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| Monday, December 31, 2007 Two Awesome Homebrew Updates — Tyrian PSP v0.8 & PSPTube 20071229c • Two homebrew updates that will keep you entertained for the final weekend of 2007. Deniska, two days ago actually, released Tyrian PSP v0.8. Download the patch below and if you haven’t already done so, grab the full package too. Copy the v0.8 EBOOT.PBP (patch) overwriting the original install (full). Tyrian PSP v0.8 patch:
SofiyaCat has also improved PSPTube today. By the look of things we may see the final version (20071231) released New Years day — on the 31st. Online Japanese to English translation indicates a possible cumulative update from past beta releases. PSPTube 20071229c: (via Google Translate)
Download: Labels: Homebrews ZX-81 Updates: PSPAtari v1.1.1 & PSPBEEB v1.1.0 Released • Another two-for-one deal… ZX-81 with two retro-fitted emulators for your PSP: PSPAtari and PSPBEEB. PSPAtari emulates the Atari 800, 800XL, 130XE, and 5200 personal computer models. PSPAtari v1.1.1 changes:
PSPBEEB is a port of BeebEm — a popular emulator of the BBC Micro computer series. Check out ZX-81’s site (see source) for the history behind it. PSPBEEB v1.1.0 changes:
Download: PSPBEEB v1.1.0 fw 1.50 Labels: Homebrews Saturday, December 29, 2007 Orbid: A New Homebrew Game • I must say, homebrew comes a dime a dozen nowadays, and over the years developers sure have come along way… What’s on tonight’s roster is another addictive homebrew game from a coder we’ve grown to know and truly appreciate. He goes by the name of Slasher, and this represents his latest — Orbid! 
Orbid features 4 distinct game modes:
Download: Orbid Labels: Homebrews PSPVICE v1.1: C64 Emulation on 3.71 M33 + the Slim • For those wishing to emulate some classic Commodore 64 action on your PSP Slim, this is for you. Martypsp has taken the liberty in recompiling Christophe and the VICE team’s PSPVICE v1.1. No code changes, no additions or loses, just Slim compatibility.  PSPVICE is a port of Rami Räsänen’s PS2Vice. Props to Christophe, the VICE team, and everyone else involved with this emulator. Download: PSPVICE v1.1 for 3.71 M33 + Slim Labels: Homebrews 3.80 PSARDumper + KL4E/KL3E Decompressor Released • Although it’s likely to serve the average Joe no real purpose, PSARDumper marks a great achievement in the PSP hacking scene. This current version dumps & decrypts PSP firmware 3.80. As well it decompresses the newly introduced compression algorithm called KL4E. Email reports indicate the work of _HellDashX_, but I’m not certain — no readme, no details, etc… Props to whomever is responsible anyway. Labels: Announcements Impaler’s PSX EBOOT Creator Updated • Impaler has once again updated his PSX EBOOT Creator. This new version features a [working] preview option and output window for error handling purposes. It’s no doubt the easiest way to create single and multi disc PSX/PSOne EBOOTs for Dark_AleX’s PopsLoader. Want to know more? Read here.  Download: Impaler’s PSX EBOOT Creator - source: impaleriso.com Labels: Homebrews Thursday, December 27, 2007 Simple Reboot/Shutdown PRX for Custom Firmware 3.71 M33 • Fadil changing things up a bit… Rather than sharing news, he’s making the news… Written by Fadil himself is a simple PRX module for preventing an accidental [official] firmware upgrade. Copy Fadil’s “update_plugin.prx” to flash0:/vsh/module overwriting the original. Of course you should take proper precautions by creating a backup first. Once that is said and done, while hovering over the firmware update icon, hold R-trigger and press X to shut down your PSP, or just X to reboot. Pretty simple, huh? Access flash0 by toggling USB on/off under 3.71m33 recovery console. And be careful! Download: Reboot-Shutdown PRX for 3.71 M33 Labels: Homebrews Freeesh 1.1 Released • So freeesh and so cleeean with the origins of life… RealtechVR’s “Freeesh” objective is to protect your cell while feeding in hopes to reach a high lever of evolution.  1.1 changes:
These are the same dudes who brought us No Gravity for the PSP. With that in mind the game packs stunning homebrew graphics and arcade-like game play. Enjoy! Download: Freeesh 1.1 - source: realtech-vr Thanks Fadil Labels: Homebrews Wednesday, December 26, 2007 Merry Xmas! • First and foremost… Merry Xmas. We hope you all have a safe and happy holiday. On top of that… ZX-81 playing the Santa Claus role by wrapping up various homebrew emulators, apps, and games in four virtual packages. So crack open those brand new PlayStation Portables, or grab your old one, and start loading up that memory stick. Download ZX-81 Xmas package: PSP Board Games — PSP GNU Chess, PSPGo, PSPMancala PSP Homebrew Apps — PSPWrite, afkim, PSPFTPD, PSPIRC, PSPPoste, PSPVNC, PSPSSH PSP Calculator Emulators — TI-92, X48 PSP Emulators & Old School Stuff — Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari 800, Caprice32, ColecoVision, Intellivision, MSX, MSX2, and MSX2+, SamCoupe, Thomson TO7, Texas instruments TI99, Sinclair ZX81 Labels: Homebrews Saturday, December 22, 2007 Another Multidisc PopStation GUI • Update: Impaler has shared a minor update which adds an about screen and preview button. Feel free to re-download the RAR archive below. Another PopStation front end for Dark_AleX’s multi-disc popsloader has surfaced from developer Impaler. I just finished giving the GUI a quick test run and it seems to function quite well. It’s capable of creating both single and multiple images depending on your selection. Impaler’s PSX EBOOT Creator is a Windows.NET Application. So you’ll require the necessary Microsoft frameworks. Labels: Homebrews YACC v0.4.0.2 Released • YACCity YACC, don’t talk back… Unless of course you’re downloading the latest version of Yet Another CSO Compressor (YACC) with two Serbian (latin & cyrilic) translation by FillerUE. In addition to that, two news skins — redbull & OmBre — courtesy of marc46. kapoue3’s YACC acts as a front end for compressing ISO images to BOOSTER’s CSO and/or Uncle Jam’s JSO format. It’s compatible with kapoue3’s CisoPlus extension as well.  Download: YACC v0.4.0.2 Labels: Homebrews Friday, December 21, 2007 LiveHelp Uptime • Livehelp will be down on 21/12/2007 for maintenance. Do drop us an email or order forms for enquiries. Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience caused. Labels: Announcements Wednesday, December 19, 2007 PSP & PS3 Remote Play with PSOne Games! • Numerous emails we’ve received detail an interesting feature that goes unmentioned with PSP firmware 3.80 and PS3 Firmware 2.10. Those owning both devices running said firmwares may take advantage of a new Remote Play feature — PSOne games! Now you have the option to save precious storage space on your Memory Stick by playing all your favourite PSOne games over Remote Play. This apparently works with PSOne titles downloaded via the online Playstation store or using the original disc. Thanks to everyone who emailed us. Labels: Announcements PSP Custom Firmware 3.80 M33 in Development • An interesting thread started by Mathieulh indicates custom firmware 3.80 M33 is in the works. Furthermore, the possibility of a 3rd generation PSP model could be under development too… Have a read:
Labels: Announcements PSP Firmware 3.80 Dumped & Decrypted… In Some Sort • Yep, you read correctly… The latest Sony PSP firmware has been dumped and decrypted; however, we won’t see a new custom firmware just yet. Dark_AleX notes:
Once those issues are tackled we’re back in business. Thanks dlr. Labels: Announcements Tuesday, December 18, 2007 PSP Firmware 3.80 Released • To accompany the PS3 2.10 firmware update, Sony has also unveiled PSP firmware 3.80. *Sniff* *Sniff* Do I smell a new custom firmware brewin’? 3.80 changes:
Labels: Announcements “Intellegenze!” • Despite the incorrect spelling PspHacker108 dares to test your intelligence with his new homebrew game, “Intellegenze.” The concept is simple: answer each multiple choice question correctly, and should you fail to do so, you’ve lost entirely. Now start over. Categories include:
Button Commands:
Labels: Homebrews Monday, December 17, 2007 Beats Review • Beats really came out of nowhere. For most, the first mention of the game was in trailer form when the PSP PlayStation Store for PC went live a week or two ago. The game quickly hit the European Store, but SCEA was mum about when the game would arrive for North America. Surprise: it's here and it's... well, it's a $5 application that turns your MP3s into a very basic rhythm action game. The "game" part of things is fairly simple: symbols that correspond to the face buttons glide in on time (well, relatively, but more on that in a second) toward one of three landing points. Simply tapping in time with the correct button will help build up a combo meter on the right side of the screen, and by hitting special glowing symbols, you can build up an Overdrive Meter that lets you double your combo meter's multiplier for a short time.  