Tag: PSP

PS Vita (In Retrospect)

The PS Vita is an amazing little machine. I distinctly remember playing Escape Plan in a GameStop circa 2012 and being blown away by the screen. Fast forward eight years, and a jail-broken PS Vita might still the best way to portably emulate in 2020

There’s something that the specs can’t capture about the system. It just feels good. I loved my PSP. That little shit traveled the world with me. And while my Vita doesn’t have as many miles on it as my PSP, it’s still seen a big chunk of the globe and been an occasional safety blank over a tumultuous period of my life.  

From a strictly monetary sense, the PSP was probably a windfall compared to the Vita. Having a behemoth of engineering like the Nintendo Switch release during your life cycle is a rough set of cards. But the Vita had already been soundly routed by the 3DS at that point. In fact, it was pretty clear from the moment I opened the box the way this was all going to play out.

Still, nothing but love from me.  

There’s a part of me that wants to buy the molds for Vita carts and try to talk Sony into a letting Ziggurat continue to press new games (3,000 copies of the recent Limited Run Vita edition of Papers, Please sold out in 30 seconds). It seems like a great outlet for under-appreciated PS3 games like BloodRayne Betrayal.

Forgotten Games

An old house is sold, and my articles are packaged and shipped to me from Minnesota out to Colorado. Boxes wallpaper most of my basement and my garage. Even a short lifetime of accumulation can easily overwhelm any storage space. I start with the kitchen supplies and linens, but soon have made my way to the boxes filled with video games. There are half a dozen of them, a few with incredibly rare Saturn and Neo Geo Pocket titles, while most is shovel ware for the PS2 and Dreamcast that I never got around to playing. The first box I open has perhaps the most pleasant surprises:

forgotten games

It’s mostly portable games (which has always been my favorite way to play games).  The PSP might be my favorite system of all time (so what if it’s all rereleases of Playstation games?  They’re still the definitive versions), and the first three games I find are some of the fondest memories I have with any system:

The 3 must play PSP games for any PSP owner
New PSP owner?  Play these 3 games first. Don’t own a PSP?  Buy one ASAP!  They cost like $5 dollars.

Most of the games that I find I have played at one time or another.  However there are a few that I meant to get to which I was never able:

photo 4 photo 3 photo 5

The last two are both unique handheld Ogre Battle battle games.  The first is Tactic Ogre for the GBA, a game that I did play when I was 14, but the memories of which are so intertwined with Final Fantasy Tactics that I can’t tell you a single thing that happened.  The second is an Ogre Battle game that only released on the Neo Geo Pocket Color.

The Tactics Ogre for the GBA intrigues me, and if I can find a GBA I’ll boot it up.  Given how fantastic Let Us Cling Together is, it will probably be my next Travel Log feature.

2 Disc Game!

Armored Core Master of Arena has humbled me.  Maybe it was overly ambitious to try and tackle three nearly identical games without a different game to break the routine.

It is certainly a challenging game.  Everyone makes a fuss about Dark Souls, but these bastards have been making tough as nails games for over a decade apparently.  These are way more frustrating however.  On the last airplane ride I almost smashed my already cracked PSP into my malfunctioning table tray.

I haven’t given up on reviewing Master of Arena yet, but my weakness got the best of me and I purchased Max Payne 3 today.  I think it was the HEALTH song that plays in the background of the commercial that actually inspired me.  Seems like a good existential time, but trailers are usually so misleading…

The song if you’re interested:  http://soundcloud.com/rockstargames/tears-by-health

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Review

Crisis Core:  Final Fantasy VII

Platform:  PSP
Price I Paid:  Gift

Image              Image

If I’m being completely honest, I probably wouldn’t have played this game if it wasn’t a gift.  I already know way to much about the FF7 universe, for someone who claims not to care about it, and I was sure I couldn’t lie with a straight face after playing another game in the controversial series.  My desire to waste time got the best of me and I did jump into it. 

The positives: It’s gorgeous (like most Square games), complete, and the story is more redeemable than expected.  Zach is a fucking idiot, but somehow endearing.

The negatives:  There is zero challenge, zero.  Literally, zero.  It might take a little effort to collect all the extras, but it hardly feels like it would give any sense of accomplishment.  The battle system is simple, and the story is not really THAT interesting, just simply better told than you would expect.

Rating: 3 stars