A PS4 Thread: Because You Had to Play "Knack"

Used games are fine - the DLC you miss varies on the game. For fighting games, for instance, they often include an extra character, which I wouldn't want to miss. Most of the time like you say it's some cosmetic DLC or an FPS weapon or something like that. Honestly, though - there are always so many sales at any given time on digital and physical, I see no reason to ever buy used unless it's something rare, out of print, or not available on PSN.

There's even less difference between physical and digital on PS4 because most games require a full install, which can be between 10-50 GB! And yeah, on the disc versions you need the disc in the tray to play DLC.

If you're going to get into a heavily multiplayer game like Street Fighter or Call of Duty it's tempting to just get digital for the slightly better load times and ease of access.

*That said, I'm a proponent of physical media in general and say always go with physical if you can, because who knows when the digital apocalypse will occur and you'll lose access to your stuff. It does annoy me when "GOTY" type editions come out, and nowadays it's almost always the base disc + a download code for the season pass, when last generation you would get everything on disc.

Dammit Josh now you got me jonesing to take the plunge, I'm going to the mall today and might not be able to resist going into Gamestop for that used Slim I ogled last week...

Josh when was the last time you had a mainstream console? There might be last gen games also worth checking out... Have you played RDR? GTA V? Skyrim?

not to mention all the non-switch indies, like inside for example

Sum total of all I have owned, ever (give or take a Coleco and Atari 7800, iirc): OG Nintendo, GameCube, Wii (which I hacked and loaded with shit), Switch, now PS4. Never had a powerful HD console, never played games on a computer, so there's a big backlog of stuff. Would consider Red Dead Redemption, no interest in GTA (I don't think) or Skyrim (I don't think). I like the immersive worlds (from what I have seen) of the SoulsBorne games, and also I'm a sucker for cool graphics (which being a Nintendo guy I've never really gotten). I had never played Doom but have been enjoying it on Switch, so might buy it again to have it run and look better. My like of Doom is leading me toward Wolfenstein, too (and maybe II).

Will PS4 play PS3 games, like Fallout New Vegas or Red Dead Redemption? Or do I have to pay for yet another subscription service?

I think I'm pretty set on indies for the Switch, there are plenty. The reason I got a PS4 was for the heavy hitters and exclusives.

PS4 is not backwards compatible with PS3, but there's a (paid?) streaming service that lets you play PS3 games on the PS4.

Bah. See, I don't want to do that, given how slow I am I like the limitation of having a few games on hand.

Inside, fwiw, is supposed to be coming to the Switch. But today I cancelled my nebulous preorder of Dark Souls for the Switch, because for the life of me I cannot imagine playing it on such a little screen. Hollow Knight, otoh, is a joy on the Switch screen.

Ooooh there's a lot of previous gen games you can check out then, like Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Batman: Arkham Asylum... many of which have gotten remasters on PS4.

Yeah, would totally appreciate any must-buy list. Though I do think I am largely set with several hundred hours of potential play on the titles already on my radar (in addition to games I have on the switch).

(Like a very stable genius, I bought TLOU and the Mass Effect trilogy for my PS3. Anyway, Mass Effect is good!)

Prey maybe. The Dishonored games. Nier Automata. the Just Cause games. maybe AssCreed Black Flag. u're not interested in JRPGs right or i'd highly recommend Persona 5. Titanfall 2 has a fantastic short/tight single player campaign. there's a Bioshock collection you should check out if you haven't played any of them. have you played any of the Dead Rising games? 1 + 2 are both great. deus ex: mankind divided isn't great but it's good. the new tomb raider reboots are good. some of the more recent saint's rows games are fun. if you've never played spelunky now you can.

Don't feel bad Lee, I've still got dozens of titles in my 360/PS3 backlogs

What's the word on Hellblade? I think that might be my first buy.

What are good jrpgs for ps4 ? I have persona 5 and a tales game, that’s it.

Hellblade looks good but I get the sense that it's a walking sim and/or on rails.

I could be tempted to get a PS4 if Red Dead Red II gets good reviews.

Also, in a really impressed-old-person way, I just think the graphics on things lately are amaaaazing. Like they're even starting to solve the uncanny valley, almost.

That said - I had a PS3 for ages but I kept forgetting it was there. I really dug Portal 2 and Braid. And Red Dead/GTA IV, but they made my hand hurt if I played them too much.

