I have been a loyal PlayStation owner since I received my PS2 in middle school. We’ve come a long way from games like Dark Cloud to games like The Last Guardian. We get games that are nostalgic but also evolving like God of War 4, but also get to experience new adventures like Until Dawn.
We all have those games that feel almost like coming home. Mine is in games like God of War, Okami, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Shadow of the Colossus. Maybe it’s because you played so much that you got all the trophies or you just don’t know how to stop because they just feel right.
But then there are those games that feel like coming back to an embarrassing and awkward moment in your life. Maybe you bought them because you were naïve and had high expectations or maybe you knew they would suck but still thought they’d entertain you… but then they didn’t. Or maybe they were just cheap!
With the PS4 being about five-years-old, we now have five years’ worth of games to browse online and in our local stores. It’s amazing how much can come out in five years! Now when I go to my local GameStop, I can’t tell what would be good and what would suck anymore. I don’t even know how old anything is anymore unless they are sitting on the new releases shelf or have made the news. Let’s get into some forgotten games, the good and the bad. Think about these on your next shopping trip.
22 Second Look: A Beautiful Game
Okami was first released more than ten years ago in 2006 for the PS2. The fact that this game keeps getting remade for every new console should be a hint that it’s worth playing again. It has been re-released to PS4 in December 2017 with its beautiful ukiyo-e art style, sweet story, and the ability to know look even more stunning on a 4K TV. Some articles have claimed that this version of Okami is the perfect example of a successful remaster.
For those who have not yet had the blessing of playing Okami, now is the time to do it! The price is a steal for the amount of gameplay, entertainment, and wonder you will receive back. While this game has gotten almost one hundred percent positive attention since it came out, it is now about twelve years old! If you played it back in 2006, now is a good time to pick it back up. The game, like Shadow of the Colossus, is still an amazing experience worth re-visiting.
There is also so much to do in the game! Collect all the stray beads or make sure to do every hidden quest. Go ahead, the amazing land of Nippon is waiting.
21 Stay Lost: Big Creature, Big Disappointment
Being Godzilla sounds fun, right? Just smash buildings and let out your inner monster? How did a game somehow make that boring?
Godzilla became known for its clunky gameplay and repetitiveness. In an attempt to cater to fans who loved the old movies, the game is mostly gray as a way to seem like one of the old movies. Except that idea backfired into just an uninteresting and depressing visual.
The game is split into ten to fifteen-minute chunks. After the first chunk, you’ve basically experienced all the game has to offer.
These are not even satisfying loops, they are the kind of loops you don’t want. They somehow made destruction not fun. Buildings have health bars and all fall in the same manner and all leave the same rubble pile with smoke.
All the monsters are lumbering and cumbersome so moving and controlling them is no fun. It tests your patience. As you move through the gameplay, your monsters can become stronger but they certainly don’t feel any better. Most gamers only played this game a few times out of curiosity. Also, this costs more than the remastered Okami! Video game prices sometimes really don’t make sense.
20 Second Look: A Strangely Unique Game
This first episode of this game was released back in 2015 and now has a prequel, Before the Storm, and a sequel in the making. Life is Strange is worth a revisit for its unique story, branching choices, and interesting characters.
You get to play as an eighteen-year-old photography student, Max, who mysteriously gains time-travel powers. Through the use of her powers, you can puzzle solve situations by learning information and then rewinding time and using that information.
Despite having a power so huge like time-travel, the game keeps itself pretty humble and simple while still executing exciting twists and dark revelations. Max never goes power crazy or dons a mask and cape (though her friend Chloe calls her a “super-Max”), but instead, Max just uses her powers for everyday deeds like remembering someone’s name or stopping someone from getting hit by a football.
The story has a good build-up and climax as Max begins using her powers with more risk involved, like breaking into the principal’s office, constantly saving her friend’s life, and eventually trying to save everyone from a huge storm.
The game has some awful slang that gave critics the shivers, but I thought the slang was hilarious and only added to the fact that Max and her friends are nerds.
Art by Sakimichan.
19 Stay Lost: A Game About Mayo?
A lot of gamers are offended that My Name is Mayo can even be called a game. All you do is click on a jar of mayo. That’s it! Hm, I wonder why the gamers are all mad?
