Available on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, PC Release date: September 1
December 2015 Update
For me, 2015 will always be about two massive, much-anticipated, epic open-world games: The Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. These are games built on a more ambitious scale; games that could close the gap between the linear, narrative-led action games that had dominated the last console generation and the more emergent, free-roaming style of Skyrim and GTA 5. Even now I’d struggle to choose between them.
Available on Xbox One (tested), PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U
With its The Force Awakens playset, Disney Infinity 3.0 concludes this year’s run of Star Wars playsets with what’s sure to be a hit, if only because it’s the closest thing to a tie-in game for the new movie. We say 'closest’ because, much like the previous Rise Against the Empire set, it’s a heavily abridged version of the storyline with some slightly peculiar changes.
Characters go missing, roles are dropped or swapped and entire scenes and sequences are added or removed. If you’re a Star Wars purist, prepare for a Kylo Ren-sized
2016 will see an “unprecedented rush” of big games for the PS4, alongside the launch of Playstation VR.
2015 was a bit of an underwhelming year for the PS4, with a small number of truly impressive exclusives being released for the platform.
If this year left you feeling a bit upset with your PS4, Sony plans to make it up to you in 2016.
Speaking to 4Gamer (via Dualshockers), Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida expressed his excitement for PS4 in 2016:
"2016 marks an unprecedented rush of big titles for PS4," Yoshida said. "It's also the year of the long-awaited launch of PlayStation VR”.
It's the year PS4 users, and those who are on the fence on whether to buy it will absolutely think, 'It's good to have a PS4.' Please look forward to it."
You can also expect the usual third party releases on PS4 next year, which will also be available on Xbox One.
Sony has acknowledged its lacking first party lineup in 2015, describing the platform as a “little sparse” when it comes to internally developed titles.
The PS4 port of Beyond: Two Souls doesn’t fix the game's core issues. It’s still a very stilted, awkward experience in spots, usually right after a stretch where the gameplay and narrative get everything right. What it does do--thanks to this edition’s best new feature, where the timeline-hopping narrative can be played in chronological order--is strip away some of the high-concept pretense and deliver a straightforward story that's stronger as a result.
Beyond: Two Souls is about the life of Jodie Holmes (performed by Ellen Page), a girl who, since birth, has been tethered to an otherworldly entity named Aidan. Naturally, having a poltergeist as an impulsive companion doesn’t exactly equal an ideal life--especially since Aidan’s presence leaves Jodie open to frequent visits from the malevolent side of the hereafter. But even when she’s not being dragged around by invisible horrors, Jodie still has to contend with Aidan’s mischievous tendencies. And on days when Aidan is calm, there’s just life as a socially awkward girl who sees things that nobody should ever have to see. We follow Jodie over a stretch of 15 years, watching her deal with the world--and the world deal with her--and make decisions that change the course of her life.
Beyond feels right at home on PS4. Textures are noticeably upgraded from the PS3 version and lighting improvements galore create an even more stunning cinematic experience. The actual playing of Beyond hasn’t changed significantly in the transition to PS4. For the most part, it’s still a copy-paste job from Heavy Rain. Most of your time is spent wandering through closed environments, looking for the magical prompt that signifies when you can interact with an object or person.
In keeping with Quantic Dream's trademark style, action is handled by quick time events in a dynamic fashion, taking full advantage of the DualShock 4's motion-sensing functionality. The PS4 edition of the game does add a few tricky bits, where QTEs use diagonals instead of normal up-down-left-right prompts, but those only pop up in two of the chapters. The timing of the prompts seems stricter, which means that Jodie is liable to take a few more brutal hits when the going gets tough, but the QTEs don’t determine the course of the story so much as they bring the action to life. Yes, you could, in theory, just set the controller down during an action scene and let it play out on its own, but you’d be watching a sequence of Jodie getting the crap kicked out of her ad nauseum. Actively participating in Jodie's struggle is much more gratifying.
Through the course of the game, the best moments in each action scene require your input, whether you're jumping between moving vehicles, tossing soldiers into the road, stealing a motorcycle, blowing past a police garrison, or saving people from a burning building. There are even a few scattered sequences of stealth combat, where Jodie tackles hapless bad guys into the dirt.
Beyond’s big hook, of course, is the fact that, any time you have full control over Jodie, you can instantly switch to Aidan and roam the world as a phantom, floating through doors, walls, and objects, listening to secret conversations, force-pushing objects around, choking the life out of folks, or even possessing hapless victims. The seams of the gimmick show often. It’s built into the story that Aidan can actively hurt Jodie if he travels too far, but how far exactly seems to be determined by the needs of the scene rather than consistent logic.
