Sony PlayStation 4 Review

It’s finally here! The next generation in gaming is brought to us in the form of Sony’s PlayStation 4. Sony promised a lot during the development stages up until final release and boy does it deliver. Sony unveiled the PS4 at a special event held in New York City on February 20th this year but didn’t reveal a lot about it. We were left wondering what it would look like and what kind of graphics and gameplay this thing would produce. At E3 later on in June, Sony finally shed some real light and it got gamers pumped for final release November 29th.
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PS4

The PS4 itself is sleek looking, half gloss and half matte black in colour. The 2 materials are separated by a thin stripe which wraps around the whole console and the top of which lights up to display the systems status, blinking blue for start-up and searching for output and white for up and running. What is nicest about this strip of light is that it fades out as it travels to the back of the console leaving the unit looking very smart. Sony has dumped the curves for a boxier design which kind of gives me the feeling that it’s homage to the mega popular for its time PS2. The I/O (input/output) around the back of the console has all your standard ports HDMI, Digital audio in, Ethernet in and so on and so forth, nothing new here. Internally, the PlayStation 4 is super powered, equipped with a custom 8-core AMD Jaguar CPU, a next generation AMD GPU and 8GB of GDDR5 memory and a faster Blu-Ray drive making it competitive with the high end PC’s of today.

Firing the machine up and you’re greeted with the infamous PS logo then it’s onto a brief simple set up process before getting dumped into the UI without much guidance. It’s fine though as it is a very simple interface to navigate as it is a simplified version of the PS3’s Cross Media Bar. “What’s New” shows us yours and your friend’s activity in real time, for example it will tell you here if your friend has just put another game on, if they have achieved a trophy, if they have sent a message or if they have uploaded any game footage or screenshots which is done with the “share” button on the controller. Every game you buy has to be installed first before playing. Games look phenomenal on the PS4, I have played a fair few of the launch titles and I am mega impressed by the visual upgrade the PS4 brings forth. Videos on YouTube or websites do not do it justice; it has to be seen to be believed.

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The DualShock 4 controller has some neat tricks up its sleeve, by this I mean the main selling point, the touchpad which is situated in the centre of the pad. It is impressively responsive and picked up my movements brilliantly. The entire pad pushes in acting like a huge button which im sure will have better uses as time goes on. To the left of the touchpad is the Share button which allows you to upload video clips or screenshots to PSN, Facebook or Twitter and to the right is the Options button which is pretty self-explanatory. The shoulder buttons have been redesigned making them a lot more comfortable and also more responsive and the Analog sticks also are more sensitive and easier to grip. On the top of the controller is the light bar imported from the PlayStation Move controller which works in tandem with the camera to bring some pretty unique features. The motion sensor also works a whole lot better.

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PS4

Summary

Sony has delivered on all fronts with the PlayStation 4 with a sleek and sexy design, mega powerful internals and some fantastic features. The PS4 delivers some of the best graphics ever seen in a video game and silky smooth gameplay making it a must have for pure bred gamers. The controller is a nice fit in the palm of your hands and the entire machine is super quiet. I can’t seem to find fault and as Sony slogan goes, this is for the players.

For the full review visit www.theleet.co.uk

Design – 5/5

Usability – 5/5

Performance – 5/5

Overall – 5/5

Price: £349.00