A week-ish with the PS4, and a smidge of Xbox One.

About a week ago my PlayStation 4 arrived in the mail, and since I have nothing better to do with my life, I thought I would write up this here blog about it.

I'll start with the things that I like about it. First off, I really love the look of the PS4. So much so that I find myself unplugging the USB cable in the morning (after charging the controller in the evening) so that the front of the machine is untarnished by having a USB cable sticking out of it. That wouldn't be so weird if it wasn't for the fact that it's literally the only thing in this room that I care about the looks of, rather than going for pure functionality. Of course I keep telling myself that I'm moving the cable and plugging it into the PS3 (which is roughly in the middle of the room) on the odd chance that I want to play a PS3 game with a DualShock 4, but I know that I'm not going back to that thing until I've finished the single player stuff in AC IV and Need for Speed Rivals (more on those later).

I also like the interface of the PS4, but I think I still like the XMB on the PS3 more. But sometimes I feel like I'm the only person outside of Sony UI design that likes the XMB, so take that however you will. It is, however, mostly easy to find what I want, and I can get to the various parts of it quickly, both in terms of it being responsive, and literally in terms of how fast I can get from one end of the UI to the other.

It's not perfect, though. While I like the blue background, and the music that plays in the background, I wish there were options to change both. Yes, I know that the eventuality would be me going back to that stupid dynamic fireplace theme that I used on the PS3, but imagine that with a fireplace crackling sound instead of the PS4 background music! That would be SICK!

A more legitimate issue, especially in the long run, is the inability to group games into folders, like on the PS3. For now, when I have two downloadable games, and three disc games, it's not an issue. But a few years from now? It probably will be. I can't imagine that something like this would be difficult to add, but what do I know? Maybe that would break the entire thing!

I think the mic included with the PS4 is not great. It's really flimsy looking, and I'm constantly worried that the thing will break, but I will say that the audio quality of the earbud thingy seemed adequate, but I only used it for a little bit the other day. I do like that I can use it for voice commands on the PS4 (because I never understood the logic of making voice commands only usable with a camera), but I don't think that the voice commands make navigating the interface any faster or easier, so I only used that feature for a minute before turning it off.

But the controller? I could not be happier with the controller! I think it may very well be my favorite controller of all time. Aside from the Options and Share buttons, I can't really think of anything on the controller that I would change. And even those buttons aren't that bad, at least now that I've gotten used to them. I do like the change from "start" to "options," because for years I've thought it was silly that we, as a society, have been pushing "start" to pause video games.

And as dumb as I thought it would be when it was first announced, I'm liking the more gimmicky parts of the controller a lot. It's easy to scoff at that light in the controller, but being the sucker for colored lighting that I am, I've grown quite fond of it, especially when games actually do something with it. For example, Killzone uses it for health. It starts at green, then as you lose health, it turns to yellow, orange, then red. But it doesn't just go instantly from green to yellow, it shifts to it, you know, color blending and whatnot. I guess? I don't really know the artsy words for something like that, but you know what I mean.

The touchpad seems functional, but none of the games I've played have used it in any particularly special way, but like I said, it works. The speaker in the controller is a lot louder, and of higher quality than I would have guessed. Killzone uses it for audio logs, which I like, because it replicates actually picking up an audio log and holding it in your hands pretty well. And the SIXAXIS (though, I don't know that Sony still actually uses that) works well too. All I've used it for is that motion control typing, but I think that works really well, and it's definitely faster than buttoning through to every letter with the d-pad.

Normally I wouldn't be typing much on a console, but with the added Share button, I find myself Tweeting a lot of screenshots, often with dumb captions and/or hashtags. I think that's a great addition, and I also look forward to uploading videos once they get YouTube support, so I don't have to create a Facebook account. I've gone this long without one, I'm not making one now.

I think that's about all that I want to say about the console, interface, and the stuff included with it. Well, I do wish that the second controller I bought came with its own Micro USB cable. I may be in the minority here, but I don't really have any other Micro USB things in my house. I guess the charge cable for my phone is Micro USB, but that's a wall plug thing, and I use that for my phone. I also wish it was a bit longer, so I wouldn't have to have my PS3 literally in the middle of the room in order for it to reach the couch. Either that, or I wish Sony would patch the PS3 to give it proper support for the DualShock 4, so I can use that wirelessly.

