I'm continuing my attempt at playing every single damn one of the PS-Plus Extra games for at least and hour even if I have zero interest in the game. The idea here is to see what games inside of the 100+ titles you will receive by upgrading your membership are actually worth playing to the average gamer. Keep in mind that I am basing my reaction solely on how well the game manages to capture, and later keep, your attention. I feel as though the first hour of playing a game is absolutely crucial to getting and maintaining an audience and it is something that so few games actually do well.
Today we look at Prison Architect, which is a prison management simulation game that I feel is actually a wonderful concept for a game, but ultimately, it is far too complicated to be played on a console.
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I can understand why this game is popular because it is actually a lot of fun to play and even though I only earmark 1 hour for every game in the library, I ended up playing this one for nearly 4 hours before I got extremely frustrated with how the game operates using a controller. Like many simulation and building games, Prison Architect has an immense number of options available to the user and unfortunately this just isn't very conducive to using a controller.
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Just take a look at this screenshot for example. This is quite a complicated setup, far more extensive than anything I ever ended up building in my 4 hours of gameplay. When I got to the portion where it became necessary to build large amounts of individual cells instead of just huge rooms like kitchens, the setting down of these intricate wall patterns was frustratingly difficult because the PS4 controller, or any controller for that matter, doesn't have the drawing accuracy that a mouse would. You could probably bang these cells out in very little time with a mouse and a keyboard, but with a controller it is a painstakingly long process.
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Not only do you have to lay down walls and doors in a very specific manner for the room type to be recognized, but you also have to connect electric and water as well. All of this has to be done in a very specific straight-line sort of way, or it will not work.
Also there are times where you are in command of a large group of riot police and the only way you can select them is to drag a rectangle around the group and select them all. This would be no problem with a mouse and keyboard, but with a controller it is just arduous.
Also, the menus are absolutely huge and once again, this wouldn't be a problem with a keyboard and a mouse but on a controller it just takes too long. Even though modern controllers have a lot of buttons on them, they pale in comparison to a keyboard.
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there's just too many options for any controller to be able to handle
Also, during the tutorial stages or the story, so to speak, there are things that you normally would be able to do such as open certain doors, but for reasons that they do not explain, you are no longer allowed to open said doors or in my case, my riot squad was simply blocked from entering a courtyard to enter another cell-block by some sort of invisible wall. The reason behind this is that there are certain other objectives that you are meant to do first, but it isn't very clear as to what those objectives actually are.
At the end of the day I think this is an excellent game and I will likely seek it out to play on PC... but on the PS4 there are far too many available options at any given time for the controller to possibly accommodate.
It kind of reminded me of the time when Blizzard decided to port Starcraft to consoles and it was basically unplayable. Some games just weren't meant to be played with a controller and this is one of them.
Good game on PC, near unplayable on PS4
Games I have already tried in my journey to play at least 1-hour of every PS-Plus Extra game
- Gravity Rush 2 (action adventure game with fast movement in every direction. It has RPG elements and a pretty decent story. Make it past the first hour and the game really opens up. Recommended)
- Oddworld: Soulstorm (2D+ platformer with great graphics, sound, and voice-acting. Unfortunately it is plagued with a lot of repetition. Recommended for a few hours)
- Bee Simulator (sort of like a flying FPS game but with no combat. It's graphically impressive and filled with tidbits of knowledge about bees... unfortunately it is repetitive as hell and gets boring fast. Not recommended)
- Prison Architect (a prison management simulator game similar to SimCity. It's a great game but just like most simulation games, it just isn't very playable using a controller. Not recommended on PS4)
All other games I have already reviewed (there are a lot of them)