Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought a Playstation 4 (PS4) at launch because...well...because that was the console that made the most sense to buy first so this review will try to cover every detail compared to the PS4 and I will try to be as honest as possible and with the least amount of bias as possible(hopefully). I also own a (very expensive) high end gaming PC that can handle most of the games in highest, most detailed quality as possible. With this in mind, I will not be reviewing this system based on graphics capabilities because even though PS4 tends to be rated slightly better, if you want to play based solely on graphics alone, then you should stop playing console games and switch over to the PC. The PS4 and the Xbox One (XBO) just doesn't have enough of a difference to buy one over the other over graphics alone. That, and the fact that I won't buy the same title for both systems to make a comparison; that just doesn't make sense for me. History: I like to see myself as a gaming enthusiast and I usually save a good chunk of my pay checks on gaming..."stuff". I've always had a high-end up-to-date gaming PC coupled with a Playstation, Xbox, and a Nintendo on the side. I don't participate in any of that fan boy war going on for each console since I appreciate what each systems brings to the table. PC brings pure raw power while throwing out portability and convenience the consoles offer requiring its user to lug around large full towers and a desk for its key board and mouse and tends to run with compatibility issues from time to time. Nintendo WiiU offers endless (family) fun that the other consoles have tried (and failed) to bring. PS4 and XBO brings in the big money titles, improved graphics over the WiiU and a ton of exclusives titles. Since the PS4 is the closest to XBO and occupies the same niche in the market, I will only be comparing the XBO to the PS4 in this review. Online: Advantage Xbox One The Xbox Live (XBL) tend to be superior in this regard offering seamless transitions between gaming and friends list management(chat, party, etc). If you have a ton of friends that plays online then the Xbox is the best console for you and your friends. The Playstation Network (PSN) have started to catch up to the XBL in this regard but they still have a ton of ground to cover. When games go down, it tends to go down on the PSN side first and it stays down on their servers the longest while the XBL servers prides itself on reliability. This doesn't say there aren't problems but when it comes from experience, XBL is leagues ahead of the PSN. Exclusive Titles: Slight advantage to Xbox One The XBO has an unfair advantage over the PS4 since XBO exclusives have had a long history of success in games such as the Halo series and the Gears series and therefore hold a larger fanbase. PS4 in comparison is still getting off the ground when it comes to exclusives series and have taken a significant set back when old Playstation exclusives like Final Fantasy (Xbox never use to have a FF title) and Metal Gear franchise have become easily available to Xbox users. Still, Playstation holds a strong number of exclusive titles such as Kill Zone (not a big fan of), Infamous (very big fan of), and the Last of Us (worth the $350+ to buy a PS4 for), and for baseball fans The Show. Unfortunately for the system, recent releases have been mixed with Bloodbourne (Dark Soulesq kind of game) receiving very good reviews while The Order 1886 was a complete flop(although some would argue that the flop was not a complete one). XBO on the other hand has arguably one of the strongest first person shooter franchise in Halo, the best looking racing game franchise in Forza, and a strong following for the Gears series while also breaking the Playstation's hold on the Tomb Raider franchise. They also introduced the well received Sunset Overdrive and a very good looking game in Dead Rising 3. In the end, if you get one over the other this category won't disappoint you. The advantage may go to XBO but that's not to say PS4 has bad titles, the XBO just has a really strong exclusive line up. Needless to say, the best games in recent memory is available for both systems anyway so this category probably holds the least importance for casual gamers. If you find an exclusive you like, then by all means go with that system, most of the other games you'll want to play will most likely be available for your system anyway. Dashboard: Advantage PS4 I used to love the Xbox 360's dashboard over the PS3 since the Xbox 360 was seamless and every information you need is right there in front of you. It didn't have a ton of useless information floating around everywhere unlike the PS3 where it was a little confusing a new person to figure out where everyone is. I would still be unable to walk a person through on how to locate their friends list if they ask me today. This generation's gaming systems have changed this up a bit. PS4 improved its dashboard by making things much simpler. Pop a game in and the dashboard will create a permanent tab on the dashboard specifically for that game. Press X on the tab and you'll launch the game. Press down on the tab and you'll explore everything related to the game. Friend activities, trophies, dlc availability, videos and more are presented to you and well organized. Wanna watch a video? Go to the video tab and select the appropriate app for the video you want to watch that includes Netflix, Youtube, Amazon, etc. The complaint I have for this is that it was a little difficult finding movies I purchased from the store but I guess it was a minimal complaint. XBO on the other hand, took a turn for the worse. Imagine the old xbox dashboard and someone sneezing on it. Everything is everywhere with little sign of order. I was watching a youtube video presented on the dashboard when I decided to sign in on Netflix to watch