How you click the jar of mayo and how many times can unlock “storylines.” There are four of them. The storylines unlock outfits and some of the mayo’s thoughts, that’s it! It’s literally just a trophy bank. Just spam click it for five minutes and you’ll probably get like ten different achievements. It’s an easy platinum, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to buy the game. In fact, it’s probably an embarrassing reason. Achievement hunters can’t be that desperate, can they?
I’m sure you’re curious now, but please save your sanity and don’t spend your hard earned ninety-nine cents on this game. Instead, watch a YouTube video of someone playing it and sharing their sad and strange adventure of clicking a jar over and over. I mean, with ninety-nine cents you can like get a candy bar or feed a goose. Those are separate ideas. Don’t feed a goose a candy bar. I hope I just saved you a dollar.
18 Second Look: A Return To A Classic Series
I have little faith in video games that are based on movies or TV shows, but lately, some games have been changing my mind. Alien: Isolation was definitely a winner and a game that honored the Alien franchise.
Alien: Isolation is a survival horror game so you need to get very skilled at hiding, being quiet, and running away at the right time. It’s very stressful, but that’s part of the fun! You also get to play the daughter of one of the greatest female horror protagonists: Ellen Ripley. So you play as Amanda Ripley. She actually wasn’t invented just for the game either, as an extended cut of Aliens does introduce her character.
Alien: Isolation shows that Amanda did not exactly have a normal life. The game takes place fifteen years after Alien while Amanda is working as an engineer and is looking for any information about her mother’s disappearance.
This game was burdened with really high expectations since it’s based on one of the most famous sci-fi horror movies of all time. I am not claiming to be a die-hard fan, but I have seen all the films and this game felt pretty true to the monsters, spaceship designs, and story.
17 Stay Lost: The Slow Crawl
I love cheap indie games, but sometimes you’re really taking a chance. Think of Basement Crawl as Bomberman, but not good. The opening caught my attention with a creepy banter between a little girl and her grandma talking about the dangers of the outside world along with these horror-centric images of bodies, clowns, and broken toys. The grandma sounds clingy and sinister and I’m like, “Oh, this is my kind of thing,” but then I realized this isn’t a story-centered game and that’s fine but then I realized it just sucked. There are no other story elements, so why even put that scene in the beginning? It actually felt like a stunt to trick you into thinking this game was something else.
This is a multiplayer only game, as well.
No tutorials or AI to even practice on. So you’ll probably have to lose terribly at least a dozen times against real players before you get the gist of what you’re doing.
Not a very satisfying way to learn. It’s also an eight-player game with only four characters to choose from, so another frustrating component is you sometimes forget which avatar you are on the screen because some people will be the same. And no, there is not even a marker to help you tell which one you are.
16 Second Look: Give The Guardian A Chance
Team ICO makes extraordinary games. If you were with them from the beginning, you’ve probably played Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Their games focus a lot on silence, the beauty of nature, and on their mysterious civilization that they reveal very little about.
All the games take place in the same mysterious world but each tells a different story. The Last Guardian is a little more like Ico than Shadow of the Colossus, as you have a silent companion that you travel with to help you through puzzles. Though instead of a girl, we get Trico, a cat-like griffon-like creature.
You play as a child who forms this bond with Trico as you both try to escape this landscape of towers, forests, and cages (sounds very familiar to Ico).
There have been a lot of complaints that the Trico mechanics can be frustrating. You can tell the creature to jump up and instead it jumps down. However, as a narrative, that frustration issue actually works! Animals don’t always do what you want. Also, Trico is so cute, it’s really hard for us to get mad at her.
The character development in Trico is wonderful. Starting off as feral and weak, you get the see the creature grow stronger and more loyal with your journey.
15 Stay Lost: Ghosts Not Wanted
Here’s an example of when turning a popular movie into a game turns out poorly. It won’t matter how much you loved the movie because this co-op game features no characters from the movie and actually has few tie-ins to the movie if any. There are a couple cameos, but only for monsters. The actual characters we probably wanted to see when purchasing this game are only mentioned in passing.
The characters feel plastic with no memorable qualities and the attempts of humor fall terribly flat. It’s a group of beginners, so there was a lot of opportunity for relatable characters and good humor. Since what makes Ghostbusters great is its witty humor, that’s a huge factor missing.
