It’s been so very long since I set foot at the edge of this wasteland of shattered code and congealed frustrations.
So very long, with an oasis that awaits me. Oasis with names such as Horizon Zero Dawn, Nioh, Tales of Berseria and Persona 5.
Yet here I am. At the abyss once more. A man survived purgatory and yet returned to hell. What shall I do? I wondered aloud. What game should set the stage for my return? It feels wrong to just drop my axe and claim any muck raked ground as my own. This couldn’t be just any bargain bin buy marking my return into the viscera.
No. This had to be special. This had to be several bargain bin finds. This had to be an entire experience.
Welcome to Terrible Tuesday: PlayStation Now! 7 Days of H**k.
Day 1
I’m not sure what it is that compels me to turn away from the solid, even if not necessarily inspired, gameplay of Horizon Dawn Zero and the engaging antics of technology addicted flippant teenage viking brave hybrid Aloy as she rides robot dinosaurs. I don’t quite remembered what it is about PS Now that so enamored me, that caused me to decide to drop everything and be wrapped by its mental tendrils, as though an acolyte summoned by some antediluvian god unknowable and terrible. Yet here I am, forsaking all that is good and holy, closing my eyes to the light, for the gentle kiss of PS Now’s seven day free trial.
I’m not even sure what it’s about. My comrades do try and warn me, faint echoes of streaming and and purse clutching, but they fall to the deafness of curiosity. I install. What is the possible harm? I learn as I go. Ah! It is a video game streaming service. Akin to Netflix or Hulu, only for video games, and frightfully more expensive. However such a thing might be useful, correct? The Playstation 3’s bountiful library at one’s finger tips. Loads of classics dare to everyone’s hearts such as Yaiba, Ninja Gaiden 3 and Back to the Future the Video Game. You know. The real charmers.
Yet surely there is a diamond in the rough. Or at least, a cubic zirconia in the pile of shattered glass. I start digging for anything I might remotely be interested in. Loading one list of categories after the next, with the idea this was more of a trial period where I shall not grant myself the privilege of becoming so attached. Those odd curiosities I always wondered about yet could never spring for. Ah! Way of the Samurai 3! A nice start, this fugly beauty caught my eye not too long ago, with recent excitement inspired by Nioh and fond nostalgia for Onimusha, this 100% accurate samurai life simulator was like that weird loner kid in high school. I never once played with him, but he seems like he could have been cool, I wish we hung out more. Well in any event I had my first game. Stuck a pin in it. Time to look through the rest and…
Oh dear. The streaming library has stopped loading. Entirely. Well I’m sure this has nothing to do with Sony’s inconsistent and incredibly slow online service, and that this issue won’t reflect in the game’s I choose to stream at all. Let’s begin with Way of the Samurai 4 and 3! A Terrible Tuesday if I ever saw…
Way of the Samurai is an amazing crazed violent hobo simulator. You run around town doing the world’s worst odd jobs in the hopes of being rewarded in nibbles of old radish and rotted rice balls to scrap together what can be called a meal. While I’m told there’s a reputation system and I should be put on my best behavior, I’ve found rather effective results in swinging around my sword to instantly end cutscenes, picking clean other people’s crops, robbing the dead, bludgeoning would be suitors and maintaining a sick attachment to a strange older woman I call “Okasan.”
Then it happened. A Horrific split in the game world, this plane being torn asunder before my very eyes. The environment became smears like mad slashes of a brush using oil paints on a cloth canvas. As the world tore itself in two, so did my character, the wandering ronin emerging from the chrysalis of himself. Finally. His own clone. The second pretender Samurai ran off in his own direction, I assume to explore this second version of the universe. Was this split and automated action due to lag? Perhaps. Yet I can’t help but feel I was witness to the veil of reality being dropped, showing our choices and stagnation, the probable and possible but never was. I was closer to the truth of PS Now.
Day 2
Dark Souls 2 would not cross my mind upon normal circumstances. Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Nioh, loved them all, Salt and Sanctuary, Dark Souls 3, Hyper Light Drifter, not the strongest contenders on my list but a good enough worth of my time. Yet Dark Souls 2 lacked all the appeal. At least until PS Now. What better game to play on a service where lag could spike at any moment, arrest my actions, and drive me running unprepared into an enemy mob. A finer title I could never think of on PS Now.
