Getting to grips with PlayStation 2

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

It was late on the second night that the PlayStation 2 finally made sense. I'd had a test model — a "debugging unit," which unfortunately meant no DVD player, but more on that later — on loan from the previous afternoon.

The first evening and the day off had delivered a few hours of videogame mayhem.

With the console came copies of Tekken Tag Tournament (the PS2 instalment for the series that is to PlayStation games what Bruce Lee is to chop-socky movies), Dead or Alive 2 (more Jackie Chan meets WWF meets the sort of pneumatic women only seen in Russ Meyer films) and Ridge Racer V (the latest in the fine racing-car series that knows it's about stimulation, not simulation).

It had been fun, but pretty much the same kind of fun. Certainly not the revelatory experience when I'd bought my original Playstation in 1997 for a wallet-worrying $500, and been hooked into the joys of WipeOut 2097, Crash Bandicoot and various other first- generation games.

We'd come home late after a movie, a meal and enough drinks to leave me fuzzy around the gills. There stood the PlayStation 2, looking rather tall and sleek for a black box and doing its best to complement the decor.

It was going back in the morning, so one last go before bed. Just a matter of slapping the Ridge Racer V disk into the vertical disk-door and hitting the couch.

Through the dim light of the lounge and lagered eyes, the rich graphics created by the PS2's powerful "Emotion Engine" chip finally made sense — it was just so easy to focus into the far corners and beyond of Ridge Racer V's swooping courses as you navigated them at 200 km/h-plus despite my own emotional engine running a bit rich.

A possible advertising line came to mind: "PlayStation 2 — even better when you've had a few."

Oh, and kids, don't try this at home.

Coincidentally, Sony is pitching the $999-priced console and its game to 18 and ups and have relaunched the PlayStation — or PSOne — as a smaller, curvier, kid-friendlier unit with a new batch of games to match, including Muppet Monster Adventure and — looking like an interactive version of Twister with its play mat — Disney's Jungle Book Groove Party.

Adult gamers will be lining up this Thursday to buy the first PS2s to arrive in New Zealand. We're getting the units at the same time as Australia and Europe after launches in Japan and the United States. The initial games available include the aforementioned Tekken and Ridge Racer titles as well as Fantavision (a fireworks simulator that wins the prize for most head-scratching title), Time Splitters (a time-travelling first-person shooter), SSX Snowboarding (apparently more Wipeout than the tedious Coolboarders series), FIFA 2001 (soccer), Silent Scope (an adaptation of the arcade sniper game), as well as ESPN International Track and Field, and Ready to Rumble Boxing Round 2.

Some Auckland videogame stores — some have pre-orders in the hundreds — say they expect to sell out of the consoles on the first day, such has been the pre-release teasing about the machine's capabilities. And after the first batch goes, no more will be available until late January.

The first consoles arrived in Auckland on Wednesday night in scenes possibly reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid on a chartered Antonov-124 — the biggest aircraft in the world — having earlier dropped off the Australian consignment.

The general manager of Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand, Steve Dykes, won't say how many units were initially being brought into the country.

"We are launching with a very big quantity. We know there is going to be massive demand and we know they are going to go quickly. Crikey, we would love to have more but we are going to do our best to satisfy that demand."

Some, of course, may wait until a price drop — the original Playstation came out in New Zealand in 1995 for $799 and steadily dropped to around the $200 mark by last year as it found its way into one-in-three Kiwi households.

"I guess we've set a trend there," says Dykes. "There is no mystery that with new technology such as this leading-edge computer-chip technology, costs come down fairly quickly.

"But the PlayStation 2 emotion engine and the other products inside Playstation are very expensive to make. We don't anticipate reducing the price any time soon — especially in New Zealand, given the tough currency situation."

What about the extras? So far as its DVD playing capability goes, an average of overseas reviews have suggested the PS2 has an awkward menu system, a reasonably crisp picture but serious DVD-philes might find it lacking.

Another slight annoyance to the PS2 — apart from its round-the-back on-off switch — its air-cooling fan emits the soft background hum of a computer.

As for its futureproofing — its one-day-soon capability to be broadband-enabled and allow for internet access, on-line gaming and e-mail as well as its USB port — isn't that effectively just selling a promise?

Dykes: "Well first, its price is just good value as a DVD machine and a games machine and a CD player. So you are getting all those other things and that promise for free. We've made sure it has all those connections. So whatever comes along, you'll have no problems accessing those things, and we all know these things are coming. We don't know what form they will take and we are not necessarily saying Sony will supply them but, boy, that machine will take advantage of them."

But what will it mean for the future, culture and design of gaming? It's hard to tell with the limited number of titles on offer so far. But last words go to Steve Poole, the English writer of a fine recent book about gaming aesthetics, Trigger Happy — The Inner Game of Videogames.

"A hint of what might be the ruling approach in the future is provided by the fact that the central processing chip in Sony's PlayStation 2 console is called an Emotion Engine. This is more than just a good marketing coinage. It also implies a more thoughtful approach — not towards something like an interactive novel, of course, but certainly towards videogame software that will take more chances to make the player stop and think. Videogames' loss of innocence can only be a good thing, aesthetically, as developers increasingly try to create new ways of seeing and playing in their imaginary worlds."