By Jon Folkers (Silver Spring, MD United States) - reviews
The Playstation 2 has been out in the USA for four years now, and has gone through a number of subtle redesigns, but none as dramatic as this. This new PSTwo is remarkably tiny, and you almost need to hold it in your hand to appreciate just how much Sony reduced the size of the machine. The design feels a lot like a laptop computer -- especially the top-loading optical drive -- and is doubtless cheaper for Sony to produce. This time I feel that we the consumers get a slick product in return for the company's increased profits. It's delicate, but no more so than the original PS2.
There are no major compromises in this machine: like the previous design, it has two memory card slots, two controller ports, two USB slots, a progressive scan DVD player, a built-in infrared remote receiver (for controlling and watching DVD movies), and the AV outputs as the original PS2. Optional video cables can change the signal from the default component to S-Video or composite, just as before. An optical audio jack is also present for digital sound output.
What's missing? Not much. The Firewire port of the launch PS2 has long been abandoned, and is also absent here. You will need to use a new multi-tap if you want to play one of the few games that support more than 2 simultaneous controllers. You'll also be unable to plug in the "PS2 HDD," the hard disk drive albatross that will likely never be supported by Sony again outside of the online Final Fantasy game. No great loss there.
As a DVD player, the new PS2 is at least as good as any other lowend machine that does progressive scan and has DTS and Dolby audio and digital output. I'm using it paired with an official Sony remote and plan to return the cheapo machine I bought when my old DVD player wouldn't change layers on the new Star Wars set properly. My new PS2 not only performs just as well, it also plays hundreds and hundreds of games for both Playstation 2 and the original Playstation. It also plays DVD-R movies, though not MP3 CDs or VCDs.
The machine has a built-in modem and Ethernet port for online play. There is no additional cost for most PS2 online games, but in my opinion Sony's online implementation is not nearly as easy or smooth as that of the XBOX.
Even after this redesign, the PS2 is still the "weakest" of the current game consoles (compared to Microsoft's XBOX, Nintendo's GameCube) in terms of graphical power, and despite this new design, is still the most expensive since you will need to purchase an 8MB Playstation 2 memory card in order to save your games and settings. Nevertheless, it's a great system even if you already own one of the competitors, because of the large software library with many exclusives and lots of quirky Japanese titles. The new design is cool enough to even warrant getting a second PS2 system even if you already own the original.
If you don't have a current-generation video game system yet, and you want one, this would be a good one to start you off. The PS3, when released, is likely to be little more than an evolution of the types of games represented on this system. There's a huge number of excellent low-cost games on this platform, with something for almost everyone who loves games.
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