Commando Mobile Game Review

If you are looking for a good action game with choppers, you might opt to try Commando, which is now available at Smart.

Lord of The Rings Middle-earth Defense Mobile Game Review

If you are looking for a tower defense game in your mobile phone, you should check out the newest game from Smart, Lord of The Rings Middle-earth Defense.

The game stays faithful to the trilogy as most of the game’s battles take place from the famous locations from the three books such as the Mines of Moria, Helm's Deep and also at Mina Tirith.

Patapon 3 Review

After years of absence, the little big eyeball tribe is back in action with their contagious rhythm beats in Patapon 3 for the PlayStation Portable, will the second sequel gives us another round of LSS with their drum beating music?

Cladun: This Is An RPG Game Review

Nippon Ichi Software or NIS, the creators of Disgaea and Phantom Brave, released a retro-style RPG for the PlayStation Portable entitled Cladun: This Is An RPG!, will this game be a hit despite having retro-style graphics?

The storyline was pretty simple, two adventurers fell into the world of Arcanus Cella, a not-your-average magical world, where they meet different people in that world and started their own adventure in Arcanus Cella. A fun part here is that you watch the end by leaving the world through a cave, even at a start of the game, but of course the ending varies as you progress into the game. The script in the game is pretty hilarious, with different punchlines and references from popular pop cultures.

Cladun, which stands for Classic Dungeon is a dungeon crawling RPG that pretty reminds you of 2D Zelda games. But that doesn't mean that Cladun is just a copycat game, the game features a random generated dungeon that reaches up to the 99th level (but of course that part is just optional) and also a deep character development system called the Magic Circle, where you place your sub characters in a slot along with some stats boosting items to attach, there are also different sets of magic circles to suit your character class, and you can experiment with the system to create your ultimate character, but do take note that the other characters that you added in the Magic Circle will gain experience at any battle as well sharing a single HP with your main character, and if any of the character dies in battle, you will a portion of the stats that were allocated from that particular character. Your sub characters will gain stats when they level up but your main will only gain HP bonuses when it levels up, so you have to switch your main to a sub character in order for it to gain bonus stats.

Another cool feature is that you can design your own character, from pixel to pixel, if you are the creative type, you can generate your favorite characters from other games in classic 8-bit design, and another cool part, you can get to choose which final boss you will going to face in your final showdown.

The graphics are all in classic 8-bit style design. this will definitely give the old-school gamers a nostalgic feel on Cladun, but players who are in the 3D-era might be a bit turned off when they see the retro-style graphics.

The music in Cladun was also good, aside from that you can choose from the original version or the classic 8-bit tune version which will complete your classic gaming experience.

There is also a multiplayer function which includes a co-op mode and a deathmatch mode that will give more ample time to enjoy Cladun with your friends.

Cladun is one great RPG that'll give 20+ hours of game time and it doesn't even include the optional dungeons, add taht up and that'll will double your game time. This is definite must-have for classic gaming lovers but some RPG fans might get mixed reactions because of the complexity of the Magic Circle system and with the 8-bit graphics, but overall Cladun is still one decent RPG.

Game Rating: 8 out of 10

Cladun: This Is An RPG! was developed and published by NIS

DJ Max Portable 3 Review

Pentavision has just released the third incarnation of their popular rhythm game entitled DJ Max Portable 3, the sixth game for the PlayStation Portable. Will this game be a hit to rhythm lovers and long-time DJ Max fans?

Long before DJ Max Technika became a hit in the arcades, there were several versions of DJ Max to the PSP, which became a hit. For those who haven't tried DJ Max Portable, the gameplay is similar that from Beatmania, only without a turntable. You have to press the corresponding button as notes fall down from the screen, continue timing the press to make a combo, rack enough combos to fill up your meter to unleash fever mode, a special mode where you can multiply your combos, the longer your combos, the higher your score will become. You can also adjust the speed of the notes before and during the game.

The first thing you will notice in DJ max Portable 3 is the new presentation, it makes you feel that it is whole new game, all of the videos are now in HD, giving a more fluid and crispier look.

DJ Max Portable 3 now features a new gameplay called the Remix System, with the Remix System, you now have an additional two side panels on the screen, making it a total of three panels instead of the original of having just one, when notes come out in one the two side panels, you have to push the analog nub to that particular direction, making the game feels like you are actually playing a real DJ turntable.

