Sony’s PlayStation 4 may be the newest console on the market, but even they know that good old school game play never goes out of style.  This is evidenced in the excellent Resogun which is a download only title that was launched with the PlayStation 4.  It was developed by Housemarque, who also developed the excellent Super Stardust HD for the PlayStation 3.  Many companies think that to make an old school game, you have to make the graphics look pixelated, add 8-bit chip tune music, and make the game frustratingly hard.  Housemarque understands that good classic games are simple to play, but give you different options once you start playing them.  In Pac-Man you can eat the dots to clear the level, or take your chances by going for the bonus fruit in the middle, or devise a strategy to eat as many ghosts as you can.  This is why these classics are still fun to play 30+ years later.

I know the PS4 can share pictures, and video, but I haven’t figure it out how to download it to my computer yet.

Resogun is a horizontally scrolling 2D shoot-em-up.  Your goal is to defeat the enemies, and save the humans, and defeat the enemy aliens.  You move your ship with the left analog stick or d-pad, and you can shoot either forward or backward by using the right analog stick.  There is a “boost” button that makes your ship move faster, and makes you invincible.  Other buttons are for a bomb that destroys everything on screen, and an overdrive button that supercharges your weapon, and slows everything down.  Obviously all these powers are limited, so you’ll have to wait for your boost to recharge, pick up bomb powerups, and recharge your overdrive by collecting the green things that appear when you defeat an enemy.  There are large bosses to defeat at the end of each stage.

The game starts off really slowly with just a couple of enemies on screen, but quickly becomes chaotic, especially on the later levels, and higher difficulties.  Because of this, it took me a while to figure out how to save the humans.  What I found out is that whenever you hear your controller say “keepers detected”, that means that one of the 10 humans on the stage is in danger of being attacked.  The enemies that are glowing neon green are the ones who are planning on attacking a human, and you have to destroy these enemies before they do so. The thing is that you don’t know where these enemies are, so if you want to save the human, you’ll have to frantically search for them, and risk crashing into another enemy.  After these enemies are destroyed, the human is released from his cage, and you then have to pick him up off the ground, and carry him to the mothership at the top of the screen.  You can also choose to ignore the humans, and just try to keep defeating the enemies in your current vicinity in order to keep your score multiplier going, because your multiplier will reset if you don’t keep constantly killing aliens.

When I say the game is a 2D game, I only mean that the game play itself takes place on a 2D axis.  You can move left, right, up, or down.  The graphics are definitely 3d, and look great.  There is a lot of neon colours, and the hugest explosions I’ve ever seen in a game.  When you defeat a boss, the entire stage explodes into pixels, and the voice in your controller appropriately calls it “armageddon.”  The speaker in the Dualshock 4 controller is put to good use here.  The announcements of “keepers detected”, “human in danger”, etc., are really important to playing the game, and might be lost if they were merely coming through your TV speaker.  Besides that it’s just cool to hear voices coming out of the controller.  To keep the game play fresh, there are 5 stages to unlock, different ships that you can use, and 4 difficulty levels to cater to all skill levels.  There may not be many games on the PlayStation 4 at the moment, but you’re not going to be concerned about that when playing this awesome game.

Pinball Arcade by FarSight Studios for the PlayStation 4 continues an excellent series of pinball games started way back in 2004 on the PlayStation 2.  I was looking forward to this game’s release on the PlayStation 4 for a while now, and it does not disappoint.  It’s available on the PlayStation Store, and now apparently it’s available on retail disc as well.  On the PlayStation Store you can download just a couple tables at a time, or download all 22 current tables for a reasonable price of under $30.

The tables are recreation of actual pinball tables, and there is a nice selection ranging from 1973’s Big Shot all the way to modern tables like 2004’s Harley-Davidson.  Chances are good that you’ll find at least one pinball table that you have played in real life.  If your favourite game isn’t in the list, just wait a little while, because there are 21 more tables to be released in the first half of 2014, and FarSight Studios is always working on new ones.  The game play is excellent, and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary as far as ball physics go.  The controls are responsive, and couldn’t be more simpler.  You pull back on the right analog to activate the ball plunger, and press the R1 and L1 bumpers to use each flipper.  In pinball your goal is to get a high score, but the developers added some fun lists of objectives for each table.  The objectives might includes things like activating multiball, hitting all the drop targets, etc.  It’s another thing that adds to the replayability.

