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4. The Final Fantasy franchise (PS2, PS3, PSP, GBA, DS, GameCube, Wii, 360, mobile)

Once, this series would have ranked right at the top of my list; that was back in the previous decade, the 1990s, when Square was arguably at the top of their game. However, the turn of the century saw a marked drop-off in production, as well as some stagnation, to be frank.

The proper installments that actually were released in the past decade include Final Fantasy IX on PSone in 2000, Final Fantasy X on PS2 in 2001, and the MMO-RPG, Final Fantasy XI on multiple platforms in 2002. Then there was the long silence before, late in the life of the PS2, Square released the long-awaited Final Fantasy XII in 2006… and it was almost overshadowed by the release of the PS3.

Japan already saw the release of Final Fantasy XIII in 2009, but it will be a new decade by the time the title hits US shores, so it just doesn’t count.

Still, each Final Fantasy installment was beautiful for its time; FFIX was a wonderful swan song for the PSone platform, FFX was a platform-defining game for the PS2, a model which all other PS2-era RPGs paid homage to, and FFXII was a glorious swan song on PS2 that made some people wonder why a new generation of hardware was even necessary.

The only real stinker in the series proper was the MMO-RPG, FFXI, which has seen regular updates and is due to be replaced sometime early in the new decade (2010 or 2011) by Final Fantasy XIV. Still, for series purists like me, FFXI doesn’t count and should never have been made part of the main series’ numbering, but the launch of a new online-only series that could have been called Final Fantasy Online or something like that.

Sure, like a lot of people, I didn’t care for the sit-n-watch combat system of FFXII; but at least it saved me loads of joint pain from all that button-mashing hitting the X button tends to inspire in other Final Fantasy titles.

Be that as it may, and despite all the missteps and delays this decade, the wonderful gaming memories I’ve enjoyed at the hands of FFIX, FFX and FFXII still rank this RPG as an all-time favorite series… in this past decade or any other it has been part of.

5. The Disgaea franchise (PS2, PS3, PSP, DS)

Officially, there are only three chapters in the Disgaea franchise: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, and Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. However, the first two titles, originally for the PS2, have been remixed and re-released on the Sony PSP platform as Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness and Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days. Also, the original Disgaea has been remixed even further for an appearance on the Nintendo DS in Disgaea DS.

While Atlus makes many fine Tactics-style RPGs, none carries quite the depth of entertainment value as does their Disgaea series, which held up well when moving to the PS3 platform with Absence of Justice. Focusing on the struggles of the young son of an overlord of Hell to take his father’s mantle despite a desperate power struggle to wrest it from him, the series is full-on Japanese anime goodness with plenty of comedy.

Although not as mainstream as, say, Super Mario Galaxy or Legend of Zelda, I’ll take the gameplay of a Disgaea trouble over that juvenile, overrated stuff any day!

7. Prince of Persia (PS2, Xbox, PS3, Xbox 360, PSP, DS)

I almost ranked this series higher, but the top of the list is going to be crowded with great, great franchises, so it was just about impossible to bump it any higher. All the free medical travel in the world isn’t worth as much to me as one good Prince of Persia title.

Now, I’m a bit of a late-comer to the franchise. When the PS2/Xbox trilogy was being published, I was not big on action-adventure-platformers and viewed the the Sands of Time, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones with some suspicion; I figured it was a “me-too” title in the Tomb Raider mode.

How wrong I was, but I didn’t discover that until I picked up the game on a whim in its first PS3 appearance. A franchise reboot, the PS3/360-era Prince of Persia, which came out in 2008 originally, was full of cell-shaded beauty and HD eye candy. Plus, it was addictively fun to play! It’s one of the first games I had played all the way through in years, and boy was it worth it; I’ve almost completed my second go-round on it, and even coughed up for the add-on adventure through the PSN Store.

