Even if the story was mostly utter rubbish, taking a huge dump on some of the best characters, if you let that affect your enjoyment of Metal Gear games they’d never get anywhere near these lists. Cramming console games designed for dual analogue sticks onto portable systems rarely works, and indeed here it takes a period of acclimatisation, but in no time at all I had my head around it and, by the end, I found myself hoping that some of this game’s advances will get ported back to any future MGS games. This is the first one in which I’ve been able to make use of the CQC system, for example, now that it’s been slimmed down and the need to regulate pressure on the buttons as well as direction on the stick has been removed.

It’s looking increasingly likely that 2010 could be the PSP’s last year as Sony’s primary handheld console, and despite some of its most impressive games coming out – Persona 3 Portable also deserves a mention – it’s been an ignominious end, with mediocre hardware sales and almost non-existent software ones. This, though, must go down as evidence that the system had more to offer. Aside from its segmented areas – methinks as much down to hardware limitations as it is portable game design – this could have quite easily been a PS2 game, and as that seems to have been the Holy Grail of PSP development since the beginning, it’s one of the biggest compliments I can pay to one of its last great games.

What a finale, though, both to the Metal Gear Solid series and the PSP’s viability. I’ve had rocky relationships with both, but they’ll still be missed.

Like how Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is the real main character in Star Wars, the key player in Metal Gear is not Solid Snake but his ‘father’ and frequent antagonist Big Boss. Considering Kojima’s love of pop culture the similarities in structure can’t be a coincidence – great warrior with good intentions is manipulated into evil, while his son defeats the super weapons of the true villain’s powerful organisation before reconciling with the father shortly before the father’s death – but unlike Star Wars, I actually far prefer the prequels in the Metal Gear Solid series.

Snake Eater is the first stop, which is by far my favourite game of the lot. In its Subsistence form with a competent camera, at least – it’s not a coincidence that every MGS game since then has used it – it offers some restraint in its story, a Cold War setting where the series’ brand of nuclear paranoia makes sense, features some of the best boss battles in the series, infinitely more interesting environments than the generic warehouses of Solid Snake’s adventures, and, in Naked Snake and The Boss, has the series’ two best characters. Not to mention my favourite ending in any game ever.

The previous PSP game, Portable Ops, didn’t really do it for me, but Peace Walker is built as a full-on entry in the series that would be as at home on a home console as it is on the PSP. It was originally going to be Metal Gear Solid 5, in fact, but don’t let its demotion from the main series line-up make you believe that it’s any less than those entries. It’s up there with MGS3 in my opinion, and everyone should play it.

The only real loss in its conversion to the PSP is in its controls, which, in the default setup, put camera and aiming controls on the face buttons while you move with the nub, approximating dual-stick controls as well as can be expected on the PSP. There are other options, but once I got the hang of it I found it to be very workable, and the game does a good job of compensating for any downsides with a hint of aim assist. Some of the simplification’s a boon, as well, as this has what I reckon to be the least fiddly implementation of the CQC system yet.

Konami’s done a decent job of building the game around the portable format on the whole, diving it into relatively small, replayable missions that could often do with mid-mission checkpoints but can usually be beaten within 15 minutes. I wish the same could be said for some of the later cut-scenes, but this is Metal Gear, after all…

It’s loaded with stuff, from returning clever uses of the PSP like generating ‘volunteers’ from nearby wireless networks, to the ability to play almost every mission in co-op, and a pile of ‘Extra Ops’ bite-sized missions that really are properly suited for a bus journey. Not to mention a bizarre appearance from a certain popular Capcom franchise. It’s probably about halfway through the game where it stops randomly throwing new things to do at you between missions, from collecting parts for your own Metal Gear to pitching your accrued forces into Advance Wars-style battles for more R&D funds to help you out in the single-player missions. If there’s one thing that you can’t criticise Kojima for, it’s not cramming prodigious amounts of content into his games.

