There’s a hot new game on the North American PlayStation Store: it’s called 5-Star 1000 Top Rated. The 98 cent digital download is essentially a slide puzzle title that’s billed as the “world’s fastest Platinum Trophy game”. Watch its launch trailer in the video embedded above and you can see that it’s clearly not shy about its intentions. But should it be allowed?

As someone who’s argued strongly against PlayStation Store curation, this author’s feeling conflicted right now. Easy Trophy games are not uncommon on the PS4 – both My Name Is Mayo and Mr. Massagy have similar intentions – but they aren’t sold solely on the premise of being gimmes. Moreover, for as simplistic as those games are, there’s actual work gone into them.

This slide puzzle title is truly awful. There’s no music – the trailer even pokes fun at that fact – and you only need to complete five puzzles to unlock the Platinum. That’s if you can finish them in the first place – your humble host finds slide puzzles beyond frustrating, as demonstrated in the video.

What can Sony do about this kind of thing? We still strongly believe PlayStation Store curation is a bad thing – especially at a time when some corners of the games press seem to be labelling the platform holder as anti-indie – but surely a title can’t be sold solely on the premise of its Trophies. That’s not right, is it?

[source bit.ly]