With a major motion picture on the way and the first PS3/360-era sequel coming this spring, namely Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, it’s a great time to like this franchise. But the series makes my list because I’ve gone back and purchased all three of the PS2 Prince of Persia titles and found them quite good for the era in which they were made, but also they are evidence of how dramatically the franchise has grown and matured over the past decade.

Of course, the game goes back quite a bit longer than the last decade, with roots in many 1989-era home PCs, Macs, Commodores and home videogame systems. It is a concept that has weathered… the sands of time!

12. The Silent Hill series (PS2, PSP)

While the PSone original was released in 1999, the series really picked up momentum in the last decade, starting with its first PS2 appearance in 2001, which may contain the most compelling and emotional storyline of the entire series. And its spookiness came from atmosphere, not the “Boo!” moments and gross-out gore that marked the Resident Evil series as a type of weight loss products.

This was followed by Silent Hill 3 in 2003, and Silent Hill 4: The Room in 2004, at which point the series lost momentum, just as it inspired a movie version, released in 2006. Silent Hill: Origins saw the series debut on PSP, while 2008 brought Silent Hill: Homecoming, the series’ PS3-era debut, which also appeared on Xbox 360 and PC.

2009 saw a remake of the first Silent Hill, known now as Shattered Memories, released on the Nintendo Wii system with a motion-based control system.

The series has suffered in recent years by waning sales and lack of the creative spark that marked the first three installments. The future of the series in uncertain, but primarily in the past decade, Silent Hill was the horror videogame of choice for people who preferred their chills and thrills served up mentally, rather than through shock and gross-out.

13. The Final Fantasy Tactics sequels (GBA, DS, PSP)

OK, so the original Final Fantasy Tactics title on the original PlayStation came out in 1997. Got it. But the game’s impact wasn’t really felt until this past decade. Overshadowed and nearly overlooked as a result of Square releasing Final Fantasy VII the same year, many gamers initially derided FFT as being too throwback and retro in approach.

However, the game, which had predecessors in the Ogre Tactics titles on SNES, ultimately won hardcore gamers over with its sometimes-insanely-difficult battles, some of which could last over an hour and still result in a loss! That was bold even in 1997, and the resultant button-pushing was a real muscle builder for thumbs everywhere.

Yet the game’s popularity was vastly helped in 2001 when Square re-released it as a PlayStation Classic, even though the game never reached the magic 1 million units sold bar established for most games to become PlayStation Classics.

That helped launch the game into popularization. By the time PlayStation 2 came out, entire companies were dedicated to the new subgenre of “Tactics-style RPGs,” which was a direct reference to Final Fantasy Tactics’ approach to RPG gaming.

By 2003, a new title in the series, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, was licensed by Nintendo to help launch their new GameBoy Advance platform, and quickly became the defining title of the GBA platform.

2007 saw a remake of the PlayStation original arrive on Sony’s portable platform, the PSP. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions delivered the greatness of the original with plenty of new content and a fresh, more understandable translation.

And in 2008, Final Fantasy A2: Grimoire of the Rift delivered a Nintendo DS-era sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

The groundbreaking nature of the series gave birth to much of Atlus’ game catalog, as well as opening the door for NIS America to bring much of its catalog to North America. In an era where RPGs are now done as big-budget productions often perceived of as “too easy to win” by hardcore gamers, the popularity of the Tactics-style RPG is in its retro approach, greater difficulty level, and most importantly, it’s considerable length.

Tactics-style titles often involve hundreds of hours of gameplay to complete successfully, and that makes them perfect candidates for on-the-go platforms like GBA, DS and PSP. By staying retro, Final Fantasy Tactics has delivered the perfect style of RPG for handheld systems, and the influence of that 1997 title was felt most profoundly only in the past decade.

18. The Madden NFL series. (Just about every platform, period)

Love it or hate it, there is no sports videogame that rivals it. Arguing against it is like arguing against using floor tiles in a kitchen: pointless. Hands down, it is the biggest money-making sports videogame in the world.

