PS4: A Retirement
If you’re reading this, it means I have procured a PlayStation 5! The long-standing goal has been achieved! The peak has been summitted! I’m at the top of the mountain and there’s nothing left to do but put up a chair, grab a drink and enjoy the view! But this also means that an old friend that I have fully owned for about 4 years is going away…
I say fully owned because around 2016 my brother got an Xbox One X, which meant that I gained full control of the PS4, which we had split when he was in college. He’d have it until he came home and then I would have it and we’d switch like that. It’s been in our possession since 2013, when it launched.
Yes, the old friend’s been through a lot, and dust has made its way into the sides. It’s life has been extended via a 2 terabyte external hard drive, and that hard drive will carry on to the PS5, as will the Silver Dualshock 4 controller, which I contest is the most comfortable controller I’ve ever used, because of backwards compatibility. The PS5 enhances most PS4 games and today, I must reflect on the PS4 that has served me so well.
Back in 2016, I took a trip to Gamestop, by now a Frankenstein’s monster, a once-dead corporate entity brought back by everyday stock investors, though it’s too little too late. Anyway, my brother and I go in and I purchase 3 games: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, The Last of Us Remastered, and Overwatch. Out of all those, I’d say Metal Gear Solid V impressed me the most, and really opened my eyes to what could be possible on the PS4. The Last of Us, while visually impressive, had a repetitive narrative that I nevertheless enjoyed. And Overwatch was an impressive game, but reminded me why I don’t really like online games very much. I gained basically full ownership that summer, as my brother had summer school that quarter, and when he got the Xbox, it was mine from there on. I had a bunch of fun with it, but I didn’t have any notable experiences with it until my first year of college.
The prior summer, I pre-ordered Red Dead Redemption 2, the long-awaited sequel to the original open-world Western epic by Rockstar. The first game’s importance to how I see video games, isn’t to be overstated. I’d played through it so many times through the years and 8 years of waiting had finally payed off. The game is gorgeous, satisfying to play and the narrative is among the best I’ve ever played. I’ll do a full post on it at some point in the future, but the next game, or game series if we’re being honest, was Kingdom Hearts, the Disney and Square Enix crossover series. I was fresh off a trip to Disneyland and having gained a newfound appreciation for “Disney Magic”, I made the decision to dive right in! And, even at 19, I enjoyed these games immensely. I still do, at 21! That’s the driving force behind why I love this console so much. The experiences of adventure, of sporting dominance, of getting beat by my older brother in pretty much every game under the sun, has made it my favorite console I’ve ever had, even more than my black PS2. That and the exclusives are amazing.
When I got the PS4 fully, one of the things I was most excited about was the prospect of a new Uncharted, a game I would describe as “Indiana Jones, but with more shootouts”, because, even as I enjoyed my Xbox 360, I lamented the fact that the exclusives were just…not great. Neither Halo or Gears of War interested me very much. Uncharted, however, did interest me, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Uncharted 4. And I loved Uncharted 4, even if it took me, and I’m not exaggerating, 3 years to finish it. I got stuck on one part and said “nope, forget this”. And it didn’t get touched until the summer of my second year of college! Once I beat it, I can say that it definitely got me interested in the others, and I bought the remasters of all 3 games, though I’ve only finished the first game. The first game is fun, but it’s definitely aged a lot, particularly in the movement of our protagonist, Nathan Drake. The gunplay is satisfying, but the cover system is clunky, and the puzzles are numerous and not very fun, though I don’t like puzzles in games to begin with (because I’m not very good at them). I’ll have to play the other 2 on the PS5 in the future, to see if they fare better than the first one. Another exclusive that got a ton of hype when it was released was Horizon Zero Dawn. If I am to describe this game in a word, I would use “bloated”. Sure the game is fun, and the idea of a prehistoric human society basically mingling with futuristic robot dinosaurs is awesome, but after a while, I just gave up on it, for some reason. Maybe it was the lore, maybe it was the fact that I got stuck, maybe both? Anyway, the next exclusive was one that I had been excited about for a long time, Kojima Productions’ debut game as an independent studio, Death Stranding. The hype had built up enough, steadily over 3 years of development time. Kojima had brought with him the greats that made Metal Gear a legendary series, namely art director Yoji Shinkawa. In terms of gameplay, it wasn’t what I had expected, but oddly enough, it grabbed me. It’s probably the only game I’ve ever played where the main obstacle is the terrain trying to mess with your delivery. The horrifying, paranormal BTs? Nope. The thieves with guns trying to steal your packages? No. A mountain you have to traverse, while having very little in the way of advancing upwards, like ladders or ropes and carrying at least a hundred pounds of stuff to the next point? Terrifying! That coupled with the typical Kojima style of offbeat and dense storytelling and themes made this my favorite game of 2019.
2020 brought the pandemic, of course, and fundamentally altered our lives, in the short and long term, and very likely forever. But, it finally brought the game I had been waiting for for at least a year, Final Fantasy 7 Remake. And as I said in my rewards post, the effort is visible and the graphical updates and the polished gameplay systems that feel at once familiar and modern. The story, once my favorite part of the original Final Fantasy 7 has been expanded upon with fully voiced cutscenes and fully orchestrated music, which lend themselves splendidly to the narrative and work towards its benefit. And 40 hours later, I’m left satisfied, but hungry for more! And I can’t wait for part 2!
As I write this now, it’s Sunday evening and my PS5 is scheduled to arrive tomorrow at some point, and with it, my firsthand account of the next generation of gaming. I’m going to spend the last day with the PS4 as my primary system doing what I love, playing games! Games have gotten me through some tough times in the past handful of years, and I have the utmost confidence that it will again in the next handful of years! After all, the hard part’s over! I already have the unit reserved! Now all that’s left to do is jump in!