PSP Review- Popolocrois
Popolocrois The cell shaded RPG, who's name no one can pronounce hits the PSP with a whimper instead of a bang. The first time I saw this game advertised I thought to myself wow finally an RPG. This was long before anyone talked of the Legend of Heroes. It looked different and promised voice acting and cut scenes. Did the developers deliver on that premise? The answer is yes, but to the detriment of the game itself.
Presentation C+
This game has some nice visuals, but the instances of them are few and far between. This game boasts a cell shaded looked and has the highest array of colors of any PSP game thus far. Turning on the game you will be treated to the cartoony-est world I have ever seen. Which is not a bad thing, just a style choice, but this leaves the game in a very precarious situation. The graphics and style is a love or hate type of thing, from the instant you turn it on. There is no in between either you love it and continue playing or hate it and your adventure in the world of Popolocrois is over before it had a chance to begin. This game also suffers from slowdown in random places. Certain effects tend to take the frame rate way down, bodies of water for instance, while at other times a person would expect slow down ( like when there are loads of people on screen) there is no slowdown. Loading in this game is a huge problem. Simply walking along a path requires a load, which draws the player out of the vibrant fantasy world. The game then further stutters by moving the characters further down screen. For example crossing a bridge and there is a load screen at the beginning of the bridge, when the load is finished, player will instantly be moved to the opposite side of the bridge. The whole trip through the middle of the bridge is gone. The voice acting in this game is great, but it turns out to be horribly excruciating having to wait for the game to load. The same thing with cut scenes. It gets to the point when a player can tell when speech or cut scenes are coming up because the game will load for about 3-5 seconds. The music in the game is fine, but is just frankly bland... Thank god for the mute button
+Cell shading-load times for everything-Music variety= C+
Gameplay C-
Popolocrois suffers from a disease I like to call "the same old". This game uses a mixture of "the same old" battle system from a combination of other games. It is a basic turned based fighting system, but allows the player to place characters where they want on the battle field. Add to that battles that are random and it becomes a huge snore fest, but at least the developers included and option for auto battle. Load times don't just plague the game's world and cut scenes, it plagues the battle scenes as well. Just entering into battle there is a slight load screen 1-3 seconds, it's not that bad in my opinion , but it gets much worse. When a player uses a character's skill, the skill is accompanied by a voice over (e.g. character casts and says lightning strike), this causes the game to load for such a long time that it's painful. The load times can be upwards of 5 seconds, especially if it is the first time you are using a move. My guess is the game cache's the voice acting that is frequently used in the PSP memory, but it doesn't really help all that much. Now just imagine a boss battle where a player is constantly using their skills, a battle can be stretched from 15 minutes to half an hour just on the amount of ridiculous load times. I have to say this fact alone will make the game very unplayable for everyone but the hardcore RPG enthusiasts. The AI in this game is fairly decent, opponents can and do change their strategy during battle to counter a players actions.
+AI intelligence-stale battle system-load times= C-
Storyline B
Popolocrois is based off a popular anime series in Japan of the same name. The structure of the story is set up in accordance to the series seasons. This is good and bad in a way. The story can feel jerky at times. Jumping from one plot line to another in rather short fashion, leaving the player scratching his head. On the good side of that, this provides plenty of plot twists and keeps the story interesting. The cut scenes do add a great amount of atmosphere to the game and in regards to the story is icing on the cake. The fun I have found in this game has only been in the story, so I won't give any of it away, but just be aware that this game has bestiality in it and you will find it out from cut scene number one.
+Cutscenes+interesting plot-jumpy plot= B(estiality)
PSP Review-The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of vermilion
The Psp's first RPG a sad mockery of the genre, Untold legends left most RPG fans, like myself, wanting. Through hours of countless hack and slash became boring and repetitive, I was left wondering "is this all that Sony has to offer me?". With the release of The legend of Heroes: A tear of Vermillion (LOH for sort) did anything change? Frankly yes. This title is an actual RPG, in all of its turn based glory.
Presentation:B+
The visual presentation of this game is gorgeous, plain and simple. The characters are drawn nicely in a 2d fashion reminiscent of Final Fantasy V. While the background consists not only of the same 2d type animations but 3d as well. Both blended seamlessly together. The audio tracks for this game are the typical for any RPG, a large amount of classical mixed with some other genres. One thing that bothered me was why there was not any voice acting put into this game? It would have made LoH even more engrossing. Reading through chapters of text never bothered me, but without the addition cut scenes or voices just seems like a little polish was left off of a great game. While I am on the topic of dialogue, in this game some of the dialogue were not translated correctly; for instance the word has appears in the game as was, so when a character "Avin has learned a spell" it appears on screen as "Avin was learned a spell". The dialogue errors are few and far between, but the errors just keep showing themselves.
