Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

Star Wars Battlefront II, yes that's EA's Star Wars Battlefront, won't feature a season pass.

Meanwhile Disney went mental and decided Battlefront II should be canon after retconning pretty much everything except for the original six films. So yeah, not sure how I feel about that...

What a weird day it is...

@Octane DarthNocturnal and I have been talking about Star Wars Battlefront II since yesterday afternoon in the other thread!

I believe that a lot of Star Wars stuff nowadays is canon. There's a free-to-play Star Wars mobile game on the App Store (iOS) that is apparently canon too! The new books, comics/visual novels and the Star Wars Rebels television programme are all canon material as well.

It could work; playing the game from the perspective of a female Empire hero/soldier is an intriguing idea.

@Peek-a-boo Playing the bad guys worked so well for Tie Fighter.

Buy Persona 5.

Also, screw Persona 5 (a sentence I can't write about nearly any game this gen, because P5 actually made me feel something that wasn't just cheap, reused combat).

Star Wars has long since voided it's right to have a canonical timeline imo. Pretty much everyone ignored George Lucas' repeated revisions of the original trilogy as him just being annoying. Lol.
The only revision that wasn't terrible was putting the retrospectively correct emperor into episode 5 (it was originally a different actor).

@Dezzy its not about what is canon within the movies but what is canon in the expanded universe.

@diwdiws

I know but my point was that when they had so little concern for consistency and integrity within the core films, it's a bit silly for them to expect the audience to buy into it for all of the extended universe.

I'm personally just gonna act as if all of the other extended universe stuff I read/watched/played was still canon, unless it's explicitly contradicted by something in these new films.

Like there was a book at one point where the emperor was resurrected. Chances are that won't be contradicted by anything in the films.

@Dezzy well i guess its Disney now that are calling the shots and with all honesty they are doing a lot better as to the consistency of the canon in the new extended universe.

Im actually glad they scrapped the old EU. Ive read almost allbthe major events ofvthe EU like the Yuzhan Vong, Jacen become a sith lord etc etc and the whole continuity was a big mess as to the tone and elements.

@diwdiws

I dunno about the consistency. Every other Jedi needs training from childhood to properly master the force. Luke needed to go and live in a swamp for a few months. And still kinda sucked at that point.
Rey knew absolutely nothing but after have a long hard think about it, decided she was actually a pro within minutes.

That was one of main complaints about The Force Awakens.

One minute Rey was a competent soldier-like figure then, after sitting down and having a cuppa tea, she was suddenly on the path of the Jedi or something. Saying that, the lightsaber fight in the gloomy snowy woods against Rylo Ken was pretty good so, there's that!

On another subject altogether, has anybody been playing the Gran Turismo Sport beta this weekend?

It is really, really good. Felt nice to be back in the world of Gran Turismo after not playing it for a dozen years (back in 2005) since Gran Turismo 4 on the PlayStation 2!

Visuals are as fantastically good as you would expect, and the audio definitely sounds a lot more punchier after enduring the vacuum-like engine sounds back in the day. You get a choice of an oval race, two (brilliant!) fictional tracks, one city course and two real life tracks.

Here's my favourite (fictional) track, and a gif thrown in for good measure:

Rey hasn't really 'mastered' the force, she just mind tricked a stormtrooper, grabbed a lightsaber away from an — at this point — crazed Kylo Ren, and found her composure. All under extremely stressful circumstances too, which seems like a very force-y thing for the force to do.

And then just from a practical standpoint: Do we really need to watch another trilogy of a peppy but kinda simple desert dweller slowly growing in power? Best just to get that done to a decent degree in one movie and let the rest go somewhere new.

I caved and turned on my PS4 for the first time since late January.

I have questions. Many, many questions.

First off, still see skipping on the Home UI, so frames are being dropped /somewhere/. Probably all that useless tat below each tile the system wants to load as soon as its the one under a cursor.

Secondly: Sony. Thank you for adding external HDD support. I know its hard to use external media but good boy youve got caught up to the rest of the world.

Now if the trade off is the crappest notification and download management menu I have seen since primitive OS designs like Windows 98 after you had a nice organised system, then I have two questions.

1: Why did you feel it had to be changed, or is the system firmware so bassackwards you need to bork something for HDD support?

2: Why let it be a downgrade?

I swear for everything Sony can do right they baffle me to no end several times over.

And I only turned it on for Yooka Laylee that I bought since my backed version was canned and the replacement for it probably wont exist.

Loading screen crashed. Most titles do this on PS4 im used to it now. Loading screen stutters like you wouldnt believe.

Game runs fine though. Thats a plus. Questioning a few things already but we'll see. I have no nostalgia for RARE period, and N64 titles generally find ways to frustrate me.

Its okay so far. But I may end up making Jim Sterlings assessment look glowing.

In all those years, I've never had any problems like that! Maybe your PS4 itself is malfunctioning?

@Octane I actually don't know.

Its a 1TB matte black PS4, bought October 2015.

Batman Arkham Knight crashed several times early on (Though we know why...). Ratchet and Clank crashed once or twice. Maybe even then once in all those play times. Far Cry 4 crashed a few times. Mega Man Legacy Collection did once.

....actually I think most PS4 games have at some point crashed. Usually they get patched after though so I assume its on the games end but...its weird.

I think Yooka-Laylee having loading screen stutter is the game. I say stutter. It stops for a good 10-15 seconds. Like no animations stops.

Don't know honestly. It is a laptop HDD in this thing.

And its not like the OS is efficient. Share button takes it time and lags a bit, even the Home screen drops frames every now and again.

Iunno. I really don't. XD I'm not moaning about it, its just a weird thing happening that confuses me. :/

@BLP_Software You make me laugh! It sounds like you were at gunpoint or something when you said that you 'caved and turned my PlayStation 4 on' for the first time in ages.

