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From Russia With Love (PSP)
by Lions
"From Russia With Love" is one of my favorite James Bond films. It's got an exciting plot, and it's got Sean Connery, who is a competitor for my title of favorite Bond. Therefore, I immediately became interested in the game "From Russia With Love" when I heard that Sean Connery would actually be doing the voice ... acting for Bond in the game. I think it's cool that the developers tried to go for an appeal towards the classic Bond fans, as well as attract some new ones. What's not cool however, is not explaining the story in any way, depicting Bond as Rambo rather than stealthy, and delivering an overall game that feels lost in transition.
Let's begin with the gameplay. It's kind of varied, and enough to at least be given a pass there, since I full understand the parameters that the developers were working on. The PSP is a powerful handheld, but it's obviously not going to have the space to support mission after mission. As it is, the single player is long enough to be justified. Many of the missions will take a good 15-30 minutes depending on your skill and the difficulty setting of the game. In addition, there are things mixed apart from typical 3rd person shooting. One of these is actually a pretty cool fight with a helicopter, in which you get to fly around in a jetpack with a minigun on it. However, these types of missions are too few and far between, and as for the actual 3rd person shooting that makes up most of the game, there just isn't enough variance. James Bond is supposed to be stealthy. Sneak attacks from above, silenced pistols, etc. Instead, this game basically has you walking right into the open and mowing down really dumb enemies with SMGs and Assault Rifles. There isn't a lot of cover to hide behind, and often times the enemy characters will simply stand, not moving and looking at the direction at which you will come from. There's no way to sneak by them. You are forced to play like it's Die Hard 4, or the 6th season of 24- which is to say, lot's of shooting. Too much shooting in fact, that it becomes dull, bland, and background. Maybe it's just me, but I think it's way more cool to have that feel of "dark creature in the night", sneaking around taking out enemies rather than just walking right up to them and hip-firing an unsilenced submachine gun.
Now onto the controls. I'm going to be very lenient here because I know how limited and difficult it is for the developers to make great controls for a shooter on the PSP. This is due to the whole restriction of only one analog stick. Basically the developers had a choice here between giving the user the ability to pan the camera, or creating a center system similar to the Z-targeting used in N64 classics like Goldeneye or Legend of Zelda. Since "From Russia With Love" is a 3rd person shooter though, the panning camera seems like a better fit, and the developers did reasonably well with it. Basically the analog stick controls Bonds movements, but the square and circle buttons pan your camera left and right. This is all well and good, and works reasonably well. However, it suffers from two major flaws, both of which could easily have been fixed by the developers, making them all the more frustrating. The first flaw is that the sensitivity for panning the camera is simply too slow. Often times I found myself being shot at from behind. However, you can't simply spin around like you can on a console with that second analog stick. Instead, you have to SLOWLY peek around to make that 180 degree turn on enemies. This generally means they've already gotten a couple of shots on you to deplete your armor or health. The other problem with this camera is that it's buggy. It will get caught on things, and sometimes have spasms on you when you try to lock into an enemy with your gun using the left trigger. Usually this results in Bond quickly spinning around and shooting randomly in the opposite direction. All in all it feels a bit too unresponsive for me.
The game does however deserve some props for it's multiplayer. In fact, I really respect EA for what they have done with it to make a worthwhile lasting experience which justifies purchasing the game rather than perhaps just renting it. There are four maps that you can play on. It's not much, but remember, we are talking about the PSP here and space restrictions obviously had to limit some potential. The gameplay of multiplayer itself though is quite good. It's fast paced, but strategy can still be used. The maps all have their different power positions, and each weapon has a time and place to use it. What really impressed me though, is the feature to allow yourself to play with AI bots set to a difficulty of your choosing depending on your skill of the game. This feature of the game impressed me for a couple of reasons. First, it allows people to play that either do not have WiFi to connect to, or are in a place without WiFi to play off of. And second, it adds to the longevity of the game. Obviously the video game "From Russia With Love" for the Sony PSP isn't the best-selling product in the world. Plus, the game was released a couple of years ago. Therefore it's very rare and highly unlikely that you will discover another player online to play a match with. With the bots however, you can still enjoy the well put together multiplayer maps. Sure, they aren't the same as real competition, but they can be tricky with flanking routes and such at times, and put at the hardest setting, they can still give you a bit of a challenge.
Overall, this game is very high-low. It's pros are very good, while it's cons seem unforgettably bad. The single player is a decent length, but its filled with too much of the same. The graphics, sounds, and shooting are great for the PSP, but they are hindered by the wonky camera control. However, multiplayer comes through to shine, making this game long and enjoyable enough to be worth the buy. It's certainly not the best, most polished game on the market. But if you look at the options out there for those of us looking for shooting action on our PSPs, we can't be too picky. And fortunately, "From Russia With Love" offers enough to us that make it decent enough for that on-the-go shooting fix.
