PS3: First Impressions

This is kind of a supplemental post to the buying the PS3 story.

I've had an XBox 360 since April 2006, so I'm pretty used to it and how it works. During that time, the XBox 360 controller has also become my all-time favorite video game controller, a spot that was previously held by the DualShock controller. Actually, the WaveBird is probably the best controller ever, hampered only by the screwy button placement Nintendo decided on for the GameCube and the lack of rumble. But I digress.

The Good:

• I liked the fact that I was able to use my old PS2 component cables with the PS3. I've got an HDTV, but it is old enough to only have a DVI input, no HDMI.
• Going back to the SIXAXIS is like riding a bike. I haven't actually turned my PS2 on in over a year, but picking up the SIXAXIS was like I never stopped playing it.
• I like the opening music when you turn on the PS3. A minor thing, but I enjoy it.
• Folding @ Home. Its for a good cause and it looks pretty.
• The wireless internet was simple to set up and offered no problems at all.
• I heart the Emotion Engine chip. No software emulation backwards compatibility for me!
• The PS3 is certainly an impressive looking piece of electronics.

The Bad:

• It is impressive looking because it is HUGE. Like it dwarves all my other systems. It is currently sitting where my original XBox sat and is way bigger.
• I really like the XBox 360's UI better. I like the blades and the way things are organized, it makes sense to me. The PS3's interface, on the other hand, is functional but ugly.
• When I first turned it on, I had to download a rather large update. It took forever. I've been told that it is faster to use my PC to download the update, then apply it using a flash drive or memory card.
• The PlayStation Store. I understand why they made it like they did. Having it be a webpage means they can quickly and easily change it whenever they want. I mean, a total conversion kind of change, too. But it looks ugly. The icons are ugly. And I hate using the controller to move my "mouse" cursor around. It is slow and very easy to overshoot your target. This was especially annoying when I was trying to buy something on the store and kept missing the scroll down bar for the credit card expiration date.
• To go along with the previous two complaints, when I bought a couple items from the store (flOw and Super Stardust HD), they took forever to download. Same thing with the demos I got. I actually started downloading the Heavenly Sword demo, put in 300 and watched it, and when I was done, the HS demo was only 83% done. There's no excuse for that. I've got 10mbs cable internet, so it isn't a speed issue on my end.

The Unknown:

• I haven't tried out the unit to play non-DVD movies yet, so I'm looking forward to that.
• Same thing for music and pictures.
• I'm also looking forward to trying some multiplayer in Resistance. I've got a couple friends coming over tonight so I'll try that. I'll also try some online play soon.
• Warbirds. That game looks so awesome and I really want to get both it and Ninja Gaiden Sigma, but I know with Halo 3, I won't actually play either of them for a while.

So that's my intial review of the PS3. I know it looked pretty heavy on the critical side, but I'm really pretty happy with my purchase. I'm anxious to get a game that can really show what it can do, though.

Halo 3 and the PS3

As usual, my timing is great. I'm probably the only guy dumb enough to pick up a PS3 four days before Halo 3 hits the shelves. But, I had the money in hand and just had to buy it. That's the good news. The bad news is now that Halo 3 is out, I won't be touching it. I guess I'll have to let Folding @ Home keep it busy for me.

The actual purchasing trip wasn't as uneventful as it should have been. I really wanted to just buy the PS3, some games, a Blu Ray movie and leave. Unfortunately, it couldn't be that easy. Last week, Toys R Us was running a "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" video game sale. I decided to try and price match at the store I was buying the PS3 at to save a trip. The problem started when the customer service person told me they don't price match from Toys R Us. I asked for a manager and things went downhill from there.

Just so I'm clear, if they would have said they don't price match Buy X Get Y deals, I would have accepted it and made the trip to Toys R Us. But the manager's reason for not doing it was that he didn't want to. I pointed to the price matching policy about 3 feet to my left in giant letters on the wall, but he said that he made the policy and wasn't going to be price matching that day. The best part came when he said he wouldn't match it because on the Toys R Us website, it says the sale is for "select" games. I told him that wasn't relevant since the store in question doesn't price match website prices, only actual retail locations. He didn't like that. But the deal in the Toys R Us stores isn't on "select" games, it is on any game. So I asked him to call the Toys R Us to verify, as this store normally would do. He refused. I again asked him and told him that this didn't need to be such a pain in the ass, and that's all she wrote.

