3 PS Plus free demos you should try this weekend (May 17-19)

One of the most underrated features of PlayStation Plus Premium is the game trials that it offers. Although Sony does not put its AAA games on the service the day they release, it and several other third-party publishers offer up free demos that essentially give players full access to the game for a limited period of time. It’s a great way to test a new game before you buy and it also gives you an excuse to try out a variety of different games this weekend without making the time commitment to beat them all. I looked through the full list of game trials that PlayStation Plus Premium offers and pinpointed three of the demos that are most worth your time.

The first is a two-hour demo for one of the PlayStation 5’s biggest exclusives. The next will give you a two-hour taste of the latest fighting game in a long-running franchise. Finally, the one-hour trial of one of the year’s best indies will get you hooked on the card-based roguelike that consumed my life for a bit.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is one of the best AAA games on the PS5. Developed by Insomniac Games, this game feels like the pinnacle of the gameplay and narrative concepts introduced across Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Web-swinging feels better than ever and flows even smoother than before thanks to the addition of mechanics like the Web Wings. Combat still feels great, and the gameplay remains rock solid when control shifts to characters that aren’t Spider-Man. Narratively, Insomniac knocks it out of the park with its interpretation of the Symbiote storyline from the comics, which is nuanced and takes a closer look at how some of Spider-Man’s villains can be redeemed.