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Aha, our 3rd CJF post! And yes, it’s another PSP wallpaper pack put together by me.

There’s quite a few original compositions in there, most of which are lovely swirly things that I like to make in my free time. From this pack, I’ll admit that my favourite wallpapers are Aurora and the aptly named Limes ‘n Leaves (largely because it’s the one I spent the most time actually making).
I’m also fond of the Team Fortress 2 wallpaper, though I didn’t make that myself – it’s just a crop.

Anyway, enjoy the freebies!

~Scott

Having already written my impressions on the game’s demo, I’ll make this one brief and focus on the question you’re like asking if you’re here to read this – is Rock Band Unplugged worth buying?

My answer is that it is. If you’re a rhythm gamer, then you should look into this, particularly if you also like Rock Band – and even more so if you like Harmonix’s previous games, Amplitude and FreQuency. That would be because the game-play’s roughly the same between the three games.

As this is a portable game, you might be wondering how the ‘Rock Band’ system works –there are no instruments, and no multiplayer, so you’d think that the ‘band’ part would be out the window, right? Well, no, that’s wrong. You ARE the band – you on your lonesome. You control each instrument one by one – playing a phase without missing a note will make the instrument play itself for a short while, allowing you to turn your attention to another instrument. You’ll then move back and forth between note tracks, playing phases and so on and so forth. It’s a system that takes a little getting used to, but there’s a set of tutorials which handily guide you through the ropes and easy mode is a good start for total beginners. Most of this is covered in my impressions, so I’ll cut it off here and move onto other aspects now.

The game has about 41 songs, off the top of my head, and it’s a pretty solid selection. Sadly, most of them have already appeared on either Guitar Hero or Rock Band games, with the exclusion of a few timed exclusives which will be seen as DLC for Rock Band on the consoles. Speaking of DLC, Harmonix is continuing to display their strength in the area with regular DLC for Unplugged – in fact, a week or two before launch, there were already about 8 DLC songs available. Talk about being prepared!

The selection of songs, whilst largely good, can become a bit repetitive. The Rock Band tour mode returns, and it’s where that you get to customise your band and buy instruments and do all the band simulator stuff you’d expect. The customisation aspect is ok, but it’s nothing too special – I found a lot of the options were limited, and the selection of clothing and colours were a bit poor. Still, it’s a nice option, I just think it could have been better. Anyway, returning to the main point – the tour mode can become repetitive. There are occasional challenges, like doing a gig for the press to get double money, or doing a benefit gig for triple fans…but that doesn’t stop those gigs all containing ‘Buddy Holly’. You’ll find that as you go through the rather big selection of cities, you’re playing a lot of the songs over and over…this is supposed to be helped out by the inclusion of mystery/random set-lists and sets where you get to pick what song you play, but the mystery/random sets have a habit of yielding a song you either can’t play or don’t like. I guess that’s down to cosmic forces, though, rather than the game’s programming – but still, it doesn’t help relieve repetition as much as you’d like. I played ‘Buddy Holly’ 3 times in 3 sets – once on its own, once as a mystery set, and then again in a random set. And I really don’t like ‘Buddy Holly’.

The presentation maintains the style of the console games, and it looks ok. I’d say it looks good, if it weren’t for a few things…first, the character models are a bit odd looking at times. It doesn’t help that they repeat a lot of animations, some of which don’t loop correctly, leading to an awkward jump between the start and end of an animation. Secondly, the customisation of the body is…well, the selection, as I said, is poor. There’s about 6 or 7 pieces of clothing I really like. Now, spread that between 4 characters. It doesn’t add up without repetition – so much for making them all unique! Besides that, the face choices are mostly ugly, the hair-dos are largely bad…and I find it odd that I made one character the minimum height and one the maximum height and couldn’t tell the difference. And finally…why are there 2 special guitars, but about 10 special basses? Especially when the 2 guitars are just clones of basses. And why can’t I choose the colour of all my guitars, not just one or two? It’s weird, and it means I’m limited because a green guitar doesn’t go with my band’s red and black colour scheme.
But this is all nit-picky really. It doesn’t actually affect the gameplay at all – it’s just something that bugs me.

