On the way home my thumbs are twitching, preparing themselves for the ordeal ahead. My eyes flick from my thumbs to the window. I try not to think about what I'm praying I'll find when I get home, and I will the train to move faster. At last, it slows to a halt at my stop and I run home, faster than I ever ran for athletics at school. Outside my back door, there is a non-descript white box marked only with a large sticker covered in Japanese text, and the letters EMS. At last, it's here . . .
That was five months ago, and now Sony's wonder-portable, touted as the best thing since someone thought it'd be a good idea to cut bread into bits, has landed in the US, easily the largest market for video games in the world. But underneath all that black plastic glitter and relentless hyperbole, is it really as fantastic as it's made out to be, by everyone from the mainstream press to the paperboy? Most gamers seem to think so, judging from the 600,000 units that were sold in the first week of sale alone in the States, and the rave reviews its garnered everywhere. The Times even referred to it as 'The Daddy', while saying the DS was a pointless gimmick. Mind you, they only had a grainy picture of the back of a PSP, leading certain parties to wonder whether they'd ever actually played on one. This sycophantic 'reviewing' and playing off against rival machines such as Gizmondo and Nintendo's DS is all well and good, but it doesn't actually tell you anything about the machine except what's been copied and pasted from the press release. That's the reason that this particular review has been written.
The PSP's looks are obviously its strongest initial selling point, and if you think people will choose substance over style, you just have to see Apple's feature-low, price-high iPod to be proved wrong. The machine has a gleaming black face plate, and a dulled black back featuring a silver disc surrounding the letters PSP. It's undeniably beatiful to look at, and there's no doubt that every Nathan Barley Shoreditch fashion slave in the Western world is going to be flaunting one. Sony are no doubt hoping to emulate the success of Apple in the respect of merely having the most aesthetically pleasing device on the market, and thus being the most successful. However, it's not terribly practical. The shiny black face is a magnet for greasy fingerprints that are seemingly impossible to get rid of, especially on the screen, and when putting it in your pocket there is a constant fear of even the tiniest scratch having appeared when you next take it out. The other sensation while the device is in your pocket is one of being heavily weighted down, because make no mistake, this is not an especially petite device, especially when in the (included with the Value Pack) Sony soft case. The console also feels fairly fragile, much more so than say the Nintendo DS, and this leads to a certain reluctance in actually taking it anywhere, for fear of it getting damaged. As far as buttons go, the PSP has a standard Sony D-Pad and symbol buttons, a carbon copy of its Dual Shock controllers, and two transparent shoulder buttons, L and R. It also has a curious analog 'nub', a small fragile-feeling analog stick that slides in any direction you move it. The unit is turned on via a switch which moves back into place once pushed upwards. It also moves downwards into a 'Hold' mode, which is the same as keylock on a mobile phone, in which the buttons have no effect when pressed. The main use of this is for when you're just using it to listen to music, and the device is in your pocket. Another extremely useful feature is the 'Sleep' function, activated by quickly pushing the off/on switch. This ostensibly switches the machine off, but if you push the on/off switch again, it comes back to exactly where you were in the game.
There are also buttons below the screen; a Home button for taking you from whatever you're currently doing back to the main dashboard (more on that later), volume buttons (interestingly, the volume bar is very similar to the ones found on Sony TVs), a screen button (allowing the changing of the brightness of the screen, and, if you hold the button down, switching off the screen altogether), and a mini equalizer button. Ergonomically, the device varies. While using the D-Pad and face buttons, or just watching a film, it's excellent and fits the hand well. On the other hand attempting to use the low placed analog nub and the shoulder buttons is less comfortable than it should be, and is merely adequate.
What immediately attracts the eye while glancing over the machine is the screen. Produced by Sharp, with a size of 4.5 inches and a resolution of 480*272, it's utterly gorgeous to look at and photographs simply don't do it justice. It's well lit and large, giving clear, sharp, images, and suited perfectly to detailed games and films. In fact, the only slight issue with it is occasional ghosting visible during high speed sections of games like Ridge Racers, but even this is fairly moot and only really noticeable if you're very close to the screen. The PSP's built-in speakers however are a different matter. They are on the bottom of the unit and provide fairly low quality sound with little bass, however this is forgivable and to be expected on a machine relatively diminutive.
