Which Handheld console is better?

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I can't make up my mind as to which one I want for my birthday in August...

I don't care about what media it can play, I have an MP3 player for that. I just want good game quality and reliability. I also want it to have final fantasy games and some good shooting games. Price is a factor, shouldn't cost more than £200.

I think the PSP has what you want more than the DS. FF Tactics is supposed to be released for the PSP pretty soon. They've got a few shooters, too.

Also, if you get a PSP, you might want to consider putting the OE firmware on it. You can get quite a bit more out of a PSP with Open Edition than Sony's standard firmware.

But the DS has Final Fantasy 3 (remake) and another Final Fantasy on it's way.
I reckon the DS is so much better, it has much more to offer and plenty of potential. You just have to make sure you buy the right games.
My friend recently bought a DS and he's very happy with his purchase.

Are the DS games good, and does it have shooting games? Which one has more games to offer?

The two both have FF games...

I never played DS but anything is probably better than the PSP's joystick.

DS, by miles. There are loads of Final Fantasy games coming to DS and you can get a more involving game expierience out of them.

DS Final Fantasy games include:
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - Ring of Fates
Final Fantasy Chocobo Tales (not really an RPG but it has Chocobos in it!)
Plus the three Final Fantasy Advance games: IV, V and VI (though V is probably the weakest)

And there's so much you can do on the DS that you can't do on the PSP. For example, you can cast spells by drawing shapes on the touch screen, you can write on the screen, you can use a keyboard. But most importantly, you can get a free Wi-Fi service that is easy to use. I think Nintendo's service is much better than Sony's

PSP wins, because I like Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy, I think. There's FF 1 and 2 for PSP, which will come out in the UK soon enough. It's not just for the Final Fantasy games. The PSP has a wider screen as well, and I don't want a touch screen. The DS games don't appeal that much to me, with the exception of the FF ones. Why get it just for FF when there's both my PS2 and some FF PSP games? The PSP is more powerful than the original playstation, as well.

I like the PSP, because it can shoot out discs at high speeds.

I had a PSP and it's utter rubbish. Also you only have to drop one once and they brake. I bought a DSlite and just wish I'd not wasted all that money on my PSP. I ended up selling it.

Thing is, will the PSP FF games be coming out in the UK, and when?

Screw it... DS Wins, PSP has games that are better played on large games consoles. DAMN MY INDECISION ON THIS! lol
DS is also more durable and has more suitable games. Graphics don't matter.

What do you mean by shooting games? First/third person shooters? The DS has basically none that are worth anything. The PSP has tons, most of which are decent, a few that are really good.

I can't vote in this poll because they're both great systems. I don't have a clue which I'd pick if I had to choose one.

Both are reliable as far as that goes (as long as you're not abusive to them or something). For the DS, I would get a screen protector for the BOTTOM screen only (don't put a top one on, as it already has a replaceable top screen protector).

I will say that the DS touch screen is a gimick. By and large it's worthless, even for games where it seems like it might be nice (like Advance Wars or something like that). There are even quite a few games that are wrecked or seriously negatively impacted by using that instead of the regular controls. So the DS is pretty annoying in that basically all of it's good games could be done as well or better on the PSP, but obviously not the reverse.

But the reality is, both platforms have great games exclusive to the platform. If a game is DS exclusive, it's irrelevant if it could have been better on the PSP
Of course usually if a game is available on both systems, it's usually much better on the PSP. Like they sometimes take a game designed for the "big" systems, which of course can be moved to the PSP pretty easily since it's very similar hardware to the PS2 (actually has some advantages), and then when they try to cram it on the DS, which is like hardware from the PS1/N64 generation, they end up with an ugly, unplayable mess.
The exception is when they design a separate game for the GBA and DS, and that separate game ends up better than the "big" version.

So...for your specific genres...if you're looking for RPGs, I think it's kind of a toss up right now. They've both got some solid entries, with more solid entries coming. For first/third person shooters (if that's what you meant), the DS isn't an option at all.

Ideally though I'd get both

But- Will FF1 and FF2 for PSP be coming out in Europe?

And what sort of games are there for the DS?

Damnit, they're so equal in alot of aspects...

