Publisher: Mediatonic

Who’s That Flying?! is a new horizontal shoot ‘em up meets tower defence game from Mediatonic (Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess) in which you play as the Guardian of the Earth and must fight of hordes of Doom Beasts with your Hyper-Powered Laser Arm. The game has 3 different modes: Story mode, Infinite mode and Challenge mode; each provide a different way of playing the game. The controls are really simple, the D-pad or analogue stick moves you around the screen, holding X shoots your laser, pressing Square when your Awesome Meter is filled unleashes one of 3 attacks (turbo fire, super beam or hyper beam) and holding R grabs the bigger enemies so you can hit them from close range.

The story mode consists of 15 levels over 5 worlds. Each level involves flying through the air shooting an infinite amount of laser beams at Doom Beasts that are trying to destroy the city, with others there to attack you to allow the Ravagers to destroy the city. You cannot take damage and the success or failure of the level depends on how many enemies you allow into the city. The other enemies (the ones just there to distract you) attack and fire different sorts of projectiles which stun you for a short period of time allowing the Ravagers to destroy the city. At the end of each world there is a huge boss to fight, which all require similar, but different enough, tactics to defeat.

Infinite mode is a survival mode, where an infinite number of enemies will keep trying to attack the city and you try to survive as long as possible, to amass a high score. Infinite mode can be played in 4 of the game’s worlds: New York, Tokyo, Mexico and Moscow.

Challenge mode is unlocked once you finish the story mode and is a series of challenges (obviously) in all of the 5 world locations. The challenges give the game even more lifespan by being difficult, but are still fun. There are 5 different types of challenge: Sudden Death – in which you have to achieve a certain score without letting a single Ravager into the city; Turbo – the game plays at double speed and you must achieve a certain score by the end of the level; Score Target – the game plays normally but you must get to a certain score before the level finishes; Battle Royal – hordes of enemies from all of the different worlds attack you all at once and you must defeat them; and finally Ultra Boss – where you must defeat that world’s boss in the quickest time possible.

The gameplay is fun and chaotic at times, and helps make the game very re-playable. The game also includes other unlockables as an incentive to replay the game and improve on your scores. In the extras section there are two sections dedicated to rewards for doing well, called ’Latest magazines’ and ‘Evidence room’. There are two magazines you can unlock by playing the game, which are available once you have a certain number of gold medals in Story Mode. The evidence is an in-game achievement system, with 12 awards available to earn for clearing levels perfectly and killing certain numbers of enemies.

Who’s That Flying?! is a great minis title, with an interesting twist on the classic horizontal shoot ‘em up. The high re-playability and in-game achievement system extend this game way past playing the story through once and being done with it, with Challenge mode giving the game a lot more depth after story mode and Infinite mode being a decent mode to give you more for your money. Games like this show what can be done with the limitations of the minis platform. Truly brilliant.

Pros:

• Fun gameplay.
• Lots to do throughout and after the story.
• Genuinely hilarious cutscenes.

Cons:

• Thumb can get tired.

Publisher: Sanuk Games

I can’t say that the hidden object genre is one that I’ve really delved too deeply into before. Thus, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I booted up Actual Crimes: Jack the Ripper for the first time, but in the end was pleasantly surprised. A minis port of the DSiWare version (titled Real Crimes: Jack the Ripper), you must find objects and solve puzzles in the setting of 19th century London, with the eventual goal of tracking down the culprit of the Ripper murders.

The story follows Sir Melville Macnaghten, a Scotland Yard detective, and Professor Francis Galton, a scientist making use of the new breakthroughs in forensic science. As the genre suggests, you’ll be spending most of your times locating clues and objects amongst backdrops of locations and crime scenes around Whitechapel. Each new area presents you with a list of these items and a time limit in which to find them.

Some items are very obvious, whilst others are extremely well-hidden within the scenery, often placed cunningly on structures or are partially transparent to mask their location. Incorrect guesses subtract from the time you have left, while finding a few objects adds extra seconds to your total. As a helping hand you can press triangle to immediately be shown the location of one of the objects, but the use of this is limited and you must wait for it to recharge before using it again.

The hidden object sections are often broken up with a variety of puzzles, ranging greatly in both type and difficulty. Some have you spotting differences in photos, others matching cards (with fingerprints on, for example) or piecing together broken evidence. Most are manageable, but sometimes you will come up against a fairly hard or tedious challenge. Thankfully, you can just pause and choose to skip the current puzzle if you want to just continue with the story itself.

