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Playstation Plus Thread 3: Getting The Knack Of These Games

SMD

Member
It is really the first time this year where I look at the list and don't see a game I thought I wanted to buy before.

But that's kind of a good thing? This way you'll try stuff you weren't aware of and might be surprised by what you get.
 

LakeEarth

Member
Just tried Deadly Tower of Monsters, love the 50's B-Movie aesthetic, with the stop motion monsters. Almost let this one slip, but it's a solid isometric action game with a fun hook.
 

Joni

Member
But that's kind of a good thing? This way you'll try stuff you weren't aware of and might be surprised by what you get.

Of course. That will depend on what I find. But it means I probably won't get to those titles too fast.
 

Ted

Member
Played through Grow Home (September 2015) this weekend and found it to be quite a fun little experience. The momentum heavy movement of BUD won't be for everyone but I loved it. The control mechanism combined with BUD's ever smiley face, his handler M.O.M. and the somewhat unguided discovery makes it feel a little like controlling a toddler finding their place in the world.

Short but fun.

I also started Deadly Tower of Monsters (November 2016) but I'm not enjoying this one as much. The deliberately hammy parody misses the mark for me so far, that said, there have been one of two things that have made be chuckle so I will at least carry on through a little further to give it a chance.
 

Ludens

Banned
So today or tomorrow new plus January line-up should be revealed, right? I hope for Gravity Rush, considering it was already included with Plus in Japan and the sequel is coming.
 
Let's see what they are. My Plus expired last month but I actually don't see a reason to get a new one for this month because the games don't interest me at all. Maybe I'll get new Plus if the new ones will be good.
 

bjaelke

Member
Full lineup:

Day of The Tentacle Remastered, PS4 (Cross buy on PS Vita)
This War of Mine: The Little Ones, PS4
Blazerush, PS3
The Swindle, PS3 (Cross Buy on PS4 and PS Vita)
Azkend 2, PS Vita
Titan Souls, PS Vita (Cross Buy on PS4)
 

Benedict

Member
Full lineup:

Day of The Tentacle Remastered, PS4 (Cross buy on PS Vita)
This War of Mine: The Little Ones, PS4
Blazerush, PS3
The Swindle, PS3 (Cross Buy on PS4 and PS Vita)
Azkend 2, PS Vita
Titan Souls, PS Vita (Cross Buy on PS4)

Not that exciting for me.
AKA never buy an good indie game, it will end up on Plus.
Already have DoTTR and The Swindle.
Have This war of Mine on PC and Android and Titan Souls on PC.
 
Another great lineup this month. I've been trying to get my friend to check out Day of the Tentacle, and now he has no excuse not to! Really want give This War of Mine a go, almost bought it during a sale not too long ago.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
Did The Swindle get a patch? If not, PSV version is pretty unplayable after the 3rd or 4th level.

Still an ace game up to that point, but pretty much only playable on the PS4. (For me... Haven't tried on PS3.)
 

Joni

Member
Full lineup:

Day of The Tentacle Remastered, PS4 (Cross buy on PS Vita)
This War of Mine: The Little Ones, PS4
Blazerush, PS3
The Swindle, PS3 (Cross Buy on PS4 and PS Vita)
Azkend 2, PS Vita
Titan Souls, PS Vita (Cross Buy on PS4)

Interesting line-up.
 
I was looking through my PS+ library and noticed I have the Vita versions of the MGS2 and MGS3. How do they perform on Vita? I imagine that some of the buttons are mapped to the rear touch panels?
 

xrnzaaas

Member
One of the best months in a long time imo. I didn't buy Day of the Tentacle after I've noticed that both Broken Age and Grim Fandango landed on PS+ pretty quickly. This War of Mine was also on my list of games to buy. :)
 

Gaaraz

Member
One of the best months in a long time imo.
Agreed, I have a feeling I already have some of these games on other platforms (can't check until I get home) but in some ways I'm happier to have great games that I already own (and a glimmer of hope for the future) than a bunch of games I don't have, but have zero interest in.
 

AndyD

aka andydumi
Interested to try a lot of those out.

Honestly I am really liking the high quality "indie" drive balanced with full games now and again. I spent almost 100 hours in Rebel Galaxy, really enjoyed Transformers, tons of time In Deadly Tower of Monsters and now really liking Stories Path of Destinies. And that's just in the past few months and the backlog just increases like crazy.
 
