Deep story games like The Last of Us vs. the rigorous punishment genre of Bloodborne

The Last of Us: Remastered

I finished The Last of Us (Remastered Edition) this weekend. It was easily the best game of the last generation of consoles, and still one of the best of the current generation. I'd have to rank it right next to Dragon Age: Awakening and Fallout 3 in terms of my deep visceral enjoyment.

But, it was a crazily depressing game. And it's efforts at realistically depicting a zombie apocalypse resonated deeply with a sense of "Yeah, this is probably how it would go down." There was a message in The Last of Us, somewhere, which involves questions about at what point one loses one's personal humanity...at what point it becomes inevitable. Survival vs. civilization, integrity vs. necessity. Interesting stuff.

Still....and maybe there was something I missed, but I never could figure out how the first Cordyceps spores managed to traverse the globe so efficiently as to lead to the epidemic. That one still leaves me scratching my head.

I also wonder sometimes if my enjoyment of The Last of Us is in part at least due to the fact that the game's principle protagonist is a man hitting 50, dealing with a lifetime of regret, worry and loss. I'm not fifty yet, but the stuff Joel worries about, while admittedly in the grand poo-bah of crapsack worlds, is still what a great many men worry about in middle age. Likewise, the loss of a daughter or child, a major driver of the game's protagonist, is something that probably speaks more to those who have children. I can safely say that I remember movies and games in the past where a child was present, and prior to becoming a father these tales never affected me as much as they do now.

One last thing on The Last of Us: it's very much the same sort of game as The Order: 1886, except much longer and it mostly avoids some of the "sense of agency" pitfalls of the latter title --you can, in many cases, find multiple paths to success, with only the occasional "kill 'em all" bottleneck moment. Still, a lot of the game is cut scenes and detailed story development. I think....honestly....The Order: 1886 should have spent more development time on about 8-10 hours of additional game play with a good story focus that was softened by an effort at more player agency. And less time rendering superficially relevant photographs and newspapers in glorious 360 degree views. For a game that's a few years old now, even with the improved "next gen" textures for the PS4 The Last of Us was damned nice looking.

Anyway if you're a gamer who plays what's good and not what's new, I recommend The Last of Us: Remastered edition on the PS4.

Bloodborne

Then there's Bloodborne. I started playing it and the game felt so much like Dark Souls I had to stop. I spent hours trying to figure out the secret to Dark Souls (and Demon Souls before it) and reached a point of actual physical aversion o the "feel" of the game. Hatred, really. So when Bloodborne fired up and the first damned NPC spoke to me in that same whispery, haunting voice that all Dark Souls NPCs do, I stopped right there. Not even worth trying. So I gave it to my wife. She played it for a couple of days, and then handed it back to me. "It's not that I couldn't play this," she explained. "It's that I know myself...I know I will play this game for however long it takes, and I will win. And I cannot afford to lose that time on such a meaningless task." So much effort for so little gain...the deep satisfaction of being able to say one beat the Souls-like game in question is outweighed by the more important things in life, like going for a walk, playing with your children, and practically anything else. The game doesn't even offer a decent story...at least, not one which is not in and of itself inscrutable. After playing The Last of Us to the end, and experiencing a game that resonated with deep and meaningful story and characters, I am really down on the idea of playing a game purely for the mechanical, visceral ability to "beat it." In fact any game for which my primary satisfaction is going to come from mastery is just not a game I care for anymore. You might imagine I hate roguelikes, and you'd probably be right. I'm also not much of a strategy fan, so, keep that in mind when reading my opinions on the Dark souls genre of games: I'm one of those softies who likes the game to have story elements and give me ephemeral, emotional reasons for caring about it. Being able to kill two werewolves at once only to die just before a lantern is...well...it feels like abuse, really. Not into that.

For me....Bloodborne looks like a game I'd want to play, but it is not. If Naughty Dog were the crafter of the tale I would be determined to play, knowing that the depth of the game would be more than just overcoming mechanical rigor and punishment for failure. But it's not....it's a From game, and I really need to remember that the rigorous punishment genre is not for me. So yep, we're done with Bloodborne.

Anyway, we're bailing out on it pre-emptively because Lives and Reasons and all that. So I'll just say that if you loved Dark Souls and have the time, you'll probably love Bloodborne too.

Wolfenstein: The New Order - review revisited

Last year I talked a bit about why I gave up on Wolfenstein: The New Order on the PS4. The rationalization (and tell me you haven't done this before) was that I was a bit tired of the game, it's alt-history Nazi theme and the fact that it seemed to be coasting on the borders of reality in a genre that flagrantly violates such borders in weird ways, anyway.

