I am clearly too much for this puny phone

Call me betrayed. I was quite impressed the last time I laid my hands on a playable version of God of War: Betrayal, but that was on a high-end phone like the Sony Ericsson Walkman, and on my RAZR it’s a completely different and rather terrible game.

I was skeptical that the slick-looking, well animated side-scroller I played a few months ago would work well on my RAZR, but Sony’s representatives at the demo assured me that I’d be getting the same game. This week, I finally downloaded Betrayal onto my RAZR, but the game that I paid $6.50 for looked absolutely nothing like what I had previewed on the high-end phone. Without a way to preview the title before committing to a download, I ended up stuck with a low-res, choppy version of Betrayal on the RAZR.

Compared to a high-end version, the RAZR-compatible version of Betrayal looks awful and plays worse. It’s got the God of War license and can be a decent platformer if you’re patient and dedicated, but the Lode Runner graphics and Game and Watch animation on the RAZR are not the kind of production values that players associate with the God of War series.

It is disappointing to say the least, but the idea of an original God of War storyline with above-average graphics on a non-gaming phone like the RAZR was just too good to be true. There are multiple versions of this game out there for different phones, so be warned that if your phone isn’t up to snuff, you could end up regretting what would otherwise be a defendable purchase. If you’re sporting a RAZR, better avoid Betrayal at all cost.

If you’ve got a fancy gaming phone like the Sony Ericsson Walkman, which I also played Betrayal on, you’ll be much more satisfied with your purchase. The graphics are pretty good, resembling a Game Boy Advance game instead of the Game Boy Color sprites on the RAZR. A high end gaming phone also allows for much smoother scrolling and animation, and certain enemies (like horseback riders) and features (such as breakable walls) will only appear in the high end versions of the game.

Clearly SOE hasn’t done a good enough job of informing consumers that there are multiple versions of this game for different phones. The Betrayal website displays only screenshots and videos of the high-end version, while completely ignoring that a significant percentage of their audience will buy this game for a phone like the RAZR and expect it to look as good as advertised.

God of War: Betrayal, at its best, takes the concept of the PS2 titles and does a pretty good job of converting it into a side-scroller similar to the original Prince of Persia games. But unless you’ve got a high-end phone like the Walkman, you will quickly discover that guiding a microscopic and shoddy looking Kratos into battle is more frustrating than fun.

RAZR version:

Walkman version:

Tags: God-of-War:-Betrayal, Kratos, RAZR, SOE

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