Full review of Sony's new PlayStation 5
We'll see if I regret that so do I think Sony made the design this way?
So it would be a statement piece in whatever room you put it in next to your TV.
Yes.
Is that a bit of a risk?
Yes
But I think this crazy design has both a higher ceiling and a lower floor for how good it can look versus something safer.
So once you're lucky enough to own a PS, v you'll notice the experience overall is a few things number one. It's faster. It's redesigned and it's definitely trying to be next. Gen. It is a gaming console fundamentally. So it's still doing all the same stuff. But the UI is new, you know, it's got all kinds of little particles and lights and stuff in there looks great on a high-resolution TV and even better in HDR, and it's definitely fast just flying around the menus and the Store and launching games is quick as you'd expect from a significantly faster SSD. Now in this gaming console world. It's practically heresy to ever compare it to anything PCS, but I think this is just were thinking about for just a second if this this PlayStation 5 was a gaming PC and it's not obviously it's not but if it was a gaming PC, it would be actually extremely small number one. It'll be pretty inexpensive at 500 bucks and it would have a pretty incredible promise of being relevant for the next like four straight years and potentially even getting better over time. Like you'll be really hard to find a gaming PC. That's this small this cheap and this relevant for this long of a time. Now, there's a lot of reasons why this doesn't hold up. Of course the main one being graphical prowess of a real PC, but if you think about it that is a pretty impressive value proposition for a console, but once you fire up that PS5 and No, it says 825 gigs on the box. But after the OS is installed you have somewhere near like 670 cakes just so
Thunder 30 just something to keep an eye on the external SSD support is for For me Spiderman was about 40 gigs NBA 2K a little less than there's some PS4 games, but generally they're a little bit smaller Need for Speed was under 30. Just something to keep an eye on the external SSD support is for saving backwards compatible games only not for playing them and then let's talk about the games. So PlayStation store shows pretty much all of the games from last generation PS4 are still compatible, which is great. And if you have some PS4 games, you still want to play they should show up here and it should Work basically exactly the same there have been some bugs reported. But generally they're going to load and play the same and then you can even sort by that in the PlayStation Store. So if you only want to see PS5 only new titles . the new Spider-Man Miles Alice game which is the launch title for it and some others just tossed in for fun. And then for other people there's other titles. They've been waiting for there's Demon's Souls. I see gets a lot of hype. There's Assassin's Creed there's all kinds of stuff like that and that catalog should be growing and improving over time. So as we get into game play,
How are the games and does it feel like next gen gaming?
Well the answer to that question. It's different in different game.
We know of course console quality Graphics have never really touched PC quality Graphics. But this time around you keep hearing about Ray tracing and better Reflections and shadows and high resolution and high frame rates. Basically. What I found is no single one of these things by itself makes a huge difference, but putting them all together this stuff adds up to feel different and that's not even talking about the controller which I'll get to in a minute. So Spider-Man Morales and my weeks of testing easily. Prettiest game I've played for sure. There's a reason this is the headlining launch title for the PS 5 and this game seems to be the best demo of Ray tracing with all the reflections and lighting and different textures all over the place as it takes place in a crowded New York City plus it's in winter. So there's lots of particles again in the air with the snow and really just whether you're in a battle with enemies with cameras, super Dynamic and moving around a lot or if you're just hanging out around New York City between missions, which is extremely accurate by the way there. There's just a ton to look around at now in this game something to note. And I think this kind of defines the console experience this time around at this level you choose in this game between High Fidelity mode or high performance mode. You can switch whenever you want. So when you're in high fidelity mode Ray tracing is on. This is the best looking version of the game the textures and the details are at their highest quality, but that's limited to 30 frames per second. And so here if you look at pretty much any Of surface like a window or some glass you can see there's some level of real Reflections . When we say Ray tracing that's an added level of realism. But if you switch to Performance mode and go to that same spot, you'll notice two things one There's nothing at all in that glass. It's just kind of fake Reflections that move around as you move doesn't really represent the real world behind it at all and to well this is obviously less graphically intensive. you're running at 60 FPS instead of 30 so now everything is much. Either which for a lot of this game you might be in to see the thing about Ray tracing is there's different amounts of different levels of Ray tracing and so on the PS5,
I would describe it as a sort of partial Ray tracing does that make sense like most windows and obvious large glass surfaces. They do the reflections, which is dope even this like a storefront window. If you look closely you can still see it's doing a realistic reflection and Shadow. It's amazing, but also some puddles and car windows. Those are just doing lighting and shadows without the reflections and so not every single surface and every model and texture in the game is super high-quality. I think most people though won't be pixel peeping that much or caring about that as long as they're like sling it around through the city and glorious high resolution on a big TV. I think in this game most of the time I prefer high performance mode at 60fps.You get that smooth motion, like even without the super realistic Reflections on glass and textures. It still looks pretty damn good and the lighting still beams off the character the snow still flows in all the tiny little particles. I love the look of this game, even with ray-tracing basically turned off now in case anyone's wondering why the PC comparison is still so far off go back and watch my videos link below about 8K gaming where we played 8K games at 60fps on the RTX 3090 with ray-tracing fully turned.