Actually, it turns out I was just stuck. I was in that horrid prison level (level 4) and couldn't get out of there. Cut forward about eight months and I've played a metric ton of Destiny, a great deal of it at high end heroic/epic levels. Now Wolfenstein feels like a piece of cake....I cut through the trouble level and everything after it yesterday. All done. Even that jackass Deathshead and his unstoppable flaming walker of doom.

Oh yeah, spoilers ahead.

Anyway, I played and finished Wolfenstein on the "Fergus" reality and quite enjoyed it. There's a problem with the game worth mentioning: it uses static save points, and those sometimes are spaced just far enough apart that it really feels like they are deliberately forcing you to restart certain key sections and suffer through a lot of repetition to get to the point where you died before...only to die again. I think it took me 2 hours at the end to get through about 20 minutes of content, to be honest (oh, thanks GameFAQs and all your contributors for existing!)

I sincerely hope we have a sequel in which you finally
get your just desserts, Evil Nazi Lady From Hell

So, some post-game observations:

I still think they needed an explanation on how Blaskzowski retained his physique while he was semi-comatose for fourteen years in Berlin. 

I really wish they had alluded to something which suggested or explained the alternate reality of Wolfenstein in the context of prior games. They had the mad woman resistance fighter with her mathematical obsession of probabilities....and she briefly tantalized us with the possibility someone might imply that there is in fact something horribly wrong with the "future present" of the New Order, but any chance of a revelation is apparently going to rest in the future of the franchise.

Did the Nazis really invent artificial gravity for their Moon bases? 

Did I just play a game in which an ancient cabal of Jewish super scientists over the milennia effectively created the first suit of Mjolnir Spartan Armor? Speaking of which, kudos to the devs for not falling to temptation and letting Blaskzowski wear the suit.

Outside of that, the game was almost fatalistically determined to craft one of the best "Nazis win" crapsack worlds ever, one where you might actually imagine a zombie apocalypse world would be less depressing. Kudos on that....I really am looking forward to a sequel now.

Wolfenstein: where our Nazis are 200% more evil than the next game's

Monday Blaaaaagh! Xbox One vs. PS4

Haven't had one of these for a while: what I call the "non-specific quota topic blog." Or, put another way, I haven't got any specific thing to write about, but I do need to write.

So.....!  Here are some amusing Xbox One vs. PS4 comparisons I have discovered this week:

Both machines require a full download of any disc-based software to run said software. However, the PS4 can do it pretty much immediately (presumably streaming from disc as it downloads in the background) while the Xbox One takes a while before it reaches a minimum percentage downloaded to function. Winner: PS4 but it's a pyrrhic victory

The new Xbox One OS doesn't require Kinect but does like to mention a lot how if you had one you could be doing voice commands. PS4 just had an update that likes to tell you it can now do voice commands if you have a mike plugged in. Xbox One came with a mike but apparently that's not enough to do the voice stuff. Winner: PS4 by a slim margin, unless you love voice commands in which case it's by a wide margin. But since I haven't actually tried to do voice on either, I couldn't tell ya'.

Xbox One's standard interface is smooth and efficient and actually quite an improvement over the Xbox 360 interface once you get used to it. The PS4 interface however is smoother and more efficient and a HUGE improvement over the PS3 interface. Winner: tie; they both work and have improved on what came before.

The Xbox One gets turned on and off occasionally by my cat who has discovered he likes to brush up against it when prowling. This seems to have no effect whatsoever on my Xbox One. The PS4, while having a touch-sensitive strip to turn it on and off, is pretty hard to actually make this happen by accident. PS4 hates being turned off unexpectedly (i.e. power loss) not sure about Xbox One yet. Winner: meh.

Xbox One interfaces with Smartglass on my Surface, letting me use the Surface's keyboard to type in codes and instruction. Nice! The PS4 lets me play games and navigate on a remote connection with my PS Vita. Also nice! However, the PS Vita is tied to an old account of mine with my real name showing (thanks Sony for not letting me change that) so while that account is on my PS4, I use my "not real name" handle account for all gaming. Since my PS Vita won't let me use a different account, it is largely useless to me for anything involving online gaming as a result. Winner; Xbox One by a wide margin. Microsoft's willingness to help fix accounts with name issues and smooth multi-media integration of smartglass is awesome. It's a shame, too, because the PS Vita's remote play connectivity is also amazing, but Sony's stubborn refusal to let people change game handles, especially on old established accounts made when, say, a confused person didn't think/realize he'd even have an online gaming tag to worry about (ahem) makes it necessary for said person to create an entirely new account to start migrating everything over to, when all he really wanted to do was change his Effin online game handle. Rant off!

Xbox One runs Netflix better than PS4. 'Nuff said. Winner: Xbox One.

Xbox One has Sunset Overdrive, a sort of genre mashup of Saint's Row, Borderlands and a mild acid trip. It's also hot the Master Chief collection coming out soon. PS4 hasn't got it's killer app (yet) but The Order: 1880 should be along early next year. Winner: Xbox One by a hair, but that's changing.

