Despair not, ye zealots, for the cavalry is a-coming. ANNO 1701: Dawn of Discovery (hereafter ANNO 1701) is the latest in a growing number of PC strategy franchises to make port (badum-tish) on the DS, a pretty damn intellectual proposition which should come as a welcome relief to all those gamers sick of flinging cartoon vegetables around or prodding their Nintendogs. What did you think all that Brain Training was for, fun?

The year, as you may have guessed, is 1701. You are a captain in a thinly disguised variant of Great Britain, and your Queen has commanded you to colonise the ‘New World’ archipelago before those over-sexed Spaniard fellows walk off with the booty, rascally blighters. Beginning with a single exploration ship and humble warehouse, you’ll farm, fish, herd and mine each island to produce goods and amenities for your settlers, whose demands will grow ever more expensive and problematic as they advance to new levels of civilisation and your budding colony becomes a metropolis. Keep your little tribe of pilgrims happy and you can get away with taxing the bejazus out of ‘em whilst building up a rudimentary army (only one type of troop can be recruited), or constructing additional ships to settle/conquer neighbouring islands. Miss a shipment of tea leaves or fail to put dinner on the table and they’ll desert you in droves, sending your revenues into free-fall.

You’ll be doing quite a bit of urban planning during your time in the New World. Each building has an area of influence which dictates where it should be placed: manufacturing facilities need to be built close to the relevant resource and within reach of a market place, while public services such as taverns and bathhouses ought to set up shop in residential areas. Barracks should be built within rifle shot of one another, as troops can only be moved between military buildings. Everything needs to be linked by road and the quality of the road will affect the rate at which goods are accumulated in your warehouses.

Throw all this together with a few environmental hazards, occasional fires, outbreaks of crime and disease and you’ve got a game which will be instantly familiar to players of the antiquated originals (or indeed of similar titles like The Settlers). And herein lies the rub: while it certainly ain’t broke, ANNO 1701 can feel a little too comfortable in its moccasins. Nor are the paltry play options- story campaign, moderately customisable single and multi-player skirmish modes- very inspiring next to the likes of Advance Wars.

But over-familiar though the experience may be, what starts slowly to impress as mud tracks become cobbles, schools shoot up like proverbial wheat and huts explode into townhouses is the elegance with which the whole thing has been translated to Nintendo’s paradigm-busting portable wonder.

Both screens are put through their paces. The bottom screen displays an isometric view of the game world and a sidebar menu with construction, finance, mission-objective and map options, while the top screen houses a summary of your income and expenditure together with an animated portrait of the Advisor, your all-purpose guru and moral compass in the world of ANNO 1701, who beams complacently when you do nice things like defeat the plague and purses his lips when you do less nice things like selling off your settlement’s entire food supply, or accidentally bulldozing the local hospital. Two levels of zoom are available and you can jump to remote locations using the map screen.

The stylus is arguably the first console interface to replicate the ease and intuitiveness of mouse control, and thus a natural fit for a resource-management title. Sunflowers has clearly recognised this, as ninety-nine percent of the game is playable with the stylus alone. Tap on an area of undeveloped land and the top screen will tell you which player owns it and give you a breakdown of its industrial and agricultural potential. Tap on a building to access a radial menu on the bottom screen with options such as upgrade, demolish and duplicate, while the top screen gives you a detailed account of the internal workings, production progress, maintenance costs, troop capacity and so on. Tap on the construction icon to bring up a series of radial menus clam-shelled inside one another, while holding down on the finance icon allows you to choose between trade, taxation, tribute and balance-sheet screens.

Clever touches abound. The camera drifts a little under its own momentum as you whip it from point to point (a mechanic apparently known as ‘soft-stopping’), which not only cuts down on tedious dragging and clicking but also feels rather satisfying in that rose-tinted, momma’s-home-cookin’ way the best Nintendo titles feel satisfying. High praise indeed. Both right and left-handed control schemes are available, for all you freaky mirror-world citizens, and you can also hotkey various actions to the face buttons.

Graphics and visual design were always going to be significant factors given the visually involved nature of the genre on one hand and the DS’s lack of screen real estate on the other, and thankfully ANNO 1701 strikes the right balance between clarity and complexity. The colour palette is bright, cheery and accessible, and while you’ll occasionally struggle to distinguish lumberjacks from stonemasons the buildings are all quite distinctive thanks to good detail and some canny colour-coded roofing. There are a respectable (but not excessive) number of graphical flourishes, from the plumes of smoke which rise from the ore smelter to the ickle sprite workers who wander about herding sheep, pulling wagons and being all industrious, the darlings. The menus are clear and unobtrusive and there’s an option to turn off certain building icons to reduce visual clutter. Smart, smart, smart.

Just a smidgeon of political comment before we slap that score on the end. The campaign storyline (told through text dialogue and hand-drawn stills) is charming enough bar a few nasty bits of Hollywood revisionism. Why hello there, Mr Iroquoi, sir! A small tribute of cloth before we all prosper together in peace and harmony? Why certainly. And because we’re all Technicolor-liberal these days, we won’t contaminate it with smallpox first.

So to sum up: an old game, a game which would feel superficial and out-dated on a home format, but nevertheless a game built around tried-and-true mechanics, given a fresh lease of life by a brilliant conversion to the DS. Sounds good to me. Issue forth, ye gaming diehards! Make the very foundations of HMV shake with the fury of your vengeance!

8/10

And so it is with high dudgeon that I present Luminous Arc for the DS, a game so mind-numbingly passable I can think of very little to say about it. It’s the latest in a monstrous number of strategy-RPGs to make the leap from armchair gaming to handheld as 2007 draws to a close. It has enough in the way of spiky anime hairdos to puncture a battleship. It has square grid maps, a turn-based battle flow which allots speedy ninja types more turns than tanks, magic, skills, items, a rock-paper-scissors elemental system and a few familiar status effects. It ties everything together adequately with some 2D isometric graphics (presumably aimed at the retro-heads among us) and full touchscreen support. It has a superficial also-ran multiplayer mode. In short, it does absolutely everything required to evade the rubber stamp of rejection whilst doing absolutely nothing to earn the lollypop of ‘recommended purchase’. This game, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason there’s a point on the scale between 5 and 7.

