Topic: Your Favourite PS4 Memories

The PS4 is on its way out and I thought it would be nice to discuss some of our favourite memories of the system.

I remember back in 2014 when I bought my PS4 that the first game I played on it was the beta for Destiny 1. I thought it was such a fun game and I was even planning on buying it when it came out. However, I found out the game was online-only and so I didn't want to get it. Which was probably for the best since I didn't know anyone who was playing it at the time and playing Destiny alone is not that fun. Still, I'm glad that I could play something that fun as my first title even if it was only a beta.

One of the early games I played on PS4 that I have fond memories of was Assassin's Creed 4. At the time, I didn't like the series at all because I was bad at stealth. One day though, the standalone expansion Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry was on sale and I decided to give it a go. I absolutely loved it! It was so much fun sailing from island to island and discovering new things. I liked it so much that I wanted to buy the base game and I spent 50 hours playing that one. Thanks to AC4 and Freedom Cry, I finally managed to play through the AC games.

Another fond memory from 2016 is when I played through my first horror game, which was SOMA. Now, at the time I didn't like horror games at all so you might be wondering why this is a fond memory. Well, like I said it was my first horror game and it helped ease me into the genre. Today, I absolutely love horror games and it's becoming one of my favourite genres. So if it weren't for SOMA, then I probably wouldn't even be playing games like Resident Evil today.

Looking through my trophy list, I actually didn't play that many PS4 games between 2014-2016 because I was still new to PlayStation, so I was still discovering so many great PlayStation franchises on PS3 and Vita. However, when we got to 2017, that's when I was truly enjoying my PS4. So many great games came out that year and that was probably when I bought the most amount of games on day one. Titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, NieR: Automata, Persona 5, Crash Bandicoot N-Sane trilogy, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Yakuza Kiwami 1, Danganronpa V3. Not to mention all other games that I didn't play that year such as Gravity Rush 2, Tales of Berseria, Resident Evil 7, Nioh, Yakuza 0 and so on. 2017 has to easily be the best year of the PS4 in terms of games.

2018 was another great year, I remember when God of War came out and I spent literally an entire week just playing that game and nothing else. I didn't play much else during the first half of the year, but during the second half was absolutely crazy. Yakuza Kiwami 2, Marvel's Spider-Man, Red Dead Redemption 2 and so on. I was going through a tough time during the second half of 2018 so I didn't play many games in general during that period. But it was still such an amazing time to be a PS4 owner.

@LtSarge I got my PS4 the same day I upgraded my television and sound system, and it all happened after a long day at work, mid-week, so I was shattered. I didn't have time to play anything, but I did wanna quickly test everything to make sure it was working properly. My first and only PS4 game was Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, which had been sitting on my shelf for a couple months already. I vividly remember booting it up and thinking "Wow, this is a really pretty pre-rendered HD cutscene!" as it got itself underway, with that long single-shot journey through the camp, and then the camera panned back from Snake and the HUD appeared and the penny dropped, as well as my jaw.

It'd been one thing watching compressed YouTube videos of what the console was capable of, but it was suddenly quite another to see it in action, first-hand. Unfortunately, that first PS4 developed a fault quite early on in its lifespan, but I was lucky enough to be able to get a quick replacement and continue enjoying those early mind-blowing experiences, like Killzone: Shadow Fall (so gorgeous).

Goes without saying that the DualShock4's inclusion of a Share button totally transformed the way I play certain games, though. I remember playing through the entirety of Batman: Arkham Knight ignoring whatever the heck that weird "Photo Mode" feature was, and only giving it a brief look-see out of mild curiosity / boredom during my second playthrough. Early on, I was more interested in capturing brief clips of my exploits, uploading them to YouTube and sharing them with my (very small) circle of gamer friends, but even that ended up running away with me, as my videos became more elaborate the more confident I got with SHAREfactory and its various tools. Nowadays, when I go back to playing on older consoles, I have to stop myself reaching for a non-existent Share button. For me personally, it's what I'll always remember the PS4 for.

And I'm not a social creature in the slightest, but this was the generation I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone a little. I joined this place, made tons of new friends (hello!) and thoroughly enjoyed a couple of online multiplayer evenings with certain folks. The PS4 made connecting with others ridiculously easy, and I have many fond memories of chatting to random strangers via its Communities feature, which I was real sorry to see go. Heck, I even briefly became a streamer of sorts, when my best friend watched me play Dragon Age: Inquisition in the background whilst she worked.

