Game Description:The teamwork based shooter returns, with a vengeance. Army of Two: The 40th Day drops the players into the city of Shanghai, when it is under attack by an unknown force. Luckily Rios and Salem are in the right place at the wrong time. Players work together to defeat enemies and solve puzzles as they make their way through the disaster to uncover who, or what, is behind it. Save yourselves before t…he entire city is lost. The hand-held version of the game features top-down, swivel-style gameplay, as well as a full cover system and plenty of co-op goodness.

The PSP port of EA’s Army of Two: The 40th Day is nothing like its next-gen counterpart. The gameplay is wildly different, but the basic elements of the franchise are in place. Does it make for a fun game, though?

A Port Unlike Any Other

Every once in a while, you pick up a game that just feels unfinished. There are framerate drops, game-breaking AI problems, and artwork that looks like placeholder assets. Unfortunately, the PSP version of Army of Two: The 40th Day is one of those titles.
In essence, the story from the next-gen version of the game is intact, albeit truncated. Salem and Rios are in Shanghai as the city collapses around them, but that actual plot is barely explored in the PSP version. The moral choices, which force you to choose between something wholly good or extremely evil, made the transition to the PSP, but they don’t have any real gameplay consequences. Some of the choices will give you cash, which can be used to purchase and upgrade weapons, but others just occur just to have something happen.

Like A Game From 1992, And Is About As Advanced

Instead of playing as a 3rd person shooter, which can work on the PSP (just look at Resistance: Retribution, Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, or the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker), the game is an isometric arcade-style shooter. You’ll move with the analog stick and shoot using the face buttons. Triangle shoots up, Circle shoots right, and so forth. Combining them will shoot diagonally and there is a hefty amount of target lock-on. Unfortunately, it rarely functions as you would expect and prioritizing targets is never an option. You will shoot where the game decides.
Your AI-controlled partner in 40th Day is abysmal, useless and game breaking in certain areas. You are able to set your partner to passive or aggressive and have him hold position or follow you. Whether or not these commands actually work is a crapshoot at any given time during the gameplay. The AI will often get stuck on some geometry and completely stop shooting at enemies, regardless of what setting he’s on. The only way to get him unstuck is for you to die, forcing him to approach and revive you. The only use you’ll get out of your partner is as a decoy for enemy fire to fill your “aggro” meter.

The AI also seems incapable of avoiding danger and he is never aware of incoming fire. One boss battle enters a phase where a large cannon on top of a tank can kill you with one shot. Your AI partner will die because of it…every time. Incoming mortar fire? The AI will gladly stand beneath it, welcoming the shells with open arms. Set your partner to aggressive and he will open fire on enemies, but emerge from cover and quickly die. My favorite is when the AI will move of his own accord, despite being commanded to hold position.

Play Game For 15 Minutes, Multiply By 10: You’ve Played The Whole Game

If you play this game for 15 minutes, you’ve already played the entire game. At no point does the gameplay evolve in any interesting way. Army of Two staples like the aggro meter are technically missing, even though the game does “use” the aggro system by giving either character a reddish hue when enemy attention is on him, or bluish when it’s on the partner. Most of the levels reuse rooms and art. Mini-Horde mode sections artificially extend the gameplay even though every room plays like a one-wave horde mode. Bosses consist of fighting and re-fighting a helicopter, harrier, APC, or heavy weapons guy. If you’re lucky, your AI partner will get stuck somewhere where he can’t be hit by enemy fire!

Cover is nearly useless as enemies can usually hit you even when you duck behind an obstacle. Halfway through the game, enemies get upgraded and carry laser guns (yes, laser guns) and rocket launchers. It’s at this point when you realize that you’re going to take damage–a lot of it. Your only chance is to constantly roll, which makes you temporarily immune to damage, but prevents you from fighting back. Usually, while trying to dodge three sets of incoming rockets, your partner will decide he doesn’t want to live anymore. At that point, it’s time to try and kill all of the enemies so you can revive him before you die as well. If you happen to be up against a heavy weapons soldier that requires flanking to kill, be prepared to attempt the fight at least five times before succeeding. Toward the end of the game, your success relies entirely on random health drops that some enemies will graciously give you upon death.