Space: it's a challenge for this era of consoles. When both machines require that you download the full game to the HDD, it means that you have to keep an eye on the 500 GB of space each console comes with. I've already had to think twice now about what games I will keep active on my PS4, having run out of space after about 14 games or thereabouts, and it's affecting my consideration for future purchases and what console they go on....do I keep CoD: Ghosts installed on my PS4 since I still enjoy dipping into the multiplayer, or do I delete in anticipating of the likely 60GB of space CoD: Advanced Warfare will command? Or do I simply by Advanced Warfare for the Xbox One, which currently still has 48% of its space free? Decisions decisions. Winner: no one wins here.

The Xbox One controller is very comfortable, works flawlessly on my PC, has cute feedback in the triggers, and is a perfect refinement of the old Xbox controller. PS4's controller is very comfortable, has a nice track/swipe square, fixes every conceivable issue one could imagine on the insanely bad old Dualshock controllers, and is very comfortable. Winner: toss up, I love them both.

Conclusion: tomato, to-mah-to. Seriously these are both fine machines in their own right and both also suffer from not having enough exclusives to really make either machine properly stand out. That's changing, slowly, but next time you see Sony fanboys mocking the Xbox One for it's 720p performance on some games (hint: I can't tell the difference) or Xbox cronies deriding the PS4 for Sony's epic failz just step away and hose them all down. Real gamers own both consoles!

Looking at the first year of FPS titles of the Playstation 4

"I think my ghost is broken, it sounds like Peter Dinklage with his emotion button switched off."*

Technically it's been about ten and a half months (give or take) since I bought my PS4 but the new holiday season is upon us and it means that we're about to be hit by a slew of new titles in the next two months, even as the first year of games immediately falls out of style and sinks into the digital muck of gaming history. So, what wasn't worth it....and what's worth remembering? I'll look at the shooters this time around....which is most of what came out for the console, anyway.

First off, Destiny arrived not long ago and has proved to be a fantastic game, albeit with some caveats. Chief among the "buts" is the fact that it's a game which suffers from an identity crisis, and depending on whether you approach it as a "MMORPG shooter" or a "Halo but with more interesting design parameters" you will likely have two very different takes on the game. I'll tell you this: it's not an MMORPG no matter how much they doll it up; structurally it is much closer to the original Guild Wars, though that doesn't become obvious until a little way in to the game. By this comparison I mean that the game has a hub, where everyone gathers, then it breaks the game up into discreet chunks which may or may not have small groups of cohorts battling it out. What it really does is present a novel way to integrate single player and co-op content into one seamless whole, and that's where the MMORPG element "feels" like it should be, even though it's not quite there. It also apparently makes for a great loot grind at the endgame but I haven't gotten there yet.

Destiny's only real sin, though, is requiring an online connection when, ultimately, only the "crucible" pvp elements and a few other specific missions (all optional so far) are necessary for that connection. This could have been a long and engaging single player game, and if they'd made it that way they could have invested in giving a more protagonist-focused plot and story to Destiny. As it stands, it exists somewhere in a weird nether: not good enough to rank with MMOs, but definitely superior in structure, mechanics and graphics to all other shooters right now. Destiny, like Titanfall and Defiance, is another stepping stone toward something much cooler in the future; but it's not "that thing" it promised, either.

Still expect to be playing it a lot for months to come, though. Criticism of its focus doesn't change the fact that it's fun as hell. The story criticisms would probably feel more damning if it weren't for the fact that Destiny still does more with it story and amazing atmosphere than most other shooters. The criticism about the story is quite amusing, really. Destiny has a strange almost mythic sort of vibe to it; its story will confuse people expecting the usual FPS story garbage (see below for many examples) or it will annoy people who prefer elaborate Bioware/Bethesda titles where everything is revolving in great detail around your character. Destiny is almost poetic in the way it blends story and atmosphere into a strange, eerie experience puncuated by moments of violence.

Which gets us to the next few games....

All of the shooters prior to Destiny now suffer a bit by comparison. Of the titles which predate Destiny (Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Metro Redux, Killzone: Shadow Fall and Wolfenstein) only Killzone Shadow Fall really offers a comparable experience, albeit in a somewhat more limited form. You can do some stuff in K:SF you can't do in any other game, including Destiny.....but the multi-player element of K:SF is still not up to Destiny-level quality, unfortunately.

