My wife just surprised me with a new PSP battery after listening to me moan about not having one ever since reading PerfectDark’s most recent PSP article. After messing around with broken USB cables and jumping through hoops to un-spoof my old prome-2 firmware version for too long last night, I finally got ARK4 running and had a blast playing Wipeout Pure.
My favourite PSP game back in the day was probably Monster Hunter Freedom Unite… so many late nights spent playing that with friends in my freezing flat. There was something special about LAN parties with handheld games. I remember putting serious hours into Peace Walker and Dissidia too.
Now I want some game recommendations… tell me which games you loved on the PSP! I might even have a look around for some UMDs!
I never owned a Vita unfortunately. I suppose I could emulate it on the Steamdeck though!
Vita notoriously doesn’t have too many good original games, though it works well as an emulator of PS1/PSP/SNES etc. that also has a few bangers. I’m currently playing through the remake of original XCOM, which is great except the interface was obviously made for the faster PS3.
There’s a shitload of visual novels for some reason, though.
I had to google this because I thought for a moment that you meant there was a remake of the original original XCOM on Vita. As in “X-COM UFO Defense” (known as “UFO: Enemy Unknown” elsewhere).
Had me excited for a moment there.
Not that the rebooted series isn’t good in its own right. But the original game was so good and would be amazing with some QoL improvements.
I mean, Wikipedia says that the 2012 ‘XCOM: Enemy Unknown’ is a ‘reimagining’ of that first game, however my memory isn’t so good as to remember what the original was like in details. I can say, though, that probabilities <40% do result in hits sometimes, which is a definite upgrade.
Yeah it gets a little confusing.
But looking at screenshots of the Vita title, it’s the remake not the original original. That is, not the one that came out in 1994.
This is the actual original game I’m referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Enemy_Unknown
This is the 2012 remake which is the basis for the Vita version (still a good game, but I prefer the original. Could be nostalgia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCOM:_Enemy_Unknown
Well, figuring out that it’s not the exact same game was easy, since it’s made with the Unreal engine.
I’ve actually read excerpts from the original’s Wikipedia article yesterday, and it says there that Firaxis’ reboot started as a plain remake, but gradually strayed from that, and the combat system differs somewhat.
Reportedly Julian Gollop, the designer/developer of the original ‘UFO: Enemy Unknown’, considers ‘Xenonauts’ to be a faithful reimplementation, and the game also has very good reviews. Gollop also made his own spiritual successor ‘Phoenix Point’, but it’s not received as well.
Yeah I’ve had Xenonauts on my wishlist for a while but haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
I had the original on PlayStation 1 and I was pretty young so I’m sure a lot of it is nostalgia. But at the time, I’d never played anything with even close to that amount of depth.
I have a couple other PSP tactics games in my ‘maybe play sometime’ list: ‘Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command’ and ‘Tom Clancy’s EndWar’ (along with ‘Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas’ and ‘Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2’, which are tactical first-person shooters).
But if you ever have real hankering for oldschool isometric squad turn-based tactics, check out ‘Jagged Alliance 2’, or perhaps its remake ‘Jagged Alliance: Back in Action’ (although the remake apparently was received poorly, and has cut out some humorous plot cutscenes). Both games have expansion packs, see the series page and also the modding section on 2’s page.
Jagged Alliance 3 was released just three years ago, but I don’t know anything about it, though the reviews seem pretty good.