If You Actually Find Someone Else With This Game…

The game does include a multiplayer mode via ad hoc network, but that would require tricking someone else into wasting his or her money on this game. If you actually find someone to play with, it makes the game slightly bearable because no human is as brain-dead as the AI in this game. Unfortunately, the core experience of the game is so flawed that adding more players doesn’t do anything to remedy the experience. The only improvement is, you’ll both be bored and frustrated together. To make matters worse, only the host will gain money and have access to his or her weapon unlocks. The joining player is just along for the ride.

Is It Too Late To Start The PSP Port?

The PSP version Army of Two: The 40th Day feels like a rush job. If Buzz Monkey Software actually did have the same time to work on this as the main team at Electronic Arts did for the console versions, I would be very scared. There is next to nothing redeeming about this title and it doesn’t even begin to approach a level of quality you’d expect for a game carrying a major franchise name. If you’re looking for a shooter on the PSP, I highly suggest looking elsewhere.

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]]> http://www.gamepreviews247.com/game-previews/army-of-two-the-40th-day-psp/feed/ 0 http://www.gamepreviews247.com/game-previews/half-minute-hero-psp/ http://www.gamepreviews247.com/game-previews/half-minute-hero-psp/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:14:55 +0000 admin http://www.gamepreviews247.com/?p=241 Game Description: Experience a number of different game genres in 30-second intervals in this unique action RPG. The game features throwback graphics and design, and provides a fast-paced, and somewhat ironic, gameplay experience. Fans of classic role-playing will be glued to their PSPs with this quirky gem. The blend of old-school graphics and gameplay with irreverent [...]]]> Game Description: Experience a number of different game genres in 30-second intervals in this unique action RPG. The game features throwback graphics and design, and provides a fast-paced, and somewhat ironic, gameplay experience.

Fans of classic role-playing will be glued to their PSPs with this quirky gem. The blend of old-school graphics and gameplay with irreverent humor and time constraints provides gamers with an original portable adventure. There are four styles of gameplay as well, and enough variety and missions to attract hardcore and casual players.

If at any point in your life as a gamer you loved classic console RPGs (if even a little too much), then Xseed’s Half-Minute Hero is a must buy. A refreshing and hilariously irreverent take on the genre, the game includes enough clever gameplay, humor, and variety to make it a perfect portable experience.

Old School Craziness

Half-Minute Hero deliberately sidesteps the PSP’s high-powered visual capabilities to use what looks like an NES/SNES-era RPG engine to drive its zany action. The story revolves around the battle between the Time Goddess and the Evil Lord. Thought to have been banished many years ago, the Evil Lord is back and surprise, surprise he’s spreading evil across the land. There are four types of gameplay, though the Hero 30 mode is the most memorable.

Hero of the Half-Minute

In Hero 30, you are the stereotypical hero of the land who must wipe out an Evil Lord on each map before said diabolical entity can complete each world’s destruction.  The twist is that you must do it in 30 seconds. The mode is completely tongue-in-cheek. For example, the Time Goddess is a greedy and narcissistic sidekick from whom you buy 30-second time blocks. The frantic pace makes what would have been a cliched, lackluster adventure feel fresh and fun. It’s also helpful that time stops when you visit towns, where you can talk to people, get side quests, buy herbs, food, and new items.

Combat is almost completely automatic, but frequent random encounters let you level-up. The game tells you when you level-up higher than the Evil Lord, and then it’s simply a matter of plowing over the poor bugger. The Evil Lords often have hilarious reasons for world destruction — one is a giant crab who believes he’ll be able to walk forward if he destroys the world. Levels take only a few minutes to get through but are challenging enough to retain your interest.

Faster than a New York Minute

The other three game styles are amusing as well. The Princess storyline is basically a shooter, in which the levels scroll and you use the face buttons to shoot arrows in all directions while trying to keep your troops alive and healthy. The Evil Lord mode is especially funny, as it applies simplified real-time strategy and monster-summoning gameplay to Half-Minute Hero’s mini-format. It features a highly vain character who is more concerned with his hair than with fighting. The Knight mode is an action-focused dungeon escort mission. While the action can get repetitive after a while, you can easily switch between story modes or try a multiplayer variation of the hero mode with other nearby players. In total, the game takes roughly 10-15 hours to complete.

