What I liked:

• Tons of levels

• Some clever puzzles
• New gadgets/abilities spice up gameplay

What I disliked:

• Rarely difficult

• Lacks an alluring aspect
• Tough to play for long periods of time

Archibald’s Adventures is a game that’s been released on several platforms, the most recent of which is the Playstation Network. It comes to the PSN as a Mini, playable on both your PS3 and PSP systems. In short, the game is a platform puzzler by Czech Republic-based independent developer Rake In Grass. You play as Archie, a young kid on a skateboard whose quest to pull off the raddest trick in his skateboarding group of friends lands him in an underground secret laboratory. In a series of increasingly difficult levels, you must guide Archie out of the crazy professor’s lab and back to his friends on the surface.

The game includes 12 chapters, all but the last of which containing 16 levels (14 regular and 2 bonus per chapter). All in all, there are 191 levels to beat. That’s a lot. Each level takes anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to complete, with some of the later levels taking a bit more time due to more intricate puzzlery (don’t tell me that isn’t a word, spellcheck). To follow the numbers train of thought, Archibald’s Adventures packs at least 16 hours of gameplay. That’s a whole lot of gameplay for a Minis title, but what type of gameplay is it?

The trailer at the top of the review will give you some pretty clear evidence of what the gameplay is like. As Archie, you ride on your skateboard (or in a maintenance pod and later a jetpack) from the start of the level to its finish. The puzzling comes into play in concocting a way to actually get to the exit. The game holds your hand for the first few levels, setting out different tutorials to explain Archie’s abilities. Soon enough you gain the ability to remotely control a pink bubble. The bubble can flip switches, pick up and move boxes, etc. It’s a cool way to spice up the gameplay and makes for some interesting distal puzzle solving. A bit later, Archie begins driving a maintenance pod. In the pod, you’re able to attach to metallic surfaces. This allows for Archie to move up and down some walls and across some ceilings. If you’ve ever played a puzzle game like this before, you know that these abilities will soon need to be used together in different ways in order to reach the exit. It’s fun, but there are some drawbacks.

In the pod, you can break certain crates or detonate bombs. All you have to do is dash into the crate to break it. To dash, you move in one direction for about 3 spaces. The problem here is that to climb a crate, you run into it at a slower speed. Long story short, you will probably end up smashing some crates, causing you to restart the level. It takes some time to become more conscious of what speed you’re traveling at (Note: Literally seconds after writing this note down, I smashed a crate near the end of a puzzle and had to restart it. Slightly frustrating).

While there are a ton of levels and the different vehicles make the gameplay varied, there’s still something to be desired here. There is no penalty for dying beyond getting transported back to the most recent checkpoint and trying again. Some sense of urgency or added incentives (collectibles, time trials, different game modes…) would really help to make this a better game. With only one way to play, the game relies on the strength of its level design and puzzles. They’re both pretty good, don’t get me wrong, but I have a tough time playing this game for more than 3 consecutive levels. After that, either my eyelids start drooping or I get the itch to dodge some coconuts or play something else. I recommend putting it on your PSP and playing it in short spurts. That’s what I did after the first 3 chapters, and it’s been working out pretty well. The music is bumpin, by the way. Definitely a plus.

What I liked:

• A lot of content

• Varied worlds
• Spot on difficulty

What I disliked:

• The Banshee sound effects

• Repetitive combat system

I know some of you have been wondering how good Young Thor is, and I apologize for the wait in posting the review. The problem was that I was playing the game on my PSP for a long time, and with good reason. In Young Thor, you play as… a young Thor, fighting on both the mortal realm of Midgard and the realm of the Gods, Asgard in order to rescue three princesses (Norns) and restore balance to the world. The game follows Norse mythology, something I’m not well versed in, but a quick look at the Wikipedia page reveals many of the names and places present in Young Thor. While the Norse world-saving storyline is coherent, it’s not what takes center stage in Young Thor. Simply put, Frima has outdone itself with this Mini title.

Young Thor is, at its core, a 2D side-scrolling beat ‘em up. At first glance, and as the controls seem to depict, I thought the game would allow Thor to move into the third dimension. However, the game constricts you to moving left and right, and jumping up and down. After a few minutes of playing, I began to forget about moving into the background, content with just checking out the scenery while smashing goblins in the face on my own plane. There are several points throughout the game when the camera will zoom out or pan behind Thor, adding a cinematic quality to game, an effect used often in the God of War series. This isn’t the only aspect that the game shares with GoW, but I’ll try not to dwell on its similarities for the sake of reviewing it as its own game.

