Take some good ideas, develop them poorly and you'll get this nasty game.

User Rating: 3 | Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory PSP
The story of Rengoku – The Tower of Purgatory is pretty interesting, although definitely neither new nor original: in a future an army of androids created for war are confined in a tower (Rengoku is the Japanese word for Purgatory) where they fight each others just to offer some kind of modern, gladiatorial TV show to the humans. But one day one of the androids, an A.D.A.M. (Autonomous Duelling Armed Machine, but it's obvious the reference to the Holy Bible first man), reaches some kind of self-consciousness, and ask himself why he has to fight his similar comrades; in order to give himself an answer he starts a long series of battles against the army of androids wandering in the tower.
It's clear the reference to a movie like Blade Runner.

Unfortunately, after the interesting CG opening movie, which explains the story, I immediately realized that the gameplay would be boring.
Basically all you gotta do is killing the androids scattered in the rooms of every floor; after you've completed this task you'll have to (guess what? You're a genius) terminate the boss of the floor, but before it the A.D.A.M. asks his opponent the answers to his angst (doubts and questions like "why we're here?-who am I?- what's the purpose of my life? keep tormenting mankind since the philosophy was born, imagine the devastating effects on a machine…).
Now the major defects. First of all, if you die, you'll fall down to ground zero, the lowest floor, and you'll loose all the items you were equipped with: the only solution to avoid this bother is saving frequently in some rooms where you find a terminal, useful to upgrade your character and to sort the items also.
A feature of the game is the high number of weapons, shields and general purpose items you can customize your android with: you can use them as attachments for the arms, legs, chest and head.
Weapons are for melee combat and firefights, and other items let you carry extra ammos, let you cool down the weapons and circuits, let you move more rapidly or let you be invisible to your foes' auto-aiming systems.
It could be cool at a first look, but after a while the game gets unbearably boring, a real waste of leisure time.

The levels of the tower are very similar each other, each room looks like the last one you just visited, and although you have a large number of items to customize your A.D.A.M you'll eventually use only the few, most powerful ones.
Battles against other androids soon get repetitive, tedious, and the final stage bosses are so anonymous to add very little excitement to the game.
Graphics are some kind of ethereal, minimalist aesthetics, colours in the game are very few.
Acting voice is totally missing, since the androids "speak" with on screen text, and music, that should be electronic (it's a futuristic game) and fast to keep the action up, is generally slow and relaxing like some new-age tracks .
Movements are clumsy and the scheme control is poor and clunky.
Despite randomly generated levels, there is no real replay value, because you'll fight the same enemies you've already beaten but just at a higher level of difficulty.