Luminous Arc escapes its own dead-centre mediocrity on exactly two counts. Firstly a lot of the lengthy still cut-scenes are voiced, which would be rather impressive given the meagre DS cartridge capacity if the script and voice-acting weren’t faceclawingly horrendous Saturday morning cartoon bull-droppings. My first ten minutes with the game were immeasurably tougher for it. How I’ve suffered for you, dear readers. Sources close to me report that I emitted plaintive whimpering noises as I was plunged, headphones and all, into the tale of Alph, the Garden Children and the Witches.

But drill past this luxuriant vein of negative potential and Luminous Arc settles well into the role of boring you silly with its sheer, monotonous competence. There is no character customisation to speak of, so it’s pretty much all about winning battles in line with the predictable story arc, which charts the escapades of yet another rag-tag bunch of teenagers as they attempt to Save the World. Far be it for me to spoil any of the ‘twists’, but let’s just say there’s no righteous crusade without a dark, dingy underbelly, and no fresh-faced young orphan without an enigmatic, magical heritage.

The second count in the game’s favour is a question of target demographic. Without the hindrance of an esoteric party development system or the sort of high-falutin’, biorhythmic terrain-modifyin’ nerdery associated with the genre heavyweights, Luminous Arc could be viewed as a pitch to the (studious) kiddies, and can be hesitantly recommended to those looking to abandon what scraps of social aptitude they possess by making their first venture into SRPG-land. If you fall into this latter category, the game is worth considering- providing you can’t get your hands on the GBA’s Final Fantasy Tactics Advance or the recent PSP extravaganza Jeanne D’Arc.

There seems to be little rhyme or reason to the emergence of this, famously niche genre on our sceptred isle. For every Nippon Ichi title to hit the shelves there’s another wonderwork which mysteriously evades detection (not least the original Final Fantasy Tactics) and a half-dozen insipid off-cuts which appear in its stead. I suppose we should be grateful for anything at all, given the great British public’s predilection for chunky men kicking balls or shooting things or, er, hosting quiz shows. Luminous Arc makes tolerable filler material on the SRPG-deprived DS, but any self-respecting anorak will make a beeline for the riches now available on the Sony slab.

6/10

Unfortunately that’s almost all the praise I’m prepared to give it. Paint by DS is clearly designed to appeal to the casual gaming demographic, with a low price point and scrupulously undemanding mechanics. It’s chief ‘draw’ [comedy gold!- ed] is that it lets you have your merry way with fifteen real, proper, genyouwine works of art from a range of periods and nationalities, including paintings by Cezanne, Hokusai and Van Gogh.

The stylus is your brush or pencil, as you might expect. The touch screen displays a line drawing of your subject, while the top screen lets you view it in all its original glory. You can pick colours from a selection along the bottom of the touch screen or mix your own using a palette. Different widths and thicknesses of brush, water and erasers are available from a menu on the right. Once you’re done, the game scores you out of five for the fidelity of your brushwork and saves your creation to the gallery.

There’s scope for quite a lot of tinkering here and the zoom view allows for a respectable degree of precision. Trouble is, it’s just not a patch on actually painting. Why blow twenty quid to push coloured dots around a screen the size of a credit card when you can buy a bog-standard canvas for half the price, nab some of your mum’s old oil paints and live the dream? Or if you absolutely must work with pixels, why not download one of the many free PC graphics packages doing the rounds? At least you won’t have to squint.

I’m being a touch naive, of course. Kids will be tickled by the idea of carrying a customisable art gallery around in their pockets, and Paint by DS will no doubt also endear itself to the strident hosts of concerned but ignorant parents, glad to see their offspring getting a little ‘education’ via that disturbing electronic hobby. Mercury Games have bigger fish to fry, however. According to one press release, the game ‘has been developed for the busy, modern urbanite to aid relaxation’ and patronising tone aside I can just about countenance this, though I’d rebut that the ‘busy, modern urbanite’ would be much better served by something like Hotel Dusk.

Outside of the main game, you can ‘Take A Break’ and indulge in some banal mini-game fodder to unlock new types of canvas and items for the gallery. Puzzle is one of those sliding-panel jigsaw things, Pixel Race is Operation! without the body parts, Memory is memorise-the-sequence-and-regurgitate, and Hit & Error is whack-a-mole with squirrels. There’s nothing here worthy of remark, other than that in Hit & Error you lose points if you bop a squirrel wearing a ribbon, but get a bonus if you sock one wearing a top hat. Some kind of pro-feminist, anti-capitalist statement, no doubt. Chin up Castro, the revolution is alive and kicking!

Paint by DS is good at what it does, but what it does is a little surplus to requirements. If you’re looking for five minutes of downtime between tube stops, I’d advise you to invest in one of the console’s many engrossing but slow-paced point-and-click adventure titles; if you’re looking for an artistic outlet, I suggest skipping the videogames aisle at your local WHSmith and venturing into the stationary section.

6/10

There’s also a tasting notes board pinned up on one wall for the ‘guest’ beers, covered with words like ‘hoppy’, ‘dark chocolate’ and so on. As I stared at it absently during a lull one evening, struggling to think of something interesting to say about the competent but fundamentally uninteresting game which is Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai 2, I had a revelation.

Fighting games, when you get right down to it, are like booze.

Oh go with it, for pity’s sake. I spend thirty brain-deadening hours a week leaning on that bar- at least let me do something useful with what little knowledge I’ve picked up in the process, yes? If it makes you happy let’s pretend this is some cunning attempt to suck up to all those scary non-gamers we keep hearing about from Nintendo. Modern electronics consumers don’t want to read a review which rambles on about resolutions, control schemes and polygon counts, the hardcore vocabulary of yore. They want to hear things put in the language of the commonplace, the routine, and what more commonplace and routine than alcohol? Hmmm. Don’t tell my GP I said that.

So. Tekken Dark Resurrection is your vintage Chardonnay, instantly gratifying yet packed with an assortment of fruity flavours which repay extended appreciation. Street Fighter on the other hand is some sort of easy-going Chilean Merlot, a little too smooth (or flat, as in like, ‘two-dimensional’- I know, I’m hilarious) and possibly overripe, but enjoyable nonetheless. Def Jam: The Takeover is a straight-up, down-and-dirty slug of kitchen vodka. And Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai 2 (hereafter Shin Budokai 2) is that girly mixer you had at that club the other week, just before the Madonna remix came on and you made a tit of yourself on the dance floor. It tastes pretty much like it did when Dragon Ball first landed on PSP back in 2006- flashy but a bit superficial- and it sure as hell isn’t getting better with age.

