Dude, Where's My Remote Play?

Neglecting an unexplored treasure of the PSP is one of Sony's biggest mistakes

Of all the features the PSP sports, Remote Play is one of the most useful and by far the most neglected. It allows you to control your PS3 using the PSP as a controller, and in exchange beams the sound and video from the PS3 straight back to the PSP's screen, rather than your TV. It gives you a fully functional Playstation 3 in the palm of your hand, whether you're on the bog or halfway across the world. In theory, that is.

Given that the majority of remote access software on cutting-edge PCs rarely let you see the desktop background on your computer back home, I'd have expected Sony to be shouting from the rafters about Remote Play, especially given that it was already proving its potential in 2007's Lair. For me, it was a huge selling point for the PSP, at least until I discovered that the number of games that support it are huddled in a terrified group amongst the ever-growing hordes that don't.

Sony have spent so much time transforming the two consoles individually that they seem to have forgotten just how much of a pairing they are. Same interface, same broad expansion into generalised media hubs, same emphasis on high-powered gaming, with online at the heart of the experience. The more the two consoles grow the closer they become, and it seems odd that this parallel development isn't being allowed to jump tracks more than it is. Just look at the compatibility list for Remote Play: some PS3 games will work, if devs can be bothered. But no PS2 games. Or Blu-Ray films. Or protected content. Well, at least PSone games work, but you'd be hard pressed to find more than ten people for whom playing games from the time of blocky 3D dinosaurs was their primary reason for buying a PSP. Or a PS3, for that matter.

It's not as though cross-console partnerships are a revolutionary idea; Sony themselves created the PocketStation, a miniature LCD egg that mimicked the Tamagotchi in design and allowed players to buff up their character in Street Fighter Alpha 3 and send their chocobo from Final Fantasy VIII on a mini adventure. Sega were the true innovators in this field with the Visual Memory Unit (VMU) for the Dreamcast, a super-charged memory card that had few uses other than low-res screensavers during most games thanks to developers who had little cause to use the screen for anything else, but it was still handy for browsing saves and acted as a handy reference for stats in games like Resident Evil 2. Sega's interest continued even after their own hardware had folded, and players could send their Chao to-and-fro between the Adventure and Advance iterations of the Sonic series to be trained and raised in two distinctly different mini-games, just like they had done on the VMU. In the present era we have the PSP, a fully-fledged handheld with game-sharing functions that allow players to send portions of a game to another player, enabling multiplayer or demo downloads without the need for two copies of the game. So why has the promise of generations gone by been ignored, when the functionality not only exists but continues to be exploited in other forms? Where is that rear-view mirror we were promised no less than four years ago?

An argument can be made that the PSP lacks some of the PS3's buttons, making remote play a difficulty, but that's a pretty poor argument. When the DualShock was released, did studios the world over throw up their hands and screech "Another pad? Now what are we going to do?!"? Of course not. They calmly and without any fuss made two control schemes - one analogue, one digital. Two generations later and we can't do a little extra button mapping, or nudge the HUD about so it fits better on a smaller screen? That would take less effort to implement than the mandatory Achievements (and now Trophies) thrust upon games in the last few years, and less thought as well.

At least Singstar works; but wait, what's this? You can browse for songs, but can't actually play? Why not? The two consoles can surely work out the ping rate (the delay between data being sent from one device and coming back again) between the two, and adjust the leniency of the game to prevent players from failing unfairly due to a poor connection? Even Guitar Hero lets you set the lag between you pressing a button and your TV displaying it, down to the millisecond, and the only reason it asks YOU to define it is because it doesn't know itself; when the consoles can take these readings all by themselves, and given that later builds of the PSP include a built-in microphone, what reason is there to deny the player the chance to Singstar their heart out in Tanzania while their PS3 is stuck in Blighty? At the very least it's a fascinating experiment in the limits we can stretch console gaming to, and with OnLive preparing to switch on during 2010, Sony have the chance to ride the wave with their own take on the concept, possibly even upstaging OnLive in some small measure by showing off what their own hardware can do.

