PlayStation 4 Console Thread

[instasis]

I'd definitely plug it in and set it up to test. Mine had a terrible sounding disc drive and I got it exchanged at launch.

[SweatyTravolta]

Yeah I would definitely test it. My pad wouldn't work unless it was connected to the console via a wire at all times. You wanna make sure that thing works.

[Simbo]

Unlike PSN on Christmas day...

You could test it and then factory reset it so it starts over i guess??

Out of interest what does a 9 year old want a PS4 for, is it minecraft perchance?

Yeah, minecraft and fifa (believe it or not). Got her a Vita last year and she really enjoys it. So naturally was happy to nudge her in the way of a PS4 because in a year or two she might be less bothered about it and that means I can start to hoover up the console exclusive stuff.

edit: How do you factory reset it? Forgot to google it before asking the question! Didn't realise it was so easy - nice one

Thanks for the advice I'll definately fire it up tomorrow morning seeing as I am working from home and the kids are at school. Cheers

[Superunknown]

Factory reset mode should sort out the welcome message/connect controller with cable messages. It certainly does on the PS3 and Xbox.

[Down by Law]

Will be getting my launch PS4 back after lending it to a friend to play TLOU two months ago. Cant say that I have missed not having it at all, been getting my gaming fix via PC, and there is still next to nothing of interest to me on Sony's console. I would say that Drive Club being a let-down is the nail in the coffin for me - its been a massively disappointing console. Another one for the Trading folder shortly.

Other than The Last of Us Remastered, which thanks to it's superb mutilplayer modes has kept me busy for months, the entire first year this gen has been disappointment after disappointment as far as big retail releases go. Ground Zeroes (a fab game in it's own right but chronically content starved for a £30 disc based release) Sniper Elite 3, Wolfenstein (The Sound Mix ruined this game for me) Watch Dogs, The Evil Within, Destiny(to a degree),Drive Club, Advanced Warfare....all big releases that have been lackluster, in fact the only game other than TLOUR that's really impressed me is Shadow of Mordor and I bought that on the strength of word of mouth alone....and what a joy it has been to play.

I'm pinning all hopes of Far Cry 4 to deliver the kind of experience I've been waiting for. From everything shown so far it certainly looks that way.

Thankfully the indie / downloadable titles have really shone this year, Resogun and the Heroes Expansion, Hotline Miami, Velocity 2X, Outlast, P.T, First Light , Pix the Cat, Spelunky and Steamworld Dig have all been fantastic and were all FREE(!) with PS+ other then First Light which cost me £2 thanks to the Now TV credit promo.

In fact the biggest dissapointment of 2014 is the no-show of Hotline Miami 2 which looks absolutely tremendous!

[Guest]

Yeah, minecraft and fifa (believe it or not). Got her a Vita last year and she really enjoys it. So naturally was happy to nudge her in the way of a PS4 because in a year or two she might be less bothered about it and that means I can start to hoover up the console exclusive stuff.

edit: How do you factory reset it? Forgot to google it before asking the question! Didn't realise it was so easy - nice one

Thanks for the advice I'll definately fire it up tomorrow morning seeing as I am working from home and the kids are at school. Cheers

Do the firmware update too, only takes 5 minutes but may take a lot longer on Christmas day.

[Dudley]

That's what I got. I might ditch Destiny though, it seems too online / headset essential for me.

Online yes. Although you could quite happily play the story and then ditch it without ever REALLY feeling online.

Headset? Nah, never used one so far. Then again I pretty much completed the story, realised all that was left was grinding the same encounters for XP and moved on.

[Uncle Mike]

If you play Destiny to solo the Story missions and then finish, you haven't really played Destiny.

[Simbo]

Great - I'm updating the firmware now - thanks for the suggestion.

Last question from me. If I do the factory reset will it stay at 2.01 or revert back to 'stock'?

[Sng]

Stay at 2.01.

[Simbo]

yes, I want to stay at 2.01 but I'm not sure if doing the factory reset will revert me back to the previous version.

[b00dles]

I actually really enjoyed Sniper Elite III but it wasn't a particularly "next-gen experience" with it's cunning ploy of saving effort on assets and textures by setting the whole game in the desert. It was George Lucas thinking at it's finest but I never fail to find the game very amusing.

I think actually, that has been my issue with this gen so far, nothing has really blown me away that sufficiently but I'm hopeful it's just the early days of the gen, to think what they squeezed out of the 360 towards the end, the end of this gen could be bonkers.

[chamberlago]

yes, I want to stay at 2.01 but I'm not sure if doing the factory reset will revert me back to the previous version.

According to the online manual

"Restoring the settings will not restore the system software to a previous version."

http://manuals.playstation.net/document/gb/ps4/settings/restore_system.html

I think there is a separate option for if you want to reinstall the system software.

