Tag Archives: PSP

Games

Region-locked saved game woes

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Look what I received last week! Despite my earlier comments about Freedom Unite only adding minimal stuff to the existing Freedom 2, I ended up buying it anyway. It’s my first purchase from Youbeli.com after its merger with Pcgame.com.my too. Oddly enough I thought that the purchase had failed when I was led to an error screen after inputting my credit card information but someone called me the next day to confirm the details.

Of course I bought Freedom Unite only because I knew that it had a saved game transfer function so you could bring over your existing character from Freedom 1 or Freedom 2 with all of his or her gear intact. Except when I tried to actually do it, it didn’t work. After a bit of investigation, I found that this was because the copy of Freedom 2 I’d been playing is an EU-region version while the copy of Freedom Unite I’d just bought in Malaysia turns out to be a US-region version. While the PSP itself happily acknowledges that there’s a Freedom 2 saved game file on it, Freedom Unite simply won’t recognize the file as a valid saved game to import from.

This means that I’ll have to restart my Monster Hunter career basically from scratch. This actually sounds more daunting that it really is. Even though I’d put more than 30 hours in Freedom 2 I’d only ever worked up to the Elder 3 quests. Now that I’ve developed the skills necessary, I’ve managed to reach the Elder 2 quests in just a couple of days of playing. Plus, this gives me a chance to diversify away from the noob-friendly longsword to the formidable but incredibly unwieldy greatsword.

The biggest visible change, apart from some very handy tools to make inventory handling easier, is the addition of the felyne comrades. So far, my pet cat doesn’t seem to very good at actually fighting (he can’t even kill a vespoid mosquito by himself!) but he’s proving to be a very handy distraction for the monsters. Still, it seems that I need to be careful whenever he decides to toss bombs arounds because that thing can hurt even me when it lands too close! More updates as I get further into Freedom Unite.

Games

A Game: Armored Core Formula Front (PSP)

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Since I knew I wouldn’t have access to my gaming PC over the Chinese New Year holidays, I made sure to have something to play on my PSP in the meantime and the game I picked was Armored Core: Formula Front. I’ve had an eye on this game for a while now but couldn’t find an English language version of it and playing such a complex game without being able to understand the on screen text was completely out of the question.

I’m normally not a fan of Japanese games, so I had to look it up to know that Armored Core refers to a fairly well established mecha action game series. This PSP version involves mecha as well, but the twist here that made me interested in this title in the first place is that you’re not really supposed to manually pilot the Armored Cores, as the mecha are known. Instead, you’re supposed to put together your own stable of ACs from a collection of parts, devise a strategy for them and the AI will try to implement your strategy as well as it can in a series of gladiatorial one-on-one fights against ACs from other teams. This makes it more of a strategy game than an action game as success depends on finding the optimal combination of parts to make an AC that’s well suited to carrying out a particular fighting strategy against enemies with specific builds and strategies of their own.

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Games

A Game: Bleach Heat the Soul 5 (PSP)

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As much as I’ve always liked the concept of fighting games, my reflexes and finger dexterity generally aren’t good enough for me to do well at them beyond beginner-level difficulty. Still, I’m a pretty big fan of Bleach, and I was genuinely curious enough about how the different character powers would work in a fighting game, so I decided to give the newest installment of the Heat the Soul series a try. This is actually easier said than done since this game exists only in a Japanese version, which means there are no English instructions. Since I don’t speak or read Japanese, learning my way through the game was mainly a question of trial and error. Luckily, the menu items are in English, but I had to guess what the instructions wanted me to do.

This latest installment covers the Hueco Mundo storyline in the Bleach series, which means that it features all of the Arrancar from that storyline and de-emphasizes the shinigami characters. Virtually all of the characters who were present in previous games are still here, but some of them can only be unlocked by importing a savegame from a previous version of the game. This is a shame, because those characters include such colorful ones as Kisuke Urahara, Mayuri Kurotschi and Shunsui Kyoraku. The new arrancar includes some genuinely interesting ones like Ulquiorra Schiffer and the fully released form of Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, but unfortunately also the rather silly Privaron Espada.

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Games

A Game: Warhammer Battle for Atluma (PSP)

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Yep, it’s yet another CCG for the PSP while I’m still waiting for a new gaming rig. This one is based on the War Cry card game by Sabertooth Games that was in turn based on Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy miniatures game. The license means that existing fans of the table-top wargame will find the factions, characters and units in this direct port of the CCG instantly recognizable. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to save it from ultimately being a very mediocre video game.

The CCG mechanics are robust and appropriately enough, borrow significant elements from wargaming. Each player builds two decks. The Army deck holds only characters, troops and weapons while the Action deck holds special strategies and tactics to be played to change the outcome of battles. Each match actually consists of three battles and each battle begins with a muster phase. During this phase every player is assigned a set number of points with which to alternately play cards from his or her Army deck onto the table, drawing a new Army card after each one played until both players have spent all of their resource points.

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Games

A Game: Marvel Trading Card Game (PSP)

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My Magic: The Gathering playing days are long gone and even if I do sometimes cast a nostalgic eye on an exciting new release like the recent Shadowmoor, I know in my heart of hearts that I will never again have the patience and freedom to buy entire boxes of boosters for the thrill of opening them one by one, build up networks of friends to trade cards and play games with and spend countless hours fine-tuning decks and analyzing strategies. So when I bought my PSP, it was with the knowledge that there are a number of well-received collectible card games available on the platform, and the Marvel Trading Card Game was at the top of the list to try out.

The Marvel TCG is a direct adaptation of the card based equivalent that uses Upper Deck’s Versus system. I’ve heard of this system but I’ve never actually learned to play it before this, so I had to go through the included tutorials not just to learn the interface but to understand how the system works as well. The tutorials do a decent job of teaching the fundamentals, but it’s likely that the average player will still need to actually jump into a game proper and learn about the quirks and subtleties of the system by playing the game and observing the available options.

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