Some just include Activity Cards to load and save your game or access a game mode (which saves time but isn't a game changer) while others go to town on tips, hints and other helpful ways to get more from their game.Īs one player put it, "Honestly, I'm just really enjoying them in Control where they tell me where to go when I'm lost in the wonderfully convoluted building. However, as with the use of PS5 Dual Sense features, different games do this in different ways.
They are like your very own guide, tailored to your current play through, providing information on progress, tips on things you've missed, more things to do (and how long they will take) and short videos of how to complete objectives (that you can pin to the side of the screen while you are playing). It’s a really neat part of the system that you can pop-up while playing by pressing the PlayStation button on the controller. PlayStation 5 Activity Cards are a part of the operating system that provide a quick and easy way to see your progress, and get helping progressing (or finding what you’ve missed) in games. Finally, a few of the games like The First Tree and Sunlight invite you to make a connection to other players, once you have come to terms with a journey on your own. Then there are games we included like Shadow of the Colossus that let you get lost in the vastness of its landscape. Other games in the list, like Thomas Was Alone and Bird Alone offer you the chance to reflect on friendship and the need to nurture relationships. Some of the games, like Never Alone, Journey and The Long Dark place you in a harsh environment that emphasises your diminutive size when faced with the expanse of nature. These games offer us insight into the benefits of appreciating time alone, such as opportunities for self-reflection, self-discovery, and the chance to curate enriching experiences or environments for ourselves. The other games offer their own lens on loneliness and solitary seasons of life. In it, you spend 400 elapsed days waiting for the King to wake up and living at a slow pace. This list was inspired by the experience of playing the unusually solitary (and long) game The Longing and the Twitter thread that followed.
“With mindfulness, there are even more benefits to gain from intentional consumption of media,” she says, “games can be tools we use to recover or grow, psychologically, and our time with them isn't wasted if they provide us insights or rest we need.” Garcia’s Screen Therapy project employs Positive Media Psychology research to highlight and interpret meaningful experiences with games and movies. We teamed up with Courtney Garcia’s Screen Therapy channel to curate a list of games that give us a chance to experience being alone in different ways. In a culture that often assumes that the route to happiness is with another person, it can benefit us to acknowledge that being alone is not always a bad thing. Still Life - capture the inanimate, mundane and overlooked elements that make the game world what it is.Īrchitectural - find ways to photograph the buildings in various states of build, decay and renewal. Sports - capture sporting moments, including not only players, but the crowd and coaches. Photojournalism - create a photo diary of the events of the game to be annotated later.įashion - document the different outfits and wardrobe styles your character chooses. Portraiture - capture images of the people you meet. Some families have tasked their expert players with capturing a certain type of photograph as they play: This means you can take really beautiful and engaging pictures in the games you play. Beyond this, many games offer a Photo mode that allows you to freeze the action and take control of the camera - even letting you control effects, depth of field and shutter speed in some cases. At a rudimentary level this allows you to take pictures of your adventures. All modern video game consoles enable you to capture an image of the screen. Photography is one aspect of this as Paul Buttle recently highlight on Twitter. This means that you can often put video games to unusual uses.
However, because games are open to the player, how you play, the direction you move and what you do in the game is up to you. The spaces and places that video games create are often designed with a particular interaction or way to progress through them.