Game Time - November 2013

As of right now I'm playing way too many games at once. I can barely handle it. Amazon had a deal on the Vita, so I finally got one of those. Now I have all the free games from PlayStation Plus to play on the thing in addition to Persona 4 Golden. I still haven't finished 2 of the 3 PS4 games I got and now the Starbound beta is out and I need to be playing that. I don't know. There are so many games I've been playing that I can't even think of them all. It has definitely contributed to how late this installment of Game Time is. Man, I do this later every month. It really didn't help that I went to the fighting game tournament NEC 14 this past weekend. Now I have a raging cold and it totally sucks.

Luckily for me most of what I just went on about has happened in December. As you know this past month I got the PlayStation 4. I think it's pretty cool. You can read more about that here if you like. So as you may have guessed I've been playing the thing a fair bit. I played some of both Need for Speed Rivals, and Lego Marvel. Perhaps I'll get around to beating them at some point, but with my current amount of games to play I don't know that I will. Both games are pretty fun though. I'm not going to talk about Lego Marvel today. It's another open world Lego game.

I did however play all of Assassin's Creed IV, and it was awesome. I don't know how you can go from having III be such a disaster to having IV be so well put together. Being a pirate and sailing the open seas is a magical experience that I highly recommend.

At some point I bought Super Mario 3D world, because I decided I wanted to play another Wii-U game. At this point I can safely say that Super Mario 3D world is the best Wii-U game out there. Somehow the Super Mario Galaxy team can spin straw into gold time and time again. They should probably be allowed to make every Mario related game from here on out if they keep doing such solid work. I couldn't stop myself from playing until the end of the game in two sittings. I still have a lot of collectibles to find and I'm eager to jump back in and get them all.

Also, sorry if this becomes an incomprehensible mess.

Ready, set, video games!

Need for Speed Rivals

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit was an amazing game. Every Need for Speed game since then has not been. You could even say that they were kind of bad. Rivals gets so close to bringing back what I loved about Hot Pursuit. It has a lot of potential, but it's held back by some of it's own mechanics.

Much like Hot Pursuit, Rivals is a good old fashioned game involving cops and racers. If you choose a cop you have to try and take racers off the road using any means necessary. You also get time penalties if you drive dangerously, which totally sucks. If you choose a racer you just race and try not to get taken down by the cops. In my opinion playing as a racer is much more fun. Being penalized for getting knocked around isn't something I want happening to me in a racing game. Especially when other cars are constantly smashing into you.

Races start out simple enough, but the cops ALWAYS show up to ruin them.

When it comes down to it Need for Speed Rivals is a competent racing game. You drive around an open world and go from event to event. The terrain is extremely varied. One moment you'll be in the desert and then all of a sudden you'll be on a mountain with snow all around you. As you race around the world and complete events you'll get speed points, which happen to be the games currency. You'll use it to purchase new cars, power them up, and purchase power-ups. You get them for doing almost anything, what's hard is keeping them. In order to get the speed points to keep you need to bank them at a hideout. If you get taken down before that point you lose them all. This is a huge risk-reward scenario. The longer you stay out the more speed points you get. When you complete an event you get a multiplier, but it's nearly impossible to stay alive for more than an event.

Normally the game will throw you into a server with around 8 other players. It doesn't tell you if they're cops or not. When you're with other humans you'll almost surely die very quickly, because they actually know how to be efficient. Normally I turn off the internet so I live a bit longer. The problem is that so many computer players spawn. Playing as a racer doing almost anything will trigger a chase. Then before you know it you have a million cops on your ass. It ends up getting pretty frustrating. Sometimes I just want to do an event in peace, but that just can't happen. At least in Hot Pursuit you knew which events would have cops in them before starting. Since Rivals is in an open world the cops are everywhere all the time!

On average this many cops are chasing you...

