PLAYSTATION GAME RECOMMENDATIONS |

The original PlayStation was my first console, and I've got a big soft spot for it. Here's a bunch of games for it I've tried out over the years, either ones I've known for a long time or ones I just found, all of which I think are worth sharing with you.

[#] Doom (Williams, 1995)

Definitely the technical best of its kind, but the most playable?

Doom is perhaps the single most overrated shooter in existence, but it's hard to deny its simplicity and intuitiveness. If you're somehow not aware, Doom has you controlling a space marine as he blasts his way through an overrun base on Mars. Doom is fun no matter how you play it, and compared to the ports for the Saturn, Jaguar, and 32x, this one runs full-screen and at full speed, making it perhaps the go-to console port of its day. That said, the improvements it tries to make over the PC original can be hit and miss.

Adapting keyboard controls to a gamepad works pretty well, though even with the ability to remap, you're still stuck turning with the D-pad as opposed to strafing. You get used to it, but all the turning and pushing forward makes quick work of your thumb. There's no selectable episodes, nor intermission text; you just play straight through all 30 levels, and without a save function (early PS1 games did not use the memory card well), you have to note down the end stage password wherever you wanna stop. That's a little dumb.

For those improvements, PS1 Doom features colored lighting and a new ambient soundtrack and sound effects. The sound effects are definitely my favorite: the new shotgun sound is so meaty, it alone made me use it the entire run. The colored lights, meanwhile, range from fittingly menacing to garishly dark. I think the dark blue bits are supposed to make you feel tense and in danger, but mostly, they just suck to look at. It might be weird on the eyes and hard on the thumb, but PS1 Doom is still a damn good time and addition to any PlayStation collection.

Recommended for... demon hunters with iron thumbs.

[#] Gran Turismo 2 (Sony, 1999)

It's a classic for a reason!

I know what I said about the famous games here--I love Gran Turismo 2, and we're talking about it. This is a game that has captured me for five months on and off, beckoning me to the bedroom to finish it off (my save, of course), the perfect balance between in-depth car tuning just before it gets boring and arcade excitement just before it gets goofy. Throw in some 25 absolutely iconic courses, a killer soundtrack featuring The Cardigans, Garbage, Soul Coughing, and Stone Temple Pilots, and oh yeah--almost 650 cars from over 50 manufacturers--and this is the premier PS1 racer. Does it hold up? My God yes.

What strikes me about the heart of the GT2 simulation is how varied all the cars feel. Everything from drivetrain to car weight to tire softness to gear transmission ratios to turbo kits (the cheap and fun way to cake a race!) noticeably affect how your car handles. The courses requires you to practice, appealing to drive but each with their tricky spots, and when you do get good at navigating one, satisfying doesn't begin to cover it. (Of course, the lack of damage modeling means you can drive like an idiot, crash, and use other cars as bumpers, but this game would suck if I had to worry about totaling my car or dying mid-race, so that's a good thing.)

Gran Turismo 2 was legendarily rushed in development, and there are complaints I could raise with it (like how impenetrable it is in its early game unless you use a setup to get a nice car quickly), but it really doesn't detract from how enveloping yet approachable the experience is. Once you start unlocking cars and getting into the weeds of all the manufacturer races and rallies (and less pleasingly, two hour real-time endurance races), GT2 becomes less of a racing game and more a big car collecting playground you'll never quite find the other side of.

Recommended for... anyone wanting to drive like an idiot in a souped-up Daihatsu Midget.

[#] Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Electronic Arts, 2002)

Pretty damn good late-arriving castle-em-up.

The first Harry Potter game on PS1 left a lot to be desired with its wonky controls, limited exploration, and linearity. The PS1 was still marginally relevant in 2002, so Argonaut were contracted to produce its follow-up using the same engine. That's the bad news. The models and gameplay are reused wholesale where applicable, and Harry still handles like he's on ice a lot of the time. The good news? There's a lot more to see here, with a much bigger castle of secrets and a wider breadth of minigames.

While the first one had a few minigames, this one expands the lot with gnome-throwing, flying car racing, first-person shooting galleries, and my personal favorite, wizard duels. These play like real-time Pokémon battles, Harry and another wizard casting spells at one another, trying to coax the other into shooting charmed objects to gain special jinxes. It's highly satisfying. I wish they gave us a duel gauntlet to play through instead of the Quidditch League, because these are over far too soon.

Aside from the rather irritatingly difficult slide segments, Argonaut mercifully built the environments to better suit the controls this time around, so you'll breeze through without much frustration. I'm especially glad they actually let us replay earlier parts of the game, something Sorcerer's Stone did not let you do, astoundingly. Secrets isn't perfect, but it's a pretty damn fun romp through a kids book and I think it's worth a reappraisal. Potter fans especially take notice.

Recommended for... Potter fans who want a good Ocarina-like.

[#] Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Electronic Arts, 2001)

Lighter than an hourglass under Wingardium Leviosa.