Really debating on whether to buy another year while it's down to $50 on Amazon. I'd hate to lose online and the discounts but I haven't been too thrilled about the game offerings as of late. I'm still good until the end of March but I refuse to buy plus for $60, especially in its current state.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
I see cdkeys has a year for 45.99 right now. Does it usually go under that price or would this be a good time to grab it?
Sounds decent, especially now that it's $60 right? I think the very lowest I've seen was $35 back when it was still $50/year, but I doubt you'll get that low now.
 

Ted

Member
I played a few PS+ games over the festive period to try and make room for the games from the January line up. Both TWoM and DotT are games I have hovered over buy for a few times and for once been oddly rewarded for my procrastination. I can't wait to see if older me likes DotT as much as younger me did back in the day!

First up was Deadly Tower of Monsters (November 2016), though this isn't going to make any GOTY lists it's a pretty fun little jaunt. I finished it up in around 5 hours and though the hammy b-movie flavour wasn't entirely to my liking they at least do it fairly well and lean into it fully throughout the game. The tower aspect gives a few interesting bits of architecture to traverse here and there but the top down view and average controls didn't really allow me to explore as much as perhaps I would have liked. The "shoot down" mechanic also didn't feel like it really added anything.

Overall, not a great game but not a poor one either. A decent short pallet cleanser between other more involved games.

Next I played a little Hohokum (May 2015). I'm not really sure what this game is or whether it has a point but it is fairly fun whizzing about in the brightly coloured and charmingly designed "levels". It feels like an experiment (perhaps in how far can we go in not telling the player what they have to do / giving the player no or very abstract goals) but could also just be the product of a slightly heady few weeks in a Californian design house. Fun for what it is but I can only see myself playing this again late at night after a little mind expansion.

Finally I started Apotheon (February 2015). I've been wanting to play this since launch but had heard it was pretty buggy (in fairly game breaking ways) so have avoided it until now. It only seems to have a couple of patches but I thought to hell with it and started anyway, So far so good. No crashes and no slow down as yet!

Liking it so far. The art style is beautiful, it's just so perfect for the era the game is aping, somebody somewhere commented on the games aesthetics having a look of a painted but not yet glazed Greek urn and I think that is pretty spot on. The controls are OK but so far neither the platforming or combat are anything more than fine and functional. I have only reached Olympus and beaten a couple of mini bosses though so far so perhaps my opinion will change as I progress. Up to the point I have played it feels like a pretty standard Metroidvania-esque game with a great art style but I'm looking forward to playing more regardless.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Apotheon is playable right now? Niiice, I tried it on the same day it landed on PS+ and it was a horrible experience due to the slowdowns and crashes.
 

Ted

Member
Apotheon is playable right now? Niiice, I tried it on the same day it landed on PS+ and it was a horrible experience due to the slowdowns and crashes.

So far at least.

I'm only through the first level (where you are still on Earth) and played around in a couple of others (Agora and Forest of Artemis) and I'm fairly insensitive to technical hiccups so best to not take my word as gospel.
 

Benedict

Member
Games are up in Sweden

Edit: looks like I forgot to download December lineup. That included games I really wanted... Fist time it happened...
:(

To busy with work, family and sick children...
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Apotheon is playable right now? Niiice, I tried it on the same day it landed on PS+ and it was a horrible experience due to the slowdowns and crashes.

Same, I dropped it cause it kept crashing. I also never saw a single patch release for it but maybe there was one released after I uninstalled it...
 

Ted

Member
Same, I dropped it cause it kept crashing. I also never saw a single patch release for it but maybe there was one released after I uninstalled it...

Patch 1.02 seems to be the last patch (released Feb 22nd 2015) and it includes a few "rare" crash specific notes. I'm not sure however whether the patch ironed out the majority of issues as most of the written commentary from users regarding it centers on the trophy fixes.

It [so far] plays OK on my PS4, I played some more last night - including the Hades level which has a section that seems like it should be more demanding than anything else I have played so far (
a lot of slowly rising fire engulfing the level
) - and didn't note any slow down issues.

I'm not near my PS4 to check but I think total install size is well under a gig so it can't hurt to download again and verify it yourself if you are keen to play it. Hope it goes OK if you do.
 
So I got a Vita recently. Can someone explain how plus crossplay games on Plus work.

I downloaded all the games on PS4, but could only get Azkend and Day of the Tentacle on Vita. Titan Souls and Swindle were nowhere to be found on the EU Vita PS store. Is it not possible to get them on Vita after getting them on PS4?
 

LakeEarth

Member
Azkend 2 is a story graphed onto a puzzle game. It doesn`t really work for me.

I actually really like The Swindle. I`m not a fan of stealth games, but it is very clear what the enemies can and can`t see. I haven`t gotten too far into it though, I`m guessing it may get ridiculous.
 