Beyond feels right at home on PS4. Textures are noticeably upgraded from the PS3 version and lighting improvements galore create an even more stunning cinematic experience.
Having said that, the puzzles, obstacles, and story points built around Aidan’s powers are wonderfully plotted. A painful goodbye interrupted by Jodie’s irritating father can be salvaged if you choose to give him a much-deserved goodbye choke. More than once, Aidan will have to rescue Jodie from a sticky situation by possessing one of her enemies, forcing him to kill his friends and then himself. Its seldom that we get to see a story through the eyes of a spirit, and the extent to which its used in Beyond leads to some fascinating conclusions.
The chronological version of this story told in the new PS4 version is a marked improvement over the original, where the key points of Jodie’s life were scrambled up and presented as a random series of disparate moments as opposed to a life flashing linearly before her eyes. As a chronological narrative, we get a much better sense of the burden of Jodie’s powers, watching her grow from a curious but sheltered child into a rebellious teenager who longs to live in the real world, and ultimately, into a young woman who finds herself routinely beaten by society.
Much of the story's impact can be laid at the feet of Page. Her performance, both vocal and physical, is powerful; it retreats to hollowly call upon the full weight of Jodie’s collective traumas in one scene, using the same trauma to fuel a deep, embittered rage in the next. Willem Dafoe brings a similar gravitas. His side of the script is steeped in exposition, especially toward the end, but there are times when he demonstrates genuine warmth and paternal concern for Jodie--traits we rarely see from Dafoe. The supporting cast varies. Kadeem Hardison, the only other “name” actor in the game, is solid in his role, but elsewhere, actors fail to keep up and weigh down scenes with poor acting that contrasts with Beyond's more capable cast members.
They’re bound to Beyond's schizophrenic script, which flips between sequences of earnest, pensive drama, high-octane action, and well-directed but conceptually goofy supernatural blather. The highs are spectacular: The sequence where Jodie deals with homelessness stands out, and a scene where she reunites with a heavily medicated relative is brutally harrowing. The lows, however, are bewildering in their shallowness: An eye-rolling incident at a bar, a detour into Navajo mythology, and a character’s sudden shift into comic book villainy ultimately disappoint. Occasionally, there are scenes like Jodie’s solo mission to take down an African dictator, which, while delivering a stellar dose of action, feels disconnected from the overarching narrative.
Beyond remains a unique experience, even as the tools implemented in its creation have become commonplace. It's filled with concepts that are immediately odd and illogical, but if you accept them on their own terms, they add up to a fascinating if unconventional tale. Beyond remains an imperfect experience but is still compelling for what it accomplishes.
In the seven years since the introduction of the PlayStation 3, we've seen our gaming consoles transform into living-room hubs through constant evolution and software updates. Those updates weren't always smooth – though on PS3, they were always happening – but it's easy to see just how far the platform has come.
Meanwhile, the designers of the PlayStation 4 were taking notes and designing a console that, feature by feature, sought to address the failings of its predecessor. The PS3 was notoriously difficult to program for, thanks to its proprietary silicon. So the PS4 was built to be developer-friendly, with a familiar, PC-like architecture. The PS3 was announced with a bizarre, boomerang-shaped controller, and launched with the rumble-free Sixaxis controller before settling into the never-great DualShock 3 controller. So the PS4 comes with the DualShock 4, inarguably the best controller Sony's ever made. And the PS3 launched at an abnormally high price point, costing $200 more than its competition. So the PS4 carries a far more aggressive price, asking $100 less than the competition this time around.
While Sony in 2006 was focused on driving adoption of the Blu-ray standard, envisioning another home media boom that never quite materialized, Sony in 2013 has no such distractions. The PS4 isn't built to sell 3D TVs, or Blu-ray discs or any other corporate mandate. It's a gaming console, a clear message that Sony has been quick to repeat.
That focus has resulted in a console that's better positioned than the PlayStation 3 was in 2006 to compete in an expanding turf war for the living room. But that same focus has also kept Sony from taking the kinds of chances that make generational leaps so exciting.
THE CONSOLE
The PS4 is Sony's most attractively designed piece of hardware. It's a beautiful system, with a sharp, slightly angled profile accented by a light bar that acts as a console status indicator.
On the back, PS4 has gone digital-only with HDMI/optical ports, and no analog audio or video outputs. We appreciate the internal power supply — it sounds like a small thing, but it's one less object to sit on the shelf next to or behind the PlayStation 4.
