PS4 Review - One Weekend In

I've now had my PlayStation 4 for one weekend (it came out on Friday two days ago). For anyone considering it, here's a concise review of both the system and the games I've played so far.

What I Like:

Games look and play excellently. I've yet to witness any slowdown in games yet, even in something like Assassin's Creed IV if I ascend a high building and look across an entire city. Most games run at 1080p and are either a solid 60fps or a solid 30fps.

The controller is the best I've ever laid hands on. Button placement is great, it fits my hands perfectly, the triggers are better than both the DualShock 3's (by far) and the Xbox 360 controller's (marginally), the rumble is meaty, and the motion sensing is accurate. You can use the latter to point at the on-screen keyboard, which surprisingly is faster than D-pad selection. I would have mourned the loss of the Start and Select buttons, but Start is now Options and is functionally identical, and any game that used Select as "open map" (the only reason I used select for) I've tried so far has simply moved that to pushing on the touchpad. The touchpad is also responsive, if barely used in anything I've played yet.

Out of the box, it's the most "complete" system I've used to date. Without spending any extra money after the base system, you can access three pretty good free-to-play games, as well as 14 days' worth of both Resogun and Contrast. If you get a camera you can also play Playroom.Update/install times are far quicker than PlayStation 3. You only need to wait around a minute for a game to install enough of itself that you can begin playing it, and then it will complete the rest in the background while you play the game. I have yet to experience a point where I have to wait for further installation while playing a game.

The launch lineup is strong. See below for individual game mini-reviews. And there are a bunch of great games set for the near future, including inFamous Second Son and Watch Dogs.

The console design is nice. It's simple enough to not be tacky, but quirky enough that it's not just another box.

What I Don't Like:

The lack of backward compatibility. For full PlayStation playing, my TV now has a PlayStation 2, 3 and 4 all plugged in at once, along with a plethora of different controllers for each one. And of course, my PS4 library is much smaller than others at present.Install sizes. While much faster (see above), games now eat up the entire game size. I'm assuming this is to alleviate what would be gigantic loading times, given the extra detail of the games, but at 8 games installed, its 500GB harddrive is nearly half full already!

Everything about the USB slots. There's two of them. The controller takes up one, Skylanders portal takes up another... and that's your lot. They're also recessed into the console's recessed design, which isn't a problem yet but a lot of USB devices have thicker, greedier designs which would not fit in the recess.

The price of games. This isn't too big a problem, PlayStation Plus is ace and there's always simply waiting for them to come down in price. But £54.99 for a standard boxed game is about a tenner too much for most games. And the non-deal prices on PSN are even worse.

The home UI feels like a step down from PS3's XMB. It's usable, but it's just not laid out quite as well. And the voice controls feel very incomplete - I'm sure they were an afterthought after the big deal made about Xbox One's voice controls.

Game Mini-Reviews:

Killzone: Shadow Fall

It's alright. Fantastic graphics, but I'm not big on FPSes, especially "realistic" ones (I prefer arcade Unreal Tournament-ish FPSes personally), so it's a little dull. Let's go with 7/10.

Skylanders: Swap Force

Sexy, excellent game. It's colourful and appealing. The figurine adverts are back in full force, but it's solid, great fun in two-player, and my 7 or so Skylanders figurines from the previous games work in it as well, so there's little need to buy further ones.

Resogun

Just as good as Super Stardust HD before it. Cracking music, responsive controls, addictive, and shiny as all hell.

Contrast

Flatmate Dan played this one, I watched. But it looked like an artsy game with very little in the gameplay department, so meh.

Need for Speed Rivals

Best NfS I've played, and the first racing game I genuinely am enjoying since Burnout Paradise. Again, looks nice, although perhaps not quite as gorgeous as I might have wanted, but it feels ace.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

The best game I've tried so far, am a good several hours into it. It's got the looks, the gameplay, it's immersive and addictive, it's bloody brilliant and highly recommended, even if you're not getting a PS4 or Xbox One just yet.

DC Universe Online

It's alright for being completely free! Worth a look even if you delete it an hour later.

I also have Knack and have downloaded the other two F2P games, War Thunder and Warframe, but haven't touched em yet so can't comment.

