akijikan

« Marble Drink | Main | Shalamar's »

March 27, 2005

PSP Ushers in New Era in Handheld Gaming

Well, I've had my PSP for a little more than 4 days and what can I say?  It's wonderful.  Yes, it is like a PS2 on-the-go.  No the games aren't ports and yes, the smudges drive you crazy.

All told I bought 5 games and a PSP system after saving up since December.  This review will be of the system only and not any of the games.  Those will come later.

Above all, the first thing you notice about the system is the screen.  Sony did not skimp on the wonderful 4.3 in wide-screen.  The display is sharp and you will not believe your eyes if you see one.

As you probably know the layout is almost just like a Dualshock 2 controller.  On the right you have the square, circle, triangle and X buttons all PSOne and PS2 users are familiar with. Also on the right side is the power light and the hold-status indicator (it's not really a light, just a slides between black and yellow).

The power light is green when it's running on it's own power or is plugged in and in use but fully charged.  It is orange when when charging with the power off or powered on, but not fully charged (because it charges even when you play it plugged in).

On the left side you have a D-pad that is standard for pretty much any video game controller, and you have an analog "nub".  Sorry if you can't see it.  The dark reflection kinda keeps it from being seen.  If you click for the full-size picture you can see it  "Nub" has been the lingo used pretty much since people discovered it didn't operate like the traditional analog stick. What's the difference?  A traditional analog stick rotates across a curved surface.  The "nub" just slides along a flat surface. 

The "nub" doesn't take that long to get used to, but I do have one complaint:  sometimes it feels like there isn't a wide-enough range of motion to hit the in-betweens of a analog control system.  The whole point is that you're not stuck with digital control (0 or 1 (all off or all on)), so you can initiate different degrees of input, like any number between 0 and 100, zero being the weakest and 100 the strongest (though I'm not sure that the actual analog stick is a range of 0 to 100 because that depends on the bit-resolution).  Sorry for the in-depth tech-talk.

Also on the left is the orange memory stick light, which lights up when the memory stick is being accessed, and the green WiFi light that is on when a signal is being broadcasted and/or received.  You can turn WiFi on and off with a switch so that is doesn't drain the battery when it isn't needed.

There's not much to see on the back except for the sleek logo. One of the side panels pops off and the battery goes there.

Speaking of the battery. While people awaited this system there was a lot of speculation and complaint about battery times. What's the story? It gets about 4-5 hours and that's good enough for me. I never use it all completely in a day and it gets charged every night.

Also for those of you who are wondering what is the best way take care of your PSP battery so you minimize damage and capacity loss, here ya go: First off, the PSP utilizes a Lithium Ion (LION battery so it has no "memory" problem like the old Ni-Cad (Ni-Cads would would capacity just because you didn't use all of the power before you charged again). So you don't need to worry about draining the battery before you charge it again. In fact, fully draining a LION battery causes more capacity loss than not draining it and should be avoided.  If you are going to store the battery for an extended period of time, it should be drained below 40% capacity and stored by itself, not in the PSP.

Here is the spring-loaded disc-tray.  Nothing much to see here, a minor complaint is that the disc tends to pop out and can sometimes all to the floor.  Just be careful.

If you plan on utilizing the PSP's awesome MP3-playing features or the picture viewing or MP4-video playback, then this is where they all go via USB between PSP and PC.  The included 32 MB stick isn't much when it comes to digital media.  Right now I have 4 songs and all my game save files on there and it's pretty much full.

I'd like to get a 1 GB stick, but so far the production is far far behind the demand.  Wasn't there a problem like this with memory cards for the PS2 when it first launched?

Lastly, I'd like to speak to all of the problems we saw with PSPs coming out of Japan.  Does the square button stick?  No, it doesn't even feel different from any other buttons.  Does the analog stick come off?  Hasn't happened to mine yet, and it feels solid (whatever that's worth).  Are there dead pixels?  Yes.  I have dead pixels.  There are a few in the lower-left hand corner that are always noticeable on dark screens.  Does it prohibit gameplay? No, but I am going to get a replacement when EB has more in stock.  I already talked to EB and they said their Product Replacement Guarantee covers this. 

For now, I'll enjoy what I have.  In fact, I'll enjoy it a lot.  This thing is definitely worth 250 dollars.  I would have paid 350 dollars for it,  but that's just me.  It wows you in pretty much every manner.  Our gaming consumers are graphics-whores and they'll love the PSP to death for its near-PS2 quality imagery.  I know I do.

If you can find one of these, buy it.  If you're a gaget freak, you'll love it.  If you're a gamer you'll love it.  This is the must-have electronic device of 2005 and now I know why.

Posted in Video Games By akijikan at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://chattablogs.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/22980

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference PSP Ushers in New Era in Handheld Gaming:

Comments

Posted by: akijikan at March 28, 2005 03:51 PM

Posted by: quaisi at March 28, 2005 01:27 AM

Posted by: DaShizil at March 28, 2005 01:07 AM

Posted by: YOyoyo at March 28, 2005 12:29 AM

Email "PSP Ushers in New Era in Handheld Gaming" to a friend!

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):