OK, so there’s nothing dramatically wrong with this fast, fun little 3D fighter, especially if you dig the Dragon Ball universe. Each character has a basic array of combos composed of light (‘rush’) and heavy (‘smash’) attacks, interspersed with projectiles, counters, cancellable moves, ‘Aura Blast’ guard breaks, chargeable strikes and throws. Underpinning all this is a solid foundation of checks and balances. Special moves, projectiles and counters draw power from the Ki gauge, which is refilled by holding the left trigger or, alternatively, smacking your opponent upside the head. Max out the meter to unleash the stock Dragon Ball epilepsy-inducing Super Saiyan transformations and thermonuclear fireballs. Empty the metre and your character will flop around helplessly like that drunk I had to hoof out the back (alright, ask politely to leave) last Tuesday night. Bet he was on the Def Jam.

Ultimately however the full-bodied core combat can’t disguise the bland roster (each character handles more or less identically) and watered-down mode selection. In addition to Arcade, Practice and ad hoc Versus modes, there’s a Z Trial mode in which players must fulfil certain conditions to win (fighting without guarding, for instance) but Shin Budokai 2’s chief concession to originality is the revamped story mode, which now features a branching mission structure, a simplistic overworld with destructible/defendable settlements, and an RPG-lite character development system. The latter is arguably the most successful new element, requiring the player to place cards on a 9X9 grid in order to buff up moves or adjacent cards- a more cerebral exercise which complements the punching and kicking much as a dash of Cabernet Sauvignon complements a slab of Roquefort. Stop looking at me like that. Flying around the overworld on the other hand is a pointless, uninspiring experience marred by bolt-on graphics, all the more annoying in that it results in additional loading pauses (each lasting around 10-15 seconds at worst).

Besides the additional modes the only real distinction between Shin Budokai 2 and its predecessor is the new story arc, which occurs through unimaginative talking-head cutscenes and is generally incomprehensible without a BA in deranged anime plotting. Apparently Goku has died of a heart condition, Trunks is doing a bit of time-travelling and Babidi and Dabura are out to leech everybody’s energy again. I lost track after the first couple of text bubbles and chances are so will you- unless you’re a dedicated DBZ enthusiast, in which case you will probably now be thinking “Zoinks! Babadi and Dabura up to their old tricks. Looking to revive Majin Buu, I shouldn’t warrant, but will they be able to manipulate such a fickle and powerful entity? And what of Goku’s fusion technique?” You have my fear and admiration, whoever you are.

At least this mixer looks classy enough, with squiffy cell-shaded character models, a respectable frame rate and appropriately explosive effects. On the flipside the arenas are a bit monotonous and the overworld, as previously noted, looks pants. The game scores points in the auditory department with some extensive albeit cheesy voice-acting, and the Tokyo rock soundtrack is tolerable enough.

Shin Budokai’s real problem is one of context. The PSP is a rather select establishment for a recycled, run-of-the-mill fighter these days, and there’s simply little reason to settle for rum and coke when champagne is available for a fraction of the price. If you obsess over fighting games or regularly yell ‘Kamehameha’ in your sleep then by all means pick it up. Everybody else should just rent it out, or go buy Tekken instead.

The bar beckons. Maybe I should flip this metaphor on its head, try to sell the liquor by inviting comparison with video games? “The Chenin Blanc, sir? A feisty little number, which strikes the palette much like an Italian plumber stomping on an enraged tortoise. Would sir care to try the demo?”

6/10

Retro collections are a symptom of the industry’s success, and should be praised for that reason if nothing else. They’re also generally worthwhile experiences because they reacquaint us with the mechanical principles which form the beating heart of video games past and, arguably, once you peel away the gloss and the influence of other mediums, present. Which brings us to the Buster Bros games (known as the Pang series in Japan) included with Capcom Puzzle World. Essentially the same game bar a few graphical tweaks and mode variations in later incarnations, the three titles pit one or two players against an onslaught of balloons in a series of single-screen 2D arenas, each more complex than the last. It’s the sort of timeless, gameplay-focussed design now finding a high-definition echo in the likes of Geometry Wars and LittleBigPlanet: put together a simple environment with a few well-considered play elements- a rudimentary physics system, platforms which can be destroyed, three different kinds of ammo with distinct strengths and weaknesses- stir in a timer, scoring system and clean, colourful graphics (including kitsch picture-postcard backgrounds), simmer for a minute or two, drain and serve.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is comparatively derivative, but the deepest and most playable title on offer here: a competitive Tetris-variant apparently inspired by another Capcom game, Pnickies, and a dig at Capcom cash cow Street Fighter to boot. The fundamentals won’t raise any eyebrows- rotate pairs of descending gems on a 12-by-6 grid to create chains which can then be detonated with a Crash Gem of the same colour- but there are a couple of neat twists. First of all the computer (or another player) will be trying to empty its own grid in parallel to yours, and any gems eliminated from one will cause Counter Gems to drop into the other. Counter Gems are much harder to destroy and chain, but will become normal gems after a set number of turns. This results in a satisfying tug-of-war progression to every match, with one player surging ahead only to take a beating as the Counter Gems in the other player’s grid become smashable, opening up some truly wicked chaining opportunities. Diamonds, effectively smart-bombs which clear away all the gems of one colour, make an infrequent appearance.

The second twist is largely cosmetic, but fun nonetheless: as you play, a pair of super-deformed Streetfighter and Darkstalker characters will slug it out in the background, translating every eliminated gem into suitably meaty roundhouse kicks, jabs and hadokens. Each character drops Counter Gems in a particular pattern, and more strategic players will want to customise their own patterns in order to turn setbacks to their fullest advantage.

The PSP incarnation of Super Puzzle Fighter includes a couple of remixed modes from the Dreamcast era: Y-mode smashes any gems arranged in columns, rows or diagonals of three or more, while Z-mode plays out a lot like Tetris Attack, with gems rising from the bottom of the grid while the player rotates already established pieces.

