Welcome back Button Buddies!
This week is all about the brand new PlayStation Plus subscription service. Do you need it? Perhaps not. Will you impulse purchase it anyway? Absolutely, because we all need more in our Pile Of Shame.
To celebrate the launch, Tim and I have gone through the catalogue to find the gems that we lovingly want to draw your attention to so we can have someone to discuss them with. Like a cat dragging in a dead bird and leaving it on your pillow.
Plus, Tim celebrates some birthdays, and I play Fall Guys and finally get my hands on Paperback in paper form.
Fall Guys is free to play now and that’s fine, I guess
By Alice
Fall Guys is free to play now, and as much as that sentence pains me (I’m allergic to microtransactions), there really hasn’t been a better time to play it since it was first introduced on PlayStation Plus.
Sure, the new paid season pass model is awful, and the rewards aren’t as plentiful as they once were, but the core of the game is still there, and there’s none of that “limited energy/lives” nonsense that plagues other free to play games. It’s still one of the most entertaining multiplayer games I’ve enjoyed in years, and the only non-Forza/non-NBA multiplayer game I’ve persisted with for multiple years in a long time.
In a world filled with bad news and games that focus on violence, Fall Guys is a breath of fresh air. Who wouldn’t want to watch and play as jelly beans with high centres of gravity competing in the most ridiculous games and sports you’ve ever seen.
Remember those inflatable obstacles courses they had at the Melton Wave Pool back in the late 90s/early 2000s? Fall Guys is that, but with a budget.
As a teenager and into my early twenties, my favourite party activity with my friends would be blindfolded musical chairs, and midnight hide and seek (in a large, dark garden, in the country, in the middle of winter). The activities in Fall Guys are what I would have done if I somehow had access to an extremely large bouncy house and unlimited healing potions.
Fall Guys is what battle royales should have been from the beginning instead of those violent games of hide and seek.
Anyway, what I’m saying is that Fall Guys is good, and if you haven’t had a chance to jump in before now, you should.
Alice’s picks
Here are some of the hidden gems and oddities on the service (and NBA 2K22).
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Truly one of the best Assassin’s Creed games, even if it is much too long.
Chicken Police. I don’t know what this is, but the name alone makes it worth playing.
Everybody Golf. Look, I don’t know why I like golf games either, but this one is good.
inFAMOUS Second Son. The inFAMOUS series, despite its unfortunate capitalisation, has some of the most satisfying movement and gameplay from the early 2010s. Revisit it to see if it holds up.
Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. The most medium of the Lego Batman series. This is a good option for couch co-op with kids or friends.
Moving Out. Do you like those stressful cooking games mixed with the stress of moving? This is that game. It is much more fun with friends, but make sure they’re ones you can swear at in the heat of the moment and have everyone understand.
NBA 2K22 for PS4. The City on PS5 was one of the worst things to happen to the NBA 2K series for a long time. The PS4 version is way better for men’s career mode because it doesn’t have The City.
NBA 2K22 for PS5. Play the PS5 version for the WNBA. It’s like what NBA 2K12 was, and I mean that in the best possible way while also side-eyeing the obvious sexism that led to this arrested development.
Tearaway Unfolded. Tearaway is an adorable papercraft game that I wish more people played. Grant this wish.
The Crew 2. A surprisingly good driving game. Like, not great, but very enjoyable.
Tim’s picks
Ignoring the more expensive Deluxe catalogue and its "Classics" for now, here are my 10 favourite games included in PlayStation Plus Extra:
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. A wonderful fairytale narrative adventure with surprising emotion and a unique twin-stick control.
Celeste. Hardcore pixel-perfect platforming meets a stunning self-care message and incredible music with just the right balance of challenge and support.
Control. A satisfying shooter with an emphasis on aggression and creative locomotion, bound together with an exhilaratingly bizarre metaphysical thriller setting.
Final Fantasy VIII Remastered. It may be a black sheep of the series, but from the melodramatic teen amnesia story to the incredible steampunk meets nature world, VIII is my favourite.
God of War. Instituting a peerless cinematic presentation but retaining its gold standard hack-and-slash gameplay, this series return finally made Kratos interesting, even likeable.
Horizon Zero Dawn. A very confident spin on action-RPG conventions and on the idea of a post-apocalyptic survival tale, with ancient robotic dinosaurs.
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Expanding on and refining one of the greatest super-hero games ever made, complex combat and a hard-hitting story makes this sequel superior.
XCOM 2. A permadeath tactical masterpiece, which pits your long-term skill investments and fragile human soldiers against intimidating and subversive alien enemies.
Uncharted 4. Effortlessly mixing relatable humanity with fantastical settings, this sits alongside The Last of Us 2 as an ultimate expression of Naughty Dog’s approach to interactive storytelling.
