Invizimals PSP

IGN had a look at an interesting PSP game that uses the PSP camera. Called Invizimals.

From the article:

You hold the PSP with the camera attached, look at the screen to see the live feed of wherever you are, and watch as the Invizimals exist in your world. You can hold them in the palm of your hand, battle with them on your couch, or project them into your shower. These beings are 3D and doing their own thing, so when you rotate the PSP, you're moving the camera around them in real time.

In this game, you plug in the camera and search your home, office, or brothel for these invisible creatures. When in scan mode, the PSP beeps and chirps like sonar or a PKE Meter to lead you to the location of an Invizimal.

When you find the hotspot, you put down your trap (currently an eight-pointed star with a black square in the center) and use the X button to click some aimers into place. When that's done, the Invizimal appears in the trap and your PSP tells you how to catch it; my demo had the player slam his hand down onto the trap to stick the creature to the square, but there will be other creatures that require you to blow into the mic, shake the PSP, or just yell in general.

The basic idea of the game really reminds me of Elebits (Wii), in the vague notion of looking everywhere for little creatures & "getting" them. But the execution is done in a completely different way. Though it skews toward the younger gamer, this sounds original & interesting.

IGN speculates that the game will come bundled with the camera, and it might actually herald the camera FINALLY arriving in the U.S. (hopefully North America)... but it hasn't been scheduled for release here yet. I have to admit, if there's an app that'd warm me up to getting a PSP camera, this might be it. My 8 year old nephew might really like the game.

With the camera's incompatibility with PSP Go (since the USB port was changed) this also reminds me of the Guitar Hero DS games. Since Nintendo removed the GBA slot on the DSi, it rendered those games unplayable on the DSi. And Activision released a new Guitar Hero DS game shortly AFTER the release of the DSi.... so could this be PSP's turn to screw over a 3rd party game maker

IGN Invizimals trailer:




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