I really hate this controller. While it is better than the awful Dualshock 3, in some regards, it is a sorry piece of junk and should be immediately redesigned by the idiots at Sony.

When you first pick up a Dualshock 4, from playing the Dualshock 3 especially, several things come to mind. “This feels so much better in my hands.” “Wow, this has lots of new technology that seems futuristic.” “The triggers seem much better than the spongy DS3 buttons.” and so on. Some of if not all of these things are true. But the controller is a piece of trash and I’m here to tell you why.

1. Battery Life

The Dualshock 3 had a remarkable battery life. 30 hours of playtime. I couldn’t talk on my iPhone (or text, or just let it sit) for 30 hours without recharging it twice or three times. However, the Dualshock 4? About 11 hours. You can improve it by an hour or so by dimming the insanely bright flashlight on the front of the controller (that we will get to in a minute) but here is a problem – I play while chatting and talking trash, so my battery life drops to about 6 hours, tops. Sometimes, it feels like less. And I think it is inexcusable to say “Well just charge it after you quit playing everytime.” No idiot, make the thing with a better battery in it than the last one had, not a battery that is actually crappier.

2. Hard to access ports

Since I usually play in the dark, I almost never can get the earphones plugged into this stupid thing. The port for charging it is on top and earphones/whatever that other thing is are on the bottom. The bottom is on a rounded surface, too, so unless you’re plugging it in exactly right, you better be Deadshot with the thing. Now, for those of you who play in a fully lit up room and don’t mind looking at it every time, like you’re examining something, this probably isn’t an issue for you, however…

3. The charger cable/port couldn’t be much harder to plug in.

I found the DS3’s USB charger fairly simple to plug in and charge. This one, however, seems to be more of a pain, not to mention you have to shove the stupid thing unacceptably hard to get it into the hole (a problem I’ve had in other areas of life). Again, if you’re trying to do this in the dark, it is twice as hard because not only is it extra difficult to see, but you have the Dualshock 4’s spotlight in your eyes.

4. Who thought it would be a good idea to put a freaking spotlight on the controller?

Once, I walked outside to take a piss. I carried my controller with me and noticed something – I could actually see my whole back yard because the light was so dang bright. This is, of course, for the 1% of gamers who will utilize the Playstation Eye/Move functionality that comes with the (sold seperately) camera. There isn’t one good game out that uses that and I could almost truthfully write that there isn’t one game out that uses it.

This also is a massive drain on the battery, in addition to being annoying to people wanting to play in a dark room and not appear like they just got pulled over by a State Trooper.

5. The speaker is lower quality than that found on a RAZR phone

I don’t know why Sony would include the suckiest speaker ever made on the phone, if they were going to do this. I actually find it sort of cool that some games (not many) utilize the speaker for certain sounds. Resogun, Outlast and a few others make use of it. However, it sounds like a junky 1990s phone-speaker, even when it is used. Absolutely useless. I’m not saying they had to put Beats by Dre in the thing, but at $60 per controller, maybe include a speaker that I actually want to hear.

6. The controller is low-quality, overall

Controller knobs, as I personally call them, aren’t the only victims of low-quality here. But as the picture shows, the joysticks just do not hold up. I’ve also found that the moment my large, sexy hands hold onto one of these pieces of junk, it starts creaking and groaning. True, I’ve got giant hands…but I’m gentle enough to pet a butterfly without making him move a nanometer. The controller just isn’t made well.

7. The Share/Options buttons are idiotically small and hard to press

Again, my large polish-sausage fingers may be above average in sizes, along with everything about me including my…intellect, but these buttons are just too hard to press. I usually have to try to hit them two or three times, just to successfully press them. And notice – they’re barely above the controller’s level in depth! Who OK’ed this? I did find one person that could probably press these buttons without much effort:

 

8. The touchpad is far too large, no games make much use of it and when they do, it’s annoying.

The single largest button in controller history is also the least used, it would seem. This massive rectangle in the center of the controller doesn’t have much function other than a large pause button. I often forget that it is actually touch sensitive and can be used to, I don’t know, do stuff that touch-sensitivity might be needed to do. I guess it is better than putting a big logo on, but was it really necessary to make it so dang big (while the share and options buttons are about the size and depth of those holes you press a pin in to reset your phone)?

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Of course, I am still a PS4 owner and not an XBone owner, primarily due to my dislike for Microsoft…but Sony hasn’t helped things along with this system. The menus are insanely complicated and cluttered, everything seems to take a long time to load up (it takes seconds for text to appear! This is 2014, not 1991), and the design and navigation of the menus is a big fail in my not-so-humble opinion. They took DLNA support away, there isn’t backwards compatibility and it isn’t customizable, at ALL! Still, I’m a PS4 owner, so save the fanboy hate (or bring it for all I care).