The ninth console generation is finally upon us. With Microsoft playing the long game, it’s left to Sony to provide us with that shiny, new sensation – and from the pristine surfaces of Astro’s Playroom (p110) to the ray-traced skyscraper reflections in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (p104), there’s plenty of the visual pizzazz we usually associate with expensive new hardware. Yet the real thrill of the new lies elsewhere: from the SSD speed that lets us zip from one side of New York to the other in seconds to the delicious feedback from the DualSense controller that tells us what surface we’re walking upon.
Delightful stuff, and yet the innovations aren’t just reserved for the new hardware. In truth, the play-as-anyone hook of Watch Dogs: Legion (p118) doesn’t quite come off, but the technical achievement of delivering the most diverse triple-A
cast ever is not to be denied. The same goes for Harmonix’s
Fuser
(p119),
which lets you remix tracks across your decks, the pitch and tempo magically shifting to accommodate even the most haphazard crate-digging. Rick Astley and Smash Mouth featuring Soulja Boy, anyone? Okay, not all mash-ups are created equal – but consider the meme potential.