Augmented reality is the new dimension in gaming, going beyond the screen and into the player's own living room. With a TV-based console that would be pretty limited to the space in front of the set. But, with a portable, these games can go anywhere. So, along with EyePet on the PS3, we get Invizimals on the PSP. It comes bundled with a PSP camera which mounts to the USB connector, so no luck for PSPGo owners. There is also a special patterned card, the PSP's link between reality and augmented reality, that you place to view the action.
The game itself plays rather like our old friend Pokemon; capture the monsters, battle them against each other and advance through the story. With infrastructure as well as ad-hoc multiplayer thrown in, which is a great bonus. It all starts with a video message from a slightly strange Japanese fellow, called Keni Nakamura, babbling on about creatures, special auras and weird science.
It soon transpires that you have a suitably special aura that can attract the creatures which can only be viewed via the PSP. Capturing a creature is a three-step process, locate it, lock it, then capture it. Locating a beastie is done by wandering around the house, pointing the PSP at different colour objects and listening to the detector. When it goes off the scale you're near a creature. Put the card down and you lock the creature by pressing X when a pair of rotating seals cross each other, pretty simple stuff.
The actual method of capture varies by creature, some have to be zapped, others petted, some have to be coerced by whistling, blowing (using the camera's microphone) or by moving the PSP in just right way. Our favourite is zapping spiky dream clouds as they approach a sleeping Invizimal. All of this works surprisingly well, assuming you're working on a suitably flat surface like a table or plain large book and keep the PSP a reasonable distance from the surface The game guides you closer or further as needed and your animals look like they're skipping around the real world rather happily.