February PlayStation Games Are Sure To Renew Your Faith In The Subscription Service

When I first subscribed to PlayStation Plus, known colloquially as PS+, the PS3 was still king among men. The previous generation of consoles was still among us, and the world made sense. Adam had recently received his platinum trophy in Just Cause 2, and I yearned to play a game so much that I would come to hate the idea of ever having to endure playing video games in my spare time ever again.

Shortly after his personal and intellectual milestone, PS+ announced that it would be offering Just Cause 2 to its subscribers. I figured it was time for me to commit myself matrimonially to Sony.

Just Cause 2 was my first PS+ baby. I took care of it for the better part of a week. Sure, the game was fun. We even shared a few great memories. But it just wasn’t a great fit for my personal video game sensibilities—damn my sometimes rigid and irrational fondness for RPGs and little else.  

My relationship with the PS+ began to falter in the years following this initial subscription. I became slightly cynical toward its value. Sure, gamers had been offered Hotline Miami for PS Vita (which is absolutely fantastic and worthy of your time, unless you get sick when exposed  to fun, ultraviolence, and/or a soundtrack so in line with the essence of a game that it makes me cry to think of the two being separated from each other). But the lack of consistency in quality games that I hadn’t played felt out of sync with my personal video game consumption habits.

Then I purchased a PS4 a couple months back, and felt a renewed vitality toward the necessity of subscribing to PS+. For those who don’t know, the subscription service is required for PS4 gamers in order to play online with friends and (statistically speaking) male strangers.  As it were, the modern family had been reunited. I re-welcomed PS+ back into my heart. In exchange, the service…well continued to offer relative mediocrity to me.

Last week, I stumbled across February’s PS+ preview on PlayStation Blog, and my jaw slacked. As of February 3^rd, I would be able to play Transistor and Rogue Legacy, two titles which I have looked forward to playing since I first heard about them, and yet oddly never purchased. 

It’s an odd thing. When I first subscribed to PS+, I did so to play Just Cause 2. Shortly afterward, I lost my way with it. I suppose that, ultimately, I never set my expectations toward the service and what it would do to enrich my gaming life. I assumed that PS+ would bring me games that I wanted to own, but had never gotten around to doing so. This didn’t end up happening only because I purchased any game I wanted to play. 

Fast forward to today, to a time where I find myself with less and less time to play even the games I want. I’ve moved out for the first time, stumbled into a job which is likely to become my career, and now discovered a new utility for PS+.  Presently, the subscription service acts as a sort of filter, enabling me to determine which games, among those that I want to play, that I want to play more than others. It’s an odd mechanism, I’ll grant you, but certainly worthy of my money. Between Theme Hospital being offered for free on Origin, and both Transistor and Rogue Legacy being offered to PS+ subscribers, it has been a great month to be a gamer.  Happy capitalism.