It's not been long since I reviewed God of War II, which I considered to be one of the best games I had played on PS2. Now Kratos is back in PSP-size form, but still dishing out blood by the bucket load in Chains of Olympus.

The PSP hasn't really been strained with the vast deluge of games thrown at the portable consumer. Most of them are either arcade, puzzle or children's games, in addition to a number of ports from PSOne and PS2 and none of them have really shown us what the PSP can do yet. God of War, as it did with the PS2, pushes the envelope and delivers - this is the nicest looking PSP game I have ever seen.

The visual style of its bigger brothers is all there, from the great Greek environments to the destructible and interactive scenery, complete with huge draw distances which capture the huge scale of the game. The cinematic set pieces common in the other GoW titles are present here and create a tense atmosphere just as skilfully. The lighting and textures are key points to highlight here, as they are truly breathtaking in places, which is something you can rarely say about PS2 games, let alone handheld titles.

The combat is largely business as usual, since the PS2 controls can be easily ported to the PSP. Functionally they still work very well and the only real difference is that rolling is now mapped to holding both shoulder buttons and a direction, which is easy to get to grips with. The only small problem is that the control stick on the PSP is not as precise as the PS2, so getting in the right place to interact and twiddling the stick in the mini games takes a little more panache.

The combat itself is still an example to the business of how to get something right (as the GTA series is for vehicle handling), and I’ve yet to play another game in which the combat works so well. The DMC series springs to mind, whose most recent version still hasn't learnt from its mistakes or the successes of the GoW series.

The storyline is as absurd and grandiose as the console iterations of GoW - set ten years before the first game, Kratos has to stop the Dream God Morpheus (now the Matrix makes a little more sense) from controlling Mt. Olympus and the Earth with its fog of slumber. Cue lots of running around, slashing, puzzle solving, timed button-pressing, slashing and more slashing.

This GoW is more geared towards combat than previous titles, but there are still a few of the series' trademark puzzles to break the combat up. The boss battles are, as always, innovative and challenging rather than the usual tedious monotony. The gore level is still cranked up to 11 as in the first few minutes you pound the pleading Persian King's face in with his own treasure! To make things feel even more like a game adaptation of 300 you are then treated to a mini sex-game with the ex-king's lovely concubines, who are sprawled naked at your feet!

It would have been nicer to fight more colossal bosses and have a few more puzzles but the game is still very good without them. If you have a PSP and you want something that lives up to what the PSP was touted as – a PS2 in your palm, then get God of War. You won't be disappointed.