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Assassin's Creed, LittleBigPlanet Coming To PSP
Sony unveiled their PSP lineup for 2009 today, and it contains a number of major games and franchies. Assassin's Creed is on the way, as is a portable version of LittleBigPlanet , which will still allow players to share their levels with the community. A Motorstorm game set in Alaska is also coming, and Rock Band: Unplugged is in development as well. "There will not be a peripheral attachment available... Instead, all input is handled by the 'Left,' 'Up,' 'Triangle,' and 'Circle' buttons. The player can switch between guitar, drums, bass, and "vocals" (although he won't physically be singing, merely tapping buttons) using the L and R shoulder buttons. ... The player can actually choose to switch instruments at anytime, but switching prematurely will cause him to lose his multiplier."
After seemingly a year or longer of negative vibes towards Sony's little console, today was a big day for the PSP. Announced at Sony's Destination PlayStation retail event were:
Motorstorm (Arctic Edge)
Rock Band
Little Big Planet
Assassin's Creed
Tiger Woods '10
Madden '10 (With PS3 connectivity)
DiRT 2 (Codemasters)
To make the PSP more female friendly comes: Hannah Montana in a purple PSP bundle The Petz range (Ubisoft)
So, no original IP announced (as promised by Sony a while back) and there will be a big struggle to can these monster franchises into the diddy hardware. However, assuming they can pull it off, then you have lots of potential for new sales, great bundles and lots of existing PSP owners dusting down their machines.
On the other hand, all it will take is two or three of these to get middling review scores and fail to ship in numbers and you can pretty much stick a knife in the PSP in its current form. Even if the vaunted 4000 model does arrive, it won't be enough without a HD display, massive internal storage (8GB min) and a powerful hardware upgrade to revive the fortunes of the console. more on me blog - http://goffee-freelance.blogspot.com/2009/02/good-time-to-be-psp-owner.html
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
That sounds almost exactly like Harmonix have gone back to their roots and given us a Frequency sequel, just using the Rock Band name to get the casuals interested.
If so, I thoroughly approve.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Don't.
The PSP would be a fine console, if it did not have a shoddy control scheme. I mean really shoddy. It is literally physically painful to play certain PSP games for any period of time, which is a terrible pity as many would make fine PS2 titles. Instead they have been relegated to a device that sacrifices ergonomics for a few more millimeters of screen size.
I have never really understood portable gaming consoles. Playing a video game is not a passive experience like listening to music. It's something that is quite deeply engrossing and which does not fit into bus journeys, lunch breaks, or just before bedtime sessions. An average video game session probably clocks in at about two to three hours. A bit like reading a book.
And good video games, like good books, simply cannot be read in bits an pieces. You cannot finish War and Peace by five years of reading it over your ham sandwiches during lunch. If you do that you're missing the point. The same holds for Chains of Olympus or the like. Something like "Brain Training", sure, but that is not a title worth buying a console over.
May the Maths Be with you!
Um...I read Will Durant's 10 volume "Story of Civilization" primarily while having my breakfasts in the morning and on my lunch hour. It took about a year. It's ten times the length of War and Peace.
(I read War and Peace itself on a Palm Pilot mostly on my commute on the train. It took about a month and a half)
Most portable games are more tailored to shorter gaming sessions. Chains of Olympus, I finished partly on a business trip and partly on my train commute. I specifically keep the PSP around precisely *because* it is engrossing. When I've had a crap day and don't want to face the commute, a good game came make the time just fly by.
The cake is a pie