Review of PSPGAMES category for Spring 2009 NeoFlash
Ragdoll CannonI had played the Flash version of this game, and I loved it. So I was glad to see a PSP version had been created. So let's get down to it:
The gameplay is great. Everything I was hoping for. Some easy levels. Some impossible levels. But in the end I did manage them all. It was nice to have access to practice each level as well as two bonus levels. The music and sound effects nicely complemented the game play.
Now, for what's missing: well the goal of the game is to finish it in the least amount of shots. It clearly tracks the number of shots it took cumulatively, except that when you get to the end, it doesn't announce your number of shots. And worse, it doesn't keep a best score so that you can compare. Even without online score sharing, a local hiscore table or best score comparison would really help with replayability.
Rating: 85+5=90%Still it is my pick for best game overall.
Gnar PongWell this is a straight forward version of pong, with a twist of some eyecandy which makes it very difficult to play. I can't say that the world needs a new version of pong really, and yet in this compo there are two versions of pong. The AI for the opponent is clever enough to be competitive, and in fact beat me because I had trouble seeing my paddle or becuase the controls for the paddle aren't analog (like on my real pong game from the 70's) and so I couldn't get where I wanted fast enough. Also multiplayer is almost always done on PSP versions of pong, and I would like to see that here too.
Otherwise it was a solid if not inspired game. Sound was missing.
Rating: 65+5=70%PongWell, another NeoFlash, another Pong. This time it does offers both two player, and single player modes. The music playing in the background (both visualized as a wave graph and the audio adds a nice upbeat feel to the game, At least until it comes to an end. Then there is no music.
I looked at the ball speed options, and I like the use of the Sony OSK to fill in the values. But when I cancelled the change, the app crashed and restarted.
As for the actual game play, it seems that the angle that the ball can move at is fixed to a small number of angles and so it gets trapped frequently at the top or bottom, since you can't put energy from the moving paddle into the ball bounces.
Rating: 35+5%=40.Earth InvasionSimple clear menu. Nice, although simple graphics are quite clear. The game play is a little confusing. Once I figured out what you're supposed to do, I made a little progress, but a typical game for me is less than a minute. Kind of discouraging really. Shouldn't it start easy and gradually become harder? Sound was missing.
Rating: 50+5%=55.TibiaThis game looks nice. Trys to read music from ms0:/music (though I normally keep my music in ms0:/psp/music for some reason). I had several nice battles with various creatures. After waiting a while to regenerate or having a snack of some food, I defeated all of the enemies on the map. There are some interesting if simple battles to be had. The chests contain lots of nice items to collect, although I couldn't find a chest with the battle ring in it, or the chest with one of the items in the screenshot.
Since it uses nice menus when you click on items, I'm really not sure why it is that there is such a complex keymap. If you look at a commercial game like Crisis Core, they simplify the attacks a lot by making it so that there is a currently selected attack for you to use.
I also didn't understand why the cursor, which you have to use all of the time, disappears when the status bar is turned off.
Overall, it was fun for an hour, after the first half hour of confusion.
Rating: 75+5=80%AginaWorldFine, but a bit slow paced for my taste. Also, it is more than 100 MB on my Memory Stick. Surely not worth devoting that much space for such a seemingly simple game.
Otherwise works fine, with some interesting game play.
Rating: 50%=50%PopBlocksFun. Diverting. Simple and to the point. No sound. The game would have been a little better with some additional animation or special effects.
Rating 60+5%=65%asterSpace3DHere I am far from home, just trying to return to Earth. Each time I do that shipping run, I wonder to myself "why doesn't the autopilot do the asteroid field, since it does all the rest." The in-game credits and instructions don't display properly. Perhaps they are incomplete. Also the misiles never seem to hit anything. And I find it quite disturbing that the spaceship moves around in chunky steps that are much slower than the frame rate of the asteroids that I'm avoiding. I died on level 6 one time when I was just 0.000008 km (or 0.3") from Earth! Gotta hate that.
Rating 50+5%=55%Crazy Gravity PortableYet another lunar lander game, but this time very well done. It has nice clean graphics that are clear, and show you what you need to do. The obstacles are quite appealing and work well. This is bug free and very cleanly done.
Rating: 80+5=85%ApollinaI have to say that I was looking forward to a polished playable game with this one. I was partly right. It is very well done, and quite polished. But I had a lot of trouble with the gameplay itself. I tried both control schemes, and I really appreciate the offer of both sets of controls. The second control scheme with the rotation on the shoulder buttons and absolute direction control via the d-pad or analog stick seems ideal to me. But I had a great deal of trouble even then hitting my targets. Maybe a practice level so that I could master aiming would make this more enjoyable for me. At it is I dodged the enemy fire and explored around until the anti-aircraft missles took me out.
It could be just me, but maybe a second try would make for a better experience.
Rating: 72+5=77%PSPReversiFunctions perfectly, and although the AI had an advantage at the beginning, it didn't work agressively for corners and edges and so it let me win my game. A fine implementation of Othello.
Rating: 65+5%=70%WTHAs a long time Magic: the Gathering player, I was looking forward to my first homebrew of this type. First try finds myself a little disoriented. More work with the game would make me more comfortable with the controls and make this a great addition to my memorystick.
Rating: 68+5=73% 
