Originally released by Sony in Japan in 2003, and is now available in the US for download. Holy Invasion of Privacy: What Did I Do To Deserve This? Is an old school dungeon master game with elements of Dungeon building and even a slight pinch of tower defense. Does this make for an interesting mix of genres, or does it miss that sweet spot?

The gameplay is quite similar to an old Bullfrog game, Dungeon Keeper, where you must create an environment lethal to any would be hero to enter your domain. Again like Dungeon Keeper, there is a sort of echo system hierarchy where you need to create slimes that slowly put neutrons into the surround area allowing you to create bigger creatures. This creature will then eat the slimes, thus becoming a little stronger, but you’ll need more slimes to make more of these or even bigger creatures that will eat then the previous one. A food chain is not often a feature you see in games these days, but it helps keep the game fresh and interesting through out while you’re trying to juggle tasks of creating stronger creatures, maintain your army you have at the moment and defeat the heroes trying to catch Badman.

Coming with a few game modes, story mode acts more like arcade mode where you must complete the mode in one sitting without any checkpoints and mid game saves and with each level building on the previous, with difficulty and increasingly better Hero AI, it is your task is to hide Badman within your dungeon, and defeat your enemies before they reach him.

Training mode teaches you the basics of dungeon engineering and features over 30 challenges to help you gain the skills to play the game, without the training however you’ll be lost and without a clue what to do as in the story mode doesn’t give you any hints or tips as you play. You’ve been warned.

A number of the challenges give you the task of creating a certain number of your creatures, like creating 20 Lizardmen within a time limit but they become more and more difficult asking you to eventually create and master Dragons.

Overall the game is fun and can easily get addicting, until you die in the story mode and you don’t feel like starting over again… but you do for some reason.

One major fault with the game though is the step learning curve, the first two missions are deceptively easy and with the grasp of the basic mechanics you’ll make it through levels 3 and 4 with no trouble but once you reach level 5, it’s trio of heroes will mercilessly and brutally murder your minions and carry your evil servant Badman right out of the door, kicking and screaming. You can spend hours, if not days trying to work a strategy but this will never be overcome until you maximize bonus and upgrade systems, no strategy will succeed.
Once you do manage to work out the trick to winning, assuming you have yet to break your PSP in half from frustration a single run through of the game will last you about half an hour.

Although to be fair, although short, is quite a handy time for a quick on the go game.

Oh and once you’ve completed the game, you’ll notice you’ve unlocked a new mode… a harder one, for real gamers seeking a challenge, with a new title and everything called;
Holy Home Invasion Robbery Badman: Why Does This Always Happen To Me?

Plus there’s also a hero editor to create custom challenges. This is a great feature to the game and adds replay value.

At the end of the day, the game is a joy to pick up and play even for a few minutes although you’ll need to put a lot of practise in to master the game.

7.0/10

By Darren Arquette Posted Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 4:10 pm