So, the game looks ok, it plays great, and the music selection is pretty solid. But what’s keeping you coming back once the tour mode’s done? Well, there’s obviously higher difficulty levels to master…you know, this is the first game to congratulate me at being so good at it that it thinks I should try a higher difficulty? Yeah, I was pretty shocked when it said “Great job! Try hard now!”
Besides that though, there’s a couple of modes to keep you going: Warm-up mode, where you can play just one instrument through the whole song, and the sadistic Band Survival mode, where you don’t get phases – all the instruments are under your control at all times. It’s…a nightmare. Really.
There’s also expansion potential in the form of DLC, which I’ve mentioned. So far the selection’s pretty good, though I did find myself disappointed that it was so difficult I couldn’t play it. That’s one thing I should note – some of the songs are a bit too hard to be fun. Some riffs or drum beats don’t translate very well to the RBU format, sadly – and it’s usually crucial parts that repeat throughout, meaning you’ll be screwing up a lot. Isn’t it odd when the main riff is much harder than the solos?

All in all though, Rock Band Unplugged is a great experience for rhythm gamers who need an on-the-go fix. It’s also much easier to play in a car than say, Elite Beat Agents on DS, which requires precision with the touch screen that’s difficult in a moving vehicle. That makes it ideal to take with you on journeys…and funnily enough, if you don’t have time to play Tour mode for the songs, there’s an easily located ‘unlock all songs’ option. So it’s perfect for portability, it’s a solid rhythm game in its own right…and it’s a lot of fun, with a big potential for growth,  what with Harmonix’s sparkling reputation for good DLC offerings.
If you’re not sure whether to take the plunge and buy it, try out the demo on the Playstation Store first. It’s a good taster, and it left me wanting more. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably find the full thing vastly satisfying.

~Scott

Superheroes have been in videogames almost since the dawn of the medium, for examples look to the countless Spiderman and X-Men games for the NES, SNES, Playstation, and so forth. The draw of these is obvious- take control of larger-than-life abilities and have fun with them. Beat up bad guys, upgrade, and so on and so forth.

The superhero sub-genre reaches a zenith with Prototype, a game that seems to be specifically designed with this drawing factor in mind. The main character is Alex Mercer, an amnesiac who wakes up near the beginning of the game in a morgue. Just before he’s cut open, he escapes, soon realising that he escaped death due to a virus infecting his body, granting him superhuman abilities. Soon enough, the virus gets loose upon Manhattan, with a covert military team named “Blackwatch” stepping in to combat the virus, and Alex himself. The objective of the game is to discover Alex’s past, and hopefully find a cure for the virus. The story seems relatively simple, and there’s nothing much that’ll make you twist your mind in knots here. There are a few twists that make things interesting, and another sub-plot involving a past military operation, but nothing entirely original. Nonetheless, it does the job well, and I was certainly intrigued and anxious to learn more. The characters, although once again not entirely original, all fit into the story somehow, even if the voice acting can seem a little forced at times.

Although the story may not be totally original, the method of telling it is. The “Web of Intrigue”, basically a representation of Alex’s brain, is a series of nodes that are gotten through absorbing certain crucial figures in the game using Alex’s virus powers. For example, to find out a little bit about Alex’s former job, you’d have to absorb someone he worked with. Some of these characters are included in the main story, but most of them appear on your map as a red icon if you get close to them. I managed to complete the main story having only attained 45% or so of the Web of Intrigue, so for the person who wants to learn everything, they’ll need to put time and effort into tracking down all of the key figures in Alex’s past. In order to avoid potential confusion, the memories are split up into several “sequences” on the Web of Intrigue menu, and by skipping between these sequences, each clip can be watched one at a time, ensuring coherence is kept.

