Hello everyone. It's time for our PlayStation 4 review.
We've spent the last 24 hours with the PlayStation 4 trying out all the
various games, comparing it to the new Xbox One
the previous Xbox, the previous PlayStation 3 and
all-in-all we're ready to deliver our review. So first off
what do we get in the PlayStation 4 box? Well,
it's a fairly well-rounded package for the price. You get
the controller obviously, the console obviously
and a healthy dose of extra cables
and accessories. This includes a headset that plugs directly into the actual game
controller this time,
unlike on the previous PS3 where unfortunately it was a Bluetooth headset or nothing.
Speaking of the controller, it's very comfortable.
The whole time when we were playing games it didn't feel too big,
it didn't feel too small, it didn't feel too heavy, it didn't feel too light,
it kind of just felt perfect, a strange thing with a controller really.
Sony have not always had the best history of really kind of nailing
their interface controllers but on this occasion
everything works really well. It's interesting that they've included things PlayStation 4 review
like the touch controls and the light bar and
from our experience of playing a few games yes it works
relatively well. How well and how supported it will be in future
that's going to be down to the game's developers, but it certainly appears
so far to be a well-thought-out concept
unlike the original six axis controller that came with the PS3
which unfortunately just felt like well a solution to a problem nobody was having.
When we actually compare the PlayStation 4 to the Xbox One we find the PS4
is substantially smaller, much lighter and in my opinion is a better
designed piece of equipment, even though we're dealing with effectively the
same internal hardware
the PlayStation 4 engineers have done a much better job
at fitting all of the product into that case
and not charging you the earth for it at the same time.
For instance with the PlayStation 4 we have an internal power brick.
So instead of an external power unit we just have a cable, plug in and off it goes.
The operation of the PlayStation 4 when running was a little bit noisy in my
opinion than the Xbox One
but not to the point that it sounds like a jet engine or anything.
Now coming onto the actual software of the PlayStation 4
the cross-media bar has been completely redesigned
on this next generation console. It's nice PlayStation 4 review
it's not in my opinion going to win any awards for originality
and it's very reminiscent of the Xbox One and
Microsoft's metro-style interface.
Effectively square blocks on the screen which are an icon,
you hover over them, they enlarge slightly and you get a sense for
where you are within the position of the menu. Like I say, it's not going to win any awards
for originality
but it works very well. There's a lot of software features they've kind of packed into
the PS4 which are going to be really interesting
for gamers. For instance livestream into twitch.tv
as well as pre-recording 15 minutes of footage that you can then dive back into
if you happen to have done something really cool. If you contrast
that with the Xbox One
where you have a 15 second buffer on the Xbox and no
live streaming at the moment unless you use external capture equipment.
Another area that was quite interesting is the PS4 is incredibly fast installing
games
from its Bluray drive. We were absolutely gobsmacked by how fast it actually was
but also the overall patching process as well on the PlayStation 4
was effortless in my opinion. When we looked at the Xbox One we found that
frankly the download times were pretty gnarly
and the install times weren't particularly quick either. Even though we're essentially dealing
with very very similar hardware
it does seem to me that the PlayStation 4 has just
really put a focus on getting gamers into the game and playing
as fast as possible and not sitting there watching installers and patches PlayStation 4 review
running through. Just for the record both consoles were tested on the same
broadband line that runs at 120meg a second download and a
10meg up so there's no bottlenecks here coming from our ISP
it's all down to what the game's developers
for instance Microsoft and Sony are providing bandwidth wise
and so far the PlayStation has got much greater bandwidth there.
Even though we were dealing with slightly smaller patches on the PlayStation you
could definitely tell PlayStation 4 review
the Sony guys are really putting the bandwith behind their console launch
this time around.
The overall look and feel of the cross media bar with the PlayStation is good.
There's nothing here to grumble about other than it being just maybe a
little bit safe. There's a lack of information on the screen
that could, you know, have been done a little bit better. It would have been nice to
have some sort of hover over context so that we can get a better sense of what's
in each of these games listings within the Play Store for instance
but overall nothing major to grumble about here.
We really did find that the colour reproduction coming out of PlayStation 4
was really good. The graphics are true to life colour wise.
When we looked at some of the other aspects of the PlayStation 4
dashboard area, cross-media bar, we found it all to be
pretty good. There wasn't any major things we wanted to grumble about
particularly
everything worked fast and fluid. There was no slowdowns or
delays or anything like that and even calling up some more information within
the Play Store
with absolutely fine.
