My PS4 has landed, bring on the future (Part 2)

I did a bit of research on the cheapest offers and there were a few which were the same so it came down to preference. It just so happened that one of the options was a large supermarket chain which I had loads of vouchers for, so I’d be paying even less out. Oh my god PS4 with Destiny bundle ordered, now all I had to do was wait, how hard could that be. I was expecting to wait until after Christmas to buy one in case Sony dropped the price, that was until my PS3 died. A few weeks would surely fly by (yeah right).

The order confirmation said Saturday 13th September, that couldn’t be right. Destiny was being released on the 9th and I had pre-ordered well in advance. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a good thing, after all I wouldn’t really have time to play it in the week anyway and I had a free weekend coming up. I came home on the Tuesday and saw a delivery note with all of my other post saying there was a package next door with my neighbour. I didn’t think much of it, as there was no name I assumed it was something for my wife. I got on with my workouts as usual and jumped in the shower. When I came down my wife had collected the package and said confused “it was a big box for you…?” apparently my face was priceless while I tried to remain calm and said “it could be my PS4”. Oh my god it was! It had arrived and had been sat next door this whole time while I obliviously carried out my normal routine.

My PS4 has landed, bring on the future (Part 1)

The time has finally come, I am now a proud owner of a PS4. For some people this will not be a big deal, but for others, especially those who know me, the fact I have lasted this long will seem impossible.

I don’t have a lot of expendable outcome so I don’t really buy many things for myself. So for me it was hard to justify randomly buying a PS4 for myself. Obviously I knew the console was coming out well before it was released, so I started putting a little money aside every month. This way when the time came I wouldn’t have to worry about if I could afford to get one.

I thought I had a full proof plan, taking £10 here and £20 there and putting it in my PS4 fund. It wasn’t until my wife asked me where I was planning on buying the console from that we spotted a hole in my plan. I now had enough cash put aside to cover the PS4 and realised I’d be buying it online. Even if I ended up buying it from a high street retailer the likelihood I’d use cash was very slim. Oh well, I had reached my target amount, might as well pay all the cash back into my account.

RIP PS3 – Time To Move On?

At some point last year I had the house to myself, so I settled in for what I thought was going to be a mammoth session on ‘The Last of Us’. About 5 minutes into the game it froze during a cut scene. My PS3 had frozen a few times before with other games and it was usually just a case of getting up and doing a re-set on the console. As I got up it made a couple of beeps as if it was starting up, then turned itself off. I knew this couldn’t be good. I went over to the console still expecting it to just turn back on, but nothing happened other than more beeps. I couldn’t even get my disc out. It had finally happened, the yellow light of death!

 

My PS3 is one of the original 40GB monsters, so it’s had a lot of use over the years. I managed to get it repaired and it seemed to be working fine. I even invested in a laptop cooling stand, in an attempt to get more life out of it. Everything was going fine until a few months ago when I started having difficulty getting it to turn on. Sometimes I’d be lucky and it would come on at the first attempt, but other times I’d lose count of how many attempts it took. At that point it would always come on eventually and work fine, that was until this weekend. I went to turn it on and it took a record amount of times to turn on. Finally when it did I put in a DVD and sighed with relief. As I sat down I heard the dreaded beeps again and off it went, it had finally given up.

 

I am able to get it on, but any attempt to get it to actually do anything, like watch a film or even play a downloaded demo, causes it to turn off. I always thought it would last me at least long enough for me to upgrade to a PS4. I’ve had countless different consoles over the years and never had a problem, I even still have an original Gameboy which I got for my 7^th birthday! The fact that Sony haven’t made the PS4 backwards compatible means I was planning on hanging on to my PS3 so that my collection of games didn’t become obsolete. The chances are that once I do upgrade they won’t get played anyway especially once a newer version comes out on the current gen, but if my PS3 remains faulty then they definitely won’t get played.

 

Don’t leave me PS3

I think my treasured PS3 is in danger of becoming obsolete by default. My plan was to hold onto it as long as possible while I saved for the PS4 and waited for the price to drop. I thought there would be no problem with this, as the PS2 only recently stopped bringing out new games, so I would be able to carry on buying PS3 games in the same way.

I have recently added a Wii U to my console collection and this fills a very unique hole in the selection of games available. With this under my TV alongside my PS3 I started a list of games like Destiny, which I’d wait to purchase on the PS4 to appreciate properly. I also started a list of Wii U games, these were mainly exclusives but included light hearted titles more suited to the Wii U, or games which makes good use of the Gamepad (Rayman Legends). Don’t tell my wife but there are also some XBox One exclusives on there too, not sure when they’ll be for though.

Review: Beyond Two Souls (PS3)

Games are becoming more and more realistic, with improvements in graphics being the most obvious step forward, but this isn’t the only thing which is continually improving. With more and more money going into the games industry developers are able to invest more into script writers and voice actors than would have been previously possible.

It’s hard not to spot who the two main characters of this game are based on (Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page), the likeness doesn’t end there though. The story plays through a timeline which moves backwards and forwards in time, to explain the key events. The little girl shown as Ellen’s younger self is just as realistic looking. There is no denying that this is visually very stunning, but is that enough?