PSP

Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days

October 18, 2009

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days is a lot of things. It’s long, it’s rewarding, it’s almost infinitely replayable, and it has a good sense of humor. Like Disgaea before it, D2 started out its life on the PS2 where it was met with critical acclaim and player love. The item world was improved upon from the first game (now it has pirates!), the character class roster is bigger than before, and the witty writing makes a return for the series’ second installment. Dark Hero Days is more than just a port. Following in the footsteps of Afternoon of Darkness (the up-port of the original Disgaea), Dark Hero Days adds a few things to the PS2 classic to entice you into buying it again. Your biggest enemy here will not be any of the bosses but the battery life of your PSP because Disgaea does one thing very well – it eats free time.

Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days is the story of Adell, the last human in the town of Veldime. Adell is on a journey to defeat Overlord Zenon, the Overlord of all Overlords, whose fault it is that the world is currently overrun with demons. The story moves on from there, and if you haven’t experienced it yet then I don’t want to spoil it for you since humor is never quite the same if you know what’s coming.

Disgaea, Disgaea 2, and Disgaea 3 are the embodiment of “hardcore” gameplay. Units don’t reach a level cap until 9,999, the Item World is randomly generated so no trip into an item will be exactly like another, and multiple endings mean that the story can be replayed without feeling stale as well. And if that weren’t enough, Dark Hero Days features extra chapters where you can play as Axel, the former titular “Dark Hero.” Magichange is also a new addition, but if you’ve played Disgaea 3 on the PS3 then you’ll be familiar with the concept. In a nutshell, Magichange lets you transform a friendly monster into a specific weapon (Prinnies – little evil penguins, for example, turn into guns) that another friendly unit can use to perform an especially strong attack. The rub is that transformed monsters only stick around for two turns which leaves you with fewer units to clear the board.

Gameplay is standard SRPG fare. Your units all exist on a grid, and depending on range and position each attack can affect one enemy or multiple grid squares of the map. If you’re standing next to a friendly unit then you both (or all three/four if you have a second/third sidekick) can all team up for one big attack. If you and three friendly units have an enemy surrounded you can all attack individually at the same time. And if you happen to be all alone you can whip out an SP maneuver and dish out the punishment solo. Moves are weapon dependent, and weapon proficiencies are class dependent. Any unit can hold a gun, but thieves will do a lot better with them than warriors will.

Disgaea 2 looks great, but it looked great on the PS2 as well and scaling down the viewable area makes everything look crisper. Environments are detailed, character models are great, and the anime cutscenes (static, sadly, but that is not a downgrade from the original) look wonderful on the PSP screen. The text is clear and readable, too. You really couldn’t ask for a better visual treatment.

If you can only afford to buy one PSP game, then make it Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days. It will be a good long time before you run out of things to do, and you’ll be having fun all along the way.

Pros: Nearly infinitely replayable, beautiful aesthetics
Cons: Lots of grinding
Plays Like: Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories
ESRB: T for language, mild fantasy violence, mild suggestive themes

Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny

October 16, 2009

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Fighting games don’t feel the same at home as they did in arcades. When I was in high school there would be a line of kids behind the Street Fighter 2 machine in the mall arcade just waiting to take on the winner of the previous match. The PS3 and Xbox 360 have made large strides in emulating that feeling through the PSN and XBL services. Now the experience is changing again with fighters on handhelds. It used to be that to play multiplayer you needed $0.50. Then you needed a pricy home console, two controllers, and a copy of the game. Now you need a handheld console, a copy of the game, and a friend within ad hoc wireless range with the same setup. It seems to me that we’re trading ease of use for no real benefit in this genre as fighters really shine when playing with human opponents more than computer-controlled ones.

SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny does its best to create an enjoyable experience despite being on the PSP. The fighting mechanics are just as deep as SoulCalibur IV’s were on the PS3 and 360. You can still grab, combo, and juggle opponents in the air, and the characters all control smoothly with either the directional pad or the analog nub. Physics from the console versions have been faithfully recreated on the PSP, and Broken Destiny is a visual wonder to behold. If anybody out there still thinks that the PSP is nothing more than a portable PS2 then this is the game to show them. Where Broken Destiny differs from its big brothers is in platform-exclusive characters. While the PS3 and 360 come with Darth Vader and Yoda respectively Broken Destiny players will be able to beat the tar out of people as God of War’s Kratos.

