PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection: The September Anticipation Preview

OK, confession time.

When I first heard that Sony were bumping up the price of their PS Plus subscription I wasn’t as up in arms about as much as most people, for two reasons.

1: I’d only just recently updated my account to a full year at the old price, so I wouldn’t have to worry about how it would affect me until 2017.

2: The talk was that, finally, we might be getting some kick ass AAA games coming our way after month upon month of garbage that I wouldn’t buy with someone else’s money, let alone my own.

So with baited breath (damn tacos) and high expectations I eagerly awaited this month’s list to drop like a kid at Christmas, a kid at Christmas who also happens to own a magnificent beard.

To say I was over-whelmed by apathy would be doing apathy a disservice.

In fact, the games on offer seem so bad, boring and bloody predictable that I almost just cut and paste my Games With Gold September preview here, with the intention of changing the names.

But, dear reader, I feel like I owe you more than that, after all you take the time to read my drivel so the least I can do is explain why I’m looking forward to these games about as much as I’d look forward to a kick in the soft, dangly parts of my body and besides which, I think Ben The Editor would’ve noticed and just forced me to re-write the whole thing, possibly at gun point.

We start with Lords Of The Fallen, a game that was already given away free by Microsoft a few months back and one that some people have called Dark Souls like/lite. Not I mind you. I wouldn’t know as I only played it for an hour before wiping it off my Xbox One with no plans to ever re-download it. Yet this is the PS4 version (Ooo!) so maybe I’ll get more out of it this time around, perhaps an hour and a half.

Then there’s Badlandwhich is a platformer that, and I quote, “takes platforming to the next level” which I’m pretty sure is code for “It ain’t the Puppeteer mate, don’t waste your hard-drive space”.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands might just as well be called “See As Above” so I doubt that’ll get more than thirty minutes out of me as I’ve never really gotten on with that series and the less said about the movie adaptation the better, even if I could watch two hours of Gemma Arterton reciting her shopping list over and over and still be highly entertained.

Yet there is light at the end of Sony’s seemingly never ending tunnel of How-Can-We-Annoy-The-Hell-Out-Of-Neil-This-Month offering and that light comes in the form of Journeyand Datura.

I’ve never played either of these games but I’m looking forward to spending some quality hours with both of them.

By all accounts Journey is something of a masterpiece and I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve never taken the time, or spent my hard earned money, to get to know it’s beautiful graphics and, seemingly, deep story but this is something I intend to correct as soon as it hits the PlayStation store next week and Datura just seems oddball enough to grasp my attention for the ninety or so minutes that it apparently takes to complete it.

Unfortunately though, this line up is the same as nearly every other line up that Sony have forced upon us over the best part of a year.

It’s uninspiring, flatter than a run-down hedgehog and has me questioning the sanity of owning a PS Plus subscription if all they’re going to do is flip you off each month while laughing all the way to the bank.

I seem to say this a lot lately but they REALLY need to up their game or risk people simply giving up on their freemium service and who knows, maybe next month we’ll finally start to see some kind of progress in that direction, though I doubt it very much, but as for this month’s offerings, well I’d rather dig out my old PS2 and blast through Crazy Taxi for the next thirty days.

Anticipation Rating: 5 Out Of 10 and ONLY because of Journey and Datura.