PSP games (and the forthcoming films and music) ship stored on 'UMDs', Universal Media Discs. A little bit like the mainly failed Sony Minidisc format, they are tiny DVDs in white plastic cases, slightly smaller than said Minidiscs. They store 1.8GB of data, and slot into the back of the machine, which flips open about 25 degrees for you to click them into place. The other storage method that the PSP is compatible with is Memory Stick Duo, the miniaturized version of Sony's flash memory format. This is used to store savegames (a 32MB one is bundled with the Value Pack), as well as compatible video (MPEG4 and 3GP formats are both supported, though not all resolutions are), images (only JPEG supported), and music (MP3 and Sony's own ATRAC compression format are both featured). Installers for firmware updates can only be stored and run from Memory Stick Duo, and you can buy Duo sticks up to 1GB in size.
Speaking of the PSP firmware, its main dashboard is extremly intuitive and well designed, using a technology dubbed 'XMB'(Cross Media Bar. Though shouldn't that be CMB? Oh, wait . . .). There are a row of icons, a briefcase (settings), a camera (pictures), a piece of film (er . . films), a musical note (I think I'll stop explaining these now), and a silhouetted Dual Shock controller. You use left and right on the D-Pad to navigate between these, and as you hover over one of them, a vertical menu appears on either side of the main icon. Under Photos, Films and Music, the only option you'll see is 'Memory Stick' from which you can access relevant films on the media in question, unless you insert a UMD containing said relevant files. Under settings, you can change playback options for video, music and the photo slideshow, the language of the firmware and setup your wireless infrastructure. You can also update the firmware version wirelessly via the internet, provided you are connected to a network at the time.
The photo viewer, movie player and music player respectively are also all intuitively and slickly designed. The photo viewer offers a slideshow and allows you to move back and forth through your photo album with the L and R shoulder buttons, as well as letting you zoom in and out by holding square and using the analog nub. You can then move around the picture, while zoomed in, with the analog nub, and the picture is antialiased and focused as you move. A Photoshop style thumbnail even appears to show you where you are on the picture, and you can access all metadata included with the file e.g. date last modified, creator etc. In the movie player, the controls are comprehensive and reachable either by pressing triangle or one of the buttons that they are mapped to. This latter feature is quite useful, as if someone speaks to you while you're watching something you can quickly stab a key to pause it rather than having to open a menu, and adds to the smoothness of the whole package. Unfortunately however, the PSP bizarrely can't play video converted into its native resolution of 480*272, instead preferring the files to be encoded at 320*240.
Currently there aren't a huge amount of options for converting video into a PSP-friendly format, only Sony's Japanese-only Image Converter or the homebrew 3GP converter. Expect, however, to see more and more video conversion software including bespoke 'PSP' options especially for the system. The music player, similar to the movie player, is beautifully designed, showing your playlist with the song name and artist clearly visible on the dropdown menu. Full ID3 tags are supported and displayed clearly, and you can swiftly fast forward and rewind using the D-Pad, and play, pause and stop using the symbol buttons.
To put these files on Memory Stick for the PSP's usage, the device must be connected to computer via a USB 2.0 to USB mini cable, and once plugged in it appears as any other removable drive on which you can store files. It's not the friendliest system in the world though, requiring quite a lot of guesswork to get working. For example, to view photos stored on the memory stick, a folder 'PHOTO' must be created, which isn't the most intuitive system in the world.
In the 'Game' dropdown menu, the options let you choose whether to look at and manage the savegames on your Memory Stick, run games from Memory Stick (none currently exist, though the firmware update runs as one) or play a game from UMD (if you have one inserted). Stylishly, if a UMD is inserted, once you hover over it the entire HUD changes to that game's colour scheme and the logo appears along with a synopsis. If you insert Ridge Racers, you even get a short video running in a window. The same effects also occur if you hover over a savegame (though the RR video doesn't play on its save).
Out of the box, PSP supports 802.11b WiFi networking, and there is a small switch on the left side of the unit with which to switch it on and off. This allows (with the setting up of the infrastructure mode) a connection to the internet through a wireless network, but its raison d'etre is the playing of multiplayer games with friends without the need for wires, and in this respect it works well, with no lag and an easy setup.
The fact that this is a portable electronic device is obviously going to make battery life an issue of concern, especially with Sony's apparent reluctance to announce the exact time you would be able to play for without having to recharge. However, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see why Sony were so reticent. The battery life varies hugely depending on your application, while playing music with the screen switched off you can achieve over nine hours, but playing Ridge Racers with the speakers on full and the screen at the brightest level you can expect no more than three hours. Expect most games to last around four or five hours, possibly six if they have small amounts of disc access. Obviously having the built-in speakers and WiFi switched on will sap this faster.
What Sony have created is what they believe to be the ultimate portable entertainment machine, and I'm almost inclined to agree with them. The PSP is beautiful to look at, utilizes a slick and innovative interface, and produces fantastic graphics quality. Is it style over substance? A case of iPod-syndrome? Anything but. The PSP's faults are minimal and the system leaves very little to be desired.
