I'm thinking of downgrading from PLaystation 5 to Playstation 3 - I would like to ask for advice

[monkeychemist]

Hello everyone,

Last year I had a very serious surgery and needed months of recovery in bed. I decided to get back into gaming after many years of not really having as much time. I bought a Playstation 5 digital edition, the playstation+ subscription and a few new to me games that I've always wanted to play like Fallout 4. Well it turns out the new game just don't appeal to me as much as my old favorites. I don't know how to describe it other than games have gotten so complicated and convoluted and frankly I don't have to patience to spend 3 days learning how to play a game. I chose playstation because I played so much PS 1 & 2, and a little bit of playstation 3. I played those old games from the PS network and had a blast. So all in all, I've decided that the new games are just not for me and return back to my last console which was the PS3. I have a few questions and wanted to ask for your advice:

1) Am I crazy?

2) If I downloaded some games on my PS5 that were actually PS3 or PS2 games like Fallout 3, Final Fantasy X, etc.. would those be on my account and playable on the PS3 or does the virtual library cut off at PS4?

3) Would I be better off with a PS4? Maybe in my opinion but if all I'm going to do is play PS3 and below then I'm not really interested in spending more

4) can I play PS2 games on the PS3. Not the actual disks because I know that requires very specific models, but a virtual purchase? I can't seem to find the PS3 virtual library, it all defaults to PS4/5.

Thank you so much for your guidance

[YoshiM]

I hope your recovery went well and welcome back to the realm of the video!

1) Naw...you be you. If stuff on the PS5 doesn't trip your trigger, there's nothing wrong with going back to something you DO like. However, the urge to game can be a fickle thing. I would suggest hanging on to that PS5 if the idea of selling it/trading it/etc. might pop into your head. It's a stunt I'd do but sometimes something about that particular system you gave up haunts you and then you buy into it again....only to not really play it except to scratch that particular gaming itch. I'm guilty of that. A search in these hallowed forums will show I've sold and bought the Genesis about 6-7 times over the course of 30 years. Turbografx-16 is probably close to 3 to 4. I'm on my second OLED PS Vita due to that.

It may not even be a thought but like candy on Halloween, I pass out the advice freely.

2) Doing a little research: no PS3 games (and probably PS2 games) cannot be passed down to an actual PS3 system. You are actually streaming the PS3 game and playing it on a server somewhere else. Same with PS2.

3) I guess it depends on if you like PS4 games and want them on disc. If you are going for PS3 gaming, why get the in between?

4) Yes, at least according to this wiki. I'd look on my PS3 to confirm but at the moment I'm dwelling in the basement and my nocturnal youngin's are ever so slightly trying to go to sleep (i.e. not really-I have a large brood of step kids with a wide range of ages and the elders really don't need to be forced to be but the 3 youngest ones, ages 11 to 7). They have a SEVERE case of FOMO and if I turn a game system on they smell it like sharks to blood and will flock to the living room. So hopefully you can find the game you want.

PS3's, at least in my area, are going for maybe about $80 or so for a slim....maybe? It's been a while since I was at my friendly neighborhood gaming store. PS3 games are pretty dang cheap so far. Controllers can be a crap shoot as the connectors that connect the top board to the bottom board are connected by pressure and is susceptible to corrosion. If you read stories about button presses just randomly happening-that's what's doing it. It looks like Retro Fighters has a PS3 compatible controller that turns on the system AND has Sixaxis called The Defender. I'm down to my last four working PS3 controllers so if they start croaking, I'll probably go to this. Especially since one of my Twins and her younger sibling both got back into "Little Big Planet" again and the young teen remembered I had "Sonic Team Racing Transformed" (and that they were good at it).

Hope that answered your questions!

[Gameguy]

I don't know how to describe it other than games have gotten so complicated and convoluted and frankly I don't have to patience to spend 3 days learning how to play a game.

But they start to get good after the first 80 hours....

Yeah, I don't bother with games like these either. Games have become a chore to play through, but a lot of games are now specifically designed for twitch streamers so they are literally work to play through.

I'll try to answer a few of your questions at least, as best as I can.

1) Am I crazy?

Not really, you're not crazy. Overall I tend to prefer earlier games to more modern ones, I'm not even watching youtube playthroughs of modern games when I did during the PS3/360 era. Imagine 10-20 minute long youtube videos of people just messing around with skill tree options, it's pretty tedious to watch modern games. It's not even just my opinion, but plenty of people who actually like modern games now consider the PS5 to be a mediocre generation for Sony compared to the current Xbox console. The PS5 is not as good as the PS1 or PS2 generations. At least there's plenty of discussion on youtube going into detail over this.

