Monsters Incorporated
PixelJunk Monsters is coming to the PSP, and it's even more awesome than you think.
Published: April 29, 2009
PixelJunk Monsters first hit the PlayStation Store all the way back at the start of 2008, and it speaks volumes toward developer Q-Games' talents that it's still the de facto tower defense game on the PS3 despite worthy competition from slightly different takes like Comet Crash and Savage Moon. We've always felt that the series could be shrunk down to fit on the PSP without losing much -- if anything -- along the way, but what surprised us as we finally got a chance to go hands-on with PixelJunk Monsters PSP was that it was actually gaining something.
That something is, in fact, an entire new chunk of levels housed on Gati Gati Island. This is in addition, mind, to the two islands found in the original PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Monsters: Encore, so it's in effect another 1/3 of the game along with all the other stuff you've already played. Riding along are a handful of new towers, including an Interest Tower that pays out more with each round, so dropping some early will help fill your coffers more toward the end of a map, a Trap Tower that works in pairs to hold enemies in place with a beam and a Lightning Tower that can attack all enemies on the screen. Yum.
With the smaller PSP screen (but the same aspect ratio), it's understandable that Q-Games opted to map a zoom-out function to the L Button on the PSP (the R button will toggle on/off the little HP meters for enemies and your towers' upgrade meters), but otherwise the game is the same with one very interesting extra bit: Tum Tum Island, which takes any five-character combination of letters, numbers and special characters and seems to randomly generate an island for you -- that or it modifies an existing one in some small ways; we noticed a few familiar layouts with more mountainous elements to block traversal, for instance.
Though our time with the game was rather short, we were still impressed by just how perfectly the experience carries over. In fact, it's so good that we were already mentally blocking out a few hour-long chunks of time to tackle the game all over again.
That something is, in fact, an entire new chunk of levels housed on Gati Gati Island. This is in addition, mind, to the two islands found in the original PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Monsters: Encore, so it's in effect another 1/3 of the game along with all the other stuff you've already played. Riding along are a handful of new towers, including an Interest Tower that pays out more with each round, so dropping some early will help fill your coffers more toward the end of a map, a Trap Tower that works in pairs to hold enemies in place with a beam and a Lightning Tower that can attack all enemies on the screen. Yum.
With the smaller PSP screen (but the same aspect ratio), it's understandable that Q-Games opted to map a zoom-out function to the L Button on the PSP (the R button will toggle on/off the little HP meters for enemies and your towers' upgrade meters), but otherwise the game is the same with one very interesting extra bit: Tum Tum Island, which takes any five-character combination of letters, numbers and special characters and seems to randomly generate an island for you -- that or it modifies an existing one in some small ways; we noticed a few familiar layouts with more mountainous elements to block traversal, for instance.
Though our time with the game was rather short, we were still impressed by just how perfectly the experience carries over. In fact, it's so good that we were already mentally blocking out a few hour-long chunks of time to tackle the game all over again.
