Playstation 5 Catch-All

Didn't expect that many upgrades to Death Stranding, I'll be jumping back in late September & just paying the £10 for the upgrade. I'm over halfway through so plenty still to play.

SIFU continues to look great in nailing a Bruce Lee type martial arts experience with the throws, counters & all the little blocks in the hand to hand combat.

FIST I've been waiting for a release date on, please be as good as it looks. Love the art style & the combat looks fairly in depth.

Death Loop I was already sold on but that demo has made me want it more. The stylish looks & the gameplay seems very creative with how many ways you can approach encounters. I'm glad blink is in there, loved it in Dishonored & the areas really look like their designed with it in mind consistently.

I think Jett The Far Shore has a really interesting perspective & I like the landscapes shown so far. The dev talking about momentum & using all the tools at your disposal when escaping enemies, that sounds pretty neat. The scanning & the discovery element of the game could make it very rewarding, could be a potential sleeper hit.

garion333 wrote:

We pretty much knew Sony had nothing to show this year when they skipped E3.

That would be what, three years in a row then? Granted I'm hardly the first person to take Sony at their word these days, but I really do think they'd rather dominate the headlines on their own time than share the stage with everyone else. I don't think they're skipping E3 just because they don't have anything new. A lot of companies have nothing new. Half of Microsoft's conference was slated for 2022. Even so, if you're trying to dominate headlines with your own events, maybe have a little more somethin'.

But I guess they're spreading things out as far apart as they can. Horizon: Forbidden West would have made quite a showing here, but they seem intent on making sure your attention is on one major item at a time. Here, it was Death Loop. Before, it was Horizon with its own State of Play.

And I get it, but it really has me wondering if this is the weakest launch year for new consoles in a long time, and I honestly don't buy that Covid is 100% to blame for such huge gaps and delays.

I guess I just find it funny that I was ready for there to be not much in this presentation, and they somehow still had less than I anticipated.

The style of the characters in Jett: The Far Shore put me off quite a bit. I really like the tiny ships flying about in expansive alien landscapes. It has an elegance to it but the figures look like they belong in a different game (possibly set in Stalinist Russia.) It must be tricky to come up with something that matches the exploration elements but perhaps a higher, more zoomed out view of much more simplified figures would be more in keeping.

I’m starting to sense that SIFU’s combat system may be way too complex and sophisticated for me to get my head around. There seem to be so many specific moves and Absolver’s system was really quite intimidating. The key will be if I’m having fun with the fights. If so I’ll be motivated enough to keep learning.

We got much more of an idea for how DEATHLOOP works. I’m on the fence about the game. There are Hitman like elements that could turn me off but the combat and abilities look fun. The over arching story and the characters were very interesting. It depends which outweighs the other. I’m probably erring on the side of it not being for me at the moment but I’m open to being convinced otherwise.

Stele wrote:

Twitter says you can upgrade Death Stranding for $10.

Considering the director's cut is $60 and you can buy the PS4 version new for $20 at GameStop right now, that seems to make the most sense for PS5 disc owners

But then you own Death Stranding...

ccesarano wrote:
garion333 wrote:

We pretty much knew Sony had nothing to show this year when they skipped E3.

That would be what, three years in a row then? Granted I'm hardly the first person to take Sony at their word these days, but I really do think they'd rather dominate the headlines on their own time than share the stage with everyone else. I don't think they're skipping E3 just because they don't have anything new. A lot of companies have nothing new. Half of Microsoft's conference was slated for 2022. Even so, if you're trying to dominate headlines with your own events, maybe have a little more somethin'.

But I guess they're spreading things out as far apart as they can. Horizon: Forbidden West would have made quite a showing here, but they seem intent on making sure your attention is on one major item at a time. Here, it was Death Loop. Before, it was Horizon with its own State of Play.

And I get it, but it really has me wondering if this is the weakest launch year for new consoles in a long time, and I honestly don't buy that Covid is 100% to blame for such huge gaps and delays.

I guess I just find it funny that I was ready for there to be not much in this presentation, and they somehow still had less than I anticipated.

Well, there's all this talk about indies being mad at Sony. Nintendo, for all their faults, still fills in their gaps with indie showcases. Microsoft also tries a bit.