The catch is that while in Overdrive, the symbols will slide in from the diagonals instead of arriving straight on from the left, right and top of the screen. Because you have to hold left or right on the d-pad to capture the symbols hitting those landing points, it can cause some fairly hectic button mashing segments, so there's a very basic risk/reward setup to going into Overdrive. Otherwise, it's simply a matter of juggling symbols as they come in, which is an easy to understand concept that requires no real tutorial (though there is one for those that are stumped). What does require a tutorial is the other half of Beats' offering: a light music creation tool that uses the dozen tracks from SCEE titles like Team Buddies, EyeToy Kinetic and Drop Ship (plus a few tracks made just for Beats) to break apart the components into a custom mix. It's slightly similar to the remixing tool that was found in FreQuency, and if you spend the time becoming familiar with the various parts of a song (they're broken down into banks for synth, drums, percussion, vocals and so on), you can actually accomplish some rather interesting remixes. Studio London did a damn fine job condensing what could have been an overwhelming process into something that can be figured out with just a bit of step-by-step instruction. The L Button lets you toggle a storage bank for multiple samples that can then be activated instantly with another L tap, and the R Button lets you cycle through the available samples of a song. Since you can play multiple samples at the same time, and because you have to flick through the "pages" of different instrument groups, learning to queue stuff up can lead to the best proper builds.  Once you've gotten the basics down, you can hit select to start recording a clip, then save it and even use that custom mix as a Challenge level like the regular game. You can also share the mixes with anyone else that jumps online, though the implementation of this is rather half-assed. Once you're online and sharing the file, there's no indication of when someone (or who) has downloaded it, so organizing shares with someone must be done outside of the game. The online-enabled custom mixing game is equally lackluster because even though it's collaborative (with each person getting their own sample bank to screw around with), actually communicating with them is impossible -- or at least isn't explained in the game. Laughably, there's a "game manual" that you can pull up from the XMB, but it simply tells you to get help in-game, and the only help available is the limited tutorial. Yes, it's a $5 game, but it would have been nice to have a little extra help. The actual game portion of the app lives and dies by its beat detection, and for the most part Beats lives up to its name, generating everything from coma-inducing patterns to absolute mayhem, though the actual complexity is understandably up to the music you feed it. Given the fact that all of the pre-supplied tracks are definitely of the electronic persuasion, it should come as no surprise that something with a simple 4/4 beat and minimal outside fuss would produce the best patterns, but Beats' digestion of more syncopated breaks and irregular rhythms still worked surprisingly well. More often than not, though, it wasn't dead on, leading to a slight disconnect from what you're listening to, though when it works, it elevates listening your MP3s to a new level, which we imagine was the idea. Beats offers a certain amount of customization of the overall interface, too. You can choose from a whopping 70 visualizations to play and react in the background to your music. Usually this means a basic warping background pattern and something spilling out of the capture points when you hit a symbol, but the backgrounds change when you go into Overdrive Mode as well. It doesn't seem like the backgrounds themselves actually change to go along with the music, but still, the variety is nice. Likewise, you can pick one of nine themes for the main menu in either static (still wallpaper) or dynamic (music and a movie) flavors.  Reproduction of the MP3s is pretty solid, but there are some technical hitches to be dealt with. Slowdown is a minor annoyance, but it does happen fairly often, as do slight pauses while the game either analyzes the track to create beats or just buffers it or possibly both. Neither is quite as hard on the new PSP, likely due to the ability to buffer things a little more, but given the number of people out there with the older model, it's something we did want to mention. Closing Comments Other parts of Beats come off as a little ham-fisted -- or at the very least like Studio London didn't quite give the game enough time to bake out some of the issues. Little things like not being able to restart a song after you get to the results screen, or just the loading times in general for something that's entirely Memory Stick-based, make it all feel a little less polished than it could have been. Even still, for just a mere Abe Lincoln, a mostly solid MP3 analysis and rhythm action game is a pretty decent deal, and I know the music geek in me will be playing around with different genres just to see what kind of patterns turn up. Vib Ribbon it ain't, but it isn't half bad either. Labels: Game Reviews Thursday, December 13, 2007 Another Custom Firmware — 3.73 HX-1 Released! • Feeling saucy? Want to live life on the bleeding edge of custom firmwares? Then HellDashX’s 3.73 HX-1 is for you. 3.73 HX-1 is based on the la You will have access to the newest official PSP features and changes, as well the “custom” factor enabling homebrew, 3rd party modules, and a ton of other fascinating things. 3.73 HX-1 changes:
