Category: PSP

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
For: Xbox 360
From: 343 Industries/Bungie/Microsoft
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, violence)
Price: $40

Though “Halo: Combat Evolved’s” impact has been exhaustingly documented, there may be no finer point than the realization that the 2011 holiday season’s best new first-person shooter may very well be a 10-year-old game with a fresh coat of paint.

At least on the solo (or two-player co-op) side, that’s what “Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary” is — a pretty carbon copy of the game that launched with the original Xbox in 2001 and subsequently formed the foundation of a video game juggernaut.

Arguably, “Anniversary’s” faithfulness is to a fault if you’re accustomed to the advancements the series has made — from enemy A.I. to the ability to sprint, hijack enemy vehicles and dual-wield weapons — since that first game. Even visually, and regardless of a graphical revamp that brings everything up to par with the recent “Halo” games, there are allusions to yesteryear in the jerky way other characters animate and the odd turns enemies sometimes make when flanking and backpedaling.

The upside to staying so faithful? A cool trick that lets you swap between the old and new graphics at any time with a single button press. The transition is a little awkward insofar that the screen briefly fades to black without without stopping the action. But as a fulfillment of curiosity and a jaw-dropping demonstration of how far graphics have come in a decade, it’s a wonderful little touch. (Just be sure to use it when the coast is clear.)

As it happens, the rest of the game remains pretty wonderful as well. “Halo’s” sequels and prequels have outdone it in terms of scope, design variety and level arrangements, but the tenets of those great games — wide-open battlefields, branching paths even indoors, enemies that swarm and flank as well as rush in packs, numerous opportunities for devising your own unique plan of attack — are fully intact here. It was groundbreaking in 2001, and in 2011, following on the heels of oppressively linear military shooters that routinely punish creativity in their campaigns, it still puts many of its newer, flashier contemporaries to shame.

For those who never played it on the original Xbox, the full-circle timing of this anniversary release could not be better. Last year’s “Halo: Reach” allowed players to play out the story that fed into the events of the original game, so if “Anniversary” is new to you, it may as well be a sequel to “Reach” in the same way a “Star Wars” movie from 1977 is a sequel to one released in 2005.

For the returning players, each mission hides a terminal that unlocks new insights — courtesy of perennial series antagonist 343 Guilty Spark — about where the series is headed when the next “Halo” trilogy kicks off next year. The terminals are sometimes harder to find than they should be, but for the diehards, they’re absolutely worth seeking out.

“Anniversary’s” faithfulness isn’t quite as hardcore on the multiplayer side (16 players). The game includes remastered versions of six classic maps and some match configurations that allow players to reenact the original game’s four-player multiplayer, but it uses “Reach’s” multiplayer engine to power it.

At no point does “Anniversary” pretend otherwise: The game uses the “Reach” branding, includes all of its features (from Forge mode to jetpacks), and allows you to play with “Reach” players who purchase the six maps as a $15 download. The maps that shipped with “Reach” aren’t included on “Anniversary,” but in a generous touch, “Anniversary” includes a code that lets you download the maps for free and use them in “Reach” if you have a copy.

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Disney Universe
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Wii, Windows PC
From: Eurocom/Disney Interactive
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (cartoon violence, crude humor)
Price: $50

Though “Disney Universe’s” name isn’t exactly untruthful, it might be a little misleading. This is neither a simulation nor an expansive online multiplayer game (as games with the word “Universe” generally tend to be), and it certainly shouldn’t be confused with the “Kinect Disneyland Adventures” game that lets you explore a virtual Disneyland.

If anything, the “Disney” in the name is more garnish than dish — a decorative exterior for a platforming game that has more in common with “LittleBigPlanet” and the Lego games than anything the “Universe” tag might imply.

Unless you had grandiose ideas for “Universe,” though, that little surprise is — particularly for younger and unseasoned players — a pleasant one.

