If you want an example of a game that was fascinating for it's time but doesn't really serve much of a purpose now, Socom Fireteam Bravo is just that. Decided to randomly try this out due to my interest in portable spinoff games and this one is interesting in how it served it's purpose well for it's time but loses it's value and novelty decades later and mainly worth checking out due to curosity like I did.
To put it simpily, Fireteam Bravo is SOCOM 3 on the go for the most part. The controls are changed and the vehicle sections are gone but it does a rather remarkable job at translating that game and by extension the single player portion of the series. The story of this very game runs parallel to SOCOM 3 itself giving Fireteam Bravo some authenticity and a sense that this project was taken seriously. The menus, music, feel of the weapons, damage animations, and tone all feels very in line with the it's console counterpart.
For one, the game is a technical marvel. You got the large and wide open maps of SOCOM 3's single player. Draw distance is surprisingly reasonable and there isn't even an overwhelming amount of frame rate drops and slow down. You can zoom in through scoped weapons, crouch, go prone, use squad commands, on the fly weapon switching and close quarters melee takedowns.
The level design and level objectives stay true too. You got room clear outs, hostage rescues, disabling bombs, planting charges, picking up files, taking pictures, and the occasional escourt mission. SOCOM 3's robust map is here too.
There are some differences exclusive to this game like auto lock on shooting and a button to switch between shooting and strafing. There is free aiming but then it's to slowly come to the realization that using auto aiming is objectively the best option and free aim is playing with self imposed restrictions. As a result, shooting becomes montonous game of getting close, holding R and pressing the fire button. You can scoped weapons for long range but why use that when aiming feels very awkward and doing it with the PSP analog nub would've added more preceived challenge and thus rely on the auto aim. The lack of leaning and peak just encourages even more auto aim use.
The controls for contextual commands can also feel like a game of mashing them until the character does what you want besides reloading or going prone.
Also absent is the series' very intuitive lean and peak cover system or it's very methodical slow movement when tilting the left stick forward.
The hardest part are the randomly timed missions where you need to disable bombs before the time runs out and that can be a hassle due to the contextual interact commands not always doing what you want. The last level can be quite hard due to the upped enemy count chipping away at your health more than any other level before this. It's a level restart if you die but it's only an issue if you play on base hardware.
It all eventually comes back to what I was saying. This was all very novel and impressive for it's time but now playing it over 20 years later and with the PSP's life cycle long over, what purpose does Fireteam Bravo serve now? Everything here is done better in SOCOM 3, the very game Fireteam Bravo was trying to emulate. There isn't much in the way of any new ideas exclusive to the latter so now without the PSP craze and Sony's marketing gimmick of promosing "console quality" experiences on the go. All you are left with is a game that feels like a worse version of an already existing console game.
Overall, apart of me respects Fireteam Bravo for being such an incredible technical marvel on a system like the PSP but at the time, it's initial novelty and purpose is lost over 20 years after it's release. It's a great example of what sounded great at the time was rather questionable in the long run.
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