Hands on God of War: Betrayal

God of War’s first mobile debut won’t be on the PSP, Kratos is coming to a mobile phone near you way before God of War: Chains of Olympus comes out. Last week I spent some time playing God of War: Betrayal and it’s a faithful rendition of the franchise. Like other God of War games you play as Kratos, except everything is in 2D. You can use the D-pad to move Kratos around and pressing the center “OK” button makes Kratos swing the Blades of Athena. Something unusual about God of War: Betrayal is you can’t run and attack simultaneously. Since some mobile phones can only respond to one button at a time you have to stand still if you want to attack. It takes some time to get used to if you’ve played a lot of God of War because you’re used to an agile Kratos who can dodge roll around a minotaur and quickly counter attack. Yeah, you can’t do that in God of War: Betrayal and the game compensates by slowing the action down. At least in the first two levels enemies will just stand there waiting for Kratos to kill them. The only time when Kratos is in danger is when he’s trapped in a pit and needs to kill a fixed number of enemies to exit. When in a pit Kratos has little room to move and it’s easy to get surrounded. Crammed onto the tiny screen are faithful replications of Kratos finishing moves where he viciously tears apart boss monsters. Like the Playstation 2 games you can do a finishing move by successfully completing a button pressing mini game. However, the timing is a little slower between presses than the console version. For a cell phone game God of War: Betrayal is a decent diversion and it’s probably one of the best looking mobile phone games in the US to date.