PlayStation Plus has changed. What was once a monthly drop of one or two games bundled with the paid ticket to multiplayer mayhem has reforged itself into something more akin to Xbox Game Pass — an all-you-can-play buffet with more games en route every month.
As something of a precursor to this dramatic shift in business, Sony offered fans a group of games called the “PlayStation Plus Collection” for several months. Many of those original 20+ games remain available, but they’ve been joined by dozens more.
Players who elect to stick with PlayStation Plus Essential don’t have access to this burgeoning library, but fork over a bit more cash for PlayStation Plus Extra, and that aforementioned Game Pass experience is yours. (There’s even a third plan, PlayStation Plus Premium, that promises to steadily build a suite of classic PS1, PS2, PSP, and PS3 titles as well.)
With so many games added to the PlayStation Plus roster, we’ll zoom in on many of the biggest ones to hit the service, ranking them by Metacritic score to give you a quick taste of their critical reception. After all, now more than ever, it can be challenging to choose…
Updated October 12, 2022 by Quinton O’Connor: We’ve added several new titles to the expanding roster. Choosing the PlayStation Plus service’s best representatives (for better and occasionally for worse) is a tough ask, since so many players will hope to find their favorites here. We hope we’ve done a good job with our grabs, but let us know if you feel something big is missing.
38 Balan Wonderworld (44)
By far the lowest-rated game we’ve drawn attention to, Balan Wonderworld is nonetheless noteworthy for reuniting ambitious creator Yuji Naka with a chance to develop a truly transformative experience on par with his classic Nights into Dreams. It… doesn’t quite hit that mark, but you may find some off-the-wall charm in its surprisingly excellent cutscenes.
37 Destruction AllStars (62)
“It’s basically Twisted Metal,” some have said, but that’s not all there is to Destruction AllStars. This game, which launched shortly after the arrival of the PS5, has sort of a party atmosphere to it reminiscent of popular cars-and-sports phenomenon Rocket League. Most critics didn’t exactly love Destruction AllStars, but if you’ve got PlayStation Extra or Premium, there’s no harm in giving it a shot.
36 NBA 2K22 (68)
NBA 2K games haven’t wowed critics for years, and 2K22 is no different. Restrictive modes, considerable reliance on microtransactions, and more have undermined the franchise. But every time a new installment arises, millions of dedicated players ignore all that because they know they’ll have a great time. If you number among them, and you happen to have PlayStation Plus, give 2K 22 a download.
35 Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon: Every Buddy (69)
Nice guy Boko just wants to go on adventures with his pals in this recent remake of a Mystery Dungeon classic. Final Fantasy fans will have plenty of fun bumping into familiar faces in a kid-friendly world that will nevertheless challenge you to your brink in later stages. Just don’t expect some epic plot here.
34 Days Gone (71)
Bend Studio’s open-world zombie survival game was notoriously ravaged by delays and skepticism prior to release. Upon its eventual release, Days Gone was criticized for unwieldy performance, a slew of glitches, and a slog of a first act. While that last point hasn’t been remedied, Bend has given Days Gone numerous patches adding additional challenges, and difficulties alongside shooting down the horde of issues. Even better, it runs at a locked 60fps on PS5, negating any of those frame-rate drops experienced on last-gen.
33 Killzone: Shadowfall (73)
Those of us who recall the earliest days of the PlayStation 4 era no doubt have bits of Killzone: Shadowfall’s marketing stuck in our heads to this day. This was Sony’s initial graphical powerhouse, and while it was understandably surpassed in pure visual fidelity by later games in its era, Shadowfall still looks pretty sweet. Whether you find a compelling video game in there is a bit of a coin toss.
32 Star Trek: Bridge Crew (75)
If your idea of a good time is plopping down on a captain’s chair and giving orders to a crew of intrepid space explorers, first, we’d love to meet for coffee sometime. More importantly, you may get a kick out of Star Trek: Bridge Crew… that is, if you own a PSVR headset, as you’ll need one of those to play this virtual reality thrill ride. Originally, Bridge Crew launched with just the “Kelvinverse” TOS crew, but it’s expanded to include Picard’s era as well.
31 Detroit: Become Human (78)
A successor to their interactive drama pedigree of titles including Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream’s Detroit: Become Human follows a trio of androids in - you guessed it - a near-future Detroit as more models start to gain sentience and crave revolution. The narrative is hardly the most subtle out there, but Detroit garnered praise for its myriad of choices and paths through which the story could play out, with masses of endings and even whole missions that could be missed entirely.
30 Until Dawn (79)
Another PS4 exclusive in the vein of the choose-your-own-adventure games of old, Until Dawn thrusts this concept into the world of teen slashers with fittingly cheesy and spooky results. Featuring jump-scares and gruesome deaths aplenty, Until Dawn has gained a reputation for providing bountiful entertainment when playing with a group of friends and has gone on to become a cult favorite of the last generation.
