After a decent April where Sony actually gave away 3 additional games as a gesture of goodwill to the world who is largely forced to stay at home these days, they paid us back for said generosity by really letting us down with the releases for May.
These games are very popular, but one of them is NOT a console game and the other one boggles my mind that it exists at all. I suppose this was always going to happen when you pay a mere $3 a month for a membership.
Cities: Skylines
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I was actually pretty excited about this one because I had seen Pewdiepie play it a bit on one of his daily gaming sessions. Of course he was making fun of it but it actually looked pretty cool. It has been a while since I played any sort of city-building game and had a lot of fun with Tropico. I wasn't really keen on using a gamepad to play such a game and it only took me about an hour before I really started to not like using such a method of interacting with it.
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You've got to build some pretty elaborate road schemes in this game and doing so incorrectly causes mayhem on the streets. Just like in Sim City, a poor road layout will result in failure and necessitate the tearing down of buildings, some of which are probably thriving hence the traffic.
This process becomes extremely frustrating right from the get go when playing with a controller, at least from my perspective. It seems that no matter how much I am concentrating on getting my road just so, a just slight overpress results in my road spanning over to the next county and some sort of error message.
If you are the kind of person that possesses this level of thumb dexterity then I tip my hat to you and wish you the best in your future career as a heart surgeon. For the average person, this is something that should involve a mouse.
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Yeah, good luck with that
It also involves a tremendous amount of dialogue and menus with very small print that are meant to be played at a desk with a PC computer. I have a 50 inch LCD and was squinting from the sofa to read the novella that pops up any time you go to do anything.
I'm sure this game is fantastic on a PC and I would like to play it there. However, playing this for the few hours that I bothered it kind of reminded of when they put Starcraft on the N64. I never played it and never will. How you can possibly play that game without a mouse / keyboard is beyond me.
Farming Simulator 19
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My Grandparents ran an actual farm for the better part of 40 years. They would both get a real chuckle out of knowing that people will actually pay money to simulate one of the hardest jobs on the planet. They found it very amusing when I told them that there was a theme park of sorts in Thailand where people would pay money to see people milking cows on an industrial scale.
To be fair to Farming Simulator, the graphics are actually very very good and this game is actually somewhat playable on the PS4. The level of intense precision needed with the controller is significantly less than on Cities but still, there is a ton of information that comes flying at you in this game and for casual players like me, I don't think I really want to have an accurate portrayal of what farming is actually like.
I know what farming is actually like because I lived it (kind of) and it isn't fun. I do find some of the interaction kind of amusing because you pretty much sprint between your various vehicles and I can't really imagine my grandfather having done that.
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The fact that everything is super expensive is accurate and the fact that you are just a few months away from bankruptcy at all times is a rather realistic insight into the actual world of farming as well.
I don't know who finds it fun to meticulously plow a field and then plant some stuff and then wait months before cultivating it... but that person is not me. I can totally understand that there are people out there that would enjoy this sort of thing, and given the right equipment, such as not on my PS4, I might enjoy it as well. However, I don't feel like SIM games are very fun on a console and being introduced to these two games at the same time is not going to change that.
Sorry for being so negative and in all actuality these might be really fun games to the right audience but for PS Plus to release both of them to us at the same time almost seems like a slap in the face. First they offloaded the entire Uncharted library on us in the span of 2 months, and now a month of only SIM games.
It looks like I may actually end up finishing the Witcher 3 afterall.
I'm not much of a gamer anymore but my kids sure are. The oldest uses the Xbox and I think Doom was his last conquest.
My friends and I spent many a night rolling the different sided dice playing AD&D. Drinking mass sodas. 😁
oh the old D&D days and oh yeah, drinking sodas with reckless abandon. Pencils and dice you say? How about hundreds of dollars in hardcover books? lol. I remember those days well.
Doom is awesome. I haven't played either of the latest two but i have seem them both. They look intense. I was actually hoping that DOOM would be one of the free games since the latest game just dropped. But no, we get a farming simulator instead.
