Yes, it’s that that time again when I spend ridiculous amounts of money on a console and whinge about it. Having now played and owning all three next-gen consoles, I’ll be giving a fair sum-up at the end, as last time I had to take a stab in the dark at the PS3 experience. A guided stab in the dark, mind you, having heard much about it and the game maktaba (crickets chirping) it has in store for players. Anyway, let’s get right into it....

I’ll skip the description of set-up and online-sign-up, as I’d be reiterating what I alisema about the 360 with the exception of it being free. No money whatsoever for online play. Just shove the Ethernet cable into the back of your PS3 and give out your life story. au in my case, tell it twice, the sekunde time I claimed that I was born two months prior to my actual birth date. It seems that next-gen consoles have parental controls coating every corner of harmless fun. So much that I am still unable to play online games on the account which is aged 17 years and 10 months (my true age), rather I have to keep using the “Master Account”, an account for the head of the house au adult owner of the console to use. I have turned off every safety restriction I can find, I have looked through every parental control crap and turned it off and I still cannot play games online on the account which displays my true age. A giant pain in the arse and I will rejoice when the protect-the-child (or 17 mwaka old in this case) hype is over.

Hmmm.... didn’t really skip that section did I.....

I initially chose two games for the PS3. Both are exclusive to the console, one is a 7+ and the other is an 18+. Did my best to get a varied and true demographic of what the PS3 experience is like.

LittleBigPlanet is a clinically insane platformer. It has very strange, high-def yet cutesy graphics. Most people’s reason for getting this game is the UGC, and the amazing level creating possibilities. Quite honestly, I’m having fun just going through the story mode and collecting items. At the start of the game wewe posses absolutely nothing to create levels with, so wewe HAVE to do the story mode, but now I’ve got a good amount of items, I still WANT to play the story mode and I have been doing so a lot. The humour is weird and wonderful, the levels are detailed, the physics work well and the character customisation is enjoyable. I upendo this game.

Resistance 2 is a WW2 shooter. “As if we haven’t had enough of those” I hear wewe say, but my goodness, this game is fantastic. It’s an alt-history game, where wewe are fighting a mutated human race with advanced technology, who is trying to wipe out the “inferior” human race. Not sounding that different from what really happened ;) I started playing the campaign mode briefly and had a little fun, but having used the Master Account to go online and play against people... I’ve found myself playing the same level for hours at a time and still wanting to play more. The weapons are fun and interesting, with strange abilities and appearances. The corpse physics can be a little spazzy at times, but seeing your enemy go sky-rocketing upwards from machine gun wounds isn't game-breaking, it's hilarious! The levels are good, not award-winning. But when has a level ever been just that? The character customization is good, wewe can play with up to 60 PEOPLE ONLINE and the levelling system is a real victory-arm-pumper. This is most certainly the FPS to get if wewe own a PS3. The front of the box shows that only those who are 18 years of age au old should play this game, but I think that anyone 15 au above should be fine playing it.


I did later buy Fallout 3 and Farcry 2. Both are on the PC and 360 as well, but I don’t see the harm in giving my opinions of those.

Fallout 3 is a slow-burn game which really sucks wewe in. aliyopewa that wewe are in the right mood. wewe have to give the game time and not rush through it. I’m a little unclear at this point about the back-story but sometime after WW2 a nuclear war results in the earth becoming a horrible deserted wasteland, with a few vaults and salama zones surviving. I shan’t give away anything about the story so I’ll skip straight to the gameplay. The game lets wewe swap between FPS, TPS and TURN-BASED? Yes, that’s right. A turn-based shooter. Now, I honestly thought this was going to be an epic-failure, but I’ve found it to be really useful. But wewe don’t have to use guns; wewe can use melee weapons as well and.... if wewe want.... no weapons at all, just use your power of persuasion to get what wewe want. A must-have for any RPG-junky.

Farcry 2, the free-roaming, realistic, beautiful FPS in Africa, with an incredibly detailed and well-made level creator has me too frustrated to play at the moment. 3D Level creating on a console is very annoying and had I known this at the time I’d have bought it for the PC instead. The start of the game is rather interesting and there’s no doubt they made it feel as if wewe are actually in Africa, but the realism they’ve tried to create has made it quite annoying and ruins the fun which a game is supposed to give. For instance, there is no aiming dot to tell wewe where you’re bullet will hit. I’ll admit that I’m not the most skilled shooter, but I’m sure that this factor would wind up even the most hardcore FPS gamer. Another point is malaria. At the start of the game wewe get infected with malaria and as such your sight keeps going nuts and you’ll pass out and fail missions a lot, therefore having to start the mission all over again. A beautiful game but annoying... so very annoying.