You must be running an existing custom firmware version prior to installation. Labels: Announcements 3.71 M33-4 Released w/ Multi-disc Supported PopsLoader! • Dark_AleX — the legend himself, not that wannabe Will Smith — has released 3.71 M33-4. The latest & greatest in PSP custom firmwares. Now enjoy your library of multi-disc PSOne games on the slickest hand held around, Sony’s PlayStation Portable. Requirements:
M33-4 & Popsloader changelog:
Labels: Announcements PSP Firmware 3.80 — Dec. 18th • SCEJ has announced the December 18th release date for PSP firmware 3.80. Also provided is the corresponding [translated] changelog: courtesy of Fadil
Labels: Announcements Wednesday, December 12, 2007 PSP Filer 4.51 Released • More on Mediumgauge’s popular PSP Filer homebrew application. Here comes version 4.51: filer changes:
Download: PSP Filer v4.51 - source: geocities Kudos Mediumgauge, and thanks again for the tip Fadil. Labels: Homebrews Tuesday, December 11, 2007 OpenBOR v2.1134 Released • SamuraiX has released a new version of the OpenBOR beat ‘em up engine. To coincide with SamuraiX’s OpenBOR v2.1134, uTunnel has created one uberly awesome mod — a remake of Golden Axe! It does however require a PSP Slim as the mod utilizes more than 20MB of memory for initialization & in-game play.  OpenBOR Engine Bug Fixes:
OpenBOR Engine Updates:
Labels: Homebrews Saturday, December 8, 2007 PSP Filer 4.5 Released • File in style with Mediumgauge’s PSP Filer version 4.5. You know what it’s all about… Move a file here, copy a file there, dump a UMD, view some pics, organize your media, analyze memory contents, rearrange XMB icons, and much more… In plenty of different languages too. PSP Filer 4.5 changes… general:
filer:
text viewer:
Download: PSP Filer v4.5 Labels: Homebrews Friday, December 7, 2007 NBA 08 • When the PSP version was released last year alongside the PS2, it was somewhat surprising to note that it was the best basketball title from Sony's studios. The portable title merged the elements of the court game and its colored halo shooting mechanic with some of the most addictive and engaging sports mini-games. What's more, it fully took advantage of the online and even peripheral capabilities of the system, making it a showcase sports game for the PSP. How could Sony follow up on such a strong title? By releasing NBA 08, a game that builds on the strengths of last year's title with deeper features and more mini-games than ever before. Once again, NBA 08 for the PSP doesn't focus on The Life like the PS2 version of the game, nor does it have a Progression Hub for created players akin to the PS3 title. What it does once again is pack in a ton of basketball and basketball related mini-games onto a tiny UMD. The same pack of gameplay modes from last year return in this year's title: exhibition, season, playoffs, shoot around, free throw and the pickup game make an appearance, with the option to play online pickup and exhibition games. The standard Sony All-Star weekend package is back, with the 3 point contest, All-Star Game and Skills Challenge included. The Dunk Contest, which was a new addition last year, has been excluded in this version of the game. That's not much of a loss, since that mini-game sucked, but considering that there's nothing new with the All-Star Weekend, it's a little disappointing that something didn't take its place.  Pinball has returned with brand new boards. Elimination, on the other hand, is a 5-on-5 arcade style game based around points. Each team member has six points assigned to them, which can only be cleared by making any combination of jump shots, layups or dunks. Once a player has scored their six points, he's removed from the court entirely, which would initially seem like a disadvantage. However, this is actually a plus, because his remaining teammates receive a powerup to further help them defeat their opponents. Some of these include unlimited turbo, increased stealing abilities or easier rebounding. All of these powerups are randomized at the beginning of each game, so you won't continually receive the same one over and over again. There is one twist to the formula, however: the star athletes will receive weaker powerups while the regular or sixth man style player will be assigned stronger powerups. So someone like King James would possibly be assigned nothing at all, while Daniel Gibson or Shannon Brown would have improved shooting powerups. The game is one once a team has eliminated four of its five players, which is a challenge by itself, but an engaging one as you try to score as quickly as possible before your opponent does.  