I purchased a PS3 last week! As is typically with me making large purchases, a was wishy-washy about it for a whole two weeks (although Alvin had been egging me to buy one for months).
To show how indecisive we are, here’s the conversation we had at the store:
Saleslady: Sir, anong kulay ang gusto nyo? Black, silver or white?
Me: Alvin, ano gusto mo?
Alvin: Kahit ano, silver na lang siguro.
Me: Sige ate, silver na lang
(The saleslady proceeds to take the silver model out of the box)
Me: OK lang ba silver? Parang mas maganda black.
Alvin: Gusto mo ba black? Ayos lang sakin kahit ano.
Me: Meh, kahit ano naman e, di bale na.
Saleslady: Silver na ba talaga sir?
Me: Sige ate, test mo na.
(She turns on the PS3)
Alvin: Dapat nga ata black na lang.
Me: Ate, pwede pa palitan?
Saleslady: Naon ko na po e!
Anyway, yeah, non-sequitur. I thought long and hard about the PS3 purchase because obviously it’s more expensive than the X-Box 360 and furthermore, and the games are expensive as well. But you gotta go with the best really.
Our PS3 package came with 2 games of our choice, and we found out just as we were buying that we had to be picky about the regions as most likely R2 games (Europe) would not work on our standard definition NTSC TV. Yup, I had decided not to purchase an HD TV because, well, they’re hella expensive! For our two free games, we went with Metal Gear Solid 4 (obviously) and Valkyria Chronicles, both are PS3 exclusives.
MGS4 is a damn awesome-looking game, even on our SD TV so I can only imagine how much better it would be in HD. I wasn’t planning on playing it myself, but instead satisfied myself with watching the cutscenes as my brothers played through it. As is typical of MGS, the game was short and my youngest brother got to the ending cutscene within a mere four days after the PS3 was purchased! Luckily there’s still MGS Online and Hard/Extreme modes so there’s still some replay value there.
Valkyria Chronicles is the game I’m playing and I’m currently 8 chapters in. From reviews I expected it to be a tactical RPG like FF Tactics and the like, but after playing I find that it reminds me more of squad-based tactical games like X-Com: UFO Defense. The game is rendered in very detailed and beautiful cel shading and is a blast to play and also somewhat hard – actual tactics are needed to win battles unlike in FFT-style games where typically it’s not too hard to power through the battles.
Another slight disappointment was that the US Playstation Store wouldn’t accept a local credit card for PSN purchases, so I was unable to purchases Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix as it is currently only available on the US PSN. Thanks to some kind folks at the PSPinoy message boards though for facilitating the purchase for me. I was able to successfully download SSF2THDR but was saddened by the lag I experienced while playing online. Hopefully I can tweak some of the network settings on the PS3 to solve the latency issues.
Overall, the PS3 seems to have been a good solid choice. Now if only I had more time to play games!
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