Until Dawn. Supermassive’s original and best video game take on the 80s slasher movie, it puts the pressure of decision-making and the weight of the bloody outcomes on you and your friends.
Teething troubles but plenty of promise
By Tim
It can be hard to quantify the positive or negative reception of something like the new PlayStation Plus. For the most part we can only go off the loudest Twitter opinion-havers and professional video games media types, mainly discussing the mechanical operation of the service rather than the content itself.
And yes, there’s been plenty to nitpick. The splitting of the catalogue into two tiers makes little sense, the PS1 games on offer are, in Australia, the inferior and slower PAL releases (which Sony has said it will fix). And there were all manner of launch day cock-ups, which have largely been resolved.
But what if you’re looking at the product less as a topic of discussion, and more as a potential alternative to buying your games at full price? Does it tick the boxes?
As great as PS4-era Sony blockbusters like God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn are, I hesitate to say their inclusion here makes the service worthwhile. You can often get them on disc for $10 or less, so if you missed these games just buying one or two a month is likely a better shout.
Access to big third-party games like Control and Red Dead Redemption 2 is an added value, although I am concerned that RDR2 is being so heavily advertised with the service yet appears to be leaving PlayStation Plus in September. Is access to a big game for three months going to be a regular thing on the service?
Access to PS1 games is a novelty on PS4 and PS5, and the included save and rewind features are brilliant. But the catalogue is paltry at launch, considering the cost of the Deluxe tier.
Right now I think the new PS+ only really makes sense for someone who’s really big on exploring lots of different games, doesn’t already have a large library and is willing to let go of the idea of game ownership. The main thing it’s missing compared to Game Pass is the feeling that new games will come out every month and be included at no extra cost, so that you’re getting value beyond the back catalogue.
But it’s obviously worth remembering that this is only month one for the service, and its slightly awkward launch likely won’t define it for long.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
I’ve spoken before about how much I enjoy the Paperback card game app on iPad, even though it’s completely broken. Recently, a lovely friend brought me back a paper copy from the US and I’ve been enjoying falling back in love with the deck building mechanics.
If you’ve never played, the concept is Scrabble, but with capitalism. You make words out of your letter cards in the hopes of buying better letters that earn more “cents” to add to your deck so you can then buy cards that give you “prestige”. The winner is the person who, at the end of the game, has the most prestige points.
It’s one of those games you can get extremely competitive about, or just play for the love of words and language.
One interesting thing about taking it from the screen to the table is that I never thought about how much set up was involved. There are so many little stacks of cards that must be neatly prepared and maintained. I hadn’t ever really thought about how many cards were in each pile, or what it meant, or really understood the literary awards and how they could be a victory condition. All that detail certainly means I’m more likely to want to play multiple games in one sitting than just bring it out for a single game, because there’s so much to explore.
It shows how the differences between playing digitally and playing for real can be impressive, even with such a simple game.
It’s disappointing that the app crashes so frequently, and that it’s so difficult to find the game in Australia. But, if you like word games and deck building, it’s the kind of game you can play for years and years and still want more, so it’s worth tracking down.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
As we end another month, it’s time to take a look at some games that have celebrated significant birthdays throughout June.
Now 10: Gravity Rush. Arriving shortly after the launch of the PlayStation Vita, this is a beautiful and ambitious game that really showed off what the platform could do, and it remains one of Sony’s best efforts on the portable. Following fledgling superhero Kat through a French-inspired floating city and a convoluted but lighthearted story told in comic book style, it offers a unique vibe matched with equally unique gameplay. Kat can control the direction of gravity in the space immediately around her, meaning she can walk on or under any surface, fall directly up to fly, or even tilt gravity slightly to go faster on the ground. It remains a fascinating action adventure to this day, and you get it and its sequel through the new PS+.
Now 25: Final Fantasy Tactics. Although it didn’t invent the tactics RPG genre — being preceded by Fire Emblem, Shining and Tactics Ogre — Final Fantasy Tactics on the original PlayStation was how many players in the west were introduced to the genre, and it remains a sterling example. It’s a complex game with 3D battlefields of varying terrain, a job class system and a deadly serious political storyline, but things are also flexible enough to allow for a lot of experimentation, customisation and play. Though FFT has been phenomenally influential, none of its own sequels or remakes have managed to replicate the magic of the original.
Now 35: Dizzy. Only in the 1980s could a pair of twin children create a game series about a cartoon egg and have it become one of the most successful British gaming franchises of the time. Originally a puzzle platformer where the tumbling, boggle-eyed Dizzy needed to find and carry certain items to progress, over time the series encompassed many genres and styles in more than 20 games and heaps of compilations. Playing them today can be a head-scratching experience and more or less necessitates a written guide. But the early entries are excellent reminders of gaming culture in the 80s home computer era, where players were also creators.