PSP Minis Review Round-up 3
The latest batch of Minis put under the microscope. Related stories (more)Minis Now PS3 Compatible!
The Best (And Worst) Of PSP Minis
Minis May Get Trophies
Article written by nofi in PS3 News, on Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 20:42.
Our coverage of the PSP’s Minis service continues after our first round-up which covered Hero of Sparta, Tetris, Brainpipe, Alien Havoc and Fieldrunners and our second, featuring Fortix, Breakquest, Vempire, Bloons and Pinball Fantasies. Let’s see what we’ve got this time:
Pinball Dreams
I’ll be honest, I think of the two current Amiga Pinball ports available on the PSP Minis platform, ‘Fantasies’ is the better game – the boards are richer, there’s more strategy and subgames and the third flipper adds a smart new dimension. However, ‘Dreams’ is still the stunning example of pure gameplay that it always was, and holds a special place in my memories and me and my old man used to play the hell out of Ignition, the first table, back in 1992. The other reason why I’m so keen on recommending this game (and Fantasies, of course) is that if enough people buy them maybe Cowboy Rodeo will port Pinball Illusions, too, and – hey – maybe they can get get their hands on even more Amiga games… Regardless, this is great fun – a quid too expensive at a pound per table, perhaps, but still decent value for money and a pixel perfect port – get the set: 7/10 [AC]
D-Cube Planet
An interesting one, this – the presentation is poor, the pace far too sluggish and the visuals could have been much, much stronger but the actual game is pretty good when it finally finds its feet. The premise is simple, even if the ’story’ isn’t, you simply need to guide your little alien dude to whatever piece of spaceship you’ve lost. In the way, of course, are lots of cubes, and it’s your task as the player to shift them around to make a path for your rather tardy green blob. The art style’s terrible, and it seems to take ages for anything to actually move on the board, but once the puzzles get tricky the game actually starts to shine, and for the price of a pint of Skol you really can’t go wrong if you’re prepared to put aside the fact that the game could really have been much better in simple top-down 2D and a better aesthetic. Interesting enough: 5/10 [AC]
Kahoots
Kahoots is something of a cult hit for Honeyslug – the visuals might appeal to the younger PSP gamers but the gameplay is somewhere nearer old-school hits like Lemmings – you have no control over the cute little thing walking back and forth on each level, nor any explanation as to why he’s doing what he’s doing, but you can switch around the blocks on which he walks. By doing this, you can position jumping blocks next to spikes to avert a nasty end, or near the edge of a platform to force him to jump down a level. It obviously starts off rather simply before ramping up the difficulty pretty quickly with bolted down blocks and other characters, but the level design is smart enough to carry off any frustration that comes in later sections, which can be pretty tough. Even better is the look of the game, which is all plasticine blobs and imperfect textures which actually works really well and the various songs performed by the main protagonist are easily worth the £2.49 – striking stuff: 7/10 [AC]
Mahjongg Artifacts 2
I actually really enjoy Mahjong games, even when they’re spelt with two Gs, and this new PSP Minis game is one of the best – the idea is simple: just match up similar tiles on the board that aren’t blocked in on either side and they disappear. But why is Artifacts 2 such a good game? Well, for starters, there’s a nice globespanning ‘Quest’ mode with lots of missions to play through and a comic book look and feel; there’s a smart ‘auto zoom’ function which keeps the game screen locked around the remaining tiles and a ‘free tile only’ view which dims out the tiles that you can’t pick up. Because of all this, Artifacts is actually a rather accessible introduction to Mahjong but also offers a decent difficultly curve if you turn off the tips. The graphics are rather typical for a game of this style, the controls are a bit iffy when you’re trying to navigate towards a specific tile with just the d-pad, but it’s nice to have a mahjong game readily available on the XMB and this is as good as you’ll need: 8/10 [AC]
Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam
This is an odd game. Basically, working in one of four eating establishments, you’ve got to serve up food to waiting customers. The viewpoint is that of the server, rather than the top-down view you’ll have seen in other similar games, and thus you have to work out what each customer wants and then serve up the required goods, putting together the more complicated food stuffs from various ingredients. In principle, it’s actually a pretty good game but it’s let down by one fundamental problem – the game feels like it was tested with a mouse and then shoehorned onto the PSP’s analog nub at the last second. Rather than simply moving between the various icons as you tap a direction, you actually control the on-screen pointer with the nub much like you did with the joystick in old Amiga games like North and South. It’s a bizarre choice, and hurts the game when the action hots up – patch this out and we’ll take another look, but as it stands there’s little reason to stick with the game despite some great visuals: 4/10 [AC]
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
BadBoyBoogie | 22/11/2009 21:05
Let There Be Rock
2516 TSA Points | Member since: Mar 2009
I quite like Mahjong games as well, so I’ll definitely be getting this for my PSP. A great game for quick 10 minute gaming sessions!!!
flatspikes | 22/11/2009 21:24
Member
483 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
Only Mahjong tempting me… Not sure there is much else in the Minis to join Tetris, Kahoots, Pinball Fantasies, Break Quest and Field Runners… not that I should really be buying more games lol!
bap10 | 22/11/2009 21:29
Member
237 TSA Points | Member since: Apr 2009
Oh I would love for some more amiga games. Skidmarks I think that would make a great psn game. In the meantime I think I will treat myself to Pinball Fantasies. Cheers for the push.
skibadee | 22/11/2009 22:57
Member
1970 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2009
will be stocking up on some mini action this xmas
BoyDay | 22/11/2009 22:58
Member
790 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
“I actually really enjoy Mahjong games, even when they’re spelt with two Gs”
I see you’ve kept with the internet rule of having a spelling mistake in your pointing out of someone else’s spelling mistake – it’s “spelled” not “spelt”.
