Have you ever wondered if a haunted video game exists? These permeate Japanese folk tales and were popular during the 8-bit era of consoles and computers before the internet was a widespread phenomenon. You play as a friend of a daughter whose father is a video game developer. You unravel a murder mystery involving a haunted DS game and a fractured video game development studio. It’s an interesting meta view on the terrible world of stressful video game development. I don’t want to get too involved discussing the story, as what little is here is very short, running at about 3 hours in total.
There are 7 days before the haunted game turns you into a statue. You initially investigate the disappearance of your best friend’s boyfriend, but eventually, you stumble upon the cursed TS game. Yes, for obvious reasons; the DS is called the TS in the game. This game is a 16-bit RPG title that reflects the real world. When you hear your TS jingle (it’s the startup sound for the DS), you will pull up what looks like a simulated DS home screen and play this 16-bit game. It’s not an RPG in this game. It’s just a single town that you walk around in and talk to people to trigger events. The music and graphics are glitched out and creepy, and it helps give off a good atmosphere. You don’t enter this mode but maybe once per chapter for just a few short minutes. Each day is started with a visual novel type of dialogue, as the majority of the game is held in book mode. I love games that use this feature, but there’s no option to flip the DS for left-handed people. The TS RPG style game is played in regular mode, so you are frequently flipping the DS back and forth.
The meat of the game is the walking simulator-style touch screen-based exploring. It’s pretty bad, and my hands cramped constantly (at least using the DSi XL). There’s no option to just use auto-run all the time. The character walks at a doggedly slow speed and one that’s not practical for running away from ghosts. You need to hold the stylus in the center of the screen to run and turn faster. While doing this, you are holding down the D-pad and rolling your thumb around to strafe. This control scheme is fine, but I would prefer to use either the stylus for movement or just the D-pad. There’s little interaction with the environments outside of picking up key items and opening doors. You will be opening many doors and backtracking through many mazes. A lot of these have to be navigated in a specific order to avoid the ghosts that roam the hallways. These ghosts aren’t very scary. They’re slow and plodding and they just have black eyes and gaping black holes for mouths.
Despite the title being a horror game, there aren’t many scary moments. While the ghosts aren’t scary, there are a few jump scares that worked early on, but after day three, the game kind of gives up the horror part and focuses more on the murder mystery. The characters are meaningless, as the game is so short we can’t get to really know anyone. Every one has generic anime tropes to them, and by the end of the game there’s not much to care about. While the mystery is solved and has an actual ending, I didn’t care about anything in between. While the levels are great-looking on a technical level, they are void of detail. I liked the Silent Hill “Otherworld”-looking areas in the hospital, but these are just plain empty hallways with an occasional chair or desk. You can’t interact with anything to encourage world-building. The goal is to just open doors and get to the next cut scene.
While Nanashi no Game isn’t a good horror title or walking simulator, it’s short enough for a fun afternoon of the occasional creep-out. The music is pretty haunting, and there is tension in the game, and it uses the DS hardware well and in interesting ways. Just don’t expect anything really crazy here. If the controls were better, or at least customizable, the game would be more forgiving on that part as well.
Advent Rising is one of the most infamous video game development disasters ever documented. Its release was at the end of the Xbox’s life cycle, and it got buried under the hype of the Xbox 360. I personally heard about the game, saw the terrible reviews, and ignored it. In 2005 I didn’t own any Xbox consoles, so I didn’t care as a PlayStation 2 and PSP owner. I also purposefully didn’t do any research into this game and let my memory of 15 year old me thinking this was a large RPG saga like Knights of the Old Republic make the decision to buy this and play it. I even bought the physical strategy guide, thinking I was in for a 30-hour adventure. This is one of those rare moments I wish I had looked into the game first. Sometimes the idea of not doing research for a surprise is not fun.
You play as a stereotypical young cocky sci-fi pilot who falls in love with every woman he looks at, and everyone seems to hate him. His older brother is a well-recognized pilot. The game has a, new for the time, cinematic opening, but not cinematic gameplay. This is a very early 2000s 3D action game that struggled to find its identity and gameplay style, and everything in this game is poorly executed. It’s obvious after about 1 hour into the game that most of the focus was on designing the lore, characters, and many cut scenes, but we’ll get that soon. Right off the bat, the lead character Gideon is a terrible character and completely unlikable. He’s just obnoxious and so stereotypical for the time. I honestly wished his older brother was the main character instead. The opening scene is probably the only part that seems to have been made as intended. As you are driving your space shuttle to a docking bay, there are tons of spaceships entering and leaving, credits flashing on screen, and radio chatter, and it feels like what modern games currently do. As soon as you enter the space station, the rest of the game goes to complete crap.
The game controls are like absolute donkey dung. Gideon runs around way too fast for the small and cramped interior areas, but later on you get completely confused after the first level’s design. You play the usual early 2000s tutorial level disguised as a training competition to learn the controls. They are awful. The game uses an auto lock-on feature, so Gideon’s arms are swinging all over the place like a madman, aiming each arm at an enemy, which is pretty neat. The lock-on feature actually works, as he will lock on to whichever enemy is closest. What doesn’t work is you can’t release the lock-on. The camera will face toward whatever enemy is locked on, even if you are running towards the camera. This can lead to frustrating blind deaths from falling off ledges and into death traps. The only way to play this game is to blast everything in sight with whatever guns have the most ammo. There are clearly other ways the developers had in mind. Each weapon does something different. From slow-shooting plasma rifles to rocket launchers, but you won’t care when switching weapons is a complete chore. The dodge button is the same button for equipping in the left hand. The left equip is X, and the right equip is Y. This makes no sense. Other games did this better, like Halo before it and even Splinter Cell. Equipping weapons doesn’t need to be complicated.
I just lived with blasting everything in my path since it didn’t matter. Once I realized that the current enemies coming at me weren’t dropping ammo for my guns, I picked up their guns and just repeated this so I never ran out of ammo. Enemies come in many waves, and clearly the combat system they had in mind didn’t support this type of combat gameplay. When you’re blasting tons of enemies, you can’t stop and think about which weapon is good in each situation. All enemies attack the exact same way. There are some larger enemies like giant mechs or taller aliens that use a staff to deflect bullets back at you, but that’s it outside of the few bosses there are. Later on the game introduces a bunch of psi powers, and clearly this was not designed around the current working combat system because they are all completely useless. Switching to them is convoluted by pressing the D-Pad to select the power and then pressing X or Y to equip that power into the left or right hand. The game slows down in the background, but then you might want a gun in another hand. So, if you accidentally equip a power in the gun hand you had, that’s another step of finding a gun, pressing the correct button to equip, and then realizing the powers don’t matter.
There are a lot of psi powers, and most of them are given to you in the last two chapters of the game in rapid succession. You can lift, push, and throw ice spikes, laser balls, and even a shield, but they all fall subject to the terrible lock-on system. In theory, throwing stones and objects at enemies is a great way to save ammo, but you end up locking on to every throwable object in the game, and then the camera swings around to lock on to something else, and you have to just guess where the enemy is and fling the right stick towards said enemy, hoping the object lands. This also goes for lifting an enemy up and throwing them. Other games did this better. The shield is completely useless when it’s not much wider or taller than you, and bullets can hit you underneath it as it floats in the air. What were they thinking? Powers and guns level-up by just using them, but there’s no experience bar. It just happens. Weapons supposedly get more powerful, but I didn’t find this to be the case. This is clearly an unfinished idea.
The story itself is fairly intriguing. Aliens worship humans as gods, and the race of Aurelians wants to protect them from the Seekers, but their own race is divided politically on sacrificing the humans to save themselves. There are some plot twists of betrayal, but in the end this lore is never explored because there’s nothing outside of cut scenes. No dialogue between characters, no logs or documents to read. Nothing. The voice acting is also hit and miss. There are many actors who went on to do other things. For example, the voice actress for Olivia, Venessa Marshall, went on to do voices for more games and Wonder Woman for the current DC cartoon series. However, the characters are just not likable. The two female characters are treated like garbage by Gideon, and they get dismissed constantly. Every woman is wearing crop tops and low-cut pants, but the men are in full armor and gear. It’s just very much a product of its time. The industry has matured and grown since then. The alien races have interesting designs but only appear in a few cut scenes.
Let’s talk about the terrible vehicles. They are all floaty and don’t have acceleration physics, so to get over hills you have to use the boost feature, or you will just end up stopped. This boost feature pushes the vehicle by borderline teleporting it, and I also get stuck on every wall and object imaginable. Many games did this better too, like Halo. When you’re not shooting endless waves of enemies, you have to contend with awful platforming, as you will get stuck on objects, not grab onto walls, or fall into pits because an enemy jumped towards you at the same time. The game was only playable because the lock-on system worked well enough to just blast everything in sight, and I didn’t have to aim at enemies.
This leads into the terrible level design and lack of cohesion with the actual story and cut scenes. It feels like the cutscenes were made before the levels. There’s also clearly rushed scripted scenes as I would drive a car through boring empty tunnels and streets with the occasional falling bridge. Clearly, there was meant to be more. Where are all the people? Where’s the chaos of the war with the Seekers? There are cut scenes showing people running out of a city, only for me to suddenly find myself in a vehicle with nothing around. I would run through an enormous empty outdoor area with nothing but enemies coming at me and nothing happening in the background. It feels completely unfinished. These levels felt as if they were hastily inserted between the pre-existing cut scenes, making the transitions feel jarring. Gideon would be up against a wall, leaning around a corner with a pistol out, and I would then just be standing in a hallway with nothing that was in the cut scene around me. No one was screaming or running around. Just a dead empty hallway with a few enemies. It was so jarring.
The game is an absolute masterpiece of what not to do. The game is completely unfinished, broken, and buggy. Music will randomly stop playing. Sound effects won’t play at all, and the music will. Falling through floors and getting stuck on objects, forcing checkpoint resets. Even the need to not kill most enemies and just run to the next area for a cutscene to play proves that these levels were shoehorned in between already made cutscenes at the last minute. The levels are boring despite the game being technically impressive at the time with huge chunks of geometry and long draw distances. There’s clearly love here in the beginning, and the game just didn’t evolve into more than AAA slop that would be the future of gaming.
***My guide made it to the sidebar of r/PSP subreddit. Check it out!***
“Come Out And Play”
March 24, 2005, was a very important day to me. It was one of the most memorable as well. In 2004, when I saw an article for the reveal of the PSP, I lost my mind. It looked so futuristic. Sony created a handheld? No! It was mind-blowing and shook the entire game industry to its core. Sony is daring to challenge the almighty GameBoy and DS lines? Nintendo is no longer the dominant handheld maker.
I saved up my allowance for 6 months to get the Value Pack launch unit, which I still have to this day. I remember waiting in line at Game Crazy for 30 minutes before they opened, along with a few other excited people. I remember the employees playing their system inside (I remember talks of Lumines), and I also remember putting down my final deposit and coming up a single cent short. I didn’t want to lose my place in line, so I had my youngest sister run out to my mom for a penny when the guy behind me gave me one. I remember the joy and sheer excitement I felt when I saw my box get scanned and handed to me. Thankfully, we lived a few blocks away, so when I got home, I tore the box open (not literally), and I had Ridge Racer to play. I remember the sheer beauty of the LCD display and the widescreen picture blowing me away.
My Monster Hunter Portable 3rd PSP-3000 and launch unit 1000
The look of the system is striking still to this day, but in retrospect, the PSP had a rough life, and there were a few issues for each iteration, as not a single one was perfect. This is a guide to information on each iteration, their strengths and weaknesses, custom firmware, hacking, settings, and various other things regarding the system in 2022. The PSP has a vast library of games, and I honestly prefer it over the Vita. It held strong from 2005–2009 before sales and releases declined greatly. During those four years, the system saw some amazing things happen to it.
PSP-1000
The PSP-1000 was the launch unit. This is my favorite unit out of any iteration. Not just because of my nostalgia for it, but because it’s the only one that feels truly solid and well built. It has more aluminum parts, a stronger UMD door, and a bigger battery. Overall, the 1000 units will feel the most solid in your hand. The biggest weakness is the ghosting on the original LCD. These screens were pretty new back in the day, so no one really noticed the ghosting. What was there to compare it to? LCD TVs were insanely expensive, as were monitors for PCs. This stemmed from the panels having a low refresh rate. There were also issues with dead pixels. Sony had to send reps out to nearly every game store to explain to them that they wouldn’t warranty out screens with dead pixels, as this was expected with the technology at the time. My launch unit had a few, but some people had full lines out of the box.
If you find a launch unit, they usually come with a value pack box. While this is meaningless today, it was a great deal back in the day. Most units are loose, however, and they used to have the most hackable motherboards, but that’s irrelevant today.
Strengths
Best build quality of any unit
Best UMD door
Biggest battery
Most compatible with every custom firmware
Shell swaps
Weaknesses
Terrible screen with ghosting, dead pixels, and dull colors
Lacks the larger RAM that newer systems have
No USB charging
No Bluetooth
No TV Out
How do I make it a better experience?
IPS Panel Mod
You can easily make this PSP the best of any unit by just modding the IPS screen. Sadly, this isn’t exactly a drop-in mod. You need to solder a bridge between two points on the motherboard; otherwise, the screen will be shifted to the left and off-center. They are at least cheap, being less than $25, and are a breeze to install. It takes all the ghosting and “screen door” effects away and makes it the best panel out of any unit. The below shot is my board variation, but there are two others I will also list.
My own work is shown here. You need a magnifier to really do this mod
PSP Hacking: A Brief History
“Hello World”
Out of respect for the community, I wanted to put a little history behind the PSP hacking scene. I was there from day one. I remember that the Japanese 1.0 firmware PSPs had already been easily hacked, and Sony had fixed this between the US launch and the 1.50 firmware that the launch units shipped with. There was the MagicGate swap, in which you had to swap your sticks in the middle of loading a specific file to exploit a loophole. Dark Alex was the father of PSP hacking, and without him, we wouldn’t be here today.
ISO Compressor
He created the first ISO compressor called DAX ZISO due to the very small storage sizes for Memory Stick PRO DUOs back in the day. Remember, readily available MicroSD card converters from China weren’t a thing yet. You had to get either a genuine Sony card or a cheaper SanDisk or Lexar card. When the PSP launched, it only had a 32MB card for saves. That was it. Eventually, 64/128/256MB cards became available, and then after the first year, 1GB cards were around $70-$80. 2GB cards and even 4GB were available, but they were $200+. It’s stupidly absurd to think about 2022, but that was the state of removable storage media in the early 2000s. For a teenager with broke parents, I had to save all of my allowances to finally get a yellow 1GB SanDisk card, and I remember ordering it from Newegg, where it came in a giant box. I was stoked. I could finally put a single compressed PSP game on my memory stick. Yeah, laugh it up, but without insane compression methods, we couldn’t even play a single full-size game.
