@Richnj Way to take things literally and humourlessly. 😂 Very po-faced of you!
Injecting personal preference is the reason there are sites like this in the first place and they include comments sections. I disagree, they're not "pointless overall", that's a dour and dismissive attitude if ever I heard one, perhaps in an attempt to try and shut down a point of view you don't agree with?
If a "design philosophy" has unexpected benefits when used unorthodoxly, then surely the conclusion is that it is relevant and the design was a good one...
@Richnj @JapaneseSonic Thumb for face buttons, first finger for right stick, middle finger for right bumper/trigger.
"That's not a technique that's taken in to consideration when designing a pad."
Whether or not they take that into consideration at the design stage is kinda irrelevant - it works for me so it's my preference. Gaming is all about variety and controller choices make or break in some cases - witness competitive SSBM players who will only use a GameCube controller hooked up to an original console running through a CRT as the reaction times etc are really important!
"So placing the face buttons in the secondary position felt extremely wierd, to everyone."
Felt great to me. It has my favourite controller layout actually, so it's not "wierd [sic], to everyone" as you have sweepingly generalised.
As I mentioned in a comment just above yours, with the Wii U Pro controller I was able to use my right hand to control the camera and press face buttons simultaneously; it's the only controller I've ever found that I was able to comfortably do that with. Try doing that when the buttons and right stick are in the places they are on the PlayStation and Xbox controllers - it's a pain. I liked playing the Witcher 3 with this controller a lot, even with the downgraded graphics to support the Switch's potato-level hardware (which they haven't bothered to update for the OLED model, classic Nintendo).
@WizzNL I'm glad someone else spotted his logical fallacy there. "I like this game more now, but no, I wouldn't rate it any higher" 😂 - if you liked it more you surely would, right?
The DualSense is one of the best things about the PS5 (it's certainly not the poorly designed UI which I've commented on elsewhere).
It's not original but they kinda combined the Xbox One/Series controllers with the HD Rumble feature of the Switch and they kinda polished both a bit as they saw fit.
I must admit I'm not like, blown away by it, and I wouldn't say for me it's significantly better than my preferred white Xbox Elite controller, but when games use it properly it's an extra layer/dimension to the experience and immersion. Astro's Playroom is a killer tech demo for it, even if the game itself totally feels like a Mario title in different clothes.
In some respects Xbox controllers still have the edge - I like that the face buttons are closer together, the shape of the top bumpers/triggers and - well this is kinda obvious - but the d-pad on the Xbox Elite controllers slays the joke of a thing that's on the DualSense, and the previous four DualShocks. Also the asymmetrical analogue stick layout is way better. I still think the Wii U Pro controller with both sticks at the top was the best though; I could do stuff like control the camera and the face buttons at the same time with right hand, although the triggers on the back of the Elite controller go some way towards making up for this.
@jmac1686 I have Venom battery backs in my two main Xbox controllers (Shock Blue Series and old gen 1 white Elite) and the battery life is roughly double what I get from the DualSense.
The worst thing about the PS5 is it's interface. No, really.
They really haven't learnt anything from the mistakes of the PS4, or any of their other products (Sony are well-known for confusing, disorganised settings menu layouts, and so it remains). It's all flash and low functionality. Even pressing the PS button, the quick menu isn't in focus, it's the things above it (like the last saved video clip for example). The other day it wouldn't even let me select anything from the Games | Media bar, the whole thing was frozen so it needed a reboot. Games regularly don't suspend when resuming from sleep - they have to be loaded from scratch, go through all the menus again etc. Not impressive when Quick Resume on the Series X can hold somewhere between 5-8 games in perfect suspend, on average. PS5 can't manage even one? How next gen! 😂
I like the DualSense, but I don't find it particularly original. It's like they combined a Series controller with the HD Rumble feature of the Switch and polished it a bit. Best controller they ever made, but the d-pad is kinda 🤮 for fighting games, the battery life is about as terrible as the DualShock 4 was (and will get worse over time I'm sure), but yeah works pretty nice in Astro's Playroom and Returnal. Bet just like HD Rumble it'll be a neglected feature soon enough. Which is a shame because the controller is the absolute standout and the thing that - slightly better visuals/higher frame rates aside - actually does feel next gen.
The help/guide features? You know from the first time I used the PS5 I barely noticed they were there. I usually game at my desk so that means dual monitors - one for gaming and the other laptop. So I'll just YouTube search bits I'm stuck on anyway, negating the need for the feature at all. I wish you could turn it off.
I also wish you could move where the Notifications appear - unless I'm mistaken they get stuck in the top right and this cannot be changed. I believe Xbox One/Series consoles allow you to stick it in one of nine different places on the screen. Sometimes notifications showing makes it hard to get to the settings menu as the UI elements are hidden behind the notification. Not particularly bright.
From a usability standpoint I prefer the Xbox One/Series dashboard in basically every way. Turning the controller/power off is a couple of button presses; on the PS5 it takes like, a dozen. Why is that, Sony? It's lucky some of the exclusive games are incredible because otherwise it wouldn't get used.
@Omnistalgic Yeah when I got a PS5 I was kinda miffed that Bloodborne still plays exactly the same as it did on the base PS4 and PS4 Pro, with it's 1080p30 lock, crappy frame pacing and shimmering caused by poor anti-aliasing. The game is amazing, one of the GOATs, so it really deserves better, especially since something like inFAMOUS: Second Son cleans up really nicely on the PS5, best it's ever played.
This was well worth a watch. I love getting into the nitty gritty technical details of things so I enjoyed the developers talking about how hard they hit Reddit, the wiki, watched playthroughs etc to gauge what people liked and what could be improved. I think they really tried their damndest to respect the spirit and execution of the original game while ironing out some of the more frustrating flaws. Video tutorials in-game showing exactly how to do it is something I've liked since Human Revolution, and with something as nails hard as Soulsborne games this was definitely a wise move. I love that they're even checking trophy details to see that more people get past Phalanx as compared to the PS3 original version, so it's a little acknowledgement that they've done their job and people love their remaster.
@JJ2 "It's also funny because I know some fanatics are convinced PS5 was supposed to launch in 2019 and got delayed at the last minute to try compete with TFLOPs haha"
Heh. That is moderately amusing. I'm not in that camp, although the talk of them running the CPU/RAM at higher speeds than originally planned to get the TFLOP number into double digits is interesting, lest it be a 9/12 split versus Series X. There's really no evidence to support that theory but it's something to think about. It's not like raw performance always matters anyway - the One X really didn't revive Microsoft's fortunes in the last days of the previous gen, although I personally still think it's one of the greatest consoles ever made (in looks and performance). Also the Switch is basically a potato and that's sold more like hot cakes, so raw horsepower isn't the whole story. As always, it's about the games. Having the games people want.
"Anyway in this type of discussion people don't listen"
MOST people don't listen, sure. I do. In fact if you read the comments to this piece you'll see I agree with some of what you're saying and some of what everyone else is saying. Part of the pleasure of gaming is not just the act itself but also discussing it - that's why sites like this exist right.
"I already said PS5 has better compression on SSD for instance, so in reality I THINK you could install more games in PS5 than SX origin SSD"
Yes you did, and while that's true it's a lot easier to expand the storage on a Series X than a PS5. At least with the Series X Seagate Expansion SSD things, hideously expensive as they are, you can play any and all Series X games from it. With an external SSD hooked up to the PS5 via USB3, you can "archive" and that's it. I consider that a weakness.
"Don't take it too seriously man and have a nice weekend."
I don't - to me this is just a polite debate/conversation - and you too. 😊
@JJ2 "It's funny because I had the feeling you didn't have a ps5 and now your saying you have one."
Yes because in the time I said that, and the time I said Returnal is freaking awesome (it totally is, really a killer app for me) I bought one. It took a while because there's a lot of unserious sellers and scammers to avoid, but yeah. After I'm done with Returnal I'll probably sell it on I expect; we'll see.
"You may mean well but I'm not interested in console war and that's where this conversation is going."
Healthy debate about the merits and disadvantages isn't a war. It's only a war if someone completely trashes one system and clings to the other. I don't do that; that's what platform agnostic means. I may prefer the Series X (and owning a PS5 has not changed this opinion; still do) but that's not to say the PS5 is terrible. It has some great games, the DualSense is a lot better than the toy-feeling DualShock 4 (feels more like an Xbox Elite controller which is a huge compliment, even kinda looks like my white/black Elite), I'm one of the people who kinda likes the collared design even though it's a bit on the large side.
Side note: One design "flaw" (although it's clearly more of an aesthetic choice) they both share is the front buttons are too small and too hidden. Quite hard to hit the target to eject the disc on either. Series X is slightly less of an annoyance in one respect though; it does have a sync button for controllers so I don't have to bust out a USB cable when moving between consoles.
