Sign up for the FREE Tell Membership and receive benefits that include the digital edition of Tell magazine sent straight to your inbox, product giveaways, coupons and much more!
Sign up for the FREE Tell Membership and receive benefits that include the digital edition of Tell magazine sent straight to your inbox, product giveaways, coupons and much more!
As I think I have said in this space before, the best gaming console platform in the current generation is not on the TV screen at all. For my money, I get more bang for my buck and spend more time playing the Nintendo and Sony handhelds.
Okay, I admit it. I am old. Keeping up with my daughter playing Guitar Hero III or Rock Band makes my shoulder ache.
“You shoulder?” my teen girl puffs back at me when I tell her we have to stop. “How is your shoulder hurting? You are sitting down.” She’ll have to wait a good thirty years before she understands that one I guess.
I don’t get much farther in Halo 3 either, especially when she and her posse are yelling at the old geezer to keep up. “Press A, Dad! Press A!”
“Why?”
“Because I SAID so,” she barks, reversing the parent/child dynamic as quickly as she guns down a line of approaching…whatever the hell they are.
And so I find the solitude and slower pace of handhelds comforting at this advanced age. Both the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP have gotten must-have titles in recent weeks. For the DS “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” is a gorgeous re-thinking of the brain teaser genre wrapped in characters, atmosphere, great cartoon design and a mystery. You play both sleuth Prof. Layton and his young boy sidekick as they enter a strange European village that has a mystery to be unraveled. In fact this is just a narrative conceit that clothes a series of cool Brain Age style puzzles. You move matchsticks in certain configurations and do basic math puzzles, etc. It seems the curious villagers are all puzzle freaks, and in order to advance you must solve these challenges. You discover coins along the way that you can redeem for up to three hints for each puzzle.
The beauty of the game is the environment. It makes puzzling meaningful and fun. The design sense is gorgeous, using a European style of animation throughout. The puzzles themselves keep in character with the surroundings, so you have to do things like chart paths out of town or get wolves and sheep across the river in a certain order. At heart this is just a brain teaser collection, but the adventure element adds a compelling reason to keep at it. What is new about this game is Nintendo’s use of WiFi and the gaming network. You can log onto the Nintendo game service to download a new puzzle every week. This is a nice addition that enhances the playability. Professor Layton’s trip to the Curious Village is well worth taking.
A very different form of game play comes from Sony in its God Of War iteration for the PSP. The “Chains of Olympus” game is part of a relentless hack and slash series from the PS2 that has simple enough controls to make the action of swinging weapons and using power combos easy on a handheld. The main character really just cuts a swathe through hordes of troops. It is the settings and the challenging bosses that make this series special. The game is truly amazing on the PSP. The graphics are almost indistinguishable from a good PS2 game. The bosses jut out from the screen, and the detail and refresh speed are up to the challenge. I often forgot I was playing on a pint-sized screen. This is a level of action that never really overwhelms you, and the bosses require a puzzling sensibility to conquer, not just youthful reflexes for button mashing and combo recall.
The handheld console platforms started many years ago with Gameboys aimed at the youngest audiences. Ironically, I find that their penchant for old school and more laid back game play make them perfect for aging old farts like me.
“That DS isn’t hurting your shoulder, too much, is it Dad?”
Wiseass.
Related Posts