Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

So I’m waiting in a Best Buy for a friend to show up, standing in the video games aisle, and I’m easily able to resist buying anything at all. It’s April, GTA IV is coming in a few short weeks, I’m up to my neck in work from my day job most evenings over the past week, and I haven’t looked at God of War: Chains of Olympus on the PSP for a couple of days. I still have Patapon unplayed, a side of Dead Head Fred also picked up dirt cheap on the PSP, and The Darkness lingering by my PS3. My friend isn’t late, but I have a moment, so I do what comes naturally. I read strategy guides, briefly reading about the final boss fight in Chains of Olympus. It sounds complicated, and when my friend does show up, I relate how stuck I am on it.

I did finally overcome the final boss fight this evening and maybe it was just the time off I took from it but I did really well at it, dying only three or four times during the process. I was very, very happy to find checkpoints in the middle of the boss fight which, combined with what I remembered from the strategy guide I glanced at last Monday, basically turned the opening segment where you whittle the boss down to half its health into the hardest part.

In the end Chains is quite an achievement, but I hold God of War II up much higher for having a broader and deeper story and more engaging action. That’s not to say God of War is a slouch — it’s interesting to look back on that game as a big gamble that paid off ridiculously well by hitting on an action-packed gameplay formula with sweeping mythological backdrops and timeless themes..

I’m completely disinterested in the special challenges in Chains of Olympus primarily because I felt the challenges on God of War II were just ridiculously hard for me to take a stab at, even with a strategy guide’s advice. I’ve sent the rental of Chains back to GameFly, but if you have a PS2-compatible PS3 and you haven’t played any of the God of War games, do yourself a favor and go give them a shot. God of War II, by the way, became a Greatest Hits game just last week, so just forty bucks can get you two of the most riveting Rated-M action stories from the last console generation. The gameplay really is more fun on a full-sized controller. I don’t think Chains is worth owning so it looks like I’ll be turning up my nose at the blood red PSP slim bundle, whenever Sony sees fit to release it to retail.