Gorgeous, unrestrained in both its scope and storytelling, deeply layered, and highly replayable – this is every inch a Metal Gear Solid game. Despite my love/hate relationship with MGS, which has been pushed more to the positive side with more recent games, this is a franchise that I’ll be disappointed to see ending. But since MGS4 was definitely the last and we’ll soon have second new game in the series beyond that point, it’s not something that I’m overly worried about yet.

On one hand, Microsoft’s apparently annual Summer of Arcade has delivered one of the highest concentrations of great downloadable games that I can remember, not to mention a solid contender for the best downloadable yet. I’ll get to them in a moment, because the enthusiasm is tempered by the complete dropping of the ball that has been its attempt at taking a big leap forward and digitally distributing full retail games, Games on Demand. This is undoubtedly testing the water for where things go with the next Xbox – personally, my money’s on a middle ground where all games are available both on disc and on demand – but so much has been piled against it that it’s impossible to see it being a success on any level.

Funny how it’s always Microsoft that can enthral and infuriate at the same time, isn’t it?

The fundamentals, bar one big one, are just fine for Games on Demand, with Microsoft even taking a step in the right direction by letting us pay for the games using actual money. It all works as it should, technically speaking, and on a fast connection you can be playing Oblivion or Call of Duty 2 in an hour. The problem, quite obviously, is that they want £19.99 for all those games; they’re £14.99 and £12.71 respectively from Game at the moment. I’m not desperate enough to play four-year-old games that I can’t wait a couple of days for them to be delivered.

The problem, I have to suspect, is that there’s some pressure from retailers not to make downloadable games too competitive on price. And by ‘pressure’, I mean ‘don’t make your downloads cheaper than us or we won’t stock your stuff’. Consoles are traditionally kept affordable because retailers accept poor margins on hardware in exchange for high markups on software and accessories, and without that opportunity to make some money back they’re not going to be happy. Why else do you think the PSP Go, which gives you no reason to visit a retail store once you’ve bought it, is selling for such a ridiculous price? It wasn’t all Sony’s idea, that’s for sure.

Who knows? Maybe we’re just not ready yet, technically or psychologically. There’s been a clear but slow ramping up in what constitutes a downloadable game that has already taken us from Geometry Wars to Shadow Complex, so maybe that’s how it’s going to happen. Even the most anti-downloads gamer thinks nothing of downloading the ‘little’ games, and before you know it you’re downloading Fallout 4 and Gran Turismo 6…

Final Fantasy VII is a perennially popular game, but one that is almost as fashionable to hate. It’s true that it has its flaws and probably isn’t even the best Final Fantasy game, let alone the best RPG ever made, and it’s probably equally true that the reason for its popularity is because it was many players’ first RPG. But even so, there aren’t many games that have spawned a CGI feature film, an anime short film, several novellas and four spin-off games, and I think the only Final Fantasy that would be more anticipated than XIII would be the much-rumoured FFVII remake. It really is a franchise in its own right.

Anyway, it was the latest chapter in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core, that originally got me interested in revisiting this world. The PSP game is very impressive, but I got the feeling that some things were going over my head, given that I’d never finished Final Fantasy VII. I hadn’t finished a Final Fantasy game full stop, with a save at the end of Final Fantasy IV Advance being the closest I’ve got. Yes, I’m ashamed.

Back when it came out I didn’t have a PlayStation and so had little opportunity to play it – I don’t think I even got out of Midgar around release – and my most successful attempt so far was almost three years ago, when I bought a new NTSC copy and actually made it to disc 2 (OMG Aeris dies!!!1) before petering out somewhere on Gaea’s Cliff, about 19 hours in. With custom firmware PSPs supporting multi-disc PS1 games, I worked out how to get my original PS1 save ported to the PSP – it involves a chipped PS2 and some homebrew voodoo -and, after familiarising myself with the abilities that I’d left on the characters, I powered on through the previous sticking point.

