PixlBit

Weekends are good for catching up with BaD... posting and reading.  

Yes, indeed, if one has real weekends. I usually work on weekends.

U might have to quit your job for BaD.  

Wait, what touch sensitive buttons? The touch pad? I sometimes have a problem setting my controller on the side cause the triggers will hit something and FF my Netflix. Games typically give you the option of touchpad or not if that's what you mean. You can set your controller light to dim in the settings menu as well.

What I've done in the past to keep the cat away is use some of the cardboard from the system box as  vertical stand. Of course, that presents other risks.

And you're not crazy, the UI is harder to navigate than it should be. I wouldn't mind as much if not for the letter by. Letter search that only exists in the store. The virtual keyboard elsewhere is  enough.

The on/off switch and the eject button on the console itself.

I think the dog bumped it when he jumped off the futon. I think if I push it further back into the cubby when it's not in use, everything will be fine.

Oh, good! It wasn't me!

Ah ok. Thought you might have had an issue with controller itself as well. 

The controller that they gave me with the system was faulty, and yes, I did have an issue with that one but The Game Box stands behind everything they sell and they sent me home not only with a working controller, but they synced it to my console as well.

I'm not thrilled with the U.I. on PS4 either, but it's probably just that I haven't spent enough time with it to get familiar with it more. The XBO U.I. infuriated me for a while, but I got used to it, mostly.

It just seems overly complicated like they felt the need to add more stuff just because it's the newest console generation.

They're always trying to cram in every type of entertainment possible into these system to please everybody. It's weird, but on 360, I used to get a tad annoyed everytime a person on my friend's list popped up saying they were watching Netflix. Mainly, I guess, because it happened so often. I wanted to hear about those people's gaming, not what TV show or movie they're watching. I needed some setting that filtered out everything but games. 

My one gripe is that light on the controller. A smaller one would have been fine. I want to play Firewatch but I've been waiting for it to drop in price on PC. When you play it on the PS4 does the radio stuff play through the controller? One of the early PS4 games I played used the speaker in the controller and I thought that was a cool feature. 

I know, it's freaking huge!

I honestly didn't notice if the radio played through the speaker on the controller, but then again, I didn't know there was a speaker on the controller. I don't think so, but I really don't know. And I thought the price wasn't overly prohibitive, there's a lot there, and when you finish the story, it opens up free roaming, so you can go back and explore any areas you might want to take a closer look at.

That mic can get creepy in shadow of mordor. One cool thing they did with the light bar in Until Dawn is there are sections where you have to hold the controller still to survive. Light bar can't move from where it is on screen.

Dang that sounds cool with Mordor, but I already picked it up for PC. Now that Until Dawn that is a neat feature. That easily adds suspense to the game. 

Glad you're enjoying the PS4! Firewatch is a really darn great game! Haven't played Never Alone though.

The PS4 is a touch fiddly, but I ended up getting used to it. Still not 100% with the Wii-U interface, but that just might be me.

 All those gimmicks are pretty silly, but some games use them really well. GTAV for example has the light flash red and blue when the police are after you, you hear police scanners through the controller speaker, and it has directional vibration when you're driving over bumps in the road. Horror games have also made pretty good use of that speaker too.

 I think there's an option somewhere to turn the brightness on the light down but I don't remember where.

Never Alone is a very cool game. It was a collaboration between the game designers and a group of Inupiat (Eskimo) community members and elders as a way to connect the younger generation with traditional stories and culture. The whole game is in Inupiaq with English subtitles. Cary did a review of the game on GamerDad (maybe here, too?), so no need for me to rehash it for you. There were a few annoying spots where I had to switch from one character to the other quickly and resulted in several cheap deaths until I got the timing right. And it was a blast playing as the fox.

I did find the option to turn down the brightness, but it doesn't seem to really make a huge difference.

You can lower the brightness of the controller blue light through the system menu to conserve battery. The controller has a shitty battery life anyway, and I usually keep it plugged in when I play so it's not really an issue for me. I play at a desk next to computer and not from a couch. I do like the fact that I can plug headphones into the controller for late night gaming, and for horror games its especially great, or for those adventure games with a lot of dialog and cutscenes like Walking Dead or Life Is Strange.

Firewatch is excellent! Also, you can make folders on the main menu to tidy things up a bit. 

I play from my couch, and I have pets, so being plugged in can be a bit of a hassle. Beau's not as bad about blundering into the cable as poor, old, blind Bandit was, though. And the 360 headsets plug into the controllers, too.

Well so far I'm really enjoying my PS4.  I've gotten lots of opportunities to review games on it.  I've already reviewed three and I've got four next in line to review.  The PS4 seems way more reliable than my PS3 did.  Sometimes my PS3 wouldn't work right, like the screen would go blank when I turned it on or started a game.  Don't have that problem with the PS4.  Also, I've noticed the PS4 is WAY faster than my PS3 was.

I haven't had any problems with the menu yet, although it took me a while to find a file to download for a pinball game I'm reviewing.  I do wish you could make folders to put games in like how you can on the 3DS.  I have a feeling it'll get more cumbersome as I get more games.

I'm really excited for the Nintendo Switch, and I can't wait until next month to play it, but I'm also glad I got a PS4 when I did (Black Friday sale).  I have a feeling the PS4 will be my go-to system for playing and reviewing games until the Switch finds its feet.

I agree with the Dashboard being difficult to manage, compared to the easy to use XB1. The battery life on the controller is also astonshingly small. The XB1 controller lasts four times as long on rechargable battery and has a much longer cord to boot. That said, I do love that little speaker in the PS4 controller. Very satisfying when it's used.

I think the XB1's dashboard is worse than the PS4's.  That may change since the XB1's dashboard is getting an update.  I think.  A lot of great games that came out a year or 2 ago are pretty cheap now.  Have you checked out Song of the Deep?  It's on the PS4.

The PS4 U.I. isn't the best but it's step up from the PS3's. Despite its shortcomings (like the crazy slow download speeds) I'm glad I bought mine.