Top 10 best PSP games of 2010 (so far)

Sony’s PSP is on its last legs. It’s living on borrowed time. Its days are numbered. And other cliches to that effect.

Frankly, we’re a little tired of hearing (alright, and saying) it.

Okay, so Nintendo’s 3DS looks like it’s going to trump the five year old Sony handheld in every conceivable way, and the iPhone/iPod touch continues to best it (in many people’s eyes) as a mainstream multimedia player.

Considering all the doom and gloom surrounding the device (in the west, at least), it doesn’t half continue to produce some good games. So far this year we’ve seen some absolute beauties, with even the much maligned Minis service chipping in with its fair share of gems.

Here are Pocket Gamer's favourite PSP games of 2010 so far. What have you been playing and enjoying on Sony’s underrated handheld? Let us know in the comments below.

The first of two Halfbrick games on this list show that the developer really has its finger on the Minis pulse.

Age of Zombies is an accomplished twin-stick shooter – which means that you control your character (the ‘80s action star send-up Barry Steakfries) with the left analogue stick and shoot with the face keys. In this case, you must fend off hoards of zombies with a potent arsenal of pistols, shotguns, and other nasty shooty things.

While Age of Zombies doesn’t differ dramatically from similar efforts such as Dracula - Undead Awakening, it remains an excellent blaster with slick visuals and a cheeky, expletive-fuelled sense of humour.

It’s pretty easy to explain Cubixx to an older gamer (or a young one who knows his gaming history) – it’s Qix played out on the outside surface of a cube. That entails cutting away segments of each face, avoiding enemies and your own ‘tail’ in the process.

It works remarkably well thanks to a compelling score-chaining system that rewards risky play. Be warned, though – Cubixx is a stiff challenge, with the difficulty ramping up from as early as level two.

Cubixx is for people who remember how games used to be – simple, addictive, and as tough as old boots.

Sony finally got around to producing its own Mario Kart equivalent with ModNation Racers. As you’d expect from Sony, though, it's not content to simply ride on Nintendo’s coat tails.

While the game plays out very much like the famous plumber’s racing exploits, the key differentiating factor is Sony’s current 'Play, Create, Share’ philosophy. As with Little Big Planet, you the player are the creative force, conjuring up a new track simply by driving where you want it to go.

ModNation Racers’s assured mixture of familiar racing and innovative creativity should ensure its place in many PSP owners’ affections. It undoubtedly earns it a place on this list.

Trust Sony to create a sequel to an innovative, much lauded puzzler (echochrome) and completely discard that first game’s core mechanic. Not many companies would even attempt such a move, let alone pull it off successfully.

echoshift eschews its predecessor’s mind-twisting spatial puzzles in favour of mind-twisting temporal ones. You must use up to nine ‘echos’ of your mannequin to solve each puzzle within 30 seconds.

Upon this ingenious foundation you’ll find layered multiple devious devices that must be dealt with – often simultaneously. In fact, a chronic case of brain-ache is the major shared factor between Sony’s two echo games.

The tower defence genre has flooded many of the mobile platforms, and is reasonably well represented on PSP thanks to the likes of Fieldrunners. But when Vector TD turned up at the beginning of the year, it offered enough original touches to grab our attention.

For one thing there’s an innovative interest system, which rewards you for holding back some of your money for later rounds, at the risk of losing it all. Then there’s the customisation element, which lets you adjust the firing parameters of each tower.

It all amounts to a tower defence game that stands out in a crowded genre, and takes its place as one of the finest Minis titles available.

Rocket Racing is the perfect example of what the Minis range should be offering more of – neat tweaks on established genres with simple, accessible gameplay.

It’s a top-down racer, but with a notable twist that’s hinted at in the title. Rather than steering your craft directly like a typical car, you must navigate around each track by changing the direction of thrust from the giant rocket that powers your craft.

As such, anticipating the effect of momentum is all important, as is mastering 'grinding' your craft against the outer barriers. Initially gruelling, Rocket Racing’s difficulty curve soon smoothes out, while your enjoyment level sets off for the stratosphere.

As well as possessing a brilliant name, Alien Zombie Death excels in the instant-gratification stakes. It’s a frantic blaster in the old skool mould, with your one-man army jumping up and down between levels, blasting and avoiding encroaching enemy swarms.

And it’s the enemies that make Alien Zombie Death the deceptively involved experience that it is. Each variety approaches and attacks you in its own way, calling for a modicum of thought and planning as you unleash hot laser death upon one and all.

PomPom’s delightful Minis shooter is perfect for a quick blast, but just deep enough to keep you coming back for more.

While we have no problem with epic games on handheld platforms (just look at the last game on this list) there’s undoubtedly a lot to be said for a game that successfully adapts to its platform. Half-Minute Hero does just that with, of all things, the RPG genre.

Rather than a 30 hour quest, Half-Minute Hero compresses each mission into a frantic 30 second snippet of action. It’s a joke that might have worn thin if the game hadn’t been made with such love and attention to detail.

From the gorgeously sketched story screens to the affectionate 8-bit visuals, Half-Minute Hero is a near-perfectly distilled dose of old skool RPG goodness.

If you’ve never heard of the Disgaea series before, take this feature as a warning. Let it get its hooks into you and you can kiss 100 or more hours of your life away, and the time in between those hours will probably be spent thinking about what you’ll do when you step back into its world.

Disgaea 2 is that kind of game. A sprawling strategy RPG that contains whole worlds within simple items, and almost infinite potential for character customisation.

And yet it’s all tied to together with the lightest of touches, the silliest of stories, and some of the funniest dialogue to be found on PSP. With such a quirky mix, its only real rival is the first Disgaea (Afternoon of Darkness), and any self respecting SRPG fan should really own both.

The best PSP game of the year thus far has to be the one that redefined what handheld games could be. To put that another way – Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker does things that no other game on any other portable system is capable of.

Quite an achievement for a system that’s seemingly on its way out.

Why so special? It is, quite simply, a console game. Not 'almost console standard' or 'console-like'. It’s a fully fledged, big budget console experience.

Taking control of everyone’s favourite one-eyed soldier Snake, you must sneak and fight your way through a rip-roaring single-player adventure. Once you’re done with that, there’s a host of remarkably involved multiplayer modes to get involved with.

Some might say that such an inflated game misses the point of portable play, but when the results are this good we’re willing to ignore that particular argument.