Posts Tagged ‘PSP’

Darren is back just in time for a semi-festive show. We spend most of our time catching up on the last few months events and our respective holiday breaks but in the process we do touch on lots of games in-between our stories.

As I said last show do not expect Dans wonderfully detailed show notes every week, and this week serves only to reaffirm that declaration. I can tell you that you can expect us to talk about all the games we played recently, Red Dwarf, bad commercials, me pissing myself, me being taunted by hordes of nerds, the upcoming 2010 releases and our vacations. Unfortunately even with Darren back there is no Frakkers this show, but we do have some music and the return of Darrens Old Games.

Hopefully 2010 will mark a more regular schedule for The DoFuss Show as we stream line the formula, but we make no promises. Enjoy the show and keep an eye on the site this month for some gaming memories of the last ten years.

What have you been playing, news and features make up the show this week. Though the last few weeks have been uneventful in terms of new releases we keep playing games and stuff is still happening in the industry.

Fallout 3 - New Vegas, Bioshock 2, Assassins Creed 2 and Dantes Inferno are all games we do not talk about. Instead we focus our attention on Final Fantasy XIII, Wii Motion Plus and a plethora of other juicy topics that sprung to mind. All this before we have a little chat about the direction of the handheld market, and why if iPhones are the future you should just wait and buy one when you get there.

Of course we also have some news on the Street Fighter 4 art book competition, but it may not be what you wanted. Enjoy and remember to leave comments at dofuss.net or on iTunes. Bye!

My thinking when it comes to handheld titles is simple. The game should fill the gaps in my life when I have no other choice than to sit and wait. It is a very rare occurrence for me to play a handheld at home, thus my gaming is limited to the train and occasionally coffee shops as I kill time between shifts. For the most part I want quick games. Old arcade style jump in and die games which I can play for fifteen minutes between house and work, such as Space Invaders Extreme or Bangai-O Spirits. But there are occasions where I want something more substantial. Something which holds my attention for hours a time. In short I want Civilization Revolutions.

Civilization is a game with so many layers that in honesty I was amazed to see it compressed down into something that functioned effectively on a handheld. Though some of the complexities are removed it is none the less involving. Indeed the concessions made serve to ensure that even on the DS your civilization is never unmanageable.

It is with some irony that the title of my favorite handheld goes to a series which has been around for seventeen years. After all in every other section I have attempted to reward innovation. That is not to downplay the shear accomplishment of putting a game that just a few years ago I couldn’t imagine working on anything other than a PC into the palm of my hand while retaining the overall feel of the experience that I lost so many hours to at university.

In the interest of full disclosure I should state that I didn’t play many handheld titles this year. I suspect if I had the funds available I would have picked up Patapon 2 and LocoRoco 2 both of which are franchises I love and could have bumped Civilization from the top spot. But I didn’t.

In Japan the handheld is king. Week after week PSP and DS battle it out at the top to the hardware charts. Recently of course sales of both have been rejuvenated by the PSP-3000 and the DSi with many buying yet another version of their favorite system.

Many factors effecting Japans market mirror the West’s. It’s perfect for commuters. The lower price is attractive, especially as the feeling of recession in Japan has been present since the mid-nineties. And now systems are not exclusively game machines the target audience is expanded.

More specific to Japan is co-operative element. With gamers often unable monopolize the family television to play with friends, handhelds become the solution. Hence when you see someone playing a portable system often someone will be playing along side.

The combination of all these factors explain the overall trend but in the links below more specific elements are discussed.