First I need to preface this by saying that I’ve been a firm believer in Nintendo’s gameplay over graphics camp all year long. Second I do think 600 is too much when I want a games console, not the supercomputer and blue ray player that Sony is offering.
So today on my break at work I wandered over to Target hoping to get my hands on the wii, and there sat the PS3.
Motorstorm was the only thing I had time to try and just let’s get this out of the way. Dirt racing has never looked so frakking good. It really has a great sense of speed and the cars handle very well. There were a few times I flew off the cliff, but never in a cheap way. Each time I kinda knew what I had done wrong driving and so I got better the longer I played. The laps, are just wow. One lap was like 3 minutes real time. That’s 3 minutes of new terrain with no slowdown or framrate loading problems. Very impressive. The Bikes handle a lot differently than the cars which they should and offer a better sense of speed. Gamers were upset that Sony got rid of the rumble and I was surprised to notice how I didn’t miss it at all during this game. In fact because my hands were not shaking all my exterior input was coming from the screen, and it actually felt more immersive this way. It may prove that the rumble was actually taking away from our game experiences but we will see how that holds up in First Person shooters which really rely on the technology. From my first impressions of about twenty minutes of gameplay, I’ve got to say I’m impressed with the PS3 and Motorstorm in particular. I can’t imagine what games on the PS3 will look like once developers figure out how to code for it. As much as Sony has tried to botch this thing, they may still have one awesome gaming system on their hands.
Now if only if the average consumer could afford it.