Summary
PlayStation Pluscomes in three tiers - Essential, Extra, and Premium. Naturally, the higher you go, the more you’ll spend for the service on a monthly basis. One of the bigger perks about picking Premium is that you’re given access to a solid number of game trials - in other words, downloadable time-limited demos.
As of this writing, there are over 70 available game trials for PlayStation Plus Premium members to peruse. That’s a lot of demos, with play time allowances ranging from one to five hours per title. We’ve narrowed down our personal favorites - consider them our humble suggestions on which ones are most worthy of your hard drive space.
10MLB: The Show ‘23
Nobody makes baseball games quite like San Diego Studio does. In theMLB: The Showseries, you’ll control a full team (especially the manager), choose from over 30 teams in a multitude of modes, and live out your yearly Major League dreams.
The Show has been consistently praised for its routinely high quality, which is rather refreshing in a world where some big sports series tend to vary considerably in decency.
Wait For A Sale (In A Good Way)
9Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Insomniac Games’ big-budget sequel to both Marvel’s Spider-Man and its spinoff, the titular Miles Morales, is an extraordinary feat of characterization in a sprawling New York City filled with a diversity of activities. It’s got a gripping story, too - maybe the best the developers have achieved yet with this world-famous franchise.
Your two-hour tour withMarvel’s Spider-Man 2should give you a great taste of the fast-paced action and epic urban adventure that awaits. Peter Parker and Miles Morales won’t be the only people you’ll control before game’s end, either!
8Crusader Kings 3
Our next entry for great PlayStation Plus game trials isalsoa period piece. Long famed as masters of deep strategy gaming, Paradox Interactive nevertheless ups the ante withCrusader Kings 3, a centuries-long sprawl from the 800s through the 1400s in which you determine the far-reaching destiny of Europe. It is the ultimate medieval strategy sim… at least, until Crusader Kings 4 comes out.
One More Turn
It’s almost more impressive than the game itself that Paradox managed to get it running on home consoles without it feeling like a cumbersome mess; this is a genre that is conventionally considered a poor fit for controllers.
Yet the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S both work great with it, and if you own the former, you can put your DualSense through its tactical paces firsthand.
7The Last Of Us, Part 1
If you’ve never played The Last of Us, there’s a million things to say about why you should give it a whirl. If you have, there’s significantly less to say about its surprise PS5 remake,The Last of Us, Part 1.
But what needs to be said, truly? The no-holds-barred Joel-and-Ellie crossroads post-apocalyptic tale is, to many, Naughty Dog’s outright masterpiece. The remake gives it all a fresh coat of paint with improved visuals, animations, and more.
Part 1, Part One
It’s not the total reimagining of, say,Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Nor does it aim to be. The Last of Us, Part 1 is like the 4K Blu-ray remaster to one’s aging DVD. In this case, that DVD happens to represent one of gaming’s crowning achievements, so the Blu-ray disc is bound to be good.
6Tactics Ogre: Reborn
Tactics Ogre: Rebornis spectacular. It comes with some history, so brace yourself for this one - it’s a 2022 remaster of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, itself a heavily revamped PSP remaster of a game that debuted on the Sega Saturn, SNES, and Sony PlayStation. So, it’s an old game, but with an incredible degree of modernization, largely for the better.
In Matsuno We Trust
Final Fantasy fans may be more familiar with Tactics Ogre creator’s Yasumi Matsuno for his work with Final Fantasy Tactics, which was in many ways a spiritual successor to the initial Tactics Ogre.
A politically-charged fantasy-medieval storyline populated by a tremendous cast of strong characters each with their own motivations? Check. A deep and rewarding turn-based and grid-centered battle system? Check. The chance to dictate the flow of the story with multiple branching points? Oh, that one’s not even in FFT. Excellent stuff.
5God of War Ragnarok
For blockbuster first-party Sony fare with a budget that’s surely sky-high, look no further thanGod of War Ragnarok. As a bonus, you’ll also receive a.) a terrific and touching story; b.) an expansive world that brings Norse legend to life; c.) a stunning soundtrack by famous composer Bear McCreary; d.) dad jokes.
Through The Gate
Stargate alum Christopher Judge won the award for Best Performance at The Game Awards 2022 for his portrayal as the ever-brooding, self-reflective Kratos, who is better than ever in this emotionally charged hack-and-slash sequel.
4Marvel’s Midnight Suns
God of War: Ragnarok prints money for Sony’s Santa Monica Studio, and rightly so. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the financially underperformingMarvel’s Midnight Suns, Firaxis Games' superhero-centric tactical role-playing game.
That’s a darn shame, because the makers of Civilization and XCOM delivered one of their finest titles here.
Marvel Game-A-Matic Universe
From Iron Man and Scarlet Witch to Spider-Man and Wolverine, the cast is stacked with a veritable banquet’s worth of recognizable capable caped folk. But you don’t need to know your Captain Marvel from your Captain America to appreciate the depth and breadth of Midnight Suns' systems.
3Persona 5 Royal
It might not be for everyone - then again, few games are - but anyone looking for a rich JRPG experience ought to know by now thatPersona 5 Royalis a pretty popular pick.
Between the vanilla version and its Royal revamp, Persona 5 has sold a good several million copies and counting, catapulting Atlus' half-demon-slaying, half-high-school-surviving series toward behemoth status as a verified genre heavyweight.
Social Reform
You’ll forge meaningful relationships with a sprawling group of friends and allies whilst harnessing a strange power to battle the evils of the world. Seriously invested players can rack up over 100 hours with P5R, so the handful of hours that Sony grants for a game trial may or may not be enough to rope you in.
2Baldur’s Gate 3
You may have heard of Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s broken the record for the largest number of Game of the Year awards, so yeah, it was kind of a big deal in 2023, and it’s going to be kind of a big deal for many years to come.
When Larian Studios announced this game, they did so in a preview event forGoogle Stadia, for heck’s sake - it’s fair to say it’s made a bigger splash than we might have anticipated. You can get lost in this world for hundreds of hours, but not in the vein of, say, Skyrim.
Rather, it’s almost uniformly a powerfully story-driven endeavor, with crisp writing that’s nearly as deep as its myriad gameplay systems and unprecedented number of ways to navigate your way through all manner of danger. Baldur’s Gate 3 is absurdly good.
1The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition
The Witcher 3 isn’t far off now from a decade on the market, but fans of Western role-playing games still whisper its name with the same sort of timeless reverence you only get when your game is this golden.
The colossal cap-off to Geralt of Rivia’s sprawling saga, which began in books and continued into the realm of gaming, is a don’t-miss experience that deserves to be played if you have even an ounce of interest in the genre.
Fans And First-Timers
Folks will tell you that you don’t need to play the two prior games in the trilogy to understand what’s going on, which is true. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we’d still recommend doing so, and even hunting down the novels. That way you’ve got the full picture.
But rest assured, even if your first foray into The Witcher is through a four-hour trial of The Witcher 3 on PS4 or PS5, you’ll get all the info you need to appreciate this epic-fantasy universe.
