Ever since I started playing games on my PS4, one thing about the console’s controller has always stood out to me. It makes a lot of noise. Audio feedback is nothing new or unique to the DualShock 4, but it’s particularly…noticeable on the thing. Like the controller is nudging you and shouting, “Hey! I’m over here!”
At least, that’s how it used to feel. As is often the case with newfangled technology, Sony launched the PlayStation 4 and all its related gizmos with a bunch of snazzy features in tow that amounted to little more than a bunch of unrealized potential. And since the company took one of its biggest leaps of faith with the DualShock 4’s redesign, a lot of gamers’ criticism has focused on the thing. Exhibit A: the pesky light bar that won’t turn off because of virtual reality.
Delivering audio cues like music or sound effects through a controller’s speaker, on the other hand, didn’t seem like anything to write home about. Nintendo has been using its Wii (and now Wii U) controllers this way for a while now — funelling choice chirps through, say, a player’s Wiimote to bring them closer to the action on-screen. But for whatever reason, the way audio was fed through many of the early games I played on my PS4 felt intrusive or distracting in comparison.
The beautiful indie game Transistor, for instance, gave me the option to hear the voice of its eponymous character through the DS4. Since the character (spoiler alert!) is a giant talking sword being wielded by protagonist Red, I guess the idea was to enhance the whole immersion factor of playing the game. She’s holding the sword and presumably hearing its chatter from around where her hands are, so you could too. You get the idea. It was neat in theory. But Transistor’s top-down perspective and tactically fraught, XCOM-style gameplay didn’t square with the DS4’s vocal flourish very well. The rest of the game’s perspective just seemed too distant and disembodied in perspective.
Other games have used the DualShock 4’s speaker more gracefully than I think Transistor did, but only because they dialed back the controller’s audio entirely. Infamous: Second Son had a few promising ideas with the way it had the DS4 buzz and ring to mimic phone calls, or make a sort of whooshing vacuum sound whenever superhero protagonist Delsin Rowe would suck up energy from neon signs or clouds of smoke. Advanced Warfare, this year’s Call of Duty, defaults to a setting where the controller makes all the clicking sounds you hear when swiping through the menu screens to choose your loadout between missions. Both of these games featured audio cues that added nice little touches, but not much else.
As with any hardware feature, the question of its value comes down to how it’s used by an actual game developer to make something interesting and, hopefully, fun. So far, I’ve seen two games bring out the DualShock 4’s talkative side in ways that are genuinely cool: Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and the new-gen version of Grand Theft Auto V.
Shadow of Mordor uses the DualShock 4 in a similar way to Transistor at face value. It’s a high fantasy game where you play as a dude (Talion) with another dude (Celebrimbor) living inside of him in spirit form, so, again, there’s some otherworldly banter to be had. Whenever you face a loading screen in that game, Talion hears echo-filled flashbacks — bits of remembered dialogue with his murdered wife or her father that emanate from the controller if you’re playing on the PS4. Whenever you step into the wraith world to activate Celebrimbor’s magical powers, meanwhile, the more ghostly sound effects will come through the DS4 as well. The controller also makes a leaf-rustling sound whenever Talion is hiding from enemy orcs in a bush, and some miscellaneous sword-clashing clatter during the showdown moments with nemesis orcs. Unlike Transistor, Mordor’s mixture of stealth and combat is delivered from a perspective that’s up close and personal enough that the sounds of rustling leaves and clashing bits of metal added to its immersion, rather than detracting from it.
Individually, most of the DS4 sounds in Mordor are all just flourishes (and potentially annoying ones) like the ones I listed above. They worked well for me, but I also loved Shadow of Mordor enough to overlook some of its irritating qualities. The one DualShock 4 audio cue I unequivocally fell in love with, however, was the tinny ringing sound it would make whenever I was in the middle of a swordfight to signal that Talion’s special orc-killing powers were charged up and ready to use. That meant it was time to start doing this:
Mordor’s violence is so frenetic and visually captivating that it can be hard to keep track of everything that’s going on during a tense bout of Talion-on-orc combat. The DS4’s chime is the perfect way to call something to the player’s attention without pulling them out of the action completely.
As for Grand Theft Auto V? Well, gosh. It’s such an expansive and varied game that I’m pretty sure I still have a lot more to discover about how it works on the PS4. But two things have stood out to me so far about the game’s unique use of the new DualShock. First is the way that it broadcasts police banter through the DS4 mic whenever the havoc I’m wreaking gets chaotic enough to warrant a wanted level. Angering the cops has always been one of the best parts of GTA V (or pretty much any GTA game, honestly), but hearing the cop calls through a separate speaker than the rest of the game’s action makes it easier to tell what it is they’re saying. This makes evading the authorities more fun in turn, since I can tell how and where they’re looking for me better than I could before.
And then there’s the first person mode. Oh god, the first person mode in GTA V. So alluring. So frightening. So ridiculously distracting. There’s already so much going in on the game that trying to take it all in from such an intimately personal vantage point can be more than a little overwhelming. That’s a good thing, though — you’re supposed to feel like you’re managing a billion different tasks at any given moment in Grand Theft Auto. And the sound makes it so much better.
