The Gamer's Quarter

silentmatt · Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 2:30 pm Post subject: Got PSP?

So... my singular hint to my Aunt and Uncle actually came to fruition this year - resulting with a PSP in my hands on Christmas Eve. Which is awesome (I made the hint when Portable Ops was released.... and now I actually get a chance to play it!).

The thing is - firstly, they didn't get any games when they bought it, so I am stuck with a console without anything to do with it (a situation I plan on resolving tomorrow) and, secondly, I have kind of ignored PSP hype until MGS:PO was announced. So, I have no idea which games are worthy of picking up when I hit up EB tomorrow morning.

In addition to MGS:PO, I was thinking of grabbing a copy of Burnout: Legends (one of my favourite series) and Lumines (despite knowing very little about the game in general). Anyone else have any tips of games to keep an eye out for? I remember hearing about a new Ghouls and Ghosts which would be fun....

I don't know anyone else in my town with a PSP so multiplayer components aren't really necessary... and I probably won't be taking the unit online often either. So, the single player campaign is the most important aspect in what I'm looking for.
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Isfet · . Joined: 27 Oct 2006 Posts: 107 Location: A New York

the PSP unfortunately does not have a huge library, so you need to hope that the games available are ones you'd like. the new Ghouls 'n Ghosts is pretty awesome if you like that series. there are also the two Mega Man games (Maverick Hunter and Powered Up) that are also a lot of fun, but: MH is probably only for those who really, really like the X series while PU is just an all around fun time. not that i'd discourage gettiing MH, as i liked it, but it might not really be for everyone.

do not, under any circumstances, buy Ys.

on the other hand, if you haven't played Valkyrie Profile before, i'd reccomend picking up the PSP port of the original.

if you happened to like Mega Man Legends (or Misadventures of Tron Bonne), you could pick up Tokobot. it'd also on PS2 now, but since you have a PSP, why not?

player 2 · . Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 585 Location: Madison, WI USA

Is this list any good?

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/psp/ten-games-every-psp-gamer-should-play-224494.php

They're missing Exit, though.
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Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

SuperWes · Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 2:13 pm Post subject:

Isfet · . Joined: 27 Oct 2006 Posts: 107 Location: A New York

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Hot Shots Golf is great, if you like golf videogames.

I love 'em myself and Hot Shots is a reliably good series of games, even if the upper-level AI gets exquisitely maddening in terms of always hitting the correct shot and draining unbelievably tough putts.

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

SuperWes · Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 10:32 am Post subject:

Did you guys see this?

(On Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror)
"It is, in a sense, the perfect game – the game is an adequate length, has an excellent story that is neither too emotional nor too detaching for the player, an excellent control scheme, a multitude of weapons, excellent level design, and, ultimately, was a joy to play and replay and replay... It is almost reason enough to own a PSP. "

Odd. As I said above, I really, really liked the demo but I don't believe in paying $40 for a portable game. This review may have been enough to convince me to go get it!

-Wes
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silentmatt · Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:19 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the lists!

I ended up going to a few shops the next morning and a pretty good starter pack. I found copies of:

-Lumines 1: which is great fun. I've unlocked quite a few skins and am at "2x a 4x4" in puzzle mode. I'm so glad I was able to find a copy of 1... Looking over reviews of 2 make it look pretty lame (what with all those cheesy music videos and such playing in the background).
-Burnout: Legends: which I love almost as much as Burnout on the PS2. I love that it is based on the 3 engine instead of Revenge... and even the fact that many of the tracks are nostalgic (as due to being ports) from that release. It is just too bad that the music selection is absolutely atrocious and you can't play your own tunes from the SD card during play.
-Bomberman: It was cheap and I have a soft spot for the Bomb. I am only a few worlds in - but it is really a perfect portable game. Easy to pick up and play for a few minutes and put down again.
-Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops: which I haven't actually played yet. I'm saving it until I give the rest of the games some adequate attention.

FortNinety · Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:35 pm Post subject:

I'm known around the Gaming Age Forums as that idiot that won't stop asking about Luminies Plus for the PS2. And the reason why I'm so deperate to know if its an exact port of the original, I will truly need no reason to get the system.

Okay, Exit and Wipeout are two other reasons. And maybe Hot Pxl and WTF. I like Wario Ware after-all.

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

dongle · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 290

Keita had nothing to do with it, fwiw. Also, just picked up a mostly mint condition PSP for almost nothing since the power switch was broken (but works if pushed with a pen).

SuperWes · Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:24 pm Post subject:

Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 9:00 pm Post subject:

Me And My Katamari is the devil!
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silentmatt · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:10 am Post subject:

SuperWes · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:44 am Post subject:

silentmatt · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject:

I found a pretty good deal on an Exit/Wipeout bundle online... I'll pick that up.

Thanks anyways!
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PSN: Twitch_City ||| Wii: 8083 5371 5767 6700
"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Exit is not a good action game. It is a pretty good puzzle game though!

