No bells and whistles here
In case you didn’t join me back in 2013 when I replayed the entire God of War series, the second entry is by far my favorite. So when I heard that the first two Kratos tales would be hitting the PlayStation Vita this year, I was pretty excited. But when it came time to actually give it a spin, I was largely unimpressed.
You see, the God of War Vita Collection is the same package that was published on the PS3 back in 2009, consisting of God of War I and II. While the PS3 edition was 60 frames per second and generally looked pretty great, not as much care was put into the Vita version. I noticed slight slowdown right out of the gate in the game’s menus, and it didn’t look as smooth in general — in other words, it’s more inline with playing it on the PS2.
For starters, cutscenes are not remastered or reworked in any way — so they still have that same early PS2 feel to them that looks odd when juxtaposed to the rest of the collection. There are also no real extras in tow as these are basically just straight ports, and from what I can tell, you can’t even switch between the two games without completely quitting out of the collection.
The good news is — if you aren’t looking for anything extra or special, you’ll find relatively faithful ports of the first two games in the series, which are arguably two of the best. Unlike a lot of other HD collections this by no means warrants a purchase if you’re looking to see each game in a whole new light — but if you annually replay either game and want to get some in on the go, you’ll enjoy it on the Vita all the same for $29.99.
