After my PS4 got the Pulsing Blue Dickpunch last Friday, I called Sony. It took me three hours on hold to finally get someone, but they told me they’d send out an RMA box. It arrived on Monday, overnighted. The return label was overnight FedEx as well, so I sent the console back the same day.
They got my broken console Tuesday, and immediately sent me a brand new console. It arrived Wednesday.
As irritating as it is to receive a broken launch console, I have to hand it to Sony- They didn’t fuck around with the RMA. There was a lot of talk of “two to three weeks” for a replacement. I had mine in five days, including the weekend. New system seems to be working fine.
It certainly helped take the sting out of the whole experience a bit.
Of course, I had been hoping to have a full week with the PS4 before my Xbox One showed up, and instead I’ve now got both brand new consoles on top of eachother. First-world problems, I know, but I’m in a bit of next-gen overload at the moment.
I picked up three games with my PS4. Assassin’s Creed 4, NFS Rivals and Killzone. The latter two I only purchased because I’d already bought AC4, and Amazon told me if I bought one more PS4 game, I’d get a free one.
If you cared about reviews for these games, you’ve already read them elsewhere, so I’m just going to give a quick rundown of my impressions for now:
AC4 looks great. Still too early in the game to tell much, but I think it’s headed in the right direction. I still feel like the whole “animus/outside the memories” gameplay is stupid and only serves to interrupt the good stuff though.
Killzone is really pretty. I nabbed this one to see what an exclusive next-gen title would look like on the PS4 right now. It doesn’t disappoint. Unfortunately I’ve always felt the Killzone games were fairly dull, and this one doesn’t deviate from that. Lots of eye candy, but little to no interesting gameplay.
NFS Rivals is actually really neat. I haven’t played a NFS game since the original Most Wanted, which I absolutely loved. The graphics are fantastic, and I really enjoy the seamless All Drive online system. I’m a little concerned about the longevity of the game (for me), since the map seems really small, and the car I wanted to unlock is the second one you get. So future car unlocks aren’t as exciting for me. Still, playing as a racer carrying a ton of speed points, being chased by a cop trying to steal them all is pretty intense and exhilerating.
I’ve got my Xbox One all hooked up and running, but I’ll need some more time over the weekend for a review. The voice command thing is neat, but still not flawless, so I’m very much on the fence about using it. We’ll see.