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PSP Minis Roundup Review
PSP Review by Dan Whitehead
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Kahoots
- Price: £2.49/€2.99
Lemmings in the style of LittleBigPlanet is your soundbite for this one, as you guide creatures apparently made of Blu-tac through perilous platforming environments. You do this by switching the blocks beneath their feet, so that bouncy jump blocks propel them safely over spikes, or trap doors drop them to levels below. Hampering your plans are bolted blocks which can't move, forcing you to think around problems - often using the wraparound screen to find new routes.
Each of the 50 stages has a slice of cake that makes for a tempting secondary objective, and the whimsical presentation does a lot to enhance the already solid puzzling. Quite apart from the bits-and-bobs handmade design style, the game even has a potential star in Pegbeast, a bizarre creature made from household items who explains new gameplay elements in song before each level.
Cute without being twee, packing in a lot of fun ideas without smothering the accessibility, Kahoots is a lovely little gem and one that deserves extra praise for resisting the temptation to grab the greedy £3.99 price point.
8/10
Pinball Fantasies
- £3.99/€4.99
While a lot of the PSP Minis have arrived on the platform via the iPhone or the PC shareware scene, Pinball Fantasies has a more impressive vintage, with its roots in the fertile soil of the Amiga.
Originally developed by Battlefield outfit DICE, it is quite simply one of the best pinball games ever. This near-perfect port offers all four themed tables - funfair, road race, gameshow and graveyard - and backs them up with a physics model that still impresses. There's the chance to pass the PSP from player to player, and a tap on the Select button flips the play area to make full use of the screen. You lose some of the info pane at the top, but it's a worthwhile trade off.
It's just a great pinball game, with intelligent table design that manages to pack in features without losing focus. I cherished the version I had for the homebrew GP32 handheld, so the sight of it resurrected once more for the PSP is a genuine joy.
9/10
Tetris
- £3.99/€4.99
It seems a bit redundant to review Tetris, what with it being the most popular game ever, but sometimes all it takes is a polished Greatest Hits package to remind you just why it has endured for so long.
Too many Tetris variants make the mistake of drenching the finely tuned simplicity of the original game under pointless gimmicks, but this is a restrained and worthy modern update that keeps the essentials clutter-free. At the same time, the periphery is tweaked with a raft of alternate modes and a compelling Trophy-style reward system.
It's easy to take such a game for granted, but it's impossible to resent the addition the addition of such a stalwart of casual handheld gaming - especially in such a handsome edition.
9/10
Vempire
- £3.99/€4.99
Yet more fun with coloured blocks, this time in a shell that mashes up Puzzle Quest with Hexic. The aim is to battle your way through various fantasy landscapes by rotating squares of blocks to form horizontal or vertical lines. Filling up a potion bottle before the timer runs out is the ultimate goal, but there's another meter slowly filling at the same time. When this reaches the top, the stage's resident monster appears to muck things up.
You can match gold bars to earn enough cash to unlock your own monstrous assistants - basically special attacks that impact the playfield - and each trio of stages is followed by an optional bonus level where you can obtain items to enhance your skills further.
The art style is very appealing, with lots of crisp cartoon sprites, but the core gameplay feels truncated and shallow. There's limited strategy, and the rudimentary play mechanics never offer the sort of nuanced long-term challenges that sustain games of this ilk. Vempire certainly isn't a bad game, but it probably would have benefited from a few more months of work on the basics.
6/10
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Comments: 1-44 of 44 in total
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kangarootoo
07/10/09 @ 13:50
+5
On a related note, I just found out you can buy PSN Store content on Amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_852... I guess this means Amazon can discount as they see fit, removing the eholw "nobody buys games at RRP" barrier to DLC adoption. Although it appears to Amazon.com only at the moment, I don't know whether the content would work if you had a US PSN account (or whether PS3 content is region locked in the software). |
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BlankOBlank!
07/10/09 @ 14:02
+6
"You can play these on the old, fatty boom batty psp too, right?"
Yes you can. |
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+1
All fair reviews I'd say - at least for those games I've bought/tried myself.
Mind you, I'd be tempted to dock Breakquest a couple more points for getting the controls so badly wrong. It took me ages to tweak them to a playable state, and as Arkanoid-style games have been around for ages on consoles, there really is no excuse for getting it wrong this late in the game, even if you are converting from PC mouse-driven controls. |
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+2
You missed Puzzle Scape.
So I guess I'll review it for no good reason: it's clearly the result of someone trying to make a game like Lumines, but without actually cloning Lumines. Blocks fall regularly from the top of the screen, and you can swap the position of any 2 blocks horizontally. The aim is to make a 2x2 square of the same colour, at which point the square, and any touching blocks of the same colour, start a short countdown to disappearance. Despite the potential for combos that this brings, the game is let down by the fact that each stage goes on too long and repeats too many seemingly arbitrary objectives (get rid of 10 red blocks....then 12 black....then 10 white...then 10 red again). 4/10. |
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+1
Mind you, I'd be tempted to dock Breakquest a couple more points for getting the controls so badly wrong.
