Rockstar’s juggernaut Grand Theft Auto series debuted on the PlayStation Portable late last year in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, a side-story prequel to the events that took place in Grand Theft Auto III for the PlayStation 2. With Liberty City Stories, Rockstar successfully translated its open-ended world of crime to a handheld system, though not without a few missteps. Enter Vice City Stories, the newly released PSP GTA game that follows a similar side-story formula. Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story’s still pretty subpar, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated. Still, if you want to roam around a large city, shooting up the place and driving like a crazy person, few games on the PSP let you do that as well as this one does. read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games Simulation
What happens when you combine the cuteness of Loco Roco and the gameplay of Lemmings? You end up with Downstream Panic!, a fun puzzler with more than a passing resemblance to both games. Downstream Panic! is an absolute blast for a few hours, but erratic physics make some of the later levels extremely difficult, and there aren’t many other ways to enjoy the game if or when you get stuck.
Downstream Panic’s premise couldn’t be simpler: Tiny fish are poured out of containers at the top of the 2D level and you must guide them through mazelike levels to the safety of the water below. This is easier said than done. For starters, you’re required to save a specific number of the 100 fish with which you start off. This number varies from one level to the next, but the consequence of losing too many remains the same: If you fall below the number, you’ll have to try again. Another obstacle is that only a small portion of the water at the bottom of the screen (marked by two buoys) is safe for the fish–the rest is filled with large carnivorous fish that are gnashing their teeth in anticipation of snacking on your little friends. read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games Action
Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City is, for all intents and purposes, an entirely different game from the Need for Speed Carbon that’s currently appearing on the Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 2, and so on. The basic conceit is much the same–you and your team of street racers take on other crews in a bid to take total control of the city–but a lot of the details are different and many are better for it.
Own the City is ultimately a revenge tale, which starts off with a flashback to the event that triggers your character’s vengeance. During a street race that both you and your brother, Mick, are competing in, something goes horribly wrong. The accident leaves you in the hospital with some nasty amnesia and Mick dead. But it seems that there was a third car involved, which was no accident at all. Six months later when you get back on your feet, the scene has changed dramatically. So you take to the streets to find out who’s responsible for your brother’s death with your old racing buddy, Carter, and your brother’s ex-girlfriend, Sara, by your side. It’s a surprisingly resonant story that takes a little time to flesh out and define some of the core characters. It also has some good twists and turns that really help to steel your character’s resolve. The story sequences are pretty slickly produced, with some distinct-looking comic-style art and voice work that tends toward the better side of average. read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games Racing
Wipeout Pulse is the follow-up to Wipeout Pure, an original PlayStation Portable launch game when the console arrived in 2005. Back then, Pure was one of the best reasons to pick up the handheld thanks to its superb graphics and excellent handling, and the game was amply supported post-release with a number of downloadable content packs. The sequel ups the ante with online multiplayer, a deeper and more varied career mode, and custom soundtracks. Although the gameplay remains mostly unchanged, and reflects a similar racing style as Pure and Wipeout 2097 (Wipeout XL in the US), the wealth of content make this a must-buy for fans of the series.
The main focus for the single-player game is the race campaign, which has 16 grids to complete, each with 8-16 individual challenges. These can vary between single races, tournaments, time trials, and zone challenges, all of which were featured in Pure. You progress by winning medals that open up new tracks, racing classes, and challenges, and you’ll eventually unlock new race types in the form of speed lap, head-to-head, and eliminator. With so many races, the career mode offers almost too much of a challenge, and it will probably take most players between 10 to 15 hours to play through everything. You don’t need to win the gold medal in every race to proceed, and you can even skip some events completely, but completing everything is a daunting task. read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games Racing
Crash Bandicoot, you were never popular enough to hang around with the cool kids like Mario and Sonic, and yet you’ve still avoided that depressing mascot retirement home where the likes of Aero the Acrobat and Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel reside (look them up if you have no idea who I’m talking about).
However, as spotty as some of Crash’s adventures have been in the past, there is still something likeable about the slightly deranged marsupial. Maybe it’s because he looks like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket while biting into a lemon. Yeah, that might be it. read full review on IGN
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Daily PSP Games Adventure
Luxor: The Wrath of Set is an ancient Egyptian take on the action puzzle genre, a genre that counts among it such other games as Zuma Deluxe and Ballistic. What’s here is mostly a no-frills port of the year-and-a-half-old PC game Luxor, which will be seeing a sequel for the PC in less than a month. If you’re crossing the Sahara with only PSP puzzle games to keep you entertained, you might as well bring along Luxor, assuming the camel can bear the weight of one more UMD. But thanks to a lackluster presentation and gameplay that doesn’t stay interesting for long, you probably won’t be busting it out until you’ve worked your way through the PSP’s other great puzzle games–or until you’re suffering from heatstroke.