The early Harry Potter games have always made me quite curious. Each platform was contracted out to a different team and run on very different game engines--and yet they share a lot besides that. Pottermania's splashes on the PS1, courtesy of Croc developers Argonaut Games, are usually derided these days based on their oatmeal character models, but I think that's a bit undeserved. I grew up with these games, and they're, if nothing else and if you'll excuse the pun, charming.

Through the game, you'll run along to classes (Charms, Potions, and Defense Against the Dark Arts are featured with Simon sequences for learning each's spell), be the school's favorite Quidditch seeker, and wander about under an Invisibility Cloak in some clunky stealth stages. The school's atmosphere is really good, with lots of flickering lights, floating junk, and secret passages to some fun minigames. I just wish it was used to its fullest potential.

In fact, that's kind of the issue with Sorcerer's Stone. It's very inconsequential. It doesn't control terribly great (though nothing a kid couldn't get on with), castle exploration is pretty shallow amounting to nothing more than a few extra rooms, and Quidditch matches amount to the same "fly through the rings" sequence every time. I'd really recommend the sequel over this one. This isn't bad, but there's also not a lot you can't get from watching someone else play it.

Recommended for... those nostalgic for it, like me.

[#] Monsters, Inc. Scream Team (Sony, 2001)

Quick and lightweight Pixar platformer with lovely levels.

While hardly a commonly-remembered PS1 favorite, Monsters, Inc. Scream Team is a fond one from my childhood. It's a 3D platformer to tie into the Pixar-y misadventures of our favorite fluffy blue bear (not much of a monster, is it?) and a spindly walking green eyeball (that's more like it), complete with fairly decent quality clips from the movie! It's about as you'd expect, and you can 100% it in an afternoon, but it looks and sounds nice and I enjoyed my time revisiting it.

The premise is Sulley and Mike (you can choose to play as either) are tasked to traverse twelve training courses full of homicidal toys in search of eight "nerves". Nerves are robot child substitutes who bounce around, skip rope, and build snowmen, and your goal, naturally, is to reduce them to shivering wrecks (and subsequently piles of metallic rubble!). The courses are divided into urban, desert, and arctic-themed stages you gain access to as you scare the requisite numbers of nerves.

This game is lovely looking for the PS1. Colorful, imaginative locales, clean, noise-free texturework, and the arctic stages even have motion blur on the falling snow. The platforming's good, though Mike sucks to control, so play as Sulley if you like enjoying yourself. You got collectables, button puzzles, trampolines, speed boost arrows, and annoying-but-infrequent slide segments. There's nothing here you can't get from watching a playthrough online, but I've got a soft spot for it.

Recommended for... Disney fans (and I'm not encouraging them).

[#] NFL Blitz (Midway, 1997)

Uncalled for, but a LOT of fun to watch.

Despite being raised in a Madden household, my affection for the games begins and ends with the early 2000s entries. I think it was accidental I liked any of them, as they're a bit slow and technical for my taste (but so is the real game). Thankfully, EA didn't yet have exclusivity over the league, so there was no shortage of much speedier, more gratuitous competition--chief among them NBA Jam's sister series NFL Blitz. And y'know what, playing it now? I think I missed out!

NFL Blitz was originally an arcade game, and it shows in the quick matches, simple control scheme (you pick receivers with the D-pad), reduced player count, no run plays (quarterbacks can still run the ball), and automated kickoffs and punts. The hits are nasty, and you have the ability to toss around and leg drop fallen players on the other team after the play is over. The NFL was not happy about all the violence back in the day, but really, isn't that why people watch real football?

This port looks about standard for 3D PS1 football games, but it's super slick to play. The Season mode is about my only real gripe--you get a few games in, and the game RNGs cheap fumbles and interceptions into existence constantly, cheating you out of easy wins. But then that ridiculous TV commentator pipes up ("that was uncalled for, but a lot of fun to watch!") and I have a giggle and all is well. Seriously, Blitz entertains and satisfies like few other PlayStation football games do.

Recommended for... sports fans, arcade fans, meatheads, insane people...

[#] Rage Racer (Namco, 1997)

Max speed on the mediterranean.

Here's two things you should know about me: I like racing games and I suck at racing games. The first Ridge Racer is a PlayStation racing classic (how could it not be? It was the pack-in title for the whole system), but it's never been my favorite thanks to the bonkers, slip-and-slide car handling. Rage Racer, on the other hand, the third in the series, may just be my favorite racer on the entire system--I might even like it more than Gran Turismo 2.

Rage doesn't support the analog sticks, but it controls great, with tight turning and a really satisfying weight to the cars. There's still power sliding, but it feels more like a punishment and you'd best avoid it unless you're trying to stall out. You earn credits after each race you can use to very coarsely tune up your car, get a new paint job, or even put your name on the hood of your car, making this one of the first racing games to feature a garage and tune-up system.