Also I can't imagine anything on a PS4 would be better than BOTW

What's wonderful about BOTW (which I have watched my kid play) is its innocence. It's deep and rigorous but you're not stabbing zombie spider monsters in the ass or blowing off bad guy heads. It's ... pure? I may like Dunkey more than most (I think he's funny) but his silly Zelda goof really captures that game's magic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EvbqxBUG_c

Ok I don't think I need to see any more by this guy, but that was great

Also - drop kicking the skull! I didn't know you could do that.

if i got a PS4 it would just be for Bloodborne. then again that game rules so hard it would be worth it.

I don't want to get any more ahead of myself than I already am, but how would you differentiate the three Dark Souls and Bloodborne? From what I've read, everyone loves (in some sense of the word) the first Dark Souls, many don't like the second (I don't know why), people are mixed but generally like the gameplay of III and it seems people ... like Bloodborne best of all, to the extent that playing it first might ruin Dark Souls for you?

xxxp oh lord the chicken-moblin war

i dont think playing Bloodborne first would ruin anyone's experience playing Dark Souls. not sure if this is the right analogy but perhaps it would be like ruining Super Mario Bros. 3 by playing Super Mario World first.

the big draw for Dark Souls is the world design, the way everything is connected, the way it all feels like a real place. your first time through DS will be special because no other game has that tight interconnected design. DS3 comes close but DS2 is a sprawling mess that doesn't make any sense w too many levels.

xxp Souls games have more build and weapon variety and tend to encourage a more cautious playstyle than Bloodborne. pvp is also more prominent in the former.
I don't think playing one first will ruin the others beyond the inevitable burn out aspect of several hours long games

So nothing on good ps4 jrpgs? Please help!

persona5 if smt is your thing

ni no kuni ii is out now right? i have only played the first but it made me feel very warm and fuzzy so i imagine 2 is great!

also: if you missed valkyria chronicles the first time around, there is a remaster on the ps4. also the 4th game in the series is coming out in september, by the time you get through all of the other stuff on this list you'll wanna play that one. (don't worry about 2 and 3: i played the... second one i think, it's on PSP, and as far as i can tell they are all more or less discrete stories)

final fantasy xv is... something. i didn't get that far tbh before other games distracted me, but i hope to go back at some point! there are some awesome weird little moments of "hanging out with the boys" that i love, and the SUPER WEIRD detail of the food they make when they camp (on coleman camping equipment) was so weird i think about it more often than i probably should. if you want a more, uh, traditional final fantasy experience?, FFX and FFX-2 also got remasters if you wanna play those and haven't before (i can say FFX was great and probably the last great "normal" numbered FF (FFXII was also great but by no means 'normal')).

i've heard good things about I Am Setsuna.

some people call the yakuza games RPGs which is a little weird to me but they're so far wonderful. apparently zero is a good place to start, but I am starting with Kiwami, a remake of the first game, and enjoying it thoroughly. Kiwami 2 comes out later this year, 0 and 6 are out there, and 3/4/5 are supposed to get barely-remastered re-releases on PS4 at some point (fingers crossed for stateside).

i never got into the ys series, but there are some of those on ps4 and some folks say they rule.

ditto for trails of cold steel, also on ps4 now.

monster hunter world is extremely not my shit, but you might like it. everyone else seems to!

don't think trails of cold steel has an english ps4 version unfortunately, it was on ps3. if you're looking for turn based jrpg then persona 5 is the big one and there's not much else unless you want to play like an atelier game or something low-rent like that. valkyria chronicles is turn based but it's closer to an XCOM type game than a jrpg. dragon quest 11 is out in September.

lots of good options for action jrpg though:
nier automata
ys viii
tales of berseria
the dark souls/bloodborne games obviously if you count those as jrpgs (they totally are)
ni no kuni 2 is alright

jRPGs are tricky to recommend in general because you have the people who just want to battle and skip through the cutscenes and you have the people who just want to hang out with some fun characters and be told a story and mash through battles and the entire spectrum in between, then you have the people who loved chrono trigger but think all modern ones are anime trash and the weebs who like the trashy anime and get bored by the underwritten old/retro style ones and in the end you can have 100 people play the same jrpg and come away sounding like they played 100 different games.

dang. I've never played a Final Fantasy since NES days when I played the first one & maybe the second. I understand these are good but I don't even know where to start