What usually happens with JPRGs is that I enjoy myself up to a point until I find myself underlevelled and give up, and as I was determined that this wouldn’t happen this time, I found out the levelling hotspots and spent several hours grinding and finding my party’s ultimate weapons and final limit breaks. Cloud and Cid with their ultimate weapons can now cause up to 9,999 damage with regular attacks, and my high-level materia and summons meant that I could take down Diamond Weapon and Ultimate Weapon in four turns each. These are supposed to be reasonably challenging bosses ;)

In short, by the time I reached the endgame my levels were in the low 70s, with most guides recommending 60-65 to make it comfortably possible, and after putting it off for a few months I was able to finish the final dungeon without too much trouble.

Now allow me to stop waving my virtual genitals around for long enough to say how good this game really is. As I said, yes, it’s flawed – the ‘see what sticks’ mentality with the innumerable mini-games, the way that the materia system effectively does away with specialisation, the poor English translation – “This guy are sick”, “Off course!”, etc – and the occasionally poor storytelling are the worst offenders - but it’s still one of my favourite RPGs.

I like the characters and, if you’re willing to read into the parts of the story that the game never tells you – how many people are actually aware that it wasn’t Sephiroth himself who killed Aeris? – it has a remarkably well-developed and interesting universe. Final Fantasy IV-VI are superb games, but which Final Fantasy world do you remember most? Apart from maybe Kefka, is there a more memorable villain than Sephiroth? And between those two, I don’t think there’s any contest over who wins in terms of depth of character and motivations – just being a bit mad and megalomaniacal doesn’t really cut it. And do any other RPGs have moments as memorable as scenes like Aeris’s death or Sephiroth’s razing of Nibelheim?

It’s hard to be surprised by Final Fantasy VII because even if you haven’t finished it, its great moments have been picked apart so much that it’s become the closest thing that gaming has to Star Wars, but that’s not to say that it’s not nice to have joined the club and actually finished a Final Fantasy – this may even be my first finished JRPG, embarrassingly. For its flaws it does have a good story, it does have some of the best characters in the series, and it does deserve at least some of the popularity that it still has. I also found that it’s a brilliant game to play on the move, so if Square has any sense it’ll bring it to the PSP legitimately and stop those who don’t play theirs in less legally nebulous circumstances from a good opportunity to re-experience it.

That or finally do that PS3 remake, of course…

I’ve already blogged about the charming Patapon and phenomenal(ly short) God of War, and I’m sure you’re familiar with those recent gems. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is out in the States and looks insanely good for a PSP game; it takes a while to get going and progress from being a fairly monotonous button masher (never thought I’d accuse a Final Fantasy game of being that) to something unique and extremely playable, slightly reminiscent of the real-time-but-not-quite combat of Final Fantasy XII. The strange things that Square’s been doing with this series makes me extremely curious – not to mention anxious – about what FFXIII will do.

Technically it’s a 2007 release, but I’ve also been playing Silent Hill Origins, which is a technically impressive and extremely solid entry to the series, that anyone worried about how a Western development team will handle Silent Hill V should take a good look at. That handful of games, together with the always-excellent homebrew community (check out the brilliant Rorschach to see what people can do), have ensured that the PSP has been my most played machine for the first few months of the year.

Just like the Wii is never going to be in any danger of being caught by the PS3, the DS and PSP are barely really in competition in that respect. But while the Nintendo machines have had a handful of recent good games – Smash Bros. on the Wii; Apollo Justice and Professor Layton on the DS – the Sony machines have shined this year. Nintendo really doesn’t have much confirmed beyond Mario Kart, while we all know about the PS3′s 2008 lineup and the PSP, while perhaps not having much of its own beyond Crisis Core, will profit from association. Bionic Commando Rearmed, for example, is confirmed to be playable on the PSP via Remote Play.