Okay, now here's a little something about the games I've played on it.

Resogun

As the games I ordered from Amazon did not arrive with the console that I ordered from Amazon (they were different orders), I found myself with only digital content to use on my PS4 for a couple of days. But even if I hadn't, I would have played a lot of this game, because Resogun is rad. I don't play a ton of arcade-y spaceship shooter-y games, but this one seems really good. It might not have that special something that Geometry Wars had, but that's because it's a lot more complex, and has more going on than Geometry Wars, and I like that. Having to stop to save those last humans creates a good risk reward. I have to endanger myself for this human, but I could get a weapon upgrade, life, shield, or bomb out of it. However, I think it's lame that sometimes it's just points, and that the shield will expire after time, even if nothing hits the ship (the announcer lady says "shield expired" when this happens).

I haven't beaten Resogun yet, but I've gotten close to beating the final boss, and I refuse to turn it down to "Rookie." I probably will beat it at some point, but even without having done that, I feel confident in calling Resogun rad, and saying that it's definitely worth your money. If you have PlayStation Plus and get it for free. I don't know that it's worth $15. Maybe $10.

Contrast

Contrast, more than anything else, really makes me wish that Drive Club (excuse me, #DRIVECLUB) had been ready for launch. Like Resogun, I got it free, so I all I lost was time, but this game is not great. I don't want to go so far as to call it bad, because I did like the voice acting (notably Elias "I never asked for people to always associate me with this one stupid line in that game" Toufexis), and I think the game deserves some credit for at least trying to do something different with both game play, and the story. I won't get into the story, because the game is pretty short (which is good, because it's still too long, even at only a couple hours), and because if you have a PS4 and PS+, you might as well go through it yourself if you have nothing better to do with your time.

I will get into the game play, though. Contrast is a platformer-y puzzle-solve-y type game (oh, game genres). Its hook is that the character you play as can merge into walls and turn into shadow when there's enough light pointing at a wall to cast shadows. When that happens, the game goes from 3D to 2D (well, you can then only move in 2D along the wall). It's a great premise, but it's really poorly executed on. None of the puzzles were fun to solve, and quite a few of them became rather tedious as I lugged boxes and spheres around rooms. It's pretty disappointing all around, especially if you made the mistake of playing money ($15!) for this game. I also feel terrible saying (er, typing) that, because this game was clearly made by a pretty small-ish group, and then must have (at some point) thought they were making something great, and that people would really like.

But I guess there's often a sharp CONTRAST between expectations and...What? Fine, I'll move on.

Warframe

I only played about twenty minutes of this, then I deleted it. The colored lighting seemed nice. I shouldn't have expected to like it, given that I'm pretty sure this was made by the people that made Dark Sector, which I played.

Killzone Shadow Fall

Then, thankfully, as it stopped me from trying more free to play games, my games arrived (well, two of them), and I started playing Shadow Fall. I'll start with what I like about the game most, the graphics. I think this game looks absolutely INCREDIBLE. Now, I know some PC elitist master race jerk is going to say, "Duh, my computer can make the graphics look much better than that, duh!" Well, shut up. I don't care. It's easily the best looking game I've ever played, and because of my constant amazement at how good the game looks, I think it colored (lighting) the rest of how I feel about the game.

Why? Because while I enjoyed myself during the vast majority of the campaign, I started thinking after (and when I say after, I really mean about 85-90% of the way in) that I would not be enjoying this game anywhere near as much if it didn't look as good. If this had been a PS3 game, that looked as good as other PS3 games, I probably would have been upset that I paid $60 for it. But as a visual showpiece for my new PS4, I'm happy with it. And while I've only played one match of it thus far, the online stuff seems fun, and I'll probably end up spending a lot of time with that once I run out of single player stuff to play.