In addition to the Remix mode, some of the game modes returns to the game, such as the mission mode, where you are given a challenge to complete a certain objective in order to accomplish the mission and unlock a reward such as new tracks, avatars, wallpapers, most of the unlocked contents can be seen in the Lounge mode.

Sadly it only features quite a few songs compared to the previous games, and most of the songs are from the Technika 2 series and others are remixes from older songs. Despite the somewhat small tracklist, it still offers a variety of songs such as House, Techno and Pop.

Another sad part is the tedious grinding in a casual game, it feels like all Korean games are required to be super grindy, and the bad part is that to unlock new contents and songs, you need to level up and to make it worse, when leveling up, you have to pick from 3 boxes to get a random reward, so the chance of getting a new song is pretty slim. It would be better if they retain the Club Mission mode from DJ Max Black Square to lessen the repetitive grinding.

The multiplayer mode was removed, which was a bad move. and there is no online leaderboards to check on your ranking, instead the game will give you a code where you will input it on the DJ Max website, they could have offered an online feature via WiFi to receive song and mission updates similar that to Rock Band Unplugged for longer gameplay times.

Overall, DJ Max Portable 3 would have been a better game it wasn't for the tedious grinding, and the lack of a multiplayer feature lessens the gameplay time for players. Although the new Remix mode still offers a good amount of entertainment despite with several flaws to the game.

If you are a fan of DJ Max, you might give this a second chance, otherwise if you are looking for a good polished rhythm game, better stick with the older DJ Max games or with Rock Band Unplugged.

Game Rating: 6 out of 10

DJ Max Portable 3 was developed by Pentavision and published by PM Studios

Phantasy Star Portable 2 Review

SEGA has released the sequel of their Sci-Fi themed RPG: Phantasy Star Portable 2, will the sequel surpasses the original and solve some of the major game issues from the original?

Phantasy Star Portable 2 takes place 3 years after the event of Phantasy Star Universe as you start out as the new recruit of Little Wing: a private military group residing on the space colony resort Clad 6, PSP2 offers a whole new storyline and new characters, with guest appearances of characters from Phantasy Star Portable and Phantasy Star Universe (you can also import your character from the first game and also in demo version of PSP2).

Gameplay is still the same from the original with some few changes, you still be able to bring a certain number of weapons during the mission with the inclusion of a new shield weapon. With the shield, you can now block any attacks from enemies, reducing the damage you receive, but reducing your Photon Points (PP) for every successful blocks, performing a perfect block (by blocking any incoming attacks at the right time) let's you land a critical attack, you can also use the block command with any two-hand and twin melee weapons. Aside from the new block command, the evade command is also new to the sequel; this enables you to dodge any attacks from enemies and also avoiding obstacles, of course at a cost of PPs. The new features makes the game feel like a Monster Hunter game, but in a Sci-Fi setting.

Another change in the game is the replacement of the Photon Charge with Photon Points (PP), instead of having different Photon Charge per weapon (you consume PC whenever you perform a skill attack or a range attack, but PCs gradually regenerate over time, and every weapon have different amount of Photon Charge) you now have a unified Photon Point. Some range weapons now have a charging attack, by holding the charge button, you can shoot a more powerful splash range attack, this is very useful in a crowded area. Also, skills doesn't level up when you frequently use it, to get higher skill levels, you either buy one in the battle shop or from monster enemy drops.

Aside from some changes to the game, there're some new additions to it, one of them is the Room customization. You can now roam around your room and add furnitures to it, you can also buy tickets to change you room's overall appearance. You can now also roam around the Little Wing, the simplified map navigation is now replaced with a fully detailed level of Little Wing. Game difficulty has been increase, now button mashing on bosses will be now difficult as they can deplete half of you life in one swing, a well placed strategy and good teamwork will increase you chances of victory.

Graphics-wise, it is still the same with the original, but with more dungeons, monsters and equipments. some certain short cutscenes now have character artworks to add elements to the storyline. Voice acting is still mediocre, they still retain some music from the original and some new musics to add the intensity of the game.

The controls is still clunky as before, the camera control on the directional button is hard to use especially during a heated battle, the lock-on control can sometimes become clunky at certain times. Character AI has improved a bit but still unreliable even with the new command function, there are still situations where your AI teammates get stuck in a map and will only respawn near you if you progress farther from them.

What excels PSP2 from it's predecessor is the inclusion of an online multiplayer mode, which the original lacks. You can now play multiplayer mode with other players via the PSN (the Ad-Hoc multiplayer mode is still available) aside from that, you can chat with other players by inputing messages with the virtual keyboard and animated emoticons. With this inclusion, you can now interact with other players from around the globe just like in a typical MMORPG.

