sofdec

Imported it just a week ago, but I'm absolutely loving it

Tempted to buy an Ipod or portable media player, I decided to just spend the same amount and get a PSP (Which I've been looking forward to for quite a while), With a system, Ridge Racers, and Lumines, I already hit the $500 mark and decided to call it a day with that order.

In addition, I bought a 256MB Memory Stick Duo for $74.99 (Then exchanged it for a 512MB Memory Stick Duo for only $5 more at circuit city), that thing sure is small..


With the UMD Games being region free, I decided why not. The majority of the 2 games I purchased (As well as all the PSP Menus) are in english, so I havent had any trouble with that. It does help to know a little japanese (And I do mean just a little - All of my japanese I learned in about a 2 week period.. But it makes stuff like "Hai" (yes) distinguishable on the save menu -- Without knowing it, you can usually find out its asking "Do you wish to overwrite? Yes/No")

The first thing you'll notice when you turn it on, is you can 'name it':


I'm guessing this is for wifi battles?

After that, you set the date. One neat thing is that each month has a new color scheme. You've probably seen the pictures of the blood red menus, and the ocean-blue menus, January's colors are a white/grey scheme (Which just happens to freak out my camera).

One of the first things you'll notice is the screen which is absolutely beautiful. Beside being huge, its incredibly clear and bright:






..Unfortunately thats not a PSP Game, but you can wish!
Those are actually pictures of.. pictures! and videos running off the PSP. Basically 5 random GTA Pictures I found on google, then took a pic of the PSP Screen.. it looks amazing.

They're all organized as thumbnails on the PSP:


and each has options much like the PS2 DVD Player:


The other sections each have their own menus (GAME (play game, save manager), MUSIC (play mp3s), MOVIES (play movies), PHOTOS (view photos), OTHER (net connection, USB, settings, battery, etc..) and looks like this:




One interesting option is the Network Update:


Which lets you connect wirelessly to any internet connection and update the PSP software! This can mean some interesting things in the future.
Since I dont have a wireless connection, I didnt think I'd be able to use it. I gave it a shot anyways, and clicked "Scan" to find a neighbors' connection appear on the PSP within seconds! Checking for updates, none were available currently.

Onto the MP3 Player, its divided much like the movies/pictures menus:


with much of the same PS2 DVD Player options:

(Unfortunately there is no option for the visualiser like the PSone).

One neat thing is each save/UMD game has its own 'theme' that changes the llook on the PSP menu when selected:


Whats even more interesting though, is you can access those files by plugging the PSP into your PC:




Meaning not only can you modify the pictures to display whatever you'd like (Custom images for gamesaves), you can email friends those files to share saves!

To connect the PSP to your PC to transfer files, you'll need a Mini USB Cable:


It seems to be the default sony cable used with their other products such as cameras (I'm using the one that came with my digital camera)

For movies/pictures/saves, its a simple drag and drop process. For videos you need to convert them to MP4 format using one of the available encoders.. Fortunately its a real fast process, converting at about 3-4x speed (Meaning a 1 minute video would take about 15 seconds to convert), you can set the quality level (Which affects the speed as well as quality of the conversion), in the end, the files come out real small which is great to see.

As for the games, I've only got Lumines and Ridge Racers, both are amazing.

Lumines (From the creator of Rez) is a sort of tetris like puzzle game (I guess it could be better compared to something like Puyo Puyo as you connect 4 like squares together to form a box, opposed to creating a straight line), each move you make creating a different noise, it might not sound like much, but if you ask me, its just as good as rez. Its incredibly addicting and challenging to unlock stuff. Time just flies by while playing it. I'm at the 30-minute point of the game (Every few minutes the level design changes, and the further you get, the more levels (or skins) you unlock.. I'm at the 30-minute point in that mode, but keep dying there and having to start over on level 1)., Highly recommended.

Ridge Racers is just simply beautiful. It looks like it could easily be a good-looking PS2 game, the courses are a lot of fun, and I love the drifting (if youre put off by it, this game isnt for you though). Again, highly recommended (At least until a new racer comes later down the road).

As for the discs, they come in Mini-DVD Cases, a little bigger than the Japanese Gamecube ones, but smaller than the US DVD Cases:

OldBoy

but won't you not be able to play US movies on a Japanese PSP? wouldn't that suck for you?

sofdec

I thought about that - And it just isnt a problem for me.

Of my DVD Collection:
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.ht...=All&id=sofdec

Only a few are US Movies, the rest are foreign/anime, so assuming some will have subtitles (I'm looking at you FFVII: Advent Children! ), I'd be more than happy with it this way.

For US Movies I want, I'll just buy the DVD.

cheapskate

Thanks for the review! It's great to see real photos of this... instead of the marketing pics - thank you! Also, thanks for making me almost shit myself by seeing GTA in the pics...

