Hunting for the PSP games
I’ve stared experiencing hunger towards the new games for my PSP, so I decided to dig through the review sites and see what I can buy now and what I have to wait without patience. Not that I finished games I already own, but I just want more variety on that little screen ;)
Ok, the first target genre is RPG. PSP is quite good for the games where you wander through some world and unlock puzzles. RPG suits this task just perfectly: the explorative gameplay and the growing experience of your character. I’ve been told that there’s alot of japanese RPG’s that are really good. Let’s see: Popolocrois, Ys: The Ark of Napishtim, Tales of Eternia, Breath of Fire III, and others.
Popolocrois. This is classic japanese RPG reviews says. Since I’m going to explore this genre it’s better for me to start with classic. Reviews are mostly positive, giving the game above average scores. Personally I really like game’s color palette. It looks so oldskool and attractive I just wanna start playing it now and explore all those cute environments. I’ll keep this game in mind when in the store ;)
Ys: The Ark of Napishtim. Another japanese RPG that looks very attractive to me. But it fails at performance, loading times between the zones destroy the immersion. This indeed can enrage one when he tries to get to the zone he explored already and wait it loads for too long. The good poits are the proper monsters and battles… Well since there are better games around I’ll have to concantrate on them rather than on this one. I need smooth performance dammit! :)
Breath of Fire III. As reviews say it’s pixel by pixel port of the PS1 game. And apart from the solid RPG gameplay it has destroying load times that happen with every single location change. The game goes blankscreen for some seconds while UMD disk is loading data. People say this is really downstep for such an old game, and it seems developers didn’t bother tweak it for PSP properly, so only real RPG hungry gamers will eat it. Seems like apity because it’s classig game in this genre and I’m not going to buy it because of that stuttering gameplay.
Tales of Eternia. Well the scores of most of the sites rotate around 80% and the main opinion is good. The onlly drawback is the story which tends to be rushed, but afterall people say that the storyline doesn’t “really matter that much after all”. And what’s most important that the game’s considered “this is by far and away the best RPG for the PSP currently on the market”. So this game has rather high chances to pull out money off my wallet.
Ok, now moving towards the action area. There choice is much more rich there and games are more quality overall. Especially the titles that came out last two months.
Daxter. Well the world seems to be in love with this one. High scores all over praising gfx and gameplay. Indeed, pics looks nice and I’ve seen JnD games before they looked indeed fun. So I seriously consider this game is worth buying.
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. Here goes action game about terrorists and such. Well everyone seems to be pretty excited here. Hmm videos of the gameplay say it’s like stealth action and sometimes plain action game but featuris awesome gfx for PSP. Well, I was never big fan of the games set in real life environments, but higly positive reviews just force me not to look away from this game. I’ll try to get a copy from the friends and try it out first before actually buy it ;)
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. Well, I never played GTA before. Tried GTA3 several years ago and was distracted by the other games. But I realised that the world in the game is really big and adventurous. So, since I never played this game and all the reviews give it very high scores I think this game is worth buying, because there’s little chance I’ll play it on PC but it migtht be really good for the PSP. Afterall I’ll get to know what this GTA buzz is about :)
That’s it so far. Digging review sites for the game information is rather tiresome task, but when one’s going to waste 30-50$ for the game it’s really worth it. It’s real pity there are no game demos which you can download and play before you buy them. I really hope publishers will allow developers releasing demos in future, otherwise it’s really hard to decide whether you have to buy the game or not, add here growing market and competition…
April 8th, 2006 at 0:40
Cool games listed there. I’ve not really play many Japanese RPG’s other than the obvious FF stuff.
GTA is meant to be very good in multiplayer.
Also I agree about demos, why can’t they do them? With a GB memory stick that would be more than enough to put them on.