PS4 First Impressions

So content for the blog has been a little thin on the ground due to the fact that my wife bought me a PS4 for my birthday!  Now that I'm finally up to speed with next gen I thought I'd write a short bit on what I think about the system itself.

First the size of the thing, it's pretty fucking large and that is a little bit of a pain in the ass.  If I lived back in my family home in Sweden or my old house in the UK then this wouldn't be an issue at all but as it happens I live in a small-ish Japanese apartment so finding space to put this damn thing down was actually a little bit of an issue.  That said it is a nice shape that slots nicely into the desk space that I put it so it's not all bad, just be aware of the size if you're strapped for space like I am.

Interface wise it's the same as every other Sony gaming product since PSP, that kind of horizontal scrolling menu.  I'm a big fan of this interface, it's slick and easy to use as opposed to the Xbone which just confuses the fuck out of me every time I use it. It might just be because I'm a stupid retard but it's I find it very easy to get lost in the Xbox One interface but with this everything is basically idiot proof, which is exactly what I need.

I do quite like this whole share button feature because sharing stupid screenshots of stuff with my friends is pretty cool.  One thing I'm really interested in is the whole streaming to twitch thing but at time of writing I have not tried this out yet.  I want to buy a Playstation Camera so that I can talk/do the face cam thing I do when I stream from my PC so I'm not quite sure how good the twitch integration is.  That said, I've watched streams of a few friends who are doing it from their PS4 and it seems pretty solid, so I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

The other feature I quite like is the whole PS+ thing.  It costs about 5000 yen for a year, which is essentially free and every month they provide you with free games for you to download.  Originally I didn't see the big deal because I thought that you lost the games when the selection games but it turns out that as long as PS+ is active and you downloaded them, you can play them forever which is rad.  I thought a service like that would cost an arm and a leg, especially in this day and age when every company seems to want to rip you off with DLC and needless extras/exclusive content but like I said before, 5000 yen is nothing and it covers the whole year.

While neither of the next gen libraries grabbed me at first, PS4 has also started to pick up some steam.  Right now I own copies of Bloodborne: The Old Hunters Edition and Yoru no Nai Kuni (yet unplayed) and there are a bunch of other games like MGS5 and a few RPGs I've seen milling around the store.  There's also P5 and Nier 2 on the horizon so with that in mind I'm pretty fucking happy with my purchase.  Already the anime moe games are starting to creep in on store shelves which may turn some people off but it doesn't really bother me, I can sit through kawaii bullshit if the games good.

So yeah, I like the PS4 and I'm hoping that it carries on being this strong all the way through its lifetime, we'll just have to wait and see.  Now I'm gonna get get destroyed at Bloodborne!