“Universe’s” levels are modestly sized and pretty self-contained, framed by a fixed-camera perspective that functions similarly to what you get in those Lego games. Also like those games, completing a level in “Universe” typically entails complete a handful of simple mandatory objectives (which clear the way, cause-and-effect style, to the exit) and some trickier optional objectives that are good for collectibles, achievements/trophies and pride in a challenge comprehensively completed.

At no point does this become strenuously difficult: Even flat-out dying in “Universe” provides no punishment beyond simply losing a few hundred coins, which are abundantly available and function as currency toward unlocking new levels and other bonus content. But “Universe” isn’t so easy as to be insulting or boring even to players who are experienced enough to cruise through it.

In large part, that’s because “Universe” does the little things better than those Lego games do. Enemies storm levels at regular intervals, but while the combat is simple and loose, it’s far more refined (and, consequently, miles more fun) than the Lego games’ shoddy excuse for brawling. “Universe” also handles locomotion with considerably less guesswork: The characters don’t run and jump like they’re wearing soggy clothes, which makes it more fun to get around and easier to (among other things) correct a bad jump while airborne. Given a fixed camera’s occasional tendency to betray the laws of perspective and distance, even a little extra polish in this arena goes a long way toward alleviating aggravation.

Predictably, everything the game does is more fun when in the company of others. “Universe” supports four-player offline co-op, and it fulfills the mission of giving players numerous reasons and means to antagonize each other as well as work together.

If, at this point, you’re wondering how Disney fits into this, the answer is “loosely.” “Universe’s” levels are themed according to Disney properties, but the themes feel like themes more than the actual worlds from whence these brands came.

That’s doubly so for the characters you play as and face off against: Instead of literal Disney characters, they’re vinyl dolls wearing costumes with Disney character themes. If you played “LittleBigPlanet” — and particularly if you purchased any of the Disney-branded outfits for that game — the characters in “Universe” will almost certainly look just a little familiar.

The significant upside to that loose interpretation is that it allows “Universe” to cram a whole ton o’ Disney — Mickey and friends, Winnie the Pooh, the Muppets, the Disney Princesses, Pixar’s most wanted, Jack Sparrow, “Tron” and more — into the game without having to explain why Lilo and Peter Pan might be joining forces on a pirate ship. The story it comes up with instead is amusing, the characters look adorable in their Disney Halloween costumes, and the costume abilities and level intricacies shout out to their respective themes in clever ways that set this apart from just another Disney game.

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Where is my Heart?
For: Playstation 3/Playstation Portable (universal, via Playstation Network Minis)
From: Die Gute Fabrik
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Price: $7

A traumatic family hiking trip inspired Bernie Schulenburg to design “Where is my Heart?,” and what results is a wonderful case of turning a negative into a positive. “Heart” follows the adventures of three monsters lost in the woods and searching for a way home, and at its most basic (on the first level), it’s a simple case of running and jumping through a level that fits entirely within the constraints of a single screen. From there, though, the levels break apart into disconnected panes that form a coherent level but do so out of order. A pane in the top left of the screen might depict scenery that’s adjacent to a square on the bottom right instead of right next to it, and you’ll need to dance along the edges and use the level design’s context clues to decipher how to reach the exit. “Heart” goes from easy to ingenious extremely quickly, and once it gives you the ability to rotate those panels and navigate parallel dimensions in search of shortcuts on the other side, the puzzles become downright devious. Fortunately, everything else about the game — the adorable 8-bit graphics, the sweet demeanor of the monsters, a sound palette that’s minimalist in a way that evokes Apple II-era games — makes “Heart” too impossibly charming to even frown at while its puzzles cerebrally kick you in the face. An understated gem like this stands in complete contrast to the tornado of big budget games that are bigger and badder iterations of the same old thing, and if you’re dying simply the play something you’ve never played before, this one is essential.

