A Playstation 2 in the palm of your hand! (Sony PSP)

Member Name: crispy

Product:	Sony PSP
Date:	04/04/06 (1282 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Extremely slick, jack-of-all-trades gadget

Disadvantages: Needs more decent games

One of my Christmas presents this year (to me, with lots of love from me) was Sony's new PSP handheld console. Naturally I was ever so chuffed to receive such a thoughtful and generous gift! I kind of justified it to myself, as I work quite far from home and stay with my parents during the week, so a decent portable all-in-one entertainment gadget seemed like a darn good idea...

I bought myself the PSP Giga Pack (£204.99 from play.com) and a handful of games (on offer for £17.99 each from play.com). So what did I get for my money?


THE HARDWARE

The Giga Pack comes with a 1 gigabyte memory card, a USB cable for connecting to your computer, and a little plastic stand, in addition to the console itself, the charger, a pouch and a pair of headphones.

The headphones are OK. They certainly sound better than the stereo speakers on the PSP itself, and also include a remote control - which makes it a lot easier to listen to music without fumbling in your pocket to adjust volume or skip tracks. Unfortunately they also don't fit my ears very well and are made of a very smooth plastic, so it seems like the slightest movement makes them fall out of my head! I can see myself buying a better pair of headphones.

The USB cable is used for connecting your PSP to your computer. This will let you copy data to and from your PSP - such as photos, music tracks, and videos. Obviously the large 1GB memory stick is useful here, as it offers vastly more storage space than the 32MB stick that comes with the basic PSP package.

So, what's the PSP itself like? Well, basically it's a very nice, sleek black gadget! It certainly feels well built, but in some hands that could translate to being a little too weighty for a long gaming session.

As far as the layout of the console is concerned, it's classic Playstation all the way. To the left of the screen, you have the D-pad (up/down/left/right directional buttons) and the analogue joystick - although slider is possibly more appropriate. On the right, you have the standard Playstation square, circle, cross and triangle buttons. Along the bottom of the screen are various buttons for adjusting volume, screen brightness and so on, and there are two shoulder buttons on the top corners.

Dominating the console, however, is the screen - and it is beautiful! It's in a widescreen format, approximately 5cm deep and nearly 10cm wide. For a handheld console it's massive, far bigger than the screen of my previous handheld (Nintendo's Gameboy Advance SP). It is also very bright and clear, and is generally a joy to view. Unfortunately, I can also see it being eminently scratchable - and to that end I've actually invested in two levels of screen protection. Firstly, I've bought a stick-on screen protector that I've applied directly to the screen itself - kind of like sticky-backed plastic. Secondly, I've bought an extremely rugged rubber-lined polycarbonate case, which will protect my PSP from knocks in my bag, accidental droppages, and, from the look of the thing, hammer blows and gunshots...

So, I've got this wonderful new gadget - what can I do with it???


PLAYING GAMES

Of course, the main point of a games console is to play games on it. PSP games come on a proprietary UMD disc format, which is a small 6cm diameter disc enclosed in a plastic caddy.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the games seem to be the chink in the PSP's armour. There don't seem to be all that many top quality, must-have titles available for it yet. There are some of course, such as Grand Theft Auto and the Tetris-like Lumines, but there's not much out there right now that I'm desperate to spend money on. A lot of the current titles seem to be rather derivative, by-the-numbers attempts at action and driving games, or are old PS2 games lazily ported across to the new format. Many of these ports are hampered by the more limited controls of the PSP, and become awkward and fiddly to control without the second analogue stick available on the PS2.

I think the current lack of decent games is largely down to the PSP's target market - or what I see its target market to be anyway. To me, the PSP is mainly aimed at the casual gamer, the 20-something gadget freak with disposable income, an iPod, a DAB radio, etc etc. Not serious gaming enthusiasts. I think in these early days of the consoles life, more effort had been made to just fill the shelf space in the local games store, rather than create truly innovative and enthralling gaming experiences - as the kiddies and casual gamers largely can't tell the difference...

The situation does seem to be improving though, and there are games in development that I'm very interested in. I'm currently keeping an eye on Lemmings, Exit, Gran Turismo Mobile and Steel Horizons...

But, and this is a big but, you aren't just limited to playing PSP games.


EMULATION - 'HOMEBREW'

You see, you can also run games from other systems, and home-made software, on your PSP. Collectively known as homebrew, this is something that Sony are unfortunately trying to restrict. This is understandable to an extent, as downloading and playing hacked games from other systems is software piracy.

However, and this was a key selling point for me, you can also play old PC games on your PSP. With a certain amount of cunning, or at least an ability to follow instructions readily available on the internet, you can install third-party software on your PSP that will act as an emulator allowing you to run certain games.

In particular, I'm interested in SCUMMvm, which will allow me to play a lot of the old LucasArts graphic adventure games such as The Secret Of Monkey Island, Day Of The Tentacle, and Sam & Max Hit The Road. If you haven't played and completed (or god forbid, heard of) any of these games, then my dear reader you haven't lived...

Note - I should add at this point that you should only play games in this way that you already own a legitimate copy of. Downloading games from the Internet, even old games that aren't available any more, amounts to software piracy and is a criminal offence - unless the title has been declared freeware and has been made freely available by its developers.


PLAY MUSIC

Yes, as well as a games console, your PSP doubles up as an MP3 player. Of course, unless you've got a decent sized memory stick you won?t actually be able to fit many tracks on it, but the functionality is there.


STORE PHOTOS

You can use your PSP as a digital photo album, and can store photos on the memory stick to display on the screen.


WATCH FILMS

As well as games, you can also buy films and TV programmes on UMD disc, and can play them back on your PSP.

However, if you've already got a DVD collection and a PC, there's no need to do this. You can get software that will rip a DVD onto your computers hard disk, and then convert it to a format that the PSP can play (MPEG4 for the techies). I use DVD Decrypter to copy DVDs to my hard disk, and then PSP Video 9 to convert the files to MPEG4.

It's relatively straight-forward, and only took me an hour or two of experimenting before I got results I was happy with, however the actual process is pretty time-consuming. It takes about 15 minutes to copy a DVD movie to your hard disk, and upwards of an hour to convert this file to MPEG4. You will also need some hard disk space available to play with, as the ripped DVDs can be over 10GB in size and each MPEG4 movie will be around 500MB depending on the quality settings you use.

SURF THE INTERNET

If you've got access to a wireless internet connection, you can configure your PSP to connect to the web. Actually typing in addresses etc is hard work - imagine text messaging mobile phone style (without predictive text) but with the added hassle of having to use the D-pad to select which button you're pressing and you're there.

You can also connect directly to Sony in order to download operating system updates and so on.


THE OPINION

So, what do I think of my PSP then?

It's... Not bad. Alright.

As a piece of hardware, it's certainly a very slick, flashy gadget. It looks good and feels well made. I like its multi-functionality - the option to listen to music, watch movies, surf the internet, play games and, um, look at photos, on the one device is great. The screen is fantastic and the sound quality is good too.

As a gaming device, it's good. It is essentially a pocket version of the PS2, so will be pretty familiar to an awful lot of gamers. I do find that the D-pad is a little awkward and the analogue stick / slider is a little twitchy, but overall it works well.

The only thing that lets it down for me at the moment is the games. Obviously at the moment it's early days for the console, but at the moment a lot of the titles around are pretty derivative, by-the-numbers efforts or are ports of existing Playstation games. There are one or two extremely playable games out there, but there's nothing really grabbing me at the moment and to be honest I don't play on my PSP much. Hopefully that will change as more games are released!

Summary: A dream come true for the gadget-obsessed casual gamer