So, I finally got my hands on my PS3 today, and the first thing you notice is that it’s kinda heavy. My arms are sore in ways usually reserved for when I’m carrying heavy metal cases, just from the walk from the office.
Hooking it up was easy enough, and it’s nice that it doesn’t need yet another external power supply cluttering up my gaming area. I originally tried to use the S-video cable from my old PS2, since the cables are supposed to be compatible, but it didn’t work and I had to resort to the composite cable that came with the system. I just bought one of the most recent, high-tech consoles, and it’s now hooked up via the crummiest video input possible.
Upon actually firing it up, it’s not as quiet as I’d expected when sitting at the menus, being just a bit louder than my 360. It’s definitely a lot quieter when a disc is spinning, though. There’s hardly any increase in noise, whereas the 360 sounds like a jet engine.
It didn’t support my wireless security settings out of the box, so I had to hook up an Ethernet cable to do the system update, after which I could then set the wireless up. It kept complaining that the Ethernet wasn’t connected while the update was downloading though, even as the progress bar was inching forward…
The main menu interface seems to have gone for a more ‘classy’ look, and seems easy enough to navigate. It automatically found my MythTV server as a media server source, which is nice, but any attempt to play recordings failed with a ‘data is corrupt’ message, which isn’t so nice. Hopefully a future version of either the PS3 firmware or MythTV will fix that.
I signed up for the PlayStation Network, but it wouldn’t let me use the same name as I have on XBL. I doubt it was already taken, so their filter probably objected to the ‘junkie’ part. Oh well. I immediately checked out the store, but the interface to it is horrible; it doesn’t show very much at a time, and you have to add things to a ‘shopping cart’, manually select them again to start the actual download, and then select them again afterwards to run their installation. Annoying.
Since I don’t actually have any proper PS3 games yet, I browsed through the store and bought GripShift and Super Stardust HD. Unfortunately, those were about the only things that looked interesting enough to me. They really need demos for all the downloadable games.
The games I got are pretty fun, though. GripShift is kinda similar to Trackmania, in that you have to drive to the goal in a record time and/or beat the other racers, on oft-weird and wacky tracks, plus some additional goals of collecting all the stars on the map, and finding a hidden marker. It doesn’t really show off the PS3 though, since it’s basically a port from the original PSP game. Super Stardust HD is sort of like a cross between Geometry Wars and Asteroids, on a spherical surface instead of a flat space. I’m not sure I’m quite playing it properly yet, as there are different weapons and I haven’t mastered knowing which to use when.
Gran Turismo HD looks great graphically, but it’s fairly limited in what you can do. When the real GT5 comes out, it’ll have to compete against Forza 2 on the basis of its career mode, online play, and AI, none of which can be seen here.
And finally, I threw in Persona 3 to test the PS2 backwards compatibility, and it worked as well as expected. I won’t really be able to tell if there’s any improvement from the upscaling until I get a better display, or better loading times until I try one I’ve played before after getting the memory card reader. The only odd bit is that the controller turns itself off whenever you enter or leave the PS2 mode, and you have to turn it back on.
Overall, it’s not really a bad system. The PS3’s struggle has more to do with other marketing and development failures than the hardware itself.