Pandora/JigKick
The Pandora battery was something I never explored, as I didn’t have the knowledge or know-how and was too scared to destroy my precious PSP that I had saved up for 6 months to attempt. This allowed you to restore a hard brick no matter what firmware you had used on the battery’s PCB. Dark Alex teamed up with the incredible Prometheus Team to create this magic.
From the PSPDev Wiki about JigKick batteries:
JigKick (also widely named Pandora) Battery is a PSP battery with its serial number changed to 0xFFFFFFFF.
You can either Hardmod a battery or Softmod it.
Hardmod is when you make a JigKick Battery by opening it up and removing a pin, this can be done to ANY battery.
Softmod is when you make a JigKick Battery by using a program. But it has to be suitable. New Batteries cannot be softmodded.
Hacking Tools
He also created the PSAR dumper used to unpack and decrypt Sony’s firmware. The creation of the TA-082 motherboard was a headache for the scene and was used in PSP-2000 models for 2.71. The great HEN CFW was created for these boards. The owners of this board could breathe a sigh of relief. He also created an update flasher that users could easily jump between 1.50 and 3.11 firmwares.
Dark Alex was involved in legal issues with Sony, and he left the scene right around its peak but emerged with team M33 to create the M33 firmwares most of us all remember and use the most.
Custom Firmware
For a short rundown in the history of custom firmware from Dark Alex to PRO you can check it out here. Today, Ark-4 is the most updated and recent custom firmware to replace all PRO firmwares from the past. It’s most customizable and easier than ever to install.
Once you install the custom firmware above, you will want some plugins to help with the quality of life for everyday PSP use. This won’t cover niche things like RemoteJoy or oddball hacks. These plugins are quick and easy, and they just make using the PSP a nicer experience.
Below are some of the most popular plugins with links. For a great source of almost every CTF theme available, you can visit PSPunk. These are some of my favorite below, but you can head to the ARK-4 wiki and check out all plugins that are supported.
This is essentially the biggest and most popular plugin for the PSP. CXMB allows you to use custom themes and is a good way to figure out how to install every other plugin.
This is one of the most useful plugins ever made, and it only became useful after removable storage expanded and got larger. I don’t recommend an SD card over 64GB, as the read speed of the PSP is very slow.
TempAR is superior to CW Cheat and is basically a Game Shark or Game Genie for hacked PSPs. It also works on PS1 games. TempAR offers advanced features like memory searching and debugging, and is easier to use for complex cheats, while CWCheat can be buggy and slower. Here is a guide and installation. A link to the cheat database is here. It’s being updated regularly.
Always wanted more than just the three standard (or four on hacked PSPs) brightness options? This gives you fine-tuning from 0-100 and allows you to set stages and even a default brightness upon boot in a config file.
This allows you to use Sony’s built-in software emulator to play PSX games. It’s an incredibly finicky plugin and needs exact versions for each firmware. When you load your game, you will be presented with pretty much every version of POPs from the previous firmware. There’s no reason to select anything but 6.61 unless there’s a compatibility issue. Use version 3 with ARK-4 since it uses the PRO API insead of ME (V4i). You also need this CDDA enabler plugin.
This simple plugin expands the clock on the XMB to show the day of the week, extended time, and various other clock-related things via a text edit.
MicroSD to Memory Stick Pro DUO Adapter
One of the first things you need to do is get a MicroSD adapter. They’re cheap on eBay or Amazon for less than $10, and they allow higher capacities than the MSPD. These aren’t made anymore and can be quite expensive due to camera collectors’ prices, so the adapter is needed. A 64GB one should be sufficient and allow you to put 50–60 games on it. more than enough. Cards over 128GB aren’t recommended as it slows down the XMB UI by having to read all the games when you open the games folder. It can sometimes take a couple of minutes, if you have any more than this, to open the folder. Also, avoid dual-slot adapters, as they are awful and of low quality. It also doesn’t matter what speed the SD card has. Even the slowest SD card is 10x faster than the read/write speed of the PSP these days. What will matter is using a USB 3.0 or lightning adapter to transfer stuff to the SD card, so you want a fast card for that purpose.
Battery
Update: 04/2025
It seems Ostent has created the best battery on the market with a new Ostent OS battery. Here’s a video guide on every battery currently on the market and how they perform.
There’s an issue with PSPs having swelling batteries that started a couple of years ago. If you have an original battery do not throw it away! You can mod the battery using the good Sony board inside and swap out the cell. Aftermarket batteries today are pretty terrible and barely work, but if you have an original it’s like finding gold. Here’s a guide on how to do the cell swap yourself.
If you don’t have an original battery there are a few Chinese brands floating around such as Ostent, Cameron Sino, Tomee, and Insten are the big names you will see. The best one to get is the Cameron Sino battery for any unit with my own testing and some other research by the community, however, there isn’t enough info to designate a definitive battery brand. Mileage has varied wildly and this is still a weird and challenging issue the community is tackling. There’s a PSP battery guide on the subreddit with people actively doing testing. The general consensus is that they are all pretty much garbage with charges lasting less than an hour, to dead on arrival, to leaking, to just not charging at all, and reporting stupidly inaccurate battery life. But, some people claim great results.
Accessories
There were a ton of accessories for the PSP. The most noteworthy ones are listed below, but you also had the same stuff that the Gameboys had. Magnifying lenses, various cases, both hard and soft, rubber grips, screen protectors, various charging cables, AV out cables (2000 and up), grips, stands, cleaning cloths, car adapters, UMD holders—you name it. The list goes on, and most of these are still easy to find today thanks to Chinese sellers.
Cases
Official Sony Soft Case
The case that came with the 1000 Value Pack is the one I use on my unit. These held up well over time due to not using cheap vinyl or plastic. It won’t survive a big fall, but it helps keep dust and scratches off the unit.
Wrist Strap
The official white wrist strap came with the launch Value Pack, and many people said it made the PSP look like a “woman’s purse.” While their insecurities within themselves clearly reflect the look of their handheld console, it’s a striking accessory with well-made leather. These also held up well over the years.
Logitech PlayGear Pocket Case
I had this case for quite a while, and it was popular because you could print out inserts for the inside of the case. I printed up tons of these and made my parents mad because I used up the ink a lot. Fun Times.
Camera Go!/Chotto Shot
The PSP was the first handheld system to do AR with the Chotto Shot from Japan. Only a few games support this, but it was cool to take photos on your PSP back in the day. It turned it into a cheap point-and-shoot.
There were two camera models released. The better camera was released in Japan as the Chotto Shot and was 1.3 megapixels, while later on, the Camera Go! was released in Europe and the US with a meager 0.3 megapixels for Invizimals. The Japanese camera is more sought-after and can fetch higher prices.
Chotto Shot 1.3MP
Camera Go! 0.3MP
My personal Chotto Shot. Bought this on PlayAsia back in 2009 for $60
GPS
One of the strangest accessories for the PSP was an unofficial GPS receiver. I believe it came with a UMD for the software and required a subscription, but this was the kind of potential the PSP had, and no one really carried it. It was truly a Swiss army knife of potential thanks to the accessory port, disc drive, expandable storage, wifi, and power. It’s a shame no one took advantage of this.
A good paring with a battery bank or modern chargers is a USB-A to C charger adapter. These must be plugged into an A to C cable as they won’t work with C to C.
External Battery Chargers
External battery chargers were big back in the day, as people would buy multiple batteries. After a while, third-party batteries started cropping up. They were bigger and offered “battery cover extensions” as well as various snap-in grips or backpack packs, so you would game for 10 hours, I guess. I never understood the extended battery thing. It’s not meant to be played for hours on end, by design. The PSP got four hours of life on the most demanding games (I remember getting four hours playing God of War: Chains of Olympus and nearly beating the game before my battery died), but they were there if you needed them. I personally just swapped out a second third-party battery at my job and got 6–8 hours on two standard-size batteries.
In 2026, your best bet would be to buy a regular battery bank with some sort of barrel jack or USB mini-B adapter, as all the accessories back in the day have long gone bad. I also wouldn’t use the official Sony wall charger unless you’ve re-charged an official Sony battery.
Sound Systems
Yep, these were things, and they were everywhere. There were so many different types, and I’m not sure if Sony even released an official sound system. I personally had the Logitech one, as it was the sturdiest and had pass-through charging. These were made because of the PSP’s UMD video and MP3 player capabilities, but most of us at that point had an iPod or another MP3 player. The PSP was a pretty basic and crude MP3 player even after all of its updates. The UMD video format quickly died, and I never could understand this even back in the day. I watched two DVD rips on this thing and gave up. The visible screen matrix made watching movies at sub-480p really annoying, and it was eye-straining. However, you now see more UMD videos on retro game stores than games. In 2022, these are nothing more than cool, weird thrones to sit your PSP atop.
Variant: A PSP console that has a different shell color or a unique design Bundle: Standard color PSP systems with pack-in games and content Note: Every video game-specific system usually came in a bundle with the game. These bundles won’t be listed to reduce redundancy
Photos for variants are thanks to consolevariations.com
Official Variants
Ceramic White – EU/JP
Ice Silver – EU/JP
Piano Black – All Regions
Champagne Gold – Japan
Rose Pink – Europe
Blue – EU/JP
Red Bull – Europe
Coca Cola – Japan
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops – Japan
Signature Tsukimi – Japan
Signature Kachofugetsu – Japan
Official Bundles
Loco Roco – Europe
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories – Europe
Daxter – Europe
Pursuit Force – Europe
Rain Wonder Trip – Japan
PSP-2000
“Dude Get Your Own”
This did not go down well. What was Sony thinking?
This unit was the first iteration of the system. It was also dubbed the Slim & Lite as it was 30% smaller and fixed the screen ghosting issue, as well as having a brighter screen and video output. There were more colors and pack-in bundles with this version, probably more than any other. This was the peak of the PSP life cycle, so Sony really pushed it hard. There were over a dozen colors combined from all regions, as well as super rare and more interesting special versions in Japan. If you don’t want to mod your 1000 screen, then this is the next best option, as it doesn’t feel as cheap as the 3000. It’s a good middle ground if you really want a large variety of colors. Sadly, the 2000 is the middle child with no real improvements available yet. Hopefully an IPS screen will be available at some point.
Strengths
Smaller and lighter
Brighter screen with less ghosting
Video output
USB charging
Extra RAM for faster load times from UMDs
Larger variety of versions and colors
Shell swaps
Weaknesses
Build isn’t as high quality as the 1000 model
Smaller battery
No Bluetooth
Still has some ghosting
Official Variants
Ice Silver – All Regions
Piano Black – All Regions
Ceramic White – Japan
Rose Pink – All Regions
Mint – Japan
Lavender Purple – All Regions
Felicia Blue – All Regions
The Simpsons – All Regions
Blue – Japan/US
Deep Red – Japan
Spider-Man – All Regions
God of War: Chains of Olympus – US
Bronze – Japan
Monster Hunter 2 – Japan
Star Wars – US/Canada
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Europe/Japan
Star Ocean – Japan
Official Bundles
Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines – US
Buzz: Brain Twister – Europe
1Seg – Japan
Madden NFL 09 – US/Canada
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Europe
LocoRoco + The Sime 2 – Europe
Daxter – US
PSP-3000
“Everywhere Just Got Better”
I wound up skipping the 2000 when they came out and got a 3000 unit shortly after release. The 3000 unit was the last regular PSP to be released and had a lot of cost-cutting measures. It was an extremely cheap feeling, but it had the best screen and offered USB charging. The 3000 is the most readily available unit on the second-hand market and the one you will find more frequently on eBay from Japanese sellers. However, there were still awesome special editions, mostly released in Japan, that were available. Like my Monster Hunter Portable 3rd one.
Strengths
Even smaller and lighter
Best and brightest screen of the three and better contrast
The 3000 model now has IPS screen options! This will remove the scanline issue from the original screen. While the PSP 3000 does have the best screen, as there’s virtually no ghosting, the scanlines really bother some people. Another video by Total Kommando shows how the laminated IPS screen loses a lot of contrast and color accuracy in favor of brightness. Remember kids, brighter isn’t always better.
Instead it’s recommended to get a non-laminated IPS screen. You can tell if a screen is laminated as it won’t have an attached glass piece. You will see some sold by Hispeedido who are well known for good quality screens for the Game Boys. The new screen from Hispeedido has fixed the refresh rate issue with PS1 games. You can find them on AliExpress or some retro game shops online.
Official Variants
Pearl White – All Regions
Piano Black – All Regions
Mystic Silver – US
Winning Eleven 2010 – EU/JP/US
Blossom Pink – Japan
Carnival Vibrant Blue – Japan
Camouflage – Japan
Hanna Montana – Russia
Dissidia: Final Fantasy – Japan
White and Blue – Japan
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep – Japan
Carnival Radiant Red – Japan
One Piece – Japan
Uta no Prince – Japan
Red and Black – Japan
Carnival Bright Yellow – Japan
Carnival Spirited Green – Japan
Turquoise Green – US/Canada
Gundam vs Gundam – Japan
Hatsune Miku – Japan
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker – US/Canada
Marine Blue – Japan
Black and Red – Japan
AKB48 – Japan
Dissidia 012: Duodecim Final Fantasy Chaos & Cosmos – Japan
Green Lantern – US
Official Bundles
Dissidia: Final Fantasy – US
Monster Hunter Portable 3rd – Japan
Poka Poka Airou Village Monster Hunter Diary – Japan
Jill Stuart – Japan
Hanna Montana – US/Europe
Rock Band Unplugged – US/Canada
BlueInvizimals – US/Canada
Silver Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters – US/Canada
Killzone + Tekken: Dark Resurrection – Europe
LittleBigPlanet – Europe
Black Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters – US/Canada
Cars 2 + FIFA 12 – US
Monster Hunter Portable 2G – Japan
Black Invizimals – Europe
Buzz – Europe
PES 2010 – Europe
Mod Nation Racers – Europe
Tomb Raider: Legend – Europe
My Monster Hunter Portable 3rd New Hunter’s Pack is straight from Japan. You can still get like new complete systems there on eBay.