4) can I play PS2 games on the PS3. Not the actual disks because I know that requires very specific models, but a virtual purchase? I can't seem to find the PS3 virtual library, it all defaults to PS4/5.

I know this was possible in the past, PS2 games were available as a digital download for the PS3 and could be played on the console. I don't know if PS2 games are still available for purchase on the PS3 today. A friend of mine bought PS2 games this way for the PS3, what I do remember is that they looked like shit on the HDTV as the PS3 didn't upscale the resolution for these PS2 games at all. It actually bothered me to almost giving me a headache, I just couldn't stand the pixilation as it was pretty extreme.

Controllers can be a crap shoot as the connectors that connect the top board to the bottom board are connected by pressure and is susceptible to corrosion. If you read stories about button presses just randomly happening-that's what's doing it. It looks like Retro Fighters has a PS3 compatible controller that turns on the system AND has Sixaxis called The Defender. I'm down to my last four working PS3 controllers so if they start croaking, I'll probably go to this.

I didn't know that this was a common issue with PS3 controllers, I mostly came across controllers with bad analog sticks. If the PS3 controllers I have stop working, then I'll probably be done with the console and I'll sell off everything I have for it. I barely use it at all, and mostly keep it around for a bluray player in case I need to use one. I do have some games for the PS3, and Xbox 360, currently less than 10 each that I'd consider worth owning. There are still other games I haven't picked up yet but I will if I come across them for a really good price, so I may still add more games to my PS3/360 libraries.

[kupomogli]

I do think that the people who are buying older games as they're cheap are smart. I mean, I know I could, but won't. I like to stay more into modern gaming because I know I'll miss out on a lot of indie games at this point which are going to increase in price due to their limited print releases. I know I'll be paying more but I'll eventually go back to older consoles once everything goes all digital and at that point I'm pretty certain prices will increase drastically.

Considering your PS5 is digital only I wouldn't even bother, but I myself refuse to do digital so there is that.

When it comes to modern gaming, I think the combination of AAA, AA, and indie make for some great games, but when it comes to AAA alone, I think half at the very least are trash. It's like AAA developers feel the need to make everything open world and when it comes to most modern open world games, my experience with these games is just overall disappointing. The latest open world game I've played is Ghost of Tsushima, one that is very widely praised, but instead the game is like a poor man's Nioh with an open world, taking just so much time getting to point to point and the game just feels so much like every other western action game that tries to add depth. It just so completely underwhelming.

It's not like you can even see how good or bad an open world game will be because not all of them are bad. But either you're willing to invest hours in watching someone play a game and then realize that you're not going to be interested in or you just have to go out on a whim based on what everyone else says and just try it. I've got a lot of open world games on last gen that I haven't yet played. Other than FF7 Rebirth though I'm not going to buy another open world game, may do what I stated above because unfortunately there are some good games that are built with the modern open world design, games like Dying Light or MGS5 Phantom Pain, to name a couple off the top of my head, even if I do think the open world makes these worse than they should be.

[kupomogli]

Oh, speaking of controllers. I think the PS5 controller is the worst I've used for a Playstation console. It's just very uncomfortable and it doesn't feel like the buttons work as well as they should.

I have only owned the PS5 for one year and my PS5 controller stopped working within the first three months. The left digital pad stopped working completely. I sent it to Sony and got a repaired controller and not even a year goes by and the controller starts getting massive stick drift. I can't even enjoy playing games with how bad the stick drift is and for a game like Theatrhythm Final Bar Line I can't even play the game period, so I was required to get another PS5 controller.

It's fucking stupid that you can't use PS4 controllers despite the fact that there's no difference in buttons, especially once I've completely turned off the dual sense feature, the only feature that isn't available on the PS4 so why the hell can't this work on PS5 games? PS4 is the best controller but that controller has stick drift issues as well. The last one I've had is the one one that's went beyond a year without the slightest hint of stick drift.

They sell a PS5 Dual Sense Edge for an absurd cost to fix an issue that they themselves manufactured. I've never had an issue with stick drift until the PS4.

[Steve W]

I know that a lot of third-party PS4 wired controllers will work right out of the box for the PS3.

A lot of things on the PS3 store are silently vanishing off the online store. There's still some games, but the library is getting smaller all the time. There were a lot of PS2 and PS1 games still available the last time I looked, but who knows how long they'll be there. You might just be better off buying a PS2 and PS3 (or a PS3 with backwards compatibility, but those have a higher failure rate). PS3 game prices have gone up in the past couple years, but it's fairly easy to get games for it since people are dumping their old games in retro game stores right now. I'm not sure about PS2 game prices.

