PSP Impressions

Snyder said:
cybamerc said:
You're allowed to make a copy for yourself in the EU.

Unless you're circumventing copy protection - that's illegal. (Sounds familiar?)

Not in some countries. It wasn't too long ago some big corporation took a Scandinavian/Polish/That-neck-of-the-woods guy to court over writing/selling software to rip DVDs. The Court ruled that it's okay to get access to material that you've bought, so they couldn't touch him in that country. Whereas in the US he'd have been hung, drawn and quartered.

There was also something I was told about by a friend just the other day where persons were arrested on charges of copyright infringement based on US laws in a country where those laws didn't stand. The Copyright holders are becoming more invasive than the Mongol Hordes!
 
Of course it's "not in some countries"--after all, country-to-country copyright laws (and the violations thereof) have been sticking point for ages.

However, the DCMA and other similar laws usually overreact and trample what rights we HAVE had in their fervor to be able to prosecute whoever they want and protect the interests of those who have the most money. (And are therefore the ones most likely to donate to political campaigns.)
 
Anyways, I got my PSP today, and I'm having fun with it now :) Well, whenever I can pry it off my wife's hands (she's already become a total Lumines junkie). The unit is in perfect working order. If anyone has any questions I'd be glad to answer.
 
is luminus that fun?
i have my ridgeracers since a while, but looking for a second game. (liksang 45euro/game with free airmail)

any fancy grafix trickery going on or just moving blocks all the time (my like flashy grafx sorry :) )
 
Oh yes, it's amazingly addictive. My wife has been hoarding the PSP for pretty much whole day, until the batteries run out, and then she continued playing it while the battery was charging o_O.

I had my testing time with it before she grabbed it, and I can attest that Lumines is a game that is hard to stop playing, and has unusually high production quality for a puzzle game. It's like it grabs the best elements from Rez (audio/visuals) and Tetris (addictiveness, action and strategizing).

As for the graphics, they are plenty flashy, trust me on that, and extremely stylish. There are no regular 3D polygonal graphics that I've seen yet (I'm very early in the game though), but it uses a bunch of extremely well laid out 2D effects, flares, shines, etc. and looks great in general. Also, it sounds amazing, but that's a bit harder to describe. Sound/Music is a very essential component of this game's experience, and it changes as you play - the moves you perform create sound effects that are tailored for the background song, and thus add extra layers to it, depending on what you do. As I've said, it's hard to describe, but it's an awesome experience.

Lumines and RR are really the games to have on PSP, in my opinion.
 
Do you have any others, though? Specifically I've been wondering at how well you can play a game like Darkstalkers on the PSP, and what some of the other high-end titles might be like--at least the ones I expect to have higher production values--like Armored Core, Dynasty Warriors, and Metal Gear Acid.

Of course it might just be better if you tell us what you have, at which point we can ask the appropriate questions. ;)
 
I only have RR and Lumines. Other games, I really wasn't sure were worth the plunge without at least seeing them first, and I'm generally not a big fan of importing when I know all those games will be available here fairly soon, and localized. I've based these putchases on tons of impressions from other people and my tastes in games in general.

I can tell you what some other (generally trustworthy) people said about the games you mentioned:

Dark Stalkers is definitely a high quality game, marred only by slow loading times (often compared to load times of Capcom fighters on PS1), which I've heard can get annoying when you are in the matches that last for a short amount of time. Other than that, it's been said to be a perfect port of an arcade game, and just a very good game in general if you like 2D fighters (I'm not a big fan of the genre though).

Metal Gear Acid is not very import friendly as it has large amounts of Japanese text, but is apparently a very good turn based strategy game (again, I'm not into that genre at all) that takes around 25 hours to complete. Graphics are worse than MGS2 on PS2, but much better than MGS on PS1.

The Hot Shots Golf is from what I understand much like the PS2 version, even has the same graphics quality (also, better image quality than the PS2 version) This, with RR is probably the most technically visually impressive game on PSP right now. It's wireless multiplayer mode allows people to play together, without taking turns and track each other's progress to see who completes the course first. I would love to play this, but again, I've read it's not very import friendly (all the menus and texts are in Japanese), so I'll wait for localized version.

Dynasty Warriors features the same crazy battles against tons of soldiers as the PS2 versions, but to make the game more short-burst-gaming friendly, they've split the maps into smaller segments, so when you get into a new segment, you can start the game from there next time. I've been told that if you like PS2 version of this game (I don't like them at all) you're going to like this a lot. The graphics look simillar to PS2 versions, but polygon counts on solidiers are downgraded. Personally, I find even PS2 versions of this game to be really poor looking, so I'm not very enthused about the looks of this on PSP. The good thing is that they preserved all the massive numbers of enemies you fight against, and the gameplay in general.
 
I'll sit around and wait to see them as well, but I figured if you had them I'd check out how they compared to RR and to each other quality-wise. ;) (As well as power-consumption-wise. I hope you got another PSP unit coming, because I figure a lot of people on here will want you to run tests 24/7! :p )

My main concern with Darkstalkers was mainly in using the PSP for fighting games in general. Games which want fast and accurate movements of the D-pad, and are testing the device more in how comfortable and how well it functions as an overall gamepad. Fighting games tend to be the most demanding on that aspect of it, and to date I haven't seen a portable that was able to deliver a "Capcom-level" fighting game acceptably well.
 
From the-magicbox.com :

"Sony has posted a public apology in its website, to apologize for the shortage of PlayStation Portable in Japan. Sony mentioned they will try their best to ship out additional PSP units to the market."

:D
 
Deepak said:
From the-magicbox.com :

"Sony has posted a public apology in its website, to apologize for the shortage of PlayStation Portable in Japan. Sony mentioned they will try their best to ship out additional PSP units to the market."

:D

Reminds me of the PlayStation 2 launch...
 
marconelly! said:
The unit is in perfect working order. If anyone has any questions I'd be glad to answer.
Have you tried twisting it hard to see if you can make the UMD shoot out like a Shuriken Of Death? ;) :rolleyes:
 
me personaly , I can't wait for GT4 portable! whoohoo.
i would like to play gt4 but don't have a ps2 only a xbox, so the psp will bring me that pleasure :p
 
hey69 said:
me personaly , I can't wait for GT4 portable! whoohoo.
i would like to play gt4 but don't have a ps2 only a xbox, so the psp will bring me that pleasure :p

.... How about buying a.... PS2 maybe?
 
can't .. i have enough with one livingroom console
and since my wife ocupies the tv all the time i don't have a lot time to play that either so the psp is a good replacement for a ps2+tv
I'm not planning to play games on the train anyway (i can already see the faces of the people seeing a grownupman playing a "gameboy" :LOL:
 
Tony Hawk Underground 2 on PSP, a must-see!

WMV

MOV

There's also "HD" versions of thoses videos, but only the WMV HD version looks slightly better, though
 
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