🤣🤣🤣
I loved the original SIMCity when it first came out. After a while it just got really crazy. My dad spent many hours playing it as well. He was really big into Flight Simulator when it was in its heyday and he still flies occasionally, but not like he used to. He got really deep into the landscape creation part of it. He actually made his own scenery for a large portion of the state because the scenery the game came with sucked. Farming Simulator? I have a hard time wrapping my head around that one. :)
Sim City was pretty epic when it was released, even though the graphics were pretty dumb at the time. I loved it. I think one of my favorite city build games or whatever they are called would be Tropico. It's simple but also a lot of fun.
I am trying to remember if I have ever played Tropico. I want to say I had a copy of it for my Mac but I don't quite recall right now.
you played the role of "El Presidente" on a tropical island and had to build farms and mines and what not while also deciding the level of corruption that you were going to embrace as leader. It was quite comical. I really recommend it because even after the scenarios are done the "sandbox" version that never ends is a lot of fun.
I'm with you on this month's selections. I have one of the Farming Simulators on my phone from a past Google Play promotion. I more or less had the same opinion of it when I tried it out there. Either way I'm looking forward to The Last of Us 2 coming so I wouldn't have time for games like these anyways.
ah, that's what i should do. I never finished The Last of Us 1. I'll fire that back up.
Highly recommend it. I think its up there with Metal Gear as one of my favorite game stories told.
I only abandoned ship because I'm not really a hardcore gamer and when i got to a difficult part, i put it down to play something a bit more casual... when i returned to the game i had compeltely forgotten the controls and this made that section even harder. I'll have to start over from the beginning.
I have never been much of a gamer. Haven't really had much hands on since the playstation. Really since sega and tetris. I loved tetris. Now i play games on my phone mostly.
Literally the most uninteresting PS Plus month I can remember since PS4 has launched. I get that these two games are high quality if you’re into this genre, but I don’t know anybody personally who actually plays these types of games. I’m not sure if PlayStation was thinking that they needed to give people games that allowed them to start living real again despite most things still being closed... but it was a bad choice of free games 👎🏻👎🏻
lol, i haven't thought about the "life simulation" angle. ha! That's a good point actually. Hopefully there will be some good specials offered on other games because I already deleted cities and am about one tractor away from doing the same to FS
I doubt Sony was thinking that deep, but never know I guess. I want them to give me Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, or Spider-Man for free. A REAL game ya know. I haven’t played most of the biggest PS4 exclusives.. I always seem to get caught on cross-platform games.
Any game from this list would make me happy. Besides Infamous Second Son and Uncharted 4 because I already have those two.
Yeah, I would have appreciated a little diversity in the offerings, even a cheap platformer would have been fine.
As far as your list is concerned, I agree, any of those would have been better choices but since they are likely still able to sell most of those games for at least $10, i think they are going to very reluctant to give them away.
I’m sure you’re probably correct. Guess we can look forward to something something god awful such as Dynasty Warriors 9 next month.
Oh and can't wait for the second season of The Witcher to come out on Netflix. 👍
I did complete Farming Simulator on the Vita years ago just to get the platinum. That's quite an embarrassing reveal I would say. The music went around my head for months after tormenting me.
i remember one guy on Twitch saying something about the audio being entirely too loud in the game and that he would take it down to around 40% in the settings. I think that is what you might be referring to at least :)
I am not getting anything playable as a still own the PS3. 🙄
I like the story of how your Grandparents found it amusing that someone will pay to watch Cow milking. My relative in the country owns and I saw him milk his Sheeps (first time I knew that the word can be used for the female ones. In Arabic we have a different word for a female sheep.) It's not something worth watching but I get why people are curious.
I would never play these games but I know at least that SimCity Skylines is popular. Then again, those who like these sorts of games probably already have it, and it's not mainstream enough game for people to be happy they have PS+ Sub for...