But. Do I want shooting games for the PSP when they're not so good on handheld consoles when I'm on the move?

Apparently the DS is faster as well.

I'd check some games site and see if it's listed. I haven't payed any attention to that, because I already own them for the Playstation (and of course a second copy of Final Fantasy 1 that I originally bought for the NES).



Like what? There are strangely a lot of PC style adventure games-more than I can recall for other systems. There are quite a few 2D games, which is cool. It's got lots of good games (though so does the PSP).



You're talking about first/third person shooters, right? From what I've played, they work basically as well on the PSP as on the PS2. Syphoon Filter is absolutely awesome (and I've never liked the series until Dark Mirror on the PSP). It's kind of a stealth action game, accept you can also play it with guns blazing (I usually start out trying to be sneaky, but can also just fight it out if I screw up). The graphics, music (by Mark Snow!), story, and especially gameplay are all awesome. Other first/third person shooters I've played have been nothing spectacular, but very solid (same as I'd say about PS2 first person shooters.) I only know of one decent FPS on the DS, but it's actually no better than the handful of FPSs I've played on the GBA-just kind of a really basic, early/mid-90's style FPS.



What do you mean?

As for the touch screen being gimmicky, I can't say I agree. Elite Beat Agents and Trauma Centre are games that couldn't have been done without touch screen, and they're both a blast to play. Advance Wars: DS I find is better controlled with the stylus, as moving units and selecting menu options becomes a lot quicker than with D-pad controls. Metroid Prime: Hunters, whilst not my favourite game (I don't like FPS games), is excellent and is particularly notable for having PC-like controls, which is great for a FPS.

There's also a few RTS strategy games on the DS (Age of Empires, FFXII:RW, Heroes of Mana) or ones that are coming soon which wouldn't have been as viable without the touchscreen support - have you ever tried playing an RTS on a console? Like PC FPS games, it doesn't work nearly as well, and I assume the touch screen will remedy that.

As for RPGs, I don't think either system really has that many of them. DS might have slightly more, but none of them are that good. Square Enix has disappointed by doing remakes of games rather than original titles (FFIII, and now FFIV), although DQIX looks very promising. Can't expect that one for a while though. On the PSP, there's Tales of Eternia, which given my experience of the Tales series, should be fun. It's probably better than any RPG on the DS at the moment. Some might disagree and say the Mario RPG for DS is great, but I didn't like Superstar Saga on the GBA and this looks largely like the same game.

I found it far, far slower than with regular controls. There's no way to scroll around the screen, no way to unselect something fast, no way to go to the next unit, etc.



I found it pretty much unplayable with the touch screen, and not accurate enough with the digital controls. Plus the DS doesn't ship with a thumb strap thing anymore. (Plus the game was just plain bad anyway-a shallow deathmatch game carrying the Metroid name



Age of Empires isn't an RTS, it was (thankfully) turned into a turn based game, and the high review scores reflect that. In theory the touch screen sounds like it would work well for an RTS, but in practice it doesn't work.

The other games you mentioned are just mini-game/Rhythm games. Yeah, they couldn't be done in exactly the same way on another system, but they're not really a full blown game like a Metroid or a Final Fantasy or whatever. I did think Magical Starsign used the touchscreen surprisingly well, but it wasn't any better than using regular controls (and definitely worse than a good analog stick/d-pad combo).

The touch screen isn't very accurate, is really cramped, only responds to one input at a time, etc. It's just basically a gimmick. 2 1/2 years and I can't think of one real, expansive game that's used it to any benefit. I'd gladly trade it in for an analog stick.



I loved Mario & Luigi 2. Liked it better than the first one (and better than the first two Paper Mario games-haven't played the third). Polopocrios on the PSP is a solid fun little RPG. I haven't played enough RPGs lately to recommend more though.

Golden Sun 1 & 2 on the GBA were really good, but they're long out of print. (They're by Camelot...who I wish would do more RPGs and less sports games...)

Forgot to mention that there has been at least one super successful RTS on a console-Pikmin. I think you have to design the game around the interface, as there's no way a console can do the kind of precision necessary to play something like Starcraft well.

Dragon Force I think can kind of be considred an RTS too, and was phenomenal.