There are four different worlds to conquer in Young Thor. Each one looks good enough (and different enough) to stir up the gameplay. You won’t feel like you’re hack n’ slashing through the same territories. After you beat a stage, 1-1, for example, it unlocks the stage above it (2-1 in this case) and a variation of the stage you just completed (1-2 in this case). Variations are just that: The enemies are different, the difficulty is higher, and new equipment can be obtained. Equipment is scattered throughout the game in different levels, giving reason to play new variations and unlock all of the levels. Obtaining a new piece of equipment boosts Thor’s abilities. For instance, finding the Winged Helmet allows you to double jump. Some of the items are actually pretty difficult to find and require a fair amount of exploration. The only slight problem I have with this system, though, is that besides for the ability to double jump, each item only boosts what you can already do. Your hammer becomes more powerful, you eventually regenerate health, but no real new abilities come from the items. Also, there is no concrete combo system, making for some pretty dull combat down the line (you’ll be ground-pounding Fallen Warriors over and over in order to defeat them while taking minimal damage).

Sorry about the level select quality. I took it with my phone because I thought it was a nice visual aid.

An aspect of the game I especially like is its difficulty. It’s not as easy as its looks may convey. To the contrary, the difficulty ramps up slightly but surely, and if you’re ever stuck on a stage that’s too tough, you can repeat an earlier variation in order to level up. I died more than a few times on my way to beating all of the stages and finding all of the equipment. There isn’t any real penalty for dying, except for the fact that you respawn at the most recently reached checkpoint. This does become a real penalty later on in the game, when some of the fight sequences last a very long time. One in particular, in level 3-4, is too long, in my opinion. It took me over 22 minutes to beat the level simply because the ghost ship sequence takes about 15-20 minutes. To boot, it’s full of two of the more annoying enemies: Banshees, whose howl will drive you to turn off your sound, and Fallen Warriors, whose sporadic attacks will lead to many deaths.

The bottom line is that Young Thor is a game that, along with others like Coconut Dodge and Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess, adds legitimacy to the Minis platform. It’s easy to pick up, fun to play, and hard to put down. The achievements in the game are many and actually feel like trophies. A couple of drawbacks hold it back from a perfect score, namely the fact that there are only really 4 different levels and the combat system is rather static. All the same, Young Thor is a game that’s well worth your $4.99. Check it out if you’re looking for some GoW-like fun on the run.

What I Liked:

• Funny creatures

• Slick guitar licks

What I Disliked:

• 2.5D tracks glitching out

• Stupid difficulty

I love a good sidescroller.  I jumped at the opportunity to give this one a shot.  All I walked away with was a feeling that I was wasting my time.

Freekscape puts you in control of Freek, a good demon, who doesn’t like to torture poor souls. He discovers the magic trident and sets forth to try and get into heaven. Thus begins our adventure. Each level has a chili pepper or seal to collect. These are usually in strange areas and add to the exploration of each level. Collecting the right chili peppers can open up new paths in later levels… leading you to more seals and chili peppers. Each level also has speedrun and freekrun time accomplishments. When I would spend 5 minutes on a level, the speedrun time was usually something like 45 seconds. If you end up digging this game, this will keep you coming back, adding to the replay value to the 40 levels included. Freek is controlled with the analog stick, and the camera is controlled with the D-pad. This made the game a bit awkward and I was surprised to see no option to change that setting.

Even though you’re in hell, who would have thought it has mellow clean guitar licks playing in the background. I enjoyed these; they were calming and very chill. The character models are 3d, this works, but for this kind of puzzler, I wonder if something like cell shading would suit it better. Not an ugly game by all means, but not a beautiful one either.

Back to gameplay, Freek’s trident lets you acquire abilities of other creatures walking around. Some are used as stepping stones; other makes your trident an umbrella or a pogo stick. Every time you grab one, Freek says the name of the creature which is kind of funny.  You combine these abilities to solve puzzles that usually involve opening timed doors that block your exit. They start out rather simple, fling a block guy over to a switch and walk through the door, but eventually they get unnecessarily complicated.

I found that the difficulty isn’t in figuring out the puzzles, but in executing them. Nothing bugs me more in a puzzle game when the difficulty isn’t in solving the puzzle. Here’s a quick example. I come to a door that needs opened, and  I understand I have to throw a block at this switch and then use a pogo stick to get up to the door. The rub comes when you see that the timer on the switch is only 5 seconds long, meaning your moves have to be absolutely precise. You turn around to grab the pogo stick; you mistimed your jump with its wonky aiming and have to start over. These kinds of puzzles come up constantly.