My main gripe with the game is that it’s very wordy, with lengthy story and dialogue typed out on screen or in text boxes. It can be skipped, but in hammering through all the text you may miss parts of the story. In addition, you’ll often wonder exactly what some of the objects are useful for, or what they’re doing at the locations. It’s unlikely that you would be finding crucial evidence lying around Piccadilly Circus so long after the crime, and then also be asked to find a Seahorse hidden in the sky.

For those who aren’t too fond of time limits and want a leisurely playthrough, there is a “rookie” mode on offer, which allows you to complete the game at your own pace. With no repercussions for bad guesses, however, you can just click everywhere on the screen until you find all the items on the list, although that’s entirely down to the player.

All-in-all, Actual Crimes: Jack the Ripper isn’t a bad little game. I quite enjoyed following the investigation through, picking up evidence and seeing it all fit into place. On the other hand, for every one person that enjoys finding hidden objects, there’s probably quite a few who would find the experience boring and tedious, which places this firmly in the realms of a fan purchase.

Pros:

• Immersive setting.
• Rookie mode offers some replay value.

Cons:

• Dialogue and text can be a bit lengthy.
• Some puzzles are quite hard.

Publisher: Skylon Games

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the best part of the past three decades, you’ve probably heard of ( if not played thousands of times) the classic game Mine Sweeper. Hive Sweeper is – you’ve guessed it – a bee-themed minis version of that classic game where you must clear the hive of bombs, complete with a whole host of bells and whistles on top.

For anyone out there who’s unfamiliar with the basic gameplay, you’re given a board of shapes (all the same shape, and all typically squares) with mines placed randomly under the board. Clicking anywhere on the board starts the game off, revealing squares which contain numbers. The number in a square indicates how many of the adjacent squares contain a bomb. If you think a space doesn’t have a bomb you can click on it and, if you were right, it reveal more squares. Click on a bomb square, though, and you instantly lose and must start again – if you suspect a square contains a bomb, you can flag it. Once all ‘safe’ squares have been revealed and all bomb squares flagged, you win.

Hive Sweeper itself introduces no new gameplay elements although it does provide a wealth of options for you to create a customised game that suits your skill level. Square, hexagonal and triangular spaces can be chosen from, with each shape posing a different type of challenge. On top of that there are three sizes of board available and you can set how many bombs are scattered throughout. Each game isn’t timed by default, but you can once again choose a time limit if you so wish. With a host of options such as this and an easy-to-use menu it’s a real doddle to jump right in and get playing with a setup of your choice.

As a Mine Sweeper clone Hive Sweeper doesn’t have much going on in the visuals depart. It’s in keeping with the title’s bee theme, so a golden colour scheme is the order of the day, with menus and backgrounds populated with hexagonal shapes. There’s a militant bee holding a flag buzzing on the screen if small or medium sized boards are chosen, which is about as exciting as it gets, but overall it all looks fairly snazzy and is a welcome update to the grey we’re all used to. Quiet, unobtrusive music plays during each game which thankfully won’t grate your ears, and there are even buzzy guitar twang sounds that play when you uncover shapes.

Taking everything into account, Hive Sweeper is a solid Mine Sweeper clone with a ton of options to customise your game alongside a welcome audio-visual update. If you’re not currently a fan of Mine Sweeper then you’ll most likely want to pass this up, but if you enjoy a game here and there and want a deeper version then Hive Sweeper is worth a look, especially at the new price of £1.24.

Pros:

• Lots of options to customise your game.
• Visual update.
• It has bees.

Cons:

• No new gameplay mechanics.

Publisher: Beatshapers

If you’ve seen Jurassic Park, you know the thrill that hunting (or being hunted by) dinosaurs can bring. The velociraptor hunting-be-hunted scene was particularly nerve-wracking and was one of the many personal highlights of that movie. So when Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter came around onto the PlayStation minis service, I was hopeful that it may bring back a few nostalgic moments of my insides squirming with fear.

You play as a multi-billionaire in the distant future who has paid the “Dinohunt” corporation for the privilege to hunt on a planet untouched by man and full to the brink of dinosaurs. And that’s it. Despite the simple premise, C:DH hides a lot of depth. You start with a basic pistol, a basic landscape and a small choice of dinosaurs to hunt. Your choices cost points and cost more the more complex or difficult your landscape/weapon/prey is. Earning points will unlock better guns, better terrains and more dangerous dinosaurs to make extinct. Again. You earn points by killing these dinosaurs and the more you kill on each haul, the more points you’ll end up with to unlock more things to then kill more things on each haul.

