Jorpho wrote:There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of PS3 exclusives that I'd want to spring for. Infamous 1 & 2, Ni No Kuni, the newer God of War and Final Fantasy games, and I guess The Last of Us and Heavy Rain.
True. If you have an XBox 360 then there's not too much point in buying a PS3, or vice versa, as most games are cross platform now. There are some good exclusives on either machine, of course, but it's not like previous generations where if you didn't have all of the main consoles then you were missing out on lots of great games.
And there are enough differences to make people prefer either one of the 360/PS3 consoles; personally I much prefer the 360's controller, plus the 360's ability to run every game from hard drive, plus I preferred it's exclusives to the PS3's (though not massively so), so I was ahppy with the 360, but some time back I picked up a PS3 for LittleBigPlanet 1 and 2, Infamous 1 and 2, Resistance 1, 2 and 3, etc, plus it's the only Blu-Ray player I've ever had. A great machine, but most of the games I like on it are also on the XBox 360, unlike when I had the original XBox and bought a PS2, as then the PS2 brought a lot of great non-XBox games to me.
I only just got around to getting a PS2; that seems much more worthwhile.
PS2s are *fantastic*! But you should really consider using a hard drive (provided your PS2 is a fat model, I don't think the slim ones can do this), thereby not only speeding up loading immensely and also stopping all loading errors, but also saving wear and tear on your PS2's DVD drive, as once you've installed your game(s) to the hard drive then you never need to use the game disc(s) again, so you can put them away somewhere safe.
This is what I do, and it's *fantastic*. I don't even use a disc in my PS2's DVD drive any more; when I turn on my PS2 it boots up almost instantly, from the memory card in slot 2, then comes up with a menu on screen allowing me to load any game from hard drive, and whilst I'm playing any game, I can press a certain combination of joypad buttons to reset the PS2 (at any time) and go back to the menu to load a new game. It really is fantastic.
The only limitations are:
- you can't play PS1 games like this, PS1 games must be played from the original discs (actually, I think you can play some PS1 games, using a PS2 based program called 'POPS', but I've not looked into it),
- not all games work from hard drive, but every game I've tried does, and the compatibility is being increased all the time as work progresses on the loading software,
- you can't save game-saves to the hard drive, you still need to save to the memory cards, but this is the same even if you run the game from the disc, so either way you're stuck with it.
You can also load games from a USB stick, these are very common and cheap nowadays, but since the PS2 only supports USB standard 1.1, then it's very slow, around the speed of loading from a real PS2 disc. For a real speed increase, you need to use a hard drive which only fat PS2's support. Slim PS2's can only load via the USB port, both USB stick and (so I've heard) USB hard drives, but the speed will only be a fraction of a fat PS2 with an IDE hard drive.
To play games from a hard drive, you need:
+ a fat PS2 (does not need to be modded),
+ a network adapter,
+ an IDE hard drive, most will do, I currently have a 250GB in mine, though only 220GB is seen by the PS2. I think the software can be made to see larger than 220GB on larger drives, but I've not yet looked into it, as 220GB is more than enough for my current games collection. IDE drives are very cheap, though getting harder to find, as SATA drives are becoming more common, and you can't use a SATA drive in the PS2,
+ the software (see below),
+ a USB stick (for transfering the software to the PS2, afterwards you don't need the USB stick, so you can just borrow one if you like),
+ a memory card (game save card) if you wish to boot from a memory card - it uses up just less than half the space on the memory card, and you can use the rest of the memory card (and any card in the other card slot) to save game saves as usual. Otherwise you can boot from DVD as usual, but then you'll need a commercial boot disc, like HDLoader.
I think you can actually boot up from the hard drive now, but my system is working, so I'm not going to change anything, the bootable code on the memory card leaves enough space for game saves, plus I can (and do) use another memory card in slot one, so save game space isn't important. Anyway, you can use virtual memory cards to store the gamesaves from some games, but I've not tried that feature.
To play games from a USB stick, you need:
+ a PS2, either a fat or a slim, either will work as far as I know,
+ a USB stick (for transfering the software to the PS2, and then the same or a different USB stick(s) for loading the games from),
+ a memory card to boot from.
The software you need is all free and legal, but I won't post links here, in case that's against the board rules. Just use to google.com and search for:
free mcboot
and
open ps2 loader
Also, there's a program called Winhiip (again it's free) that allows you to connect your PS2's hard drive to your PC via IDE connector, and then transfer PS2 games from the PS2's hard drive to your PC's hard drive, and vice versa, allowing you to back up your PC games (which I advice, as media doesn't last forever).
Aside from the hard drive and the network card (I bought the latter from ebay) you'll only need to buy a USB stick, although you can probably borrow a USB stick off someone as you only need it to install the software. The software is all free, unless you need a commecial boot disc like HD Loader, but I'd recommend booting from memory card instead, as it's quicker and saves wear and tear on the DVD drive.
For a list of compatible hard drives, google:
ps2 hard drive compatibility
though I bought two off the shelf, without checking as I didn't know that some drives didn't work with it, and they both (a 120GB, and later this 250GB) worked fine.
Anyway, before you do anything, read up on everything, and know what you're getting and what you'll have to do to install everything. It's a bit of trouble if you don't know what you're doing, but once done it's done for good, and believe me, a hard drive really transforms the whole PS2 experience, and I couldn't go back to loading from disc every time I wanted to play a game.
Moderators - please note, everything in this post is legal, and I've not posted any links just to be on the safe side.
