The PS Plus free games for April 2022 have been revealed, and it seems the reception is largely slanting negatively. That’s not to say these are bad games, nor that the reception is overwhelmingly negative, but that more subscribers seem dissatisfied with this selection than they are happy with it. Hood: Outlaw and Legends, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated, and Slay the Spire are all set to release on April 5 for PS Plus subscribers, though PS Plus’ SpongeBob game is apparently already available for some users.
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, the quality of PS Plus games has swung like a pendulum.
Now, this isn’t to say that a game or two wasn’t great, and that no one found a quality game among them for PS 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
The PS Plus free games for January and March 2022’s best qualities are immediately identifiable. PS Plus free games for January 2022 included Deep Rock Galactic, Dirt 5, and Persona 5 Strikers. Not only is there good variety among a 4-player co-op shooter, a racing game, and a Musou game of a popular JRPG franchise, but the quality is evidently there. The lowest MetaCritic score was 80, which doesn’t always mean much, but it works here. PS Plus subscribers loved Deep Rock Galactic, absolutely blowing up its community size, while the other two were solid gets for many gamers.
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 with Ark Survival Evolved, Ghost of Tsushima Legends, Team Sonic Racing, and Ghostrunner. The titles alone show the sheer variety, but each of these are hugely popular titles. One could argue that Ghostrunner is more niche, but it adds a great touch.
That’s still a bit of a double-edged sword though. If PS Plus free games for March are the biggest of the year and these games are compared to past March games like FF7 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.
PS Plus ‘Bad’ Free Games for 2022 – February and April
The PS Plus free games for February 2022 did not have that same variety, or at least, a necessarily appealing variety. They included Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure, UFC 4, and Planet Coaster. The problem with these titles is not the titles themselves, obviously, but how they operate on the service. Assault on Dragon Keep is not even a full game, and while one could argue it was a hype builder for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands…the whole premise of the new game hinges on how much players loved Assault on Dragon Keep to begin with.
The fact that it’s not a full game didn’t sit right with many fans, instigating the first real PS Plus controversy of 2022. Meanwhile, UFC 4 is 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, while Planet Coaster is 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 massive PS Plus petition to change the games.
April is here now, and while none of the games now or in February are “bad” games, they lack that appeal PS Plus titles really need to have. Hood: Outlaws and Legends is a multiplayer game, which usually does well on the service, but it’s kind of like Destruction AllStars (another PS Plus multiplayer title) is that it doesn’t reach the full potential of the genre. Combine that with a minute amount of content, and it’s not going to last subscribers very long.
Slay the Spire is 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. And SpongeBob is a good game, a nostalgic one, but unless someone is feeling nostalgic for SpongeBob and hasn’t picked it up, or they have children who want it, it’s not really engrossing. That, and the truth is that the older Battle for Bikini Bottom is 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 of 700 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.
PS Plus subscribers get a handful of free games every month.