- On-the-go gaming funOne of the disadvantages of being a gamer is the amount of money you'd have to pay to cure your curiousities. A lot of times you really want to try out a certain game but can't because that would mean buying a whole new system and hope that system will offer steady support over its lifespan. With the PSP, it's one of those systems where the games that definately intrigue are on a new system so it becomes a question of "can I live without buying a PSP?" or decide to give up and get one anyway. Well I got a little impatient and had to check out those games so I thought I'd get it. So how does the system fare?
The system itself can be described as basically a miniature PS2. While graphically the PSP isn't as pristine, many of its games such as Crisis Core and God of War look pretty uncanny to their more bigger console brothers while we also have games such as Jeanne D'Arc, Final Fantasy Tactics or the Metal Gear Solid Digital Novel have great art design and going for a more storybook or unique quality than ultra-realism. The 16:9 ratio of the screen also helps give the games a more cinematic feel and the clarity in many of the games is quite striking. My one complaint and it's more for lack of gear or storage than anything but with the screen as widely accessible to rough surfaces and objects it can get easy to scratch unlike the DS which closes and shelters the screens so either hide the machine or put it where things aren't going to scratch across it.
The controls for a handheld game tend to be quite crucial and one thing that annoyed me with the machine was that my hands would cramp after awhile and after awhile would have to wave my hand back and forth like I burned it just to "loosen it up". Another small flaw I found was the buttons since in the heat of battle/excitement/whatever, it's easy to hit another button such as the "Home" which is right next to the analog nub (which feels awkward too) and it's easy for your palm to rub against the Power switch on the right to turn it off.
The PSP allows for a bit more than gameplay such as photos, music (which comes in handy for stuff like Grand Theft Auto where you can have custom radio stations with your own stuff), Wi-Fi and online gaming as well as the UMD movies which is a neat idea - watch movies in the backseat on long trips, say - but I kind of prefer the bigger theatricality of the HD widescreen TV and big volume stereo. Most won't even use the features and are perfectly content with having prints of photos set up, music on CD's or iPod's but the online gaming and Ad-Hoc feature can be quite welcome.
As for its library of games, it ultimately depends on your preference. There's racing like Wipeout and Midnight Club, platformers like Ratchet and Clank and Daxter, Silent Hill Origins for those into scary stuff, tactical RPG's like Tactics or Disgaea and long RPG's like Valkyrie Profile. There's even some unique games like Lumines, a puzzle game and PSP's version of Meteos, to Patapon which is basically a mixture of DDR and that electronic board game Simon Says. But for some gamers, actually finding the games can be another matter entirely since there's a good 5 games on my list that I'd love to play yet with 5 stores in town that sell PSP games, not a single store carries it.
I'd recommend the PSP for the kind of games it gets and owning a DS at the same time, I can get the more unique style and the traditional whenever I want.
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