Sadly, it’s at this point that the suspiciously ambivalent-sounding phrases ‘generally worthwhile’ and ‘praised for that reason if nothing else’ return to haunt us. It isn’t just that the third game in the collection, Block Block, is an unimpressive Breakout clone (paddle, ball, bricks, need I say any more?) with twitchy controls and a cramped screen ratio. It’s also that it’s the only other game in the collection. Gamers may have been prepared to fork out a week’s wages for Pong back in 1975, but in this age of downloadable extras and hundred-hour RPGs we expect a little more bang for our buck, even at the bargain basement price of £19.99. Delightful as the Buster Bros games and Puzzle Fighter may be, only the latter is chunky enough to see out a week, and comparisons with bulky fellow retro releases Sega Mega Collection or Metal Slug Anthology are far from favourable.

The conversion is at least pretty competent, with a fast-loading front-end, ad-hoc multiplayer and sharable high scores, a few gobbets of unlockable concept art and a nifty option to import your own photos and use them as a background in Buster Bros. On the other hand, Capcom has allowed the collection to ship with some severe stability issues: be warned that you’ll need either firmware 3.40 or (preferably) 3.52 if you want a crash-free experience.

The review now divides on generational bounds. The twenty-something critic in me likes it like a six, and demands that you go invest in one of the many more generous retro anthologies available to handheld gamers (if not a real game i.e. anything post-2005). The nostalgic aesthete (and Puzzle Fighter fanatic) in me won’t go lower than eight: the titles included here have their place in the history of gaming, and to play them is to deepen your appreciation of the medium- did you know that Block Block’s immortal predecessor influenced the design of the Apple II computer? Have you thought about the relationship between Puzzle Fighter and the recent, excellent Puzzle Quest, another genre-hybrid? The teenage graphics whore can’t be arsed with all this, and wants to go surf for Killzone trailers. And the laconic post-grad thinks it’s time for lunch. A nice, inconclusive seven it is then.

7/10

Let’s assume this quintessentially Japanese videogaming phenomenon has passed you by. Let’s assume you’ve come to this title fresh off the back of a button-mashing bonanza like Dynasty Warriors or the recent Heavenly Sword. After a superficial character creation process you are treated to a cut scene of your wonderfully detailed and animated hunter being knocked off a cliff by some Jurassic Park reject. Fortunately a local Samaritan is on hand to save yo’ n00b ass, and on regaining consciousness you find yourself, conveniently enough, in the village you were trudging towards when you were attacked.

The aforementioned Samaritan has left you with some entry-level armour and a few crude weapons to play with, and after flicking through numerous text boxes you manage to equip yourself with the biggest sword you can lay hands on, ten-by-four of razor-sharp bone. You stroll down to the quest hall. Apparently somebody needs the smackdown laying on a few Giaprey. You set off without further ado.

Whether it’s the delicate ivory silhouette of a distant peak or the flower you tread underfoot as you scale the mountainside, the beauty of your surroundings is an endless source of wonder. Snow lashes your forehead as you tackle the higher reaches, but your fur-lined hood, coat and boots keep out the chill. Eventually you gain the sanctuary of a vast cave haunted with silver shadows and hung with spears of ice. And that’s when you see them. A pack of the beasties, each around the height of a man, metallic blue with a blood-red crest. As you draw your sword they become aware of your presence, and advance on you in leaps and bounds, giving off birdlike cackles and fearsome, rasping shrieks. You move in, aiming for the leader-

And at this point Monster Hunter’s peculiar sense of realism kicks in as it belatedly occurs to you that- by golly! it might just take a little time to swing a weapon the size of a Ford Escort and- heaven’s above! that Giaprey isn’t just going to sit there while you do so. Your gear, proof against the cold, offers rather less protection against teeth and claws, and after a moment’s fruitless flailing you are carted, bruised, bloodied and unconscious, back to camp.

Patience, young grasshopper. Lick your wounds and meditate awhile. Take the time to delve into the training missions, and learn the many nuances of each of the ten weapon types. That Great Sword you carry may have tremendous stopping power, but to wield it against such adversaries is like trying to slay gnats with a bulldozer. A simple Sword and Shield may offer a better balance of speed and endurance, or you might prefer to step back from the fray and rain down chargeable vengeance with a Bow, or opt for the immense defensive strength and explosive counterattacks of the Gunlance.

You begin to master the arts of evasion and timing, when to wind up your uber-moves and when to roll out of reach, when to give chase and when to take flight. You get to grips with the unresponsive camera system. You familiarise yourself with the fundamentals of a hunter’s inventory: potions and herbs to maintain your health, rations and steaks to boost your stamina, whetstones to keep an edge on your blade. A cannier opponent, you set out once more to the snowy mountainside and inflict all kinds of merry hell on the hapless Giaprey, returning laden with pelts, fangs and meat, odd berries and mushrooms, nuggets of iron ore and discarded bones. Your success makes you complacent, and you decide to try one of the higher ranked quests.

Somebody is willing to pay astronomical prices for a Rathlos egg. The nest is accessible enough, a heap of mouldering branches in a secluded crevasse, reached by way of a tunnel past tangles of ferns. You pause to catch your breath. The silence is oppressive, ominous.

You heft one enormous egg and clasp it to your chest. It gleams silkily in a shaft of stray sunlight. You settle it a little more comfortably between your arms, glance around and turn- straight into the gaping maw of a fifty-foot-long alligator.

The ensuing battle is nasty, brutish and short. One massive claw dashes the egg from your grasp and shatters it against the rock. You draw your Long Sword and get a few piddling blows in before the beast butts you full in the chest, sending you hurtling into the opposite wall.

Don’t give up, grasshopper. Persevere, persevere. Back at the village, you throw open your hoard and fish out spider webs and strands of ivy, which you weave into a sturdy net. You buy a trap tool at the local depot, and a few minutes’ work yields a pitfall trap. Further experimentation leads to poisoned arrows, throwing knives tipped with anaesthetic, and a variety of devastating bombs.

Then you gather together what raw materials you’ve amassed and head down to the blacksmith, there to spend the first of many hours tinkering with your armour and weapons, plumbing the game’s muddled ocean of skills and statistics, calculating whether the durability of this Hammer offsets the ice affinity of that, or whether you want to use up those precious resources on sturdier mail or a nifty set of gauntlets, a sniper scope for your Bowgun or a gemstone for your helm…

You get the picture, anyway.

