PS3 informational update: There’s nothing I want on this system. I looked over the catalogue of games and outside of _possibly_ getting that Gundam game from japan there’s nothing that even tickles my fancy. The other game I was moderately interested in was Resistance: Fall of Man but thank god there was a demo for this game.

Resistance is painfully generic. It’s also painfully terrible. I don’t know what else to say outside of the fact that bullets travel about as fast as a man running. Bullets! That should give you enough information.

I also tried the demo for Ridge Racer 7. It looks good! An improvement over the 360 version, but not really by that much. It made me want to get the game, but then I remembered that it’s $60 and I wouldn’t play it for very long because I just played through RR6 in its entirety less than a year ago.

As I stated before, flOw is the game I was interested in. I like it, but honestly prefer the way it plays with a mouse. Tilt-n-tumble ps3 controller is decent, but it never feels “right” to me. I do like that it is much larger than the PC game. I haven’t gotten through it all but I’ll probably play through it a few times.

Now to the meaty reason that I got it: hardware emulation BC. The first game I tested was Shadow of the Colossus, which is an unfortunate game to test. The very first thing that I noticed was the lack of bass. Then I noticed a few other sound problems relating to the music: when it transitions into the more epic and louder and faster music rather than transitioning it now stops and then starts the next track. Nothing _major_ (and it only happens about 2/3 of the time) but it does disrupt the mood.

So my initial impressions were poor and I was a bit disheartened, but I decided to try out a few more games before I was pissed. As I was saying: hardware backwards compatibility was a main thing because my PS2 both has huge problems reading blue bottomed PS2 games and, even with component cables, the games look like someone smeared Vaseline over the screen. I decided to grab a few games that I had played on the PS2 with my TV and been a bit disappointed with.

Gitaroo Man: I had had some very minor lag issues with this game on the PS2 because I was using a wireless logictech controller (my consoles are just a bit too far away). It looked good, but had a slightly smeary quality to it. With the PS3 this is all gone. The minor lag issues are gone, and the quality is a bit improved. The image is so sharp and clear that many of the 3D models look as though they’re made out of many, many lego blocks or something. It’s really nice actually.

Next I grabbed Skygunner because I remember there being a setting to play the game with more background enemies which makes the framerate drop. I was going to load a save from one of the heavier dog fights and see if the framerate issues were fixed. I only managed to watch the intro anime movie, and the quality was quite a bit better. It was very sharp and clear as though it were a good quality DVD. I ended up not being able to find my save game so I moved on to another, but my impressions had begun to change.

Next up was ICO, notoriously difficult to get to run on either of my PS2s. It was so bad that I actually gave up on my second time through at the windmill. So I loaded the game up and was initially disappointed with the terribly blurry quality (I had also noticed this on SotC) so I was set up for disappointment knowing that the game was set to run in a low resolution. Then the intro movie started and the quality was nice and sharp. The lighting was gorgeous and the sharpness was just right. I loaded up the game at the windmill and looked at the water to see that it looked great, and then got to a part with the shadow enemies and they looked better than I thought they could. So, color my impressions changing.

Last was God Hand. This is actually the game that I stopped attempting to use my PS2 on my new TV because of. The Vaseline quality of smear over the screen added with incredible blockyness and a weird resolution was just too much on the regular PS2. This game easily looked the most improved on the PS3. It looked much closer to a late-gen PS2 game like it should. The models and environments are smoothed out a bit and the smear is completely gone. I was so impressed that I kind of forgot that I was just testing games and played for the rest of the night. I’m mostly finished with the game now.

Overall it seems like about 1/5 games will have an issue, but not game breaking (only game disrupting). I’m sure that there are a few games out there that will have major issues, but I’m not too worried considering how bad software emulation is for the PS3. I also realized that my copy of rez is a JP version. I kept trying to get the damn thing to work, but I had completely forgot it was an import. I… may have to buy a US version of this game (when the ps3 controller finally has vibration). The PS3 satisfies what I want in it: not-terrible looking PS2 games. It’s also very nice to have the virtual memory cards and the ability to turn off/switch games through the controller.

Tonight I’ll probably test out a few PS1 games. I’ve been pretty happy with their quality through the PS2 with component cables. Unfortunatly most of my “very good” PS1 games are imports at this point, so I won’t be able to test Umihara Kawase.

OH! Back to the bass level comment. I was looking up some information today on the PS3’s video playback (I want to watch some TV shows and internet videos on my TV) and found a guy who reviewed the PS3 as a DVD player and Blu-Ray player, and he had noticed quite a few problems with the bass. He also tested his surround system and checked for options in the audio menu, something that I did. I think that the PS3 has a bass output issue, and to me bass is very important. Hopefully this gets fixed in a patch (some kind of virtual level adjuster or equalizer).