The DS has been my dearest plaything for years now. It starts quick, it has fun quick games, it carries easily, it has a long battery life, it looks a little like an iPod. The PSP, when it first came out, was a beautiful lusty item to me. Who could resist how amazing it was? The problem became its load times, its battery life, and its sense of delicate build. I was afraid to lug it around. The UMDs seemed delicate to me. The drive door. The metal bits. And the games, while impressive-looking, never drew me in all the way. I felt distanced. And the loads took too long. It wasn't impulse gaming anymore, oddly enough, after only ten seconds of loading. It was commitment gaming. I didn't want to think about my decision to procrastinate, and the PSP was giving me too many moments in the dark, waiting, thinking about my decision to "game."
Too deep, perhaps. But now, I'm back to the PSP.
I upgraded to a PSP slim. That may have helped. My techno-lust is sated, briefly. The load times have improved. The feel is more portable—more plastic-y, but, also safer, somehow. The battery life has improved, with an extended battery (but even the regular seems pretty good). And, Patapon has arrived. The last game this team made was Loco Roco, which, come to think of it, was the last time I was obsessed with my PSP (brief Crush crush notwithstanding). Weirdness makes me happy.
Patapon isn't perfect, and I can't say I always like it, but it gets me coming back to see what happens next.
God of War is now in PSP mode. Wipeout Pulse is here. There are so many PSP games that I have to finally admit that the PSP game library trumps the DS library by a significant degree. Not a tremendous degree, but significantly. I want to carry the PSP around again. I am feeling the love.
I also have a sidebar in an upcoming Playboy issue about some of the best genre-based PSP games. It was written before my newfound happiness, but probably contributed to some of it.
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