One of my rentals was a PSVR point-and-click adventure game Psychonauts: The Rhombus of Ruin. This 3-hour (without a guide) experience didn't overstay its welcome, with some varied, perspective-based puzzles and interesting-enough characters. I missed the other (two?) Psychonauts games, but wasn't put at a disadvantage when trying to keep up with the story. The main writer here is Tim Schafer, who has written a ton of weird, funny, off-kilter games like this. The only other one I've played was called Day of the Tentacle, which had some really convoluted sequences to complete and puzzles to solve. Thankfully, it seems an agreed-upon pact among devs not to make their VR games long and difficult. This is done by having shorter scenes and less items to manipulate, and that is fine by me. In fact, that's Double-Fine (anyone?). I last saw a PS+ sale of this game for <$10, and I'd say that's a good value.
Right after beating this, I went back to a free PS+ tower defense game in February called Gunhouse. Besides the street-art aesthetic, what sets the game apart is that you augment your base by matching tiles. The trophy list is small, but there are 300+ levels, even if they're as short as 2 minutes. The levels don't vary much, so I knock out 10 or so at a time. This isn't a hard game by any means, and it's become a muscle memory routine after the first week of playing.
Speaking of muscle memory and dropping dem blocks, I just couldn't shake that free Tetris Effect demo I played in March and ended up hunting down my own copy on eBay. Tetris is one of the top 3 most popular games, and is probably just behind Pong as the most accessible game ever made. This version is enhanced for VR, though totally normally playable. The full retail price is $40, and sheesh, who the heck would spend that much on a game that's been released on pretty much every gaming platform, often for free?
Tetris Effect has a dope electronic, snythy soundtrack and mind-melting visuals, boosted infinitely by headphones and VR. The developers lean heavily on the relaxing potential this game can bring to you and have no-fail modes, a visual-only (non gameplay) mode, and the campaign mode promises an emotional journey. It delivers. The level goal is to clear 30 lines, but every 10 lines, there's a speed change, usually faster, but mercifully slower every once in a while. Additionally, the music loops at certain points until you hit different points. So, in the first 10 lines, you might get just the percussion, and at 11, you get a bassline, and finally the lyrics come in at 21 lines cleared. Add some colorful particle effects and you've got yourself an addictive experience. Akin to Lumines is also that movement uses sound effects that blend with the music and change with each stage segment, so you might find yourself moving pieces to the rhythm rather than for sheer speed. It's all up to you.
Lastly for new games is a rental of Pixeljunk Monsters 2, a Pacific Island-themed tower defense game. I love this genre, and this game is about tower placement more than speed and button pressing. Bonus: my wife plays with me and I may have sold her on tower defense games!
I also cleared three of the four Final Fantasy XV DLC packs. The first episode follows Gladio when he disappears from the main story, and is mainly a beat-em-up, with a kinda-hard boss at the end. The only reason I finished all of this in 2 hours was because I did it for a friend last year, and the trauma lingered. The second pack followed Prompto when he...disappeared from the main story, and is a 3rd person shooter with a really clumsily-implemented snowmobiling racing mini game. Same deal with the trauma and experience. The third DLC I played followed Ignis, which is mainly a beat-em-up that's REALLY fun. The significant difference for me is that story has a really emotional climax to it, and that caused me to place value on the rest of the story. Final Fantasy games usually touch on death, loss and grievance, and your heroes always suffer. Maybe that's where the title comes from? Anyhoo, as well-developed as the story and Episode Ignis was, it also has the absolute hardest fight in FFXV. It's a one-on-one 'friendly' battle with Prince Noctis, and Square Enix makes you bleed for this trophy. Holy cow, a 'good' run for this fight is 10 minutes of dodging and attacking, dying and reviving yourself, and I can only make 2 attempts in a session before I lose the desire to play.
Other than that, I'm still playing Apex Legends, and Overwatch released their limited-time PvE mode 'Storm Rising' that's a ton of fun, even if it sounds like a scary racist chat room name.
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