These dinosaurs have 3 varying stats: hearing, scent and sight.  These are countered by applying certain “boosters”, if you will. Scent is countered by applying “Cover Scent”, sight is covered by “Camouflage” and  hearing is countered by good old fashioned walking slowly. While the former two are useful, they will cost you a percentage of the points you gain from that haul. Additional boosters come in the shape of a radar which will show all the dinosaurs as green specs on your vast map, and being able to put tranquiliser rounds into your gun, gaining 25% more of your earnings. However, any dinosaurs you do hunt with the tranquiliser will not go into your trophy room.

While the statistical side of things is very deep and compelling, the actual gameplay isn’t. You use the face buttons of your PSP to control your character and the analog stick to control your aim. Aiming in particular is a problem as you cannot adjust your sensitivity. Instead, you’re stuck with a sluggish aim speed that even a three-legged Stegosaurus could outrun. This causes problems should you accidentally run into one of the lightning-quick, one-hit-kill predators, as you can’t turn around quick enough as you hear their rumbling footsteps behind you.

The actual hunting of dinosaurs without the radar is horrible too. You can deploy a dinosaur call to hear if there any dinosaurs nearby. However, unless you’re wearing a surround sound headset, you won’t know where the sound came from. You’ll then pretty much run around like a headless chicken, mashing the “Dinosaur Call” button over and over until you eventually get to it. Or just give up. This can potentially be very rewarding, providing you have the patience, but if you are expecting short, sharp doses of intensity from a minis title, that’s something a radar-less C:DH doesn’t deliver on. Graphically, the game doesn’t deliver much either, with low-resolution textures in places and blocky scenery.

Providing you can stick with the game past the “I’m fighting dinosaurs with a measly pistol” phase and build up some points, the depth and fun in C:DH will make itself clear. Despite this, the game doesn’t particularly provide much in the way of fun, but more a calm, paced form of gameplay fun that will cater to those who like to not have enemies blasting them with bullets every second like most other first person shooters.

Pros:

Huge areas to explore.

Game gets more interesting after ranged weapons unlock.

Cons:

Graphics are poor.

Hard to locate your prey.

Poor controls.

Publisher: Gameshastra

Puzzle games seem to be a staple of the minis service, so here we have D-Cube Planet, a block-shifting puzzler from Gameshastra. A little alien has crash landed his ship on D-Cube Planet, with ship parts scattered all over. It’s your job to move blocks and clear a path for him to recover the parts, rebuild his ship and continue on his way. A simple concept, you may say, but you’d be wrong, as D-Cube Planet has some fiendishly tricky levels up its sleeve.

Each level gives you a board with a number of cubes on it blocking your path, with your aim to shuffle the cubes around and give your alien friend a path to his ship part. You only have a certain number of moves to accomplish this and to complicate matters further certain cubes can only be moved in certain directions. D-Cube doesn’t reward anything less than a perfect (or near perfect) set of moves, with gold and silver medals awarded for completing the levels in the perfect number and allotted number of moves, respectively. Going in all-guns-blazing will do little more than force you to restart the level, so patience and forward planning is the key to progression.

There are three difficulties to play, each altering the amount of sadism present in the levels. Even if you’re playing on Easy the difficulty ramps up fairly sharply, so playing on Hard is reserved for hardcore puzzlers only. There are 40 levels for each difficulty meaning there’s quite a lot on offer here, but it’s all virtually identical. The gameplay is always the same, with a complete lack of special moves, cubes or any twist at all. As you progress the only thing that changes is trickiness of the puzzles so it can all get very boring very quickly.

Visually it’s pretty neat, but as with the rest of the game it lacks any sort of variety or flair. You’ll be presented with the same background level after level without any change, and little else happens (outside of the puzzle) apart from a flying saucer or shooting star passing by every-so-often. The audio is somewhat lacking, too, with the same mix of weird and wacky sounds and noises repeated in each level. After a while it’ll grate your nerves and you’ll be reaching for the mute button. The controls are simple (analog nub or d-pad to move the cursor and X to select the cubes/alien) although there’s a definite lag, especially when moving the alien around.

Overall, D-Cube Planet is merely a satisfactory puzzler. With 120 puzzles over 3 difficulty levels there’s quite a bit of game for your money, but unfortunately it’s all just too similar and lacks the flair to raise it to anything more than above average. If you’re looking for a casual, fun little something to pass the time and get the brain cells working I would suggest you look elsewhere, only die-hard puzzle fans need apply here.

