The Sony PlayStation 4

Many apologies are in order since I've posted nothing but links to videos for the last three posts, but fear no more as actual text is here! Textovision? Just like video, but in words; if words were videos and videos were words. Yeah!
Wait. Hm.

Frankly, I bought a PlayStation 4 and I promise it wasn't to take this photo. Mostly:

That wonderful piece of black plastic is what's partially to blame for there not being much content for a week after my video on E.T, both for the channel and this blog. It's not entirely to blame, but it isn't innocent either.
That was a hectic week: starting classes again, having a temporarily heavier than usual work schedule; all while doing nothing but playing Watch Dogs when I got home. In some ways it was an awesome week, but the Retro Game On hole was wildly apparent. Well, here I am now. Back in the Retro Game On groove.

I'm not too sure if I should be posting about a latest gen console on a blog devoted to retro gaming, but in my eyes it's all video gaming. I like a game no matter when it came out, so I feel this is worthy of a post.
Originally I was going to wait for Uncharted 4 to come out (I bought a Vita because of Golden Abyss), and hopefully buy a deal that combined both. That however, all fell through when I saw a deal that included the console with Watch Dogs and inFamous Second Son for an outrageous price. I'm not too big on the inFamous series to be honest, but I was going to purchase Watch Dogs for PS3 or PC regardless. When I saw that deal though, it didn't take much self-convincing to jump on the PS4 train early.
I have heard some harsh opinions against Watch Dogs, but for what it's worth (and I won't get into a full review here) I quite enjoyed it. In fact, I liked  it quite a lot. I would recommend it if you're into open world games. It really brings a new twist to the genre; messing around with infrastructure never gets old.

I'm still giving Second Son a chance at the moment. I haven't played too much of it yet, but I'm struggling to get into it. I'll give it some time though as there are plenty of games I haven't truly liked until a few hours in.
As for the future, I have plenty of sequels to look forward too. Uncharted 4 is the obvious one, along with Mirrors Edge 2 and Assassins Creed: Unity. On top of that a HD remake of Grim Fandango is on the cards, so that's cool (and retro related).
I will be on the look out for original IP's though, hopefully ones that will really make the hardware shine. So far, there hasn't really been much that's jumped out and grabbed my short attention span. Early days yet though.
As for the console its self, it's a very cool machine. It's basically flawless, except for one niggling problem: the battery life on the controller. This honestly took me by surprise as the PS3's lasted seemingly forever. I actually looked it up to see if there was something wrong with mine and it turns out all the stuff they've crammed into it depletes it, like the built in Move, the touch pad and to an extent the built-in speaker. I can't imagine the speaker drags the battery down too much, but luckily the Move light can be toned down. It seems to help somewhat, but eh. Still disappointing.
Luckily I am in cable reach of the console as I play so it's not a huge issue, but I can imagine a USB extension cable would be in order for lounge room players.