mzowski83's Full Review: Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) Console
The PlayStation Portable is Sony's first attempt at cracking the titanium egg that Nintendo consistently hatches with handheld video game systems. After dominating the portable video game division for more than a decade and a half, Nintendo now has a new rival. Actually, it's an old rival that dethroned Nintendo's prosperous reign in the console wars with its PlayStation console and now it's attempting to repeat history with its portable system.
Sony has created a multimedia portable video game system with enough features to make it more than something to play games on. Some key features of the PSP are taken from it PS2 counterpart including controller layout and the ability watch movies.
Incorporating a dual-shock like controller setup with a directional pad, L and R button (triggers), four face buttons (Square, Triangle, Cross, and Circle), Start, and select. An analog nub is located in an awkward spot, directly underneath the directional pad. Then underneath the screen there are 7 buttons including the start and select. Home, volume + and -, a button labeled with an oval (used to toggle backlight), and a music note button to change equalizer levels from jazz, to pop, etc (only with headphones on does this button work).
The PSP has a very sleek design with a highly-glossed finish and a jet black casing with transparent buttons that add to the shine effect. A USB 2.0 port is found at the top as well as a switch to open the UMD port (discussed later). On the right of the system is a power switch that can be set on hold so it won't accidentally shut off if the PSP is put in your pocket (which I don't recommend). Then following around this switch, on the bottom, is the spot where a DC adaptor plugs in. The two tiny speakers are placed on both sides of the bottom of the PSP. On the other side of the system is a switch for wireless and ad hoc set ups. Next to this switch, is the spot where a memory stick DUO is inserted. Finally, flipping the PSP over, on the left is where the PSP battery is inserted.
Perhaps the PSP's greatest asset is its totally-awesome screen. Providing the player with a 4.3" high-definition widescreen display that is capable of producing vivid colors from a palette of 16.77 million. Even with the size of this screen, watching UMDs on a PSP is comparable, if not, better than watching DVDs at home (judging on the quality of the televesion you have your DVD player hooked up to).
This screen, marvel that it may be, is sadly vulnerable to dust, fingerprints, and scratches. I purchased a screen protector and (thankfully) placed it on my PSP almost perfectly. This has saved my screen from the aforementioned vulnerabilities and has kept it intact for the past few months that I've owned my PSP. Another problem that has been a major issue of other PSP owners are the dead pixels (which are pretty commonplace on PSPs). One dead pixel is enough to annoy any player because it is one dot on the screen that is blank for any video game or movie watched. It catches the attention of your eye like a black olive on a pizza that you only ordered pepperoni on.
The graphics on the PSP are very lush and detailed. Complete, computer-generated FMV is shown lavishly on the beautiful screen. This system has a lot to offer from a graphical standpoint; a high polygon count that creates massive 3D worlds like those found in GTA: Liberty City Stories, tennis matches with fatigued players wiping sweat off their foreheads in Virtua Tennis, and realistic car damage found in car pile-ups in Burnout Legends. Infact, the graphics are so crisp that they may make some games look like near-ports of PS2 games.
The texture resolutions are pretty nice with faces not being blotched up with pixels. It's easy to read speed limits in video games and spell effects aren't pixelated, but instead smooth and look detailed. I would say that PSP's graphics fall somewhere between PS One and PS2, but they are on the far end of the spectrum right next to PS2. I have noticed zombie-like faces on closeup shots of some characters, like the ones in Virtua Tennis, but I overlook this graphical problem because when I am playing the game it still looks great.
The button layout isn't anything too special. The buttons are easy to press and would makes porting games from any genre from PS2 onto PSP a no brainer. Hence the reason why we are getting so many ports (Spoken of later in my review).
The analog nub is a letdown in my eyes, however. Being placed directly underneath the directional pad is a problem. Try sticking your four fingers on your left hand in a "4" position, now tuck your thumb in even more and this is the feeling you'll get by using this nub. It's in a very awkward place and doesn't move as easily as the PS2 analog sticks (AT ALL). I feel like I need to spray the thing with WD-40 just to get it to not be so "sticky" but of course I wouldn't do that. Thankfully, most of the games on PSP can be played with the directional pad, however, it would have been nice to be able to play them with a decent analog stick.
The system comes with a 32MB Memory stick DUO, which is fine if you want to play games. When I bought my PSP, I threw in a 1GB Sandisk Memory Stick DUO because I purchased my PSP for its multimedia aspects, not the games. If you are buying a PSP just for games, then you could hold off on purchasing a larger memory stick. If you want to load all kinds of pictures, mp3s, and movies onto your system, you better have a much larger memory stick. Remember that purchasing one of these larger capacity memory sticks adds to the price tag of a PSP. Prices keep dropping on these, thankfully, and if you wait long enough, stores like Best Buy or Circuit City have sales on them from time to time. Needless to say, with a 1GB memory stick, I haven't had to use my 32MB one once.
