Originally, I got a PS4 because I didn't want XBox One's Kinect and I didn't care for the $499 price tag. Fast forward a year later, I played through Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, played through half of inFamous: Second Son (I didn't really like the main protagonist as much as Cole McGrath) and didn't even touch Watch Dogs. Looking down the road, the only game I really wanted was Uncharted 4. Pretty much, I was using the PS4 as a Netflix machine. So, I went to Gamestop and traded my PS4 for a Kinect-less Xbox One, and so far, I'm loving it! I've been playing the crap out of Forza Horizon 2 and I'm playing The Evil Within whenever my nerves can take it. While my only exclusive for PS4 was still a ways off, now I've got the Halo: Master Chief Collection to look forward to (I've only played Halo: Reach) and all sorts of cross-platform titles I can now play with my friends, since they all had Ones. I was also happy to learn XBox One provides 3D Blu-Ray support, something I was under the impression it didn't
Okay, but FPAlpha was explaining the appeal of story games. Super Mario Bros. isn't a story game. The appeal doesn't come from the narrative or the characters. It comes from interacting with the gameplay mechanics and the level design. Nobody criticizes the story in Super Mario Bros. for the same reason that nobody criticizes the story in a porn flick. It's not the point. On the other hand, The Last of Us is a story game. The appeal of the game does come from the narrative and the characters. Criticizing the linearity of the story is a legitimate criticism for this type of game.
Maybe, but at the same time, I enjoy the gameplay and the level design of The Last of Us as well. I find the combat controls to be some of the best of any shooter, and I found the levels absolutely gorgeous. But stories are linear. Sure, some of them have more of a "choose your own adventure" format to them, where your action affect the outcome of the story, but some don't. I don't think that's a legitimate criticism; it's simply the story the developers chose to tell. It doesn't make playing through the levels any less fun.
I've only played through the first chapter and about half of the second. It's a trippy game with some mind-fuckery about it. The first level I probably got chainsawed to death about twenty times. This guy is following you around the hospital and you have to evade and hide from him while being careful not to make noise or else he can track you. The game is in letterbox, so that takes some getting used to and it has a grainy look about it. So far, it kind of reminds me of Resident Evil 4, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw and Silent Hill crammed together. Like I said, I'm not that far into it, so I don't know if it's as scary as the commercials make it out to be, but my heart rate stays elevated every time I play it.
For those of you considering picking up an Xbox One this holiday season, Microsoft has announced a temporary price cut for the USA (not sure about Canada) to $349 from November 2nd to January 3rd. $349 for a Xbox One Sunset Overdrive bundle? Not a bad deal. Not bad at all.
@RHJ It was produced by the creator of the Resident Evil series, so he carried over elements of them to this game. It's pretty neat, very much an updated RE4 in some ways, survival horror with lots of interesting grostesquery. Spider Lady, that one will have you sleepless for a while.
I still like my 360, PS3, and PS4. As for the $h!t Box One I may pick it up at some point now that they are selling it with out the Kinect.
I'm surprised that The Last of Us is getting criticized for gameplay and story. The story is pretty good. If post-apocalyptic zombie stuff isn't your thing, fair enough, but you can't deny that it's pretty well written, fantastically acted and excellently integrated into the rest of the game. As for the gameplay... it's silly to say that it lacks mechanics. If you feel like it's "just push buttons until it poops more story in your face" then you should probably crank up the difficulty. To me it was a tense third person stealth/action game. The scavenging and crafting serve the story perfectly. *shrug*, it just all worked. It certainly had a lot more depth to it than the Uncharted games. As for Xbox One and its nice $350 deal... That's a little desperate. I'm actually surprised that their negative image has persisted this long to where it's getting crushed in sales as much as it is. With the rapid release schedule, the dashboard is actually becoming pretty great, where at launch it was a disaster. Sony's is still kinda shit, though they have a 2.0 release coming tomorrow I think. But nothing in the release notes grabs me. "Share Play" is kind of cool from a tech perspective, but I would never want to play a game like that. My plan has been to get multiplatforms for PS4 across the board, but I've reconsidered a bit. I might go back to Xbox One for multiplayer games just because the experience is so much better thought out than what I see on PS4. But it's tough, I can't deny that there's a big performance gap in favor of the PS4. Life would have been so much easier if Microsoft didn't screw up their hardware design and I could just stick with Xbox as my main brand, and use PlayStation for Naughty Dog and random Japanese flavor.
Indeed. IMO, the game was damn near perfect. I've played it twice through, and I am probably going to play it again very soon. I also played the DLC, which was an excellent add-on to the existing story.
"Last of Us" was simply superb and is the new benchmark for story telling, which is crucial in this day n age as I want to be engaged in the story & characters and it ticked virtually all the boxes. Gameplay wise the realistic undertones were a nice touch over most games and even the old school health meter felt warranted & not outdated or out of place. I love all the sneaking around taking out my foes and feeling less than safe when engaged in combat compared to most games of SPRAY & PRAY The multiplayer mode on the PS4 is quite addictive with the slower nature of the gameplay though I could of done without the factions mode being "mandatory". I'd love a sequel with a side co-op mode similar to Uncharted 2 & 3 + A little more open world though I understand the linear nature is key.
So I turn 30 in like a week and I've saved up enough. White PS4 is on it's way with a brand new copy of Wolfenstein New Order. Around $550 I think, allowing for the conversion, not sure if that's good or not but meh.
I played Return to Castle Wolfenstein a lot back in the day, even dug it out and replayed is this year. I never got a hold of Wolfenstein 2009 but from all accounts it was pretty crap, so I'm not sure that's such a loss. But it was £26 on Amazon new so grabbing that while it's going, heard that it's a much better one than the last game. So "Faye" (got the icey white/blue console) get's delivered Friday, but probably not unboxing until next week. Still pretty excited though.
Happy birthday, a PS4 is a great present for oneself. Don't forget to snag any and all PS+ games you can. Wolfenstein is pretty good, I need to get back to it.
Spoiler: GTA V Remastered #GrassGate (Bandwidth Warning: Large GIFs) (Original post by Hanmik on NeoGAF.)
As someone that was strongly leaning towards getting a PS4 last year, I must say that the slow rate of updates coming from Sony has been off-putting. They still haven't implemented some of the core features they promised, such as suspend/resume, and it took them a friggin' year just to get a YouTube app. MS have been doing a much better job updating the Xbox One, they've added some neat features and have a more impressive app library. On top of that, Sony's exclusive games have been average at best. I'm still slightly leaning towards getting a PS4 some time next year, but I'm actively considering getting an Xbox One instead. The PS4 is clearly is the more powerful console, and I still have my concerns that MS could drop the Xbox division if sales remain lacklustre, but Sony need to step their game up in terms of software.
Kotaku just posted a pretty lengthy article comparing the two consoles. Take a read if you can't decide. One Year Later, Should You Get An Xbox One Or A PS4?