It wouldn't be as bad if the open world was put together better. If you want to race with friends you really can't unless you challenge them to a head to head race. This requires that you find them on the map first, which is kind of hard, because everyone is driving as fast as possible. If you want to do events with other players you might as well forget about it. That would require all the necessary players to be at the event starting position. On top of that you have to not get killed on the way there, or you'll have to start super far away from the event again. I wish there was some type of party system in the game or something to make multiplayer a little more playable. As it is right now it's basically a single player game where other players happen to be in the same world for their single player experience.

Oh yeah, there's a story too. Surprise, it's not good. Every story scene consists of a computer screen with video of racers or cops on it and some weird chat. In the background a racer or cop is spouting off nonsense about freedom or justice. It's all super self righteous bullshit, but in a funny kind of way. There's a racer named F8 in the story, which is pronounced fate. That's edgy I guess? The story seems to be trying way too hard to be something it's not. Need for Speed the Run taught us all just how terrible stories in Need for Speed games can truly be. So I guess I should be thankful it's not that awful.

At least it's not this game.

As a racing game it's fine. It handles how you'd expect it to. That's what makes it mediocre. With an untapped open world and bad multiplayer mechanics Rivals is kind of disappointing. If you're looking for some free roam racing you'd probably be better off playing something like Forza Horizons, or better yet Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

I really liked the real world plot of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Then Assassin's Creed 3 happened and killed it for me. I don't really know where it went wrong, but it went horribly wrong. On top of the real world plot being destroyed, the in animus plot wasn't very good either. It felt very disjointed and there were way too many time skips for absolutely no reason. Connor was a decent character in the beginning, but unlike Ezio in the previous games he was a major bummer. Assassin's Creed 3 was a disappointment on many levels for me and it almost made me stop playing the franchise.

The first few trailers of Assassin's Creed IV looked interesting to me. I'm a huge fan of pirates, so that helped out a lot. I had originally decided not to purchase it at all, but Watchdogs got delayed and I needed a game to play on the PS4 at launch. Much to my surprise it even got excellent reviews. I ended up liking AC 4 a whole lot. It somehow managed to reinvigorate my interest in the franchise.

You'll be stabbing lots of people in AC IV.

As you may have guessed you play as an Assassin in Assassin's Creed IV. Well, he's not actually an Assassin to start with, but he sure is good at assassinating people. You play as Edward Kenway, who is the grandfather of Connor from Assassin's Creed 3. Edward is a happy go lucky pirate trying to make his way in life. The best part about Edward is that he's a fun character. He doesn't really have a whole lot going on except for the fact that he wants to find treasure and have fun. Sure, he's not the deepest character ever, but he's just fun to play as. He's a pirate and he acts like one. He still dons the Assassin's robes and stabs fools from behind, but he can also sail a ship on the high seas.

While Connor could sail a ship in Assassin's Creed 3, Assassin's Creed 4 expands on that concept quite a bit. In order to get from place to place Edward must sail across the ocean in his ship the Jackdaw. It's an open world game, so there are tons of places to explore and things to do. You can fish, take over naval bases, battle other ships, and sing some sweet sea shanties. On land you can do the same things as you could in every other Assassin's Creed game. There are additions, but none of them are really worth nothing.

Edward is a fun character who's a bit of a badass.

The overall story isn't anything to write home about. Edward is looking for a place called the observatory, because with its power he will be able to get rich. It's an interesting enough tale, but it really starts to feel like a slog in the middle section of the game. It felt like one of the longest games I've every played, but that might be partially due to the fact that I was trying to do all the side activities. There are way too many side activities.

Much to my surprise the game actually has a story outside of the animus as well. All of the terrible events of Assassin's Creed 3 have still happened, but somehow the setting manages to be interesting. You are a faceless employee at Abstergo Entertainment, which is a video game company the Templars use as a front. They develop games for the animus. You are a developer on their newest pirate game, which is why you're playing as Edward. You can get out of the animus and walk around the offices in first person. It's really weird, but in an interesting way. There is still an overarching plot, but it's nothing special. I think they're floundering after what happened after AC3 and decided to just keep an overarching plot, because the series has always had one.