The primitive visual style might be a turn-off to some players, and there are some occasional minor flaws, but there’s no denying that through its design approach, Half-Minute Hero is an ideal portable game. It’s funny and engaging, with many fast-paced levels and gameplay that’s pretty accessible for nearly anyone. If you have 30 seconds, you too can save the world.

Source:g4tv.com

With music games making more money these days than most countries, it’s hardly surprising that they’d bring Rock Band to the PSP. What is surprising, in a pleasant way, is that rather than try and replicate the “you’re a rock star” feel of the other games, which worked so badly when Guitar Hero came to the DS, as you’ll see in this review of Rock Band Unplugged for the PlayStation Portable, they’ve decided to make it more of a rockin’ puzzle game.

Rockin’ In The Free World

As with every music game, Rock Band Unplugged has you following along with the bouncing notes, hitting the corresponding buttons as they pass the frets on a fretboard. Hit enough notes in a row and, yeah, well, you know the drill. Visually, it looks the same as its console counterparts, has the same kinds of bonus challenges (win a van, do a benefit show for more fans, etc.), and has the same open structure. Which means you’ll have to play some songs over and over and over….

Except that instead of playing this game with a mic, a guitar-shaped controller, or a miniature drum kit, you following along with the buttons on your PSP: the triangle for green notes, circle for blue notes, and up and left on the directional pad for red and yellow notes, to be specific. You also, at any given time, play one instrument, with notes in a row grouped into phrases. Nail all the notes in a phrase, and the instrument will play on its own for while which doesn’t mean you get to just sit back and flirt with a groupie. You have to switch to another instrument, which you do by hitting the shoulder buttons.

What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?

If you don’t nail all the notes, though, the game creates a new phrase, so you can try again. Except that if you miss a couple phrases in a row, the notes will start flowing on another instrument. As a result, screwing up doesn’t just ruin your score, it ruins the song as well, since, if you’re trying to nail the vocals on a song, and don’t do it right away, you’ll find it’s become an a capella track before too long.

You also can’t pull a Lemmy or a Geddy or a Sting and just swap between the bass and vocals. Once you’ve got an instrument going on its own, it goes for a while, so you have to be like a street corner one-man band and play every instrument. Which isn’t that big of a deal since, aside from slightly raising the volume on whatever instrument you’re playing, the game plays the same whether you’re on bass, drums, vocals, or guitar.

While this all might sound kind of weird, it actually weirdly works, albeit more as a fun puzzle-ish game. Granted, hardcore puzzle-heads won’t agree with this assessment, since there’s no mental challenge, but if you’re not a puzzle purist, you’ll see what we mean. If anything, Unplugged recalls 2001’s Frequency and 2003’s Amplitude, the trippy musical games the Harmonix guys made before they took a cue from GuitarFreaks and made 2005’s Guitar Hero. As a result, while this has some songs that have been in music games before, here they feel exciting and new.

Let The Music Do The Talking

If Unplugged has a failing — and if it didn’t, it would be getting five stars instead of four — it’s that the game has no multiplayer modes. You and three friends can’t play with each of you on the same instrument for a whole song, and you and your BFF can’t play a two-player guitar solo showdown. Why the developers didn’t take a couple extra months to put them in, we don’t know. It’s not like they had to get this out in time for the movie or anything.

We have the usual compliment of R&B (The Jackson Five’s “ABC”), punk (The Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday In Cambodia), alternative (Nirvana’s “Drain You”), and rock both contemporary (AFI’s “Miss Murder”) and classic (The Who’s “Pinball Wizard”). And while some might feel having such an eclectic mix guarantees that there’s something for everyone, you could also say there’s not much for any one person.

That said, the game gets huge, huge kudos for not including any pop crap (The Smashing Pumpkin’s “Today” notwithstanding), which never work as well in these games as well as rockier stuff, and for also not including any songs by the Harmonix employee’s crappy bands, which never work…in these games or on their own as placeholders.

More Than A Feeling

Admittedly, playing a music game without the faux instruments won’t make you feel like you’re rocking out with the band…unless your concept of being a rock star has been so warped by reality shows and celebrity blogs that you think texting on a blackberry like Pete Wentz is “rocking out.” For those of you who don’t need a faux ego boost and for those who can take this for what it is, Rock Band Unplugged is pretty electric.

Source:g4v.com