This Week's PlayStation Games Bring ‘Broken Age,’ ‘Tropico 5’ And More

Sony Playstation — A person plays a video game at a Sony PlayStation in the Sony's flagship store in Berlin, April 27, 2011. Reuters/Thomas Peter

Another week brings yet another assortment of brand new PlayStation games. This week’s grab bag promises to be fun for fans of adventure games and strategy fare. Tim Schafer’s Kickstarter powered adventure “Broken Age” finds its way to PlayStation platforms, as does Haemimont Games’ gorgeous construction and management sim “Tropico 5.”

Headlining the charge on the PlayStation Blog is the long-awaited release of “Broken Age,” which began life as a crowdfunded adventure game from the mind of “Psychonauts” and “Grim Fandango” designer, Tim Schafer. The project raised over $3.3M during its campaign from nearly 90,000 eager backers, and was eventually split into two acts due to an increase in its scope and ambition.

Both acts were released on April 28, 2014 to generally positive reviews. Critics praised the quality of writing, the story being told and the beautiful visuals, but critical of the amount of backtracking the game required. Polygon scored the game an 8/10 in its review, commending Double Fine for creating grounded, heartfelt characters and intriguing worlds to explore. “Broken Age” will be released as a cross-buy title on both PS4 and PS Vita.

Next up is “Tropic 5,” which stands as the PS4’s first big management and strategy sim. Armed with a quirky sense of humour, the game tasks players with taking control of a small island nation, and leading it through the colonial era, through the Great Depression and World Wars and into the modern era.

Originally released on PC and Xbox 360 in 2014, “Tropico 5” is the first entry in the series to support four-player competitive and cooperative play. Speaking to GamingBolt about the PS4 version in particular, head programmer Ivan-Assen Ivanov explained that the team at Haemimont Games had put a lot of time and effort into creating a worthy port for PS4 fans.

“In our previous console ports, fitting the game in the available RAM was a significant effort, now this problem simply disappeared, as, indeed, we have access to more memory on the PS4 than we have on PC. Between our support for cross-platform multiplayer (which requires the same game logic running on both sides), and our plans to bring the visual improvements done for the PS4 version back to the PC via free updates, the game you’ll experience on the PS4 will exactly match what you can get on a (fairly high-end) PC,” he said.

PlayStation 3 owners don’t have a huge lineup to choose from this week, but they’ll be able to dip their toes into the strategy game waters with “RISK,” the classic game of global domination. This digital version, released in 2014 uses the 2010 rules standard, and offers fans the same level of depth and tactical nuance they’ve come to enjoy. Also on the docket for PS3 is “Paranormal Pursuit: The Gifted One Collector’s Edition,” a beautiful paranormal adventure game in which players must keep a young boy with psychic powers out of the clutches of an evil politician. In total, seven new Playstation games games hit PSN spanning all three Sony platforms. A full breakdown includes the following:

“Broken Age” PS4, PS Vita — Digital (Cross Buy)

“Omega Quintet” PS4 — Digital, Retail

“Paranormal Pursuit: The Gifted One Collector’s Edition” PS3 — Digital

“Project Root” PS4, PS Vita — Digital (Cross Buy)

“Risk” PS3 — Digital “Sketchcross” PS Vita — Digital

“Tropico 5” PS4 — Digital, Retail