As a kid, I loved the Pokemon series. I won’t sugar-coat it. I know I lost tons of hours capturing monsters and training them to be able to compete on fair ground. While the Pokemon series has over 400+ monsters over several different realms and a new rendition coming soon… It’s just a staggering number of monsters to keep up with and can overwhelm someone who has never played before.
There used to be an embeded media player here, but it doesn't work anymore. We blame the Tumbeasts.
Invizimals caught my eye when sites like Kotaku had made mention that the game was using augmented reality technology to render a unique game play experience. While the game has been in Europe for almost a year and Novarama is working on a sequel (Invizimals: Shadow Zone) for Europe, this week America gets its taste of the series on October 12th, 2010. I lucked out and picked up a copy of the game early this past Saturday at a local Wal-Mart that had apparently broke street date.
The contents are pretty simple. Game with a fiduciary marker card and the PSP-450 X camera for the MSRP price of $39.99. The US release does have the Invizimals PSP System Entertainment Pack that includes a special PSP-3000 model PSP system in the “Vibrant Blue” color, Invizimals with the PSP-450 X camera, 1 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo, a free PSN downloadable movie voucher, battery, and power cables for the price of $199.99. The US does not have the option to play the game alone without the camera unlike the European market.
A short note: The PSP Camera (PSP-450 X) bundled with Invizimals came out some time in 2009. The PSP-450 X camera debuted last year as a new model to the PSP-300 Go! Cam (Europe)/Chotto Shot (Japan) and it is a significant downgrade from it’s predecessor. The biggest thing is the the level of detail between the cameras that illustrates the point. The PSP-300 is a 1.3 megapixel camera with a sturdy metallic frame while the PSP-450 X is a 0.3 megapixel camera withe a slimmer shape made out of plastics. If you did import the PSP-300 camera, the good news is that it is compatible with Invizimals. The PSP-450 X camera that comes with Invizimals does the job, but those who own the nicer camera should consider yourselves lucky and privileged! Below is a sample picture of the PSP-450 X for a reference of quality:
The game is a unique take on the monster capturing RPG genre. The plot starts off with a “PSP Web-Cam” chat with a Japanese Sony PSP R&D researcher Kenichi Nakamura telling you that he’s discovered that there are invisible creatures that are only visible to some “developmental” software able to notice these creatures. The game quickly takes you through tutorials with Professor Dawson who is played by Brian Blessed. I find the tutorials are pretty fun and really help you understand the concepts of playing the game. The dialog is a little more on the corny side and seems more targeted towards kids. I personally wish that the game was more broadly targeted to both kids and adults. It’s not detracting to the experience rather it’s more personal preference. The story basically has you participating in Kenichi’s research and you later find that you are trying to protect Kenichi’s research from malicious hackers trying to use the Invizimals for evil.
Catching Invizimals is pretty unique as it’s not like Pokemon. Each Invizimal has a “method” to catching them. Finding Invizimals is fun as the game uses the PSP camera much like a metal detector. If you’re assigned to looking for a certain Invizimal, the game will work like a metal detector and click when you have found the monster. Once an Invizimal has been detected, the game will ask you to place the “electro-static” trap in the viewing area of the PSP camera. On putting your plastic card down, you will see a monster burst from the center of the card and the game will ask you to hit X when the 2 spinning glyphs overlap. Once the player has gotten 3 glyphs to overlap Kenichi will brief you with data video about the Invizimal and how to capture it. The Mobula, for example, you have to blast with your PSP when it’s not looking at you to weaken it for capture. Some monsters will require you to play a mini-game just to nab them. After catching them, you end up at a stats screen showing off various statistics and attack commands the Invizimal can perform. Some Invizimals can only be caught at certain times of the day and some even have special criteria to evolve to their higher states. There are around 100 total Invizimals that can be found/collected. When your Invizimal levels up, the game takes an element of RPG’s where you can fuel points into certain stats to pump them up.
The battle system is a little bit of a mix between real-time and turn-based combat. Combat also requires you to use your “electro-static” trap to set up the battlefield. Invizimals all have a elemental affinity and the same can be said of their attacks. These affinities operate much like a game of rock-paper-scissors and will require you to react wisely to your opponent’s Invizimal. Each Invizimal has 4 attacks linked to the PSP face buttons (Square, X, Circle, Triangle). Square is the Quick Attack which is hard to block for as the speed is fast but deals below average damage. The X and Circle buttons are the Regular Attacks which do average damage and are a moderate speed. The Triangle button is for the Strong Attack which usually does massive damage and slow to pull off. The L-Button is the Block command allowing your Invizimals to block attacks. On a “perfect” block timed just right, your Invizimal loses less HP from blocked attacks. Combat is also based on stamina as quick attacks use very little and strong attacks will use a great amount. Blocking can also chew through a lot of stamina as well. Make sure to have plenty of stamina throughout a fight, because the minute you run out and your opponent is attacking… You could leave your Invizimal to lose a lot of life points from being unable to block/evade. Later in the game, you also have the abilities to use Vectors to do things like heal, regenerate stamina faster, or attack your enemies. Later battles may also have you putting up your own Invizimal up for ante. If you are worried about losing your Invizimal, I highly advise you to back up your game to your computer because the game auto-saves periodically. If you lose your Invizimal from an ante battle, it is gone and you’ll have to retrain and catch the one you lost if you didn’t have a back-up save file.
Unfortunately due to me getting my copy of Invizimals early, I am not able to comprehensively test the online portion of the game. The game provides an ad hoc mode for PSP-to-PSP play and infrastructure mode to play other players online via the internet. With both modes, you can chat, trade and fight with other Invizimal players. Chatting is handled by the microphone that’s on the PSP Camera. To log online via infrastructure mode, you are required to have a PlayStation Network (PSN) account to log-in. I will give kudos to Novarama for adding internet play to the game as it can be very hard to find another PSP user locally sometimes. It’s not very often that PSP games are made with the ability to log on via PSN for multiplayer and some games may not have many people using the PS3 Ad Hoc Party app to simulate finding a local player.
I’d say that I find the game a fun purchase and if you like Pokemon… Invizimals gets my recommendation. Sure, the monster hunting is a little clumsy and may require you to to get up and move; that portion is actually part of the game. It definitely is one of the most fun implementations of augmented reality I have ever seen. Bravo to Novarama for producing Invizimals and I hope that their sequel “Shadow Zone” gets even better! For those that do buy Invizimals, I highly recommend you head over to the Invizimals site and do the mini-games to get a free code to get an awesome Invizimal!
[Images of Mobula and Uberjackal were taken from the photo mode of Invizimals. Logo from the Invizimals site and trailer is from the PlayStation YouTube channel.]