Could also be the lack of Japanese games coming from them now.

Nah, their Japan studios haven't done anything for a while now so definitely not that (also, I am aware you are poking fun, but naturally I must take all things with the utmost seriousness).

Higgledy, if it helps you feel any better, Death Loop will inevitably become a PS+ game, so you can always wait the six months to two years to play it that way and see for yourself if it's your style of game.

ccesarano wrote:

Higgledy, if it helps you feel any better, Death Loop will inevitably become a PS+ game, so you can always wait the six months to two years to play it that way and see for yourself if it's your style of game.

That seems extremely unlikely. Sony would have to negotiate a new deal with Bethesda in order for it to become a PS+ offering, and now that Bethesda's part of Microsoft, I'd put the chances of that at effectively zero.

ccesarano wrote:

And I get it, but it really has me wondering if this is the weakest launch year for new consoles in a long time, and I honestly don't buy that Covid is 100% to blame for such huge gaps and delays.

You got me to go back and look at the 2013-2014 PS4 lineup, and to remember why I ignored the console until 2017 when Horizon Zero Dawn showed up. (I wasn't a FromSoft fan; they at least got Bloodborne in 2015.) Console launch lineups are always weak and I don't think this is any weaker than usual.

Yeah, just with Demon's Souls, Miles Morales, and Astro's Playroom the PS5 already had a stronger launch lineup than usual; depending on your tastes, you may also want to throw in AC: Valhalla, The Pathless, Borderlands 3, Maneater, Sackboy, or Bugsnax into the mix. And if you widen the "launch window", as console manufacturers seem to like to do, to include Returnal and Ratchet & Clank, it's really been a great launch.

Well that was exactly what they promised, but unlike the last few, it was still somewhat of a letdown for me because the Deathloop footage showed almost nothing new. I'm super excited for Deathloop, but there wasn't enough new or exciting there to anchor an entire SoP without another big announcement.

I did like seeing new footage for several of the indie games though. The Moss: Book II reveal was a nice way to open. The first Moss was a great experience on PSVR. SIFU's presentation is striking, but I really need to see what the game actually plays like before I get too excited for it. Jett: The Far Shore looks right up my alley.

And unlike the Ghost of Tsushima PS5 boost, the Death Stranding PS5 update looks like an absolute steal for a $10 upgrade. That's so much new stuff. I didn't care for the story in Death Stranding, but I loved playing the game. All those new toys might be enough to pull be back in for a while if I can use them with an existing save.

Evan E wrote:

Yeah, just with Demon's Souls, Miles Morales, and Astro's Playroom the PS5 already had a stronger launch lineup than usual; depending on your tastes, you may also want to throw in AC: Valhalla, The Pathless, Borderlands 3, Maneater, Sackboy, or Bugsnax into the mix. And if you widen the "launch window", as console manufacturers seem to like to do, to include Returnal and Ratchet & Clank, it's really been a great launch.

Yeah, I am continuously confused by this. The rose colored glasses are getting thicker. If you actually go back and look at first year lineups in the last 15-20 years, this is one of the strongest in recent memory. The first acclaimed big-budget PS4 exclusive was Bloodborne which released 18 months after the PS4 launched. It's kind of crazy how fast, numerous, and consistently good the PS5 launch games have been in comparison, and even more so considering they were being developed in the midst of a global pandemic that has pushed virtually everything back 6-12 months.

Perhaps. I think part of my issue is that Miles Morales is also on PS4, so it's not really a big get for PS5. Demon's Souls is a remake of an older game, and there's something sad about hinging your launch on a remake of a game. Astro's Playroom was the only new experience exclusive to the system until Ratchet & Clank.

Of course, that's already better than what Microsoft has for Series X. First exclusive to next-gen on Microsoft's side was third-party The Medium, which is now also on PlayStation.

I think part of it is just the fact that "next-gen" means very little right now. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the first truly "next-gen" by taking advantage of the SSD drive, and I guess a lot of people are excited about haptic feedback, but I've seen so many of these tech innovations become so normalized that I can't help but feel unimpressed.