Anyway, I finished Killzone's campaign and was ...I don't know.... I guess impressed at the sheer length of the design credits for the game, more than anything. I wish they'd spent more time figuring out how to convey the story; the game has a story, and you can follow it (and also miss a lot of it if you don't hunt for the game's many hidden collectibles) but I never really felt a connection or even a care for any of the characters** except one, at best a twinge of remorse at the end of chapter nine just before chapter ten started with it's "payback" mode (no spoilers, I promise). The bottom line being: people may criticize Destiny for a shallow or poorly conveyed world and story, but this is not a problem unique to Destiny (hell, I would argue Destiny has the opposite problem by keeping it simple and eloquent....and this confuses many players looking for complex and confusing. K:SF has a decent story but it's told through poorly conceived sequences....it's become an epidemic of shooters in general these days. Developers telling us that the single player campaigns are not necessary (Titanfall, cough) or not the main point of their game (Battlefield 4, blech) are deluding themselves (I hope). I can tell you right now for all the time I've spent in Titanfall (hint: not much) I definitely won't buy a sequel until it hits bargain basement prices. And this is as good a segue as any to talk a moment about Call of Duty: Ghosts.

The only sympathetic character in Killzone....and she still wasn't that nice

First, I've played all the "modern" iterations of the CoD franchise as well as the WWII editions. I've mostly focused on the single player campaigns, so my investment is way lower than your typical CoD addict, and I didn't get into the multi-player element until the first Black Ops, which was distinct for recognizing the desire to have bot matches. CoD: Ghosts to its credit continued that trend and you can play multi-player local with bots easily, and the bot AI can be pretty decent....if you're just looking for fun and don't want to deal with the stress of the online PvP crowd then this is great. Of course, there's also the single player campaign...

At this point in the CoD universe they moved the storyline to the future, quite a ways, and the story itself is almost transparently evident as a series of strings tying one location to another. The reason and purpose for the action of your protagonist is tightly defined in a formula that is so wrote now that you can pretty much tick off by the numbers what will happen, perhaps even when. So we get Roarke as the charismatic bad guy over Makarov. We have the driven cohort who spurs us on, the Big Bad Evil Empire which in this case is the South American Federation, and we have lots of places where things happen, each more impressive in scope and madness than the last. And it's damned playable, even if the plot comes right from the scribblings of a Tom Clancy fanfic forum. But....it's gotten too old, too predictable. The end of Ghosts' campaign was a paint-by-numbers in which I knew what was going to happen scene by scene, even as I still conceded I wasn't entirely clear on what the hell the plot was, or why Roarke turned evil-bad. In fact try to play this game keeping in mind that the Federation is basically South America at large....and tell me if you could have guessed that. They discreetly cut down on the extraneous chatter (I didn't hear a lot of Spanish or Portugese being spoken, for example), and no behind-the-scenes major villain ever surfaced, which was weird; usually they're better at this stuff....it would have helped explain Roarke's existence if a more shockingly evil supervillain were behind his "conversion."

And the end: without spoiling it, I'll just state that I really wish they had let these characters alone in the end, because knowing they set it all up for a Ghosts II sequel is not selling the franchise's future to me anymore.

I'm very forgiving of the CoD fanchise, but Ghosts is pushing me to think twice. Luckily Advanced Warfare does not appear to be in the same universe.....but it does suffer from what I call "Crysis but without any weird SF vibe to scare away the mundanes" going on for it. Maybe I'll get it....after I read the reviews, first. Maybe. Or I could wait until they have a sale or two.

So for the rest of the shooters? Here it is in a nutshell:

Wolfenstein: I'll be honest, as well designed as this game was it got tepid and unpleasant after around chapter fiveish, and I grew increasingly annoyed with the game. Somewhere in the latter half of the prison level I gave up; Destiny's existence did not help my motivation to continue here. Plus, I could not get over the fact that Blaskowzki was stuck in that home for the indigent for years and yet somehow retained his soldier's muscle mass? WTF! I know suspension of disbelief can be tenuous in these games, but this one snapped mine completely.***

Battlefield 4: this one buried the hatchet on the franchise for me completely. I loathe this franchise now, and will not even bother with Battlefield: Hardline or whatever nonsense they plan to produce next. Short reason is the single player campaign was unpleasant, too linear, and just plain old "not fun." The multiplayer was conceivably more interesting but also required a greater degree of investment to become good at, which means time, which I have in too short of supply for this game.

Metro: Redux: this is actually a fantastic game, and if you somehow didn't play it previously the Redux edition is a good starting point. It's fairly linear, but the game makes up for that problem in so many other ways, including numerous realistic touches, a seriously well developed story line and more atmosphere than you can shake a gas mask at. Play it to experience Fallout Russia style.

In Russia game play you!

*In Peter Dinklage's defense I think his voice over as the Ghost is fine, but he has two problems: they don't really give the protagonist enough (almost any) dialogue, and it's impossible to avoid comparing the Ghost to Cortana...and Cortana will always win. Always.



**Contrast with games like Last of Us or Shadow of Mordor where you can feel your very soul gripped by the plight of the characters.


