Playstation 5 review: 'If the PS4 was greatness awaits, the PS5 is greatness realised'
By Jordan Middler // Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ The Social contributor // 9 November 2020
The PlayStation 5 feels like a truly next-generation console. From its towering, unique design to its tech which powers some utterly jaw-dropping visuals, the PlayStation 5 is already extremely impressive.
While only a handful of games will be truly exclusive at launch, those that straddle the line between PS4 and PS5 deserve to be played on the latter. Other than a few confusing changes to the user interface making navigating the menus slightly more difficult, it’s a system that’s hard to find fault with.
The visual power and the mind-bending speed of load times make the PS5 a worthy successor to Sony’s sales juggernaut and the DualSense controller is a genuine leap forward that you need to play to believe.
PlayStation 5 Review
The PlayStation 5 is already an extremely impressive console.
The PS5 has a swagger about it. From the bombastic opening animation to the aesthetics of the menu, everything about it screams “you’ve just purchased a piece of high-end tech”. This is mirrored in its design which is both sleek and utterly enormous. It’s a swagger well earned.
Sony dominated the last generation via a very simple message, they have the services, we have the games, a theme that’s mirrored in both the launch of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X. Unfortunately, this is limited to PS4 and PS5 games as sadly, despite rumours to the contrary, PS5’s backwards compatibility efforts still pale in comparison to the suite of options on the Xbox.
But speaking of those PS5 games, the ones I’ve been able to test, about half of the games that will be available at launch, will make you forget all about that.
The marquee title is Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a half-step sequel to 2018’s Spider-man and the game that most, if not all PS5 owners will pick up with their systems.
It follows, shockingly, Miles Morales as he navigates his way through his first year of being Spider-Man and moving to Harlem from Brooklyn. Visually, the game is probably the single best-looking video game I’ve played so far on a next generation piece of hardware. Offering both a performance mode, which locks the game at a solid 60FPS with adaptive 4K, and a fidelity mode, which sits at 30FPS with ray traced lighting. I was repeatedly smacked across the face with how good the game looks.
The game isn’t a full-length title however, think Uncharted: Lost Legacy but this is reflected in its price and the fact that it’s based on the same open world from Spider-Man 2018, but you soon forget that because Miles as a character is so incredibly charming and engaging that you forget about Peter Parker and his new face.
While obvious comparisons will be drawn to the best superhero film ever; Into the Spider-verse, instead of shying away from that, Miles Morales embraces it, although sadly, he doesn’t wear Jordans.
Gameplay wise it is extremely similar, but this is no bad thing. Spider-man 2018 was fantastic, there’s a reason it sold roughly one billion copies*. They’ll be making Spider-Man games till the end of time, but they’ll never have to update the swinging because Insomniac has perfected it.
The story is also incredibly heartfelt, and the performances are fantastic, I can’t wait to see what a full Spider-Man 2 will look like.
The preloaded title, Astro’s Playroom is a beautiful love letter to the history of the PlayStation. A game that you may write off as a simple tech demo, it both serves its purpose to show off the power of the new controller and revels in the long history of PlayStation’s hits and, with good humour, its misses.
I’ve purposefully not included any of the moments that made me stop and go “oh my god they referenced that” in this footage, which to be honest was hard because there’s so many of them.
I even teared up at the end. I’m a massive Playstation fan, I bought the bloody shoes, but even if you’re not as big a fan of the PlayStation, Astro’s Playroom is a fantastic way to start your PS5 journey while something else installs.
The other first party titles, Demon’s Souls and Sackboy’s Adventure were not available at the time of this review. But, in the case of Demon’s Souls, if it’s anything like the quality of BluePoint’s Shadow of the Colossus remake, it’s not to be missed.
Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition brings the world’s favourite emo boys screaming into the next generation with a remaster of their latest adventure. Featuring ray tracing and a new playable character, it looks fantastic, but it’s largely the same game.
As mentioned, the PS5 doesn’t have the mammoth library of backwards compatible titles that the Xbox does, but it does support just about every PS4 game. They also receive benefits such as an upgraded or more stable frame-rate purely based on the power of the system and some titles have or will receive patches to upgrade their specs.
