Of course, you can’t do much with most any video game without a trusty controller! The PS4’s companion controller is the Dual Shock 4, arguably the biggest and most jarring refinement of the familiar PlayStation controller design to date! While the controllers of the original PlayStation, the PS2 and the PS3 remained mostly consistent, the PS4 takes said design to the next level!
Again, the first thing that will likely surprise you about the new PS4 controller is how surprisingly small it is. In screenshots, the Dual Shock 4 controller looked large and imposing. In real life however, only its grips, each containing their own vibration motors (immensely increasing immersion compared to the centralized vibration motor in the prior three Dual Shock controllers), are actually larger than the PS3’s controller. Everything else is actually smaller in size, even if not by much.
Despite that however, complaints of the PS3 controller’s buttons feeling too ‘squished together’ have been effectively addressed, as the redesigned Dual Shock 4 build allows for much more comfortable button spacing and analog stick placement. The traditional Square, Triangle, Circle and X Buttons are wider and more comfortable, as are the much more prevalent and large-sized Directional Buttons. The L1/L2 and R1/R2 buttons have been adjusted to feel tighter, with the L2 and R2 buttons arced upward to be even more ‘trigger-like’. The result is a scheme of buttons that is much more comfortable and ergonomically sound than ever before, even during hours of extended play. This adjustment to the shoulder buttons also makes the Dual Shock 4 feel more at home with shooters, driving games and other such titles which previously handled noticeably more comfortably with Xbox controllers.
The analog sticks have also been changed drastically with the new PS4 controller design. They have small recesses on top that make pressing them in easier on your thumbs, and the length and flexibility of the sticks has been considerably increased over the PS3 controller, offering added precision and MUCH more accuracy with your movements. Like the shoulder buttons, the revised analog sticks of the PS4 controller feel much tighter and more responsive than they did on the PS3 controller.
We didn’t really get much of a chance to try out the central touch pad, light bar or built-in mic, as very few PS4 launch titles utilize these specialty functions, but the touch pad feels very natural and intuitive, able to be both grazed and pressed in by your thumbs with little effort. The light bar is positioned in such a way so that it’s noticeable, but not shining in your eyes during gameplay, and it effectively helps players tell apart their various PS4 controllers with colour-coding, even before the light bar tracking that can be used with the optional PS4 Camera. The built-in mic is incorporated in some exclusive PS4 launch titles, such as Resogun, and it sounds noticeably sharper and clearer than the built-in mic of Nintendo’s Wii Remote, which clearly inspired this feature.
As for battery life, the PS4 controller doesn’t appear to come with a full charge out of the box. It began to run out of juice after just a few hours. Recharging was quick, only taking about an hour-and-a-half, and from there, the controller made it about just under fifteen hours before needing another recharge. Controller battery life may vary according to games played, length and magnitude of use, innate controller build quality, and more, but evidence seems to indicate that the PS4 controller’s battery life is only slightly less than that of the PS3 controller.
Without hesitation, we can say that this is the best refinement of the PlayStation controller design to date! Some of the changes and additions may seem drastic to PlayStation purists, but it won’t be longer before any PlayStation gamer adjusts to the new Dual Shock 4. It’s comfortable, it’s precise, it’s intuitive, and it presents loads of possibilities that won’t be available in the competing Wii U and Xbox One controllers!
One of the PS4’s most exciting new capabilities is Remote Play, a technology that Sony has been trying to push since 2006 or so, between the PS3 and PSP at that time. When Remote Play was first introduced, it was clunky, slow, volatile, and generally unappealing. Over the years, and as better hardware was introduced with the PS Vita, the technology has improved slightly, and now, we have the most ambitious Remote Play offering yet between PS4 and Vita.
Fortunately, we’re happy to report that the potential of Remote Play has finally been realized here for the most part! Remote Play works exactly as advertised with PS4 and Vita! We made purchases on the PlayStation Store, managed network features, toggled PS4 settings, and more using a Vita, even in entirely different rooms!
What’s most impressive is that you can use Remote Play to stream almost any PS4 game onto the Vita screen too! You do lose the ability to navigate and input with the Vita’s touch screen when using Remote Play, but certain areas of the touch screen and rear touch pad will substitute for some of the shoulder buttons and clicking in the analog sticks when playing a PS4 game on Vita. It’s more comfortable and intuitive than you’d think in most games, even if some PS4 games are inevitably more at home with Remote Play and the Vita-specific touch inputs than others, and some PS4 games like Just Dance 2014 can’t be used with Remote Play due to their design principle.
The same PS4 graphics are mostly realized on Vita, which is extremely impressive, though the incredibly compressed resolution obviously hurts the amount of detail you’d otherwise see on a 1080p HD television display. Textures in certain games also suffered at times due to the crushed resolution, and it really feels like some PS4 games were designed solely with the television in mind, especially when fluctuating connection quality occasionally made them stutter when played on a Vita. Still, the fact that a Vita can render PS4 graphics this seamlessly and effectively most of the time is mind-blowing the first time that you experience it, finally capitalizing on what Sony promised with Remote Play all of those years ago!
Even now however, Remote Play isn’t quite perfect. The fact that 3G can’t be used to connect with PS4 for those with 3G-enabled Vita’s is a big helping of cold water thrown on many a desire to operate your PS4 on the go most notably. Not only that, but the connection between PS4 and Vita would often be lost when we tried to access the PlayStation Store or Music Unlimited through a Vita.
Remote Play is very exciting, and it does present a mostly effective answer to Nintendo’s ‘Off-TV play’ that is so frequently touted with the Wii U, allowing gamers to continue gameplay and other console-specific features if someone else needs the television… That is, if you already bought a Vita before the PS4 launch. That right there is the big fly in the ointment here.
Remote Play obviously demands that you own a Vita to take advantage of it on PS4, which will run you about $300 at this point, including tax, and not including games and accessories to go with it. That’s almost the price of an entire second PS4! Because of this, Nintendo’s Off-TV streaming with Wii U is currently much more cost-effective for those who don‘t already own a Vita, not to mention that Wii U omits the stability issues that the PS4/Vita connection currently suffers from. As much potential as Remote Play has, it’s probably limited to die-hard PlayStation gamers at this point. The dependence on using one’s home wi-fi network for a connection that’s still a bit spotty when taxed, just makes Remote Play a questionable selling point for anyone else, as cool as it is.
We had fun with Remote Play between PS4 and Vita, but it still suffers from a lot of limits and requires a lot of variables to get the most out of. It’s a great feature, but it could be more compelling, especially since it’s unusable if you can’t be convinced to own Sony’s handheld.