[Smoothy]

How has everyone found the 2.01 firmware update? I've used Rest Mode again and it's still switching off some time afterwards.

[Simbo]

According to the online manual

"Restoring the settings will not restore the system software to a previous version."

http://manuals.playstation.net/document/gb/ps4/settings/restore_system.html

I think there is a separate option for if you want to reinstall the system software.

Thats great - really appreciate you finding this out for me - I will give that a go. I had tried googling but I ended up with nothing but a stream "2.01 is live install now" results. Just couldn't find a combination of the right words to get a match via search.

[kradica1]

How has everyone found the 2.01 firmware update? I've used Rest Mode again and it's still switching off some time afterwards.

Are you sure you haven't got it set to stay in rest mode for 3 hours to charge controllers and then turn off? It was a new option in 2.0

[Dudley]

If you play Destiny to solo the Story missions and then finish, you haven't really played Destiny.

I've done some multiplayer, the competitive stuff is same min/maxing as every other multiplayer I can't be fucked with.

The Co-op stuff is just the same stuff you did solo. It's still just as bland and inspired and "There's about 5 types of enemy in the game".

It was reasonable, it was fun, I didn't waste my money but they're going to have to try a lot harder than months of tedious grinding for a slightly larger gun to make this a dynasty.

Or maybe they won't, seems to work for warcraft after all.

[Sng]

yes, I want to stay at 2.01 but I'm not sure if doing the factory reset will revert me back to the previous version.

I meant "it will" stay at 2.01.

[b00dles]

I've done some multiplayer, the competitive stuff is same min/maxing as every other multiplayer I can't be fucked with.

The Co-op stuff is just the same stuff you did solo. It's still just as bland and inspired and "There's about 5 types of enemy in the game".

It was reasonable, it was fun, I didn't waste my money but they're going to have to try a lot harder than months of tedious grinding for a slightly larger gun to make this a dynasty.

Or maybe they won't, seems to work for warcraft after all.

Each to their own and so on but I thought exactly the same until I did a few missions with fellow forumites that I'd never even spoken to outside of responding to a thread on here etc and it made the game SO much better, it's uncanny.

The missions are also differently weighted with more players although I will admit there isn't quite enough actual co-op type stuff in it like player 1 does this bit while 2 & 3 do this bit, or even all three of you stand on pressure points at the same time or some nonesense but apparentyl the RAIDs are much better in that respect too.

[Gorf King]

The Co-op stuff is just the same stuff you did solo. It's still just as bland and inspired and "There's about 5 types of enemy in the game".

Nope. It's fair enough not to like the game - it is an MMO, there is grinding to be done, and so on - but the best of the co-op is very different to the rest of the game - and by 'the best', I mean the raiding in particular. That's very different to playing the story solo (or even in a fireteam). There's a real puzzle aspect to it, proper tactical and strategic skills need to be developed that require good teamwork (across several sub-teams who have different tasks), and increasingly ace FPS skills (and even some platform stuff, lol). It's structured differently, it has different environments, different goals, and the dynamics change. The end game co-op content puts the rest of the (what is often very enjoyable) story/mission content to shame, as many people have remarked once they've reached that point.

So aye, it's fine not to like the game - and its flaws are recognised even by people who do like it - but 'the co-op stuff is just the same stuff you did solo' is simply factually incorrect. At the top end, it mutates into a quite different game. And it's a much better game for it.

[K]

Destiny is a weird one, because it does feel like a shit Halo with no story and mega-grinding at first, but after a while the structure of the whole thing becomes clear, and you can see how amazing and clever it really is. Rather than a story mode with some nice-to-have co-op attached, it’s like there’s this whole meta-structure, where every bit informs every other bit, and you gradually get taken from the very basic stuff like weapon types and differing abilities, right up to high-level gear finessing and inch-perfect six person strategy. Eventually, the raid feels like the culmination of every system and every mechanic in the game – like the bit when Halo clicked on Legendary, except about twenty hours later on.

It’s a shame it takes so long, and that it looks like such an incoherent soup of different ideas and styles and factions and currency types for the first twenty five hours of play, but once you see not only how everything works, but how it works together - it’s like a light going off in your head. You get it! Like Tony Soprano in the desert when he’s on peyote, except this isn’t a drug-induced self-justification of your life of crime, it’s a game. But you realise, it’s a fucking fantastic game that’s not really like the Halo follow-up you assumed it was for the first day or so of solid play.

Completing the story missions and getting rid of it is a bit like doing the solo missions on Counterstrike and giving up. It’s, like, you can do that if you want, but you’re not really giving it its due. Destiny is a bit more tricky, in that it really looks like a conventional FPS, there are a fair few things that unambiguously a bit shit and in need of refinement, and the fact it takes fucking ages to properly gel. But the actual core of it is staggering.