***Don't get me wrong, this is a game about "future" Nazis in the sixties with giant robots and all that, but I'll be honest, I never finished any Wolfenstein previous to this one, so it comes as no surprise that the series' alternate history post-WWII setting just doesn't do it for me, anyway.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Another long week in which I'll be traveling, so no guarantee I'll have may blog posts, but I did want to mention that Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is out and it's a damned good game, possibly the first real "must have" of the season. I managed to play a few hours (finally*) this Sunday and here's my initial thoughts:

At it's core Shadow of Mordor is "fantasy Assassin's Creed." Given how well it was done though this little derivation can be forgiven. If anything, think of the Assassin's Creed style of game as it's own special subgenre. It just so happens that a tale about a wraith-possessed ranger fighting the good fight against the hordes of Mordor fits the AC style of game very, very well.

The style and approach to the game is more "movie" and less "other." It is also very polished, so if you've been gunshy about LotR derived properties through bad experiences (like me) then be assured this game exceeds expectations and sets the bar for the future very high.

The lore so far is specific to this storyline and seems to be well-contained. I haven't played far enough to tell you if they deviate anywhere however, nor am I the definitive Middle-Earth expert though I'm certainly no lightweight in that regard, either.

The nemesis system the game employs in which you encounter various orc captains (and other creatures? I don't know) works really well and is one of many distinct touches. The game does something extremely right in this regard that the last few AC games haven't: it really makes you want to find all the side missions and extra stuff. There's something interesting about every item you can locate on the map.

As always I'm playing this on the PS4....the PC specs looked a bit concerning for my aging rig.

Anyway....check it out!

*Also explains why I didn't prep more blog content for the week =)

Destiny

Destiny is now out, and it's a thing, at least if you're into consoles. PC owners will have to wait a while, I suspect....assuming Bungie actually does release this for PC down the road, that is. They may be quite comfortable with keeping it on console, if only because it's easier to monetize there.

Anyway, it's a great game....not the "be all and end all" of new titles for the next generation, but definitely innovative in a significant way for shooters. The structure of the game is a well-conceived blend of traditional FPS style gameplay and MMO design, creating a mixture of scenarios and open world exploration that blend really well together. The hubs and multiplayer elements are there, and certainly available for exploit by those who crave them, but just as easily a "background detail" for those not so social....you can still get into plenty of firefights with allies without having to group, talk, or do much more than nod appreciatively at the assist, basically.

I'm only a few hours in so far, catching up and surpassing where I got to in the beta test a while back, but the open world areas are huge and gorgeous, the quests generally interesting in a "collect this and kill that" sort of way. Although I can see them getting a bit repetitive after a while, I am counting on the game giving me incentive and opportunity to move on to new regions and events to keep it fresh.

The desolate post-apocalyptic landscapes, sound and music are great....sort of reminds me a bit of the love child of Halo and Fallout 3, but with the lighter fare of an MMO quest mechanic over the more involved RPG storyline. The main missions contain the story, which is told in cut scenes and events....I am eager to see where it goes over time.

Character generation is surprisingly detailed for the kind of game this is, but you don't get to name your character, which is a shame...simple things like that will attract the diehard RP crowd, which Bungie may not be all that familiar with, coming from a FPS console side of the picture. A shame, because I could see my wife and her RP buddies playing the hell out of this game for the character armor options alone.

Destiny won't rock everyone's world, but I think it does set a new precedent for FPS titles. Going back to play CoD: Ghosts, Wolfenstein The New Order or Killzone: Shadow Fall after playing Destiny is a bit hard....they feel a severely lacking for different reasons, to say the least....CoD: Ghosts too tired and focused on rigid formulas, Wolfenstein too on the rails (despite trying to pretty up the experience with the illusion of choice) and Killzone feeling too clunky compared to the smooth, almost effortless control scheme of Destiny. Metro Redux gets a pass because the game's aambiance is through the roof, and its story is hard to beat.

Anyway.....nice to have a really good and unique game out on consoles again. I'll provide a follow-up report once I've had more time to really delve into Destiny's long term potential.

Xbox One Decoupled from Kinect, now competitively priced at $399...but too little, too late?

Microsoft has announced that on June 9th Xbox One can now be bought for $399 without a bundled Kinect. That's cool, and it may prompt me to buy one (though still not likely to happen until they actually have some exclusives worth purchasing).

The problem, of course, is that a lot of people (like me) opted for the PS4, and don't regret that decision. The PS4 and Xbox One have very, very similar catalogs of games right now....if you look at the existing lineup of games for each console, you'll see that the number of exclusives is damned small, and technically leaning in favor of PS4 right now (based on Infamous: Second Son and Killzone: Shadow Fall mostly, but I'm rather biased since I never much cared for the Dead Rising series...and Ryse doesn't sell well to people averse to the creep-zone brought about by the Kinect).*

If the 2014 releases for both consoles are almost perfectly identical (and they are), and the exclusives that would sway decisions on this are still looking like 2015 or later releases for the Xbox One...is anyone really going to buy a second console just so they can have both, when having one pretty much nets you everything right now? And on a console which is being trumpteted for its superior performance time and again?

