The Biasphere

Skambu (gaming profile | personal site)

Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2008 11:56 pm EDT
31 Game Reviews

Power Stone Collection (PSP) combines Power Stone and Power Stone 2 into one game. Though it's more than just a simple port, it has loads of nice extras which make it worth checking out.

Power Stone is basically a 3D arena fighter which has loads of weapons, power-ups and characters to play with. The Start Screen gives you a choice between playing Power Stone, playing Power Stone 2, or to view the Collection Features. To start with, I played the original Power Stone first, because that would make more sense than playing them in reverse order, right?

The moment I turned on the game, I immediately noticed how lifeless the announcer was. I don't know whether it was on purpose or not, but it really doesn't get me pumped to play. When you first start the game, you have 8 characters to pick from. They're Falcon, Ayame, Gunrock, Jack, Rouge, Ryoma, Galuda and Wangtang. The character I chose to start with was Galuda.

The term 'Power Stone', refers to the diamonds you pick up while playing to upgrade yourself, and man there's a lot of them! You collect them to raise your power to help you destroy your opponents! If you collect 3 Power Stones, you turn into your super form to help you kick serious 'buttocks' (because of the censors, but you know what I mean). It's pretty much impossible to get hurt when you're in that form. There's also health upgrades that appear in the form of cake and meat.

The best part about Power Stone is that almost the whole environment is destructable, and you can use loads of things as weapons. Including bombs, lamp posts, pot plants, chairs, tables, rocket launchers, flame throwers, guns, signs, and even swords! Seriously, the sword is my favorite weapon in the game without a doubt. You can use loads of wrestling moves like suplexes and throws.

Power Stone 2 actually surprised me. It has way more options than the original Power Stone game. There's 1 on 1, 1 on 3, CPU VS CPU, Adventure, Network Battle, Training and the Item Shop.

Oh man, Power Stone 2 has so much new stuff! There's loads of great level designs, loads of new weapons (tridents, bubble guns etc.), new characters, new modes and more! It's such an improvement.

Power Stone 2 has 4 new characters. They're Pete, Julia, Courmand and Accel. The characters themselves don't look that great, but it's nice to at least have some new characters to try out.

The level design is amazing. In one level you can ride a skateboard while running away from a huge boulder, and in another level you can swim next to a submarine in the freezing ocean! Seriously, the level design is way improved. Some may seem it as a gimmick, but I love it because it's not just fighting.

There's some fun stuff to do in the Collection Features menu, you can play 3 mini-games, view the game endings, But you don't start with all the stuff unlocked, you have to work for most of it.

The thing I can really appreciate about this collection, is that I can finally play a good fighting game in 16:9! Since I don't own a good TV, all of my gaming is done on a regular TV. Plus if you're a purist, the game will give you a choice of playing in 16:9, 4:3 and 4:3 stretched, which is another nice feature.

This game really suffers from 3 huge problems. The loading times, the lack of new content, and the frame rate in Power Stone 2. There's 15-20 second load times between each level and cutscene, which gets really annoying after a while. It doesn't seem like much after 1 or 2 times, but after a while it really piles up. Another bummer is that there isn't that much new content to keep fans who have played the game before interested. You can still play all the VMU games, you can view all the artwork, listen to all the music and view all the endings. There's no actually new content, but it brings together almost everything you'd want in a good compilation. Plus the framerate in Power Stone 2 is pretty damn slow, but I'm fine with that because it's still fun with all the extra features.

BUY IT, BORROW IT OR BREAK IT:
Buy it. It's really really cheap, and it can keep you busy for a whole weekend, or just for a bus trip.

I give Power Stone Collection for the PSP, an.... 8/10!

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