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Riiiidge Racerrr!
Posted February 26th, 2007, in Games.
Before you ask, it was the one that costs $499 US Dollars, and yes, it wasn’t hard to get. But I like it. Veronica bought a Playstation 3 on my command\advice when she was in New York (I think) as we both wanted to play some PS2 games, we wanted to try the new Sonic the Hedgehog game, and we knew that if she brought it to Australia we could probably eBay it for about as much as we paid. I decided that it’s so particularly interesting as a piece of gadgetry that I should write about it, as I think it’s pretty cool really.
The Setup
Firstly, this bastard was a pain to get going. To begin with, it’s pretty big, though the box isn’t a crate or whatever. We set it up in my room, on my desk, but encountered just a few problems. Firstly, it didn’t like my 240v->120v stepdown power convertor that I use for my Japanese Dreamcast, instead beeping with anguish when I pressed the “on” button. I did some research and read some labels, and I soon noticed.. my converter was rated for 30W, but the PS3 wanted more like… uh.. 400W. That’s right - while the Dreamcast is hungry for 20W of power, the Gamecube about 40 and my iMac about 180W (With screen!), the PS3 wanted as much as a high powered gaming computer. Well! I then ordered a 500W stepdown converter from eBay ($90 AUD!) which is already bigger than a Wii by itself, but it supplied ample power for the damn thing and it finally turned on.. with no picture.
You see, a few weeks earlier I bought a HDMI to DVI cable so we could presumably play in 720p on my cute little IBM 17” LCD screen. I made the mistake of assuming HDMI was worth something - unfortunately, it appears that the norm for HDMI devices now is to encrypt everything with HDCP, which basically means that even though a HDMI->DVI cable should work perfectly in translating the wires to the right positions, you need a HDCP-capable monitor to decode the stupid DRM shit they put on the video cable. My IBM monitor, being old, does not. Unfortunately, neither do that many newer monitors, either - even el-cheapo plasma and LCD TVs often omit HDCP support. Even Apple Cinema displays don’t do HDCP yet. It looked like my DVI idea was a waste, so I dug out the 14” CRT television in my warddrobe and hooked it up with the plain old composite cables it came with. (I later got some component cables and ran it on a big 51cm Sony TV, looks pretty good but I want to try HD sometime!)
The console
Okay, so that was the anguish-ridden process of setting it up. Boo DRM, haha that’s kinda funny power consumption. How do I rate the console itself, though?
Aesthetically, it’s pretty gorgeous. Yes, it’s hueg like a PS3, but the curves and gloss are clearly designed to hide this, and it’s only when you’re carrying it do you think “Man this is a huge bastard of a thing.” I don’t know if it’s bigger than a first gen Xbox, but even if it is, they are polar opposites in terms of what they aim for in the case design.. “HEY GUYS I’M A GIGANTIC BRICK WHAT THE FUCK’S UP IN HERE!” says Xbox, while the PS3 is sucking in its stomach and wearing svelte, form-fitting clothes, hoping you won’t notice the hidden girth. It’s a weird design for sure, with the curved top and various recesses, but sitting flat or standing as a tower it sure looks impressive, and it does feel like it cost the amount you paid for it. It looks like it could be an awesome little Vaio computer if you have it like a tower (and I think it can, if you install Linux!) and it looks imposing and next-gen in a way that the Xbox 360 is only kinda approaching.
What’s wrong with the case? I would have liked to see colours, and I hope they diversify soon. Black isn’t bad at all, though. The Spiderman font is absurd and hideous (I’d prefer they go with that bizarre PS3 symbol you see just to the side) but it’s not that repulsive in person. It’s also pretty obvious that Sony’ll release one that’s about 10x smaller in a year or three, but for now I think it’s on par with the Wii and DS in terms of high quality design. Did I mention the touch-sensor off and eject buttons, cool and quiet operation, Sony-style beeps and bloops as you switch it on and off, and the slot loading Blu-Ray drive? Totally awesome.
As for the other bits to do with the hardware.. the controller isn’t bad. The USB charge cable idea is absolutely superb, and the automatic bluetooth pairing system is reliable and quick. The controller feels a bit better than usual due to the lightness, and I can’t say I miss rumble that much. I do like the way you press the PS button in the middle to boot the console up. It’s super duper slick. The AV out plug at the back of the system is the same as the PS2 (and PS1?) which is very nice of Sony, and HDMI\optical audio out are cheerfully provided on the low-end version (remember the ridiculous Sony-bashing hype of last year about this? Probably better than you remember the quiet headlines when Sony decided to put HDMI on both anyway.) The PS3 has four powered USB ports at the front, which (so cool!) worked with my USB keyboard without issue, as well as Veronica’s iPod and a flash drive. You can also pair a bluetooth headset to it, and it was talking to my Mac through gigabit ethernet. It really is a little computer in there, and for once it feels like it.
The software
XMB, or Xross Media Bar, is the ridiculously titled PS3 system software. It’s so pretty and simple! But it does a lot. I have no real experience with the 360 system software, but I will say that the PS3 one is far more minimalistic and beautiful than any of the competition. I expect Nintendo’s might be easier to use due to the remote interface, but for a controller-based menu screen it’s about as good as you get. Basically, you get a ribbon of icons that flow horizontally, and you access the contents of each section with up\down. That’s generally it. You get a very beautiful wave of colour moving along in the background, with the rest left to big white text.