[monkeychemist]

Thanks to everyone for your input, I really appreciate it. Particularly YoshiM, thank you for going into such detail... and Gameguy I think we're in complete agreement with today's games. It's funny because I was playing Fallout 4 (which is more of a PS4 game but in the vein of modern games) I spent hours customizing and looking for parts. My daughters watched me and said "why do you like this game, you don't do anything in it." It took me a couple more days until that made sense to me. When I realized that, I stopped playing and I had been looking forward to this one for YEARS.

[kupomogli]

Imagine 10-20 minute long youtube videos of people just messing around with skill tree options, it's pretty tedious to watch modern games. It's not even just my opinion, but plenty of people who actually like modern games now consider the PS5 to be a mediocre generation for Sony compared to the current Xbox console.

Yeah, right here. You watch 10-20 minutes of a video and you literally see nothing, if you want to do research to see if you're interested in a game now days you've got to sit there for hours so it's either actually doing WORK to see if you'll like a game or you just go out and buy it. It's ridiculous. The largest fanbase in gaming are people who are happy to just play anything regardless of quality and most publishers want the biggest potential userbase they can get so we just end up getting these games that developers know people will play for no other reason than they exist as games rather than games that are actually good.

I don't really get where you're coming from about the current Xbox is better than the current PS5 because it's really not. Playstation still has better first party titles than the current Xbox and the mixture of AAA from both western and Japanese third party developers still keeps Playstation ahead of even the Switch which has mostly indie games and Japanese third party games at half the framerate with the one caveat that Nintendo games are atleast better than Sony first party studios and Nintendo seems to go after a lot more of the exclusives that people actually want from third parties, something I can't say for Sony or Microsoft except for Final Fantasy 7.

*edit*

Xenoverse 2 doesn't even have an open world but the game has fetch quests in this hub world out the ass. It's hard to even want to continue because I do like the storyline they've added but it takes forever to get anywhere because they want you running all around this damn hub world. I've been saying this for a long time but I think developers have started purposefully developing games that waste your time.

Persona 5 is a good example of one that receives a massive amount of praise. Now if you've played Persona 4, the dialogue between characters each day is often different, but Persona 5 day in and day out has so much text that is constantly the same thing every single day based on what's happening at the time, the fact that every character needs to get a response in after each character says something this shit drags on and on and on. I don't even like Persona 5 because of how much bloat it has in text, it's like a game that is potentially amazing but the amount of time it wastes is unbelievable(same with each new The Legend of Heroes game.) People apparently love the idea of spending more time than the idea of that time being just filler content and developers that have no respect for the time you're spending.

[Gameguy]

Thanks to everyone for your input, I really appreciate it. Particularly YoshiM, thank you for going into such detail... and Gameguy I think we're in complete agreement with today's games. It's funny because I was playing Fallout 4 (which is more of a PS4 game but in the vein of modern games) I spent hours customizing and looking for parts. My daughters watched me and said "why do you like this game, you don't do anything in it." It took me a couple more days until that made sense to me. When I realized that, I stopped playing and I had been looking forward to this one for YEARS.

I'm glad I'm not alone with my thinking, I was starting to think my negative attitude towards modern games was mostly just me.

Yeah, right here. You watch 10-20 minutes of a video and you literally see nothing, if you want to do research to see if you're interested in a game now days you've got to sit there for hours so it's either actually doing WORK to see if you'll like a game or you just go out and buy it. It's ridiculous. The largest fanbase in gaming are people who are happy to just play anything regardless of quality and most publishers want the biggest potential userbase they can get so we just end up getting these games that developers know people will play for no other reason than they exist as games rather than games that are actually good.

I don't really get where you're coming from about the current Xbox is better than the current PS5 because it's really not. Playstation still has better first party titles than the current Xbox and the mixture of AAA from both western and Japanese third party developers still keeps Playstation ahead of even the Switch which has mostly indie games and Japanese third party games at half the framerate with the one caveat that Nintendo games are atleast better than Sony first party studios and Nintendo seems to go after a lot more of the exclusives that people actually want from third parties, something I can't say for Sony or Microsoft except for Final Fantasy 7.

*edit*

Xenoverse 2 doesn't even have an open world but the game has fetch quests in this hub world out the ass. It's hard to even want to continue because I do like the storyline they've added but it takes forever to get anywhere because they want you running all around this damn hub world. I've been saying this for a long time but I think developers have started purposefully developing games that waste your time.

