This will be the smallest and mightiest PSP® system yet. You can download rich, immersive digital gaming or the best movies and TV shows saved directly to the ample 16GB hard drive and browse the incredibly deep lineup of PSP gaming and movie content on the PlayStation® Network. Another cool feature is the use of the built-in Bluetooth support to connect a wireless headset and utilize Skype to talk with friends. But best of all, show off your content via the ultra-crisp 3.8 inch LCD screen on the most portable PSP system yet.

This will be the most portable PSP, thus the name Go. The release date for the PSP Go is in Fall of 2009.

The best game ever created by man.

+ Excellent soundtrack and dialogues
+ Superb storyline and character design
+ 20+ hours of quality gameplay
+ An emotional story that you’ll always remember

- Few camera issues and poor graphics at times

System requirements:

PlayStation (One) console or PS3 console or PSP

more screenshots here

You should be familiar with the fact that PlayStation games are compatible with the PS3 and PSP by now, which is a pretty good piece of news, specially if you’ve kept your PSX titles laying on some shelves, covered with dust. It’s time to wipe them clean and give them the spin and the glory of the old days by re-playing them. One of the first titles I’ve replayed on the PSP and PS3 is Final Fantasy VII, produced by Squaresoft (back then), turned into Square-Enix for quite some time now. Don’t be harsh, don’t criticize the graphics, as it’s a 1997 game I’m going to review here, but one that generated millions of fans, motion pictures and even sequels.

Story
Final Fantasy VII features the best storyline I’ve ever seen in a game… It’s a tale of love, hatred between clones, the dangers of technology and magic. Now, when there’s a movie to be seen, Advent Children, serving as a follow-up to this game, you’ll surely understand the story better, specially if you also play Crisis Core, on the PSP, FF VII’s prequel. Back to this game’s storyline, you’ll control Cloud Strife throughout the title’s action spanning 3 CDs (quite an achievement for a 1997 game) and witness as he becomes the Planet’s savior after getting to know him as cold-blooded mercenary.

The game starts with the blond main character (Cloud) aiding Avalanche (a rebel group) blow up reactors belonging to Shinra, the greedy corporation that’s leading the world right now. As you progress, you’ll find out that each new character who joins your party has his/her own complicated story and you’ll have to vanquish their enemies and get to know their past. In case you haven’t played the game, I could go on talking about it for hours, but I would spoil the experience, so I’ll let you find out for yourself how Cloud and Aeris, one of the most important feminine characters, fell in love. The arch-nemesis of the title is the famous Sephiroth, probably the best designed and the most complex villain I’ve ever seen. He’s pretty quiet, but when he does talk he can be the most diabolical creature ever and his actions are also an argument supporting this statement.

Concept
Final Fantasy VII is Square-Enix’s RPG, pertaining to an extremely successful series that doesn’t quite seem to end. You could call it a turn-based RPG, since the battles feature a waiting time and turns for each character’s attack. All combat sequences are randomly triggered by walking on the world’s map or any location in the game, which is a trend pretty much fading away these days, when we can see the enemies approaching and get ready for some serious walloping. It’s hard to say how many hours you can play Final Fantasy VII before finishing it… I would say about 15-20 if you’re an expert and you want to go through it in a hurry, but it can even reach 70 hours if you check out all the minigames, the Weapons (monsters) and additional quests and storylines. Square’s hit features battles that are separated from the regular action (walking on the map, talking to NPCs etc) through a special fading screen.

One might think that such a feature can fragment the action, but they’re wrong, specially because you’ll get to like the sound of a battle starting plus Square couldn’t have implemented on-screen monsters roaming on the map in 1997, because they would have been poorly drawn. You control a party of three almost always including Cloud Strife, the game’s protagonist, but there will be times when he’ll be out of the group of controllable characters, due to "health" reasons. There’s a wide range of characters to choose from and there are even optional ones, like Yuffie or Vincent Valentine, a mysterious vampire-like man, so fascinating that he was featured in 2 other Square-Enix titles (Dirge of Cerberus and a Final Fantasy title for mobile platforms). The other characters are: Tiffa, Cloud’s childhood female friend, Aeris, Cloud’s great love, Barret, a tough one-electronic-arm dude, Cid, a crazy pilot, Red XIII, a wise … feline of some sort and Cait Sith, a talking toy shaped like a cat.

