Playstation 5 Catch-All

Definitely don’t overlook Astro’s. I’d play that first.

detroit20 wrote:

My new PS5 disc edition is arriving later this week, but now I have to find something to actually play on it. I'd love some recommendations from fellow GwJers.

I have loved Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Demon Souls, Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

As a benchmark, I've watched gameplay footage of Guardians of the Galaxy and Madden 22, and it's not obvious to me that PS5 versions of games are substantially better than their PS4 alternatives.

One thing to remember it is not just the graphics. Many games like Spider-man take advantage of the new controller's features.

WizardM0de wrote:

My $0.02: You want exclusives that show off the PS5, go Returnal or Demon's Souls if you're ok with a challenge, go Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart or Spider-Man: Miles Morales if you're less sadistic. Astro's Playroom is free and is a great title to show off the new haptics as well.

If you didn't try them on PS4, Nioh 2, Tsushima, and Control all run great on the new hardware to the point where you notice.

These are all great recommendations. Also, if you're a PS+ member being a PS5 owner gives you access to the Playstation Plus Collection, a collection of 20 PS4 games, so be sure to pick them up if you can. Among them are Days Gone and God of War, which run substantially better (frame rate and resolution-wise) than they did on the PS4 Pro. Last month I fired up God Of War just to see what the improvement was like, having already played it when it came out, and got sucked into replaying the entire game (but with all my upgrades from the previous playthrough unlocked from the get-go); it was even more enjoyable than the first time I played it, when I got burnt out before I reached the end.

Because I'm a cheap bastard who tends to wait for games to go on sale before purchasing, much of what I've played on the PS5 in the last year has been my PS4 backlog, but almost every one of those games has benefitted from the PS5's hardware, at the very least from crazy-fast load times even if they haven't been patched to do anything else new.

WizardM0de wrote:

Wow. I can't imagine this. At all. It's so beyond what I'd expect from our scummy providers in the states. Take, take more, never give, ever.

I think it's even more unimaginable than you think it is.

Because it's a legacy provider, lots of BT's broadband customers are old farts like me who either: (a) don't want to change suppliers, or (b) prefer to have the same provider of copper wire, fixed-line telephony and broadband. All the kids have long since skedaddled to new providers supplying flashier (often bundled) services.

I would have thought that people like that are exactly not the customers who'd appreciate as a reward the opportunity to buy a PS5... something confirmed, I believe, by the fact that I was still able to snag a PS5 three hours after the offer was announced. They tend to disappear in minutes when made available online elsewhere.

WizardM0de wrote:

I picked up Deathloop when it was on sale recently and I'm really glad I got it on sale. It was fun for a few hours, but now I guess I'm just in the loop and, well, here I am...in the loop. I'm probably not the best to weigh in on this but if you were meh on Dishonoreds for whatever reason, you'll likely be meh on this too, and for me the game's highly overrated for the experience it offers.

My $0.02: You want exclusives that show off the PS5, go Returnal or Demon's Souls if you're ok with a challenge, go Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart or Spider-Man: Miles Morales if you're less sadistic. Astro's Playroom is free and is a great title to show off the new haptics as well.

If you didn't try them on PS4, Nioh 2, Tsushima, and Control all run great on the new hardware to the point where you notice.

Thanks for the steer on Deathloop.

I played Demons Souls on PS3 and Ghosts of Tsushima on PS4, and feel no desire to return to either. And I don't feel the need for another Marvel's SpiderMan just yet. And I know that Returnal is going to be too hard/frustrating for me.

I guess Ratchet and Clank is the most likely purchase for me, and with Control a possibility if it's cheap enough.

detroit20 wrote:

As a benchmark, I've watched gameplay footage of Guardians of the Galaxy and Madden 22, and it's not obvious to me that PS5 versions of games are substantially better than their PS4 alternatives.

I'm not sure about Madden, but GotG is a gorgeous game on the next gen consoles. I'd be very surprised if it didn't look substantially better than the PS4 equivalent. Perhaps it doesn't come through as well in the videos you watched.

You'll get to experience it firsthand soon, but I can't emphasize enough how large of a performance and convenience boost the PS5 and Series X hardware offer over the underpowered PS4 and XB1 hardware. Even if I only played previous gen games, I still would consider the upgrade worthwhile for the frame rate boosts, steady performance, system UI snappiness, and load time boosts. The load times in particular are a complete game changer and have spoiled me on ever returning to PS4 era load times. I even recently found myself getting somewhat annoyed with the relatively short load times in Metroid Dread on my Switch.

As an added potential bonus for any PS5 owners still holding on to their PS4s, the chip shortage means that even older consoles can be exchanged for unreasonable amounts. Protip: Keep an eye on trade-in deals at Gamestop and similar retailers. I traded my PS4 Pro ($325) and original XB1 ($160) into Gamestop just last month for a combined total of $485, almost enough to cover the entire cost of my PS5.

detroit20 wrote:

And I know that Returnal is going to be too hard/frustrating for me.

For what it's worth, Returnal's a challenge but it was nowhere near hard or frustrating enough to not completely wow me. The way the graphics, the sound design, the haptics, the ray tracing/effects, etc. all come together is really something, and it was the first time on my PS5 where I told myself out loud that gaming is different now.

