I moved across the country about six months ago and one part of the deal was I got to pick up one of the latest gen systems to entertain myself. The choice wasn't too difficult. Which system had exclusives I wanted to play? Well, neither, really. I don't care much about Halo, Fable has always been a bust for me, and while I will likely never again have time enough for hardcore racing games, I was always a fan of Gran Turismo. I don't give a crap about DVRing or other cable-incorporated features because I don't watch TV, so I decided the things that were most important to me were the specs.
But my XBox 360 did great service to me and my gamer score got pretty high, despite having not owned the original XBox. There were a lot of great games for that system that I haven't reviewed, and may retro-review in the future, but for now I'm going to talk about the slightly more present.
So the new challenger comes along. The PS4. The only other Sony console I owned was a PSOne (the little white one) that I picked up around 2002. I wanted to play through Einhander, Xenogears, FFIX, and a few other games I had picked up. I never owned and didn't have much time logged on a PS2 (mostly playing others' xboxes). And as far as the PS3 went, I've never actually touched one. My brother bought the original PSP on release day and I played a couple games on that, too.
I ordered the PS4 from Amazon and it came with Little Big Planet 3, and Lego Batman. I ordered Shadow of Mordor to come with it, which I'd been wanting to play since it was announced. I wasn't sure what other games I wanted for the system but knew I'd like to get around to GTA5, and eventually Bioware would release another Mass Effect, and I wanted in on that.
Turning on the PS4 wasn't as magical or monumental as I remember the Gamecube startup being (with it's quirky little home OS). Sony's OS reminded me of the OS that shipped with my brother's PSP. A bunch of scrolling tiles that do all things you'd like to do. The built in browser isn't bad, I used it to stream an episode of Downton Abbey that my wife and I missed during the recent season.
The PS4 hardware makes some great looking games. I remember watching the promotional and demo videos over the last year or so and thinking there was no way this thing was any better graphically than the previous generation, but I was wrong. Things have been stepped up, and that's cool.
The best part of this new console came in the latest update. You can suspend your games and pop back in exactly where you left off. It's great. In the middle of a long battle and have to run to work?? Hold the PS button and enter "Rest Mode". The game is suspended and when you turn on your system later that day (week, month, year) the same battle is going on. Admittedly you're probably not in the zone anymore and are going to die a horrible death, but we're talking seconds, not minutes, to get back in the action. This is, of course, using power the whole time. And if your power fails at all, your suspend data is vaporized (and your PS4 will not let you forget that you should power it down nicely every time...)
I have two big complaints. The first is how the OS organizes your apps/games. Video apps and social apps get their own tile, but games are in a long carousel that doesn't seem to end. You just keep scrolling until you find whatever it is you want. Everything is organized by chronologically. It's very annoying, borderline broken. Say you've downloaded 50 games from the market. They're not in alphabetical order, if you haven't played the game for a few months, you're going to be digging for a while. I hope this gets fixed.
The second big complaint is a twofold complaint regarding the Dual Shock 4. The battery life sucks, and the light bar can't be deactivated. It can be charged over USB micro, so if you need a mid-game charge, a normal charger will work fine. but still, maybe six hours of power. For $60 MSRP they should be putting a real battery in these.
All in all I'm glad I made the switch. It's difficult getting used to not having a gamerscore anymore, but it's a small price to pay.
