Movies PSP

Beaterator (PSP)

 June 9th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

In Beaterator, you don’t play along with the music, you create it.

The title may elicit images of the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, busting out DDR moves, but Beaterator is not a game; much like Korg DS-10, this is pure music-producing software. You won’t find multiplayer modes to unlock, or tracks that only become available after several hours — Beaterator is simply a portable music studio. But just because it doesn’t have a “Career” mode doesn’t mean it lacks accessibility.

Rockstar is positioning Beaterator as music software for people who don’t have an extra thousand dollars lying around to buy real mixing boards or expensive editing programs. Instead, the developer has teamed up with prolific music producer Timbaland to literally put music-creation in the palm of your hand. The music celeb contributes more than just his likeness, though; to assist in your creative endeavors, Rockstar says, “Timbaland has given Beaterator hundreds of loops and sounds from his own personal collection… along with the hundreds of loops and sounds that Rockstar composed for the game.”

But you’re not limited to the sounds already on the disc. Plug a mic into the PSP and you can record original samples on the fly, and Beaterator also accepts .wav files in the event you want to record something in higher quality. Once you upload a file via Memory Stick, you can make minor adjustments to the sample before looping it into your own track. Or, if you’d like to make your own melody, Beaterator includes an 88-key keyboard (with adjustable sound effects) for laying down your melodies, harmonies, and chords. I didn’t get a chance to actually use Beaterator, but, the only detraction I found during Rockstar’s demo is that you can’t run more than eight tracks simultaneously.

Of course, making music — even simple songs — is no small feat. If you just want to jump straight into the program without learning all the ins and outs, Beaterator includes a “Live Play” mode, which lets you start up, mix together a few tracks, and begin putting together a song on the fly. And once you make music, you’ve got more options for showing off your music than just the PSP’s speakers. Songs can be shared online through Rockstar’s Social Club or, again, exported as .wav files to use however you like. Rockstar suggested the idea of making your own ringtones, though you could undoubtedly find much more creative uses for your compositions.

Though it won’t be as feature-laden as the PSP version, Rockstar also plans to release an iPhone/iPod Touch version of Beaterator. I didn’t get to see that version, so what features the team will excise from the regular Beaterator remains to be seen. But the iPhone’s touch-screen interface would seem to lend itself well to the lever- and nob-filled program.

This holiday season is already over-crowded with rhythm games, but Beaterator is the only one focused solely on creating your own original music. It’s a gamble for Rockstar, especially on the PSP, which isn’t as known for its practical “lifestyle” software. But almost everyone’s at least considered being a musician at some point, and
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Beaterator’s $40 price seems like a reasonable amount to make that a small-scale reality.

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Need For Speed Underground Rivals (PSP)

 June 8th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

Looks fantastic.

From its urban nighttime setting to its heavy customization and glorious sense of speed, Rivals distills the Underground home games into portable form. This is no mere port, either, boasting 10 new tracks to host your 20 fully customizable cars. A solid eight play modes exist, too, with minigames like Drift Attack (a series of drifting obstacles) and Nitrous Run (unlimited nitrous boosts) debuting in this version.

Rivals certainly looks fantastic, but it doesn’t get everything right. Four players can compete in any mode, but only in a turn-based, pass-the-PSP fashion. Because EA figures instances of PSP owners gathering to play will be rare for now, only two people can compete wirelessly at the same time. (Namco’s Ridge Racer allows eight players to race via Wi-Fi.) Also, Rivals’ analog control feels a little oversensitive at this time and could use some refinement.

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Super Monkey Ball Adventure (PSP)

 June 6th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

The Monkey Balls have entered the platforming zone.

Amidst the hoopla surrounding the announcement that Super Monkey Ball is coming to the Wii, it’s easy to forget that the Super Monkey Ball series isn’t done livening up the current generation just yet. In a departure from the stage-based Marble Madness-style gameplay offered up by the previous Monkey Ball games, Super Monkey Ball Adventure is taking the series into the realm of the platformer. At a recent Sega pre-E3 event we had the chance to get a peek at how the transition to more traditional gaming pastures is being handled.

