GamesRadar - PSP Previews

Daxter (Daxter)

10/03/2006

The smaller, hairier half of PS2's platform-leaping duo Jak & Daxter is going it alone for this PSP adventure. Daxter spans the gap between the first two games in the series - the two friends have warped into a grim future, Jak's been locked up and an otherworldly enemy is beginning to invade. We caught a firsthand look at how Daxter is making it on his own. This future world is being overrun by Metal Bugs - mini relatives of the Metal Heads monsters that Jak trades lasers with in Jak 2. Lost, ...

Daxter (Daxter)

9/03/2006

After years of bragging about his accomplishments, Jak's fuzzy sidekick Daxter is putting his money where his muzzle is on March 21. Taking place in the two years between Jak & Daxter and Jak II, during which series hero Jak was imprisoned and tortured, the predictably-named Daxter follows the hyperactive otter-weasel creature as he searches for Jak in the big, scary future. While he's looking, though, Daxter needs to fend for himself, and that means getting a job. Bragging in a bar lands him ...

Dead Head Fred - hands-on (Dead Head Fred)

26/06/2007

Even by the bizarre standards of videogames, Fred Neuman is an unconventional hero. An undead, amnesiac private eye, Fred's out to solve the mystery of why someone murdered him and replaced his head with a brain floating in a jar. His hometown can best be described as a 1950s-era toxic-dump nightmare, which might explain his ability to rip zombies apart with his bare hands. He raises radioactive worms as a hobby, and then feeds them to mutant chickens that he enters in cockfights. Weirdest of ...

Dead Head Fred - first look (Dead Head Fred)

18/05/2006

Of all the weird games we saw at E3 this year, few of them were as flat-out bizarre as Dead Head Fred. Offering up a cartoonishly grim take on brawling and film noir, it tells the story of Fred, a detective who runs afoul of a local crime boss and winds up headless. Luckily for Fred, a kindly mad scientist finds his corpse and reanimates him as a jarheaded monstrosity, able to steal and use his enemies' heads as he tries to track down his memory. It's a gruesome, darkly funny premise, and Dead ...

Death, Jr. 2: Root of Evil - hands-on (Death Junior 2 - Root of Evil)

20/10/2006

The run-around-and-hit-things style of gaming is quickly becoming old hat. Take some quirky and/or badass characters, throw them in a third-person perspective and youve got about 75% of all the games out there right now. Hit a switch, grab a key, hit something in the face, whatever - it's always the same crap with a different smell. The first Death, Jr. felt a little something like that. So, it's at least cool to see a developer learn from its first time through and actually enhance the ...

Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed (Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed)

18/07/2007

Our biggest beef with Destroy All Humans 2 was that it felt like the usually coldhearted alien, Crypto was more concerned with saving the world than destroying humans. But it looks like this won't be a problem in Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed. In this mouth watering follow up - set after the events in Destroy All Humans 2 - Crypto decides to open his own restaurant which features human flesh as the secret ingredient. Although capturing and cooking people serves Crypto's antipathy ...

Devil May Cry 4's new weapon (Devil May Cry 4)

29/11/2007

Nov 29, 2007 At the recent Capcom Gamers Day in London, DMC4 producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi showed us a vibrant jungle level, Dantes new (and absurd) Pandoras Box weapon - see below - and a sexy, creepy boss named Echidna. “Leave my children alone, you bastard!” shrieks Echidna, twisting and turning through the air before landing and exposing a demented reptilian woman nestling ...

Hands-on with handhelds - Touch the Dead, Diner Dash, Zendoku (Diner Dash)

25/04/2007

The very first thing you see when entering their lobby is a curvaceous statue of Lara Croft. The second thing? An intimidating life-size replica of Hitman's Agent 47. But gaming publisher Eidos is offering more than just testosterone and other hormone-driven action games this year. They've also got a surprising number of mainstream-friendly handheld titles in the lineup. The games are simple and straightforward... are they also addictive? We dropped by their offices earlier this week to find ...

Downstream Panic! - hands-on (Downstream Panic!)

21/01/2008

As Downstream Panic! begins, a cyclone comes out of nowhere and sucks up all the tiny fish in the ocean, leaving behind a bunch of angry, hungry and exceptionally ugly creatures. As a good Samaritan it's your job to guide the little fish back to the ocean, hopefully without getting eaten on the way. You'll have access to a wide assortment (but limited supply) of tools to accomplish this task, ranging from bombs and harpoons to fans and flowers, and while it might seem easy at first - ...

Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai (Dragon Ball Z Shin Budokai)

5/04/2006

Wednesday 5 April 2006 Ludicrous plots, spiky haircuts that would shame a Wella Shockwaves ad and fights upon battles after punch ups. But then what were you expecting to see in a Dragon Ball Z game? True to form, this is all beating the crap out of each other as flamboyantly as possible. It'll probably come as no surprise to learn that it's not the deepest of scrappers either. The fighting, while doubtful to worry the likes of Virtua Fighter, packs a fair amount of variety into a simple two ...

Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai (Dragon Ball Z Shin Budokai)

3/03/2006

If you clicked the link to this article, odds are you're a devotee of the Dragon Ball Z games and already plan to buy Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai no matter what we say. If you're not, though, then this might be the game that gets you hooked. Shin Budokai brings the series' fast-paced, button-mashing action to the PSP's small screen, and little seems to have been lost in the translation. The battles are still fierce, as glowing supermen pummel each other with rapid-fire kicks and mammoth ...

Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai Another Road - hands-on (Dragon Ball Z Shin Budokai 2: Another Road)

6/02/2007

The screaming, spiky-haired Dragon Ball Z anime series concluded years ago, but the torrent of games based on it is still going strong. That probably has something to do with the fact that flying around and smashing things as fireball-tossing kung-fu aliens never really gets old, and the DBZ games have done a fantastic job of not screwing that premise up, especially lately. Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai Another Road, despite having a really unwieldy title, looks to continue that tradition. We've ...

Dragoneer's Aria (Dragoneer's Aria)

26/06/2007

Oh, to be young again. How we long for the days when we were training for graduation from Dragon School, sporting a mullet the size of Oklahoma, and still getting some of Grandmas home cooking. Such is the life of Valen Kessler, the hero of NIS latest role-player Dragoneers Aria. Its heading for your PSP sometime later this year, and we got our swashbuckling hands on a preview copy of the game and took it out for a ...

Driver '76 (Driver 76)

8/05/2007

Ubisofts first step at trying to kick-start the stalling Driver series is this PSP game that acts as prequel to Driver: Parallel Lines, and is set two years before. Just like previous games its a mix of driving and on-foot action with 27 missions divided up between six major plot strands. New for the Driver series are multi-player options that allow you to test your driving skills against others using the PSPs Wi-Fi capabilities. Theres straight street racing, a Destruction Derby challenge and ...

Duke Nukem: Critical Mass - first look (Duke Nukem: Critical Mass)

31/03/2009

At this point, we’re doubtful that developer 3D Realms will ever actually release the perpetually in-development Duke Nukem Forever. But that hasn’t stopped classic shareware developer Apogee Software (now separated from 3D Realms) from crafting a trilogy of new handheld Duke Nukem games for the DS and PSP. The first of these is Duke Nukem: Critical Mass. ...

Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony (Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony)

7/08/2006

Like it or not, the PSP is home to a mountain of ported-over console games that don't receive a lot of extra lovin' to make them appealing for the handheld crowd. The upcoming translation of PC-hit Dungeon Siege, however, seems to be a wholly new, overhead action RPG, recreated from the ground up to be a completely new experience... with a little trimming here and there to pack it all onto a tiny disc. On the PC, Siege put you in control of a custom-made character, ready to traverse deadly ...

Dungeons & Dragons Tactics - hands-on (Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics)

29/04/2007

Even though it has the word "tactics" in the title, even though it's packed with familiar-looking grid-based strategy, there's no other portable game quite like Dungeons & Dragons Tactics. Meticulous enough for the most hardcore D&D fans, Tactics squeezes in several books' worth of rulemongering tabletop knowledge while still managing to be accessible for fans who just want to roll up some barbarians and kill some monsters already. We've already talked up D&D Tactics' extensive features and ...

Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics - updated impressions (Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics)

7/11/2006

Early next year, PSP owners will get the opportunity to take D&D on the road, without having to schlep a big-ass rulebook around with them. Actually, that's half true. Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics will arrive on shelves in February, promising to be as faithful as possible to the game, going so far as cramming in about 13 rulebooks of dungeon-crawlin' and magic missile-firing goodness. Atari stopped by to demo an Alpha-build of the new strategy game. The game plays much like the table-top ...

Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics impressions (Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics)

22/08/2006

We got our first look at Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics in May, and back then its grainy caves and blocky characters looked ugly even by PSP standards. Still, the thought of a turn-based, D&D-themed strategy game piqued our interest, and after seeing the handheld game in action, it's obvious that D&D: Tactics has come a long way in the past few months. The setup of Tactics is simple: as a mortal caught up in a conflict between two powerful dragons, you'll build a party of 4-6 fantasy characters ...

Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics (Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics)

1/05/2006

This winter, fans of Dungeons & Dragons will have yet another way to avoid actually playing their favorite tabletop game. Unlike Neverwinter Nights or D&D Online, though, Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics is a no-nonsense, combat-centric adventure that lets players fight monsters the way they were meant to be fought: on a grid, in turns. It may not look too pretty from the screens we have here, but Tactics has a few interesting things going for it. For starters, players won't be shoehorned into a ...