THE LATEST NEWS FROM SEPTEMBER 2006
SEPTEMBER 2006 – It’s a big month for PSP owners and a dry month for pretty much everybody else, as the software drought continues. Nick Thorpe takes time out from revisiting his firstyear student flat to check out the hottest games of the past
Sony promised consolequality games on the go with the PSP, and this month Namco really stepped up to deliver on that with Tekken: Dark
Resurrection. The updated version of Tekken 5 earned 10/10 from the Official Playstation 2 Magazine, which declared it, “The first landmark PSP game.” Go Play gave it 94%, praising the visuals and “genuine, honest-to-goodness, interesting unlockables”, while
Play gave it 92% and noted that “there was never a problem with any of the buttons’ responses”, contrasting it with previous PSP fighting games. Edge and games™ both awarded it 7/10, but for different reasons – the former felt that the series had become “unable to innovate” but that there would “always be a place for quality like this”, while the latter lamented juddering performance.
Gitaroo Man Lives!, a revised PSP port of the cult favourite PS2 rhythm action game, earned a set of solid reviews – 89% from Go Play, 8/10 from games™ and 8/10 from Official PS2. Go Play
noted that “some of the more demanding button sequences have been toned down a little” compared to the PS2 version, while games™ felt that “PSP’S nub actually improves the Gitaroo Man experience” because the added accuracy makes players “far less likely to misjudge the angle of a guitar section”. Official PS2
claimed that, “Blasting evil with a squealing solo is as satisfying as gaming gets,” but cautioned that the game is “bloody hard” and that there isn’t much extra content for owners of the PS2 version.
Also on the PSP, Capcom terrorised the unskilled with
Ultimate Ghosts ‘N Goblins. This series revival earned 9/10 from
Edge, which praised the inclusion of “power-ups which substantially change the way you play”, such as
“a special shield and winged suit of armour, which almost turns the game into a free-scrolling shooter”.
Go Play was also impressed by that, and noted that “the hardcore gameplay still remains for those who want the challenge”, awarding the game 91%. Gangs Of London, a spin-off of The Getaway, didn’t fare so well. Go Play gave it 80%, praising the variety but criticising the “wonky aiming” and advising players to look to Grand Theft Auto games instead.
If you were playing anything other than a PSP, you had precious little of interest on the shelves this month. After a decent first half of the year, the Xbox release schedule had dwindled significantly, to the point that
Official Xbox Magazine contains just one review – the Pixar movie tie-in Cars, which earned 5.8/10. The Gamecube version scored 64% in Official Nintendo Magazine, the PS2 version earned 7/10 in Official PS2 and the PSP version received 60% from Play, which said that “kids will like it” but that it “doesn’t show any ambition or take any risks”. PS2 owners could enjoy
Real World Golf 2007, which used the Gametrak motion sensor and earned 7/10 from Official PS2, or Singstar Anthems which got the same score from Official PS2 and was described as “the campest thing you can buy for your PS2 this side of a little sailor’s hat”.
With nothing of interest on the UK schedules for Nintendo’s handhelds, that just left the PC to make the month more interesting. While Outrun 2006: Coast 2
Coast had already appeared on consoles, the PC port was the joint best-reviewed new game of the month in PC Gamer, scoring 88% for being “the best arcade racer on the PC in living memory”. The other high scorer was Armadillo Run, an indie physics-based puzzle game that encouraged players to experiment and come up with unexpected ways to get the titular animal to safety.
More divisive was Darkstar One, a “flying around, shooting and occasionally trading in space game” which PC Gamer quite liked “despite there being 500,000 instances of this particular genre” because of its “broad scope and sense of ambition”. That was enough to earn it 80%, which was considerably higher than the games™ score of 5/10. The multiformat mag said that the combat was great but that “essentially it’s the same five minutes of entertainment repeated over and over again” and “it’s difficult to see the point of having 300 systems to visit when they’re all exactly the same”.
Join us again next time – it’ll be the last one without any new consoles to talk about.