The Stupid Gamer

I was completely determined to hold out. I wasn’t going to do it. I was not going to buy a PlayStation 3 until they were under $400. Well, just last week I stumbled into an unlikely deal on a PS3 and I had to take it. In the end, my PS3 cost me my old PS2, Guitar Hero, Okami, the GH guitar, and an extra controller. That’s it. It was a straight across trade for a brand new PS3 and copy of Resistance: Fall of Man. I went through the setup process and gave the console a pretty long play session and here are my preliminary complaints and praises. What? You’ve heard these all before elsewhere? Whatever, I’m still posting this. Note: these impressions are based on the current 60GB model.

Pros:

• Shiny!
• The hardware feels very solid
• Nice interface
• Backwards compatibility looks great (mine has the EE)
• HDMI is easy, it looks great, and it sounds great
• Online play is free
• SD, Memory Stick, Compact Flash, USB support
• A promising lineup
• Built-in WiFi and Blu-Ray are great perks
• Can buy games/content in the PSN without leaving leftover funds

Cons:

• Shininess attracts dust/fingerprints like crazy
• XMB dashboard isn’t as intuitive as the 360 dashboard
• It’s HUGE and heavy
• No HDMI cable in the box (old and tired complaint, I know)
• Sixaxis feels impossibly cheap, charging cable is stupidly short (pics soon)
• PSN is much slower and harder to navigate than Xbox Marketplace
• Triggers on Sixaxis are terrible, still has bad analog sticks with dead zones
• Weak current lineup

Overall I’m pretty impressed with the PlayStation 3. The console is definitely a powerhouse and a beautiful piece of hardware, but Sony still has made some silly mistakes. I don’t get why the Sixaxis couldn’t have been an improvement over the Dual Shock. It’s time that Sony puts the d-pad in its proper place and places the left analog stick where it belongs. Proper triggers would be great as well.

As mentioned above, the current lineup is weak. Outside of Resistance, nothing besides maybe Ninja Gaiden Sigma have me all that excited. There is, however, a slew of must-haves coming in time for the holidays…so I can be patient and wait that out. Hopefully by having a PS3 in my home I’ll be able to improve my coverage of the console here on the site; I will do my best. Look for the next podcast to shed more light on my specific praises and complaints on the console as a whole and how I see the PS3 performing from here going forward.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 6:07 pm and is filed under PlayStation 3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.