Each level follows this recipe. Some throw new monsters into the fray, meaning new gimmicks to learn and add to your repertoire. I thought the umbrella was rather useful, until it kept biting me and biting me and biting me until I glitched off the path and died. Speaking of glitching off the path, I encountered this quite a bit. If it wasn’t me getting thrown off the side, it was the monster that I was trying to carry numerous platforms away from its spawn point to solve the puzzles in my way. Once again it comes down to the difficulty in the actual engine, not the puzzles.

Do I sound frustrated?  Damn right I do.  I usually enjoy this genre, but Freekscape didn’t do it for me.

What I Liked:

• Catchy tunes

• Easy to pick up gameplay
• Crazy visuals

What I Disliked:

• Beat didn’t always seem dead on

• A little on the pricey side

In a world of rhythm games, how does Vibes fare? To compare it to other rhythm games, Vibes really reminds me of Elite Beat Agents, just minus the touchscreen. You control the central arrow, as seen in the screens. As each song plays, colored icons corresponding to face buttons on the controller fly towards you. Point toward the icon with the arrow and hit that button. Hit it in time with the tune to score combos, keep your health alive, and shoot for high scores. A pretty simple concept, but it makes for quite an engaging experience. I played it on a PS3 controller and enjoyed it, but Chris K wanted me to note that his hand cramped-up after awhile when played with the PSP’s nub analog stick.

The game looks great for a mini. It has numerous 3D backgrounds that are all trippy and are usually pretty funny too. The sumo wrestler and rubber duck backgrounds were my favorite. One problem I found with them was that sometimes the background color would match the very color of the icon on screen flying towards you. I also found that sometimes the animations just didn’t stick with the tunes playing, and the vibrations of the background caused me to get off beat from the song.

Vibes has a play-list of 13 tunes. They’re most likely not from artists you will recognize, but for only 13 songs, they are a real variety and I enjoyed the majority of them. “Hello” by Fake Elegance was probably my favorite track. Yeah, euro-pop, don’t judge. Each song has 3 difficulty levels a la DDR. You start out with a couple songs unlocked on easy and you’re free to go from there. As you get more high scores and clear more difficulties you unlock new songs and difficulties. I found some of the higher difficulties harder, (duh) but also found that sometimes the beats didn’t always match up with the notes I had to play. This would take out my combo and I would get a bit flustered. This is the only problem I had with this game. If you’ve got the music in your bones, pick this one up for sure… and here’s hoping for a couple installments of this game, with some tweaking this could be a must have.

What I Liked:

• Cinematics and Writing

• Good idea

What I Disliked:

• Imprecise gameplay

• It’s Short
• Could’ve been a contender

Widgets Odyssey is a puzzle-platformer in which you guide five different robots through their interstellar journey to stop the evil Yagor from destroying the universe. The levels are split up into planets, and on each planet, you control a different robot. Actually, there are four planets (not including the “mini-game”, but I’ll get to that a little later); the first level quite literally combines two of the robots into. The game was developed by Frima Studio, the creators of such PSN Minis as Vector TD and Zombie Tycoon. Considering Frima’s Minis pedigree, I expected Widgets Odyssey to be better than it is.

The game begins with a cut-scene that introduces the main characters and lays out the story. The opening cinematic is characteristic of all of the cinematics in the game in that it’s bright, colorful, and funny. The writing for the game is what really stuck out to me. It may be funny the sort of way children’s movies are funny, but it’s funny nonetheless. Some examples of the humor come in the names of the characters: where Cruella DeVille (The Disney villain) is a cruel, stuck-up bitch, Monk, the ship’s mechanic, is slouched and resembles a monkey. Other innocent-type humor comes in the form of the cinematics: one of the robots “teleports” by being slungshot (or is it slingshotted?) at a planet. In another cinematic, one of the robots exclaims, “Anything for a lubrication job and a change of oil!” That one elicited a chuckle. Still more clever writing comes in the form of the names of the levels: Blade Roller (Blade Runner), The Fifth Elemonk (The Fifth Element), and Planet of the Trash Apes (you can figure that one out on your own). Unfortunately, the game can’t stand on the merit of its cinematics. Once you get to playing it, things go wrong.