PSP-E1000
Also known as the PSP Street, the E1000 unit was released in PAL regions only and is the least liked system of them all. Sony stripped a lot of features, including wifi, which isn’t a big deal today, but back then you couldn’t play multiplayer games at all with this thing, among other cut features. These are mostly sought-after by collectors. It’s also the most expensive to buy because of the limited quantities that were produced. Unless you collect, don’t bother with this unit.
Strengths
Same screen as the 2000
Smaller and slimmer than the 1000 unit
Weaknesses
Cheap build quality
No wifi
Mono speaker
Lacks color variants
No USB charging
No Bluetooth
No brightness setting
Non-removeable battery
No shell swaps
How do I make it a better experience?
Same as the above minus the screen mod. The E1000 is pretty much ready to go without any issues. Horray!
Official Variants
Ceramic White – All Regions
Piano Black – All Regions
Official Bundles
God of War: Chains of Olympus + Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories – Europe
Gran Turismo + Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories – Europe
Cars 2 + Geronimo Stilton Return to the Kingdom of Fantasy – Europe
Gran Turismo + LittleBigPlanet – Europe
Cars 2 + Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension – Europe
FIFA 2010 – Europe
LEGO Harry Potter – Europe
Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier + Cars 2 – Europe
Cars 2 – Europe
PSP GO
Also known as the N100 model, the PSP GO cut a lot of features in favor of a sleeker and more radical form factor, but it was too little, too late. Sony claimed there would be some sort of program for UMD owners to get a digital version of their games, but they couldn’t figure it out, and it failed. The GO is incredibly expensive these days due to its unique form factor and is usually mostly in pretty rough condition. It also requires different settings when hacking with custom firmware due to the internal storage. There was also the change in removable media format to the Memory Stick Micro, which is pretty much insanely priced these days. Sadly, there’s no alternative to the external storage option, and no adapters have ever been made. You’re stuck with just 16 GB.
To help stave off angry fans, Sony launched the PSP Mini program, which included small download-only games. A couple of months later, support was added for the PS3 and, at launch, for the Vita. There were quite a few mini games released, but most were pretty terrible.
Strengths
Solid build quality
Extremely fun and unique form factor
Bluetooth
Video output
Docking station available
16GB internal storage
Double internal RAM for faster UMD load times
Weaknesses
Smaller screen size
No UMD drive
Uses a new proprietary charging port
New external removable storage format is incredibly expensive and only went up to 32GB
Only two colors
No shell swaps
Non-removeable battery
How do I make it a better experience?
Replace Scratched Up Lens
These units usually come with really scratched-up lenses, but the problem is that they are glued to the LCD underneath. Thankfully, LCD replacements are cheap on AliExpress and cost around $15. You can also easily get the backside of the shell replaced as well, but currently, there are no front faceplate replacements.
Everything else is the same as above, minus most of the accessories. The PSP had an official cradle/base (which I have myself) to turn the system into a desk clock and grips, but that was about it. The cradle goes for a ton of money these days and is probably the most expensive and sought-after accessory for the PSP. There are two variants floating around. A seemingly genuine one with a barrel jack plug and TV-out and a possible Chinese knock-off that feels light and plasticky with a USB mini-B port
The PSP Go now has a cheap SD card mod, but the downside is that it’s internal and requires cutting of the inside of the shell. It’s a 10 minute install and I did installed two of them with no issues. They cost about $13 and allow you to completely bypass the expensive proprietary M2 cards.
The PSP Go now has USB C adapters for both data and charging. I highly recommend these over soldering a new USB-C port. It’s not worth risking the damage done to board and having to modify the shell.
Official Variants
Black – All Regions
White – All Regions
Official Bundles
Gran Turismo – US/Canada
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs – Fireteam Bravo 3 + LittleBigPlanet + Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters – US/Canada
The Games
If you didn’t already guess, the PSP launched with proprietary optical disc media. This was a flaw in the PSP design as it used up more battery life and more moving parts, which meant more failures, and it also created longer load times, but there was no other cheap way to gain gigabytes of storage. The Nintendo DS cards maxed out at 512 MB, and this wouldn’t do for Sony. They needed something that prevented them from charging $50+ for games and made manufacturing an expensive nightmare for publishers. To also prevent pirating, Sony was future-proofing their system in that regard as well, along with the proprietary removable storage. The PSP UMD, or Universal Media Discs (they were not universal), were small GameCube-size CDs inside a plastic housing. Sony claimed this helped protect the disc from scratches, but others were saying this was to prevent disc copying as they couldn’t be inserted in any disc drive. And it worked. There were no issues with pirating PSP games—physically anyway.
Not long after custom firmware came around, people started ripping discs straight to their hard drives via USB. In the pirate community, there’s no if, but when, and it didn’t take long. Within months, ISO files of PSP games were floating around the internet forums and various torrent sites. Was this an oversight on Sony’s part? Probably.
No, this doesn’t exist, but I thought it was funny. There was a rumored external UMD drive being worked on by Logitech that never came to be, probably due to copyright and patent issues, and mostly a lack of interest.
Unless you want to physically collect PSP games, there’s no reason to even bother using your UMD drive. In fact, not using it will protect the drive from wear, but if you have a UMD, it’s good to pop one in here and there to make sure it still works and to prevent parts from sticking. Some UMD drives are starting to have horrible grinding or scraping noises due to the lubricant drying up. A simple application of lithium grease on the worm drive usually helps with this. The drives got cheaper as you moved up the line. The 1000 unit has the most solid drive with a full metal slot, while the 3000 is just a door you smash onto the UMD and is mostly plastic.
Solid 1000 UMD drive
Cheap smashy 3000 UMD drive
The Best Mainstream Games
So, let’s open up with the games most people will recommend first, or what most mainstream gaming sites like IGN’s top 25 or something will always recommend. When you Google “best PSP games,” these are the ones that will most commonly pop up. Think of this as your starting list to get your appetite wet before diving into the “hidden gems.”
#
The 3rd Birthday (All Regions) – It’s okay. A spiritual successor to the Parasite Eve series on PS1. It’s a confusing and convoluted story with somewhat overcomplicated gameplay, but it was one of the last AAA budget PSP games and one of the last releases in general. It also looks damn good. Overall, it’s worth playing for its weirdness.
A
Ace Combat: Joint Assault
Ace Combat Series (All Regions) – A definitive mix of arcade and sim dogfighting. These were spin-offs from the PS2 series. Both look great and play exceptionally well.
After Burner: Black Falcon (All Regions) – I don’t care for this game, but it was really popular when it was released due to the many arcade game fans.
Ape Escape: On the Loose
Ape Escape/Academy Series (All Regions) – Ape Escape: On the Loose was a launch title for the PSP and sold very well. The typical mini-games and charm are here that you loved from the PS1 games.
Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines (All Regions) – A very faithful spin-off of the first game. It really feels like a full-fledged mini Assassin’s Creed game with an entire small open area to explore and the same great gameplay we loved from the first game. It looks great too and is considered to have one of the better stories of the AC series.
B
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II
BlazBlue Series (All Regions)– Some of the best-looking fighters on the PSP. These were faithful ports from the PS3 versions. They were packed with content and looked amazing and ran very well.
Burnout Legends
Burnout Series (All Regions) – Easily regarded as one of the best racing games on PSP due to the blistering framerate. Legends was a technical marvel back in the day and were one of the most anticipated post-launch titles for the system. Both games look great and feel like faithful ports of their console counterparts.
C
Call of Duty: Roads to Victory (All Regions) – While a very rudimentary WWII shooter in the same style as Finest Hour or Frontline, Roads to Victory isn’t a terrible shooter, but it’s incredibly basic. A quick play-through is satisfying as there aren’t many shooters on the PSP due to that pesky single analog nub.
Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (All Regions) – A highly regarded remake of Rondo of Blood, this is some of the best 2D platforming you will get on PSP.
Coded Arms
Coded Arms Series (All Regions) – This isn’t the most exciting series, but it’s heavily talked about as it was the first-ever first-person shooter on PSP, and I pre-ordered it. Despite how generic it is, and the procedurally generated levels, it plays well and has solid controls and visuals, it’s just basic.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (All Regions) – Oh man, Final Fantasy was at its peak hype was back in the mid-2000s. The Final Fantasy VII saga (that feels like it’s still going on today) was all about a Japanese mobile game, the movie, and this game. There’s a large divide with some people flat-out hating the game, but it’s worth a try even if you aren’t a Final Fantasy VII nut. It has some of the best visuals the system has to offer as well.
Crush (All Regions)- A puzzle game being talked about a lot? This is by far one of the most unique puzzle games released on PSP or ever to be quite honest. Use both 2D and 3D planes to solve puzzles by “crushing” the plane you are on to reach new platforms and pathways. It’s a must-play for any puzzle fan.
D
Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (All Regions) – This is one of the best fighting games on the system and was a fantastic and surprise launch title. It’s a port of the Dreamcast game and does an amazing job as well. A must-have for any fighting fan.
Daxter (All Regions) – It’s no surprise that a new Jak and Daxter game popped up on the PSP as the series was still going strong around this time. In fitting irony, tiny Daxter has his own adventure on PSP. It’s a solid and charming platformer and will make any Jak and Daxter fan happy.
Dead Head Fred (All Regions)- A weird and bizarre platformer that fits the PSP ecology. While the camera is a bit of an issue, the game oozes charm, character, and fantastic voice acting. It’s a fun romp that looks great too.
Death Jr. II: Root of Evil
Death Jr. Series (All Regions) – An incredibly unique platformer series that had charm and fun characters, but had camera issues that knocked it down a few pegs. It still has that “PSP DNA” that many games helped form in the early years of the system’s life and is worth a play.
Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days
Disgaea Series (All Regions)- There were two PS2 ports to the PSP and all to critical acclaim plus an original title. If you love Final Fantasy Tactics or turn-based strategy games then these are for you. Disgaea is well known for its humor, eccentric characters, and crazy story.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Dissidia: Final Fantasy Series (All Regions) – Of course, pretty much anything Final Fantasy is going to be talked about and recommended quite a bit. The Dissidia series is strange as it was almost a Super Smash Bros. clone but with Final Fantasy characters, and of course, it was over-complicated. It’s a weird game, and with this one, unless you like Final Fantasy, you probably won’t get into this. Tons of fan service.
DJ Max Portable
DJ Max Series (All Regions) – Originally released in Korea and Japan this was a fantastic rhythm game with addicting gameplay and music videos playing in the background. It replicates the Japanese rhythm arcade experience in handheld form. It blew up with many people importing the games and it finally came to the US with DJ Max Portable 3 and Fever. There are many versions and collector’s editions released in Asia territories.
Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai – Another Road
Dragon Ball Z Series (All Regions) – Yep, Dragon Ball Z fighting games were a huge hit on the PSP and most were damn good and looked great too. I remember my cousin being obsessed with these games on his PSP back in the day.
E
Echochrome (All Regions) – This debut made everyone go nuts at E3 2006. Essentially this is MC Escher: The Game. A very clever and unique puzzle game based on perspective kind of like Crush. The strikingly simple visual style helped push sales and is considered one of the best puzzle games ever made.
F
FIFA 09
FIFA Series (All Regions) – This series is generally considered strong the PSP. The last few entries were mediocre, but 09 and 10 were the best.
Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy Series (All Regions) – I’m talking about the core Final Fantasy RPGs here and not the spin-offs. Some people regard the ports of Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 4 to be the best out there in terms of content and sprite work. These ports were fantastic and a lot of people’s first time experiences with these games. There was also an ambitious 3D game called Type-0 that was only released in Japan until it was upgraded to HD for home consoles. It looked stunning. There was even an amazing port of Tactics as well. The PSP was a fantastic home for Final Fantasy.
G
God Eater: Burst
God(s) Eater Series (All Regions) – This Monster Hunter clone based on the anime was wildly popular on PSP. I couldn’t really get into it, but there is a solid game here, and the series went on the other consoles thanks to its popularity. One trivia fact is that the title was changed to Gods (plural) for the West as to not offend religious folks.
God of War: Ghost of Sparta
God of War Series (All Regions) – Well, you can’t have a Sony console without a God of War game showing you what it can do and then no one ever topping it and making you upset. Chains of Olympus was probably the single most anticipated PSP game ever next to Gran Turismo. I pre-ordered it the day it was announced and played through the entire game at work on launch day. It was gorgeous, it felt like the PS2 games, and it was the first game to overclock the PSP to 333MHz achieve what it did. Ghost of Sparta somehow topped all of this and is considered one of the best games in the series.
Gran Turismo (All Regions) – As stated above, Gran Turismo was a myth, a legend. The one PSP game to come out and somehow unlock hidden power no one would ever be able to achieve. To have the ultimate racing sim in the handheld form to never be topped again. While it took the entire life of the PSP for the game to come out, what we got was a solid racing sim that felt like the PS2 games we grew to love. The game upset people due to a lack of a career mode. It felt like Sony said, “Meh, just release it anyways the PSP is nearly dead”.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
Grand Theft Auto Series (All Regions) – This is probably the most played PSP series by far. When Rockstar announced a “port” of GTA3 for PSP it drove sales up and people lost their minds, but how would it work with only one analog nub? Well, it kind of didn’t, but it was still faithful to the PS2 game. The later side story was well received and the DS port of Chinatown Wars was fantastic. There was a long rumor of a San Andreas Stories that never saw the light of day.
H
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Extend
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Series (Japan) – The popular rhythm game saw the same treatment as DJ Max. Lots of people importing. The series has grown to become a fantastic and addictive game and has spread to many other consoles. The PSP versions had great visuals, catchy Japanese pop tunes, and overall addictive rhythm gameplay that only seemed possible o the PSP.
Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2
Hot Shots Golf/Everybody’s Golf Series (All Regions) – The Hot Shots series saw a lot of love on the PSP. Both entries are solid entries and tons of arcade golfing fun.
J
Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier (All Regions) – The last entry to the beloved Jak & Daxter series was on PSP and PS2 despite the PS3 being out for some time at this point. It wasn’t anywhere near as memorable as the original trilogy, but it was a fun game and well worth a playthrough.
Jeanne d’Arc (All Regions) – Considered by many to be the best turn-based strategy game on the PSP and one of the best ever made. This original game had a great story, deep strategy, and just overall tons of content.
K
Killzone: Liberation (All Regions) – While many expected a first-person shooter killer app we got a top-down shooter instead, but a damn fine one at that. The game feels like Killzone and looks great too. There is some strategy to the game, and while the story is lame, it’s all about the fun gameplay.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (All Regions) – Yeah, this was to be expected. The mid-2000s was the peak of Kingdom Hearts and this was easily one of the most anticipated games for the system. It look fantastic and was actually a lot of fun and felt like its PS2 counterparts.
