Introduction
The God of War franchise has been a mainstay of the Playstation brand since its first release in 2005. Consistently being some of the best selling and highest-rated games on the PS3, PS4, and hopefully soon, the PS5. However, there’s a little known game in the series not released on a Sony console, the first one to take the grandiose action and place it into the palm of your hand.
God of War Betrayal was released for mobile phones a mere 3 months after God of War 2. That’s right, less than a month before the launch of the first ever smartphone one development team was brave enough to translate this epic series to flip phones. Taking place shortly before God of War 2, the game is typically considered canon for the franchise and of all the games I’ve neglected to cover thus far, this is by far my most shameful omission.
So I tracked down the game’s file to play it on my smartphone and today I intend to rectify this mistake and cover one of the most groundbreaking sleeper hits of the past 20 years. A game that defined the portable God of War experience. A game that would shape the franchise for years to come. Today I take a look at, God of War: Betrayal.
Development History
Betrayal was developed by Javaground and SOE Los Angeles, with WayForward (who would later go on to develop the Shantae series) handling the animations. Announced at a press conference in 2007. Surprisingly neither David Jaffe nor Cory Barlog helmed this title, but rather a new face, Phillip Cohen.
Cohen stated that the project was enjoyable, but cramming such a massive game into only a few megabytes was quite the challenge. The design process began in mid-2005 with development starting 11 months later. No rushing perfection I suppose. Two versions of the game were developed for high- and low-end devices.
Half a year later and with approval from the aforementioned Jaffe and Barlog, the game was released on June 20th, 2007 to high praise. The graphical fidelity, art style, and gameplay were lauded for their similarity to the console titles. While sales data is unknown, it did win IGN’s awards for game of the month and eventually, the best mobile platform game of the year. So with all of this hype, let’s finally dive in to this game-changing title lost to time.
Opening Sequence
Not sure there’s much of an opening sequence, just level 1. It teaches the controls, you fight a giant monster with just… too many eyes, and you run through to the end.
Story
Kratos runs through Greece with the Spartan army wreaking havoc, he’s framed for killing Hera’s creation Argos after it causes him some trouble, he chases the hooded figure that framed him, he fights some of Hades’ minions for some reason, Zeus sends Ceryx to tell him to stop, Kratos kills Ceryx, the assassin escapes, and Kratos worries that Zeus will soon retaliate against him, leading into God of War 2.
The story is simple, but fine. Nothing contradicts the established storyline and it does make sense that Kratos would have a few notable casualties in his quest to conquer Greece. Personally I think it’s heavily implied that Zeus either sent the assassin or was the assassin, wanting an excuse to come after Kratos himself.
Characterization
Kratos kills shit. Honestly, this is probably the game where he’s most helpful to the Spartans that need him. It’s a straightforward story, so not much room for a character arc, but Kratos is faithful to his console counterpart.
Presentation
Animations are decent for a flip phone game. The finishers are pretty cool all things considered and the variety is to be commended. However, the game appears to run at a plazing 6 fps or so, which isn’t exactly ideal. The only music that plays are sound effects and various jingles, but you can’t really expect much more on a Nokia.
Combat
Smash the ok button. Like yeah, there are other attacks, but they’re mostly useless. The sword does more damage, but the range is so short that you’re likely to run into enemies and take damage more often than you kill them. The two spells could be neat but have fatal flaws. Medusa’s head can freeze enemies in place, but there’s not much point when every enemy is stunned by the blades of chaos and while Hades’ army does decent damage the spells have a long charge up time and getting hit by an enemy causes the spell to fail and switches you back to the blades. Even the blade combos can be risky since some of the moves have a short enough range to let enemies in for an attack. You’re always best off staying on the ground and smacking enemies from a distance.
Though this does lead to a lot of running in circles. You smack the enemies a few times with the blades, but since Kratos’ attacks push him forward, you end up needing to run back before getting too close and taking damage, rinse and repeat.