Ok, so maybe using the term "pain in the ass" wasn't appropriate, I'm not really sure. Since I wasn't calling the manager a pain in the ass, but rather was talking about this whole situation being a pain in the ass, I don't think I crossed any kind of line. But, whatever. I went to a different store who was more than happy to take my money. Plus, they matched the Toys R Us sale, so I picked up Resistance: Fall of Man, Eternal Sonata, and Overlord along with 300 on Blu Ray and the 60GB PS3. Yeah, yeah, I got two XBox 360 games and only one PlayStation 3 game. But really, the only other game I was interested in at the time for the PS3 was Heavenly Sword and once I heard it only lasts 5-6 hours I decided spending $60 for it wasn't the smartest idea. I'll pick it up on the cheap later.

Once I got home and set everything up, I tried the demo for Ninja Gaiden, which is awesome. I never played the XBox versions for some reason, so I was blown away. Had I known the game was this cool, I would have picked it up instead of Overlord.

But now Halo 3 is out, so it looks like my PS3's days of love are going to be delayed.

This Is The End

It seems like just yesterday I was commenting on how quickly the goal was approaching. Actually, it was two days ago. How time flies.

This morning I checked my accounts and with the marketing sale that went through while I was sleeping, I've reached the goal. Yes, I have now managed to acquire the funds for a PlayStation 3 using only online sources. I'm at $523.14 earned, which is enough to go make the purchase. And it only took 52 days.

I'm still waiting on a couple of checks to come in, but at this point I'm sure I could convince the wife to let me go get the machine and reimburse the checking account as the checks arrive. I'm really not sure what I'll do. The sad truth of the matter is that I'm in a rush to get a PS3 only because I want to be sure to get a 60GB version with the Emotion Engine chip inside. There aren't any PS3 exclusive games I'm dying to play and I don't own any Blu Ray movies (yet).

I am, however, looking forward to playing some of my PS2 games upconverted. I especially am anxious to play some God of War and Kingdom Hearts on it. I'm also wanting to play Stranglehold, but I'm not sure if I want to play it on the XBox 360 or the PS3. I do like the achievements on the 360, but if I can get the limited edition PS3 version, I'll probably grab that one instead.

I'm also thinking seriously about getting the PS3 from Amazon. I've got an affiliate account, so I'll get like 4% back, which is still better than nothing. On top of that, they're running a promotion where I'll get 2 free Blu Ray movies with the PS3, in addition to the 5 movies you get just from buying the system. If I go that route, I'll probably get the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Those should look pretty nice in HD.

But I guess the real question is, where do I go from here. I've got the foundations of my internet marketing business up and running. The revenue is still rolling in from it and I really enjoy tending to the sites to make it all happen. I really think that learning these new skills was way more exciting than getting the PS3.

I'll keep this blog going, because I've had a lot of fun talking about video games. But I will be changing its purpose. Or, at least half of its purpose. With the PS3 purchase imminent, I think I'll shift my sights a bit higher. I've been wanting to get an iMac to do some music recording (GarageBand is pretty damn cool), so I think my next goal will be to get one of those nice 24" screen iMacs. Just like I did with the PS3, I'll keep the running total going to the right.

The End is Near

Wow, this is pretty crazy. Its only been 50 days since I started this and now I'm just $60 away from the goal. I really didn't expect to get that much money that quickly. Of course, when I started I was figuring I'd be doing surveys for money and writing for Associated Content to raise it all.

Of course, since then I discovered that there are far better, more fund and much more efficient ways of making money online. I suppose I've been lax in talking about them, since that is half the stated purpose of this blog. I spent nearly all of my posts talking about video games, because I figured that what people found the most interesting.

So, to explain it very simply, I've got a few sites set up that have some articles about different topics. Kind of like blogs, but not updated nearly so often, if at all. I make sure to write something I think is interesting to the person who found the site and I also make sure that the articles I write have something of value in them. What I don't want is for someone to find my site and think it is there just for selling something, because I hate that when it happens to me. If I'm searching for information and a site claims to have that information, I'm not amused if they'll only give me the info after I pay them.

That having been said, the sites are most certainly set up to sell something. But more in a "Hey, I hope that article helped you out, and if it did then you might want to check out this book, too." kind of way. Like I said, I make sure to address the reason the reader came to my site in the first place.

