This is a thread for PS+ (PS Plus) members

it’s dead, Jim

Next week is looking pretty good.

Killing Floor 2, PS4
Life is Strange, PS4
Abyss Odyssey, PS3
WRC 5: World Rally Championship, PS3
Neon Chrome, PS Vita (crossbuy with PS4)
Spy Chameleon, PS Vita (crossbuy on PS4)

I really enjoyed a few hours of Spy Chameleon last month.

The NA store has a big sale this week. Many games are really cheap with PS+. Hot Shots for Vita is a dollar and change. God of War 3 remastered is 4.

Coming up:

Until Dawn, PS4
Game of Thrones, PS4 (Telltale)
Tokyo Jungle, PS3
Darkstalkers Resurrection, PS3
Element4l, PS Vita
Don’t Die, Mr. Robot, PS Vita (Cross Buy on PS4)

That’s you (PS4) will be free for a few months. There’s also a beta & F2P goodie pack for Orcs Must Die Unchained.

I’m happy. Until Dawn was on my very short wishlist. Tokyo Jungle is cool. It’s really unique in a great way. I highly recommend checking that out. Darkstalkers is a good combo pack of a couple old fighting games.

Spoiler warning: Game of Thrones starts at Season 3 IIRC.

I think Ratchet & Clank is on sale on PSN currently as well. $8 for PS+ members, $10 for the rest of us.

Until Dawn, nice. That might be the first on-disk first party exclusive made available through PS+. And here I thought it would be Knack.

Bold prediction: “free” PS Vita and PS3 games through PS+ will not extend past 2017. In the case of PS Vita, they may be running out of available titles.

Sony seems to have completely broken the PS Plus UI, at least in Europe. When I try to add a game to my library, I’m told to choose a version, neither of which is “Add to library”. Then I have to go through about five more steps, one of which half looks like it’s charging me money, before it will do what used to be one button press.

Edit: Hmmm, may be an artefact of server issues. I can’t even get to the landing page now.

Meanwhile, I’m over here looking at a library full of literally dozens of Vita games that haven’t been PS+ freebies.

Sony could keep giving away two Vita games a month through PS+ for years without any problems, especially if they go back to dipping into the PSP’s library as well.

I agree that the total number of PS Vita releases is well in excess of the number of PS+ Vita games. But that doesn’t give us any insight into how many publishers/developers are willing to have their games be PS+ games.

Given the thin stuff lately, including a number of PSP games (an unimpressive move IMO), I wonder how thin the candidate list is getting. Stuff like Don’t Die Mr Robot, Letter Quest Remastered, and A Virus Named Tom are not exactly “fuck yeah!” material. And that’s from a guy that already owns Don’t Die Mr Robot.

Looking at this list, it appears that most of the Vita games are PS4 cross-buy games. So it might continue to be worth Sony’s while to support cross-buy game publishers with some cash.

I mean, I can’t imagine absolutely zero publishers on Vita are willing to get onboard with PS+ freebies, but that’s what it looks like if you look at the freebies from, well, pretty much ever since they started doing Vita games as PS+ freebies. It definitely seems more like Sony actively decided to push cross-buy titles that happen to include Vita support in the Vita slot, which kind of sucks for those of us who’d rather see something like Demon Gaze or Soul Sacrifice Delta (and to be clear, I own both of those games, so those being freebies wouldn’t help me at all) than Generic Indie #26498.

July was my first month away from PS+, and I was fine missing out on that line up. Here is next month’s:

PS4

Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry
Downwell
Just Cause 3

PS3

Snakeball
Super Motherload

Vita

Downwell
Level 22

I already own Just Cause 3, so again, I’m fine with missing this lineup. I think I might own Downwell in my steam backlog. I’ll have to check.

If Freedom Cry is “more Black Flag”, I’m down with it.

First time in a couple of years that the PS4 games are of interest. I have Just Cause 3 on PC but haven’t played it yet, and haven’t played any Assassin’s Creed other than dabbling a bit with the first one.

Next month includes a VR game (timed with a price cut on PSVR), and Infamous Second Son. I really enjoyed Second Son. I’d recommend spending time on it if you have haven’t played it. It’s fun all the way through. It’s really tough at the beginning, but once you start getting more and more powers, it becomes pretty easy later. I can’t remember if they have difficulty levels, but if they do I played it on Hard, and it becomes easy even on that difficulty later on, so I recommend it. It feels good to have so much trouble early, and then feel so powerful by the end.

I think I still have First Light from PS Plus and haven’t played it. If I were going to play one of them, would Second Son be the best choice?

Yes. I enjoyed them both, but Second Son is definitely more extensive and a great super hero game.

Both are self-contained stories, Second Son is the full-game release and First Light is the smaller subsequent release featuring a supporting character from the original game. Sony’s been doing that with several games lately, and I think it’s a nice alternative to the traditional DLC model, which can result in some tacked on, minor, or pointless stuff as opposed to a complete side story.

I played First Light first and easily completed it within a day. Second Son took three or four days of focused playing. Both games are highly polished open world games with interesting mechanics and well worth playing (as were the original infamous games).

I had to visit the blog to see the rest of the free games lineup. I kept my PS3, Vita, and PS+ sub!
PS4

Infamous: Second Son
Strike Vector Ex
We Are Doomed
Hatoful Boyfriend

PS3

Truck Racer
Handball 2016

Vita

We Are Doomed
Hatoful Boyfriend

Strike Vector looks neat and mindless. Hatoful Boyfriend should be fun to troll my wife with on the big screen TV, too.

(I learned some Markdown today!)

I think Strike Vector Ex is PSVR only. Do you have PSVR? How is it? Qt3 hasn’t had many impressions of it.

Ha, what is We Are Doomed? Sounds like a blast!

IMG_0498

I do not have PSVR, and Strike Vector Ex is a normal game.

The blog does say that there’s a free PSVR game for 2 months: RIGS Mechanized Combat League.

We Are Doomed is some odd-looking polygonal twin stick shooter. I might have actually bought and played it on Steam 2 years ago.