It may be that tepid software sales and rampant piracy has a detrimental effect on the PSP’s future as an independent system, and it’s been accused of being little more than a PS2 port machine in the past (the ironic thing being that several high profile PSP games have now been ported back to PS2), but with any luck its recent software successes will keep the fires burning. Whether as a games machine, a PS3 accessory, or a portable media player (watching films and TV shows on it is great, if occasionally unflattering to the screen’s poor refresh rate), the PSP has been showing itself as a late bloomer.

God, this year’s Sony praise is making me feel a bit sick. I’ll be sure to compensate once Ninja Gaiden 2 is out.

It’s so pretty that I’m just going to drop in another screenshot here…

Epic temples with nice lighting are all well and good, of course, but what about enemies? Here you go…

And it wouldn’t be God of War without the ludicrous sex scene that mysteriously never gets debated on Fox News. I’ll be kind to the working folks and leave that one as a text link.

Wowee. And those don’t even show the most epic areas, coming as they do from within the first hour of the game. In other words, the first 25% of the campaign. There lies the major problem with this game.

Chains of Olympus is really short – less than five hours the first time through – and while it’s all extremely high quality stuff and I’m already on my second playthrough (admittedly not entirely from choice, given that the save from the promo copy I was playing for the last week doesn’t carry over to my retail copy), it’s getting slightly annoying when big games all turning out to be slightly slim on the content front. Halo 3, Uncharted, Gears, Heavenly Sword, this…all recent high profile games which are lucky to hit eight hours, and yet still cost £50.

Still, I’ve always said that I’d prefer a short but great game to an artificially extended and average game, and I’m sticking by that. Chains of Olympus is a proper God of War game – spectacular graphics, a rollicking rollercoaster ride – and I still enjoy them despite the flaws. The games are a guilty pleasure, like watching Independence Day on Blu-ray when I have 2001: A Space Odyssey here, and five hours of great spectacle on a handheld is something to dip into, almost short enough to blast through in one sitting on a long plane or train journey.

What with it being a PSP game, I don’t expect this game to do particularly well, but if you’re one of those people who’s fallen off the PSP wagon and hasn’t bought a game in months, this one is well worth a look. With Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII due this month as well, it might even be worth charging up the thing again.

It’s been quite a while since my last PSP game, as is probably the case with most people, so it looks like the game to take the cherry of my recently purchased slim PSP will be Patapon. It’s been mooted as a successor to LocoRoco, sharing as it does a developer and a vaguely similar art style, and, as the Wikipedia entry puts it, combines gameplay elements from “music and rhythm games, real-time tactics and God games”. A clear example of a peanut butter and chocolate combination, if I ever saw one.

It also helps that it’s being released as a budget title, and you can get it from Video Games Plus for £12.49 plus postage (even cheaper if your importer of choice is in the US), which I think is an excellent way to sell a niche title that will undoubtedly get great reviews.

Anyway, I’ve been plugging away with the English-language demo of the game. There’s a nigh impenetrable version available through a PS3 on the Japanese PSN store, but for US preorderers and those with a more nebulous moral compass (and/or custom firmware on their PSP), there’s an English-language demo “out there”. Even if you’re buying the game, finishing the fairly lengthy demo is worth the effort as it unlocks an exclusive weapon in the full game. Have at it.

So I was plugging away at it in the wee hours, mostly with a smile on my face because I enjoy being told what an excellent god I am (who wouldn’t?), when I found myself hitting the wall that has scuppered me in everything from Dance Dance Revolution to the later stages of Guitar Hero: I have no sense of rhythm whatsoever. I can just about keep my tribesmen – who, I’ve noticed, occasionally sound just like the Ro-Bear Berbils from ThunderCats – marching, bar the occasional scolding for doing it too fast or too slow, and can usually at least get them into a frenzy, but task me with changing to another beat without losing time and I’m like a deer in headlights.

Surely I can’t be the only one with this problem? It’s like I was born without a certain part of the brain, and the fact that I enjoy this kind of game – this one particularly so – just makes it all that much harder. I conquered games like Samba De Amigo and Guitar Hero II (on normal difficulty, at least) almost by force, just trying the same sequences again and again until muscle memory kicks in, while people that I know – damn you, Barney! – can seemingly just waltz in and do it.