The graphics in the game are nothing especially revolutionary, and certainly don’t push the 360 to its limit. While the character animations may be fluid in-game, their bodies and movements sometimes seem blocky during cutscenes, and one can’t help but think there’s some detail missing from their clothes and faces, etc. The buildings and suburbs in Manhattan look good, but the game suffers from sometimes being grittily realistic. Is it too much to ask for a bit of sunshine glittering off of windows or on the surface of the water? Or just glittering at all, for that matter. There is also a bit of fogging that occurs when buildings are far away, which I’m sure is not there for effect. It doesn’t cause any major gameplay difficulties, but it’s somewhat unappealing to look at. Having said this, however, the graphics are by no means bad, and the effects such as blood splattering, explosions and the little bursts of broken brick and glass under Alex’s feet as he runs up buildings are nice touches, and the red fog that clouds the air when you venture into an infected zone gives a nice bizarre feel. As said above, they are by no means groundbreaking, but they’re good nonetheless, and don’t impact negatively upon the gameplay.

The sounds and music in-game are also nothing special, there’s the typical growling and screeching for the Infected, and the standard military jargon. In all honesty, I hardly noticed the music as I was playing through the game for the first time, but 2^nd time through it does do a good job of creating an atmosphere, it just…isn’t entirely necessary. The exception is when you are spotted by the military and they call in strike teams on you, at which point the music starts pounding and a real “oh, crap” moment ensues for the player. And it is quite satisfactory to hear the screams of military personnel that had, prior to your bisecting them with your bare hands, been shooting rockets and blowing you up.

Now, the gameplay. I’ll split this up into sections- combat, freerunning, then the missions. First of all, combat, which will most likely be the drawing factor for many people. The combat in Prototype is incredibly varied, and there are dozens of ways to dispatch your enemies. First of all, there’s your typical hand-to-hand combat. You have a light and heavy attack, and you can vary these to perform different combos and basically experiment a bit. For example, you can do light, light, heavy, or light, heavy, light, and so on. Although this isn’t especially groundbreaking, it’s fun to just have a play around with, even though it’s later overshadowed by Alex’s crazy powers. You can also pick things up and throw them, including cars, air vents, mailboxes, and people. You can grab someone and absorb them to regain health or just dispatch them, or you can shape-shift into one of Alex’s other forms to gain new abilities such as a whip or blade arm. You can piledrive people, you can jump into a helicopter and blow things up, you can call in air strikes, you can disguise yourself as a soldier and tell your teammates that one of their comrades is Alex…there are tons of options at your disposal. When dealing with a helicopter strike team, do you karate-kick a cockpit then slash it with your blade, do you hurl a car at it, do you take it over and exterminate the rest…it’s hard to get bored with the combat, as there are so many methods you can use. A related aspect of the game is stealth- as said above, Alex’s powers allow him to absorb any living organism and gain health from it, or take on its likeness. Many missions involve absorbing military personnel and disguising yourself as them to infiltrate a base, or take control of their vehicles. Of course, you can do this outside missions, and there are military bases dotted around the map that you can infiltrate and absorb people to upgrade your abilities or help fill in the Web of Intrigue.

The freerunning aspects of the game are, in my opinion, one of the best parts of a game I’ve played all year. The game uses an engine focused around parkour, or what is basically running up buildings and leaping from one environmental object to another, and such. Rather than focusing on vehicle-based transport (Although you can highjack military helicopters and tanks) the game seems to push you to sprint and jump from building to building, run up walls, air-hop and glide around New York. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been in a side mission and been distracted by how fluid and fun the freerunning controls are, and decided to just run around until the timer ran out. At the start of the game, the controls may feel a bit unruly and stiff, but after a while (And a couple of upgrades from the pause menu), you’ll be leaping around Manhattan with no difficulty at all. The best thing about it is that you can leap off practically anything. There’s buildings of course, but you can also jump into lamp posts and leap off as they collapse, jump off a car that’s been thrown or catapulted into the air, or even destroy a helicopter and leap off it as it falls to the ground. The freerunning is expanded on in the side-missions, which involve you hitting checkpoints as quickly as possible, or gliding to the middle of a target, and are of course heavily featured in the main storyline missions. One major gripe I have with these controls, however, is that they make indoor activities significantly harder. Maybe you’ll want to run around a boss and attack from behind. Yet Alex runs too fast for these types of strategies, and sometimes the camera gets stuck as you are forced to maneuver quickly, and end up being hit as the camera sorts itself out.

