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After all the hints, and all the random hunting for letters with the monitor brightness maxed out, the sliding puzzles and hunting on Google trying to understand Roman numbers, the mystery is finally out. And guess what, it’s exactly what we (and a thousand other sites) have been predicting - that God of War: Chains of Olympus is indeed the PSP version of the game. In development by Sony Computer Entertainment and Santa Monica based Ready at Dawn, who gave us the most excellent Daxter last year, Chains of Olympus seems to tell the story of what happened with Kratos in between the events of God of War and it’s newest sequel.
As if a new trailer and the news wasn’t enough, Sony now has a teaser website up here, and while the site bears a “Coming Soon” tag for the most part, there is an option to sign up for a free Chains of Olympus: Special Edition demo UMD, at least until supplies last. So if you know anyone in the United States/Canada who can get the UMD and ship it over to you pronto, just head on over to the site (PlayStation Underground ID required) and register for your free copy. We’re just going to go and start painting half our body and face red, getting a tonsure, a goatee, a (fake) scar and polishing our (foam) Blades of Athena.
1. Nariko is dying.
The Heavenly Sword is a godly weapon that recently fell into the mortal realm. Because only gods can wield the Heavenly Sword without ill effects, Nariko is succumbing to its poisonous effects and has only hours to live when the game opens. In gameplay, your life meter is constantly depleting and can only be sustained through constant combat. This helps keep the focus on swordplay and not frustrating puzzles or platform-jumping exercises.
2. The head baddy is named King Botham.
Unfortunately, we don’t know much about him aside from the fact that Lord of the Rings actor Andy Serkis (Gollum) is supplying motion-captured acting and facial expressions. His character is described as an invading, genocidal tyrant, but little else is known about his role or personality.
3. Nariko has three fighting stances.
With a press of a button, Nariko can swap between three core fighting styles. Ranged style allows Nariko to assault foes from a distance, though it lacks stopping power; Speed gives Nariko two short-swords for close-quarters combat but won’t defeat the toughest enemies; and Power style creates one massive sword than inflicts monumental damage, though it suffers from a slow swing time. Knowing when to swap between Nariko’s styles will be a key element in the final game.
4. The Cell processor pulls off some fancy tricks.
Heavenly Sword may just be the game to show what Sony’s high-end Cell CPU is made of. According to our talks with the developers at Ninja Theory, the Cell’s supposedly prodigious processing power enables some high-end effects, such as swirling cloth and hair, dazzling particle effects, and gorgeous waterfalls.
Looks like Aiman was wrong, and it’s, very, very sadly, not God of War: Chupaqabra of Death or Chu Chu Kingdom! If you’ve had nothing better to do in your miserable life than to stare at the new countdown timer on the Island of Rhodes site each day, like us, then you’d see that a significant portion of the new name has now been revealed. And considering how there’s very little space left in the frame and just one large character left, we are betting our lives and using our really sharp, blazing fast brains to deduce that the new game/mode will be titled: God of War: Chains of Olympus. Actually, we have a life, so we just leeched this news off the poor sucker that actually managed to complete all the tile puzzles, the Roman number puzzles and then got to this picture. We don’t know about you, but we are definitely betting all that’s left of our hard earned money that Chains of Olympus is definitely either an announcement on Ready At Dawn’s port of God of War on the PSP or a new locked blade upgrade in God of War 2 that can be unlocked somehow, considering SCEA had said that the site is for God of War puritans and bears the PS2 logo all over the place. Either which way, we’re cleaning the freshly dried blood off our blades for the upcoming battle, errr, announcement.
Amazing how a lot of people already predicted that the annoucement would be called Chains of Olympus, even before the word “Chains” could be fully unveiled…
Update: The game has now been officially unveiled. For more info on the game, the trailer and the free demo UMD, head on over here.
So we’ve said enough and more about God of War 2 and the Island of Rhodes fiasco. To make matters worse, it looks like Sony is yet again stiffing their PAL region customers. First it was the PS3 minus the Emotion Engine, and now, it’s God of War 2’s HD mode as well.
Kikizo.com reports that the HD mode of the game is available exclusively to NTSC users and that all PAL region owners have no option but to shut up and bitch about how they aren’t getting as much of the graphic gorefest that they are entitled to. According to Sony’s Hugo Bustillos, they had to leave the HD mode out of the PAL versions of the game thanks to all the extra European languages that had to be added in, leaving no space on the disc for the HD video mode. Explaining the movie at the Island of Rhodes site, Director of Technology Tim Moss says that the final decision to not include the HD mode was made late into development, which is why the feature was hidden as an extra and not made a standard. However, if you are playing the game on a PS3 and connect to an HDTV via HDMI or Component cables, the game automatically scales itself to a mucho-weird 576p resolution.