The controllers are -in my opinion- much better than the 360 controllers. They are zaidi au less the same weight, but that weight is proportioned differently and zaidi comfortably for the PS3. The left and right stick positioning is much zaidi comfortable. Maybe it’s because I’m very much used to PlayStation controllers, as they don’t change much from console to console. I had a non-gamer hold and compare a 360 controller and a PS3 controller, and they alisema the PS3 was much zaidi comfortable. The battery scheme is much better than the 360, which wewe have to keep buying batteries for, au use rechargeable batteries which are sold separately. The PS3, however, lets wewe plug your controller into the PS3. So wewe can charge and play at the same time, then unplug and continue playing when it’s fully charged. The controllers have a motion-sensing feature called Six-Axis, which is integrated as a nice side-feature in games like Little Big Planet, which moves the character’s head about kwa tilting the controller.

I don't think Sony can decide what theme they are going with for the PS3. When wewe look at it, it gives the impression that it's a hardcore piece of machinery of bad-ass proportions. But when wewe load up a game it does this strange twinkly jingle noise while inaonyesha the PlayStation 3 logo.

I know it’s an odd thing to compliment gaming system on, but the on-console buttons are very, very..... fun? How ever weird it sounds, I really like being able to just touch the surface of the PS3 where a symbol is, and have it do something. Some may think this could get annoying like if a piece of paper, sock, au phone drops on the console and turns it off, but cleverly Sony made it only respond to skin-contact. Don’t know how they did that, but kudos to them.

The PS3 has a lot of media streaming options. wewe can play clips and picha from your camera, flip the pictures if wewe took them sideways and watch a cool montage of all the pictures in that section. I expect a lot of people to be shouting "WHAT ABOUT BLU-RAY???". I couldn't care less about Blu-ray; I don't see the appeal of buying a disc with slightly better definition than a DVD. What if a friend wants to borrow a film from you? wewe have to say, "sorry, it's a Blu-Ray" because let's face it, not a lot of people have a Blu-Ray player.

The PlayStation Store is a real disappointment. I searched the entire store and there were only about 3 things I wanted to download from it. The Heavenly Sword demo (just to see if it’s as crap as everyone has been saying it is), the Ratchet and Clank demo and the Dynasty Warriors 6 trailer (which as I’m typing I’ve noticed that it’s an interview. Yay, factless, self-complimenting crap). I think that fanboyism must be a real disease which wewe can catch kwa owning a crap game, because I didn’t find the Heavenly Sword demo that bad. Well, not as bad as Zero Punctuation made it out to be, but still mediocre. So that was a real joy; I give the PlayStation Store a thumbs-down.

After hearing respectful and honest YouTubers and podcasts talk (moan) about it; I’m reluctant to give PS nyumbani a try, it’s been aliyopewa an awful reception kwa many people, even the most loyal Sony mashabiki are getting annoyed that they waited years for such crap.
Just finished downloading PS Home, took a while so I hope this is good.

1)    First thing it asks me for is 3077MB of HDD space for PS Home. Anything that’s talked about in MB these days isn’t that big, so what the heck, I’ll press X to continue.

2)    Now I have to wait for it to reserve. Done that, got to press X to continue.

3)    Right, it’s loaded up, tells me to press X to connect. There sure is a lot of X pressing to be done on here.

4)    It’s aliyopewa me a piece of gripping Terms of Service literature to read. How fascinating... SKIP.

Just finished creating my character. Very good graphics, body and face are very customisable. Not much in the way of clothes and accessories. There are these weird forehead wrinkles I can’t get rid of.

30 dakika later...

After having a good look through, PlayStation nyumbani is an online, glorified and basic version of The Sims.

Having all three consoles, the war between the 360 and the PS3 is still a little vague. I’ve tried and here comes the conclusion:






In third place..... The Nintendo Wii. With a limited maktaba of hardcore games and a pitiful online experience. This is not the console for a serious gamer.


In sekunde place......PlayStation 3, the lack of free headsets has made a dramatic effect on the online experience, nobody can be bothered to go out and buy one, so a game of Resistance 2 is silent and awkward when wewe want to say thank wewe to someone who saved wewe from a Chimera

And in first place is the 360. I really didn’t want to come to this conclusion. The PS3 has a small maktaba of great non-exclusive games and a few wonderful exclusive games but it’s not worth throwing away the Xbox Live Marketplace for the PlayStation Store which has a grand total of 1 interesting title. I didn’t want to base my conclusion on the online experience but because so many games come out on multiple consoles now, that’s what it boils down to.

Again, it comes down to your budget, if wewe can’t pay £40 ($80) a mwaka for dhahabu membership, and yet zaidi money for any display pictures, expansion and themed backgrounds wewe want to download; then it’s not worth getting the 360 and wewe should probably go for the PS3. It’s a shame to recommend the 360 as a first choice when I’ve been playing the PS3 A LOT recently. But I can’t recommend a console because of two games... I just can’t. If wewe do have enough money; try to buy both, there are some wonderful perks to the PS3 which give wewe a refreshing break from Microsoft’s bleed-the-customer-dry-approach.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m off to play Resistance 2 =D