10 Overlooked PSP Games Worth Playing

Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice

In Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, you play a police officer with a rather unusual way of catching criminals. He chases down their car, leaps onto it while both vehicles are moving, and starts dealing with the passengers. After that, you can take the wheel yourself and continue the chase in their car.

And you keep jumping between vehicles all the time. Has your car been shot to pieces? Try moving to the one next to you. Need to hijack the criminals’ vehicle? Pull alongside and jump. All of this happens at high speed, right in the middle of traffic.

The developers were clearly not shy about throwing ridiculous ideas into the game. There are shootouts from helicopters and huge vehicles you have to move across during battles. It gets as far as tanks and fighting on the wing of an airplane. The local gangs are so heavily armed that they could almost count as private armies.

You do not get to roam freely around the city like in GTA, though. The game is built around separate missions, with chases alternating with shootouts and other set pieces. The result is a fast, energetic action game about a cop for whom simply shooting out of a car window is obviously not enough.

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure

In Gurumin, a girl named Parin comes to live with her grandfather in a mining town. There are no other children there, but she discovers an entire village of friendly monsters nearby. Parin befriends them, but before long the village is attacked by Phantoms, who kidnap her new friends.

To save them, she pulls a legendary drill out of a stone. In a mining town, apparently even legendary weapons have to match the local trade.

From there, it turns into a 3D action RPG with platforming, combat, secrets, and puzzles. The drill can be used to hit enemies and smash obstacles. Later you get fire, ice, and electric attachments that are useful both in combat and for solving puzzles on the levels.

The equipment is worth a look too. Different hats and accessories provide very specific advantages. Goggles protect you from water, a gas mask from gas, and cat ears help you find treasure. In other words, you have to choose what to wear based on where you are going.

The graphics are bright, the characters are charming, and the world itself feels pretty cheerful. The bosses can still be a handful, though. On top of that, taking hits reduces the drill’s power, so a bad fight can become even harder: the enemies keep attacking while your weapon gets weaker and weaker.

Half-Minute Hero

In Half-Minute Hero, a villain is going to destroy the world in thirty seconds. In that time, you need to level up your hero, buy equipment, reach the castle, and defeat the villain himself. Everything that would normally take hours in an RPG is squeezed into half a minute here.

Battles happen automatically and very quickly. The hero runs into an enemy, they beat on each other for a moment, and then you either keep going or realize you came here too early. There is no time for a long grind, but rushing straight to the boss is usually a bad idea too.

Fortunately, there is a Time Goddess who can rewind the clock and give you another thirty seconds to save the world. The catch is that you have to pay her. And every time you ask, she wants more money. So you need cash both for new weapons and simply to keep the world alive long enough to save it.

The maps and objectives change from stage to stage, so you cannot just repeat one successful route. The PSP version also has separate modes starring other characters: a princess with a crossbow, a monster lord, and a knight protecting a sage. They have their own rules and even shift into different genres. So the developers did not stop at making one speed-run RPG.

Crush

In Crush, the protagonist suffers from insomnia and agrees to undergo treatment with a strange machine. As a result, he ends up inside his own mind, where he has to climb across platforms, collect marbles, and deal with whatever is keeping him from sleeping.

The most interesting mechanic is the ability to turn a 3D level into a 2D one. Say there is a huge gap between two platforms. You rotate the camera until the platforms line up next to each other on the screen, then “crush” the world flat. The gap disappears, and you can simply walk across.

When you return to 3D, the hero remains on the other side. You have to use these switches to find your way through the entire level. The viewing angle matters: from one side you may see a passage, while from another the same space becomes a solid wall.

Visually, the game is pretty strange. The protagonist wanders around in a bathrobe, surrounded by odd structures, cockroaches, and fragments of memories. The insomnia treatment looks questionable, but it makes a good setting for a puzzle game. You keep rotating the camera and trying to “crush” the level from different directions. Two platforms may be far apart in 3D but look adjacent from the right angle. Flatten the level into 2D, and suddenly you can walk between them.

OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast

OutRun 2006 is a gorgeous arcade racer full of Ferraris, long drifts, and roads that constantly split in different directions. You weave through regular traffic, race to reach the next checkpoint in time, and choose which way to turn along the route.

The main attraction is controlling the car while drifting. You can enter a corner sideways and stay that way for quite a while, sliding around traffic. The physics are completely arcade-style, so nobody expects a Ferrari to behave like a real car. The payoff is that you can glide through several corners in a row in spectacular fashion.

In the standard mode, you choose your own route at each fork. Take a different branch and you get different stretches of road and a different finish. In Heart Attack mode, the girl sitting beside you also gives you tasks. Sometimes she wants you to overtake cars, sometimes to perform a certain stunt. Simply getting your passenger to the end of the route is no longer enough.

There is also a large series of Coast 2 Coast challenges. Completing them earns miles, which serve as the game’s currency. You can spend them on new cars, routes, and music for your races. Unfortunately, the frame rate sometimes drops on PSP, which is fairly unpleasant in a game this fast.

Metal Gear Acid 2

Metal Gear Acid 2 is easy to overlook if you expect a conventional Snake game. It is a turn-based tactics game built around cards. Before a mission, you assemble a deck, then use those cards to move through the base, use equipment, and fire weapons.