"Ps5 had a fantastic launch line up so far and the idea the console was rushed to compete with SX is just silly."
Ah, here's the thing. I never said it had a poor line-up of games. I wouldn't say the PS5 had a stellar launch line-up but it wasn't dire either. Certainly better than the PS2 many years ago. I didn't even mention that; you've just taken what I wrote to mean that, and that isn't what I meant.
I was talking purely about the hardware, and the firmware (which admittedly is a type of software). Neither launched in a state I would consider complete. If anyone considers that they were, at launch, then I would say people are as happy to buy unfinished consoles as they are to buy unfinished games and are letting Sony off of the hook way too easily. For example, Microsoft made sure that SSD expansion slot media was available on Day One and that's (at this point) a proprietary media/form factor of storage. Sony's M.2 slot, which uses regular M.2 style spacing, is more standard and yet it launched with the slot disabled and no media to put in it. If Sony's excuse is "there aren't any M.2 SSDs fast enough to facilitate the speed needed for games" then they should have made one, or subcontracted out to have one made. They're in the business of making hardware - TVs, home cinema systems, games consoles - and have been for some time, so it's really a lame excuse.
"Look believe any narrative you want."
This presupposes I've been "suckered in" by someone else's train of thought. I haven't. I look at the facts as given and draw my own conclusions. The only narrative I believe in is my own, and I think narrative is completely the wrong word to describe it. It's more of an honest analysis.
I don't care for the Sony/Nintendo approach (funny that these old rivals are often quite similar in their styles; Astro's Playroom in fact feels just like a Nintendo game) of just dribbling tiny tidbits of information out whenever the hell they feel like it, to be honest. I prefer the Microsoft approach - keep everyone regularly updated even if it's incremental.
I still don't understand why it's so difficult to have a webpage which timeline all the main first-party game release dates as a simple list, and if you click on the game name it gives you a diary of mini-updates, like when it's scheduled to go gold, if there are delays and a very brief reason why.
I think rather than encourage mystique and rabid speculation, which is where the gaming community often finds itself, they should just give people some information that's easy to access. Basic facts and updates will do, just to tear down the rumour mill before it's even fully built.
People who, for example, have families and have to limit the amount of cash they can drop on their hobby would probably appreciate more information. This way they can plan ahead for which ones they want to buy the most, especially with new PS5 releases being £70.
They didn't launch "too early to keep pace with Ms' .
The PS5 was launched as an unfinished product. It has poor airflow (stuff like allowing the rear mounted RAM chips to cook at 95ºc when a game is running which is way higher than it should be), the M.2 slot is disabled, there were some moderately severe issues with the firmware at launch (the "resume from sleep" causing game crashes), only being able to "archive" native PS5 games to an external USB3 device and that wasn't there at launch it's been added since plus you can't run them from an external device. Some Series titles can run straight off an external SSD rather than having to be copied back. Not all, but that's more than zero as it is for the PS5.
I genuinely don't think either the software or hardware was complete when they released it, but they kinda had to in an attempt to avoid MS getting a headstart like in the X360/PS3 gen.
That s fantasy narrative from console war BS. Id recommend you don t get into that silly stuff.
It's not silly/fantasy narrative. I don't believe in console wars - I'm platform agnostic, I just believe in good games, I don't use phrases like "salty ponies" or "PC master race".
I own both systems. The Series X strikes me as a pretty complete product, no major defects, still allows playing games from all 4 of it's generations without requiring the equivalent of PS Now. If I want to Quick Resume from Psychonauts (original Xbox) to Call Of Duty: Black Ops (Xbox 360) to The Witcher 3 (Xbox One X) to The Medium (Xbox Series) I can. The PS5's fancy DualSense pad is very nice, sure, but at this exact moment it's literally the only ace the console has, to me.
Compression is a lot better and after all its only 135GB difference left (of available space) with the SX.
135GB is still potentially a lot of games difference. Assuming an average 8GB for them, that's 16 extra Xbox 360 games I can store on the Series X. But I don't need to; I can and do run them off of an external 2TB USB3 SSD. That's two generations behind current. If I want to play PS3 games on the PS5, I have to subscribe to PS Now, and I can't justify the cost because I don't use it enough and it's cloud gaming which basically always introduces video quality and input lag issues. I'm not paying £13 a month for that, on top of potentially also paying £70 for all the newest releases. It's a total gouge.
Whereas on the Xbox platform, I've essentially had 6 months of Game Pass Ultimate for £4 (I got a £3 for 3 months, took a break, and then was offered a £1 for 3 months a few weeks after).
So for current advantages of the PS5 :-
Astro's Playroom is really impressive... once.
Returnal is incredible - it's the killer app that made me get a PS5, at least temporarily.
The DualSense is pretty impressive; feels way less like a toy than any of the DualShocks.
Series X, for me, holds all the other advantages which are numerous. For example, it runs quieter than the PS5, more noticeably than I realised. My PS5 doesn't appear to have coil whine, which is good.
@Cybrshrk I must admit, I bought a PS5 today and the prices on the store made my eyes pop in shock. It's hideously expensive, and I really don't see why everything seems to be £70. That's about six months of Game Pass Ultimate, right there. Where's Sony's "try before you buy" approach like you can do with that?
I don't use Remote Play features on any console (video quality drop and input lag are unacceptable to me, and with cloud gaming you get various degrees of both) but I can see why they would be useful to some.
Other thing I've already noticed about the PS5 is that the interface is more of the same crap that the PS4/PS4 Pro were. The Settings menu is still a cluttered, disorganised mess. They're still not making the most of the screen space - everything still seems to be a scrolling list, everywhere. The only improvements I can really see are it's faster (seeing as Sony never bothered to optimise Orbis OS on the PS4/PS4 Pro in eight years, pretty terrible, as it was always laggy and still is), and the home menu ambient music is better? That last one is moot because it'll get switched off at some point anyway.
Overall not impressed. Controller is better - form factor feels like an accomplished rip-off of the One and Series controllers except the left analogue stick is still in the wrong place and the shape buttons are still spaced too far apart.
It's a bit meh, really. Apart from being able to play some old PS4 favourites I own digitally (and again, disappointment here as The Witcher 3 is still locked to the same sluggish 30fps that the PS4 versions were) and Astro's Playroom showing off how amazing the DualSense upgrades are, I'm struggling to see what all the fuss is about.
Wow. Pretty poor showing, to buy a PS5 and then find that the game is locked to the same sluggish 30fps that both the PS4 and PS4 Pro were - my copy is digital so there's no choice in the matter.
The Series X uses the One X Enhanced edition where the frame cap is 60fps, except the Series runs 60fps everywhere because it can handle more detailed environments with more assets and NPCs, so it doesn't drop to 30-40fps in places like Novigrad and Oxenfurt.
Therefore, as things currently stand the best console to play this game on is Series X. I think it also has a higher base resolution (One X Enhanced version targets 4K, no DRS).
@Cybrshrk I happen to agree with you, however in terms of raw numbers there's no getting away from the sheer outselling of the PS5 to the Series X currently. They're way harder to buy used as well, and retain more of their "close to RRP" value on the used market. It's pretty crazy. I think Microsoft will close the gap over time, but not yet. Wait until those several awesome looking E3 announced games drop and there you have it.
What no one else seems to have pointed out is that it's funny to see how both Microsoft and Sony have found ways to spin the lack of games into their advertising. Still, higher FPS, faster loading times (especially with Quick Resume) and Auto HDR genuinely do make older games run better, in a similar way to how emulators upscale to make the games look better on modern 4K flat panels.
Oh, and the Series X is more than capable of running God of War. I was using it for exactly this the other day, so it's not strictly a PlayStation exclusive any more! 😁
@twitchtvpat Although I agree with you and see your point, it was good to have all these announcements in one place on one day. When publishers trickle it out, if you're not paying attention to gaming news often you might miss something. For people with limited time that's not always possible.
@The_New_Butler I think the Wii had the unique selling point of doing motion control fairly well, which meant it launched strongly with casuals after being on the market a while, especially with stuff like Wii Fit that wasn't strictly a regular video game. But looking back, it really was a fad, and the knock-on effect was the knock-off effect of seeing Sony and Microsoft rush to market with Move and Kinect which weren't as good. Nowadays nobody wants Kinect or even the new PS5 camera particularly; there's much more interest in PSVR.
@MrGawain Personally that has been my strategy for years. Publishers cash in on the impatience of gamers, often by overpricing their new releases. If you wait a while, easily done when you have a backlog of games to get through (most serious gamers do these days, it seems, myself included), you can snipe on on sale for half the original RRP or less. Or wait a few years and watch it get to maybe one fifth if the game was a good seller as used copies will flood the market and you can get a disc version that way.
