Ever since I bought my PlayStation4 a year ago it’s sat there next to my TV, begging me to play it. The problem is that pretty much every game that I would play on it has also been available on PC and since that’s my platform of choice the PS4 unfortunately falls by the wayside. It also doesn’t help that the one launch title that I wanted to play, The Witness, has since been delayed to “when it’s done” status which means we’re not likely to see it for some time to come. However one of my mates convinced me to go and play Destiny with him and since it won’t be available on PC for sometime I figured this would be a good chance to give the PS4 a burl.
For starters it seems that the PS4 exhibits some rather strange behaviours when it’s not connected to the PSN, usually when it requires an update. I was trying to put the disc in to get everything going but, for some reason, it just wouldn’t grab it. I’m not sure if this is because Sony don’t want you installing games offline or something like that, but it was rather frustrating to see what I had assumed would be default functionality turned off when it couldn’t contact home. A quick Google shows that this particular issue has plagued others as well, although what leads to it happening seems to be somewhat random.
Another gripe I have is the game installation and update process. Whilst the initial installation seems to be relatively painless (it just does it in the background) the update process is rather cumbersome. You’ll automatically get any updates for the game added to your download queue however you don’t apply them from within the game. Instead you have to wait for the download to finish, find the download (a chore in of itself) and then tell it to apply. You can’t simply sit in the game, watch the download and then apply the update from there like you could with the PS3. Honestly it feels like a huge step backward in terms of usability and I’m not hopeful that it will ever get changed if it’s still like this almost a year down the track.
The gaming experience is pretty good, however. It didn’t take long for me to get into a party with my mate and to get voice chat going although the quality of the included mono headset is probably about as mediocre as you can get. I was somewhat sceptical about the new controller design, it looked a little goofy, however it does feel very comfortable in the hands. The stick buttons were a little hard to push down (a little annoying as that’s sprint in Destiny) but that might just be them needing a little breaking in before they become usable. I didn’t get a chance to check out the inbuilt sharing features unfortunately as that’s something I definitely want to see in action.
I’ll probably touch more on the PS4 experience in the greater Destiny review (coming in the next couple weeks) however my first impressions are good, if marred by some issues that really should have been sorted out by this point in time. Whilst I lament the fact that it’s sat there for the better part of a year unused I’m at least somewhat happy that it has managed to provide a good gaming experience once I did find a title for it. I’ll develop a more fully formed opinion of it whilst I bash my way through Destiny and will hopefully be finally able to tell you if it’s worth buying or not.
Better late than never, right?
