The Friday Five - The PSP Edition

Welcome to the newest Disparate Elements ploy to not have to think of something to write. I'm calling it The Friday Five and as you may have guessed, it's a list of five things. Usually I'll try and stick to a theme, but the theme may just as well be "Things I Forgot to Tell You This Week". Sometimes I have a hard time coalescing my thoughts, especially on a Friday when my bulb is at its dimmest, so this will help me get things together. Fun!

I bought a PSP this week as, and I'm not making this up, GameShark kept sending me PSP games to review despite my repeated insistence that I don't have a PSP. I'm convinced that Bill has stock in Sony and this is all part of some nefarious plan to drive up the stock price, using my own greed against me at the same time. Honestly, how could I resist the 100 bucks in review games just sitting on my desk waiting to be taken? At any rate, I bought one of the newfangled slimline systems and while it is slimmer and lighter, much of the thing hasn't changed, so today's Friday Five is:

Five Things Still Wrong With the PSP

I'm so gloriously negative! But I digress

1.) No on-board storage and no included memory stick. The fact that you need a memory stick to save games is silly enough in the first place, but to then not include one with the system is even more ridiculous. I mean, after spending 170 bucks, who wants to spend an additional 30 just so they can save their gaming progress? I realize that the PSP can do more with the memory stick like read movies and music from it, but it's still 100% necessary for game play, so include one in the box, or put one in the unit.

2.) You have to have the unit plugged in and fully charged to update the firmware. Why? This makes no sense. Maybe it's just a precautionary thing, but seriously, you get a new game console, want to upgrade the firmware and have to wait while the damn thing charges up? That's just dumb. Plus, it's a portable for Chrissakes, you shouldn't have to have an outlet handy any time you want to do anything with it.

3.) It needs firmware updates. Consoles used to be closed boxes. You bought one, bought some games, and played on it for three to five years. Now they're all so frakkin' complicated that they need multiple firmware upgrades just to turn the damn things on. Handhelds used to be the last bastion of closed-boxedness, but now this blasted thing needs firmware upgrades too. I just want to play games on the damn thing, not use it to open my garage door.

4.) Setting up wireless networking is a pain in the ass. Yeah, I'm glad it can do Wi-Fi and all that, but entering a 20+ digit WEP key with a cell phone interface is as close to hell as I've been in quite some time. If this thing is so smart, why can't I use the USB connection to put a text file on it and the system can import the WEP key and SSID from that? No good fucking reason, that's why.

5.) Games are on discs, not cartridges. UMD's are stupid and everyone knows it. The fact that the PSP has to read from a disc constantly sucks out the battery life and because it's read only, you have to buy a stinking memory card for game saves. Thankfully, the UMD has sold like gangbusters and it has heralded a new age of Sony proprietary media. Oh wait.

Now, on the plus side, that screen is still a fucking marvel of modern engineering and it is a slick looking piece of tech. It can do a bunch of new things like get RSS feeds automatically and connect to your PS3, should you have one, and it's hard to be impressed with 3D games on the DS after playing Medal of Honor Heroes 2 on the PSP so it's not all bad. I still probably wouldn't have bought one if I couldn't make money off of it, but now that I have one, I can play Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, and hopefully, review the upcoming God of War game. First though, I have to finish the aforementioned Medal of Honor and then Dead Head Fred. Time for this thing to earn its keep.