God of War Might Be the Best-Looking PS4 Game to Date

When the original God of War came out in 2005, it was arguably the most attractive game on the PS2. Thirteen years later, Sony Santa Monica is still capable of blowing us away. This new heartfelt interpretation of God of War on the PS4 stands alongside Uncharted 4 and Horizon as the most visually impressive games on both the vanilla model and the PS4 Pro.

After the massive shrug that was 2013’s God of War: Ascension, a complete redesign was absolutely necessary. As such, every aspect of the series has been rethought for this impressive comeback. We’re dealing with a different pantheon, more methodical combat, a close-up camera that never cuts away, and a palette of emotions that actually extends beyond pure rage.

At our sister site IGN, God of War has earned a perfect score. Jonathan Dornbush wrote up the review, and he praises everything from the single-shot camerawork to the Nordic backdrop to the emotional development of Kratos. And whether he was playing on a standard PS4 or a PS4 Pro, the visuals were delightful throughout:

Similarly, Metacritic has this installment sitting at 95/100 based on 86 scored reviews – the highest metascore in the series. There are plenty of perfect and near perfect scores, but some outlets like The Daily Dot and Twinfinite went as low as 4/5. There are some criticisms of the puzzle design and some repetition in certain battles, but even the lowest-scoring reviews still gush about the game’s high points. It’s clear that this game will be a real contender when we reach GOTY season.

DigitalFoundry has analyzed God of War, and the results are impressive across the board. With silky smooth animations, top-notch dynamic lighting, a very reactive environment, loads of GPU-accelerated particles, and best-in-class checkerboard rendering, this is one of the best looking games of the generation.

On the standard PS4, it’s no surprise to see a 1080p resolution and a 30fps target. The frame rate is mostly stable, and the anti-aliasing being applied here is undeniably attractive. Even if you’re playing on a 4K screen, the original model or the Slim deliver exemplary results – especially if you have an HDR-capable display.

But if you have a PS4 Pro, you get to choose between two modes: Performance and High Resolution. In Performance mode, the resolution stays at the 1080p we see in the base model, but the 30fps cap is removed. At the game’s most peaceful, you can see the frame rate rise to a wondrous 60fps, but you should expect to hover between 40fps and 50fps during most scenes. It’s a nice option to have, but that kind of fluctuation isn’t to everyone’s taste.

Toggle on the High Resolution mode, and we’re given a checkerboarded 2160p image capped at 30fps. While it suffers from occasional dropped frames just like the base version, it’s not anywhere close to ruinous. Given some time, it’s even possible that a patch could smooth out the handful of situations that cause dips to 29 or 28fps. And as for the visual trickery on display, DF’s John Linneman calls it “one of the finest implementations of checkerboard rendering we’ve seen,” so we need not worry about the fidelity here. It’ll definitely give your 4K TV a workout.

Here’s How the Inside of Your Gaming Console Really Works

Whether you own a Nintendo Switch, a PS4 Pro, or an Xbox One X, you’ve got a platform capable of playing new, cutting-edge games — but what sets these machines apart from each other, or from mainstream gaming PCs? In many cases, less than you might think.

Traditional PCs are designed as generalist systems with the option to add workload-specific accelerators, like high-end GPUs. Because consoles fit into smaller spaces and are purpose-built for gaming, they can take advantage of a higher degree of component integration. Smartphones, game consoles, and PCs all use a type of highly integrated processor known as an SoC, or System-on-Chip. The SoC contains the actual CPU cores, the CPU L1 and L2 caches, a graphics processor, various I/O connectivity (USB ports, hard drives), and the memory controller that interfaces between the other function blocks and the main system RAM. In the old days, these functions were typically broken out into multiple chips on the motherboard; today they’re integrated into a single functional block.

For reference and example, here’s the motherboard off a launch PlayStation 3.