The 3rd Birthday
For: Playstation Portable
From: HexaDrive/Square Enix
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, partial nudity, strong language, violence)

It’s been a long time — 10 years — since we last saw Aya Brea in “Parasite Eve II,” and for those who cared about the games she was in rather than Aya herself, this likely isn’t the homecoming you had in mind.

Officially, “The 3rd Birthday” marks the continuation of the “Eve” storyline, an opera of mutated monkeys, genetic engineering and spontaneous combustion that’s entirely too bizarre to explain succinctly. Unofficially, it doesn’t much matter: Only a few other characters make the crossover from “Eve” to “Birthday,” and while there are definite ties to the past — Manhattan and Christmas Eve really do not mix in Aya’s world — the new storyline feels more like a fresh crisis for a familiar face than something reliant on events whose explanations exist in a decade-old game.

More to the point, though, “Birthday” doesn’t play anything like the “Eve” games, which creatively layered role-playing game elements atop horror gameplay from the “Resident Evil” playbook.

“Birthday,” by contrast, is a third-person shooter, and even by the classifications of that genre, it falls heavily on the arcadey side. A heavy infusion of storytelling directs the action, but most of the time, you enter an area, the music swells, you clear the area of monsters, move to the next area and repeat. The game compensates for the PSP’s lack of a second stick by using the left trigger to lock onto enemies and making aiming mostly unnecessary, which in turn transforms “Birthday” into a run-and-gun shooter that rarely stops running and gunning.

If it sounds repetitive — especially stretched across the 12 or so hours “Birthday” needs to weave yet another enjoyably labyrinthine story — that’s because it is. But the general fast pace of the action means it also stays fresher than if “Birthday” moved at the speed of a traditional third-person shooter.

“Birthday” also helps itself by throwing in some oddball mechanics that, while often confusingly explained, do serve their purpose.

Because Aya is more a spiritual presence in these shootouts instead of there in the flesh (crazy story explains, don’t worry), you’re free to “jump” into the bodies of your human allies, control their movements, and jump at will from body to body. As long as the body Aya assumes doesn’t die, neither does she, and being able to leap around the environment so quickly allows her to flank enemies and use cover in some creative ways.

Other tricks aren’t quite as significant but do come in handy. Aya can use the same trick to temporarily jump into the bodies of weakened enemies and destroy them from within, and a limited-use trick called Liberation temporarily makes her an invincible force of nature. “Birthday” doesn’t give you much in the way of tactical controls over your allies, but it is possible to duck behind cover, direct crossfire on a specific enemy, and either evade the enemy or finish it off while your allies concentrate their fire that way.

If you like “Birthday’s” brand of shooting enough at its outset, the flavor these mechanics provide — along with an elaborate weapons/armor upgrade system and a completely convoluted (but, once you get it, pretty cool) means of upgrading Aya’s DNA — should keep it in your favor while the story does what it does. “Eve’s” unique gameplay remains missed, but “Birthday” carries on the series’ quirky storytelling disposition, and that may be the more important of the two legacies here.

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Mayhem
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Left Field Productions/Rombax Games/Evolved Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (violence)

From the numerous mentions of 3D in the marketing to the two pairs of 3D glasses bundled inside, “Mayhem” makes a pretty big deal about its stereoscopic 3D capabilities. Unfortunately, it’s much ado about nothing: The glasses are the old-fashioned red and blue variety, and the results of using them — so-so results for some, headaches for most — is the same it’s always been with that kind of 3D technology.

Fortunately, the 3D is optional and disabled by default. Twice as fortunately, “Mayhem” doesn’t even need the gimmick, because it’s an entirely great time on its own merits.

In large part, that’s because “Mayhem” is the first game since 2007’s “FlatOut: Head On” to successfully attack a genre — destruction derby racing — that’s a no-brainer for gaming possibilities but also a magnet for lousy budget titles that don’t even try to do it right.

Like “FlatOut,” “Mayhem” splits its time between racing events (traditional race and longer elimination-style events) and car combat (a last-vehicle-standing destruction derby and an event where you must knock the opposing vehicles off the track and into pits before they do the same to you).