L
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Series (All Regions) – A much-beloved port of the two chapters and they are great on PSP. This is by far one of the best JRPGs on the system due to its wonderful story and great characters.
LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
LEGO Series (All Regions) – The LEGO series was a huge hit on the PSP thanks to its portability. Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Star Wars all made it to the system and they looked nearly as good as the PS2 games. These are some of the finest platformers on the system even if you don’t care about the IPs.
LittleBigPlanet (All Regions)- One of the only PS3 series to make it onto PSP, this game had it all. Downloadable levels, a level editor, and a vast campaign and it looked fantastic. It’s one of the best 3D platformers on the system.
LocoRoco 2
LocoRoco Series (All Regions) – The tiny yellow singing balls were a huge hit for the early days of the system. The quirky Japanese gameplay was bright and fun and the game looked great too. While the physics got a little weird, the series is part of what makes up the “PSP DNA”.
Lumines II
Lumines Series (All Regions) – The launch title that really helped set the standard for the “PSP DNA”. It was a much talked about game with its unique rhythm and puzzle gameplay mash and was also an instant hit. The series later went on to continue on other systems.
M
Madden NFL 06
Madden NFL Series (All Regions) – Of course one of the most popular sports franchises of all time wouldn’t miss the opportunity to cash in on the PSP. This is one hit-or-miss series on this system. The quality is all over the place so the best thing to do is try them all.
Manhunt 2 (All Regions) – One of the most controversial games on the system due to Jack Thomspon’s violent video game crusade of the mid-2000s. The game was censored blurring out kill scenes that were later patched out for those with hacked PSPs. It’s a solid stealth horror game and one of the most violent on the system.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Series (All Regions) – Top-down dungeon-crawling superhero games were all the rage in the mid-2000s and Marvel was doing them the best.
Me & My Katamari (All Regions) – Riding off the success of the first two games on PS2 this was a solid entry to the franchise and worked surprisingly well despite the lack of a second analog stick. It’s one of the best “PSP DNA” games out there.
Medal of Honor: Heroes 2
Medal of Honor: Heroes Series (All Regions) – The other WWII shooter. Surprisingly this series had the more solid foothold on PSP and the most solid entries. Quick and fun objective-based first-person shooting action. Both games back to back are a ton of fun.
Mega Man Series (All Regions) – Capcom hit the ball home twice in a row with two solid platformer entries. Both are considered some of the best entries in the franchise.
Metal Gear Ac!d Series (All Regions) – Hideo’s card-based strategy spin-off was received with mixed reception, but strategy fans loved it. The first game is really rough but improves with the second. The series shipped with weird 3D glasses too.
Metal Gear Solid Series (All Regions) – Probably one of the most popular games on the system and a huge seller. Peace Walker was an official entry while Portable Ops was more of a handheld tailored affair with a follow-up re-release. This is seriously one of the best series of games on the system and helped define the PSP for what it is today. Not to mention the stunning visuals.
MLB 10: The Show
MLB: The Show Series (All Regions) – Probably some of the best sports games on the system and the most consistent with quality. Sony’s exclusive licensed baseball game was a huge hit on the PSP and looked good doing it.
Monster Hunter: Freedom 2
Monster Hunter Series (All Regions) – The Monster Hunter series blew up in the mid-2000s thanks to strong entries on the Wii. Portable 3rd is considered one of the best games in the series, but sadly never made it the West. These games are best played in Ad-Hoc co-op. I had many fun nights with a co-worker playing Portable 3rd.
Mortal Kombat: Unchained (All Regions) – Being a massive Mortal Kombat fan I was stoked to hear the announcement of Unchained. A port of Deception with all content intact? Sadly, there were to main factors that kept this game from achieving the greatness of Deception. No online play and horribly compressed sound. It is still one of the best fighters on the system.
MotorStorm: Arctic Edge (All Regions) – Considered by many to be one of the best-looking PSP games and one of the best racers on the system. The fast-paced arcade action was a ton of fun and sadly was the final entry in the franchise.
N
NBA 2K10
NBA Series (All Regons) – Now there’s a lot of different developers under the NBA license. There was EA’s NBA Live and Street, 2K’s NBA 2K series, Midway’s Ballers and Sony’s own series. The entire license was all over the court in terms of quality. I actually enjoyed Street quite a bit as I loved the console series, but there’s qualities to them all and you should give them all a shot.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted 5-1-0
Need for Speed Series (All Regions) – These were probably the most popular racing games on the system and sold a butt-ton because Need for Speed was the Call of Duty of racing back in the day. Neither entry is amazing, but they all have their qualities and are all worth checking out
P
Patapon 2
Patapon Series (All Regions) – The Patapon series was part of the PSP’s DNA and was incredibly unique and there wasn’t anything else like it on other systems. A turn-based strategy game fused with rhythm-based gameplay was addictive and fun and was a huge hit. I personally got frustrated with the first game and never continued, but I do want to go back and try again. It has striking visuals and cute characters.
Phantasy Star Portable 2
Phantasy Star Portable Series (All Regions) – Phantasy Star was a huge hit on the GameCube and continued on the PSP. While most popular in Japan, the series had an online co-op, but the single-player campaign was also there. It’s a fun pseudo-MMO and the closest we ever got to one on the PSP.
Prince of Persia Series (All Regions) – The Prince of Persia franchise was at its peak in the mid-2000s with The Two Thrones having just been released and the trilogy concluding. The PSP received a fantastic port of that game as Rival Swords, and a decent albeit buggy port of Warrior Within. There was also a port of Forgotten Sands that was completely unique for the PSP.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2013
Pro Evolution Soccer Series (All Regions) – There were many entries on the PSP, and like all the other yearly sports titles, the quality varied. It’s best to play them all and find out which one suits your taste the best.
Pursuit Force
Pursuit Force Series (All Regions) – A surprisingly short-lived series, it was so popular the game got a fun sequel. Tons of popcorn Hollywood action scenes and great visuals. Nothing to really complain about.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (All Regions) – One of the few mainstream puzzle games. Puzzle Quest kickstarted the match 3 RPG mash-up genre we know today on mobile phones. It was incredibly addictive as I remember clocking in 30 hours on the campaign before completion and I couldn’t put it down.
R
Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (All Regions) – One of the biggest profile games for the system, Size Matters smashed down on the Earth with a bang. It was everything we loved in the series and somehow managed to make playing with one analog nub fine. It looked great and captured all the fun from the PS2 games.
Resistance: Retribution (All Regions) – Another high-profile Sony exclusive. With PS3 games doing well, the PSP version was a third-person shooter and controlled well and looked amazing. While the story was nothing special it was the great gameplay that made this stand out from the crowd and show the PSP could do shooters.
Ridge Racer
Ridge Racer Series (All Regions) – One of the most high-profile racing games of all time just due to the fact that it was one of the biggest launch titles for the system and a return to a dormant franchise. The game looked stunning, probably the best-looking game at launch, and I remember picking up my pre-order two days before the PSP launch and reading the entire manual over several times. It was exciting and played so well. Perfect controls and tons of content. A sequel was released everywhere but in the US and was mostly just an upgraded version of the first game with new content.
Rock Band Unplugged (All Regions) – This was one of the oddest games to release on the system. A game that is normally totally reliant on external peripherals, but somehow made the game work by switching instrument tracks and using the same button timing system as other rhythm games on the PSP. It was tons of fun and was a full Rock Band experience with DLC songs and all.
S
Secret Agent Clank (All Regions) – Two Ratchet features on a portable?! It was crazy talk. Like Daxter, Clank got a pint-sized adventure all on his own and actually was overall better than Size Matters. The charm was there, the more interesting gameplay, and it just felt tailor-made for the PSP.
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 – Portable
Shin Megami Tensei Series (All Regions) – These were probably some of the biggest RPGs on the system. Person 3 Portable FES was a direct port of the PS2 game with added features and content. It was, and still is, the definitive Persona 3 experience. There were both PS1 ports and a Devil Summoner game exclusive to Japan.
Silent Hill: Origins
Silent Hill Series (All Regions) – It was a huge surprise that the PSP would get two Silent Hill spin-offs. Shattered Memories was a reimagining of the first game with more action and less horror, and Origins was a traditional game and was fantastic and looked stunning. I enjoyed the crap out of Origins and plan to back to it again.
SOCOM: US Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo 2
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Series (All Regions) – SOCOM making a showing on the PSP was brave. No one thought it could work, but it was one of the most popular franchises on the system. With four entries, more than even the home consoles, the series was rock solid. Playing through all Fireteam Bravo games will give you a fantastic tactical shooter experience.
SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny (All Regions) – Nearly every high-profile fighting franchise made it onto the PSP. Broken Destiny was a full-fledged original entry and featured Kratos as a guest fighter. It looked great and played well, but sadly there was no online play.
Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron
Star Wars Series (All Regions) – There were quite a few Star Wars games on the system from LEGO to three whole Battlefront games!. There were also mediocre ports of The Force Unleashed and a Clone Wars game. Overall, the quality was all over the place, but you should check them all out.
Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX (All Regions) – Considered by many as the definitive version of the game, the PS1 port is a fantastic entry and looks great to boot. It was the only Street Fighter game we got and thankfully it was a good one. Japan got Zero 3 which was a favorite for importers.
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror
Syphon Filter Series (All Regions) – Syphon Filter is one of my favorite video game series of all time. I played the hell out of the first two games as a kid. My dad and I would rent it every weekend until we eventually just bought them and memorized every enemy placement, weapon, and could eventually get through each game without ever getting hit. The level design was just so fantastic, and when the series got revived for PSP I was so stocked. It was a pre-order for me and I even wrote my own walkthrough guide for them both. That’s how much I love this series. It showed how to do shooters right on the PSP despite its limitations. These are considered the best shooters on the system bar none.
T
Tactics Ogre: Lets Us Cling Together (All Regions) – Despite the strange name, Tactics Ogre is considered by many to be superior to Final Fantasy Tactics in both story and gameplay. While this game didn’t sell very well it is one of the most beloved PSP exclusives mainly because it’s a remake of the SNES game. If you want to sink into a deep game with a lot of story this is one of the best on the system to do it.
Tekken: Dark Resurrection
Tekken Series (All Regions) – Tekken 6 and Dark Resurrection are one of the best fighters on the PSP. The visuals are stunning, the controls are great, and it’s just an overall solid 3D fighter which there weren’t many good ones on the system.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour
Tiger Woods PGA Tour Series (All Regions) – Just like any sports franchise on the PSP the quality was all over the place. While Tiger Woods 07 would be considered the best overall, you need to try them all to really find out what you like. They’re still solid titles on the system with some great graphics and packed campaigns.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Tomb Raider Series (All Regions) – Both Tomb Raider ports are some of the best on the system. These are nearly identical to their PS2 counterparts with fantastic controls and excellent visuals.
Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 Remix
Tony Hawk Series (All Regions) – Underground 2 Remix was an amazing game on the system. It ran well, looked good, controlled perfectly, and was packed full of content. I played this game religiously when I was able to pick it up for cheap. It’s just one of the best games on the system. Period. Project 8 was decent, but not the kind of quality that Remix was.
Twisted Metal: Head-On (All Regions) – An ambitious launch title for the PSP. Just one more franchise to come out of the woodwork for the little system that took the world by storm. It was one of the only online infrastructure games back in the day as well.
V
Valkyria Chronicles II (All Regions) – Sadly, the sequel to the popular strategy game was a PSP exclusive and has remained so. An odd choice for sure, but it’s one of the best strategy games on the system and is rock solid all the way around.
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (All Regions) – A port of the PS1 game, Lenneth is one of the best RPGs on the system. It has beautiful art, fun characters, and stellar gameplay. The PSP was truly an RPG lover’s dream machine and has some of the highest quality ports of any system to date.
W
Wipeout Pure
Wipeout Series (All Regions) – Wipeout Pure was one of the best launch titles for the PSP and featured a hidden web browser for DLC. I remember leeching off of a neighbor’s Wifi (we didn’t have any wifi devices in 2005 yet) and just thought it was so school despite how terrible the experience was. The series was colorful, had a great framerate, and just looked good.
WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2007
WWE Smackdown vs RAW Series (All Regions) – I’m not a wrestling fan by any stretch of the measure, but this was a very popular series on PSP. 2006 suffered from insanely long load times on the UMD and every entry has varying levels of quality in different areas like any other sports series. Play them all to find your favorite.
X
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (All Regions) – Seriously, this is one of the best dungeon crawlers on PSP and there aren’t many. Tons of characters, content, and the graphics were great.
Y
Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim
Ys Series (All Regions) – 2D 16-bit RPGs were a staple for the PSP thanks to many ports from the SNES. Ys had a few solid entries on the system.
The Best “Hidden Gems” or Underrated Games
I want the term “hidden gems” to go away. This term just isn’t relevant anymore as every single retro game from niche and obscure to the mainstream has been documented and probably reviewed numerous times on YouTube. Even the Phillips CD-i and Nokia N-Gage aren’t obscure or hidden anymore. If they were then they wouldn’t be $400 on eBay because they would be “hidden”. This term was more relevant 15 years ago when you walked into a retro game store and someone suggested said game to you. You then took it home and realized how fun it was and why you overlooked it. That’s a hidden gem.
Thanks to the internet that term lost all meaning and the same goes for “underrated”. I prefer the term underappreciated. Underrated in terms of critical reception maybe, but most gamers cherish the underdog so nothing is really underrated anymore, but can still be underappreciated because a casual onlooker may not like the screenshots or understand it from a first glance. Games like Gunpey or Beaterator for PSP may be new to you but just Google those games. Tons of YouTube videos, and top-something lists with them in it. Because of the internet, nothing can truly be hidden anymore. Once something is dug up everyone rushes to go buy it to stick it in their collection.
The following games are underappreciated due to one factor or another. Not enough marketing, low budget, low print run, bad release timing, too hard to understand at first glance, not a big hit with critics, a niche genre, or many other reasons.
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7th Dragon 2020-II
7th Dragon Series (Japan) – A fun Japanese-only RPG with great graphics and fun gameplay. There is a fan translation patch available.
A
Activision Hits Remixed (All Regions) – Fans of 8-bit consoles will have a blast here. Well emulated classics for Atari 2600. Includes 44 games.
Adventures to Go! (All Regions) – A really good dungeon crawler that wasn’t American made.