Visual presentation+Audio-Voice acting (lack there of)-Translation errors=B+
Gameplay: A+
LoH is an old school turnbased RPG at heart. During battles, players select what he or she wants his/her character to do (cast spell, strike, skill, deadly, etc..) once the actions for the whole team are set, the "actions" begin for both the player and the computer. The AI in this game is decently intelligent. I've been in battles where the AI attacks the healer just to cripple my party. While walking around the environment, the main character Avin, will have a pet to assist him in finding items. In return the pet expects food and lots of "lovin", but not in the nasty way, but in the same way as in the Purina commercials. Navigating the menus is simple and uncomplicated. Battles are a breeze, not in difficultly but in playability. For a good RPG to be good battling should not feel like a horrible chore, but a fun and necessary part of the game. Leveling up is at the right level of difficulty too, were it does take time to level up, but it is not to the point were you have to spend time walking around just to level up if you don't want to. Character learn skills and spells as they level up. Each character has a special move called "deadly". Every party member has a bar at the bottom of the screen labeled power that is filled up by every attack and hit that a character does/receives. Once the bar is full the "deadly' move is unlocked and can be unleashed at the player's discretion to do high damage. All enemies are present on screen, so there are no random battles. Icons over the enemies head give clues to their strength and aggression levels. Outside of battle icons are present over the NPC's heads as well helping players distinguish whom they really need to talk to complete a mission. I find this very helpful as in most other RPG I've played have me wondering around for days (real time) looking for a character that was right in front of me the whole time. The game varies a good deal with missions and battling, which is a good thing, helping keep the game fresh.
Menus+pet system+Battle system+leveling up+NPC Icon system=A+
Story: B-
There is nothing original about the story to LoH, never the less it is still entertaining and includes some interesting plot twists. The story begins with Avin and his sister Emeille. They are both living in Cathedral are the passing away of their parents. The Cathedral comes under attack, by a once good guy who is now bad (I'll save his name because that kind of spoils the rest of the game... Just a little). The "baddie" wants what he calls "the daughter of Durga" which seems to be Avin's sister. A chase ensues and the pair ends up separated, with Emeille going into hiding. This starts Avin's quest to find his sister... Things do get more interesting from then on out, but I won't ruin it for you.
Plot twists-unoriginal= B-
Overall= B-
Back in business
Psp coverage will resume with the review of Legends of Heroes and more up coming games. Soon to come is video reviews and much more.
Writers, or any positions up for the taking
With my busy schedule, I find it very difficult to keep up the crazyness of the game world. If you want to join my staff and get this site rolling again at full speed email me at ljbad4life2009(nospam)@yahoo.com just remove the no spam. if it is something the site as it is does not cover I will gladly expand coverage of this site and incorporate your views and ideas into the site and how it is run.
UMD Movies Released!
The first batch of umd movies for the Sony PSP include: "xxx(2002)" "Resident Evil: Apocalypse", "Hellboy", "Once Upon A Time In Mexico" and "House Of Flying Daggers" for the cheapest priced UMD movies go to circuitcity.com or target.com. The umd movies are mixed in with the regular dvds. There isn't any specific sections for UMD movies. Prices range from $12.99 to over $22.99.
Psp Editoral Part 2....Finally!
In the first PSP editorial discussed the hardware side of the Sony PSP, this editorial will browse over the software side of the PSP. From the time I turned on my PSP until the time I select which application I want to run (games, movies, videos, or photos), the PSP is in what is commonly called the home screen. The User Interface of the basic PSP menu is stellar. Entering text is easy , it uses the same type of input as a cell phone. Where one virtual "button" corresponds to 3 or 4 different letters. Setting up the wifi (80211.b) network is frankly a breeze. The process consists of scanning for networks, entering a wep code (if needed) and naming your connection, that's it.
Now onto the multimedia part of the PSP, the movies and music. The included "Spiderman 2" UMD movie is stunningly spectacular. The quality both audio and visual are top notch DVD quality. AS I speculated before, to fit a DVD movie onto a UMD which is much smaller, the special features have been cut to ensure high quality audio and video. The movie runs at least the standard 30fps(frames per second) very smoothly. The included headphones and inline control are high quality. One of the best headphones shipped with a product. There are better headphones, but again I doubt any other company has shipped as high a quality headphones bundled with another product. I haven't used my memory stick to encode and play anything off of, but I do intend to do so soon.