There are also promotional items that you can acquire by inputting passwords from the vision phone in your room, some promotional items include weapons, costumes and furnitures based from previous and current SEGA games and also from popular Anime series.

Overall, the game is still feels and plays the same like with the original with some flaws still retains, but with new added contents it manage to increase the playing time, but what makes it better is the addition of the online gameplay, which will ensure more multiplayer action. Fans of JRPGs and Monster Hunter games will surely get this, if you want an RPG with multiplayer co-op features, then grab Phantasy Star Portable 2

Game Rating: 7 out of 10

Phantasy Star Portable 2 is developed and published by SEGA.

K-On! Houkago Live Review

Sega just released the PSP game of the hit Anime series K-On!, will the game promises a great music rhythm gameplay or will it only pleases the fans of the series?

A fair warning though, as there is no English release for the game, expect a lot of Japanese texts and you will have a bit of hard time to navigate through the game if you are not prepared, you can refer to this link for a guide to navigate the game.

If you've been playing the Project Diva series (which is also developed by Sega) you'll notice some similarities to it, such as customizable characters and room and MTV-like videos in every song. The gameplay is the same to any music rhythm games; while the music is playing, you press the right a button at the right time, make consecutive hits to make a combo and your score goes higher, make a lot of misses and it's game over. You can use powerups during the game to boost your performance.

What's good to the game (and also rather interesting) is that every character (5 in total) have different button inputs which correspond to their musical instruments, as if you are really playing the instrument itself. aside from the rhythm gameplay, there's the Sing mode where you create your own music video, it's only difficult to navigate as it is full of Japanese text. Another plus to the game is that it has a multiplayer option via Ad-Hoc (up to 5 players) to play with your friends, which some games like Rockband Unplugged lacks.

The graphics is also quite similar to the Project Diva game, although not that spectacular. You can customize your characters with different costumes which you can acquire as you progress the game, you can also interact at the menu screen where there's a chance to open an event scene will recreates a scene from the Anime.

The tracklist offers 19 songs from almost all of the soundtracks of the first season, the tracklist is really disappointing as it will only a very short gameplay time (you can complete the whole tracklist in just around 1-2 hours) and there is no DLC for additional songs. And the sound is pretty weak even if you maxed out the volume both the PSP and the game, so it's best to use a headphone and stay in a less noisy environment while playing.

Overall K-On! Houkago Live is a still good game, despite having very few songs. And this one of those rhythm games that you can enjoy with friends. Fans of the series and rhythm games will enjoy this game.

Game Rating: 7 out of 10

K-On! Houkago Live was developed and published by Sega

Persona 3 Portable Review

Atlus has released the portable version of their 2007 hit RPG Persona 3, now entitled Persona 3 Portable. Will this game become a toned-down budget version of the original, or will it even surpass the original version itself?

The setting is still the same as with the original; it takes place on modern day Japan where you take control of a high school student who's part of a secret organization called the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES) where the student involved in the group has the ability to summon the manifestation of their inner self which is called a Persona, they can summon their Persona by shooting a gun-like device called the Evoker into their heads. the SEES investigates the Dark Hour, a time which occurs only during midnight where beings called Shadows appear along with the giant tower called Tartarus where the Shadows reside.

The new addition in P3P is the introduction of a Female protagonist, on the original version, you only control a Male protagonist, now in P3P you get to choose between the two. Choosing the Female protagonist can alter some aspects of the storyline, such as having a different assistant in the Velvet Room and getting different Social Links.

Navigating to the world is now simplified with the exception on the dungeons, players now guide a cursor on the screen to navigate and interact with characters and areas, although this makes moving on different maps and interacting with characters much simpler and faster, it also lessens the feeling of experiencing the whole Persona world. Real-time cutscenes are now replaced with illustrations and character portraits, but they still retain the voice overs during the cutscenes.

The Battle system is still the same with some additions that were borrowed from Persona 3: FES and Persona 4. Gameplay is turn-based, in the original version, only the Protagonist is playable while the other party members are controlled by AI but they can be guided by using the Tactics command, now in the P3P version all members are playable. You can get an extra turn if you managed to land a critical hit or even exploit a weakness on the Shadows, knocking them down, if the whole opposition was knocked down, you can perform an All Out Attack; a special move where all of the party members will attack simultaneously, causing a ton of damage against your enemies.