Publisher: Invictus Games

We’ve had all sorts on the PlayStation minis service so far, from retro-inspired arcade games, action games, puzzlers and top-down racers. Most of these are bite-sized titles, but Invictus have upped the scale with the minis port of their iPhone racer 4×4 Jam, which has more in common with a full PSP title than a mini. It’s all about off-roading on crazy terrain with trucks and buggies, jumping, rolling and bumping your way to victory.

Starting up, you’ll have two modes on offer – Quick Race and Career – with only a single car, location and race type open to you. Career mode is where you’ll want to head first, which is comprised of a series of various races over a total of 8 locations. These races vary from bog-standard circuit races to much more exciting types such as Collector and the titular Jam. Collector races see you and your opponents racing to collect a certain number of coins first, with Jam a dash to a series of gates; only one gate appears at a time and the first person to it earns a point, with the aim to hit a certain number of gates first. It’s the craziest and most tense race on offer, with cars ramming each other and flying everywhere in a desperate attempt to be first to the gates. Unfortunately, the other standard race events can become somewhat of a bore the further you progress, but there’s enough variation to keep things fresh.

Career mode incorporates cash, with a podium finish earning you prize money and unlocking the next event. Cash, of course, is used to buy new cars and trucks to destroy the opposition. There are 8 vehicles you can get in total, from your simple starter buggy to modified 4x4s and even racing pickup trucks. Each vehicle can be raced from various camera angles, too, including a cockpit view and hood camera. All the vehicles handle differently and in some cases extremely unpredictably, much to your dismay. Some trucks will roll over when you attempt to turn them sharply which can cost you in a race, so you’ll need to take each for a little test run in quick race before trying it out in career. Losing comes with a price; you need to pay an entry fee for the races in career, so coming in last could potentially leave you out of pocket.

Quick Race is pretty simple, yet effective; just pick your location, race type and vehicle and away you go. Anything you’ve unlocked in Career will be present in Quick Race, so it’s the perfect place to get some practice in, try out new cars of just have a laugh. Interestingly there’s a free roam mode on offer, which just plonks you in your chosen locale and leaves you to do whatever you want. The map scrolls in all directions, so you can keep driving forever without hitting an invisible wall. Quick Race also gives you the opportunity to alter the settings for your favourite game modes, which is great for adding in some extra challenge and replayability.

Technically, 4×4 Jam is stuck somewhere between a mini and a full PSP racer. It’s fully 3D, but graphically it’s simple and most of the areas you’ll be racing in are very bleak. There’s a scattering of grass and trees, but oddly enough you can clip straight through the trees, so they seem to just be there to populate the map rather than add any extra hazard. You’re able to set both the view distance and whether the grass is rendered, but neither seem to alter play that much and everything trundles along nicely, although there is some noticeable pop-in. Vehicle models are adequately detailed, but they won’t blow you away. Audio-wise, you’ll be racing to different tracks of generic rock and the sound effects are bland, lacking any real punch.

4×4 Jam, then, is a good example of what can be done with the minis service, offering a lot in a surprisingly small package. Unfortunately, this comes at a price – £5.99 to be exact – which is encroaching on that of a full PSN game, even though 4×4 Jam doesn’t quite meet that standard. However, it’s definitely something that racing fans should look into, with hours of core Career play and a healthy dose of Quick Race replayability on top, which just about justifies the high price point.

Publisher: Grip Games

We all love a bit of variety, don’t we? Grip Games – a new development studio – recently released their first game, 5-in-1 Arcade Hits, for all of you out there who do. Instead of focusing solely on one game, they decided to roll 5 into one, neat little minis package. You have card games, such as Pairs and Solitaire, mixed in with slider puzzles, Pool and even a brick-breaking bonanaza called Tetroid. I’ll run you through all of them one by one, starting with…

Pairs

I’m sure most of you have played this at some point in your lives. You flip over pairs of cards and if the symbols match they disappear and you get some points, with your goal to match up all the pairs. At the end of the day it’s just a memory test, with large points rewards for chaining correct pairs. There are three difficulty levels to choose from, with each one changing the symbols on the cards in an attempt to confuzzle your brain. If you’re playing on easy each pair will have distinct pictures, giving you a better opportunity to memorise which ones are in what position. Normal gives you pairs of numbers to match and hard mode offers you oriental symbols. Pairs does offer a two-player mode where you take it in turns to match cards, and when all pairs are matched the player with the highest score is declared the victor. Pairs isn’t hugely addictive and won’t keep you hooked for long unless you’re really into memory games. It’s not much of an arcade game, either.