You said you could view images and movies - what kind of movie file formats does it let you view? Do you just drag and drop this stuff onto the PSP through the Windows Explorer interface?

How do you feel about the controls? Does it feel comfortable to play?

sofdec

When you plug the USB Cable in, you hit "USB Mode" on the PSP (Its right above or under the "Network Update" button), that will have the PSP show up on the PC as a removable drive.. From there its real easy, you have folders for:

GAMESAVES
PHOTOS
MUSIC

And its basically just drag and drop. Put your JPEG's in PHOTOS, MP3s in MUSIC, downloaded saves in GAMESAVES.
For videos its a bit trickier, since you need to make a new folder.

If you use the free program (3gpp), you basically open the program, drag the video file you want onto it, and set the quality level, it will do the rest for you and you just drag/drop that onto the PSP the same as pictures/music.

If you pay for the SONY program (Its under $10) called IMAGE CONVERTER 2, you basically do the same thing (drag and drop) and it will automatically put it on the PSP wherever its supposed to go. It also has an image/movie manager which lets you edit the files already on the PSP.
The video format it uses is MP4 which are extremely small! While keeping a GREAT quality to them, they're a little smaller than WMV Files I believe.

As for the controls, I love the D-Pad, the analog stick took a little bit to get used to (Its not a stick, its more of a disc you slide around) but I'm loving it now. The X, O, /\ and [] are real easy to use (Same for the R and L triggers), Its the other buttons that are a little hard to see (HOME, Vol+, Vol-, Brightness, Select, Start) -- fortunately you don't need to use those a lot. The HOME button is nice, and basically exits the game back to the PSP Menu right away (So no going through a bunch of useless menus.. Basically click HOME, YES, and you're there).

The battery life has been good to me so far. Since I use it at home I keep it plugged in for the most part.
I did unplug it, play a round of Lumines (20 minutes) and came back to see the battery life was still 96% (And thats at full brightness/full sound).

young

hey, thanks for the writeup

Darknight

What's the big deal when you can rip and encode your own movies to Memory Stick?

BeckysBoy

At last, a worthwhile review of the PSP (and one that actually makes me want one)! God bless you for figuring out that a review of the PSP does not have to include the letters DS.

Tarantino

How much is this going to retail for at US launch?

sofdec

No price yet, but: http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives...cial_th_1.html


The news is coming right now from CES: The Sony PSP will cost less than $200 when it launches in the U.S. (probably in March). This has been confirmed by Sony Executive Howard Stringer.

Much cheaper than the going import price (Which is about $400), I still don't regret it one bit though.

sofdec

And for Cheapskate:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050110/105132_1.html

Apparently a new GTA Game (Set in Liberty City) was just announced for the PSP (Due this year sometime), so maybe the pictures werent that far off

I also got impatient (And curious) and went through the other 11 months of the PSP Colors.. I've gotta say this months' is definately the ugliest/plainest of the batch, I just wish there was a way to permanently set one color (or a background image)

maxpower

not to go offtopic...but I hate it that companies go with proprietary peripherals that cost twice as much as what the actual hardware costs. The case here being the memory stick. Wouldn't they be able to cut costs with general use accessories? I guess they can be lucky they did not go with a proprietary usb connection. During the holidays, walmart was selling 256 mb sd cards for $15. To see the same amount of memory selling for $75 dollars is crazy....sorry for the rant.

cheapskate

Woo! I'm sold!

I wasn't planning on getting one of these. I was worried about the UMD format for movies (now it seems you can just rip your own to memory sticks) - and the lineup of games. But it just looks so... cool.

Now I have to find a way to justify the purchase.

sofdec

Yeah, I know what you mean. SONY's been pushing their Memory Sticks for quite a while now, and fortunately prices have started to come down lately.

One reason I do like the Memory Sticks though, is they're pretty much universally compatable between most SONY Products. I could plug it into my PC and use it as portable storage, plug it into my camera to take pictures, plug it into my clie to save data, plug it into my TV to view pictures I've taken, plug it into my PSP and use it to store movies/pictures/games/saves, etc..

I dont have a problem paying that much right now.. But I remember they used to be real expensive (I think a 256MB one was close to $200 - I remember getting a 'deal' on one for $80 (Regular price was $139), paying that same $80 for 512MB doesnt bother me since its mostly a one-time thing. I'm more happy that they didnt try to create PSP Memory Cards with 8MBs for $30

PixyJunket

I find it interesting that in all you wrote, you only barely talked about the games or the playing of games. In the first post, that section seems like an afterthought.. the feel of the system and controls were only discussed after being asked about it. But thanks for going over the other aspects of the system, very cool indeed. I am curious as to how a block matching game's save file could be 160 kb, but I'm guessing most of that would be the theme/menu design that goes with it. Also, I don't think you can really comment on the battery life if you're playing it plugged in. I'd suggest giving it a full charge and playing Ridge Racers unplugged to get a feeling of how long the battery will last. One question I have, how big are the control pads and button in comparison to say a regular Playstation controller or even a GBA-SP?

sofdec

Well, I dont own a GBA, But I do prefer the PSP D-Pad over the Playstation D-Pad.. It doesnt seem like much of a difference, But I do find it more comfortable and easier to use.

