After the June reboot, the highest PlayStation Plus tier you can currently buy is the Premium tier. It’ll cost you £13.49 per month or £100 for a year, but in return for that amount, you get access to a huge amount of games. Not only do you get to play all the games in the PS Plus Extra catalogue, but you also get to try out PlayStation Classics from the PS1 and PSP eras, as well as PS3 game streaming and several other benefits. Here are 10 of the best games you can only play on PS5 if you have a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription.
1. Demon’s Souls (PS3)
While Bluepoint’s Demon’s Souls remake is perfectly serviceable, it’s missing a certain something, and that certain something can be found in the PS3 original. It’s certainly true that the 2009 version has significantly less polished gameplay, but what it lacks in finesse, it more than makes up for with atmosphere and presentation. The original Demon’s Souls is a decrepit, bleak masterpiece; it eschews the remake’s polish for an uglier, more horrifying style that pays off in spades. It’s sadly not available in the US or UK stores, so you’ll have to play on the Japanese store to check it out.
2. Devil May Cry HD Collection (PS3)
Devil May Cry HD Collection contains two excellent games and one absolute dud, which still isn’t a terrible hit rate by most developers’ standards. The original Devil May Cry is a stone-cold survival horror-inflected action masterpiece, and Devil May Cry 3 ratchets up the ridiculousness, the backtracking, and the spectacular boss fights to great effect. Devil May Cry 2 is a repetitive slog, but you’ll get enough mileage out of the first and third games to more than offset the second’s weakness.
3. Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time (PS3)
The Ratchet and Clank franchise may have somewhat lost its way now, but A Crack in Time is a testament to when the series was still unequivocally excellent. It presents a sprawling open world to explore, complete with optional objectives to chase. However, if you just want to get on with things, then you’ll find a fantastic trad Ratchet and Clank game here, too, replete with all the usual bombastic and over-the-top weaponry you’ve come to expect from the series.
4. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (PS2)
Forget the dark-and-edgy Jak II and the Mad Max-inspired Jak 3; Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is Naughty Dog’s platformer franchise at its finest. The latter two games are fine, really, but the first one is full of wonder, enchantment, and light-hearted humour. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, presenting a world chock-full of collectibles to find and challenges to complete. If you love games like Banjo-Kazooie, then you’ll love this as well.
5. Rogue Galaxy (PS2)
Rogue Galaxy is an oft-underappreciated JRPG, but it’s one of the finest of its kind. Taking influence from Star Wars and other space opera-style stories, it casts you as the improbably-named Jaster Rogue, a young man seeking his fortune on a go-nowhere sand planet. He’s swept up in a tale of intrigue and danger alongside a group of space pirates, and what follows, while being your typical JRPG-style all-encompassing god-slaying plot, is also full of life and character.
6. Wild Arms 3 (PS2)
The Wild Arms series is another JRPG franchise that fell by the wayside in many people’s minds. That’s a shame, because it’s great fun; it marries Sergio Leone-style Western aesthetics with classic turn-based combat and dungeon exploration, and it’s the third game where that formula really starts to come together. Wild Arms 3’s soundtrack is absolutely excellent, and it’s even got a decent story with some intriguing world map exploration mechanics to boot.
7. Ape Escape (PS1)
The original Ape Escape was the perfect way to sell the PS1’s new DualShock controller. With the left analogue stick, you controlled protagonist Spike as he navigated a series of themed platforming worlds. With the right, you used a series of gadgets including an ape-catching net, a radar, and a beam sword, all of which needed to be used in different ways to help you catch a diverse and impressively mobile set of monkeys. Ape Escape spawned sequels, but the original is still the best.
8. Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee (PS1)
There’s something profoundly strange and unsettling about the grim world of Abe’s Oddysee. It could be the down-to-earth New-Yoik accents of the game’s Glukkon businessmen, or it could be the weird fused masks of the Slig guards. Whatever it happens to be, this is one seriously disturbing cinematic platformer, but it’s also darkly hilarious and not a little touching, too. Play this one and not the execrable New ‘n Tasty remake. You’ll thank us.
9. Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! (PS1)
Usually, licensed games are pretty terrible, but the PS1’s Toy Story 2 tie-in game was a notable exception. It was a brilliantly-designed 3D platformer with huge levels to explore and tons of things to find in those levels. Characters from the Toy Story franchise were dotted around each level to help you, and although Buzz’s quips did get a little wearisome, the game itself had some of the most surprisingly well-executed platforming gameplay of its time. The Western level’s music slaps, too.
10. Echochrome (PSP)
Finally, we round off our best PlayStation Plus Premium games list with a PSP puzzler. Echochrome was originally released in 2008, and it’s a staggeringly original little gem that too few people played. Essentially, it’s a video game take on the baffling environments of M.C. Escher paintings. You must guide a mannequin around these paintings, rotating shapes and viewing things from a different angle in order to proceed. It’ll fry your brain, but Echochrome is great fun.
