Last week, I was pretty irate at Playstation Plus, and with good reason. After all, the service moved to bi-monthly and the offerings were both horrible and insulting to people that had churned out fifty dollars to partake in the service. After that, Sony followed up by not making Dead Nation’s beta a PS+ exclusive, and some non PS+ owners received the beta invite over PS+ subscribers, even though Sony promised a key piece of PS+ would be that subscribers received priority beta access. Whoops.
This week’s offerings are no different than previous weeks in that they are lackluster and the service again under-delivers. However there is one highlight and one extreme lowlight. With this week’s edition, we’ll be continuing with the same format. We’ll take a quick look at the Playstation Plus lineup for this week and then break it down into six categories:
1. Already own, but would have purchased without PSPlus if I hadn’t.
2. Already own, but regret purchasing.
3. Don’t own, but would have purchased w/out PSPlus.
4. Wouldn’t have purchased, but downloaded due to PSPlus.
5. Wouldn’t bother downloading this regardless.
6. Discount isn’t enough to make me pull the trigger.
So there we go. Six possible categories each PSPlus item can fall under. Then at the end of the column we’ll see if I got my $3.33 for the mouth out of it.
Playstation Plus Downloads For the Week of August 24th
Mushroom Wars (Original Price $9.99, Free to Playstation Plus Subscribers)
2Xtreme (Original Price $5.99, Free to PlayStation Plus subscribers)
Vempire – minis (Original Price $2.99, Free to PlayStation Plus subscribers)
TerRover Demo (Early access to PlayStation Plus subscribers)
Two-year PS3 PlayStation Protection Plan (PlayStation Plus price $44.99, regular price $59.99)
Soldner-X2: Final Prototype + Soldner-X: Himmelstrurmer Bundle (PlayStation Plus price $10.79, regular price $17.99)
Soldner- X2 : Final Prototype (PlayStation Plus price $9.09, regular price $12.99)
Yes, I know. That’s it. And it covers a two week span. That’s pretty pathetic and it’s a clear sign Sony’s first few weeks were meant to entice stupid and/or loyal gamers into buying the service and then they pulled the rug out from under us. Back when this was a weekly service, this would have been insulting. Now it’s just downright being an asshole to Playstation Plus subscribers. Still, we have to go through the routine. Let’s see where things fell.
1. Already own, but would have purchased without PSPlus if I hadn’t.
Nothing falls under here this week. However…
2. Already own, but regret purchasing.
Vempire – See, I purchased this the first day it came out. I like puzzle games. I like horror. I thought this would be a lot of fun. It is terrible. You can see I’m not alone on this as Vempire has one of the lowest ratings on PSN right now. As such, it’s a mystery as to why Sony thought this would be a good Mini to give to their paying customers. It’s like saying, “Have this free poop. What’s wrong with you? It’s free!” There are many better Minis out there and the fact this is what we were hit with says that Sony is having publishers and/or developers going along with the service, or they just don’t care about giving PS+ subscribers quality games. Sadly, I hope it’s the former.
TerRover Demo – Here’s what pisses me off. This was offered last week to PS+ subscribers for free as it was the awful product placement piece known are Qore along with the Splatterhouse theme. Now Sony is regurgitating this like it’s new content. Only the stupid or ignorant would fall for this, which is obviously what Sony thinks PS+ subscribers are. We know we had this last week and why are you giving it to us again as if we didn’t? I don’t know how this can be interpreted as anything BUT “Sony thinks we are all idiots and has little to no respect for its consumer base.” WTF people? This alone should have people angry.
3. Don’t own, but would have purchased w/out PSPlus.
Absolutely nothing. The service doesn’t offer anything this week that is an truly great game, at a truly great price.
4. Wouldn’t have purchased, but downloaded due to PSPlus.
Mushroom Wars – I was really surprised at how good this was. I went in thinking it was going to be a second or third rate Mushroom Men knock-off, and found it to actually be a fun little game that mikes RTS with tower defense. I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It’s fun, it’s forgettable, and you won’t miss it once you end your PS+ membership. That’s exactly what the service should offer. Thank you for this candle in the void that is PS+, Sony!
2Xtreme – Wow. This is an awful game. Serious, how do all these bad games get to be listed as “PSOne Classics?” This was painful to play through and like Vempire, has me wondering if Sony is just desperate to get some sort of content to Playstation Plus subscribers, or if it is actively being mean to them. Why would you inflict this on someone?
5. Wouldn’t bother downloading this regardless.
Two-year PS3 PlayStation Protection Plan – This is downright disrespectful and insulting. First of all, it shows Sony considers PS+ to basically be a coupon service. You pay a lump sum at first and then are given the illusion of a discount when you buy something down the road. This is borderline unethical to begin with. Wow, I save fifteen dollars on an extended warranty. Oh wait, no. That fifteen dollars I “saved” was actually spent already on a PS+ subscription service.
Second, this only covers systems already under warranty. Which again screws over the most loyal and longtime Sony PS3 owners. I happen to have a 60 Gig PS3. The warranty is off that and I can’t use this even if I wanted to as it only applies to the slim-line PS3s. So not only am I treated like crap by Sony for buying an original model and paying far more for it, but I have to pay extras in repairs just because I was an early adopter and/or wanted backwards compatibility that should be a given in the system anyway. Again, this little “feature” should have the oldest and most loyal Sony fans cracking under how horribly they are treated. But they won’t, and that’s why Sony gets away with crap like this
Now if this service was a blanket $50 a year to cover a system regardless of age, I’d be championing it. It would be akin to Amazon.com’s Amazon Prime service in which you pay $50 a year for something that is clearly high quality and in which you can see that it pays for itself. This is little more than an extended warranty and offers services that you should already be getting for free, like “Direct access to PlayStation Support specialists” or a “Pre-paid shipping box.” It never ceases to amaze me how bad Sony is with Customer Relations and PR, but it always surprises me how many apologists for this kind of crap there are.
6. Discount isn’t enough to make me pull the trigger.
Soldner-X2: Final Prototype + Soldner-X: Himmelstrurmer Bundle – I am a shooter gourmand, but $10.79 just isn’t enough to make me buy these two games. Why? Because the first game was raked over the coals by our reviewer Ian Gorrie, while the sequel received a fairly positive review from another DHGF reviewer, Chris Bowen. Maybe if this was 10-15 dollars, I’d have picked them up. Instead, I’m keeping my money where it is. I will say however, that a seven dollar discount is a pretty good one.
Soldner- X2: Final Prototype – See the above. $9.09 isn’t enough of a discount for me. At $5-$7.50, I’d pick it up. Again, this is due to other DHGF staffer’s reviews. I can put in Ikaruga in my Dreamcast, Radiant Silvergun in my Saturn, or Gradius V in my PS3 since I have backwards compatibility in mine and guarantee myself a quality shoot ’em up experience.
So we see that this edition of Playstation Plus is an odd one. We have a good offering in a free version of Mushroom Wars, a mediocre offering in a discount on the Soldner-X bundle and X-2 by itself, and then a lot of insulting crap that ranges between just being bad games to obvious signs that Sony thinks little of its PS+ subscribers and assumes we are all idiots. Worst of all? This is still better than the PSP update. Man, I feel sorry for PSP GO owners…
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