PS1 vs PS2 vs PS3 vs PS4

[dscross]

Here's one for you...

With four highly successful consoles under Sony's belt, and with the PS4 doing just as well as its predecessors, which generation of Playstation do you think was the best for its time, taking into consideration the factors at the time of release. You can use any criteria you like, not just sales figures (such as greatest impact on gaming, greatest legacy, best games - anything you want).

What is everyone's take?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

For its time? As in 'back when' probably the PS2. Huge library, with some very strong games in every genre, and lots of 3rd party support. Having said that I think some of the games probably haven't aged as well as we'd all like to think they have.

PS3 was also very strong, but didn't have many standout games that weren't also on every other console and graphing calculator.

PS4, as with the Xbone, I'm on record believing were out and out scams, sold on a hotbed of lies, false promises and backpeddling, and only a complete apology for this new Gen and free backwards compatibility will make up for it. Having said that, all the lies aside, some current era games are pretty good. But not one of them couldn't have been on a PS3 with a software update.

PS1 I've completely forgotten about...

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Tricky question.

PS1 was a solid platform with some amazing games for it's time (which for the most part haven't aged well at all)

PS2 had an extensive library and pretty much every game i played worked well without any running issues

PS3 had lots of technical issues with 3rd party games which made it a worse option than xbox 360, despite the 360 breaking with any real usage.

PS4 is solid enough but it lacks any real competition and some of the game loading times are plain insulting.

So it's really a question of PS1 or PS2 for me. I'll pick PS1 because at the time it was amazing and it had the platinum range of games dragging down the cost of gaming for the masses. The PS2 is a very close second.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

PS1 I've completely forgotten about...

I'd argue the PS1 had the more diverse library of games than the PS2 because the PS1 covered games from both 2D Sprite Era and Polygonal 3D Era.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

PS1 I've completely forgotten about...

I'd argue the PS1 had the more diverse library of games than the PS2 because the PS1 covered games from both 2D Sprite Era and Polygonal 3D Era.

I guess maybe a larger library, sure, but a lot of Sprite games bled together. Larger, certainly, but more diverse? That I'm a little less sure on. I mean like Atari had a huge library, 90% of which were space shooters.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

'Legacy' is a bit of non-issue when you're talking about the same series of consoles. It's objectively the first one, you can't really answer it any other way as each proceeding console is a symptom of the original's legacy.

Avoiding that, however, I've fed each of them to each of my cubs and whomever lives the longest from that point is the winner. Unfortunately my plan failed as they all seem to have died whilst I was off in the toilet. That was much faster than expected. And I cannot be arsed to make more of the needy bastards. So either all of them won or all of them lost.
For now, am going with the only one currently entertaining and surprising me; the pisspoor...because I live in the moment...man. [small](Not a conscious choice).[/small]

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

PS2. Not just because of the huge library but also because of the ease of use. The old days when consoles had the advantage over PC's because they're easier to use is pretty much gone. Back in the PS2 era all you had to do is pop the disc in and start the game. So that coupled with the library of games at the time is why PS2 is still the king of consoles IMO.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I'm going to have to say PS2 still reigns as best PlayStation. The quality and diversity of that library is still amazing. It was the time after the rather bumpy road into 3D (PS1), remember when Syphon Filter was thought as being good? It was also the time before AAA got so homogeneous that every game had to sell millions upon millions and just about everything somewhat popular became copied ad nauseam from all shooters being MMSs to Open World: The Game to Batman Arkham combat that even found its way into Uncharted. We are just now starting to recover from the sameness of AAA gaming in the AAA landscape itself along with a bunch of mid-tier devs making really great games like the Divinity Original Sins or Shadow Tactics and many more. What, to me, has made the PS4 gen way better than PS3 is that just about any PC game that you'd expect to be on just PC is on PS4 too whether it's the aforementioned games or stuff like Cities Skylines to The Sexy Brutale and so many more. The 1st few years of PS4 was still last-gen bleeding in with basically its complete stagnation so it's not nearly up there with PS2.

So to rate the systems by game libraries it would be...
PS2 >>> PS4 > PS1 >>>>> PS3

Hardware-wise (ignoring just plain power and specs) I think PS1 would be the worst as it was just designed to play games. PS2 was amazing at the time for being a DVD player, which was my DVD player for years along with my primary console. PS3 suffers from being the 1st gen of consoles getting PC features like hard drives and patches and it obviously stumbled pretty hard out of the gate with game updates not being able to be done in the background (so very annoying). Also, the reason both PS3 and 360 had major hardware issues is because they weren't allowed to use lead solder. However, the PS3 was a cheap and good blu-ray player much like the PS2 with DVDs and the PS3 has an amazing MP3 player of the sound quality of something you'd expect from Cowon / jetAudio while the PS4's music player sucks ass. Thus, PS3 had some greatness in features while also being marred by major failures. PS4 fixed all of last-gen's issues with the transition to basically a PC-in-a-box along with the hardware issues. PS4's ability to capture game footage is really awesome.

So to rate the systems by hardware (for their time), it would be...
PS2 > PS4 > PS3 >>> PS1

 

[Natemans]

PS2

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The old days when consoles had the advantage over PC's because they're easier to use is pretty much gone.