I’m aware that the game is targeted towards a younger audience, so I tried to be patient and forgiving while playing through it. The platforming is competent, if regularly imprecise, and the puzzles aren’t too difficult. However, I often had a “what now?” sort of feeling while playing through. The levels aren’t big enough to get lost, per se, but there were several instances when I repeated the same actions, wondering what to do to progress, and where to go to do it. This problem arises partly from the fact that interactive objects are indistinguishable from their surrounding artwork/environment. The graphics are fine, especially for a Mini title, but you can’t easily distinguish between what’s strictly scenery and what’s not.

In episode 3, there’s a screen where a giant flamethrowering robot guards an oil can. Every time I leaped over the robot and procured the oil can, I fell through the level and was forced to quit and restart. After about the fifth try, I found a way to attach to the wall and not touch the ground but still get the oil can. Regardless, that’s a pretty big bug for a pretty mini game. The next level, Monk’s stage, is probably the best. Following then connecting pipes to spray water on robots was fun, even if the difficulty is a bit stunted for the youngins. The only “mini-game” comes after the fourth level, when you are tasked to escape a trailing ship in the form of a side-scrolling shooter. It’s bad. The ship is barely maneuverable, making it impossible to dodge enemy fire, and the mid-air mazes are okay, if unvaried.

I tried hard to like the game. The cinematics are sharp, the narrator and writing are on point, but the gameplay is rough and imprecise. It’s short, and the replay value is basically absent. It reminds me of a late nineties, clearly kid-targeted Gameboy Color game. Not unplayable by any means, just lacking of the want to play it.

What I Liked:

• Charming Graphics

• Addictive Gameplay
• Music That Gets Stuck In Your Head

What I Disliked:

• Presentation May Turn Off Some

• Gets Really Hard After A While

FuturLab started off as a developer with extremely ambitious intentions for their work on PlayStation platforms. However, you have to start small if you’re dreaming big, so their first mini, “Coconut Dodge”, was recently released onto the PSN Store.

Coconut Dodge is, at it’s heart, a relatively simple puzzle game, with you playing as a crab, dodging coconuts and collecting coins in order to further your own high scores. The game also contains a maze mode, in which you guide your crab through a variety of coconut mazes, in order to get the highest scores possible. Be sure to scroll past all the mazes to find some hidden goodies. As you can probably tell, the game is extremely score based, and as such, can get extremely addictive. I’ve lost count on the number of times I’ve found myself retrying for a higher score, and (mostly) succeeding. The game is certainly going to hold your attention for quite some time.

If there is a caveat to the game, its that the way that its presented may turn off some players. The game isn’t particularly flashy, presentation wise, although the music has managed to worm its way into my brain, and sure as heck won’t budge for quite some time to come. If you’re not a fan of bright, fun games, then you’re unlikely to like the presentation here. But then again, you’re probably too busy writing twilight fan-fiction to care.

The bottom line here is, Coconut Dodge is an incredibly fun game, and deserves to be played by absolutely everyone. It’s charming, and utterly addictive.

What I liked:

• A wealth of content for a Mini
• Simple, straightforward layout
• Epic music

What I disliked:

• Menu navigation is a bit wonky

First thing’s first: This is Mahjong solitaire, a casual, classical board game in which you match tiles of the same suit or design. It’s not complex in the least, and while there exist strategies to playing the game, it’s likely that you’ll just be matching until you clear the board. That being said, Mahjongg Artifacts and Mahjongg Artifacts: Chapter 2 are very impressive simulations of Mahjong solitaire. Each game has three play modes: Play Quest, Play Classic, and Play Endless. The Quest mode takes you through an archeologist’s search for legendary artifacts. Each time he finds an artifact, he has to “prove his wisdom” or some other such malarkey in the form of playing Mahjong. The Quest is lengthy, featuring 25 boards of increasing difficulty and a wide variety of locations and tilesets to help keep things looking novel. Classic mode gives you the opportunity to choose from 99 different board layouts and 5 different tilesets. Endless mode is endless mode: You play until your vision fails and you drop the PSP or PS3 remote from exhaustion.

