Topic: PlayStation 5 --OT--

@Th3solution You can pet the dog though

@Th3solution That's exactly what I thought when I watched the trailer, it looks just like Dishonoured and probably too much for my liking. I really wanted to like Dishonoured but just couldn't get into it, perhaps because it was first person as well. There was just something about the atmosphere or the pace of the game or the mechanics, I don't know but I just got really bored playing it.

Will have to wait for the reviews of Ghostwire I think but it wouldn't be one that I'd pick up straight away anyway. I think it's perhaps telling that Sony hasn't put as much effort behind this as they did Deathloop, perhaps because they know that it's not going to sell that well so they don't want to spend the money, or maybe because they've got 2 big first party games coming out around the same time and they'd rather people spent their money on those.

@velio84 You also buy stuff from levitating talking cats. GOTY.

@Voltan I’m glad the next gen power of my PS5 can be maximally utilized in creating photorealistic dog petting.

@render Yeah, there is a weird discrepancy between the marketing for Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo. Perhaps Sony doesn’t believe in the Ghostwire much. But I do believe you’re right that they have their own first party games to promote now and so they seem content to cut their losses with Ghostwire. I expect steep price discounts quickly, not unlike what has happened with Deathloop.

@Th3solution At least they gave it a showcase. If it didn't even get that, it would have been even more concerning. They do have a lot of stuff to promote right now, so I'll at least partially chalk it up to that. Still, like you said, it should drop in price. I wouldn't expect it to be quite as quickly as Deathloop since that came out much closer to Christmas, but still, I plan on waiting.

I will still likely be playing Horizon Forbidden West, and then I have plenty of other games like the Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection (might as well replay them in 60 FPS), Death Stranding, replaying Ghost of Tsushima via the Director's Cut, and also Deathloop itself. That's not counting plenty of other backlog, so waiting will be nice and easy.

Playing a little Dirt 5 every now and then. It’s alright, but it made me think about something:
As I was laser-focusing on the road, trying to overtake the cars in front of me, I finally realized how harshly I was squeezing the trigger full throttle and slamming the left stick right and left. The thought crossed my mind — which games make you abuse your controller the most?

I think racing games are my worst — Because it’s constant focus and you are pulling, pushing, and squeezing so hard and don’t even realize it. The second hardest games on the controller for me are probably fighting games. The relentless button mashing in those games is also buried in such constant concentration that you don’t realize how hard you’re hammering the buttons.

Good thing they make these things durable.

Better do a visual novel or a nice slow turn based RPG after this to give the poor pad a break

@Th3solution One game that I know I’ve abused my controller on is Hades. The later levels are really full on and it’s all about fast reactions so you don’t really think about it. There’s one particular weapon that’s even worse for abuse than the rest and you can really go to town on the buttons and sticks.

One of my controllers has a little bit of stick drift and it’s the only game I really noticed it on. It’s ok to start with but after playing a few levels my character would just start walking left all by itself.

@Th3solution I've been pretty careful with my dualsense but mario aces online legitimately destroyed a set of joy cons on my switch 😂! It's a game that genuinely bums me out that online died, an even match online was a thing of genuine beauty.

Ghostwire Tokyo looks like a Typical Japanese game to me. I don't expect it to be a popular game but more a niche interest - like Scarlet Nexus for example which to me has a similar vibe to it - albeit a different game-play loop. These type of games don't tend to do well outside of Japan in terms of sales, but they do have a dedicated fan base.

Anyway, I am not one of those fans so it doesn't appeal to me. Even with Game Pass, its not something I'd be 'keen' to try for 'free' when it eventually does come to Xbox next year.

Stupid question here…

So if I play a PS4 game with a PS5 update patch (for example GoW or Days Gone) on my PS5 from the external hard drive, do I get the full benefit of the PS5 upgrades (the 60 fps, quicker load time, better resolution, etc)? Or does the game need to be uploaded to the internal hard drive? I know native PS5 games can’t be played from an external hard drive and I know PS4 games can, but wasn’t sure if you get all the PS5 patch upgraded benefits that way.

@Th3solution You'd get all the benefits except faster load times (unless your external drive is an SSD - in that case it should be faster than a PS4 but still potentially slower than the internal drive)

@lolwhatno @Indoorhero @Voltan Ok, thanks, friends! With the small amount of PS5 internal storage, I’ve wanted to only fill it with native PS5 games and run PS4 games from an external if possible. But I also don’t want to play a lesser version of the PS4 game. Load times don’t bother me as much as getting the better frame rate enchantments, so it sounds like I can just leave the game files on the external.

One of these days I’ll invest in an internal SSD expansion.

@lolwhatno I'll see your Days Gone and raise you Witcher 3, the load times on that were absolutely awful 😅

@lolwhatno Oh, I didn’t know the load times were bad for Days Gone. That’s good to know. I’ll just be sure to download that one straight onto the internal drive when I get around to it.

On the subject, it’s amazing to me how variable the load times are. I’m not a software developer or programmer, but it’s weird how some games can be nearly instantaneous while others take forever to load.

