neurological dryer lint

two popular third-person brawlers just ended up as portable games recently - and both are excellent translations of the home console experience. behold:

- ninja gaiden: dragon sword is one i doubt i would have laid down cash for, if it hadn't included the sweetest stylus ever. it's certainly the most complete action game i've ever played on the DS (new super mario bros. aside). where zelda's controls collapsed, dragon sword shines - sophisticated, slick attacks are executed like butter. graphically it's not too shabby, the backgrounds are pretty simple and i really think they could have done something a little more stylized (i.e. okami, or the original SF4 trailer comes to mind) instead of the SNES-level sprites. it's a ton of fun to play, though, nowhere near as frustrating as the xbox installments.

- god of war: chains of olympus is stunning. i've never seen anything look this good on the PSP - the guys at readyatdawn certainly pushed the system to its limits. i was kind of afraid it would run like crap on my original model (load times are faster on the newer "slim" psp2000 hardware) but it looks just fine. the controls made the jump from the PS2 and i actually find myself dodging a whole lot more than i did in GoW 1&2, but that's mainly because the enemies you fight in this version require that you're much more defensive. the only serious flaw is the occasional "where the heck do i go now" moment - a sign of insufficient playtesting by the developer. it's pretty short, too, so i'm glad i rented it.

it got me thinking about how good a PSP uncharted title would be - i'd definitely hit it (with an inverse tachyon beam). hopefully this game's success drives devs to do more ports...