Social Links is one of the best sellers of the game, during the day, you can interact with characters and make friends with them, creating a Social Link with them, continue interacting with them and your Social Link rank increases, with high ranked Social Links , you'll be able to create stronger Personas.

And then during at night, at the time of the Dark Hour, you get to explore the giant tower Tartarus, which spans more than 200 floors and is separated with different sections. The maps in every floor of Tartarus are randomly generated, so every time you revisit the same floor, you'll always encounter a different map.

Another good part in the game is that you have to balance between fighting Shadows and doing every school life and increasing Social Link Ranks, giving you options on which to prioritize first, focus more on dungeon crawling and you might flunk in school; focus only in day time activities and you'll get a hard time defeating shadows and bosses, so you have to plan ahead on what you have to focus first. Also, every time you perform an activity, times passes on the game, so you only have limited time, but this doesn't force you to rush on your grinding, as you can still enjoy a casual time despite having a time limitation.

The music in P3P is quite good, it has that funky beat with some mix of hip hop and Jpop, even the battle theme has vocals in it, and new soundtracks was added for the Female Protagonist story. Voice acting is also quite impressive, it makes you feel like you are actually watching an Anime series.

Overall the transition of Persona 3 to the portable console is quite good, it may not be a perfect transition, but it still retains the feel of the game. You can still enjoy a lengthy game even if you're on a go. Newcomers to the game will still enjoy the game even if it was toned down just to fit it on the portable console, and old timers will still feel nostalgic on this one as it has new additions for more game time.

Game Rating: 9 out of 10

Persona 3 Portable was developed and published by Atlus.

Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker Game Review

Hideo Kojima finally release a new chapter for his epic masterpiece franchise Metal Gear with Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and it is only available for the PlayStation Portable, promising better gameplay and more action for the portable console. will this proves that small consoles can pack a big game similar to next-gen consoles?

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is the sixth PSP MGS game (if you include MGS: Digital Graphic Novel) and takes place ten years after the events in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and four years after Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. The game continues the story of Big Boss aka Naked Snake as he leads his newly formed mercenary group Militaires Sans Frontieres (MSF) where they investigate a mysterious armed group deployed in Costa Rica.

The gameplay is still similar to the traditional MGS gameplay; classic stealth action game, that is, you can sneak behind enemies and perform CQC (Close Quarter Combat) or you can shoot tranquilizer darts to knock them out, but once you get detected, more enemies will storm out in the area to eliminate you, in this case you can either hide or completely neutralize the whole opposition. You can opt to go stealth or go gung-ho. They also added the camouflage system from MGS3 to the game, giving you more advantage when going stealth.

The bad side is the PSP's limited buttons and lack of a second analog stick making some buttons to have multiple functions, and using the directional button as camera control and the analog stick as movement can give the players to maneuver and navigate to the areas, especially during boss battles, good thing they featured a new control setting similar that from the shooter control from MGS4 (making the triangle, circle, square and X buttons as camera control) giving that FPS-like controls to Peace Walker, although this could give some who are new to these kind of configurations a tough time to master.

The game is divided into missions similar that from Portable Ops, where the in-game save feature is remove and replacing it with post-mission saves. The Main Ops focus on the main story of Peace Walker while Extra Ops is more of a VR Mission-like missions, these composed of simple tasks like reaching a goal point without being detected to more difficult missions like defeating a hard version of a boss encountered in the Main Ops, and just like in VR Missions, EX Ops offers more than 100 missions.

Boss battle missions in Peace Walker is a real pain in the ass to beat, and sometimes it encourage you to beat in Co-Op (but still they can be finished even in single player), and one of the coolest part here is the enormous size of the bosses, especially the AI bosses, some event the size of a building, giving you that epic battle feel when encountering a boss. Some certain boss battles let you capture vehicles and use them for your army, and midway through the game, you get to salvage parts from AI bosses to build your very secret weapon (it starts with an M), so secret that you have to play the game to know more about it. There's also a special guest from a very familiar monster from a very familiar monster game franchise.

During missions, you an rescue POWs (Prisoners of War) or capture enemy soldiers and turn them into your recruit for your mercenary group MSF which is similar to the recruit feature of Portable Ops. Instead of carrying soldiers to the truck, you can instantly transport them via Fulton Recovery, a parachute device use to recover soldiers for you army, the idea is more of an oddball and fictional, and later in the game, you can get to recruit soldier via WiFi access. Recruited personnels can be assigned to different tasks to improve your Mother Base; homebase of MSF, tasks such as R&D (Research and Development) to develop new weapons, Mess Hall for food supplies, Combat for your army strength, soldiers in the Combat category can be deployed on Outer Ops (a mini strategy game) to get funds, you can also use the captured vehicles to Outer Ops. Having a base management feature adds more replay value to Peace Walker, giving you more reason to play again after completing the game.

