Amidst the corona virus lockdown, I’ve been playing games on my PlayStation 4 after “work from home”. If I were to believe in conspiracy theories, I could have easily said that the corona virus’s COVID-19 was predicted in these games: Life is Strange: Season 2 and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. LOL xD
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The effects of the confinement is starting to affect my morale now. Getting a huge burnout. Next I’ll be playing Ex-Deus: Mankind Divided and continuing Life is strange in parallel. Hope my brain will come back to me. How are you dealing with the confinement?
Why? Because my DualShock 4 seems to be on the verge of breaking. At first, it would refuse to stay in an OFF state. Today, while playing Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain, my R1 button remained in a pressed state. After pressing the button hard a few times, it seems to have returned to normal. But till when?
Let’s try the MK220 Wireless Mouse and Keyboard from Logitech.
I tried loading MGS V. Mouse and Keyboard Not Detected 🙁
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Next I tried War Thunder, which is basically a PC game ported in PS4. The menu and cursor were fully functional with Mouse and Keyboard combo but in the battle, only the mouse can be used to point and left click to shoot. Moving the tank or zooming in was not possible.
Next I tried War Face. Mouse and Keyboard was useless for both the menu and game-play.
Have you ever managed to play a game using mouse and keyboard on the PS4?
The game is actually priced at £15.99 but I actually paid £ 5.79 during a sale on PlayStation Store. In Mauritius rupees, it would be around Rs 280 which is a good price.
Graphics
The graphics are excellent on the PS4. A real treat to the eyes.
Gameplay
Excessive crouching
After playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, there was some things which annoyed me. e.g.
Snake, the protagonist, crouches too much even when there are no enemies around. Just walk near a wall or something and he just crouches so I have to press X to make him stand up again. Call it first world problems but I think Tomb Raider nailed the fight mode better.
No jump!
Like really. Snake cannot jump unless the terrain provides the option to. Sometimes a rock is really small and snake cannot climb it. You have to find a red carpet-like route in the mountains to climb higher.
Silencers are not permanent
In Tomb Raider games, bow and arrows are OP. Unfortunately there are no bow and arrows in MGS V. Only some guns come with silencers and the effect wears off. After shooting few people, your gun becomes loud again. Gotta calculate the risks before engaging enemies.
The AI!
At first, the enemies seemed really dumb. You could just run besides them and they won’t notice. But later in the game, their vision sharpens as you create more havoc. They adapt to your play style.
Overall
Where this games shines is in the small details. Just google metal gear solid hidden tricks and so on. You’ll be amazed by the amount of features present in the game. I used to play it as a shooter game and it worked fine. But after discovering the real stealth tactics, it got even more amazing. I’d totally recommend anyone to try the game.
There is no point in having Windows 10 installed alongside my Linux OS (KDE Neon) anymore for me. I thus deleted the Windows partition from my SSD boot drive leaving more space for my Linux OS and apps.
But why? Gaming is the reason
I recently purchased a PlayStation 4 for gaming. I get a minimum of 30FPS with 1080p on my TV for every game. No more having to tweak games settings so as to have a “playable” FPS as on PC.
PUBG can be played on my Huawei Y9 very conveniently in case I’m on the move. My laptop can handle some RTS games quite well and steam is bringing quite some games to Linux now. I recently purchased Tomb Raider (2013) game for $ 2.99 during a promotion. After finding this, there is really no point in having Windows 10 anymore.
I know that the Linux drivers may sometimes have a slight performance disadvantage; my laptop has an NVIDIA GEFORCE 940MX. But yeah, I decided to vote with my money. By buying more games from Steam on Linux platform, more games will come to Linux eventually. With that better driver from the manufacturers.
PlayStation is maybe not officially supported in Mauritius right now. e.g. most Mauritians choose the US or UK as their country when first setting up their PlayStation.
For the past 3 months I downloaded different demos and free-to-play games. Then PlayStation put a heavy discount on Motorcycle Club, Life is Strange and Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 year anniversary. I decided to finally buy my first game. And lo! I couldn’t add my PayPal account
I even tried with my MCB Prepaid Card but I’d still get an error.
Fortunately there are numerous PlayStation groups on Facebook for Mauritians. I inquired about the problem there.
Finally a friend suggested me to buy PSN Cards. I quickly googled it and was going to buy a $10 card but then I remembered that my account is configured for the UK. I should get £10 cards instead.
Finally bought my PSN Card from offgamers.com.
It was very quick and they accepted PayPal as payment. I missed the deal of Motorcyle Club but managed to buy Tomb Raider in time.
