LAST MONTH ON PS PLUS
How’s everybody getting on with their New Year’s resolutions? Personally, I’m finding my promise to “share more” to be… challenging (get your FILTHY PAWS off my limited-edition DualShock). But PS Plus set a stellar example for me last month, with freebies sharing the love across PS4 and PS Vita alike. Warmed my cold little heart, it did.
Yes, compatibility with Cross-Play meant that DAY OF THE TENTACLE REMASTERED wrapped its feelers – or, rather, feeler – around both consoles. As irreverently rib-tickling as it ever was on ye olde MS-DOS back in 1993, the point-and-click’s lick of graphical paint and eternally ingenious puzzles were a welcome New Year gift. But we were suckers for a good sob story with second headliner THIS WAR OF MINE:
THE LITTLE ONES (PS4). The charcoalsmudged, strategic survival sim was tough in more ways than one. The brutal difficulty of keeping yourself and your wee whippersnappers safe, plus heartwrenching moral decisions to make… We’ll never forgive ourselves for robbing that old lady blind.
Psych! THE SWINDLE proved we were all born thieves. Stealing onto PS3 and PS Vita as well as PS4, the cybercrime caper pitted players against highsecurity buildings, permadeath and a 100-day countdown to filch as much as you could. Less ambitious was arcade racer BLAZERUSH (PS3). A handful of entertaining modes and a valiant attempt at some Micro Machines-esque colour couldn’t save it from skidding into relative insignificance.
But while simple ‘match-three’ PS Vita puzzler AZKEND 2 suffered a similar fate, it was tiny TITAN SOULS’s Dark Souls/Shadow Of The Colossus tension that kept us bouncing between PS4 and PS Vita – again! – for just one more boss fight. Maybe I could get used to sharing.