16th April 2004, 7:21 PM
That's good size but it's still not going to make a difference in games like Resident Evil 4, Silent Hill 3, Dead Or Alive, Soul Calibur, Metal Gear Solid 3, Metroid Prime 2, etc where half the fun of the game is the detail in the graphics. The detail would only be apparent when and if the portable systems get the chance to play on larger screens. I played Rogue Squadron (N64) on a tiny high res pocket TV at Circuit City, it was crazy because playing it was rediculous... you couldn't see enemy ships until they were on top of you. So i thought Rogue Leader would make a difference and it didn't. It looked exactly the same. The only time I noticed a difference is when I saw dynamic lighting effects like the water reflecting the sun in RL. Even the cut scenes looked exactly the same except for draw distance. On a 4.5 inch screen, Perfect Dark will look like Halo with a choppy frame rate. When you play Twin Snakes imagine trying to see *anything* in that game on a 4.5 inch screen! Let alone any detail such as individually rendered hair, particle effects, or any effects for that matter.
The PSP will no doubt allow users to simply plug it, or the game disk in to their Playstation 2 or 3. So graphics power would then be understandable, but you would still only be enlarging the image, so all that detail they packed in would become pixelated, just as Zero Mission does on my TV. You could program alternate graphics modes for hand held play and television play which would be a higher res and more details, but why not release the same game for the console with those extras? No matter how you slice it, anything more powerful than a PSX or even a N64 is a waste of time and space on a hand held. Graphics detail can bring alot to the game experience, but only when you can see it.
The PSP will no doubt allow users to simply plug it, or the game disk in to their Playstation 2 or 3. So graphics power would then be understandable, but you would still only be enlarging the image, so all that detail they packed in would become pixelated, just as Zero Mission does on my TV. You could program alternate graphics modes for hand held play and television play which would be a higher res and more details, but why not release the same game for the console with those extras? No matter how you slice it, anything more powerful than a PSX or even a N64 is a waste of time and space on a hand held. Graphics detail can bring alot to the game experience, but only when you can see it.