The PS4 really was a game-changer, in every sense of the phrase.

@RogerRoger Considering you've been playing games on the PS3 lately, have you gone back to certain titles and noticed that the graphics were not as you remember them to be? I personally recall PS3/360 games looking better but going back to some games, they haven't aged well at all in terms of visuals. An example of detail is hair in PS3 games, it just looks so washed out compared to PS4 titles. It actually haven't dawned on me until recently that PS4 games look significantly better than PS3 titles, despite having the notion that the jump between PS3 and PS4 isn't that huge. Because I thought that PS3 games already looked really good, but they didn't. Makes me wonder how I will look back on PS4 in the future after playing on a PS5. But yes, I did find myself being captivated by numerous games with amazing visuals on PS4. I played through the entirety of Horizon Zero Dawn earlier this year and that game still looks absolutely gorgeous even on a standard PS4.

The social aspect of PS4 is something that I didn't touch upon and I think I'm the same way as you. I didn't like socialising over video games but the PS4 helped change my mind. I loved taking screenshots and sharing them with people. It also helps you remember games better when you go through all the pictures you've taken and recall all the events that happened in those moments. The Share button truly was innovative. Sadly, I don't bother taking screenshots and sharing them with people that much anymore because I have so many games to play that I'd rather just get to the next ones. Maybe that's why I don't have any fond memories of games from recent years, which is sad but hey what can you do.

i agree about the height of the ps4 era being 2017-2018 for sure ; then its gotten progressively worse for me personally . hell , ill take it even further back and say that since its release in 2013 - 2018 was the best years of my time with the PS4 . Dragon Ball Fighterz and Spider-man (both 2018 games) was the last of my true enjoyment/fun with the ps4 . I had friends from my last job that all had PS4's and we'd play DBFZ online. but , Nowadays , i just play my ps4 alone & like a zombie with no emotion

A lot of the highlights have been touched upon already, but there were so many great games that generation it's crazy thinking back on it all. Even near it's end, it's rare that a console can have it's last (basically) full year that it had to itself like it had last year. Not counting ones that were cross-gen on day 1 (like Miles Morales), any year that had Final Fantasy 7 Remake, The Last of Us Part II, and Ghost of Tsushima should be considered a really good year since all 3 could have been Game of the Year contenders. While I have issues with some of the story of The Last of Us Part II and I wouldn't consider Ghost of Tsushima one of the best open world games ever like some, they were both still really good games.

Back to the beginning though (for me at least), I had originally planned on waiting about 2 years until Uncharted 4 came out, but I couldn't wait that long after Metal Gear Solid V came out after Metal Gear Solid IV was such a life changing experience for me on PS3 (at least gaming life wise). So, shortly after that came out I got myself a PS4 and then got Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and the full game together for Christmas. It was a bit disappointing to me. It's been a while, but I'm guessing it was the story that was a bit of a let down to me. Still, it being what it was, it was still an experience like few other games could provide.

Got the PS4 Pro and traded in my PS4 shortly after it came out to play Horizon Zero Dawn in the highest quality possible. Loved the game. Spider-Man would be my favorite PlayStation exclusive of that generation, but I still loved Horizon Zero Dawn.

The PS4 generation could very well have been the best video game generation of all time. At least in a long long time. The PS3 was a very special generation for me as that's when I became a huge fan of PlayStation (even though I owned a PS1 and a PS2 as well), completely changing gaming for me after getting to experience some of the amazing exclusives. Still, it's hard to argue with a generation that had the long list of greatness the PS4 had. I can only hope things get on track and the PS5 can even come close.