Conclusion:

I'm thoroughly enjoying my time with PS4 so far, and have no regrets buying it day one. Would I recommend it? If you're into the same stuff as me, yes. It's not a 100% must-have device right now, and I can't tell you if it's better or worse than Xbox One. It appeals to me more, but it's really down to your personal taste.

Three YoYo Years

My mind is blown. As of today, I have been employed by YoYo Games as a junior developer for three years. The time has flown - it genuinely doesn't feel that long ago I was creating and releasing stuff like Remaddening independently. Yet, when I look back at it, the amount that has happened has been astonishing. This will be a little bit biography, a little bit reminiscing.

I still remember, clear as day, my visit to Dundee in May 2010 to meet with the YoYo folk - at the time, Sandy Duncan, Mike Dailly and Russell Kay. The location of the original YoYo HQ hadn't been finalised, I'd never set foot in Scotland before (despite my nationality being 50% Scottish)... it was a great experience. We had breakfast in Costa, lunch in The Pancake Place and dinner in Dil'Se. Me and my dad stayed in Holiday Inn and had a further lunch in a Bangladeshi restaurant that sadly no longer exists.

Roll forward a month and a half, and on July 5th 2010 I did my first official YoYo Games work - porting greenTech+ to PSP. The first week of work I had to work from home due to accommodation issues, but the following Monday I had a room on Bank Street ready, so on Sunday 11th July we spent eight hours travelling and stayed in a bar slash hotel in Perth for the night.

I remember this place clear as day too. Dogs roamed around inside the pub. I remember looking out of our room's window, seeing my parents' car full of all my belongings and coming to the sudden realisation that fuck, my life was now going to be massively different. And perhaps most memorable to me, I remember watching the World Cup final on the shitty CRT television in our room. Holland got their asses kicked that day. Infact, this is another thing that makes time seem so much shorter - that the next World Cup is only a year off, so the one I saw that day was three years ago!

So the day after, I began in-office work at the original YoYo HQ, an office above the I.C. Cave in the University of Abertay. Four of us were the entire in-office workforce for a few months - me, Mike, Russell, and Kirsty - with Sandy flying over every week or two. Soon after Realtime Worlds went bust (in August 2010), the workforce grew with an artist, Geoff; a producer, Stuart; and a web developer, Lee, all within the space of a few weeks.

Our first game, a port of Chad Chisholm's "Skydiver Mach II", was released in October. Shortly after came Maddening, a quasi-sequel to my self published series madnessMADNESSmadness/Remaddening (Maddening was released exactly one year to the day after madnessMADNESSmadness, purely by coincidence). In 2010 we released several ports of existing games under the original YYG business model, including Teka Teki and Sync Simple. We also released an original solitaire game, Simply Solitaire, coded from scratch by me and then fixed laboriously by Mike (at the time I was still very poor at programming, achieving what I needed but doing it messily and without much optimisation).

2010 was also the year in which I met Mark Overmars, the original GameMaker creator, and Jesse Venbrux of Karoshi fame, who stayed for a month to create games in-house including an upgraded port of They Need To Be Fed and a new Karoshi game, Mr Karoshi.

2010 Christmas party: A burger in the student café opposite University of Abertay

Throughout 2011, the growth began. Several new people joined. Multiple more games were released. New teams emerged, with Jack Oatley and Darrell Flood, the two people I still live with in "YoYo House", spending a year creating YoYo Games' first social game outing "Grave Maker". The office, once four of us in a pretty empty room, began to fill out. The year began with the release of GameMaker 8.1, and ended with the release of GameMaker HTML5. I still remember having to pull 11 straight days of work with overtime to help get the new manual (now the old new manual) for the latter ready for its release, but a posh celebratory meal in Playhouse made it all worth it!

I also met Kjell t'Hoen towards the end of this year - great guy who I would've kept forever had it been up to me, but sadly he was only here for six weeks!

2011 Christmas party: Posh dinner in Duke's Corner

2012 was when the growth properly began, though the big first change was outside the office. Me, Darrell, Jack, and then also Mark and Piotr moved house! From Bank Street, a small (but adequate) five-room compact cheap flat share where the stairwell leading up to it was frequently home to heroin addicts with no bowel control, we moved to a beautiful house on Adelaide Place with big rooms, a fantastic kitchen, a massive living area, and most importantly a specific room containing a full size snooker table and dartboard!