There’s a thin line between challenging and frustrating, and Monster Hunter is never far from the brink. I’ve hopefully given some sense of the complexities of even basic combat, which can at least be picked up by rote; the game is less generous when it comes to the innumerable details required for effective equipment customisation, which are communicated to the player by way of cryptic phrases like ‘Faint Prob Halved’ or ‘Cold Inc [Lo]’. To really open out the guts of the thing you’ll need to download a FAQ, or be prepared for some considerable trial and error. Monster Hunter is not a game you’ll be playing in snatches on your way to work.

But stick with it, and an odd synchronicity occurs between the lumbering movements of your hunter and the more unforgiving design elements, which begin to feel less like flaws than plausible parts of the Monster Hunting experience, the cumbersome armour you bear in-game mirrored by a carapace of awkward mechanics. You’ll come to despise those weaker gamers, with their incessant wittering for intuitive, accessible gameplay. Save-anywhere feature? Unlimited inventories? Pfffff. The Great Edwige Von Arse-Smiter trucks not with such triflings.

Not all of the flaws, however, can be put down to your simply being l33t3r than your fellow man. There’s the odd instance of gimped AI, like a boar which charges repeatedly into a cliff as you squat above it, and while the inhabitants of the breath-taking environments are among the most lifelike virtual organisms I’ve ever seen, it seems a shame there isn’t some sort of ecosystem to round out the illusion. You’ll never come across a Velociprey pouncing on one of the deer-like Kelbi, or glimpse a wyvern flying off with a Bullfango in its talons.

Then there’s the inevitable question of originality. For all its additional weapons, new areas and creatures, MHF2 is largely the same game Console Obsession reviewed back in 2006 (which was, in turn, largely the same game as its PS2 precursors), and many of Simon’s initial caveats still apply. The titanic loading times are present and correct, and while you can enable a speedier background loading feature this takes a Pleisoth-sized chomp out of the battery life, hardly a boon on the PSP of all platforms.

Perhaps most irritatingly though, Capcom still haven’t managed to do the decent thing and shoehorn in some kind of infrastructure multiplayer, which means we’re again stuck with Ad Hoc or the tricksy Xlink Kai. According to my nefarious sources, this decision is to be attributed to the company’s prioritising the needs of Japanese consumers, amongst whom Ad Hoc parties are comparatively commonplace. While Capcom can hardly be blamed for pandering to the core market- Monster Hunter is among the few Playstation franchises capable of whacking chunks out of the Nintendo colossus in Japan- their strategy is no less irksome given that the game is so patently built for multiplayer. There are a whole suite of hunts and abilities designed with two or more hunters in mind, and the girl at the Quest counter never fails to bring this to your attention. “You’re heading out alone?” Of course I am, silly wench, just as I have done since time immemorial. Get on the blower to your bosses and tell them to patch in some proper co-op pronto, capiche?

Ultimately your affection for MHF2 will depend on whether you want to invest sufficient blood, toil, tears and sweat to unlock its true creative scope. At heart this is a fine game, pure, unapologetic role-playing wrapped in some of the slickest graphics and most arresting production values to be found on the system. But, to rehearse that time-honoured reviewer’s adage, it certainly isn’t for everyone. If your idea of hardcore is Spyro the Dragon, dock a few marks from the score, but if you regularly play Ninja Gaiden with a blindfold- well, you probably own this game already.

8/10

Unfortunately/fortunately my experience of D&D is entirely second-hand- a sprinkling of Warhammer, the odd flirtation (if ‘flirtation’ is an appropriate word) with Baldur’s Gate- which means I may have to opt for Reviewing Tradition B: the polemical aside in which you lecture your audience on how little it matters that you can’t tell a Half-Orc from a Halfling, why the game should be playable in its own right rather than with reference to a bunch of thirty-year-old textbooks, fan-service being a crime against playability and so on and so forth.

Trouble is, this would be inaccurate. D&D Tactics is definitely a more enjoyable (not to mention easier) experience if you’ve done your homework. Players may recall developers Kuju Entertainment as the chaps responsible for the excellent Puzzle Quest, a game which took two gnarled old staples- the Bejewelled brand of puzzling and RPG statistical development- and combined them to fantastic effect, but nothing so funky awaits us this time round. This is a labour of nostalgic love rather than conceptual inventiveness.

Early impressions from the States put heavy emphasis on the claustrophobic rule-sets and unfriendly interface, and this coupled with what I assumed was going to be an unflattering comparison with Jeanne D’Arc (which I picked up on import a scant few hours before the review copy arrived) had me initially pinning it as a low 6/10. In fact, playing it alongside that other, wholly dissimilar SRPG proved illuminating, and nudged Kuju’s nerd-fest somewhat higher in my estimation.

The game is built around the 3.5 edition rule set, which seems to have won it a lot of brownie points from learned forum aficionados. The heart of the beast is the forty-hour campaign mode, which allows you to pick a party from a preset roster or create your own, worth doing if only in order to rebel against humourless fantasy conventions by naming your hero Jim-Bob McSpank. There’s the expected stupefying variety of character attributes: seven races including dwarves, half-elves and gnomes, thirteen classes including a few (apparent) novelties in the Barbarian and Psion, six base abilities like charisma or wisdom, a moral alignment restricted by class (Chaotic Evil Clerics need not apply) which has a bearing on the game narrative, skills such as weapon proficiencies and lock-picking, and finally- deep breath- feats, special or enhanced capabilities unique to every character.

Once you’ve wrestled six characters out of the ether you’re whisked off to the world map, which is fantastically boring fixed-route 2-D parchment stuff. Towns have the familiar array of merchant, temple and mission desk options. Pick a mission and you’ll usually be treated to a cutscene, but Peter Jackson this ain’t: the storyline is featureless fantasy fare and is told by way of a bland collage of character portraits, backgrounds and text boxes. Compare all this with the aforementioned Jeanne D’Arc, with its gnarly anime interludes, meagre but transparent customisation options and bright, primary colours, and it’s easy to feel uninspired.

But things pick up once you get your first mission, and head off to put the hurt on a band of goblins. The first thing you’ll notice is that the battle maps score quite well in the looks department, some way behind Jeanne D’Arc on the snazziness scale but some way ahead, to pick a game at random, of Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light. The three-dimensional character models are nothing much and texture detail is around average, but take the action inside or underground and the wonderful real-time lighting system comes into force. Animations, unfortunately, are of the drunken and spasmodic variety.