some Grey Anatomy(don't judge). When I pressed A on the Netflix app, it created another window on the right side of the screen. This is apparently a "feature" of this new dashboard that allows you to watch picture in picture. It honestly took me about 10-15 minutes trying to figure out how to watch just Netflix since my attention span can't handle two videos going at the same time. Tip: If you had/have the same dilemma as me, press the "start" button (or the small button in the middle to the right of the xbox button) and you should be able to "close" the currently opened app. Then open the app that you want in full screen and viola, you're good to go. This process is way too complicated and needs a steady dose of simplification. They tried to integrate a "living room experience" by allowing you to plug in the video of your Cable box set into the console so that you can watch TV while playing games or without having to turn off the xbox but I really don't see the point. I can easily take a pass on that feature without regrets. Controller: A very strong TIE Both controller is amazing, and both managed to make substantial improvements over the previous generations. Both controllers are much more natural on the hands and the quality was greatly increased. Both changed the location of their "dashboard" button with the PS4 opting to place it much lower on the gamepad while XBO opted to place it much higher on the gamepad. Either solution works and neither one has a problem with "accidentally-going-to-the-dashboard-during-a-vital-time" anymore. The XBO controller improved on the mechanics of the previous controller adding in separate vibrations to the triggers making shooting games and racing games that much more fun. Forza on this new controller was amazing experience. I really don't know if I can ever play another racing game without it ever again. This controller made you feel every bump in the road, the acceleration/deceleration, hitting another car and everything. It is enough for me to say this is revolutionary in the vibration technology. The battery is also moved inside the controller instead of bulging out like the old controllers making the controller itself feel much more natural and compact. However, the console comes with two AA batteries for the controller....What?!? in 2015? You guys still use batteries? This is ridiculous. Even the cheapest electronics come with rechargeable internal/external batteries nowadays. The rechargeable batteries are sold separately for $20 effectively pushing the price of a new controller to the $70-80 range. Ew... Although the PS4 doesn't have state of the art vibration system, they did add an oh-so-useful touchpad that has a ton of uses on every game I played. Shooters use it for quick inventory uses that allowed you to simply swipe up down left right to equip different equipment's and pressing in the touchpad allows you to use skills. Also, the PS4 controllers have a built in speakers and these speakers are used creatively by current game designers. For example, in Dying Light, your character has a walkie-talkie that notified the players when the sun was setting or what the next objective is. Instead of getting this audio from your speakers it now comes out of your controller so if feels like you're actually holding the walkie-talkie yourself. In Grand Theft Auto V, whenever you talk to someone on the phone, the audio also comes out of the controller. This creates another dimension to playing and is a very welcome addition to the controller. Unlike the XBO controller, this one comes with an onboard battery and a micro-usb charger. Although that can be a bad thing since you can't replace the battery when it goes bad, they tend to be reliable for years. I've had dozens of xbox 360 controller vs. two (exactly) PS3 controllers that broke on me during the previous generation. The joysticks tend to be the weak spots for the 360 while the PS3 controllers held up for years and only broke when their wires started peeling off. We can only guess if this trend will continue but for now, it's too early to tell. Game installations: Advantage PS4 Ever get home with a new game excited to play it only to realize you have to wait two hours until it is fully installed to play it? ( ahem Metal Gear ahem). Well you won't have a problem with that on this generation. Both the PS4 and the XBO allow gamers to play games while the game installs on the hardrive and the games keep installing even while the consoles are off. I would still give the advantage to PS4 just because it installs games to 100% much faster than the XBO (Much much faster. Think 30 minutes vs. a few hours). Maybe I have a gimped XBO but it took forever to install Forza which might be understandable but it also took forever for Dead Rising to install. Also, during the initial game disc insertion, the PS4 makes their game available for play almost immediately while the XBO needs to take about an extra 5 or so minutes (maybe longer, I was watching Grey's Anatomy so I didnt really time it but I made it halfway through the episode before the game became available) before you can actually launch the game. That is way too long when compared to the competition. UPDATE: After week 1 or 2, I've had the opportunity to play a host of games for the XBOX One and have ran into another problem for installation. After initially putting the game disc in after a minute or two it'll be on a ready state like the PS4 however, unlike the PS4 this ready state means playing a trailer video for the game over and over again until your game is fully installed. It is somewhat annoying since they practically lie to you to make you think that their game is ready just as fast as the PS4 which it definitely does not. Also another thing that I hate is that the games are a bit more unstable than PS4 games. I've had crashes happen way too many times on the XBO and I've never had