Coded Arms: FPS on the PSP

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Yeah! PSP 411 has a link to a Japanese gaming site which has a new high-quality video of Coded Arms, the first person shooter for the PSP which is launching June 28th. I've written about it before, but I'm mentioning it again because it looks gooooooood. It's got sort of a Half-life meets The Matrix theme going, and even with the video blown up to full-screen it looks really nice.

The coolest thing is the four person death match, via WiFi (as shown in the 2nd video). A few weeks ago, Diego, Mike, Martin and I spent a long time in a dark room playing Halo. That was fun, but it was sort of an effort to get us all in the right place with the right equipment to play. It'd be sooo much cooler to be able to start up a match completely ad-hoc: "Hey, we're having a barbecue this weekend, don't forget your PSP!" :-)

I hope the game is as good as it looks. Only playing it will really tell you whether it works or not. Maybe the PSP's controllers are too limited (only one analog stick), maybe the levels sorta suck, maybe the realities of the wireless deathmatch aren't as good as it seems (lag times, skipping, etc.), maybe the screen - as big as it is on the PSP - is just too small for a decent FPS experience. Lots of questions... Also, it sorta sucks there's no online play - you can only deathmatch against other PSPers in the same room.

Well, even if *all* of that is true, we have to remember a few things: First, this is just the first generation of games for the PSP, the game designers are still trying to figure out how it works best. Secondly, the PSP is running at about half-speed right now because of battery concerns. Future OS updates are going to free up the rest of the processing power and we're going to have more power, and hopefully better games that way as well. (Though, as my obsession with Mario shows you, power's not everything...

:-)

-Russ

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