PS4 fixed all those issues, you just pop in the disc and you're playing within minutes after the short "initial" install as the rest of the game installs as you play. Updates download and install basically transparently without you even knowing it quite often. There's a reason consoles are still selling like hotcakes without a mass conversion to PC gaming. You don't have to worry about specs or the game not running similar to the Arkham Knight scenario (which is a rarity but still can happen). Plus, just about every PC game that would normally be a PC exclusive is on PS4 so there's even less reason to play games on a PC than ever before honestly. Also, remember the PC just got freaking refunds this gen and convenient controller support also very recently, I remember having to download Japanese drivers to use a DualShock3 on my PC last-gen. Now, I can just plug in a PS4 controller for Divinity Original Sin and it works, that's a very new development for PC gaming. I bought Divinity on PC because that was a type of game that I completely didn't expect to get a console release. Both platforms are basically moving squarely towards each other. "The times, they are a-changing."

 

[Squilookle]

This might have been difficult to answer if you could only play PS1 games on a PS1. Since the PS2 had a legendary and huge library and was fully backwards compatible, it's the PS2, hands down. 3 and 4 don't even show up on the radar.

 

[dscross]

Too early to tell since this generation isn?t over yet, but two was pretty much king of the hill that built on the original?s steam, three was the tooth-and-nail come from behind underdog generation where free online and some killer exclusives saved them, and four so far looks like a return to two?s glory.

The thing is we?ve still only had a handful of exclusives, which have all been great but something tells me we?ve yet to see the best the system has to offer.

 

[Leg End]

60GB launch PS3 since you get flawless PS1 and PS2 emulation with the PS3 library.

 

[dscross]

For its time? As in 'back when' probably the PS2. Huge library, with some very strong games in every genre, and lots of 3rd party support. Having said that I think some of the games probably haven't aged as well as we'd all like to think they have.

PS3 was also very strong, but didn't have many standout games that weren't also on every other console and graphing calculator.

PS4, as with the Xbone, I'm on record believing were out and out scams, sold on a hotbed of lies, false promises and backpeddling, and only a complete apology for this new Gen and free backwards compatibility will make up for it. Having said that, all the lies aside, some current era games are pretty good. But not one of them couldn't have been on a PS3 with a software update.

PS1 I've completely forgotten about...

Uncharted 4/Lost Legacy both had maps far larger than any of the PS3 games, and used real time cutscenes vs pre-rendered that masked load times of very linear levels on PS3.

Horizon Zero Dawn is far beyond what could?ve been done on PS3. At the very least they would have had to cut corners to the point of making a square a circle. It would?ve been like how God of War1/2 faked the titans? sense of scale vs how 3 made them fully rendered character models. Between the expansive map, dynamic destruction, and the detail involved in making those machines, [https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/296493/Making_Horizon_Zero_Dawns_Machines_feel_like_living_creatures.php] Horizon is probably the most technically impressive game yet this generation.

 

[Yoshi178]

PS1 was amazing. PS4 haz no games and just remasters old games.

 

[bluegate]

Dare I say it, pretty much every PlayStation console was great for its time, especially the PS1 and the PS2 with their ginormous library of games.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

PS2 will always be my favorite PlayStation - and my favorite console, for that matter.

 

[CriticalGaming]

This is a very interesting question.

In terms of raw game value, or in other words, in terms of which generation had flat out more great games, I'd have to say playstation 2. That system had a huge library of great games in literally every single genre with the possible exception of RTS as those games were almost strictly PC at the time.

However, it is hard to deny the HUGE step in the video game medium that the Playstation 1 provided. Because that was the first system to be fully supported by developers and publishers that used CD based media. Which means that system is the first system to truly experiment with having HUGE games. Because unlike with cartridges, CDs allowed games to cross through multiple disks, with huge worlds, huge stories, and more complex gameplay and graphics. Top that off with the playstation having a fantastic library as well. You could really argue that the first Playstation was the best system of all time, simply because of the step up in game design, size, quality, and variety.

As for the PS3 and 4? Well these systems haven't done shit to expand and innovate in any positive ways imo. Sure graphics are better, and multiplayer is better. They've also come with far more negatives than ever before, IE. Lootboxes, paid online services, buggy game releases to be patched later, etc. Now both these systems have some of the best games EVER made, the ratio of shit games to fantastic games is wider imo.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

For its time? As in 'back when' probably the PS2. Huge library, with some very strong games in every genre, and lots of 3rd party support. Having said that I think some of the games probably haven't aged as well as we'd all like to think they have.

PS3 was also very strong, but didn't have many standout games that weren't also on every other console and graphing calculator.

PS4, as with the Xbone, I'm on record believing were out and out scams, sold on a hotbed of lies, false promises and backpeddling, and only a complete apology for this new Gen and free backwards compatibility will make up for it. Having said that, all the lies aside, some current era games are pretty good. But not one of them couldn't have been on a PS3 with a software update.

PS1 I've completely forgotten about...

Uncharted 4/Lost Legacy both had maps far larger than any of the PS3 games, and used real time cutscenes vs pre-rendered that masked load times of very linear levels on PS3.

Horizon Zero Dawn is far beyond what could?ve been done on PS3. At the very least they would have had to cut corners to the point of making a square a circle. It would?ve been like how God of War1/2 faked the titans? sense of scale vs how 3 made them fully rendered character models. Between the expansive map, dynamic destruction, and the detail involved in making those machines, [https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/296493/Making_Horizon_Zero_Dawns_Machines_feel_like_living_creatures.php] Horizon is probably the most technically impressive game yet this generation.

Bull. Uncharted 4s map was as big as Just Cause 2's map, no bigger.
And yeah, HZD had big monsters. So did Shadow of War and Shadow of the Colossus. And Horizon isn't even the most impressive game, graphics wise. That still goes to the phenomenally boring Order: 1886