The gameplay is just shooting at ghosts until their health bar is depleted and then suck them up. That is not so bad, could be worse, but it’s not so loyal to Ghostbusters. In the movie, we have laser beams and traps, not guns! Yeah, you basically shoot ghosts with guns to lower their health.
With all this in mind, this game has pretty much been labeled a mindless money-grabber by the gaming community. I feel most gamers who get this are either not very experienced when choosing their games, or it was a gift from an unknowing family member.
14 Second Look: A Great MMO
This is my favorite massively multiplayer online game. While most people who play are on the PC, I own it for the PS4 and have been very satisfied.
You don’t have to be a Final Fantasy fan to get into the world. Sure there are Moogles, Chocobos, and familiar beasts, but like most Final Fantasy games the game has its own independent world and stories.
Out of all MMOs I’ve played, I’d say Final Fantasy 14 has the best story and characters. MMOs typically don’t care so much about their NPCs or story, so I really appreciated that I could both play a massively multiplayer game AND get a good story at the same time.
If you love customization, this game is for you.
You get to be a cat-person, dragon-person, tiny person, human, elf, or giant. You can be every single class and raise them at different levels depending on what you want to play. So if you max out the samurai class, you can just move on to black mage next. There are tons of classes in crafting, foraging, and combat. There are free companies and guilds to join. You can get your own mounts, get married, get a house, and there are a ton of dungeons. Also, the Hildebrand quests have the most comedic cutscenes I’ve ever seen in a video game. Basically, this game can easily take over your life for years.
13 Stay Lost: No Life For A Tiger
Some reviews have called Life of Black Tiger the worst game to ever grace the PS4. Why? If the fact this used to just be a mobile game isn’t a hint, maybe the trailer was? When the trailer hit the screens, it did not even attempt to hide what you would be buying: a story about a tiger just running around and hunting with very poor and ugly graphics.
That’s it really, just running around as a tiger and hunting is the game. You hold down the same button and get the same attack animation over and over again along with a roar. Sometimes you get missions to walk slowly places or run quickly places or avoid other predators.
There is also a hilarious amount of poorly rendered animals that don’t belong in the same ecosystem.
As the game increases in difficulty, it only becomes less bearable because everything just takes longer. The upgrades for the tiger also make very little difference.
There is a weird story that seems hastily put into the game about the tiger finding love and having a baby. This is told with stock photos. Also when the tiger does have a baby, he states that he’s happy it’s not black like him. Um, what? Whose idea was this?!
12 Second Look: Don’t Leave This Game Alone
Never Alone has received some poor reviews from big-name game critics, but I don’t think it’s a game that should be forgotten, especially since it’s gotten mostly positive reviews by the everyman gamers themselves.
The little indie game tells stories of Iñupiat (native Alaskan people’s) traditions and folklore. It was developed in partnership with the Alaska Native community. The visuals are very creative and beautiful and it tells a story that gives you a warm heart once finished.
The one drawback is it’s not really a single-player game. You can play it alone, but it’s a far better experience with a partner. While single-player may have gotten the game a wider audience, I don’t think that’s what they should have strived for when it lessens the quality of gameplay.
A game done right is when you feel a culture rather than hear or see it, and I think Never Alone accomplished that feat. As for the story, you play as a young Iñupiat girl and an arctic fox as they set out to find the source of the eternal blizzard which threatens the survival of everything they have ever known. Both of the characters are adorable and encounter figures from the culture’s folklore.
11 Stay Lost: Under The Umbrella
Umbrella Corps is a Resident Evil spinoff game, so it might have tricked a lot of gamers into thinking it would be a quality game. Once the game got into the hands of critics, they begged anyone and everyone to not buy the game.
There is evidence that Capcom even knew this game was not good, thus they sold it at a lower price than their usual games. They were sneaky, though, and created DLC where you can play as your favorite Resident Evil characters. Thus this game no one liked has a deluxe edition!