Yeah I know all that, the AMD Jaguar CPU is the One X's bottleneck despite the massively improved GPU. Had to be that way for compatibility reasons. HDD is easily upgraded to SSD in the One X to reduce load times significantly due to the SATA-III bus, over the (I believe) SATA-II bus of the original One. I mentioned the 667GB earlier, yes. 😉
Side note, you refer to the newest consoles as having "hard drives" - they're surface-mounted SSDs (direct to motherboard). 😊
EDIT: PS5 is surface mount, Xbox Series X is a smaller-than-regular-form-factor M.2 style. Both still SSDs, though.
@The_New_Butler Developers who truly want to target the "casual market" make free to play mobile games with in-game microtransactions. Sadly some of the seedy business practices from the mobile market - the ones that work, anyway - have seeped into home console gaming, which sucks. EA clearly looked at that model, saw a meal ticket, and have now spent years working out how to better psychologically manipulate people into gambling thousands of real world credits away in their Ultimate Team scam.
@JJ2 Oh yeah I know the tech reasons for the smaller PS5 SSD, I watched Cerny spell it out, it's just in a world where gamers latch onto "one number is bigger than the other" (like the stupid fanboy teraflop flaming prior to next gen launches) things it doesn't look great, more so when you launch a console where only 667GB of that is usable and games regularly top 100GB and average maybe 50GB now, especially when you launch too early to keep pace with Microsoft and aren't able to activate the M.2 SSD expansion bay slot. Bet when they launch a slim, collarless version of the PS5 they'll offer 1.6TB and by then the M.2 slot will finally be usable. Bet launch PS5s will be a lot cheaper soon after! People who paid £900 for them are gonna feel chumped if they don't already.
Fallout I haven't played enough to comment on. One of the few notable space games I played recently (I love the genre but think it's under-served) was No Man's Sky, and that struck me as a rather tedious exercise in resource management where everything expires on a timer, so something more RPG based with less "do tedious tasks to micromanage your way out of dying" in the vein of Elder Scrolls or Mass Effect would be preferred.
@JJ2 Well said! Great games and the ability to enjoy them (on your own and with others) is more the point isn't it? Maybe it's fair to say too many people enjoy the soap opera melodrama aspect of it these days because there's more direct communication between developers/publishers and the gaming community. Who knows? It's usually not just one thing. 😁
Exclusives are what they are. If they help sell systems and these systems then go on to host more great games (exclusive or not) then it's a means to an end. To be fair the one game that really makes me want to own a PS5 is Returnal - I've been playing Housemarque games since before they were called that, and Super Stardust Delta was, I believe, one of the games that made me want and soon after own a Vita (still one of the best titles on the system, too) , so it doesn't surprise me they've done it again. But what I have noticed is the "exclusives" (in quotes because some are coming to PC or are already on it, like Flight Simulator) coming to Series X are way more in tune with what I want, perhaps because there's generally more of a mature theme. For example I was excited about Rift Apart until reviews started saying it's visually stunning but the gameplay is shallow perhaps because it's targeting that "all ages" demographic, and subsequently I'm now more fired up by things like Starfield and Redfall even though we've really only been teased with cinematic pre-renders instead of actual gameplay - Starfield claims "in game footage" but it's still basically a cinematic. Hopefully it's "Bethesda does Mass Effect really well" but we shall see. Redfall looks like Avengers meets Hellboy and Blade kinda insanity as a game and I think we're seeing a potential sleeper hit there - one that initially sells okay, gets good word of mouth and then explodes a year after release. Too early to say really! Fun to speculate though, as long as you don't fall into the classic gamer trap of taking fiction as fact 😏
@JJ2 Ha yeah I remember that. Maybe they were ashamed of it. The Series S is certainly going to hamper the Series X a bit, and it's weird to me how it's a "next gen" console yet it's not capable of 4K output unlike the One X before it. Same as the PS4 Pro has 1TB of storage by default, yet the PS5 that replaced it has 825GB. Classic case of "the newer ones have less of a thing".
Maybe it's more accurate to say Microsoft are more open and transparent by comparison to Sony. Either way, as long as both of those companies have great games to sell that we all enjoy, their PR isn't really as important unless it's, for example, really bad PR like EA using Ultimate Team to manipulate kids into gambling or Ubisoft's sexual haressment (panda) culture.
Well, one of the problems with the modern world is oversharing, right? Which can lead to it looking like eagerness for attention combined with having nothing to say. Sony are so committed to not doing this they've ditched E3.
I don't know, that doesn't bother me personally. Would have been nice if they'd said more about the console shortages though, as they've been vague and it gave some people the impression they don't care, which is never a good look. Gamers are a fickle bunch though, so it's hard to tell between the facts a company give and the exaggeration and histrionics gamers add, sometimes.
Microsoft are doing this more open, transparent thing and sticking to it, making it work for them. Their E3 reveals were really good - I was stunned how many potentially great games there are in the next few years, and kinda vindicated my choice to go with Series X first and PS5 later as a few are dropping within the next couple of months. Forza Horizon 5 looks like epic fun, for example, and it's one of about a dozen I'm looking forward to.
What I'm saying is, either way can work (lots of communication or only the bare minimum) for a company, and as you get older you don't really care because you've got more important things to worry about. In the end you just buy the games you really want and don't worry so much about the noise excitable and easily led younger gamers make so much. Old dogs versus puppies, basically!
BLOPS4 was free on Game Pass for months before this, pretty sure, and Plague Tale has been on there a couple of months. If you own both Sony and Microsoft machines you must feel pretty duped cos you're not really getting anything you didn't already have.
Let's be honest. It's gonna be hard for Sony to ever top giving away Horizon: Zero Dawn for free. That game is immense, beautiful, not perfect but so fun, really a great gift and you didn't even need PS Minus for that, just a regular PS account. I'm looking forward to dipping back into that when I get a PS5 in a year or two.
The fact they're even offering a CoD game suggests they're kinda lamely trying to respond to GP. Which is interesting.
That's cool, when I pick up a used PS5 in a year or two I bet I'll be able to get either a disc edition or digital copy for maybe £20 on sale, all I have to do is wait. There's so many great titles dropping on Series X in that time it'll fly by.
I don't think I've ever seen such a huge disparity in quality between two back to back titles from the same developer. One is a much-loved piece of interactive fiction which rightly won countless awards, and the other is Cyberpunk.
Not only do I feel bad for the developers who have this travesty on their CV, I also feel bad for Mike Pondsmith, who created the IP. It's sad that the first taste of his fiction will come to many in the form of a buggy, ruined potential video game. CDPR have kinda tarnished his reputation into the bargain, not just their own.
Still, this failure might inspire CDPR to go back to the well and make a stunning Witcher prequel that can ascend to the same heights as Wild Hunt. Maybe they can get transport right this time too - it's hard to believe they made a traffic system worse than Roach ever was, but they did!
Huh. Yeah the DualShock 4 always had pretty weak battery life even on the mark II model from new. Wouldn't take much for it to go from three to two bars when gaming. Lowering the glowbar to minimum and keeping the internal speaker at half or less helped, but not much. Not surprised to hear that the Dualsense is much the same.
Battery life on Xbox controllers seems better, both last and current gen. Even using a third party battery pack/dock I tend to get more life out of a single charge than with a DualShock 4 with the One controllers, more so with the Series models, and battery metering by the OS is almost always accurate. It even disables rumble support when the battery is really on empty point so you have that haptic loss as a reminder you need to change and charge soon. Maybe Sony should copy that feature. I'd take the form factor of the Xbox controllers over the last few Sony attempts as well, despite not always being as durable (although with how fragile the Dualsense is I think the tables might have turned there).
Not sure if Sony "lied" in the strictest definition of the word, but there was definite misleading at several steps along the way, a lot of which the gaming journalism sections of the web took and ran with.
I still think the PS5 was released as an unfinished product so Sony could avoid Microsoft having a year's lead like they did with the Xbox 360, which cost Sony dearly although they eventually caught up by offering a better overall platform and making cheaper and cheaper hardware by cutting out the extra USB ports, PS2 back compat (and charging for "ported" titles as PS Classics) and so on.
I think if it was released November 2021, i.e. before Christmas this year, it would be with far fewer firmware bugs than are still present, a working M.2 SSD slot and probably a more refined cooling design that has better airflow because the one they went with doesn't have great pipe/porting so the rear RAM chips for example are cooking at 95ºc when running a game.
