It was probably inevitable, but I expected to last longer than a week after I first played the bloody thing. Paid more than the US retail price but it was the only way I was going to get one this side of Christmas.
I’m Weak
Tag Archives: Imports
PlayedStation 3
I got to have my way with a Japanese PS3 earlier today. First thing I should point out that this was just connected through composite so I can’t claim to talk with any authority about the graphical acuity that people will get through component and HDMI. Unless they’re on a 1080i TV, of course. Ba-dum tish!
With the obligatory bash out of the way, on with the impressions. First, the hardware itself:
- This mutha is mahoosive. Imagine the monolith from 2001 with an HDMI port. It’s slightly bigger than the 360, and a similar size to the original Xbox. Where are all the jokers who made the size quips when that came out, I wonder? Queuing for their PS3s, I’d assume.
- It has the same shiny finish as the PSP. Thankfully you’re not required to touch it and therefore smudge the hell out of it as you were with that, but it looks nice.
- (whisper quiet). A very good thing. A bit louder than the near-silent slimline PS2, quieter than the 360…not that that’s difficult.
- Slot loading disc drive and touch-sensitive buttons are extremely slick.
- If you’ve used a PSP you’ve used the “XMB” dashboard-thingy. I wasn’t that keen on it then and I’m still not, but it’s a dramatic improvement on the PS2’s frontend…not that that’s difficult.
- The web browser is decent but a mouse and keyboard is a necessity. The controls for it are even more convoluted than on the PSP.
- 100MB firmware updates? Let’s not make this a regular occurrence when some of us have bandwidth limits.
- The jury is out on the SIXAXIS. I’m not a huge Dual Shock fan anyway, and although the sticks have a nicer finish than the DS2, they’re still not nearly as accurate as Nintendo and Microsoft’s analogue sticks. Rumble is one of those things that you miss when you don’t have it. It’s not as light as I’d heard, and so I was expecting to hate it since I’d been given comparisons to the SNES controller; it’s still a bit on the cheapy side, but not bad. I’ll talk about the motion sensitivity where relevant in the games.
Elite Beat Agents Impressions
I don’t think I really need to go over how much I liked 2005’s cult DS hit Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (in case I do: 1, 2, 3) so to say that a whole new sequel excited me should go without saying. Well, having played a good few of its songs now, I can safely say that Elite Beat Agents is a great addition to the burgeoning series, even if some of the quirky charm is lost in translation.
The wacky sense of humour is still in there, to be sure, but I can’t help but feel that it loses something when what’s going on beyond what you can work out visually. Does it even need to be in English? Diarrhoea is a pretty universal language.
OK, so marketing is an obvious concern in that respect. CIA agents just sell better than male cheerleading squads for some reason, and for god-knows-what-reason people prefer Ricky Martin to L’Arc-En-Ciel. The music may have been more appealing if they’d gone for less obvious artists that could have been pulled straight out of thin air, and again just don’t have the idiosyncratic charm that the best stages of Ouendan had. I’d just pick any of the original songs over the embarrassment of having YMCA suddenly blare from my DS.
Regardless, the great fundamentals are identical and on that basis it still gets a firm recommendation. Just be sure to pick up Ouendan as well (handy Play-Asia affiliate link!) so that you won’t miss out. The original is still the best.
Okami Soundtrack
Check this baby out. Got it in the post this morning from YesAsia. Thankfully I didn’t order from Lik-Sang…
I haven’t had a chance to listen to most of it since it’s five discs, 218 tracks, and over five and a half hours long. I think that I actually have albums that are quicker to listen to straight through than it’s been to import this thing into iTunes.
The music while playing the game has been very good, obviously with strong traditional Japanese influences and more modern elements for good measure. If you like that kind of music I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. In any case how can you say no when it’s this purdy? Anything less wouldn’t do the beauty of the game justice, I suppose.
RIP Lik-Sang
Remember those days when your only choice for getting an import game was the local independent and the prospect of paying £100 for it? Or a questionable mail order company in the back of CVG that may or may not fold before the next issue? Then the Internet came along and we could get all the cheap imports and dirt cheap accessories we wanted from Hong Kong outlets, and it was good.
As you may or may not know, possibly the biggest of these Hong Kong retailers, Lik-Sang, has today announced in a surprisingly ironic statement that it’s closing down as a result of repeated Sony lawsuits against it. The most recent one, which I wrote about in my last post, ended in a ruling that the importing of PSPs into the EU before the official release had been illegal and, by association, that importing the PS3 would be as well.
“Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe’s ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don’t see fit. It’s the beginning of the end… of the World as we know it”, stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com.
“Blame it on Sony. That’s the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally ‘won’, few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today.”
Well, fuck them. Really, fuck them. I’d never once used Lik-Sang to buy a Sony product but had bought countless cheap gadgets (most recently my £10 component switcher) that are difficult to find elsewhere. Now that’s gone because Sony wants to attack consumer choice for when they decide that they don’t like paying more for a late product. I don’t, didn’t buy a UK PSP, and also won’t buy a UK PS3.
This is a sad day. I hope this pisses off enough gamers to really come back and bite them.
Sony’s at it Again…
So now it’s illegal to import a Sony console into the EU without their permission, following on from all that rubbish surrounding PSP imports when that was delayed in Europe:
“The law is clear; grey importing PS2, PSP or PS3 into the EU, without the express permission of SCE is illegal. Therefore, we will utilise the full scope of the law to put a stop to any retailers who chose to do this.”
Beside the fact that if it’s illegal it’s not ‘grey’ anymore, it’s a potential stumbling block for those indies who miss out on the Christmas rush of PS3 buyers and so were counting on flogging imports at inflated prices to actually get an advantage of the high street for once. And I thought this thing was multiregion? What’s the point if you can’t import games, since the PSP embargo stopped a lot of companies even selling those?
Maybe someone should point out to them that price fixing is also illegal. I can’t think of a better term for a 33% price hike while simultaneously blocking cheaper imports from abroad. Whatever happened to competition?