The PS4 is Here!

Yup.  And I'm a proud owner of a PS4.  This blog will be about my initial impressions.

In what has to the best launch ever, I got my preorder machine with no fuss, muss or line ups.  This was a far cry from the PS3, or even the Xbox 360.  It looks like console manufacturers have learned their lessons.  It seems like the Xbox One launch will be smooth too.  Anyway, about the PS4...

Setting up the machine to the TV was a breeze, along with setting up the Playstation camera (sold seperately, but I got one).  When I turned on the machine for the first time, the visuals already blew me away.  I haven't see a crisper background in my life, even though it's just a menu at this point.  This was also when the trouble started.  As everyone knows by now, there was a huge day 1 patch to the machine.  You need this before you can do any kind of online stuff with it and it is 350mb approx.  Sony, naturally, got their servers bogged down by all the PS4 owners doing the same patch, so no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get the patch downloaded.  Eventually, I had to go online with a PC, download the patch onto a USB stick, then use the stick to update the PS4.  For all of Sony's faults, at least they gave us this option.

By that time, it was getting late, so all we could do was hit the Playroom.  After a quick update (not nearly as big) for the Playroom, my girlfriend and I gave it a shot.  Playroom itself is nothing more than a tech demo to show off the controller and the camera.  So as it is, it isn't much.  We had some fun with two player air hockey using the controller's touch pad and played with some very cute robots with the camera's augmented reality feature.  Basically, robots appear on the screen, superimposed on an image of out living room via the camera.  Then we interact with these robots.  We can pet them or hit them, and they react accordingly.  To be honest, it's not that impressive.  But it is funny, and the robots were cute.

The next day, I woke up early to further test out the machine.  I bought into the PS Plus program and downloaded, for free, Contrast and Resogun.  Resogun is a side scrolling shooter with trippy visual.  It adequetly shows up the PS4s lighting muscles but I'm not sure if I should be impressed. It does look very, very pretty when the screen is packed full of enemies and bullets but, again, I'm not sure if this can't be done on the PS3.  Probably not, because the light show looks a little TOO pretty.

Next up was Contrast.  If there ever was a diamond in the rough, this game would be it.  It's got an unusual story involving a girl and her imaginary friend who has the power to fuse with shadows.  Unfortuately, I've see this premise already with Lost In Shadows on the Wii.  Graphically, aside from sharper than usual images via higher resolution, the game doesn't look next gen.  And when it moves, the frame rate doesn't really keep up.  Not as much as I could tell anyway.

So basically, it was up to Assassin's Creed 4 to really show off the power of the PS4.  Can't really expect much too, since the game also came out on the 'last gen' consoles.  The game plays great, as expected, but it doesn't use any of the controller's PS4 specific features (except the ability to scroll the map using the touchpad which is actually more cumbersome than using the analog).  I notice things in the graphics that the PS3 likely couldn't handle.  Weather effects were top notch, especially when it storms.  I also noticed crisper shadow effects than the older machines, too.  And I think (because I can't tell for sure) the 1080p resolution made it look sharper but there's nothing I can truly point a finger to.

So far, the only difference in performance I've noticed are much shorter loading times, and a very quick transition between game and the PS4's menu.  This is actually a bonus in one respect, because the sharing feature just won't be the same if the PS4 interface lags.  I've posted an image and a video on Facebook and both went off without a hitch.  The video capture feature was quite impressive.  At any time, I just hit the share button on my controller and the last 15 minutes of game play would be recorded for me right there.  All I had to do was give it a slight edit, which basically involved setting a start and an end to the video, crop it, then post it to social media.  All this was done in seconds.  The editing options could use a bit more features, however.  When previewing my video, it would be nice to be able to fast forward or rewind.

All in all, anyone looking for a true next gen experience should wait a year before picking this up.  As it is, the only difference between this and a PS3 would be the difference between a high end gaming PC and basic one.  For me, I'm loving it.  The machine is smooth, it's an improvement, and I can't fault the experience for being too much like last gen.  And I have every confidence that it would only get better.