PlayStation 4 Review: (In Progress), But Do You Need to Have One Yet?
How good is the PlayStation 4? Ask me in five years. Ask me after Naughty Dog's next couple of games, after I figure out whether God of War is headed in the right direction, after I learn whether it has become unfathomable to play a console game without livestreaming it.You know what? Ask me in a week, because I've only been using the new system online since 9pm Tuesday night and let history show that this review first ran online on 9am Wednesday morning.
That's why, for now, I'm calling this a Review (In Progress). These days, many game reviews aren't really done when they first run. They can explain parts of the game accurately at launch, but online communities shape these games. That's true, too, for the surprisingly online-centric PlayStation 4. We update game reviews to factor in how a game's multiplayer stands up. And I'll be updating this one, significantly, as we test more of the system's offline and online features. Still, there is a lot I can share now.
Today I can tell you a bit about what the PS4 is, how it's working in its pre-launch phase, and what, as a device, its manufacturer Sony has situated it to be.
The console is a sleek, easily portable (!), wonderfully quiet slab
The PS4 is a surprisingly small box. It is so sleek that it might as well be the 2015 PS4 Slim tossed back to us 2013ers via a time machine. It is lighter, thinner and quieter than the original 2006 PlayStation 3. Some game machines, such as the first fat PS3 or the original Nintendo DS, arrive with an imperfect design that predicts their own looming displacement. Not this one. The PS4 shapes up as a box in need of no space-saving or cosmetic improvement. It doesn't use a power brick and even uses the same power cable as the PS3.
The new angles of the unit look nice. My colleague Tina calls the console italicized. But this is still as artless a box as most game machines.erhaps Nintendo's GameCube was the only console ever designed to be seen rather than to be hidden in an entertainment center. Sony's newest is designed to disappear.
The PS4's trim shape and low profile is nevertheless a boon to gamers. On day one, the PS4 turns out to be easily portable. This is surprising and pleasingly discordant with the fact that, as the performance of PlayStation 4 games proves, this console is a powerhouse. Mighty as it may be, for several days, I've been able to easily slip the console into a backpack. I grab two cables and a controller and travel with the machine with little more inconvenience than if I was hauling around a thick laptop computer.
The controller has better sticks, better triggers, better weight, and an awesome jack
There is much to like about the console's new, improved controller.
The DualShock 4 retains the twin-stick, many-buttoned layout that hardcore gamers love and that probably horrifies most of the people who went bowling on the Wii. This controller will break no barriers the way the Wii's Remote did or the commercials for Microsoft's Kinect say it will. It should nevertheless please dedicated console gamers. A circular groove around the tops of the controller's thumbsticks enable more confident analog movement. The shoulder buttons have more punch. The triggers finally curve outward to cradle your finger as the Xbox 360 controller's did. And the whole thing is a tad heavier than the disconcertingly light DualShock 3.
One of the signature additions to this PlayStation controller is a multi-touch touchpad, though it plays no great role in any of the console's launch games that I've found. It's been used for simple swipe-based commands of in-game minions in Killzone and can zoom in on a map in Assassin's Creed. Nothing amazing yet. It is inoffensive, at worst.
Better, though less ballyhooed, is a headphone jack in the controller that, in conjunction with a change in the console's settings, can output all of a game's audio to controller-connected headphones, a trick most recently seen on the Wii U. Call that setting the Domestic Bliss option. Your most beloved housemates will appreciate it if they walk in and you swap the game audio from blaring through your speakers to purring through your headphones. And it works, I can confirm, with regular old iPhone headphones.
The DualShock 4 apes one of Nintendo's sillier concepts and puts a speaker in the controller. It wasn't really necessary. But let's give a cheer for Sony adding a more sensible feature and allowing controllers to be charged when they are plugged into a PS4 that is in standby mode.
Overall, consider DualShock 4 a healthy upgrade.
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