Persona 5 is a good example of one that receives a massive amount of praise. Now if you've played Persona 4, the dialogue between characters each day is often different, but Persona 5 day in and day out has so much text that is constantly the same thing every single day based on what's happening at the time, the fact that every character needs to get a response in after each character says something this shit drags on and on and on. I don't even like Persona 5 because of how much bloat it has in text, it's like a game that is potentially amazing but the amount of time it wastes is unbelievable(same with each new The Legend of Heroes game.) People apparently love the idea of spending more time than the idea of that time being just filler content and developers that have no respect for the time you're spending.

First I'd like to thank you for addressing those points separately, I should have separated them when I wrote that but just didn't which was a mistake.

These days 20 minutes for a youtube gameplay video will barely get past the tutorial sections. It's actually another reason I dislike modern games, it takes ages just to learn the basic controls for a game compared to the NES or SNES era. Now that I think it over it's also a reason why I dislike Ocarina of Time as I hated that opening village section which I found incredibly boring, I would usually shut off the game before leaving this section and just play something else. With people buying games regardless of quality, I really believe a big part of this is people buying games to review on youtube or make let's play videos, or general twitch streaming. It's not for enjoyment, it's for content creation. The more bugs and crap to complain about, the more entertaining it is for the intended audience.

As for which current console is better, I don't have personal experience with using any of them so I'm probably not fully informed correctly, I've just seen a lot of people preferring the current Xbox exclusives over the PS5 exclusives. Like with the latest Spider-Man game for PS5 which has tons of severe bugs. Also the Xbox online services are apparently cheaper priced than the PS5 online services, which apparently had a recent price increase as well. I never use online services so I wouldn't know, it just seems like there's a lot of complaints towards Sony these days except from the fanboys. Plus Sony tried and failed to prevent the Microsoft merger with Activision Blizzard, it just seems like Sony is in a worse position compared to Microsoft.

As for the Switch, it still has a library that looks more appealing to me compared to the other consoles. Maybe eventually I'll get one, but I'm reluctant as it doesn't seem super reliable for the long term compared to earlier consoles. You're right about there being more indie games on it, many of those are what appeals to me, and modern releases of classic franchises such as Wild Guns, Pocky and Rocky, and several others.

You are right about games being designed to waste the player's time, it's to market the game as having more hours of gameplay so it can be sold for a higher price. You've already pointed out something I was going to mention as well, game maps are made bigger than ever, but there's not really any additional content so it just takes longer to travel between the actual gameplay. To be fair, plenty of older games in the past were also made like this, such as all the adventure games that included arcade sequences. It's just way more common with modern games, like games that need to be played multiple times to experience multiple paths or endings, or skill trees in games that aren't RPGs like FPS or action games. Multiple paths and endings can be well designed depending on the game, but I'm thinking more like Telltale's King's Quest game which has three paths to play through(really just three ways to solve each puzzle which affects the ending), this just feels like artificially lengthening the game. Plus forced online gameplay or other questionable design decisions, mostly added so watching a youtube playthrough won't be "good enough" compared to most one-player narrative based games.



With how enjoyable modern games seem to be, I think back to the arcade days when you had to wait in line, or with early consoles when visiting a friend's house.

Arcade/early consoles: "This game looks fun, I want to play it!"

360/PS3 era: "This game and story looks interesting, but the controls look complicated and annoying. I want to watch a playthrough on Youtube."

Current era: "This game just looks tedious. I'd rather watch a movie or random youtube videos."

Obviously there are some exceptions but I mostly don't care about modern games at all, the characters and stories just don't interest me with most current games. I suppose I could think of specific reasons why that is, but it would take me awhile. It's mostly either terrible gameplay, or terrible writing when a game focuses heavily on the narrative or character development.

[kupomogli]

As for which current console is better, I don't have personal experience with using any of them so I'm probably not fully informed correctly, I've just seen a lot of people preferring the current Xbox exclusives over the PS5 exclusives. Like with the latest Spider-Man game for PS5 which has tons of severe bugs. Also the Xbox online services are apparently cheaper priced than the PS5 online services, which apparently had a recent price increase as well. I never use online services so I wouldn't know, it just seems like there's a lot of complaints towards Sony these days except from the fanboys. Plus Sony tried and failed to prevent the Microsoft merger with Activision Blizzard, it just seems like Sony is in a worse position compared to Microsoft.

