Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops: PSP

Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops Plus is a stealth game, you control "Snake" from a third-person perspective. In the game, you can recruit allies and form a team. Before each mission, you must compose a four-man group.( You can choose not to too, but it will be harder as you have less players to control, meaning that you might lose more easily.) The group is then sent into a mission. Each member should have his own strengths and weaknesses. Some units are best on the battlefield, others may specialize in producing items, healing allies, or providing information for each of the game's maps.


(Lots of actions which you can do by using simple key combinations.)

During gameplay, the player controls only one member at a time. The others not in use hide themselves inside a cardboard box, and can be swapped into play when you find a hiding spot, where you can hide in your own cardboard box.

Characters who are killed in combat are eliminated from the your group permanently, unless they are "unique characters", such as Snake. Unique characters also include team mates that are bosses or supporting characters in the story. If a special character's health is reduced to zero, they are sent back, in order to recover. Or you can also abort the mission and return to the pre-mission state.

A there are numerous methods for you to expand your squad. If an enemy character is tranquilized or stunned, they can be dragged to a waiting vehicle and be captured. After a period of time, the captured soldier will become a member of your team. Also, enemy characters can be dragged to an ally waiting in a cardboard box, where by hitting the cardboard box, they will be ordered to transport the enemy for the player, saving stamina. Alternatively, by using the PSP's WiFi feature, soldiers can be recruited. It is quite hard to get soldiers by Wifi though as you have to click some buttons quick enough at the right time to get them, or else they will just run away. However, the first soldier that you encounter using the Wifi feature can be easily recruited, but you must have a member with "Headhunter" as one of their speciality in your group. Do not worry if you do have one, you can put one in your group and go back to the Wifi feature to find that soldier again. All soldiers that you encounter will appear again if you failed to meet his requirements on the first encounter.


(Dragging an enemy to the truck.)

Some of the your recruits might include former enemy soldiers or personnel, hence they can walk among the enemy undetected as long as you avoid suspicious actions. (For example, suddenly crouching in front of your enemies, pointing your gun at them, sneaking and sprinting and dragging an unconscious soldier.)


(The Blue Icon at the top left hand corner shows that you are blending in with your enemies.)

Another new feature is the surround indicator added to the game's HUD. The surround indicator allows you to determine the rough distance of enemy soldiers by the noises they make. The surround indicator is composed of two circles; the outer circle displays the noises made by enemies and inner circle displays noises made by the player himself.





Graphics: 9/10
Content: 9/10
Sound: 10/10
(MY　ＦＡＶＯＵＲＩＴＥ PSP GAME!!!) The game is hard to understand, but once you get the hang of it, you will be hooked on!

Digimon World: DS

In Digimon World DS you control a Digimon tamer and embark on a journey to discover, tame, raise, train and command Digimons. Digimon World DS's gameplay still continues after the character collection is completed. You can build Digi-Farms to raise, evolve and communicate with their Digimon.


The Digimons can be equipped with items and weapons. The weapons allows the Digimon to use new special attacks. Some weapons are for certain monster types, and others have level requirements. In addition, armor and accessories can also be equipped too. You can have up to six Digimon in your party. The first three monsters are the ones that enter into battle. How many Digimon you have in their party will determine the number of enemies that appear. Having the first three slots filled often means the monsters will be battling three enemies at once.





Unfortunately, there are no "digiballs" used to catch new monsters. Instead, every time you encounter a Digimon, it gets scanned and data is gathered on it. After around 8-10 encounters( Every encounter with a digimon gives you a ~15% data scan), you should have enough information (min. 100% data acquired) to convert the scan data into your own Digimon. Some of the rarer Digimons will take some time to collect, since it will be a while before you encounter them enough times.



Graphics: 7/10
Content: 6/10 (Every 20-30 steps you take in a map, you will encounter a Digimon battle. Which is very irritating if you are rushing somewhere. The storyline is very interesting, but the bosses are quite hard to defeat, the maps are hard to navigate, it is quite hard to train your Digimon and they don't give you a clue as to where or what you are supposed to do after a quest. I had to follow a guide to complete the game...)
Sound: 7/10

God Of War: Chains of Olympus PSP

Chains of Olympus is a third-person action adventure game where you get to heck and slash your enemies. There are little puzzles here and there for you to rack your brains and solve. For example, you sometimes have to move statues and other items to reflect light or activate a pressure switch to open doors. Kratos(you) collects red orbs to power up his weapons and abilities. He also collects Gorgon eyes to increase his health points and Phoenix feathers to increase his magic points.

