THREE TO PLAY
PSN games you might have missed
Every month, loads of games come to the PS Store. You’d be hard-pressed to play them all, so we’re looking at some that didn’t make the cut for a full review. This month, we look at strange twists on standard relationships across love, deaths, and, er, neighbours.
Thought the moustachioed Mr Peterson from the first game was creepy enough? Well, Hello Neighbor 2 brings him back and adds a whole cast of oddball neighbours to the town of Raven Brooks. It boasts advanced AI; all we can attest to is that playing as an investigative journalist hero trying to avoid the patrolling threats is a tough challenge. Stealth is a must if you want to avoid being hunted down, but you’ll need to poke around the homes of all the residents to solve mysteries, which do involve some pleasing puzzling. While some of the edges are a little rough, there’s good reason the series has become a multimedia sensation as there’s a quirky, family-friendly charm to this survival horror.
Looking for something a touch sweeter, and without any dodgy lip hair? Raptor Boyfriend: A High School Romance has you covered. Playing as teen girl Stella, you move to the smalltown of Ladle, home to cryptids. In addition to the titular desirable dinosair Robert Raptorson, this dating sim also allows you to get closer to fairy Day Lilly and sasquatch Taylor Tall-Toe. There’s plenty of interactivity to be had as you make decisions about who to phone or even which potential sweetheart to drop off first in the car. While it’s obviously tongue-incheek and quite funny, that doesn’t mean it skimps on emotions. This is a genuinely engaging and sweet little tale that romance fans shouldn’t miss.
While the recent Valkyrie Elysium didn’t exactly wow us, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth now joins it on modern consoles for the first time. Much better than Elysium, this is a port of the PSP game which is itself a port of the 1999 PS1 original. With dungeons that are almost more like a platform game and a unique party system that has you recruiting dead einherjar as you shepherd them through the afterlife, there’s really no other RPG series quite like it. Where else will you regularly get to know new companions but then also have to come to terms with when to let them move on? While lengthy, we recommend this over the newer Elysium.