Sailing the high seas is surprisingly fun.

Assassin's Creed IV is another Assassin's Creed game. The difference is that it's actually good again like Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed 2 were. The gameplay is largely the same as it was in previous iterations with the addition of boat combat on a much larger scale than in Assassin's Creed 3. I played it on the PlayStation 4 and the graphics were incredible. The topical environments look very vibrant, but the water in the ocean is absolutely mind blowing. If you have any interest in the Assassin's Creed franchise still you should probably give Assassin's Creed 4 a chance.

Super Mario 3D World

Video games have become much more complicated over the past few years. In most cases games put complex systems and graphics over the gaming experience itself. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but sometimes it just gets tiring. Sometimes I just want to sit down with a game and have fun. That's exactly what happened with Super Mario 3D World. I've been getting increasingly frustrated with Nintendo recently, but for a brief moment they've done something beautiful. The Wii-U now has a game that I'd say makes buying the system worth it.

I didn't buy New Super Mario Bros. U, or Super Luigi U. My stance on 2D Mario games that take around 4 hours to beat and cost a full $60 is that they're a load of bullshit. While it might be a great game for those four hours it's just another rehash of the New Super Mario Bros. formula that Nintendo thinks is the greatest thing ever. Truth be told I'm kind of over 2D traditional Mario games now. I think 2D Mario games died when Super Mario 64 came out. If I want to play classic Mario I'll bust out my Super Nintendo and play some classic Mario.

I'm pretty much over 2D Mario games.

Nintendo has always been able to make the most out of the hardware they have. Even though the Wii-U is on par with the PS3 and 360 I thought it would be left behind in graphical potential. Much to my dismay I'd say that 3D looks far better than anything I played on the PlayStation 4, which is a next generation console. Much like Pikmin 3, 3D world uses its art style to its advantage. I would be willing to go so far as to say that 3D world is the best looking game I have played this year.

What's funny is that it's looks don't really mean that much, because it's just straight up fun to play. In essence it's the same game as Super Mario 3D land for the 3DS. Despite that it doesn't seem like a rehash, because there's enough new content to keep things interesting. Every single level is unique, and there are quite a few levels that introduce mechanics only used for that specific level.

Many levels use mechanics that are never seen again.

Much like Super Mario Bros. 2 you have the option to play as multiple characters who each have their own special abilities. Mario plays exactly how you would expect him to play. Luigi can jump a little higher and flutter his legs to get farther. Peach can float for a while, which allows her to get much farther with her jumps than other characters. Toad's ability to pick stuff up super fast in Mario 2 wouldn't really help him in this game, so now he just has the most mobility. Once he starts running he can fly through the stages with incredible speed. You can also unlock Rosalina from Super Mario Galaxy once you complete the main levels. She can jump a second time by spinning, which wasn't very impressive to me. Much as I do in all Mario games that allow me to I stuck to using Princess Peach. Her floating ability makes precision jumps so much easier.

When I first saw the trailer for 3D world I didn't know what to think. Mainly because the new suit turns you into a cat. The pick-up is a bell, which then puts the person who picked it up into a colored cat suit. It allows you to slash and run straight up walls. I don't like cats, but the cat suit is amazing. It pretty much breaks the game and makes it easy to get anywhere. I often found myself going back to the first level to pick it up.

Princess Peach was my character of choice for most of the game.

What I don't like about it is that it's meant for four players. The levels start off super wide and seem a bit empty, because four people could be there. This also makes the starting levels a little bit easier than I'd like. I don't think that games that involve precision platforming should be multiplayer. It just makes every level pure bedlam, because everyone dies all the time when someone gets ahead. Lucky for me the later levels get very challenging and I can't even fathom how you'd be able to get through them with multiple people. There are a ton of levels in the game, and you can unlock extra worlds and levels by getting all of the collectibles. Each level has three green stars and most of them have a Miiverse stamp to collect. You will also want to reach the top of every flagpole, which seems easiest to do with Peach.

Super Mario 3D World is fun. I can't say that enough. The game controls amazingly. When mixed with the truly incredible visuals and jaunty orchestrated soundtrack something truly memorable is born. I want to get back to collecting everything the game has to offer, but with so many other games I need to play I sadly might not get to for a while.

Christmas is Almost Here

It's almost Christmas, which means that this edition of Game Time is horrendously late. I'm going to warn you that the December edition of Game Time will probably be horrendously late as well. I've already played a ton of games this month and I'm sure to get a whole bunch more to play on Christmas. Perhaps by Christmas I'll be able to breath out of my nose again!

Since I have so many things to talk about I'm thinking I might do two editions of Game Time to be able to fit everything in. Perhaps I'll just write up a thing about the Vita and how awesome it is. It's a real shame that Sony isn't helping it sell at all.

I don't know. I have a lot of games to be playing, so I'll see you next time.

     -Manny

Game Time ID: PlayStation 4

On Friday when I first got my PlayStation 4 I felt like I had to put something up right away. I rushed it out in excitement of my shiny new console. Now that it's been a few days I feel like I can say a lot more about the system as a whole. I've played many hours of Assassin's Creed 4, Lego Marvel Heroes, Need for Speed Rivals, Resogun, and Warframe. All of them have been quite fun. Since all of these games are either for PC and/or the previous generation of consoles the most interesting part about the system right now is the operating system.

I mentioned in my quick impressions that I liked the UI. I still do to a certain extent, but not as much as before. In an attempt to make everything much more simple the operating system lost a lot of basic functionality. For example, every time you put in a game it's added to a list of recently used applications. They show up in a row as fairly large squares. As far as I can tell there's no way to get rid of any of them, and there's absolutely no way to sort them. Right now it's not that big of a deal. but when there are a bunch of downloadable titles it will be a huge pain to find what you're looking for. At least on the PS3 you could sort things into folders. Hopefully some type of sort option will be patched in at a later date.

It doesn't seem like it will be too hard for Sony to patch things in either, which is nice. One major complaint I had has already been fixed. For some reason games won't patch until the first time you open them. As soon as they boot the patch is pulled, which is kind of dumb since you can't play anything online unless the game is up to date. This means that you have to quit the game to install the patch and then boot back into it. This is still an issue. What Sony did fix however is the fact that there was no way to differentiate between a game and a patch. I downloaded Resogun from the store. That was listed in my downloads as Resogun. Then it tried to patch and the patch was in the downloads also as Resogun. Last night Sony pushed the firmware update 1.51, which now lists patches you've downloaded as game updates. Not a huge change on it's own, but it's good to see that they can change things if they need to.

Friends

The PlayStation 3 will only let you have 100 friends on your list. The PlayStation 4 on the other hand will let you have 2,000. Why you would want to do that I don't know, but you totally can. I only have around 30 friends on my list right now and the list is super annoying, so I can only imagine how it must be for people who have more than that. Friends are split into 2 categories of Online and All. Online obviously shows you everyone who's online and what they're playing. All shows every one of your friends. What sucks is that both lists are in alphabetical order and there's absolutely no way to sort them. In the end it's almost easier to search for the username you're looking for with the new search function. I'm sure they'll patch this in the future to change how all of this is displayed.

When you first log in with your PSN account you'll be asked if you want to integrate it with Facebook. If you choose to, which I did, it pulls your real name and profile picture. I chose not to use my profile picture, because I like my PSN icon of Cody from Street Fighter just fine. It is super weird to see my real name all over everything though. Your friends won't be able to see your real name unless you send them a name request. This doesn't really have any bearing on anything, but it's an interesting feature.

What's cool is that you can see what game your friends are playing and what system they're playing it on. Even if they're playing on Vita you can see what they're playing, which is something that you can't see on the PS3. The same profile features from the PS3 carry over as well, so you can see their brief introduction and what languages they speak. Their level and how many trophies they have are displayed prominently on their profile page and you can easily compare if you want to.

Messaging is a little better now, because you can send voice messages. As you may have heard there is also party chat now. These are both things that the Xbox 360 had, so it's nice that the PS4 is at least on par with that now. I chatted it up with a friend today while playing Need for Speed Rivals. It worked quite well. I used the pack in mic, which sounds a whole lot better than I thought it would. I might be able to get away with using it for a while longer.

Trophies

Trophies are now a staple of the PlayStation, so it's good to see that they're integrated into the system and not tacked on and poorly implemented like on the PS3. Once you log in to PSN all of your trophy data comes right down. On a new PS3 I had to wait 20 minutes or more for my trophies to pull down since I have almost 4,000 now. This makes viewing trophies a much more pleasant experience. Apparently it's not too bad on the Vita either, but I don't have one of those yet.

When I first heard that the trophies still had to sync all the time I got a little worried. It's not nearly as bad as I thought, but it's still kind of annoying. Sure it takes hardly any time at all to sync them up, but there's no reason that I should have to go to my trophies in order for them to do so. Achievements show up automatically on the Xbox, so it's a little weird that people can't see what I've gotten since I last synced my trophies manually. Trophies are supposed to sync automatically like they did with PlayStation Plus on the PS3, but they aren't for me. I'm probably supposed to leave the system in standby mode, but I don't.

There are two new things with trophies that I think are really cool. The first is that if you view a game it separates out the trophies from the main game and each different DLC set. This doesn't really matter, but it's cool to see regardless. What's interesting is that all of my PS3 games are separated out in this way and some even have custom art to go along with the DLC packs. It's weird that these games all have the same treatment, but it's only when being viewed on the PS4.

The other feature is actually super awesome. When you view a trophy list there is a rarity next to each and every trophy, which ranges from common to ultra rare. It takes into account how many people have played the game and have gotten that trophy. It even shows what percentage of that games players got that trophy, which is pretty neat. It adds a little more depth to a system that I care less and less about with each passing day.

Internet/Store

I'm happy to report that the PlayStation store doesn't run like garbage on the PS4. As I mentioned in my quick impressions it's the exact same store as the PS3 had with a lot less on it. As the PS4 gets more games I'm sure they'll do away with the huge advertisement like panels in favor of something that's a little less frustrating to navigate just like on the PS3 store. That part doesn't even really matter though, because the download speeds don't totally suck! I was able to download Resogun which is over a GB in a little under ten minutes. Game patches took hardly any time to download as well.

What sucks is the way the PS4 handles downloads. If you're downloading multiple things at once they don't queue up and instead all download at the same exact time. What's worse is that you can't pause the downloads, or at least there was no option that I could find. It's crazy, because the PS3 both allowed you to pause downloads and it only did one at a time. I guess that's the trade-off for reasonable download speeds.

I'm also happy to report that I'm not having stupid connection issues when playing games online either. With the PS3 I couldn't connect with my friends 90% of the time even though I have a NAT 2 connection. I still have hard times finding matches in any online PS3 game as well. With the PS4 I had absolutely no problem finding games and connecting with other players in Assassin's Creed, Warframe, and Need for Speed Rivals. Maybe this means I won't have to try and mess around with my connection every single time I want to play a game with a friend.

Sharing

In the past few years recording video games with commentary has become a big deal. The same goes for streaming video games out live as they're being played. Both Sony and Microsoft realized this and now the PS4 and Xbox One have built in streaming. I myself have wanted to get into the world of streaming and recording video games, but it's not exactly the easiest thing to do. My previous laptop wasn't exactly a powerhouse, so it wouldn't have been able to do it very well.

As of right now I'm very disappointed with the PS4's sharing features. Yes they make it very easy to do things that previously weren't, but it could be a lot better off the bat. Some of the things that aren't included make it feel rushed out, which it probably was. The Xbox One won't have it's streaming until 2014. Perhaps the PS4 should have been the same way.

It is very easy to start up a stream. When you push the share button you get three options, which are upload video clip, upload screenshot, and broadcast gameplay. Hitting boradcast will prompt you  to stream on Twitch or Ustream and then you're pretty much ready to go. The quality is relatively high and you can even show some of the chat at the bottom. What makes me upset about it is that you can't archive broadcasts yet, so everything you do will disappear into the ether. This wasn't even apparent until I looked it up and found out on Twitch itself. Archiving will never be available on Ustream. It's kind of weird that this stuff would be omitted at launch. It's even weirder that they'd never say anything about it. Maybe they did, but if so, I never heard about it.

The ability to take an in game screenshot is cool too, but the resolution is so low it's not really worth it. Even then you can only upload it to Twitter or share it on Facebook. Hopefully in the future you can upload the images to Flickr or even Instagram. You know, an image hosting site.

Gameplay videos are also interesting in theory, but right now I have no interest in making them. The system will always record up to 15 minutes of your gameplay, so if you see something awesome you can hit record and grab it. This is good if you're just trying to show off a glitch or a cool sequence of gameplay. What's really lame is that it doesn't pick up any microphone inputs so I can't even talk over videos of my gameplay. If I wanted to do that it would be the most convoluted process ever. First I'd have to upload the video to Facebook, then I'd have to find a way to rip the video from Facebook. Following that I'd have to record my voice and re-encode the video. Finally I would have to re-upload it for everyone to hear. I don't really want to go through all that so I'm just going to wait until archiving is available.

This feature has so much potential and I was looking forward to it so much. That's the reason why I sound so angry about the whole thing. You can't even upload videos to YouTube! What kind of video sharing service can't upload to YouTube! These are all things that I'm sure will be fixed in the future, but right now it's just frustrating.

The Newest Black Box

I don't really like the way the PlayStation 4 itself is shaped. Sure it's flat so I can set things on top of it, but why couldn't it have just been a literal box. Instead it's slanted in the front and back. The slanted front is fine, but the back makes it hard to find where you need to jam all of your cables. Also for some reason the top left of the console is made of that stupid glossy plastic that gets super dirty. I don't get why companies insist on putting that stuff on devices that people are going to touch a lot. With time I'm sure I'll get used to it, but as of right now I like the look of the PS3 a whole lot more. Specifically the slim. The original fat PS3 was a beast, and the new cheap PS3 looks like garbage.

The buttons on the front kind of bother me as well. They're both super tiny and at first I didn't even realize they were buttons at all. Above the disc slot is a super thin power button and below it there's a super thin eject button. They're barely recognizable as buttons unless you're looking for them. The good thing is that theoretically you'd only need to use the power button the first time you turn on the console. After that you could use the controller to turn the system on and off and eject the discs from the system level menu.

While the box itself hasn't impressed me all that much outside of it's internal hardware I've absolutely fallen in love with the DualShock 4. Yes, it looks like a weird version of the DualShock 3, but it's so much more. Almost everything about it is better with the exception of the d-pad. As of right now it seems like the D-pad is worse, because it doesn't give me any feedback on my movement. It barely moves at all. I'll need a fighting game to qualify that statement though. Overall though the whole thing is incredibly comfortable. It has grips on the bottom of both sides and the analog sticks have an indentation to rest your thumbs. The triggers feel excellent compared to the awful ones that were on the Dualshock 3. Perhaps now shooters will use the same controls on both the Xbox and PlayStation.

It's odd to have a touch pad in the center of the controller. It might not be as weird when games utilize it more though. In Assassin's Creed you can use it to navigate the map, but it works super poorly. There's no way to know where your finger is on the pad, so I kept sliding off of it. On top of that the movement speed and accuracy were both much worse than if I was using a controller. That's just a product of the game itself though, so hopefully in the future games will put it to better use.

Greatness is Here

Upon re-reading this post I sound very angry about the PS4, which was not my intent. I'm just being overly critical, because this is a new console generation. When it can't do some of the basic things a PS3 can, or things that were promised it's more than a little frustrating. The sleep mode feature they talked up so much isn't in the system yet, but that's one of the first things they announced. Yes, most of the things I have issues with will be fixed, but that time isn't here yet.

The PlayStation 4 as a gaming machine is excellent. I can put games in, they play, and they look excellent. I can't wait until games like InFamous come out in March so I can see the system at its full power.

The next generation of gaming is finally here and it's very exciting. It's just going to take it a while to get off the ground. With the Xbox One launching this coming Friday I hope it lights a fire under Sony's ass. With any luck we'll be seeing many firmware updates in the months ahead.

March will probably be when these systems finally take off and show us what they can really do. The Xbox One will be getting Titanfall. Both systems will be seeing Destiny in that time frame, and the PS4 will be touting InFamous Second Son. Those are the first true next gen games and I'm super excited to play them.

     -Manny

Quick PS4 Impressions and Thoughts

I received my PlayStation 4 earlier today. I'm busy playing it at the moment, but I thought that I'd share a few things.

The first is that I will probably not be posting any videos of myself playing games any time soon. Turns out that Twitch archiving is something that's going to be patched in. On top of that I can't even record myself talking over 15 minute chunks of gameplay to upload, because the headphone jack on my controller doesn't work right. It will only recognize anything if it's pretty much hanging precariously out of the controller, which totally sucks. I would just exchange the console normally, but since it's from Amazon I can't really do that. It doesn't help that I spend a fortune on games, so I can't really justify spending another $60 on a fully functioning controller at this time.

Edit as of 12:40 AM 11-16-13: Turns out I just suck at life. I had to shove the cord into the jack as hard as I could until I heard a pop. Somehow it wasn't in all the way on any of the headphones I tried. So maybe now I can actually post some videos haha.

Luckily, that's the only thing I have to bitch about here. Everything else has been great. People were bummed to find out that you still need to sync trophies, but it goes super fast and you don't even notice when the console is syncing everything. In fact, everything about the console is very seamless. I did manage to stream to Twitch while trying to get my mic to work. It came through in good quality, so I'm pumped for when I get a working controller and they patch in archiving.

Part of what makes everything seem so quick and seamless is the fact that the UI doesn't totally suck anymore. Everything is categorized so most things are fairly easy to find. Messages, trophies, and everything friend related are right at the surface level. The one thing I haven't gotten a chance to mess with yet is party chat, because of my stupid controller.

Going to the XMB in a PS3 game will often send everything to a grinding halt. That is not the case with the PS4. When you push the PlayStation button you can access everything at the system level and go right back into the game with absolutely no issue. I paused Assassin's Creed 4, went to the PlayStation Store to download Resogun, changed my router settings, and was able to get right back into the game as if I had never left it. It's awesome and it'll be even cooler when they add in the sleep feature.

Everyone can rejoice, because the PlayStation Store doesn't run like total garbage on the PS4. In fact it's the exact same as the PS3 store, which means they were just testing it out before. What does suck right now is navigating the store. There isn't much out yet, so everything seems like a gigantic banner ad, which makes scrolling through everything kind of annoying.

So far I've played a bunch of Assassin's Creed IV, which is incredible. I don't know if the PS3 and 360 versions are super incredible looking, or if the PS4 version has some serious graphical improvements. Everything about it looks beautiful. The rain in the opening scene blew my mind! I also played some Resogun, which was pretty cool as well. At the end of a level everything blows up into thousands of tiny particles, which would have crippled the old consoles.

Oh yeah, the controller itself is very comfortable. It feels great. The triggers are a huge improvement over the Dualshock 3. What's going to take getting used to is the fact that there are no start and select buttons. Instead it's the share and options buttons separated by a rather large touch-pad that doesn't do a lot.

I'm pretty into this thing so far. As I become less infatuated with playing it every waking moment I'll be sure to post more!

     -Manny