GoW:CoO is a really nice game, but it has some serious flaws.
At first, I must say the graphics are beyond awesome. It's pure PS2 quality on your hand-held, you have to see it to believe it! Nothing wrong with this part. The story is really nothing special, it's about Kratos who wants to get rid of his visions, but the Gods don't let him, and he must fight. That's it. No twists, no turns, and at the end you get a somewhat disappointing conclusion.
Now, we got to the crucial point of the game: the controls and the gameplay. During your adventure, you will encounter many enemies (but the fights are in more than 60% of the cases are blatantly staged!), and you have to use your weapons and magic. Now the control scheme is brilliant, considering that the PSP lacks a second analog stick. I've never played any GoW games before on PS2, so I thought it was meant to be this way. And the guys did a splendid job with the port. So you won't be suffering to make Kratos do what you want him to do. But you will be suffering when you will find out that you don't have complete control over him! And this is the greatest flaw of the game. Although the gameplay isn't too inspiring (puzzle solving, staged fighting, puzzle solving, staged fighting, and so on, ad infinitum), the beautiful graphics will blow you away as you discover new areas, and because of this, you won't mind the mediocre gameplay schemes, trust me. But there are serious problems in the area of controls. You can launch your heavy attacks with the triangle, your light attack is on the square, jump is X, and sometimes the game will prompt you to press circle. You can chain your attacks, launching multiple hit combos on your opponents, and that's nice, BUT... and here it is, the big BUT, which ruins your experience: once Kratos started a combo, you can't get him out of it! This is especially frustrating, when you trying to play the "one hit and you're dead" challenge, where you have to abuse the L trigger + triangle combo to win. No, seriously it's about the only way you can defeat them in that challenge! Whenever I tried to play it skillfully, I've always seen 2-3 seconds before I got hit that I will get hit. And this is wrong! Being able to see that you're about to get hit and not being able to do something about it is the worst video game experience you could ever have. Except for playing a really bad game, of course, but that's beside the point. The point is: there are combos that last for 10-15 seconds, and once you've started them, Kratos will do it, no matter what you push when you realize that the enemies will strike you. And yes, it's the same with the enemies too! So once they've started the attack animation, you can do nothing to prevent them from hitting you - and this is just bullshit! Sorry for being this harsh, but this is a really poor combo system. You have to have some kind of combo breaker move, for Christ's sakes! But no. You don't.
So all in all, when playing on medium, this is not really an issue, because the game isn't that hard. Your frustration begins on hard and god mode and when you play through the challenges. When there's no room for errors, this game fails to give you the results of your skills. Even if you're the best reflex-gamer of the world, you won't be able to enjoy your reflexes, because you cannot use combo breaker moves. This ruins the gameplay when you want to beat the game in god mode, and sadly it ruins any more experience with this game, because after you've realized this, you can't just look away. And Kratos' moves are beautiful, and some combos are like a dance, so this game really deserved a better combo system! I'm sad, but this game really isn't that good. It's worth playing through once, but then you can forget all about it. It's a real pity...
I would've given it a 6/10, but the great graphics saved the game, so it's 7/10 now. Rent or buy? RENT, definitely.
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