Very much a latecomer to the PS4, having only got one in 2018, due to being very much still into my Xbox 360 at the time.
Started off with a God Of War bundle, which was probably as good a starting point as you could get at the time, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was going to buy one earlier, having been enticed by the prospect of Shenmue 3, but held off when I saw it was going to be some time before my kickstarter contribution bore fruit.
Call Of Duty and Rime were standout titles for me in the early days, before Uncharted: The Lost Legacy gave me my first taste of the series. Horizon then blew me away, and remains my favourite overall game to this day.
Shortly after that I finally got my PSVR, and Astrobot charmed me completely, and retains its place as my most loved VR experience to date. The system was impressing me on a technical and variety level more than any other at this point, with a late adoption of Uncharted 4 proving to be a highlight for me at the time.
Despite searching for what felt like an eternity and patiently waiting for a decent price, I finally got hold of some Move controllers, so was able to enjoy titles like A Fishermans Tale and Ghost Giant.
PSPlus was a new concept for me, which I essentially used randomly to essentially 'rent' up to 4 games a month, by cheekily buying mid-month to take advantage of the end of one months offerings and the beginning of the nexts.
Infamous Second Son then blew me away, and shortly after this I started live-streaming on Twitch for a while, for which my PS4 was my main machine. By sticking to lesser known titles at the time, I was able to get used to the mechanics of streaming whilst playing to a small audience, which gave me the time to learn the ropes - Gorogoa and Concrete Genie were among the first titles I played this way.
PS4 has reignited my interest in broadening the variety of what I play, something that I haven't really dabbled with since the days of the Sega Dreamcast. Arise: A Simple Story, What Remains Of Edith Finch and Superhot have recently been more indy titles that have been worthy of my time, among many others.
For the future, PS4 will remain my go-to machine - I still have the likes of Spiderman, The Outer Worlds, Nier Automata, Detroit Become Human and Far Cry Primal to play, as well as being yet to start Ghost Of Tsushima, which I am very much looking forward to.
With the PS4 version of Horizon Forbidden West and the sequel to Moss on the way (together with a few planned re-runs), my PS4 will be around for many years, and has proved itself to be one of my favourite consoles of all time - inventive, versatile, techically impressive and offering a huge variety of quality games that have made me smile

Kinda yes, and kinda no. I mean, there's always the whole "this is as good as games can look right now" thing whenever you're playing a contemporary console, so that's definitely gonna influence what you think of a game's visuals at the point of release, versus going back after a decade of innovation and refinement and noticing all the tricks and shortcomings.

If anything, I end up pleasantly surprised whenever I go back to PS3, though. Since it's now two generations in the past, my brain keeps trying to downgrade the graphics of my memories, probably in an effort to make me more appreciative of modern gaming (which, as somebody with access to the entire history of PlayStation consoles, has a lot to compete with relative to the amount of money I've spent on it; like I said recently, since booting up my PS5 in April, I've spent more time on my PS3 than anything else). So I think I have the opposite problem you do, which is kinda fascinating!

I think it depends on what you choose to play, though. Some multi-platform games looked atrocious on PS3 because it was the toughest platform of the generation to develop for. I can't recall what PS3 game I'd been playing right before I got my PS4 and was blown away by Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, but chances are it was something that looked better elsewhere, and has looked better since.

You should totally keep saving screenshots! They make for an awesome album of memories. You could always share what you take here, in the forum's dedicated topic?

@RogerRoger I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of screenshots as being a nice album of memories, but that’s a great thought. I need to be better about chronicling my experiences that way, just like one would do when going on a vacation and traveling the world. Of course, I’m horrible at remembering to take pictures even in real life experiences, so it’s no surprise that I’m lazy about it in the virtual world too.

I think I have a new gaming goal for 2022 — More deliberate screenshots.

I’ve never been much of a social gamer or prone to share my gaming pictures or videos, nor livestream. But I will say the PS4 was the first console that really made it easy to do. I messed around at first with streaming on Twitch and capturing videos and those were some fun times, but I quickly lost interest.

I wouldn’t mind having my own virtual travel albums to look back on. I rely on the trophy list as my means to be look back and chronicle my gaming, but I don’t always remember the details of the gameplay like a picture would do. Although I can look back and see “Oh yeah, I played Shadow of Mordor back on late 2017. That was pretty fun,” but I don’t remember the game nearly like having a handful of pictures would do. Maybe that’s why I forget a lot about my games after I finish them. 😄

@RogerRoger I do take screenshots from time to time in certain games, I just never share them anymore. Well I guess that's because I've been gone for a year! Might start doing it again, but for some games like Journey which I played through recently, I just don't think there's any point in sharing pictures of that game since we all know how beautiful it is.

But yeah, I will look through my screenshot gallery and see if there are any I find worth sharing!

I got my console in the Autumn of 2014 having just moved around the country (again) for work. I had a tax rebate of something like £1000 come through so I used it to pay for my car insurance and buy a PS4

I got a bundle with FIFA 15 from Asda (the last FIFA game I owned). Early games included Shadow of Mordor and Far Cry 4 before getting into Bloodborne; it's crazy to think the game is that old at this point (similarly with MGS 5 soon after).

