Games With Gold Vs PlayStation Plus: The September Review Face Off

Trying to pick a winner between the two freemium services this month is like trying to figure out the answer to which royal you're going to set fire to last. It's a pointless and futile exercise, considering you're going to burn them all at the stake anyway.

You see the problem is that both sets of offerings from Microsoft and Sony have been, bar the exception of two games, pretty average verging on down right awful but, as your friendly neighbourhood reviewer, it's my job to pick which side annoyed me the least by clogging up my hard drives with useless crap that I have no intention of ever playing through again and it wasn't easy, I can tell you.

Let's start with the shite shall we.

Assassins Creed Chronicles: China

Both companies are guilty here with Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China and Badland being nothing more than glorified mobile phone games. In fact I'm pretty sure that Badland is nothing more than a re-skin of Flappy Bird and Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China just proves to me that Ubisoft are far more interested in sucking as much cash out of peoples pocket's as they can, instead of putting out top quality content. It saddens me to say it but Ubisoft are heading down the EA path with every passing release and it will just get to the point where I take my one man boycott to them as well.

Now onto the average.

Earthlock: Festival of Magic, Forza Horizon, Lords Of The Fallen, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Datura all fall into this category.

You can read my review of Earthlock: Festival of Magicby clicking on the handy link that Ben The Editor has no doubt added to this piece but suffice to say I found it, and I quote, bloody boring. Forza Horizon is a very pretty racing game but it's still a racing game and it seems like a month doesn't pass where we're not offered at least one of these, almost as if they're just looking to pad out the numbers.

Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Lords Of The Fallen is nothing more than a Dark Souls rip off, and even I know that Dark Souls does it better. Similarly Datura is a very impressive tech demo and nothing else. Though I have to admit that I enjoyed Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands far more than I thought I would, but it's still a Prince of Persia game. So to paraphrase the great bard, all filler, no killer.

Wait, that was Sum 41 wasn't it?

But there were two diamonds shinning out from the mound of elephant dung we had hoisted upon us this month and they came in the shape of Mirror's Edge and Journey.

I already own Mirror's Edge and I love that game but that didn't stop me adding it to my Xbox One collection and belting around Glass City pulling off death defying leaps and kung fu smackdown's as the parkour goddess, Faith. And yes, it is far too short but that doesn't matter when you find yourself jumping a ludicrous gap, landing into a slide and kicking a bad guy squat in the dangly parts.

I mean, how can anyone NOT find that entertaining?

Journey

As for Journey, what can I say about it that hasn't already been said? It is visually stunning on the PS4 and even though I wasn't quite sure what the hell was going on most of the time, and having completed it I'm still kind of confused as to what it was all about, it gripped me from the off and that's all I ever ask from a game.

So, there it is.

A month of boring second rate games that were saved by a dystopian Jet Li and a dude with a magic scarf. But if I have to give The Golden Controller (trademark pending) to anyone this month it'll be Sony for including Journey in its list but it comes with the proviso that they also get The Golden Finger (trademark pending).

Overall Ratings:

Games With Gold: 4 I'm Really Finding It hard To Keep The Faith (Geddit?) Out Of 10

PlayStation Plus: 5 Insert Witty Joke About Journey here Please Out Of 10.

Neil Gray | @NeilGray007