ATV Offroad Fury Pro (All Regions) – Probably the best in the MX/ATV lineup on PSP in terms of visuals, physics, and content. It was a rock-solid well-balanced racing game, but other entries are worth taking a look at too.
B
Beatorator (Europe) – A well-made music creator from Rockstar Games and producer Timbaland
The Bigs
The Bigs Series (US) – Usually left in the dust by EA’s MLB series, The Bigs was a better baseball game on PSP, but sadly just couldn’t find the sales to keep it up.
Bleach: Heat the Soul 5
Bleach: Heat the Soul Series (Japan) – While incredibly redundant this was a smash hit on PSP in Japan and attracted many importers. There are subtle differences between all seven games so playing them all is the only way to find out what you prefer.
Bomberman (EU/JP) – While it didn’t have any online replay it was the most faithful in the series for consoles up to that point and was a solid entry.
Brandish: The Dark Revenant (US) – Released very late and long after the death of the PSP (2015!) Brandish gave us one last dungeon crawler that was surprisingly fun and well made.
Brave Story: New Traveler (All Regions) – This was actually quite a high-profile RPG since it was released early in the PSP’s life, but no one paid attention. It had great visuals, fun combat, and an entertaining story.
Brothers in Arms: D-Day (All Regions) – While the game was a big clunky it had fantastic visuals and played quite well. All three major WWII shooter players made it onto the PSP, which is quite a surprise in hindsight.
Bust-A-Move Deluxe (All Regions) – This is one of the coziest puzzle games on PSP. While it doesn’t do anything new or exciting it delivers the same great Bust-A-Move gameplay we all love with bright colorful visuals.
Buzz!: Master Quiz
Buzz! Series (Europe) – No, it’s not a game about Kevin McAlister’s brother. A Europe exclusive franchise, Buzz! is a fun trivia game series for people who love that kind of thing. No crazy button peripherals here, but multiplayer is a blast.
C
Cake Mania: Baker’s Challenge (US) – If you love time management games like Diner Dash then this game is up your alley. It was released as part of the “PSP Minis” library.
Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded
Capcom Classics Collection Series (All Regions) – A good amount of classic Capcom games were released on two different UMDs. Games like 19xx, Street Fighter II, Ghosts and Goblins, Mercs, Exed Exes, and many others were well put together and run great here.
Cars
Disney/Pixar Cars Series (All Regions) – Yep, I’m dead serious. The Cars series was pretty solid on PSP and offered a fun arcade racing experience. It looked good and played surprisingly well. Because of the kids-only relationship with Cars, no one really gave it the time of day.
Chili Con Carnage (All Regions) – A crazy over-the-top third-person shooter with lots of humor injected in. It had an unfair checkpoint system, but other than that, it was a solid action title.
Class of Heroes 2
Class of Heroes Series (All Regions) – A “labyrinth crawler” with surprising depth and a fun cast of characters. You’ll definitely sink dozens of hours into the entire series.
Crash of the Titans
Crash Series (All Regions) – Crash Bandicoot didn’t do too well after his PS1 outings. The Crash games that came after were mediocre to just okay at best. The PSP Crash games are decent fun, but nothing amazing. They scratch that itch for a platformer and a kart racing game on the PSP, but nothing more.
Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars (All Regions) – A fun and faithful port of both Dreamcast games. While the graphics haven’t improved much it will satisfy the arcade racing craving you might have. There was even online multiplayer at the time.
Crimson Gem Saga (All Regions) – A sequel to Astonisha Story, and a much better game overall, and it offers some wonderful characters and turn-based strategy gameplay. If you finished up Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics then this could be your next time sink.
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Dante’s Inferno (All Regions) – A cut-down version of the console game content-wise, but the gameplay is rock solid and feels similar to God of War. The console version was short enough as it was, but some boss fights are stripped down to cut-scenes instead. Despite that, the gameplay itself holds up for a few hours of fun.
Dead to Rights: Reckoning (All Regions) – Released alongside the console game Dead to Rights II, the series had one last go before finally disappearing into the ether. It’s a decent third-person shooter all around.
Def Jam: Fight for NY – The Takeover (All Regions) – Def Jam: Fight for NY is one of the best fighting games ever made. Hate the hip hop part of it all you want, all though it features tons of “golden era” hip hop artists from the 90s-mid 2000s, The Takeover was released a year after the console versions with great visuals, solid controls, and tons of content. Easily one of the best fighters on PSP.
Diner Dash: Sizzle & Serve (All Regions) – A port of the DS version, this is Diner Dash greatness through and through. While the DS version is superior thanks to its touch screen controls, it works fine here.
Downstream Panic! (All Regions) – A mix between LocoRoco and Worms. This is truly one of the most unique puzzle games on the system and was criminally overlooked.
Driver ’76 (All Regions) – A prequel to Driver: Parallel Lines for PS2, this is a fun and action-packed driving game. Lots to really like here.
Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony (All Regions) – a big boy dungeon crawler on a handheld? Many were skeptical, but it really shined and is one of the better dungeon crawlers on the system albeit very rudimentary and basic.
E
Every Extend Extra (All Regions) – Tetsuya Mitzuguchi was at his peak in the mid-2000s. Riding off the success of Lumines his next music-based game didn’t make as large of a splash but was still excellent. This is a bigger version of a freeware game he released for PC back in 2004. He also went on to create the excellent Meteos for DS.
Exit
Exit Series (All Regions) – A very unique puzzle-platformer that had that “PSP DNA”. The game was colorful and tons of fun and had downloadable levels. One of the better puzzle games for the system for sure.
F
Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake (All Regions) – While this was better played with other people, Fat Princess is a cartoony and whimsical tower defense-like game that fits well on the PSP.
FlatOut: Head On (All Regions) – This is what all FlatOut fans wanted. A good portable experience. Spectacular crashes, a great sense of speed, and awesome graphics. It’s one of the better racing games and was sadly completely overlooked by most.
Football Manager Handheld Series (Europe) – If you love spreadsheets you will love this game. Jokes aside, there are many fans of the Football Manager series and it’s pretty decent on the PSP despite the control limitations. If you want some deep strategy involving your favorite sport there’s nothing quite like it on the system.
G
G-Force (All Regions) – A surprisingly good movie tie-in. No joke. While the game is easy it has charm and will keep you interested until the end.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (All Regions) – Like the anime or not, this was only the second FPS game to be released on PSP right after Coded Arms and before Metroid Prime: Hunters on DS came out. This one kind of did it better. It had a less generic feel to it and did well for the hardware’s limitations.
Gitaroo Man Lives! (All Regions) – A faithful port of the PS2 game. This quirky Japanese rhythm game is in the same lane as Parappa the Rapper. Great tunes and a fun game all around.
Gladiator Begins (All Regions) – A sequel to the PS2 game Colosseum: Road to Freedom this really took me by surprise. I didn’t even see this one come out until years after. It’s a solid Gladiator sim and has solid controls and great visuals.
Gradius Collection (All Regions) – There weren’t many shmups for the PSP, but Gradius Collection is probably the best. Five Gradius games on one UMD and all run great. What more could you want?
Grand Knights History (Japan) – Sadly, this never saw a western release just like Princess Crown, but there is a complete fan translation. Vanillaware has a unique art style and fantastic 2D gameplay. This turn-based strategy game oozes color and personality and is one of the best on the system.
GripShift (All Regions) – One of the best arcade racers on the PSP. Fast-paced action, crazy tracks, and the level editor was a huge hit.
Guilty Gear Judgement
Guilty Gear Series (All Regions) – Three solid fighters on PSP and were all upgrades to previous entries in the series, but that’s okay. Great visuals, excellent controls, and overall just added on to the solid lineup of great 2D fighters.
Gun: Showdown (All Regions) – A stripped-down version of the console games, but not in a negative way. They took the best parts of the console games and stuck them on the PSP. There isn’t an open-world here, but it’s best you will get to Red Dead Redemption in portable form.
Gunpey (All Regions) – Another of Tetsuya’s weirdness, but more on the Rez end of bizarre. It doesn’t meld the magic of music and puzzles like Lumines did, but you should play this more for its oddball magic than the gameplay.
Gurumin: A Monsterous Adventure (All Regions) – This is seriously one of the best action games on the PSP hands down. It received raving reviews, but no one paid attention because of its quirky Japanese exterior and cutesy visuals. I think we’ve all learned that cute visuals don’t make a bad or easy game. Incredibly charming and addictive throughout.
H
Half-Minute Hero (All Regions) – Probably the most unique and original JRPG on the system. You literally have to beat the game in 30 seconds. Level-up, battle, buy equipment, and more all within a 30 second time limit. It’s hard to explain, but it’s something that must be experienced. It’s also pretty funny.
Hammerin’ Hero (All Regions) – It may be simple, but its charm is what will get you. This is one solid platformer with that fun Japanese flair from the early 2000s.
Harvest Moon: Hero of Leaf Valley
Harvest Moon Series (All Regions) – Three games came to the PSP, and while not critical successes they are decent sim life fun. A PS1 port also made it over. If you already love the series or want something similar to Animal Crossing this is the closest you will get.
Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (All Regions) – A hilarious FMV game based on the Adult Swim show. There’s tons of humor and video game cameos thrown in. It’s really short but super entertaining.
Hexyz Force (All Regions) – The story won’t blow you away or have you weeping tears, but the gameplay and item management here is stupendous. A really fun tactical RPG that was sadly missed by most.
Hot Pixel (All Regions) – Yep, you guessed it. This is the PSP’s answer to WarioWare. Lots of fun and silly microgames and just as much of a blast as the WarioWare series. It’s too bad no one bought it.
I
The Idolm@ster Shiny Festa: Funky Note
The Idolmaster Series (Japan) – These were huge hits in Japan ending up in the second spot in the sales charts upon release. There are three different versions with different lead idols, but what’s inside are super addictive and charming rhythm games in the same spirit as the Hatsune Miku series. Thankfully there are fan translations now.
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (All Regions) – This original Indiana Jones title is a stripped-down version of the PS2 game, but it’s rock-solid action with great visuals.
Infected (All Regions) – This was one of the first post-launch releases and was highly anticipated. This third-person shooter had a unique gameplay loop and online feature. Shooting a hole in a zombie would allow you to use your blood and infect others and start a chain reaction to rack up points.
J
Jackass: The Game (All Regions) – This was based on the movie at the time and featured acting from the original cast. The mini-games are fun, the action is dumb, and it’s pretty hilarious and was done surprisingly well.
James Bond 007: From Russia with Love (All Regions) – The only James Bond game that made it to PSP. Various developers have been able to perform amazing feats of programming for handheld Bond games and the PSP looks fantastic and plays well.
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights
Juiced Series (All Regions) – Another really fun arcade racing series. Looks good too.
Justice League Heroes (All Regions) – One of the few good dungeon crawlers on PSP. Marvel had one of the best and DC’s take isn’t too bad. Great graphics help too.
K
Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble (All Regions) – A Japanese game that made a surprising debut in the West. Kenka Bancho is a fantastic beat ’em up with lots of boss fights and plenty of action.
The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga (All Regions) – For a system that didn’t have the best D-pad for fighters it sure did get a lot of them. This is a fantastic collection of Kind of Fighters games from the past and they run well and look great. It had a bunch of extra content to unlock too.
Kingdom of Paradise (All Regions) – This game is reminiscent of PS2 action games of yesteryear such as Genji, Onimusha, and others of its ilk. It’s a bit clunky, but still fun and captures that moment of nostalgia.
Knights in the Nightmare (All Regions) – A really high-profile SRPG on DS ported to PSP and was well done. Be warned that the game has a steep learning curve and can be hard as balls. There are multiple endings and should be great for people wanting a deep strategy game to sink into.
L
Lemmings (All Regions) – A fantastic port of the original game with 36 new levels and the ability to download user-made levels. While that isn’t possible anymore what’s here is awesome. If you love deep puzzles this is a game for you.
The Lord of the Rings: Tactics (All Regions) – Another good strategy game on PSP. It’s crazy how many good strategy games this system got. The game looks good and is a strange one-off game for the system that you can’t get anywhere else.
Lunar: Silver Star Harmony
Lunar Series (US/JP) – The Lunar series was ported with care and quality. The first game was released only in the US while the second game was Japan exclusive. It’s a real shame there was no Western release, but they are both excellent games still.
M
M.A.C.H.: Modified Air Combat (Europe) – This air combat sim was exclusive to Europe and played well and looked great. There were a surprising number of combat sim games on PSP and this was among the best.
MediEvil: Resurrection (All Regions) – A remake of the original game. This was very well done minus the camera issues, but it looked good and is one of the “PlayStation DNA” games that got ported to the system.
Mercury Meltdown
Mercury Series (All Regions) – This is one of the best puzzle games on PSP. The physics are awesome and the clever puzzle designs are addictive. Color coding to open gates and switches, tilting the world to move the mercury and split it apart. It’s a unique game that really needs another entry.
Metal Slug XX
Metal Slug Series (All Regions) – While XX was its own game, the Anthology has all six games and are fantastic ports and play well. The D-pad isn’t the most ideal, but the fact that all six games exist on one UMD is unreal.
Miami Vice: The Game (All Regions) – What. A good movie tie-in game?! Yeah, it’s a surprisingly solid third-person shooter that was heavily overlooked due to the terrible movie and the whole tie-in stereotype. It’s not a super interesting game, but there are very few shooters on PSP to begin with.
Michael Jackson: The Experience (All Regions) – This is an interesting take on the game. While the console versions were motion-based, the PSP one had chibi Michael and button presses similar to Hatsune Miku. It’s not the best version, but it has all the same tracks and is a lot of fun if you are a Michael Jackson fan.
Midnight Club: L.A. Remix
Midnight Club Series (All Regions) – Two console racing games ported with grace on the PSP. While LA Remix has some slowdown unless you overclock your system they both play well. The PSP had tons of great arcade racers and these are no exception.
ModNation Racers (All Regions) – An ambitious if generic kart racer that has a good amount of content and colorful visuals. It’s safe and fun.
MX vs ATV Untamed
MX vs ATV Series (All Regions) – The PSP was not short of racing games and the long-running motocross series made it over in two releases. Both are good for a different reason so I suggest trying them all out.
Myst (EU/JP) – Never released in the US. Myst is one of the few adventure games on the system and this is a fine port of the PC classic.
N
N+ (All Regions) – If you like Super Meat Boy you will love N+. A sadistic platformer with over 200 levels mixed from other versions as well as a level editor with sharable maps.