As you can see there, that's just a quick look at Warframe's page,
slightly disconcerting to see £170 I think it was
to unlock but just a remarkable amount of money to have to spend on
well getting absolutely everything for a free to play title
but at least Sony have actually gone with free to play titles in a genuine way.
Unlike Microsoft whose attempt at a free to play title was Killer Instincts
which effectively just got you one character you could play with
and then you'll have to hand over £15 for anything else. That's not exactly free to
play Microsoft.
Might want to go and look up the definition of free to play there. Sony
do seem to be putting an awful lot of effort behind their free to play offerings
and as well as working with the independent developers who are creating
and it's to be applauded in my opinion.
Free to play games, indy games as well, they are the lifeblood
of this next generation. We've seen that in PC gaming
over the last two or three years and it's going to be true of the next gen
consoles as well.
Microsoft really do need to take a little bit more care and
love of their independent developers and the free to play community. PlayStation 4 review
It doesn't really feel like they've understood what that's all about
just yet. As with PlayStation you can have
the PlayStation Plus there which will get you access to a few free games
if you're a PlayStation Plus member. Those people buying PlayStation at
launch
there is an offer running in a number of shops where you'll be able to pick up a
PlayStation Plus
membership for 12-months for £30 as opposed to around £60 that it would
normally be. Well worth it for Christmas,
you know, bonus as it were, picking that up.
So here is the ShareGreat Moments
options. So basically as you're playing a PlayStation game at
any time you like you can hit the share button on your controller and start
broadcasting live to the web,
straight up on to twitch.tv so that your friends can watch you gaming in real time.
You can also record clips that you can upload yourself to Facebook
as well and also post to Twitter if you really like to.
It would've been great to see a YouTube option here, I don't understand why Sony
didn't do a deal with Google but looking at both of the consoles
it does seem that there's not really the kind of
integration with Google services that we might have come to expect YouTube being
the biggest video site
on the web and there just doesn't seem to really be the support there.
We do have the YouTube apps that allow us to watch
YouTube content on our games consoles but we don't have those sharing features
at this point
and that feels like a bit of a missed opportunity
in my mind. Overall PlayStation 4 review
if it's just the software you're looking at on the PlayStation 4
it works fine, it's passable. In my opinion it's not quite as good
as theXbox One which does have sort of tighter integrations
but is missing out on some of those kind of key features like the sharing
options which for my mind are just awesome. At anytime you like
you can jump in and watch other people playing their PlayStation 4 games
and if that game's excited you, you can then start the game yourself if
you happen to have it, otherwise it'll take you over into the Store so you can buy a
copy of it.
There's some good thinking there Sony. The video footage was a bit of a strange one though.
There's obviously an awful lot of compression
being added into the video footage so it can be streamed live
without impacting either the performance of the games console
or impacting on your bandwidth that you have available from your ISP.
But what we found is that the video footage might look a little ropey
for the first sort of 20 seconds or so
and then it does improve quite dramatically if you have quite a lot of
downstream bandwidth.
It does seem to be using Twitch's back end as it were
for the video footage and in my opinion that's not quite as good quality
as you would get from your YouTube live stream. That said though
if you're just wanting to take a look and see how somebody else is playing a
particular level
or how you yourself are getting on against your friends
then it's more than passable and it certainly looks great on a television set
with just a little bit of macro blocking kind of pixellating
the image just a little tiny bit. As you can see here this is Killzone
Shadowfall, just a phenomenal game really, we've got some more footage of that coming up
from our live play. This is just a bit of pre-record that we pulled down
directly from PlayStation's livestream just so that you could see how to livestream
functionality works. As you can see you can scroll
right the way through all sorts of games that are available on PlayStation now
and jump in and play but we did find occasionally this... PlayStation 4 review
nothing going on. Whether this
is the person who's streaming simply going and taking a break and leaving their
console running, not too sure, that's what it appeared to be to us.
It didn't certainly appear to be a frozen console or anything like that.
But as you can see, you can scroll through all of this different content, you can
search for content by
particular games and you can enter the comments and chat with people
as well whilst they're gaming. It works very well
and one of the great things about this is how much of a community it really
does feel like it's fostering.
On the PlayStation 3 community was kind of a dirty word in some respects
it wasn't something Sony seemed to really care about with their games.
Now we have it integrated directly into the console layer.