An actual screenshot for once. Taking a picture of my TV with my phone does not do justice to how great the game looks.

With each new generation of consoles released, FarSight Studios comes closer and closer to replicating the real thing.  Playing the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4 versions back to back, I noticed the PlayStation 4 version has noticeably sharper graphics than the Xbox 360 version.  I always thought the Xbox 360 version looked great, but now I see jagged edges that the PlayStation 4 version just doesn’t have.  The lighting of the pinball tables in the PlayStation 4 version is fantastic too, and is another upgrade over the previous generation.  There is now an option to change the ambient lighting from bright, neutral, to dark.  Setting it to dark really makes the tables pretty as it would on a real life table.  However it is sometimes hard to see the ball using this setting.  The only minor gripes I have with this game is some low quality sounds, and a lack of rumble support.  These are going to be addressed with a patch in the near future.  It still sounds pretty good though, and I’m happy to be able to play it now rather than months down the road.

Sadly it is harder to find real pinball machines to play today, and sadder yet that I am not rich enough to afford all of these pinball tables, and the space to store them.  I can tell that FarSight Studios are big pinball fans as well, as they always put a lot of care into making them.  Highly recommend for pinball fans.

Mission Impossible: Getting rid of all the dust on a PlayStation 4 console.

According to Wikipedia, Need for Speed: Rivals is the 20th game in the Need for Speed series.  The type of racing in the Need for Speed series changes from time to time, but I’m happy to say that Rivals has the feel of the classic Need for Speed games in which you race exotic cars through the countryside, while avoiding the police.

It takes place in an open world environment similiar to Burnout: Paradise, in which you drive to the start of the race, time trial, etc, and then press a button to start it.  In fact, it’s a lot like the Burnout series.  You’ll earn points for drifting, driving on the wrong side of the road, making jumps, etc.  You’ll also earn points for winnings races of course.  If you drive long enough, the points you earn for doing this will multiply.  As your multiplier increases, so do the number of police chasing you.  The decision you have to make is whether to make a run to your hideout to cash in your points, or risk losing it all if the police catch you.  You need these points to buy new cars, and upgrades, so it can get really nerve racking if you have a lot of points, and a lot of police chasing you.  Among the upgrades you can make to your car, besides the usual engine, and handling upgrades, are pursuit techs.  The pursuit techs are things like spike strips, shockwaves, and other abilities to take damage other vehicles.  It’s very Mario Kart-like.

The race career mode can get extremely hard later on, so if you need a break from it, you can switch over to the cop career mode.  Obviously in this mode your job is to arrest the other racers, rather than race against them.  This mode is a lot of fun, and it’s the mode you want to chose if you like to simply drive around without being hassled by the cops.  You can also play online as either a cop or a racer.  Although I didn’t try this mode as you have to sign up for an EA online account, and I’m not a huge fan of online play anyway.  Also in career mode, there is a very very cheesy storyline that you’ll want to watch, because it’s so bad that it’s good.

I’m never a huge fan of open world driving, because it usually means repetitive environments.  In this case however, EA has done a good job to avoid that.  You’ll race through deserts, mountains, countryside, forests, highways, towns, and so forth.  The graphics looks great, but they’re not going to blow your mind.  The music was very generic, so I turned it off pretty quickly.  The sounds of the engines, sirens, and tire squeals are very loud, and exaggerated, and add to the fun.

The advantage for a company releasing a launch title for a new system is that there is a good chance that they will have the market cornered for it’s particular genre.  Need for Speed: Rivals is a launch title by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 4, and is automatically the best racing game for the PlayStation 4.  Is it any good though?  The answer is yes!  This game is very fun, and it’s the best Need for Speed game released in years.  Is it alone worth buying a PlayStation 4?  Not really, since it’s out for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC.  However if you have a PlayStation 4, and like racing games, I recommend getting it.