PS5: First Impressions

24 Feb, 2025

I finally bought a PS5 last Friday, and have spent the weekend getting to know it and trying to get used to playing NHL 25 - you can read about my progress and experience with difficulty levels on my video game blog.¹

The reason I bought it was because I went seeking out suggestions for a new 4K player; I wanted to upgrade from Blu-ray. I have the Star Trek 4K box set that was released a couple of years ago now, and while the remastered versions are on Blu-ray discs included in the set, I want to watch them in 4K. Wouldn't you? And now I will probably start buying 4K discs wherever I feel "necessary".²

It's funny, my console buying has come full circle. When I originally bought a PS2, it was to watch Fellowship of the Rings on DVD in August 2002. At that time, also having a console to play games was a big draw. This time around, while I appreciate the ability to play PS5 games, the gaming side is a little more of an afterthought. Still, it's fitting that I buy a new, modern gaming console for the same purpose as the purchase I made over 20 years ago.

PS5 as a 4K Player

As this is my primary purpose for buying a PS5 (remember, being a gaming console simply made it a cost-effective 4K player, but from all accounts the upscaling on the PS5 is really good), this seems like the best place to start.

To this point I've only watched one movie on the system: a DVD copy of Because I Said So, one of 5 movies picked out by my wife to watch Friday night. There's nothing particularly special about this movie that you'd want to upscale it for, but the picture still looked great. No grainy-ness I might assume would be there on a DVD being upscaled to a 4K TV, everything was crisp and clear. I'm definitely impressed by the picture quality.

The controller as a remote control is...OK. I had this problem with the PS2 as well, eventually opting to get Sony's DVD Remote Control (which was really excellent on the PS2). I don't know if such a remote exists for the PS5, but I don't think I'd get it this time around. The controls are fine. Plus, given how well the system integrates with my TV, I wonder if maybe it will register the rudimentary controls on my TV's remote.

Overall this does a great job at my intended purposes. I have a handful of movies I purchased secondhand recently that I'd like to get to, so I'm looking forward to them. Some of them are older movies and might not transfer to a higher definition screen on an inferior player.

PS5 as a Gaming console

Obviously the PS5 is first and foremost a gaming console, so it really needs to shine here. And it does. There's no question that the games are visually impressive, even though I've really only played NHL 25 than any other game. You can tell that there's a significant improvement between what I'm used to (PS3) and what I've graduated to (PS5).

But that's not where I mean that it shines.

It shines in the gaming culture. What I mean is that a big part of gaming is sharing experiences and playing with other people. Obviously online gaming has been a feature since PS3 days, that's not new; but I know that my friend down the road (who had a PS5 well before me) has made many "friends" (buddies?) through playing NHL 25 and just generally having fun. It's always better to be gaming in the same room as your friends, but being able to move beyond the offline experience is great. Having said that - I still despise games that pretty much require you to be online to play them, but thankfully I haven't experienced that yet.

The other aspect is sharing with other people. I love that I can take screenshots from my game (that's where my game stats come from in my post about difficulty levels), but you can also record gameplay natively through the console! Previously to do that you'd need a capture card, something I looked into when I got back into playing some Wii/Gamecube/N64 games. For me the cost isn't worth it, so built-in screen recording is great. An example of a screen recording I did to highlight something stupid the computer did:

So from that side of things the PS5 is great. But it falls apart in a very important area: load times.

In days past (even with the PS3) you could insert a game and just start playing. No need to install patches, updates, etc. But I discovered much to my chagrin that you can't simply start playing NHL 25; first you have to install the game to the hard drive, which takes some time. Go play another game and come back, it says. But once the game is installed, it needs more time to finish installing or updating whatever else, so you only have access to two game modes: Free Skate and Stanley Cup Final. But I want to play a game now!

We were going out anyway, so I put the console in rest mode (more on that in a sec) and we went out. It was ready when we came back hours later, but that was a serious annoyance. I intend on buying MLB The Show 24 in a few weeks, but I'm going to try to wait out for a price drop. In the meantime I put a hold on a copy from the library so that I can get a head start installing the game information. Isn't that a little stupid?

Side note: it is really cool that I can borrow games from the library. I made a list of games to borrow suggested by Brandon.

I mentioned rest mode - that actually is another area the console exels. Instead of turning off the console, leaving it in Rest Mode allows the console to download and install updates in the background when you're not using it. But on top of that, it keeps the game you were last playing open - so when I turn it on, I can go straight into a new game of NHL 25. It's great!

Overall I'm really happy with the purchase. I doubt my gaming habits will change (in other words I won't game any more than I was before), but really happy that I have better options available and have a fantastic player for movies.

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