So what’s bad about the game? It’s incredibly repetitive to the point that it feels like there is no content. You collect the same DNA samples over and over. There are two modes and a mission gauntlet. If you wanted a story, you found yourself dry with this game. No characters or story, just wandering around and shooting in a very boring environment. If you thought you’d get to know more about the Umbrella Corporation, then you’d be met with severe disappointment. There are not even bosses! Resident Evil is known for its horrific bosses! You do get diary notes, but it’s honestly just a guy whining, nothing worth anything.
10 Second Look: A Good Game In Wolf’s Clothing
I am a huge fan of Telltale for its comic-book style graphics and role-playing decisions. The company also has a creative way of taking a franchise that already exists and making original stories and characters in that universe that feels authentic. The Walking Dead series is probably their biggest hit and one of my favorite game series out there.
If you’re a comic book fan, you may have read the Fables series, which is about fairytale characters living in New York. The biggest main characters are probably Snow White and Bigby (the Big Bad Wolf), who both play important roles to keep their fairytale community under cover from the “mundies” (short form of “mundane,” sort of like “muggle”).
The comic is incredibly creative, showing how certain characters would struggle in real-world New York.
Beauty and Beast are the only couple that hasn’t divorced out of all the married fairytale couples. Many are in debt. You get to play as probably the most interesting character, Bigby, who is the sheriff. Fairytale folk like him use what called “glamours” to hide their animal forms and be regular people on the streets (though some can’t afford that and are sent to a farm). You get to solve some major crime with characters like Grendel, the Woodsman, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, and tons of other interesting characters. This game seriously needs a sequel.
9 Stay Lost: Belongs In The Beyond
Let me immediately point out that this game is nowhere near as bad as the other “Stay Lost” games on the list. In fact, it’s gotten rather decent reviews. However, it is one example of how many of David Cage’s games somehow fall flat even though they start out with creative concepts. Games like this and Heavy Rain claim to be story and emotion-centered, but instead, they end up with many clichés.
Beyond: Two Souls is a story about a girl who basically has a ghost attached to her. The game skips around their lives together as experiments, working for the government, being homeless, and then living with a family of Native Americans.
You sort of skip around the map of her life and with different themes so much that you don’t really feel attached to the world or characters that you meet. It’s just constant whip-lash with each chapter.
It would not be so bad if the game did not so proudly claim itself to be emotional and story-driven. It would also not be so bad if we didn’t compare it to other games out there that do story far better.
If you want a game about choice with emotion and amazing characters, look at what Telltale, BioWare, or Team Ico has to offer instead.
8 Second Look: A Strong Return To A Series
It’s scary how this good game was cast out from the gaming community. In fact, it was met with such bland reviews that BioWare is taking a break from the franchise. So why does it deserve a second look?
If you loved Mass Effect and did not play Andromeda because of its reviews, you are missing out. I’ll lay it out plainly: our game critics failed us. Andromeda kept what made Mass Effect good and added more of what I wanted to see. There is far more exploration, as you are colonizing an entirely new galaxy!
As a sociologist nerd, I always loved how Mass Effect detailed alien race and culture, and in Andromeda, we got an entirely new alien race… and its culture might even be my favorite one yet! What’s more exciting than meeting a whole new race and dealing with their trust and lack of it.
The game handled making a sequel incredibly well considering the different endings for Mass Effect 3. You get to learn about the Reaper threat in Andromeda, but it’s left pretty open-ended as to the fate of your home. There is also a fascinating mystery in the game that someone knew about the Reapers (probably even before Shepard and Saren) and thus made up the idea for colonizing the Andromeda galaxy.
If you’ve never even played Mass Effect, Andromeda is also a great game for beginners as well.
7 Stay Lost: This One Should Skate Away
This would have been better off as a cell phone game. I have not experienced Tony Hawk’s other games, but have heard they are good while this one is the worst of them. Pro Skater 5 has shoe-box sized places to explore. Sure, they look big, but then you learn there are invisible walls everywhere and that if you could actually see the limited space you have to skate, it’s actually claustrophobic.
The missions are incredibly frustrating. You have to find an exact path to complete some of the missions like the ones where you have to go through all the rings. That ruins part of the fun, as I’d like to find my own path, not some exact path we all have to figure out. There should be multiple ways to move about in a skating game!
The physics are a little strange too, like the way the skater slams onto the ground doesn’t flow well and looks clunky.