I guess the last time I truly felt like a next-gen launch was worth being in on in the first year were the Xbox 360 (I was about six months late, but got Call of Duty 2, Kameo: Elements of Power, and Dead Rising in that timeframe, and Gears of War landed on the 1st anniversary, all of which were games I really enjoyed, plus Oblivion being a big deal for the system in its first year), and the Switch may not have had the best line-up for a while, but the novelty of the device felt fresh. PS5 and Series X, meanwhile, have me feelin' like PC is fine for now (which is probably what a lot of PC players were feeling back in 2005-2006, admittedly).

I dunno. I guess I'm just waiting for God of War: Unofficial Sequel Title to come around and actually tempt me in some fashion.

ccesarano wrote:

Astro's Playroom was the only new experience exclusive to the system until Ratchet & Clank.

Ahem. Returnal would like a word with you, after you dodge this hailstorm of projectiles. Destruction: All Stars and Godfall have some nitpicks, too.

Destruction: All-Stars and Godfall are, from my understanding, better left forgotten (also, Godfall's current-gen now, too).

I did forget about Returnal, though.

Microsoft has made it crystal clear they have no interest in exclusives. They only are interested in getting consumers to subscribe to Game Pass and most titles there will be Xbox and PC. In general subscription revenue is better than anything else.

There are a few Android based gaming handhelds that are going to make really good xCloud streaming systems. Not to mention the dedicated streaming hardware Microsoft is releasing for TV’s. Pretty soon the idea that the “winner” of a console “generation” (for what little that itself is even worth) is who sells the most units will be a quaint historical statistic.

As great as Spider-Man and Miles Morales are on PS4, that trigger feedback on PS5 takes web swinging to an entirely new level.

And ray tracing is nice too, since you can't seem to buy a Nvidia 20x or 30x card for less than a PS5 full price right now.

TheGameguru wrote:

Microsoft has made it crystal clear they have no interest in exclusives.

Depends on your definition of exclusive I guess. If exclusive to Microsofts ecosystem, they seem to love exclusives quite a lot. But not exclusive to a single platform.

Stele wrote:

And ray tracing is nice too, since you can't seem to buy a Nvidia 20x or 30x card for less than a PS5 full price right now.

Nor can you buy a PS5 for less than a Nvidia 30x card right now

FINALLY got one of these elusive machines with the help of a friend. First impressions, love the universal settings to invert controls and turn off subtitles. Been playing a lot of No Mans Sky on ps4 lately and the improvements on the ps5 version are immediately noticeable, much quicker loading, better framerate, even little things like switching your multitool modes are instant instead of that half second delay. Excited to finally have this thing.

ccesarano wrote:

Perhaps. I think part of my issue is that Miles Morales is also on PS4, so it's not really a big get for PS5. Demon's Souls is a remake of an older game, and there's something sad about hinging your launch on a remake of a game. Astro's Playroom was the only new experience exclusive to the system until Ratchet & Clank.

I’m not only excited for new titles arriving on the PS5, even if they are also being released for PS4, I’m excited to experience PS4 games I haven’t played yet on the PS5 when I finally get one. Also, and I haven’t played it either, by all accounts there are remakes and then there are friggin’ gorgeous remakes.

ccesarano wrote:

I guess a lot of people are excited about haptic feedback, but I've seen so many of these tech innovations become so normalized that I can't help but feel unimpressed.

I believe a couple of guys said something similar whilst watching the Wright brother’s first flight.

Higgledy wrote:

I believe a couple of guys said something similar whilst watching the Wright brother’s first flight.

Exactly! Who actually likes flying anymore! Crying babies and kids kicking the back of your seat and the guy next to you snoring up a storm while you're cramped in like a sardine in a tin can...

Seriously though, it's just like regular rumble in games. Sometimes you notice it's there. Sometimes you notice when it's not. But it's so normalized that it's like... yeah, it's not impressive anymore. The same will happen with Ray-Tracing. It's a big deal now until the next tech innovation is around the corner.