It won’t stop me playing Patapon, since Ouendan showed how little my inability to play rhythm games can damage my ability to enjoy them, but surely if it’s a learned skill I would have picked it up at some point between PaRappa in 1997 and now?

• Jeanne d’Arc (PSP) – Level-5′s strategy RPG arrived with almost no hype and, therefore unsurprisingly, didn’t exactly set the world alight. What was the last PSP game that did? Nonetheless, it’s as gorgeous as Dragon Quest VIII with even better production values – check out the fully animated and voiced anime scenes – and is portable, which for me makes an RPG infinitely more playable. It’s also not as hardcore as many SRPGs tend to be, so virgins to the genre shouldn’t be afraid of trying it out.

• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS) – As the game in this list that came closest to making the top ten, I shouldn’t need to tell you what’s good about Phantom Hourglass. It’s Zelda. You’ve played it. This one just gets extra credit for mapping workable touch screen controls to a traditional game style. As with Twilight Princess, I found myself enjoying the unique controls rather than simply tolerating them.

• Mass Effect (360) – Despite suffering from many of the issues of Knights of the Old Republic minus such an immediately appealing world (though this one is certainly far better than most sci-fi RPGs), Mass Effect is an enthralling game that will become a huge time sink if you let it. Both technically stunning (the facial animation) and disappointing (the frame rate), it’s still a lesson in how to do a sci-fi adventure. Let’s hope that it doesn’t mark Bioware’s descent into the same hole that swallowed Westwood and Bullfrog.

• Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3) – I’m cheating somewhat here, given that I’ve played Sigma for little more than a couple of hours. This is really a chance to honour Ninja Gaiden in general, a game that I played to a meaningful extent for the first time this year and thought was absolutely fantastic. Sigma looks better and has more content, and is therefore just as easy to recommend. Play any version (the original and Black both work perfectly on a 360) in time for the sequel later in 2008.

• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (360/DS/PSP) – If Viva Piñata was 2006′s best game that nobody played, surely Puzzle Quest is 2007′s. Yes, at its heart it’s yet another Bejeweled clone, and yes, the AI can be frustratingly prescient, chaining massive combos using off-screen gems that no-one could know about without cheating. But even so, Bejeweled is an addictive and fun game without a well-developed RPG component. Since its appearance on XBLA there can be few people without access to this gem. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

• Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3) – While it’s consistently overrated in certain camps, Resistance was a solid shooter with an excellent suite of multiplayer modes, and deserves mention for the extensive support post-release. Insomniac’s feature-laden patches have brought everything from balance tweaks to a screenshot function and Dual Shock 3 support, even while they’ve brought another game to market and have undoubtedly started work on the sequel. Other developers could learn from the example.

• Super Stardust HD (PS3) – In the flood of twin-stick shooters that have followed Geometry Wars, this is arguably the best. While I felt it slightly overcomplicated, it gave the genre a modern sheen that Geometry Wars had lacked, coupling mightily impressive graphics with a superb soundtrack. With more content to come and the recent patch bringing more features to the table, this is an overlooked gem.

Download

I don’t think it’s half bad for a first attempt, although perhaps I could have gone for a bit more consistency with the logos I used to mark options. And it is, of course, yet more proof that I need something more productive to do with my time.

Feedback is welcome.

I downloaded a rather impressive theme pack and trawled some forums for the best, as well as a couple that are a bit rubbish really but I found funny. Here are some of my favourites, both official and fan-made:

Cookie (official)

Doom

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

Foxhound/Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

iPhone

Ken Kutaragi

Kingdom Hearts

LocoRoco

Lumines

Neon

Puyo Puyo

Super Mario World

Wipeout Pulse (official)

I suspect that at least two of those ‘unofficial’ ones are secretly leaked from within Sony. Can you guess which ones?