God of War: Chains of Olympus (Part II)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_War:_Chains_of_Olympus

…that the original God of War used the right analog stick solely for Kratos’s dodge roll, so it’s not particularly missed. Holding both shoulder buttons and using the lone analog stick to dodge is cumbersome, but it’s only an annoyance until you get used to it, which took me about an hour. The only other change due to missing buttons is using spells, now carried out by holding down R and pressing a corresponding face button, and it’s actually an improvement over the original. Switching between spells is now quicker and easier, making fights a little less difficult and making Kratos – under my control, at least – look more like a badass, since he is no longer pausing to make sure he didn’t leave that lighting bolt spell in his other man skirt.

In fact, Chains of Olympus is a bit easier than the first God of War, a damn hard game even on normal difficulty. That’s not all together a bad thing, but a greater challenge would have obscured Olympus’s one large fault: like too many games of late, it’s incredibly short. My last save, right before the final boss fight, clocked in just shy of five hours…