Under the auspices of a love story straight out of Romeo and Juliet, it is up to you to rid the lands of the Naysayers, villains who thrive on the existence of the love/hate strife and do their best to suck the life out of the world. You can choose to play as one of four monkeys as you exterminate vermin from each of five worlds. Within each world you will be tasked with completing a variety of tasks, though the order which you can do so is almost entirely up to you. We say “almost entirely” because some of the tasks require you to gain certain abilities before they can be completed.

These abilities come in 12 varieties, playfully dubbed “chants”, which you can learn by helping characters you meet and collecting bananas. Four of the chants grant you differing degrees of teleportation powers, while the other eight represent a variant mix of original abilities and those which have been seen during minigames in previous Monkey Ball games. All-new abilities allow you to perform feats such as turning into wood and floating across water, rendering yourself invisible, and protruding sticky spines to easily traverse any environment. Returning abilities include fan-favorites such as the painfully obnoxious — when you’re on the receiving end — monkey glove and the more-innocuous monkey glide.

Despite the attempt at delivering a Monkey Ball platformer, Sega has cleverly incorporated traditional Monkey Ball stages (or “puzzle trays”) directly into Story Mode. Often times you will find your progress impeded by a locked gate. In front of each gate resides a portal and in order for you to open the gate you must enter the portal and complete the puzzle trays — about 50 in total, though only 60% of them need be completed in order to unlock the necessary gates. It should be noted that controlling your ball through the puzzle trays operates under the same principles as before — leaning in the direction you want to travel — whereas in Story mode the controls have been tweaked, making directional management directly controllable (a la a traditional platformer).

Fans of Monkey Ball multiplayer minigames have not been forgotten as three remixed minigames — including Monkey Target and Monkey Race — and three all-new minigames will be available. Of the three new minigames, we witnessed Top Gun, a more-complex take on Cannon Fodder whereby up to four players fire their monkeys out of cannons in attempt to destroy the blocks that make up the others’ towers. At Sega’s event, the almost embarrassing squeals of enjoyment elicited by grown men engaged in Top Gun was more than enough proof that at least one of the newly created minigames will be a big hit with party gamers.

Given the action-puzzle niche that Super Monkey Ball traditionally resides in, it will be interesting to see how Super Monkey Ball Adventure fares in delivering an enjoyable “alternative” style of gameplay when it’s released in July. If nothing else, gamers can always forsake the platforming elements and revel in the addition of dozens of new traditional puzzle trays and a combination of new and old addictive-as-ever minigames. If Story mode turns out to be just as engaging, then all the better.

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Silent Hill Shattered Memories (Wii)

 June 5th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

A full hands-on preview of Konami’s Silent Hill “reimagining” based on a showing at E3 2009.

I am not, generally speaking, a fan of survival horror games. Since Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil defined the genre all those years ago, developers seem content to smash together action and adventure tropes, creating a rough slurry of dodgy controls and unfriendly design decisions using clichйd slasher film aesthetics as an excuse for never bothering to evolve the games into something more refined.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, then, looks like a creation for people like me: survival horror for everyone who hates survival horror. Although it’s a remake (or reimagining, as the creators would have it) of a ten-year-old adventure, the move to Wii has given Konami and Climax an excuse to rethink many of the genre’s basic underpinnings. Gone is the clumsy combat; protagonist Harry Mason is even more of an average guy than he was in the original PlayStation game, a normal man trying only to find his daughter and incapable of fighting back against the nightmarish creatures who stalk him through the streets of Silent Hill. Gone are the cheap scares of dogs crashing through plate glass windows; instead, Climax is looking to the true psychological roots of horror by creating a game that aims to unsettle and unnerve rather than simply startle. Gone, too, are the horrible controls that seem endemic to survival horror; Harry moves about like a normal video game character, walking and running with the Wii Nunchuk’s analog stick and looking about with the Wii Remote. The Remote serves an additional purpose as a flashlight, which simultaneously illuminates important details and creates long, eerie shadows. Even amidst the light and noise of the E3 show floor, Shattered Memories was perhaps the most unsettling game I’ve ever played.