But speed and destruction are never mutually exclusive. “Mayhem’s” races — often set on figure eights and other tracks where you’ll run into cross- and opposing traffic — are wonderfully perilous, and taking first place is as much about knocking your opponents off the track as it is about boosting past them down a straightaway. Conversely, because the combat arenas are nice and large, you’re afforded plenty of room to attack with purpose, finesse and speed instead of merely bump and react.

“Mayhem’s” driving physics, which vary nicely across 120 delightfully clunky sedans, wagons, trucks and even monster trucks, play their part perfectly. They’re a little squirrelly, which can lead to your getting turned completely around in a race where you trade paint and lose the fight, but they’re more than sufficiently responsive in terms of steering and cornering. The action is fast without feeling needlessly unwieldy, and there’s an unmistakable weight to the vehicles that does not come at the expense of their handling. Everything feels just right.

Though the 3D experiment isn’t a rousing success, “Mayhem’s” graphic novel-style presentation gives the game a striking visual personality anyway. Nearly the entirety of the game — vehicles, tracks, arenas — appears in stark black and white, with the only sources of color being a blood red skyline and the occasional bright yellow “BAM!” that pops in after a particularly vicious collision. The unique look is a jaw-dropper at first, and it surprisingly doesn’t get stale or even get in the way once you grow accustomed to it. Credit the level of detail in the cars and tracks, which squeeze as much out of that minimal color palette as could possibly be expected.

If “Mayhem” hobbles anywhere, it’s in the longevity department, but the budget asking price goes a long way toward mitigating even this concern. The game’s career mode can be finished off in four hours or so, and outside of unlocking all the vehicles, there’s little else in the way of dangling carrots. But the racing is fun, fast and distinct enough to make “Mayhem” replayable simply on the merits of replaying it for fun, and if you have friends whose taste in racing games runs parallel to yours, the simple but sufficient multiplayer support (two players split-screen, eight online) has your back.

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StarDrone
For: Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network)
From: TastyPlay/Beatshapers
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)
Price: $10

To really understand “StarDrone” is to see it in action rather than read about it on paper, be
cause while it combines things we’ve all seen before (a little bit of pinball, a little bit of “Breakout” and a little bit of “Spider-Man”-style web slinging physics), describing exactly how it comes together doesn’t do justice to the unwieldy but very satisfying way these elements collide. Though other objectives factor in, the general goal in “StarDrone” is to manage those physics in a way that gets your ship around each of the 53 levels and clears the area of collectible stars (or, later on, enemies) in as little time as possible. But you don’t control the ship directly — enter slinging physics — and the levels are loaded with enough obstacles (some fatal, some not) to make getting around, much less quickly, easier said than done. For the impatient, “StarDrone” may even be too unwieldy to truly enjoy. But for the player who loves nothing more than to replay levels in hopes of shaving a second off that finishing time and shoot for each level’s gold medal score, this is pretty much bliss. The truly bold will appreciate the clever ability to adjust “StarDrone’s” speed on a 10-point scale, which makes ever faster times possible for those steady enough to handle the spike in recklessness. Just keep a DualShock handy if you want to do your best: “StarDrone’s” lauded Playstation Move support delivers as advertised, but it supports traditional controllers equally well, and the added precision they afford will come in handy come high score pursuit time.

Bulletstorm
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: People Can Fly/Epic Games/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual themes, strong language, use of alcohol)

With respect to the hard-working people who brought “Bulletstorm’s” sound design to life, few would blame you for playing this first-person shooter with your sound muted.

“Bulletstorm’s” storyline is infested with cliches, and its characters are massively unlikable meatheads who inspire no rooting interest whatsoever. It initially feels like a spoof in the “so bad, it’s good” vein, but too many turns for the melodramatic make it clear this wasn’t the intention.