This is also a glitch nightmare. There are game-breakers in this! Sometimes the camera can just stop following your character or it vibrates so much that the game gets confusing. You can also randomly glitch through objects. The game also crashes, a lot. If that crashes during an auto-save point, say bye-bye to your twelve-hour game file!
6 Second Look: The Rise Of Lara
The sequel to the Tomb Raider reboot, Rise of the Tomb Raider, got really stunning reviews. Something that sets it apart from your average PS4 game is there is a manor chapter you can experience via VR headset. Though I haven’t experienced it in VR myself, I have heard that it’s either the best VR game or it’ll give you motion sickness. When it comes to Tomb Raider, I am all there for the creepy places, so the manor was one of my favorite parts.
This game was released as a 20-year celebration of Tomb Raider, and the quality of the game is something that feels worthy of celebration. There are a lot of add-ons with an “Ultimate Survivor” difficulty mode, new outfits, new guns, classic Lara skins, “Endurance Mode,” more expedition cards, and Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch.
If you enjoyed the Tomb Raider that took place before, this is a proper continuation of Lara’s journey.
The story has good pacing and I haven’t found anything left unresolved. There is a bigger emphasis on resource gathering with makes you hunt, forage, and look for supplies to get gear upgrades. There is also gathering collectibles to increase Lara’s ancient language knowledge. So nothing is really given to you, you have to find it for yourself, with is part of the fun!
5 Stay Lost: Nothing Amazing About This Superhero
Superheroes almost feel like they exist to make good games. Spider-Man, however, hasn’t been as lucky as Batman. The one positive The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had for me was the swinging from building to building. That’s something they got right.
However, the combat in this game sucked due to its repetitiveness. You can sneak attack, but if you’re like me, you’re going to get caught. If you’re not like me, you’re still probably going to get caught because this game doesn’t do a great job at telling you when the coast is clear.
It has glitches where villains walk endlessly into walls. Sometimes if you’re lucky (or unlucky), it’ll happen in a boss fight which will either make the boss stuck and easy to beat or invincible and you’ll have to start the fight over.
The plot is totally incoherent. You can choose dialogue, but it’s really dumb because you are just picking what order Peter Parker will be saying these things. It’s not branching choices or anything. That’s actually so unneeded that it’s funny.
This game was just plain bad and I think the only reason it sells is because it’s Spider-Man. Well, I suppose that happens with a lot of games.
4 Second Look: Breaking Free
If you like prison dramas, The Escapists is your game. This is a strategy RPG about breaking out of prison! This game is good enough to be addicting. This is not all in the same prison. With each prison you escape, a new one is unlocked for you to try next. Each one takes a couple hours for you to get the hang of things and successfully escape. There is a lot of trial and error to seeing what works and what doesn’t.
There is a lot of strategy in this game. It’s typical to start off by following the prison’s daily routine to get the flow of things and know who is where and when. You need to pay attention to details like when there is roll-call, when you can get away with stealing an item, or when no one is around a certain locked door.
The game will be unforgiving if you get caught. Much like I imagine real prison to be like, they’ll take away all of your hard work like all your items and built passageways that you worked hours on.
The major fun in this game is all the creative options you have for escaping. It’s an entertaining and creative game and I hope we see more games like it in the future.
3 Stay Lost: This Game Should Wander Off
This was a game that tried to be like Journey in terms of being a quiet multiplayer game, but really failed. It’s relaxing, sure, but it doesn’t feel like a finished game. I think gamers really wanted to like Wander, but it came to us half-baked and underwhelming.
You play as a being that can transform between a tree, griffon, human, or water lizard. That sounds pretty cool, right? It is until you start off as a tree and move slow as molasses and have a terrible time exploring. You could walk for hours and get nowhere before you find your first transformation stone.
Like Journey, it also attempted in-game language. Journey kept it as simple meaningless chirps with the press of one button, but Wander really tried to complicate it with tons of different gestures.
For a game about exploration, the graphics were really disappointing. The trailer is far prettier than the actual game. When gamers explore, they need to have something to look at, but instead, we got constant popping out objects and objects that we can walk through. The game’s textures also feel completely off. Besides just not looking good, the scenery is also repetitive. You may wander around and squint at a group of trees that look exactly like the same trees you saw five minutes ago.
