Now that all the PlayStation Plus games for 2021 have been announced, let’s have a look back over the last third of the year to judge their quality. Parts one and two of this series can be found a few words ago, and without further ado let’s get into September!

SEPTEMBER

We start with a fairly miserable month. Overcooked is a great party game, or fun to play with kids, neither of which overly appeals to me so I didn’t download this one. Hitman 2 was also made available for fans of the franchise who somehow hadn’t bought this yet, and once again as I am not, I wasn’t keen on this being offered for these reasons. This wasn’t to be the worst game for September however, as Predator: Hunting Grounds, a game I did play, was a total mountain of turds.

I’m still fuming over the fact I was milliseconds from winning a match as the Predator, but as the over-long animation for killing humans hadn’t ended by the time the level timer ran out I ‘lost’ the round. Fuck this game and fuck the Predator, right in its weird mouth.

OCTOBER

Halloween month decided that not only was it unwilling to provide any spook-tastic games, it was also reluctant to give us games of any quality whatsoever. First up was Hell Let Loose, a ‘highly realistic’ shooter which hadn’t even finished downloading before I was advised to not bother as it might be realistic but it certainly wasn’t much fun. We were also offered Mortal Kombat X, a game I hated intensely when I first played it *checks calendar* six fucking years ago! No sooner had I finished recoiling in horror (get it, because it’s October!) from that awful shock and my eyes dropped a couple millimetres to read the next game offered, PGA Tour?! Are you trying to detonate my brain through a mix of fury and indignation??!

NOVEMBER

November rolled round fast and following the shitstorms of September and October fortunately happened to be one of the strongest Plus months of the year. Two great multiplayer games were free for November, First Class Trouble, an Among Us clone, and Knockout City, a colourful dodgeball colour-explosion. I enjoyed my brief time with Knockout City though did promptly delete it as soon as the session was over after seeing all there was to see in under an hour, so the real star of the month was First Class Trouble, which is the first exclusively online game to hook me since Rocket League. Lying to people has never been more fun than in this experience, in which I must have racked up 10 hours by now, which is made more impressive by the fact most rounds follow the same pattern over and over but somehow never lack for fun factor.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning was also available for cost-free download, meaning I now have access to play but choose to ignore it across three generations. What fun! To be fair I was very pleased to see this game attract a new generation of fans, but I’ll have to be pretty deprived of other games to try this remaster!

There were also three VR games which I’m not going to entertain as VR is as appealing to me as a dog food milkshake.

DECEMBER

Oh boy, December… The less said about this month the better, but I’m not letting Sony off that easily! A hugely condensed version of a lukewarm ‘next-gen’ title, Godfall, a prospect met with such universal contempt that many (myself included) have vowed not to download it in the hope Sony sort their shit out and give us the full game. Not content with just that insult, we’ve also been given one of the world’s weakest Soulsborne clones (though admittedly not the worst, looking at you Hellpoint) in the form of Mortal Shell. Even Luke, our resident Soulsborne expert and worshipper hated Mortal Shell, and he’ll play just about anything *insert clever dig*.

The final PlayStation Plus game for 2021 is Lego: DC Super-Villains which I can’t bring myself to say anything harsh about as I’m pretty sure I’ve previously outed myself as not a fan of Lego games and so will just be wasting everybody’s time. Suffice to say, it couldn’t pull December out of this nosedive.

VERDICT

January – 10/10. Best game – Maneater

February – 7/10. Best game – Concrete Genie

March – 9/10. Best game – Remnant From The Ashes

April – 8/10. Best game – Days Gone

May – 5/10. Best game – Battlefield V

June – 5/10. Best game – Star Wars: Squadrons

July – 7/10. Best game – Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

August – 2/10. Best game – Fuck them all

September – 4/10. Best game – Hitman 2

October – 2/10. Best game – Fuck them all

November – 8/10. Best game – First Class Trouble

December – 1/10. Best game – Fuck them all

PlayStation Plus 2021 Score – 5.7 / 10

That’s 2021 for PlayStation Plus! By my count we’ve had six decent months compared with three boring and three dramatically abhorrent. Looking at this year against the last few years I’m still content enough with the stronger months to say this is (tragically) one of the best years yet, so much so that I’ve purchased another two years of subscription to this Jekyll & Hyde service.

When all is said and done with PlayStation Plus, if you have a PlayStation 5, the PS Plus Collection fully justifies the annual cost (if you buy it in a decent sale!)

Join me in 2022 where I’ll continue judging the Plus games, and let me know in the comments which Plus month this year has been your favourite. Thanks for reading!