There’s always something to do in Prototype, and that’s probably the best thing about it. You can do the storyline missions (Which are fun and varied- it’s not all about “go here, kill that”, sometimes you’ll be protecting things, sometimes you’ll be killing, sometimes infiltrating), you can do some side-missions (Which you unlock by completing storyline missions and involve the aforementioned free-running, as well as occasionally fighting on the side of the Infected or Military against their respective faction among other activities), you can roam around New York City and collect hint orbs or Landmark collectibles, or absorb people to complete the Web of Intrigue, or you can simply start a fight with the military and devastate anything they throw at you. The game always keeps things interesting and, above all, fun. There are usually lots of ways to complete tasks or defeat bosses, and it really makes you feel super-powerful when you run up a building as missiles explode a foot behind, then jump off and elbow-drop a helicopter, before leaping off into the city.

Prototype is, above-all, a brilliant sandbox game. The combat is varied, the missions are good and, above all, it’s fun! It does have its negative points, such as the good-but-not-great graphics, the sometimes dodgy voice acting, and the unoriginal story and perhaps concept (How many times have we run around New York in video games now?) but overall it fulfills its expectations and exists as a pinnacle of the sandbox genre.

I mean come on, you can elbow-drop a tank and surf on a soldier’s corpse.

~Ben

See the Future, Fable 2’s second DLC pack, is cheaper than its predecessor. Logically, you’d think that this would make it inferior to the Knothole Island DLC pack. That, however, isn’t the case. It’s definitely as good, if not better.

See the Future only really sees 2 new quests, both revolving around Murgo the salesman, or rather the items which he sells to you for 5 gold each. There’s actually 4 items, but I’ll explain that later. The quests are standard Fable 2 fare, but their context is what makes them interesting, and a few of the mechanics utilised are interesting.

The first sees you bring colour back to a cursed village inside a snow-globe, and the enemies themselves are draining the colour. The enemies are coloured either red, blue, or yellow. This is actually significant – the colour, like flit-switches, signals how you should attack them. It adds a simple yet interesting twist to fighting.

The second sees you inside a cursed skull (notice a pattern?) trying to free a trapped knight by bringing souls to release him – but the souls will only follow the dead. Furthermore, there are gates which require you to mimic them exactly, except they’re statues of monsters. This is where new customisation options arise in the form of monster costumes. These costumes make you look like various monsters you’ll fight in the game, and there’s a few achievements tied to them as well. It’s another fun little addition – the sort of thing it would have been nice to see more of in the main game.

The third item I’ll talk about is the one which will probably see the most play-time: the coliseum. This coliseum is basically a fighting mini-game where you’re scored on how many baddies you can kill, and you earn gold and experience from it too. It’s good fun, especially co-op, and it’s a good addition to the game. If you enjoyed the game’s Crucible section, you’ll enjoy this a lot.

Like the Knothole Island DLC, there’s also a bundle of new items for customisation purposes, most significantly the dog breed changing potions. There’s only a few, but it’s pretty cool to change your dog’s breed. And you can change it back should you wish, as there’s a potion for that too. Other similarities include new achievements, but there’s actually 250 gamerscore to be gained over Knothole’s 100, as well as 10 items to be explored for. These are a bit better hidden, too.