Namco Battle Anthology
Namco Museum Series (All Regions) – This was a popular series that came back from PS1. Five volumes and a Battle Anthology. A lot of classic Namco titles if that’s your thing.
NCAA Football 09
NCAA Football Series (US) – Probably the best football series on PSP. Even though it’s college football, the NCAA series has long been regarded as superior to Madden.
NFL Street 3
NFL Street Series (US) – Ports of the arcade NFL games. This whole Street series has been highly regarded among fans and should really come back. EA’s strongest time in sports was with their EA BIG lineups such as SSX, NBA Street, FIFA Street, Freekstyle, and Def Jam.
NHL 07 (All Regions) – Easily the best hockey game on the system, and sadly there weren’t many options. EA didn’t release another version despite their other sports titles getting yearly releases.
O
Obscure: The Aftermath (All Regions) – This horror title doesn’t do anything new. Solve puzzles and kill monsters with multiple characters while you unravel a story. Fairly dated gameplay-wise, but it fits right in on the PSP.
Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (All Regions) – Probably one of the very top arcade racers on PSP. It looks amazing and clearly given time and care to feel right on the system.
P
Pac-Man World 3 (All Regions) – The Pac-Man World series has always been fairly decent, and World 3 on PSP is just as strong as the console versions. What sets World 3 apart from the first two games is its hilariously serious tone in its story.
Pangya: Fantasy Golf (All Regions) – A spin-off of the Korean MMO game, this right here is the single best golf game on PSP. Colorful visuals, a quirky story, lots of content, and great ball physics. It feels like a complete package and less like a port.
Parappa the Rapper (All Regions) – This is probably one of the highest regarded PSP games, but despite raving reviews it just didn’t sell. It’s a fantastic port of the PS1 classic and looks great too.
Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection
Pinball Hall of Fame Series (All Regions) – The best pinball games on PSP. Two collections allow you to play them in Tate mode. What more could you ask for?
Pipe Mania (Europe) – This puzzle game is really colorful and addictive. Its simple approach is what makes it so accessible and fun.
Power Stone Collection (All Regions) – Ports of the Dreamcast games and well done too. Power Stone is a great fighting game, but better over multiplayer Ad-Hoc.
PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient
PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient Series (All Regions) – A really fun and weird puzzle game similar to Brain Age, but more 3D and interactive. It really has that weird “PlayStation DNA” attached to it.
Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?
Prinny Series (All Regions) – A spin-off of the Disgaea series, and surprisingly a platformer. This is highly considered one of the best platform games on the system, but it’s really hard and has terrible voice acting.
Puyo Pop Fever
Puyo Pop Series (Japan) – You can’t go wrong with portable Puyo Pop. The Fever series was a fantastic way to play this one the go.
R
R-Type Command (All Regions) – Another weird IP to go tactical. One of the best tactical games on PSP, and it’s surprising as R-Type is not a slow methodical game.
Race Driver 2006 (All Regions) – An absolute blast of a racing sim. One of the best on the system, and one of the best looking games on the system period.
S
Shrek Smash N’ Crash Racing (All Regions) – Yep. It’s a Shrek game. Yes, it’s actually decent. While no Mario Kart competitor it looks decent and has some fun tracks and fun Shrek characters. You could do a lot worse with the license…and boy did they.
The Sims Series (All Regions) – Fantastic spin-offs of the main PC version. These games hold up surprisingly well and are hand-tailored for mobile play. If you already love The Sims or want some sort of relaxing game on PSP these are it.
Smash Court Tennis 3 (All Regions) – Probably the single best tennis game on PSP and there were a few. Great visuals, controls, and overall content.
Sonic Rivals Series (All Regions) – The only Sonic games to come to PSP. These are considered some of the better games in the series according to Sonic fans. While not perfect they are miles better than most of the 3D turds Sega was pumping out in the mid-2000s.
Space Invaders Extreme (All Regions) – A freaking amazing remix of the Space Invaders game. Like Pac-Man Championship Edition it keeps the addictive formula but turns the volume up to 11.
Split/Second (All Regions) – While it tries hard to capture the magic of the console games, the PSP does a decent job. Not the best racer on the system, but it’s still fun and looks great.
SSX On Tour (All Regions) – A rock-solid entry in the SSX series and looks and feels great on PSP. It’s also the only snowboarding game on the system. Thankfully it’s good.
Star Ocean: First Departure
Star Ocean Series (All Regions) – Great ports of the PS1 games. Safe ports though without many new enhancements, but they’re solid 2D RPGs.
Star Trek: Tactical Assault (All Regions) – Another odd strategy license. While not the best tactical game on the system it does a decent job. I just wish it used the license more.
T
Tales of Series (All Regions) – While the West only got Radiant Mythology there were a bunch of ports in Japan. A solid RPG and the sequel is great too.
Test Drive Unlimited (All Regions) – Quite a risk of a release due to Unlimited’s reliance on constant internet connection. The game is still a solid single-player experience and looks awesome.
Thrillville Series (All Regions) – The only amusement park sim on PSP and both games are great. They look good and have a smattering of content to keep you coming back.
TOCA Race Driver 2
TOCA Race Driver Series (Europe) – One of the best racing sims on PSP and was only released in Europe. They look amazing and have great physics.
Tokobot (All Regions) – A criminally underlooked game and one of the best looking too. Lots of fun puzzles here and hours of fun.
Tom Clancy’s EndWar (All Regions) – A genic but fun hex tactical game. The series isn’t the real-time strategy graphical powerhouse that the consoles got. This is more about the strategy than the visuals.
Toy Story 3 (All Regions) – The console version was a surprisingly solid platformer with charm and great visuals. The PSP version is no different. Don’t let the Pixar name fool you either. This is a solid movie tie-in game.
U
UFC Undisputed 2010 (All Regions) – A surprisingly solid entry for PSP. Great visuals, controls, animations, and content. Sadly it was the one and only.
Ultimate Ghosts’N Goblins (All Regions) – One of the best platformers on PSP, but also the hardest. The difficulty that the series is well known for is here too.
Untold Legends: The Warrior’s Code
Untold Legends Series (All Regions) – Originally a launch title for the PSP it’s a decent dungeon crawler albeit generic. Nothing amazing but it will scratch that dungeon crawler itch.
V
Valhalla Knights
Valhalla Knights Series (All Regions) – An interesting and unique RPG, but has some flaws and issues. If you can look past all of that you will enjoy the series quite a bit.
Virtua Tennis 3
Virtua Tennis Series (All Regions) – A great tennis series all around and there really isn’t a bad one. It’s just a matter of what your preferences and tastes are. You know you have a good library when you get a choice between good tennis games.
W
Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command
Warhammer Series (All Regions) – Both games are surprisingly good. Just another great tactics game to add to the PSP’s lineup. If you love the Warhammer license you will really love these games.
The Warriors (All Regions) – A fantastic port of the Rockstar action game. Even if you don’t know anything about the movie its based on you will really enjoy this game.
What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord?!
What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord?! Series (All Regions) – A humorous and unique game where you play the bad guy and have to create dungeons to stop the hero. It looks simple but has a lot of spirit.
Wild Arms XF (All Regions) – A fun hex-based SRPG with a lot of dialogue, cut scenes, and story.
World Championship Poker 2 Featuring Howard Lederer (All Regions) – Not sure who Howard is, but this is probably the only good poker game on PSP. The graphics are rough, but it has fun poker gameplay.
Worms: Open Warfare Series (All Regions) – Worms was just another awesome strategy game on PSP. It’s insane how many awesome ones there were. Both games are worth playing and have fun levels and great humor.
X
Xyanide: Resurrection (EU/JP) – A direct sequel to the Xbox shmup. It has great visuals and just overall plays well. There weren’t many shmups on the PSP.
Y
Yggdra Union: We’ll Never Fight Alone (All Regions) – Overall a solid port of the GBA game with upgrades. This is just another solid SRPG with great visuals.
Z
Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger VS Darkdeath Evilman (All Regions) – A fun roguelike SRPG with great humor and colorful visuals. Heavily overlooked.
2005 was the tail end of Resident Evil clones. This period was just before the emergence of Resident Evil 4 clones. It seemed to never end. Cold Fear has an intriguing premise and a couple of neat gameplay ideas, but they are never fully explored. What we get here is a survival horror title that focuses mostly on action and has little horror to offer. I like the idea of being stuck on a ship during a storm. You feel claustrophobic, and Cold Fear did a decent job portraying this. I experienced a constant sense of urgency, needing to act quickly before the boat overturned or the zombie infection overtook me.
Of course, it’s never that simple. It’s not just a generic zombie virus. Instead, you play as a U.S. Coast Guard agent (neat idea), Tom Hansen. He’s your typical generic blonde-haired action dude with no personality who tries to be amusing but never is. He answers an S.O.S. and tries to rescue those on board. You find out there’s a species called Exocels that is infesting everyone on board. The scenario leads to zombified crew members that wield knives and can sometimes shoot. There are also regular humans, who are the Russians on board trying to kill you. It’s not a very intriguing plot or very deep. The game is only 4-5 hours long, so there’s no room for any plot development. Diaries scattered throughout the game provide the majority of the Exocel DNA exposition. There is only one other character, Anna, who is a Russian daughter of the person you’re rescuing. It’s not important, to be honest. There is a small escort section at the beginning of the game, but after that, you mostly do not see Anna again, at least not with the character you are rescuing.
With the almost neat story out of the way, the game’s main focus is combat. There are quite a few weapons in the game, such as a pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher, flamethrower, crossbow, submachine gun, and AK-47. The pistol and submachine gun have a flashlight attached to them as well as a laser sight. The AK does as well. There aren’t many really dark areas in the game, but the flashlights do come in handy in some situations. The humans and zombies are pretty boring and straightforward enemies. There’s no dodge button, but if you are grabbed, you execute a QTE to do a critical hit. Zombies will only die when their heads explode, which is a neat gameplay mechanic. You can shoot the zombie’s head off or perform a head stomp on them when they are down. If they burn up or experience electrocution, they also die.
There is a lot of environmental damage that can be done, such as shooting barrels, fire extinguishers, and valves on walls and shooting some electrical boxes to electrocute enemies in water. There were even a couple of scenes in which you extend a bridge, and if you think ahead, you can have the zombies fall off by pulling the bridge back. These were fun mechanics, but they aren’t utilized frequently. The very cramped and small rooms are difficult to maneuver and fight in. The camera switches to an over-the-shoulder perspective reminiscent of Resident Evil 4 when aiming, but it snaps back to a pulled-back third-person view and occasionally switches to fixed camera angles. It’s disorienting, and while not game-breaking, it wasn’t ideal for this much action. The later Exocel enemies are more interesting to fight, such as the Exoshade, which is invisible in shadows; there is one that’s invisible all the time, and you must watch for wet footprints, or it will be visible when passing through steam. The Exomass, resembling a bull, stands as the most formidable opponent in the game. The only way to kill it is by shooting its red club-like arm until it explodes. You need to utilize each weapon for each situation, such as the AK for long distance and everything else for close quarters, with the shotgun being the best weapon. Each of the game’s two sections (the ship and the oil rig/research facility) has two restock rooms and a limited medbay. You can’t restock forever.
Sadly, what drags the whole experience down quite a bit is that there is no map, and the labyrinthine maze-like areas will confuse you. Sure, you have objectives, but they mean nothing if you don’t even get a clue as to where to go. You will wander around aimlessly until either an event occurs or you find a sparkling object nearby. Saves are also predetermined before entering certain doors that either trigger a cutscene or just after. They aren’t spread too far apart and were fairly placed. Unfortunately, once you finish the game, there’s no reason to play again. It’s not intriguing enough to. While the game is serviceable, it suffers from frequent frame rate drops too.
Overall, Cold Fear isn’t scary, but tense. The many gameplay ideas are peppered throughout that show promise but are never fully used. Waves can inflict damage, the boat can rock you when you’re on deck, you can swing objects that can strike you, and you can use environmental hazards to combat enemies. The game either disperses these ideas excessively or utilizes them sparingly. Although the combat is decent, it suffers from a sluggish camera, and the game’s overall layout is too constrained to provide intense action. You need a guide to avoid wandering aimlessly without a map. The visuals are pretty decent too, but nothing spectacular. Everything is gray, metallic, and drab with decent lighting effects but suffers from severe frame rate issues. Cold Fear isn’t a fantastic survival horror, especially when most of the horror is missing. It’s short enough to not be offensive, and don’t expect a deep story or intriguing characters.
Curse is the most deceptive video game cover I’ve ever seen. It looks freaking scary and is a damn excellent cover. It’s also a pretty rare game on Xbox, one of the more expensive ones in the library. With the subject matter being a survival horror game, I had to add it to my collection. I didn’t do much research for the game. When I finally got a copy and booted it up, I stared at my screen. “Oh,” With a blank stare, I flatly exclaimed. It’s one of “those” survival “horror” games. It’s essentially an Alone in the Dark clone. It’s no more scary than a Goosebumps TV show. The beginning cut scene doesn’t invoke much hope, and neither do the production values.
So, you play as a man-woman duo, Darien and Victoria. You only play as Victoria a few times in the game, but you are mostly Darien. The game is set in late 19th-century England. The two protagonists are American, but everyone else seems British minus Abdul. The hijinks here end up becoming 19th-century Night at the Museum. Darien’s childhood friend Victoria invites him to a British museum when an artifact is stolen, the titular Isis statue, by a thief named sigh Le Chat. His avatar is a person in a black ninja-type costume that shoots crossbow bolts. You end up chasing this character through the game. The story is completely uninteresting and fails to develop at all. In the entire game, you are simply chasing down the Eye of Isis to return it to its rightful place and prevent a “curse” from spreading. It’s a yellow mist that turns people into zombies. Yeah, it’s not fascinating at all.
The lack of scary monsters contributes to the overall uninteresting nature of the game. The two monsters are equally frightening. You get zombies from the regular humans you fight, who are British dudes with shotguns and mummies. Totally not scary one bit. The zombies have open chests that shoot out a tentacle at you or spray yellow mist out of their mouths, which can raise a meter on the screen that slowly drains, but this also will drain your health. The enemies are surprisingly easy to dodge thanks to the also unexpectedly good lock-on combat system. I didn’t hate the combat in this game. You can circle strafe around everyone and avoid most damage pretty easily. A yellow reticle will slowly shrink down to a dot, which is your accuracy meter. There are only a couple of weapons in the game. The available weapons in the game include a revolver, shotgun, crossbow, rifle, mortar, and flamethrower. The revolver and rifle share the same bullets, and the flamethrower needs canister fuel refilled at oil stations.