Fully agreed. By default the controls in Breakquest are bad to the point of comedy. I suppose messing with the options might make it better, but the game should be thoroughly slated for clearly not having been playtested for more than a few minutes at a time on an actual PSP. It might be petty, but I'd mark it as 1 or perhaps 2 out of 10 - even if it can be made work like it should, a game shouldn't release in a state where anyone who wants to play it has to spend time fine tuning the controls. |
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Sulphur_Man
07/10/09 @ 14:24
-2
Dirt cheap and a lot of charm there. What do I need to play them on? Something equally affordable I presume? A PSPGo you say.....let me check the price. WHAT THE F...
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kangarootoo
07/10/09 @ 14:30
+10
@mingster
Really? I spend nearly that crossing town on the bus. Its barely more fun than walking, and it takes about 15 mins. £1.99 was what I was paying for the equivalent cheap games on casette 25 years ago, and they seemed damn good value back then. £4 these days is a bargain for anything even remotely good. |
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BlankOBlank!
07/10/09 @ 14:35
+10
"Dirt cheap and a lot of charm there. What do I need to play them on? Something equally affordable I presume? A PSPGo you say.....let me check the price. WHAT THE F..."
Or a PSP... |
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0
So how does this Tetris compare to the many many times more expensive DS version? I might give it a go at just a fiver.
I would expect them to be similarly enjoyable, and I know Eurogamer's score takes value into consideration. Is that the only reason this gets a point more than the DS one?
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 07/10/09 @ 15:50
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0
I was having a look into some of these but none of them really appeal to me. Since portable consoles started including sleep modes and quick save options it's not been so important for portable games to only last minutes. These days I often find myself playing a level of something over several bus trips rather than a short burst of something like this.
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+2
Bought Pinball Fantasies instantly, just for hearing the music again, which I've always loved. The actual gameplay though, while ok, is really outdated. You can't go on calling this one of the best pinball games ever now. It was great back then, but since we had all those pro pinball tables which were awesome, and now stuff like Zen Pinball on PSN (and it's beta-version on Live ;) ) is absolutely stellar. The dlc Street Fighter table is really cool too.
There's also the Williams Collection for PSP for a comparatively small amount of dough more, which has better graphics and something like 15 classic real tables. The physics in that game are very similar to this though, which is a tad disappointing. Still a big fan of this old classic though, and considering how old it is, it's pretty good still. ;) And still love the music. As for Tetris - it should always be mentioned in these type of games whether or not it has a good time trial mode. It's the only thing I like. Last time I liked Tetris was ages ago, Classic Tetris and Super Tetris on PC back in the VGA days, both for their Time Trial modes.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 07/10/09 @ 16:26
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0
I don't know, fantasies had such big tables.. how did you manage to remember all those bumpers and flippers and whatnot without a minimap? that's too much effort vs reward surely?
it needs mission marker, racing line, rewind option, in game button prompts and an extended turorial. This isn't the nineties anymore you know. although I reckon there's a really good pinball game buried in here. |
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0
What about Kahoots!
http://www.honeyslug.com/games/kahoots/s...
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 07/10/09 @ 18:57
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-1
Pinball Fantasies is very good but Pinball Dreams is where it all began and you can't beat the Nightmare table on Dreams, I'll wait for that next time.
Tetris is very good, slick the sound FX are just right. The only prob is that there aren't enough variations in the music. The ability to play songs from the psp memory stick would have been a good option to put on. Also a multiplayer would have great. |
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SeesThroughAll
08/10/09 @ 04:37
+3
Funny that the review actually is using a screenshot of homebrew Tetris. :D
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-1
@kangarootoo
I pay 1200$ to go to CA in the USA which takes a whole 10-11 hours! Doesnt mean I'd go buy me 3 PS3 on release... I dont get whats the point you tried to make there to mingster. A coffee costs maybe even more than each of those. So i'll stop going out with my friends for a simple coffee to buy Minis or I shouldnt buy me smokes to buy me Minis? Then if you dont have a steam account create one , short them by price and start clicking on things up to 5$. Yes, way more worth as well. Monkey Island is in there too... Oh and you surely need an iPod. Does sound like your cup of tea. They have lots of even cheaper ones of the kind. Burgain you called it. Its been going on for ages. This isnt what you called a burgain. |
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-1
@kangarootoo
Amazon isn't selling PSN games, they are simply selling the codes. You still have to join PSN and download it from there. Looking at the prices Sony may simply be selling game codes at a bulk discount. I can't see there being a price war over who sells the codes the cheapest given that sony set the base price. At best the codes can be sold at retail prices but, then there is zero incentive for anyone to stock the codes. Personally I'll be the guy crying when physical media finally dies as that will signal a free for all rip off of the consumer. |
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M_of_the_sys
08/10/09 @ 09:21
+1
I didn't buy a PSP to play DS and iPhone style games. More Crisis Core and GoW type games please? Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines seems to be all I have to look forward to. :(
Edit: Although I know I'm not their only audience so if you like this sort of thing fair enough.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 08/10/09 @ 10:21
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0
BreakQuest PSP minis codes giveaway at http://www.pspminis.com/351/breakquest-c...
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0
Ka-hoots! Ka-hoots! Kahoots, kahoots, kahoots! Gets on your mind after a while!
Pinball Dreams exists both for GBA and iPhone/"iTouch" so probably just a question of time before that too appears on Minis. I guess they chose Fantasies first because it is more "fancy". But it's not that much more fancy, and Nightmare beats Stones 'n Bones any day.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 09/10/09 @ 23:11
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Comments: 1-44 of 44 in total
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