11 Best Looking PSP Games

Retribution is set in the weeks after Resistance: Fall of Man, and it follows former British Marine James Grayson. He is forced to kill his own brother inside a Chimeran conversion center, and he goes on a vendetta to destroy every conversion center he can find. The Maquis, the European resistance, talk him into a bigger job, and Operation Overstrike takes him into Europe through Rotterdam and on toward the Chimera tower in Paris. Famitsu gave it a total of 32 out of 40.

Players say it has some of the best graphics on the system. The war-torn cities are grey and wet, which suits a game about alien goo, and it is one of the few shooters on the PSP that never looks like a compromise.

Tekken 6 is the seventh main installment in the Tekken franchise. It started in Japanese arcades in November 2007 as the first game running on the PlayStation 3-based System 357 arcade board. A port to the PlayStation Portable came out shortly after the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. Critics praised the visuals, and the PSP port was well received for how faithful it was to the console versions. It even keeps the beat 'em up mode that follows Lars Alexandersson and his coup.

Players name it as one of the best looking games on the PSP. A PS3 arcade fighter squeezed onto a UMD should look rough, and somehow it doesn't. The stages are busy, and the fighters still have proper faces.

Arctic Edge moves MotorStorm to Alaska, where you race on icy mountain tracks with avalanches and broken ice bridges in the way. Small vehicles can get over the ice bridges, but heavier ones can break them, which makes the short cut impossible to cross. You race cars, snowmobiles and trucks, and you can swap wheels, exhausts and spoilers. The PSP version has a Photo Mode, custom soundtracks and six-player online races, and a PS2 port by Virtuos came out the same year.

Players call it one of the nicest looking games on the PSP, good enough to pass for a PS2 game. The Photo Mode makes sense once you see the snow. It is the rare racer here that wants you to stop and look.

Crisis Core is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, and it follows Zack Fair, a young member of SOLDIER sent to find the missing Genesis Rhapsodos. Hajime Tabata directed it, with Tetsuya Nomura as creative producer and character designer. The battles run through the Digital Mind Wave, a slot machine in the corner of the screen, and if the numbers line up as "777", Zack gains a level. The CG cutscenes come with voice acting in a 16:9 widescreen presentation, and the game sold over two million units worldwide.

Players praise its graphics, especially on the 3D side. Seeing Sephiroth rendered this well on a handheld was a shock. A remaster, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, came out on December 13, 2022.

Type-0 came out in Japan on October 27, 2011, and it started life as Final Fantasy Agito XIII, a game for mobile phones and the PSP. Hajime Tabata directed it after Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII. The setting and presentation were inspired by historical documentaries, and the story was written to be darker than other Final Fantasy titles. You play Class Zero, a squad of cadets with a weapon each, from a card wielder called Ace to a flute wielder called Deuce.

The PSP version stayed in Japan, and an HD remaster reached the rest of the world in March 2015. Players say it looks so good it could pass for a PS3 game. Big battles with that many characters on screen were not supposed to fit on a UMD.

Birth by Sleep is a prequel to the original Kingdom Hearts, taking place ten years before its events. Tetsuya Nomura directed it with Tai Yasue as co-director, and development began in June 2005. You build a Command Deck of attacks and spells, and the Shotlock puts you in a first person mode to fire homing spells at a crowd of enemies. Critics praised the gameplay and the graphics, and one review called the graphics and music "superb".

Players still find it hard to believe it runs on a PSP. It plays like a full Kingdom Hearts, and players compare it to Kingdom Hearts II squeezed onto a handheld. The Disney worlds keep their colours, and the Keyblade fights move fast without the frame rate falling apart.

Chains of Olympus came out on March 4, 2008, as a prequel to the original God of War. Ready at Dawn reconfigured the controls for the PSP's smaller number of buttons, and critics praised the result. The team also kept asking Sony to raise the PSP's clock speed, and Sony released a firmware update that let games use the full 333 MHz processor. It is the highest-rated PSP title on Metacritic and sold 3.2 million copies.

Players say both God of War games look as good as the PS2 originals, sometimes better. Kratos is small on that screen, but the bosses are not. Chains of Olympus was the game that proved the PSP could do the big set pieces that sold the series on PS2.

Gran Turismo took five years of delays to reach the PSP, and along the way it was called Gran Turismo Portable, Gran Turismo 4 Mobile and Gran Turismo 4.5. It finally came out on October 1, 2009, as a launch title for the PSP Go. It has more than 800 cars and 35 tracks, and series director Kazunori Yamauchi said the main problem was fitting the game into such a small memory space. There is no online play, only local ad hoc races.

Players single out its frame rate. It runs at a rock-solid 60 frames per second, and the cars look like they came straight from the PS2 games. It sold 4.67 million units, so a lot of people saw that for themselves.

The 3rd Birthday is the third entry in the Parasite Eve series. It came out in Japan in 2010 and in North America and Europe in 2011, after starting life as an episodic game for mobile phones. Hajime Tabata directed it, and Square Enix called it a "cinematic action RPG". Aya Brea can Overdive, jumping into the bodies of the soldiers around her in the middle of a fight. Toriyama imagined the snowy New York setting and the image of a bloodstained wedding dress.

Critics were split on the story and the camera, but they praised the presentation. Players agree with that part. They call it one of the best looking games on the PSP, even the ones who admit the game itself is divisive.

Ghost of Sparta came out on November 2, 2010, and it is set between God of War and God of War II. Kratos sees his mother, Callisto, held prisoner in Atlantis, and the trip ends with him looking for his lost brother, Deimos, in the domain of death. Development took 23 months, and Dana Jan, the lead level designer on Chains of Olympus, took over as director. He said the game took the PSP to its "absolute capacity", with more enemies on screen.

Players say it looks better than Chains of Olympus. The team learned a few tricks on the first game and used every one here. It is the game players reach for first when they want to show what the PSP can do.

Peace Walker is the third Metal Gear action game made for the PSP, and Hideo Kojima directed it at the same time as Metal Gear Solid 4. It has two modes, Mission and Mother Base, and in Mother Base you recruit soldiers, research gear and grow your own army. The Fulton Recovery System replaces the truck from Portable Ops, so you attach it to a knocked-out soldier and he is carried off to join you. Some missions use illustrated cutscenes that ask you to press buttons as they play.

Critics praised its scale on a small form factor. Players rank it first, just ahead of Ghost of Sparta, and say it blew their minds on the PSP. It is also the one game here where the cardboard box comes in a two-man version.