on this page i just wanted to talk a little about my experiences with playstation consoles in general and talk more about each one individually before going on to talk about the games i have for each on their own pages
my first ever gaming experiences were on the ps2 so that console and playstation in general hold a special place in my heart. the ps2 is still my favourite console to this day!
i grew up with playstations and discovered my love of games through them! i fully believe that had i grown up without them, then i would not be into gaming today and it's wild to think about how a chunk of plastic and wires formed such a big part of my personality and who i am today
if you want to hear my thoughts about a specific console, you can click below to be taken to it
i missed out on the ps1 while growing up, my dad had one but just never played it (or at least i can't remember him ever playing it) and it ended up just getting forgotten about. eventually after several moves it ended up in the attic of my house and was left there even after my dad moved out. by this time i had ended up collecting every playstation bar the ps1 (and the ps5 but it wasn't announced yet) and decided that since i had all the others, it would be unfair not to get one. i started looking on ebay and decided to start saving up to buy one until one day i had to move some stuff into the attic and found my dads ps1. the bag it was in was yellow with age and although it looked in really good condition and had all the cables and a controller, i wasn't sure if it would actally work. i plugged it in not expecting much and it loaded up perfectly fine! now though, i had to buy some games for it and used the money i'd saved up to buy the die hard trilogy which is still one of my best purchases yet! genuinely if you have access to a ps1, go play the die hard games they're stupid fun! it did take me an embarrassingly long time to get used to not having any thumbsticks but now if i ever need to play something quick and simple to cheer me up the die hard games are what i go for. to date i only have two games for the ps1, the die hard trilogy and star wars episode I the phantom menace (which wild selection i know), but i'm working on saving up to expand my collection!
ps2
the ps2 remains my favourite console ever and this is the hill i will die on. personally i think it looks the best, plays the best and also has the best selection of games. coincidentally it's also the console i grew up with and have spent the most time with but im sure that isn't swaying my opinions at all. i have such fond memories playing the multiplayer modes in the james bond games with my sister and driving around in driv3r ignoring the story mode fully. before we got a wii we'd play the lego star wars and indiana jones games on the ps2 too which started my love for the lego games and the war between me and my sister where i wanted to collect everything and she just wanted to play the game! i'm not an achievement hunter/100%er for everything but i do enjoy trying to 100% the games that i love and i do think these ps2 lego games are where that started. also it would not be fair to talk about the ps2 and not talk about the simpsons hit and run which i think everyone was obsessed with and i spent so so so many hours just driving around having such a fun time! my ps2 was the first console i bought myself since my sister kept ours when i moved out and i was lucky enough to get one with a bunch of accessories like the eye toy and most importantly a dance mat! i would spend hours at the arcade on the ddr machines and never knew that you could play it at home until i saw the listing on ebay and immediately bought it! im still saving up to get a proper fancy mat but the one that came with my ps2 has held up super well considering how much i use it! i know that the ps3 has guitar hero (which i'll talk about later) and ps4 has vr (also will talk about) but genuinely i think the ps2 has my favourite peripherals of any console and definitely has the ones i use the most. its just a beautiful brick of plastic that i have so many fond memories with and if i could only have one console it would 100% be the ps2.
ps3
now despite just saying that the ps2 has the best selection of games, the ps3 definitely has most of my favourite games and is the console that got me through high school. i would rush home ready to spend all night playing red dead redemption or skyrim, blocking out the rest of the world. it's also the console that i had guitar hero on and i was obsessed from day one! i would spend days and days practicing until i could 100% a song and then move onto the next. my instrument of choice was the guitar/bass since my sister always hogged the drums and honestly? i think you feel cooler playing the guitar! i love guitar hero so much still that i have spent way too much trying to find working parts and learning how to fix the guitars (still havent figured out the drums yet). i still spend way too much time playing and at this point there are definitely a couple songs that i could do with my eyes closed but its a lot of fun and i enjoy pretending im actually able to play guitar! the ps3 is where i found my love for a lot of series like fallout, the elder scrolls (though i started with skyrim then went back and played oblivion), and uncharted. its also the first console i really played by myself on. even when playing single player games on the ps2 i would usually have my sister there watching and demanding we take turns, but for the ps3 we stopped spending that time together and although the circumstances of it weren't the best, i am still glad that i got to experience gaming by myself and that it didn't put me off. there's something so nice about sitting down at the end of a long day and playing a game by yourself with no one to disturb you and i do think that if we hadn't had that phase where we drifted apart so i was sort of forced into gaming alone, i would have always seen it as a social activity and would have missed out on so many amazing games and memories because of it.
ps4
the ps4 is not a bad console but honestly i don't have that much to say about it. i've not got that many physical games for it and mostly played games from ps plus on it. there's nothing wrong with the ps4 but also for me there's nothing special about it? i love it as a console and i love the games on it, it just hasn't had the profound effect on me that the other consoles have. the first vr headset i bought was the psvr but it wasn't my first experience with vr. it was, however, my first experience with skyrim vr and there really is something magical about being able to be inside of this world that you adore. i'll talk more about that in the vr section too.
ps5
so i was not interested in the ps5 at all when it was announced. i was barely using the ps4, there weren't any games that really interested me and it seemed like something i would get eventually but i wasn't in a mad rush for it. side note i had to google when the ps5 was released for this and it was 2020??? it feels so new to me still what do you mean its five years old??? anyway a couple years pass and i'm still not bothered about it until one fateful day where i see a clip of the "herald of darkness" music video from "alan wake 2" and go oh my god i need to play this now! but,,, i hadn't actually played alan wake 1 and knew nothing about the series other than "this game has a musical in it that looks sick af i need to play it now". i genuinely bought a whole entire ps5 so that i could play a game i'd never heard of from a series i'd never heard of based soley on a thirty second clip of a song. and it was one of the best decisions of my life. i fell in love with alan wake and the world remedy built and playing the musical part of alan wake 2 was without question my favourite moment in all of gaming and honestly one of the best moments of my life. the payoff of finding out that this section of game that i'd put so much weight on to be good and be worth the cost of a ps5 was so much better than i could ever have imagined was incredible! you might be thinking this sounds more like a rant about alan wake instead of a rant about the ps5 and honestly that's because i dont have much else to say about the ps5. the look of it and the controllers have grown on me (i fully hated them when they were announced) and i play elden ring on it sometimes but other than that it's really just ended up as a glorified media machine that i play alan wake on. i did get myself some ps5 games for my birthday last year, but i've not had a chance to play any of them yet - i keep getting distracted with mainly steam games if im honest. the ps5 is similar to the ps4 for me where its a nice console and i do enjoy it but it lacks the nostalgia and the magic of the other consoles.