Oh, but the software on this thing is pretty great. I already mentioned how it works with peripherals like a keyboard or bluetooth headset, but there’s also an option for USB webcams (didn’t like a Logitech one I tried though.) If you watch the Engadget walkthrough of the XMB, you’ll see that it has a whole bunch of options to choose relating to video and sound output, Blu Ray movie display, preferred audio encoding, etc.
It seems quite good at playing media. It can swallow all your music from CDs, and while you need to manually find the files in Apple’s crazy structure, it will indeed play music from an iPod (I do wish Sony supported the iPod more directly, though.) The visualiser is quite nice, and it will display ID3v2 album art in an attractive way. My only real concern with the media playing aspects is that the little overlay of play\pause\repeat etc controls is small and a bit unattractive. This is used in the DVD playblack mode, as well as general video playback, CD and internal music playback, and I think photo display. It works, though.
As an aside, I think it does pretty much everything iTV does and probably not that much worse. Add iTunes share support and fairplay and you’re done. I would only marginally prefer Apple’s interface, but remember that Sony have a high quality Bluetooth remote you can buy and Apple are stuck with the antiquated IR Front Row remote.
The web browser is surprisingly good, supporting thumbnail browsing kinda like Expose, with clever usage of the controller for text input (of course, USB keyboards work too!) and lots of shortcuts to menus to use. The renderer isn’t too great, though, it’s a bit slow and messes up on complex sites. I’d compare it to Safari 1.x or something.. though I do wonder what it uses. (ACCESS maybe?) There’s a Playstation Store site you can visit which has downloadable games, movies and addons for the PS3, some free, some cost small amounts (Seems like $5-6 is the norm.) I never used Xbox Live before, so the experience of downloading demos and freebies from the Playstation Store was pretty exciting to me. Games range from 80mb to 800mb, with a fair expectation of game size being 400mb or so. It would be nicer if the store was presented as part of the XMB native interface, as the website design is a bit clunky at times, but the only thing it’s really begging for is background download support.
Oh, on second appearance it seems quite buggy and crappy in places. I forgot my password, but there’s no means to reset it. I also added $10 to the Playstation Store wallet so I can buy flOw ($8 game) but I can’t buy it (I get a page saying “commerce.purchaseFailed” and it cheerfully emails me with a bill for $0.00.) It’s not a total disaster but it certainly needs bugs worked out.
The Games
Huh, what? This thing has games? (You kinda feel that way after using a PS3.) But yeah, it’s not just a superduper media device, of course. It seems to me that so far, there isn’t too much to play on the PS3, and that we’ll be waiting until Christmas and early 2008 for the really big names (MGS4 MGS4 MGS4!!) Anyway, I’ll list the notable games I tried here.
- Sonic the Hedgehog. - This is a lot of the reason we bought it, and yes, we knew it was meant to be bad. I came away from it saddened that a game with such potential and obvious effort was rushed severely to the point of becoming difficult to enjoy.
- Resistance. Uh, I dunno. It seems polished, and well made, and original, and the story is kinda interesting.. but it doesn’t grab me. Console FPSes aren’t very good, and this one is no exception to that rule, at least to me. It’s also pretty hard! It basically comes down to feeling like Halo or Gears of War but not quite there - it’s better than the average also-ran FPS title, but it doesn’t make it to classic status either.
- GT:HD Concept. Zomg. Just one track and twelve cars with no competitors, but this is a lot of fun. I still need to figure out drifting, but overall this free download game really surprised me and took up a few hours of my time. I am now really hyped up for Gran Turismo 5, but I don’t think we’ll get it until 2009 or something. Here’s hoping for more GT:HD Concept downloads!
I will now mention the notable demos I played:
- Motorstorm. This together with GT:HD make for some really impressive tech demos, but Motorstorm is similarly refined and clever in its gameplay. While Gran Turismo has a super polished realistic feel, Motorstorm has a super exciting crazy exploding car-fest feel.
- Ridge Racer 7. Ridiculous drifting is ridiculouuusss.
- Genji 2 (an action game). Button mashey but very pretty at times.
- Formula One. Awesome graphics, pretty fun with all the automatic guide things turned on :(
- Blast Factor, Cash Guns Chaos, GripShift. Boringish.
- Lemmings. Great.
PS2 and PS1 emulation is so far flawless. It has this system where you create virtual memory cards, but apart from that it Just Works. We’ve played MGS3, Grandia 1, Grandia 3 and Sonic Heroes on it. It even shows the old BIOS bootup screens which is really cute - seeing the PS1 bootup screen is kinda weird on component video!
Conclusion
I like it! As a gadget, it’s versatile, well-built and extremely cool, and seems to be a good solution for the features it offers - movie player, music library photo viewer, though less so as an internet navigator. As a console? Up to you. I’d say right now it’s only a good choice if you factor the PS2\PSX into the equation, as right now there’s only like three PS3 games worth playing, and none of them true blockbusters. It has yet to truly shine and I continue to expect it to surge ahead towards the end of the year and finally assert its place as the top selling console of the year. Just wait for a price drop!
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