15Puzzle

This is probably the least enjoyable of all the games offered in the mini and is also not strictly an arcade game. It’s exactly the same as those board-slider games where you must re-arrange all the pieces into the correct order, either to form a number sequence or picture. Your score starts at 30,000 and 100 points are deducted for every move you make, so your aim is to try and unscramble the board in as few moves as possible. As you’re only allowed to move one piece at a time it can take a fair amount of time to accomplish this, providing you haven’t given up and quit to play one of the other games on offer.

Pool

The third game available does exactly what it says on the tin, albeit with an Arcade twist. It’s a top-down version of the classic game, with all the standard rules: you must pot all the coloured balls before potting the black. Chaining those pots together racks up score combos, so there’s incentive to pick your shots carefully to avoid breaking the chain. You aren’t able to take too long, though, because the clock is ticking and your final score is dependant on how fast you can clear the table. You can hold the X button to charge your shot, giving you the opportunity to carefully clip the ball into the pocket or smack it as hard as you can. There are even arrows that appear on the ball you’re aiming at, showing which direction it’s going to go in. If you want to play with a friend you can take it in turns to pot balls in a full game of Pool, complete with solids and stripes. Both modes are great fun to play and it’s a nice little version of the game which you can easily lose quite a bit of time in.

Solitaire

Next on the game roster is our old favourite Solitaire. If you haven’t played Solitaire before, where have you been all this time? The 5-in-1 Arcade Hits version works perfectly and is extremely easy to play; the d-pad moves the cursor over the cards, you use X to pick up or place cards and can press ‘triangle’ to automatically send cards to home. You gain points for correct card placement, but lose 100 for each second that passes, so you’ll need to send all those cards home as fast as possible. It’s not an original choice, nor your classic arcade game, but for all those out there who love card games then this version will satisfy your Solitaire needs, and, let’s be honest, who doesn’t like Solitaire? There are two difficulty settings on offer, so hardcore Solitaire players can pitch their skills against a tougher game.

Tetroid

Tetroid is essentially a version of breakout, but played sideways and with walls of bricks that move towards you. Breaking the bricks with the ball before they reach you is the name of the game, and if they manage to reach your (oddly-shaped) paddle it’s game over for you. It’s a fairly hard game to begin with, as the bricks form random patterns and you aren’t able to predict what you’re going to get. Certain bricks only take one hit before breaking, some take several and others are explosive, so when you hit them they’ll destroy neighbouring bricks. Due to the randomness you may get a load of explosive bricks and can easily clear the way, but restarting the game could provide you with an impenetrable wall of multi-hit bricks. Score multipliers sometimes appear out of broken bricks, as do multi-ball tokens; pick up one of these and you’ll get three balls to bounce around instead of one.

As with Pairs and Pool there is a two-player mode on offer, which plays a lot like Pong. There’s a wall of bricks in the middle which can make the game extremely tedious, as it takes a while for you to break through and get the ball to the other side of the screen. When you do eventually manage this, the other player has normally been given enough time to get in position. Both players share the PSP, with one using the d-pad to control the paddle and the other using the face buttons. Tetroid is an interesting concept and quite fun once you get used to it, but it lacks any difficulty options.

Conclusion

Overall, 5-in-1 Arcade Hits is a decent collection. Out of all the games on offer, Pool, Solitaire and Tetroid are the only ones I can see myself playing in the future, but it’s your personal taste that will determine which games you’ll enjoy most.  Whilst Pairs and 15Puzzle play perfectly, they’re not the most exciting games and definitely aren’t what I would call “Arcade Hits”, so could easily have been omitted to make way for two other, more exciting games. Whilst most games have a small selection of options, it would have been nice to see some of them, such as Tetroid, fleshed out a bit more.

The replay value is definitely there with medals awarded for getting high scores, so there’s always the incentive to go back and try to get gold medals for all game modes. Grip have also put in a leaderboard system on their own site; the game will generate a code which contains your score and medal data – simply create an account and enter the code to upload your medals and progress, and also see your place on the leaderboards. It’s a neat way to get around the lack of network connection.

So, 5-in-1 Arcade Hits is definitely worth taking a look at for the amount of content on offer and is great value for the price. Some of the titles chosen for the collection are questionable, but you’ll no doubt enjoy most of them. Just probably not 15Puzzle.

Publisher: Konami

Ever since the genius that is Hideo Kojima revealed two more games to add to the Metal Gear Solid series, there has been a lot of attention to see how the game dubbed “A true MGS sequel” would hold up on the tiny PSP platform. A true sequel the game most certainly is; set in 1974, a whole ten years after the events of my favourite game of the series, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and four years after the event of the previous PSP game, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Peace Walker chronicles the events that turned Big Boss from the super soldier we know from MGS3 to the big baddie we know in the very first game that started it all, Metal Gear.