At the same time, between things like VR and the Wii, I feel like the industry and consumers have proven that the only thing that really matters in the end isn't tech gimmicks or graphics, it's game design. So that, at least, won't be going away.

ccesarano wrote:

Seriously though, it's just like regular rumble in games. Sometimes you notice it's there. Sometimes you notice when it's not. But it's so normalized that it's like... yeah, it's not impressive anymore. The same will happen with Ray-Tracing. It's a big deal now until the next tech innovation is around the corner.

That might be the difference. Regular rumble has never worked for me. It’s always struck me as a strange idea in theory and an active negative in practice (probably because the examples I’ve experienced have been so crude.) I always turn it off. Haptics, with a greater fidelity and the ability to control exactly the sensation you are giving the player, makes a lot more sense to me in theory as does the idea of varying the tension on triggers depending on the weapon being used (which I’m not sure counts as part of haptics. I presume so!?)

I can’t wait to try it and I guess, when I do, there’s a chance I’ll be underwhelmed and I’ll have to silently admit to myself that ccesarano had a point.

I played the Scarlet Nexus demo on both the Xbox Series X and a PS5, and I noticed the difference in the controller rumble and the PS5 felt better. I ended up getting it on that system.

I've always been a fan of rumble, going so far as to import a DualShock 3 as soon as it was available and thus inadvertently winding up on the front page of Ars Technica, so people should probably factor that in when I say that completely without hyperbole the DualSense is my favorite controller ever. Do I wish it had better battery life? Absolutely. Do I go back to my Dualshock 4s when I can? Not a chance in hell.

The Dual Sense is comfortably my favourite controller ever, the haptics alone add a hell of a lot. Take away all those little nuanced pulses, pinpoint rumbles, plus the adaptive triggers from the likes of Astro's Playroom or Returnal & they'd be worse off for it.

I've never felt environments come alive like they do through the Dual Sense, walking over air vents, along glass, swimming in water. The feedback from firing weapons, slinging webs, dropping from a great height to smash into the ground, it's all got far more depth to it.

To see how detailed they can go you really have to experience the frog suit in Astro's Playroom. Feeling the coils go from the left to the right side of the controller is magic. It even feels like the weight is transferring from one side of the controller to the other. The climbing mechanic in the monkey suit is another stunner with the adaptive triggers offering a light & strong grip.

I can't wait to see what other inventive ideas developers come up with for the Dual Sense this generation.

I dunno. Everyone already forgot you could feel marbles roll around inside the JoyCons, right? They technically had haptic feedback first, and nobody bothered using it. Maybe Sony's made it easier to program that functionality in there, or maybe Sony's really pushing that tech onto developers in order to make it a real marketing gimmick. I'm just wondering how long it takes – like all technology – until people stop being amazed at it.

Unlike VR, which I'm still not thoroughly convinced is good for more than a theme park ride in your home, I do think haptic feedbacks have their uses. Even in terms of rumble I can't help but think of the first time you load yourself up with a plasmid in BioShock, the controller trembling in your hand like crazy, and then once the screen goes black it all stops, leaving your fingers tingling in a way that just delivers the sense of your body getting wrecked and suddenly going cold that just seeing it on screen wouldn't deliver on its own. The new rumble and vibration is capable of delivering something similar, but to a greater extent. Simultaneously, the more sources of feedback to a player so that they can make better, more instinctive decisions in a game, the better.

I just see us in a world where 4K TV's are still getting into homes and there's already a push for 8K TV sales. People's Internet can't even handle 4K video bandwidth for streaming and there are companies trying to sell 8K. Any push in technology that's impressive today gets taken for granted tomorrow. So I feel like it's a marketing point now and people keep talking about it, but at the end of the day, it's going to be something folks shrug off and just accept as being normal as opposed to amazing. To that end, it always comes down to the games themselves.

Then again, I played 3 hours of RE4 today and then 3 hours of an indie Metroidvania that I'm not even sure had rumble, so I'm not exactly the person to be impressed by new tech easily anyway.

We're not saying it's good because it's new, we're saying it's good because it makes the games better. If it doesn't work for you, fine; it still enhances the game experience, in multiple games, for us in a way that no other controller has. (Speaking for myself, I've never touched a JoyCon.)

My biggest issue with the DualSense is that the handles don't seem to be long enough for my hands. The bottom tips of the handles just don't fit very comfortable in my hands. But that is a me problem. Otherwise it is a great controller.