(And yes I read this three times before posting to make sure I’d not made any spelling mistakes)
nofi | 23/11/2009 03:21
Wants a custom tag.
3870 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Spelt is fine, ’spelled’ is American, I think.
SYY2127 | 23/11/2009 04:06
Member
502 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
I don’t think I’ve ever thought that there was a difference
TctclMvPhase | 23/11/2009 05:25
Member
818 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2008
Spelt is correct.
Working in the US I get “corrected” on the supposed error all the time, as well as catalogue, aluminium and some others. The odd part is that I was educated in the United States and I dont use the international spellings for all words, as I spell color without a ‘u’.
bunimomike | 23/11/2009 11:44
Member
3374 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Over here, it’s completely accepted (both irregular and regular spelling) but in the US, it’s been pretty much dropped in favour of just using “spelled”. Something I ended up reading into when someone was trying to correct me for saying “learnt”. Pesky yanks!
minerwilly | 23/11/2009 20:59
Member
556 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
Grrrr don’t get me started on this , its like they are slowly year by year changing the words of the English language so one day they can just call it Americanish or am I paranoid !
cc_star | 23/11/2009 21:02
Team TSA: Writer
5869 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Nope, it will just become American
bunimomike | 23/11/2009 08:06
Member
3374 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Fingers crossed we’ll get to see a lot more Amiga games being ported to the PSP. Halcyon goggles out of the window, there’s still some cracking fun to be had with older games. Especially on a portable device where short bursts of gaming are sometimes a must.
Radboud | 23/11/2009 08:34
Member
899 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2008
Yes, definatly would like to see some more Amiga games return as PSP Mini’s!
.
Gonna get Pinball Dreams too. I too spent a lot of time on Ignition back in the days
Sympozium Necropolis | 23/11/2009 09:14
Member
1142 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2009
Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam 4??? NOOOOOOOOO
Stewart Gilray | 23/11/2009 11:13
Member
93 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
As the producer of the original Amiga Pinball Dreams (and every other console version since then, apart from the iPhone and PSP versions) I have to say, Dreams is my favourite one!
nofi | 23/11/2009 11:20
Wants a custom tag.
3870 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
I saw you had credit for the enhanced graphics in both Minis titles – nice.
bunimomike | 23/11/2009 11:46
Member
3374 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Zen Pinball (?) I find completely unplayable and my instant reaction was “this isn’t a patch on Pinball Dreams/Fantasies. Oh, and Zen’s music is shocking. I still have the mods from the Amiga titles available on my Amiga music list!
/ends blast from the past.
bunimomike | 23/11/2009 11:47
Member
3374 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Missed the end quotes but I’ll leave that as a bit of fun for you all to pen in on your monitors with permanent marker.
iNsAnE_gAmInG | 23/11/2009 16:07
* Banned *
-1930 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Nice round-up. My sister bought Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam for her DSi and I told her to not buy ‘crap’ with her points but she did.
Like the round-ups, can have a quick glance to see if there is anything with bothering with. Good stuff.
davidjmclare | 23/11/2009 19:44
always on easy
894 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
really like the cooking jam online, but didnt think it would work on psp if its using a pointer. shame.
iNsAnE_gAmInG | 23/11/2009 20:05
* Banned *
-1930 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
My only concern with Minis is the fact often they are games you will only clock up around 15mins maximum playing time on. And although they are around £3, if you buy 10 then it soon becomes £30 (duh!) which is a lot consider the fact they would provide only about 2 and a half hours maximum entertainment for me and then they do not seem such bargains at £15 an hour.
Fieldrunners is pretty impressive stuff though (which I won from TSA) and I quite like that Bloons one, but otherwise, the other games are not worth the best part of a fiver.
mark_i_efc | 26/11/2009 12:57
Member
2 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2009
Alex – Thanks for the ace review of Kahoots, we’ll add it to our press page.
iNsAnE gAmInG – I can’t agree with you. As a developer of one of the minis we know there is a minimum of 4 hours play from our title. To level the accusation that games OFTEN clock up around 15mins of gameplay maximum is a potentially harmful reflection on the minis developers work and ultimately could be damaging to the sales.
Bear in mind these titles are developed to be played on the move, so they offer short bursts of gameplay which can be played on the bus/train/whatever and switched off any time without harming progress.
It’s one thing to criticise individual titles for not being satisfactory, it’s quite another to tar an entire range of titles with a rather damaging and (given I know most of these games) untrue accusation of offering the equivalent of 20p a minute of gaming in total.
nofi | 26/11/2009 13:01
Wants a custom tag.
3870 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
No probs.
I wouldn’t read too much into what insane_gaming says, he has a ridiculous habit if writing off stuff he has never played.