10/10
------>
The unit is one of the most import friendly consoles to be released to date, allowing you to change the system language to English and incorporating a 100-240v PSU, meaning you can use a normal UK figure-of-eight adapter to charge it.
That was five months ago, and now Sony's wonder-portable, touted as the best thing since someone thought it'd be a good idea to cut bread into bits, has landed in the US, easily the largest market for video games in the world. But underneath all that black plastic glitter and relentless hyperbole, is it really as fantastic as it's made out to be, by everyone from the mainstream press to the paperboy? Most gamers seem to think so, judging from the 600,000 units that were sold in the first week of sale alone in the States, and the rave reviews its garnered everywhere. The Times even referred to it as 'The Daddy', while saying the DS was a pointless gimmick. Mind you, they only had a grainy picture of the back of a PSP, leading certain parties to wonder whether they'd ever actually played on one. This sycophantic 'reviewing' and playing off against rival machines such as Gizmondo and Nintendo's DS is all well and good, but it doesn't actually tell you anything about the machine except what's been copied and pasted from the press release. That's the reason that this particular review has been written.
The PSP's looks are obviously its strongest initial selling point, and if you think people will choose substance over style, you just have to see Apple's feature-low, price-high iPod to be proved wrong. The machine has a gleaming black face plate, and a dulled black back featuring a silver disc surrounding the letters PSP. It's undeniably beatiful to look at, and there's no doubt that every Nathan Barley Shoreditch fashion slave in the Western world is going to be flaunting one. Sony are no doubt hoping to emulate the success of Apple in the respect of merely having the most aesthetically pleasing device on the market, and thus being the most successful. However, it's not terribly practical. The shiny black face is a magnet for greasy fingerprints that are seemingly impossible to get rid of, especially on the screen, and when putting it in your pocket there is a constant fear of even the tiniest scratch having appeared when you next take it out. The other sensation while the device is in your pocket is one of being heavily weighted down, because make no mistake, this is not an especially petite device, especially when in the (included with the Value Pack) Sony soft case. The console also feels fairly fragile, much more so than say the Nintendo DS, and this leads to a certain reluctance in actually taking it anywhere, for fear of it getting damaged. As far as buttons go, the PSP has a standard Sony D-Pad and symbol buttons, a carbon copy of its Dual Shock controllers, and two transparent shoulder buttons, L and R. It also has a curious analog 'nub', a small fragile-feeling analog stick that slides in any direction you move it. The unit is turned on via a switch which moves back into place once pushed upwards. It also moves downwards into a 'Hold' mode, which is the same as keylock on a mobile phone, in which the buttons have no effect when pressed. The main use of this is for when you're just using it to listen to music, and the device is in your pocket. Another extremely useful feature is the 'Sleep' function, activated by quickly pushing the off/on switch. This ostensibly switches the machine off, but if you push the on/off switch again, it comes back to exactly where you were in the game.
There are also buttons below the screen; a Home button for taking you from whatever you're currently doing back to the main dashboard (more on that later), volume buttons (interestingly, the volume bar is very similar to the ones found on Sony TVs), a screen button (allowing the changing of the brightness of the screen, and, if you hold the button down, switching off the screen altogether), and a mini equalizer button. Ergonomically, the device varies. While using the D-Pad and face buttons, or just watching a film, it's excellent and fits the hand well. On the other hand attempting to use the low placed analog nub and the shoulder buttons is less comfortable than it should be, and is merely adequate.
What immediately attracts the eye while glancing over the machine is the screen. Produced by Sharp, with a size of 4.5 inches and a resolution of 480*272, it's utterly gorgeous to look at and photographs simply don't do it justice. It's well lit and large, giving clear, sharp, images, and suited perfectly to detailed games and films. In fact, the only slight issue with it is occasional ghosting visible during high speed sections of games like Ridge Racers, but even this is fairly moot and only really noticeable if you're very close to the screen. The PSP's built-in speakers however are a different matter. They are on the bottom of the unit and provide fairly low quality sound with little bass, however this is forgivable and to be expected on a machine relatively diminutive.
PSP games (and the forthcoming films and music) ship stored on 'UMDs', Universal Media Discs. A little bit like the mainly failed Sony Minidisc format, they are tiny DVDs in white plastic cases, slightly smaller than said Minidiscs. They store 1.8GB of data, and slot into the back of the machine, which flips open about 25 degrees for you to click them into place. The other storage method that the PSP is compatible with is Memory Stick Duo, the miniaturized version of Sony's flash memory format. This is used to store savegames (a 32MB one is bundled with the Value Pack), as well as compatible video (MPEG4 and 3GP formats are both supported, though not all resolutions are), images (only JPEG supported), and music (MP3 and Sony's own ATRAC compression format are both featured). Installers for firmware updates can only be stored and run from Memory Stick Duo, and you can buy Duo sticks up to 1GB in size.
