Overall, though, this appears to be how 2022 is trending for PS Plus. It’s had some good games and some bad games, a constant to and fro in terms of quality. Indeed, there are two major components to PS Plus’ games and their success: variety, so that a multitude of gamers are likely to enjoy them, and the quality needed to deliver on that. Yet, looking at 2022 thus far, thequality of PS Plus gameshas swung like a pendulum.
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Now, this isn’t to say that a game or two wasn’t great, and that no one found a quality game among them forPS Plus. That will always happen due to one’s preferences and whatnot, but in general, when looking at receptions thus far this year, it’s been very back and forth. They are denoted below as the “good” and “bad months,” but only in terms of their variety, quality, and reception.
PS Plus ‘Good’ Free Games for 2022 – January and March
Meanwhile, PS Plus tends to have one of its best, if not its absolute best, months of the year in March. This shines through this year withArk Survival Evolved, Ghost of Tsushima Legends, Team Sonic Racing,andGhostrunner. The titles alone show the sheer variety, but each of these are hugely popular titles. One could argue thatGhostrunneris more niche, but it adds a great touch.
That’s still a bit of a double-edged sword though. IfPS Plus free games for March are the biggest of the yearand these games are compared to past March games likeFF7 Remake, Remnant: From The Ashes, Shadow of the Colossus, Modern Warfare Remastered,and so on, then they do seem marginally weaker—if still good. It’s too much of a slippery slope to suggest as a certainty, but the overall quality of PS Plus free games could be suffering in 2022 if this is the best it gets.
The PS Plus free games for February 2022 did not have that same variety, or at least, a necessarily appealing variety. They includedTiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure, UFC 4, andPlanet Coaster. The problem with these titles is not the titles themselves, obviously, but how they operate on the service.Assault on Dragon Keepis not even a full game, and while one could argue it was a hype builder forTiny Tina’s Wonderlands…the whole premise of the new game hinges on how much players lovedAssault on Dragon Keepto begin with.
The fact that it’s not a full game didn’t sit right with many fans, instigating the first realPS Plus controversy of 2022. Meanwhile,UFC 4is a fun mixed martial arts game, but anyone interested in this particular style of sports game would likely already have it. It’s not going to have that broad appeal on PS Plus, whilePlanet Coasteris a simulator. Sim games tend to receive a lot of flak on the service, perhaps because of how niche it is, and the one time Sony gave out two sim games, it resulted in a massivePS Plus petition to change the games.
Slay the Spireis perhaps the gem of the bunch, but it’s a hard sell for one reason only: it has cards. It’s not a traditional card game, sure, but there are many who do not find card games to be engaging in any form, at least when delivered digitally. AndSpongeBobis a good game, a nostalgic one, but unless someone is feeling nostalgic forSpongeBoband hasn’t picked it up, or they have children who want it, it’s not really engrossing. That, and the truth is that the olderBattle for Bikini Bottomis a more interesting game than its remake.
PS Plus games have to have variety, high quality (do not read AAA though), and broad appeal to hit their highest marks, and these two months have suffered from one of these. The thing is, as PS Plus moves forward into summer, it seems unlikely that there’s going to be a huge pattern shift. It could happen, arguably it needs to happen, but it seems PS Plus will not hit its same high marks in 2022 as it did in late 2020/2021.
The big change, of course, is that PS Plus really ramped up for the PS5. Now, it seems that PS Plus could be putting all of its eggs not its revamp. With a selection of700 games coming for PS Plus Premium users, there’s some real quality there, but it runs a major risk of becoming like Xbox’s selection of monthly free games. Game Pass is amazing, but it seems clear Games with Gold suffers because of it. Sony should not let its free game giveaways suffer because of its upcoming library of available games.