I do have persona 5 already which I wanna start but summer's starting & I'll be on the road a bunch so I don't wanna start it now

my personal understanding of final fantasy is that 6 thru 9 are classics, everything before that is too primitive and everything after that is too messy. 12 has a bit of a following though I think & I haven't tried it.

dunno how many of them have PS4 ports though

jRPGs are tricky to recommend in general because you have the people who just want to battle and skip through the cutscenes and you have the people who just want to hang out with some fun characters and be told a story and mash through battles and the entire spectrum in between, then you have the people who loved chrono trigger but think all modern ones are anime trash and the weebs who like the trashy anime and get bored by the underwritten old/retro style ones and in the end you can have 100 people play the same jrpg and come away sounding like they played 100 different games.

so true

i often wonder why i play rpgs. sometimes i do really enjoy the story (the first 3/4 of xenogears, the witcher 3), but often they seem oddly underdeveloped, given that they're supposed to be a highlight of the genre. it's tough to put up with terrible voice acting for 50+ hours. even just zelda's meh voice acting in breath of the wild is driving me nuts, and i barely encounter her. i'm willing to put up with anime-leaning games, but i'd rather not play a game where most of the adult female characters speak like 6-year-olds and/or showcase their underboobs, and that's most of them ime.

xp
FFVII has a PS4 port already but also has a PS4 remaster due at some unknown near future point. So maybe worth waiting for that rather than picking it up now, if remasters are your cup of tea.

the ff7 project is a full on remake not just a remaster and it's probably a long ways off still

some people call the yakuza games RPGs which is a little weird to me but they're so far wonderful. apparently zero is a good place to start

yes, forgot about yakuza! i've played a few of these, halfway through 6 now, and 0 is my favourite so far, and it's like $20 nowadays

kiwami and zero at $20 on june 28!

polygon story on greatest hits releases next week

oh nice, i'll pick up yakuza zero for $20 for sure

i can say FFX was great and probably the last great "normal" numbered FF

yeah i liked X a lot. i would agree with this. it has the turn based combat of the older games but there are some really nice mechanics added in that make it a lot of fun to do battle. it also has the most absurd mini game ever where you have to anticipate lightning strikes.

So I've seen some talk about the merits of going with the Pro for "future-proofing" reasons, which I don't get. It's not like games made to take advantage of the Pro's hardware won't play or will break the gaming experience on Slims, right?

Yeah, I don't get it. I thought about it, but if you're worried about "future proofing" anything you shouldn't be getting a new system toward the end of its cycle. PS5 or whatever is being talked about for 2020, maybe, but even if the PS4 lasts longer, the only real significant thing the Pro has to offer over the slim is, I think, 4K support (plus faster processor, maybe?), and "future proofing" with TV evolution in mind is a fruitless task.

But man, the dude at Costco was really pushing the Pro over the Slim, even though even to a know-nothing like me I knew more than he did and knew he was talking out of his ass. "Oh, the difference is this one has HDR+, but that one has 4K, which is what you really want" - wrong - and (he points to pictures of games on the box) I think it comes with these games" - wrong.

A bunch of games that have already been released not only run better on my Pro than they did on my PS4, but they have added features. The most significant is visual textures etc. that are only displayed if 4K/HDR is enabled, but also I think some games have extra Pro-only features. (Don't quote me on that.)

Future proofing probably only matters if you have a lot of PS4 games and want to keep using your library. I'm probably more likely to play PS4 games through my PS5 on PS Now or whatever than I would be to dust off my PS4 and use it, but if you can see yourself doing it, the new system is definitely very nice. Even the menus seem nicer ... I haven't A/B'ed that yet though.

Warning: Some redundancy up there :(

But is it $100 (or whatever) better?

normal PS4 does HDR too btw, if that wasn’t clear

Huh I didn't realize that.

Well, it was an easy sell for me because my PS4 was getting pretty wheezy. I think the better tech specs are worth it but ymmv.

So what kind of game sales should I be on the lookout for? For example, there is a playstation flash sale right now. Do those happen all the time? Some games I'm interested in are 50-60% off. Is that common? Unusual? How about at brick and mortar stores, anything (or any specific places) I should be keeping an eye on?

gamefly sells off copies of the games they rent, i've found good deals there occasionally

josh, just get the witcher 3, you don't need any other games