I officially dig the Sony PSP now.

Sure, it holds a couple gigabytes of mp3s, and allows me to wander around with a copy of Night of the Comet at all times; and it's got a simplified version of GrandTheftAuto, of course. But what really counts is this:

The version of The Sims for the PSP [officially called The Sims 2, despite the lack of any portable version of The Sims 1] is simply cool.

The most obvious difference between this and any other Sims games I've played is that this is actually more like GTA. You're not selecting one of several characters and pointing them toward something they're likely to ignore. The whole game is guiding one character along through various missions.

More importantly, a good percentage of those missions somehow involve zombies. Making it similar also to Resident Evil.

And, just to be funny, they made the notorious Teleporter hack from the first Windoze game the last thing you can really acquire within the missions:

But here's the best part. This time, if and when you become dead, little changes. Except that you can kinda fly. And, your only mission in undeath is to float over to someone not dead [with at least one exception] and scare the hell out of them over and over until you've got enough sanity points to buy another life from the grim reaper. So, at some point, the real point of the game is to get killed a whole lot and scare the hell out of everyone you meet.

There are downsides, of course. One is that there simply are no cheatcodes ?yet [there is an odd exploitation in which you can begin to paint something, cancel just as you begin, and have it magically be finished and ready to sell]. Not that the game can't be won without them; but things can be a little rough in the beginning before you can afford the Vitaliser [and getting that is critical]. And, of course, the game is a bit too much for the PSP's 333MHz CPU; in cases, you'll fail a mission simply because the damned machine was busy trying to decide whether to load graphics, listen to you, or puke altogether.

Curiously enough, the only walkthrough available online is this horrid textfile thing written by some illiterate haxor [look for it; you'll find it; then you can play the new game: counting the number of times 'your' is misused]; it really only hints at things instead of explaining the procedures. Then again, the game seems to be more fun when you've got no clue what's going on.

Not that it couldn't be played twice. It would be worth it just to go back and see the nearly triumphant Rise of Beezelbeef again. Someone directing this game had a sense of humour.

Naturally, I also picked up a couple 2200mAh batteries for the PSP. I think I can finally get through all the mp3s without an electrical outlet now. So that's helpful too.

More later....

Forgot to add tags for this stupid entry.