The basics of dungeoneering are pretty much as you’d expect from a tactical role-playing game: each active character in your party is placed on a chessboard grid, and can move and act once a turn, with certain actions- drawing weapons, using more potent attacks or quaffing potions- taking up more or less time in a commonsensical sort of way. Ditto your enemies. The difference, of course, with Jeanne D’Arc lies in the rabbit warren of variables, including the effects of fear, racial modifiers and poor light, which condition the simplest of decisions. Accordingly D&D Tactics lacks something of the spontaneity of its fellow SRPG, but those in search of greater depth will not go wanting.

I’m not going to whinge- much- about the plethora of branching menus (which are, in any case, quite effectively crafted so as not to take up too much screen space) or the way vital information has to be teased out of the party management screens with a toothpick, because frankly this is Dungeons and Dragons, and squashing anything like a workable version of it into a device marginally larger than a Weetabix is no modest feat. More thorough tutorial missions would have been welcome, not to mention a log of the calculations which occur behind the scenes, but in general Kuju has located a shaky middle ground between a game buried in its own lore and one dangerously light on specifics.

I will, however, whinge at length about the occasional spats with the camera, controllable via the analog stick, which has trouble keeping up with rapid changes of location. Fire off an arrow or spell at somebody across the map and there’s no guarantee you’ll see it connect. The PSP’s dodgy D-pad also makes it difficult to plot diagonal movement paths when the camera isn’t aligned correctly, cue a lot of swearing and acute thumb cramp.

The pulp-fantasy orchestra soundtrack deserves a mention if only because it has a nasty habit of stalling out, presumably because the game loads it from the UMD rather than storing it in the PSP’s RAM buffer. Or something like that. Tech-wizards are welcome to offer their own explanations.

While the promised downloadable content and level editor has failed to materialise, Kuju have come through with the multiplayer, which is available in deathmatch and cooperative flavours via both Ad Hoc and Infrastructure modes. Sadly you won’t be able to take your own custom-built band of misfits into the fray, which, together with the limited range of maps on offer, may explain why nobody in the entire frickin’ world appears to be playing D&D Tactics online as of the time of writing.

All of which leaves me recommending this to diehards only, a conclusion suspiciously redolent of the last game I reviewed, Monster Hunter Freedom 2, though I gave that an eight. Hmmm. I’m getting a bit of reputation here. I think I’ll dust off my DS and play something light and fluffy for a change.

7/10

Sadly, this is not the Tomb Raider memorialised in the popular imagination. Over the course of her eleven iterations, two movies and nine real-life representatives, boobs (with their action movie adjuncts guns, explosions, fast driving and sleazy banter) have come to the fore, obscuring both Lara’s taciturn, hard-as-nails persona and the truly unprecedented experience of which she was the centre.

Now only the most puritanical of apologists would deny that Lara’s status as the first mainstream videogame sex symbol has played its part in her success, and you can’t help but feel just a teensy bit cynical when Toby Gard, her disenfranchised creator, starts to whinge about her BMI-defying attributes. If you wanted to put personality before looks, Toby, why didn’t you give Lara a fifty-inch waistline and a yashmak?

But let’s get our priorities in order. Tomb Raider was a landmark game because it demonstrated, along with Super Mario 64, the cavernous possibilities of three-dimensional gaming, not because of the cavernous nature of Lara’s cleavage. It was also fantastic because beneath all the HIGH OCTANE THRILLS and tedious, trivial gunplay, it was a game which expressed, with a poignancy matched only by its greatest descendant Ico, the fragility of a human being lost in an ancient, hostile landscape. Lara’s very obvious femininity has a subtler role here, inspiring feelings of protectiveness and empowerment among male and female players respectively.

And thankfully, this is the Tomb Raider Crystal Dynamics remembers. Even given the relative limitations of the PSP hardware, Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a masterpiece which simultaneously advances the Legends formula and recaptures something of the spirit of the magnificent original.

Gone are the hordes of unshaven guerrilla banditos with their penchant for biting your bullets. Gone are Zip and Alister, your wifi-enabled cheerleading squad. It’s back to first principles and back to the haunting isolation of Himalayan mountainsides, Egyptian pyramids and Atlantan ruins. Silence. Wind in distant crevasses. The creaking of brittle timbers. Water splashing on rocks.

Crystal Dynamics has a certain pedigree in the action-adventure genre thanks to Soul Reaver, whose megalithic potential has yet to be realised by any subsequent game in the Legacy of Kain series. But rather than invoking this rich albeit troubled in-house legacy, their first collaboration with Lara in Tomb Raider: Legend was pretty much a straight rip of Ubisoft’s superlative Prince of Persia titles, with more or less the same range of moves and well-judged, accessible but tightly linear acrobatic puzzling predominating throughout.

When it came to remaking the original this approach must have presented something of a dilemma, because the PS1 Tomb Raider is a rather different Aztec burial urn of fish. Part of the discord can be put down to the mercilessness of the simulation. Where Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is lenient enough to let you approximate the distance from ledge to ledge or pillar to pillar, Tomb Raider forces you to eke every last millimetre of horizontal movement out of your jump, and align Lara’s flailing hands just right in the bargain.

More fundamentally, the PS1 title has a yawning open-endedness which is both intimidating and exhilarating, with multiple routes and objectives, different elevations and hidden items obliging you to take a fully- well- three-dimensional attitude to your surroundings. Sands of Time, with its unambiguous waypoints and corridor progression, keeps you firmly on the beaten path. A lavishly rendered, consistently creative beaten path, granted, but a beaten path nonetheless.

In a nutshell, the developer has preserved the open-plan nature of the elder game whilst injecting it with the comfortable fluidity and funky moveset of the younger, and the result is an action-adventure which neither holds your hand to the point of complacency nor frustrates you to the point of surrender. Each of the cathedral-like environments will dazzle and dizzy when you first lay eyes on them, but once you step forward into the gloom the mechanics of running, jumping, hanging, swinging, swimming and climbing are as smooth as silk. Checkpoints are much more generously spaced and the semi-automatic camera does its job for the most part, though it occasionally gets into a bit of fluster over the Croft backside. The grapple shot, retained from Legend, has been convincingly worked into things.

