The upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker PSP bundle has me drooling…
I’ve never really considered buying a PSP ever in my life, but the combination of having picked up a PS3 recently and the fact that there’s a new bundle coming out with the new Metal Gear Solid game has piqued my interest. What the heck is it about Metal Gear Solid? The 4th one was what got me to buy a PS3 in the first place, and now the PSP gets graced with Peace Walker, a game that continues Naked Snake’s storyline from Metal Gear Solid 3 – perhaps my favorite game in the series. Read on as I write about my conflicting thoughts on whether or not to purchase this bundle.
Let’s start with the positives:
1. The bundle itself is arguably a good deal
If you were to buy a PSP-3000 right off the shelf, its retail price is $170. The retail price of Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is $40.
Gamestop’s exclusive Big Boss Bundle retails for $200, and contains the following:
- “Camouflage” PSP-3000 system
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker game on UMD featuring
- Voucher for in-game content unlockable at the start of the game
- 4GB Memory Stick PRO Duo
- Premium carrying case
The estimated retail price of the bundle is at about $250, so to jump in on the Big Boss Bundle now be pretty decent.
2. The PSP has its own share of good exclusive titles
Having never played the PSP before, there are titles I wouldn’t mind checking out such as Jeanne d’Arc, Patapon, LocoRoco, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe, and even the original Final Fantasy Tactics, which got re-released for the PSP.
Is it worth paying the $150 or so for the PSP to be able to play games like this:
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
Jeanne d’Arc
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Patapon 1 & 2
PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe
LocoRoco 1 & 2
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror
Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow
Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters
Half-Minute Hero
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Dissidia Final Fantasy
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite
Maybe yes, even if it may be tough actually finding the older titles. The combination of a pretty good bundle plus a library of gaming titles that I wouldn’t mind playing are pretty strong reasons!
Yet, let’s look at the negatives:
1. My backlog ain’t getting any shorter
With huge major titles on consoles out nowadays and a ton of backlogged games for my DS (I still haven’t even beaten any Phoenix Wright games after the first one!), do I really need to pick up the PSP library as well? Look at what happened with my PS3. I bought that, bought some games for it, but all it’s doing now is collecting dust since I have too many things I still want to play on my 360. Will this be the same case with the DS Lite trumping the PSP?
2. The PSP’s short battery life
One of the glaring negatives to the PSP is that it is a disc based portable system, and thus, has only a battery life of 5 hours. Compared to the DS Lite’s 10 hours, I can’t imagine calling the PSP that “portable” of a system. The iPad was recently released, but being a more hardcore PC user myself, I’m waiting for a PC alternative. HP’s Slate looked very promising, until I found out that it would have only a 5 hour battery life compared to the iPad’s 10 hour battery life. 10 hours is the magic number people!
3. Not many new games
While the PSP has a decent library already (primarily consisting of Metal Gear and Final Fantasy games), the future is not so bright. Perhaps the only game I’m looking forward to after Peace Walker is Valkyria Chronicles 2. Do I really want to jump aboard the PSP train if it’s about to come to a halt?
4. Not future proof at all
I read that Apple’s iPhone (and presumably the iPad) have been seriously eating into the portable console market. Fortunately for Nintendo, the DS Lite saw maybe only a 5% drop in sales, but I think the PSP dropped nearly 50% in sales once the iPhone entered the market. This is obviously a problem, and being a 30 year old guy myself, I wonder if I’m perhaps too old to be going for a PSP when maybe I should be going for an iPhone or something similar.
Decision?
Definitely some positives and negatives balancing each other out on this purchase. I’m going to have to think about it some more. The rational and mature part of me is telling myself that I definitely don’t need to be buying any more games for the next several years based on the backlog I have, but the impulsive side of me is shouting out, “Come on! Gamestop is giving a 35% discount on all used PSP games right now! You can get several of the PSP titles for only $5 a piece!” Argh. How can I get myself to stop loving games. This is kind of a problem!
Ha, ha that was the tough decision I made a few months ago when I bought my PSP. I had always sort of wanted one (especially whenever big titles like Metal Gear or God of War came out), but it wasn’t until they announced the PSP Go and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker last summer that I decided to buy one. I enjoy the Go because its way more portable with its size and not needing any discs, but that Peace Walker bundle is pretty sweet. Oh ya – I have an iPhone and I tried a bunch of “console-like” games for it, but got frustrated with the touch controls. I enjoy the PSP much better than the iPhone games.
A couple thoughts about the PSP: the battery life is not so good – you’re right about that one. Not bad for commuting on the train, but if you had a long flight or something you might want a USB charger.
If you get a bigger memory stick you can find most of those games on the Playstation Network. I think only 2 or 3 on your list are missing right now. The older ones are about $15 each which is pretty good I think.
A couple other good games: Daxter (played this one-really fun if you like the Jak series), Little Big Planet PSP, Resistance Retribution, Killzone Liberation, and they just announced last week that a new God of War game (Ghost of Sparta) is coming out this year too!
One last note – I just finished playing Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops this weekend and I was not too impressed by it. The graphics were great, but the story was only so-so and the controls were not very good. Peace Walker has better controls (based on the demo) and the story is supposed to be really good, so I think it will be a much better game for Metal Gear fans. Portable Ops never really sucked me in.
Good luck with your decision. All you need after this is a Wii!
thanks for your opinions Mark! Man I’m very surprised that the PSP Go, even though it doesn’t have a UMD drive, doesn’t have a better battery life than the psp-3000. then what the heck is keeping the psp’s battery life so low?
with no gain on the battery life and the removal of the ability to play UMD based games on the psp-go, i think i’d still probably lean on picking up the psp-3000 instead…especially since it’s bundled with peace walker
Yea, I really want to play the Metal Gear games on PSP just to see the continuation of the story. But…probably not a good idea. My DS is enough portable stuff for me!
One other thing I like about the PSP Go is that it’s not very conspicous looking. People could think it’s a smartphone or something when I’m playing. The camo PSP looks very cool, but people will definitely notice when you’re playing in public. Have you seen the other Peace Walker bundle? It’s not as good of a deal, but the PSP is a different solid green colour. Hard to tell from the pics if the colour is good or kinda gross.
Anyway, I think finding the time to play all your games is the biggest factor. I’m juggling PS3, PSP and occasional iPhone games. And something new always comes out before I finish the games I’m playing!