Days Gone, MediEvil, and Friday the 13th are October's spooky PlayStation Now additions
Plus Rad and Trine 4.
There're some seasonally appropriate treats in store for PlayStation Now subscribers looking to inject a bit of video game spookiness into their October, with five new additions coming in the month ahead: moody open-world zombie adventure Days Gone, hack-and-slash remake MediEvil, asymmetrical multiplayer horror Friday the 13th, Trine 4, and Double Fine's Rad.
Days Gone, which seems as good a place to start as any, follows the tribulations of bandana-bedecked Deacon St. John, an outlaw-turned-drifter with a penchant for motorbikes on a quest to find his wife, two years after a global pandemic. What follows is a survival-hued open-world adventure across the gorgeously rendered Oregon countryside, doggedly blighted by its multitudinous swells of cannibalistic monstrosities and, less pleasingly, a whiff of overfamiliarity.
"Days Gone carries with it the expectation that if you cobble a game together from parts of other games that are already massively successful, you'll have yourself a winner," wrote contributor Malindy Hetfield in her review last year, "but it has no awareness of why these games were successful... Both in terms of its systems and its story it's uninspired, which is driven home by the fact that it's endlessly, needlessly long". Perhaps you will like it though!
MediEvil, meanwhile, is last year's remake of Sony's fondly remembered 1998 comedy hack-and-slasher, in which now-skeletal knight Sir Daniel Fortesque attempts to thwart the plans of villainous sorcerer Zarok. The remake successfully retains the charm and colour of the original, refreshed with some truly wonderful presentation, but sadly suffers from developer Other Ocean's decision to stick so slavishly to its source material.
"Given MediEvil's 21-year-old story is so carefully retold in the remake, it's puzzling that so many of these dated design choices weren't afforded the same improvements as the visuals and sounds," wrote reviewer Vikki Blake, "In trying to be faithful to the original game, all the developer has done is shine a light on the game's few, but substantive, flaws, failing to capitalise on this timely opportunity to improve MediEvil's mechanics for a new generation."
Next up then, is Friday the 13th, a compelling multiplayer spin on the classic horror movie franchise. The gist, here, is that seven players assume the role of Summer Camp "counsellors", while an eighth player dons the hockey mask of Jason Voorhees. The former must either survive or escape, while the latter is charged with dispatching his teenage opponents before the game ends, ideally in a variety of imaginatively gruesome ways.
Eurogamer contributor Rick Lane was quite taken with the whole thing when it released back in 2017, calling it "a thrilling game of cat and mouse where being the mouse is fraught with tension and being the cat is fucking awesome."
Rounding off October's additions are two somewhat less spooky offerings; there's Double Fine's post-apocalyptic 3D action rogue-like Rad - in which the titular bat-wielding teenager wanders an ever-changing radioactive wasteland in a bid to restore the world - and Trine 4, the latest entry in developer Frozenbyte's co-operative puzzle-platformer. The latter, incidentally, earned itself a Recommended badge when Eurogamer reviewed it last year.
All of the above games launch on PlayStation Now today, and Sony notes that Days Gone will remain available until 5th January next year.