Queen, Cakes and PS3 (Good Bad and Ugly)

Film watched:
The Queen

Surprising interesting and engrossing story. Helen Mirrem deserved the Oscar.

7/10

Made some cakes with Elliot over the weekend. Unfortunately, I think I added a bit too much sugar – so my fairy cakes came out looking more like deformed Yorkshire puddings. They still taste not too bad- just don’t look that pretty!

So – to the PS3 then…I’ll cover my comments so far below:

THE GOOD
- I’m a High-Def virgin, so, pretty graphics!!!! Yeh!!!!!!!
- It’s great to have a console with online gaming (yes I know – this is old news for X-Box fans). Also online gaming works exceptionally well (although for Motorstorm there is some waiting around in lobby’s)
- Very slick design and easy to set up.
- Resistance is a great Doom meets Call of Duty meets Half Life game. I don’t even mind paying this with a controller as oppose to a mouse.
- Motorstorm is also a great racer, where every little bump on the track makes a difference.
- Free Gran Turismo HD – Yeh!
- Tekken 5: Resurrection. Just Tekken with Hi-Def graphics, but still, very nice.
- A nice selection of downloadable games, demos and movies on the Playstation store. Hopefully they’ll keep updating this regularly.
- Hooks up to my plasma via a VGA box (up to 1080i). Hopefully Blu-Ray movies (when I get some) will look sweet in 50 inches.
- Overall, the console is very solid (and heavy) and certainly seems to justify its price tag.

THE BAD
- Without rumble (which doesn’t bother me), the controller feels very light and as a result, a little cheap.
- Sometime the controller loses connection and need to be reconnected via USB. This is not during gameplay- but sometimes after games, and only occasionally.
- Boy is it big.
- It collects dust and fingerprints like a magnet. Glossy black – hmm, not the best choice for colour.
- The load times in Motorstorm are slooooowwwwwww.

THE UGLY
- Backwards compatibility… It’s sh*t. I’ve only tried 2 games, Shadow of the Colossus, which should have no problems and FF12 with “minor issues”. Shadow of the Colossus runs fine, but for some reason the picture aspect is wrong, and you miss a bit off the screen at the top and bottom. FF12 works, but the FMV looks like it’s been dragged through a grinder backwards. As FMV plays a big part of FF games, this, in my opinion – is simply not good enough.

As a result of the above I have repurchased a (slimline) PS2. Extra (and unwanted) cost, I know but I cannot live without playing FF12 at its best.

Conclusion:
I’ve been very impressed with the PS3 so far, probably more so than I expected. It lacks the immersion of the Wii (due to its fantastic controller), but for traditional games, it’s a very solid machine. The backwards compatibility is the only dark cloud on the PS3, especially for me in relation to FF12 – but if you just want the machine for Next-Gen (or should that now be Current-Gen) games, you can’t go wrong.

So there you have it. I now have both a Wii and a PS3, therefore presumably making me one of the PSWii crowd (as oppose to the Wii60 crowd). Both excellent machines for very different reasons. As different, dare I say it, as black and white.