trivard676Well, we all knew that an announcement like this was inevitable. It was something that had been rumoured about for ages, with different ‘leaks’ revealed months ago, and mounds of speculationa ll about. It definitely heralds in a new age of portable gaming – the only thing it lacks thus far is 3D screen, but time will tell if 3D is actually a good thing in portable gaming.
So let’s take a look at what this thing has, and what it means for gaming, and since you’re at RoH, horror gaming.
The Screen
We don’t want to be rude, but we can already see ourselves oggling that screen. A five inch OLED screen with a 960×544 resolution means for good looking games. Very.
Being powered by what Sony claims is “the most advanced CPU in its class.” We already thought the PSP looked pretty damned good for a handheld, but they showed off a bit of Killzone and rocking some Uncharted footage and it already looks good, damn good. It doesn’t quite look like it’s PS3 level quality, but we’re willing to wager that when we get it in our hands (which by the way it totally will be…eventually…) it’ll thrill us just as well. Did we mention it’s a touch screen? It is.
Dual Analog Sticks
Well that’s just a given. The extra stick is a ‘micro’ design that mimics the Dualshock.
Touch and Tilt
The PSP2 will sport a rear touch-pad that will allow for more interaction. The Uncharted footage that was shown uses the rear track pad to allow Drake to climb over obstacles and simulate hand over hand climbing of vines. On the front side of things, the demo showed a line being drawn up a cliff and Drake following the path up a cliff. That’s kind of cool, but nothing we haven’t seen before…plenty of times.
We can instantly see ourselves feeling around in a hole in the wall, like the beginning of Silent Hill: Homecoming, searching for Robbie the Rabbit. When suddenly the screen goes dark, and we have to follow the prompts onscreen, tilting and twisting to free ourselves.
Front and Rear Facing Cameras
Two words – augmented reality. While it might seem gimmicky, the possibilities are endless. We mentioned before how awesome it would be to implement something like Fatal Frame into the real world. Horror gaming and the real world don’t always mesh well, but it would really make going back into the laundry room difficult when we hear an unfamiliar noise back there…
The augmented reality is actually something that Sony is really pushing – Reality Fighters was demoed a little bit in the show.
Social Networking
Aargh! Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay. Everyone wants to share everything with their friends, be it the latest photo they snapped of their friends, or how many crops they managed to fuck up the last time they cultivated. Sony wants to implement this into all of their devices. One of these aspects is LiveArea.
Live Area is basically the entire UI of the device, and implements social feeds into the game itself. We’re not quite sure how this would work out, but itwill work out in the horror gaming world, but it would definitely mean that there would be a lot more of your horror-gaming friends ready to romp through the Sprawl with you, right at your fingertips.
We can imagine the updates, too…what they might sound like. The demo shows “____had a Double Eagle in Hot Shots Golf,” but that’s not…fun enough. We’re thinking “jeeves86 just sliced through 50 Necromorphs in Dead Space Portable.” Nice. Or how about Or “jeeves86 just died…take a look at the decapitation video…” Now that would be awesome! Now if we only could get an announcement on some sort of portable Dead Space. Or Resident Evil. Or anything for that matter.
3G and WiFi
We’re going to be the first to say it. We want Resident Evil: Raccoon City to be the fabled Resident Evil Portable. With 3G gaming capabilities and go-anywhere gaming, the request is not all that unreasonable. And Sega showed a Yakuza of the Dead demo, so the the NGP as it’s being called is definitely going to get a small sampling of undead. Let’s hope it gets a taste for it.
So we should see the PSP2 sometime this holiday season. We knew this announcement was coming, but just hearing it and seeing it is awesome. The potential it offers to portable gaming is just amazing. With Sony’s plans to interconnect your gaming on the go with your gaming-at-home and amped up hardware, we’re excited about the future of portable gaming.
Whatever the future brings, you can count on RoH to bring you the horror-gaming coverage. Take a look at this previous article in which we daydream about more of the potential amazing-ness that the PSP2 could bring.
–jeeves86
Big thanks to Engadget!