On high quality Graphics settings. That's the difference between a PC which is much bigger and much more expensive and this that's all the other PS5 game I've spent more time in was NBA 2K 21, and this game is technically next-gen, of course, it's made for PS5 but for my fellow 2K players, we already kind of know 2K is kind of like the iPhone of console games like they make a new version every year, but it's kind of same stuff just A little bit different maybe a little bit better. So the gameplay is all still familiar same controls. But for this game their focus on realism really seems to be in again Ray tracing and like on the wave of the materials look so players hair textures are more accurate and a sweat rolling down their face and reflecting the lights. All that stuff is more clear the textures on the court also with Reflections off the hardwood are a little better more detailed and even the cutscenes just overall everything has a little layer of Polish .
the real next-gen feeling part of it is the new and massively improved haptics inside and the Adaptive triggers. So playing through Astros playroom. It's actually not even that good of a game to be honest. Like you're more just kind of exploring and wandering around doing stuff hitting stuff grabbing stuff, whatever you could play for a while and never really do anything or win anything but the next-gen feel of the controller haptics making sand feel like sand through your hands. Ice feel like ice is amazing and the Adaptive triggers kicking in making it difficult to squeeze and when you need to compress a spring really adding and feeling that resistance as you squeeze them is so good. It's even more immersive to me than the haptics the Spider-Man game to my disappointment kind of didn't really do much with all or either of these things. I was hoping Spider-Man climbing on metal and glass would feel like metal and glass or maybe the triggers would get harder to pull. If I was slinging through the city and I slung through a building that was extra far away something like that. But there's pretty much none of that in this game at best you get the occasional vibration when punching or throwing things obviously that doesn't feel at all like the difference-maker on the PS 5 into k21 though. I love this. So in this game you hold the trigger to Sprint, If you're running pulled the trigger and so in 21. if you're getting back on defense after a fast break, you can feel it's heavier. And it's harder to Sprint and throughout a game it gets heavier and heavier. So that to me that was good. That was a great use because really the point is instead of having to look at the screen you're now feeling when the character is more tired and that is what makes it feel more next gen to me nevertheless. I still personally wish I would see more of this stuff throughout Other games so I played some other PS4 games like FIFA and Need for Speed and dirt and of course, it's still doing normal tiny vibrations. You would think like in a driving game the controller would be going crazy with all the different surfaces and collisions. But here it's not the PS4 stuff still feels like PS4 stuff and the PS 5 stuff feels like a little bit underutilized. I think part of it might be that developers might be a little tentative to overuse it like they might be scared of likes scaring people off in a way .
The good load times was a big thing to keep an eye on for the new generation of consoles. I found load times to be faster, but not like some blink of the eye never see a splash screen again type faster, but it was noticeably faster in every single game whether it was a PS5 optimized game or even a backwards compatible PS4 game and that is thanks to the Lightning Fast SSD. And again, it's one more little thing that adds to the experience that feels like Next Gen gaming and I like the slightly new menu organization the new UI with all your most recent games and Strip on the home screen and then the rest of your library at the end with all your games. And when you press the PlayStation button now in a game you cannot only go home or to your normal settings, but it pops up this card view that's pretty useful for navigating around checkpoints or different stages or progress in a game and every developer use it differently, but some will just show your level or some trophies others will show hold tutorials inside this car that will help you get around. But yeah, generally this is a welcome addition. I like It and just generally speaking. I'm a fan of the whole thing. I guess those fauci Carter would say that PS5 is a major major go. If you can get your hands on it, It's basically a computer that's guaranteed. Hopefully to have a long life cycle and to improve over time as the game Library grows and that's something we got to keep an eye on and Trust developers to do but I think it's happening. I'm excited for it. The most interesting piece for me will be a wait and see how this controller gets implemented in future.
Thanks
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