I’m terribly sorry if that was a little confusing to you, but it is necessary to explain how the game links into the rest of the timeline. A cheap spin-off this is not. Peace Walker has a full-blown story that will move you just as much as any of the other MGS games, providing you’ve played MGS3. Even if you haven’t though, the move to PSP has removed the lengthy cut scenes and replaced them with interactive, to the point events with a beautiful art style. This gives those who were maybe not so much a fan of the lengthy story the opportunity to get involved with the MGS universe.  Fans of the marathon cut scenes and constant twists and turns  need not despair though, as there are plenty of briefings to hear and lots of twists packed into all those mini-cut scenes. One thing that most certainly hasn’t changed from the console games is the stellar soundtrack, employed at the perfect opportunities to build tension, tug at your heart strings or to make your fingers scramble for all the right buttons as an intense action scene is played out.

At the start at the game (Don’t worry, no spoilers!) you’re a given a small place to establish a base for Big Boss’ Militaires Sans Frontieres (Army Without Borders). Expanding on the recruitment of soldiers from Portable Ops, the player can knock out enemies and send them back to this base before assigning them to one of the many roles soldiers can take up there. The men and women you recruit will have specialities in five different areas: Combat, Research & Development, The Mess Hall (Food), Medical team and the Intel team. Your combat unit will obviously be participating in combat; this gives you GMP, the currency you use to spend on researching better weapons and equipment, which will be needed against tougher enemies. Your medical team will help you develop better tranquilisers and heal any wounds your brave soldiers receive, and your intel team will provide you with information before your missions. An army is only as strong as its stomach though. If your army isn’t fed, their morale will drop and they will eventually leave your base; keep them well-fed and they will perform above their normal parameters and produce better equipment, fight harder, find more out before a mission, and so on.

While it sounds complicated, the game explains it perfectly and brings each unit in slowly, making sure you’re comfortable with each before moving on and combining them to create some very wacky and elaborate stuff. And this is important, how you co-ordinate your work force around this base will eventually establish how Big Boss goes through the entire game. Do you go research heavy and make sure you’re outfitted with the latest gadgets? Do you have your intel team as the highest priority to prepare for all your missions ahead? Or do you make sure your army is well-fed so that they outperform themselves, making your whole system stronger? It is a true credit to the developers that they have managed to make such a huge game element so deep and yet manageable in seconds, giving you an overlay of your whole base and allowing you to adjust it how you wish in no time at all.

This isn’t the only thing though, you can send out your army to help resolve conflicts elsewhere in the world in a small modified version of ?RISK?, view and research your equipment, use wireless access points to recruit new soldiers and complete a whole host of extra operations ranging from destroying weapon caches to defeating souped up bosses. You can view a whole host of stats, trade your staff with other players and even develop your own super weapon, but I won’t spoil that surprise for you. In a bid to try and keep this review concise, I haven’t gone too deep into these as they’re fairly self-explanatory, but they’re important to how your base turns out.

So we’ve got the back story and some of the background gameplay, but how does controlling Snake feel? Well, of the three control schemes on offer, I personally found the shooter type to be the best, but even then not having a right analog stick can make aiming with the face buttons a terrible pain. This alone is enough of an incentive to play stealthily and slowly, how an MGS game is meant to be played, but there are times where action is forced upon you and the flaws in the controls are shown. Even while sneaking, trying to hold the stick in place so that your footsteps remain quiet can also be troublesome.

While this is the only major problem the game suffers, it does have a few other minor flaws, like the originality of some of the boss battles. Without spoiling any of them, all of the boss fights are roughly made up of the same type of enemy, so to speak. MGS1 has Psycho Mantis, MGS2 had Fatman and Vamp, MGS3 had The Sorrow and The End, and all of these reeked genius and originality, as well as a keen mind to get around the boss and eventually defeat them. Peace Walker’s boss fights are pretty one-dimensional and will only challenge how well you can adapt to the controls to defeat them. This kind of problem will only effect the die-hard fans of the series who have come to expect genius everywhere we look, though.

The third and final problem is also another minor one but ironically one of Peace Walker’s greatest strengths. Being able to play co-op is great fun and opens up a host of new ways to play the game and ultimately makes the game easier. Peace Walker has no difficulty settings and is designed with co-op in mind, so should you be wanting to play all the way through on your own you may have a tough time, but it certainly isn’t impossible. You just may end up replaying a few bits because you don’t quite have the right equipment or the right amount of firepower necessary for the mission at hand.

