My PSP finally arrived Friday.. A few days before that I told the UPS Driver that he would be my new best friend come Friday. Which he was on that day. I waited patiently for him at work, waited till the magical 1:30 P.M. time he always makes his deliveries to the office and then when I heard the office door squeek at 1:30 and the familiar sounds of boxes banging against the side of one of the twin doors I raced to the front and proceeded to tackle the young lad who just did NOT see it coming. After I got my hands on the PSP I told him the friendship wasn' t going to work so we went our separate ways. Of course I should have said that to him AFTER checking out the PSP just in case Karma planned to get back at me with a defective unit but luckily I guess Karma wasn' t paying attention...
Anyways after checking out the unit I can' t even begin to tell you how impressed I am with it. It truly is all that and a bag o chips and dip. The unit itself feels incredibly sturdy and feels quite comfortable with the button places and all, the mark of great craftsmanship. The user interface of the unit is really easy to navigate around and quite intuitive and should allow players to get up to speed in no time. Connecting the PSP to the laptop and Transferring music and pictures was a breeze thanks to being able to drag & drop stuff onto it, transferring movies will require a bit more work but as long as you have decent DVD ripping software and the 3GP_Converter or Image Converter 2 and up, you' ll do fine. I was able to transfer 2 movies I encoded from the Biohazard 4 demo and a DVD movie without a problem.
I can' t wait till the online features become active cause the PSP was able to recognize my wireless router (Linksys 802.11b) so we' ll just have to wait and see what Sony has planned in that department.
While I have 5 games I' ve only played Ridge Racers to hell and back so far, absolutely Fantastic racer! I' ve always wanted to experience another Ridge Racer game after enjoying the hell out of Ridge Racer V for the PS2 and FINALLY I get that! Obviously Namco did NOT get the memo Sony sent out to developers about taking it easy with the graphics early on in the PSP' s life and not do anything graphically intensive/impressive yet in order to keep the battery life longer. I haven' t been truly impressed with a racer since Outrun 2 and before that it was Ridge Racer 5. Drifting in this game is awesome and the sense of speed is quite nice.
What sent my enjoyment of the game further into the stratosphere was switching over to one of the other BGM selections and hearing both " Dare Devil" and " Samurai Rocket" from Ridge Racer V. You should have seen the HUGE smile that formed on my face when those tunes played while starting a race. Racing nirvana. So far the battery life has been pretty decent, especially today when I played through many of the tracks of Ridge Racers.
As far as defects or annoyances go, I guess I' m lucky I haven' t encountered any of the infamous dead pixels yet, no nubs fell off and no UMDs flew out of the unit and smacked someone on the head. But one thing about the PSP, it seems prone to accumulating dust easily (I spotted a microscopic dust spec or two) so if you' re not playing it it would be best to keep it in a safe, sealed place like a case of some sorts.
For more detailed and comprehensive coverage on the PSP Hardware and Ridge Racers check out Adam' s review on the front page NOW!!1!
p.s.- almost forgot to mention how gorgeous the screen is, it' s gorgeous. ok. done.. For the longest time the Turbo Express handheld had the best resolution of all of the handhelds but now it has finally been surpassed!
< Message edited by Terry Bogard -- 1/9/2005 11:22:41 PM >