Instead of using a funky space cannon or an even funkier mystical frog, you’ll be launching croquet balls with a gold-winged scarab that scrolls back and forth along the bottom of the screen, a la Breakout or Arkanoid. As the cavalcade of colored balls follow the infidel’s path toward pyramid defilation and, presumably, Set’s wrath, it’ll be your job to bust them up by linking three or more like-colored balls. Delivering multiple sets of evil little balls into the maw of Ammit yields score multipliers, as well as power-ups that range from speeding up your shots to exploding all the balls of one color. To help keep these multipliers accruing, you’ll be able to switch to, and fire the ball in your queue. Combos and chains will speed up the completion meter at the bottom of the screen, and once it’s full, you’ll be advanced to the next stage–that is, once you’ve blasted the last of the balls already in play. If you’re unable to keep up with the rolling caravan, Set will strongly disapprove and you’ll be subjected to the much-dreaded “try again” screen. However, you only have a limited amount of tries, measured by how many gold coins you catch during the levels. Running out of retries means you’ll have to start the chapter you were working on completely over, which can be a real pain in Set’s caboose when the later stages get faster and tougher. Read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games Puzzle
Star Ocean: Second Evolution is an enhanced remake of developer Tri-Ace’s Star Ocean: The Second Story, a popular PlayStation role-playing game. It shares much with First Departure, a recent remake of the original Star Ocean, highlighted by incredibly striking anime sequences courtesy of Production I.G., full voicing, and even an updated, smoother translation. The two games look and feel nearly identical, but while First Departure suffered from gruesome backtracking, Second Evolution frees itself from the constant barrage of pointless globe-trotting by focusing on engaging gameplay and a cohesive plot.
The game casts you as either Claude, a reluctant Federation ensign following in the footsteps of his powerful father, or Rena, a young girl who is desperately trying to locate her parents. Their fates intertwine as Claude accidentally sends himself through an interstellar gateway and awakens near Rena’s village, where the locals are far too eager to adopt him as their prophesied hero. The story branches between the two characters for a more interesting twist, and while you’ll observe only slight changes in the overall plot depending on your choice, the difference is enough to encourage a second play-through to flesh out both characters and to access all anime segments. There are numerous superfluous conversations between characters (”private action scenes”), but aside from giving your ally friendship levels a slight boost, these scenes won’t do much for you. Nevertheless, the story and characters are all well done, and make this grand adventure one worth taking read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games RPG
Like Puzzle Quest before it, Patapon is a game that grabs key features from existing genres, squishes them together like different-colored balls of Play-Doh, and then turns them into something far more special than you might expect. For example, if you combined a ball of red and ball of blue you might expect to get a big lump of purple, while a rainbow-colored re-creation of the Venus de Milo would seem unlikely. But Patapon is just that special. Puzzle Quest’s nontoxic, nonstaining ingredients included a Bejeweled-style puzzle component used for combat, as well as a character advancement system and storyline that belonged in a role-playing game. Patapon’s recipe, on the other hand, blends rhythm-based controls with a horizontally scrolling real-time strategy game. Then–as if that combo wasn’t already enticing enough–it sprinkles plenty of RPG-style gear collection and some fabulous visuals from French artist Rolito on top. In short, Patapon is unlike any game that has come before it, and with a retail price that’s half of what many PSP games sell for, our recommendation of this ingenious recipe that has been masterfully realized is a no-brainer. read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games Puzzle, Strategy
It would seem that Bub and Bob just can’t catch a break. Last year’s Bubble Bobble Revolution for the DS was a disastrous attempt to update the franchise, despite the fact that it included a functional version of the much-loved original Bubble Bobble. Now there’s Bubble Bobble Evolution for the PlayStation Portable, which clumsily shifts the focus of the gameplay to be more puzzle oriented. Yeah, there’s still a pair of cute, bubble-bustin’ dinosaurs to mess around with, but the graphics are cold and lifeless, the music is crushingly monotonous, and the gameplay itself is simply tedious. It may not be out-and-out busted, but it’s still no fun.
For some completely and totally inexplicable reason, Bubble Bobble Evolution is set in 18th-century London, where two young boys named Bub and Bob are inexplicably turned into dragons (or, more accurately, young boys in dragon costumes), separated, and then each placed on the ground floor of two mazelike towers. To escape, they’ll have to work their way to the top of their respective towers, and though you’ll control both Bub and Bob, since they’ve been isolated from each other, you’ll have to hop back and forth between the two towers as they make their ascent. Read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games Puzzle
Not too long ago, an aspiring designer created a series of death traps for ninjas. These traps were not merely cunning mazes or killing-machine-filled rooms, but also a downloadable game for the PC. The game was known as N, a stylishly short abbreviation for Ninja. Atari now enables you to enjoy redesigned ninja challenges on the go in the form of N+ on the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.
When picking up the game, you become the guide for a bell-bottom-clad ninja as he crosses chasms and traverses increasingly challenging mazes to activate switches–or series of switches–to get to the all-important exit. By making use of a full repertoire of moves, you can find the little guy a way out of more than 200 encounters. Available moves include a wall jump, a wall slide, and the ability to sprint up or down inclines. You can even bound off of walls and shifting blocks. Although you don’t have a sword or a double-jump ability, you do have plenty of control over your in-flight movement. This will help you land on narrow ledges, slip through tight passages, and reverse your momentum to avoid any number of diabolical devices. The creators of the various levels cunningly imbedded deadly red mines, electrified blue orbs, and stationary units that shoot homing missiles or deadly accurate projectiles.
Read full review on GameSpot.
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Daily PSP Games Puzzle
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