Now Shooting Bricks isn't a bad thing! Shootin' Bricks, on the other hand, is more like Arkanoid, where you control a paddle and knock balls into different colored bricks on a basketball court. Random blocks are arrayed on the stage as well which can either affect the direction of the ball or unlock powerups, such as the ability to use magnets to move the ball where you want it to go or expanding the size of your paddle. The game deviates from Arkanoid in a few ways though - you can control the angle and the speed of your paddle at any time you want, and you also don't have to clear every single block to reach the next stage. Instead, you simply have to uncover the basketball goal that's hidden by a block on the stage and have the ball make contact with the goal to continue. Regardless of the Carnival game that you play, you'll receive tickets which can be used to unlock classic jerseys for teams, or floor patterns for the Own the Court game. It's an okay number of unlockables, but the true meat of the extras to be found here comes with the aforementioned downloadable pinball tables, which should keep you busy for a while. Another thing that will keep you busy is Conquest mode, which has been significantly expanded from last year's version. As a quick reminder, Conquest is a mix of basketball and strategy where you take you favorite team and attempt to invade and take over every other NBA city with your skill on the courts. There are a number of new features that have been added to make the strategy more complex as well as increase the challenge for skilled conquest players. The first is the ability to strengthen your teams with the addition of training programs. In last year's game, you could only improve a squad under your control by beating another team, trading their stars for yours in the process. While that's still a key point of the game, you're now able to supplement these teams with additional training, bolstering a player's individual stats with extra medals and stars. What's more, you can now redeem any of these stars for upgradeable powerups, such as shooting, running and power boosts to make those athletes more of a force on the court. Stars can also be used to upgrade a city, making it harder for an invading squad to defeat another team by taking the court off the streets and into practice facilities and eventually the home arena itself. Once again, Conquest mode comes off as an incredibly deep feature that could stand alone as a title, and hopefully it will be exported to all of the future versions of Sony's NBA franchise.  The gameplay hasn't really been tweaked... Obviously, NBA 08 is incredibly deep, and the fact that you can take on players via Ad Hoc and Infrastructure in five of the mini-games as well as the exhibition and pickup games is impressive. However, we did notice that while jumping online and getting into a match with another player is extremely easy to do, we ran into multiple instances of lag that dipped the title below the game's standard 60 frames per second. We also noticed that many of the features that were included in last year's title seem to be missing in this year's game. For instance, the game sharing that was included in last year's title for Carnival games appears to be completely missing from NBA 08. Similarly, the inclusion of PSP camera support appears to have evaporated from this version, presumably because the peripheral has as well for North American shores, which is somewhat disappointing. Considering all of that, it would've been nice if you could hook up your PSP to your PS3 version of the game and take your season with you on the go, uploading your progress when you got home. Alas, that's not to be in NBA 08 either. At least there's downloadable roster support.  ... so if you can get around some of the old issues, you'll be fine with NBA 08. Closing Comments Labels: Game Reviews Castlevania: Symphony of the Night • It's actually debatable why I'd even need to throw a couple words at you about why you need to have Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in your collection in some form. It's arguably the best game on the PS one (rivaled primarily by Metal Gear Solid, No. 1 on our Top 25 PlayStation Games of All Time list), and though for posterity's sake it's probably a good idea to have the original PlayStation disc chilling somewhere in your game library, getting the game in digital form is certainly a close second. Symphony of the Night represents a rather unique snapshot in the history of games; it's the swan song of 2D as it went the way of the dodo (or at least the California Condor) and 3D gaming rose as the de facto standard. More recent games like Odin Sphere and GrimGrimoire are at least keeping the genre alive, but SotN was the pinnacle of 2D at the time -- even more surprising given that the PS one wasn't really supposed to be a 2D powerhouse.
