• 21Jul 10

  The Sudden Push in Handheld Excellence

  Portable games have always been a subpar species to it's older, much attractive brother, the console. The portable device was there to suit a certain need, portable gaming. You would rarely spend time playing the portable device if you had the opportunity to play a console and when you were playing a portable device, at least for me, I wished I was playing a console due to the lacking features of the portable game. As someone who has always owned portable consoles (PSP and DS primarily) I wasn't the most avid of players. But, it's not hard to see that as of about a year or two ago, the calibre of portable games has been on the steady incline. For me, the first big portable game that made me start paying attention to the DS (at the time) was "The World Ends With You." Here was this game that had a rich storyline, some amazing music, and addictive gameplay, all bundled up into one small package. I was shocked. Never before have I been so enthralled by a handheld gaming system. I'm sure there were plenty more before it, but this was the first for me. From this point on, I began paying a lot more attention to the genre.

  It was around this time where I first noticed that I would spend an evening playing a handheld gaming device over a console, even though I was in the same recliner I used to play my consoles. Games like GTA: Chinatown Wars, Monster Hunter, Final Fantasy Crisis Core and plenty of others began to take up much of my time. The games weren't the standard quick play in and out devices they used to be, but were now sprawling stories with intricate gameplay with console length playtimes. One could be excused for being blown away by the quality of a handheld game, especially if they were used to the Tetris of yesteryears.

  The two most recent games I'm drawing attention to are Dragon Quest 9 and Persona 3 Portable. Yes, one of those is a port, but it's a huge game and extremely well put together on the mobile platform. With games like Valkyria Chronicles around the corner for the PSP, a new God of War, and a completely new 3D system from Nintendo, the future looks incredibly bright for the handheld market.

  So, who else is digging the sudden change in quality of handheld games. Or maybe you feel they have always been this way? Let me know what you think and if you have any suggesstions of your favorite games.

  • Posted Jul 21, 2010 11:29 am GMT
  • Category: Games
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