Topic: PlayStation Plus | OT |

So, having just re-subbed to Playstation Plus, I decided I'm going to play and finish (or drop, if I really dislike the game) at least one game every month, and I thought it'd be fun to talk about those here. I put names of various games into a list randomizer and what turned up first was... something called 10 Second Ninja X. It only took two hours or so to beat, although there is apparently a bunch of post-game content that I'm probably not going to bother with. For what it's worth, it's a decent platformer, with some clever puzzle elements to its levels. The idea is that, in each level, you get ten seconds to kill all the enemies, and you're awarded from one to three stars depending on how quickly you complete it. My first instinct was to keep replaying levels until I three-starred them, but I quickly tired of that and settled on two-starring everything, as I felt like that would show an adequate grasp of the flow and mechanics of each level. While I didn't want to spend an inordinate amount of time playing the game, I also didn't want to blow through it like it was nothing.

There's... not much of a story. A pirate guy kidnaps you, but you quickly learn he's just working through emotional problems, and there's an obnoxious janitor who has a sort of character arc, I suppose. it's weird.

I'll give it a 5/10, based on Push Square's scoring policy. Nothing exceptional or memorable about this at all, but it controls well and is a perfectly adequate experience. Played on Vita.

Anyone else playing the free games this month?

Onrush
I'm mostly enjoying it so far. Very simple and arcade-y racer with a focus on aggressive driving. As usual with fast racing games, though, I kind of suck at it, and crash constantly when I'm playing. With that said, unlike something like Fast RMX, the game doesn't punish you heavily for it, and just kind of throws you back into the race. I've won the majority of races I've played so far, even crashing a lot, although I imagine that'll change once I get further into the single-player campaign or when I go online.

All of the cars have different skills that subtly change how you'll play a given race, which adds an extra layer of depth to it, and there's a threadbare story mode that's still enough to keep me engaged for an hour or two at a time.

I mostly like the aesthetics of it. It's a very colorful game. The character models look pretty average, though, and the dubstep music it plays after you win a race is annoying. Also hate the replay that activates whenever someone trashes my car.

Iconoclasts
Playing this one on my Vita to have it portable. It's a BEAUTIFUL game. This is the way to do sprite art. It's not quite as exquisitely detailed as something like Owlboy, but it looks really, really nice. With that said, it might perhaps be better on Switch or PS4, as the character sprites are tiny against the giant environmental backdrops.

The game controls brilliantly, and is incredibly responsive. It's very plot-heavy so far, and seems to be set in some sort of oppressively theocratic fantasy realm. It kind of throws you into the middle of things, and you're forced to figure out character relationships and what's going on in the larger plot from contextual clues (so far... I'm only an hour and a half in, so this could change significantly).

Really happy with this one so far.

@Ralizah I've been playing those two these last two days. And I think I'm agreeing with you on most points. Though I am a little farther into Iconoclasts.

The graphics in Iconoclasts are out of this world beautiful. Sprite art can be so satisfying in motion. I like the gameplay so far too (bosses are fun), though I haven't spotted a lot out of the ordinary.

OnRush was made for me. It plays like it's the follow-up to ExciteTruck (the best game on the Wii), which is all I could ask for. I played the heck out of the beta, so I kinda knew what I was in for.

Brilliant game.

So, there's at least one boss I've encountered now that requires the player to defeat it by playing two different characters, who have to engage in teamwork to defeat the boss. It's the first such encounter in the game that has really stood out to me.

And yes, sprite art, when a lot of effort is put into it, can look amazing. The flip-side is that I find myself being turned off games with terrible-looking sprite art, like Celeste. I just can't pay $20 for a game that looks like that. Which is fine, as I'm kind of hoping to try it out one day as a PS+ freebie anyway.

That's a weird way to spell "Super Mario Galaxy."

@Ralizah @Kidfried Thanks for the early impressions. This month has games I’m quite excited about, especially in comparison to the last couple months. OnRush and Soma both have me curious enough to try, and now you have me thinking about Iconoclasts, which I had not been planning to play. The real highlight for me is actually Papers, please. I literally had gone to download it a couple weeks ago, thinking it had already been a PS Plus game many months ago, only to discover I was mistaken and so I was contemplating just buying it and decided not to. That’s the first time in a long while that has happened where I was literally thinking of buying a game just days before and then it gets announced as a freebie (probably last time it happened for me was Bloodborne). So I’m probably going to try Papers, please first with my Vita before Iconoclasts. I just wish Steins;Gate was offered as crossbuy on Vita too but for some reason they only gave away the PS3 version. I’ve always wanted to play that. Alas, I haven’t turned on my PS3 in ages and don’t plan to either. (Curses for the lack of backwards compatibility!).
Anyways, thanks for the very informative impressions of these titles.

@Th3solution I can't really summon much enthusiasm for Papers, Please, as I've owned it on PC for, like, six years, but it's a fantastic and pretty harrowing experience, and one I'm hoping more people will try. There's really nothing else like it on the market.

And, yes, if you don't mind how heavily story-driven the game is, absolutely try Iconoclasts out. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

@Th3solution I already own (and have finished) Papers, Please, on multiple platforms even. I would recommend playing that over Iconoclasts too, if you're only going to play one Plus indie game this month. Still, if you have the time, just play all of the titles.

@Kidfried @Ralizah Time. There’s the rub. Where does it all go? 😛 Another reason I was looking hard at Papers, please was my understanding that it is relatively short. It’s been a rough few weeks for me schedule-wise and the forecast looks like it’s not letting up anytime soon, so time is limited. But I see Iconoclasts is only about a 13 hour game, so that seems manageable also. Blasted RDR2 is the only epic I think I can tolerate opening up right now. And that’s another reason OnRush seems like a reasonable game for one to just boot up for short spells and doesn’t require 80 hours of dedication to maximize the enjoyment.

Wasn't too keen on Onrush when I tried it over the free weekend, so I will give that a pass. Already have Soma, but yet to even start it. Will give Iconoclasts a look after you guys comments

OnRush is quickly climbing up the ranks as one of my favorite games of the year.

PS+ Games for January...

Nothing of interest to me - I may add Steep just because I can....

Nothing of interest to me in January, unfortunately.

@BAMozzy nice I've just read the blog. Steep is a, nice choice.

@Ralizah Nor me either.

A good lineup to push the PS store January sales

Eeesch... 2019 doesn’t seem to be off to a very good start.
Not that I have a shortage of games to play, but I don’t have any interest in any of these.

@JohnnyShoulder @Th3solution Thankfully, there are a large number of PS+ games in my backlog, so I'll take this opportunity to play some of those, instead!

@themcnoisy Steep is pants unfortunately

@Ralizah @Th3solution Yeah same here, I have several games I've added to my library and not even downloaded. Not complaining, as I think ps+ is good value. The amount of games I got from service far exceeds the price that I pay for it.

@JohnnyShoulder I miss Frank Derbin. What a bunch of films they should give that out on psplus.