Image by Wikimedia

The Nvidia-built GPU is on the left, the Cell Broadband Engine (CPU) is on the right, and the chip above the CBE is the southbridge, where I/O connectivity was provided. The CPU’s XDR RAM is the four blocks of just to the right of the CBE. Compare that with the Xbox One X:

Image credit: Digital Foundry

While machines like the PS3 eventually moved to a single SoC later in the platform’s lifespan, the Xbox One X and PS4 debuted with these technologies in place. The rationale is simple: The fewer chips on the board, the less complex the routing and the fewer components you have to pay to install. The Xbox One X’s central SoC is the large processor on the board surrounded by its memory. While we’ve focused on the Xbox One X and Switch as the most-and-least powerful consoles of their respective generations, these trends hold true for the PS4 and PS4 Pro as well.

What’s impressive is that you can see this same design philosophy on a device like the Nintendo Switch and on your own smartphone.

Image credit: iFixit

This image, from iFixit, shows the Switch’s SoC (red), the 4GB of RAM (orange), and its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth controllers (2x green boxes). What’s surprising isn’t that mobile devices are tightly integrated, but that we’ve seen this integration play out even in large systems. The same is absolutely true of PCs. While many PCs continue to offer large numbers of external expansion ports via PCI Express (thereby requiring certain minimum amounts of real estate), many to all of those connective ports use silicon built directly into AMD and Intel’s latest CPUs.

At a hardware level, PCs and consoles are more alike than ever. Switch runs on ARM, but the Xbox One and PS4 (and their upgrades) are all x86 processors that use a PC-derived graphics architecture. Practically speaking, the only difference between the Xbox, PS4, and PC are the operating system they run and the capabilities the developer has chosen to expose to end users.

post credits: extremetech

Even the Xbox One X Can’t Stop Microsoft’s Console Sales Slide

When Microsoft announced the Xbox One X (See on Amazon), it was clear the company was pulling out all the stops in its effort to close the gap between the Xbox One and PS4 sales figures. Ever since it launched, the Xbox One has struggled against the PS4 — and new data suggests nothing Microsoft has done has stemmed the tide, at least not globally.

During EA’s latest conference call, CEO Andrew Wilson said the following:

Turning to our expectations for fiscal 2019, we expect sales of current-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony to continue to be strong, with the installed base growing to 130 million consoles by the end of calendar 2018 from 103 million at the end of calendar 2017. Nintendo Switch is expected to have built an installed base over 30 million by the end of the calendar year.

We can combine that number with Sony’s own estimates for total PlayStation 4s sold. According to Sony, it had sold 73.6M PS4’s through to customers (the phrase ‘sell through’ means that the console was purchased by a customer, as opposed to “shipments,” which reflects unsold inventory still sitting on store shelves) as of December 31, 2017. Wilson’s statement implies total shipments of 29.4M Xbox One consoles versus 73.6M PS4s. That figure implies Microsoft’s total Xbox One X shipments were extremely poor in 2017 — around 5 million units, compared with roughly 20 million units for the PS4 Pro.

The Xbox One X motherboard. Image by Digital Foundry

EA presumably has better access to these kinds of figures than the rest of us, given that Microsoft has refused to state how many Xbox One consoles it has shipped for several years now — precisely because Redmond doesn’t want to publicize the fact that Sony has whipped the stuffing out of it. And, as Microsoft notes, these are worldwide numbers, not North American-specific. The Xbox One has historically been more popular in the US than in other countries, particularly in Japan.

The bottom line is this: Even if we grant that the EA figures are low on the Xbox side — and they are low, relative to what I would’ve expected — and we toss in another 5-6 million consoles that EA somehow missed, the results still don’t make Microsoft look very good relative to its chief competition. And that’s unfortunate, because from the time it launched right up to the present day, the Xbox One X has been one of the best gaming solutions you could buy. That’s been particularly true thanks to rampant GPU price inflation, which pushed the price of graphics cards up so high, it’s been impossible to recommend building a PC for most of 2018 so far. Even today, cards are still running hot. The cheapest AMD RX 580 at Newegg as of this writing is $309, compared with $229 launch prices over a year ago. That’s better — but it’s still not great. Meanwhile, if the Switch keeps tearing up the market, it could be closing in on Microsoft’s lifetime ship rate for Xbox One before the Switch turns two.

Hopefully Microsoft learns its lesson this time around. The company squandered the goodwill and momentum it gathered during the Xbox 360’s generation chasing content licensing deals, new game distribution methods, and mandatory always-on connectivity. Microsoft chained its entire console strategy to a peripheral virtually nobody wanted to purchase and was left with a paperweight when gamers revolted over paying $100 more for a less powerful console.