And that’s what impresses me most about Shattered Memories, I think. Where most survival horror games are content to put the player into opposition with the interface or with overwhelmingly impossible foes, Climax seems happy to smooth over those elements and lower the mechanical barriers to entry. Ultimately, this only serves to highlight the fact that your real opponent is your own personality and the way you deal with Silent Hill’s ominous world. Of course, there’s no telling if the developers will actually manage to make the psychological creepiness as big a factor throughout the entire adventure as it is in that opening half-hour… but for perhaps the first time ever, I’m eager to play a survival horror game to find out for myself.

I’ll probably leave a light on as I do, though.

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Ape Escape: On the Loose (PSP)

 June 3rd, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

Nub Fondling.

Ape Escape’s charm comes not from being packed with monkeys wearing pants and flashing lights on their heads, although that certainly doesn’t hurt. No, it derives from it being one of the first games designed to fully take advantage of the DualShock—and the ambidextrous analog-nub fondling that entailed. The PSP’s first Ape Escape, while offering a certain amount of nub fondling, suffers dramatically due to the control layout of the system. with two sticks, Ape Escape is a beautiful example of clever Japanese game design and is packed with curious and witty gameplay ideas. With a sliding PSP nub, it’s just another silly character action game full of monkeys wearing pants. Everything you expect is in there in terms of story: time traveling supermonkeys, hats that make you smarter, a brainiac professor apparently obsessed with monkey-catching paraphernalia, and a hero who adheres to pretty much every Japanese character-design cliché.

As for reasons to play it on PSP, it has to be said that the graphics are slick and vibrant, and the simple, family-friendly gameplay makes it one of those good first games to buy for a system because it won’t confuse people when you’re showing off your new toy. Minigames aplenty keep things bearable, however, and then, of course, it promises multiplayer games using the Wi-Fi connection. At the end of the day, though, it’s Ape Escape. You’ve played it before.

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GUN Showdown (PSP)

 June 1st, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

Where Sunset Riders meets GTA… on PSP.

Looking for a game that contains brutality, lawlessness, greed and lust all in one package? Look no further then Activision’s GUN Showdown. Last year’s console version of the epic gunslinger that gave players the opportunity to traverse a harsh, visceral and unforgiving landscape is now being ported over to the PSP so that players can now take the West with them wherever they go.

Controls have been slightly tweaked from the home versions to allow players to control the bean-eating, horse-whipping, dual-wielding Colton White on the PSP setup. The analog nub serves as White’s movement, while the four face buttons control strafing and looking up and down. R trigger is to shoot those varmints and the diagonal pad controls weapon selection and more. Speaking of shooting, “quickdraw,” GUN’s version of bullet time also returns in this iteration. Added weapons include mines and throwing knives.

Although GUN Showdown is considered to be a direct port, players can expect to find an increased depth of gameplay. Five new missions have been developed for the PSP version in order to extend the rich story (which was written by Hollywood scriptwriter Randall Jahnson of Mask of Zorro and The Doors). Character models also look good, bearing in mind the sacrifice in polygon count.

Another new feature this time around is a “pick up and play” mode. Designed to give players a quick burst of enjoyment, GUN features a handful of minigames that include shotgun games, Texas Hold ‘Em and one where you control a canon and try to prevent others from reaching your fort. Load times are lightning fast for these minigames, which is a great treat for those of us on the go.

Wireless multiplayer functionality provides players the opportunity to go head-to-head in a variety of modes including Deathmatch, Golden Cross and Texas Hold ‘Em. Deathmatch can feature as many as six different characters running around the screen at one time, which begs the question, “Who gets stuck as Jenny the prostitute?”