2012 also saw the release of GameMaker: Studio, the tool allowing anyone to publish their games cross-platform. We celebrated with a good old fashioned burger and beer in Ketchup.

Other games were released this year, including probably my personal favourite game I've worked on yet, "BASE Jumper".

2012 Christmas party: Posh dinner, long part-ay and large amounts of free champagne in Queen's Hotel

And then began this year, 2013! The big story so far was the office move at the end of May. By the move, YoYo Games was on around 25 members of in-office staff, almost a 700% increase from when I started, and with more people still outside of it. We filled the University of Abertay office, which was adequate.

And now we are in the top floor of River Court, an air-purified monster office with ping-pong and foosball tables, stunning views in all directions, a balcony, a massively expensive coffee machine and a drinks fridge (along with the rest of a gorgeous kitchen)... everything about it is breathtaking.

So the three years feel like they've gone quick as a flash, but when I compare then to now, it's been a stunning change:

ACCOMMODATION

2010: Small room in a compact flat with a stairwell commonly housing junkie turds and a window view overlooking a graveyard
2013: Large house, big rooms, a garden, a dedicated games room with full size snooker table

WORK HQ

2010: Converted segment of an IT area of a university, makeshift kitchen area, no plumbing - just a "slop bucket", view featured a car park
2013: Massive modern office, ultra-expensive kitchen area, ping-pong, foosball, air purifying, beach huts, Chupa Chups carousel, 360 degree view of Dundee featuring miles of River Tay and thousands of square feet of views of Dundee, and a balcony if the fact 90% of the walls are windows isn't enough

IN-OFFICE WORKFORCE

2010: Two core tech, one game developer, one customer support (count: 4)
2013: Around 8 core tech, three game dev teams of artist + programmer, three producers, QA teams, customer support teams and more (count: around 25, with space, and plans, for many more)

GAMEMAKER

2010: Standard 8.0, play games on Windows
2013: Studio 1.1 + 1.2 Beta, play games on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, HTML5, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, with a plethora of options for them all and more

LOGO

2010: Gradiented Ambex Heavy Oblique wordmark
2013: Recognisable modern "YO/YO" ambigram logo

MY CODING

2010: Shit
2013: Not so shit

It's been a hell of a ride, and a ride I want to keep on riding! Looking back at all the differences of the company in such a tiny timespan is awe inspiring. May YoYo Games live forever!

Game of the Years

For some reason, every time I've finished the last couple of games I've bought, my end thought was "This is good, but it won't take Portal 2's place as my Game of the Year". I've never, ever thought about what my personal game of any particular year would be. But this got me thinking what they would be for each of the last few years (ie the PlayStation 3 era, the one I know).

Here are my listings so far for 2007-2013.

2007
1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
2. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
3. Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction

2008
1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. LittleBigPlanet
3. Burnout Paradise

2009
1. Brutal Legend
2. Skate 2
3. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

2010
1. Skate 3
2. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
3. Dead Rising 2

2011
1. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
2. Portal 2
3. LA Noire

2012
1. Sleeping Dogs
2. Batman: Arkham City Armoured Edition
3. Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

Here's some explanations now.

2007 was easily the weakest year of gaming PlayStation 3 had. Along with the price, the console was initially ripped apart for it. It did have some goodness though. Brilliant exclusives Uncharted, like a better version of Tomb Raider, and Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction, strong sequel to the PS2 series (and the first "proper" R&C game for four years), were followed by ports of other successful games like Elder Scrolls IV and Tony Hawk's Project 8 (which missed the top three despite how much I played it - it was pre-Skate so I'd not moved series at that point). There were other exclusives I enjoyed as well; MotorStorm, the game I got along with the PS3 on its launch, was good fun but mainly just a filler for the space between Burnout Revenge and Burnout Paradise, and Resistance: Fall of Man, a decent enough FPS and perhaps one of the last FPSes I've cared enough about to do that with.

