Playstation games that I like!
Okage Shadow King
What the people would call one of those more obscure JRPG games but perhaps not as obscure as Moon RPG Remix would have been as a point of reference.
It was a very stylized rpg that was about a quiet boy named Ari who was completely unremarkable. People had a hard time even noticing him at times. On one day his grandfather finds an ancient bottle. He brings it back to cure Ari's very important sister (sarcasm here) as she had a curse placed on her by some ghost to make her shadow permanently pink.
Rather than some genie, they let out Stan (Full title: Lord Stanley Hihat Trinidad XIV), an evil king who agrees to fix the curse but only in exchange for a body so he can go and conquer the world. The family near immediately and collectively decides that yup, better give this guy Ari as he's the least important person. Stan merges with his shadow and the two set out on Stan's quest to become The Evil King, as he was overthrown and has had his power split up among a number of lesser "fake" evil kings. So for stan to regain his title (and also take over the world) he's gotta go beat up the other fake evil kings and show the world who's boss, and Ari is just along for the ride.
It suffers from some of the issues that Other JRPG's suffer from in trying to be subversive but it's actually really interesting in a story convention the farther you get into it, though I'd hate to spoil how the game ends (though I will say it absolutely doesn't end the way you'd expect and I think does successfuly subvert the standard JRPG).
Hippa Linda / Stretch Panic!
This game came out around the year of 2001 (so it's a bit on the older side). Truly just a conceptually weird game that I kind of have a love / hate relationship with. Love it because I love the concept of a game that is mostly / completely boss battles and it's a nice different take than how shadow of the Colossus Handles it.
Very simple story synopsis that Linda and her twelve sisters all live together in a house, and Linda turned out okay while all her sisters became very vain. Vanity Demons show up and posses the vanity obsessed sisters and one tries to get Linda too, but gets stuck in her beloved scarf, imbuing it with hand like properties as well as the ability to stretch things. So it's up to you to beat the demons and save her sisters.
That being said some of it hasn't aged very well at all and is in pretty poor taste by today's standards. Some of this can be chalked up to the game being near on 20 years old and what is / isn't really appropriate to joke at and societal standards have shifted, but a good chunk of it is just... yea that's a deliberate choice and it's a bad deliberate choice.
To cut to the chase, the game's got really wild amounts of misogyny. A lot of the game's story is just hidden in the manual and it's a mix on whether or not that's a good or a bad thing. On one hand it'd be nice to get more in game than what's shown, but on the other hand the actual written story is just not that great with regards to the misogyny. There's also some Fatphobia involved in the game which isn't great either. This is skipping over the fact that one of the common enemy types you gotta grind to get points to do things with, is in fact just a lady in a bikini with big breasts (and I mean Big breasts).
the Fatphobia
One of the characters, Jelly-chan, is described as being overweight and food-obsessed. It does not age well and while it was the 2000's and humor standards were wildly different twenty plus years ago, they could have set it up so that she was just super obsessed with anime / japan stuff and still gotten away with having her boss form be a jelly monster because like, slime monsters are iconic for japanese rpg's it wouldn't have been hard to simply not write fatphobia, especially when the name Jelly-chan is right there.
I think it's also a fair criticism to point out that the game runs on a point system which by itself isn't a terrible idea. In execution it is real obvious padding to make what would have otherwise been just a long tech demo into an actual servicable game. To open boss doors it costs points, to do the exorcism move it also costs points, and you gotta grind out points in the ex levels against common enemies. It is a more fair option in this case if the alternative is platforming challenges with the movement tech but on the other hand it is just real obvious padding.
The boss fight concepts when kept in isolation are pretty fun and engaging (though I am a fan of gimmick bosses). Outside of the aformentioned boss involved with the fatphobia, some of the concepts are wild and surprisingly well executed.
Gregory Horror Show
A bit like something between chulip and animal crossing, but also make it a horror survival game.
Due to the Popularity of the pre-existing IP in japan, this fun game was created and released in august of 2003 in japan, and then in december of the same year for the internation / european release.
