THE VIDEO GAME PAGE

Q4 roundup: Reviews & reflections
Part of a year-end series on fourth-quarter 07 releases
The latest trends, tips and reviews

SNEAKY DUD

Little appeal; just dont bother SWAT: Target Liberty Sierra; PSP; $39.99 ESRB Rating: Teen (13+) (blood, language, violence) Oh sure, it looks like a cool commando game, with the excessively armed and appropriately Kevlar-clad guys on the cover looking all fired up and ready for action. And a game titled SWAT: Target Liberty certainly sounds like a flag-waving special-ops thriller, but the truth of the matter is, its not. Rather, its just a dreary hackneyed, dungeon-crawling , wannabe set in New York-ish environs instead of dungeons, with heroes dressed up in specialty cop regalia instead of leather helmets and chain-mail robes. Too bad.

PSPs hits, misses

By SHAUN CONLIN Cox News Service he PlayStation Portable (PSP) really hit its stride in 2007, and the last quarter of 07, that magical holiday buying season, saw many new titles come to market to capitalize on the hardwares spurious sales. Some were great, many were good and a few were neither.

PlayStation Portable

FAN FAVES
Appealing to some; others, not so much Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions Square Enix; PSP; $39.99 ESRB Rating: Teen (13+) (blood, drug reference, fantasy violence, mild suggestive themes) Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is a remake (with some new content) of the PlayStation Ones turn-based tactical-combat game (think chess, except with animated characters, swords, magic, etc.) rooted in the well-known Final Fantasy universe. If you have patience, dedication and a lot of free time on your hands, its a great game for fans of tactical strategy in general and Final Fantasy aficionados specifically For the. uninitiated, War of the Lions might be a bigger bite than you can chew, but with production values of this caliber, its also a great place to cut your teeth. SOCOM: Tactical Strike Sony; PSP; $29.99 ESRB Rating: Teen (13+) (drug reference, violence) SOCOM: Tactical Strike features a clever blend of real-time action and order-based gameplay. Though it resembles a turn-based battle game in many respects, Tactical Strike plays out Sony entirely in real time. Thus, on-the-fly and often under duress, you must queue-up movement and attack orders for each individual in your squad and, hopefully execute some elaborate, coordinated , assaults, mixing suppression fire, sniper attacks, room breaches, silent stealth kills and maybe finish off with a satisfying and totally stealth-less air strike. Its great stuff, but again, mainly for tactical-strategy gamers. Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness NIS America; PSP; $39.99 ESRB Rating: Teen (13+) (mild blood, mild fantasy violence, mild language, suggestive themes) No bones about it, the PlayStation systems are positively saturated with role-playing games (RPGs) many of them really good, too. NIS America, furthermore, has the lock on weird, anim-flavored RPGs. Originally a critically hailed PlayStation 2 title released in 2003 (itself based on a similarly hailed anim series), Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness comes now to the PSP with all the original goodness intact. Its quirky stylish and classically playable, while also , sporting some added features and enhancements that make this new hand-held incarnation arguably superior to the original console game.

BEST BUYS

AAA productions, long-term play and re-playability Atari Classics Evolved Atari; PSP; $19.99 ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+) (mild violence, simulated gambling) Retro game bundles are always good for a go on the bus or detention hall, simply for the addictive whimsy factor in that theyre easy to pick up and play filling ones downtime with , quality distraction. But Atari Classics Evolved is all that with an added bonus: Each game Battlezone, Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, Tempest, Lunar Lander, Super Breakout, Warlord, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe and Pong features both the original version, as seen in its coin-op-arcade form of old, plus updated versions with added graphical glitz. The update makes each look and play like a typical, modern casual game. Eleven games for $20 is a great deal, but there are also 40 Atari 2600 games (circa 1977) thrown in for good measure, though only in their original blocky blotchy and dotty glo, riousness and of much lesser appeal because of it. Syphon Filter: Logans Shadow Sony; PlayStation Portable; $39.99 ESRB Rating: Teen (13+) (language, violence) Gabe Logan, a sort of blue-collar James Bond, is relevant again, emerging from the moldy oldies heap of original PlayStation One games to deliver a new and impressive mix of run-ngun, hide-n- seek-n-destroy tippy, toe-tactics and flat-out commando combat on PSP. Better still, the often ill-suited control configuration of the PSP is actually used to great effect in Logans Shadow, as if the old Syphon Filter were custom-made for Sonys hand-held hardware and just had to wait for it.

Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles Konami; PSP; $29.99 ESRB Rating: Teen (13+) (blood and gore, mild suggestive themes, violence) Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles offers plenty of side-scrolling, whip-cracking, Dracula-bashing action, and it is sure to please longtime fans of the long-running Castlevania series not to mention leather-and-whip bash enthusiasts in general. Its a difficult game, but its also big and beautiful, a great time killer for anyone up for the challenge. And for devotees, its stuffed with fan-sating extras like unlockable gear, bonus content and an entire second game, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the hugely popular PSOne and Sega Saturn game (replete with dated graphics) that made the franchise such a hit in the first place.

NIS America

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate for Cox News Service. (800) 255-6734. *For release the week of January 7, 2008.