To Play, or Not to Play… online
Spending more time with the PS3 I am beginning to form a very bittersweet relationship with it. I have already expressed my disappointment with the lack of rumble in the controller, however I have found one additional factor with the PS3 that I find absurd. That factor is the PS3’s complete backwards design of their online system. Now I understand that anyone who reads gaming blogs most likely has heard this complaint numerous times, however I just cannot understand why the executives at Sony are not pounding their fists over the way their online gaming is handled. Jim and I decided to take a stab at playing some online PS3 games. Our experience was nothing short of horrific. On two separate occasions, we tried three different games and when it was all said an done, we only played together on one lap of Motorstorm.
The first game we tried was Resistance: Fall of Man. Being a Xbox gold subscriber, I was disappointed in the fact that I was not allowed to chat with an individual on my fiends list while I was playing a game (single player), or even while I was browsing the XMB on my PS3. I had to be locked in a chat session, now what is the point of this? So Jim and I found a solution, we fired up Skype on our PC’s and communicated using Skype’s VOIP service. I had also read on another site that Resistance offered an online campaign co-op, however we discovered while we were online that playing cooperatively through the campaign was not possible. Since we were not in the mood for a deathmatch, we decided to play something else.
The next game we attempted was Motorstorm, only this time we decided to use our Bluetooth headsets to communicate in-game. After figuring out how to setup the game session, I told Jim that I would set up the room and told him to join my session. On the first attempt our voice chat never connected and when the game launched, I was the only one sitting on the starting grid. Ok, let’s give it another go… when Jim joined the room on the second attempt, our voice chat kicked right in. I launched the game and we both selected our vehicles, when the green flag dropped, we both took off. During the first lap, all was well, however as we entered our second lap of racing Jim got dropped form the game. After making another lap and realizing I was the only one there, I exited the game to find Jim waiting in the lobby. We made one additional failed attempt before deciding to try a different game, this time we tried Madden 08.
We both figured Madden would have to allow you to easily play a game with your friends, however once again we were proven wrong. Perhaps the issues were a result of the fact that neither of us have played many online games on the PSN, perhaps it is the fact that both of us are Xbox live gold subscribers and we are just used to having online gaming be easy. Regardless of the reason, this day in age, there is no reason that Sony could not make online gaming as easy as online gaming is on the Xbox.
Needless to say both of us were disappointed with our experiences online. I am very hopeful that Sony can evolve their online gaming component overtime. With the gaming industry becoming more of a ‘social’ means of entertainment the PlayStations online component is going to need a major overhaul if they expect to stay competitive.