I played FF7R Intergrade and closely followed by R&C Rift Apart and was just amazed at how instantly the game popped up and how quickly the save loaded; as soon as I clicked the continue button I was playing the game right away. I got accustomed to the speed and then expected that Demon’s Souls would also load quickly, but although it’s pretty fast, the loads are by no means instant like that. Booting up the game takes a few seconds to get to the title screen, and then after clicking continue you get the fog-filled transition screen for a few seconds. All in all it’s still leagues faster than last gen games usually were, but some PS4 games are still super fast to load like Ghost of Tsushima. Even on my vanilla PS4 it loads so quickly.

Obviously part of the loading comes down to studio expertise and whether a game is built tailored to the hardware. Most first party games run faster and more efficiently (although apparently not true for Days Gone). Also having recently played RiME on my PS5, it’s remarkable how sloooowww that game loads, even on PS5! For a simple small 4 hour game, it’s amazing that it takes probably 10 times longer to load that GoT did on older hardware! 😄

@lolwhatno That is a good question — I think I’d rather have the one long initial loading time and then be able to play seamlessly after that, rather than have a quick start but having to sit through multiple shorter loads during the gameplay.

So in that regard, perhaps it makes sense for an open world game like Day Gone to take a while to load, whereas Rift Apart has you in the action right away but you have a short transition animation whenever you change worlds. 🤔

I suppose it depends whether the game is the type of game I’d sit and play for 3-4 hours at a time, or whether it’s a game that’s a ‘jump in, jump out’ type of game that I play in 30-45 minute bursts. Playing Dirt 5 right now and I use it for the latter — a game to just jump into for an hour and do 3 or 4 races and then be done. Using for that purpose, the load times are really quite unacceptable, considering this is a native PS5 game. The loads really should be much faster — both when the game is booted and also between races. And the online match load time was extremely excessive when I tried that, but that’s a common issue with online modes in general.

As for DG, that’s right — I’ve never played it. I’ve never even downloaded onto my system yet. I might be able to get to this year. I’m torn between my next zombie game being DG vs. TLoU2 vs. RE4 vs. TWD4. I’m leaning toward playing TLoU2 first. Have you played it and how would you rank the two (DG vs TLoU2)? I know they are really different styles of gameplay, but thematically I can only enjoy the zombie apocalypse setting so often. I really loved RE3 a couple months ago, so I’ll be due for my next zombie game soon. 🧟‍♂️

@lolwhatno Yeah, that’s a good approach. I think I’ll watch my mood and see what gameplay loop sounds the most satisfying at the time. My next couple game slots are taken up already anyways, so who knows when I’ll get to it. But I’ll eventually have to fill my zombie quota for the year! 😄

@Th3solution I'm coming at this load times thing from a general software development point of view as I haven't got game specific knowledge. In my experience load times will be hugely affected by the speed of the hardware, definitely, but there's other things that you have to factor in. A few of the things I can think of off the top of my head are:

1. Is it one large file or lots of smaller files (although the later should be negated a bit with the fact that it's using an SSD so pretty much no seek time)
2. Is it data that lends itself well to compression e.g. is it oodle textures or something that can't use hardware decompression
3. How is that data loaded e.g. is it done sequentially or in parallel
4. Does that data have to be transformed / worked on in some way once it's loaded before it's ready to be used

I know that there's been talk from some developers in the past that their engines don't always benefit from more cores because they are doing more work in a single thread so it could be that this is still happening a lot. That problem will apply to both loading the data and also any transformation that needs to take place of that data once it's loaded. Various structures might need to be built to create the game world and some of that might be dictated by the contents of the users save file that may alter what's in the world etc. It's likely that some game engines just work a certain way that would need deep down changes in order to allow improvements in the hardware to filter up into the software.

It's interesting stuff though and I'd love to have the time to delve more into the game specific side of things myself but I'm too busy playing games

@render Thanks for your thoughts. It’s all a few levels above my head but I can understand the gist of it.
I would be curious to run RiME on PS4 side by side with PS5 just to see how much the SSD helps loading, but I bet it’s not a drastic change. For someone like me who has no understanding of the inner workings of software and hardware, I just look at the face value of the game and think, “How can this simple looking game not be faster than this other enormously complex looking game?” But it’s obviously much more complicated.

Maybe it’s like putting a Ferrari engine in a cement truck and expecting it to still drive 200 mph. 😅 It’s more than the power of the engine, it’s the way you construct the whole car that makes it fast. (Probably a horrible analogy, but more on my level 😂)

@Th3solution It's only when I read it back did I realise that what I wrote was more technical than I first thought. You are right with your analogy though, just because somethings got a faster engine in it, it doesn't mean it can go as fast as that engine could theoretically propel it. The gearbox and the drive train might not be capable of transferring that power to the wheels in a way that would make real world gains for a start and the vehicle might just be totally the wrong type for that engine to be useful.

Shame that isn't the case though as it would have been great to just get instant loading across all games and you feel really disappointed when you go back to an older PS4 game to find that it's just really slow to load. It's the same with the DualSense. When I go back and play a PS4 game that doesn't use the haptics and triggers it now feels like there's something missing. Hopefully soon all games will use these features so we can be totally spoiled 😀

@velio84 review day must be nerve wrecking for those people.