Was there really nothing that interested you since the beginning of this year, given that it has been an incredibly brilliant and diverse line-up of games in the past three months?

Anyway, the new notification bar/menu is indeed terrible. I can see what they were trying to do, by simplifying each category (downloads, friend requests, player invites, trophies, etc.) with the latest and most recent thing, but it doesn't work particularly well.

More information on display is (sometimes) a good thing.

I have got a PS4 Pro, therefore I haven't noticed any of your stuttering or crashes. Maybe I have just got lucky (so far) or something. The OS does lag a little bit when you leave the game in the middle of a loading screen though, but that goes for both console and PC games when you choose to return to the home page.

Let us know what you think of Yooka-Laylee! My backlog comes first so, I won't start that up for a while...

PS4 has a horrendous UI, unfortunately. Which is weird, because the Vita's UI is the exact opposite: customizable, intuitive, and attractive.

Never had crashing issues with my PS4, though: sounds like BLP has defective hardware.

And yeah, I have a hard time believing anyone would find the PS4's lineup disappointing this year. So far, it's one of the best in Playstation's history.

I haven't powered up my PS4 since December (I've got a growing backlog....in shrinkwrap....but haven't actually OPENED anything ) don't tell me they made the notification bar WORSE?! It was HORRIBLE before! They found a way to make it actively WORSE?!

sigh and people mock Nintendo. Sony has a beautiful history of taking really bad UIs and finding some way to make them even bad-er.

@Peek-a-boo "but that goes for both console and PC games when you choose to return to the home page." I haven't done PC in years, but last I remember doing PC games going back to the desktop usually resulted in a game crash either on minimize or restore, or a full system lock as the video card never recovered the transition. So any console handles THAT better.

@Ralizah FINALLY someone that agrees! So many people praise how great the PS4 UI is. I hated it day 1, still hate it, one of the worst UI's I've ever used on any device ever (excluding various other Sony UIs on media players.) But Vita is quite possibly the very best video game system UI to date, maybe even a notch over Switch, though I kind of like Switch's spartan, utilitarian interface. Needs a download manager though.

I think PS1 and PS2 had some definite years better than this one, but it's certainly the best in a long long time.

@NEStalgia Yeah, I don't understand people who want the Vita's UI to look more like the one on the PS4. PS4's UI is slow, clunky, weirdly organized, and it's hard to customize anything. By contrast, the PS Vita is fully customizable, either with themes or with custom wallpapers (I've had a lot of fun designing wallpaper collections for my Vita over the years), has a wonderfully intuitive and comfortable bubble-like interface that makes finding games and system utilities a total breeze, and the system allows me to access its various functions VERY easily. And, while it's not quite as snappy as the Switch's UI, it's still reasonably fast.

As in love I am with its UI, OLED screen, and D-Pad, though, I'll reiterate that I hate that back touch panel with a burning passion.

@Ralizah Yeah. Lots of people seem to think the PS4 UI is so wonderful. Personally, I hated the PS3 XMB until I bought a PS4. Can I have my horrible XRoss back please?

I don't even use themes and wallpapers, but I just love a thoughtful organization of used features. PS4 UI involves way too many button presses just to check on a download status or pause a download. Button presses that can't even be memorized and done blindfolded because it depends WHERE you are starting in the menu. That's bad design. If they made it WORSE that's.....forget it, take Persona, I'm buying a Scorpio Wait...no...I can't do that

LOL the back panel is purely evil. At first it had no purpose other than to be there, like a Nintendo gimmick on steroids. Remember the awful Golden Abyss demo with the presenters up there climbing ropes with the rear screen swipes? There was no way to make that look good. But then they made it into an R2/L2/R3/L3 replacement which took it from bad to horrendous. Little Deviants was the only game to use it "well" And that's not a compliment.

@Peek-a-boo There really has been nothing. Persona 5 doesn't interest me (I actually couldn't tell you why though. One of those things I guess.), Horizon...I feel like I've done it before, if that makes sense. Especially coming right off of Far Cry 4 (uuuugggghhhh) I didn't want another game that had nice dense foresty stuff to look at. Yes I did just get all 900 Korok Seeds in Zelda. I needed a break from realistic art.

Honestly? My next intentional purchase is Crash bandicoot if only out of nostalgia, to see if they cock it up and because well, I liked Crash. preferred Spyro, but Crash was great. Except the original. Screw that game into the deepest pits of hell.

But yeah. Haven't used my PS4 much. Took 2 years for Sony to convince me. Took until April 2016 for the game that made me buy it (And play it none stop for well over 2 weeks) to land.

Having the download progress be there at the top of the list, I get that. It's most important. Unless you're downloading multiple things at once at which point it's less helpful.

And now all those spam messages (Because people can see my username!) about free PSN cards eat the list. Thanks Sony. Round of applause for that complete failure.

I haven't noticed the OS lag when going to the UI from a game. Only when using the Share button. And in a game I get it, diverting resources, I'm cool with that.

What I'm not cool with is the little frame drops on the UI period. It's been fixed, thankfully, from what it used to be (That was....actually terrible), but it happens, just enough to see it.

I will let you know what I think of Yooka-Laylee.

Though I do have one thing. I don't mind the Banjo-Kazooie style yacker for talking, but....why is Yooka grating on me? Actually, its weird. I get what they are going for....but I'm weirdly annoyed by it. Not irritated, just...annoyed.

@Ralizah My PS4 also runs like a jet engine. That's to be expected with Sony hardware. So does my PS2 and PS3. I don't know why it crashes. It's infrequent, and some games patch it, but others....straight up the application has stopped. I don't know really. It's weird.