Since I mentioned minigames above, I might as well say that they’re pretty exciting, from the snowboarding you’ll have to do in order to reach Sephiroth’s lair to a submarine hunting game or Chocobo racing. What’s a Chocobo? In case you don’t know that, you haven’t played many Square-Enix titles till now. It’s the companies trademark mascot, so to say, like Mario is for Nintendo and Sonic for Sega. A chocobo is some sort of huge golden ostrich, used for transportation and racing, just like a horse. In Final Fantasy VII you’ll breed these birds and grow them in order to obtain racing champions, in their purest form and race. There’s even the opportunity of riding one on the world map in order to get around. Having mentioned that, I must remind you that the world hosting these adventures is huge, so you’ll need means of transportation from time to time, from a buggie to a plane or some sort of Zeppelin-style airship, called the Highwind, plus a nice submarine. The list of enemies included in the game is impressive, some of them being mythological creatures you might have heard of, zombies, robots, wolves, snakes, poisonous plants and even human enemies.

Everything I’ve said so far seems pointless unless we figure out one thing: the purpose of our journey. Cloud travels accompanied by his mates in order to stop Sephiroth from summoning Meteor, which pretty much would mean the Armageddon for the planet. The protagonist has also personal reasons for hating Seph, but I’ll leave you to find those out for yourself. Back to the actual game, the battle system isn’t too complicated, featuring regular attacks, special abilities, an items option, magic and a summoning ability. You won’t be able to master those moves from the beginning, since you’ll have to do a bit of customizing, when it comes to your accessories and weapons. You see, the world Cloud lives in is based on the Lifestream, the source of all life on the Planet. It makes flowers bloom, trees grow, people get born and keeps the whole planet alive.

However, the highly advanced Shinra corporation have started using Lifestream as a source of energy having depleted the coal and oil resources. As such, this powerful energy can be compressed into materia orbs, which grant humans magical powers. This pretty much explains why the entire battle and customization system is based on Materia. These pieces of solid Lifestream can be attached to slots in your armor, granting you special abilities, magical powers and allowing you to call on and wake huge beasts, through summons. There are many types of materia you’ll be using during the game and you should know that they come in all colors, a different one for each type of ability they bring. The red materia is used for summons, the yellow one is used for special abilities, while the green one allows you to do magic, the purple one increases your stats and the blue one has various effects on other materia orbs.

Since FF VII is an RPG, it’s pretty obvious that characters evolve, gaining EXP points and increasing their general levels. By doing that they’ll gain more HP (hit points, the "life" of characters") or MP (magical points, or mana points if you want, that allow you to do magic and summons). Also, increasing your level means that you’ll unlock new limit breaks for your characters. These limit breaks are probably another one of the elements that define this title and the Final Fantasy series. During a battle, if you get hid badly and enough times to fill a certain limit break gauge, you’ll be able to trigger an extra powerful attack, which pops up as an option instead of the regular attack. It can either inflict huge damage on your enemies or cure the entire party of status ailments or increase their HP (this only applies to Aeris’ limit break).

Your Materia can also increase its levels, as you collect AP (ability points) that can level-up your magical attacks or summons, plus most of the supporting materia. As such, you’ll either end up using Ice 2 or Ice 3, evolved from the original Ice attack, or leveled up summons that do more damage or a purple piece of materia, that adds 50% more HP, instead of the initial 10%.

Gameplay
This being a huge game, you’ll have to save quite a lot, in order to make sure that your progress is stored and you won’t lose your hard work. These save points surface in the shape of a lighted question mark, available in towns, or any other location, but the world map, where you can save any time you want. By the way you can check out the entire world map, once you get out of towns and start traveling, in order to decide which route to follow in order to reach the next place Sephiroth has visited. The AI of the foes should be mentioned, as it’s pretty challenging, specially when it comes to bosses and hidden enemies, like those pesky Weapons.

They’re the giant beasts spawned by the Planet to protect it from Meteor, but they’ll cause of lot of rampage to the surrounding environment and to you. One of the coolest materia you can use in FF VII is the Enemy Skill yellow orb, that allows you to learn a couple of special attacks from the enemies that use them. They’ll be remembered by the characters wielding this materia and used against them. This RPG also focuses on elementals, so you should be careful when attacking a fire-based enemy with a blaze or a snow wolf with Ice 3, as it will only heal them.

Cloud and his companions can suffer from status ailments, like poison, confusion, numbness and many many others that either drain your HP, make you spin around and attack allies or make you miss the targets of non-magical attacks. The items in your inventory can be found in chests, in various locations on the map, gained after battles or simply bought from various shops. Each town has its own shop, allowing you to buy weapons and new accessories with more materia slots, and better protection against attacks, or increased stats. While many minigames are optional in FF VII and only award you cash (gil) or items, some must be done in order to progress, like the one involving the dress-up of Cloud like a woman, which was pretty much my reason for questioning his sexual orientation in this article.