And finally, the ‘see the future’ bit should be mentioned in a See the Future review. It basically fleshes out the ending of Fable 2 –   like the Knothole Island DLC, a lot of this DLC is off limits till you complete the main quests. I can’t say it did much for me, as what it detailed was as clichéd as the ending the game already had, but for big fans it was nice…but it’s not like you couldn’t see it coming.

So, the verdict on value…well, at only 560 MS points compared to Knothole’s 800, I’d say this is easily a must-buy for Fable fans looking to expand their Fable 2 experience. It’s a bit short, quest-wise, like its predecessor, but the lowered price means it’s more justified. And if you’re an achievement seeker, then it’s actually worth more to you than Knothole, since there’s 150 more points to be had. All in all, it’s definitely good bang for your buck!

~Scott

Looking back at the Fable 2 review, one of my main problems was a lack of complexity to the key quests. The puzzles were often as simple as shooting a switch. I was looking to the Knothole Island to fix a bit of this problem…and it (sort of) delivered.

The plot’s pretty simple. A submarine driver turns up in Bowerstone Market looking for a hero, and you being the only hero in the game who does any proper hero-ing, naturally he finds you. Or you find him. Either way, he explains that Knothole Island is having some crazy weather and they need a hero to go and get the three totems which will allow them to control the weather and thus solve the problems. The thing is, each time you get a totem, well…things go wrong again.

What this means is three new dungeons to explore. I say ‘explore’, they’re actually rather linear and Knothole Island isn’t too big or complex, either. The dungeons have a few fun puzzles, but they’re almost all timing based flit-switch puzzles. Though they are more challenging than the main story puzzles, I must admit, and bar a bit of frustration, they’re more entertaining too. It would have been nice to see more like them in the main game.

Your other prizes in this DLC are a set of new customisation options and gear, including a suit of armour, as well as new achievements. The customisation items are largely new dyes and potions to make you thinner, fatter, taller, etc., helpfully counteracting the side effects of some of the game advancements. For example, raising your skills would make you taller…but you might want to be short. So you could use a potion for that. It’s not exactly a feature you couldn’t go without, but it’s nice to have the option. The DLC also notes ‘new enemies’, but they’re not exactly new enemies…rather they’re ‘shadow’ versions of enemies you’ve already fought. A bit of a letdown, I guess.

One other thing of note is the trading mystery prizes, where you trade rare items for prizes. It’s a nice little diversion, gathering everything you need, and the prizes are rarer than what you trade for them, including new weapons and clothing items.

What you don’t get told, however, is that you won’t be able to play a majority of the DLC if you haven’t completed certain parts of the main quest. This impacts the value of the DLC really, as you have to do the DLC quests to unlock a lot of the shop stock on Knothole Island, and you can’t do that without doing the main quest. I can see the point to it, but it does mean it’ll be a bit useless to new players…mind you, I don’t think it was designed for them.

So, do I think it’s worth the 800 MS point price tag? Well, it depends. If you’ve finished the main quests, and the side quests, and are still hungry for more Fable 2 goodness…then yeah, I’d say so. Though do be warned, the quests take only about an hour or two at max to plough through. The customisation options are nice, though. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a steep price point. There’s a lot of nice content in there, but if you’re after more quest content than customisation, then the 3 quests available won’t offer as much as you might have liked, and without the customisation content to back it up, well…there’s not much to it. And if you’re looking for deep exploration, then you’re out of luck. There are 10 books to locate, but they’re pretty much all sat out in positions where you don’t have to look hard to find them. I only missed one without actively looking for them, and I went back and got it in a few minutes when I was, so it’s not like the gargoyles or silver keys where they’re a bit more out of the way.

In the end, Knothole Island’s value is relative to what you’re after. If you love Fable 2 and want more, get it. Otherwise, well…think before you buy is all I can say.

~Scott

PS: The snowy island is actually gorgeous. Even if you don’t buy the DLC, at least ogle some screens of the snowy island!