Bosses are the least fun to fight in this game due to the cramped areas you are in. These bosses are big, and you just don’t get enough room to move around. The first big boss isn’t so bad, but you need to wait for vulnerable moments. You should stay constantly locked on, and as soon as the yellow reticle pops up, it indicates that it’s okay to shoot. I didn’t realize this during the first fight with two bears and wasted tons of ammo. Another fight against a giant bull requires you to move a meat hook and pick it up crane-game style with three button presses, but the bull needs to be in the exact spot, and mine glitched by just randomly cutting to the meat hook being attached when the bull wasn’t anywhere near the hook. There are quite a few glitches in this game. It’s incredibly unpolished.
Inventory management can break your game permanently if you’re not careful. You can swap inventory items between the two characters or give them to Abdul, who is your only save station. Abdul will follow you around and appear at key moments, allowing you to save frequently. However, if you give an item like a weapon to a character, they will disappear for a good chunk of the game, and you can end up with no weapons or ammo. I also ran into a glitch where the flamethrower fuel canisters kept multiplying in my inventory, and there’s no drop button. I had to give five to Abdul and not touch the canister that said x99. If I had kept going, I would have locked my game up. I had one issue where I gave all my weapons to Victoria, but she disappeared, and I was swapped back to Darien with no weapons or ammo. I had to reload my save and not do that again. It would be nice if each character had their weapons or could find their own during their parts of the story. Inventory management is seriously broken here.
With that said, the game is incredibly mediocre. This is a must-play with a guide, as the level design is atrocious. The maze-like levels and awful map system don’t help. The map has zero labels outside of slight shading on doors that you can’t open, but these constantly change. It’s a way for the developers to lazily guide you around. Every door will be locked except the one you need to go to. What’s the point of large areas with many rooms if everything is locked and unlocked based on what’s happening? I also encountered issues with ladders that glitched and required the character to be placed in an exact position before they could be activated. Puzzles are obtuse with badly placed camera angles, making it difficult to see symbols and objects. The two available written guides exhibit poor quality, lacking warnings about weapon selection and descriptions of boss fights. For the final boss, one guide advises, “I won’t spoil how to fight the boss, but just beat it like the last one.” That’s not helpful at all.
Overall, Curse is an awful-looking, mediocre game that isn’t scary. Only two enemy types, broken inventory that can lock your game up, terrible and dated visuals, an uninteresting story, and bad camera and level design with uninteresting characters. Even the sound design and music are just bad. Why does walking on sand sound like squeaky rubber? At least the voice acting is good.
This is a game I have been trying to finish for years. I started the game three times on a Dolphin emulator and lost my save (I never owned a Gamecube growing up), and I finally gave up. I wound up selling my original Wii U before this game was released and missed out, but now that I have a Wii U again, I can finally complete the game, and I certainly did, but with a walkthrough because boy, oh boy, is this game more massive than I ever imagined. While Nintendo games tend not to be very story heavy or deep, Wind Waker HD does have a small story that seems to only have a cut scene every 10 hours of gameplay when you hit a new section of the story. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like much is going on until the final chapters of the game, but that’s okay. We all play Zelda for the gameplay and atmosphere.
There is a lot to dissect with this game. The premise of the game makes you think this is a simple “kids” adventure due to the bright and colorful graphics and Toon Link design. You start out on an island and get to know the gameplay loop just like in any Zelda game. You fight an old man to learn combat, pick up pigs to understand the need for solving puzzles, and eventually swipe grass to collect rupees, which serve as the in-game currency, just like in every other Zelda game. Upon boarding the Red Lions, you will embark on a vast ocean that features a grid system. You need to use the Wind Waker to change the direction of the wind; otherwise, going into a headwind will cause you to barely move at all. This is the first insanely annoying thing about this game. If I had the Gamecube version this feature alone would make me quit playing. Why is this a thing? In the HD version, you can obtain the Swift Sail at an auction much earlier than in the Gamecube version, which not only allows you to move faster but also enables you to ignore the wind direction.
With that first annoyance aside, Wind Waker is a true adventure. You can sail anywhere and see an island, jump on it and see what it holds. You usually need an item to solve a puzzle, but some don’t require one. In the game, you can explore 28 squares immediately, but it’s advisable to save the sailing discoveries for when you have access to the Swift Sail. One baffling design decision was the requirement to feed a fish in each square, which will then mark the corresponding island on your map. I felt these choices took away the adventure and discovering-for-yourself part of the game, as once you enter the square on the map, it should unveil what island is there. This is one of many tedious side quests that just aren’t needed. The upside to this level is that every fish will give you a hint about the island on the square, but I felt this wasn’t really needed as they are pretty vague anyway.
Like many other Zelda games, there are dungeons to explore that advance the quest further. On your map, you will occasionally see a red circle indicating your location, but at times, the path becomes ambiguous and challenging to navigate. You will get lost effortlessly during certain portions of the game. I feel the dungeon design for Wind Waker isn’t as appealing as previous or later games. The early ones are very short, and they all feel rather labyrinthine and difficult to navigate later on. Some of their difficulty is remedied with pots you can jump into to warp to other parts of the dungeon, but they need to be discovered and uncovered, so even these are hidden around, which is annoying. Most of the puzzles in the dungeons vary, using the same ideas throughout the game, such as lighting sticks on fire, platforming, combat, block pushing, etc. The puzzles vary greatly, and no two are usually alike, but I did find some elements within that bring the experience down a tad. Platforming isn’t outstanding in this game. There’s no jump button, but Link will just hop right off the ledge with nary a breath on the analog stick. This resulted in many character deaths and the need to restart combat sequences. If you die, you restart the room, but if you lose all your hearts, you go back to the start of the dungeon, and all enemies respawn.
Combat is actually pretty good this time around with a lock-on system and some fast-paced animations and action. Swiping three-button to five-button combos is swift and fast, and you can even do a 360 swipe. When you lock on, you can use items without having to manually aim, such as the grappling hook to get them from enemies or bombs. Many enemies can be dodged or avoided, but boss fights are pretty unique despite being fairly easy. The typical boss fight consists of three rounds, which occur after discovering the attack pattern and learning how to inflict damage on the boss. Dungeons play out just like other Zelda games, with small keys to open doors to advance through the dungeon, and these are acquired through puzzles or combat. You will also get items to explore the overworld and advance through the dungeons while seeking the Boss Key.
Most of the side quests in Wind Waker are pretty tedious and are needed to be completed because the infamous final section of the game requires you to pay Tingle a large amount of rupees to decipher the Triforce maps. This has been reduced a lot in the HD version by about a third, as well as the horrendously tedious quest itself of getting 8 Triforce shards and only three Triforce maps. I find it difficult to understand certain aspects of Japanese games. There’s also another tedious section in the form of a boss rush in which you need to defeat all four bosses a second time, but at least they’re easier and don’t require as many hits. With that said, there are also treasure maps, nearly 50 in the HD version, that lead to heart containers and rupees. The rupees are much needed for the end of the game as well as for buying some heart containers by either paying to do mini-games or using the auction house. Everything is connected, and while much of the content is optional, completing most or all of it makes the endgame easier.
The player can extend the game time by nearly 20 hours when doing so. I spent more time exploring, finding treasure maps, completing side quests, getting heart containers, etc., than on the main quest itself. I had a lot of fun doing all of this. Not much feels like a chore, outside of some quests being nearly impossible to figure out without a guide. Digging up treasure chests gets old after a while, but it’s doable. I didn’t care for the submarines or the infamous combat gauntlet of 50 rooms of enemies towards the end of the game. The reward is well worth it, but it did feel tedious. Despite the minor issues, the dungeons and islands all feel different. There are so many different puzzle types and platforming sections that you can shake a rupee at it; it’s absurd. Let’s also talk about the titular Wind Waker itself. This wand is used to make songs that are needed to advance in dungeons, change the wind’s direction, and cycle night and day, which are also used for puzzles. It’s fine, but not nearly as memorable or as special as the Ocarina. You use the gamepad’s touch screen to swipe in the direction of the arrows, and the songs appear on the touch screen for easy reading; however, I found Wind Waker to be less memorable or interesting than the Ocarina. The game would have been fine without it.
The visuals of the game really come to life, making this one of the most iconic and artistically unique games ever made. Back in the day, there was significant backlash against the cell-shaded art direction, which many gamers felt appeared too “kid-like” compared to their desire for a darker, more mature Zelda adventure. The HD version enhances the colors and brings them to life, in addition to introducing many quality-of-life changes to the game itself. Many critiqued the game for having too much bloom effect, but I didn’t mind it so much. Increased wallet size and the ability to use the gamepad as a navigation tool for the map and item management are significant improvements in a game where these features are frequently utilized.
Overall, Wind Waker HD adds many changes to make the game more enjoyable and really enhances the visuals to an eye-wateringly beautiful level. The core game itself has some issues, such as the early dungeons being short and easy, the weird late quests tedium, such as the Triforce shard and map quest, and the repeating boss fights, but this was significantly made more tolerable with these being cut down. Gaining access to the Swift Sail much earlier in the game significantly improves the experience. I found the Wind Waker itself wasn’t a very exciting object and doesn’t match the greatness of the Ocarina. It honestly could have been scrapped, and the game would have been just as enjoyable.
Many of the side quests can be tedious but are manageable; however, many important items and secrets are easy to miss without a guide. Without a guide, you will completely miss the numerous treasure maps, chests, heart containers, and secret items on your first playthrough. I highly recommend a guide for the first playthrough to see most of the game. I found the story forgettable, and while the combat is better than previous games, it’s still nothing special. Ultimately, Wind Waker is a game that evokes strong emotions due to its expansive ocean exploration, which physically separates you from the main quest and extends it into a 40-50 hour adventure.
The idea of robots taking over humans has been an age-long discussion, but what if they were designed to help us instead, no matter the cost? That’s the idea that The Fall presents to players. You play as a pilot who has crash-landed on a planet, but the AI known as A.R.I.D. (autonomous robotic interface device) activates and uses an advanced smart suit to essentially control the pilot’s body while searching for medical attention. The pilot lands on a derelict planet run by an AI called the Caretaker, who is examining and studying ARID for unknown reasons. Excellent writing and voice acting bring the story to life, despite its short length. There is not a single wasted line of dialogue or moment. This is an incredible premise and idea that I want to see more of. The Fall is a Metroidvania-lite, but with its own identity. The genre has seen little of this type of game today, especially with the explosion of indie games being produced.
Despite its simplicity, the game boasts a surprisingly complex control layout. You can walk around in a 2D plane, but jumping and combat are limited. You must use the flashlight on your pistol or light the path ahead, as the game is very dark and is mostly underground. When you shine your light over objects, a context piece of text will appear describing it or allowing you to interact with it. The majority of the game is puzzle-based, relying on an inventory system to combine and interact with the right object. The Caretaker’s testing center is the longest section of the game. Many puzzles are actually quite fun and clever, but a few can take a weird obtuse angle and make little sense in terms of how they are solved.
Combat in The Fall is crunchy and powerful but very limited. Other androids will attempt to attack you, but their actions are very limited and occur only during scripted events. You can hide behind cover and pop out to deliver a headshot. You must switch to the laser sight for better accuracy. You can sneak up behind enemies to kill them, or you can advance on them while they take cover. The shots are impactful and crunchy. The combat doesn’t overstay its welcome and is used at the right times. Of course, you can’t use your gun for the first third of the game, as abilities need to be unlocked, such as faster fire rates, the gun itself, and other suit abilities.
The game is tedious because it has a lot of backtracking, so you’ll often go from one end of a level to the other. I understand that this is part of a Metroidvania, but you aren’t going back to a level once you are upgraded and can access new parts of a level. You often find yourself running back and forth to collect parts of a puzzle, hoping you have the correct piece, only to discover that you either don’t or that it belongs to another puzzle located elsewhere. It’s not game-breaking, but it does get old pretty quickly. Once you have read all the text and discovered every part of the level, the adventure part of the game kind of disappears, and all that’s left is the tedious process of solving puzzles and running around.
The atmosphere and graphics are fantastic even today. The game has a surreal feeling of almost transporting you to the world thanks to its great sound design and visuals. While there is a lot going on in the foreground, most of the atmospheric stuff comes from what’s happening in the background. A lot of the background stuff can give you a visual cue as to what’s going on just from one glance. You can see a massive cave and the exterior of a spaceship through the windows, among other things. The few occasions where there is spoken dialogue are excellent, and the excellent writing keeps you captivated with every word.
Overall, The Fall is a fantastic atmospheric Metroidvania-lite that features great writing and tense gameplay, including gun sections that do not overstay their welcome. ARID is a wonderful character despite being a programmed robot, and the ending of the game is well worth your time. This game was one of the few indie titles that contributed to the “indie revolution” of the early 2010s and played a significant role in establishing the Wii U eShop as a prominent platform for indie games.
Silent Hill was nearing the end of its life back in the mid-2000s. The series peaked with Silent Hill 3, and it seemed that Konami and Team Silent just struggled afterwards. While Origins was supposed to bring the series back to its roots and feel similar to Silent Hill 2, it was the first Western-developed game in the series, which was done by the now-defunct studio Climax Group. The game went through development hell, being cancelled as a clone of Resident Evil 4 and then rebuilt within less than a year to feel more like the first two games in the series. Climax Group succeeded in capturing the haunting and surreal atmosphere of Silent Hill, including some great new monster designs, but faltered in many other areas.
You play as Travis Grady. A truck driver who is passing through Silent Hill hits a girl in the middle of the foggy road. As you get out, you end up rescuing a girl from a burning house only to realize you were trapped in an occult scheme and needed to save her from being sacrificed to a god. Sadly, the story is very vague, and there isn’t much in terms of explanation. There are only a few pre-rendered cutscenes, and in-game cutscenes are very sparse and don’t explain much. This tale could have been fleshed out more if Climax had more time on the game. The story is mostly forgettable despite having the ingredients for something outstanding, such as returning characters. This release is supposed to be a prequel to the original game, after all.
Disappointing story aside, the game at least looks and feels like classic Silent Hill. With fixed camera angles due to the lack of a second analog stick, Origins lets you flip the camera behind Travis with the L button and lock on to enemies with the R button. The controls work surprisingly well despite some weird camera quirks, like when the camera flips around and you’re pressing the analog stick in one direction, it will flip the controls on you, making you change the direction you are pressing. Small rooms can feel cramped, and enemies can be off camera and hard to see, including items. Origins has many melee weapons because Climax thought it was a good idea to focus on more combat than exploration with this game. It just doesn’t work well. To compensate for missing items, Travis will look at objects of interest, but it doesn’t work out super well most of the time, as he will also look at doors, which is useless. At least there are frequent save icons (red triangles) because this is a portable game after all. You need to be able to save often.
