Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

Sony’s problems with the current generation of consoles have been well documented. Some have been deserved, others have not been. But today came several pieces of very welcome good news for the formerly unquestioned industry leader in console gaming.

First, comes news of a new firmware update with a number of excellent goodies.

And second comes word that a highly anticipated game from Ubisoft will be released for the PS3 alone in 2007. While the game will eventually go to the 360, it is still welcome news for Sony that the PS3 will have a game to counter Halo 3 with initially.

Of these pieces of news, I by far the most excited about the firmware update. Some of the games for the PS1 and the PS2 are truly unequaled in a lot of ways. The thought of me being able to play God of War 1 and God of War 2 with upconversion to a higher resolution (in my case 1080p!) is an incredibly welcome one for me.

A word of advice for anyone who hasn’t yet purchased their HDTV and plans to at some point in the future, keep in mind that bigger is not better in all circumstances. What I mean by that is that the bigger the TV, the more it stretches out the pixels in what is showing on the TV. The net effect of this is that if you’re watching something on your TV in a low resolution like 480i or 480p, it doesn’t look very good on a monstrous sized TV like my 61” Samsung.

Now obviously none of us play games exclusively for the pretty looks, but we also cannot reasonably deny that how a game looks has at least some impact on our overall gaming experience.

That is why the firmware update giving the PS3, which for the most part has excellent backwards compatibility, upconverting on older games is such welcome news for me. Having experienced upconverting on the HD-DVD add-on for my 360 (primarily before it started experiencing severe issues one month past its 3 month warranty) I can say from experience that adding upconverting can make a huge difference in picture quality.

It doesn’t always make a big difference. I don’t have the technical details on how the upconverting works and I know that the amount of upconverting that has been done on my DVDs that I’ve watched on the HD-DVD add-on in the past has been a bit inconsistent to say the least, but it frequently has a huge impact.

And hey, the price of “free” cannot help but be right for the PS3 firmware upgrade. Heck, it saves me the price of purchase of an upconverting DVD player to replace my busted HD-DVD drive for the 360.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I had to make a Wal-Mart trip for some moving supplies and get some lunch. That’s right, the little studio is moving because we are just out of room. While walking into our local Wal-Mart, I noticed a Sony Playstation tent set up pimping the latest games and systems.

Of course I had to take a closer look, so I walked up and started to ask the Sony rep some questions about the system. I consider myself an educated consumer, and I had some legitimate questions and a little beef with the controller so I gave the Abercrombie and Fitch clad, 70s throwback aviator shade wearing teenie bopper a good ole fashioned grilling.

First on my list of questions was, “So what games are coming out for this thing?” The Sony rep, we’ll call him “chip”, responded with, “You can go to our website and find out all of the current releases as well as what’s coming. Not exactly colorful, nor informative, but that’s I guess as much as you can expect from a corporate flunky.

What happened to surrounding yourself with people who are passionate about games, people who can really get excited and talk about gaming. Let’s be honest, 9 out of 10 people who are willing to plop down $600US on a Playstation3, don’t care about how fast it runs folding@home. Real gamers have real questions like:

• Why is the battery not removable?
• Why is the included USB charging cable so short?
• Why are there still so few games available?
• Am I seriously going to have to pay another $60 to get rumble?
• When is “Home” coming?
• Why did they use an onscreen cell style keypad?

The list goes on and on. Many of us are really perplexed about some of the choices. I can understand trying to position it as a home media center, but how many of us are using those features? Did they come at the expense of not only the console, but features that gamers really want? Why emulate the PS2, but not have PS2 controller ports for all of the games with 3rd party controllers….Guitar Hero anyone?

I digress… I did bring up my gripes with the size of the controller….but it turns out I would have been doing as much good conversing with a cardboard cutout. I was disappointed that Sony didn’t get people out in the field who are true evangelists of the system. The PS3 is a good system. Sure it has flaws, the game library is laughable, and the thing is just plain….well, big. Get a few games out there, and let people who are passionate about gaming sell them to the general public, and drop the price at least a hundred bucks, and I think Sony might be amazed at the results.

I am a little late getting this review in. I have been playing this game voraciously for a few weeks now. I had written a few weeks ago that I had finally found a game I liked for PS3, Resistance: Fall of Man. Well, I have to say that I have hit two winners in a row. When Dawngrrl and I go to Hastings, our local game and movie store, it’s become second nature for Dawngrrl to go straight to the Xbox 360 glass, and I go to the PS3 glass.

This day in particular, I was quite excited to see a used copy of Motor Storm on the shelf. We had played the demo and really enjoyed it, but as many games as we buy, it’s hard to plunk out $60 every time I see something pretty behind the glass. We save new purchases for must have games and with the track record my PS3 had so far, 4 purchases, 3 trade-ins, I skeptically waited to find this game used.