For the save-file size, I'm not sure where that comes from - My guess is it reserves the 160KB for stuff you unlock further into the game (Instead of keeping a growing file which could somehow not update if the memory card were full), that is quite a bit of a difference though.

For battery life, I really do plan to take it on the road soon (or a least just play it unplugged), of the 20-25 minutes I played it though, the percent only went down 4%.. That would add up to about 600Minutes if it maintains that ratio (And who knows, maybe once it hits 70% it drains twice as fast), but that does seem to be what sony states a while back (10 hours for games, 2.5 for movies), I wont say for sure until I do try it out without it plugged in

As for the games, I really just couldnt think of much to say about them. A game like Lumines I just found incredibly hard to try and describe, while one like Ridge Racer is hard to keep talking about
Both are amazing games I would've liked to have talked about more, but couldnt think about anything else to say, and mainly went on about the actual System Features

Josh H

I 2nd Pixy's request. If you get a chance, give us some comments on how the games are, and how they control. I'm especially curious about the analog stick, as it's kind of slammed in EGM a couple months ago.

I don't care at all about the other features, as I'd do nothing but game on it if I decide to pick one up down the road if the game library starts to appeal to me.

sofdec

Well, in that case I'll see what I can do

Lumines
Like I said in the original post, each 'skin' features 2 colors, You need to rotate the piexes (triangle, o, x, or square rotate it.. left/right move it on the grid, and DOWN will push it down instantly).

The point of the game is to create a solid, 4-piece same-colored block.

As you can see in the picture, there are 3 '4-piece same-colored blocks' (2 orange ones and 1 white one).
Once you get that, that block is complete (And ready to be 'cleared')..



In this picture you can see an orange vertical line going across the screen (It has a "0" on the top). This bar goes across the screen (left to right) every few seconds in beat with the music, and 'clears' the full blocks you've created (In this picture, the orange block is about to be cleared), at that point, the 0 will change to a 1, the object of that to be to get as many blocks to be cleared on one sweep as possible (5x bonus, 10x bonus, etc..)

Additionally, you can add to the 4-piece blocks. If you have 4 orange, you can put 2 more orange connected to it, and get another 'block' out of it (so it would now be 2), and so on.

Once you 'connect 4' pieces and create a block, it will show up as:


that means its just waiting for the bar to come by and clear them. thats important to keep in mind since sometimes those stacks will pile up high, and you have to make sure they're cleared before you put another block down and fill the screen (like tetris, if it overflows, its game over).

In addition to the 2 colored blocks (In this case, orange and white), theres a 'special' block that appears randomly as a block with a circle inside it. this is sort of like a 'bomb' block. You connect it to 3 other (same-colored) blocks like normal, but every same-color block touching it will also disappear:

so if you have 4 orange blocks (and one being the special block) it will clear not only those 4, but every single orange piece touching it (As shown in the picture)

Every few minutes, the colors will just change..



So the White blocks may turn red and the Orange blocks blue, and you just have to keep going.

Besides the colors, the backgrounds and music will also change, as well as the speed they descend.

The game (challenge mode) is set up as 1 large level. Basically it transforms to a new 'skin' each few minutes, and you just keep building on your ongoing puzzle. Each 'skin' (level) you get to, it unlocks in skin-select mode (Meaning if you like the red and white level you can play ONLY that level, instead of needing to play through challenge mode and getting back there, to play it for 5 minutes).

Challenge mode is quite lengthy (I'm up to the 30-minute mark in it, and at that point, its just insanely hard to keep going).

In addition to Challenge and Single-Skin mode, there are time-modes if you want to play for a specific time (60 seconds, 180 seconds, 300 seconds, 600 seconds, etc..), as well as a Puzzle mode where you need to use the pieces to create specific objects (like a + sign, an X, or other shapes.

There are also multiplayer modes, as well as a VS mode (in VS mode, the screen is split in half. 1 person on the left, one person on the right. As you connect more blocks (And they're cleared) your screen overtakes the other players' screen, giving you more room to work with and them less.. eventually they'll run out of room and overfill their area and lose).

One very important part of lumines is the Music!
Its not like other puzzle games where the music is just something to listen to while playing, its much more like Rez (And from the creator of Rez I would expect no less ), each move you made (move it left, right, down, rotate it, connect 4, connect 6, connect 8, 10, 12, etc..) each makes its own noise. And much like rez it starts off simple and the more you get into it, the more unique, full sounds you create..