Single player, as is the case with all fighting games, is only really there for when you can’t find real people to fight with. That is makes up the lion’s share of available and easily playable game modes here is disappointing. Gauntlet mode tells a story that I won’t ruin for you in case you care about the SoulCalibur narrative, but know that the story segments are interspersed between short challenges that just aren’t fun. Arcade and Training modes also make a return. Arcade mode is serviceable, but – again – it feels like what you pick when you can’t beat up on a friend. Training Mode is good for learning movesets and combos though. You’ll outgrow it, but it sets out to make you better at the game and it is successful at it.

SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny also suffers from an annoying save-related issue. It occasionally refuses to acknowledge save files on my memory stick. I only have one (and no on-board memory) so I can’t rule out “faulty memory stick,” but it works for everything else, and it is really annoying to have Broken Destiny complain that no memory stick is inserted when I know it’s there and full of save files.

SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny is a solid fighting game with one big thing going against it – multiplayer options. I know that my PSP can connect to the Internet, and I know that portable games can have online multiplayer (Mario Kart DS springs to mind) so who at NamcoBandai didn’t manage to connect those two dots? As it stands SoulCalibur fans probably own a console version of SoulCalibur IV, and if your friend is close enough to play PSP games via ad hoc wireless you’d may as well just sit in front of the big TV and play that way.

Pros: Gorgeous visuals, great mechanics
Cons: Ad hoc wireless multiplayer only
Plays Like: SoulCalibur IV
ESRB: T for mild language, partial nudity, suggestive themes, and violence

Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?

August 3, 2009

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This? (Badman from here on out) is the potential offspring of the unholy union between Evil Genius and Dig Dug. Badman allows you to create underground mazes full of monsters with the intent of thwarting heroes from the surface in their quest to defeat your underling, drag him to the surface, and do dastardly things to him.

You will play as the God of Destruction and as Badman, your bumbling overlord. There are a lot of things to consider while playing Badman, but your only interaction with the world at large is through a pickax that you use to destroy blocks of dirt. Destroying these blocks not only creates the maze that heroes will hopefully get stuck in, but it also spawns monsters that will hopefully defeat the many heroes that come down from the surface to steal Badman from you. The strategy comes from deciding which blocks of soil to dig. Blocks with more nutrients and soil will yield more powerful monsters to defend your helpless overlord.

To get started you will need to dig up a slimemoss, one of the most useful units in the game, since their job is to pick up and redistribute nutrients to places on the map where they will be more useful to you. Once you have enough slimemosses moving nutrients around you will eventually find a soil block with enough nutrients in it to create one of the best units in the game – the insect-like Onmon. You can also use nutrients to create sword-wielding lizardmen. Mana is handled differently in that it requires heroes to traverse your dungeon and cast magic. As they do mana will build up in nearby soil blocks, and you can dig them to spawn spirits. These spirits do for mana what slimemosses do for nutirents. To make matters more complicated there is an in-game food chain and economy system. This can be frustrating at first, but since you can only interact with the world by digging up soil you will soon stumble across the solution to your problems.

Badman features two modes of play –  challenge and story. Challenge mode makes a good tutorial since you can run the same scenario over and over figuring out the best way to overcome a particular setback. Story mode is the real meat and potatoes of the game. In it you stave off hero after hero (who hopefully leave you the ever-useful mana) and create the best labyrinth you can. To make things a bit more challenging you have a preset amount of dig power (the number of soil blocks that you can destroy) to use per level. In between levels you get some dig power back and can choose to use what you think you don’t need to upgrade your units. Unfortunately, the biggest drawback about story mode is that once Badman is captured it is game over. No restarting the current level – you’re just done.

Badman is challenging – very challenging. The heroes in story mode ramp up in difficulty very quickly, and like Nethack before it defeat carries the huge penalty of a game over screen that actually means game over. Despite the difficulty, however, I can’t stop playing it. And with its being a downloadable title I can always start up a game regardless of which UMD I have stuck in my PSP.

Pros: Challenging, good challenge mode that doubles as a tutorial

Cons: Very difficult, very unforgiving

Plays Like: Evil Genius + Dig Dug + Nethack

ESRB: T for animated blood, mild fantasy violence, mild language, and mild suggestive themes

Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?

April 2, 2009

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Did you grow up on Mega Man and Bionic Commando? Do you think that most contemporary games are too easy? Then Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? is the game for you. You control a battalion of prinnies (the adorable penguin bombs from the Disgaea SRPGs on a PlayStation product near you) – 1,000 of them to be exact. You and your army of prinnies have 10 hours to gather the ingredients for Etna’s (your boss) ultimate dessert. Sure the story is flimsy, but it’s a serviceable excuse to run, jump, kill enemies, blow past checkpoints, and die repeatedly against end-of-level bosses. 