The piece of plastic that covers the battery is so poorly designed you'll think that you just purchased a flashlight. The casing comes off so easily and makes you wonder if it's going to stay on when you replace the battery. No biggie I guess, but it would have been nice if it was built a little bit better.
The UMD slot pops open and these are inserted with the arrow pointing down. These hold a surprisingly large amount of data and resemble a minidisc that's been put inside a cartridge. UMDs are capable of holding enough to data to create large games like those on PS2, but are hindered (GREATLY) with long load times. This is very unfortunate for a portable system, and even more unfortunate for casual gamers. The PS2 has very fast load times and the PSP is unfortunately bogged down with load times that are as bad as the original PlayStation's. You can expect in some games to be sitting there for a minute for the game just to load. This is a major downfall in the PSP's design.
So you've managed to purchase a PSP, a larger memory stick DUO, and you already have a slew of mp3s and video files on your PC. The PSP comes with a USB cable so uploading data on it should be a cakewalk right? Wrong.
It displays digital pictures alright, and these can be set as the wallpaper. It's almost pointless to do this because the picture will almost definitely get in your way of reading the PSP's main menu. But I guess I can see where it would be cool to be able to put a small picture of a hero/mascot on the bottom right portion of the screen. That way it wouldn't get in the way.
Mp3s can be uploaded (you must make individual folders on the memory stick for different albums/genres/authors etc) onto the PSP and played through its miniature speakers. This is fine, but the fact that creating playlists has to be done on the PC makes it cumbersome. Let's say for some reason you copied a file with 100 mp3s onto your PSP. Scrolling through all of these mp3s to find "The Boys of Summer" will take a while. There is no way to type "T" and have the PSP display all mp3s that start with a T. I have to turn my PSP volume down if I want to fastforward music otherwise I am presented with a painfully-squeeky noise that bugs everyone else in the room. And when I want to listen to my PSP loud... well, I can't. The speakers produce a ridiculously unrespectable amount of sound that makes you wonder why they threw in an mp3 player in the first place. Unless it's hooked up to my computer speakers, I don't think twice about listening to music off this thing.
Video files can't directly be read with a PSP. So the player must jump on the internet and download programs that will assist in converting household files into mp4 format. This isn't as easy as it sounds. Players can also purchase software from an electronics dealer if they want to go down that route. I'm not going to mention names, but I found one on the internet that I've been using and it converts most files into an mp4 format. Thankfully it's worked for me, but it seems like Sony threw in the video playback option at the last minute. They should have been more elaborate with their instructions, or furthermore, had the PSP capable of converting files into mp4 format on-the-fly so players wouldn't have to go through this mess in the first place.
Now you've purchased a PSP, a memory stick, software to convert video files into a PSP-mp4-format, and now you are going to buy a movie to watch on your PSP... say... Office Space.
You've already spent close to $390 and you still don't have any games. The UMD's range from $14.99 for shady movies to $29.99 for newer ones. This is alright, considering that you don't have a portable DVD player and want to watch these on a plane in their entirety. But the sad thing is that they don't come with extra features that are found on nearly every existing DVD. No sound options, no commentary, no behind the scenes, no bonus scenes, nothing. You get the movie and that's about it. Now you should probably throw in a video game ($50) and an extra battery incase the main one gets low in the middle of a movie ($40) and you're already looking at close to $500. Throw in a screen protector and a carrying case and you're already near $525.
Don't just throw in any video game, though. In my opinion, the PSP's game selection is alright. Does any game stick out as a system-seller in my eyes? No. Original titles that make the PSP the hands-down portable video game system to own are coming out at a slower rate than RPGs released on the N64. Most games for PSP are in the $40-50 price range and most of these titles PS2 owners aleady own. Until PSP's game selection acquires titles that make the PSP shine as a system on its own merits, its original launch library of 20 games or whatever isn't going to support the system's success. Hopefully we'll get the Suikoden I and II ported over (which again is a port) and hopefully they'll make a handful of titles that are exclusive to the PSP.
The games I own are okay but I use my PSP for a dumbed down version of a portable DVD player... still waiting for quality games.
I think the PSP has great potential, but is sorely built for a small spectrum of players. I don't think that everyone has $525 to blow on a system that doesn't have a great library of games. Recommended if you have the money and want a decent portable with a great screen. If you have a laptop, mp3 player, or portable DVD player, then a PSP really isn't a great system to own because it doesn't do justice to any of these. Still, it does have a lot to offer for its $250 price tag. If you want games, then get a Nintendo DS because you will save on money, have a better library to choose from, and a more durable system in the long run.
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