Video games are great obviously, but they can also be a serious time sink – time not everyone has to spare.
Now, I would never dissuade anyone from handing over 100+ of their precious hours to the likes of Elden Ring or The Witcher 3, but sometimes you just want to start and finish something without it demanding too much from you. That’s where these games come in.
Here are three of the best PS5 games you can finish in under four hours.
Time Flies
As one of the most universally despised living creatures, being a fly can’t be much fun. They don’t tend to live very long either, and while that isn’t great news for flies, it turns out that it’s a pretty good basis for a video game.
In Time Flies, the brief lifespan of a housefly (in this case barely longer than a minute) becomes the time in which you have to complete a bucket list of achievements. You buzz hurriedly around a small selection of minimalist, monochromatic 2D levels with goals that are often as vague as “get rich” and “make friends”.
Each one is a miniature puzzle, and working out how to tick off an objective requires plenty of trial and error. When your timer runs out, the fly instantly dies, and another takes its place.
To complete a level, you have to successfully get through your entire bucket list in a single run, and while the game might fill you with existential dread, its smart design and slapstick humour make it worth it.
Sword of the Sea
The best way I can describe Sword of the Sea is as follows: imagine if the indie classic Journey and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater had a baby. This game is what would pop out.
Like in Thatgamecompany’s serene desert adventure, Sword of the Sea has you exploring equally sprawling sandy dunes, to which you return water by traversing the environment on your magical hoversword and collecting seeds. As in Journey, there’s no dialogue to explain where to go next, so you have to pay attention to the guidance of nature.
The skateboarding action is far more stripped back than THPS, but there are tricks to perform, and thanks to the DualSense controller the game feels fantastic in your hands.
Sword of the Sea isn’t particularly challenging, but its sense of momentum and flow, coupled with stunning visuals, make it a pretty special experience.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake
These days, he’s best known for his work on the Game of the Year award-winning It Takes Two and this year’s fantastic Split Fiction, but the first game Josef Fares directed was Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons back in 2013, and it remains a gem.
It’s a third-person adventure game about two young brothers who journey into a fantasy world to seek a cure for their dying father. Fares has always been fascinated with dual-protagonist games, but unlike his studio’s more recent splitscreen multiplayer efforts, Brothers has one player controlling both characters, with a thumbstick assigned to each sibling.
Most of the game’s puzzles involve working out which brother you need to use for a specific task, such as opening a gate or crawling through a gap, and they often need to work as a team to progress.
The original is still well worth tracking down, but this 2024 remake gives the game a handsome graphical overhaul, and if you missed it the first time, it’s never looked or played better.