Now, the other games I bought Assassin's Creed IV and Need for Speed Rivals (which arrived a few days later than the other two), I haven't completed yet. I'm about 14 hours into ACIV, and I could probably write a lot about that, but for now, I'll just say that thus far it's probably my favorite Assassin's Creed yet, and definitely one of my favorite games of the year. It is, in many ways, the pirate game I've always dreamed of, but I'll leave most of that for a later blog. I will add one more thing, which is to say that while it doesn't have the same level of detail as Shadow Fall, but I do think it looks fantastic. The water looks amazing.

I've only played about an hour and a half, maybe two hours of Rivals. I don't play a ton of racing games, but I really like this one, at least in terms of the handling. I do think the online stuff is underwhelming, but I'll wait until I've played more to pass judgment on it (I'm not upset with my purchase though, I'll have a lot of fun, I bet).

While I do not own an Xbox One, nor do I have any plans to purchase one in the near (or mid) future, I did get to spend a little bit of time with my cousins' Xbox Ones. Yes, plural, as my cousins (brothers, still living with their parents due to them still being high school age (well, I can't throw stones; out of college and living with my dad)) each got his own Xbox One. I was at their house for a few hours, and in that time I spent a little time with a few of the games, looked at the interface, yelled at the Kinect, etc.

I didn't like the controller. To me, it felt like someone had taken the Xbox 360 controller, and said, "How can we make this worse?" I think the RB and LB buttons are terrible. I would go so far as to say that they are worse than the 360's d-pad. I'm probably overreacting, and after a few days I would get used to it, but I think that changing them so they can only be pushed from the outer edges was a poor design choice.

I also don't like the rumble triggers, or really the triggers when they're not rumbling. They're kinda wide. Not in a way that makes them unusable, but in my limited use, I thought they were a step back from the 360 triggers. The rumble part though? That might actually make them unusable, at least for me. I don't know if it was just Forza, or something weird with my fingers, but the way it rumbled in Forza was REALLY uncomfortable. To the point where I think I might have weird fingers with the nerves too close to the skin or something. I can't fathom how anyone would enjoy using that, but the rumble seemed way less (if at all) in CoD, so I won't go so far as to completely condemn it yet.

I didn't like the sticks either. They were between 360 and PS3 levels of looseness. I kinda like the PS3 sticks because they are so loose (conversely I also like tight sticks like on the 360 and PS4), but I dunno about the Xbox One sticks. After a few minutes with CoD I got used to it though, so I wouldn't say they're bad. Just different.

While I like that Microsoft also moved away from having a "start" button, I think changing it to a button with three vertical lines (or, "line line line" as I was calling it) was really dumb. I know that officially it's called the "menu" button, just like the "two overlapping squares" button is the "view" button, but not labeling those on the controller was REALLY DUMB. This doesn't actually impact game play at all, and those buttons are easier to hit than the Options and Share buttons on the DualShock 4, but come on Microsoft, they should be labeled.

And the games? Call of Duty Ghosts seemed like Call of Duty, but it looks slightly better? Forza 5 was way to realistic for me to play it well (never mind those rumble triggers, which were honestly an issue for me). My cousin did have a copy of Dead Rising 3, but he refused to play it in front of me, for reasons he didn't explain well. Something about not wanting to speed through it? I dunno. Killer Instinct, however, seemed cool. I didn't get to play much of it, because after one match my cousin declared that he didn't like it, and I didn't get a chance to go through the tutorial like I wanted to (blame my cousin for being a 14 year old that didn't want to leave me alone with the Xbox One).

So, I left being really happy about my purchase of a PS4. While I'm sure that Dead Rising 3 is probably a really good Dead Rising game, now that I've beaten the first Dead Rising (a task that took me seven years to do), I feel like I never want to play Dead Rising ever again. And while I would probably buy Killer Instinct if it was available on a system that I own, it's nowhere near good enough to warrant buying a $500 console. And as seemingly the only person not excited about Titanfall, I'm confident that I can resist making a dumb decision to buy an Xbox One before there's a significant price drop (please don't be good, D4, please don't be good).