Following 2007 was 2008, which was really, really strong in releases. It kills me to put Burnout Paradise as third favourite since I loved it so much, but it unfortunately was released in the same year as the near-perfect Grand Theft Auto IV, and the vastly-community-expanded sandbox-lover's-wet-dream LittleBigPlanet. Had it been released in 2009 it would have been first place. GTAIV tops the list with absolute ease; one of the best game storylines I've ever witnessed (if anyone ever made a Grand Theft Auto TV show I would not remotely complain if they just shoved some real actors into GTAIV's cutscenes and filled the gameplay bits with filler content), along with the best-crafted gaming city I know. Seriously, San Andreas may have been bigger and Vice City glitzier, but IV's rendition of Liberty City is a beautiful, memorable, fun-to-explore take on New York. With a great physics engine that means you can now push people down flights of stairs or trip them up over kerbs, a shooting/covering system I only wish could be transplanted into the PS2-era GTA trilogy (I can't enjoy them as much now I know what IV had), and two expansion packs that only upped its excellence (see 2010) GTAIV has won a permanent place in my heart.

2009 was okay at best. Brutal Legend was a stunning game, if not quite as interesting as Double Fine's earlier outing Psychonauts. The only big detractors for me of Brutal Legend were the strategy segments. I cannot stand strategy games, so despite it being difficult I spent most of them in the action style (you can stay omniscient and manage your troops and/or hop down as Eddie Riggs and take them on yourself). Skate 2 ate a ton of my free time, just wandering around the universe. The walking, while present (in Skate you could only skate), was dodgy, and because the entire level was on a hill I always seemed to end up at the bottom of it. But it was an excellent time sink. And Uncharted 2 was pretty fun. I'd have put it higher but, while I find the games very fun, there are others I prefer and that hold the memories better for me. With Uncharted, I play it a ton, finish it in a week, and ignore it forever.

Then 2010 came along, and somehow it was worse for me. I enjoyed the Grand Theft Auto IV expansions (I got my Xbox 360 this year), Skate 3 was a fantastic improvement on Skate 2 and once again ate hundreds of hours of my time. There weren't many other games I was truly into in 2010 so I put Dead Rising 2 third, which was fun in short doses and in spite of the ridiculous lack of a "sandbox" mode (you HAVE to do the story, and you HAVE to do certain quests which are far less fun than just killing zombies).

2011 was stunning. Best game lineup I've ever seen, and the first year where I had to fight multiple games. Honourable mentions would be Pokémon Black, LittleBigPlanet 2, The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim, and Saints Row The Third, all of which I adored. But the best three are headed by Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I was enamoured with it from start to finish (ignoring the bosses). It's one of those games that just let me play it however I damn wanted to. My mate would take a turn and do things all-guns blazing, I got to hide in pipes like a wimp and stealth-kill people. The missions were endearing, the side missions interesting enough, the game was sexy (though very black and orange) - it was just excellent. Narrowly second (I swore this would be first until I touched Deus Ex) was Portal 2. Portal 2 did the odd thing of making me nostalgic for it just days after completing it. While short, it was flat-out hilarious, memorable, stupidly clever - stunning stuff. And third goes to LA Noire, yet another memorable and unique experience. The facial motion tech it displayed was stellar, the game was interesting and long, it was set in a period not often seen in games and... yes, I just loved it.

2012 was, for me, the year of the sandbox (weird given GTA didn't get a release that year). As well as finishing Saints Row The Third in 2012, I bought and played through Sleeping Dogs and Batman: Arkham City (the Wii U edition, so it was technically a 2012 release for me). Sleeping Dogs was another great sandbox game, though part of me kept dreaming about GTA V while playing it. Batman was fantastic, I'm surprised I hadn't bought the original version on impulse but it did mean I had a launch game on Wii U that wasn't the meh-tastic ZombiU. Speaking of the WiiU, it had a pretty good launch lineup! Ignoring ZombiU, I enjoyed four of its launch titles a ton - Batman, NintendoLand, New Super Mario Bros U and Sonic and Sega All-Star Racing Transformed. Best launch lineup I've seen for a console in recent memory (hi, PS3!). I put Professor Layton third because I fucking loved that too. I've loved all the Professor Layton games, but Miracle Mask was the best one I've seen since the first one.