In the bad column, it's a collection of moderate to minor annoyances. The PS4 doesn't support the new 802.11ac wireless standard, instead relying on an 802.11b/g/n radio at 2.4 GHz — no 5 GHz support here either, all of which is disappointing to see on a consumer device in 2013. More annoyingly to many on staff, the PS4 doesn't include an IR port for universal remotes, nor does it support Logitech's PlayStation 3 Bluetooth Harmony adapter or the PS3 Bluetooth Blu-ray remote. This omission seems to signal Sony's abandonment of the media aspirations that drove much of the PS3's basic design.
Players who want to game privately on their consoles might be temporarily annoyed at the absence of Bluetooth headphone audio support for the PS4 at launch.This is offset somewhat: the PS4 can broadcast all game audio (and voice chat) to the audio/mic jack on the DualShock 4, which is compatible with all headphones and mobile headsets using 1/8 inch audio adapters — though enabling game audio output on the DualShock 4 disables all audio via HDMI and optical out.
Despite these problems, Sony nails the fundamentals with the PS4 hardware. The half-gloss, half-matte finish is a pleasant visual compromise. It's a grown-up machine, designed more like a stylish DVD player than a gaudy video game console. It's a small, attractive system, and one that also happens to pack more powerful hardware in its diminutive frame than any other console.The PS4 is Sony's most attractively designed piece of hardware.
It's an impressive technical achievement. It's also compact enough to fade into your entertainment center without being distracting or ostentatious, and we appreciate that it retains the PS2's and PS3's ability to stand vertically. Those of you with frisky pets or children may want to invest in the vertical stand, sold separately, for some added stability.Oh, and it will charge controllers over USB while in standby mode. Finally.
2016 will bring an "unprecedented rush" of big games for PlayStation 4 that, along with PlayStation VR, will combine for a package so compelling that system sales are likely to grow even further. That's according to PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida, who said in an interview with 4Gamer (via DualShockers) that 2016 is shaping up to be a banner year for the PS4.
"2016 marks an unprecedented rush of big titles for PS4," Yoshida said. "It's also the year of the long-awaited launch of PlayStation VR. It's the year PS4 users, and those who are on the fence on whether to buy it will absolutely think, 'It's good to have a PS4.' Please look forward to it."
Some of the big PS4 console exclusives for 2016 include Street Fighter V, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Gran Turismo Sport, and The Last Guardian. There are also going to be a number of big-name multiplatform games released on PS4 next year, of course.
Check out this gallery to see more of the biggest games coming in 2016.
In media interviews this year, PlayStation executives spoke openly about the PS4's "sparse" lineup of first-party games for 2015. Just this month, PlayStation boss Michael Ephraim acknowledged that Sony focused more on third-party relationships in 2015 in part because "our first-party lineup was not as a strong as we would have liked."
The PS4 enters 2016 as the best-selling new-generation console with sales in excess of 30 million units. For its part, Microsoft is also claiming that 2016 will be a huge year for Xbox games.
What do you make of the PS4's lineup for 2016? What are you looking forward to the most? Let us know in the comments below!
The PlayStation 2 Classics library on PlayStation 4 continues to expand. The latest addition, PS2 launch title FantaVision, was released this week with the PlayStation Store refresh. It normally costs $10, but PlayStation Plus members can pick it up right now for $7.50.
With FantaVision's arrival, the PS2 Classics library on PS4 now stands at 10 games. It launched with eight earlier this month, while PaRappa the Rapper 2 became the ninth game in the lineup last week.
More are coming in the future. While Sony has not announced a roadmap of what games are on the way and when they'll arrive, listings from the ESRB may have revealed what's coming next. TheESRB already rated Max Payne for PS4, suggesting Rockstar's game is coming to the program, while five more PS2 titles were reportedly recently rated for the new machine.
According to reports from GamesRadar and GameZone, the games listed below were rated this month for PS4, though these filings no longer appear to be available on the ESRB's website.
Wild Arms 3
Siren
Primal
Okage: Shadow King
Ape Escape 3
Earlier this month, PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida said Sony will work "tirelessly" to release even more PS2 games for PS4 "on a regular basis." The company is also asking for your suggestions for which games should be added.
On the subject of price points for the PS2-on-PS4 games, Yoshida said the emulation technology that makes it possible, among other things, doesn't necessarily come cheap. That's why Sony is charging $10-$15 for games you might already own.