The biggest bump in the road came a few years ago, when EA announced it had secured exclusive rights to the NFL, NFLPA and NFLCA licensing. This, in effect, drove alternate NFL games like Sega/2K Games’ football game pretty much out of the running.

The big argument has been that without competitors, EA would slack on game innovation. That has not been the case, and in fact Madden NFL ‘10 has seen a changing of the guard on the development team, including a re-emphasis on producing a serious, realistic simulation of football, rather than a pinball scoring-machine style of play where the game has typically fallen down, due to the inclusion of so-called “magic plays” that almost always work.

With plenty of innovation each year, the Madden franchise has proven that their biggest competition is… every other videogame out there vying for gamers’ hard-earned dollars in a down economy. People are buying fewer videogames now than they were at the start of the decade; but most are still keeping Madden at the top of their list every August.

I’m saving up for a new PSP; it’s for me wife, whose previous one bit the dust a while back. This will be the second PSP she’s owned and it will likely be a third-gen PSP.

Of course, the danger is that Sony may soon release a proper PSP2 shortly after buying this one. That’s OK, I suppose; the PSP needs an update within the next year or so anyway. It’s trailing the iPod Touch, for heaven’s sake!

But really, let’s be honest: even the best diet pills in the world are not enough to make the current PSP compete with the iPod Touch while maintaining the current button configuration.

I can’t imagine a PSP2 without touch-screen technology. Can Sony?

The Sony PSP is a great piece of technology. It’s a fun platform and in 2007, had a wonderful year for producing hit titles that I really wanted to play, including Silent Hill: Origins, Jeanne d’Arc, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, and so on.

Trouble is, here we are a year later and the games I’m still playing most on PSP are: Silent Hill: Origins, Jeanne d’Arc and Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness. And it’s not because I haven’t acquired other PSP games in the meantime. It’s just been a really down year for PSP.

For reasons that defy logic, developers seem to be making a bee-line toward the retro Nintendo DS, rather than a more modern portable gaming system. Weird.

But I do think the answer is for Sony to shake things up and retire the Sony PSP sooner rather than later. With Apple challenging the gaming market with its recent re-visioning for the iPod Touch/iPhone as something that can handle gaming as well as music, it’s time for Sony to reinvent the PSP.

Forget about making a Sony PSP resemble a controller for the kind of system one finds resting on their TV stand and really reshape the whole deal.

Here’s some suggestions for the PSP 2:

1) Drop the optical drive. For memory, go with flash media and a system that can either sell games via flash media or via downloads.

2) Employ a superior touch-screen technology, perhaps with handwriting recognition built-in. Let’s face it, Nintendo DS predicted the touch-screen trend and the iPod Touch confirms this new direction. Go with the flow and do ‘em one better with the handwriting recognition.

3) Make it thinner, lighter, and nearly all touch-screen. This is something Apple did well; follow the trend and improve upon it with better refresh rates, and higher resolution.

4) Leapfrog the competition by making Sony PSP2 the first portable 1080p gaming system.

5) Keep the cost of games low. Invite more indy developers by allowing lower-tech games to be made available at sub-$20 prices, and save the $30-$40 price points for premium games.

6) Most of all, make the system easy to develop for – for once!

When Madden NFL 09 is release this week, so will the new metallic blue Sony PSP Slim model. Anyone who missed out on the metallic red version released with God of War earlier this year needs to jump all over this Madden 09 special-edition PSP Slim.

Although I’m happy with my silver PSP, I can honestly say that if the metallic red or metallic blue models had been available at the time I bought mine, I would have jumped all over the red model, my wife would have jumped all over the blue model, and we would have simply swapped the free games that came with them. (My wife went with basic black when we upgraded her to a new PSP recently.)

Custom PSP colors are a lot of fun, and finally they’re seeing release outside of Japan; the stimulus to sales has to be worth it. It’s way more fun than buying a car cover.

