I agree in principle, but in reality I think the DS has *far* more awful 'why did they do it in 3D?' games. Final Fantasy III (I can her the fanbois howling already) is one of them. Great game layout, design, levels, story, etc. - HORRENDOUS visuals. I mean OW with the bleeding eyes. It actually lowers my enjoyment of the game and actually gives a feeling of character movement being awkward (even if they aren't)

At least the PSP has the horsepower to do 3D *right* as long as devs put a modicum of effort into it. Games like Daxter and GnG look fantastic.

That said, some PS2 games exceed the PSP format in terms of detail on the small screen or raw 3D power. As much as I admire the GTA games, these are, perhaps, better left to the consoles. Same with the DS - games like Burnout (unlike the PSP edition) shouldn't even be attempted.

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"Same with Metal Gear. Portable Ops has control issues. Why not create a 2D game, or a top down game, ala the Game Boy Color Metal Gear? Go retro. People would still purchase it.""

MGS:PO has control issues only if you SUCK.
You get used to the controls after what, a minute?
No, I wouldn't have bought it if it was 2D overhead.

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I wouldn't have bought MGO:PO if it was the old style, top down view. Your view would be extremely limited. Hs the guy ever played the original games?

The control schemes on many PSP games fail because developers want to do too much, and end up overcomplicating the control's. Daxter was good and simple, and Syphon Filter did well for not having a second analog stick.

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Pixelator, yer nuts. Within the limitations of the DS, FFIII looks great. Compare it to the NES original or any FF through VI and it's obvious that 3D visualization was used to very good advantage. I'd have been far more interested in new handheld versions of FF V and VI if they got similar treatment.

As it is, FFIII raises some high hope for what can be done on the DS with a big budget project. There are far better examples of 3D heavy games, especially some N64 third party ports like Rayman, that were badly done and ended up being far abstract in parts for the player to know what was happening. But then, that was a common complaint for N64 and PS1 games.

The reall strength of FFIII DS is that the developers sought a balance between the original and modern visualization approaches. The same could easily be done on the PSP with far better resolution and detail. Much of the PSP RPGs to date have been ports from the PS1 dating so far back the PS1 guys were still treating it as a more powerful SNES. If Square were to remake rather than port FFVII to the PSP, I'm confident it would blow away the original and become a standard against which other PSP games are measured.

The real problem is whether the budget for such a project can be justifed for the PSP.

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Tight controls are the key. Using the face buttons for looking around works well if there's a good target lock system.

Just have analogue nub= move, face buttons= left, right, up, down, and Down arrow D-pad= target lock or jump. THAT's the magic combination! There it is, how hard is that for the devs to figure out?

Also, all games should have user-configurable buttons like Lumines II & Ace Combat X do.

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"I wouldn't have bought MGO:PO if it was the old style, top down view. Your view would be extremely limited. Hs the guy ever played the original games?"

Really? I would have to disagree. I think I would have enjoyed MPO even more if it had its old camera angles. God of War is a perfect example of "fixed camera" done right. I could say the same to Monster Hunter Freedom, if they made it simpler for the PSP, that would the game way more fun too.

I think its awesome that favorite games of all time, God Of War and Resident Evil 4 (on Gamecube), would work perfectly on the PSP. Just fine tune the controls on the PSP and make them different like Instead of Resident Evil, make it Dino Crisis. Hope your listing Capcom ;).

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FPS games on the PSP aren't that different from the control scheme from the N64... w/ it's c button collection. I think that some games probably are better off in a 2d form and castlevania is one of them.. they've tried it about 3 times and haven't been able to really do good on the 3d versions, but it's never been a hardware issues, it was just a development issue.

I do think that the entire gaming world needs more 2d games (w/ 3d graphics on occassion) You can really get a lot of beauty out of a 2d game... I just think about how much artwork and animation went into Street Fighter 3rd strike..

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