God of War's weapons include Kratos' trademark Blades of Chaos, and the Gauntlet of Zeus, a magical gauntlet that allows Kratos to unleash powerful punches on his opponents. There is also a Sun Shield that Kratos picks up that allows him to block most attacks, parry an attack that stuns the opponent and also deflect projectiles back at enemies. Kratos also acquires magical spells throughout the game that help him defeat the enemies he faces. This includes the “Efreet” spell, which knocks out all nearby enemies with fire, the” Light of Dawn”, which allows the player to throw balls of light, and “Charon's Wrath”, which inflicts damage on several enemies.


The "Efreet" spell.

The controls are generally quite good. Kratos can make light and heavy attacks using his blades of chaos, and you can perform combos by pressing specific, simple button patterns. Eventually you'll get a second weapon, the Gauntlet of Zeus, which is a giant glove that Kratos can use to smash his foes. It's a ton of fun to use. It's just too bad that it's the only alternate weapon in the game. Magic spells are a bit limited as well, but you'll eventually acquire a few other abilities. The most useful to me was the first one you get, the “Efreet”, which damaged all nearby enemies; the other abilities were of little use. For every successful kill, you're rewarded with red orbs that can be used to learn new attacks as well as upgrade weapons and magic. Once again you can find hidden treasure chests that contain red orbs, as well as others that offer gorgon eyes and phoenix feathers.



Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 9/10
Content: 8/10 (Can finish in 7 hours, some puzzles are too hard to figure out too.)

Assasin's Creed Bloodlines: PSP

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines has a third-person gameplay. Altair(You) travels to the island of Cyprus, where he must hunt down and assassinate a remaining group of evil Templars. Cities in the game are divided into districts, with short load times when moving from one district to another.

Your targets are generally boss characters which must be fought head-on in order to kill. The character is free to wander around and accept side missions, or attempt to collect coins scattered around each of the districts. These can by saved up and used for health and skill upgrades.

The controls are quite easy to use, because they enable players to pull off stunts with ease. Although the key combinations are easy to remember and press but you need to be quick as you have to press the key combination quickly to activate a stunt. For example, if you need to jump from a ledge to another ledge, you have to push the analog stick and press X and Square. However, X is used for sprinting, so if you are standing on a small area and you attempt to jump to some other ledge, you have to press X and Square quickly and not hold X for too long or you will just run off from your standing position and drop down. There are some opportunities for rooftop-jumping in Bloodlines. But often at times, there are only one or two routes open to the player, as many buildings cannot be scaled.






Graphics: 9/10 (Pretty good for a PSP)
Content: 10/10 (You can replay the missions over and over again. The missions are quite fun too.)
Sound: 8/10

Gunz

GunZ is an online third-person shooting game. It is currently free to play, however some special items are available which cost real money. The game allows you to perform exaggerated moves, such as wall running, dashing , tumbling, and blocking bullets with swords.



In Quest mode, players in a group of up to four members go through parts of a map for a certain number of stages, which are determined by the quest level. In each stage, you are required to kill all the creatures, and the game ends when every member of the player team dies or completes all of the stages.

Players can increase the quest level by sacrificing some quest items that can be bought from the shop or hunted from monsters. Quest items in-game are stored in chests randomly placed around the map, certain items may be dropped by those monsters. By sacrificing certain items in combination, players can enter a boss quest.

Scoring kills in GunZ earns a player "bounty", which is the currency of GunZ, and EXP which contribute to the player's level. The amount of EXP and bounty a player receives for a kill depends on the level of the opponent defeated. If a player is killed, they will lose EXP if they are at least level 21 and their opponent's level is 10 or lower. Excessive EXP loss can cause a player to delevel. A player may also lose EXP through killing themselves with a grenade or falling to their death. You will not lose EXP when using the "/suicide" command and this death will not affect the player's score.

Here is a video of me exploring Gunz:



Graphics: 8/10
Content: 8/10
Sound: 8/10
Community: 7/10 ( Those people are quite arrogant. Occasional cursing. And quite some hackers D=)

Pokemon FireRed is the enhanced remake of the original Pokemon Red video game. You control the player character from an overhead perspective, and participate in turn-based combat encounters. A new region the player may access have also been added. Throughout the games, the player captures and raises Pokemon for use in battle.

When the player encounters a wild Pokemon or is challenged by a trainer, the screen switches to a turn-based battle screen that displays the player's Pokemon and the engaged Pokemon. During battle, the player may select a move for his or her Pokemon to perform, use an item, switch his or her active Pokemon, or to flee. All Pokemon have hit points (HP) when a Pokemon's HP is reduced to zero, it faints and can no longer battle until it is revived. Once an enemy Pokemon faints, all of the player's Pokemon involved in the battle receive a certain amount of experience points (EXP). After getting enough EXP, a Pokemon may level up.

