| After all the hype and hoopla,
the PS2 is finally here. I've spent a week with Sony's new
wonder, and it's definitely cool -- but it may not be as cool as
the pre-launch hype has led you to believe. What follows is a
review of the PS2 hardware only. Reviews of PS2 software will be
posted separately. Now down to business...
Every part of the PS2 package makes it clear that this is not
just a game machine. If it weren't for the bright blue color of
the box and the PS2 logo on the front face, you could easily
mistake this box for any other Sony electronic product. The
manual is also like that of an electronics device rather than a
gaming system. The manual is extremely poor, including such
poorly translated phrases as "You can enjoy the vibration
feature." Options are listed, but what they do is anyone's
guess since the one-line descriptions are often on the cryptic
side.
When I started up the system, I was startled to discover that
its clock showed the correct date and time, presumably preset at the
factory. The system's interface is dark and bland. The
organization is clunky and unintuitive. I still can't figure out
what is happening when I press the square button on the page for
setting the clock. The menus fade away and all that's left is what
seems like a clock face with no hands on it. Very strange.
Another oddity is that you must set the PS1 emulation
settings every time you start the system (and yes, it even says
so in the cryptic manual so it's not a bug). This is annoying
because it means that you can't just pop in a PS1 disk and
play. First you must reset the system without a disk and then
you must view the system's driver information. Finally you must
change the PS1 driver settings, put in your disk and select it
through the system browser. Once you get it up and
running, the results are quite pleasing. I've tried the original
Ridge Racer and Metal Gear Solid, both of which run very nicely
on the PS2. The smooth textures are most noticeable in Metal
Gear Solid, but if you look closely, the cars and walls in Ridge
Racer are no longer pixely on the PS2. One final note on PS1
emulation: you must use a PS1 memory card to save PS1 games.
One of the big selling points for the PS2 is that it plays
DVD movies and CDs in addition to PS1 and PS2 games. The system
definitely does all of this, but you could clearly get a better
DVD or CD player for $300. My main gripe with these extra
features is simple: the system fan is too noisy. Unless you
crank the volume very loud, the incessant whirring of the
PS2 fan is a big distraction during any quiet piece of music or
during a quiet movie scene. The PS2 is actually louder
than my computer when I put Windows into Standby mode.
The CD player is quite odd. I was expecting some fancy
display so that I could leave the TV on while listening.
Instead all that's shown is a slowly rotating cube (on only a
small portion of the screen) and the play
controls. The sound quality through the optical out is excellent
though.
The DVD player works well, but it is also an odd piece of
software. Like the system front end, the DVD interface is
clunky, forcing you to stop playback to access and adjust some
options. The color saturation on the PS2 is very high, perhaps a
little too high for my TV. I used the THX Optimode (complete
with the free blue THX glasses for proper color tweaking) on two
different DVDs to try and find a decent adjustment with my TV.
What I have found is that I can find a very satisfactory picture
for movies, but those settings cause the colors in video games
to be a little too harsh. After a week of tweaking, I think I've
just recently found the best compromise between the two. Also along the the lines of general picture quality, I
noticed that the PS2 occasionally produced a very fine staticy haze over
dark black areas of the screen. After some experimentation, I
discovered that it seemed this was largely because the PS2 was
less than a few inches below my TV and was causing some interference.
Moving the PS2 to a lower shelf helped, and the haze is now
barely noticeable. What really brought out the best in the image
quality of the PS2 was acquiring a Monster Cable Gamelink 300
s-video cable. I am stunned how this cable has made the color
almost as detailed and well defined on my TV as my Dreamcast's
color is on my VGA monitor with the Performance VGA adapter! The
Dual Shock 2 controller is very nice. The length of the cord is
longer than that of a $15 clear Sony Dual Shock 1 that I picked
up for a temporary second controller, and it reaches where I sit
with just enough slack to be comfortable. The analog function of
all the major buttons (including the directional pad, but not
including the Start and Select keys) is strange. In Ridge Racer
5, for example, there are several different sensitivities to
chose from. On the higher sensitivities, it takes a lot of force
on the buttons to register a full press. Whether or not this is a useful
feature still has to be proven. Overall, while the PS2
is competent at its various capabilities, everywhere that Sony
had a chance to go above and beyond the call of duty and really blow the
consumer away with its new $300 multimedia box, it simply
dropped the ball. Using the PS2 feels a lot like using a buggy
new OS. The potential is there, but it doesn't feel polished
enough yet to be the "little black box" of the future.
Supposedly future PS2 disks can update the system, so there's
still hope that things will become more polished soon. So is
the PS2 worth what people are going through to get it?
Yes, but just barely. If you're not able to secure one before
next year, don't be too upset. On the other hand, the PS2 does
do just enough to make it worth
the $300, and if the games follow the same trend that those for
the PS1 have, I don't think anyone who is fortunate enough to
get one this year will regret having gone through so much
trouble to acquire it.
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