Given the widescreen 16:9 ratio, the camera has been slightly positioned to the left so that you aren’t always staring at Colton White’s back and have a clear visibility to any enemies in front of you, just another small convenience that Neversoft was sure to include.

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Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (PSP)

 May 30th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

We go behind closed doors to get our first glimpse of Kingdom Hearts’ new playable character.

What our take? Birth By Sleep is slated for a 2009 release in Japan, according to the trailer, but don’t count on it being the first half of the year. It’s a slick-looking PSP adventure and the action seems like a more interesting and varied take on the previous Kingdom Hearts titles, but the new trailer very conspicuously consisted of only environments that have already been seen in previous demos: the worlds of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, and an unnamed wasteland. Granted, new material was demoed in each area, including hero Ventus riding around on the back of the cat from Cinderella, the heroes talking to Sleeping Beauty’s brilliant villainess Maleficient, Cinderella losing her slipper as the runs down the steps of a palace, and a single new world: Snow White speaking to Terra.

More significantly, though, the new trailer shows off the game’s final playable character. The last look at the game showed us Terra and Ventus (who bear remarkable similarities to Crisis Core’s Zack and Kingdom Hearts II’s Roxas, respectively); this time around, the elemental trio is completed with the introduction of Aqua. Previous articles and speculation had referred to Aqua as “he,” but in fact the newest Kingdom Hearts warrior is a woman. Dressed in a black and white outfit with pink straps crossing her chest, Aqua wields a keyblade the same as her companions — in fact, the trailer ends with her confronting Maleficent, who changes into her dragon form amidst the field of thorns surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

Of all the Kingdom Hearts titles in the works, Birth By Sleep is the most impressive by far. Check out our previous impressions for more details on what makes this look like such a must-have for KH fans. And brace yourself for a little girl power.

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SSX On Tour

 May 30th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

SSX On Tour

Reach breakneck speeds, catch huge air, and become an icon with SSX On Tour. Progress from a slope-side wannabe to a black-diamond rockstar. Compete for medals or tear up the massive mountain, and make sure you look good doing it. Pull off jaw-dropping Monster Tricks to out-style your competitors while hurtling down the slopes at supersonic speeds. You create the hype – the hype creates a legend in SSX On Tour for the PSP.

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Hot PXL

 May 28th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

Hot PXL

Bringing fast and furious bite-size gaming to PSP system, HOT PXL comprises more than 200 deviously crafted mini-games based on a unique and original story premise that draws inspiration from street culture and the digital lifestyle. In Hot PXL the player is charged with guiding the central character, a skateboarder named Djon, through an extraordinary and colorful journey in a pixellated world. The world of Hot PXL features fast-paced and varied mini-games ranging from eccentrically outrageous to cool and clever, dipping into Atari’s rich video game history for inspiration along the way. The rapid gameplay requires players to draw on their reflexes and 2D gaming prowess to get through hundreds of inspired scenarios – whether it’s blasting through an old-school style video game, busting tricks on a skateboard or a BMX, stage-diving at a concert, or just trying to cross a busy digital street.

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Metal Gear Acid (PSP)

 May 26th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

Solid Snake gets tactical with this turn-based thriller.

Although Metal Gear Acid, Konami’s quirky offshoot in its popular stealth action series, has already seen release in Japan, questions still lingered about this intriguing game. What you know so far is that Acid is the essence of a Metal Gear title deconstructed into a turn-based card battle affair. And, from what you could tell by looking at screenshots floating out on the ‘net thus far, Acid also features wacky character illustrations unlike anything we’ve seen in the past from veteran MGS character designer Yoji Shinkawa. Unsurprisingly, MGS fans want to know: What the hell is Acid all about?

At its 2005 press event today, Konami unveiled, for the first time, a translated version of Metal Gear Acid for attendees to play. Through the power of English reading comprehension, we learn that the game takes place in 2016 on Lobito Island, a fictitious locale set somewhere in South Africa. Solid Snake is recalled back into duty when a commercial airliner is hijacked over U.S. airspace. To help him save the day, you’ll have control of both Snake and a new heroine to the series.

