The Sony NGP Rundown

Our hands-on report on the initial slate of Sony CEA first-party games for the NGP.

By 1UP Staff

June 2, 2011

We’ve seen and manhandled the Sony NGP before, but we didn’t see much in the way of actual games at the time. With E3 around the corner, Sony CEA recently hosted an event for media to check out the first-party lineup for the system. Some of these games are targeted for launch, while others have a more nebulous date. We’ll probably see some more titles, from both SCEA and third-party developers at E3 next week, but for now, here’s our rundown (with help from our colleagues at IGN) and quick impressions of the NGP lineup to date (contrast that with our own imaginary lineup of what we wanted yesterday):

• Hustle Kings

  

  Imagine the PS3 version of this pool table simulator, but now in portable form. That, and you can use the touch pad (either front or back) to pull back the cue and release. What’s probably the most interesting feature is asynchronous play, where you and your NGP-owning can take turns on your own time. As noted by our colleagues at IGN, Hustle Kings lets you take a shot, and then your buddy gets a push notification on his or her NGP indicating that you’ve taken your turn. Then s/he goes, and you get a little notification (we’re assuming this works best with the 3G-enabled NGP), and so on.

  Besides that, Hustle Kings also supports NGP and PS3 versions playing together — in case both of you are in the same place, and one player wants to sit on the couch with a DualShock3 and the other wants to sit on that same couch with an NGP. We’re hoping that the push-notification/asynchronous multiplayer makes its way to other NGP titles.

• Little Deviants

  

  When a system boasts multiple hardware features like a gyroscope, multitouch pad, cameras, and the like, then you should expect at least one launch game to be little more than a tech demo for said features. Little Deviants seems to be the closest to said title, as it’s a collection of 30 minigames — each featuring one-to-three uses of the NGP’s hardware features.

  We’ve previously touched upon how one of the minigames involves manipulating terrain via the back touchscreen, and played a few more in that vein. There’s a version of Whack-A-Mole that uses both the front and back touchscreen — you simply need to tap the face of the critter you’re smacking, and some of them face away from you. Or one where you’re falling down a crazy cavern (think Mega Man), and use the sixaxis to tilt the level around your falling deviant. The most complicated minigame involved an Augmented-Reality shooter, where you move the system around to find critters to blast at on-screen (similar to Face Raiders for the Nintendo 3DS) — with the added element of using the touchscreen to wipe goop away from your viewscreen. We’ll see if any of the games become more than gimmicks as we get closer to launch.

• Reality Fighter

  

  Our first impression of this little fighting game is “Photo Dojo HD.” While that DSi game converts players into little sprites for a simple and free/low-cost fighting game, Reality Fighter uses Augmented Reality to generate characters and backdrops for your bouts. After capturing your face, you can then outfit your character with goofy accessories before choosing a fighting style.

  Like Photo Dojo, the actual gameplay is pretty straightforward: hit buttons until someone else falls. The producer on-hand that was demoing the title remarked that the team aims to have about as much depth to the fighting mechanics as Street Fighter, but that wasn’t evident in our short playsession. The use of Augmented Reality stood out most — when it worked. Having fighters on a glass table seemed to confuse the game a bit, as it had a hard time figuring out the difference between table and ground, and the characters would bounce around as a result. Somewhat like Little Deviants, this seemed to be more tech gimmick showcase rather than actual game.