Now Playing - "Its a Trap!"

Thought I'd post up another Now Playing before the rest of the week flies away from me. I've mostly been putting more time into Riviera: The Promised Land on the PSP and starting to realise that I'm liking some aspects of it, but at times a bit frustrated by other minor things. The need for TP (I forget what it stands for) throughout the stages gets on my nerves at times. You basically get TP as a reward for doing well in battles (based on a ranking of C, B, A or S) So if you don't do well in battles, you dont get much of a reward in TP and this usually means you miss out chests (as you cant open them without) and other things in Look Mode. Its not too much of a problem missing out on items as the inventory can't hold very many at a time, but I still like to not miss too many things (especially when its because of quite an awkward system.) I'm on chapter 4 now (I think about halfway through) and I'm quite liking what I'm seeing of this game so far.

Also, the chests in this game...pretty much every single one has a trap in it, and fair enough you get a chance to evade it by doing timed button commands but if you fail, your characters get a 10% or so penalty to their HP for the next battle, which kinda annoys me at times especially when I don't get the item in the chest. That has caused much reloading...

Kind of on a whim, but because I've wanted to play this for a while now, I bid on Shadow of the Colossus on Ebay and picked it up for a bit cheaper than it usually is. So it arrived today and I've put just under an hour into it. (Not sure if that counts all the times I died on the first colossus...) It looks gorgeous for quite an old PS2 game, sure there are some jaggy and poor textures but the overall feel of the game, it really is quite epic. Makes your guy feel tiny and alone. 

My only real gripe so far is that some of the controls and camera angle really coulda been better. The camera is determined to kill me it seems. It also took me a long time to actually figure out what to do against the first colossus, its good that it isn't too obvious I think. 

I don't particularly like it in games when walls that can be destroyed are clearly different and stand out (like in Red Faction) or different textures give some kind of clue as to where I should be aiming. In this, so far at least it seems pretty well textured and rendered. Except for the occasional jaggy. 

Although I still need to play more, I've only played an hour or so.