Editorial

9:34 PM on 7/13/2010 by Katrina Pawlowski

The PSP Go has been out for almost a year now, and with it a lot of downloadable options for the Playstation Portable. Sure, the option to download your PSP titles has been around for a while, but it’s really kicked off since the Go. Now we’ll explore a great way to take those games, which are usually local-only, online for some solid co-op.

What you need:
 

• A PSP, or PSP Go
• Wireless internet
• A Playstation 3, connected to the web via ethernet
• Ad-Hoc Party, downloaded on your PS3
• Any PSP co-op games
• Friends with the same

The way the Ad-Hoc Party program works on the PS3 is making a virtual room for you and your buddies to hang out in. It utilizes the online capabilities of the PS3 with your PSP, and you can play local games through the system.

Since you’re playing on the PS3, you’ll also be able to use your chat system that way. But if you’re anything like I was before I tried it, this is all mumbo jumbo. Here’s really what you need to do, and it’s a lot easier than it seems.

First, make sure your PSP and PS3 are friends. To do this, you’ll have to sync them up. Once the device is registered, download the Ad-Hoc party to your PS3.

Instead of simply transferring the Ad-Hoc to your PSP, you’ll open the program in your PS3 and select a chat room. There is a wheel with letters and numbers to select a specific room, which you and your buddies can set to private if you don’t want to be bothered. You will be represented by a little icon stick-figure, and ready to play online.

You don’t have to do anything like hooking up your PSP to your PS3 now, you can just play as though you were sitting across the table from one another - the PS3 has taken care of all the technical stuff. Now you can play great games from across the states, countries, or just across town through tha Ad-Hoc Party.

If any of this is confusing or unclear, please leave a comment and we’ll be sure to clear anything up we can - I’d recommend trying this before thinking too much, otherwise it sounds way more complicated than it is.

Now for my co-op PSP experience through the Ad-Hoc Party:

Play 1-4 player sessions of Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker online or locally through the Ad-Hoc party. If you don’t have a PS3 headset, don’t worry - you can give your “squad” commands through the game, such as follow, wait, help, etc. Peacewalker was quite a bit of fun to play locally or online, and Konami didn’t skimp on the co-op amusement.

I played about half of the game in person, and half on the Ad-Hoc party. With this experience I can say the whole thing works like a charm. The gameplay doesn't lag or have any obvious flaws, and the communication works as well as anything on the PS3 can.

My hope (as well as Sony’s I’m sure) with the Ad-Hoc party is to bring people together to play some of the co-op of their PSP games. It’s unfortunate that people can’t get together to play as often as we used to, and it’s nice to be able to jump online to check out some of the great ways we can game together. It was my belief at some time that portable co-op was chopped up, or tacked on so it wasn’t as good. I was very wrong.

Author

Katrina Pawlowski
Former Editor

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