Speaking of the PSP firmware, its main dashboard is extremly intuitive and well designed, using a technology dubbed 'XMB'(Cross Media Bar. Though shouldn't that be CMB? Oh, wait . . .). There are a row of icons, a briefcase (settings), a camera (pictures), a piece of film (er . . films), a musical note (I think I'll stop explaining these now), and a silhouetted Dual Shock controller. You use left and right on the D-Pad to navigate between these, and as you hover over one of them, a vertical menu appears on either side of the main icon. Under Photos, Films and Music, the only option you'll see is 'Memory Stick' from which you can access relevant films on the media in question, unless you insert a UMD containing said relevant files. Under settings, you can change playback options for video, music and the photo slideshow, the language of the firmware and setup your wireless infrastructure. You can also update the firmware version wirelessly via the internet, provided you are connected to a network at the time.
The photo viewer, movie player and music player respectively are also all intuitively and slickly designed. The photo viewer offers a slideshow and allows you to move back and forth through your photo album with the L and R shoulder buttons, as well as letting you zoom in and out by holding square and using the analog nub. You can then move around the picture, while zoomed in, with the analog nub, and the picture is antialiased and focused as you move. A Photoshop style thumbnail even appears to show you where you are on the picture, and you can access all metadata included with the file e.g. date last modified, creator etc. In the movie player, the controls are comprehensive and reachable either by pressing triangle or one of the buttons that they are mapped to. This latter feature is quite useful, as if someone speaks to you while you're watching something you can quickly stab a key to pause it rather than having to open a menu, and adds to the smoothness of the whole package. Unfortunately however, the PSP bizarrely can't play video converted into its native resolution of 480*272, instead preferring the files to be encoded at 320*240.
Currently there aren't a huge amount of options for converting video into a PSP-friendly format, only Sony's Japanese-only Image Converter or the homebrew 3GP converter. Expect, however, to see more and more video conversion software including bespoke 'PSP' options especially for the system. The music player, similar to the movie player, is beautifully designed, showing your playlist with the song name and artist clearly visible on the dropdown menu. Full ID3 tags are supported and displayed clearly, and you can swiftly fast forward and rewind using the D-Pad, and play, pause and stop using the symbol buttons.
To put these files on Memory Stick for the PSP's usage, the device must be connected to computer via a USB 2.0 to USB mini cable, and once plugged in it appears as any other removable drive on which you can store files. It's not the friendliest system in the world though, requiring quite a lot of guesswork to get working. For example, to view photos stored on the memory stick, a folder 'PHOTO' must be created, which isn't the most intuitive system in the world.
In the 'Game' dropdown menu, the options let you choose whether to look at and manage the savegames on your Memory Stick, run games from Memory Stick (none currently exist, though the firmware update runs as one) or play a game from UMD (if you have one inserted). Stylishly, if a UMD is inserted, once you hover over it the entire HUD changes to that game's colour scheme and the logo appears along with a synopsis. If you insert Ridge Racers, you even get a short video running in a window. The same effects also occur if you hover over a savegame (though the RR video doesn't play on its save).
Out of the box, PSP supports 802.11b WiFi networking, and there is a small switch on the left side of the unit with which to switch it on and off. This allows (with the setting up of the infrastructure mode) a connection to the internet through a wireless network, but its raison d'etre is the playing of multiplayer games with friends without the need for wires, and in this respect it works well, with no lag and an easy setup.
The fact that this is a portable electronic device is obviously going to make battery life an issue of concern, especially with Sony's apparent reluctance to announce the exact time you would be able to play for without having to recharge. However, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see why Sony were so reticent. The battery life varies hugely depending on your application, while playing music with the screen switched off you can achieve over nine hours, but playing Ridge Racers with the speakers on full and the screen at the brightest level you can expect no more than three hours. Expect most games to last around four or five hours, possibly six if they have small amounts of disc access. Obviously having the built-in speakers and WiFi switched on will sap this faster.
What Sony have created is what they believe to be the ultimate portable entertainment machine, and I'm almost inclined to agree with them. The PSP is beautiful to look at, utilizes a slick and innovative interface, and produces fantastic graphics quality. Is it style over substance? A case of iPod-syndrome? Anything but. The PSP's faults are minimal and the system leaves very little to be desired.
10/10
------>The unit is one of the most import friendly consoles to be released to date, allowing you to change the system language to English and incorporating a 100-240v PSU, meaning you can use a normal UK figure-of-eight adapter to charge it.
Comment