PSP

Made The Playoffs, But Lost In The First Round

HIGH Breaking through a six man gang tackle to rush for a touchdown.

LOW Having to play the fight for the fumble mini-game when I was the only one near the ball when I fell on it.

WTF Enough with the measuring, it's clearly a first down.

I finally got around to downloading my first title direct-to-PSP. Considering how smoothly it went, I'd have to say that Sony was completely smoking drugs when they decided to come up with the Go. Although I performed the process on one of the original UMD-compatible models, if it's even remotely analogous, then their new download-only handheld is sunk before it's even started.

Electronic Arts' been cool enough to share another new Developer Diary for their forthcoming action game Dante's Inferno. This one is entitled "Anger", and as you might have guessed, it's all about how Dante will bring the pain to Hell's minions.

I'll let the clip speak for itself, but the crew behind the game spends roughly five minutes talking about Dante's Death Scythe melee weapon, how they came to choose it over a more traditional sword, and the benefits of the Cross magic combat system. Interspersed with that is a lot of gameplay footage to whet your appetite.

With Demon's Souls nearing release, it's all things Atlus! We welcome Atlus USA's Manager of PR Aram Jabbari to the show. Localization strategies, digital distribution, aggregate sites, and much more are covered, and we take our best shot at getting you some Persona scoop! The back half of the show brings some of the most in-depth Demon's Souls discussion around. Featuring Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, and Tim "Tim Spaeth" Spaeth.

Download: Right click here and select "Save Target As..."
Subscribe: iTunes | RSS
Read: Transcript

Topic and Game References:

• Atlus
• Shin Megami Tensei series
• Trauma Center series
• King's Field series
• Cubivore
• Demon's Souls Review

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

A while ago, I complained about demos that failed to impress, and wondered why it seemed so difficult for developers to accomplish what appears to be a fairly straightforward task.

At the end of the piece, I invited developers to write in and school me if I was off-base, and one actually did. Talented game dude and all-around good guy Andrew Rubino dropped me a line not too long after my blog ran, and this is what he had to say:

In summary, making a demo is harder than it seems, especially for some games. A demo for something like Gears of War would be relatively easy – have a couple combats and the player walks away with a good understanding of what the game is about. But a demo for something like Batman is harder, (something that I can see now that I’ve played the full game, which is awesome, btw). (More after the break)

Bring your demons to Show-and-Tell

HIGH The new updates (both in terms of gameplay and aesthetics) are amazing.

LOW The difficulty level can be brutal.

WTF Japanese teenagers are surprisingly nonchalant about interacting with the supernatural.