This also applies to the finishers. Again, since enemies deal damage when you get too close the finishing moves are pretty risky since you’re just as likely to get hit as you are to take the enemy down. Plus the button press can be really finicky to actually start the animation and the finisher fails if you’re too close to a wall when initiating it so the animation doesn’t break, meaning most of the time it’s best to just slap enemies in the face instead of taking them out in style.
Enemies
The variety of the enemies is to be commended, with many levels introducing a new familiar foe from the console games. The problem is that they’re all able to be stunned with a single hit from the blades, but also do instant damage when Kratos gets too close, meaning the hit and run tactic mentioned earlier is exacerbated even more. This also means that in spite of the variety available, there’s no real difference between the different enemies outside of their designs. Plus they can spawn in behind or on top of Kratos, making many hits feel unfair.
Bosses
Argos appears in nearly every level until his defeat and beating it is a simple matter of smacking the monster in the face a few times before sneaking in for a finisher. It usually just walks forward and occasionally punches, even getting the ability to leap forward towards the end, but it’s never really a challenge since he’s stunned by the blades like all other enemies. To finish it off, Kratos pushes it into a trap in the sewers where it’s killed by the assassin.
The Ceryx fight starts on a rooftop with infinitely respawning cerberi joining him. He only has two attacks-timidly flicking his staff forward and sprouting giant wings to attack with. Even so, it’s just another matter of stun locking him while wearing him down over time until the fight’s done. Which takes an agonizingly long time. Look, this game takes about 90 minutes to beat and this fight uses up about a tenth of them. Nothing gets more interesting, nothing is revealed, just continue to hit the guy until he falls over 3 times.
Platforming
The platforming controls take a bit of getting used to, by which I mean theta re absolute garbage. Of course, it’d make too much sense for the diagonal buttons to have Kratos jump diagonally, so instead pressing up causes him to jump diagonally forward in whichever direction he’s facing. There are a few jumps that are tricky, and some hazards that require timing to pass, but nothing poses much of a challenge.
Even still, with some traps causing instant death and enemies being placed just above ledges, traversing the environment is more of an annoyance than a game. Evidenced further by just how slow everything is. Draggin statues, jumping around, fidgeting until Kratos is in just the right spot to jump across a ledge, restarting areas because you fell into a pit you couldn’t have seen coming… It’s a complete bore.
Puzzles
Right… “Puzzles”. Really, there are some doors that have switches or levers that need to be pressed in order to proceed and you have to run around the map looking for the box to put on the switch or the lever to pull before moving on. Cute way to shake up the gameplay and add variety to the player’s intent when approaching each level, but nothing special.
Level Design
The levels consist of basic mazes with the direction being pretty clear throughout. There are red chests, gorgon eyes, and phoenix feathers to find, but they’re pretty easy to collect. Annoyingly even with all of the chests you’ll be lucky to have obtained enough red orbs to level up 4 out of the possible 20 times. Though abilities remain between playthroughs and in the arena, so you could always grind for more if needed.
The best thing about the game is that upon respawning you return to the last checkpoint with all enemies still dead, allowing you to waltz back in and finish the job, even against bosses. Now, does this make the entire game a trivial inevitability until reaching the end reminiscent of the monotony of life itself leading us down a chosen path, unaware of the insignificance of our own existence as we pointlessly endeavor to both enjoy the fleeting time we have left on this earth while attempting to craft a legacy and make an impact despite spending 90 percent of our time working to survive even the slightest bit longer for the fleeting hope that such efforts will end in success? Yes, but it also means I didn’t have to play more of this game than necessary so I’ll call it a win.
Final Thoughts
Alright, did I cover this game as an April Fool’s joke? Kinda. Did I also do it so no one could jump down my throat for skipping a game in the series after I finish off the Greek saga? Kinda. Was that an announcement that Chains of Olympus, Ghost of Sparta, and Ascension are getting retrospectives soon? Kinda. Should you play this game? Fuck no. Alright, have a mighty nifty day and peace out pog champs.