 I was never a Sony fanboy and I didn't even buy a PS3 until February last year  ....but I'll be damned if Microsoft didn't make me one.

*Given that the best version of Titanfall is on PC, hard to include it as "exclusive."

Friday Blog - PS4 one week in

Just a short update for Friday....so we've had the PS4 one week now, and I have a few observations:

Five Good Games: unless you're into sports or legos, neither of which appeal in my household (yet; Marcus is just learning about real, physical legos right now so give him a couple more years and I'm sure video game legos won't be far behind) it means my wife and I collectively have snagged Call of duty: Ghosts, Need for Speed Rivals, Battlefield 4, Injustice: Gods Among Us, and (despite having it on PC) Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.

I couldn't resist playing some ACIV on getting it, and it turns out the purchase was worth it (fair disclosure: I used Gamestop credit so it didn't really cost me anything, although the Season Pass did). The PS4 version runs better and looks nicer than the one I have on the PC....a sad sign my PC, at three years old, is getting long in the tooth.

I played just far enough into ACIV to have a double-take moment followed by the usual "....oh, I better finished the other games soon so I know what major plot bit they were just refering to...." moments.

Netflix on PS4 is Testy: what is up with Netflix? It randomly freezes the whole system, gets testy when you do things like pause, and also corrupts any background loading you've got going on. We're still using the PS3 for Netflix right now, the PS4 version of the app can't be trusted.

Handy Reboot Tip: if your PS4 has frozen you can reboot it by placing your finger over the whole "start" strip and don't move even if you think hell just froze over. It will eventually reboot, I promise. (About 20-30 seconds, IRL)

Couch Co-Op: My wife and I have ascertained that if you want local multiplayer, Call of Duty Ghosts is a solid win, with multiple split-screen modes to keep us going, despite the fact that Battlefield 4 is technically the superior shooter experience....we both want to play Battlefield 4, but it won't let us play together, so CoD: Ghosts gets more of our time, and we take turns on Battlefield 4 otherwise.

Aside from CoD: Ghosts Injustice has some fun beat-em-up multiplayer, but I suck horribly at these fighting games, so its more fun to let my wife play while I watch the unlocked story scenes. Rumor is the game Knack is good for co-op couch gaming but neither of us found the cutesy platformer genre that Knack comes from to be interesting.

Touchy Feely Console: The PS4 turns on by swiping it's on-spot, which is not an obvious place unless you read the manual. You can also eject discs this way. For some reason it does not let you just turn the console on from the controller like the PS3 did (though you can turn it off that way). It also seems to get uppity in it's power-saver mode, so I've been keeping it in hard-off mode when I shut it down.

Beyond this point....I have to say we're both happy to have the PS4 now. I still have PS3 games to finish...and I shall....but the potential of the new system is obvious, and I expect it will only be a matter of time before the Xbox 360 is retired, and the PS3 will probably hold us over for another year before I finish all the backlogged titles I have on it, too. By then, the new gen consoles should have a decent array of titles to keep us from even wanting to look back.

The Console Shelf Got Very Crowded Last Night

My wife took it upon herself to buy us (and by us I mean me) a Playstation 4 for Xmas. And because neither she nor I can resist giving out gifts to each other two second after we get them, I got it last night. I reciprocated with a Deadpool Omnibus Vol. I (she's a big Deadpool fan) but it felt a little...off kilter. Might need to find some more lewt for her....!

So yeah, despite not planning to get a PS4 I now have one. Which means this is all I have to blog about today. But a few observations for those interested:

1. I received Killzone: Shadow Fall and Need for Speed Rivals with the PS4. Both decent games. It's impossible not to notice that they are suddenly in 1080p. It's hard to believe it took us this long to get a console that displays games natively in 1080p.

2. The selection of free to play titles on the PS4 is modest but important: Killzone: Retribution, DC Universe Online, Warframe and a few others (such as Contrast and Resogun as PSNetwork freebies) are vital downloads, since outside of this there's a pretty skimpy lineup of launch titles. Also, near as I can tell no one is making splitscreen co-op anymore, which is a damned shame.

3. If you were not a fan of the old Playstation interface you might like the new one. It had a few quirks, but once I got used to it I find its pretty easy. A bit odd how one closes out a game or app, though.

4. A weird negative: don't try to watch Netflix on the PS4 while downloading games. It does not like this, and will make you sorry by corrupting the download files.

5. I think this has been fairly well established, but in case you didn't know, the new generation of consoles are not backwards compatible. So....don't chuck your old PS3 anytime soon. Unless you're completely done with it, the PS3 may still have some life left in it. For me, I've still got a couple dozen games I'd like to finish on the old machine.