The lock-on mechanic makes shooting easy, but ammo is scarce and should be saved for bosses or when you’re outnumbered. Melee weapons are breakable. This feature makes the game insanely frustrating. Rather than relying on a single, well-balanced weapon as in Silent Hill 2, you must scour the town, searching for as many melee weapons as possible to pack. All of these weapons have varying durability, and some heavy weapons can be smashed and are only usable once. You will end up with enough weapons to pack into a small U-Haul. For example, you are carrying around IV poles, filing cabinets, and weight sets. It makes no sense and is insanely silly. I can understand wandering around the town for consumables like health drinks, first aid kits, and the ever-rare ampoules, but Climax screwed up twice and added a stamina system. This doesn’t do anything except make you run slower every 10–15 seconds, and it’s insanely annoying. You have to use energy drinks to recover right away or stop and let Travis catch his breath. This can be annoying when running from enemies.
I also found the number of enemies you encountered and the level of difficulty to be frustrating. Sure, in Silent Hill, it is recommended to run from most enemies when able, but there are just way too many, and Climax opted to make them more aggressive, like in the first game. They will always beeline towards you no matter how far away you are and won’t stop chasing you. This leads to enemies mobbing you with four to five straightjackets on your tail. If you stop fighting, you are instantly dead. The game becomes progressively more difficult and unbalanced as it progresses, making it harder to reserve many of the big items for boss fights. At least the monster designs are cool and in line with the previous design DNA of the series. The game introduces new adversaries such as the Remnant, a formless entity with only a metal cage encircling their chest, and the Two-Back, a hideous mass of flesh. These are inventive enemies, but they just aren’t fair to fight.
Puzzles are in line with previous titles in that they are pretty tough and require quite a bit of thinking. You usually find a manual or instructions and must flip switches or place objects in a certain order. Some puzzles are quite challenging, including one that necessitates the use of algebra. You will definitely need a walkthrough for the first playthrough and put puzzles on the easiest difficulty, but it’s debatable whether or not this game is worth revisiting. Navigating the world is similar to previous games, with a large map that has red lines for areas you have visited. You can try doors, and if they are locked, they will get a red squiggle, and windows that open get a red line. Important items are marked on the map, and objectives are circled. It’s a little cryptic on where to go sometimes, and with a lot of enemies around, and some areas where they respawn, it can be maddening. There’s also a new element thrown in that lets you transport to the Other World via mirrors and is required to solve puzzles. The Other World has more powerful monsters; they are more aggressive, and everything is rearranged with new areas opening up and others being blocked. The Other World looks wonderful and captures the look and horror of previous games.
I really wanted this game to be better. I was sucked into the world and atmosphere of the game. The haunting music is just as excellent as previous titles, with Akira Yamaoka returning to do the music. The industrial and surreal soundtrack will invigorate your senses. The game also looks wonderful on the PSP, being one of the most impressive games in its entire library, but it’s not a super fun game to play. If the combat were better, I could forgive the harder puzzles and the shortcomings of the story and lack of more interesting events. You primarily move from one area to another, battling a boss and various enemies, only to repeat the process. The areas aren’t super interesting in and of themselves, as they have already been seen. There’s a hospital, an apartment complex, a motel, and a theater. The most captivating part of these areas was the Other World versions. I liked that there were some Easter eggs thrown in, such as multiple endings, extra options for a new game, and little tidbits like gory scenes, but it’s just not worth it. The game is mostly enjoyable on the easiest difficulties to counterbalance the poorly thought-out combat. At least the game isn’t too long, running at around 6 hours or so with a walkthrough.
There was never a time when a mainstream Mario platformer was bad—2D or 3D. In the early 2010s, Nintendo was dialing back the more open 3D Mario adventures in favor of more linear 2.5D platforming titles. This shift was sparked by the popularity of the New Super Mario Bros. series, which then spun off two 3D Mario games that were kind of in between that and Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario 3D Land, which was exclusive to the 3DS, was a lot of fun; however, it was too easy and seemed more suitable for children. The levels were super short; they could be completed in a matter of a couple of minutes, and overall, the game was a perfect weekend rental. Mario games are not typically ones that require 100% completion, since the only reward is personal satisfaction; however, Nintendo attempted to change this with Super Mario Galaxy. The reward is the challenge.
3D World is 3D Land’s bigger console cousin. Released for the Wii U two years after 3D Land, and being the only mainstream 3D Mario title on the system, it was a giant success. Implementing a four-player couch co-op mode and introducing new power-ups while maintaining the short levels from 3D Land seemed to be a perfect match for most people. The game exceeded the capabilities of the Wii U and boasted a stunning visual aesthetic, which it continues to maintain on the Switch today. Bright, colorful visuals similar to Mario Galaxy were a winning combination. The game’s world map has the same standard Mario layout we’ve seen since the beginning. You navigate a map in 3D that has each stage you can enter. There are some small things to do on the map, like enter slot machines to win power-ups and coins, bonus stages, Toad houses with presents, etc. These are neat but don’t really add anything to the game overall. The 3D map functions effectively and fulfills its purpose.
Mario can store one power-up while also using one in this game. Power-ups are suits with something old and something new, like the Cat power-up, which allows you to sprint faster, swipe at enemies, and run up walls, which not only opens up new gameplay possibilities but can also make levels and challenging spots easier. Each stage flows like a typical Mario game. There are constant obstacles to jump across, pits to avoid, enemy patterns to learn, and coins to collect. Coins are simply used to provide you lives. 100 coins equals one life, so don’t feel obligated to hit every single question mark block. Some of the later stages can be really tough, but nothing that can’t be managed if you are careful. What makes Mario games so beloved is how well balanced everything is, and there’s always something new coming at you. No two levels are the same. While many obstacles and hazards are the same, they are always used in unique ways. This is just the Mario design language that has been unable to be replicated to this day. It’s literally perfect. You also get to ride a water Plessie, which has his levels and areas. While he can be somewhat challenging to master in terms of riding and steering, the exhilarating sense of speed is truly remarkable.
There is a giant variety of levels ranging from lava, ice, clouds, mountain peaks, and many other types of terrain. There are expansive cities, shadowy mansions, eerie caverns, and underwater caves. I can’t think of a single type of level that isn’t in this game. Most levels flow similarly, though. You get a couple of sections that show you what to expect in the stage. Is there a lot of platforming, enemy stomping, running, and dashing? Each level has three hidden green stars to collect and a stamp. This is your completionist objective: to get them all. You do have to get some extra stars, as later boss stages require unlocking them with stars. Some of the stars are very well hidden or incredibly tricky to get without dying. If you die, you keep everything you found and can restart at either the checkpoint or the beginning of the stage; however, since the stages are so short, this isn’t a huge deal. Occasionally, there are levels that can be incredibly frustrating. Either a group of enemies is just in the wrong place, or something just isn’t designed well within the level.
Mario can stomp enemies, but with a power-up, he can attack from afar or swipe. The Fire Flower can throw fireballs, the Koopa suit can throw boomerangs, and the Tanooki suit allows you to jump farther; additionally, if you die at least five times, you will receive the white Tanooki suit, which grants invincibility. This optional box is located at the checkpoint. This item is great to use if you just want to power through a level and get the stars and stamp. Just remember, if you get a single hit, you lose the power-up, and another hit makes you tiny. Three hits and you’re done. The boss fights are really disappointing, incredibly easy, and repeated often, which seems to be a trend with 3D Mario games at this time. I keep saying Mario, but there are other characters, and they all feel different to play. Luigi jumps higher, Peach jumps farther, and Toad is faster. Some secret areas require specific or multiple characters to activate. In single-player, you can pick up the new cherry power-up to multiply yourself for these puzzles. However, controlling a number of characters at once is tricky.
Bowser’s Fury
If you don’t 100% the game, you can blow through the entire thing in less than 6 hours. It’s a very short game. Thankfully, the Bowser’s Fury DLC was included, and the game is like a whole new mini Mario adventure on its own. You break away from the classic linear levels and are dumped into a small 3D map that has islands that play out similar to the 3D World levels. You can explore the areas surrounding these islands for small mini-games that award Cat Shrines, which are the new stars in this DLC. You need 40 to fight the final Bowser boss, but there are 100 in total. It’s a massive DLC that’s another game all on its own. There’s no new focus on new power-ups. They just took the 3D World stuff and threw it into an open-world design, and it works.
A gate marks the start of each “stage,” showing the Cat Shrine goal name and how many are left. Each island has five Cat Cards you can find, which will award a Cat Shrine. Each new run in the level allows for a new way to navigate it. One run might focus on platforming, while the next run provides a helicopter box that allows you to fly around the small island in search of a key to open the cage containing the Cat Shrine. The levels are just as well designed as the main game, and the final few stages are tough but fun. The new element here is that Bowser is a massive Kaiju monster, and every few minutes a rainstorm starts, and Bowser will start throwing stuff at you, and this also opens up gameplay opportunities. There are Bowser blocks hidden around some islands, and if you stand by them while Bowser is out, he will breathe fire on them and break them, usually revealing a Cat Shrine. The number of shrines hidden throughout this DLC is massive, and it can easily take a player 6 hours just to find all of them with a guide.
Once you get enough Cat Shrines, you can fight Bowser in a new Giga fight. There’s a massive Cat Bell at the center of each of the three islands, and when Bowser comes out, this will light up and ring. Grab the massive Cat Bell, and you will transform into Kaiju Mario, allowing you to brawl with Bowser. Here you need to dodge his attacks, swipe at him in any of the power-up suits, and power stomp him when he’s belly up. Throughout the storms, if you clear a lighthouse while he’s out, it will take some health away so he’s easier when you fight him. This innovative approach to gameplay is unparalleled in previous Mario games.
Of course, the same old bosses from the main game are found throughout the DLC, which sucks, but you get Bowser Jr. to tag along with you, and he can assist in combat, or you can tap on giant question mark graffiti icons to get a power-up. A second player can control Bowser Jr. too, so this is obviously a more single-player-focused DLC. In this DLC, you can hold as many of these powers as you want. Since you are on a giant set of islands, the entire game takes place in the ocean, so to get across large distances, you can use a Plessie, who also has his own sprinting mini-games to get Cat Shrines.
Overall, Super Mario 3D World feels excellent to play and is a lot of fun, especially with four players. My biggest gripe is that the game is far too easy and the stages are too short. After Mario Galaxy, I feel like the series hadn’t quite hit that stride until Odyssey came out. The physics of the game also feel a bit off. I often had some perspective issues where I fell off ledges and misjudged jumps because of the camera angle. The level design overlooked or couldn’t help these quirks. I also find the boss fights monotonous and simplistic. Upon reaching the 6th world, I began to feel a sense of exhaustion with the game, and the remaining areas became somewhat tedious. Bowser’s Fury, a fantastic DLC, effectively bridges the gap between 3D World and Odyssey. Overall, the result is a solid game packed with content.
Onimusha was a third-party PlayStation 2 exclusive franchise that did very well back in the day. I remember seeing these games on shelves for years at Blockbuster and game stores, and they never caught my interest until the third entry. Onimusha can be described as a Samurai-themed version of Resident Evil, featuring 3D polygonal characters set against pre-rendered backgrounds and utilizing tank controls. In 2019 an HD remaster was released that vastly improved the game and made it more playable thanks to modern enhancements. These include things such as up to 1440p resolution, texture filtering, a 16:9 aspect ratio, re-recorded voice acting and soundtrack, and improved controls. You can now control characters with the left analog stick, which removes the tank controls. You can also switch weapons on the fly rather than through menus, like in Resident Evil. This bumps the score up quite a bit and makes it enjoyable to play.
You assume the role of Samanosuke, a samurai whose clan is engaged in a war with Oda Nobunaga. Oda is killed in battle, and he swears allegiance with demons to come back to life and take over Samanosuke’s clan. Given that a quick run-through of the game takes around 4-5 hours (3.5 hours with a walkthrough), the story is extremely thin and lacks interest. There’s not much time to tell a good story. Unfortunately, the characters lack depth and backstory, making it difficult to care about them. The boss designs are cool, but the enemies feel like generic zombie samurais and monsters. The only really cool design is Guildenstern, who feels like something straight from H.R. Giger. The enemy variety is enough for this type of game, as you need to learn enemy attack patterns, so too many enemies would make the game more unbalanced.
The combat consists of a single attack button. You can lock on to enemies and do three-hit combos as well as block. It’s punchy and feels excellent and each of the three weapons feels excellent to use. Enryuu is a heavy flame sword, Shippuu is a swift double sword, and Raizen is a medium-speed short sword. Each weapon has an elemental attack attached to it that does massive damage and uses blue magic, so you only get a couple of uses, and each weapon has its own meter; it’s not a shared pool. You can gain more magic only from enemies dropping orbs or magic fountains near save points. Therefore, you should utilize it sparingly against bosses or to overcome challenging situations. You also use these magic powers to unlock doors to progress through the game. You must upgrade your magic first, or you’ll be stuck and have to grind. Enemies do respawn, which is annoying, but it’s needed to gain more red orbs to upgrade magic and weapons.
Armor isn’t upgradeable, but you can find two different sets of better armor in the game, but they are locked behind some puzzles. Some of the best items and jewels, which are used to upgrade max magic and health, are locked behind puzzle boxes. Books provide clues, but they can be hard to interpret. The map system is quite adequate, allowing you to either consult a labeled map online or create one yourself. Like Resident Evil, you need to memorize landmarks to get around the game, as every room has a fixed camera angle. There is a bonus arena mode in which you descend 20 levels of waves of enemies to get a key to unlock the strongest sword in the game, but it’s not until just before the final boss, so this is mostly useful for second playthroughs. The arena is incredibly challenging, so I recommend playing the game on easy first and then doing another playthrough on a harder difficulty.
Overall, Onimusha was a good attempt from Capcom to create another sub-genre of their Resident Evil games, and it was mostly successful. A simple but solid combat system, fun and challenging bosses, and well-designed levels will give you a fun weekend. Just don’t expect a complicated story and captivating characters.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yeah, it's pretty damn awful. Notoriously one of the worst games on the PSP. A 4 was actually being generous.…