I think that's everything I have to say for the time being. No progress has been made on getting Space Cops 5000 ready for public consumption, and at this point I doubt I will make my self-made deadline of the end of the year. I'm sure you're all torn up about that.

And I'm going to end this now before it turns into me complaining about my life, because no one wants to read about that. Now I'm off to do other stuff, and maybe start thinking about my weird game of the year awards stuff. Hm... Probably won't be as big and ridiculous as last year's, unless I find a box of motivation I can use (and even then, I'd be better off using that motivation for other things).

@mooseymcman said:

Huh, I learned something today. Being that I've never tried to do such a thing, how useful is that to you during gameplay? Is it just a gimmick, or is it pretty easy to see the light bar based on how you tend to hold the controller?

@mooseymcman: Dark Sector was a decent game that gets a ton of unwarranted hate thrown it's way. I'll defend that game to my grave as "hey it wasn't that bad, it was kinda cool, sorta"

@cloudymusic: It's mostly a gimmick. I can kinda see it lighting up the insides of my fingers because of how I hold them a little away from the controller when I'm not using any of the shoulder buttons/triggers, but it's not super useful. But while I would like to have an actual on screen health bar, I know that most games (like this) aren't going to do that, and I think this is better than just relying on the edges of the screen turning red.

I do know that Thief is going to use the brightness of the light to indicate how hidden you are, going from bright (not hidden) to dark (hidden in shadows), and that sounds less gimmicky and more potentially useful.

The rumble triggers are awesome in Forza. I feel a little shitty about the monetization in Forza, but the controller is awesome for Forza. I think the shoulder buttons are a little weird on the Xbone with the inside pivot point, but I got used to it and haven't noticed it. Overall I think I prefer the xbone controller. After a weekend with both though, I definitely like the Xbone better at launch. The UI is really slick and the kinect allows for some cool features, plus the games are way better. Resogun is the only game of the PS4 launch games I had any fun with, but Forza, Dead Rising, and Killer Instinct are all a blast so far.

OK I take it back the assassin's creed 4 Luigi is Luigi photoshop picture of the year

I know in games like FIFA is also changes to match what color indicator you are in game, so if you have the red marker over your player, it will be red. Simple stuff like that is actually pretty useful as sometimes that stuff can get confusing.

gah you fool - Warframe is the killer app, you totally missed it.

Incredibly detailed, thanks for the post man!

I agree in regards to the shoulder buttons. At first, it was essentially like re-intergrating myself with how to rest my hands on the controller but once I got used to it, it felt fantastic. I really like the controller design overall, even more so than the 360. Everything has a satisfying click to it and my god... the thumbsticks are absolutely fantastic for Battlefield. SO MUCH MORE PRECISION!

I did enjoy it a fair amount back when I played it, but for whatever reason I feel like I have anti-nostalgia for it. Rather than remembering it better than it was, I remember it worse than it was. Or maybe it's just that the only times I've heard anyone mention it since that has been Jeff Gerstmann talking about how he was barely able to bring himself to beat it because he hated it so much.

Yeah, the glaive it in was pretty cool.

@cjduke: Never count out my ability to outdo myself in something really dumb!

And for those defending the rumble triggers in Forza, I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure they were messing with the nerves in my finger. It almost felt like an electric shock going up my finger. Not quite, but almost. I blame either the way I was holding the controller, or my fingers for being bad at being fingers. I'm sure the people that made the game thought it was a great feature, and for some people, it probably is, but it felt wrong to me.

As for the RB and LB, maybe I'd just need to get more time with them, but I stand by my statements.

@mooseymcman: I just wanted to say as someone who owns both Dead Rising 1 & 2 and never even came close to beating them (Seriously, look at my achievements for them) I'm having an absolute blast with 3 and encourage you to give it a shot in the future. It's a lot of goofy fun and a lot more accessible

@barrock: If I had an Xbox One, or if the game was also on PS4, I most likely would have bought it just to have something else to play. As it is though, by the time I either get an Xbox One, or have access to one for long periods of time, this game will have faded into the annals of history, and I probably wouldn't even think to try to play it.

Also I feel like I've moved on from zombies in general.