Way back when in the late 1990’s a game called MediEvil was released for the original PlayStation. The game developed a cult following and when MediEvil Resurrection was announced for the PSP, many fans rejoiced. Resurrection is a great name for the game, because basically the PSX game has been resurrected to the PSP with a new level thrown in as well as some minigames.

The backstory behind the game is this: “everyone” knows the legend of Sir Daniel Fortesque, who died valiantly while battling the evil wizard Zarok. In reality, Dan was a coward and died in one of the first attacks..but history never gets in the way of a good story.

Anyway, Zarok is now back and he’s resurrected an undead army to take over the world – one of the side effects is that Dan was also resurrected and now he will be able to have a second chance to take on Zarok.

You of course become Dan and you need to fight you way through almost 20 levels to get to Zarok. Basically the game is an action adventure: you kill all the enemies, run around to pick up various bonus weapons, figure out the right path to get a rune (which is MediEvil for “key”), find the golden chalice and fight a boss man. Obtain a new item in the Hall of Heroes and proceed to the next level.

The game itself is very formulaic, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: there are enough challenges in there to make it worth playing without it being insanely difficult. Runes/chalices/etc aren’t totally easy to find, especially in later levels, but you do have figure out creative ways to get them – either jumping across caskets in the river or by jumping up to the top of a building in a graveyard for example.

The graphics in game are very good and very detailed for such a small screen. Touches like the crosses on caskets and the decomposition on the undead zombies are really very good.

So far, you’re probably thinking, why is this a C+ game? Unfortunately, the gameplay is lacking, specifically the control of the game. The analog stick is quite the failure in this game. In a lot of levels you have to walk on very narrow platforms and perform precision jumping and you do not have the precise control you need. For example, the jumping on the coffin exercise required you to jump off a broken bridge into the river. You have control of Dan during the jump, and quite often he overjumps the coffin and goes into the water, resulting in a 25 hit point loss. It’s mind numbingly frustrating. You can save the game anywhere by hitting the start button, which is a big bonus and I highly recommend you do this in order to avoid replaying the level from dying.

The camera is also unsatisfactory. You can center the camera behind you by pressing the r button, but while you’re trying to fight off enemies, it’s just another thing you have to worry about. The camera never seems to be in the right position.

In one early level you are in the center of an arena with at least 10 dogs chasing you. These are tough dogs and take multiple hits in order to kill. The dogs just come at you randomly – usually from your blind side. You have to turn around and attack almost immediately. The problem is the collision detection is not very good, or too good, if that makes sense. If you don’t hit your target on the exact pixel that your enemy is on, you’ll miss. When you’re one on one with a relatively lame target, it’s not that big of a deal, but on the boss level it’s hit or be hit. There are ranged attacks available and they too are hit or miss. You do have a ‘icon’ ahead of you that glows red when you’re locked on, but even then, if the enemy moves, you still may not hit them. Between the camera and the collision detection, the gameplay just seems more difficult than it actually should be.

There are other attacks available to you such as a charge attack, which looks good but doesn’t do much damage. You have two-handed weapons like the war hammer which just looks awesome to use and does do some damage, but as you’d expect, you lose the ability to have a shield.