DS/movie spoilers.

Who wants the whole movie spoiled for them?

That’s right, I just blew ten hours of my life playing the PJO video game. Most of the stuff that happens matches reports from Scholastic Scope, so I’ve written up a run-down of the game that lays out most of the plot of the movie.



The game starts at Yancy, then you go to the museum. You fight Mrs. Dodds (at first with some random sword, but then Chiron gives you Riptide). You go home to find out what’s happening, then try to escape to camp. The Minotaur shows up, you fight him, he grabs Sally anyway, you faint. You wake up at camp.

At camp, everyone wants to beat you up, so you fight them (notable: Victoria, a daughter of Apollo who’s a big Ares fangirl). At some point, you discover Ares kids desecrating shrines and beat them up. Then you have sword practice with Luke and almost kill him (what) and then you all go play Capture the Flag against Annabeth. In the middle of Capture the Flag, a sending of Hades shows up (and also a bunch of monsters). He tells Percy to bring him the Master Bolt of he’ll never see his mom again (harsh, man. Way harsh.) You have to purify the shrines and fight some more monsters, but then Percy tries to leave camp. Grover and Annabeth catch him and say they’re going with him, then they go to Luke to get some supplies. Luke gives Percy flying shoes and his ~favorite shield~. He also gives Percy a map of his dad’s with the location of “three green pearls” that can take you out of the Underworld (this explains the pearl-grabbing with Athena’s statue and on the Lotus roulette).

Luke also comes with you, which we know doesn’t happen in the movie, but you fight your way out past some campers on guard and wind up taking a Hephaestus counselor called Isaac with you, too, so yeah, I’m pretty sure they just want you to be able to be able to vary your party. (You only get to use three people at a time; I played the canon trio whenever possible.)

First pearl is at Medusa’s. You fight her and get a pearl.

Next pearl is at the Nashville Parthenon. You fight the hydra, get the pearl, fight the hydra some more, and finally Grover just uses Medusa’s head to turn the hydra to stone.

The next part may or may not be in the movie. There’s chaos in town. You fight Victoria. You fight Ares. While fighting Ares, you drop your shield. Ares makes Victoria go with you.

All six of you go to Vegas. Your friends get stoned and abandon you, and you have to beat them up to get them back. Nine days have passed! Gotta hurry to LA!

You rob people to pay Charon. You go to the Underworld. You fight monsters. For some reason, you need to ride the ferry again, and to do that you fight the ghost of King Midas. Eventually, you fight Hades. You find out that the shield is the Master Bolt (mentioned in Scope)! Luke blames Ares. Unfortunately, your pearls can’t take all of you back, so you leave Grover behind (mentioned in Scope).

Then Luke takes the bolt and runs away and you have to beat him up. Here’s his reason:

LUKE: The gods have been in power too long. It’s time for the younger generation to take over, just like the gods took over from the Titans. Let them fight each other with their deadliest weapons. ‘Til they’re weak. Then people like us can swoop right in.

So… no Kronos in the video game, at least!

You stop the war of the gods. Zeus brings Grover back. And here is where shit gets really nutty. Poseidon tells Percy that he’s sorry for being a loser deadbeat dad, but that it’s not his fault because when Percy was little he did stay with Percy and Sally, but it started turning him human. So Zeus passed a law that said gods couldn’t hang out with their kids.

Huh.

Anyway, that's the end. I should toss in that there are a few spots where the game differs from what we do know about the movie -- no Persephone, no Procrustes (there's an actor for him on German Wiki's movie page), Luke goes with you (and Isaac and Victoria...). This playthrough confirms a lot of stuff that's shown up in the trailers, but it's not perfect.

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From a non-plot point of view, this game is atrocious. It has zero redeeming features. If you're morbidly curious, I blogged my way through the game (Part I :: Part II), but don't waste your own time or money on this thing.