles. There are 3 to 4 boss battles in the small area you run through alone, one of them being the huge mythical creature Scylla. As always, these bosses are larger than life and it will seem almost uncanny to defeat even one of them, let alone many in succession. But you can still rely on Quick Time Events to ultimately slay your opponent in a surreal manner. Even though most of the time you’ll focus too much on the button combination to press, to truly enjoy what’s going on behind it.

In all, God Of War: Ghost Of Sparta will not disappoint fans of the franchise. Building on a winning formula, it adds something new here and there for experienced players to enjoy and it’s still a good game for newcomers to pick up. The key phrase here is “much of the same,” but I suppose you don’t fix what isn’t broken and the sixth installment proves this to a point. If there’s anything satisfying about committing mass murder without a second’s thought, this game is bound to offer it.

The demo is available through PSN everywhere right now and the full game is due November 2, 2010.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed.