Tech – Page 23 – Robot Claw

My Collection: PSP

March 6, 2014

I wasn’t planning on doing another of these posts so soon but I got a PS Vita for my birthday. This was the final nail in the PSP coffin (so to speak), so since I found myself packing the PSP away into the ‘permanent collection’ I thought it was a good time to do a retrospective of the many years of enjoyment it has given me.

In December 2004, Sony released their first handheld console, the Playstation Portable, or PSP. I bought one on launch day in the US, March 24, 2005. It cost me $249.99 and I also bought Lumines, a puzzle game.

At launch, this was an extremely impressive device. It had a beautiful screen, wi-fi connectivity, was the first handheld with an analogue stick and used media with far more capacity than the cartridges Nintendo were using for their Gameboy Advance and DS systems. The PSP also launched very shortly after the DS, and was initially a much more impressive unit. The future looked rosy indeed for Sony.

Furthermore, the Universal Media Discs (UMD) that the PSP used were being used to sell movies and TV shows as well, and Sony wasted no time marketing the PSP as an all-in-one device. Customers showed little interest in buying movies though, and this market was soon abandoned and the PSP was devoted to being a game system.

Within a few years western support for the device as a game system had cooled as well. More and more tier-1 console franchises saw their PSP versions canceled or never announced, and it became more a console for translated Japanese games. In other words, it became heaven to an otaku like myself! The PSP more and more became the console for RPGs, shooters or other quirky games that would have been too risky to release on PS3. I lapped them all up, and I loved the thing.

Some examples:

R-Type Tactics (2008) – A tactical based shooter set in the R-Type universe. Unique, difficult and very playable!

Metal Gear AC!D (2005) – The second game I purchased for the PSP was this crazy tactical card game set in the Metal Gear universe. Incredibly entertaining, very replayable and for my money the second best Metal Gear game yet (after its sequel)!

Patapon (2008) – A rhythm RPG in which you control an army of Patapon’s against many fierce beasts. The graphics are in silhouette, the music charming and the gameplay surprisingly deep. A landmark PSP series (there are two sequels) that I’ll remember forever.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (2011) – If you look back on my list of favourite games of all time, this one (which originally came out for SNES in 1995) is one of them. The best version by far is the PSP re-release from 2011. This game is so packed with content I feel I could play it forever…

Of course no mention of the PSP library would be complete without the recognition of one particular series, and that would be Monster Hunter. Capcom’s juggernaut series was first released for PS2, but didn’t explode until it came out on PSP. Suddenly Japanese players discovered they could easily hunt monsters together via this portable system, and in the years that followed the launch of Monster Hunter Portable (Freedom in the west) in 2006 the sales of the PSP would get a large bump with each new Monster Hunter game.

I was – still am – addicted to the series, and played them all for many, many hours. To this day, I suspect Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (aka Portable 2g) is the portable game I have played more than any other, with a save file somewhere near 400 hours (not including the ~130 hours on the old savefiles that were imported from previous versions).

In 2007 Sony released a new model of the PSP – called the PSP Slim – that I bought on release day. It was lighter and had a better screen and longer battery life. In 2009 they also released a version called the PSP Go that was digital only and did not include the UMD drive, which meant it couldn’t play any of the existing games unless you repurchased them digitally. This was a tremendously bad idea and unsurprisingly it failed miserably, being withdrawn from the market within six months.

The writing was on the wall for the device in the west even then, and the last few years have seen few new game releases, especially in physical versions. The last UMD-based game released in the west came out last November (I bought it), over a year after the PSP’s replacement device (the PS Vita) was released.

During the years I purchased 102 different PSP games. Here’s a shot of most of my collection:

The PSP had no lockout, which meant games worked no matter where you bought them. About 15% of my collection is from Japan, Australia or the UK. I also have a decent amount of promotional UMDs (thanks AW!) also strangely some of these don’t work on either of my systems. Compared to my game collection as a whole, the PSP ranks sixth in terms of total games owned.

One of the PSPs strengths – the physical drive – is also a weakness. I haven’t used my original PSP in years, but around the time I purchased the slim model the original was demonstrating loading issues. And in the last year or so the springs on the UMD drive on my slim model have weakened, and occasionally discs take an excessive time loading. Were the PSP to continue as a viable device, I imagine I would have had to purchase a new one soon. I do wonder how playable they will be in the years to come.

For now, everything you see above is being sealed inside the pink storage box and put away. I can thank my PSP’s for nine years and thousands of hours of fun. In my opinion the PSP is one of the best handheld systems ever made.

Master Builder

February 9, 2014

I got a trip of Metal Earth building kits for Christmas and made them all last week:

In order, they are the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and the new World Trade Center building. Which one looks the best?

Puzzle Games & Dragon Games

December 20, 2013

Last year my gaming habit seemed to decline noticeably, with 15+ year lows in both the number of games purchased and the total dollars spent. Has that trend continued? Let’s find out…

In 2013 I purchased only 50 games. This was the first time since 1994 that my average had dropped below a game a week. Given I now include iOS purchases in my data, this is significant. The fact is I am simply not buying as many games as I used to, and I doubt I will ever return to the early 2000’s when I was purchasing an average of 2+ games a week.

