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| The Sony PSP - our top three games |
| Wednesday, October 12, 2005 at 22:57 by Laurence Norah |
Since Sony launched the PSP in Japan last year, and subsequently in the US and Europe, there has been a significant lack of gaming titles for the handheld console. In fact, Sony seem to have been putting their efforts more into promoting the device as a video playback tool rather than a gaming console. Hopefully upcoming game releases will put that straight, but for the time being, here's a quick run down of our essential PSP gaming selection.
Virtua Tennis World Tour - This game comes from Sega and forms a part of their almost legendary Virtua Tennis series. The game is ideally suited for the PSP as you can dip in for five minutes play or five hours, and still get a great deal out of it. Easy to pick up yet with a learning curve that will keep you coming back for more, the game lets anyone who aspires to hitting a ball around a court like Roddick or Federer quickly get into the action.
There's a quick play mode that lets you pick one of 14 top players in the world (all faithfully recreated on-screen) and have a quick slugging match against the CPU, but the main meat of the game revolves around the world tour option, whereby you take two players, one of each gender, and try and train them up to become world number one. This involves entering championships (and winning), as well as various training mini-games which are almost as addictive as the main event.
Graphically the game is pretty stunning. As there's not a great deal going on on the screen Sega were able to really push the PSP to render the players to incredible detail. If you know your tennis pro's you'll easily be able to recognise individual players as they play against you. The sound is also pretty good, with crowd noises, line calls and players grunting all adding to the experience.
If we were going to have a complaint about this game it would be the same that we have about many PSP titles, that of loading times. Not only do the mini-games and the actual games take a while to load, there can be annoying pauses whilst the computer loads up an "out" sound bite when a ball heads linewards. These problems can be easily overlooked though in a game that should keep you entertained for months.
Lumines - This is, in essence, a simple puzzle game from Ubisoft. On first glance it would appear to be a Tetris clone, but the concept is actually simpler than that, and possibly more addictive. The premise of the game is to form blocks of the same colour that get wiped off the screen. Given that there are only two block colours to choose from this doesn't sound too hard, but throw in a dance sound track that evolves with the game play, and constantly changing and updating backgrounds depending on what you're doing, and we're suddenly taking about a game play experience that can occasionally threaten to overwhelm your senses. Add to that the fact that blocks only get erased by a timeline which pans across the screen from left to right, and this is one game that will have you hooked. No wonder they've sold over 500,000 copies so far.
Toca Race Driver 2 - There have been a number of racing titles for the PSP, but in the absence of the much anticipated GT4 (release date pushed back to sometime in 2006), the one that seems to be standing above the rest for us in terms of variety and game play is Toca Race Driver 2. Offering players a huge choice of events, ranging from rally driving, to truck racing, to classic cars and all the other more usual events, there really is something here for everyone.
Car handling is fairly realistic, given that this is supposed to be a serious racing game rather than an arcade effort. Cars also suffer from damage, so those tactics of using the walls to go round corners will soon wear thin as your wheels fall off and your car grinds to a halt.
Graphically the game is fairly polished, car models look great, and frame rates don't suffer even when there are 21 cars on the track. The only one criticism we'd have with the graphics is a slight lack of track side detail, but when you're whizzing along at 150mph you're probably not going to worry too much about a lack of birds fluttering around.
There are a few options here again for the user, a quick race against a number of computer opponents, or a more engrossing career mode that starts you off as a rookie and sees you progressing into the major pro leagues. This is done as a story-line driven sequence, with good use of cgi cut scenes to move the story along and make the player feel part of something more than just a good driving game.
Our only gripes with the game revolve once more around the issue of loading times, with races taking up to a minute to load. This can be frustrating, but if it's the only flaw, we're ready to live with it for now.
Other notable games that we've missed off our list for now include the classic Wipeout, and the more arcadey racer Burnout, but we felt that for now one racing title would be enough. If we had to pick only three games out of the current crop of PSP titles, it would be the above three we've mentioned.
Finally, looking to the future. The lineup for the PSP is looking pretty healthy, there's a GTA instalment hitting stores towards the end of October, as well as Pro Evolution Soccer for all the soccer fans out there who felt that FIFA didn't quite cut it. There's also an interesting title in the works called Infected which offers some interesting multiplayer twists, and then of course there's the all powerful Gran Turismo mobile, should it ever be released. We're pretty pleased with the device so far, and hope that Sony continue to promote it as the great gaming platform it has the potential to be.
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| is this really news? or do we expect to see some sony adverts on this site soon? maybe next we can expect sony's greatest albums or their best cameras. .....hopefully not. I do like sony but I want news not reviews
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| That's the point. They have NO news on the PSP and its games. The handheld is languishing and if Sony doesn't come out with killer games for it soon, it'll go the way of the Atari Lynx. |
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| The problem, as far as I can see is that piracy is running rampant in the US and possibly in Europe (the release of the 2.0 downgrader greatly assisted in breaking open the European bootlegging scene).