The game is incredibly addicting, and I will say that time completely flies by while playing (You can play 30 minutes of Challenge mode and not realize you were playing for 1/3rd of that time.. so if you're on a schedule.. dont play this game! )

Highly recommended and I hope it makes it stateside.

(I'll try and write one for Ridge Racer in a little bit - My browser crashes a lot though and I dont want this to get lost )

Get Me Coffee

The line up on for the US release is looking better and better each day! I can't wait to get this in my hand!

I understand why you can get lost with just all the features to the PSP...it's not a matter of turning it on to play a game....it's so much more!

Get Me Coffee

lumines looks like fun! Is that going to be released in the US?

Puzzle games on portible devices

sofdec

No news on a US release yet, coffee
If it doesnt (and you do get a system), definately import it. I'm real glad to see sony making the games region-free. for cases like this.

Ridge Racers
I've never liked the racing games where you're on a set racecourse, they've never been fun to me. I've always liked the streetracing type games, and thats exactly what this is.

From islands to the mountains, to bizrre citystreets, its a lot of fun.

First off,

Yes. It does look that damn good

I'd say it could easily be a PS2 title, some of the backgrounds are photo-realistic.

The screenshots dont even do the game justice. In person, seeing them on the screen, they look much better, believe it or not.

Starting it up, The game is almost entirely in english (All voices are, the main menu is, and so are the courses and car info.. the only japanese text are items scrolling along the bottom of the screen (Which I believe is just a translation of the english dialog), and some of the confirmation screens are in japanese. If you've played any game before, you wont have a problem with it (most of it is "Are you sure? Yes/No" type stuff).

Onto the game, I'll start off by saying I dont know a thing about cars, I've just never been interested in them, so any technical questions of wondering if so-and-so is in the game, I couldnt tell you. Theres a red car, a blue car, etc..

I will say they look nice though!


The game has 2 views, the one in the above picture, and the first-person view:



As you can see, there are 3 little energy bar type things to the left. By drifting (skidding your car sideways around corners) you gain more power in them, Once one is full, you can hit the R shoulder button to let out a Boost.

The controls are fairly easy to get down. D-Pad or Analog stick = move car, X = Gas, [] = brake, R = Nitro, L = Switch view.



Every once in a while, a little icon will appear on the screen in the left corner:



That shows the current lead. The BLUE car is you, the RED car is either the person in first place, or the person behind you (If you're in first place).
In the image here, the person in first place is ahead by 28 seconds.



The game has 12 different tracks, with several ways to play them (Normal, In reverse, or dozens of little differences to them (Most tracks will have several directions you can turn at different points, they'll be blocked off on one track, but a 'remixed version' of that track will have that road open which will lead somewhere completely different.



The way you unlock cars and tracks is World Tour mode, which is a 'series' of different tracks where you must get a certain place (rank 1, rank 2, or rank 3 usually). I found this to start off fairly easy, but towards the end, it got pretty hard - And I'm still in Basic mode on the World Tour).

Each race is 3 laps, and I believe 12 cars total. Winning each 'set' (each set has roughly 3 tracks which you must win - basic mode has 10 sets.) unlocks those tracks, as well as a bonus car.

For the music, theres a wide variety of tracks from the first 4 (?) ridge racer games, new tracks for this game, and a set of remix songs.

World Tour mode is where the game really shines through, and where you'll spend most of your time.

Outside of the single player mode, there are multiplayer modes that you can play using the built in wireless connection (And there are already 'tunneling' programs to play people online over the internet). I havent tried this yet though.

Overall, A great looking game and one that I expect to be a big seller once it comes out. Definately pick it up if you get a PSP

--

As for the analog stick (or "nub"), I thought it was hard to use at first, but after 30 minutes with it, I didnt have any problems whatsoever. I dont know what EGM's complaints were (and if they were using it on a timed schedule), but I dont have any problems with it anymore.

PixyJunket

Okay, Lumies sounds pretty damn cool. Thanks for that write-up!!

PixyJunket

The little icon with the blue and red car is from the classic Namco arcade game Rally-X, which is included on Ridge Racers in full.

sofdec

oh ok, I didnt know what exactly that was from (or whether it was a new 'retro' game they made for this), but like you mentioned, the full game is indeed on the discs, it actually starts right before the main menu (You can press Start or Select to exit it and proceed with the game)

cheapskate

Sweet...

Last I heard was a March US release - but then again, I haven't been keeping up on these things. I think I can justify this purchase if I say it's for ME to play, while my wife is using the PS2. How does that sound, good right? I often waste that time away by reading. Pfft - I can do without that...