Stealth is still the preferred way to infiltrate a base. Guards patrol the area, react to noise, and raise the alarm. The difference is that now you can calmly think through your next move while your turn is still active.

Cards have a cost that affects how soon your character can act again. That means simply stuffing the deck with the most powerful weapons is not enough. You can launch a devastating attack, then end up waiting far too long for your next turn while the enemies take care of Snake. You have to balance weapons, movement, and cards that reduce that delay.

The sequel also has an unusual look, with bright colors, thick outlines, and an almost comic-book style. The game was even sold with the Solid Eye, a cardboard stereoscopic viewer that attached to the PSP and created a 3D image. Yes, the PSP had its own cardboard 3D accessory. You do not need it to finish the game, though; a normal screen works just fine.

Jeanne d’Arc

In Level-5’s tactical RPG Jeanne d’Arc, you play as Joan of Arc and her companions. Except this version of the war between France and England also has demons, magic, and bracelets that transform their wearers into powerful warriors. The historical figures remain, but the story quickly veers into fantasy.

You assemble a party, choose equipment, and move your characters across a grid one turn at a time. It matters which side you attack an enemy from and where your character ends up afterward. A strike from behind is better than a frontal attack, but first you still have to get there.

Some heroes have magical bracelets that let them become stronger for a short time. Jeanne, for example, gains magical armor, improved stats, and new attacks. Better yet, defeating an enemy in this state lets her act again immediately. You can weaken several opponents with the rest of the party, then send Jeanne in to finish them off one after another.

Abilities are tied to stones that you place into each character’s available slots. Later, those stones can be combined to create new ones. So you have to think both about positioning your characters on the battlefield and about what each of them can do.

Between battles, the story continues through dialogue and anime cutscenes, so the narrative takes up a substantial part of the game.

Hammerin’ Hero

The protagonist of Hammerin’ Hero is a carpenter who carries an enormous hammer. When the Kuromoku Corporation starts taking over his town, he goes out to deal with its employees using his favorite work tool.

It is a side-scrolling arcade action game. You smack enemies, jump over obstacles, and work your way toward bosses. The graphics themselves are 3D, though: hit an enemy hard enough and they can go flying into the background.

The hero is not limited to being a carpenter. As the game goes on, he takes up other jobs and gains new attacks. Become a baseball player and you get a bat. Turn into a sushi chef and you start fighting with sushi and a giant fish. Apparently, one ordinary hammer cannot solve every problem in town.

There is also a very strange way to help the townspeople. Thought bubbles showing their worries appear over their heads, and you can hit the bubbles to literally knock their problems out of them. In return, residents send you notes, help in battle, or unlock new jobs.

It all looks funny, but the game can be fairly difficult in places. Some bosses take several attempts before you figure out how to deal with them. So beneath the cartoon graphics is a surprisingly demanding arcade game.

Patchwork Heroes

In Patchwork Heroes, huge warships are flying toward your city. The heroes land directly on them and start sawing through the hull. You need to cut away pieces large enough that the ship can no longer stay in the air.

You run across the ship trying to cut off the biggest section you can. That means thinking about where to start. Pick the right spot and a large chunk can fall away at once. But you cannot spend too long planning, because the ship is still flying toward the city.

Enemies constantly get in the way. Attacks would be bad enough, but there are repair crews too. You cut through the hull, and they patch it back up behind you. So you have to stop and deal with them or all your work goes to waste. Bombs are available for tougher sections of armor, and along the way you can find useful items and rescue prisoners. There is plenty to keep track of, especially with the time limit.

The visuals are distinctive too. The ships and characters are drawn in a slightly odd style that resembles old posters, and even the interface matches it. The look may feel unusual at first, but it suits a game about sawing flying warships apart surprisingly well.

What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord!? 2

And finally, a game whose title nearly takes up a whole line by itself. Your job is to protect an evil overlord’s dungeon from heroes who keep showing up to kidnap him. To do that, you are given a pickaxe and told to dig a suitable network of corridors yourself.

Monsters emerge from the soil. They live in your dungeon, reproduce, eat one another, and fight the heroes who come in. You cannot simply save up money and buy ten of the strongest creatures. You have to build an entire food chain.

Breed too many predators and they eat everything else, then run out of food. Focus on raising more small creatures and, meanwhile, an armed hero may already be inside the dungeon. You have to keep track of what actually lives there, what it eats, and whether it can stop the next wave of visitors.

You cannot command the monsters directly. Instead, you influence them through the layout of the dungeon and the conditions in which they grow. The sequel also adds mutations, so the population of your cave can change over the course of the game.

It takes quite a while to understand how all of this works. Fortunately, there is a separate mode where you can experiment with the dungeon and watch the monsters without any hero attacks. It is very useful: by the time you figure out who should be feeding on what, the overlord could already have been dragged toward the exit several times.

What Should You Play First?

If you want action, start with Pursuit Force or Hammerin’ Hero. For racing there is OutRun, while Crush and Patchwork Heroes cover the puzzle side of things. Half-Minute Hero is a good choice if you want to see how the developers tried to squeeze an entire RPG into thirty seconds.

Let me know which other PSP games deserve a place in a list like this. The console had enough unusual games to fill a sequel as well.