I ended up playing all the way through and I've yet to finish a From Software title. Still plenty to unlock, see, do, complete, etc. if I choose to go back, but it's a fun next-gen romp.

Dyni wrote:

I'm not sure about Madden, but GotG is a gorgeous game on the next gen consoles. I'd be very surprised if it didn't look substantially better than the PS4 equivalent. Perhaps it doesn't come through as well in the videos you watched.

I can't say for sure on a base PS4, but there are painfully few games that run at a decent framerate on my Xbox One X. Performance improvements for current gen games are barely there. That said, Guardians of the Galaxy runs and looks gorgeous on it, so it could just be that Guardians is a well optimized title that looks good across all platforms, and therefore is tough to tell how much better it'll look on next-gen.

I feel like Digital Foundry might be able to cover a lot of major titles and whether they really look better on next-gen compared to current gen or not.

According to Digital Foundry, GotG on Series X and PS5 gives you a pretty stark choice - it'll look fantastic in 4K at 30fps (with occasional single-frame hitches), or it'll play fantastic in HD at 60fps (with drops into the low 50s and occasionally high 40s). It's definitely a resource-intensive game, but not to the extent that it's not worth playing on console.

WizardM0de wrote:

I ended up playing all the way through and I've yet to finish a From Software title. Still plenty to unlock, see, do, complete, etc. if I choose to go back, but it's a fun next-gen romp.

In contrast, I have finished every Souls-era From title save for Sekiro and found Returnal impressive but infuriatingly difficult.

Evan E wrote:

According to Digital Foundry, GotG on Series X and PS5 gives you a pretty stark choice - it'll look fantastic in 4K at 30fps (with occasional single-frame hitches), or it'll play fantastic in HD at 60fps (with drops into the low 50s and occasionally high 40s). It's definitely a resource-intensive game, but not to the extent that it's not worth playing on console.

...that's... not much better than playing it on current hardware then.

Oh, no, it's definitely worse on previous-gen consoles. No 60fps option, and dynamic resolution scaling that falls well short of 4K or 1080 (Xbox One drops to 720p). One X actually manages to perform similar to the Series S, but the PS4 Pro occasionally drops to 20fps.

How well does Guardians of the Galaxy hold up on last-gen consoles?

Apologise if this is asked and answered...

My PS5's disk drive is loud... like airplane loud. How f*cked am I?

That's true for almost all of them; my theory is that they originally designed it as a drive-less system, and only bolted on the drive at the last moment, without sufficient dampening. Some people have found they could quiet it down by simply taking off the shell and screwing the drive down more securely, I think.

Edit: as Stele correctly points out, the PS5 rarely actually uses the drive except for installing and momentarily checking to see if you have the disc for the game installed on your SSD, so it's not really that much of an issue.

That GotG article was from release. PS5 has had a ray tracing patch since then. Looks pretty dang good to me.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

Apologise if this is asked and answered...

My PS5's disk drive is loud... like airplane loud. How f*cked am I?

Normal. Same here when I was playing Fenyx last year. But that was also trying to install the PS4 version in the background before that was fixed. Now it mostly spins up when you start a game and is then quiet.

Stele wrote:

That GotG article was from release. PS5 has had a ray tracing patch since then. Looks pretty dang good to me.

I've found it depends which way I do the comparison. If I switch from Ray Tracing Mode to Performance, it looks acceptable. When I started out on Performance and then realized I could switch on the fly to Quality or Ray Tracing, my initial reaction when I panned the camera around in the 30fps modes was "OMG WTF? This is a stuttery mess!" You really get used to 60fps pretty fast.

Stele wrote:

That GotG article was from release. PS5 has had a ray tracing patch since then. Looks pretty dang good to me.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

Apologise if this is asked and answered...

My PS5's disk drive is loud... like airplane loud. How f*cked am I?

Normal. Same here when I was playing Fenyx last year. But that was also trying to install the PS4 version in the background before that was fixed. Now it mostly spins up when you start a game and is then quiet.

Problem is it is continually running while I am trying to play GotG. Sounds like that is the issue then, and less the noise itself.

Yeah make sure system software is up to date. Patch from the summer fixed the weird dual install issue. I haven't noticed much drive noise since then.

It seems better now. After a restart, I switched disks and switched back to GotG. Seems to like everything better now. Thanks.

Evan E wrote:
Stele wrote:

That GotG article was from release. PS5 has had a ray tracing patch since then. Looks pretty dang good to me.

I've found it depends which way I do the comparison. If I switch from Ray Tracing Mode to Performance, it looks acceptable. When I started out on Performance and then realized I could switch on the fly to Quality or Ray Tracing, my initial reaction when I panned the camera around in the 30fps modes was "OMG WTF? This is a stuttery mess!" You really get used to 60fps pretty fast.

Yeah I played control ultimate on PS5 in performance 60fps almost all the way through, I thought I'd check out the ray tracing at 30fps and couldn't it. Couldn't tell if the ray tracing was causing a slowdown or if it was the frame drop. Had to switch it back as soon as possible to keep playing.