Despite these very minor complaints, Peace Walker is a brilliant game that every PSP owner should have. This game could easily be on a home console, and destroy a large majority of the games on any one of those consoles, but the fact it works so wonderfully on the PSP means you’ll be taking Big Boss’ adventures wherever you go. Whether it’s the story, the man management, the strategy of how you build your mercenary group up or just sneaking through brilliant environments, you will love Peace Walker.

At first glance Coconut Dodge appears to be much the same, but it’s improved in a lot of areas and FuturLab have managed to squeeze even more content in for you to play around with. The basic gameplay remains unchanged, with you controlling little Clawrence as he dodges falling coconuts and collects the treasure falling from the trees. Collecting treasure gives you points, and your main aim is to rack up a massive score by collecting as much as possible before kicking the bucket. This was a main area of frustration with the original, as many people found the game to be too hard with the single life you’re given. Thus, the major change for the new version was the inclusion of three lives.

Coconut Dodge was fairly unforgiving in that it only took one coconut to the noggin to end your play and send you back to the beginning. Whilst great for the hardcore players who are always eager for a challenge, it did hinder the ‘pick-up-and-play’ factor somewhat. Skill was essential for reaching the later levels and racking up those high scores, so more lives was a heavily requested feature to make the game more welcoming for beginners. You’ll be pleased to know that FuturLab have heard your cries and you now have three lives to play with, making the game a bit easier. Don’t think that you can just cheat with your extra lives though, as the points system has been re-jigged slightly. If you still have all your lives at levels 10, 20 and 30, you’ll be rewarded with 20,000 bonus points at each milestone. It’s added incentive not to get hit, and the hardcore players will be rewarded for their skill with larger scores.

Second on the list of major updates is the ability to quit and restart from the pause menu. Previously you had to die before you were given the option of quitting out to the main menu, but FuturLab have once again listened to your feedback and you can now quit out to the main menu to your heart’s content. Whilst it was only a minor niggle for me it’s nice to see it patched just to make our lives a little bit easier, as well as that of Clawrence’s. You don’t have squash him with a coconut just to access the menu, unless you’re a sadist and that’s your preferable method. If so, I suggest you attend Crab Squashers Anonymous.

A few tweaks have been made to the animations, too. Superturbo, activated by double-tapping and then holding X, has been given a mini-makeover. Clawrence now kicks up a bigger plume of dust when entering this mode, and a nifty little sound effect has been added. Some asked that superturbo be mapped to the square button, but this hasn’t been implemented because it would make the game far too easy. As far as I’m concerned this was the right move; the key and skill to navigating some of the mazes is rhythmic button pressing, a nifty little mechanic, which would have been lost.

As far as content goes, FuturLab have been so kind as to include easter eggs for players to find. The first is a game of Keepy Uppy where beach balls are thrown to you and you must bounce them the required number of times whilst also dodging coconuts. The second is the main game mode from the old version, where you’re only given one life and must make it as far as you can before getting squished. The third is most dastardly: dubbed the “Impossible” mode, it’s how Robin, the game’s programmer, plays the game. All colour is removed from anything falling (everything is black) making it hard to tell what’s a coconut and what isn’t. It’s hectic but an absolute laugh to play.

Switches have been made to the Maze Master mode (bit of a tongue twister, that): two unlockable mazes in the previous version, from levels 6 and 13, have been replaced with mazes unlocked from levels 1 and 2. Both mazes 6 and 13 were intended to be played with beach balls, and so were too easy to complete in Maze Master without them. Also, players will unlock mazes 1 and 2 much faster, giving them access to Maze Master much earlier on. Overall both the easter eggs and maze switches are extremely welcome and fantastic additions to the wealth of content already available.

Getting into the nitty gritty for a second, a few tweaks have been made here and there including new items to collect for points and a bug fix for level 10, where there was a very rare chance that no coconuts would fall. These changes won’t scream out to you and aren’t as obvious as some of the others, but they’re all present and making the experience as enjoyable as possible.

I must say that I really admire what FuturLab has done with Coconut Dodge, listening intently to feedback and implementing everything that they possibly could. The update doesn’t alter anything that made the game so awesome in the first place and only serves to build Coconut Dodge into a complete, fun and addictive experience which should be enjoyed by absolutely everyone. Still priced at £1.99 (the price goes up soon, so be quick) the game is exceptional value so there’s no reason for this mini to be missing from your collection. It’s undoubtedly the best mini I’ve played and I can’t praise it enough, and thus I felt that it needed a new score after the update. Well done, guys.