Anyways, this thread needs more Every Extend Extra. It's a damn good game if you like the original (which you can play online for free).
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SuperWes · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:23 am Post subject:

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

Isfet · . Joined: 27 Oct 2006 Posts: 107 Location: A New York

with money i received for xmas, the first games i actually ended up buying were for PSP. they were EEE and MGS: PO. i've only spent about 10 or 20 minutes with PO (which was mainly story), but it seems pretty enjoyable. when i have more time i think i'll end up really liking what it has to offer. EEE, though, is incredible.

i had never played the free version (though i knew of it), so maybe i'm that much more impressed with it or something. either way, for $20 there's no reason not to get it.

i also picked up Lumines 2 because...well, i liked Lumines 1? also, i hadn't heard much about it (this was before people here expressed distaste for it), so i figured what the hell. it basically seems like Lumines but with different music. it's not bad, but it's probably not necessary at all. although there's some kind of (song?)edit mode that i'd like to check out (and will probably be disappointed with).

silentmatt · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 12:35 pm Post subject:

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Ketch · . Joined: 17 Sep 2005 Posts: 420

Myst if you like beautiful point-and-click mechanism solving games. (I haven't got a PSP though.) Exit sounds good.

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Oh, I missed the part where EEE turned out to be good (this is not sarcasm- the last I remember there was a demo that everyone hated, and all the preview videos looked bad, and I just haven't heard anything about it from then till now), but now I may have to pick it up. Without a PSP.

Hey somebody! Make some more good PSP games so it's reasonable to buy one! Hey Sony! Make a hardware revision and decent pricing for similar reasons!

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

I've been saying it's good for months now! Since the Japanese release last summer!

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

dongle · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 290

browse forums. I got a 1.5 firmware one for $145 shipped that came with six games (avg resale value: $15), a screen protector, and a hard case. I'm not bragging; deals like that are fairly common.

That said, some people hacked popstation to make eboots with cdda in a format that the offical psx emulator on the psp can understand so, yeah.

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Hey, can someone pick me up some cheap games for PSP over there? They are still like $60 here. Exit would be nice, and anything else decent. Wipeout Pure maybe?

Actually looking at the games available, I'm interested in:

Exit
Wipeout
Powerstone
Daxter
Syphon Filter
Tekken
Lumines
Megaman PU
Dungeon Siege
Lego Star Wars II

Seen any of these for cheap over there?
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SuperWes · Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:36 pm Post subject:

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Where would be a good place to buy them online? Are you talking about like ebay?
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SuperWes · Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:18 am Post subject:

silentmatt · Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 6:35 am Post subject:

SuperWes · Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 10:02 am Post subject:

silentmatt · Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 5:50 am Post subject:

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

Bomberman is a really good purchase, too. I would put it up there with Super Bomberman 2 and Saturn Bomberman without hesitation.
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Six · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 313 Location: montreal

I ended up getting one of these at the beginning of May. I like it very much!

It turns out that there's a simple reply for pretty much every complaint you can level at the system: homebrew. Long load times? Short battery life? Use a homebrew application to dump your UMD to solid-state media, improving both! Anemic software library? There are several excellent emulators available, including Sony's built-in, near-perfect PSX emulator. (There's even an early version of DOSBox and an x86 emu, though I haven't tried either yet.) Hell, you don't like the SMS-style text entry fields? Well, okay, those are kind of silly and I don't know why they're designed like that. But if you do a lot of writing on your PSP (which you might, since the web browser is surprisingly able) there's even a homebrew plugin that allows you to use a Palm wireless keyboard.

My favourite piece of homebrew so far, though, is the SVCapture05 plugin. This thing lets you capture screenshots at any time, which is a feature that I wish were standard in most games.

Check this out:

(Doesn't that guy look like he belongs in the Perry Bible Fellowship?)

I think the thing I dislike the most about it is that it seems prone to that sort of device worship that you see in a lot of iPod users. Seriously, I saw a whole suite of accessories with the tagline "It's your baby." Er, no. Though it is kind of like a temple; don't even think of touching the thing unless you've cleansed your hands, lest ye taint it irrevocably with your filthy mammalian oils.

ApM · Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:35 pm Post subject:

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

My main problem with the PSP is the design of the system itself: my hands cramp up after about 15 minutes of play. Call of Duty kind of beat that out of me though - painful, painful experience.

I would love to play my PSX games on the system - Bushido Blade, Jumping Flash!, WipEout, etc. - but I'm not a fan of having to buy a memory stick that's only useful in one device. I know I will eventually, but anytime I go to buy memory I end up picking up an SD card since it can be used in so many of my items (camera, pocket pc, desktop pc, laptop, wii, etc.). I used to play homebrew stuff but ended up leaving it behind when Death Jr. 2 needed an update and I was tired of skipping out on newer stuff. Is it easy to play PSX games on it? I was reading a readme file for one program, and it seemed like a breeze.
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fish · . Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Posts: 113 Location: montreal

god damn i hate the psp.
some good software on it every half a year or so but, even then, i prolly wont be bothered to deal with that ill-designed machine.

it hurts to use it.

i dont use it.
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Six · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 313 Location: montreal

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Can somebody point in the direction of decent low-on-the-l33t PSP firmware hax site?

silentmatt · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 7:35 am Post subject:

Scratchmonkey - check your PM.
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PSN: Twitch_City ||| Wii: 8083 5371 5767 6700
"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

Fred · . Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 99 Location: Iowa

silentmatt · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:54 am Post subject:

While the PSX emulation itself is pretty amazing... the lack of R2/L2 buttons REALLY isn't.

Honestly, there are only so many PSX titles that are really enjoyable on the PSP when you consider that fact.

That said, many don't require the use of R2/L2.
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PSN: Twitch_City ||| Wii: 8083 5371 5767 6700
"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999