This Final Fantasy title is a great experience, in that it never allows you to get bored, presenting you with minigames, just when you thought that you’ve had too many battles and you should take a break. Picture yourself fighting a ten-foot monster using summons and then riding a cute golden bird in a race, the Chocobo being raised and trained by you. The only thing that will probably bother you, after playing at least 10 hours of FF VII is the constant running around you have to do in order to fulfill all the assigned tasks. Other than that, the game’s pure feeling, magic and it features an unique atmosphere that’s worth a play, replay and a return to the experience every now and then.

Graphics

Final Fantasy VII is not to be judged by today’s standards! Keep in mind that it’s a game that was released in 1997 and there are still people playing it on a daily basis, being astonished by its complex characters, huge world and its emotional storyline. The cutscenes are class A, even for today’s standards and there’s plenty of FMV action to watch, specially if you’re playing the PSP version and traveling long distances while doing that. The characters are nothing more than polygons shaped like human beings, but this appearance was a sign of the times, while the battles look decent even if you’re a pretentious gamer. The magic casting and summon animations deserve a standing ovation, being extremely varied and featuring vivid colors, lots of character motion and a visible influence on the foes. Add a couple of hotties (Tiffa, Aeries, maybe Yuffie) in the mix and we’ve got a good-looking visual package, plus an extremely diversified world, that includes deserts, large fields, frozen mountains, underground areas and many other places to explore.

Audio
Nobuo Uematsu has struck gold every time he has composed music for a Final Fantasy game. I’m a FF OST collector, in case you didn’t know and the piano works done specially for Final Fantasy VII are my most treasured albums. The game’s background music is superb, specially in the emotional moments when a character dies, kisses or simply recalls the past. Even the funny music that starts playing during Chocobo races or during fun events will be remembered as a reason to smile in a corrupt world, draining the planet’s Lifestream. The battle music may become annoying, but in the long run you’ll get used to it, while the game’s main theme is perfect for any cellphone as a ringtone. Couple that with the best Latin-based choir song I’ve heard, the one from the final boss fight with Sephiroth and you’ve an artistic product of its own streamed directly to your brain.

Conclusion
When a game gets you excited 10 years after playing it and you still manage to shed a tear when a very important and loved character dies, that means that you found your ideal game. For me Final Fantasy VII is the best game in the world and I’m not only judging it from my point of view. I’ve done research among RPG fans and there are many Final Fantasy players, Diablo players, Halo 3 players who simply love this title. It’s the best RPG ever created, the best game ever created, because it manages to portray human emotions, beautiful characters and a decaying world that’s sadly too similar to ours. Simply the best title a team of developers could ever come out with….

By Alexandru Stanescu, Editor, Gaming Reviews (Consoles)

11th of January 2008, 14:09 GMT

As far as Japanese RPGs go, the Star Ocean series has long been one of the most underrated franchises to come out of Square-Enix. The series, which draws its roots way back on the Super Famicom (the first game never saw a formal release in the US until Star Ocean: First Departure hit the PSP last fall), hasn’t really enjoyed the same runaway success as other “Squeenix” franchises like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, but has still managed to be a pretty compelling series with great story elements and fun gameplay. Now, keeping in line with the publisher’s recent policy of updating their classic games, Square-Enix has updated and launched the second title in the Star Ocean universe on the PSP with Star Ocean: Second Evolution.

While not exactly a full-on remake of Star Ocean: The Second Story (which debuted on the PS1 in 1998), Second Evolution is really more of an update, taking advantage of the PSP’s high-resolution widescreen display with sharp graphics, anime cutscenes, and full voice acting while still retaining most of the gameplay elements from the original PS1 release. While the game is not perfect and has many of the same issues that plagued the original, this is still a pretty solid remake and a fine addition to any PSP-owning RPG-lover’s library.

Star Ocean: Second Evolution begins by having you choose between two different characters: Claude C. Kenny and Rena Lanford. Claude (the son of Ronyx J. Kenny, the hero of First Departure), finds himself transported mysteriously to Rena’s home world of Expel, which is far less technologically advanced as Claude’s world. Therefore, Claude embarks on a journey with Rena to find his way back home while helping Rena discover the mystery of a meteorite that had recently landed on Expel, known as the “Scorcery Globe”. While the two characters will spend the majority of their journey together regardless of which you choose, your choice will have different effects on the storyline, and even give you different endings depending on your interactions with other characters that join your party.

For players who played through the recently released Star Ocean: First Departure, the overall layout will be immediately familiar. The game uses the same updated interface as its predecessor, and is stylistically very similar. The game has all of the familiar trappings of old-school RPGs, namely big towns, dungeons to explore, a world map, random battles, and so on.

