Sony has just revealed its line up of free games offered up to PlayStation Plus subscribers in January, and there’s a super-heroic flop among the mix.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had the hype, but not the heart, to save it from critical and commercial failure in 2024, and is the headline act in an actually-pretty-good month for PS Plus subscribers.
The game, based on the misfit antihero comic book characters from the DC Comics universe, was developed by Rocksteady Studios, and was pitched as something like a spiritual successor to its much-lauded Batman: Arkham series.
But the multiplayer shooter missed the mark, slammed for its repetitive mission design and live-service filler content. Though its character work and story beats showed the same pedigree as those earlier Arkham games, the final product (after a protracted development cycle) showed a dev team working against the single-player gameplay style it had all-but perfected.
Now, less than a year after its release, its PS5 version is being given away with the subscription service, alongside a final season of content and an offline mode that will keep the game playable when its multiplayer servers inevitably get switched off.
For ‘free’, though? There’s plenty to enjoy — if only to indulge in Rocksteady’s singular take on the DC Universe. Hopefully they’ll be allowed to get back to what they do best with single player super hero titles soon enough — though the financial flop of Suicide Squad may have done irreparable damage to the studio, which suffered job cuts in the wake of the game’s failure.
Two far less controversial games join Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League in January’s PS Plus line up. Both PS4 and PS5 versions of The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe will be offered up for free — it’s a walking-simulator about a trapped office worker that plays a fourth-wall-breaking trick on with the player’s expectations about game design. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered rounds out the selection for the month — an arcadey racer that pits cops against criminals in high-stakes car chases.
All three games will be available to subscribers, whatever tier of PS Plus they pay for, and will become available on January 7th.
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