While you only get one course, it is eye candy--waterfalls, gigantic cliffs, bridges and tunnels (your speedometer even glows when you're inside, nice touch), and a beautiful Mediterranean shoreline. These are genuinely some of the most appealing 3D graphics I've ever seen the PlayStation put out. A curious midpoint between the bumper cars of Ridge Racer and the sleep-inducing extreme detail of later racing games, Rage actually avoids the pitfalls of both to great success.

Recommended for... arcade racer fans with vertical hunger.

[#] Robotron X (Midway, 1996)

You'd think neverending Robotron would be a good thing, but...

I'm a huge Robotron: 2084 fan. You can't fuck it up: screen full of robots, two eight-way joysticks, one to move, one to fire. Shoot robots, collect humans for big points. It frazzles your nerves, it looks and sounds like nothing else, and games rarely last more than five minutes. It might very well be my favorite golden age arcade game; it's just unfortunate that Robotron X proves you can indeed fuck it up. It's not all bad! There is good news--very little of it involves playing this game though.

X has two main issues that make it a gigantic headache to play, and that's framerate and pacing. Frames drops all the time when the screen gets busy, something even the arcade game managed to avoid. The pacing is even worse. Each wave is split by an unskippable, several seconds long intermission screen of your unsightly protagonist flipping through space, and in the later waves, new enemies get dropped on your head constantly. Over 200 waves, this becomes an absolute slog.

There's an ugly, eerie feeling to this game, with all its black voids, freakish faces, and grotesque gigantic robot brains. It's a little hard to look at. The one genuine highlight I can cite is the soundtrack, all heavy hardcore and gabber from Midway's unsung soundtrack hero Aubrey Hodges (buy it on Bandcamp, it's good). This one got a much better port for the Nintendo 64 as Robotron 64, so if you want 3D Robotron (and believe me, I do), check out that one instead.

Recommended for... morbidly curious arcade fans with overclockable emulators.

[#] Space Invaders (Activision, 1999)

The songs you grow to like never stick at first.

Didn't your mother ever teach you not to judge a book by its cover? Mine didn't, and that probably explains something. Still, this game drew me in in a weird way, so let me give you the Wikipedia rundown of PS1 Space Invaders so I can make my point. It's a 3D remake of the original, ten waves to a planet, each with bosses and aliens with funny attacks and power-ups, and you can unlock the original emulated Space Invaders. It was a little slow and easy at first, and I had a pretty middling review written up for it and scheduled for weeks--and then I went to try out its RetroAchievements set.

RetroAchievements is a site that gives you achievement sets, points, and trophies for various emulated retro games. If that sounds dumb to you, hold on. RA has given me reason to dive into games I'd written off as stupid, simplistic, frustrating even, to learn how to beat them or to get the high scores, and I walk away with a new appreciation for them every time. I thought the original Space Invaders was just obnoxiously difficult and required ungodly reflexes until I learned of the "wall of death" setup that turns the pace outright leisurely, making the "4,000 points without dying" achievement a game of clean execution instead. Suddenly way more fun, cool as shit now.

Just so you don't think I wrote this solely to glaze RA, let me talk some about the remake. Shooting four aliens of a color in a row will give you a powerup based on their own attack. The horizontal sweep weapons and the laser are easily the best in the game, and there is actually a lot of satisfaction to taking out a whole row or column with one shot. You get into the groove of clearing waves, visually, it's solid and clean, you can save at any time, and if you're looking for a challenge, you do get it on the higher difficulties. Like the arcade original, Space Invaders is definitely a little underwhelming at first blush, but dig into the details and you might just find some appreciation for it.

Recommended for... regular visitors to the Tank Graveyard.

[#] The Adventures of Lomax (Psygnosis, 1996)

Adorable and punishing, which is also how I like my women.

Lemmings is one of those legacy franchises that's left a ton of forgotten little spinoffs in its way, Lomax being one. Lomax is a squeaky lemming knight out to rescue other lemmings who have been transformed into an army of ugly, ghoulish creeps. Lomax is a platformer, and the classic Lemmings gameplay is the twist on it: Lomax can pick up icons that enable his lemming powers, from building bridges to digging through walls.

The first thing you notice about Lomax is that it's gorgeous. The backgrounds and animations are intricately detailed pixel art, cloud cover drifts through the stages, 3D is worked in as foreground-background stuff, it's genuine eye candy. The second thing you notice is the difficulty. Lomax can only take two hits. Worse yet, he can't swim, and platforms tend to be a little loose with their collision detection. I wouldn't call it unfair, just exacting.

My recommendation for Lomax comes on the basis that you enjoy trial-and-error platformers. The controls aren't well-explained in the game itself (double-tap X for a spin attack, Circle is your hat attack, Select picks abilities, and Square uses them), and you only get so many lives and continues, so be sure you're keeping track of your passwords and restart the whole game if need be. It's a very pretty game with a lot to like about it--provided you can handle the intense difficulty.

Recommended for... the baddest and toughest platformer fans.

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