If you’ve already bought the game and want the update, just delete the original from your PSP/PS3 and then re-download it from the store. If you’re buying it for the first time you’ll automatically get the new version.

Futurlab have also provided everyone with some Coconut Dodge related goodies, so click here to download some wallpapers and click here to download the soundtrack. Awesomes!

Publisher: FuturLab

Ever imagined yourself as a crab scuttling around on a beach, dodging falling coconuts and collecting treasure as you do so? Well, fear not, FuturLab have created a little action-puzzler (for want of a better description) for the PlayStation minis service, which lets you do just that.

Playing as a treasure-hunting crab called Clawrence (the Indiana Jones of the crab world), you need to move from side-to-side to collect the falling treasure – in the form of gold, diamonds and rubies – whilst dodging the falling coconuts and getting a huge score whilst you’re at it. The main game mode, which is where you’ll be headed initially, has you facing a series of levels of progressive difficulty which you must successfully navigate to progress and get that treasure (and massive score) you’re after. Get hit by a coconut, though, and you have to try again from the beginning.

The game is continuous, so each level comes straight after the last. Part of the level sees you grabbing your treasure whilst avoiding randomly dropping coconuts, and another has you navigating the coconut mazes (more on those in a minute). After each level there’s a random drop of gold which you must scurry to collect, followed by a short break before you need to get dodging again. It’s simple at heart, but there are a few little additions which add to the core gameplay and help you out if you’re in a jam, including a turbo mode, beach balls and a viking helmet.

When you’re thrown a beach ball, you must stand underneath it to play “keepie uppie” for a certain number of hits, after which point it’ll pop. If it’s a yellow ball you’ll receive a points bonus, and if it’s a blue ball all the falling coconuts will be temporarily slowed, allowing for easier dodging. At various point you’ll also be thrown a viking helmet; if you catch it, you’ll be rendered invulnerable for a short period of time. Coconuts will break when they hit you (with a satisfying cracking sound) and you will get a few points for breaking each one, which is pretty neat.

Clawrence himself also has a few tricks of his own up his sleeve (although, do crabs have sleeves?). By default you move rather slowly, which isn’t always enough to navigate your way through the falling coconuts. Hold down the X button and you get a speed boost; double tap and hold it for a Super Turbo. He can also creep if you hold Circle. Using these is crucial to navigating some mazes, as you need both speed and precision. Clawrence can also dig underground for a short period if you press Triangle, but it’s not hugely useful and you’ll want to spend most of your time above ground.

So, those mazes. These really are the focus of the game and are also where you can score the most points. Coconuts will fall in a set formation, creating paths which you must get through whilst collecting the treasure inside. Some mazes only have one way through, whilst others have multiple routes you can take. Certain paths can ensure your safety, but these typically aren’t worth as many points. The riskier routes generally contain diamonds, which are worth a lot more, so it’s up to you whether you play it safe to progress or take the dangerous routes for the high score.

Any maze that you’ve cleared in the main game mode can be played again from the main menu via Maze Master. In this mode it’s not just about getting through in one piece, it’s about the score. As you start your selected maze, a score requirement pops up on screen and you must achieve it to “master” that particular maze. Doing so often requires you to make a perfect run through the dangerous routes, so it can be quite tricky. The main issue with this mode is that unless you can make it far through the main game, you won’t actually have many mazes unlocked.

The game’s visuals are worth a mention, being one of the most striking aspects of the game. Everything is bright and cheery, giving it the perfect ‘beach’ feel. The animations are great and everything runs along nice and smoothly. Similarly, the audio is fantastic, with a catchy theme tune that plays throughout the game. Some tunes can grate your nerves after a while, but I’ve been playing Coconut Dodge for a while now and I’ve yet to get annoyed. I even crank the volume right up when I’m playing (much to the dismay of those around me).

All in all, Coconut Dodge is definitely worth your attention. The gameplay is fun and addictive, although can be very challenging at times seeing as you can only take one hit before losing. Nevertheless, it’s a “one more go” game, and you’ll want to spend time trying to beat the developers’ scores on the leaderboard. It’s great for both short blasts and longer sessions, and the presence of maze master gives it added replayability. Oh, did I mention it’s also £1.99 until the beginning of July? At that price, you can’t afford to pass this mini up.

I’ve also been speaking to FuturLab about Coconut Dodge, and it’s worth noting that they’re working on an update in response to early feedback and criticism. In essence, they’re making a great game even better. What are you waiting for?