I received a Sony Direct invite and scored a disc drive console, and picked up Ratchet and Clank. If you have a popup blocker on your browser, be sure to turn it off, or else you'll be stuck in the queue for way longer than necessary.

The fact that we are right at the beginning of this generation and nobody outside of Insomniac can pull off raytracing and 60FPS at the same time makes me laugh (again) at all the people on other gaming forums who screamed last year at everyone about how getting a new TV that could do HDMI 2.1 was essential at the same time as their console because 4K@120 would be the new standard.

kuddles wrote:

The fact that we are right at the beginning of this generation and nobody outside of Insomniac can pull off raytracing and 60FPS at the same time makes me laugh (again) at all the people on other gaming forums who screamed last year at everyone about how getting a new TV that could do HDMI 2.1 was essential at the same time as their console because 4K@120 would be the new standard.

Ironically my 4K/120 AVR can't do 4K/120 without a breakout box because the manufacturers and licensors f*cked up the specs so bad that none of the HDMI 2.1 AVRs from Yamaha or Denon/Marantz worked properly out of the gate. To top it off, said breakout box, while complimentary, is six months backordered. Consequently I won't be buying an HDMI 2.1 TV for at least another six months.

steinkrug wrote:

May end up having to send my week old PS5 in for repair. Instead of waking or turning on it will flash a blue light. I’ve tried a number of things and it will work for a day or so and then do it again. Tonight I reset it and reinstalled the system software. Thankfully my saves were all backed up. If it happens again then I’ll probably be contacting Sony.

I contacted support on 11/29 but still waiting on the box to send the console to them. I got the blue light even when it attempted to restart during the recent system update.

A lot of stories about bad experiences with Sony support out there. I could live without Rest Mode but I am concerned it means there’s an actual hardware issue.

Half price PS+ on the PSN store for a week. Not for existing subscribers. But any new PS5 buyers, there you go.

Normally that's a fantastic deal, but as someone who doesn't do multiplayer and who's been a PS+ subscriber since the tail end of the PS3, I have to say the PS+ free games have been pretty impressively underwhelming for the last year. I'd let my subscription lapse, except thanks to occasional sale prices on subscriptions I'm actually subscribed into 2023 already.

If you haven't subscribed to Playstation Now, a year's subscription is currently 25% off, but again that's only for new subscribers. It's a decent mix of old PS4 games, PS3 games, and a smattering of earlier games wrapped in a PS4 wrapper. The PS3 games can only be streamed, but many of the PS4 games are downloadable in addition to being streamable.

Rumors are very strong that within the next few months PS Now will be folded into PS+, with three different tiers for the combined service. Tier 1 will basically be PS+ as it is now, Tier 2 will add access to a selection of PS5 and PS4 games, and Tier 3 will expand game access to include a library of PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP games. I think it's a reasonable guess that anyone already subscribed to either Plus or Now will get access to the new service - I like Jeff Cannata's long-standing prediction that it will be called PS Plow - at the appropriate tier.

If that turns out to be the case, I shudder to think how some of those PS1 games will look on my 55" TV.

My PS5 arrived yesterday and now sits underneath my TV, ready to go. I thought I'd offer a few thoughts:

There's no Optical Audio Output. This is disappointing, as my elderly AV receiver doesn't have an HDMI port. However, I accept that technology moves on, and I've bought an HDMI splitter to address this.

There's a USB Type A slot on the front where - on the PS4 - the second USB Type C slot used to be. I assume that this is partly future-proofing and partly in anticipation of an official peripheral that will be released in due course. I currently don't have any use for it.

The other two USB Type C slots are in the back... which is presumably where I'll need to insert the dongle for my Sony Pulse Headset when it arrives. I wonder, however, whether this will be enough longer term (for example, when things like PSVR2 arrive). I anticipate that - in the future - I'll be spending time connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting.

The new User Interface seems less intuitive than the old one. More functions seem to be another menu away.

Astro's Playroom is a nice introduction to the new controller, and a fun game in-and-of-itself. If it wasn't already free, then I'd wouldn't begrudge spending up to £10 on it.

Hmm, I seem to be the only person who actually likes the PS5 interface. Other than a couple weeks of adjusting to the fact that press vs hold function of the PS button is basically reversed this time around, I found it very intuitive.

I just really miss my Persona 5 themes I had for PS4.

detroit20 wrote:

...There's a USB Type A slot on the front where - on the PS4 - the second USB Type C slot used to be. I assume that this is partly future-proofing and partly in anticipation of an official peripheral that will be released in due course. I currently don't have any use for it. The other two USB Type C slots are in the back...

You either mistyped, or have USB Type A and Type C confused. Type A is the larger, irreversible rectangular plug; Type C is the smaller rounded rectangle that works regardless of which side is up. PS4 only had Type A ports (two in the front for the base, the Pro added an additional Type A port in the back).

I already have this Anker 4-port USB 3.0 hub plugged into one of the Type A USB ports on the back; if I didn't, between PSVR, a bluetooth transmitter for my non-Sony headphones, and an external drive I'd already have maxed out all the Type A ports.