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Hands on impressions with the PSP Go and Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny
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I prefer the white one
The new PSP Go was announced at E3 this year and ever since it has been a point of controversy for fans. Some find the new design unattractive, while others vow never to commit to a download-only platform. The most talked about issue, however, has been the price; at $249, it is a good $70 more than it's disc holding counterpart, the PSP-3000. I got a chance to handle the machine at an event recently, and while I feel mostly positive about the look of the system, I did come away with a few concerns.
Once you have the PSP Go in your hands, you realize that it truly is a very small peice of hardware. The PSP-3000 is thin, but you'd never confuse it with a cell phone if it was in your pocket because of it's length. The PSP Go, on the other hand, could probably fool the less tech savvy rather easily. Its sliding design is even used in many new phones with qwerty keyboards now. It isn't just the length that is smaller though, every feature on the face of the machine has been shrunk down a bit. The screen is slightly smaller, but it didn't seem like a noticable difference without the PSP-3000 next to it to compare; what really stood out as being smaller were the buttons. All the same buttons are there as on the former models, but they're just a little bit smaller and closer together. This gave me some concerns about how I, with my adult thumbs, would do in games that needed more precise control, and had I had the time I would have played the Rock Band Unplugged demo they were showing to see, but unfortunately they were closing the demo station for the day and only allowed me to play one game.
The face buttons are just smaller, but the shoulder buttons feel completely different. The clicky-ness of the old design are gone in favor of softer, but more ergonomic buttons. They felt fine in my hand, but I wondered if I wouldn't have the same trouble I had with the Sega Saturn controller, where the shoulder buttons weren't responsive enough to let me know if I was pressing them or not. The new position of the analog nub also seemed as though it would take some getting used to, but was not hard to reach, because the whole unit is quite small, likely smaller than you imagine it is.
The game I did get to demo was Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, the upcoming PSP only version of the long running fighting series. In retrospect, this may have been the wrong game to get a feel for the system with, because I would only be using the d-pad and the face buttons, but why not test how it works with the most basic controls before worrying about the rest. Broken Destiny looks great on the PSP. I didn't notice anything missing from the stages or the character designs, and the framerate and animations both looked very smooth. The two new characters, Kratos from God of War and the mustachioed Dampierre, were on the character select screen, but they were cruelly locked, so I chose Mitsurugi to fight Raphael instead. The first round I lost, which I chalk up to not having played a Soul Calibur game in quite a while, but I easily disposed of my enemy in the next two rounds, having gotten a handle on the PSP's buttons. Mechanically, I feel as though nothing has been lost in this entry into the series, which is great news, because the mechanics are probably the best part of the Soul Calibur series.
After that, I returned the console back to the waiting gentleman that it was tethered by a thick wire to, and parted ways with the system. I still have reservations about how functional the smaller buttons are in games that don't take to button-mashing as well, but I left feeling more excited about the release of the PSP Go than ever. It was aesthetically very pleasing, and the small design and downloadable nature make it the most portable dedicated game console to come out, if you discount the foreign ones built to play Super Nintendo roms, and you should.
The PSP Go is set to be released in North America on October 1st, for $249.
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