“Bulletstorm’s” comedic antidote for the encroaching melodrama is to take dirty words that make second-graders giggle and jam them into sentences in ways that intentionally make no sense. Hilarious, right? Nope, and you need not find swearing remotely offensive to be put off by the notion that something’s funny simply because somebody blurted out a word you can’t print here. It’s immediately lame, and hearing the same gag ad nauseam over “Bulletstorm’s” six-hour campaign is nauseating. (There’s a toggle to disable “mature” language — calling it that is unintentionally funnier than the entirety of “Bulletstorm’s” script — but that won’t fix everything else that ails the story.)

But “Bulletstorm’s” problems go deeper than storytelling. Though the levels look pretty, their construction — too many tight corridors, too little room for meaningful strategy, laughable attempts at “puzzle”-solving — are uninspired. The enemy A.I. occasionally falls apart, with a half-dozen baddies all targeting you despite the nearly constant presence of two allies by your side. Your allies are even worse, regularly standing out of position, blocking your view or just doing nothing while those aforementioned enemies dig in. It makes the omission of online campaign co-op even more regrettable than it already was.

Good thing, then, that “Bulletstorm” at least does some things no other shooter does. If it didn’t, the aforementioned roster of problems would be impossible to overcome.

“Bulletstorm’s” big hook is the notion of killing with style. You can shoot a guy if you want, but why do that when, for instance, you can pull a gigantic seed toward you with your energy leash, kick the seed so it lands on an enemy’s head, pull the enemy in with the leash, kick him into the air and fire a shot that launches him into a gigantic cactus? Doing that nets you more points, which function as currency toward purchasing weapons and ammo. In the game’s best move, it gives you an in-game database of every possible stylish kill and challenges you to achieve all 131 of them.

Default weapon aside, “Bulletstorm’s” guns are satisfyingly powerful and fun to use, and the leash — which you crack like a whip to yank enemies and objects toward you for additional manipulation — adds a fun, mischievous wrinkle. Your kick, meanwhile, is as straightforward as it sounds but similarly fun to use because it’s cartoonishly overpowering.

The moment-to-moment insanity afforded by these abilities does much to compensate for all “Bulletstorm” does poorly, but the novelty also has an expiration date. It starts wearing thin about halfway through, and the final few chapters — which find the A.I. and level-design problems at their worst — are a grind.

It’s no mystery why “Bulletstorm” nixed competitive multiplayer, which would have been disastrous with everyone booting and leashing each other constantly.

But whether Anarchy mode — which allows four players to fight cooperatively online (and collect special multiplayer-only skillshots) against up to 20 waves of enemies — provides satisfactory compensation is debatable. Anarchy is “Bulletstorm” at its best — no annoying story, no useless friendly A.I. — but even competing for the high score won’t fully scratch whatever itch you might have for human competition.

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Ys I & II Chronicles
For: Playstation Portable
From: Falcom/XSEED
ESRB Rating: Teen (alcohol reference, blood, mild fantasy violence, mild language, mild suggestive themes, partial nudity)

Dreamcast Collection
For: Xbox 360
From: Sega
ESRB Rating: Everyone to Teen (mild violence, suggestive themes, language)

What follows is a tale of two retro compilations — one from a publisher that understands its audience, the other from one that seemingly couldn’t care less.

“Ys I & II Chronicles” represents the umpteenth time the first two games in the “Ys” series, which debuted nearly 24 years ago, have been released, rereleased, remade and/or retouched. “Chronicles” most closely resembles a 2001 PC remake that never released in America, and in addition to the graphical and storytelling upgrades that premiered with that version, this edition includes a terrific new remixing of the games’ wonderful musical score, three versions of which are selectable in-game. “Chronicles'” initial printing comes packaged with a soundtrack CD containing the score, and if you’re part of the audience XSEED is targeting with this release, you understand why that’s no trivial bonus.