I've never really been the type to click on a lot of ads or buy things online. I'm more of an instant gratification guy. But it turns out, lots of people do click ads, and a lot of those people buy stuff after they click. So by following the concept of writing informative articles and then directing people to products they're already interested in, you can make pretty decent cash. So far it doesn't look like I'll be retiring on this, but it has paid for more than half of a PS3 in less than a month's time, so that's not too shabby.

Secret Shame - My Massive Backlog

Time for another confession. I've mentioned my gaming ADHD, so it should come as no surprise that I've got a massive, massive backlog. I'm talking about a backlog so massive I honestly don't see any way that it will ever be beaten down. At this point I'm probably better off just admitting that I'll never actually play the games and be done with it. I sometimes like to think that I'm a collector of video games and that makes my problem better. I know that's not really true, but I it doesn help the pain just a little

Here's just a partial list of the games I have that I want to actually beat. They're not listed by system or any particular order.

• Halo 2 - Never actually beaten the single play campaign. Started running through it in co-op mode, but didn't finish it befored I moved.
• Paper Mario 2: The 1000 Year Door
• Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes
• Metal Gear Solid 2
• Metal Gear Solid 3
• Eternal Darkness
• Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
• Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance
• Viva Pinata
• God of War
• Kingdom Hearts
• Kingdom Hearts 2
• Guitar Hero 2 (Need to beat Expert mode)
• Crackdown
• Just Cause
• GTA: SA
• Pokemon Diamond
• Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations

And these are just the games that are at the top of the backlog. I've still got tons more games that I haven't beaten. Hell, in same cases I haven't even played them. And there's still BioShock to finish up. Then Halo 3 comes out, Mass Effect, Metroid Prime 3, and the list just goes on and on.

The Perfect Time For Zombie Genocide

For nearly the last week, I've been sick as a dog. Like, the only movement I've made is from my bed to my couch and back again. I was even too sick to want to play any games, which means I was pretty damn sick. If I would have thought about it, I probably would have been trying for the zombie genocide achievement in Dead Rising, but the it didn't occur to me. But really, driving around in circles in the mall basement is really about all I could have handled this week.

Right before I got sick, I did get around to playing the skate. demo, which was a lot of fun. I've mentioned before I never really cared for the Tony Hawk games, but this one was alright. I doubt that I'll actually buy it unless it drops down to $20 or $30. But if a friends gets it, I'll probably end up borrowing it for a few days.

I also play the new Medal of Honor demo, which was fun but not really outstanding. I think it is very probable that I burned myself out on WWII games a few years ago. Actually, since I beat Allied Assault and then went right into Battlefield 1942, I haven't been that into WWII games. I barely even touched the Call of Duty series.

What I'm really in the mood to play is some Beautiful Katamari, but I've still got a month and a half for it to come out. I kind of wish they'd held the demo just a little so there wouldn't be such a long wait. I suppose that at least gives me time to get in some more BioShock.

Slacking

Well, it certainly appears that I've been slacking this week, judging by the non-existent posts I've been making.

But that's simply not so. No, as the mission statement for the sites claims, I've been busy earning money for my PS3. I've spent the last couple weeks learning how to do some internet marketing. No spam crap, but basically how to make money off of web sites. Not that this site will ever make me rich. (Click the ads. You know you want to.)

In fact, in the last 48 hours I've made about $50 towards the old PS3, which is awesome. The best part about it is that this is pretty much an automated process, so now that it is up and running, I don't have to overly worry about it. So, that's going on, and while it is pretty much taking care of itself now, it was pretty time consuming to get up.

I also just got the first check from the fine folks at CashCrate. I'll get a picture of it up soon.

In with all that, I've been trying to squeeze in some BioShock time, which just keeps getting more and more awesome. I've also downloaded the demos for the new Medal of Honor game and Skate or whatever it is called.

I'm really looking forward to trying the Medal of Honor demo. I loved Allied Assault, but haven't played any of the MoHs since, but I do have high hopes. I'll play the skateboarding game, but I'm pretty apathetic about it. I've never really cared for skateboarding games. I've got Tony Hawk 2 or 3 (I really don't remember which and can't be bothered to check), but I only own it because a friend gave it to me.

So, that's been my week. I'll get that check picture up shortly and then I'll work on getting back to my more regular updating schedule.