The only real downer is the combat. I have a dream that someday a Tomb Raider game will be released that doesn’t feel obliged to intersperse all the tomb raiding with myopic thugs and suicidal wildlife, but till that fateful day Anniversary’s take is probably the best we can hope for.

It’s your classic strafe-jump-shoot affair with the now deplorably ubiquitous bullet-time add-on. Shoot an enemy for a bit and it will become enraged, whereupon it will hurl itself brainlessly at your face and give you the opportunity to perform a lethal ‘Adrenaline Dodge’ countermove. Time slows, sound goes all underwater-blurred and Lara does her best Max Payne impression as three cursors converge on your target’s body. Fire off a shot when they intersect to score critical damage.

It’s functional enough in the same way that beans on toast is functional enough, and were that the whole story we could just tidy the gunplay under the carpet and be done with it. But in a fit of bandwagon jumping, Crystal Dynamics have also seen fit to throw in QTE sequences during the boss battles, and consequently turned one of the more iconic Tomb Raider moments into something barely worthy of Sonic Heroes. How on earth can you go wrong with a T-Rex?

Fortunately, fire-fights are infrequent and brief and the scenery is a major consolation. I have no idea what sort of techno-jiggery keeps everything ticking over, but suffice to say this is easily the most gorgeous game of its type on PSP, out-pacing even the mighty Daxter. Draw distance is through the roof, ambient light and reflections routinely mesmerise and the visual design is rarely short of breathtaking. Lara’s svelte figure is alive with all kinds of dynamic lighting and subtle texturing, right down to the weave in her trademark blue top, and while the frame-rate dips noticeably in some areas it never becomes unmanageable. Not all of the highlights are immediately obvious. A few levels in, I was astonished to note that Lara’s aristocratic features had actually become smudged with dirt during all the scrambling. (Yes that’s right, you can make Lara dirty, nudge nudge wink wink etc- now run along and play with your Action Man.)

On the aural front, Crystal Dynamics has gone for a straight revamp of the original soundtrack, which is just as well because the original soundtrack was excellent. The bursts of orchestral music which signal traps or the presence of enemies are as suspenseful as they were back in 1996, and the title theme is amongst the best ever composed.

There are a couple of other minor issues, neither of them remotely game-breaking. While technologically impressive, the new in-engine cutscenes are directed somewhat less intelligently than their FMV predecessors, and there’s a certain unappealing goofiness to the ‘acting’. Chief villainess Natla now resembles the ghastly lovechild of Madonna and Bloodrayne, and Lara’s eyebrows behave like they’re on the set of Carry On Camping.

The other caveat is hardware-related. Up till now I’ve avoided judging the PSP version against its bigger sisters on other platforms, simply because the execution is so impeccable (going some way towards justifying the additional development time). But it goes without saying that if you own a PS2, 360 or modestly-specced PC you should lay aside your humble PSP. The poor little blighter takes its sweet time loading levels and some of the sound effects, and the analog nub, while sufficiently responsive, is no substitute for a Dual Shock.

But if you prefer to raid tombs on the go you won’t be disappointed with this pearl of an action-adventure. Lara may have lingered in the minds of the uninitiated by virtue of her chest measurements, but she is fondly recalled by the PlayStation faithful for the quality and beauty of her games, and Anniversary is set to continue that tradition.

9/10

A short while ago in a galaxy not very far away…

“Hm-hm-hm-hm. What is it, young padawan? Troubled are your thoughts. Strong the Force is as a raging vindaloo with the PSP’s winter release schedule, but weak as a drunken Ewok with your wallet. Choose, you must, but which? Ahhh, on Renegade Squadron, do you look? Be seated, and let an old Jedi Master give his counsel. Who am I, you ask? Who are you, the question is. If nine hundred PC fragfests you have endured, rate this game you will not- but if blast imperials on the train you must, or under a rock you have lived while Halo 3 your friends have played, then buy this game, you well might. Now, Master Solo. From here, you will take it.”

“Okay kid, I’ll get right to the point- this baby’s got class. They don’t make many like her any more, and I’m not sayin’ that just because of those lousy graphics. This ain’t one of your second-rate console ports. She’s a true blue exclusive, built from the ground up to fit the PSP as snugly as that gold bikini Leia used to wear. Y’know, before she became a suffragette.”

“Indeed. The circle is now complete. When Battlefront first came to PSP, it was but the learner. Now it is the master.”

“Thanks, Darth. Like I say, kid, she may not look much but she’s got it where it counts. What, you want to talk figures? How about sixteen player infrastructure? Eight player ad hoc? Three single player modes, and a few dozen different weapons and power-ups?”

“Don’t be too proud of this numerical terror you’ve constructed. The ability to customise your character’s equipment and abilities from a hundred point budget is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”

“Lord Vader’s insight serves him well. Confuse us with numbers you do, Master Solo. Padawan take heed! Rule the numbers you must, or ruled by them you will be. All, gameplay is. And age gracefully I fear this gameplay has not.”

“What? So she’s a little rusty. Some things are built to last, and third-person runnin’ and gunnin’ is one of those things. Look, she covers all the bases, don’t she? You can strafe, jump, roll, shoot, lock on, use power-ups- what’s not to like? You want variety? How about some bitchin’ rides? Everything from my trusty old Millennium Falcon to Imperial Walkers, hoverbikes and those smelly kangaroo things I kept tryin’ to barbecue on Hoth. She’s got bags of good gameplay value, and don’t let that old walnut or tin-hat here tell you otherwise.”

“I find your lack of purchasing sense… disturbing.”

“At odds we are. What say you, Master Kenobi?”

“My friend, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. Some might argue that the Conquest mode, which has two teams vie for control of a few resource and spawning points, borrows unimaginatively from the Battlefield series. Some might suggest that the sizeable, variegated maps compensate for this derivativeness. Some will point out that the single player campaign shoehorns tedious linear objectives into an experience best enjoyed with friends (or more probably with abrasive foreigners- we are fortunate that there is no headset support or text chat option). Others would say that the Force is strong with the Galactic Conquest mode, which has you alternating between random, clumsy blasting and Risk-esque turn-based strategy- an elegant diversion for a more civilised age.”

