This confirms titles already available as part of PS+ Extra can be given away as part of PS+ Essential's monthly games. I guess Sony's justification for this is that you won't be able to play a Extra/Premium game through PS+ Extra when it's removed from the service, but games claimed through PS+ Essential are yours to keep as long you have an active PS+ subscription.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (PS5 | PS4) - 85 Metacritic Score | 8.1 User Score
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man Of Medan (PS4) - 69 Metacritic Score | 5.8 User Score
Arcadegeddon (PS5 | PS4) - No Score Available | 4.6 User Score (Early Access)
Game info
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time is the eighth and most recent entry in the the Crash Bandicoot series. A platformer like the other games in the series, Crash 4 was lauded by critics and players alike as a return to form for the franchise, with some even going as far as to proclaim it the best game in the series. A new gameplay mechanic introduced to the series is the addition of Quantum Masks, which grant you specific powers in specific locations of the game. There's also local hotseat multiplayer (playing a level, then passing the controller one to someone else) up to four players as outlined in this video. Not only has Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time been called the best Bandicoot game, but the consensus surrounding the game is that it's also the hardest in the series, frustratingly so at times, so you're in for a challenge even if you aren't going for the platinum. Speaking of the platinum, expect it become to become much rarer, with the PS5 version likely becoming Ultra Rare.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan was the first entry in Supermassive Games' The Dark Pictures series. A interactive horror game, it received mostly mixed reviews from critics and players who compared it unfavorably to Until Dawn. It's a heavily story driven game, so I would not look up any trophy guides till you've done one playthrough if you don't want to be spoiled and I won't get into any specifics about the story either. Although it was criticized as cliched, the way it unfolded with so many possible outcomes as determined by the player's actions did garner praise. Like with a lot of these interactive story games, gameplay is made up of exploring, making choices and QTEs. The game features five playable characters, and it comes with two multiplayer modes, one that lets splits the characters between two players and an other five player mode that gives each player control of one of the characters.
Arcadegeddon is an upcoming third-person roguelite cooperative multiplayer developed by IllFonic, the studio behind Friday the 13th: The Game, and Predator: Hunting Grounds. Early access impressions from publications lean toward the positive, but user impressions are more mixed although more positive than expected for a game like this. From what I've read, IllFonic have proven themselves to be dedicated to improving the game, with the Early Access release having gotten a lot better over the past year, which is a good sign when it comes to future support and Arcadegeddon is expect to support crossplay at launch. I've seen its gameplay feel compared positively to Risk of Rain 2, praise for the soundtrack, and the game's visual style drawing influence from Jet Set Radio so it has that going for it.
The story is simple is enough, you're helping your uncle fight off a Megacorp that wants to crush his Arcade business. They've infected his top game with a virus and it's up to you to enter the game fight off the virus. You can play alone or with up to three other players, and solo mode can be played offline.
The way the game works is that you create your character and make your way through hub area where NPCs will give you some challenges to meet in a run, with each run getting more difficult as you progress with no end in sight, you just keep playing till you get as far as you can. Halfway through a stage you can find a machine that increases the difficulty of a run even more, which will make reward gained even greater but not all challenge progression carries over (say you need 150 kills with a shotgun but your run end with 140, it'll reset to 0) so it's a gamble. Once a run ends, you lose all your weapons, and stat/power boosts but carry over completed challenges. Completing challenges unlocks Surge abilities and cosmetics, with the former giving you more options for your next run.
While Arcadegeddon is mostly a co-op experience, it does come with competitive elements. Individual rewards at the end of a stage are determined by your personal score, so you might be tempted to steal kills in order to fast-track your progress, but that doesn't mean it pays to play selfishly because your score also increases for helping out your teammates, such as reviving them and you guns can be traded to help out other players even further. The other competitive element is a number of minigames that can be found in stages throughout your run, with the winner of any of the dozens of available minigames receiving a powerful weapon. If you want to play just PvP, you can do that by accessing the PvP machine in the Arcade hub area.
From what I gather, it seems the developers are going for a fun chaotic experience, and they've succeed more than they've fail. These are just early impressions though, so I could be way off. Personally, I'm just happy to see a developer create their own IP rather than relying so heavily on existing IPs, and at the very least it looks more interesting than IllFonic's other releases.
Trophy Hunting
The PSNProfile's trophy guide by coldhardcrash_ for Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time gives it a difficulty rating of 9/10, with an estimated 100 hours to complete made up of 4 playthroughs. PowerPyx's guide also rates it a 9/10 for difficulty but gives an estimated platinum time of 50+ hours, while the PlayStation Trophies guide gives an estimated platinum time of 60+ hours, and also rating the game's platinum difficulty as 9/10. As all the guides note, the platinum time is extremely skill dependent and can be much higher or lower depending on how adept you are at platformers. There are also several trophies for collectibles, so this guide by Z-Yux and ThaKingTropy will prove useful.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan PSNProfiles Trophy Guide by Last-_-Judgment gives it a difficulty rating of 3/10, with the platinum taking up to 30 hours made up of at least 4 playthroughs. The PowerPyx trophy guide gives the platinum the same difficulty and playtime, but says it'll take at least 5 playthroughs. The PowerPyx guide lists 7 trophies are requiring online play, while the PSNProfile's guide only mentions Learning to Work Together as requiring online play. This is because when the game launched, There were some collectables that could only be found in a Shared Story session, locking out some collectable trophies if you were playing on your own. This changed with the release of the free Curator's Cut DLC. This collectible guide also by Last-_-Judgment explains things better. Four trophies, Aye, aye captain, Ghost ships are just a myth, right?, Learning to work together, and Secrets! Lies! Conspiracies, man! are listed a buggy.
Arcadegeddon is still in Early Access, so there's no trophy guide yet, but the trophy list can be seen here. It looks to be quite grindy and potentially difficult, and naturally there are lot of online multiplayer trophies. As the game isn't out yet, this is my guesswork; Playing 100 games of Adventure Mode, opening 500 chests, destroying 500 chests, collecting 500000 Tickets, the seven trophies requiring you to get 500 kills with a specific type of weapon, getting 100 headshots, and unlocking all Surge abilities appear to be the grindiest trophies at a glance.
The skill based and luck/RNG based trophies appear to be; Having a single Tiny Tornado get frozen, electrified and set on fire, Killing 20 enemies with a single Pluggernaut Ability, Killing 15 enemies with a single Fireball, Trapping 15 enemies with a single Black Hole, Killing 10 enemies using a single Major Tombot, Killing 20 enemies while boosted by a single Shield Drone Ability, and Freezing 10 enemies with a single Freeze Blast Ability. Defeating all bosses in a single run might also be really challenging as you only start off with one continue per player, and in order to fight a boss you need to manually increase the difficulty halfway through a stage.
I'll stress again that Arcadegeddon isn't out yet and information is limited, so these trophies might not be as grindy or difficult as they appear. For example, the 500 kills trophies sound incredibly grindy but I've heard that enemies are plentiful and you'll be mowing them down all the time. We won't know for sure till the game's out.
PS+ Extra & PS+ Premium
The indie sci-fi cat adventure game Stray has already been announced to be coming to PS+ Extra when it launches on July 19th.