Are PSP and DS Really Worth It?
Welcome to 2005, where watching videos and movies isn’t just a family get-together affair where you sit around a soul-stealing television and fatten yourselves with heart-attack-inducing popcorn anymore.
Nosiree. Now it’s about sitting around ignoring each other while everyone watches their own movie, and the family dog/cat sits on the floor eating the popcorn because nobody knows its there. Why? Because they never heard the person who brought it down with their blasted earphones on!
Gaming consoles - the diet plan for the future.
Well, they could also be considered the diet plan of the present, too, what with those acne-scarred 40 year old teenagers hunched over their gamecubes and X-boxes, playing an RPG for over 16 hours straight (guilty as charged).
Oh, wait, my bad. Not the X-box. Because the X-box was designed for wanna-be jocks who want to get it on in the games since they’re last to be picked in real life! =O
Okay, now that I’m done with my X-box/Microsoft crack of the day…
The PlayStation Portable. The Dual Screen. Sony and Nintendo’s attempts, respectively, to become the Microsoft of the gaming world. (Sorry, my bad. Couldn’t resist) And, of course, all those loyal fans with their PS2s and their Gamecubes are going “Wow! Kewl! It’s new so it must be advanced! Lets wait in line 15 hours to get it since we have no real life! Lolololol!!!!11111eleventy-one”
But, truly, is there anything new there? Anything at all that would require going out and facing monster lines to get, what to some, is a life necessity? Knowing what I know about recent game consoles, I took a second look. Beware falling sarcasm, obvious partiality, and wanna-be wit - I’m not a daughter of the Shameless Geek for nothing.
The PSP is, for the most part, simply PS-on-the-Go. Aside from being Sony’s only handheld in recent gaming, some find this enough to be worth the buy. But wait! It can’t use the ordinary PSI/PSII games - now you have to buy them twice!
They might also start, in the general tradition of gaming - a PSP-only line of games. All I have to say is that if Final Fantasy XII becomes PSP only, Sony executives should breathe a sigh of relief that I’m not as competent with the zerg as my dad (an insane madman, who’s most likely part mutant-bug anyway~). I have, however, acquired the skill of an Aries rush. And that’s all I’ll say on that.
And an avid RPG gamer should be wary when she first acquires a PSP - the inital battery life is only two hours. Bleh! Not even enough to get into the initial storyline, much less getting your characters to level 3! Fortunately, full battery life lasts about 5 1/2 hours, depending. Though, with some of the more ‘intense’ games, the lithium batteries last about 3 hours. Just long enough to get to that tricky boss and beat him with 1 hp remaining, only to realize there’s no save point within the five seconds of power you have remaining.
It’s also, from the looks of it, fragile. The probability that you’ll have at least 5 dead pixels on the screen aside, the PSP requires its own carrying case. One little scratch on the screen and - boom! - it’s ruined. Well, damn, who was this thing made for - OCD adults? Of course children are going to want it - and when children are involved, scratches are certain. Any handheld would be, but apparently SOny wasn’t smart enough to think of that. With all this chant of ‘Quality! Quality! Performance!’, everyone seems to have forgotten that important necessity known as durability. Even if the intended audience is teenagers, there are still little brothers/sisters to worry about.
Silly Sony! Games are for kids!
Wait, you might be saying, if the PSP can’t play the original games, then how can it play DVDs? Simple question, simple answer. You have to buy a memory card - one big enough to hold the movie file in question - then you have to rip your legally (hah!) owned videos, then convert them into another format and then you can watch your movies. After transferring them to the video card, that is. From the looks of it the PSP suports the MPEG 3 & 4 formats - but, considering one review advised me to go to a japanese site for conversion software and then use google to try and find english-translated instructions….
Can you say WTF? Yeah, that’s what I said. Because, quite frankly, the children of today are more computer-literate and I doubt even they would have known to do that.
And are the Sony executives avid fans of illegal music/videos? I mean, I can’t even think of a better way to indirectly promote illegal downloads of music and videos. Hey, it would certainly be alot easier than converting it yourself.
And, I have to ask. What the hell is up with this sleep mode BS? You don’t want to play a game anymore, so you simply save it and put it into sleep mode while it still sucks up power? That deserves yet another ‘WTF’ - whatever happened to that glorious OFF function?
Maybe I missed something in their confusing explanation of what sleep mode actually entails. All in all, their explanation of this ‘important feature’ just took ‘confusing technical manual’ to a whole new level without using any technobabble. Congrats, Sony, on an absolutely worthless accomplishment.
There are also other flaws, most of which are common to most handhelds such as glare. Which means users of handhelds usually practice yoga, for obvious reasons.
But, the PSP is also awkward to hold for long periods of time - one reviewer complained about twinges and his hands falling asleep. To make matters worse, to watch a movie without this problem you have to put the PSP down, but prop it up so the bottom shows or else the sound will be muffled, and then get both the console and yourself in a position so that it minimizes the glare.
I’m not a contortionist, ladies and gentlemen, nor do I want to become one.
In fact, I’ll just call it quits here. Because there are so many flaws with the PSP it’s not funny. And you’re all big boys and girls - I’m sure most of you know how to use google.
As for me, I’m crawling into bed. Because this poor college student has to get up early for class registration - which, by the way, is another reason why she praises the internet because sleeping on the lawn in front of the admin building in this temperature would suck. Very, very much.
After that, Shinnite is going to take a nap, barely manage to crawl out of bed for lunch, and attend her lovely classes. And, when the day is over, her relaxation time will be spent making sure her PSII is still alive and possibly curling up in bed with her trusty, durable GBA. Because, as far as she is concerned, high quality graphics and sound aren’t impressive, as old school like Super Mario Brothers is really where it’s at.
Now, I truly know why Lizzie refuses to play on any game system more advanced than the NES. Hah.