The first thing I noticed after booting up the game was the graphics. While the graphical style is undeniably casual, there are a handful of well-drawn graphic comics that unfold the story in Quest mode. It looks good on my PS3, so I can only imagine it runs smoothly on the PSP (Editors note: There is a tad bit of slowdown on the PSP). As far as gameplay goes, you match tiles by selecting one then navigating to a similar one and selecting that one. Every once in a while I had a bit of trouble navigating, but for the most part the controls are spot on. One minor gripe I had is that navigating the menus was a bit weird since you can’t press the ‘O’ button to go back. Chapter 2 has ‘O’ button support, which is bizarre considering it was released way before the prequel. There are a few different methods of zooming in on the board, allowing for a customizable visual experience. I primarily stuck with the Auto-Zoom feature, since it’s rather intuitive and kept me at a comfortable distance from the board. Words pop up on the screen if you match tiles in rapid succession. “Excellent!”, “Incredible!”, and “Perfect!” provided just the motivation I needed to keep up the matching frenzy.

The music is great. The title screen and board clear screen music are reminiscent of PuzzleQuest in the sense that it’s rather epic for a casual board game. The music during gameplay, on the other hand, is serene, which is fitting for the action-lacked tile matching. The sound effects are spot on, with clicks, clacks, and laser beam noises accompanying the tiles as they clear.

With an expansive Quest mode and a bevy of boards for Classic play and Endless fun, Mahjongg Artifacts and Mahjongg Artifacts: Chapter 2 are jam-packed with content for a Mini title. If you’re curious about Mahjong or want a small (38MB), portable Mahjong solitaire game, pick one or both of these up. Remember, though, that at the end of the day, it’s a tile matching Mini. What it does, it does well, but it’s not trying to do too much.

What I liked:

• Easy To Use Controls
• Sharp, Simple Graphics
• Packed With Content

What I disliked:

• Easy To Learn, Difficult To Master
• Problems Inherent To The Minis Program

Halfbrick seems to have always been a firm supporter of the minis program, and certainly seem to know their way around the handheld. As it stands, Aero Racer is a great game, and a fantastic addition to the minis line-up, with the only problem with the game stemming from its status as a mini.

Aero Racer is filled to the brim with hours of content, ranging from a selection of 25 levels running the gamut of GP’s to Quick Races. The game certainly has a good amount of content for its asking price, and the sheer breadth of content on display makes it a sure-fire way to use up an hour or two. But it also makes for a great game to simply pick up and play for 5 minutes. It also helps that the game is extremely visually appealing, with bright, solid colors and a silky smooth frame-rate helping to make the game appear extremely inviting, with the music providing decent beats to race to.

In terms of gameplay, Aero Racer certainly is easy to play, but difficult to master. The tutorial in the game does an admirable job in teaching you how to maneuver through the game’s many twists and turns, but it’ll take a good few go’s before you’re racing like a pro. I found myself crashing all about the course in my initial play sessions, before finally managing to master the intricacies of the drifting the game expects you to do. Expect to drift a lot.

However, if there is one caveat of Aero Racer as a game, it is the limitations of the mini’s service that the game has to abide to. The lack of ad-hoc multiplayer and time-based leaderboards could have made this game truly addictive, but without these features, it still stands on its feet (though it’s not quite as tall as it could have been).

Aero Racer is a great little arcade racer, and presents excellent value for money. If it wasn’t for the limitations of the minis service, it would easily stand as the best title in minis. As it happens, its still a great game, with fun controls and more content than you can shake a stick at.

What I liked:

• Great graphics and sound design

• Hilarious writing
• Plays like a charm

What I disliked:

• It’s over far too soon

Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess is a delight to play. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, allow me to explain why. As a game, Monsters plays like the love child of doodle jump and sonic the hedgehog, with the player taking the role of “The Duke”, a villain out to rescue his princess, who has, as you may have guessed, been captured by monsters. Probably.

The gameplay itself is a fairly simple platformer, with the player jumping further and further upwards in order to score 3 hits on whatever monster the duke is currently fixated. There is a combo system that allows for some flash moves, but the core gameplay here is solid and endearing enough that I didn’t mind if I accidentally hit the same platform twice (which ends your combo). I was just having far too much fun.

Graphically, Monsters really pops off the screen, with vibrant colors and great animation really selling the package visually, along with the fantastic music and hilarious writing completing the package. It really is fantastic to both see and hear this game in action.

If there is a problem with Monsters, its that the game is over far too soon, but there are additional challenges for you to sink you teeth into, and they’re just as fun as the main game.

Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess is certainly the best mini to date, with a superb package in all regards, and I sincerely hope that we see more great minis from Mediatonic in the future.

What I Liked:

• Great art style makes graphics pop on both ps3 and psp

• Plenty of modes and playable ships

What I Disliked:

• Controls are awkward, and can lead to some cheap deaths

• Gameplay lacks finesse.
• The game has one particularly awkward interface issue.

