This Friday (in the UK) will see the release of two of the biggest and most important handheld titles ever. GTA: Chinatown Wars brings Liberty City to Nintendo DS Lite, whilst Resistance Retribution will be made available for Sony PSP. Both are landmark titles and both could offer new directions for their respective platforms in the future. Let’s look at both titles individually and see what each brings to the table.
GTA: Chinatown Wars
The Nintendo DS is the most popular handheld console (by quite some margin) available today. The machine offers a wide range of titles and appeals to everyone. Indeed Nintendo’s advertising now features people of all ages, sex and race playing games on the little machine and this is a good thing. However, there aren’t too many games released on DS that get slapped with an 18 rating. GTA changes this.
The game is set once again in Liberty City and focuses on the triads. Drug trafficking, murder, robbery, sex and corruption are the games mainstays, a million miles away from the brightly coloured lands of New Super Mario Bros, or the over-the-top cuteness of Nintendogs. This is not normal territory for DS owners to find themselves in.
However, as with other titles in the GTA series, the violence and other adult themes are not there to purely gratify the acts they portray. They’re tong in cheek and over the top and therefore a lot of fun. Remember people, the GTA games are for adults, not kiddies and that’s fine because as we have already discussed Nintendo DS offers something for people of all ages.
So far the reviews for GTA Chinatown Wars have been excellent and it seems that Rockstar’s first attempt at developing for DS has paid off in dividends. GTA is such a successful and massive franchise that the acceptance of software like this on a Nintendo machine could pave the way for other mature titles to be developed in the future. Madworld DS anyone?
Resistance Retribution
The PSP has suffered from having games that on paper look good (and in screenshots), but never quite deliver on that promise when you actually get your hands on them. Resistance Retribution joins a long line of shooters on Sony’s handheld, but offers something new. Good controls and decent online multiplayer.
The analogue disc that is often used as the main method of control in PSP games is not the best device ever created. It doesn’t offer the same level of precision as a traditional joypad analogue stick for example. The disc can sometimes mean that controls feel ‘floaty’ and the lack of a second analogue device to control the camera movement in a shooter only adds to the problems on PSP. Resistance does things slightly differently. It offers a lot of help with auto aiming. Normally in a shooter this would be seen as a cheap way of making the game simple for players, but on PSP rather than cheapen the experience it enhances it.
I’m so used to playing a shooter on the PSP and getting shot to hell because I couldn’t target properly, by increasing the auto aim assist it actually makes the game fun to play (at least in the demo version I tried out last month). In addition to this the game interacts with PS3 and specifically Resistance 2. Connect your PSP to your PS3 and load up Resistance 2 and you will get extra features and modes. Also, and as far as I know this is a first, you can actually use the PS3 Dualshock 3 pad to play Resistance Retribution on PSP, so you get 2 analogue sticks and can actually play it like a full blown console game. No more tricky aiming to contend with.
The PSP has full online capabilities, but these are often ignored or not utilised to their fullest potential in games. Once again Resistance Retribution changes that by offering a true online multiplayer experience with several modes available. More information and a video detailing the game can be found here (Kotaku).
Sony promised increased support for PSP last month and stated several major franchises would be coming to PSP this year including Little Big Planet, Assassin’s Creed and Motorstorm. It’s a sad fact that a lot of PSPs are sitting in user’s homes gathering dust at the moment. The machine has a great deal of potential let’s hope Resistance Retribution is the catalyst that will begin the PSP’s rebirth as a quality gaming platform.
Let’s talk
We’ll be picking up both games and offering our views on each on this week’s podcast.
Technorati Tags: Consoles, GTA Chinatown Wars, Handhelds, Nintendo DS, PSP, Resistance Retribution, Sony
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