Korea Miéville

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a spaceship shooting at drifting asteroids—forever.

Yeah, this is great for me, since there are always a ton of games that I’m curious about, but not enough to gamble money on.

These (along with Guardians of the Galaxy) are the games I was hoping to see on the list, too. These are games I was either very interested in but passed over for one reason or another (like Death Stranding) or was on the fence about (Returnal) and couldn’t justify spending $50-80 on.

As someone who has spent hundreds of dollars over the years on games that end up languishing unplayed in my library, this is probably the service for me. If I can have access to at minimum of four or five older AAA games per year for around the cost of one brand new AAA game, that’s absolutely worth it. If I never actually get around to playing a particular game, I won’t feel bad that I spent a bunch of money on it.

And one major reason why I signed up for PS Now in the first place was so I could try out games I’m not familiar with, or genres I’m not sure I like, so the ability to quickly and easily try games without having to buy individual titles is terrific. I know the time-limited trials are controversial, but I’m totally the kind of gamer who likes demos and being able to sample games to see if I vibe with them.

I’m surprised as well. I loved the original as a teenager, but it hasn’t aged well for me at all, so I was already indifferent to the idea of a sequel. Seeing the trailer killed any interest I had in it—it looked like a sad nostalgia wallow, recycling the good bits of the first movie and throwing in laughably archaic sequel devices like having Goose’s son be in Maverick’s class. (And for some reason all of these call signs, like "Rooster" and "Hangman," that seemed cool in 1986, just seem ridiculous to me today.)

All of which is to say that I’ve been admittedly biased against this sequel ever since, and expected a more cynical critical reaction, so I’m a bit taken aback by the glowing reviews—even the ones that smirk at the military fetishization and recycling of the original are just like, "yeah, it’s ridiculous, but just lay back and enjoy it."

I’m normally a defender of big, dumb, turn-off-your-brain escapist flicks, so I feel I should be on board with this movie, but I can’t muster any enthusiasm for it. Even the super positive reviews make it seem kind of tedious.