From the Makers of Cubixx comes Stellar Attack, part Asteroids, and part Zuma, It forms an enticing prospect, with a great looking art style similar to the game gravity crash, and a choice of control schemes that resemble said game, with one option being the old faithful combination of turn and thrust, and the other being a decidedly more modern approach, with either the d-pad or analogue stick thrusting your ship in the direction of your choice. As long as that direction is one of the 8 ways the game allows you to move in. Even with analogue control, Stellar Attack sticks to a system of 8 directions with which to move your ship in. I stuck mostly with the more modern approach, as I preferred being able to control my ship’s direction in a far more precise manner.

Sadly, neither of the control schemes provided me with a method of maneuvering that wasn’t awkward and frustrating, with the older style of control being fiddly and inconsistent, and the more modern control scheme served to irritate me just as much, due to the inaccurate nature of only being able to aim in 8 separate directions. There are dodge moves mapped to the shoulder buttons, but the distance covered by a single dodge seems much too meager to be of any use, and I didn’t honestly see much point in a dodge button if the actual act of dodging is unable to move you out of harms way.

Also, the game lacks a quit button. It’s a strange omission, and one that only served to irritate me further, as I was unable to quit out of the game and back to the main menu without either destroying my ship enough times to achieve a “game over”, or quitting directly to the XMB and relaunching the game.

The only thing Stellar Attack really has going for it is its art style, which has a smooth, clean, colorful look that is visually appealing on both the ps3 and psp, with the shapes translating well to the larger screen. Also, the game has a good amount of content included in it for the asking price, although the other gameplay modes are essentially just the main mode with different health layouts, which is somewhat disappointing.

Stellar attack makes a great first impression, with great graphics and a good soundtrack. It’s once you get to playing the game, however, that it all starts to fall apart. Lackluster controls and awkward gameplay unfortunately mean that Stellar Attack is a tough purchase to justify, especially with better games out there on the PSP.

What I Liked:

• Well-designed interface, and good music

• It’s a cool new idea, and pretty fun because of it
• Packed full of features

What I Disliked:

• Difficult to learn.

• Tutorial doesn’t quite make everything clear.

From the makers of Imagine: Fashion Designer, and Petz: Horsez 2 (I kid you not, I checked their web site) comes Spaceball: Revolution, and arcade puzzle game resembling nothing I’ve ever played before, in the best possible way. Played from a top-down perspective, the player shoots balls towards panels on the floor, trying to light up certain panels into rather specific shapes, and the game is a blast, featuring tight time limits that really up the ante of the onscreen antics, and moving obstacles that actually force you to bounce balls of walls in order to create the shapes that are required of you.

The game is packed full of features, containing 2 different game modes, and over 700 puzzles, with 4 difficulty levels also included in order to make for a load of replay value. There is one caveat with this game though, and that is the fact that throughout my first playthrough, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. This was quickly rectified by reading the instructions inside the game, but be warned, this is a difficult game to pick up and play on your first go.

This also happens to be the games most endearing feature, as Spaceball: Revolution is a great puzzle game, and at the price it retails for, I wholeheartedly recommend picking it up.

What I Liked:

• Great fun, with a price that suits the length

• Fantastic Atmosphere, and video that makes the game great
• Extra content, combined with a cliff-hanger ending that makes this game feel like part of a larger project.

What I Disliked:

• If you don’t like extended quick time events, and hate full motion video, you aren’t going to like this game

So, who here likes Dragons’ Lair? Just a few of you then? Well, you can stay, because you’re exactly the type of person who is bound to enjoy Hysteria Project, the third Mini from Sanuk Games. Hysteria Project feels like part of a bygone era, where games like Dragons’ Lair, Space Ace and… Night Trap ruled the gaming world. Whilst the genre (and the Sega CD) may have long since been relegated to a distant dream in recent memory, Hysteria Project bursts onto the scene with a great little tale about a man in a forest being chased by an Axe Murderer. So, business as usual then.

Hysteria Project is very much a guilty pleasure, as the full motion video, combined with the creepy atmosphere make it a game that you can get through in one sitting, in part due to the length of the game (roughly half an hour), and in part due to the fact that the game is just straight up fun. It’s certainly been a while since I’ve replayed a game twice in one sitting, and Hysteria project was just so good that I wanted to experience it over and over again.

The game itself may not be for everyone, but the price tag, combined with just how entertaining the game is, make Hysteria Project a Mini that I recommend you buy as quickly as possible. It’s just that good.