It isn't a hopeless case; Sony certainly seem to recognise the benefit of cross-hardware hook-ups, with the MediaGo application for sorting the PSP's media from your desktop, and media sharing for the PS3. Even more promising is adhoc Party, an app for the PS3 that lets you run local multiplayer functions on the PSP over the internet by using the bigger-brother console as a hub. Adhoc Party is an inspired idea that especially helps out western gamers for whom adhoc gaming is largely a pipe dream, and shows genuine thought into what a PS3-PSP union can achieve in the right hands. It only remains to be seen what direction Sony takes in 2010, and with Nintendo hinting that a DS successor could be announced in the coming months, Sony will be under pressure to announce a rival. If they remain true to form it will be stylish, expensive and ready to exploit what Nintendo can't or won't offer. And with the current gen in full swing and online firmly at the centre of the HD console wars, there is no better time for Sony to re-evaluate the potential of their handheld.

LittleBigPlanet PSP

The mini-sized adventure gets even more mini, and survives the transition well

LittleBigPlanet was exactly the kind of game I bought a PS3 for in the first place; it was endlessly happy, achingly saccharine and warmed by the smooth and dulcet tones of Stephen Fry. It's a rare game that can make me laugh from the sheer joy of playing it, but LBP did so effortlessly, and what made it such a gem was the way it turned the design ethos of traditional games upside down. Rather than staple a level editor to its single player mode or devote the entire game to level creation, LBP crafted a tightly made story mode using the same tools that the player would eventually be given to make their own. No half measures were allowed; the developers found a way to craft their vision with a Sixaxis, or they didn't do it at all. The result had a deliberately hand-crafted feel but never felt cheap or crude, and the result was a game more charming than Stephen Fry himself.

The PSP edition fares amazingly well; Media Molecule have trimmed away the fat where it is needed the least, losing a few excess animations and incorporating a more rudimentary menu screen, while retaining the soft lighting and gorgeous animations that made the original so fluffy and warm. The minimised PSP screen is the game's greatest asset, where a few rough edges are all that truly separate it from the visuals of its bigger brother. There isn't anything to rival the scale of the jaw-dropping wheel of doom from the Collector's lair, nor a boss battle so convincingly constructed as the showdown against that particular villain, but the developer's conservative approach to level design still allows for a few standout moments, such as a level-spanning chase against an angry dragon, and a clever ball-in-the slot puzzle nestling amongst whizzing UFOs and a rampaging ape in the Tinseltown levels.

So what does the PSP outing change, exactly? Very little, is the answer, but LBP was designed from the beginning to generate fresh content from the same engine and assets, so portability is enough of a treat to add to a whole new single player mode with brand new levels, sounds and building blocks. You run, you jump, you swing, pull and grab, all while basking in some of the most charming game design around; the staggering amount of materials, stickers and construction pieces that the original conjured up clearly haven't depleted Media Molecule's imagination, and the UMD outing manages to hold as much content as its Blu-Ray brother.

In fact, LBP may be the perfect showcase for the PSP's capabilities. Players can sign in to the Playstation Network and stay logged on for the duration of play, giving them the always-online experience of the home consoles. Extra levels and content make a smaller footprint on the memory card than you'd expect, allowing for plenty of expansion, while the game itself is regularly updated, as is the News section. Multiplayer is suspiciously absent, but given the small screen-size the developers can probably be forgiven, and I suspect that the prospect of adding an extra load to the already-straining servers that blight the PS3's online play probably had something to do with it as well.

Multiplayer is not the only casuality, and it is here that a few of the game's flaws have been given short shrift; the slight flakiness of jumping between foreground and background hasn't improved, and small niggles in the physics continue to dog the experience, especially when making certain jumps. It is understandable that Media Molecule would like to keep both versions of the game identical, but a little housekeeping wouldn't have gone amiss. Even more disappointing is the apparent lack of steam when they knocked out the final levels, which are as visually pleasing as a cardboard box and designed with about as much flair. The very end of the game involves nothing more than a brief trundle through the jungle in a rickety parade float, which is only soured further when you think back wistfully to the final showdown with the Collector. Climactic it surely ain't.

But despite this, LBP is at home on the small screen as much as it is on the big screen. The original captured our hearts from the first screenshots and didn't let up past release; without the luxury of warm, fuzzy, self-generating hype, it is great to see that LBP can still offer us plenty to love. And as with its bigger brother, the best content is going to keep on coming months after release, and keep us loving it for a long time to come.

Verdict:
A lack of multiplayer and occasionally flaky physics don't prevent LBP from being an essential title, and a fantastic showcase for the PSP's capabilities.