On Need for Speed: Rivals....this is a pretty addictive game. Damned addictive. Despite there not being a way to pause while actually rolling around the tracks, primarily because this is a sort of "racing MMO lite," if you need to pause you just go into safe drive mode or quit out to your garage screen. This may cost you winnings....assuming you don't suck like I do....but it's not nearly as problematic so far as some gaming outlets might have suggested. Beyond that, the pick-up-and-go multiplayer racers vs. cops is very addictive for those who are into racing games.

As for Killzone: Shadow Fall the game looks very nice, and starts off promising. It's got a very comfortable interface and the gameplay feels very right. I like the drone you acquire. The forests you stalk through are very impressive. It bodes well for what we can see on these machines in the future. Note that you do not need to have played the prior Killzone titles to enjoy this one, as the story takes place decades after the end of Killzone 3.

Beyond all that, the new PS4 game controller is extremely nice, and I like it much, much more than the older sixaxis controller for the PS3 and prior versions. The revamped controller was long overdue but well worth the wait. So far the only oddity about it is the placement of options button....for me, anyway.

So....more later on the PS4! I'll try to do proper reviews of the aforementioned titles, and also plan to snag Call of Duty Ghosts and Battlefield 4, too. I already have Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the PC, so that will have to sit out, I suppose. I do have CoD:Ghosts on Steam but....my wife would kinda like to play it as well, preferably in splitscreen mode....which I've heard this one might actually support (internet rumors are hazy on this though...)

On the Joy of Not Caring About New Consoles

One of the nice things about having a diversity of interest is that no single thing necessarily dominates one's attention. In my case I've been far more excited about discovering 13th Age than I am about the imminent arrival of the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One. Given that I just bought a PS3 earlier this year that makes a bit of sense; I have 20+ games in my shelf backlog on that machine that I hardly have time to get to; the prospect of paying $400 right now for a PS4 just to play the new Killzone doesn't sound like a smart move...and all the other titles coming out are almost all cross-platform, including PC, which makes for very little incentive to pick up one of these consoles Day One.

Given that the 1st release of new consoles also comes with hideous uncertainties like fatal design flaws and unforeseen errors and other problems, it's sometimes a miracle that they can get such a high rate of adoption early on.  Still....a lot of people out there use the console as their primary gaming bread and butter, so I imagine there must be households out there where having one of these machines is both a necessity and a sign of prestige.

So in the midst of this consumer chaos I have opted out. I'm going to keep prepping for my 13th Age game (we're running one this Saturday!) while I enjoy my recently acquired Kindle Paperwhite (more about that later). And speaking of big spectacles, the recent World of Warcraft "Warlords of Draenor" announcement was enough to push me over the edge....after two years I have decided, shockingly, to not only resubscribe to WoW but to even get the Mists of Pandaria expansion....! So what did did I do with this return? Why, roll up a brand new level 1 human fighter, of course! I'll suffer through a pandaren later....but not a monk. I'll make something else a monk.

I don't know if it's nostalgia or just the video game equivalent of comfort food, but it is nice to return to WoW again. In the world of MMOs there's something rather pleasant and addictive about the way WoW does it's "thing" that the endless competitors keep missing. I'll play it for a while, probably lose interest eventually and then be ready for when the rather impressive sounding Warlords of Draenor finally arrives.

Have some Humble Pie, Xbox One

Apparently Microsoft is not above admitting it made a bad choice and recanting. Don Mattrick came out with an official statement that the Xbox One will no longer require an internet connection every 24 hours, will only require internet access at startup, will not restrict the trading and resale of games, and will let you play all games the same way either online or offline.

Interesting. I guess the backlash was even more noticeable than just a lot of internet flack (maybe preorders were way below what they anticipated?)

Unfortunately, they still have that mandatory Kinect requirement and a $500 price tag so PS4 still looks like the better deal to me.

Focusing on the Positives!

Okay, back to the usual round of gaming stuff on the blog!

Penny Arcade summed up Microsoft's E3 presentation nicely:

At this point....like, literally the only thing Microsoft can do to salvage it's image issue with the Xbone is to recant some of its established position. My suspicion is that due to numerous behind-the-scenes agreements and issues already in place that this is not feasible, so I guess they'll have to keep figuring out ways to spin their current tangled web.

I mean....if you haven't seen the video by now, it's really quite amusing: PS4's process for sharing games:



Sony really owes Microsoft, they couldn't have made E3 so entertaining and successful without them!

PS4 takes the First Shot and hits it out of the park

Who knew?!?!?! The idea that Sony, only slight less vitriolic and clueless at times than Microsoft, would properly announce a Playstation 4 that caters to all the features that the now infamous Xbone has specifically eschewed.