The PS5 is a generational leap. From setting it up, to holding the controller for the first time to then being dazzled by Astro’s Playroom and the visual and technical fidelity.
The technology behind the PS5 is incredibly impressive. Like the Xbox Series X, the move to an SSD has had a massive impact, not only on the previously mentioned backwards compatible titles, but where it truly shines is in the first party launch games.
Looking at how fast Miles Morales loads in from the main menu, it doesn’t even seem possible. Astro Bot levels load with barely a blink. For me, that moment of clicking Miles Morales and being in the game in less than 10 seconds is truly the most next gen thing about either of these consoles. The only thing that lets it down is that the PS5 has no equivalent to the Xbox’s Quick Resume.
Weirdly, the PS5 has a “switcher’ which holds the last few games you’ve played, but they aren’t suspended, they’re just sitting there. This feels like the groundwork for a similar feature to be introduced, but for now, it’s a real miss on the PS5
Download speeds are also much quicker on the PlayStation 5 thanks to the sheer strength of the PS5’s internals. A game like Miles Morales which was around 40gb downloaded in half the time that a similarly sized file would download on the PlayStation 4.
This is essential, mainly because of my biggest problem with the PS5. The available storage is incredibly small. At just over 660GB available from the 8250gb on the box, the PS5 simply isn’t big enough for the size of modern games. Especially with 4K textures and games like Warzone taking up 102GB on their own, I filled up my PS5 within the first day. Like the Xbox Series X, the SSD will be expandable, but the feature isn’t available at launch due to Sony having to approve each SSD individually. So, for now at least, you’re stuck with moving games from an external storage system back and forth. The lack of storage space is a big letdown for both these new consoles. The only hope is that the compatible drives for the PS5 aren’t as expensive as Xbox’s proprietary memory cards.
The user interface is very clean and navigating through your games is easy, but the back end of the system isn’t that different from the PS4. It definitely looks better, but a few more quality of life features are needed before it reaches the level of ingenuity and ease of use on the PS4. Although, what it has in spades over the PS4 is speed. My library of PS4 and PS5 games sits at around 450 and they all load into the library tile instantly.
You can also now check how much time you’ve spent playing an individual game, which I thought would be a great feature… until I checked FIFA 20. It’s not even a good FIFA.
For me, the main event of the PS5 is the controller.
The DualSense is a true step forward for controller design and its features are so revolutionary that I pray that more than Sony’s first party games make use of them. Astro’s Playroom shows this off really well, but no amount of description compares to trying the thing for yourself.
Triggers have resistance to them, the controllers' haptics can make it feel like you’re skating on ice or walking through mud, it’s something that I think a lot of very innovative developers could take advantage of. It’s also more comfortable to hold in my option, although thus far the battery life hasn’t been exceptional. This will obviously vary depending on how much of the controller extra features like the haptics are used.
The console itself looks like a skyscraper from the year 3000 and I love it. It’s massive, almost egregiously so, but I really like the way it looks. Honestly, the console could be the size of the moon, just as long as it was quiet and thankfully, I'm thrilled to report that the danger to the West of Scotland posed by my PS4 exploding is over. The PS5 is whisper quiet.
The PS5 is a generational leap. From setting it up, to holding the controller for the first time to then being dazzled by Astro’s Playroom and the visual and technical fidelity. The moments in Spider-Man like the ray traced lighting or the hyper-fast loads that made me stop and think “this is the next generation of games.” I didn’t think a controller could possibly shock me in 2020 but the DualSense does that. It has all the potential in the world to be the differentiator for the PS5 and the ways that it’s already used in Astro’s Playroom and Miles Morales show that. It makes the Xbox Series X controller feel so standard by comparison.
The launch lineup is by far the stronger of the two boxes and while I wouldn’t say it justifies the console's price on its own, if you get one you’re going to feel like you’re sitting down to a leap forward in tech. It made me feel the way I did when I first got a PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
If the PS4 was greatness awaits, the PS5 is greatness realised.
