Well, today I went by my local Best Buy, after despositing some extra mula ( :) ), and after passing by the line of wishful Wii owners camping out, I went to the gaming section as usual. Upon my arrival, I was greeted wit the Guitar Hero stand, the lovely game of course was out of commission for today, which was a drag. Then.. my ears perked up as I heard a lovely voice desribing the upcoming, and my soon to be loved, Wii.

Well after I'd watch the video (as there were no controllers to play on this kiosk, why? I don't know...) I decided to look for the 360 stand. It was where Guitar Hero had been, but it seemed to have moved from the beautiful HD screen that now places the PS2's GH II. I found it, and what do I see beside it? Well the 'mighty' PS3. Now who would pass up a chance to play up this new baby, right? Well apparently many, as the kiosk was devoid of human population and left all alone. A sad sight almost, but nonetheless a grand enduer for me to play what Sony says will allow me to "Play B3yond."

Well, as I grasp the controller, the first thing I was doing was trying to play that NBA game, you know the one that scored a 4.9 here... Well I was immediately unimpressed. I'm not fan of sports games to being with, but this game was just aweful. Boring, as no announcers were about, the game had sported many glitches, and I found the controls just irresponsive, and convuluted.... I'd hope that was not the final game, so I held down the "PS family logo" button and went to the systems XMB.

Now, I began to analyze this... so here's my little review.
PS3's  XMB
- Same as PSPs (So if you know the PSP's XMB this is no different really...)
-Easy to navigate, yet deja vu flowed through my mind...
- I personally enjoy this interface a bit, but I love the Wii channels more to be honest....
-Overal... 7/10 Nothing exciting, easy to navigate, but I wish it had more substance and didn't feel so empty all the time...

Well, I looked through the media bar, found some pics. They were about kittens and locations, not bad. Nicely made, but I didn't get to slideshow them, as for some reason... they were ordered oddly, and it would only slide show like 3 because that's how many were in "Feb 06" folder or whatever....and it had them seperated all by months, so these folders weren't connected it seemed, making a slideshow for all... not possible (or to my knowledge...)

Next I played some music... no real artist from whom I could tell. There was not info on the tracks, they were just some eleveator music basically... or some forgetable techo. It was nice with the pics, but... well bad choice of music really. After that, I went to the "movie" bar... boy did sony screw this up. The videos were playing off the HDD I supposed, but they were badly decompressed or something. The quality was low and pretty grainy as it tried stretching them out to the T.V. which btw is broadcasting in 720p :question: What's up with that? Why tout 1080p and not have a t.v. to support it for your kiosk? Smooth move sony.

Well after that, I got bored, so I decided let's go where it really matters, the games. Under the games section there was that NBA game, a Genji trailer, which I paid no mind to, a montage which was "meh", and then Motorstorm.

So with no other choice, I chose this game... and here's where I began using the controller and studying it during the load times. (Which weren't bad though...)

Firstly, let's talk about the Dual...err I mean SIXAXIS.
-Same as you've come to known.
-Feels much lighter (but I found this to be no hindrance really)
-No game used tilt to my knowledge so couldn't try out
-The new L2 and R2 buttons made me loathe the design (more on that soon.)
Overal... at this point in time... it's a 6/10 for me. Nothing new, but then again what is "new" is nothing exciting...

Ok, so upon playing Motorstorm... I chose to play with the trucks. The game has R2 as the acceleration, L2 as the brakes, and X for boost. That's all that really mattered. So, I played the game, and the first thing I felt when I pulled the new R2 trigger, was that if felt ... wrong almost. It felt like it was on a hinge of like .1 inch long, because I felt like I snapped teh thing. It felt to me like it was broken, as I was expecting it to feel like my PS2's shoulder buttons. This took some time to get used to, but when I pressed it down.. it sent an immediate shock to me, at how poor it felt.

Well, after a while, it was ok, but the real problem here was how it curved. With it's outside curve, and the same shoulder button feel you have from the previous PS controllers. The texture was just slippery... I couldn't find myself holding the controller as well as I'd hope, because there was no curve ins for me to rest my fingers on, like the 360 triggers.  I kept finding myself readjusting my fingers to get a better grip. Making them rubberized or something would have been nice, to reduce slipping, but they are the same smooth texture you know and love (or hate) and I assume like my other PS controllers, through time, they will get smoother via oil on your hands and be even harder to keep pressed down.

Well, the game overall... motorstorm. It had nothing that wowed me too much. The crashes were nice, the sense of speed however lacked. This is a demo though, but the game had some chugs here and there. The biggest drops were in the beginning, when all racers were on field, leaving the starting line, it was just painful to watch. The graphics were actually not that impressive to me. The thing that bugged me, was the game probably supports 1080p (I think...) but in 720p (which the t.v. only supports.) it filled up with some jaggies on my car. The textures up close were unimpressive, and I noticed a lot of glitches. My guy got stuck in a rock, and the toehr time, when I crashed, I also was stuck again into a giant cliff. When I was flying in the air, my guy suddenly lost all his textures, and became quite bland for a second, as they popped back up.

Hopefully this won't ruin the game, and gets improved, as I found these glitches to be immersion killers... It was still somewhat enjoyable from what I played, but I wasn't satisfied.

Overall... my experience with the PS3 was sadly underwhelming. I was hoping for more.... but it seemed like I got nothing too great. Playing Gears of War must have spoiled me, cause I've yet to see the games look any better, and I run GeOW in 1080i too...