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Burnout Legends (PSP)
by Jenraux
I've been playing Burnout since the original on the PS2, i rented the 3rd one on the Xbox as soon as it came out. And Burnout Legends was one of the first PSP games i bought.
I'll split the review into sections so if you want you can just look at the sections your interested in.
GRAPHICS:
The graphics are ... actually quite good, cars do feature damage but only when they enter a crash cinematic, they won't take damage from small scraps and scrapes. Cars are detailed, i would say the quality is similar to that of GT2 on the PS1 for car quality, but the shading and lighting is slightly better.
I would rate the graphics: 9/10
SINGLEPLAYER:
Well there are a lot of events for you to compete in, always a good thing. There are 100 Crash events and i believe 100 race events, I'm sure its already apparent i like the crash events more. During singleplayer mode you can unlock cars and also new tracks.
There are several modes of play available in singleplayer.
World Tour, this is the only one i play, this is basically the career mode, and covers many of the other modes.
Race, your conventional race, 3 laps, quickest driver wins.
Eliminator, Only appears in world tour, basically a lap knockout, driver in last place at the end of each lap is eliminated.
Face-off, 1vs1 to unlock your rivals car.
Time Attack, drive for as long as you want to beat the best lap times for that track.
Burning Lap, basically Time Attack, but there are set target times you must achieve in order to get medals.
Road Rage, you should know this one, wreck as many cars as you can within the time limit.
Pursuit, I think this is a new mode, basically a 1vs1 Road Rage, take out the target within the time limit or before he wrecks you.
Crash, present since Burnout 2, cause as much damage as you can, at a crash junction.
Thats all the game modes for single player. Cars can be unlocked playing the World Tour and Crash game modes.
To be honest i think the single player mode of the game is the best, i wasn't amazingly impressed with multiplayer, but more on that later.
I rate the single player, 8/10.
MULTIPLAYER:
Well i was quite disappointed with the multiplayer in this game, there are some common multiplayer problems that plague racing games that also appear in this title.
Cons:
- The game is generally not synced, Traffic is fairly synced, but sometimes it can appear out of nowhere. Players are poorly synced, if your directly in front of another player on your screen, chances are your behind them on theirs. Also if you ram someone, usually the other player won't see the collision on their screen.
- Loading times do take a fairly long time, PSP Slims load a couple of seconds quicker than Phats, and the game rather ridiculously allows the Slim player to start ahead of the Phat, as it won't wait for the other PSP to load before the race starts. Luckily the game has a big catchup so the Phat user shouldn't be far behind. If your having a lot of trouble with this, make sure WLAN Power Save option is set to 'No', in your XMB on both PSP's, or else it'll have awful loading times.
- No AI in multiplayer, so gets boring quickly with 2 players, you'll want 3 or 4 to make it interesting.
Pretty much the only 3 cons, but they're bad enough to ruin the multiplayer experience, and these were played on an LAN, over the internet its probably worse.
On the plus side, you can play a good deal of game modes, such as Crash, Pursuit, Road Rage and Race.
Crash is probably the best mode, it's played simultaneously on both PSP's, but you won't be able to see each other, it'll reveal the other players scores at the end of the round. This is probably the best mode as the Cons i mentioned above don't really affect this mode, except Slim PSP's will start a couple of seconds before.
Because of its issues, i rate the multiplayer mode: 6/10, at least it has one.
GAMEPLAY:
The game feels similar to other burnout titles, they haven't really changed the driving style between this and Burnout 2/3. Entering a drift is easy, exiting it, less so, often i overshoot my drifts and end up in the inside wall, but after a few minutes of driving you should get used to it. The PSP's analog stick doesn't feel particularly well suited to Burnout, but I'm using a Phat, the Slim's analog was re-designed, it may feel better.
The physics of the game aren't anything new, but they do the job, crash mode does have decent physics for a PSP game, and the game does feature car damage and basic deformation during a crash cinematic. It still features the classic slide along a barrier method of cornering unfortunately, you won't really lose anything unless you hit a corner hard and the game enters a crash cinematic.
The amount of game modes helps the game a lot in replayability, and can probably keep you interested in the World Tour mode for a few hours at a time. Multiplayer hurts it a little, but if you have no friends you should pick this up anyway, its a great game in its single player mode, and Crash in multiplayer is great fun also.
Overall this game gets an 8.5/10 from me, its a great game, but multiplayer is a big part of Burnout and is disappointing, only Race and Crash modes really work properly.
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