12 December, 2008

The PSP:A wonderful piece of hardware

I have always yearned for an up to date PC, with the latest games, and playing them with the best and highest of resolutions. But call it fate, or call it destiny, I had to forsake gaming on the PC completely for the following reasons.

> Gaming is centered around windows. Linux and Mac users don't have those many choices

> There are so many games around that the quality is almost next to nothing. See: NFS Undercover

> I have to sit in office in front of the PC, all day long (Yes, I do work daytime job), and when I get home, if I wanna play my favorite game, I have to sit in front of the PC again, resulting in frequent backaches

> I guess I was never a fan of killer graphics(and no gameplay) , or killer game play(and 0 graphics). I would rather spend my time playing a game having a mix of both

> Portability is a HUGE issue with my desktop

> The electricity bill went through the roof

One fine day, I just decided I had to go out and buy myself a console. I had never owned one. But then all consoles suffer from the same problem as the PC. Portability, and upgradation, and what not. So, I decided I would afford myself a PSP. And I must say its REALLY worth the investment. I do find the occasional blooper, but then the games on the PSP are better than those for the PC by leaps and bounds. And the graphics are really good too. Now, I can take my PSP to the rooftop just to play a game of Burnout Dominator, rather than play Crisis:warhead in front of my PC. The graphics on the PSP are really good. What I don't understand is the reason why game developers for the PC have to make such hefty games which don't compare to squat.
The graphics on burnout:Nominator are almost equivalent to NFS:Most Wanted, and that of God of war: Chains of Olympus surpass the graphics for Prince of Persia:The two thrones. If a 500Mhz CPU with 2MB VRAM can render such excellent graphics, just take a second to wonder what the PC could really do with careful programming. Developing games for the PSP is really a tough task because you cant afford to be careless about memory leaks. There is a lot less RAM than the PC to work with. And, also gamers are much more demanding graphics wise when it comes to playstations. So, each and every frame has to look well polished, and the frame rate shouldn't vary greatly.If it does, it would be downright outrageous.

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Move over Prince of Persia, God of war is here

God of war:Chains of Olympus was the first game that was installed on my PSP. As soon as I waded through the first level, I got a sensation of Deja Vu. The graphics looked stunning, and it almost looked as if it employed Prince Of Persia's' graphics engine! How could this be? Perhaps both games are really well polished, and the graphics may look similar. But how can a hand held console even come close to the graphics capabilities of a PC equipped with the latest video card? What baffled me more was the fact that the game loads almost instantly. There are a lot less "Loading" screens on God of war, than there are on Prince of Persia:Two thrones. Even the EPIC setting is not lost until the last boss fight. If you're a serious gamer, then this has got to raise a couple of questions in your mind.

> How can a hand held with 2MB VRAM render graphics equivalent to a game on the PC?

> With careful optimization of games, can game developers squeeze more out of existing hardware?

> Do you really need to upgrade your PC? Cant you buy a cheaper hand held?

To these questions, hardware manufacturers such as NVidia have got to answer, or all gamers would eventually move onto consoles. Got answers? Lets hear them in the comments!