I got myself a PlayStation 5
For the last 8 years or so I've pretty much been a PC gamer. I've played the occasional mobile game and I've also clocked a few hundred hours on my Nintendo Switch because of its handheld capabilities. I really felt like consoles were falling behind PCs during the long gap between the release of the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5. Horrendous load times and unstable frame rates were one of my biggest gripes with the PlayStation 4. It felt like you had to plan 30 minutes ahead whenever you wanted to play Grand Theft Auto V on that console due to the long loading screens.
Whenever the PlayStation 5 dropped I pretty much didn't care about nothing else but the fact that it had a SSD or not. Luckily it did which gave it a fast track ticket to the top of my wishlist. However with it being out of stock for pretty much 2 years straight I never bothered putting in the effort to get it. To battle the scalping problem pretty much all retailers in Norway put them for sale through a random raffle. No waiting list. Everything based on chance.
Just before Christmas however there was one online store that got them in stock for standard ordering. They were gone in around an hour but luckily a friend of mine was monitoring the situation and we both managed to snag one pretty much instantly after they came in stock. An early Christmas gift for myself.
A seamless experience
After having used it for around a month now I have to say that the PlayStation 5 is everything I had hoped for and then some. With the lightning fast SSD it's a wonderfully seamless experience. From picking up the controller you're in-game in less than 10 seconds after pressing the PlayStation-button on the controller. This both turns on the TV and automatically switches to the correct HDMI-input. If you want to switch games there's a handy game switcher feature in the OS that lets you switch games with only a few clicks. It barely takes 10 seconds from being in-game in God of War: Ragnarok to being in-game in The Last of Us 2. It's simply a seamless experience.
PlayStation +
So far I've started quite a few games on the PlayStation 5 and thanks to the PlayStation+ subscription I haven't actually bought a single one yet. Except for God of War: Ragnarok which was bundled together with the console. And The Last of Us 2 which was on sale for $9.
I went with the PS+ Extra tier which gives me access to claim a few monthly games which are mine to keep and play as long as I'm subscribed as well as a pretty impressive catalog of games to download and enjoy. I can't remember the exact price but I paid around $100 for a year of this subscription and if I were to pay individually for each of the games I've downloaded and played so far I would have spent more than that.
The Games
I haven't had a lot of time to play games the last few months which is reflected in my activity here on Hive but I've tried a few. I won't write up to much on each one as I'll probably want to make separate posts about them soon.
God of War: Ragnarok
God of War: Ragnarok has of course been the big one. This was bundled together with the console. Before getting the PlayStation 5 I was prepared to wait several years before being able to play this on the PC like I did with the last game. Luckily I didn't have to.
It's been a up and down experience so far. I haven't been as impressed with it as I was with the first game but I'll rant more about that in a separate post.
The Last of Us 2
Me and @emuse loved The Last of Us 1 when we played it on the PlayStation 4. We never bought Part 2 for the PlayStation 4 since I knew I was going to get a PlayStation 5 sometime in the future. Luckily this game was on sale in the PlayStation Store for only $9 during Christmas so we went for it. We've only played for a few hours so far but it's feeling like a really good game so far. The premise for the story does feel quite a bit weaker, seeming mostly like a revenge story so far, than the first game, seeming mostly like a revenge story so far, but the gameplay is everything we hoped for. Hopefully the story will pick up soon.
Demon's Souls Remastered
Demon's Souls Remastered was included in the PS+ subscription. I was quite excited when they announced this remaster. It's the predecessor to the Dark Souls games which are some of my favorite games of all times. I did play it for quite a bit but eventually ended up just dropping it. It's much slower than the more recent Souls-games and unforgiving to the point where you run out of healing items and will have to farm for them. That took out most of the fun for me. I'm glad I didn't pay the full price of $80 for this game. That's almost the full price of the subscription even...
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope
Me and @emuse played this one together. Whenever we play games together it's usually story-driven horror games. This is a story-driven horror games where choices matter. Basically the goal is to make all the characters survive to the and and there's quite a few branching paths depending on which dialogue option you choose throughout the game. It's from the creators of Until Dawn and plays in the same way. The story isn't as strong however.
You can expect to see more posts about games from the PlayStation 5 going forward. At least eventually. I've had quite a hectic time recently with work being quite a time consumer and we've also been selling @emuse's apartment. Gaming opportunities haven't been optimal and Hive haven't been a priority during this period. I've been lurking but I haven't been engaging much. I hope that I can return to posting and engaging more on Hive when we move appartments in late February and things settle down. I also hope to get back to both making videos for my YouTube channel and streaming on Twitch after we move. We'll have to see what time brings.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.