Building My PS4 Library

It's always weird when you have a brand-new console. A console has a whole library associated with it, and particularly with one that has been out for a while, there are clearly a lot of places to go.

I recently got a few big expenses out of the way well, well under-budget, so I felt I could afford to splurge a little.

I got the PS4 with the Nathan Drake Collection bundle - which is itself a compilation of the three PS3 era Uncharted games remastered for the PS4. On top of that, I got the Witcher III.

I'm loving the Witcher (I like Uncharted, but it's definitely not as deep a game as the Witcher,) and part of me feels like I shouldn't get any new games until I've beaten it, but another part of me says "feel free to take your time with this one." The Witcher has a pretty intense story, but I also think I'm at a good breakpoint, having dealt with what I imagine is the biggest quest chain in Novigrad (could be wrong, though, as it's a big city,) and I feel like picking it up again later wouldn't be too terrible. I haven't even gone to Skellige yet, so I figure there will be a good "new beginning" if I wind up taking a break from it.

So my new purchases:

First is Bloodborne. This one's a no-brainer because it's basically the main reason I got a PS4 instead of an Xbox One (Microsoft's console seems to have a much better backwards compatibility system, but we still have the 360, so that's less of a draw.) No, I still haven't beaten Ornstein and Smough in Dark Souls, but I'm really too curious to find out how different Bloodborne feels (I'm going to guess it's easier between bosses, thanks to the ability to find Blood Vials all over the place, but that bosses might be tougher because the game's built around dodging rather than blocking.) I haven't decided what sort of build to start off with - I did find a hybrid Strength/Arcane build online that focuses on Logarius' Wheel (one of my big determining factors for what build I use is how ridiculous my weapon will be, and that's got to be one of the most ridiculous.)

Oddly, looking at Amazon, it's actually like 50 cents cheaper to buy the game and The Old Hunters DLC separately, so I figured I'd get the base game and then if I'm feeling eager, I'll pick up the DLC when I get around the level required to start it.

The other purchase was Grand Theft Auto V. I cannot tell you how many hours I've spent dicking around in GTA 3, Vice City, and particularly San Andreas (the latter being the only one I personally owned.) I don't know if there's any other franchise that is as good at just plain making it fun to wreak havoc. There's a lot of talk in the theory of games (not Game Theory) about "extrinsic" versus "intrinsic" rewards. Having you farm a dungeon to get some cool piece of gear? Extrinsic. That dungeon being a total blast to fight your way through? Intrinsic. GTA has, in my experience, been great at intrinsic rewards, making it plenty of fun to just drive like a maniac and blow everything up.

So I'm excited to play a newer game. We had GTA 4 for the 360, but the disc cracked and while it was playable, we didn't want to risk breaking the console if the disc suddenly flew apart or something, so I never really got to play much of 4.

So that should round me out quite well. I guess I just need a quality FPS (perhaps Fallout 4 or maybe one of those Far Cry games, which I've never played.) I could also use a traditional JRPG, and I'm excited to hear about a new Square Enix game called I Am Setsuna, which looks to be mechanically based on the original Chrono Trigger, which is probably my favorite RPG of the SNES era (which was definitely Squaresoft's Golden Age.)

Anyway, the whole reason I got a new console was to open up new horizons of gaming possibilities, and already I'm feeling good about it. I'm not getting rid of my Wii U or anything, I'm just patiently waiting for Zelda and occasionally doing a round of Smash Bros.