(Thanks to Sean Thompson - PSN username: Sean1504)

PS3 - 72 Hours In

I’ve now had my PS3 for just over 72 hours, so thought I’d get my initial thoughts on the system over to Three Speech.

So it was finally here, the moment I’d been waiting for - in a few hours time I’d be the proud owner of my very own PS3. My local GAME was doing a midnight launch so I headed down with a friend and my brother about 23:20 to find quite a queue had already built up. At about half past, a member of staff went along the line handing out raffle tickets - we were number 20 which was much better than I’d expected; obviously most people had brought their friends along like I had. By this time the queue had grown a fair bit, so I’d say maybe 50 or 60 people had turned up in total. The police were constantly walking past but there was never any sign of trouble while I was there.

Once we were in the shop we were handed a slip and a pen to indicate which items we were after. In common with probably 80% of day one adopters I went with R:FOM, MotorStorm and an extra six axis - there just isn’t much else out at the moment that takes my fancy. Once midnight hit, the staff started putting orders through the tills rather quickly and I was home by 00:26.

First impressions on unpacking the console were very good. Yes it is very shiny and yes it does look like a £425 bit of kit. I’m moving into a new place in the next couple of weeks, so unfortunately I’ve got a temporary set up that doesn’t exactly do the PS3 justice, but hey, a few years ago I’d of been happy to have a 24” 4:3 CRT as my gaming screen so can’t grumble. The initial setup is quick and simple and after a couple of minutes I was downloading the new firmware.

I’ve seen people complaining about how long it’s taken to download but I had it down and updated in 12 or 14 mins, can’t quite remember. This was at about 00:45 so I assume I got on before most people. Next thing was to sign up for the PlayStation Network. I’d pre-registered my PSN ID so this was an extremely quick process, especially with the help of the USB keyboard I borrowed from work. One slight annoyance is that there was no confirmation in any way whether or not I had managed to get a copy of Casino Royale - in fact I’m still unsure. I hunted around but couldn’t see anything, figured I should ‘activate’ my console as it could only help my chances but apart from that nothing. I’ve since read over the terms and conditions and it says those registering a ‘new’ PlayStation Network account on their PS3 are eligible so as I’ve pre-registered does that make me exempt? I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.

My thinking was that most people would be playing their disc based games and that now would be a good time to raid the PlayStation Store and try out the background downloading that our American and Japanese friends have been missing so much before the servers became too congested. Well, I snagged everything that was free and plan on going on later in the week once I’ve completed Resistance and MotorStorm to get everything that’s not. I’ve since been onto the US store and downloaded everything from there and will be going onto the Japanese store tomorrow night. I’d have to say that I’m a little disappointed that there isn’t more in the UK store. All I can think is that they’d prefer to release the content gradually so that the UK store doesn’t look ‘stale’, as it were, by not having any new content in the near future. If they keep releasing new stuff every week to start with, people are a lot more likely to build up the habit of checking the store regularly than if they’d put everything on and then not released any new content for a month.

I found my downloads ran pretty quick - the 690MB GT:HD (I think that’s how big it was, anyway) downloaded in under an hour and the store is easy to navigate. One feature I think Sony should add to the background downloading would be to be able to change the priority order of your downloads or specify if you would like more than one download to run at a time.

Once everything was downloading I added a couple of friends and then popped R:FOM in for some co-operative with my brother. Even on my crappy CRT I was impressed and once it’s running on a 46” 1080p set I think I’ll be even more so. Me and my brother had a lot of fun playing it and over the rest of the weekend I’ve played it a fair bit more on single player and am really liking it. I went online briefly and was very impressed - 40 player really is as good as people say and I imagine that this will take up a lot of my time in the coming months until some more games are released that I’m interested in.

However, while playing with my brother I came across one of my big gripe’s with the system at the moment. A box popped up to let me know that my friend had sent me a message, so I pause the game and press the PS button hoping to be able to read it but no, you can’t. So I waited till the end of the level and quit R:FOM to read it. I’m sure this can be updated in a firmware along with the ability to continue your chat conversations while playing a game, but for me this is quite a big drawback for the time being.

I’d also had a pop up to say that GT had finished so I installed that, and me and my brother unlocked the first few cars. Again, I think it would look truly amazing on a 1080p set. The traction control was pissing me off a bit. I played around with it so it didn’t stop me every time I skidded, but apart from that I really liked the handling of the cars. I’ve since completed it with all of the standard cars and I think the rankings system is a good idea, and I think I’ll spend more time improving my laps once MotorStorm is complete. The only thing I’d say is that I feel the target times should have been set a bit lower as I unlocked all the cars in ten laps - not exactly hard eh?!

My brother popped MotorStorm in for a quick go - he was playing it with the tilt and was commenting on how it worked really well and the graphics were great. Coming from an XBox fanboy I was a bit shocked to hear it - he also said that he’s unsure whether to get a 360 or PS3 now, as he can see that the PS3 is much more than a games console and better value for money, but 360 will have Halo 3…

I’ve now done a fair chunk of the single player on MotorStorm and think it’s a truly great game - it’s got stunning visuals, good gameplay and opponent AI, and to think that it’s a launch title bodes so well for later releases. The loading time is a little on the long side, though.

It was getting on a bit so I set folding@home downloading and took my brother home. When I got back I was surprised that it hadn’t downloaded more - it was quite slow actually considering it was only 50MB. Once it had downloaded I input the code for our team over at www.gamesey.com, left it working and hit the sack. I really like the visual of the earth by the way - very cool.

When I woke up I stopped F@H and left the XMB idle for a while - to my horror when I got back I couldn’t move around the XMB at all. I tried turning the machine off and unplugging it but still it would boot up. I could use the PS button on my controller and shut down etc, but the triangle, circle and directions just wouldn’t work. So a quick text to my mate to see if they had any in stock and then it all went back in the box and I was on my way to GAME. I handed the console over to my mate for him to go test it out back expecting him to come back out saying I could have a new one but no it was working! Typical, I looked like a right dick. He plugged it through the screens in the shop and brought me the controller to have a play, and yeah, it was working, so god knows what went wrong - just hope it doesn’t happen again.

Once it was all set up again I installed and played through the other demos that I had downloaded. I wasn’t impressed with Genji, mainly due to the dodgy camera, and RR7 just isn’t my thing. Formula One, on the other hand, I may get in a few weeks, as it looked and played really nice.

I then had a play around with the photo and video functions by plugging in a memory stick with some stuff on. All worked really well, and I think it will be great to just take the memory card out of my camera after a night out and plug it in to show all my mates the photos.

I didn’t really get a chance to play it much Friday or Saturday night as I was out for friends birthdays but I played all day Sunday on Resistance and MotorStorm, and can’t see myself getting bored anytime soon. I also tried out the remote play - this is a wicked feature and once it goes global it will be unbelievable; being able to stream films, TV shows or music off my PS3 when my flights been delayed for 3 hours, for instance, would be so good.

In conclusion, I’ve been really impressed with my first 72 hours with the PS3 and am looking forward to the times that are to come. I feel it is a system with so much potential and that is the reason why I didn’t get a 360. With the PS3 I can/will be able to do a whole lot more. To your average gamer who’s not clued up on the tech side of things, £425 will seem like a lot of money, especially in March. However, I feel that when people get a chance to play one round their friend’s house, for instance, they will most certainly be impressed. And this combined with services like Home, and games like LittleBigPlanet, MGS4, Killzone, Lair, Heavenly Sword and FFXIII can only further sales.