PSP Juiced 2 HIN – Underrated

I got my hands on the Juiced 2 game on the PSP. The game has been around since October last year. In my opinion, it is better than any NFS or any Midnight Club game on the same console. But game reviews say it sucks in other platforms. Thus, the PSP version becomes undervalued.

The game greatly focus on street racing particularly on drifting. But this is not the typical illegal street racing game. Juiced 2 brings modified car racing, along with the hot chicks, in a legal manner. The game brings the Hot Import Nights on the PSP. HIN produces big street racing events that even closed public roads to be used as a race track. And don’t forget about the hot women.

Racing games today are all about car modification. NFS and Midnight Club lets you do that. Juiced 2 is not far from them. It is the only racing game I know of so far that lets you modify vinyls’ size and position in the car’s body. However, it does not offer other changes in the car that includes lights, neon, plate number, decals, and tint, and it also has small quantity of body parts to choose from.

In terms of graphics and control, Juiced 2 is ahead of the NFS and Midnight Club. NFS Most Wanted controls so bad that I stopped playing it again on the PSP. Midnight Club got good controls but becomes unrealistic when you activate the NOS. Juiced 2 has greatly tuned cars and in-game driving makes you feel the weight of the car. Now, how can you do that on a hand-held console?

The view modes of the game is quite awful. Sometimes, the back of the car cannot be shown in the third person view. That’s not handy especially when you are drifting. The first person view, like other games, gives a look like the camera is above the car’s hood. You can’t see the hood, the dashboard, and the side mirrors. Maybe it’s not even called first person view. But I haven’t yet seen any racing game on the PSP that gives a realistic first person view.

If you would focus on the gameplay, I bet there will not be any problem in Juiced 2. Except only if you drift for more than a million points and then the car bumps on the wall. Makes you want to throw your PSP.

Red Alert 3: 7 Years in the Making

“Welcome back, comrade“

After 7 years, EA will soon publish the third installment of the game Command and Conquer: Red Alert. Beta-testing is open for buyers of the C&C: Kane’s Wrath until September 15, 2008. No official release dates yet but the beta-testing end date gives us a slight hint that the game may be released around that date or until the first months of 2009 (that’s only my assumption).

The game will also be available in Xbox 360 and PS3 gaming consoles. AT LEAST, IT WILL BE AVAILABLE IN THE PC! Curse those HD systems that kill other consoles!

Anyway, I can remember playing Red Alert 2 with my friends at internet cafes when I was in grade school. Good old days. Imagine the military strategies of grade schoolers.

Crisis Core: Aerith vs. Cissnei

Last time I met a friend of mine, we had a little debate about who’s more charming, Aerith or Cissnei? And now, I give you the tale of the tape:

AERITH

Aerith Gainsborough. Brown-almost-straight hair. Wears a red ribbon given by Zack. Isn’t she cute? (HAHA I’m getting biased)

She appeared on Crisis Core in the scene when Zack fell from the sky as Angeal charges the floor of a room in the MAKO reactor (I’m not really sure). Her first word was “Hell-loo?” But that’s not the normal hello you can get from any of your text friends. This Hello revives Zack from uh… sleep.

She also got an awesome music theme.

Her DMW skill is Healing Wave which will heal Zack around a thousand HP points. It helps Zack well especially in boss battles. The bad part of this skill is that if the game suddenly becomes GTA, she’d be called hooker.

CISSNEI

Simply Cissnei (no surname given). Red wavy hair. Usually wears the Turk uniform except on the cutscene that shows Zack’s vacation.

Cissnei is the first woman that appears in the DMW. She has a strong figure. When Zack first saw her, she’s being assaulted by several Genesis clones. Zack was about to help when two Turks stopped him and delayed him a little bit. Next thing Zack saw was the Genesis copies lying on the floor defeated by Cissnei.

On the DMW, she brings the skill Lucky Stars. This will give Zack a critical status. It is a good skill to be used for enemies with high HP.

According to a couple of SOLDIERs, she’s the hottest girl in Shin-Ra. But then again, who wants to settle with a chick with shuriken?

WHAT?! 3 MONTHS ALREADY?!

This might be the latest blog post about the end of Pangya Philippines. Three months late. Talk about timeliness.

I feel left out. When everybody’s done grieving about the loss of Pangya, here I am whining in my blog. I am only getting the hang of hitting a tomahawk shot last time I played it.

I haven’t played Pangya since new year’s eve, I believe. I was busy doing school stuff since before Christmas break ended. And so, I am really surprised that Pangya already closed.

The only good thing that happened was that I was so lazy that I did not copy the installer from the other computer into mine. Saves me from straining my muscles from clicking the mouse several times and inserting a flash drive into two computers.

Crisis Core

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core is the newest game I have on PSP. It is my first Action RPG FF Game, although I played the FF1 Remake on the PSP which is a strategy type game. I never played any other FF game since I neither owned a PS or a PS2. All I know about Final Fantasy is the music which my friends influenced me. And oh, I forgot to mention that I tried to watch Advent Children but I was not able to cope with the storyline.

When I started the game, I thought I might feel the same way I feel when I watched Advent Children – OUT OF PLACE. But luckily, no. I learned that Crisis Core is a prologue to the original FF7 game. And so, I can catch up with the story. I might also be able to understand the Advent Children movie next time I watch it.

The game is good. In fact, the game gained a 9.0 rating at GameSpot alongside with Patapon. That’s the highest rating so far on PSP games. It has a good story and gameplay. More importantly for me, it has a good music (although I was a little bit disappointed that only few tracks were composed by Nobuo Uematsu).

I like the way how videos are important in the game. Unlike other games I’ve played, videos cannot be skipped while it is being played. The videos narrate the story of the game and so, you don’t want to miss it. It is a good thing that videos can be paused using the start button. I don’t know if FF in other game consoles are like this but I’m giving this feature a two-thumbs-up.

This game is a must-have for PSP owners. Also, I would recommend the PSP console to those who doesn’t have it because Sony’s trying to pump-up the console by exclusively publishing high quality games.

Lastly, I would like to quote Zack’s “If people have wings, they’d be monsters.”

[Uhh... I'm also wondering why I quote this. =)]