I always forget that HD Rumble was a thing in the Switch. I'm not sure if it is because I primarily play in handheld mode but I instantly turned off rumble on the Switch, I found it far too annoying when playing handheld. I also never found it very effective, always seemed like a relatively minor rumble to me. It wasn't until some time after I bought one that I heard the rumble in it was supposed to be HD Rumble! Maybe I should check it out again sometime.

The DualSense rumble is much more impressive, and combined with the adaptive triggers and speaker I think it really does set itself apart. I actually think the audio doesn't get enough credit in the controller. When combined with haptics and adaptive triggers it really helps sell the sensations you are supposed to be feeling, far more than rumble by itself. The DualShock 4 never really did much with the speaker but on the DualSense it's pretty integral for games that leverage it.

Rumble in handheld with the Switch is awful as it actively works against the JoyCons being tethered to the device and feels off. I honestly think Nintendo should've turned it off by default when in handheld.

Higgledy wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

Seriously though, it's just like regular rumble in games. Sometimes you notice it's there. Sometimes you notice when it's not. But it's so normalized that it's like... yeah, it's not impressive anymore. The same will happen with Ray-Tracing. It's a big deal now until the next tech innovation is around the corner.

That might be the difference. Regular rumble has never worked for me. It’s always struck me as a strange idea in theory and an active negative in practice (probably because the examples I’ve experienced have been so crude.) I always turn it off. Haptics, with a greater fidelity and the ability to control exactly the sensation you are giving the player, makes a lot more sense to me in theory as does the idea of varying the tension on triggers depending on the weapon being used (which I’m not sure counts as part of haptics. I presume so!?)

I can’t wait to try it and I guess, when I do, there’s a chance I’ll be underwhelmed and I’ll have to silently admit to myself that ccesarano had a point.

Basically it's HD Rumble? I think I was expecting more when I finally felt what it was in MM web slinging at first I thought the buttons were sticking on the controller. It didn't do much for me but if this is your cup of tea then enjoy it as best you can. I don't need to be a curmudgeon about it. Play to have fun.

Hobear wrote:
Higgledy wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

Seriously though, it's just like regular rumble in games. Sometimes you notice it's there. Sometimes you notice when it's not. But it's so normalized that it's like... yeah, it's not impressive anymore. The same will happen with Ray-Tracing. It's a big deal now until the next tech innovation is around the corner.

That might be the difference. Regular rumble has never worked for me. It’s always struck me as a strange idea in theory and an active negative in practice (probably because the examples I’ve experienced have been so crude.) I always turn it off. Haptics, with a greater fidelity and the ability to control exactly the sensation you are giving the player, makes a lot more sense to me in theory as does the idea of varying the tension on triggers depending on the weapon being used (which I’m not sure counts as part of haptics. I presume so!?)

I can’t wait to try it and I guess, when I do, there’s a chance I’ll be underwhelmed and I’ll have to silently admit to myself that ccesarano had a point.

Basically it's HD Rumble? I think I was expecting more when I finally felt what it was in MM web slinging at first I thought the buttons were sticking on the controller. It didn't do much for me but if this is your cup of tea then enjoy it as best you can. I don't need to be a curmudgeon about it. Play to have fun.

ccesarano wrote:

Unlike VR, which I'm still not thoroughly convinced is good for more than a theme park ride in your home, I do think haptic feedbacks have their uses.

I get that VR isn't everyone's bag but have you ever played Farpoint with the aim controller? That game gave me chest scares, like when a car pulls out in front of you with no time to brake you're gonna effing crash terror when aliens jumped at your face or charged you. If you added haptic feedback or sensory feedback with air jets or something to that it might kill some folks. It would be a blast and I would be very afraid to try it. Just the mask alone is enough to immerse you. Gaming in it is unreal. I had a night I was playing it and thought a giant monster was across the map, he had gotten right behind me as I turned around he was about to eat my face, this monster is the size of an elephant. I legit just horror screamed, took the mask off and laughed my ass off. My wife was wondering what happened from the upper floor.

VR takes gaming to a great new level when done even mildly right. The rides and what not are ok and fun demos. Actual games are amazing!