I still think the One/Series consoles have the better dashboard, to be honest. It's fast, easy to navigate, pretty powerful. It's sad it still renders at 1080p and upscales to 4K but I have a feeling part of the reason for that is to maintain interoperability between all Xbox One/Series versions, i.e. they're not having to fork the codebase to have a 4K version for the One S, One X and Series X while sticking with a 1080p version for the base Ones and Series S. Slightly blurrier fonts? Big deal. 😂 Beats having to use the "still laggy after all these years even on a PS4 Pro with an SSD retrofitted" PS4 dash. Nice shade of blue on a 4K TV though.
I found a lot of the cross-plat titles from the PS3/X360 era are better played on the One X or Series consoles for 4K upscaling and often better performance. For example, the original Red Dead Redemption is the best version and has smoothing in "quality" mode to sort out a lot of the jaggies. Dead Space is currently on Game Pass Ultimate as well, the whole series actually. Also great that Xbox Live for older Xbox 360 titles works too - I'm still able to play my favourite iteration of the Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops (the original) with friends across teh interwebz, which is great. Still gets an average of 40,000-60,000 people online at any one time too. A lot of the cross-plat games, on Xbox 360 versions they have higher base rendering resolutions as well (pre-DRS days too I believe) - for example the aforementioned BLOPS "the Xbox 360 game running somewhere in the region of 1040x608 while PS3 is closer to 960x544" according to this old EG article https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-tech-comparison-cod-black-ops-pc from our long-standing friends at Digital Foundry.
For any PS3 exclusives that never got turned into PS4-era games for use on my Pro, it's the best place for those, I suppose.
Oh and Psychonauts, kind of a cult classic, that's on Game Pass too and despite being 4:3 locked (I think; maybe there's a widescreen mode buried in the menus I haven't found yet) it's a good looking version of the game and plays great.
One of the things I liked about Dawn was it placed no importance whatsoever on the sexualisation of Aloy's character, which for the type of game and setting was very appropriate. She felt more real that way rather than being a sex object. I see her as hunter and acrobat first, and barely pay any mind to the fact she's female cos from the point of view of the game it's irrelevant.
Its sad that those kinds of Barbie doll plastic photoshop looking things are stuff certain men find attractive, though, like on the right hand picture. They look freakish and fake to me. Bimboification is a real thing, and in my opinion a real problem. It's gross. Natural is better, but that's personal bias on my part. Less makeup often works wonders and is better for the skin so it can breathe rather than using it as a face painted on top.
Huh. I thought if they're using someone else's work they had to credit it, but I suppose where the logo is based on Sony's IP it's a gray area.
As usual, sad to see how much emphasis gaming companies put on Metacritic. And amusing to see VIllage getting a mention as a "never been better" game when it's had pretty mixed reactions, especially from fans of the series.
I think now that you mention it you could say that it's an either/or situation, but I find Quantic Dream games have a less linear progression due to result of QTEs offset by dialogue/exploration choices. Whereas Naughty Dog the story is basically the same every play through interspersed with "don't die in this linear gameplay section" bits to get to the next cutscene, unlike say Detroit: Become Human where I've completed it 4 times and had pretty different experiences each time.
Only 5 hours in, goofing around exploring the world and hunting the robot monsters but it's quite the game. Really does make use of the PS4 Pro's extra horsepower and I'm very surprised how much they've been able to squeeze out of the console - even with checkerboarding the image is super sharp and yummy looking in 4K. I like the way Aloy's inner monologue is spoken out to the player so you know how she feels about a particular situation. And the video game world really does need more female badasses - I used to count Lara Croft as one but since the reboots, sure, there's character development to make her more complex and real however she comes across as unsure of herself, whereas Aloy strikes me so far as overall more confident even though some doubts etc linger in the background. Really a very polished game that steals an hour from you without you even realising - the "just one more quest" thing any good open world presents where you find it hard to pull yourself away from the immersive experience.
Call of Duty: Black Ops (Zombies Mode) Xbox One X
Nothing beats a good round of co-op on this old beast. I recently looked at the tech specs for the Xbox 360 version and although it is superior to the PS3 version it's actually rendering the game below 720p. I wonder how many games of that era were struggling to render the games above 600p or so even when the Xbox 360 itself was outputting to 1080p. Probably quite a few. My guess is the HD consoles were often that in name only... even now we're seeing the same sort of thing with DRS, that a game renders 1080p-1440p or so and then the result is scaled to fit 4K. Still, it's a big improvement. And there's more to games than resolution, after all...
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Xbox One X
Had less time with it this week but been on Skellige doing side missions and some main quest ones like The Last Wish. I had Enemy Scaling set to ON and it makes the djinn ridiculously strong, so I ended up dying 20 times before looking up and finding this out online. Switch it off and... way too easy. I just figured originally that the idea was the djinn would be tricky on any level/difficulty due to being a super powerful genie but no, game bug. 😂
What I always find odd is how many space games there were in the early days and how few good ones there are now (with the exception of stuff like No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous I suppose; YMMV) so if Returnal knocks it past the stratosphere I'll be genuinely impressed. I'll still probably buy it when it's on sale though, same as everything else - then a decent amount of actual trustworthy reviews will exist and any major bugs would hopefully have been squashed in the first few big update patches that all big games seem to have these days.
I was given this free on disc when I bought the PS4 Pro, haven't played it yet. At least now I won't have to find the disc to not play it. 😂
Seriously though, well done Sony for this. Although booting up the PS4 Pro reminds me why it doesn't get used - it never downloads updates when in sleep even though it's been set to and added about 4 to the list before Horizon which I decided to pause, it whined about being out of space even when I changed the location of the download (you have to delete and re-add it for it to "notice" the Application Install Location had been changed...) and it takes like 10 presses to turn the controller off compared to the One X's 3 presses. 🤮 It might have a ton of great games but it also has a truly crappy, cluttered UI where I still can't easily find things years later.
This has been an ever-increasing problem since the start of the previous gen's era, I find. Developers all assume that gamers are running things on 100-inch 4K projection screens and have perfect sight, I'm sure.
@mariomaster96 Oh yeah, I think they went for 45FPS for Return To Arkham release of Arkham Asylum, which makes no sense because it causes judder. Totally stupid.
I prize 60FPS above almost everything, so I'd have whatever keeps a solid 60FPS, wouldn't be fussed by the lack of ray-tracing.
Still amuses me that PS5 boxes have 8K proudly displayed on the outside. Yep, like we'll ever see any graphically complex game running that, no developer with sense will ever target it. Guarantee you the next PS5 model/iteration with a new box will just say 4K HDR and maybe VRR/ALLM if they bother to implement those, plus whatever the higher capacity models will have in terms of onboard storage.
@HMazzy111 I'd like that. I still use my Vita. Over the weekend I was playing The Pinball Arcade which still looks and plays great, especially with the overclocking home-brew to push the FPS up on the more complex/poorly optimised tables.
Comments 645
Re: Xbox Boss Is a Big Fan of Sony's PS5 Controller
@Richnj Way to take things literally and humourlessly. 😂 Very po-faced of you!
Injecting personal preference is the reason there are sites like this in the first place and they include comments sections. I disagree, they're not "pointless overall", that's a dour and dismissive attitude if ever I heard one, perhaps in an attempt to try and shut down a point of view you don't agree with?
If a "design philosophy" has unexpected benefits when used unorthodoxly, then surely the conclusion is that it is relevant and the design was a good one...
Re: Xbox Boss Is a Big Fan of Sony's PS5 Controller
@Richnj I think I was quite clear in saying it's irrelevant to me - the next words after you ended the quote were "it works for me"...
Re: Xbox Boss Is a Big Fan of Sony's PS5 Controller
@Richnj @JapaneseSonic Thumb for face buttons, first finger for right stick, middle finger for right bumper/trigger.
"That's not a technique that's taken in to consideration when designing a pad."
Whether or not they take that into consideration at the design stage is kinda irrelevant - it works for me so it's my preference. Gaming is all about variety and controller choices make or break in some cases - witness competitive SSBM players who will only use a GameCube controller hooked up to an original console running through a CRT as the reaction times etc are really important!
Re: Xbox Boss Is a Big Fan of Sony's PS5 Controller
@Richnj
"So placing the face buttons in the secondary position felt extremely wierd, to everyone."
Felt great to me. It has my favourite controller layout actually, so it's not "wierd [sic], to everyone" as you have sweepingly generalised.
As I mentioned in a comment just above yours, with the Wii U Pro controller I was able to use my right hand to control the camera and press face buttons simultaneously; it's the only controller I've ever found that I was able to comfortably do that with. Try doing that when the buttons and right stick are in the places they are on the PlayStation and Xbox controllers - it's a pain. I liked playing the Witcher 3 with this controller a lot, even with the downgraded graphics to support the Switch's potato-level hardware (which they haven't bothered to update for the OLED model, classic Nintendo).