According to Gamespot:

The PS4 will support the used market as it exists currently....so no convoluted new scheme to force  consumers to give up the Right of First Sale, nor to assume that there is any harm from the used market that must be squelched, presumably.

No online check-in required. Wow!

And at the Escapist (I don't recommend Escapist for properly researched news bits, but it is convenient):

Price point of the PS4? $399. That's one hundred bucks less than the Xbone.

It'll come packaged with a 500GB hard drive, controller, headphones and HDMI cable out of the box. Looks like it does come with a Sony Eyecam or whatever it's called. I wonder if it will be an "always on" element or not? Given the Ps4 is designed to facilitate offline play as much as online, I'm guessing not.

Also, it's shaped like a Rhombus and does not look like it fell off of a Delorean.

Tech Radar has the best overview I've found so far.

I'll be putting my preorder down for the PS4 it looks like. Nice to feel excited for a console, even if it's just to be a part of the process.

Your move, Microsoft.

Grumpy XBone Post #2

So Microsoft released more details on the XBone and it's not terribly reassuring for many people. Ars Technica has an overview on the new info here. In parsing out the new data, there are actually some decent features being pesented.....but they're modest and hard to appreciate in the wake of the other more draconian elements. Specifically:

1. You can have a family account with up to ten people on it. This is pretty neat actually, something Steam doesn't provide for on PC and something the current Xbox 360 only touches on with family accounts. On the other hand, I can pop a disk into my 360 and anyone can play it. In fact I am pretty sure the only limits right now are on DLC and XBLA downloads purchased on my account. Even Sony's PS4 is a bit more reasonable than that, allowing a certain number of current accounts to access my downloaded content (so my wife can play Demon Souls too, basically).

2. The phone in online-every twenty four hours or every hour at a friend's thing doesn't really bother me because I'm always online at home, but the friends part does because I like to drag my Xbox 360 to my friend's house once in a while for some Halo or Gears of War gaming and he's got occasional internet issues (also, he doesn't even have an Xbox Live account so we usually don't go online at all). The new Xbone doesn't favor this freedom. The loss of offline functionality for more than 24 hours is problematic for the two or three times a year that Comcast/Xfinity craps out, too. I've always been able to lean on the 360 in the past to fill those periods with gaming. Admittedly, that's not a big concern for me....I am not lacking for offline entertainment, I admit....but it's still a negative, another loss of freedom that Xbone's predecessor offered.

3. The used games issue isn't a deal breaker for me either, as I don't buy many used games. However, the key reason I will buy a used game is if I want to try it out but want to return the game should it prove to be a terrible experience, and Gamestop still offers that sort of return one week from date of purchase. I also happen to think that Microsoft's got lots of evidence on its own current XBLA store that they don't really plan on moving to a competitive digital sales model ala Steam, simply because they barely touch upon the concept now. Xbox Live weekly sales are occasionally cool, but 95% of the time most sales are "meh" at best and the typical cost of games on their current digital service are disproportionately high relative to the long-tail value of PC titles, for contrast. If you want even more compelling evidence that Microsoft has no interest in consumer-friendly pricing structures and sales look at the travesty that is the Games for Windows Live store. So in this regard I have to clearly state that Microsoft's demonstrated how it handles digital sales, and it's not pretty.

4. There's no upside best as I can tell to the always-on Kinect elements, and I'm going to show my paranoid colors here by stating that for every other issue with the Xbone, this is the one which kills it for me. Actually, the language Microsoft itself used is what's the deal breaker, as the curious covert double speak, suggesting that the Xbone can and will be recording if you don't specifically opt out, is a tacit implication that it can spy like this, and therefore one must assume at some point it will do so. Someone coined the phrase "Xbox1984" as a title for the new machine, and I think it's apt. Yes, they do state "we won't record you," but the fact that they then discuss "opting out" as a process you have to go through suggests the default setting for the machine is "we can record you if we want, unless you specifically tell us otherwise. And even then, who knows!" The level of detail the Kinect is capable of recording is even more disturbing.

 At this point, literally the only reason I can see to purchase an Xbone is if I want to continue with the Halo franchise. Gears of War was a great series, I quite enjoyed it....but it was clear with Gears of War: Judgement that the franchise was done and had just released one more retread that I strongly suspect was intended originally to be a DLC content pack for GoW 3 before Cliffy left Epic. Meanwhile Halo 5 will have direct competition from its progenitors at Bungie with Destiny....which, of course, will also be on the PS4.

All Sony needs to do is announce a PS4 that operates in the same core model of digital sales and distribution as the PS3 currently, with continued support for used game sales and I think they've won this console war before the first machine is ever sold. We'll see. That...or Wii U needs to do some aggressive advertising and Nintendo needs to display a distinct uptick in the number of third party releases for its machine. However, if the PS4 jumps on the Xbone bandwagon and Wii U continues to look irrelevant....then I think PC gaming is going to dominate.