What I Liked:

• Retro graphics have some charm to them
• Music is all kinds of wonderful
• Control scheme serves the game well

What I Disliked:

• The game is far too short, considering it’s price tag
• No idea what is going on, story wise.

NormalTanks is an arcade shooter, featuring a top-down perspective and 8 levels in which you essentially blast your enemies to kingdom come, in a wide variety of settings. NormalTanks is the third mini from Beatshapers, the same folk that brought us minis such as BreakQuest and MelodyBloxx, and it continues their tradition of forgetting to put spaces in the titles of their games before sending them off to marketing. It also continues the tradition of their games being rather good, which is a far better tradition to follow, if you ask me.

NormalTanks’ best asset is its retro charm, with great looking sprites combining with wonderful music to create the atmosphere of a lost retro treasure. And as with most retro games, the concept is devilishly simple. You play as a tank, and you have to reach the end of one of 8 stages, defeat a boss, and defeat an alien menace. Not that you’d know that there was an alien menace until the name of the last stage flashes up on screen. It seems that the developer elected to drop the player straight in to the action, rather that choosing to explain what was going on beforehand, you are treated to, upon completion of the game, a lovely text scroll, explaining that you have defeated the aliens, and that you are, of course, a hero. Lovely stuff, I’m sure, but I would have appreciated knowing at least some of this beforehand, though I suppose that’s just my personal preference.

NormalTanks plays exactly how the screen shots would lead you to believe. You control the tank (or, in stage 7, the mech) with the D-pad, whilst the face buttons control the angle of the gun, with the L and R triggers changing and firing your weapons respectively. That only leaves the analogue stick, which the game elects to use as a sort of manual auto-aim. Whilst that sounds completely bizarre, allow me to explain. You simply hold the stick in the rough direction of an enemy, and your turret will do the rest of the tracking. It works very well in practice as the digital control of the turret via the face buttons is all but useless due to the faster moving smaller enemies, but when I was playing the game on the PSP, my awkward hand position whilst playing the game made it hard to control on the portable platform. I then switched over to the PS3, and the game controlled as smooth as was possible, and I no longer needed to worry about either my hands cramping up, or in fact blocking the actual screen.

Not that I would have needed to worry for long. For its price, NormalTanks is a bit too short for my liking. The single player campaign can be completed in around 45 minutes, and there is nothing else waiting for you on the main menu apart from other difficulty settings. Some kind of survival mode would have gone a long way towards extending the replayability of this title, but as it stands, £3.49 is a little bit steep for only 45 minutes of fun. Unless you play it once on each difficulty level, you’re going to have a hard time getting your money’s worth from this game.

NormalTanks is a good game, but the lack of features and dubious playability on the PSP mean that it should only be recommended to those of you that particularly enjoy arcade top-down shooters, and are perfectly unfazed with playing £3.49 for less than an hour of fun. And the game certainly is fun, for the time that it lasts.

What I liked:

• Great visuals and music
• Classic gameplay can be played for minutes or hours
• Clearing a board with a full x6 combo

What I disliked:

• While they visuals are great, they don’t vary much
• Highscore font isn’t fixed width. (Minor gripe)

Cubixx is another take on the Qix formula, but what sets it apart from others is that this time you are on a cube. While the cube is 3D, you will still be mostly playing on the faces. So it isn’t all that confusing if you have played a Qix game before.

When you start the game up you are met with four options. You can play the game, learn how to play, look at the high scores, are muck around with the options. The “tutorial” is just a basic explanation of what the controls are and a quick overview of how to advance through the stages. Your options menu is just for sound options so no real reason to go there.

You are probably wanting to hear about the game and not the options so let’s do that. You start on the edge of a cube face. Your goal is to mark off the percentage of the cube that is in the lower right corner. While you are doing this you want to score as many points as possible. Your points are determined by the length of your line and the combo you have. You gain a combo multiplier by marking off parts of the cube in a different face. This seems really simple and that is what makes Cubixx great. Progressing through the levels you will notice the enemies getting smarter and trying to take you out. They do that by touching the line you have drawn. The simple nature of this game makes it a great minis title.

I do wish that the background varied a bit. You will be staring at the same black cube the whole game. The great music does seem to minimize this though. I also wished that the highscore font was fixed width. If you have a lot of “1″s in your score it may look fairly small, enough though you are at the top of the highscore list. That highscore list is pretty much the main reason I play this so much. I am still not good enough to get to the top, but I sure as hell am trying to get there.

