In 2024, playing on a PS4 isn't actually that bad

When you get a few years into a new generation of consoles, you start to exaggerate how bad the last generation was. These loading times took forever! These graphics were hardly presentable! The DualShock 4 was as thin as crepe paper!

You get used to the new bells and whistles and forget what it was actually like to live without them. But after a few weeks of playing my PS4 for the first time since 2020, I have to say that it's still a perfectly good gaming device.

The PS4 remains strong

I didn't believe it in March when the problems with my PS5 started rearing their ugly head. When I had to send my PS5 in for repairs, the main thing I did was pull out my PS4 so that I still had access to a Blu-ray player in the meantime. But on a whim, I booted up Judgment on the PS4 to see if I could complete Yagami's story before my PS5 came back. The newer console finally arrived less than a week later, so my PS4 still lives next to my PS5, two generations of consoles side by side under my TV.

I expected the loading times to make playing Judgment painfully slow. In reality, they're doing well for the most part, and I think there are a few factors that may be contributing to that. For one thing, I still play a last-gen console a lot, especially because it also happens to be a current-gen console: the Switch. Due to the disastrous performance of the Wii U, Nintendo broke out of the cycle shared with Sony and Microsoft and began the new generation in 2017, when the PS4 and Xbox One were still three years away from retirement. This approach, along with Nintendo's penchant for low-performance hardware at a lower price, means that the company's latest software is currently only available for technologies that would have been impressive in 2013. Longer loading times and worse graphics are not just the domain of the PS4.

I also played a lot of Baldur's Gate 3. The game looks much better than anything on the Switch, but every play session begins with a loading screen that lasts about as long as the Cambrian Explosion. Fast travel within a region is almost instantaneous. However, if you want to go back to the Druid Grove from Baldur's Gate, expect more loading screens.

The new generation isn't quite there yet

Still regularly playing a system that bridges generations in the same way console and handheld games do, and a game I've put hundreds of hours into that loads like a last-gen game, I was ready for the PS4 . In some ways, strangely enough, it almost felt like an improvement. I played Yakuza Kiwami on PS5, which is a remake of a PS2 game and looks and feels like it. So when I switched to Judgment, I was surprised that Yagami could run into buildings without loading screens and was impressed by the quality of the lighting and the look of the Kamurocho streets. The fights also went faster and more fluidly. In fact, I'm less excited to return to Kiwami on PS5 after experiencing how Judgment plays on PS4.

It was a real wake-up call – although I experienced a similar epiphany with my Xbox One last year. Console performance isn't everything and the PS4 still has some life left in it.

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