Hands-On

Can't Hear You, Just Static

Dealing with all but the simplest sound effects and CD audio tracks for a Playstation game seems to be quite a task, indeed. There are plenty of options in Bleem to decrease the load on your CPU by lowering sound quality. Unfortunately, lowering sound quality really lowers the quality of your gaming experience; at lower settings, the game's sound is interspersed with a lot of static, which is extremely irritating. Cranked up to the top level, you'll hopefully get the sound quality you're used to hearing out of your TV speakers. Unfortunately, on some games (Street Sk8er, out of the games we tested, as well as the cinema sequences in all the games), the sound is incomprehensibly choppy, playing a brief burst of noise every second, followed by silence.

As a matter of fact, out of the games we playtested, the game that had the best sound was Spice World. Pick your favourite Spice Girl, then jump around on colored blocks in the "mixing room" to create your own personal mix. We think. We couldn't really figure it out without the instruction manual. It did have the only FMV with mildly acceptable sound, though. It was crackly, and out of sync with the picture, but at least we could understand what was being said while the girls talked about how much they liked playing live concerts.

Playstation

Bleem

You played WHAT?

Calm down - we wanted to get a large variety of games to playtest bleem with, both by playing the game on our PC, and by contrasting that to the game on the Playstation. Our test lineup was as follows: Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, Spice World, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Sk8er. Of the list, Gran Turismo, and Grand Theft Auto are D3D enhanced, Metal Gear Solid and Street Fighter Alpha are not, and Spice World and Street Sk8er are not recognized in the bleem database.

It's important to keep track of what game is in what status, because bleem certainly doesn't. Non D3D games are often faster with D3D acceleration disabled. Street Fighter Alpha, for example, was completely unplayable until I turned off hardware acceleration. Because you can't customize settings for specific games, and bleem doesn't autoconfigure the D3D option for you, this is a vital thing to remember, especially because it's non-intuitive.

Playstation

Bleem - notice the transparency