If you still want more God of War 2 goodness, turns out that LevelUp sat down with the Main Man Barlog and talked at length about the game, including God of War 3 on the PS3, how the decision was made to make Kratos the ultimate bad-ass anti-hero, about how RAD is handling the PSP port and how and why they decided to cut the much-publicized God-sized Kratos taking on the Colossus in a fully destructible Rhodes.
Just give me the PSP version already, that’s all I ask for.
God of War fans worldwide were pretty pissed on April 11th. Especially people like me who literally stared at the countdown timer religiously for atleast 10 minutes everyday. There were rumours and speculations of the PSP game announcement or maybe the PS3 God of War 3 or maybe a full blown expansion pack for God of War 2 on the PS2 to actually give a satisfying treat to those who were put off by the cliffhanger at the end of God of War 2…
But things didn’t go as expected…no announcement was made that shook the heavens or anything close to that. All we got was a crappy video of Kratos’ fight with the Colossus of Rhodes along with some commentary from the developers. And of course, the secret HD mode (which they say slows down the game a bit when activated…WTF?!?). I was there when the countdowntimer hit zero and boy, I was pissed …extremely pissed. The Island of Rhodes was officially a piece of over hyped crap.
But I’d like to take back what i just said. It seems that all is not lost, we may just have our big announcement. To make things easier for readers I’ll just give a step by step procedure so that you can join in on the hype. Let’s just hope it doesn’t kick us in the balls like the last time.
1.) Go to www.islandofrhodes.org
2.) Skip past the crappy video commentary by hitting PROCEED. This will bring you to a page with information about the island of Rhodes.
3.) Now hidden away in this page are the letters that will form KRATOS…you will have to click the letters in order to form the name of everyone’s favourite bald killer. Given below is a picture to help you find out where the hidden letters are.
4.) This will bring you to another video, this one being about the Kratos on Pegasus scenario. Hit PROCEED to reach a page that will reveal a sliding puzzle that you have to solve before the timer runs out. Trust me, its TOUGH…DAMN TOUGH…and irritating too…atleast it was for me.
After one month of drooling over a timer, I know now where the Island of Rhodes is - plumb in the middle of the Sea of Extreme Disappointment! After losing sleep for almost a month and endless discussions all over the Interwebs on what exactly the Island of Rhodes was, and how it would be an announcement for God of War PSP, God of War 3 on the PS3 (or as some people were desperate enough to believe, on the PS2), it turns out that the stupid countdown timer on the IslandofRhodes.org website made us wait for nothing more than a video dev-diary/director’s commentary of the part where Kratos the Violent, Orgy Loving Machine takes on the Rhodes Colossus - something that most fans have played through over and over again ever since the game released last month. So it also gives you access to the hi-def mode on the game (Punch in L1, L2, L3, Circle and Square simultaneously when the game loads up. If done correctly, the SCEA logo will turn purple) but seriously, all this hype just to show off the HD mode and listen to the developers try to sell the game a bit more to the rabid masses?
What the website does right now is just throw extremely heavy Flash videos of the gameplay, peppered with commentaries from the various people who worked on God of War 2, including Cory “Balrog” Barlog (Director), Eric Williams (Lead Combat Designer), James Che (Game Animator), Nate Stephens and Lewis Walden (Environment Artists) and Todd Papy (Level Designer). Seriously, is this a joke, guys? This is why we had to enter a staring contest with a countdown timer for almost a month?! Jeez!
I just hope that the site gets revamped over the next couple of days and these are just placeholder videos, because frankly, the world (meaning me) needs more information on Kratos hacking and slashing his way through the PSP as well as the super-hi-def gorefest that would be God of War 3 on the PS3. Strangely though, Cory Barlog’s blog just mentions his PS3 project as “something involving the cast of The Facts of Life.” Does that mean he wouldn’t be working on the next God of War game, or is it just something else they’re looking to get out of their system before the extreme violence makes them go out on the streets with chain blades and start looking at everyone like an uncarved Christmas turkey? Whatever it is, all this pain of not learning anything new about Kratos and his stabby ways has left me partially impotent, so please, excuse me while I go back to Battle of the Gods and have Kratos “lark” it out against Chubby Kratos! As you kinda figured, I don’t have an HDTV!
PS: If anyone figures out why the Omega symbol/Hades theme (look to the right on the rock outcrop) on the official God of War site looks so much like the Island of Rhodes flaming theme, please let me know. Stupid sign had me thinking there was a new God of War expansion for the PS2! Gah!
GameTrailers.com has a comparison of the Standard Def vs High-Def gameplay over here. Head down there if you have an HDTV and wanna know how graphic your virtual bloodletting can truly be!