PSP Review

Well today I played on the notorious Playstation portable and I actually wanted to find something terrible with it, but surprisingly I am very pleased with it.

I was playing “liberty city” and to my eyes the quality was just as good as the PS2, I am aware of the fact that many people who read blogs and who know just the slightest about PC will loath all forms of consoles, but you know what this is different.

I think that I could spend a whole day in the back of a car with one of these playing games or watching movies. I think by now most probably have seen the PSP on TV or even in real life, if you have seen it on TV well all I have to say is that it doesn’t do the PSP any justice, the screen is so much bigger than you could imagine but saying that the console itself isn’t too big.

I have thought quite hard to find some bad things on the PSP here is what I have come up with………………………….. …. …. ..umm.. no but seriously the only thing that I could think of well in my eyes is the fact that they use some crappy UMD, I think if I am right in saying that is stands for Universal Media Disk these are some small cassettes type CD’s which can fit in to the palm of you hand but they really do cost an arm and a leg. The only other bad points of the PSP is the things it doesn’t have (like the feature of being a mobile phone) which if it did have I would be sure to buy.

I think consoles are on the brink of a revolution if the PS3 is as good as the PSP, and I definitely think that Sony have got there act together…well I still disagree with putting multi-player games on consoles I think that ruins the experience. If you do have the money then definitely I am 100 percent behind you if you buy the PSP its a bargain in my view.

Well I don’t own a PSP so I cant talk about the long term experiences of a PSP e.g. malfunctions, glitches, overheats and warranty’s but still a great little toy. if you disagree with the PSP just because it is a “console” or a “Sony” play it first, or if you have played it and still disagree with any thing I have just wrote, write below.

1. Usayd Says:
   December 21st, 2005 at 7:25 pm

   Hamza, nice review. I must say i’m quite surprised at how much you fell for the PSP. It is an easy console to enjoy, to say the least I was impressed when I first saw it too. Funnily I was just discussing this same thing over at the Isoc website. I, like you, are quite biased, so bare with me too
   The PSP, I agree, is the only decent handheld game console in this years market. For £120 I still wouldn’t buy one because I just see them as a bit of a useless product. Sure they have good graphics and they are relatively fast, they are useless for MP3’s because a PSP is huge, and playing Movies on it is a bit of a waste of time (iPod/Archos etc video? PDA?). I’ve played a rather decent amount on a PSP and to be quite honest it can get rather boring.

   It is different to a PS2 in that you have such little space for playing those complicated games. This is something I have found quite often with handheld consoles - the more complicated the game, the more boring it tends to get! For example, on my PDA I have AOE (Age of Empires) and Worms. I always find myself playing Worms rather then AOE because its much simpler, quicker and more of a game you can play just on the move. AOE was designed for being played sat at a desk with a keyboard and mouse smile

   My verdict isn’t that handheld consoles should be designed to play simple games - I simply feel that sometimes the improving technology isn’t all that when it comes to the future of gaming. I still miss the good old days of Super Mario on the original gameboy, that was a classic wink

2. Seb Says:
   February 12th, 2006 at 12:10 am

   I’ve recently bought a PSP mainly because of its versatility and features. I agree with Usayd in that the games I prefer to play on a handheld console are simpler and more “mobile” but there is a big advantage of having a PSP that you seem to have missed out - HOMEBREW! Fanjita has been working on how to run home-made apps on your PSP and has been battling with Sony’s more up-to-date and secure firmware. Until recently, the discontinued v1.5 firmware was needed to take advantage of this whole new world but an exploit was recently found on GTA which allows you to run homebrew apps through loading a specially modified save game. Check out http://www.fanjita.org/

3. Usayd Says:
   February 13th, 2006 at 2:04 pm

   Obviously not owning a PSP myself I wasn’t aware of this project which looks like a very good idea. These open source projects are often availiable for different platforms, for example there is a Pocket PC one similar to this like FPSEce which is a free playstation emulator. Obviously when reviewing a product you can’t really take 3rd part apps into consideration, however they do often give great improvements. I think you can conclude from such apps that free, non commercial/open source software rocks.

4. psp movies Says:
   September 15th, 2007 at 6:43 pm

   I wasn’t aware of this project which looks like a very good idea. keep up the good work.