For as long as I can recall having friends as a child, I remember playing video games with them. That has just always been my life. I never took it seriously though, and thought “wow, this is more than just a fun thing to do to pass the time” until I got a Playstation 2. (I skipped the PS1 for any number of reasons, but they don’t actually matter here.)
I lived with my family (mom, dad, 2 bros & 1 sister) in a town in the middle of basically nowhere – Union, Oregon. My high school had a whopping 200-300 kids in it, my senior class being that of roughly 36. It was a small town, and unless you were active in FFA, 4H, or a plethora of other after-school acronyms, there wasn’t all THAT much to do. For a while, I turned pretty heavily towards being a rock star, playing all matter of instruments and going through that goth phase we all love. But one day, one magical day, my dad brought home a PS2 for my brothers and me, after one of his many trips to Salem and back.
I had heard of this glorious box, and thought that it was a thing I’d never see, and that it was only really for the well-to-do families. But here it was: The Playstation 2, hooked up to my 13” TV/VHS combo that my brothers and I saved for months for. We’d had a disc-based system before (the Sega Saturn… What a mess), but this was shiny and new. And we had games to go with it! I think the very first two games I’d ever gotten my paws on were Simpsons Road Rage, and Tony Hawk: Pro Skater 2. The gaming world as I knew it was about to open up entirely. I’d learned that there were so many worlds I could explore, and so many stories I could essentially be a part of, just by pushing a few buttons. As it would happen, some of my favorite stories, and in part, memories would come from various Playstation consoles (and handhelds if you really want to get into it) over the next 10+ years.
Now, this isn’t about the Playstation 2, or even the PS3… No, this is supposed to be about last year’s Playstation 4.
Upon hearing that Sony was going to announce something big in the beginning of 2013, I got really excited, but also a little worried. Their current (at the time) console, the PS3, wasn’t exactly the big hit of the generation. It was expensive when it launched, there weren’t many games that were considered good enough to be “system sellers,” and it just didn’t generally appeal to the mass gaming public. That started to change though, in the months leading up to the announcement, and eventually launch, of the PS4.
As someone who had been a pretty loyal Playstation gamer for the better part of the past 10+ years, I immediately decided that I had to have a PS4 at launch. No questions asked. I mean, there weren’t even games announced that looked like anything I really wanted to play, but I was sure that there would be something eventually, and everything would work out in the end. So I waited patiently from the time it was revealed in early 2013, through E3 with the announcement of tons of games that I was pumped about (Transistor, InFamous: Second Son, Kingdom Hearts 3), to launch day on November 15th.
I recall that for some silly reason I thought it was a good idea to dye my hair on the night of the midnight launch, and Jon had to go pick the system up from Gamestop, but when I was done, there was a shiny new box on my coffee table, ready to be opened. I mean, it was like any other system unboxing – You have your glossy outer box, followed by the inner box with all the guts, wrapped in soft plastic-y foam, as to not harm the hardware. Then there were all your standard cables: HDMI, power, controller charger. After getting the boring stuff out of the way, you get to it… The meat, so to speak. The system was finally in our living room, ready to be played. (Not before a myriad of updates though, of course.)
So we got it all set up and updated, and ready to go. I think we picked up Killzone and Assassin’s Creed, and there were a few free games, like Resogun, available on the PSN. Unfortunately, like I mentioned, there wasn’t a lot, game wise, that appealed to me, but I tried to play what I had, because that was my only option really. I didn’t touch Killzone, and Ass Creed isn’t generally my jam, but Resogun… Oooooh Resogun. This little game was probably the best (and still is in the top of what’s out) game available at launch. There’s not much of a story, as far as I can tell, but the gameplay makes it. Side-scrolling, space-shooting, save-all-humans goodness was all it took for me to get hooked. And that lasted maybe a month.
Unfortunately, that’s the downside to console launches – it can take a while to get up and running, no matter how successful the system actually is. (PS4 has been the top selling console in the US for 9 consecutive months as of mid-October.)
At the beginning of 2014, I didn’t actually use our PS4 much, other than to binge-watch something on Netflix, or play the occasional quick game of Resogun, but that would all change in May. After obsessing over Transistor (by SuperGiant Games, the studio that made Bastion), for over a year, it finally released, and I couldn’t put it down. I think by the time I quit playing it, I’d gone through the game 3 full times in less than a week. After that, there was InFamous, a bunch of other indie games, and Diablo 3: Reaper Of Souls. Now, if you know me at all, you know I love me some dungeon-crawling Diablo 3. While I destroyed the game on the PS3, got the Platinum Trophy, and didn’t have anything left to do, I was ready for more on the new console, with new content. I still haven’t really put D3: RoS down, despite buying a whole second system when Destiny came out in September. I will say, Destiny was fun… for a while though. Thinking back, I don’t know if buying a whole second system for it was the right choice, but I couldn’t say no to the “Glacier White” PS4.
I feel like now, I’ve come to a turning point. Before summer was over, and before D3 and Destiny came out, I felt like I could still hold onto my PS3 and be okay with games still coming out on the previous system. But lately I’ve been feeling so spoiled by the speed, and ease that the PS4 offers, in terms of load times, menu navigation, and even connectivity to a shitty wifi network, that it’s hard to go back. Recently, Borderlands: The PreSequel was released on PC and the older consoles, and while I’ve been looking forward to it for a while, it’s mentally difficult to take that step backwards. I keep catching myself either wishing that it was on the new systems so I can stream it, or play with my friends since most of them have migrated from Xbox Live over to PSN, or just playing it on my MacBook, because I can use a PS4 controller there, and I’ve gotten used to that.
Overall, I’m very happy with the PS4, and ultimately my decision to get a second one, despite the limited amount of games I actually played on it in the first 6+ months. With the PS4’s first birthday just having happen November 15th, I will definitely celebrate a little by playing games, (probably Diablo 3 still, at this point), and looking forward, with anticipation, to the stories I’ll get to be a part of in the coming months and years.
BEYOND! <3