We don’t know what the precise figures are, and it’s possible EA’s are off — but when you have to add 5-6 million console sales to the relative distribution to get back to “as bad as we thought it was,” that’s not a good sign.

Nier Automata – PS4

Square Enix and Dengeki hosted a NieR: Automata live stream today where it showcased 21 minutes of new footage from the upcoming action RPG, as well as shared a first look at the game on PlayStation 4 Pro and announced new collaborations and related goods.

NieR: Automata will launch for PlayStation 4 in Japan on February 23, in North America on March 7, and in Europe on March 10. A PC release is due out in 2017. A PlayStation 4 demo is due out worldwide on December 22.

 
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WonderBoy The Dragon’s Trap – PS4

After reaching and defeating each dragon, you’ll transform into new creatures with different abilities, such as a mouse that can climb walls or a fish-man that can swim, which in turn allows you to reach new areas and stab differently colored crabs, ghosts, and dragons. Oh, and ninjas, which don’t really fit the whole “Monster Land” theme considering that you start out fighting what’s basically a knock-off MechaGodzilla I’m not going to try to over-analyze it. Each addition grants you new tactics, which, without the advantage of modern popup tutorials, are fun to puzzle out while exploring each new location.

After reaching and defeating each dragon, you’ll transform into new creatures with different abilities, such as a mouse that can climb walls or a fish-man that can swim, which in turn allows you to reach new areas and stab differently colored crabs, ghosts, and dragons. Oh, and ninjas, which don’t really fit the whole “Monster Land” theme considering that you start out fighting what’s basically a knock-off MechaGodzilla I’m not going to try to over-analyze it. Each addition grants you new tactics, which, without the advantage of modern popup tutorials, are fun to puzzle out while exploring each new location.

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Gears of War 4 – PS4

Gears of War 4 takes place 25 years after the Imulsion countermeasure weapon destroyed the Locust, Lambent and Imulsion on the planet Sera. Unfortunately, this also eliminated the use of fossil fuels, forcing humanity to adapt to new ways of survival.

The countermeasure has also brought the advent of “Windflares” the powerful storms that form throughout the planet. After following the outbreak of Lambent, the reformed Coalition of Ordered Governments estimated that only hundreds of thousands of human beings are left on Sera.

To prevent the declining population, the walled-off cities were built to protect citizens against external dangers. The COG has also declared martial law, preventing any travel outside the city walls. Some human survivors rejected the views of the COG and formed a group called the “Outsiders” who live outside the jurisdiction COG, conducting raids on the COG territory to gather resources.

The game focuses on J.D. Fenix ​​(son of Marcus Fenix ​​and Anya Stroud) alongside his friend Delmont “Del” Walker and Kait Diaz face a new threat to the survival of humanity.

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Dirt 4 – PS4

•  THE OFFICIAL GAME OF THE FIA WORLD RALLYCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP – Race at Montalegre, Lohéac Bretagne, Hell, Holjes & Lydden Hill in a multitude of different series

• LANDRUSH – Short-course dirt track racing in Pro Buggies, Pro-2 Trucks, Pro-4 Trucks and Crosskart vehicles in California, Nevada and Mexico

• JOYRIDE – Laptime challenges, smash challenges, free-play area and send challenges to friends

• DiRT ACADEMY – Taking place at the DirtFish Rally School in Washington, USA, learn the skills, techniques and practice to become the best!

• CAREER MODE – create your driver, compete across the disciplines, gain sponsors and build your team with clear goals and rewards

• COMPETITIVE GAMING – Daily, weekly and month-long challenges against fellow players from around the world

• NEXT GENERATION OF RACENET – Live ladder, leagues and tournaments, cross-platform leaderboards, enhanced CREST telemetry system

• TUNING – Tweak your set-up based on vehicle, track and weather conditions to best suit your racing style

• DAMAGE & REPAIRS – Wear and tear is faithfully recreated with an improved and realistic damage model. Damage can be repaired by hiring Engineers to work in the team’s Service Area between stages but with a finite amount of time available.

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