I\’ve been hearing rumours that the 80GB Metal Gear Solid 4 PlayStation 3 bundle was soon to go the way of the dodo, and with it all backwards compatibility from the product line. I was pondering whether or not to take the plunge and shell out the cash for one of these bundles, but an e-mail that popped into my inbox at work swiftly resolved those thoughts.
A guy at work was selling his 60GB PS3 along with a few games, for the bargain price (relatively speaking) of $450. I wasn\’t particularly interested in some of the games he was offering (Tiger Woods and Madden…right), but I realised that that sort of price for the long-discontinued 60GB model was a pretty damn good deal, so I jumped at it. Hence the shiny black monster now perched next to my 32\” HDTV.
The machine is remarkably quiet, even with a disc inside it – noise elimination was clearly one of their priorities in developing the hardware. Heat is another story, though – I tried to reposition the console slightly to make space for something else and the underside was almost too hot to touch.
That said, I don\’t have much else to complain about. I\’ll probably put Ubuntu on it so that I can use it as a media center (without being restricted to the formats that the PS3 supports natively). And now that I have something that can actually use the hi-def capabilities of my TV, I might start buying more DVDs (and downloading content from the PlayStation Store – I hear Xam\’d is particularly good).
Games? Err, I got Guitar Hero III along with it, but until I clear my existing PC and PS2 backlog I\’m probably not going to buy anything else for it. I\’m still halfway through Devil May Cry 4 and I suspect I\’ve barely scratched the surface of Mass Effect.
On a somewhat related note, I beat Metal Gear Solid at last (after disovering the first-person aiming option in the escape level which was never revealed to me, and in any case was rather difficult to use). Of course, the game rewarded me by freezing up right after the credits, preventing me from saving my complete file. Joy.
Overall thoughts? Rather rough around the edges, but it did have enjoyable moments.
I put a few minutes into Metal Gear Solid 2 – the two main things I brought away from it were
- Yay aiming doesn\’t suck as much!
- Boo the cutscenes are still way too long.
I\’ll probably only continue once I get the PS2 memory card adapter I ordered from Amazon tomorrow, so I can move all my save data onto the PS3. I\’m not sure what I\’ll do with the PS2 yet, but I\’ll probably take it back to Singapore the next time I go.