 Runnin'. Symphony also kicked off the birth of the so-called Metroidvania style that would eventually see plenty of GBA and DS sequels down the road. The layout of Dracula's castle, though, is arguably better than any of the others. It offers a constant string of impediments that are slowly unlocked as you search the castle for your lost powers. Yes, it's an unapologetic homage to the Metroid style of gameplay, but wrapped in a proper action-RPG setting where main man Alucard actually deals points of damage with every strike and slowly gains more hit points and hearts to use special items, it all feels fresh even today. There's also the matter of the game's translation. No, the story isn't terribly amazing (Alucard, Dracula's son born to a human mother and his infamous father, rejects his vampric nature to side with the humans in destroying his father's castle before Daddy Drac can be reborn yet again), but hearing hilariously delivered lines like "Mankind can ill afford a savoir such as you" and "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!" is almost reason enough to go for this version rather than the updated, retranslated version available in the Dracula X Chronicles.
 The glory of combat. In fact, one of the biggest reasons why I have such an affinity for Symphony of the Night is because of the way the castle was designed. It's challenging in normal form, but Konami's brilliance in building it to be played upside down as well speaks volumes about the skill of the design team. Throw in much tougher enemies and parts that can only be explored once you've mastered all of Alucard's skills and you have a game that keeps giving long after it would normally be over (literally, you can push your completion percentage to 200+ if you seek out all the hidden passageways in both versions of the castle).
Closing Comments If you don't own Symphony of the Night in some form, slap yourself for being so careless and get your butt over to the PS Store to grab you some Castlevania love. Now. Labels: Game Reviews Silent Hill: 0rigins • By now, gamers have become well aware that if any character mentions Silent Hill, they're in for a world of pain. Full of insanity, skinned monstrosities, alternate dimensions and a freakish cult hellbent on destroying the world, this supposedly sleepy town has ensnared its visitors with a unique brand of survival horror. Over the course of four console games and a feature length movie, fans have descended its depths and explored its buildings, looking to escape from its fog-enshrouded streets. The evil has crossed from consoles to the PSP with the latest title, Silent Hill 0rigins, which attempts to explain what made the town so twisted to begin with.  Expect to see a lot of familiar faces. Or do you? Unfortunately, while the concepts behind combat in 0rigins are cool, the implementation is somewhat skewed. Sure, your melee weapons break, but there are so many items that you can acquire to replace them that you never feel like you're in danger of relying solely upon your fists to survive. I killed a number of creatures and broke plenty of drip stands, spears and crowbars, but there were always plenty of objects to replace them. In fact, by the time I got to the final boss, I found that I still had at least twenty or thirty melee weapons of various conditions in my inventory. Another strike against combat is that your projectile weapons quickly become useless against many of the monsters you face off against. It's pretty easy to toss a television into a nurse because she's pretty slow and weak, but later enemies can frequently shrug off some of these one hit kills. What's more, hefting and throwing these items takes a long time, which can easily open Travis up to injury against some of the faster enemies or monsters that spit viscous liquid at you. Additionally, the quick time events that you'll find yourself sometimes engaging in if monsters get too close don't have the same kind of impact that they do in other games. You don't gain any additional damage on monsters, but instead push them away, which feels like a bit of a letdown compared to the other battle elements.  Get off me! Another issue that crops up is the problem of the camera, which is designed to highlight dramatic angles or impart a sense of claustrophobia. While it does this rather well, it fails within battle, as you will frequently find yourself struggling to see what is attacking you from off-screen. What's more, you may find that as you swing or move forward in battle, the camera angle will change and you'll accidentally move in the wrong direction or run into danger rather than away from it. Even trying to remedy this is somewhat hampered, because centering the camera doesn't work as well as it should, which is very unfortunate. Of course, combat isn't the only thing within 0rigins - Players will find themselves exploring the town, collecting objects and using them in to gain access to new areas. Frequently, this will take you across both the foggy "normal world" and the industrialized "other world" that has become synonymous with Silent Hill. However, 0rigins has a rather unique twist that makes exploration a bit more flexible, but is possibly controversial as far as the series is concerned. Instead of being dragged into the other world kicking and screaming, feeling as if your grip on reality is being stripped away from you, you pick and choose when you're going to travel between both worlds with the use of mirrors that have been scattered across the town. Since you can control these at will, the sense of dread or foreboding is sometimes stripped out of venturing into the other dimensions in favor of searching for a door to unlock or a new item to collect. The mental institution, in particular, is guilty of this, because the section drags on for way too long.  