I predict for 2013 that GTA V will win it (GTA IV remains my favourite 7th Gen game to date), followed by Watch Dogs for PS4 and then... well, I don't know! Let's say Far Cry 3 or Tomb Raider's reboot for now.

eBay Score!

I browse eBay a lot for random job lots that are low on auction time and price alike. I just, for £70, got a chipped PlayStation 1 with two controllers, two memory cards, all the PS1 original manuals (and Demo 1, which is awesome)... and the following Japanese PS1 games:

Alundra 2

Arc the Lad III

Biohazard Director's Cut (Resident Evil)

Biohazard 2 DualShock Ver.

Biohazard 3 Last Escape

Black/Matrix+

Bloody Roar

Bloody Roar 2: Bringer of the New Age

Bomberman World

Brave Fencer Musashiden (x2, different boxart on each)

Brave Prove

Brave Saga

Bushido Blade 2

Captain Commando

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Chrono Cross

Chrono Trigger

Chocobo No Fushigina Dungeon

Command & Conquer Red Alert 2

Complete Graphics

Crisis Beat

Cyber Org

Dance Dance Revolution 2nd Remix

Dance Dance Revolution 2nd Remix Vol 1

Darius

Dead or Alive

Dewprism

Dino Crisis

Dino Crisis 2

Dragon Quest 2

Ehrgeiz

Fifa 99

Fighting Force

Final Fantasy V

Final Fantasy VIII (x2, though one's only one disc)

Final Fantasy IX

Get In The Tomorrow

GETTER ROBOT the BIG BATTLE!

Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo 2

Gundam The Battle Master 2

Hokutonoken Seikimatsukyuseisyudensetsu (dead serious)

Houshinengi

J.League 1999

Kagero

Kiganjo

The King of Fighters '97

The King of Fighters '98

The King of Fighters '99

The King of Fighters KYO

Koudelka

The Legend of Dragoon

Legend of Mana

Lunar Silver Star Story

Macross Digital Mission VF-X

Macross VF-X 2

Marvel vs Capcom Clash of Super Heroes EX Edition

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Slug: Super Vehicle-001

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack

Mobile Suit Gundam: Perfect One Year War

Mobile Suit Gundam: Version 2.0

Mobile Suit Z-Gundam

Mortal Kombat 4

OverBlood 2

Panzer Warfare

Parasite Eve

Parasite Eve II

Pocket Fighter

Pop 'n Tanks!

Puzzle Bobble 4

Racing Lagoon: High Speed Driving RPG

Real Bout Special: Dominated Mind

Real Robot Battle Line

Real Robots Final Attack

Ridge Racer Type 4

Road Rash 3-D

Rockman X-4 (Megaman)

Rockman X-5

Runabout-2

Saga Frontier

Saga Frontier II

Samurai Shodown Special

Samurai Shodown Warrior's Rage

SD Gundam G-Generation

SD Gundam G-Generation Zero

SD Hero Fighter

Shiritsu Justice Gakuen Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki (assumed, same Kanji as sequel but without the 2 or the English...)

Shiritsu Justice Gakuen Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2

Silent Hill

Sin SD Sengokuden Kidoumushataisen

Sol Divide

Soukaigi

Star Ocean: The Second Story

Street Fighter Collection

Street Fighter EX-2 Plus

The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love.

Super Robot Wars Alpha

Super Robot Wars Complete Box

Super Robot Wars F (x2)

Super Robot Wars F Final

Tales of Destiny

Tales of Eternia

Tekken III

Tenchu

Tobal 2

UEFA Champion's League Season 1998/99

Valkyrie Profile

Wild Arms 2nd Ignition

Winning Eleven 2000 (either ISS or Pro Evolution Soccer)

X-Men vs Street Fighter Ex Edition

Xenogears

Zill O'll

??? (Super Robot Wars game)

???

??? (I imagine it's Japanese letters not Latin numerals but it looks like 335 something)

??? It's something to do with The King of Fighters)

??? Something II

...as well as two GameWeekly demo discs and a few unlabelled VCDs (I think) I'll be testing later.