PSP Month: Playstation Network Collection: Power Pack

Game: Playstation Network Collection: Power Pack
Console: Sony Playstation Portable
Developer: Sony
Release Date: 24th October 2008

The PSN Collection: Power Pack is a three game compilation of Playstation Network games released for the Playstation Portable and features Beats, flOw and Syphon Filter: Combat Ops. I'll be reviewing this as a collection since the individual games are mostly gimmicky or short. It's an interesting choice of titles too; a rhythm game, a relaxed indie "life simulation" and a shooter, but maybe they were going for variety?

Beats

As a fan of rhythm games, I was pretty sure I'd like Beats. It allows players to import music from their Memory Stick Pro Duo and creates beatmaps based on the pulse for players to tap along with. The songs which come as standard with Beats are all pretty lifeless and don't show the game off in the best possible light, but if you're a fan of energetic electronic music then you're in luck. I chose to import The Prodigy's song "Wild Frontier" and finally I could feel the beatmap working alongside the song to create steps in time with the beat.

The play area has 3 "landing pads" for steps, and players press the corresponding button when the symbol is in the centre of the landing pad. In addition to this, when a step is performed on the left or right pad, the d-pad must be held in the corresponding direction to register the step. This isn't too complex, but anyone who's played regular rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution or Rhythm Heaven will likely find themselves forgetting to press left and right every once in a while.

Graphically the game has a basic interface, but a large choice of backgrounds and themes against which to play. It's an interesting experience and some songs work better than others; it's a matter of luck really. It'd be tough to listen to an album this way, but I can't see myself wanting to play more than 5 songs in a row in the Beats format. 

Overall it's not bad for a bitesize rhythm game, and the near infinite choice for songs is nice though the game will only allow 127 to be accessed at once. The powerup bar and subsequent Fever mode are a nice touch also, but I feel like Beats is missing a real unique selling point which distinguishes it from other beatmap based rhythm games like Audiosurf and Dance Factory.

Score: 6/10

flOw

flOw is a very simple game with deep ocean style visuals where players control a creature and "eat" other creatures to become larger and more detailed. Each screen is pretty small, but players can move up and down to dive deeper and find new things to eat and merge with. Every now and then it's possible to lose some of your creature, but this isn't a particularly competitive game and it's easy to get any progress back.

There's very little to do in flOw aside from swimming around and consuming everything in sight. While it might be fun to watch your creature grow for a minute or two, when there's literally nothing else to do in the entire game, it can get old quickly. As beautiful as the concept and execution is, when there's not a lot of gameplay it can be difficult to enjoy a game.

Overall flOw is mind-numbingly boring, and should only be played as a bedtime wind-down. Apparently the game can save your "progress" but there's no end goal, and nothing to achieve so it seems pretty pointless to me. As relaxing as this type of game is, it needs to bring a little more to the party to compete with any of the other titles on the PSP.

Score: 3/10

Syphon Filter: Combat Ops

Perhaps the most disappointing of the three games in terms of content, Syphon Filter: Combat Ops is essentially a map designer add-on for Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow, allowing players to create and share their own multiplayer maps. Since my PSP has some connectivity issues with my Wi-Fi, I wasn't able to verify whether you're able to play these maps, but I doubt there'd be anyone online to play with even if I had been able to.

Graphically it looks okay, and fans of Syphon Filter might have a little fun designing some maps, but it's a very poor inclusion on a multi-game collection which purports to be a "power" pack of video games.

Score: 1/10

Overall

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this Playstation Network collection was; if it was to collect together the best that PSN had to offer, at least from Sony's game selection then why are there only three games, and why are they all such average or boring games? There's variety in the type of games included but I can't see anyone truly enjoying this UMD for very long at all. With other collections like EA Replay, Gradius Collection, Metal Slug,  Power Stone, Namco and more on the PSP this is a very weak showing.

Rating: 30/100
Grade: E