The weekend that was the PS3 launch...

After months of fevered anticipation it was with pure elation that The Shed snatched its new PS3 away from the postman on launch day morning. Here's a run-down of our first three days with Sony's beast.

The same weight as a breeze block, the PS3 feels next-gen and upon wiring the black monolith up to The Shed's 37" HD beauty it was time to drink in the future.

Kicking off with MotorStorm was a good move, it's the perfect way to settle in with the power of PS3, packed to the gills with next-gen moments.

Surprisingly, the sixaxis works pretty well and so far we're not missing the rumble function too much, although a bit of feedback from rough terrain would have been nice...sigh.

Our next experience isn't so satisfying, Genji: Days of the Blade being a stale hybrid of Dynasty Warriors and Onimusha but not nearly as good as that sounds. We perservered with it for a good while, but it wasn't long before repetitive hack and slash got the better of us and we opted for a blast on Resistance: Fall of Man.

A solid, well-made first person shooter, Resistance is good fun, engaging and instantly accessible. Shooting aliens is a bit of a no-brainer admittedly, but Resistance does it well enough.

After giving Resistance's multi-player a quick going over, we get a taste for competitive gaming and resolve to throw Virtua Tennis 3 into the disc slot.

Having played the 360 version already, we attempt to scrutinise the differences between the two graphically and there's very little to separate the two. Virtua Tennis 3 manages to consume the subsequent 5 to 6 hours as we sink into its variety of wacky minigames and multi-player options.

It's getting pretty late and we haven't even taken PS3 online yet. First things first, we download firmware update 1.60 which takes ages. Gran Turismo Concept HD is free from the PlayStation Store too so we decide we'd have to be completely Jordan-brained not to grab it. Weighing in at a mere 690MB GT HD still manages to take over an hour to download, monopolising valuable time we could be gaming. We find out we could have been doing other things while it downloaded in the background thanks to our recent acquisition of 1.60 firmware. D'oh...

We decide that taking our multi-player gaming online probably isn't wise right now what with our slow connection. We'd rather not start off our online experience with a series of laggy, humiliating defeats.

It's with burnt retinas, an HD-induced headache and a wry smile that The Shed rolls over onto the couch, fully-clothed, teeth unbrushed, falling into a sweaty, blissful slumber. Lucid PS3 dreams follow as we look forward to spending the next ten years together.

PlayStation 3 has us tightly gripped in its clear black and chrome claws and refuses to let go. The next-gen is here, and we love it.