by Tiberius Jonez
After a recent good run of Texas Hold ‘Em at the local casino I decided to spend some of my winnings on a new slim-line silver PSP. I bought an original PSP during the original launch, but after a six month drought of games I sold it. This time around I figured there had to be more games available and even if there weren’t I liked the movie playback and photo presentation aspects of it enough to justify it as a worthy addition to my office desk.
I picked it up in the Daxter/Family Guy edition which came with the 1 Gig Memory Stick and I grabbed MLB2K8 to go with it. The first thing I noticed when I got it out of the box was how much lighter it was than the original PSP; it was a dramatic difference. After configuring my wireless settings I immediately updated the firmware to version 3.95 and started checking out some of the new features like the internet radio and improved PSP store. The internet radio worked flawlessly and I found the new PSP store to be a huge improvement over what I remember. It is still not as easy as shopping amazon or downloading demos from a site like fileplanet, but overall it was easy to use and worked without trouble.
I downloaded the demo for Syphon Filter Dark Mirror. This game sports some excellent graphics and the controls work considerably better than those in Socom. Most games I’ve played online with my PSP are total lag fests, but surprisingly, Syphon Filter played very smoothly online – which didn’t keep me from getting owned.
I’ve played several levels of Syphon Filter and I am really enjoying it.As a shooter vet it is possibly too forgiving with an abundance of health packs and ammo scattered about, but the graphics, gameplay, story elements and wide assortment of weapons are quite impressive for a handheld game. In fact, graphically, I can safely say this is better than many PS2 games I’ve played. If you have a PSP, you should pick this one up.
MLB2k8 also has very nice graphics but I am either terrible at hitting or it is very difficult to hit consistently – I’m not sure which yet. Fielding controls are smooth and the animations are pretty varied. I still prefer the overall gameplay of the original MLB from Sony better though. The fielding animations in that game were so sweet. But I like the pitching mechanics of MLB2K8 better.
Finally, I traded in Tomb Raider Legend (too brain busting for me) for Tekken: Dark Resurrection. On the big consoles, I personally prefer Dead or Alive to Tekken, but for a handheld title this game is absolutely fantastic. It really stretches preconceived notions of what a handheld game can be as far as speed of play and graphics. If you like Tekken, this is a guaranteed winner. The best part is all but 3 of the playable characters are available right from the start, so you don’t have to trudge through the story mode 600 times to unlock all the fighters.
I’ve only had my new PSP for a month but I am very satisfied. I’m enjoying it much more this time around and this latest batch of games has convinced me the PSP can have long legs if quality developers are making games for it. With the extended-life battery I’m getting 8-12 hours of gameplay on a single charge and the new features included in the latest firmware updates are nice additions.
I will be delving into Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters next week and will have more on that once I’ve gotten a good taste of it.
After a recent good run of Texas Hold ‘Em at the local casino I decided to spend some of my winnings on a new slim-line silver PSP. I bought an original PSP during the original launch, but after a six month drought of games I sold it. This time around I figured there had to be more games available and even if there weren’t I liked the movie playback and photo presentation aspects of it enough to justify it as a worthy addition to my office desk.
I picked it up in the Daxter/Family Guy edition which came with the 1 Gig Memory Stick and I grabbed MLB2K8 to go with it. The first thing I noticed when I got it out of the box was how much lighter it was than the original PSP; it was a dramatic difference. After configuring my wireless settings I immediately updated the firmware to version 3.95 and started checking out some of the new features like the internet radio and improved PSP store. The internet radio worked flawlessly and I found the new PSP store to be a huge improvement over what I remember. It is still not as easy as shopping amazon or downloading demos from a site like fileplanet, but overall it was easy to use and worked without trouble.
I downloaded the demo for Syphon Filter Dark Mirror. This game sports some excellent graphics and the controls work considerably better than those in Socom. Most games I’ve played online with my PSP are total lag fests, but surprisingly, Syphon Filter played very smoothly online – which didn’t keep me from getting owned.
I’ve played several levels of Syphon Filter and I am really enjoying it.As a shooter vet it is possibly too forgiving with an abundance of health packs and ammo scattered about, but the graphics, gameplay, story elements and wide assortment of weapons are quite impressive for a handheld game. In fact, graphically, I can safely say this is better than many PS2 games I’ve played. If you have a PSP, you should pick this one up.
MLB2k8 also has very nice graphics but I am either terrible at hitting or it is very difficult to hit consistently – I’m not sure which yet. Fielding controls are smooth and the animations are pretty varied. I still prefer the overall gameplay of the original MLB from Sony better though. The fielding animations in that game were so sweet. But I like the pitching mechanics of MLB2K8 better.
Finally, I traded in Tomb Raider Legend (too brain busting for me) for Tekken: Dark Resurrection. On the big consoles, I personally prefer Dead or Alive to Tekken, but for a handheld title this game is absolutely fantastic. It really stretches preconceived notions of what a handheld game can be as far as speed of play and graphics. If you like Tekken, this is a guaranteed winner. The best part is all but 3 of the playable characters are available right from the start, so you don’t have to trudge through the story mode 600 times to unlock all the fighters.
I’ve only had my new PSP for a month but I am very satisfied. I’m enjoying it much more this time around and this latest batch of games has convinced me the PSP can have long legs if quality developers are making games for it. With the extended-life battery I’m getting 8-12 hours of gameplay on a single charge and the new features included in the latest firmware updates are nice additions.
I will be delving into Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters next week and will have more on that once I’ve gotten a good taste of it.
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