The initial reaction? You can read no further, hop in your car, and pay the full price of admission, this game is worth it. I don’t want to say that it’s the best driving simulator I have ever played, ahem, Gran Turismo….but as far as fun goes, this game is off the meter. The graphics are truly top notch and the game play is fast and furious, terrible pun, I know.

Before I get into all of the things that Motor Storm excels at, I do want to mention the negatives, there are a few. The first thing to note is the load times are pretty painful. Even the act of choosing your vehicle suffers from long lags before the next vehicle appears, but the track load times are the worst.

The next thing to ding it on, is that the game play structure. This game has only one mode. A linear race to unlock vehicles and tracks mode. Of the over 150 vehicles available to you, only a handful, about 16 or so, are available at start. For those of you with the arcade mentality that just want to load up, select a cool ride, a cool track and jet…..you are going to be pretty disappointed that your choices are very slim in the beginnings. This game would have done well to have a few other game modes for you.

The last thing to say as a hit, but still by no means a reason against purchase, is that the motorcycles are very difficult to control. After some practice you get better, but it’s pretty tough. Each track is split into tickets, and you have to complete each segment, usually on a different vehicle, at a 3 or higher finish, to proceed. You might find yourself in quite a few races before you can move on. I caught on pretty quickly, but Dawngrrl had trouble adapting to the really sketchy controls.

Not really a negative, but an observation, the game play curve is also somewhat out of whack. I played through probably the first 7 tickets with nothing less than a 1st place finish on every segment of every ticket (not all on the first try of course) only to find that the second race on the 8th ticket I can do no better than 11th after quite a few tries. Talk about frustrating!

Those points aside, this game is really fun. The action is very fast. The AI is fun and punishing, the fellow racers are by no means patsies. They will ram you, run you into rocks and spin you out without a hint of conscious. This makes some of the races frustrating but really fun.

Back to the point of graphics, this game is truly gorgeous. The textures are very high quality making the fast moving track realistic and interesting. You speed along, but can’t help try to take in all of the scenery. The vehicles themselves are of equally high quality with the addition of awesome physics and great lighting effects. I found a few issues with shadows, but they hardly detracted from game play.

Issues with controller size aside, the controls are easy and intuitive. I do wish the PS3 had placed the left analog stick where the 360 does, but that’s just preference for someone with larger hands.

This game is worth it. I would have a hard time parting with it so I wouldn’t expect to be lucky and find one used like me. Regardless, it’s worth the $60. I hope you at least rent it and give it a shot, it’s a lot of fun.

If you are a bigger guy, or at least have big hands, you might find that the PS3 controller can really start to be a bother on those longer gaming sessions. Recently I purchased MotorStorm for PS3. I do love the game, this isn’t a slam on the game in particular, but it has really given me a chance to find the flaws in the current controller.

If you read regularly, you already know I think the controller is too light. In this game, more flaws come to view.

In the MotorStorm game, the two shoulder triggers are used for gas and brake. This is where I really start to have problems. Since the controller is so small, the two hand hold portions of the controller does not reach into my palms. This can be a big problem when you are really trying to slam on the gas and go, it pushes the controller back into your hand unless you really squeeze hard on it. when you squeeze on it pretty hard you can actually hear it creak. The seams of the plastic will actually make noise. I showed the PS3 and Xbox 360 controller in the above photo so I can show the size difference, it doesn’t look very obvious does it?

Now look at the controller in my hands. Notice how my fingers curl completely around the bottom of the controller. The Analog sticks seem to be a little low, and the controller itself is kind of shoved up in to the top of my hand leaving the bottoms of my hands holding nothing but air. This doesn’t sound like a huge problem until we revisit how hard I mentioned you have to squeeze the controller to keep the shoulder buttons from pushing it back into your hand.

I know this may all sound pretty nit picky to most people, but it really is a problem. I played MotorStorm for about an hour last night and my hands actually did hurt.

Now to be fair I will admit I really like the Xbox 360 controller. It’s heavier, feels more substantial, more solid and just feels better to me. Notice in this photo how for the same type of game the left analog stick, usually used for steering, is right under my thumb. Also notice how the bottom of the controller completely fills out my hand giving me a firm grip, without having to squeeze it with any amount of pressure. Also notice how my fingers comfortably wrap around it and I can press the shoulder buttons without my fingers arching to the buttons. Sure, this all sounds pretty silly to a casual gamer, but if you are playing for hours, it can really make a difference.

I know, I know, go ride a bike Jason, get out and do something other than play games for hours. Yea, I got that part, but the point is that the controller seems to possibly be designed for much smaller hands than the usual American might have. I am sure there is something to be said to that, hoping nobody bitches at me for racial generalization, but Japanese people are a bit more, well, Wii

I really like my PS3 lately, but I am definitely on the prowl for a new controller. I hope the next one is bigger and heavier….and maybe has rumble?