You can’t buy Driveclub on the PlayStation Store anymore, and its multiplayer servers have gone dark. Evolution Studios, the team behind it, is now part of Codemasters. That leaves the single-player content on a physical disc. It’s a hazard of revisiting the PS4’s overlooked games: some are already hard to get, and the console is winding down as Sony plans new hardware and a disc-less future.
The PS4 launched in North America on Nov. 15, 2013, and has continued getting games across many genres, even six years out from the PS5’s launch. Here are ten near-perfect games that few people played, grouped below by how hard they are to track down today.
Driveclub (Oct. 7, 2014) arrived early in the PS4’s life with some rough edges, even if it looked beautiful in screenshots. Evolution Studios spent months adding impressive weather effects and making small adjustments under the hood to improve the arcade driving. It eventually became something special, but by then players had moved on. The game was pulled from the PlayStation Store, its servers shut down, and the team became part of Codemasters. Find a physical copy, though, and the single-player side is still fun.
Summon Night 6: Lost Borders (March 10, 2016) faces a similar availability problem. Its developer, Media.Vision, is best known today for Digimon Story: Time Stranger and its work on the classic Wild Arms RPG series. Despite that pedigree and the franchise’s cult following, this entry slipped past most people. Give it a chance and you’ll find a compelling SRPG with colorful visuals and accessible combat. Unlike most games here, it isn’t on the PlayStation Store, so you’ll need to track down an increasingly rare physical copy.
The Tomorrow Children is a cautionary tale with a happier ending. Sony published the original on Oct. 25, 2016, an interesting action-adventure from Q-Games with a design that leaned on microtransactions to keep players spending. Keeping it online cost more than Sony was willing to pay, so the servers shut down in November 2017. The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition arrived a few years later on Sept. 6, 2022, self-published by Q-Games with extensive changes to the original design. It no longer needs servers or microtransactions, and it’s back on the PlayStation Store.
Still easy to find
The remaining games are easier to track down, with many still available digitally or on the used market.
Infamous: Second Son (March 21, 2014) barely qualifies for this list, given how big the Infamous series was on PS3. Its PS4 outing received far less attention. People sometimes post on social media wishing Sony hadn’t ended the series after Infamous 2, unaware that this game exists. Second Son was a solid game that shouldn’t have marked the end of such a well-loved franchise. But unless you count Infamous First Light (released Aug. 26, a few months later) as a sequel rather than a spinoff expansion, that’s what it became.
Gravity Rush 2 (Jan. 18, 2017) is, according to the people who spent time with it, one of the very best games of the decade. Most players barely noticed it, even with Sony handling publishing and marketing. Its large cast of female characters has a comic-book look that suits the gravity-focused gameplay. A few ground-based missions and cramped corridors take away that freedom, but those restrictions make the liberty you enjoy through most of the game feel all the more thrilling.
Erica (Aug. 19, 2019) is one of several PS4-era games that mix gameplay with live-action footage, and Polygon’s review was enthusiastic. Its branching story follows the title character as she deals with her father’s murder. There are darker secrets behind it than she initially realizes, with a shocking truth waiting at the end. It’s short, but if the story grabs you, it’s worth replaying to make different decisions and discover the other endings.
Zanki Zero: Last Beginning (July 5, 2018) was developed by Spike Chunsoft (Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island) and Lancarse (Final Fantasy Resonance). Without an established franchise to help sell it, the game didn’t reach the audience it deserved. Its intriguing story of life after the end of the world as we know it explores loss and family, providing the backdrop for plenty of familiar dungeon-crawling. Few games are quite like it, making it worth a look if you’re after something unexpected.
Exist Archive: The Other Side of the Sky (Dec. 17, 2015) comes from tri-Ace, best known for the Star Ocean series, whose latest original installment is 2022’s Star Ocean: The Divine Force. Developed with Spike Chunsoft, it includes work by several people behind the Norse mythology-inspired RPG Valkyrie Profile, itself an unusual game in its day. Endearing characters and satisfying combat are the highlights, though the late game gets a little grindy. In a surprising twist, dungeon exploration uses a side view, like a traditional platformer. That should appeal to JRPG fans looking for something a little different.
Bound (Aug. 16, 2016) is a 3D platformer about love, life, and expression, set in a fantastical world within the mind of a woman reflecting on her earlier years. You move through expansive, beautifully rendered environments using dance. Polygon’s critic put it best: “Bound is a reminder that through diversions like art, sport, dance and literature, there are ways to escape, at least for a while, and perhaps to re-emerge as someone slightly different.” If you want a game that embraces the medium as an art form, this is it.
Concrete Genie (Oct. 8, 2019) launched in Japan as Ash to Mahou no Fude. This third-person adventure follows Ash, a painter who can bring his creations to life and use them to change the tiny fishing town of Denska. Vibrant visuals and a heartwarming story make it suitable for gamers of all ages. It’s also PlayStation VR compatible, giving you a reason to pull that hardware out of storage. Its biggest flaw is that it ends too soon, but it’s a good pick if quality matters more to you than quantity.
Driveclub and Summon Night 6 are the two games on this list you can’t get digitally, so a physical copy is your only way in. Driveclub is the sharper case: its servers are gone and its store listing is pulled, which leaves only the single-player content on the disc. The other eight are still sold on the PlayStation Store or turn up on the used market, so you can get to them whenever you like.