During battle with a wild Pokemon, the player may throw a PokeBall at it. If the Pokemon is successfully caught, it will obey you. Factors in the success rate of a capture includes the HP of the target Pokemon and the type of PokeBall used: the lower the target's HP and the stronger the PokeBall, the higher the success rate of capture.

Personally, I play Pokemon FireRed on the PC. There is even cheat codes for it. You can get some from here: http://www.neoseeker.com/Games/cheats/GBA/pokemon_firered.html



Graphics: 8/10 (Pretty good for a Gameboy)
Content: 9/10 (Lots of Pokemons for you to catch and place to explore)
Sound: 7/10 (Quite basic sounds...)

SuddenAttack

There are two teams in the game, red and blue. Teams are pitched into various types of gameplay matches in different maps such as deathmatch, bomb defusal etc. They both have to battle each other to win the match. The game can contain up to 16 Players. Players earn experience for battles which they participate in. The max rank is 5 stars.



There are two types of currencies: cash and points. Cash is based on real money and can be charged by cell phone billing or home phone billing etc. Points can be earned from playing games. Points and cash can be spent at the in-game shop. Points are used for buying weapons. Cash enables the purchase of special bonus items, along with special team-specific outfits.

It is quite similar to Counter-Strike, where you can plant/defuse bombs and have to kill each other to win. However SuddenAttack has more content, such as "Item retrieval" and "Asset protection". For item retrieval, you have to retrieve 2 items from different locations while the other team will prevent you from doing so. For asset protection you just have to prevent a location, that you have been assigned to protect, from getting invaded by your enemies.

Here is a video of me playing SuddenAttack:



Graphics: 7/10
Content: 9/10
Sound: 7/10
Community: 8/10

Counter Strike Source

Counter-Strike: Source involves a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won either by completing an objective (such as detonating a bomb or rescuing hostages) or by eliminating all members of the opposing team. Shooting while moving dramatically decreases accuracy, and holding the mouse button down to continuously shoot will cause severe recoil. The amount of damage done by a bullet varies dramatically depending upon the body part the bullet hits, a shot in the head a one-hit kill.

Aspects of the game that have changed from Counter-Strike 1.6 include the behavior of the grenades, the physics engine, and the weapons' recoil. The smoke grenades in Counter-Strike: Source spread much more slowly than the ones in Counter-Strike 1.6. The recoil in Counter-Strike: Source differs from the recoil in Counter-Strike in that while Counter-Strike 1.6 has an almost perfectly consistent recoil, the recoil in Counter-Strike: Source is more noticeable. Furthermore, the addition of ragdoll physics marks another difference between Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source.



There is a wide variety of different customizations and add-ons that can be used with the game. There is a large fanbase for the game that creates customized sounds, textures, weapon skins, and player skins.

In Counter Strike: Source and Counter Strike 1.6, you can choose to create your own server and play with bots or play online. You choose the difficulty level for your bots and also choose the number of bots in the game. There are lots of custom maps made by players which you can download online. One of which I like the most is "fy_poolday".





Graphics: 10/10
Content: 9/10 (Not much to do other than killing and defusing/planting bombs.)
Sound: 10/10 (Realistic)
A very nice FPS game, you can play offline with bots or join an online server and play with other people. I just love the physic effects.

Maplestory

MapleStory is a free, 2D Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game developed by "Wizet". Although playing the game is free, character appearances and gameplay enhancements must be purchased from the "Cash Shop" using real money. MapleStory has a combined total of well over 100 million subscriber/user accounts in all of its versions.

In the game, players travel the "Maple World", defeating monsters and developing their characters' skills and abilities just like all role-playing games. Players can interact with others in many ways, such as through chatting, trading, and playing minigames. Groups of players can join together in parties to hunt monsters and share the rewards. Players can also join a guild to interact more easily with each other.



After you get to level 10, you can choose a job. Jobs are categorized into "Adventurers" and "Knights of Cyngus". For Adventurers you can choose to be a Magician,Pirate,Thief,Warrior, Bowman or Aran. For Knights of Cyngus you can be a Windbreaker, Dawn Warrior , Night Walker or Flame Wizard. These are just the First job advancements. After to get to level 30, there are more for you to choose from, for example you can be either an Assassin or Bandit for thieves or a Page/Fighter/Spearman for Warriors. Each job has their own unique weapon and skills. The max level is 200 but for Knights of Cyngus, the max level is 120.

Here are some ingame pictures:







My ratings:
Graphics: 8/10
Content: 10/10 (Lots of quests for you to do!)
Community: 8/10 ( There might be some scammers and KSERs... so watch out. )
Sound: 10/10 (Matching background music with the map)