One of the major things you will notice on Peace Walker is the ability to play with a friend via Co-Ops in both Main Ops and Extra Ops, the first Metal Gear game where you can play multiplayer in a main story. Co-Op feature is one of the key features of Peace Walker, and it has some advantages. You and your friend can go into "Snake in" a co-op buff that grants you increased life and defense as well as a "Snake Formation" where the player in front will control the movement while the player behind will focus in shooting. Aside from Co-Op mode, there's also the Versus mode with classic modes like deathmatch and capture the base.

The graphics is just amazing, at a first glance, you wouldn't notice this as a portable console game, but from a PlayStation 2 game. The maps in the game are fully detailed, the trees in the jungles to the vehicles such as tanks and helicopters. Cutscenes are presented in a form of animated comics similar to the ones in Portable Ops with artworks from Yoji Shinkawa and Ashley Wood. In addition to the animated artwork cutscenes, there are also quick time events during the scenes to keep players entertained during the lengthy scenes.

Voice acting is still impressive as ever, having the Hollywood-like performance, as David Hayter also returns to lend his voice as Snake. Peace Walker offers almost hours of dialog from cutscenes to mission briefing files. Soundtrack is still epic along with good theme songs like Heaven's Divide by Donna Burke and Koi No Yokushi Ryoku by Nana Mizuki.

If you are a Metal Gear fan, PSP owner or even a stealth game fan, you shouldn't miss this game. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker has tons of replay value with lots Easter Eggs giving you hours of gaming action, and this another reason for you go multiplayer with play with your friends. In other words, you should get Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

Game Rating: 10 out of 10

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is developed by Kojima Productions and published by Konami

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 Game Review

Fans of the hit anime Naruto will surely get the newest game Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 from CyberConnect2. The Japanese developer was already developing previous Naruto games since the PlayStation 2, and this is their 3rd Naruto fighting game for the PlayStation Portable. But will this fighting game deserves to be the on the blockbuster list, or should it be cloak into the shadows and be ignored, let's find out...

The story in the game takes place during the beginning of the Shippuden series, where Naruto returns to their village after two years of training. Some parts of the storyline was slightly changed to fit in the game and to avoid newcomers to the Naruto series to get confused with some plots from the previous series.

There are several game modes in Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3, aside from the traditional free battle and multiplayer battle, there's the Master Road. It's more of a story mode where you progresses through the story by completing missions, this composed of conditioned battles against 1 or more opponents to side-scroll adventure where you need to reach the goal or defeat a number of opponents within the time limit. As you progress through the Master Road, you get to unlock characters, jutsu attacks and bonus materials. There are tons to unlock, but with missions that are really repetitive makes it annoying to complete the story mode, but the good part here is that 1 to 3 players can join your mission via Ad-Hoc.

The game has simple controls: Circle for the regular attacks (you can also make combos with the Circle attack), Square for the weapon attack, Triangle for the special jutsu attack (you can combine Triangle with the Circle attack) and X for the dash, you can also perform Awakening attacks and every character have different Awakening attacks that grant special conditions. Despite having customizable jutsu attacks in every characters, the controls rather feel stiff, and it's very easy to perform combo attacks by just button mashing, and the controls doesn't feel right during the side-scroll adventure missions.

Graphics in the game are just average, although the Ultimate jutsu attack scenes are still fun to watch. Cutscenes in the Master Road involved conversations with still portraits with some simple animated effects to flesh out the story. As for the audio, you can get to choose between the Japanese dub and the American dub, but I'm pretty sure that most of you will opt for the Japanese dub.

Multiplayer is the major plus in Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 as now you can duke it out with 3 other players in Ad-Hoc either in a tag team of free for all, yet sadly, the control issues can drag the multiplayer funfactor down, but still playable.

Overall Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 could have been better if they improve the controls and added some unique gameplay features. The multiplayer is still fun, you just have to bear the stiff controls. Naruto fans will still enjoy the game, but if you are looking for a good multiplayer fighting game, you might opt to find somewhere else.

Game Rating: 6 out of 10

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Heroes 3 was developed by CyberConnect2 and was published by Namco Bandai Games.