Sony is offering one week trials to its game streaming service, PlayStation Now. It’s not hard to draw comparisons between PS Now and Netflix, but perhaps the most important one I can make is that both platforms allow users to experiment with titles that would normally fall outside of their regular comfort zone thanks to a low cost of admission. I’ve discovered some of my favorite movies by trying new things on Netflix, adopting a philosophy that boils down to me frequently thinking “ok, I’ll check it out for 15 minutes. If I hate it, I’ll bail.” Surely that philosophy must also apply to PS Now, right?
Operating on the presumption that yes, it surely must, I’ve compiled a list of 5 games that differ greatly from one another. If you have time, and an active subscription to PS Now, it won’t hurt to give them a try. Who knows? You may even end up liking some of them.
Catherine
Created by Atlas, Catherine fuses a haunting narrative to unique gameplay that alternates between puzzle/platformer and dating simulation.
Players take control of an unkempt slob named Vincent (voiced by Troy Baker) who is struggling to navigate the trials of adulthood which have been further confounded by an unexpected pregnancy, an uncharacteristic affair, and a series of strange nightmares which increasingly allude to a demonic presence within Vincent’s life.
During the day, Vincent visits his friends at the bar. This portion of the game feels like a dating game as the player manages Vincent’s relationships with his friends and balances his attention between his girlfriend, Katherine, and his mistress, Catherine. While at the bar, Vincent also hears news of a series of murders happening around his town. It seems single men are dying in their sleep with a look of intense anguish on their faces. It is during this portion of the game that the player can earn items to improve his abilities for the puzzle/platform portion of the game.
When Vincent leaves the bar and goes to bed, the nightmares kick in. In this realm, Vincent meets other bachelors who have turned into sheep. On his own head, Vincent has horns, and in his arms, a pillow. The only way to survive, he is told, is to climb to the highest regions of the tower they are in. To do so, the player must climb a series of stairs made up of falling blocks. As the bottom falls out, the player rushes to push and pull blocks in order to ascend past obstacles and enemies towards the goal point. The puzzles become much more intense on boss floors, where Vincent is chased down by grotesque manifestations of his fears.
Once you decide what you want for Vincent, the level of suspense increases as you try your best to achieve a desirable outcome despite minimal feedback. It’s often hard to tell whether or not you’re making the best choices, both morally and practically, but making difficult decisions is a huge part of what makes Catherine such an engaging game. Especially when you see how your choices compare to the rest of the player base.
Tokyo Jungel
Not many games let you viciously tear into the flesh of a chimpanzee. Fewer games let you do that as an adorable but fearsome pomeranian. Fewer still not only let you, but require you to press “O” to hump an animal until it’s pregnant. To my knowledge, that territory exclusively belongs to the brazenly unnerving and deceptively challenging Sony game, Tokyo Jungle .
In Tokyo Jungle , players take control of an animal as it tries to survive in a mysteriously desolate Tokyo void of human life. To survive, the player character, depending on dietary requirements, will hunt, graze, hump, sneak, and piss on things. As the animal gets stronger, it can attract better mates. Better mates help pass on stats to descendents, which is important because time is always ticking and better stats allow the player to do important things faster before they pass away of old age. Eventually, they might be able to discover just what in the hell happened to all the people and why there are dinosaurs flying about.
What is unusual about Tokyo Jungle is that it is one of the few games to contain copious amounts of violence without even a shred of empathy. The characters are animals, and all they have available to them are their survival instincts. That can feel a bit off-putting. If your humanity enters the picture, chances are you are going to lose the game. But even after you accept the fact that you’ll be mauling cute animals until their little bones turn to dust, the game will still provide plenty of technical challenges. Check this game out if you’re interested in exploring a fairly original concept or are simply a bit touched in the head and on the hunt for some lulz. I won’t judge.
The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season
The Walking Dead has spread across our culture like an actual zombie virus. Or worse, like American Idol . As such, of course it has a video game. In fact, it has a couple of video games bearing its beloved name. But, of those games, the Telltale series are the ones worth playing.
What makes these games especially good is that anyone can play them. Know a non-gamer who loves the show? Hand them a controller, and watch as they get sucked in. This episodic series, like other Telltale games, puts a huge focus on the narrative and how the player’s choices affect it.
Often times, players will have to decide for themselves which characters are worthy of their empathy. And then, they have to decide who to protect, and whether to save the most people or the most important people.
The first season, which you can beat in an evening, ends with a bang and forces players to think about hypothetical situations that they never thought they’d have to confront. Play it for free, and then look into purchasing the second season. You’ll have a tough time finding a platform it’s not available on. Yes, even iPhone.
Shadow of the Colossus
Shadow of the Colossus is the reason everybody wants The Last Guardian to come out already. Ico was impressive, but Shadow of the Colossus really sold gamers on Fumito Ueda’s vision.
In Shadow of the Colossus , players take control of a young man named Wander. Wander makes an oath to an evil entity in order to bring back a girl who has recently been sacrificed. In order to fulfill his part of the oath, Wander has to cross the lonely, quiet expanses of the game’s world to search for Colossi; the only enemies in the whole game. Wander is aided on his quest by an enchanted sword and his horse, Agro.
The whole game is a puzzle. The narrative is a puzzle, morality is a puzzle, and the Colossi are puzzles. The Colossi are actually some of the best puzzles I’ve encountered in gaming; each one feels like an individual level that the player must contend with and navigate in order to discover and assault various weaknesses.
If you keep a critical eye and ear open, you’ll see many of the game’s themes reflected in narrative, gameplay and aesthetic alike. I won’t spoil that for you here, though.
Sonic CD
Yes, I’m recommending a Sonic game. I understand if that concerns you, but the reality is that it might just be possible that Sonic CD is the most recent Sonic game I can wholeheartedly recommend. It may have been the last great Sonic game, and it came out for the commercial failure that was the Mega-CD back in 1993.
Various updated releases of the game have also garnered high critical praise, and in my own experience, the game aged extremely well. It was the title that introduced us to the infamous Metal Sonic and the effervescent, sometimes grating, Amy Rose.
The game had two features that set it apart from previous Sonic games. First, it had a “Super Peel Out” mechanic that allowed Sonic to quickly accelerate from a standstill. Second, it had a time travel system that allowed players to travel between different time periods within a level. Each stage contains past, present, good future, and bad future versions for the player to explore.
The newest versions of the game also allow players to unlock Tails as a playable character by beating the game once. If the light narrative interests you, it is canonically linked with the dramatically different title, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II which is also available on PS Now.