You'll never look at a mirror the same way again. Jokes of the accolades aside, 0rigins is visually stunning on the PSP. Climax and Konami have managed to capture every disturbing aspect of the console games in startling detail. From the cluttered and junk strewn locations to the rusty, chaos filled doppelgangers of the alternate dimensions, everything feels like it's been stripped from one of the other titles and shrunk down to the handheld. Character models are large and detailed, and many of the monsters show off a slick, oily sheen that highlights their unnatural shapes. The ubiquitous fog that makes Silent Hill as ominous as it has become known for shows up extremely well, and the well placed items of gore and other scare tactics (including flashbacks and cutscenes) work extremely well.  Die, odd jelly skinned dog thing! Closing Comments Labels: Game Reviews Football Manager Handheld 2008 UK Review • You probably already know whether you're going to buy Football Manager Handheld 2008. That's because the Football Manager series, more than any other football game, captures all of the blind devotion, all of the irrational animosity, all of the emotional extremity of the beautiful game. So you've probably already decided whether you're going to like it or not. And that question ultimately boils down to whether you're going to like what basically amounts to the same game as the last one, updated with all the correct players and statistics for the current season. And the chances are that if you've found yourself ensnared by the labyrinthine depths of the last game, you probably already know you're going to buy this one too.  FMH 2008 doesn’t offer quite as many leagues or competitions as the PC version. If you haven't found yourself ensnared by the last game, then you probably haven't played it, so perhaps a quick summary is in order. FMH 2008 is the third version of Sports Interactive's seminal management sim to appear on the PSP. The idea is simple: pick a league from one of 10 countries, then pick a team from that league, and turn it into a financial and sporting success. Sign and train players to assemble a squad, set your tactics, and then send your team out to do the business on the pitch. It is unadorned by fancy graphics, or a la-de-da soundtrack. It is, mostly, just an array of names and numbers. It is the essence of strategy gaming: simple, but complex. Compared to the PC version of the game, however, Football Manager Handheld is ruthlessly pared down, in order to fit the PSP screen and on a UMD, but also to make the game more suitable for portable play. That, actually, turns out to be the game's greatest strength. In shrinking the game to fit the PSP, Sports Interactive has been forced to constrain some of the bloated excesses that deter non-Stattos from dabbling with the main game. And that stripped back design cuts right to the essence of the management genre, without any off-putting distractions.  FMH 2008 adds the ability to customise your tactics, and share them with friends. That much is true of the first two Football Manager Handheld games, and it's also true of FMH 2008. The major difference is, of course, that FMH 2008 features all the player data and stats from the current season - which isn't to be sniffed at when you're considering the irrational world of wish fulfilment. The other features, however, consist mostly of tweaks that will only really be discernible to Football Manager's die-hard fans. There are no new leagues, for example, and only a few new cup competitions. A new interface layout and choice of skins provide just a cosmetic enhancement over last season's iteration. A more substantial alteration is the inclusion of a reserve squad, providing managers with more opportunities for long-term development of their footballing dynasty, as well as a wider range of players to support their squad rotation policies. It's the sort of change that maintains the simplicity of the handheld game, while gently opening up the range of strategic options. Another such change is the new ability to customise your team's tactics. These are the sorts of changes that many players won't ever need to explore to shore up a moderate degree of mid-table success, but budding Mourinhos and Wengers will seize these new opportunities with both hands.  