Saturday, July 29, 2006

urgo2 daily PS2 talk

A lot of the games you saw coming out last year during the Xbox 360's initial run had one foot planted firmly in the previous generation. With the advent of the PS3, though, the latest iterations of all the big franchises are finally being designed with the next-gen consoles fully in mind, and it's exciting to see what developers are coming up with.
Last year's installment of the evergreen Tony Hawk franchise, American Wasteland, was a good little skateboarding game--everywhere except on the Xbox 360, where Activision didn't seem to care enough to beef the game up significantly over its current-gen counterparts. That all changes this year with Tony Hawk's Project 8, the first game in the series that's clearly being made for the power of the new consoles. The game is taking a back-to-basics approach similar to the Pro Skater series, in that it's heavy on trick-related goals instead of a linear storyline. The craziest looking new feature is the ability to literally control each of your feet in slow motion with the two analog sticks, allowing you to actually craft your own custom tricks from scratch. Sounds weird, I know, but you really need to see our new video of the game in action to appreciate how that's gonna work.
Next, if you can't get enough 2D side-scrolling action on the go--and I know I can't--you must set your sights on Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins for the PSP. Mainly because from what I can tell, beating that game on the hardest setting will take you so long, you'll never need another one of its type. The game recreates the gameplay feel of the classically ghoulish action series, all the way down to its maddening white-knuckle difficulty level. Capcom has managed to flesh out the action with a bunch of collectable items, new weapons, magic spells, multi-function shields, and more--so there's a lot of meat packed in here, but only if you can hang with the challenge.
Lastly, I know it's only been a couple of weeks since I told you about our latest import preview of Tekken: Dark Resurrection on the PSP. But now we've gotten our hands on the final English version of the game and passed judgment on it for all time--and I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't include our new highest-rated PSP game in this here newsletter. The game is basically identical to the Japanese version I checked out recently--except it's in English, of course--and it's easily the best fighting experience you can get on the go, on any handheld platform. Hats off to the developers at Namco for cramming an entire arcade machine (and then some) onto one little UMD. The game should be out on shelves by the time you read this, so get out there and get scrappy.


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home