Next to the television I have a small blue bag, inside this bag you will find a PSOne (baby white) with Metal Gear Solid & Front Mission 3. This bag also has a second larger pocket which has a PS2 Slim and a collection of games including Simpsons Hit & Run. Under the TV I have three shelves & on the bottom shelf you will find my one & only Playstation 3 console (original edition) & the only retail game you will find on my shelf is Metal Gear Solid 4 everything else is installed on the hard drive.
I sold my US Super Nintendo console with 18 to 20 games inc lots of RPGs to CEX in London to purchase an import Jap Playstation 1 with Ridge Racer & Tekken on release. The PS1 was my only console that I purchased on release & introduced me to some of my best gaming years with the likes of Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy 7, Front Mission 2, Parasite Eve, Tomb Raider, Xenogears, Suikoden, Final Fantasy Tactics, Castlevania - Symphony of the night, Gran Turisimo & I could go on for ever. It was for me one of the greatest consoles ever made (only pipped by the GBA Micro & the US SNES I owned).
I am not sure if it is Sony's excellent E3 showing or the recent games I have completed on the PS3 (Journey, Last of Us) but somewhere in the last six months I have found my love again for the Playstation brand. The PS3 was totally neglected because the 360 became the default console for gaming in the last five years, thanks mainly to it's controller & live experience. I was wavering quite a bit about my PS4 pre-order but finally decided to stick & Martin delivered my PS4 on Friday at 17:03.
After plugging the console in and upgrading the system firmware to 1.51 it was time to play the games. I purchased Killzone, AC4, & digital downloads of Resogun, Contrast & Flower.
The controller is lovely, the triggers are much better which was my biggest gripe with the PS3 controller. The battery life however is poor, I managed about four hours, hopefully in a future firmware update an option to turn off the controller light will improve the battery life. The touchscreen section of the controller is nice & on Killzone you use it to control your robot companion.
I tried the camera with the Playroom software, the kids enjoyed flicking robots around & drawing items on the phone to flick to the tv screen. The camera is really useful when using twitch to stream gaming you can use the inbuilt microphone to talk to you followers which is much better than the rubbish ear-set supplied (I have ordered an over the head set).
The games then, Killzone is the obvious graphical showcase & does look amazing, it is a generic shooter like so many but at least it looks lovely. Resogun is the main game I have been spending time with, it is the PS4's answer to Geometry Wars & is amazingly good fun. I love the various special effect, explosions & all at a blistering fast pace. Abbas played the Fifa 14 demo & is currently playing AC4 which uses the touch pad to control the game map.
Remote play works very well on the Vita, I tested Killzone & Resogun with no slowdown that I noticed. On-line gameplay of Resogun with HurricanePilot, I created a chat party which he joined & then he sent me an invite from the game, all of which worked well but with the occasional slowdown not sure if that was due to the PSN servers, internet connection or the game?
At £350+ (inc cost of the games) it is an expensive purchase which I mainly made because I wanted to play the multi-platform games like AC4, Watch_Dogs & Destiny on the most powerful console. This time next year we will start to see more games being released only on PS4/XB1 hopefully in the next few days news of a new Fallout 4 would be awesome.
For me however Greatness Awaits in playing Assassins Creed 4 over xmas in 1080p.
