Slowly those gaming podcasts wore me down with their talk of Xbox Live, the PSN, the trophies, the exclusive titles and most importantly, the playing on the couch.
I don’t know what it is about gaming on my PC, but I simply can’t do it without getting restless about checking my RSS reader, my guild’s website or thinking about how my auctions are going on WoW. Plus, I pretty much sit on 3 cushions and a phonebook to get myself to the required height, and my arse lets me know about it after a few hours.
It was that damn Ben saying how amazing Uncharted 2 was, and my 43rd birthday which made me flip and convince an unwilling partner that I needed technology for a present this year. And suddenly I feel like a goofy 24 year old minus the beanbag, except I have barely any idea how things work or why I am heading down this path.
First impressions are that the PS3 looks cooler than a Wii or an Xbox. Especially the Slim that I got – things are dull black and minimalist, but the controller (that silly spidery-looking thing you hold) is quite a puzzle. Whoever thought of those dumb symbols X, Triangle, Square and O? And the way to turn the unit on or off, or go to the menu is a little thing in the very centre that I thought was only a decorative sticker. But the wireless stuff was easy to setup and my 32″ TV looks really crisp – a lot better than I feared.
After fluffing around with an on-screen keyboard only slightly less painful than SMS’ing on a mobile phone, I’m now on the Australian Playstation Network with a gamer name of “grenache-dfv”, except all this is fairly useless because the interaction is terribly clunky. I miss the immediacy of Ventrilo, and since my only friend so far “morrie23” – a guy in my WoW guild, hasn’t got any of the games I have, there’s sorta no point.
I’m looking forward to getting a second controller so Kim and I can muck around a bit, but so far Pixeljunk Shooter has been loads of fun, and Heavy Rain is waiting till I have a few solid hours on the weekend to start. And I have 5 PSN trophies already which is worrying because it might turn out like a whole new “WoW achievement” obsession again.
And I now have a gamertag!
Over summer I managed to help someone fix their PS3 while they were at work, but only after I too discovered that there was actually a button under that logo. It set me back a good half hour.
Are you tempted to create another blog category now? 😉