PlayStation Now - Or when you connect
After the next gen consoles were announced, I think I speak for any gamer here saying we were all absolutely ecstatic when we saw the possibilities coming from Microsoft (after they got rid of the initial mistakes they made) and Sony with their new consoles. However, once the question was put forward whether these new high tech titans still use backwards compatibility quite a few of our hearts were broken. No, no they could not. What was even worse to take was how many amazing games we had previously had. For me, I was heartbroken to hear I could no longer play Uncharted, Killzone 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4. So for me, this actually made me feel a little deterred in selling my PlayStation 3 and upgrading but nevertheless I gave the console a chance and in all honesty don't regret it at all.
I still always had that niggling feeling in my head, always that same notion going through my head "Hey, wouldn't it be great to play some MGS4 right now?" and whilst the new PS4 games were blowing my mind, it was a notion I agreed with. On the 7th of January 2014 I felt all my Christmas' had come at once. At CES the PlayStation Now service was announced. A service where you could either rent games on a per game basis for a select amount of time or pay a £12 pound Monthly subscription. A price I'd happily pay if it meant I could have access to hundreds of PlayStation 3 classics, and potentially PS2 and PSX in the future. I waited a year before the Beta service came out and instantly jumped in. Whilst at first I looked over all the games like a kid in a sweet shop, licking my lips at all the possibilities, once I actually began using the system to its fullest extent, I was sadly awoken from my nostalgic coma and brought into a hellish poorly connecting nightmare.
The PlayStation Now system basically works like a streaming platform. The games aren't fully downloaded onto your system, only the bare necessities. This means that it saves huge amounts of memory on your hard-drive and also in theory means that it gets you gaming quicker. On paper it is an amazing idea, something that actually beats the idea of having simple backwards compatibility. In practice, it simply is too flawed. Out of all the issues with the platform, the poor streaming quality is what really grinds my gears. Unless you have a pristine internet connection whilst playing, you will experience a horrendous amounts of lag and this always seemed to be perfectly timed with when you least want it. My best example was when I was playing Resistance 3, a fantastic first person shooter and the final one in a great PlayStation series, I barely got past the second level mainly due to a the more enemies that would appear on my screen, the more it would strain my connection. It would appear that the more it tried to do, or the more it needed to do caused it to struggle to actually get all the action onto your screen.
Now I can live with lag, this didn't happen all the time of course. However not only does it appear to struggle to keep up with the high octane action of some games, the actual image quality it sends across half of the time is pathetic. I felt like on some games I could barely call it 360p. Unrendered surfaces covered my games, whilst trying to play Infamous, many of the NPC's facial details hadn't been sent across, If I hadn't played the game before, I'd be lucky knowing who I was actually talking too.
I have never been one of those gamer's who needs high graphics quality, sometimes I feel a great story and decent mechanics can really make me interested in a game and if I felt I could experience that on PS Now, then I'd stick with the service and maybe I could even stick with it now knowing they are still working on improving the system, but what kills me is the fact they haven't even got some of the biggest games of the last gen PlayStation even on there. There is no sign of Metal Gear Solid 4 returning to the console after it was pulled initially from the platform due to "Performance issues". Sounds like if this is the case then so should all of the games I experienced.
It actually pains me to say it but I won't even think about using it again until I know that the game library has not only vastly improved but the quality of the streaming has actually gone up to a standard in which I feel I can play even the simplest of games. With the release of the Uncharted: Nathan Drake collection and the rumour going around that Konami might cash in on making a MGS HD Collection for the PS4, I feel that the PS Now has a long way to go before replacing remakes and the good old way of Backwards compatibility, I would recommend if anyone is still desperate on playing their really old titles from the PSX, go get a PS TV, works along the same lines as a Vita in essence. To really end my little rant, Microsoft have announced they will be releasing a patch update for the Xbox One which will update the software on their systems to allow 360 games to now be used on their next gen console, maybe Sony should give up on this streaming idea and follow suit.
Oh well, at least I can look forward to PlayStation VR right?