As perhaps goes without saying, the only thing that remains dated as ever is the first-generation “Ys” gameplay, which resembles a classic role-playing game but employs a strange semi-real-time combat system that merely asks players to “bump” into enemies in a certain way and let the stats sort out the battle. It was weird then, and it’s old and even weirder now. But it still works, and because it’s the primary reason “Ys” stood out from its peers back in its original iteration, the developers would be crazy to mess with its integrity.

“Chronicles” might be an odd mix of old and new, but it’s a polished and faithful mix that makes smart decisions about what to change and what to preserve. Series devotees should be pleased, even if they’ve played these games inside out already.

Sega’s “Dreamcast Collection,” by contrast, is a collection made for whomever and for reasons unexplainable beyond cash grabbing.

For starters, the four selections — “Crazy Taxi,” “Sonic Adventure,” “Sega Bass Fishing” and “Space Channel 5 Part 2” — don’t exactly embody what people loved about Sega’s Dreamcast console. “Taxi’s” probably the darling of the bunch, but it’s also available as a $10 standalone download.

All four of these games, in fact, either are or will be available as Xbox Live downloads — which is why Sega chose them for inclusion. “Collection” doesn’t even bother modifying the boot code: Once you select a game from the top menu, you have to quit out to the Xbox dashboard and reboot “Collection” to select another one.

Such laziness might be OK if “Collection” at least did the one thing — give you $40 worth of good downloadable games for $30 — it set out to do.

But “Sonic Adventure’s” control and camera issues — which were problematic by 1999 standards, to say nothing of 2011 — remain intact. “Crazy Taxi’s” physics and driving controls are way too touchy with the Xbox 360’s controller, and Sega didn’t even bother to map the reverse gear to the left trigger, which racing games have been doing for nearly a decade now.

“Space Channel 5 Part 2’s” uniqueness has allowed it to age a little better, because even with the advent of rhythmic music games, nothing plays quite like it. But its timing demands remain uncommonly stiff — now to the point where it feels broken on the more responsive 360 controller. “Sega Bass Fishing,” meanwhile, was only notable in its day because it supported a bizarre fishing reel controller that obviously doesn’t work on the 360. Why bring this back? Who knows.

Sega didn’t have to reinvent these games to justify selling them again, but even a little effort — controller concessions, interface redesigns, widescreen support for all games — would have done wonders for convincing us it cares at all about this collection. But it doesn’t, so neither should you.

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Back to the Future: Episode One: It’s About Time
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
Also available for: Windows PC, Macintosh, iPad
From: Telltale Games
ESRB Rating: Teen (alcohol reference, language, mild violence)
Price: $20 for a PSN season pass (which gets you episodes two through five when they release on PSN); $25 for the season pass on PC/Mac; $7 for episode one separately on iPad

We’re not going to get a “Back to the Future IV,” but because the latest “BTTF” video game adaptation has landed in exactly the right hands, we no longer need it. “It’s About Time” isn’t a retelling of the movies: It’s a new story, set in 1986- and 1931-era Hill Valley, and it succeeds the events of the films, which still make their presence felt in some subtle, clever ways. Like most Telltale games, “Time” is a point-and-click adventure (optimized pretty painlessly for the PS3’s controller), and advancing through the story incurs a mix of saying the right things to the characters you (as Marty) meet and solving a few cause-and-effect puzzles to help trigger events beyond Marty’s direct control. In the case of this episode, that means meeting Doc Brown’s younger self in order to free the Doc you know and love from the local jailhouse. The puzzles aren’t exactly brainbusters, nor is “Time” a particularly lengthy game if you can quickly outsmart it. But those puzzles do their part in advancing a “BTTF” storyline that’s lain dormant for 21 years, and between the spot-on voice acting, the genuinely funny dialogue and the willingness to take creative license with the universe beyond what the movies provided, “Time” nails it. Like most Telltale releases, “Time” is merely the first of a five-episode pack you buy all at once, and if the teaser you see at the end of episode one is any indication, things will only get more interesting in episode two.