So I set off with my generic vaguely Celtic warrior in this new land of undeath. I was found much to my dismay that Dark Souls 2 favored platforming well more than any of its relatives. The enemies put up not much struggle, but if death were coming for me, if my souls the game’s top keep, it would be at the hands of platforming. It was when aligning one such jump that the worst came to pass. The world split. That familiar swirl of blurred edges and tearing, as my Celtic ran, and ran, and ran. Straight into the water, her eternal slumber. I could not put up with the horrible, near Zombi-U appearance of my hollow undead after. I had failed her, I had failed myself, humanity was not mine to claim.
I am sorry Celtic Barbarian Girl, I have failed you.
Samurai Warriors 4 awaited me. A surprisingly delightful experience. A tall drink of water in this void. Yes, the world split occurred repeatedly, but through bravery, luck and automated combos, I was able to champion my way through the toughest challenges. Even better, I was able to create my own samurai to carry out my legacy in foreign lands. Would he be brave and strong? Would she be elegant and a good source of pantsu? These questions demanded they be answered, through purchasing my own copy of Samurai Warriors 4 and not having to worry about preserving my saves, subbing to PS Now or anymore world splits. This was, after all, a glorified Red Box.
Finally I courted with Way of the Samurai 4. Another surprisingly pleasant engagement. Bizarre. Yet pleasant. Only over the course of one game could I beat up yakuza, make them my pupils, fight in a tournament, sneak into a girl’s room for night time antics, fish, rob corpses, try my hand at games of hanafuda, ride a pummel horse… not entirely against my will, dress up in lingerie, aide a religious rebellion then proudly turn around and say I sold out my samurai heritage to become a European manservant. 11/10, Game of the Year.
Day 3
The Cable, I mean “Spectrum” technician had to come through today to fix my connection. It would serve as a brief respite, a reminder that there were other human beings through the cold eternal fogs. That did not stop me from trying to draw him into the madness myself, using connection tests as an enthusiastic excuse to show him the PS Now experience. I was compelled to share, even if it was with a complete stranger.
Of course, that was second guessing whether he was already familiar. He was. I suppose I was not the first to utilize the PlayStation as a litmus test for online connectivity, and I suppose I was not the first to be acquainted with the chaos of PS Now. Its roots ran deep indeed.
Still good… Still good…
Day… 4?
It is Day 4 of my journey. Or is it Day 5? i͎͉̮̣͎̤̝ț̵͎̜̯̜̝̣͖͘ ̴̣̙e̛̯̗̤͎͕͖̺n̶̮̯d̸̫̳̱̕͡ͅsI seem to be losing track of the minutes, hours. I’m in that gulf of time we all experience, where we feel as though our journey has just begin, while the ending is also in sight, and both feel so close but so near. My head hurts. Coffee can not clear the fog. Yet I am compelled to scroll to the PS Now icon. I hit it. I look at today’s selection. My journey has taken me face to face with several ancient soldiers, many of them samurai, and yet aside from an ill forsaken and thankfully brisk trip into the world of Yaiba I have neglected another Japanese warrior of legend. The Ninja. So it would seem only natural I would choose to experience Batman Arkham Origins.
The game looked shockingly good. Until this point all of my experiences have looked like regurgitated Edward James Almos ass. Sure, PlayStation 3 graphics are older and out of date, and sure not all of them carried an aspect ratio native to my television, but I blamed most of these ocular razors on the streaming service itself. It was nice to view a game of relative beauty. As though the powers beyond saw fit to reward me with a brief suckle of the mana infused waters from this mental oasis. I was grateful.
Then… The game happens. A camera undergoing near constant seizures with framerate to match. Animations with the fluidity of mercury. An odd graphical style that seems to go for cell shading but not at all that. A storyline to make Zack Snyder proud. A battle with Killer Croc that reminded me of playing with my dear pet feline. How I wish I could abandon this poorly conceived quest to be with him right now. I should be fair, it’s not the most horrible game in the library, it’s on the list of “game’s that might be worth playing if you’re unafraid of unstable connections interrupting Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption and Gat out of Hell” or “games that might be worth playing if you want to pay 20 dollars a month when you could dig it out of the bargain bin for less along with Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption and Gat out of Hell.” Even then Arkham Origins could still be a lot worse. It could be Arkham Knight. It could feature Lady Arkham. Take what respite you can.