Prinny features a lot of levels (36 to be exact), but you won’t be able to play all of them in a single play. At first this sounds like a downer, but what you’ve got is a 2D platformer with genuine replayability. It is possible to play Prinny six times without ever repeating a level. Prinny is by no stretch of the imagination an easy game, but it isn’t unfair either. It shares a unique quality with Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox. When I died I felt two things: 1) that it was my fault and 2) that I had learned something that I could use throughout the rest of the game. Prinny stands as a stark contrast to Mega Man 9 – another fiendishly difficult game. The difference between the two is that Mega Man 9 is consciously out to get you and it feels cheap more often than it feels difficult. Prinny, on the other hand, never feels cheap. It’s just hard, and that makes victory over the game’s giant bosses all the more satisfying. 

So what keeps Prinny from feeling cheap? Well-placed checkpoints for one. These checkpoints serve to break up the levels logically and keep you from replaying large sections of a level you’ve already defeated. Second, you have 1,000 lives. It doesn’t sting quite so badly to miss a jump when you know you’ve got 800 d00ds in reserve. Prinny also manages to maintain a good difficulty curve – it just happens that the difficulty continues to go up further than you might expect. Like games of old, though, Prinny teaches you everything you need to know in order to complete the challenges presented to you. 

Nippon Ichi also hit the ball out of the park graphically. This is bar none their finest PSP title, and if anything really shows that off it is the art. 3D backgrounds, intricate sprite-based enemies, and details unique to specific enemies, bosses, and your character all make Prinny a joy to look at while lamenting that missed jump or botched boss pattern. Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero is an amazing action platformer that hearkens back to days spent sitting on the living room with an NES pad in your hand, Bionic Commando on the television screen, and your friend alternately laughing at your failures and cheering you successes. 

Any gamer with a PSP and a love of platformers should give Prinny a whirl. It’s full of great (and out there) characters, witty writing, and plenty of satisfying platforming. The great level design and non-linearity make it a must-buy game that you’ll play many times. 

Pros: Challenging, appropriate difficulty ramp-up, fun characters, great checkpoint placement

Cons: Probably too difficult for those who didn’t cut their teeth on 8-bit platformers

Plays Like: Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario Bros.

ESRB: T

 

Midnight Club: LA Remix

November 11, 2008

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

The PSP is something of a dumping ground for watered-down console ports. Despite the “Remix” in the title, Rockstar’s newest portable edition of Midnight Club is a full-fledged title that doesn’t feel like a trimmed down version of its console brothers. The game feels fast, the locales are detailed and offer varied events on a myriad of courses.

Midnight Club: LA Remix is a checkpoint racer, and that makes sense considering the open-world nature of racing through southern California instead of turning left repeatedly on a NASCAR track. Rockstar does their best to keep things interesting though by varying how the checkpoints are handled. Some events feature a collection of points that can be hit in any order, others play leapfrog with only two points – where you are and where you’re going next, and some events are inspired by the grand prix in that they are three races in one.

One place LA Remix hurts in is load times, which are certain to be a PSP limitation rather than a software one. Controls are tight: steering with the analog nub feels much better than I expected, and the emergency brake is responsive. It needs to be, because you’ll be making last minute turns a lot. Most events take place at night which can make it harder to see your next checkpoint. This makes races more exciting since you’ll constantly have a “don’t want to miss my turn” mentality, but I can’t help but think that it isn’t intentional.

Presentation is top-notch, and Rockstar hits you with it from the starting line. The opening cinematic is breathtaking, the driving and tricks – nitrous bursts, going up on two wheels, etc. – feel organic and rewarding, and the sheer amount of vehicles and deep customization are amazing. Gear heads will have a lot to do here.

Midnight Club: LA Remix is difficult, sometimes a bit too difficult. After the first half-dozen or so races you’ll find yourself needing to repeat most events a number of times. Combine this with the typical “cruise around, find event, take part in event, rinse, repeat” nature of an open-world racer and you’ll find yourself frustrated. Like any good racer, however, LA Remix really gets its longevity from its multiplayer component. Numerous modes like capture the flag and paint (analogous to king of the hill) make sure that racing against real people never gets old, and the breadth of environmental options (day/night, weather, random traffic, etc.) available ensure that no two events need to be exactly the same.

Midnight Club: LA Remix is what a portable racer should be. It’s gorgeous, it’s fast, it offers deep customization, the multiplayer is fun, and the single-player is varied enough that playing alone on a car trip is a great option as well.

Pros: deep customization, fun multiplayer modes

Cons: too many races take place at night

Plays like: Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Burnout Paradise

ESRB: T for Mild Suggestive Themes, Mild Violence, Strong Lyrics – if they won’t be turned away by the difficulty LA Remix is appropriate.

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →