Finally played a ps4. Fuck, I forgot Best Buy's existed.
Couldn't fiddle with the UI and stuff because it's just a launch demo unit.
Controller is perfect. Well, ALMOST PERFECT. It's just one thing: the analog sticks. They are full on ass. Like many reports said, the material on the sticks is so cheap and shitty. There was a huge chunk missing from the rubber on the controller I was playing with, and I can definitely see them wearing down fast. Terrible. PLEASE FIX THIS SONY. Especially if you contrast with the One's sticks. At the very least, they're still better than Dual Shock 3's sticks. I can actually see myself playing Jet Set Radio with this controller, something I find impossible with the Dual Shock 3 due to the horrible sticks that have no grip. Beyond that, the controller has a great sense of balance and weight. The d-pad is amazing and aside from the Saturn d-pad, could very well be the best d-pad I've used. It is very good. The new triggers still aren't triggers, but they are WAY more comfortable and more practical than ps3's.
The demo unit had FIFA, Knack, Contrast, Octodad, and some other game I didn't get to try out.
Fifa is Fifa. My comments? At least it isn't PES.
Knack.
This is what I think about Knack.
I haven't played such a mediocre effort in a LONG time even if we are talking about demos. Wow. Watching videos is boring, but actually playing it is even more boring. I played it on hard and even then, it's just so vapid, dead brain, repetitive, and lazy. Like, there's a part where you turn into "Stealth Knack" and there are lasers. So you end up thinking that maybe they'll make a cool gimmick to avoid the lasers. Nope. All you do is press triangle to morph from stealth Knack and into regular Knack to beat up bad guys. In order to avoid lasers as Stealth Knack you aren't jumping. You aren't crawling. You aren't avoiding them, you aren't even walking around them. All you do is turn on stealth and walk through the lasers and you're not detected. So you do this about four times and then you're done with that section. Wow. I won! Then I clicked exit application. Ugh.
The difficulty that IS there - at least in hard mode - is the amount of damage enemies can do on Knack. One hit kills, two hit kills, they aren't a big deal for these guys. You'll be dead. And yet, despite this IT'S STILL BORING AND LIMITED. What's more interesting is how it really isn't even difficult, what I played is a classic example of faux difficulty. You die, and end up having to repeat and entire section due to the absence of checkpoints. Dying doesn't make a game hard. And lack of check points doesn't make a game hard. I was still playing with half my brain shut off, and the game still failed to engage me. It just added repetition into the mix.
I have no clue if the final game is better, but I"m not willing to find out when I get my PS4 in about two years.
Contrast is pretty cool and is far more impressionable than Knack in every sense. It's your typical indie puzzle platformer. So basically, a game made for me. Yay.
Octodad was the stand out game I played, and it wasn't even a ps4 exclusive. I can get it on Steam.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/224480/Overall, I came away more impressed by the hardware - only the controller, really, because I didn't see any graphical showcases or the UI - than the software. In other words, a typical game console launch.
Sony just really needs to fix those horrible sticks.