At the outset of each mission, you begin the game by assembling a deck of cards, each one with an ability unique to the MGS series. For example, a card featuring Metal Gear Ray kicks in a devastating group attack, while basic cards like rations, body armor, or your silenced SOCOM pistol let you use certain items. Strategy comes into play when you’re limited by the actions (or cards) in your assembled deck and are forced to adapt to the situation at hand. And as you progress through the game, you’ll chance upon new (and in some cases, rare) cards to add to your collection.

Do particularly well on any one mission to receive a high ranking, as well as points to purchase more cards for your arsenal. To boost the collectibility factor of Acid’s gameplay, the developers at Konami have packed the game with more than 200 cards to discover. Which brings up the Konami’s other surprise announcement for the game today: Acid will support two-player card battles using the PSP’s Wi-Fi capabilities. These battles (which take place within Acid’s VR Missions-like environments) become high stakes matches as you and your buddy wager rare and powerful cards as the victor’s prize. Acid will will undoubtedly also support card trading with friends and foes.

Graphically, Metal Gear Acid is a good measure of what the PSP is capable of as a launch title. Character models, while obviously not as detailed as their PS2 counterparts, look sharp and stylish, while plenty of particle effects garnish surprisingly detailed backdrops.

Metal Gear Acid is still on-track to be a PSP launch title this March. For more information on the Japanese version of Acid, look for 1UP’s import coverage here.

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Traxxpad (PSP)

 May 24th, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

Lay down some tracks with your PSP.

With the extensive amount of homebrew and multimedia content available on PSP, it’s odd we haven’t seen more companies experimenting with different types of commercial software for the platform. Stranger still, game publisher Eidos is releasing Traxxpad, which has nothing to do with gaming, and everything to do with music production.

Traxxpad is composed of four basic modes: R.T.I.S.T. (Real-Time Interactive Sequencing Technology, i.e. where you create the beats), MeLOD (the melody maker), MyXxer (for live sequence triggering) and S.T.A.C. (Studio Through A Console, for assembling full songs). We were initially skeptical about what a PSP could accomplish compared to music hardware and digital workstations with comparable features, but after several hours of cranking out studio-quality tracks, we walked away impressed.

Though difficult to decipher without the aid of the manual at first, Traxxpad’s floral menu system makes it a breeze to select options and sounds once you learn the layout. The quantized recording and matrix sequencing is also a snap to learn. However since you use every button on PSP, it may take a while to become familiar with the controls.

Traxxpad also sounds amazing. With our iPod in-ear headphones, Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 Pros, and the “auxiliary in” of an aftermarket car sound system, the highs were clean, the mids full, and the lows booming. Each of the hundreds of included samples may not be perfectly clean, but the overall sound quality is solid given the breadth and range of included sounds. Though we haven’t gotten a chance to try it yet, you can also record samples using an external microphone/headset and edit the raw waveforms in the Chop Shop.

Audio gear doesn’t come cheap, and while Traxxpad won’t be a replacement for a professional workstation, for the creatively inclined (but perhaps not so monetarily endowed) or interested PSP owners, it certainly looks to be worth consideration. With the ability to export your creations directly to a memory stick (in MP3 format) and to share your beats wirelessly, Traxxpad clearly aims to turn PSP into a full-featured musical instrument. Look for it on shelves later this month.

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SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals Fireteam Bravo

 May 23rd, 2010 › Psp games, video games › admin › Comments Off ›

SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals Fireteam Bravo

All-new single-player and wireless multiplayer gaming missions in four different Areas of Operation (AO). Players are tasked with completing 14 unique, realistic international single-player missions, including Chile, which is a unique AO only available in the PSP release.

Features:
Command your teammate in 14 different single-player missions, designed with detailed plots and varied mission objectives.