My time with the Playstation 3 thus far.
I bought a Playstation 3 about a week ago, and I’ve been playing the thing on and off since then. So I thought I’d throw in my two cents about it with a disclaimer right here. I don’t care about the third party stuff for it to be perfectly honest unless they’re exclusive to the console unless (in the few cases) they’re actually done better on it. Final Fantasy XIII would be one of those cases, but I don’t care that much about RPGs so I highly doubt I’ll ever bother with it, and nothing any of you can throw at me can change my mind on that. I just don’t really like RPGs. I also don’t like stealth games, so Metal Gear Solid 4 is out. And other than casual styled golf games, I don’t really care that much about sports games. Other than that, I’m pretty open.
First, the constantly having to wait for things to install, which seems to take forever. It should not take me more than about 10 or 15 minutes to download a 1GB demo. Yet over PSN it takes a half an hour or more. THEN instead of being ready to go like on Steam, the 360 and even the Wii … I’m having to wait for the damn thing to install. Then there are probably updates to them as well that cause even more waiting. Luckily I haven’t gotten any of the mandatory install games yet, so I haven’t had to deal with that. There’s just a LOT of needless waiting here. Especially with Playstation Home … which LOOKS really cool. Better than anything the 360 has done, or will ever DO, with their retarded avatars. The theater was kind of cool actually sitting down and watching a movie … even though my avatar’s head was at the bottom of the screen no matter what camera angle I was using. And the movie would buffer from time to time. But again, CONSTANTLY having to wait FOREVER for these little 30 and 40 meg downloads, and then having to wait AGAIN for it to install. So I gave up on it. And yes, I’m very much aware that it caches those downloads.
The store is horrendous as well. Sony doesn’t do a very good job at advertising things that come out on the main screen … and it’s hit or miss as to whether or not there are demos to the games. That’s the one thing that Microsoft gets RIGHT on Xbox Live Arcade in the fact that literally EVERYTHING on there has a trial of some sort. And it’s nice being able to pay actual MONEY for a game rather than using the stupid points system … even though I find myself getting the games from Amazon rather than using the Playstation Store purely because Amazon doesn’t charge me tax on them.
The user interface, while I can see what they’re trying to do, just feels like a cluttered mess. And none of the default themes for it were worth a shit. I finally settled on the Killzone 2 theme. Which brings me to the few games I’ve gotten for it. The first one is Uncharted : Drake’s Fortune. Absolutely stunning looking game, excellent voice acting from everyone involved, great exploration and puzzles. Awesome story. But some of the WORST gunplay I’ve EVER encountered in a game, and jet ski levels almost caused me to return the game, and the switch over to the … what NaviFairy called “crazy zombie frog men” was just utterly retarded. If the story and characters weren’t top notch in the game I wouldn’t have bothered with it past the opening level of it. What the hell were they thinking with that? Of course, from what I understand they fixed a great deal of those problems in Uncharted 2, which I plan on eventually getting.
Little Big Planet is an awesome platformer, even if the way you select the levels people have made doesn’t work worth anything … and half the time it took me 2 tries or more just to get them to download. And for some reason it hearts everything I select. Go figure. But it’s definitely my “go to” game on the system when I want to spend a few minutes on something. And I’ve tried the demos for games like Wipeout HD, Super Stardust HD, PixelJunk : Monsters and Zen Pinball … all of which are top notch. Having access to the PS1 games on there is awesome and I’ve already gotten two of them. Medal of Honor and Hot Shots Golf 2. And I bought a couple of games from there as well that are actual PS3 games …PixelJunk Shooter and Mortal Kombat 2.
But so far, with all it’s good points with the few exclusives there are that are in my interests, my $300 could have been MUCH better spent on damn near ANYTHING else. As good as Uncharted is, it’s not worth buying the system over. The free Playstation Network doesn’t mean anything to me. There aren’t many games that look at ALL interesting that are actually Playstation 3 games other than the ones I mentioned earlier. Later on this week Section 8 goes on sale for half off and I’m going to get it on the PS3 instead of the 360 purely because of … well … it’ll be cheaper and it comes with some things that you have to pay for on the 360 … even though the Sony controller doesn’t lend itself to being very friendly to first person shooters being that my hands are always in this uncomfortable claw-like position and the L2 and R2 buttons on that thing make that even worse.
So far my money would have been much better spent on just getting games for my Xbox 360 and Playstation 2. As good as Uncharted is, it’s not a system seller to me by any stretch of the imagination. The same with Little Big Planet. Killzone 2 doesn’t feel all THAT different from the first one despite the fact the frame rate doesn’t chug when nothing is happening anymore and it looks absolutely stunning. But yeah … so far it’s a bit of a disappointment from a practical standpoint. Just not enough exclusives to make it worth having in my case.
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