Something about near all of the titles I have tried so far bothered me a great deal. I could not place my finger on it, until Warriors Orochi 3. The Musou Battlefields mode, aka, the Create-a-Stage mode touted how I could make my own levels and play those worlds formed like clay at the hands of others. Battlefields I was hard pressed to find, a vast gulf of nothingness with the occasional pitiful showing of a level, played by all of four other individuals. The online worlds of most these games, save perhaps Dark Souls 2, were utterly and completely dead. Whether by playerbase or by developer there simply was no support. It reminded me of a far older Terrible Tuesday buried in my logs never to see the light of day. Terrible Tuesday: Second Life. A gathering of null space. Sex dungeons in a state of entropy and fantasy lands crumbling as though sacked. PS Now returned to me that feeling of loneliness, emptiness and despair. The irony of an online streaming service that only streams dead worlds.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Day 5
Fighting Vipers. Why did that title look familiar. What was…
Oh my god.
Oh my god!
It was as though I opened a door and stepped right into my childhood. Surrounded by sky blue painted walls, teenage mutant ninja turtle action figures, and my Sega Saturn.
I eagerly turned on the game. Wait, was a sistah always the lead of the roster? All I could remember, all the internet would let me remember, was that ridiculous lolita and the Jotaro look alike. I quickly selected Grace, so I could skate and cause pain, and maybe remove a few bodices.
I was excited. But wrestling the controls was like rolling the rock of Sisyphus. You mock me? YOU mock ME. What punishment is this. Who was ever able to play fighting games with these unwieldy controls? This isn’t the hours of fun beat downs I remember, this is having my head held under cement. PS Now is cruel indeed.
I moved on to a game named Mars War Logs. Which touts itself an RPG. I believe ‘Edgelord Simulator’ would be more apt, as my first interactions with the game were rescuing a green soldier and prisoner of war from being gang raped in the showers, only to tell him mayhaps my motivations for rescuing him was to keep him to myself… Moving on.
Day 6
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. What other way to describe this than a fever dream in video game form? Quite literally I felt as though I was playing a hallucinogen. How appropriate that such a maddening journey would see its twilight in me playing madness itself. It’s about angels first and foremost, yet any other ways to describe it end there. Imagine, if you will, all of the psychobabble mind attack sequences in Evangelion, or the second disc of Xenogears, the final act of Indigo Prophecy, Suda 51, Yoko Taro and Hideo Kojima more unrestrained than they already are. Is any of this painting even the most remote picture for you? Imagine that, only… Worse.
My heroic journey, rich with a diverse cast of characters that traversed the ages, was entirely completed in the game’s opening credits. I fought, and died to, one of the games final bosses twice, redid the first area twice, all within the tutorial. I conversed with the angel Lucifel who was to help me return the fallen angels to heaven. He, in his Calvin Klein shirt and always on his smartphone with a direct line to God. Me, in my Roman Empire inspired angelic armor. The game itself like running on the twisted tracks of Guitar Hero or Rez in 2D platformer style, while exploring as one would in a 3D adventure. Trying to describe this game, to process the near insanity into written form is only tearing away at what’s left of my mind.
The Entire Game
Though I will say this. Just as the Fallen Angels in this title. I have tasted the Forbidden Fruits, and some dark part of me would perversely enjoy plumbing the world of El Shaddai much much further, no matter the cost, no matter how much it fractures my essence.
Oh of all the titles I didn’t play. Beyond Two Souls.