Ah, the local derby. What football’s all about. Apart from that, it's very much business as usual. It's perhaps marginally more difficult for lower league managers, because it's marginally more difficult to snaffle all the youthful talent. And the match engine has, apparently, been optimised too - certainly the load times are quick and painless, and matches zip along (if you set the game speed to very fast, which you'll want to do). One minor complaint concerns the interface. It's certainly easy enough to navigate, but there are still times when all of the information you need isn't quite at your disposal - like when you want to compare potential new signings to your existing squad members, for example. But yes, this is the largely the same game that's already appeared twice on the PSP. Which is, in many ways, a good thing. After all, the best managers tend to stick to careful evolution, and know the value of a low profile nip and tuck here and there, rather than risking everything with radical change. And even third time around, the game is still a strategic, wish-fulfilling treat. You'll quickly find yourself drawn into its carefully constructed, superbly coherent footballing world and you'll rapidly feel the need to fill all your waking moments wrestling with the thorny question of whether to press or whether to counterattack, or what to do about your central defender's impending retirement, or your new striker's delicate ego.  At the start of the game you can pick a team, or have one randomly assigned to you. So Football Manager Handheld 2008 is a perfect fit for the PSP, just like the other two games were. It's a brilliant distillation of the best things about football management games, with all of the extraneous superfluity stripped out. Sure, there are minor niggles regarding some of the interface design, but this is as good a football management game as any portable platform has any right to expect. But, still, this is true of the last two games in the series, and the biggest problem with FMH 2008 is undeniably that it fails to sufficiently distinguish itself from the previous games. Closing Comments Labels: Game Reviews Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice • If there's one thing you can say about Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice it's that its title is right on the money. As a member of Capital City's elite police unit, the Pursuit Force, you've got the green light to do whatever you like, dishing out the death sentence without so much as a verbal warning, let alone a trial. Spot a guy who has a red circle around them? Shoot them. And if you pass a car with a big arrow above it, blow it up. Yep, in this futuristic alternate reality, zero tolerance means just that, and that can only make for a riotous action game, right?  Enemies are auto-targeted for you. Just pick your biggest gun and shoot. Extreme Justice definitely trumps your average get-from-A-to-B-against-the-clock driving game when it comes to variety. In terms of explosive spectacle and over-the-top arcade action, it's hard to beat - particularly when it comes to the newly-introduced major boss vehicle set-pieces. There aren't many PSP games that cram in boss fights atop a plane cruising at 5,000-feet. These battles pit you against one gang leaders per level, all with a unique vehicular twist. One epic boss encounter sees you perched on top of a speeding fire truck, dodging fire balls, inching along the side, shooting armed cronies and frantically trying to regain balance if they land a shot. Admittedly, it overindulges in the QTE action a bit but, luckily, Extreme Justice's frequent forays into real-time button pushing sequences work well as a means of introducing some up-close drama. It's not all about gameplay additions though. For this follow-up, developer BigBig has gone some way to addressing a major criticism levelled at its original Pursuit Force. Last outing, the game suffered from some seriously frustrating difficulty spikes. This time around, it's definitely more balanced but sadly still not perfect. For instance, there's still too much focus on tough time limits. All too often, goals are so harsh progress screeches to a lengthy halt while you grit your teeth in increasing fury. Clearly the large number of missions on offer is great in terms of value, but giving the option to move off a difficult mission when defeat is practically inevitable would have helped make things infinitely more manageable.  You'll find yourself chased down on bikes, fire engines and helicopters. Unfortunately, Extreme Justice is equally uneven from an entertainment perspective. While driving all manner of vehicles - from boats to trucks to hovercraft - is largely enjoyable, especially in missions where you're leap-frogging from one to another every few seconds, on-foot missions simply don't match up in terms of quality. For instance, enemies come rushing at you with all the intelligence and panache of a Friday night drunk clutching a broken bottle, but still don't seem to struggle caning three-quarters of your health before you've even had chance to think about taking cover. On-foot missions can be utterly draining in their ineptitude, offering little in the way of fun or skill fulfilment. Alongside the one-off missions found in Challenge mode, four multiplayer modes round off the experience and include both versus and co-op cops and robbers style car chase games. You can either spend fraught minutes trying to blow each other up, or take to a super-vehicle with one driving and one manning a kick-ass rear mounted gun. The Rampage game is the only let down of the lot and that's just because it's an on-foot deathmatch that really doesn't offer the same thrills as the four-wheeled bouts.
Closing Comments Labels: Game Reviews
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