As you already know, I'm a Playstation fanboy, but I don't just blindly dump on the other companies just because. Most hate towards Playstation nowdays is because it's the most popular. Also, the Playstation is the only console that's in direct competition with each of the other two consoles. Xbox and Nintendo have little in common aside from indie games. Xbox doesn't get many Japanese games that aren't AAA, Nintendo doesn't get many AAA games.

It is true though that Sony recently increased the price of PS+ and yeah, that's bs. I'm lucky because when it was on sale for $40 I purchased two years of PS+ so right now I'm sitting on three years, but for those that have it's $80 a year which is just ridiculous. That's just for the base PS+ to just play games online and the free games per month. The PS+ extra increased to $120 and the premium increased to $160. The amount of money they're asking is just crazy.

If you ask me though, Sony probably looked back at their terrible purchase of Bungie for 3.6 billion and were like. Wtf were we thinking, we're not going to profit from this deal for a good 20-30 years, we need to do something to look like we're making a profit, let's increase the price of PS+ and lay off employees from our other developers. Their fanbase is rewarded by paying more money for stupid purchases.

As soon as there's no more physical releases on Playstation, I'm going to abandon the console, but that could be said of Nintendo as well.

As for the Switch, it still has a library that looks more appealing to me compared to the other consoles. Maybe eventually I'll get one, but I'm reluctant as it doesn't seem super reliable for the long term compared to earlier consoles. You're right about there being more indie games on it, many of those are what appeals to me, and modern releases of classic franchises such as Wild Guns, Pocky and Rocky, and several others.

The thing is, is that none of these indie games are exclusive to any console, even physical versions of the games eventually release on the other. However, there are more of these limited publishers that only release Switch games. Kind of like what you said about these streamers with AAA games, this is equally true for how many Switch collector channels there are.

I've actually made a lot of these compilation PS4 videos. I still have a lot of games to go, pretty slow going because I finish the games before hand and all the games I replay as well. Again though, reason why I like PS4 over Switch is because, I can collect on one single console and have the best(or equally good versions) of "good AAA games" like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Monster Hunter World Iceborne, Resident Evil 2-8, Diablo 3, Like a Dragon games, etc, etc, etc. Now, while I do make these PS4 videos, I collect the PS5 versions of some of these games and not the PS4 version because I want the better version, same reason I don't purchase PS4 games on Switch.

I'd say Switch is not worth purchasing if Switch 2 has BC and if you've waited this long, there's no reason to purchase a Switch. If the Switch 2 doesn't have BC which I highly doubt, then yeah, get the Switch. This console has more exclusives than both the PS4 and XBO. I have a theory that a lot of physical games on the Switch with digital only games on PS4 are due to Nintendo paying for physical exclusivity and this is due to some of the popularity of a lot of these games as well as an interview with the publisher of SNK Heroines that Nintendo did contract for physical distribution of the game making the initial collector's edition releases on the PS4 the only PS4 games to ever release. Do you really believe that Capcom would not release a physical version of the Monster Hunter Rise games when the game finally released on the other consoles but then release Exoprimal as a physical release?

Anyways, here's one of those collection videos of mine for the PS4. This is the last one I've made, if collections have a maximum of two games on them, I'll add the games individually, but if the collection has more than that I do include the collection instead of the individual games. There's two reasons I make these video games. One reason is because I do want to show off what I feel is one of the best consoles ever with just a massive amount of quality games(even if I really dislike some of these modern games.) The second reason is actually more personal, but really it's because I'm proud of how good I am at video games. I'm good at a lot of things, but I'm a huge fan of video games and I'd like something I'd do to get recognized, even if few people ever actually see these. So I take 12 seconds of what I play from each game that displays the basis of each game is and try to get 12 seconds of something that looks really good per game. Like for example, look at that Huntdown gameplay, and then compare that to any video on Youtube at the same point(btw, that game is absolutely amazing.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9IJfOh9f40

*edit*

There are some games that I don't like that I did include. I don't like Blaster Master Zero, feel it's pretty mediocre and I also don't like God of War, hover over the time for an really good easter egg. I included these in the video for no reason other than their mass popularity.

They're pretty short, only seven of them, anyways here's another one. I'd say check out all of them and if you'll probably find some games you like. In this one there's Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, absolutely amazing game, and Wargroove is another amazing game. Anyone who loves Advance Wars needs to play Wargroove, it's similar, but a very different take on how Advance Wars works. And 12 seconds may look short but look how good that 12 seconds of Mega Man X4 looks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUud5ctZ7D0

[fpbrush]

I don’t think so. “Downgrading” is how the wonderful thing known as retro gaming started. We saw something there was plenty of and was fun, then went for it (this was back when things were cheap in the space)! Have fun with the hobby!