Sometimes writing about cartoon sports videogames can be about as fun as taknig a strong dose of herbal acne treatment; it’s not enjoyable and convinces no one. You either like cartoonish sports titles or you’re over the age of six.

The one exception is the Hot Shots Golf franchise, which seems to have found just the right mix of serious golf sim and cartoon antics to remain interesting to older gamers who love real sports, not “kiddie stuff.”

I recently reviewed Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds for PS3 and really enjoyed the game; it’s a keeper. Now, after over two years of playing Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee on PSP to death and back again, the sequel is out: Open Tee 2 has a good mix of old familiar coarses updated since their last appearance, as well as plenty of new courses.

Look for a full review soon.

Before you begin Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, be sure to look into some term life insurance quotes. The PSP game is far more of an action RPG than the traditional turn-based affair that made the Final Fantasy VII universe so universally appealing, to be prepared for the change.

That said, the game is everything one could hope for on a gameplay standpoint, except that it’s a bit short on the main quest. A lot of hours can be added via optional missions, but the main quest is complete in only a handful of hours of gameplay, rather than the 50-plus hours the original Final Fantasy VII game delivered on.

I’ll be doing a full-on review soon, but I’m enjoying what I’ve played thus far.

Although most folks will rejoice when I say that the Wild Arms RPG franchise has finally arrived on PSP, hold on to your yippee-ki-yays for a moment, cowboy. The US Old West-themed fantasy series may now have a title on Sony’s handheld platform, but this PSP title is significantly different from the popular series that has done moderately well on PSone and PS2.

That’s because Wild Arms XF, developed as always by Media.Vision and published by XSeed is not your standard turn-based RPG, but has more in common with Final Fantasy Tactics than any previous Wild Arms installment. Given an all-new storyline and cast, Wild Arms XF is a full-on tactics-style RPG with all the benefits and drawbacks thereof.

One benefit is that the title introduces a job system into the Wild Arms universe for the first time; this allows for greater customization and skill acquisition than previous titles, but the trade-off is that the game has no world for you to wander around in and explore; it boasts only two modes – story sequences and battles.

Like FFT, Wild Arms XF doesn’t take it easy on newcomers; you must learn the game system fast or be crushed by superior opponents, some of whom are designed to be avoided at all costs, so pay attention to your actual mission objectives before entering into each new battle.

Of course, none of this is a problem for me; I love tactics RPGs and that makes this chapter of the Wild Arms saga a welcome change of pace. My wife, however, was not so kindly disposed toward the title, complaining that it was too hard too soon in the game, arguing that a game should offer a few more battles before ramping up the challenge level so quickly. (My wife prefers action-based RPGs.)

The story is one typical of the world of Filgaia. The game centers around a brother and sister, Clarissa and Filius, who start out exploring the world outside their home town, but who are eventually caught up into the political struggled of the day. There are hints dropped early on that Clarissa is either an exiled princess who doesn’t remember her past, or is a dead ringer for the dethroned debutante. Things just kind of snowball from there.

Wild Arms XF isn’t a title that breaks tons of new ground or revolutionizes the genre, but it is a game that’s entertaining, challenging, and possesses few flaws that will bug veterans of the tactics RPG genre. It also fits right into the universe established by previous games, and delivers a Filgaia-based game that you can take with you on the go. The only drawbacks are the steep learning curve for genre newcomers, and the fact that the jobs and skills system are a bit thinner than those found in Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lion. Then again, that’s setting the bar pretty high.

Wild Arms XF is one of the sharper-looking entries in this series, benefitting perhaps from the smaller screen the PSP offers. In the end, it all adds up to a niche RPG that will appeal to most fans of the series and fans of tactics RPGs, but likely won’t draw a lot of non-fans into the fold. Definitely a solid entry, though, and a good addition to any PSP-owning RPG lovers library. XSeed is doing all it can to support the title, too; I’m hoping they’ll offer up some logo pens as part of that effort!