The RePortable Vol.1 No.4
The PlayStationPorta-console?
I see a lot of people on various message boards say things like, “I don’t know why developers treat the PSP like it’s a console,” and “It’s not hooked up to a tv, it’s a handheld, why don’t developers realize this?” What they might as well be saying is, “I don’t know why developers waste time on epic games that are all but console quality on a system that is more powerful than any hand-held before it and more powerful than most consoles before it as well.”
They say that great graphics & sound make for a shorter gaming experience due to small size of UMD discs. Sure, maybe God Of War: Chains Of Olympus was a bit on the short side, but in this way, it doesn’t wear out its welcome. Some games tack on unnecessary length just for the sake of being able to say, “This game’ll take you 1000 hours to complete, never mind the fact that 950 of those hours are complete busywork and pointless to boot!” I don’t believe that a game has to be 40 hours long to be good, and if you do, well, you can leave through the window. I’ll take 30 minutes of great stuff over 30 hours of aforementioned junk ANY DAY!
But that said, why NOT treat the PSP as if it were a console? I mean, we’ve got games on there that are borderline PS2 quality, some of which have actually been released ON the PS2! AND THEY SELL! Now what does that tell you? The two Grand Theft Auto games we’ve been enjoying on the PSP did really well on the PS2, as has Silent Hill 0rigins. People have been clamoring for Chains Of Olympus to be ported to the PS2 and even though it won’t happen, (it’s funny how angry people on the GameFAQS GoW:CoO board would get when you told them that it wouldn’t be ported. It’s like you were telling them there’s no Santa. Good times, good times!) it would work.
In short, we NEED developers to start treating the PSP “like a console” because that’s the way to ensure that it sticks around. The DS has created its own little niche market and gaming experience, while Sony went the route of The Stooges, going for Raw Power (Google Raw Power by The Stooges. If you like rock but don’t know this album, your life is not complete, even if you do that the wife, kids, house, and a 70 inch flat screen.) So if we’ve got all this power at hand, why not, oh, say, USE IT! Give us epic games like Crisis Core and God Of War that push the PSP to its limits! Give us games that can stand up to titles that have come out for recent consoles! There need to be games like this to get people in the door.
Sure, I’d love to see Sony get a little more mileage out of the UMD format and figure out a way to squeeze a little more on them, but it’s not a necessity. You can’t have it all.
But what you CAN have, are console-worthy graphics and sound in the palm of your hand, and who wouldn’t want that?
I don’t know…I have handhelds purely so I can play them when and where ever I want. I’m quite content with my DS as it provides hours of gaming without the battery going low (usually about five hours). The PSP seems to me a bit pointless if you can’t play it on a 2-hour train journey without the battery going flat. Sony are relatively new in this area of gaming so I’d give them time and see if they catch up with it’s rival because that’s what they’re doing right?
Get your hands on one of those 2200 MaH PSP batteries and you’ll virtually double your battery life!
The PSP only needs to catch up in terms of Sony’s support/promotion of it. Nintendo has ads with actresses like America Ferrara, and what does Sony have to counter that? Nada. Sony doesn’t seem to do too well promotionally speaking outside of Japan, and I’m sure that if they’d pony up some money and start advertising the PSP, it’d get a lot more love than it does.
I agree wholeheartedly with this post. I like playing anywhere I want with handhelds more than staying rooted to the ground with consoles, but I still like having full console experiences more than the niche handheld “pick-up-and-play” experience that seems to be going around (Nintendo even seems to be putting together the worse qualities via the Wii), so the PSP offers a great experience like that. Even if the only games I play nowadays are old games via emulation. The GB and GBA both had some games of epic scale like the GB Zelda games, the Metroid ones, and some others, but the PSP brings this even more to the forefront. Which is something I really like.
That said, I really need to get Chrisis Core. Eh, probably after I play FFVII, though…on my PSP…