Site like PSPUpdates are full of comments from hundreds of users who both blatantly admit to pirating, and who are openly defiant towards Sony about it. While PSPUpdates does not openly condone piracy, they regularly report on advances in piracy and actively distribute tools for manipulating the PSP firmware. It doesn't take much beyond reading the site news and doing a simple search on Google to turn up other tools that can be used in conjunction with PSPUpdates software to commit piracy.
The lack of a selection of decent releases is a uniquely US and UK problem. Japan does not lack for quantity and variety in titles for the PSP. There are so many quality releases in Japan that Sony has already inaugurated a lower-priced "Classics" line featuring the PSPs earlier releases at half their issue price. Meanwhile, the US has only received a couple dozen games, few of which seem worthy of the up to US$50 they command on the shelves at retailers.
But, why would Sony release anything to a marketplace where thieves will eat up all of the profits? It makes complete sense that Sony would focus itself on that area where piracy is less likely to cost them - movies. Even then, though there is a great selection of films and other video content, and the overall quality is more than fair, movies are being priced far above what they are worth, sometimes exceeding the prices of their DVD counterparts which offer much more value for the money beyond simply being able to carry them in your pocket.
While piracy appears to be Sony's reason for not enabling great software to come out with good variety to boot in the US and UK, it seems that price point has been the real deciding factor in the PSPs lackluster success. Games for the Nintendo DS run about US$25-35, while PSP games begin at US$30 and can go as high as US$50. For machines that are really only portable diversions meant for an ocassional quick thrill while on the go, Sony's prices are a bit too much for too little return. Likewise, the console itself runs US$100 over the cost of a DS, and US$150 over other handheld devices like the older GBA which is now enjoying new life via the release of the GBAMicro and that offers a wide range of content at prices from US$15-25 per title. While you are certainly getting an amazing bit of tech for your US$250, once you have laid out that initial near-US$300 investment, you tend to feel pretty hard pressed to lay out yet another $40-$50 for each game title you may want to play.
With memory sticks alone costing over US$50 for any decent size capable of holding some video and music and a few other items, the total cost of ownership rises quickly and that's not good in today's economy where energy prices are rising even more quickly and eating up a lot of our extra spending cash.
I figure that for most gamers, the choice becomes clear rather quickly. Rather than spend nearly a thousand dollars on a PSP, a proper memory stick, some movies, and a few games, it seems a lot more cost effective to buy the PSP, get a decent memory stick, and then begin to scour the internet for ways to get the rest for free. There is no shortage of illegal and quasi-legal software ranging from pirated software and the tools to run it down to emulators to run the pirated software of yesteryear, all of it just a Google search and download away. For about US$350-450, you can have your PSP and way more software to use on it than if you had laid out the thousands it would now cost you for every possible title available for it. Encoding your own movies is easy, and cheaper, plus you get all the DVD extras for when you are at home. with the new AVC codec in firmware 2.0, you get excellent quality and you can downgrade your PSP back to 1.5 when you are ready to go back to gaming. All of this makes great financial sense for many PSP owners, some of whom made great sacrifices just to get the machine and who probably won't have the cash available to buy any of the software for it for a while.
So, in conclusion, it just seems that the PSP was way too much device, and thus it cost way too much money. Perhaps Sony expected that this would just be a luxury item and failed to consider the ravenous appetites of gamers for the latest in gaming fixes. Or, perhaps Sony is simply a victim of the economy just like the rest of us. Either way, the PSP is a huge burden to purchase, and a bigger one to maintain. I believe that this high cost has created an atmosphere that is ripe for piracy as few gamers have the financial means to keep up with Sony's demands. This, in turn, has led Sony to shy away from releasing quality titles with variety in places where piracy threatens profits, amounting to a vicious cycle that may very well lead to the premature death of the PSP. |
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| the best raceing game is midnightclub |
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| Great article Laurwence, so what if its not 'news' per se. It does have info coming up about future games which is news.
Also the title gives away what the article is about, if you dont want to read it, dont click on the link?
That said its opened up a great thread on pirating PSP games. Piracy is wrong, wrong, wrong but it does make it an attractive proposition for some gamers, a very cheap handheld console if all you have to pay is the $180 for the device and some more for a decent memory stick. Wonder what the number of consoles to number of games sold will be?
Just my 2c worth |
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| Quote "Comment # 3 on 13 October 2005 at 14:15 by Anonymous"
Spot on article. I have been wondering why there are so few games for the PSP when it is essentially a vehicle for PS2 ports and conversions. The piracy angle makes sense and is sad but true. It would be a shame if the general buying public were to have their choice narrowed because of the actions of individuals who care not that buying software ensures quality release and fail to realise - the more you copy, the less you WILL have to copy. If a game is good (GTA, Lumines, Mecury, PES5, Burnout, Wipeout Pure) then go show your approval by buying it, thus ensuring quality future releases. Copy everything, and all you and the rest of us will have is sparse choice and poor titles. Go figure. |
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