Re: Soapbox: PS5 Is Beautiful When Its Distinctive Features Are Used Properly
@WizzNL I'm glad someone else spotted his logical fallacy there. "I like this game more now, but no, I wouldn't rate it any higher" 😂 - if you liked it more you surely would, right?
Re: Xbox Boss Is a Big Fan of Sony's PS5 Controller
The DualSense is one of the best things about the PS5 (it's certainly not the poorly designed UI which I've commented on elsewhere).
It's not original but they kinda combined the Xbox One/Series controllers with the HD Rumble feature of the Switch and they kinda polished both a bit as they saw fit.
I must admit I'm not like, blown away by it, and I wouldn't say for me it's significantly better than my preferred white Xbox Elite controller, but when games use it properly it's an extra layer/dimension to the experience and immersion. Astro's Playroom is a killer tech demo for it, even if the game itself totally feels like a Mario title in different clothes.
In some respects Xbox controllers still have the edge - I like that the face buttons are closer together, the shape of the top bumpers/triggers and - well this is kinda obvious - but the d-pad on the Xbox Elite controllers slays the joke of a thing that's on the DualSense, and the previous four DualShocks. Also the asymmetrical analogue stick layout is way better. I still think the Wii U Pro controller with both sticks at the top was the best though; I could do stuff like control the camera and the face buttons at the same time with right hand, although the triggers on the back of the Elite controller go some way towards making up for this.
Re: Xbox Boss Is a Big Fan of Sony's PS5 Controller
@jmac1686 I have Venom battery backs in my two main Xbox controllers (Shock Blue Series and old gen 1 white Elite) and the battery life is roughly double what I get from the DualSense.
Re: Soapbox: PS5 Is Beautiful When Its Distinctive Features Are Used Properly
The worst thing about the PS5 is it's interface. No, really.
They really haven't learnt anything from the mistakes of the PS4, or any of their other products (Sony are well-known for confusing, disorganised settings menu layouts, and so it remains). It's all flash and low functionality. Even pressing the PS button, the quick menu isn't in focus, it's the things above it (like the last saved video clip for example). The other day it wouldn't even let me select anything from the Games | Media bar, the whole thing was frozen so it needed a reboot. Games regularly don't suspend when resuming from sleep - they have to be loaded from scratch, go through all the menus again etc. Not impressive when Quick Resume on the Series X can hold somewhere between 5-8 games in perfect suspend, on average. PS5 can't manage even one? How next gen! 😂
I like the DualSense, but I don't find it particularly original. It's like they combined a Series controller with the HD Rumble feature of the Switch and polished it a bit. Best controller they ever made, but the d-pad is kinda 🤮 for fighting games, the battery life is about as terrible as the DualShock 4 was (and will get worse over time I'm sure), but yeah works pretty nice in Astro's Playroom and Returnal. Bet just like HD Rumble it'll be a neglected feature soon enough. Which is a shame because the controller is the absolute standout and the thing that - slightly better visuals/higher frame rates aside - actually does feel next gen.
The help/guide features? You know from the first time I used the PS5 I barely noticed they were there. I usually game at my desk so that means dual monitors - one for gaming and the other laptop. So I'll just YouTube search bits I'm stuck on anyway, negating the need for the feature at all. I wish you could turn it off.
I also wish you could move where the Notifications appear - unless I'm mistaken they get stuck in the top right and this cannot be changed. I believe Xbox One/Series consoles allow you to stick it in one of nine different places on the screen. Sometimes notifications showing makes it hard to get to the settings menu as the UI elements are hidden behind the notification. Not particularly bright.
From a usability standpoint I prefer the Xbox One/Series dashboard in basically every way. Turning the controller/power off is a couple of button presses; on the PS5 it takes like, a dozen. Why is that, Sony? It's lucky some of the exclusive games are incredible because otherwise it wouldn't get used.
Re: Demon's Souls Documentary Is an Hour Long Deep Dive into PS5 Remake
@Omnistalgic Yeah when I got a PS5 I was kinda miffed that Bloodborne still plays exactly the same as it did on the base PS4 and PS4 Pro, with it's 1080p30 lock, crappy frame pacing and shimmering caused by poor anti-aliasing. The game is amazing, one of the GOATs, so it really deserves better, especially since something like inFAMOUS: Second Son cleans up really nicely on the PS5, best it's ever played.
Re: Demon's Souls Documentary Is an Hour Long Deep Dive into PS5 Remake
This was well worth a watch. I love getting into the nitty gritty technical details of things so I enjoyed the developers talking about how hard they hit Reddit, the wiki, watched playthroughs etc to gauge what people liked and what could be improved. I think they really tried their damndest to respect the spirit and execution of the original game while ironing out some of the more frustrating flaws. Video tutorials in-game showing exactly how to do it is something I've liked since Human Revolution, and with something as nails hard as Soulsborne games this was definitely a wise move. I love that they're even checking trophy details to see that more people get past Phalanx as compared to the PS3 original version, so it's a little acknowledgement that they've done their job and people love their remaster.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@JJ2
"It's also funny because I know some fanatics are convinced PS5 was supposed to launch in 2019 and got delayed at the last minute to try compete with TFLOPs haha"
Heh. That is moderately amusing. I'm not in that camp, although the talk of them running the CPU/RAM at higher speeds than originally planned to get the TFLOP number into double digits is interesting, lest it be a 9/12 split versus Series X. There's really no evidence to support that theory but it's something to think about. It's not like raw performance always matters anyway - the One X really didn't revive Microsoft's fortunes in the last days of the previous gen, although I personally still think it's one of the greatest consoles ever made (in looks and performance). Also the Switch is basically a potato and that's sold more like hot cakes, so raw horsepower isn't the whole story. As always, it's about the games. Having the games people want.
"Anyway in this type of discussion people don't listen"
MOST people don't listen, sure. I do. In fact if you read the comments to this piece you'll see I agree with some of what you're saying and some of what everyone else is saying. Part of the pleasure of gaming is not just the act itself but also discussing it - that's why sites like this exist right.
"I already said PS5 has better compression on SSD for instance, so in reality I THINK you could install more games in PS5 than SX origin SSD"
Yes you did, and while that's true it's a lot easier to expand the storage on a Series X than a PS5. At least with the Series X Seagate Expansion SSD things, hideously expensive as they are, you can play any and all Series X games from it. With an external SSD hooked up to the PS5 via USB3, you can "archive" and that's it. I consider that a weakness.
"Don't take it too seriously man and have a nice weekend."
I don't - to me this is just a polite debate/conversation - and you too. 😊
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@JJ2 "It's funny because I had the feeling you didn't have a ps5 and now your saying you have one."
Yes because in the time I said that, and the time I said Returnal is freaking awesome (it totally is, really a killer app for me) I bought one. It took a while because there's a lot of unserious sellers and scammers to avoid, but yeah. After I'm done with Returnal I'll probably sell it on I expect; we'll see.
"You may mean well but I'm not interested in console war and that's where this conversation is going."
Healthy debate about the merits and disadvantages isn't a war. It's only a war if someone completely trashes one system and clings to the other. I don't do that; that's what platform agnostic means. I may prefer the Series X (and owning a PS5 has not changed this opinion; still do) but that's not to say the PS5 is terrible. It has some great games, the DualSense is a lot better than the toy-feeling DualShock 4 (feels more like an Xbox Elite controller which is a huge compliment, even kinda looks like my white/black Elite), I'm one of the people who kinda likes the collared design even though it's a bit on the large side.
Side note: One design "flaw" (although it's clearly more of an aesthetic choice) they both share is the front buttons are too small and too hidden. Quite hard to hit the target to eject the disc on either. Series X is slightly less of an annoyance in one respect though; it does have a sync button for controllers so I don't have to bust out a USB cable when moving between consoles.
"Ps5 had a fantastic launch line up so far and the idea the console was rushed to compete with SX is just silly."
Ah, here's the thing. I never said it had a poor line-up of games. I wouldn't say the PS5 had a stellar launch line-up but it wasn't dire either. Certainly better than the PS2 many years ago. I didn't even mention that; you've just taken what I wrote to mean that, and that isn't what I meant.
I was talking purely about the hardware, and the firmware (which admittedly is a type of software). Neither launched in a state I would consider complete. If anyone considers that they were, at launch, then I would say people are as happy to buy unfinished consoles as they are to buy unfinished games and are letting Sony off of the hook way too easily. For example, Microsoft made sure that SSD expansion slot media was available on Day One and that's (at this point) a proprietary media/form factor of storage. Sony's M.2 slot, which uses regular M.2 style spacing, is more standard and yet it launched with the slot disabled and no media to put in it. If Sony's excuse is "there aren't any M.2 SSDs fast enough to facilitate the speed needed for games" then they should have made one, or subcontracted out to have one made. They're in the business of making hardware - TVs, home cinema systems, games consoles - and have been for some time, so it's really a lame excuse.