The combat unfolds in real-time, having your characters navigate the battlefield and then attacking your enemies using the face buttons to perform special combos. You can use melee attacks, magic, or a variety of Special Arts. The combat is pretty fast and doesn’t drudge along, but unfortunately falls a bit short by feeling overly simplistic and repetitive.

Graphically, the game looks pretty good, and is a marked improvement over the PS1 version thanks to some high-resolution sprites and environments courtesy of the PSP’s big, beautiful screen. While the game won’t tax your PSP’s graphical prowess with detailed 3D graphics (the game is mostly 2D sprites on pre-rendered backgrounds with the occasional 3D areas), it still retains the original feel of the game on which it’s based while providing a pretty solid aesthetic.

The music in Star Ocean: Second Evolution is very well done, with some nicely implemented pieces to the score that stand well along other entries to Square-Enix’s franchises. The voice work in the game is fairly plentiful, with tons of written dialogue. The majority of the voice acting is well done, but there are quite a few instances of awkward deliveries and some poorly written lines.

Star Ocean: Second Evolution is a solid update for a title that many RPG gamers may have missed out on the first time around. While the game doesn’t really bring a lot new to the table (a lot has changed in the genre since Star Ocean 2 first hit the PS1) and the combat is pretty simplistic and repetitive, it’s still worth a look for hardcore RPG purists.

Gameplay: 7.0
The game plays out like any number of traditional RPGs, with the same conventions that the genre has seen for years now. The updates to the gameplay are Spartan at best, meaning the game does feel somewhat dated, albeit still pretty fun. The combat is somewhat disappointing, feeling quite simplistic and repetitious.

Graphics: 8.0
Second Evolution doesn’t really receive much of an upgrade in the graphics department, but still looks pretty good on the PSP’s screen.

Sound: 8.0
The music is still great, and the voice acting is good for the most part, save for some awkward and poorly-written lines.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 8.5
The game’s sweeping storyline and multiple arcs make for a pretty compelling adventure.

Overall: 7.5
While there are a few issues here and there, Second Evolution is a solid update of a compelling RPG from the past.

 Official Website: na.square-enix.com/starocean/

credit: http://psp.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r32550.htm

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A NEW leader in the brain game genre is about to emerge – Buzz! Brain Bender for the PSP is set to take over the title of ‘class swot’ from Brain Training on the DS.

While the Brain Training titles on the Nintendo handheld remain very good, it sometimes feels like sitting through a school lesson as you work on the DS exercises.

Sony’s new rival comes across as being fundamentally more fun and rewarding.

The game aims to improve your brain in four key areas: memory, observation, calculation and analysis.

There are 16 mini games to test your ability in each of these four categories.

For example, in the memory section there is Take Away – you must memorise playing cards to know which are missing when you see them for a second time.

One of the observation games is Match Up – how quickly can you spot pairs among a group of objects?

The calculation games include Blot Swot where you have to fill in the numbers missing from various maths problems.

And in analysis you can try Power Struggle – you’re shown a tug-of-war between different vehicles and you must work out which is strongest.

The games are timed so speed is vital as well as accuracy – quick pressing of the correct buttons is essential to achieving a good score. The score is based on how much brain your brain is supposedly outputting, measured in kilojoules.

Brain bender offers several modes of play.

In training you can choose the game you play. You’re given a gold, silver or bronze medal depending on your score, and you must work through easy, medium and hard levels for each game.

Test mode charts your progress over time. Each test gives you a random game to play from each category. Your combined power score is then converted into an equivalent electrical item such as a vacuum cleaner, TV or jukebox so you can see how you are improving – or not!

Challenge mode mixes up the various games and levels of difficulty. You unlock challenges to try as you progress, and you must then complete the objective required in each one, getting the highest score you can.

The final mode is perhaps the most fun – brain battle. Compete against up to five other people in a multi-player brain-testing frenzy. Choose four games to play – players take turns playing each one, passing the PSP around the group.

Buzz! Brain Bender looks really good the PSP and plays very well.

Quiz master Buzz takes on a mad scientist role in this game, and his encouragement and sarcastic put-downs add to the enjoyment.

Brain Bender is not as formal as other brain or as obviously ‘educational’ but it has something which many of the other similar games on the market lack, the fun factor.

Congratulations to Relentless Software and Sony for a job well done on this one – it raises the stakes in the genre and gives the PSP a new game to be proud of.

Verdict: 9 out of 10

The good
- Plenty of depth and variety in the game
- Colourful, attractive, well produced look
- Excellent multi-player option

The bad
- May cause domestic tension when competing in the brain battle!

- Simon Bull