[Gorf King]

Yeah. It's just strange (and off-putting, and a flaw) that the 'core' is, essentially, the end-game, and what comes before it seems so bitty sometimes. Like you say, all those bits add up to it (well, those plus some new bits added in), and make sense, finally, as a whole. I think everyone who's attempted the raid will agree that the raiding experience comes as a bit of a shock at first, because you can't just brute-force it, like you would a slightly harder version of what came before; like you would a really hard mission or something. You actually, for the first time, have to become diverse and co-ordinated as a team, and work together across a number of tasks simultaneously. So yeah, playing the story mode - even some of it in co-op - and deciding the rest of the game is just the same, is a mistake. It's not. (In fact, one of the game's biggest flaws is that it then becomes hard to go back to that mode just to grind stuff out. It seems not just easier, but far more pedestrian and far less compelling, after experiencing the raid. I just hope the raids in the expansions are up to the same level.)

[Superunknown]

Thats great - really appreciate you finding this out for me - I will give that a go. I had tried googling but I ended up with nothing but a stream "2.01 is live install now" results. Just couldn't find a combination of the right words to get a match via search.

You can't ever rollback the firmware by doing a factory reset; it just restores all settings to their factory defaults within the current firmware framework.

[StephenM]

You know what? It's these mixed, complex, flaw-discussing perspectives that have made me exponentially more interested in opening the packet and playing Destiny than I ever was before.

Meanwhile, COD is still COD, but that's okay. I haven't played the past couple of incarnations, so I don't mind at all.

And earlier today I tried that Flowers (or is it Flower?) game. Outstanding.

TLOU still awaits me. That's the one I'm most desperate to play - it's the reason I switched to PS - but I WILL NOT let these new PS4 games become yet another part of the backlog.

[Timmo]

I'm sure Destiny is good, if:

1) You have a lot of free time to devote to it
2) You are willing to put the effort into getting into an organised, communicative squad

I couldn't tick either box so it wasn't for me.

[Spacehost]

I really like it, but then i) I love the setting, ii) I love the gunplay, and iii) I'm a sucker for all the retention mechanics and progression systems they've built into it. It's definitely not for everyone but then I absolutely love that someone like Activision threw time and money behind a game that isn't trying to please everybody.

[Gorf King]

The second point is very true, and the first is to an extent. But only to an extent, because compared to other MMOs I've played (and even compared to PSO), it takes a lot, lot less time to get to the end game content. And that is broken up into little bite-sized checkpoints (hello again, Halo), which you have a week to string together into a complete run. So it's much more doable in terms of time and commitment than other MMOs (or pseudo-MMOs). Which, funnily enough, is a criticism some have of it - it's all over too fast, and then all you have left is to do it again. I think it's about right myself, but it is starting to need some new content on top of what it has now.

Anyway, back to the PS4. The 2.01 update seems to have fixed the standby issues, no? Hooray. I'm glad I didn't take the sage advice to return my console and all its games in outrage and disgust now.

[b00dles]

As mentioned I played Destiny (although not actually done a raid yet) with just random 'mukkers from my friends list, that I invariably just gatecrashed into their games but everyone was nice and welcoming and it always resulted in much better games than with randoms.

It does need a lot of refinement I'd say but it's genuinely the most interesting and different FPS that I've played in ages. I think that's why I've been so unimpressed with CoD, the very first bit of the game is essentially a futuristic version of the Omaha beach landings from the very first one, which was impressive then and is still a good spectacle but it's nothing remotely new in terms of the game.

I mentioned it elsewhere but I really think that games need to be far more like Destiny than they do CoD to make the most of the medium and so on. Everyone I played Destiny with didn't really give a monkeys what was allegedly happening in the game (I'm still not sure to be honest) but the actual game bit and planning stuff with people and even the novelty of the massive firefights you could cruise past on a patrol or what have you are so much more immersive than the usual 'follow these other NPC's down this corridor for a bit, watch something quite cool and then have a shooting gallery' repeat ad infinitum.

[Shimmyhill]

Destiny is an odd one for me, i love the setting, the grpahics and audio but despise the grind.

I have no desire to ever play it and yet when i do i end up on it for hours having loads of fun but no idea why!

[b00dles]

Destiny is an odd one for me, i love the setting, the grpahics and audio but despise the grind.

I have no desire to ever play it and yet when i do i end up on it for hours having loads of fun but no idea why!

That's probably exactly why I've not played for about three weeks now... once you actually start playing it's always great fun but 'the idea' of it isn't that appealing, or something...