What the game is about is figuring out the curious people of Gregory's Hotel. You're trapped in his hotel but you're given the opportunity to escape by collecting all the souls squirreled away in this house by that dreaded rat. They aren't out in the open, as each guest is carrying one of the lost souls. The game is like a puzzle in that you gotta figure their character out well enough to figure out how to get those souls from them, and on top of that you gotta figure out their schedule as that is more often than not handy and necessary for getting those souls.
Be warned however, that each stolen soul outside of the one tutorial soul will cause the person hiding that soul to become rather angry. They will hunt you down on sight and attempt to kill you, and it becomes a deal of how to shake them before they catch up. It also does not help that there's a health and sanity meter to also deal with, as though the "horror shows" might not always kill you, it's traumatizing enough that you really can't take too many at once without losing your mind (which is the other game over outside of running out of health). And if these guests catch up to you before you cash those souls in? they take them back and then you have to do the whole thing over again.
Scaler
This one's also rough in that I do have a fondness for it as a game I played and got really far into in my youth. Some of it's not aged well though hence why i'm being upfront about it here.
While it certainly doesn't seem to mean to do this (or at least do this in a serious and intentionally malicious way), the whole evil space lizards / reptilian conspiracy theory is rooted in antisemitism so that's something to consider before playing this game. It doesn't take itself seriously but it is about evil space lizards from another dimension trying to take over. The game absolutely doesn't take itself too seriously in it's intro but it's also worth pointing this out.
Game's pretty much about Bobby "Scaler" Jenkins, a very overeager lizard activist, who gets kidnapped for figuring something out about the people he's protesting. He finds out that they're lizards from another dimension who are planning to take over the multiverse. He gets tortured but then gets turned into a lizard person and hops into a strange portal to one of the other dimensions.
There he meets allies Leon and Reppy, and between the two lizard people and flying lizard mount, they decide that they gotta rescue all the stolen lizard eggs the evil group stole and also figure out a way back to Bobby's home universe.
The writing's not great but on a gameplay side it is a pretty solid platformer and that is the one thing I remember most about the game. Not the story at all, but the visuals and the fact that it just played really well for a platformer game. Or more specifically it's bonkers rail grinding challenges. Never got around to beating it but I remember getting to like, the 2nd to last level or so in my youth.
Big ol Bass 2 / Fisherman's Bait 3
A weird little PS1 Game that I have a lot of fond memories of. Mostly doing the world monster fishing mode of it. Let me tell you the conceit of the game pretty much was "hey a fish magazine hires you to go fishing in increasingly ludicrous situations as part of a life insurance fraud scheme but you keep finding cryptid fish", which is kind of wild in hindsight.
A slightly better but no less unhinged story explanation
You work for World Monster Graphics which is a fish magazine catching rare and interesting fish for your boss, Jennifer Clam (editor in chief), so they can be put on the cover of the magazine each month, and I think it's also implied / mentioned somewhere that you also do some article writing but most of your job is just catching fish to put on the magazine's cover. Most of the fish in this game mode are fake fish outside of a very small pool of real fish solely picked because they were interesting fish in real life.
Egypt Lake - You get sent to catch a supposedly cursed fish because that would be a good article either way (if you get cursed they write about it, if not they write about lack of curse).
American Lake - There's a fish that is swiping picnics I guess? The U.S. Military shut the lake this was happening in down to the public but your boss got permission from the president to just let you fish there to catch it (and it's partners in crime) and interview them.
Asian Lake - The rare Xien Rong Yuigh fish from legend has been spotted again after a long absence, and Jennifer wants one to put on display as well as something for the cover of the magazine. She wants the biggest specimen that you can get her.
European Lake - Jennifer's up in arms that some fish called Jack Anarchi is attacking Jennifer's friend's fish. She wants this one fish to show off to the queen (also her friend), as well as putting it on the magazine cover.
Amazonia / South American Lake - You're tasked with finding the Pirarucu fish in the amazon (also known as the arapaima, while a great many of the fish in the World Monster Fishing campaign are fake but there are a few like this one that are pretty much the real fish with some slight exageration). Jennifer wants several for her fish collection and you gotta go grab that as well as find an article for her. Small sidenote the Arapaima in this game do look adorable, though I would say 0/10 they do not make great fish tank pets due to their sheer size and need requirements.