"Look believe any narrative you want."
This presupposes I've been "suckered in" by someone else's train of thought. I haven't. I look at the facts as given and draw my own conclusions. The only narrative I believe in is my own, and I think narrative is completely the wrong word to describe it. It's more of an honest analysis.
Re: Poll: Does Sony Need a Big PS5 Showcase This Summer?
I don't care for the Sony/Nintendo approach (funny that these old rivals are often quite similar in their styles; Astro's Playroom in fact feels just like a Nintendo game) of just dribbling tiny tidbits of information out whenever the hell they feel like it, to be honest. I prefer the Microsoft approach - keep everyone regularly updated even if it's incremental.
I still don't understand why it's so difficult to have a webpage which timeline all the main first-party game release dates as a simple list, and if you click on the game name it gives you a diary of mini-updates, like when it's scheduled to go gold, if there are delays and a very brief reason why.
I think rather than encourage mystique and rabid speculation, which is where the gaming community often finds itself, they should just give people some information that's easy to access. Basic facts and updates will do, just to tear down the rumour mill before it's even fully built.
People who, for example, have families and have to limit the amount of cash they can drop on their hobby would probably appreciate more information. This way they can plan ahead for which ones they want to buy the most, especially with new PS5 releases being £70.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@JJ2
They didn't launch "too early to keep pace with Ms' .
The PS5 was launched as an unfinished product. It has poor airflow (stuff like allowing the rear mounted RAM chips to cook at 95ºc when a game is running which is way higher than it should be), the M.2 slot is disabled, there were some moderately severe issues with the firmware at launch (the "resume from sleep" causing game crashes), only being able to "archive" native PS5 games to an external USB3 device and that wasn't there at launch it's been added since plus you can't run them from an external device. Some Series titles can run straight off an external SSD rather than having to be copied back. Not all, but that's more than zero as it is for the PS5.
I genuinely don't think either the software or hardware was complete when they released it, but they kinda had to in an attempt to avoid MS getting a headstart like in the X360/PS3 gen.
That s fantasy narrative from console war BS. Id recommend you don t get into that silly stuff.
It's not silly/fantasy narrative. I don't believe in console wars - I'm platform agnostic, I just believe in good games, I don't use phrases like "salty ponies" or "PC master race".
I own both systems. The Series X strikes me as a pretty complete product, no major defects, still allows playing games from all 4 of it's generations without requiring the equivalent of PS Now. If I want to Quick Resume from Psychonauts (original Xbox) to Call Of Duty: Black Ops (Xbox 360) to The Witcher 3 (Xbox One X) to The Medium (Xbox Series) I can. The PS5's fancy DualSense pad is very nice, sure, but at this exact moment it's literally the only ace the console has, to me.
Compression is a lot better and after all its only 135GB difference left (of available space) with the SX.
135GB is still potentially a lot of games difference. Assuming an average 8GB for them, that's 16 extra Xbox 360 games I can store on the Series X. But I don't need to; I can and do run them off of an external 2TB USB3 SSD. That's two generations behind current. If I want to play PS3 games on the PS5, I have to subscribe to PS Now, and I can't justify the cost because I don't use it enough and it's cloud gaming which basically always introduces video quality and input lag issues. I'm not paying £13 a month for that, on top of potentially also paying £70 for all the newest releases. It's a total gouge.
Whereas on the Xbox platform, I've essentially had 6 months of Game Pass Ultimate for £4 (I got a £3 for 3 months, took a break, and then was offered a £1 for 3 months a few weeks after).
So for current advantages of the PS5 :-
Series X, for me, holds all the other advantages which are numerous. For example, it runs quieter than the PS5, more noticeably than I realised. My PS5 doesn't appear to have coil whine, which is good.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@Cybrshrk I must admit, I bought a PS5 today and the prices on the store made my eyes pop in shock. It's hideously expensive, and I really don't see why everything seems to be £70. That's about six months of Game Pass Ultimate, right there. Where's Sony's "try before you buy" approach like you can do with that?
I don't use Remote Play features on any console (video quality drop and input lag are unacceptable to me, and with cloud gaming you get various degrees of both) but I can see why they would be useful to some.
Other thing I've already noticed about the PS5 is that the interface is more of the same crap that the PS4/PS4 Pro were. The Settings menu is still a cluttered, disorganised mess. They're still not making the most of the screen space - everything still seems to be a scrolling list, everywhere. The only improvements I can really see are it's faster (seeing as Sony never bothered to optimise Orbis OS on the PS4/PS4 Pro in eight years, pretty terrible, as it was always laggy and still is), and the home menu ambient music is better? That last one is moot because it'll get switched off at some point anyway.
Overall not impressed. Controller is better - form factor feels like an accomplished rip-off of the One and Series controllers except the left analogue stick is still in the wrong place and the shape buttons are still spaced too far apart.
It's a bit meh, really. Apart from being able to play some old PS4 favourites I own digitally (and again, disappointment here as The Witcher 3 is still locked to the same sluggish 30fps that the PS4 versions were) and Astro's Playroom showing off how amazing the DualSense upgrades are, I'm struggling to see what all the fuss is about.
Re: Random: You Can Run The Witcher 3 at 60FPS on PS5, But It Has to Be Unpatched
Wow. Pretty poor showing, to buy a PS5 and then find that the game is locked to the same sluggish 30fps that both the PS4 and PS4 Pro were - my copy is digital so there's no choice in the matter.
The Series X uses the One X Enhanced edition where the frame cap is 60fps, except the Series runs 60fps everywhere because it can handle more detailed environments with more assets and NPCs, so it doesn't drop to 30-40fps in places like Novigrad and Oxenfurt.
Therefore, as things currently stand the best console to play this game on is Series X. I think it also has a higher base resolution (One X Enhanced version targets 4K, no DRS).
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@Cybrshrk I happen to agree with you, however in terms of raw numbers there's no getting away from the sheer outselling of the PS5 to the Series X currently. They're way harder to buy used as well, and retain more of their "close to RRP" value on the used market. It's pretty crazy. I think Microsoft will close the gap over time, but not yet. Wait until those several awesome looking E3 announced games drop and there you have it.
Re: Random: Removed Sony Ad Had PS5 Console Placed Upside Down
What no one else seems to have pointed out is that it's funny to see how both Microsoft and Sony have found ways to spin the lack of games into their advertising. Still, higher FPS, faster loading times (especially with Quick Resume) and Auto HDR genuinely do make older games run better, in a similar way to how emulators upscale to make the games look better on modern 4K flat panels.
Oh, and the Series X is more than capable of running God of War. I was using it for exactly this the other day, so it's not strictly a PlayStation exclusive any more! 😁
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@twitchtvpat Although I agree with you and see your point, it was good to have all these announcements in one place on one day. When publishers trickle it out, if you're not paying attention to gaming news often you might miss something. For people with limited time that's not always possible.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@The_New_Butler I think the Wii had the unique selling point of doing motion control fairly well, which meant it launched strongly with casuals after being on the market a while, especially with stuff like Wii Fit that wasn't strictly a regular video game. But looking back, it really was a fad, and the knock-on effect was the knock-off effect of seeing Sony and Microsoft rush to market with Move and Kinect which weren't as good. Nowadays nobody wants Kinect or even the new PS5 camera particularly; there's much more interest in PSVR.
Re: PS Store Planet of the Discounts Sale Has Almost 500 PS5, PS4 Game Deals
Remember when everyone was super-excited for Godfall? It's slowly making it's way towards bargain bin prices now...