“Yeah, well. Good against AI bots is one thing. Good against the living, that’s something else. But where are the community features? Why can’t I tell what everybody else is packin’? And why can’t I put all my smugglin’ buddies on some sort of Friends List? Hey Ben, what’s your player tag?”

“Multiplayer gives me a migraine.”

“Come on, you old hermit. Learn to live a little!”

“You don’t need to see my player tag.”

“…I don’t need to see your player tag.”

“You’re going to fetch me a herbal tea.”

“…I’m going to fetch you a herbal tea.”

“Two sugars.”

“…Two sugars.”

“And a Jaffa cake.”

“…And a Jaffa cake.”

“Thank you, Han. I must say I’m getting too old for these damn fool idealistic crusades. The only reason I came along was to see some of those delightful hand-drawn cut scenes.”

“The Force is indeed strong with the story, at least. And with the space battles. I like the space battles. Even though they get repetitive quickly. I like the noises the Tie-Fighters make. Neeee-oww.”

“Darth, I can’t help but feel you’re lapsing out of character.”

“Your ears are weak, old man. I was just telling padawan here how the ironclad fist of the Empire will crush the flimsy meringue of the Republic.”

“At odds we all remain. The final word you must give, oh eloquent Chewbacca.”

“HoooaarrRRGH, argh argh argh, wfffffffghrrhragh [wags finger] arghaaaaghaghnaaarghh. OooOOoorarrurghraghagagaghr argh [circular motions with both hands] grahgh urrrrgh ugh ugh ugh roooarrrgh. Gragh ighurgh wufffghffffghggaaargh. Ughghughahgrhgarrgh. Argghh [pelvic thrust].”

7/10

Dead Head Fred burrows into this enduring fascination and gene-splices it with Tales of the Crypt to create its own, novel breed of ghoulish noir. Fred is your average private dick, getting the lowdown on a controversial new power plant at the rotting burg of Hope Falls, only to be decapitated by local big cheese Ulysses Pitt. Fortunately for Fred, Pitt’s pet crackpot Doc Steiner takes pity on his decomposing hide and squirrels it away to his lab, where he reanimates Fred with the aid of a power drill and a jar of formaldehyde. Rather than dusting for prints, calling in favours and putting two and two together, Fred figures the best way to recover his head is to bust somebody else’s (that and a little platform hopping, anyway) and so begins another ten-to-fifteen-hour bout of stylish but well-worn action adventure shenanigans.

Rather than pick skills from some menu, Fred can swap his pickling jar for any misplaced domes he comes across in his quest and benefit from their properties. There are nine of these heads for the reaping and it’s here that the game is at its most imaginative. The Shrunken Head, predictably enough, shrinks Fred to the size of a matchbox, while the Corpse Head gives him foe-debilitating bad breath and lets him suck up and spit out huge quantities of fluid, be it water, oil or blood. The Bone Head comes with claws and a toothy ranged attack. And the Dummy Head lets Fred talk to those still among the living without causing them to throw up. Hey, a guy’s gotta be able to hang with the liddle people, don’t he?

Each of these heads comes with a grotesquely plausible parcel of animations. Don the Stone Head and Fred will stamp and swing his arms like a gorilla, while the Corpse Head gives him a hunched, shambolic gait. Enemy and NPC rosters display a high level of finish and are delightfully eccentric, running the gamut from hooded executioners and headless horsemen to skeletal mobsters and a busty voodoo priestess. Without a doubt, the character models are Dead Head Fred’s silver bullets in the chamber.

It’s just a shame, given such a diversity of interaction options, that the adventuring is so thoroughly… unadventurous. Where a more ambitious developer might have painted broad vistas stocked with intricate, multi-dimensioned obstacles, Vicious has settled for well signposted, corridor levels and environmental puzzles which rarely require you to do more than pick the right head and whack a button. Spot a mousehole? Shrunken Head it is then. Conspicuously fragmented section of wall? Equip Stone Head and smash, check. It ticks enough boxes to keep you engaged but never overflows with inventiveness, and the platforming elements are marred by the poorly angled camera.

You’ll get the most out of your heads during combat, but despite all the different move sets duking it out is not one of the game’s strong points. You can throw punches with square and modify the ensuing combos with X to dish out knock-back attacks like a shoulder barge. Once your enemies have been stunned, smackdowns can be very messily administered with the triangle button. Holding right trigger lets you block, and right trigger plus a face button unleashes one of two head-specific unblockable Rage attacks. Your enemies will frequently wind up Rage attacks of their own, and you can counter these by hitting triangle whilst wearing an appropriate head, cue one of those QTE mash-the-button-to-fill-the-bar sequences which, hopefully, will be identified as a crime against decency once the BBFC gets shot of Manhunt 2.

It’s solid but hardly inspiring stuff and the implementation isn’t quite up to the job. The camera is even more lifeless than Fred himself and, together with your inability to lock on or strafe, makes it hard to tackle more than one opponent at once. Be prepared to get mobbed. The good Doc must have got a few wires crossed when he put Fred’s nervous system back together because X serves as both combo modifier and jump button. Mis-time your attacks and it’ll revert to the latter function, sending you bouncing backwards and forwards like Labour’s environmental policy. Oish. Dat’s gotta hoit.

The story isn’t hugely compelling either. While not unworthy of the odd chuckle (e.g. the Igor character complaining about surplus minutes on his phone contract), the script as a whole puts the emphasis firmly on the ‘ass’ in ‘wiseass’, with lots of gratuitously sweary bits, obvious puns and laboured punch lines. It’s certainly far from the worst you’ll play through, and the professional voice-acting is a boon, but it doesn’t match up to the likes of Ratchet and Clank.

One aspect which certainly can’t be faulted is the meatiness of the package. In addition to a brace of optional fetch quests, the game serves up fishing, pool, pinball and (bizarrely) cock-fighting minigames. Everything just about passes muster on the technical front, too. Loading times can be a drag, but texture detail is respectable and the frame rate is on the money. The soundtrack is a sultry medley of saxophones and acoustics.

Dead Head Fred puts me in mind of the PS2 gothfest Primal: big on atmosphere and promise, short on real ideas. When they stepped up to the chopping board, Vicious evidently had a grand ole’ winter gumbo of an action game in mind, but despite their largesse with the ingredients and laudable attention to detail, the resulting dish is neither as exotic nor as nutritious as it might have been.

7/10