The fantasy of subscription services is that one day we will have time. I joined Game Pass for the same reason I have a bunch of big, beautiful novels that I have yet to read: Oh, one day I’ll have time for that.
So let’s pretend, for just one Sunday, that the rainy day – the rainy weekend – is here. This seems like the best way to create an intrusion into a list of games that are wayward and perhaps exhausting, like the current Playstation Plus offering.
Let’s pretend: 48 hours with nothing but playing PS Plus games. What follows is my imaginary journey through the new Playstation service. what is yours?
Day one. It’s morning. Do you remember a cuboid? It was a game from a good time ago – a clever puzzle to control a wooden block that was twice as long as the wide one. You will turn it over and over again to navigate mazes and avoid traps. This feeling that gave you, in fact, to hold a block and turn it in your hands. Brilliant and gentle, it feels like a wonderful sleepy start to a day of games. Something to wake you up in a few minutes and trigger your brain.
Then Super Stardust will move your eyes and hands: Housemarque’s frantic double sticks glow and shine as you move across the planet’s surface, brandishing a flaming whip at your enemies. Give Super Stardust a minute or two and no more, or you won’t escape gravity for a week.
Return trailer.
And you want to escape because the next one is Returnal: from Housemarque from the past to Housemarque of the present, a grim and sinister sci-fi bag that shows you how far a team can go in a few years. But also look at the enemy waves, the laser fire and the pure choreography of this thing. See how the ghost of Eugene Jarvis is still hovering in the sky. Housemarque hasn’t changed what’s important since the days of Super Stardust – there’s a straight line from there to here!
Then we have to slow down a bit. And what could be slower than being dead? In I am Dead, you wander the streets and houses of a small fishing village, a ghost that keeps an eye on people you once knew. This is the most fun game ever made and moves at the methodical pace of a sniper as you peek inside objects and learn a series of sweet truths about the community you once belonged to. Perfect morning game. True eleven!
And the perfect pairing for 428: Shibuya Scramble, another long reflection on the spot, albeit the bright city tide of Tokyo, shaped like a visual novel. No spoilers: just log in and see what you can find.
I’m a dead trailer.
For lunch, I think two movement games can be good. Celeste is a demon with a pure heart in the game, a study of mental health, wrapped in one of the most demanding and insanely rich platformers ever. Not to be missed. Death Stranding, meanwhile, is a long swamp at the end of the world, depicted in Icelandic and Cairngorms colors. Be careful how you stand and yes, this is the voice of Ubercorn.
Listen: It’s early afternoon. Time of day when I traditionally want to take a nap. It’s time to remove the games I can’t give up.
First, Magicka 2, with her characters in clothes and ingenious, tangled finger dial spells. You are a magician, and magic is the elementary board you must control to connect your enemies with a quick, sizzling death. There are also jokes. Then Outer Wilds, simply because every subscriber list with Outer Wilds in it almost requires a visit. Travel in a pocket solar system and enjoy the dynamism on offer: Heraclitus was right – the only constant is change. Finally, Big Sky Infinity is a space shooter in which you can chew planets. This is basically the easiest sale of all time.
Outer Wilds trailer.
Now in the late afternoon and if I haven’t taken a nap, I will need the Wrath of Asura to restore my energy levels. It’s a beautiful eerie smashing of buttons for pure endless rage. A source of rage pouring from the center of the earth. In addition, at one point you hit the ground with your fist so hard that it grows like a beak.
Early in the evening I go for a deep cut. InFamous may not be the most beloved franchise, but its blurred parkour and electric superheroes have always appealed to me. Festival of Blood is a perfect slice and a perfect game to play when the sun goes down. In New Orleans, it’s Halloween or something very close to it. I remember mainly claret clouds and the fact that I had a good time.
Now. In the evening, it’s the best time to find out that Lumines Remastered is on this list: the falling block marathon next to Tetris’ sprint sprints. I think this is a game that is best played in sessions of about four hours. Give it all night and then ring at midnight with Fantavision fireworks. And then a bed.
When the second day comes, I feel like Kingdom: New Lands is the perfect game to meet the light of another day – a poetic game with a sense of dawn as you ride your horse, slowly transforming the landscape around you. This is a perfect game to wake up and a perfect game to enter without knowing too much. But it’s melancholy, so follow it with the deliriously colorful puzzle game of Capy Critter Crunch – the funny equivalent of a glass of fresh orange juice – orange juice with pieces in it.
The first day was useful: so many games! So many opportunities. Day two is to make a choice and live with them for a while. So Hollow Knight is a magic game for the insect world and I insist you give it all morning. They say it’s a subway ride, but it’s really a place for adventure: go ahead and get the Stagways running again. You can relax in the glittering clutter of Queen’s Station.
Hollow Knight trailer.
What’s for lunch? LocoRoco and Ape Escape! It’s great to have a little carefree to accompany your sandwich. Peristalsis and timers. Good times!
For the afternoon, a little mixed, but it’s still day two, so give each game its moment. IQ Intelligent Qube is a wonderfully weird puzzle dating back to the PS1 era, but it feels weird as if it could be a million years old. Moving on, Primal has been something of an action game since the early 2000s, giving you a great sense of what a PS2 blockbuster might look like at the time. Use this as an entrance to one day browse the dizzyingly rich catalog of this brilliant game console.
Next is Miles Morales, because it’s pure joy, and Concrete Genie, because it’s such a sweet torment – from a superhero to a lone artist who brings to life a derelict port city. Both are enlivened by beautiful details and animation. The paint in Concrete Genie is reason enough to get involved before your brain tries to make sense of the 2D puzzles that take place in the 3D world.
Almost done. How do I bring things home? I think with a game that is for the home. I want to end my two days on the PS Plus journey with Gravity Rush, one of the most beautiful games ever made. This is the story of a clumsy newly carved superhero who can reverse the direction of gravity as they race and descend around a city in the Art Nouveau style, slowly returning new neighborhoods from the air. It’s a reminder that Sony once launched one of the strangest and most enjoyable lavish portable devices of all time – and a reminder that it’s a video game giant that still knows how to surprise.
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