Re: PS Store Planet of the Discounts Sale Has Almost 500 PS5, PS4 Game Deals
@MrGawain Personally that has been my strategy for years. Publishers cash in on the impatience of gamers, often by overpricing their new releases. If you wait a while, easily done when you have a backlog of games to get through (most serious gamers do these days, it seems, myself included), you can snipe on on sale for half the original RRP or less. Or wait a few years and watch it get to maybe one fifth if the game was a good seller as used copies will flood the market and you can get a disc version that way.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@MakersMark "Just remember in today's day and age, people do things because they can GAIN something for it"
I think you'll find that's true of EVERY day and age. That's where capitalism comes from - greed.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
Yeah I know all that, the AMD Jaguar CPU is the One X's bottleneck despite the massively improved GPU. Had to be that way for compatibility reasons. HDD is easily upgraded to SSD in the One X to reduce load times significantly due to the SATA-III bus, over the (I believe) SATA-II bus of the original One. I mentioned the 667GB earlier, yes. 😉
Side note, you refer to the newest consoles as having "hard drives" - they're surface-mounted SSDs (direct to motherboard). 😊
EDIT: PS5 is surface mount, Xbox Series X is a smaller-than-regular-form-factor M.2 style. Both still SSDs, though.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@The_New_Butler Developers who truly want to target the "casual market" make free to play mobile games with in-game microtransactions. Sadly some of the seedy business practices from the mobile market - the ones that work, anyway - have seeped into home console gaming, which sucks. EA clearly looked at that model, saw a meal ticket, and have now spent years working out how to better psychologically manipulate people into gambling thousands of real world credits away in their Ultimate Team scam.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@nathanSF Sony are still well ahead of Microsoft in terms of units sold on new gen consoles. They're very much not in crisis; that's hyperbole.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@JJ2 Oh yeah I know the tech reasons for the smaller PS5 SSD, I watched Cerny spell it out, it's just in a world where gamers latch onto "one number is bigger than the other" (like the stupid fanboy teraflop flaming prior to next gen launches) things it doesn't look great, more so when you launch a console where only 667GB of that is usable and games regularly top 100GB and average maybe 50GB now, especially when you launch too early to keep pace with Microsoft and aren't able to activate the M.2 SSD expansion bay slot. Bet when they launch a slim, collarless version of the PS5 they'll offer 1.6TB and by then the M.2 slot will finally be usable. Bet launch PS5s will be a lot cheaper soon after! People who paid £900 for them are gonna feel chumped if they don't already.
Fallout I haven't played enough to comment on. One of the few notable space games I played recently (I love the genre but think it's under-served) was No Man's Sky, and that struck me as a rather tedious exercise in resource management where everything expires on a timer, so something more RPG based with less "do tedious tasks to micromanage your way out of dying" in the vein of Elder Scrolls or Mass Effect would be preferred.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@JJ2 Well said! Great games and the ability to enjoy them (on your own and with others) is more the point isn't it? Maybe it's fair to say too many people enjoy the soap opera melodrama aspect of it these days because there's more direct communication between developers/publishers and the gaming community. Who knows? It's usually not just one thing. 😁
Exclusives are what they are. If they help sell systems and these systems then go on to host more great games (exclusive or not) then it's a means to an end. To be fair the one game that really makes me want to own a PS5 is Returnal - I've been playing Housemarque games since before they were called that, and Super Stardust Delta was, I believe, one of the games that made me want and soon after own a Vita (still one of the best titles on the system, too) , so it doesn't surprise me they've done it again. But what I have noticed is the "exclusives" (in quotes because some are coming to PC or are already on it, like Flight Simulator) coming to Series X are way more in tune with what I want, perhaps because there's generally more of a mature theme. For example I was excited about Rift Apart until reviews started saying it's visually stunning but the gameplay is shallow perhaps because it's targeting that "all ages" demographic, and subsequently I'm now more fired up by things like Starfield and Redfall even though we've really only been teased with cinematic pre-renders instead of actual gameplay - Starfield claims "in game footage" but it's still basically a cinematic. Hopefully it's "Bethesda does Mass Effect really well" but we shall see. Redfall looks like Avengers meets Hellboy and Blade kinda insanity as a game and I think we're seeing a potential sleeper hit there - one that initially sells okay, gets good word of mouth and then explodes a year after release. Too early to say really! Fun to speculate though, as long as you don't fall into the classic gamer trap of taking fiction as fact 😏
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
@JJ2 Ha yeah I remember that. Maybe they were ashamed of it. The Series S is certainly going to hamper the Series X a bit, and it's weird to me how it's a "next gen" console yet it's not capable of 4K output unlike the One X before it. Same as the PS4 Pro has 1TB of storage by default, yet the PS5 that replaced it has 825GB. Classic case of "the newer ones have less of a thing".
Maybe it's more accurate to say Microsoft are more open and transparent by comparison to Sony. Either way, as long as both of those companies have great games to sell that we all enjoy, their PR isn't really as important unless it's, for example, really bad PR like EA using Ultimate Team to manipulate kids into gambling or Ubisoft's sexual haressment (panda) culture.
Re: Reaction: It's Time to Accept We Can't Predict PlayStation Anymore
Well, one of the problems with the modern world is oversharing, right? Which can lead to it looking like eagerness for attention combined with having nothing to say. Sony are so committed to not doing this they've ditched E3.
I don't know, that doesn't bother me personally. Would have been nice if they'd said more about the console shortages though, as they've been vague and it gave some people the impression they don't care, which is never a good look. Gamers are a fickle bunch though, so it's hard to tell between the facts a company give and the exaggeration and histrionics gamers add, sometimes.
Microsoft are doing this more open, transparent thing and sticking to it, making it work for them. Their E3 reveals were really good - I was stunned how many potentially great games there are in the next few years, and kinda vindicated my choice to go with Series X first and PS5 later as a few are dropping within the next couple of months. Forza Horizon 5 looks like epic fun, for example, and it's one of about a dozen I'm looking forward to.
What I'm saying is, either way can work (lots of communication or only the bare minimum) for a company, and as you get older you don't really care because you've got more important things to worry about. In the end you just buy the games you really want and don't worry so much about the noise excitable and easily led younger gamers make so much. Old dogs versus puppies, basically!
Re: Poll: Are You Happy with Your PS Plus Games for July 2021?
BLOPS4 was free on Game Pass for months before this, pretty sure, and Plague Tale has been on there a couple of months. If you own both Sony and Microsoft machines you must feel pretty duped cos you're not really getting anything you didn't already have.
Let's be honest. It's gonna be hard for Sony to ever top giving away Horizon: Zero Dawn for free. That game is immense, beautiful, not perfect but so fun, really a great gift and you didn't even need PS Minus for that, just a regular PS account. I'm looking forward to dipping back into that when I get a PS5 in a year or two.
The fact they're even offering a CoD game suggests they're kinda lamely trying to respond to GP. Which is interesting.
Re: Reaction: Messy Ghost of Tsushima Upgrade Makes PS5 for the Payers
@Floki They're basically interchangeable; try not to be such a pedant, get a sense of humour etc 😂
Re: Reaction: Messy Ghost of Tsushima Upgrade Makes PS5 for the Payers
@Residentsteven If they renamed it Push X they could cover both Xbox and PS as both have X buttons on the right don't they.
Re: Reaction: Messy Ghost of Tsushima Upgrade Makes PS5 for the Payers
That's cool, when I pick up a used PS5 in a year or two I bet I'll be able to get either a disc edition or digital copy for maybe £20 on sale, all I have to do is wait. There's so many great titles dropping on Series X in that time it'll fly by.
Re: Jim Ryan on Cyberpunk 2077: Sony Didn't Want to 'Sell a Game That Might Result in a Bad Experience'
Another round of "Jim Ryan tries to spin something into positive PR and instead fails and looks more smarmy than if he hadn't tried" I see.
Re: PS5's Game Library Now Defaults to Your Installed Software
@luisterr You can do this right away, today...
...on a PS4 Pro or Xbox One/Series console!
Re: More Cyberpunk 2077 Outrage as Dev-Made Montage Videos of Bugs and Glitches Leak Online
I don't think I've ever seen such a huge disparity in quality between two back to back titles from the same developer. One is a much-loved piece of interactive fiction which rightly won countless awards, and the other is Cyberpunk.
Not only do I feel bad for the developers who have this travesty on their CV, I also feel bad for Mike Pondsmith, who created the IP. It's sad that the first taste of his fiction will come to many in the form of a buggy, ruined potential video game. CDPR have kinda tarnished his reputation into the bargain, not just their own.
Still, this failure might inspire CDPR to go back to the well and make a stunning Witcher prequel that can ascend to the same heights as Wild Hunt. Maybe they can get transport right this time too - it's hard to believe they made a traffic system worse than Roach ever was, but they did!
Re: PS5 Is Probably Telling You to Charge Your Controller Way Too Early
Huh. Yeah the DualShock 4 always had pretty weak battery life even on the mark II model from new. Wouldn't take much for it to go from three to two bars when gaming. Lowering the glowbar to minimum and keeping the internal speaker at half or less helped, but not much. Not surprised to hear that the Dualsense is much the same.
Battery life on Xbox controllers seems better, both last and current gen. Even using a third party battery pack/dock I tend to get more life out of a single charge than with a DualShock 4 with the One controllers, more so with the Series models, and battery metering by the OS is almost always accurate. It even disables rumble support when the battery is really on empty point so you have that haptic loss as a reminder you need to change and charge soon. Maybe Sony should copy that feature. I'd take the form factor of the Xbox controllers over the last few Sony attempts as well, despite not always being as durable (although with how fragile the Dualsense is I think the tables might have turned there).
Re: Talking Point: Did Sony Lie About PS5?