Fable 2 is the sequel to the highly popular Fable, which essentially popularised moral choices and the effects of those choices in video games. Hotly anticipated, Fable 2 comes across as a game that is fundamentally good, but lacked the polish to make it shine.

As the name might suggest, Fable 2 takes place in the fairy-tale world of Albion, where everyone has a (quite often bad) English accent (maybe because ‘Albion’ was a name used for England on ye olde mappes), and the world needs a hero. Through a twist of fate in your childhood, you discover your heroic bloodline and set off on a quest for revenge…It’s heavily reminiscent of the first game in that respect. In fact, most of the game is.

Focusing on the story for the moment though, the game sort of let me down in that area. It was typical fairy tale fare, except without any excitement. It seemed vague, inconsequential, and the ending was a big let down…though it’s not as if there was any real set up for it, anyway. There are several moments throughout the game where I’m sure I was meant to feel sympathy or guilt, but the tendency to deliver these bits poorly often lead to me just wanting to get back to whatever I was doing in the big open world. The fact that I was never able to attach to any of the characters, who themselves weren’t particularly original or interesting, made it even harder to feel sympathy. It all just seemed a bit poorly done. Especially the ending (I really do consider it one of the worst endings I’ve seen yet in a video game).

The presentation is pleasant, with some genuinely good looking environments, fitting of the fantasy theme. That said, the graphics aren’t the most amazing in modern console video games, particularly character models. Some of them are downright ugly.
The background music, when audible, fits the moment and adds to the atmosphere. Sound effects like guns and magic spells are good fits. What bugs me though, is the English accents. Perhaps it’s because I am English, and I hear enough of these accents in impersonations for it to grate on me, or perhaps it’s because some of them are genuinely awful. The voice acting quality fluctuates regardless, though – some characters sound particularly emotionless in the delivery of their lines, and particular characters were very well voiced. But one or two in particular nearly drove me to sleep in their longer speeches, especially story related ones – remember my point about poor delivery?

The gameplay itself is where the draw to the game is, and it’s probably because there’s quite a bit to do. If you wish to explore a fantasy world, you are free to do so. If you wish to kill all the villagers, go ahead. If you wish to find 50 silver keys, fine. Want to work in a bar, or as a blacksmith? You can. If you want to get married and then go and have sex with a prostitute, you can. The experience is very customisable. There’s also a bundle of side quests (which are often more interesting than the main quests, I noted) for you to do, and some of them even have an effect on the game world as you progress. Sadly though, a lot of the side quests (like the main quests) are variations of ‘go to X, collect and/or kill Y, return to Z’ and it becomes a bit repetitive by the later stages.

The controls are decent, though I found that casting spells wasn’t as streamlined as it could have been, and sword-fighting was a lot of button mashing. Shooting was also a curious one, particularly holding the fire button to aim. The controls have definitely improved since the first, but they’re still not a shining example of action RPG controls…but I guess with such simple combat, they don’t need to be particularly complex. Still, the combat is entertaining and the level up system gives you complete control over what you want to prioritise, though more variety in skill choices might have been nice. The same goes for weapon choices, too. One thing that did irk me was that the inventory became difficult to work with, especially when you had lots of items. I’ve seen worse systems, but it could have been a lot more comfortable with a few tweaks.

The focus though is on customisability, and…well, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. There’s a wide variety of hairdos, and facial hair. You can get tattooed, too. Clothing I found to be a bit limited, with a lot of shops offering the same items, so it can be a bit hard to get a look you like.
The real draw to customisability is the moral choices, and how they affect you r appearance and the reaction people have to you. But moral choices in video games tend to fall into a rut, often offering only ‘pure and holy’ or ‘downright evil’ choices. And Fable 2…well, it doesn’t escape it. Becoming good will give you a nice halo, and people will fall in love with you and give you discounts. Becoming evil makes you go grey and grow horns and people will run away from you and, uh, give you discounts. It’s not exactly revolutionary, or even a game-making change. It’s just sort of there.