Early highlights of the console though revolve around the GTA5 upgrade. The game gets a lot of stick, much of which is deserved, but the online mode in particular is some of the most fun I've had with any game, playing with a good group of people from another forum. In particular, the long awaited online heists came along a year later and I completed the whole set with the same three other people which was really cool.

General thoughts echo what others have said here. The longevity of the console has been impressive and my base model served me well through those six years. The quality of games has been pretty amazing from start to finish with big hitters like MGS5 coming relatively early in the console lifespan but big games continuing right to the dawn of the next gen with the final year seeing TLOU2 and GoT vying for game of the year.

I also was one to scoff at the thought of a share button appearing on the controller but making it so easy to share screenshots and video clips, as well as stream, has changed things quite significantly. I have a handful of videos I have uploaded, mostly to share with those I was playing with, but in the last year randomly had one from FC4 suddenly jump to 10k views??

And to top it all off, I even got the wife to try out the console over lockdown. We only got as far as Lego Harry Potter (and still haven't finished it) but it's a start!

@Th3solution With all of the recent PS4 retrospective topics and discussions, I went back and found my first ever screencaps, as well as my first ever Photo Mode shot, and it sparked some nice nostalgia. It's amazing how an image, same as a piece of music or a certain phrase, can evoke so many feelings from a certain period of personal history. For that alone, I'm real grateful for the Share button!

But yeah, in reality, I'm the same as you; I never take any actual photographs. It's weird how the habit has taken specific hold of me in gaming terms. Give me a decent camera in real life and I wouldn't know the first thing about focus, shutter speed or any of that "proper" nonsense.

I agree that trophy lists are also useful tools to trigger flashbacks. Do you have that auto-screencap feature turned on for your trophies, perchance? That might help you start a collection, what with it being connected to a system you already use? Apparently, a lot of modern games (particularly Sony's first-party titles) deliberately time the trophies to ping when there's something pretty on screen. When it was first introduced, many turned it off because they just got stuck with a bunch of mid-action blurs or black loading screens, with a teensy trophy notification in the top corner. D'oh!

Love your new avatar, by the way!

@RogerRoger I was one of those that disabled the trophy screencap function because of the poor quality photos. Interesting that they’ve fixed that; I didn’t know. It explains maybe why sometimes the trophy ping sometimes occurs quickly and sometimes takes a while.

FF7R has a simple photo mode, which for me might help, since it’s a low barrier to entry and not intimidating. I’ll see about capturing some of my own shots. This is a good place to start. It’s interesting that you mention my new avatar (thanks for the props by the way) because I remember thinking, “it would probably be a lot easier to just capture my own gif” because there was an actual lack of good Tifa action combat gifs, which is the specific thing I wanted to sport as my avatar for the next several weeks while I play FF7R. All the Tifa gifs and screenshots online are just her acting coy or flirting with Cloud. I wanted one of her showing off her boxing skills! Her uppercut is effin’ awesome.

@Th3solution Well, not every game fixed the trophy screencap system; I think it's just a select few first-party titles, but the list is growing as more and more developers realise it's a thing (and helps net them free advertising if and when people upload good shots to social media).

Hope you have fun with the Photo Mode in FFVII Remake. From what I've seen, it's real pretty!

I've made quite a few of my own animated avatars in SHAREfactory over the years, for similar reasons (although be warned that the PS5's SHAREfactory Studio doesn't have a GIF creator, so you'd have to import clips back to your PS4 if you're still spreading yourself across both consoles... and yeah, I think it's a weird oversight, as well). It's a shame Tifa's badassery isn't better represented out there, but I'm glad you found that GIF eventually. If she'd been like that in the original, I might've warmed to her a bit more!

My biggest memory of the PS4 era will probably be how awesome the early games were, such as Dragon Age Inquisition (2014) and The Witcher 3 (2015), along with early editions of sports games like MLB The Show. And as amazing and fun as those were, even better were my expectations of how much BETTER future games on the system would be, if that's what they could make essentially before the console even released. After all, that's generally how it worked with most prior Sony console generations.

But sadly, that wasn't really to be. FFXV was so empty and hollow, ME Andromeda was a mess, Fallout 4's graphics were flat out awful, and a lot of others were dissapointing. Thankfully, there were very bright spots like Horizon Zero Dawn, AC Odyssey and Ghost of Tsushima, but an 8-9 year span of time, I honestly expected a lot more than what we got, and the scale and quality of the ones at the end weren't noticably better than the ones at the start in a lot of ways.