Not sure if Sony "lied" in the strictest definition of the word, but there was definite misleading at several steps along the way, a lot of which the gaming journalism sections of the web took and ran with.
I still think the PS5 was released as an unfinished product so Sony could avoid Microsoft having a year's lead like they did with the Xbox 360, which cost Sony dearly although they eventually caught up by offering a better overall platform and making cheaper and cheaper hardware by cutting out the extra USB ports, PS2 back compat (and charging for "ported" titles as PS Classics) and so on.
I think if it was released November 2021, i.e. before Christmas this year, it would be with far fewer firmware bugs than are still present, a working M.2 SSD slot and probably a more refined cooling design that has better airflow because the one they went with doesn't have great pipe/porting so the rear RAM chips for example are cooking at 95ºc when running a game.
I still think the One/Series consoles have the better dashboard, to be honest. It's fast, easy to navigate, pretty powerful. It's sad it still renders at 1080p and upscales to 4K but I have a feeling part of the reason for that is to maintain interoperability between all Xbox One/Series versions, i.e. they're not having to fork the codebase to have a 4K version for the One S, One X and Series X while sticking with a 1080p version for the base Ones and Series S. Slightly blurrier fonts? Big deal. 😂 Beats having to use the "still laggy after all these years even on a PS4 Pro with an SSD retrofitted" PS4 dash. Nice shade of blue on a 4K TV though.
Re: PS3 Received a New Firmware Update, By the Way
I found a lot of the cross-plat titles from the PS3/X360 era are better played on the One X or Series consoles for 4K upscaling and often better performance. For example, the original Red Dead Redemption is the best version and has smoothing in "quality" mode to sort out a lot of the jaggies. Dead Space is currently on Game Pass Ultimate as well, the whole series actually. Also great that Xbox Live for older Xbox 360 titles works too - I'm still able to play my favourite iteration of the Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops (the original) with friends across teh interwebz, which is great. Still gets an average of 40,000-60,000 people online at any one time too. A lot of the cross-plat games, on Xbox 360 versions they have higher base rendering resolutions as well (pre-DRS days too I believe) - for example the aforementioned BLOPS "the Xbox 360 game running somewhere in the region of 1040x608 while PS3 is closer to 960x544" according to this old EG article https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-tech-comparison-cod-black-ops-pc from our long-standing friends at Digital Foundry.
For any PS3 exclusives that never got turned into PS4-era games for use on my Pro, it's the best place for those, I suppose.
Oh and Psychonauts, kind of a cult classic, that's on Game Pass too and despite being 4:3 locked (I think; maybe there's a widescreen mode buried in the menus I haven't found yet) it's a good looking version of the game and plays great.
Re: Aloy Trends As Fans Discuss Horizon Forbidden West Hero
One of the things I liked about Dawn was it placed no importance whatsoever on the sexualisation of Aloy's character, which for the type of game and setting was very appropriate. She felt more real that way rather than being a sex object. I see her as hunter and acrobat first, and barely pay any mind to the fact she's female cos from the point of view of the game it's irrelevant.
Its sad that those kinds of Barbie doll plastic photoshop looking things are stuff certain men find attractive, though, like on the right hand picture. They look freakish and fake to me. Bimboification is a real thing, and in my opinion a real problem. It's gross. Natural is better, but that's personal bias on my part. Less makeup often works wonders and is better for the skin so it can breathe rather than using it as a face painted on top.
Re: Sony Uses Fan-Made God of War Ragnarok Logo in Official Presentation, Fools Us All
Huh. I thought if they're using someone else's work they had to credit it, but I suppose where the logo is based on Sony's IP it's a gray area.
As usual, sad to see how much emphasis gaming companies put on Metacritic. And amusing to see VIllage getting a mention as a "never been better" game when it's had pretty mixed reactions, especially from fans of the series.
Re: Mini Review: Hitchhiker (PS4) - Intriguing Concept Can Be Monotonous
I think now that you mention it you could say that it's an either/or situation, but I find Quantic Dream games have a less linear progression due to result of QTEs offset by dialogue/exploration choices. Whereas Naughty Dog the story is basically the same every play through interspersed with "don't die in this linear gameplay section" bits to get to the next cutscene, unlike say Detroit: Become Human where I've completed it 4 times and had pretty different experiences each time.
Re: Mini Review: Hitchhiker (PS4) - Intriguing Concept Can Be Monotonous
"closer to an interactive experience than a traditional game."
So... it's like a Naughty Dog title?
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 373
Horizon: Zero Dawn
PS4 Pro
Only 5 hours in, goofing around exploring the world and hunting the robot monsters but it's quite the game. Really does make use of the PS4 Pro's extra horsepower and I'm very surprised how much they've been able to squeeze out of the console - even with checkerboarding the image is super sharp and yummy looking in 4K. I like the way Aloy's inner monologue is spoken out to the player so you know how she feels about a particular situation. And the video game world really does need more female badasses - I used to count Lara Croft as one but since the reboots, sure, there's character development to make her more complex and real however she comes across as unsure of herself, whereas Aloy strikes me so far as overall more confident even though some doubts etc linger in the background. Really a very polished game that steals an hour from you without you even realising - the "just one more quest" thing any good open world presents where you find it hard to pull yourself away from the immersive experience.
Call of Duty: Black Ops (Zombies Mode)
Xbox One X
Nothing beats a good round of co-op on this old beast. I recently looked at the tech specs for the Xbox 360 version and although it is superior to the PS3 version it's actually rendering the game below 720p. I wonder how many games of that era were struggling to render the games above 600p or so even when the Xbox 360 itself was outputting to 1080p. Probably quite a few. My guess is the HD consoles were often that in name only... even now we're seeing the same sort of thing with DRS, that a game renders 1080p-1440p or so and then the result is scaled to fit 4K. Still, it's a big improvement. And there's more to games than resolution, after all...
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Xbox One X
Had less time with it this week but been on Skellige doing side missions and some main quest ones like The Last Wish. I had Enemy Scaling set to ON and it makes the djinn ridiculously strong, so I ended up dying 20 times before looking up and finding this out online. Switch it off and... way too easy. I just figured originally that the idea was the djinn would be tricky on any level/difficulty due to being a super powerful genie but no, game bug. 😂
Re: Poll: Will You Be Buying Returnal?
What I always find odd is how many space games there were in the early days and how few good ones there are now (with the exception of stuff like No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous I suppose; YMMV) so if Returnal knocks it past the stratosphere I'll be genuinely impressed. I'll still probably buy it when it's on sale though, same as everything else - then a decent amount of actual trustworthy reviews will exist and any major bugs would hopefully have been squashed in the first few big update patches that all big games seem to have these days.
Re: Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition Is Free to Download Now
I was given this free on disc when I bought the PS4 Pro, haven't played it yet. At least now I won't have to find the disc to not play it. 😂
Seriously though, well done Sony for this. Although booting up the PS4 Pro reminds me why it doesn't get used - it never downloads updates when in sleep even though it's been set to and added about 4 to the list before Horizon which I decided to pause, it whined about being out of space even when I changed the location of the download (you have to delete and re-add it for it to "notice" the Application Install Location had been changed...) and it takes like 10 presses to turn the controller off compared to the One X's 3 presses. 🤮 It might have a ton of great games but it also has a truly crappy, cluttered UI where I still can't easily find things years later.
Re: Disco Elysium: The Final Cut (PS5) - A Hauntingly Brilliant RPG That Lives Long in the Mind
"Tiny, tiny text in some menus"
This has been an ever-increasing problem since the start of the previous gen's era, I find. Developers all assume that gamers are running things on 100-inch 4K projection screens and have perfect sight, I'm sure.
Re: Resident Evil Village Is 4K at 60 FPS on PS5, And 900p at 45 FPS on PS4
@mariomaster96 Oh yeah, I think they went for 45FPS for Return To Arkham release of Arkham Asylum, which makes no sense because it causes judder. Totally stupid.
I prize 60FPS above almost everything, so I'd have whatever keeps a solid 60FPS, wouldn't be fussed by the lack of ray-tracing.
Still amuses me that PS5 boxes have 8K proudly displayed on the outside. Yep, like we'll ever see any graphically complex game running that, no developer with sense will ever target it. Guarantee you the next PS5 model/iteration with a new box will just say 4K HDR and maybe VRR/ALLM if they bother to implement those, plus whatever the higher capacity models will have in terms of onboard storage.
Re: Sony Backtracks PS3, PS Vita Online Store Closures
@HMazzy111 I'd like that. I still use my Vita. Over the weekend I was playing The Pinball Arcade which still looks and plays great, especially with the overclocking home-brew to push the FPS up on the more complex/poorly optimised tables.