The surprising part is that, at the end of all my negativity in this review, I’d still recommend the game to you if you liked the first one, or are into action RPGs. It’s not perfect, and having played it through I can’t see what all the hype was about. It is worth a play, but it’s a game I’d look out for cheap, or perhaps even rent, because after all the quests are done there’s not much to bring you back to it.

~Scott

MGO:PO is a direct sequel to MGS3, placing you in control of Naked Snake – now Big Boss. The plot is, as expected from a Metal Gear game, complex and well paced, full of clever plot twists and surprises. The storyline is developed through cutscenes which take on a very scratchy hand drawn style – they have a very unique style to them, and are certainly interesting to look at. These cutscenes are also voice acted, and as is standard in the Metal Gear series, the voice acting is top notch. The storyline is very much canonical, and for avid followers of the series, it sets up for a lot of the events that come to be in later games.

Speaking of presentation, the graphics are impressive for the PSP, with detailed textures and models and fluid animation. The soundtrack is appropriate and contains several very powerful pieces. Everything about the game’s presentation works together well, and provides an enjoyable visual and aural experience.

The gameplay itself is, for the most part, the same as the series’ console iterations. However, restricted by the PSP’s lack of a few buttons, controls are trimmed a little. They work well, but they have a slight learning curve to them, which should be easy to adjust to for series veterans, but for newcomers (like myself) can be a bit of a struggle. Other changes include the inventory system, allowing you to only carry 4 items at any one time, and the removal of the camouflage system implemented in MGS3.

The largest changes however, and indeed the most significant, is the squad system. By capturing enemy soldiers, you are able to recruit them into your personal army, which can then be assigned to any range of positions, such as the sneaking team, the spy team, the weapons tech team, or the medical team. Each soldier you capture has their own skills and traits and allow for vast customisability in tactics. As well as this, soldiers who wear the same uniform as those in an area will be able to enter the area undetected, so long as they don’t do anything suspicious. This is both a blessing and a curse – it’s a very useful system, but it can become very tempting to boycott Snake in favour of soldiers who don’t need to sneak about, because they’re camouflaged. It takes away from the need for stealth a little, which does seem a bit odd in a stealth game. Still, it’s not always as easy to stay undetected as you’d think when ‘disguised’.
The system on the whole is new and interesting to the series though, and it might be nice to see it return in a later game. Capturing soldiers is always interesting, and the management of your team is simple and fairly painless. It adds a new strategic element to the game, as you define each soldier’s load out, as well as which squad they are in, etc.

The game is laid out rather openly. You have story missions, but at any time you can enter previously opened maps to hunt for new recruits, seek out items, or perform side missions based on reports from your spy team’s intel. It can be fun to take on these missions when you’re bored, and they do help make the game easier in the long run. However, it is possible to simply blast through the story missions if that’s what you want to do as well. The game ranks you upon completion, giving a rank based on how you played, and there are also various unlockable soldiers for your team who can be gained by fulfilling various requirements – some of which require other Metal Gear games on PSP.

The game falls down a little in its combat mechanics, as shooting is not as easy without a second analogue stick as the console iterations make it. You can either lock on with L and shoot away, or hold R to enter first person aim which is more accurate but limits your mobility. It makes combat a bit clumsy at times, and in boss fights this really does make things a little less enjoyable. However I can say it could be handled a lot worse, and often the systems set in place work well enough – after all, you should be avoiding combat as much as possible anyway. I do find the impressive amount of guns and weaponry quite odd though – it’s nice to have the variety, but I found that I very rarely actually used most of the guns. There are not many times when you can say ‘this would be a perfect time to use my sniper rifle’, and oddly chaff grenades only appear to be useful in one of the very last levels.

Overall, the game provides a solid and consistently enjoyable experience. The story missions are well varied in their objectives, and the presentation of the storyline through its cut-scenes is appropriate and enjoyable. There is some replay value, and an online multiplayer mode is available too. However this is better expanded in Portable Ops +.
Altogether, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is a good experience for action fans, and a must have experience for Metal Gear fanatics, or followers of the series. I’d say this game is definitely worth owning if you have a PSP.