Despite buying fewer games in total, my dollars spent increased about 20% from last year to about $1300, or an average of about $26 a game. This was a more than 60% increase on the amount spent per game since last year, almost entirely due to my decline in iOS spending in the last year.

Here are the plots:

The above is a percentage breakdown of games per system. I’ve included the 6 months of World of Warcraft subscription as one purchase for Macintosh. Comparing to last year the decline in iOS games downloaded is notable. This is for two reasons: I download fewer iOS games, and I don’t track free game downloads. If you’re not following the iOS gaming scene, free-to-play is fast becoming the norm.

Above is the percentage breakdown of dollars spent per system. Obviously iOS amounts to very little since the games are rarely more than a dollar or two. The 3DS dominates this list, both because of the high amount of purchases and the $40 price point for games.

The trends this year were:
1) More dollars spend on PS3 and 3DS
2) Fewer dollars spent on PSP and DS (both are ‘dead’ systems now and may disappear from these lists next year)
3) A sharp decline in total iOS games and total iOS spending

What the charts do not show is how much time I spend gaming, and I truly wish there was a way to measure that. My feeling is despite the downward trend of purchases, I don’t spend significantly less of my free time (and that’s key) gaming. I may game less overall due to the increase in work responsibilities and vacations (I’ll spend about 6 weeks away from home on vacation this year), but when I’m home I still play a lot. Actually, I play even away from home, and you’ll see why in a moment…

There was also the fact that 2013 was a year with several ‘epic’ games, by which I mean games that kept my attention for very long periods. These included World Of Warcraft, Monster Hunter 3U, Dragon’s Dogma, Pokemon X, Tales of Graces f and my game of the year (below). Indeed, some of these (especially Monster Hunter or Pokemon) I could have just kept playing but put aside to devote time to other games.

So onto the lists! As with last year, let’s start with the biggest disappointments in reverse order:

3) New Super Mario Brothers U (Wii U) – Come on Nintendo, it’s like you’re not trying. Just as the 3DS game from last year was a disappointment, so too was this Wii U game. It’s not a bad game – in fact it’s actually quite good. But as a Nintendo game, and a Mario game, and as a game that desperately needs to sell a failing system to consumers, this simply wasn’t good enough. And it certainly wasn’t as good as it could have been. Let’s hope they have remedied the situation with the recently released Super Mario 3D Land for Wii U (which I hope I get for Christmas)

2) Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (3DS) – Farming the sequel of a beloved game to a third-party isn’t a great idea to start with, but that’s not the real issue here. The problem with this graphically excellent and technically impressive showcase of the 3DS is that it lacks any sort of a soul, and becomes more of a ‘checklist simulator’ than a game. I loved this the first few levels, and hated it the last few. It wasn’t half the game Luigi’s Mansion was.

1) Goat Up 2 (iOS) – Again, not a bad game. In fact it’s quite a good game, and a fun spiritual throwback to the C64 days of yore. But it was disappointing for two reasons: i) It’s not as good as Goat Up and ii) It’s apparently Minter’s last iOS game. Boo hoo. I played this one for an hour maybe. I played Goat Up for at least ten times that.

So what were my favourites of the year? Well in a year of truly great games three stood above all others and gave me hundreds of hours of fun. In reverse order:

3) Dragon’s Dogma (Ps3) – This was the game in which Japanese developers tried to ‘out Skyrim Skyrim’ and in my opinion they succeeded. A massive open world RPG with complex battle systems, a fascinating story and – honestly – almost unbelievably good graphics (watch that video!). This had been out for ages when I bought it (for about $15!) and I was just amazed by how good it was and how much I enjoyed it.

2) Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS and Wii U) – A game that deserves the ultimate in it’s name. The biggest and by far the best MH game yet delivered in spades and when I finally put it aside I’d spent over 300 hours playing between my 3DS and Wii U (since the game allowed for save file transfer to play on the small or big screen). The online multiplay in particular was amazing, especially when you got into a group of skilled players and worked together to defeat one of the mega-bosses like Dire Miralis or a Stygian Zinogre (as in the above video).

1) Puzzle and Dragons iOS (iOS) – Yes, you read that correctly. A free iOS puzzle game is what I consider the game of the year. I can just hear Florence shaking her head in disgust! I was aware of this game before our Japan trip, but didn’t know quite how popular it was over there. I have since learned that ten percent of Japanese people play ‘PazuDora’ and I believe it: everywhere I saw people playing it, especially on trains. I downloaded it during our trip and… well today was my 200th consecutive login day! You can see from the video this is more than a match-3, since it involves monster collection, team building and a lot of skill making matches during the rounds (the player in the video is no amateur!). The game starts easy but quickly becomes very, very complex and in addition to it being fun I enjoy the challenge of team-building and beating the often very difficult ‘descend’ dungeons. I don’t see myself giving up on this game any time soon either. It’s as far as I am concerned, the ultimate phone game 🙂

So how was your gaming in 2013? Did you play more or less? What were your favourite games of the year?