African Lake - You just have to go get a Coelacanth so Jennifer can gift it to her very famous musician friend so he can put it in his basement safari attraction (this way jennifer looks good for this guy), as well as some extra fish. You're getting her the Coelacanth so she doesn't have to give away her own coelacanth.
This one is interesting if only because the lake goal is "catch any fish over a ton in total weight (including said coelacanth)" compared to the standard "you must catch this "boss" fish as well as two other target fish species". This is to say there's no hard restrictions out side of "catch as many fish as you can until you hit that amount and you do need the one boss fish among that 1 ton amount". Another lake with a real fish peppered in among the fake ones (though there are real hammerheads in this one as well).
Devil's lake - this is another lake in south america but it's different guys I swear. In this mission you gotta go catch the "Black Devil" fish of the Amazon River by request of the Brazillian Government, as well as the other fish in the area to analyze the local fish ecology. Supposedly at least 5 people have already gone missing related to the case(and are implied / "proven" to have been eaten by said fish). Fish mission in this lake is catching about 1300 lbs worth of Diabo and 4 other different fish. There is usually at least one Monster sized Diabo stocked in the lake each mission for this. It's is marked as the last of the mainline missions, though there are "postgame" missions. You get little clues to unlock the postgame stuff here after the credits.
Lost Lake - You catch a T rex here. That's it that's the conceit of the mission. This is also the one where you get the confirmation about the life insurance policy fraud thing Jennifer's Got going on. It's a lake on a tiny island in the pacific. You get this after completing the Devil's Lake mission.
Mu Lake - Same as above but it's an elasmosaurus, ya know, like nessie but they don't put it in the loch ness to be cute, it's it's own weird little lake out in the middle of the ocean like the previous mission. Yo uget this by catching all the main targets in each Monster fishing mission at the Monster Size Rating.
Atlantis - It's atlantis! but you're only there to catch the world's biggest bass. And you can find it here. Also hardest to unlock.
As implied by the previous mission the game does track and keep reccord of your biggest fish size for each fish. In order to unlock this one you gotta get all fish's record size to being monster size before it unlocks. You track this in the Livewell. Unfortunately it's rough that it shutters some of the post game stuff to completion, though you also unlock free fishing mode with the completion of each of these missions for those locations.
I remember getting really good at it but not good enough to unlock the extra spicy stuff after getting the T-Rex fishing zone (stuff after T-Rex I think requires a certain amount of completion that is really just trying to make sure every fish you catch counts as monster size if possible).
Each lake mission (for lack of a better term) would give you a couple of other goal fish to catch as well as a "boss" fish, and to complete the level you would have to catch each of the listed game fish. Fun in that the boss fish would have their own little boss music as you're trying to reel them in. Not everything has necesserily aged well but the gameplay is mostly solid since it is just fishing based gameplay.
Mort the Chicken
A weird little game that I also played as a little kid and got surprisingly far in. It only recently gained any sort of notoriety through the Pizza Tower Cameo but it was one of the few PS1 games we just sort of had in my childhood game collection for no discernable reason alongside croc 2.
I got as far as the penultimate boss before failing. Mostly because the fact that I couldn't figure out how to defeat the box man made me get real scared of said box man. There's a good stream VOD of it here by Scorpy if you're at all interested in it. There's also probably no-commentary versions of the whole game up on youtube but I really enjoyed this stream.
Puppeteer
A game I really liked from afar but never really got the opportunity to play. It is a very cute little game for the playstation 3 which kind of stands out from the other games here which are mostly ps1 / ps2 titles. Still a bit on the older and more obscure side
It is mostly the story of the child Kutaro, as he gets spirated away by the Moon Bear King and gets his head (and soul) stolen. It then follows his quest to gain his head back.
It really leans into the whole puppeteer gimmick but in a creative way I would think. The whole conceit of the game is that it's a lot like a stageplay with a narrator as well as moments that run both as "hey these are actors" and moments where it's leaning upon a 4th wall within the game while not leaning on the actual 4th wall. How much you're into that is really gonna inform how much ya like the game but it's got a weird little notch in my heart nonetheless.