~Scott

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Another set of free PSP wallpapers for you all, put together by me.
There’s a lot of Metal Gear Solid influence in here…and 2 photos instead of 1, too.
That’ll be cos I finished MGS4 (review coming soon) and cos I took a bundle of photos the other day.
Still, they’re designed to look appealing on your PSP screen, so hopefully you’ll like at least one of them.
And hey, can you complain? They’re free, after all.
Enjoy!

~Scott

Rock Band Unplugged is the first portable endeavour in the Rock Band series, and to some it might not make sense. First of all, there are no peripherals, and secondly only one person can play the game at a time. So essentially, everything that made the original what it was is missing.

Interestingly though, the core gameplay mechanics remain largely the same.
You have to hit notes in time with music in order to play an instrument, and thus play the song. It’s basic rhythm game procedure. However, the game varies in that you have to play all 4 instruments, at the same time. Though, that’s not technically true – you actually play one instrument after another. By hitting a ‘phrase’ with an instrument, that instrument will play by itself for a short while. Typically, one phrase finishes as another instrument’s starts. However, missing a note in a phrase will start a new phrase, and will lead to other phrases being pushed back. Conversely, hitting a phrase on each instrument without missing any notes puts you into ‘band groove’. Finally, there are solos, which are sections where the other instruments zone out and you focus on a single instrument, and are given a percentage score and a bonus for how many notes you hit – just like the original.
As well as this, there are only four notes per instrument – green, red, yellow and blue. These are controlled with the face buttons and the d-pad, and switching between instruments is handled with the shoulder buttons. This new control scheme might take a bit of getting used to, but luckily there’s a quick tutorial mode which will teach you the basics. It’s a good idea to give it a try. And, if you think that having only 4 notes will make the game easy – it doesn’t. The game actually proves to be quite challenging.

The demo gives you 3 tracks to try in all 4 difficulties – AFI’s ‘Miss Murder’, Jimmy Eat World’s ‘The Middle’ and Foo Fighter’s ‘Everlong’. However, you don’t actually get to play any of the songs the full way through which is a bit of a letdown, particularly since they always seem to cut off when you’re getting into it. The game promises 40 songs and support for DLC, and if it’s supported as the main platform is, then you should find an extensive library of songs at your fingertips.

The demo also features two extra modes and a ‘modify game’ option. These modes are ‘Band Survival’ and ‘Warmup’. In Band Survival mode, every note counts – the instruments will not play themselves, leaving you to scramble between 4 sets of notes…certainly a challenge. Warmup mode is essentially the opposite, allowing you to play just one instrument whilst the rest automatically play themselves. Any time you fancy switching, you can, and the CPU will just pick up and hit the rest of the notes. Good for if you want to focus on a certain instrument in a song.  Finally, the ‘modify game’ option allows you to choose a ‘no failure’ and ‘no solos’ option, turning off failing and solos respectively. I can see the prior being useful for newcomers, and for practice – but I can’t quite see the point of the second one. Regardless, it’s nice to have the choice.

The game is graphically appealing, and fits the visual style of the series well. More importantly, the sound quality is high and most if not all of the songs which will be in the game are master copies. There’s no lag between sound and visuals either, which is crucial in a rhythm game.

All in all, the Rock Band Unplugged demo has left me wanting more. What was originally a ‘maybe’ on my radar has, with this demo, become a must own game. I don’t usually pay full price for PSP games, but this one might well be my first.
If you are in the same boat as I was, then check out the demo, which is available now on the PlayStation Store.

~Scott

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Welcome to the first Cactus Juice Freebies, where we give you free stuff (though I doubt it will be physical stuff).
This time we have a set of PSP wallpapers, put together by me.
The pack contains 8 wallpapers, displayed in the preview above.

They’re free to download, so have at them.

~Scott