any on the PS4. Forza Horizon wouldn't even run for me until I had to unplug the system. With that said, when the games finally fully install (after watching several episodes of Grey's) and they run without any crashes, they've been absolutely a blast to play. I would still stand by my initial review of putting the advantage for the XBO for exclusive games for now. Storage: (Memory) Huge Advantage to Xbox One I forgot to cover this in my initial review but now that it came time to upgrade my hard drive (a few weeks later) I've done a few research on my own and found out that the Xbox One has a huge advantage over the PS4. First, the PS4 boasts that you can pull out the internal hard drive and switch it out with another hard drive. This lets users replace the slow stock hard drive with an even faster hard drive such as an SSD or the Raptor HDD series but the process can be overwhelming for beginners. You would have to download a firmware from the PS4 website which according to reports posts an outdated version of this firmware that would not work, then the screw holding the hard drive into the bracket cannot be over tightened. If the user failed to follow any of these instructions, then there is a good chance the PS4 will display error messages. This is more complicated than it should be since it takes away the plug n' play advantage of the consoles vs. the PC and if you have a single mother/father who knows nothing about electronics is trying to install this for their kids, then this becomes a huge problem. In contrast, to upgrade the hard drive in the XBO, all you have to do is buy an external (up to two 256gb and over hard drives are allowed with USB 3.0 capabilities) and connect the USB 3.0 into the system. The system will ask you to format the drive and you'll press A to say yes and you're good to go. This is a much simpler process which doesn't leave a lot of room for errors. The price point for an external vs. an internal replacement for consoles is about the same. Internal tends to run cheaper (without losing value)though since they don't need to provide a casing for their hard drives. Expect to pay $50-100 for a 1TB hard drives with a reputable name and decent speed, and expect to pay $75-150 for 2TB (and above) hard drives but if you're upgrading, do it once and do it right, get a 4TB to set your for life(of the system). Conclusion: With all of that said, I wanted to give the XBO a 4.5 since I was massively disappointed to find batteries for my controller (it was a plus that they provided the initial batteries), a very convoluted dashboard experience, and a very long wait for game installation but I decided with the 5 star over the 4 star because these can be improved and knowing the Xbox team, they will make the necessary improvements to provide an amazing experience. Did I regret buying a PS4 over the XBO initially? No. The PS4 is a great system that did everything right during the initial launch. They allowed users the choice of not paying extra for a mostly useless accessories that brought the price of their console down making it a more attractive buy for everyone else. Do I regret buying the XBO even after owning the PS4? No. The XBO offers pluses on its own especially with their must-try controller. I literally can't put Forza down just because of that damn controller and the crazy real graphics. I heard that the XBO runs less than the 1080p of the PS4 but I just don't have the super crazy vision needed to see the difference between a few pixels that I would pass on a great system. The reasons to not buy the XBO (price, always online, camera always on, etc) are no longer valid since they fixed most of those undesirable problems since launch. As the owner of both systems, buy whatever you want and I promise you that you wont regret it. In the end, if you're still on the fence between the PS4 and the XBO, figure out what genre of games is most important to you and decide based on that. Racing: XBO (Forza all the way and you can't beat the impulse triggers when it comes to racing games). FPS: XBO (Everything is available to both but Halo + Gears > KillZone, and again impulse triggers). RPG: PS4 (the best RPG titles "tend" to gravitate to the PlayStation but the best ones that are out right now minus Bloodborne are available to both systems). Sports: PS4 (everything is available for both except The Show and that is the only baseball game worth playing). Strategy: PC (lol). HALO: Master Chief Collection Review To start, I've played all of the games in this collection in their except for Halo 4. So I guess this is a lists of things that have changed. Halo 1: Looks wonderful. If you plan on playing the last one first, stop. Play this one first and get that story out of your system. This remastered edition just looks 10x better than the original (duh) but it is an eye sore if you played any of the new Halos recently. You can even appreciate the change even more by pressing the "Select" button to toggle between the old version and the new version. Halo 2: Same as Halo 1 but with the added bonus of the new gen cut scenes. The ugly cut scenes from the original has been completely remade from the ground up and you just need to see the difference on youtube. Halo 3: No change it seems. Very minor changes and the graphics is behind. This felt like playing the Xbox 360 version without any improvements at all. A total disappointment when compared to the gorgeous movies from Halo 2. Halo 4: Amazing graphics and gorgeous movies are back. Walking out into a Cliffside in the start of the game almost game me a heart attack. I honestly felt that if this world existed in real life, it would look exactly like this. Final thought on the game: Loved it. It was either this or the Assassin's creed bundle but I already have those on PC so..... there you have it. I'll try to update this review as I run into more things I can fairly compare.