By: Kevin Larrabee

I did it. I walked down to my local GameStop and picked up a 40GB PlayStation 3. After starting up RedZoneGamer.com and making the possibly life altering decision to get into video game journalism, I had little choice on the $400 decision. I never thought I would be dropping that amount of cash on a system of which I constantly talked badly of.

There aren’t any real system sellers when it comes to the game lineup, and even Sony admitted in the March 2008 issue of EGM that they fumbled the kickoff of their new system. The time I’ve spent with the system has had its highs and lows. Now, after spending five days with it, here are my initial thoughts.

The first thing I noticed as I opened up my PlayStation 3 “lunch box” was that little comes with the system. Inside there is one Sixaxis controller, composite AV cables, the power cable, instructions, and the system. It really bugs me that there are no HD cables included with what is touted as a high definition console. One HDMI cable costs $4 on monoprice.com. Sony is a monster-sized company. It makes no sense for the absence of that cable.

Nothing. That is what I heard coming from the system as I booted it up and threw in my first game, Motorstorm. I was concerned for a second, thinking that the Blu-Ray drive was broken and wasn’t reading the disc. But the game’s title screen appeared. An odd sense of satisfaction came over me due to the silence, something I did not expect. My Xbox 360 sounds like a turbine jet engine when it loads up a game. This surprised me so much that I even went as far as to stand up from my comfy futon, and walk towards the system to put my ear up against it to see if I could hear anything. From now on, when I watch a DVD (and now Blu-Ray movies), it will be in the PS3.

Sticking with my experience with Mortorstorm, there was one major disappointment — load time. It took about 60 seconds for the game to load before each race. Needless to say, this was annoying. I played Motorstorm for about 30 minutes and found it to be very enjoyable, even when I had to replay the first race three or four times to place in the top 3. The visuals are lush, and the game sounded amazing coming out of my Klipsch surround sound setup.

When it comes to Sony’s online service, PlayStation Network (PSN), I was happy I didn’t have to spend another $50 for a 1-year subscription to the service, but ultimately I was underwhelmed by the experience. First, before I could visit the online store, I had to download the latest PS3 update. A new one comes out every eight to ten weeks. This process took 30 minutes, including download and installation. In comparison, Xbox 360 provides two updates a year, and it takes a total of 60 seconds to download and install the update.

Now let’s talk about the PSN store. The store layout needs to be navigated like a website, not like the button layout of the Xbox Live Marketplace. This becomes another annoyance, since instead of a mouse and keyboard, you need to use the analog controls of the Sixaxis. Needless to say, I continued to the demo page and proceeded to download 4 demos, MLB 08: The Show, Uncharted, Resistance, and Super Stardust HD. I quickly came to the conclusion that Sony doesn’t have the same size download pipes as Microsoft. For a download that was 1.05GB, it took 35 minutes (with a wired connection). The same file size on XBL takes ten to fifteen minutes.

After downloading a demo that took 35 minutes, I was anxious to play it. Well, not so fast. The demo then needs to be installed after it is downloaded. The installation of MLB 08: The Show, took another 20 minutes! I really couldn’t believe it. After everything I had experienced on the Xbox 360, how was it possible that Sony was that far behind in the online experience? The only presumption that I could come up with was that the downloads needed to be decompressed, and then installed due to the massive size the final game will be since it is on a Blu-Ray disc (around 40 GB). This is compared to the 9 GB that is the max for an Xbox 360 game.

Lastly, I will talk about the games, and as a gamer, this is the pivotal factor when considering a purchase. I am really pleased with the games that I have played so far.

MLB 08: The Show (demo) was by far my favorite. As an avid Red Sox fan, I have purchased the last two 2K Sports MLB games (MLB 2K6, MLB 2K7) and disliked them both for reasons I will not get into here. After coming off the still memorable experience of EA’s MVP 2005, I have high expectations for my baseball games. For the first time in three years, I think I have finally found an exciting and enjoyable baseball experience. The graphics are amazing with uncanny player models, and the one stadium I played in, Fenway Park, looked more alive and accurate than any MLB game I had previously played. From the pitching mechanics, to fielding to running the bases, to the announcers, everything felt tight and responsive. I never would have thought that this would be the game that I am looking forward to the most on the PS3.

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (demo) gave me mixed emotions. The environments are beautiful, the combat is interesting enough, and the platforming is enjoyable, but for some reason I couldn’t really get into Nate’s adventure. The main factor that diverted my attention from the gameplay was the oddly high amount of screen tearing through the game, I noticed it every four or five seconds. I am getting the full retail game in the next day or two. Hopefully I will enjoy the full product experience a lot more.

I played Resistance for about five minutes. I noticed instantly that I missed having rumble for the first time on the PS3. I don’t know what it is about me, but I need to get the tactile feedback from my controller that I am shooting a gun. I believe that because of this, the enjoyment was severely diminished. This was so much of an issue that I went to www.play-asia.com 10 minutes after putting the controller down to import a Dual Shock 3 from Japan. After I receive it I will give Resistance an honest effort.

As I stated before, overall I am happy with the games so far, but the real AAA exclusives will be coming this year in the form of Metal Gear Solid 4, Infamous, Killzone 2, Resistance 2, and Little Big Planet. Clearly there is plenty of content to look forward to, and now that Blu-Ray has won the high definition disc war over HDDVD, I will be looking forward to getting new releases through Netflix.

Bottom line: now is a good time to get a PS3 for $400 if you don’t need and/or want the PS2 backwards compatibility feature. PS3 sales are strong. It was the No. 1 selling console in January, according to the NPD numbers. Don’t expect a price cut before the release of Grand Theft Auto 4 in April. I predict that the only different SKUs we will see before E3 will be one with a larger hard drive, and the inclusion of the new Dual Shock 3 controller.