Redesigned PSP is a Winner

Redesigned PSP is a Winner but Won't Handle Your Old Stuff

If I were still poor and could afford to buy only one video game machine, I might go with Sony's hand-held PSP. It's an extraordinary little miracle on par with the PS2, and now there's an even slimmer, lighter PSP on the market.

Sony just started selling a redesigned PSP. It doesn't weigh much more than my BlackBerry. The excellent screen is still a 4.3-inch LCD, which beams movies and games with a crispness that beats the iPod and other techy devices.

It's $170, though $200 bundles come with the fairly fun cartoon adventure "Daxter" and "Family Guy: The Freakin' Sweet Collection." Another new bundle comes instead with "Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron."

The pros: For this PSP, you can buy an AV cable that hooks up to TVs, so you can put PSP images on a big screen. Games load a little faster. And the system comes with a nice 1-gig memory stick.

The cons: If you already own peripherals for your old PSP, they probably won't work. My amazing 15-hour Blue Raven battery booster ($80) doesn't fit my redesigned PSP. Neither do my Griffin iFM radio adapter ($30; to receive radio signals) and my Griffin iTrip ($25; to send PSP audio to my car radio).

Plenty of gamers complain that the PSP doesn't offer as many great titles as do the PS2 and Xbox 360. This is true. But there are enough games to keep you busy for months, such as "Tiger Woods PGA Tour'08."

And some new and recent games spin spectacularly.

- "NBA'08" is just as fun as the slate of basketball games on Xbox 360 and PS3.

- This summer's "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas" lets you zip through a huge and showy action adventure both as a solo mission and as an online shooter.

- Perhaps the best of a new bunch is "Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow," a sequel shooting game that looks better than most PS2 games. It allows you to graphically shoot and stab bad guys with aplomb. The online shooting is fairly fun, too, though it's nothing like a great Xbox 360 experience.

The hand-held system may get a boost in the spring with the release of "God of War: Chains of Olympus."

I haven't been able to play all of "Chains of Olympus," because it's not finished. But Sony sent me a demo disk so I could flip through several completed levels. And "Chains of Olympus" looks like it may be the greatest PSP game of all time.

It's a filmlike beast of an action adventure that moves, feels and plays every bit as exciting as previous PS2 "God of War" games.

In essence, "Chains of Olympus" could do for the PSP what "Halo" titles did for the Xbox 360: give gamers a reason to invest a lot of money in a system just to play one title.

Redesigned Sony PSP

Plays fun. Looks great. Easy to very challenging games.

Price: $170

"Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas"

Plays fun. Looks great. Challenging. ½

Price: $40 for PSP Rated: T (teen)

"Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow"

Plays addictively fun. Looks great. Challenging.

Price: $40 for PSP Rated: T (teen)

"NBA'08"

Plays very fun. Looks great. Challenging. 

Price: $40 for PSP Rated: E (everyone)

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