Day 7
The Twilight hour is upon us. m̨ͪ̆y͋̇ ̡ͮͮ̚͢͞è͒͞҉͘ŷ̧͗ͩͦͥeͫͩ͌͂̔̇̄́̕͜͠sͣ̾͐ͥ̐ͩͣ̊́͘ ̧̄̌̓̔͢a̸̡͐̔̈͞r̷̾ͣ̈́̓̉̿̆e̶̒͛̋̀ͣ ͫͯ̂̒͒͆͌̔̚͏̴ǵ͛͊͒͆̍҉ơ̴ͣ̔͑͒̍ͪͣ̀n̨̡̨̆ͣ̓ͪͮͥ͛e͗̄̅̔̋͏The sands in the hourglass run down. The greatest treasure in the world hangs in the balance. My. 20. Dollars. It has been a week of suffering and mirth. A week that even convinced me to pick up one or two of these titles. Should I keep the PS Now subscription? Or should I turn my back, and forget all I have witnessed here. I have left the future on the shoulders of one game. Only a single individual, one of the greatest figures in our collective history. I turn over my fate to you, oh sacred one.
Sonic the Hedgehog.
Sonic Unleashed began with all the blockbuster action, story driven excitement and edginess I’ve come to expect of Sonic… Wait.
Anyone who said the Sonic portions of this game were the ‘good’ parts was desperate for something nice to say. Controlling Sonic felt like driving a car with broken shocks, poor handling and no breaks. Rolling around at the speed of sound had become rolling around in a disastrous car wreck. Perhaps the most unexpected part of this game was, well, not the werewolf business, that was well expected. It was being required to walk around a Greek tourist destination conversing with the locals for information regarding my quest. As well as the inventory and a world map. A Sonic with RPG elements, oh thank god.
If it’s one thing I always believed sidescrolling Sonic needed more of it was rumble feedback and the homing attack. Sonic 4 well delivered. It’s not like a rumbling controller in a game about fluid motion and momentum is completely distracting or anything. If Unleashed Sonic was a car driving on slick ice, Sonic 4 Sonic was a boat frozen it ice. I would like to make note here, I quit in a fit of rage both Sonic Unleashed and Sonic 4 for the same exact reasons. A series of jumps requiring usage of the homing attack. A once celebrated feature in Sonic Adventure turned into my ever waking nightmare. Both games also downplayed or had a complete absence of the spin dash. This is Lara Croft without vertical traversal. This is Mario without jumping. Listen to me Sonic Team, always Spin Dash, never not Spin Dash.
Sonic Generations was… Good. Good job. This is what you should have been doing all along. More like this. Boy oh boy did that Chemical Plant Zone remix fill me with tears-flavored with nostalgia.”That pink water makes me really nervous for some reason.” Aye, Tails, I concur, remind of the delightful terror.
There was but one title left, then PS Now would be allowed to die.
Sonic the Fighters.
I had decided Sonic had his time in the sun long enough. It was time to play as my main man Bark. Which the game calls “The Polerbear” [Spelling as in game], only he looks like a golden retriever. Wh… What is…
What the hell are you supposed to be?
In any event, Sonic the Fighters was surprisingly playable, perhaps even good. Perhaps because it was a faster version of the Virtua Fighter engine Sega had used during the decade in game, after game, after game, after game. It’s a very similar approach to how they resulted in the recent spate of Sonic games and even the online generation of Phantasy Stars, only in Virtua Fighter’s case it was not a complete grease fire.
I’m not sure what I learned in this grand quest. Rather I feel I have lost parts of me, of my intelligence, my sanity, and soul. PS Now however reminds me of something. Something else that I can’t quite put my finger on. Some other form of streaming service disaster…
That’s right. OnLive. A Cali based video game streaming and cloud service that spoke to us for the first half of the decade in dark whispers while thankfully, no one had ever given into the madness. Why Sony would delve back into such territory is anyone’s…
Dear God.
PS Now is OnLive.
Sony had preserved all of it. Be damned the warnings raised over poor quality of service, stress on broadband connections and passing off high costs of maintaining such a service on to the players. They care not for our well being when it coumes to service of their dark ones. What other vicious artifacts did they keep in their pockets. What necromicons and unholy texts of the old forsaken internet did they contain, and what plagues were they willing to place on us, the public? How far did this go, Microsoft and Nintendo too? The government? The Vatican?
Once I took steps to safeguard myself and cancel my PS Now subscription I thought my journey into madness was over.
In reality, it may be just beginning.