Cubixx is a first rate mini and should be picked up by anyone. The only problem is that it still isn’t out here in the US. After speaking with Laughing Jackall the wait shouldn’t be much longer. They are currently in the process of submitting the game to the ESRB and SCEA. So just hold out a little bit longer, as I am sure arcade-game fans will love this title as much as I did.

What I liked

• The games sense of humor.
• Easy to pick up and play.
• Barry Steakfries.

What I disliked

• Only took an hour to get through.
• Would have liked a few more weapons.

Starting up, you’re introduced to the games protagonist, Barry Steakfries. He is hurdled through time by Dr. Brains, mad scientist extraordinaire. Barry must then fight his way through 5 different worlds each brought to havoc via zombies.

In the first world you’re in prehistoric times fighting off zombie-cavemen and eventually a zombie-trex which certainly sets the tone of this over the top experience. My buddy and I found ourselves laughing at the games announcer, as you pick up power-ups, each different time period has a different announcer. I think the feudal Japan one was my favorite. Speaking of power-ups, we’re talking shotguns, flamethrowers, rifles, miniguns, and smgs, as well as mines and grenades that can be used as subweapons. These are all fun and easy to chain combos with. I found myself wishing there were a few more weapons just to further liven up the dead killing. I just love killing zombies in every which way, so maybe that’s just a personal complaint… it certainly doesn’t detract from the gameplay.

The control and perspective reminds me of Dracula Undead Awakening. You have a top down view and you shoot in the direction of the buttons you push. Its art differs however, as it is very cartoony and quite over the top. Rather than a health bar, Barry uses a recharging health system, much like most modern FPS games. The screen will turn red if Barry takes damage and if he takes too much he dies. If you back away from the action for a bit, the screen will return to the normal color and you know that you will be safe… for now.

Barry will die and he will die a lot if you aren’t careful. I found myself using an almost Geometry Wars like strategy to lure the hordes of zombies around so as not get pinned in a corner. What really is there to write home about is the game’s stupid humor. Barry spouts out some pretty good one-liners and some of the interactions with NPCs are just gold. The titles of the levels are also quite funny. I confess I was laughing out loud at the conversation between Dr. Brains and Barry at the end of the game. Put it this way, it’s like he’s a funny Matt Hazard.

My biggest gripe is that it takes only about an hour to get through. There is a survival mode to keep you coming back though which is fun, but I found that I just wanted more. I enjoyed my time with this title, and am really glad I got to review it. If you like this genre pick it up. Seriously. Do it.

What I liked:

• Classic Tower Defense gameplay, with a twist here and there.
• Crisp vector graphics look really good on either PSP or PS3.
• Enough maps and different with ways to play to keep you coming back.

What I disliked:

• If you have a lot of towers and power-ups in one area it gets cluttered.
• No highscores or fast-forward.

Many of you may know Candystand from the web. They have one of the most popular flash game sites out there. But this is there first entry into the minis space and VectorTD tries to set its self out from the pack. The game may start off a bit slow, but by the end you will be making every move like it is your last.

The game is simple like most tower defense games. Choose one of eight maps and try to last 50 rounds without running out of lives. The formula is also similar to most games, there are different colored enemies, called vectoids, and towers of the same color will do more damage to them. After five rounds a boss vectoid shows up, and if you can destroy it you gain a bonus item. These can be cashed in for things like damage enhancers and range modifiers.

Your towers also have different effects on the vectoids. There are the blue towers, you will learn to love these, which can slow down a vectoid. There are also powerful red towers which shoot out homing missiles, another staple that you will be using a lot. You can upgrade each tower, adding more damage and extending their range. The graphics on-screen are vector-style and there are lots of particle effects. Although if you have a lot of power-ups it might be a little cluttered, but by the time that happens you should be at the end of the waves.

There was only one thing that kept me from giving this game a 5 star rating. That is the fact that there are no leaderboards or highscore tables. After hours of trying, I finally found a strategy that worked and to my dismay after clearing all 50 waves all I could do was restart or pick another map. I was bummed to say the least. I know minis can’t have online functions but a local highscore table would have been nice.

This game does all the little things right, I was impressed by small stuff like the background music softening when the game is paused. It really shows that the devs put a lot of thought into this title and they didn’t just try to rush a port. It may get under your skin, but when you finally find a strategy that works and you clear the stage, you really feel like you have accomplished something. There are not many games where you can say that.