(Image credit: Rik Henderson / Future)

The PlayStation Portal is a strange device. It looks like a Frankstein’s monster of a DualSense controller and a tablet, and can’t run any games natively, relying on Wi-Fi to either stream games using the remote play feature from your PS5, or over the cloud.

However, since Sony really opened the Portal up to the latter a few months ago, letting you stream pretty much any game you own from the cloud, I’ve found myself reaching for it more than ever.

Some games don’t work well at all when you’re streaming them. Twitchy shooters or fighting games, for example, where any hint of input lag can really mess things up, but there are plenty of PS5 games that pair perfectly.

And with the handheld PS Portal now available with big discounts in the sales, it's become a great partner for your PS5 thanks to some incredible gaming experiences. Here are three of my favourites to play first.

Baldur’s Gate 3

When I first played Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian’s incredible Dungeons & Dragons-inspired RPG, it was on the PS5 proper. But as excited as I was to try what is a decidedly hardcore PC game on a console, something felt off.

It’s immediately clear that movement and combat was originally conceived for a mouse and keyboard setup, and as impressive as the port is, I bounced off pretty quickly.

A few months later I tried again, but this time on the PlayStation Portal, and this time it clicked. Baldur’s Gate 3 is perfectly suited to handheld play (from the comfort of my bed, in my case), and thanks to the Portal’s large display, I didn’t struggle to read the many lines of text in the game, which would have been a deal-breaker.

Turn-based games are also well-suited to the Portal’s streaming capabilities, as you aren’t worried about latency issues. I still think Baldur’s Gate 3 is a PC game at heart, but when I want to make some progress in the Forgotten Realms, it’s the Portal I reach for.

The Plucky Squire

I’ve yet to play a single minute of the charming dimension-hopping Zelda-like, The Plucky Squire, on the PS5. From the moment I downloaded it on PS Plus it’s been a Portal game for me.

The bright and colourful art pops off the handheld display, while the breezy nature of the campaign means I never feel like I need the added responsiveness of a native console game.

The Plucky Squire would be a fairly rudimentary puzzle-platformer if not for its ingenious central mechanic, which lets the player character leap out of the 2D storybook pages he lives in and into the three-dimensional world.

The game is patronisingly easy at points, and there isn’t much depth to the combat, but its perspective-shifting wizardry makes it well worth a Portal play through.

Lumines Arise

Lumines started its life as a PSP exclusive, and therefore this Tetris-rivalling block puzzler has always felt like a handheld game at its core. Fast forward a couple of decades and Lumines Arise pulls a Tetris Effect by taking a familiar game and reinventing it as a hypnotic audiovisual assault on the senses that might make you cry.

The problem is, with no Switch 2 version currently announced, console players can only play it on the PS5. LikeTetris Effect before, Lumines Arise is an incredible VR experience, but what about the Lumines diehards who want to take the reimagined puzzler on the go?

That’s where the Portal comes in. Since downloading Lumines Arise at launch, I’ve spent some time chilling out in front of the TV trying to make some progress in the main single-player mode (which has been slow, given that I’m not very good at it), but I keep finding myself reaching for the Portal as if it’s a jumbo PSP.

I actually find it a bit easier to process all of the colour and visual effects on the smaller display too. Just make sure you use headphones for this one, though.