Joni

Member
So I got a Vita recently. Can someone explain how plus crossplay games on Plus work.

I downloaded all the games on PS4, but could only get Azkend and Day of the Tentacle on Vita. Titan Souls and Swindle were nowhere to be found on the EU Vita PS store. Is it not possible to get them on Vita after getting them on PS4?

It might be easiest to look in your download list on the PC and add them to your Vita download queue.
 
It might be easiest to look in your download list on the PC and add them to your Vita download queue.

That seems to have worked. Got Swindle and Titan Souls this way.

I still don't get why you have to do it this way. Why not just make the games accessible through the store on the Vita? Makes no sense to me.

Anyway, thanks for the help!
 

wetflame

Pizza Dog
Can anyone be a good fella and tell me where i can buy cheaper ps plus 12 months for Europe? Thank you

If anyone knows the best deal for a UK subscription I'd also appreciate a heads up. Although I'm not too fussed about redeeming it right away as the current batch of games don't appeal too strongly and I don't play online multiplayer.
 
If anyone knows the best deal for a UK subscription I'd also appreciate a heads up. Although I'm not too fussed about redeeming it right away as the current batch of games don't appeal too strongly and I don't play online multiplayer.

I haven't seen a decent UK deal for years. CDKEYS is about the cheapest at £34.89
 

Ted

Member
.. that Apotheon (February 2015). I finished it last night and overall I really enjoyed it.

It's not got the best platforming or the best combat but both are done adequately enough to not feel like I am fighting the control scheme at any point. It's not necessarily deep but you do need to get used to the combat to find out what works best for you.

I really liked the art style and the story - though fairly basic - isn't a chore to get through at all. The bosses vary between fairly rote to quite imaginative and nothing is overly hard or frustrating.

I really did like the exploration above all else, the main quests (objectives) are pretty well signposted but there are plenty of side quests that aren't immediately obvious and require you to find and read the clues as well as having to do a reasonable amount of exploring. All in all - trophies included - there's not much you would need to consult a guide for (I really only checked for the find x "stash" side quest trophies) though I didn't bother with the collectibles one (find all lock boxes).

On the bugs, I put in more than ten hours and have had a total of 5 crashes to desktop/OS. Apart from one, these crashes occurred during fast travelling and have always at least crashed cleanly to the report screen. One crash was during a boss fight but the game auto saves at the start of these so I didn't lose too much progress. Equally none of the rest were much of an issue as the game auto saves fairly often and I have been making sure to manually save (9 slots) if I am about to fast travel after making progress where no auto save may have been triggered.

It's a shame that the number of bugs at launch have kept people from this as now that it's running more reliably it is worth a play through if you dig the art style and are up for a simple but fairly effective "Metroidvania".

[LATE EDIT - played some local multi with some old friends and that's pretty good fun as well, could do with some more maps but it's good simple button bashing fun for sure]

I'm also coming close to the end of Day of the Tentacle (January 2017) but as this is a game I played to death way back when it's really been more like revisiting an old friend than playing a new game. The remaster is excellent however, really really lovingly done and being controller-ised hasn't slowed things down too much so I'm going to finish it up and then do one more play through with the dev commentary enabled and call it a day.

Because this isn't new to me I've also started something else to get that new game flavour, this time I'm going to try CounterSpy (March 2015). It looks like good fun. I've only played the tutorial and first level so far but I can see me getting on with this. I am slightly bothered that you can't set the invert Y axis setting independently for the 2d and 3d stuff so have had to blag it using invert and directional controls for 2d but it's not the end of the world.

Playing through all these small but solid PS4 PS+ games lately has really made me question the folk who always post along the lines of "more indie trash" in each monthly PS+ thread. Sure, I'm totally in support of adding some big "AAA" games to the line up more regularly (probably for different reasons than many) but just lumping all these games together as "Indie trash" is complete bullshit, totally inane and frankly insulting to some of these smaller games and the teams making them.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
CounterSpy is awesome. The game just needs more content and more random elements in the levels. I hope they'll fix that in a sequel. If they do I'll buy it without waiting on a PS+ appearance. :)
 

mclem

Member
CounterSpy is awesome. The game just needs more content and more random elements in the levels. I hope they'll fix that in a sequel. If they do I'll buy it without waiting on a PS+ appearance. :)

Yeah, I said something very similar when I played it:

CounterSpy: I enjoyed this for as long as it lasted, but I don't think I'll be replaying it any time soon; the content was wearing awfully thin towards the end, with quite a few repeated rooms. The core gameplay was a lot of fun, though, even if it did get a bit samey and occasionally felt a lilttle unfair. I'd love to see what they could do with a followup.
 
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