Playing GTA V in first person changes the game in many substantial ways. But for my purposes here, let’s just focus on one small tweak I immediately noticed in the PS4 version. Whenever you make or receive phone calls in first person mode, the voice of the person on the other side of the phone comes through the DualShock 4 speaker. The voice of your character, meanwhile, stays on the TV screen. Like the subtle way a character’s head bobs up and down as you run around the city of Los Santos, the small change to phone calls in the game adds a fresh layer of depth and realism to the whole experience of playing GTA V.
This probably sound like a small detail. It is, on one level. But that’s what makes it so great. Because hearing the input and output of a mobile phone in this way makes perfect sense once I started to think about it. I mean, the two characters aren’t in the same room together or anything. That’s the whole reason they’re talking on the phone. They should sound like they’re disconnected in physical space, and only able to communicate through some fuzzy technological pathway. Hearing it for the first time suddenly made the entire world of Los Santos just sort of…fit together in its new perspective in a way I didn’t expect. The world came to life in a new and fascinating way that it hadn’t previously — at least not to the same extent.
Before playing GTA V and Shadow of Mordor on the PS4, I saw (or heard, more accurately) a lot of promising ideas for how to use the DualShock 4’s unique assets to better a game. But these are the first two that felt like they brought something more than good ideas to the table. The DS4’s audio cues just made the games more fun, plain and simple. I hope more developers take some inspiration from Rockstar and Monolith to help their work come to life on the PlayStation 4 as well.
UPDATE 8:24 pm: Some readers have commented saying that the phone calls in GTA V work the same way, audio-wise, whether you’re playing in third person or first person. This hasn’t been the case in my experience — the game swapped back and forth depending on whether I was playing in first or third person, and only played the audio of the person speaking through my DS4 when in first person. I’ve updated the post for clarity.
To contact the author of this post, write to yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.
Comments
22 responses to “I’m Finally Starting To Like It When The PS4 Controller Talks”
I particularly liked how Alien: Isolation used the inbuilt speakers. The touchpad had some use too – mainly as a huge select button.
Yeah, I thought having the motion tracker pings coming from the controller speaker was a great little touch. It’s also not a bad option for when games have audio logs laying around for you to find and listen to. Although it can be distracting if that’s playing from the speaker while there’s other dialogue / sound coming from the main speaker.
strangely even if the touchpad was just a huge select button I would like it because it’s so easy to press from anywhere at any angle
The thwock of the tennis ball in Wii sports is one of those moments where it all makes sense.
I’m yet to feel that about the ps4’s speaker, but I’m keen to try gta v this weekend.
That sound was pretty satisfying.
This is all I could think of.
Isn’t this article about 8 years late?
I love all the controller audio but 90% of the time I play with headphones so I’m usually missing out. It’s always a pleasant surprise though the other 10% of the time
Heh heh, I was able to play Tales of Thrones and Borderlands without headphones the other night because my wife thought it was some TV show or something instead of a game (she wasn’t watching that carefully mind you).
My missus is usually a sleep by 9 , so most of my gaming is done between 9 and 1130. She liked game of thrones too but her choices weren’t brutal enough for me. Why send someone to the wall when you can chop their fingers off? When in westeros
I thought he might start sowing sedition if I let him stay, so I chose the option to send him away. One less whinging mouth to feed and all that.
I’ve disabled it in most cases because I play with headphones.
I always preferred the Wii version of Guitar Hero because the sounds when you make mistakes come out of the controller. Whenever playing any other versions I found then really off-putting, they usually made me make even more mistakes. I never turned them off entirely, but just having them quieter than they normally would be made them that much more bearable.
Otherwise, Red Steel had some cool use of the speaker.
Yeah, screw them for trying, right? Seriously, the description you gave made the use of audio seem perfect but now it just seems like you’re just rationalising flimsy reasoning. Are there actually this many problems or concerns with such a tiny, generally ignorable feature?
No More Heroes (I think the 2nd one) had the main character having a conversation on a phone several times. The person on the other end – their voice came out of the wiimote.
I like the audio coming out of the controller…Now for the author’s update about GTA V, yes the audio when on the phone comes out both the TV Speaker/Surround Speakers and the controller from my experience.
It’s always nice when friends will play a game (such as GTA V for example) and get a shock when a voice comes out of the controller
The GTA5 feature was pretty damn awesome when it first happened. Makes the game seem that much more realistic. And I already play with surround sound.
My whole one PS4 game doesn’t have this, but does the audio coming from the controller hammer the already pathetic DS4 battery life?
Turn the light bar brightness down, I easily get 15-20 hours out of mine now instead of 6-10 hours.. But I also turned the speaker off, because I wasn’t over fussed with it.
Hmm. I’ve turned the light bars down on mine – I wish you could turn the damn things off – but I still only get a shitty amount of use out of both of them. Oh well.
Yeah, I do too. Even in a dimly lit or even dark room, on low they light everything up :/
It seems stupid that you can’t turn it off for games where it’s not needed (ie. most of them).
Tbh Mark, I also had the phone calls in GTA V come through the controller even in third person mode.. Until I turned the speaker off for more battery life lol.