LocoRoco £34.99 (New with free T-Shirt)

After playing the demo that came on Official PSP mag, I decided that when I had the cash I'd invest in it.

Game had an offer where by if you purchased the game it came with a free T-shirt showing all the Loco's on it. Very simple but a nice bonus.

The game it's self is controlled by tilting the screen with one of the shoulder buttons and then using the other one to cause the weird space hopper type creature to jump. You use this to roll or jump your way around the maps collecting things along the way. The fruit are important to collect cos they cause you Loco to increase in size.

You can split your Loco into all the smaller Loco's you collected to allow you to get through small gaps and enter secret areas. Then recombine them to carry on. 

The game is simple once you pick up the controls but really hard to 100% as you have to collect all the fruit, weird fly things and Mui Mui which are strange little people that are hidden throughout the levels, who give you bonuses for collecting them.

It took me 10 hours to go through all the levels but I'm far from 100%-ing it.

A Bonus is that the game comes with a few extras. Including a Firmware update that takes your PSP to Version 2.80, a couple of mini games the best being a crane grabbing game (just like those you see in sea side arcades). As well as allowing you to create your own level and share it with friends. You can also share a couple of demos with friends via the Wi-Fi.

A truely original game that has well an truely earned it's 2 Brit Awards that it got this year. It also shows that the PSP can be more than just cheap ports from PS2 games.

If you want a taste of it try out the Flash demo on http://www.locoroco.com/

Yet another update on what fun I've been up to with my little baby.

Well I managed to find an unsecured network connection at a friends flat and managed to download Version 2.60 of the Firmware over it. You can also see from the picture above that I've changed my wallpaper to Jenson Button's winning race at Hungary this year. 

I've managed to start to put full length movies onto my PSP via PSP Video 9. As I got a 512 Meg Memory Stick Duo with my new SonyWalkman phone. Which also means I can take snaps on the camera then pop the Memory Stick Duo into the PSP to view them which is a real bonus as I can now use the large screen to work out which pics I want to keep.

Above you can see The quality of The Beautiful South Live on it. It looks amazing and sounds great too.

My Cousin was over from Oz earlier this year and we managed to have a mad gaming session, using the Wi-Fi and gamesharing abilties of certain games.

I also got to see what I think to the White PSP and I must say my cousins had started to turn an off-white colour. I'm glad I got a black one.

We also discovered that The Oz & UK PSP's don't have a problem playing games from each others countries, eventhough the boxes say they are region specific but they do have a problem playing UMD movies that have a region on them. They just refuse to play unless the discs are regionless. Above is the two machine communicating over Wi-Fi for a Gameshare of Burnout: Legends. Which my cousin had never played and was well impressed.

As you can see above my Cousin had bought a stand and speaker system for his PSP and I must say I was really rather impressed.

If it was a bit cumbersome and the sound was a little tinny. It also had to be plugged into mains which kinda defeats the purpose of A playstation "Portable" but it did charge the machine at the same time which was nice. The copy of Daft Punks Interstella 5555 looked and sounded really good due to it boosting the sound from the headphone socket, as did some of the UMD movies we tested. 

After I completed Metal Gear Ac!d which I bought earlier this year, I still wanted more Snake so I managed to pick up...

Metal Gear Ac!d 2  £21 used

This game improves on certain aspects of the orginal game but keeps most of the game the same other than completyely changing the graphics engine from something that looked close to PS2 version of Metal Gear Solid 2 to a more anime cell-shaded version.

I wasn't too impressed with this change to start with but I soon adjusted and rather liked it after a while. They've also improved the way you control snake which makes the game flow a little better. But it still is a turn based card game / RPG, which I wasn't really into before I started playing these games. Now I'm a complete addict as I've said before I was a huge sticker collector as a kid and this feeds my child like hunger for collecting as you have to buy new cards as you go along.

The game was quicker to complete than Ac!d but that may have been down to the helpful tutorial at the beginning or because I'd played the previous game.

The game comes with a rather strange addition it's basically a card board box with two lenses on it that allows you to play the game in 3-D by fooling you eyes. You also open up bonus 3-D movies by collecting certain cards. These cards break down into two types. The amazing 3-D versions of many of the PS2 version of MG3:Snake Eater cutscene movies that look astounding, as well as a teaser trailer for the PS3 MG4. The other movies are strange almost pervy Japanese girls posing in swim suits, a bit weird but very Metal Gear.

A rather strange game that can really eat your time. I can honestly say that I've play some mammoth sessions of it until the we small hours. Especially playing the battle arena mode which pits you against two character from previous MG games. As it was a great way to build up points for spending on cards.

It also comes with the abitlity to Link with MG3:Subsistence but I've not had a chance to try it yet. Lets hope it works unlike the MG3: Snake Eater link for Ac!d which I couldn't get to work at all.

So the PS3 has finally hit the shops in Japan and USA so it's about time that Sony provided the Firmware update required to allow the PSP to control the PS3 and they have.

www.yourpsp.com have finally done so and added Version 3.01 which adds a few extra bit including remote play (something to do with controlling the PS3, I believe), Camera, which is to do witht he Eyetoy that's coming for the PSP and I'm in no rush to purchase, Online instruction manuals (a bit strange but not a bad idea), and the ability to fast forward music tracks at various speeds.

Whilst on the site I managed to finally get a download for WipeOut: Pure. I downloaded the Omega track pack and it's very strange, addeds 4 new tracks, and skins that have been created by artists and they are alittle strange. I'll have to download the other packs as soon as I get sometime with a fast connection and spare time.

What I should note is that the site has changed and now it's like a virtual shop, it's so set up for when they can start charging for content, at the moment I'm going purely for the free stuff which is why I down loaded the LocoRoco theme music. I've also added the Halloween Demo of LocoRoc along with a demo of Ridge Racer 2?!, and the other Wipe Out downloads. I'll let you know what I think when I get them.