We also have a complete set of apps as well interestingly BBC iplayer
makes an appearance where it doesn't on the Xbox One currently
and the browser in the PlayStation 4 as well
was really good even to the point that we could bring up
the Androidizen YouTube page, start our intro video
and then play it full screen with no slowdowns at all.
You try and do that on a PS3 and I'm afraid you'll find it a really frustrating
experience.
But here it was just like browsing on a tablet or on a
full-sized PC, it just worked fluidly
and absolutely spot-on. You can see there we have full control over the player
using the controller. It's a little bit difficult sometimes to hit those
buttons
but by and large it just worked really really well
once obviously the buffer just kicked in for a second there
but as you can see perfect frame rate, no slowdowns no glitching or anything like
that
and that's running through the PlayStation 4 web browser.
OK, on now to some actual gameplay footage. This was all captured
directly from our PlayStation 4 using our high end capture system so
you are seeing this exactly how it would be coming out of the PlayStation 4
and quite frankly it is groundbreaking some of this
stuff. While we're maybe not seeing the biggest
leap forward between console generations we've ever seen
what we are seeing is scale and a level of clarity and quality of textures and
lighting
that we've not really had before, not in games consoles anyway.
Much of this is very familiar to those of us who have got high-end PCs
that are used for PC gaming but even so the level of storytelling within this particular
title which is Killzone Shadowfall by the way
is just fantastic. It has an immersion going on PlayStation 4 review
that is kind of one up in CoD in many respects. We've got the usual sci-fi tropes
with the Killzone
series but it's so well executed that
it's hard not to be absolutely blown away.
This is footage from the opening 15 minutes, we're not going to spoil any
part of this game for you,
but just to give you a flavour of what the Killzone Shadowfall
is really bringing to the table. There really isn't a title
like this on either of the launch consoles.
It's very much a PlayStation 4 win here. When we then come into kind of
a moment of awesome cityscape you can really see what the PlayStation 4 is
capable of.
Massive draw of distance, absolutely huge scale
and gorgeous gorgeous lighting. I mean this really is
a groundbreaking game and a fantastic demonstration of what the PlayStation 4 is
capable of.
To find a comparison within the Xbox One launch titles is actually quite
difficult. PlayStation 4 review
I would probably say it comes down to Forza being the
kind of groundbreaking title over on the Xbox that kind of shows what the
console is really capable of. But as you can see here, just gorgeous graphics
beautifully well realized and the game plays pretty good as well,
do you know what I mean? So then we come across to a title like Battlefield. This is a
cross-platform title bear in mind so it's available on the Xbox One
and on the PlayStation 4. Now the PS4
in my mind does incredibly well here.
Both consoles produce perfect quality
of image, very, very nice lighting everything feels pretty much the same as
we'd expect from a cross-platform title.
Now in previous generations we found that there's sometimes a bit more of a
gap as it were between what one console is doing versus the other
but actually here Battlefield 4 is just
spot on on both. If I had to pick one
I would say the Xbox wins out just marginally in only one area
and that is the colour reproduction just feels a little bit better
on the Xbox but you really have to be picky about it
and again if you're looking for the best image quality
and you're sitting two inches away from your television set squinting
then that's the PlayStation. The PlayStation has slightly crisper graphics
but you have to be sat very close to the screen. When we've been doing it in our
standard home setup we found you cannot tell the difference which console is
which
unless you're holding the controller. It's as simple as that. So whichever
console you end up getting for Battlefield be happy
you're not getting any major changes there's no skimping
being done on either console here. Some people may say that the Xbox One
has a lower resolution which is then being upscaled onto the TV PlayStation 4 review
but honestly if you can actually tell the difference when you're sat on your sofa
you're a better person than I am because I cannot see the difference. When we
set this up with a few of my colleagues as well, we were sat there squinting at
the TV
you just can't tell the difference unless you're really up close
but Battlefield 4 as a game? Brilliant.
Obviously it was launched a little bit later, it coming to the next gen consoles
after it came to the main consoles and
honestly it's just fantastic. Personally
I will always be a Battlefield player on PC as opposed to on the consoles
but it's very interesting to be able to contrast the PC to the Xbox One
to the PlayStation 4 and actually find there's not too much difference graphically.
You're talking about the difference between high and ultra settings.
Ultra settings being the top end on the PC, high being on the next gen consoles.
But the differences are marginal. As you can see here, and here's our first moment of
world NextGen as it were and again on Battlefield it just
looks fantastic PlayStation 4 review.