The music capabilities of the PSP are pretty good, but are hindered by the price of memory stick duo high prices. PC world has done an interesting story
here that Sony may release a writable UMD and UMD writer, only for music and movies( at the very least give more companies access to the UMD technology), and keep the game format internal to Sony.
Finally the games. All of the games that I have purchased, "Metal Gear acid", "Twisted Metal: Head On" and "Untold Legends: Brotherhood Of The Blade" have rivaled my home console experiences in both visual and fun. All games have eye popping graphics and audio that engulfs the user. Expect a full review of all these games and more coming soon
Psp Editorial Part 2: postponed
I have decided to hold off on the second part of the editorial on the Sony PSP for various reasons. The first is there are too many conflicting reports on the software side of the psp for me to do even a slightly relevant story without doing more research on my own, with my own PSP. Stay tuned for Launch madness.
Prelaunch Sony PSP editorial Part 1
With the impending launch of the psp, I felt the need to assess what Sony's Playstation portable has to offer to the market. Both software and hardware. Instead of drilling down the exact specs, I'm going to just go through what the psp can do. The hardware: The first and major ability that the psp has is games. Games are available on a proprietary umd disc format (just think of a semicircular minidisc) that hold about 1.8g of information. The umd discs are read only, meaning that any game information such as game save files need to be saved else where(on a memory stick)
Now on to the memory storage. Since the psp (just like the disc based home consoles) can't write to the disc, information needs to be saved another way. The removable format that the psp uses, of course, is Sony's memory stick duo pro. A flash based memory format invented by Sony. The available sizes for the memory sticks range from 32mb(four times the storage of ps2's memory cards that are 8 mb) to 512mb, soon 1g cards will be available. The prices vary widely so it is no use even to quote a price, but why would anyone need so much memory to save games? There is an answer which leads me into my third point.
The psp's ability not only to play games, but to play movies and music. The psp plays movies two ways. The first is the psp plays movies off the umd disc. These movie umd discs can be purchased at retail outlets. The first million psp's will be packaged with a umd movie of Spiderman 2. One thought has come to mind when researching the umd movie format. Dvd's hold at the very least 4.8g of information while umd's hold 1.8g. That is a great difference in capacity. What will change for a movie to fit on a umd. Obviously compression will take place, but will it affect the quality of the movie. The psp has a brilliant screen and it would be a shame for it to be wasted. Another possible area that could be limited to make a movie fit on a umd. The special features could always be minimize or eliminated to conserve space. Considering both options it is most logically that the movie studios and sony would want to create a cutting edge compression to both save quality and the special features. The movie must be watchable and should have the same features as a dvd to even merit a purchase of a dvd that a consumer may already own.
Now onto the psp's second way of playing movies, off of the memory stick. Here is one of the reasons for having a large memory stick. Movies obtained through ripping a dvd or another manner on a computer are then encoded to play on the psp using sony's encoding software provided with the psp (since the only encoder is in japanese, at this point, and I can't read or speak japanese I can't tell what the hell to do with it. An average 90 minute movie usually comes out about 300mbs on other handheld devices. So I would expect the same from sony's encoder. The other reason for a large memory stick sizes is the psp's ability to play music. It's not a huge stretch of technology for the psp to do this, but it is nice.
My final point of this part 1 editorial and far by the second most interesting ability of the psp is built in the wifi. The psp will be the first console (home or handheld) to have games support online play right from launch. There are four sports titles from 989 studios as well as some from ea that come launch day will have online play. The structure will be set up very similar to that of the ps2. I will be writing a story on online play when the psp launches march 24, but here are the basics. The psp will connect via a wifi hotspot, no matter if it is your home router or at your local starbucks. You will then be brought to a menu, a lobby really, from there you can select to enter a game that is about to begin or start your own. The psp will also be able to play wirelessly with other psps in the immediate area. So having a group of friends come over with psp to battle them in a multiplayer match is easy and there is no need for cables. Much like Nintendo ds's wireless capabilities. That's it for part one. In part two I will write about the software side of the psp which should be coming soon.stay tuned.
Tiger Telematics adds "Worms World Party" to the Gizmondo's line up. The game will have bluetooth multipayer ability, but gprs (internet) multipaler is unknown. Release date is also unkown at this current time.
Reports have it that LGE (LG) has announced a new phone the KV3600 at ces that is a mobile gaming handheld as well. First to be launched in korea then eventually elsewhere. This cdma phone has the capabilities of 3d graphic thanks to its 3d accelerator by ati (w2320) and supports Opengl es.More info to come soon
