Life On The Road

What I liked (a lot) was the complete absence of fuss with the whole procedure, and if there had have been a payment step involved I'm sure it would have gone through just as smoothly as it did the other day when I bought a couple of Minis games. Contrast this with attempting to buy media online through the usual Internet channels and I'm sure Sony will sell a lot of media.

Once received there was a slight pause while the comic database was updated and then I was ready to start reading. The interface is very slick indeed, and shows the amount of work that must have gone into devising the system. Assuming you already have some comics, the first menu item shows a summary of your library, along with a front-page image of the last comic that you read. From there you can browse your collection, choose to resume from a bookmark (if any) or set the reader options. After a bit of experimentation I opted to use the "Autoflow" feature controlled by the 4-way rather than the left and right buttons which are a bit clanky on the PSP 2000. Other than that, I slowed the "camera" down to -30% as it was a bit too nippy for my liking initially. Autoflow is an interesting concept as it allows "you" to read the page as you would as a human; I.e. scanning from top left to bottom right, and if the comic content is exciting you'll soon find yourself building up quite a speed.

You also have the option to zoom/pan in and out anywhere on the page using (in my case) the left and right keys: this is cool if you want to examine the artwork in more detail, and on this point I have to say that it is beautifully rendered, with the PSP screen doing it full justice. Couple that with the ability to listen to your music while reading and its a winner! Okay, so comics don't tax the brain a great deal (IMHO) and having some good tunage in the background is an added benefit. However, if a content-provider ever decided to release something heavier then I wouldn't try and listen to a background track. Shakespeare for the PSP? Hmmmm... Track selection is done without leaving the reader which is handy, as is the ability to select new tracks if you're that way inclined.

As regards the content itself, the stuff we'll be paying for in December, evaluation copies of Transformers and Aleister Arcane were provided (45Mb and 33Mb respectively) and of course I've read these already and now I have to wait until December for the next episodes. That shouldn't be a problem though and I'll be very interested to see which titles and genres make it into the Store: I'm wondering if Sony will realise that its not just kids that own PSPs but some of us, er, more mature adults too, but for now, I'm quite happy with the Horror Genre offering. My hypothesis that it'll quietly morph into an eBook reader still stands though, but we'll have to wait for a while to prove or disprove that one.

As for whether I'd recommend the system, yes, I would, but as mentioned earlier you'll need to be prepared to pay to feed your comic appetite. Apparently Sony have decided not to sell on a subscription basis as this would "discourage the impulse buyers" (hey! that's me!). I'm still not sure of the price but I noticed a cover-price of $3.99 on the Megatron comic: whether this will be the price of subsequent issues I don't know, but figures I've heard quoted on various reckon to be around the UKP 3 mark, but don't quote me on that. The best thing you can do now though is to check out the PSNcomics site and download the reader to try out. Please note that at the time of writing, the free download codes will only work for downloads from the PSP, not Media GO!. Enjoy!