29 Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy (80)
Thinking of jumping into the beloved Bandicoot’s new game but haven’t caught up on the classics yet? No fear as the N. Sane Trilogy is part of the collection rendering the original trilogy in glorious reworked high-definition with heaps of new extras.
Hearkening back to the original PlayStation, now a brand-new generation of gamers can experience the pain of Road to Nowhere on the fifth era of PlayStation. Lucky them.
28 inFamous: Second Son (80)
An early PS4 exclusive that has nonetheless held up over time, inFamous: Second Son still looks gorgeous with its detailed particle effects and satisfying combat. Racing up the Space Needle in a plume of smoke is still a generational highlight and like other titles in the collection, it runs at a smooth 60fps on PS5, meaning even experienced players can enjoy this one like never before.
27 Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (80)
What should have been a sales figure slam dunk for Square Enix proved somewhat more complicated when the announcement of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy inspired only constrained enthusiasm following the shaky reception of Marvel’s Avengers. That’s a shame, because RPG lovers in particular may not know what they’re missing with Guardians’ complex, character-driven campaign. It’s got a lot of heart, and it’s yours “free” with PlayStation Plus.
26 Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Zombie Chronicles Edition (81)
If you’re itching for a return to the Call of Duty of years past, Black Ops 3 might just be your comfort zone. This version also comes with the Zombie Chronicles expansion adding a whopping eight remastered Zombies maps to the game. That’s already on top of a co-op campaign, online multiplayer, new Zombies maps, a special Zombies campaign, Dead Ops Arcade 2, and a free-run time trial mode. No wonder this was the Call of Duty of choice for the collection.
25 Final Fantasy 15 (81)
It’s not the culmination of ten years’ development on the originally-labeled “Final Fantasy Versus 13” that some anticipated, but then, Final Fantasy 15 could never have lived up to such lofty expectations; in reality, this very different iteration of the project had fewer than three years to get out the production door, and these days, that just isn’t enough. But Final Fantasy 15, with its unexpected “bro road trip” vibe, gorgeous vistas, and some emotionally heated moments, is best played in Royal Edition — with all the bells and whistles of its many patches and DLCs — and that’s what you’ll get here on both the PS4 and PS5 versions of its Plus download.
24 Enter The Gungeon
The roguelike genre — that challenging group of games that give you one life, and reset your progress (to varying degrees) after you lose it — may feel like dime-a-dozen these days, but they were more of a novelty not so terribly long ago. And for good reason. Gems such as Enter the Gungeon set the bar incredibly high, demanding a level of skill whilst simultaneously bedazzling with deep gameplay mechanics and lush audiovisual experiences.
23 Outer Wilds (82)
A funny thing happened in October 2019. Two rather different games launched within a week of each other. Outer Wilds was one of them. The Outer Worlds was the other. They even both scored an 82 on Metacritic. People have been mixing them up ever since. And who can blame them?
Outer Wilds is one of those games with a fairly decent critical score that doesn’t quite manage to reflect just how beloved it is by its fans. Described by its developers as an ‘open world mystery’, and set in a solar system trapped inside a time loop, the story requires players to investigate this phenomenon. There’s a lot more going on under the proverbial space roof, of course, and so many great puzzles strewn throughout.
22 The Last Guardian (82)
It’s easy to forget now but there was a time in which The Last Guardian felt like nothing but a legend. Revived for the PS4, Fumito Ueda’s man-and-beast parable is one of the system’s most poignant and unique games, talked about by many but ultimately played by few. There is no better time to give Trico a second chance than on PS5. Just cross your fingers that they’ll behave.
21 Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (83)
Konami is still a big player in the gaming industry, but its name is met with hostile growls from a not-insignificant portion of the gaming base. After pulling most of the way out of the market for a number of years, they have allowed beloved series like Metal Gear Solid, Suikoden, and Castlevania to melt by the wayside. Koji Igarashi, Castlevania’s famed producer, eventually left the company and elected to continue that legacy through Bloodstained. Ritual of the Night successfully recaptures a lot of what made fans fall in love with Symphony of the Night, so give it a try sometime.
20 Ghost of Tsushima (83)
For a long time, the notion of Sucker Punch, the makers of the inFamous series, taking on something so different as 13th-century Japanese history seemed… outlandish, at best. But in the eyes of many players, they pulled it off with aplomb, upping their experience with open-world adventures and offering a wonderfully haunted protagonist in Jin Sakai. The choice isn’t whether to give Ghost of Tsushima a try. It’s whether you’re bold enough to go through your first playthrough in black-and-white for the ultimate Miyazaki experience.
19 Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (84)
You don’t need to know the first thing about series lore to understand much of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, though do be warned that certain nuances and eccentricities may fly over your head. That’s OK. Eivor’s journey is enjoyable in its own right, This bestselling Viking story is seemingly without end; plenty of expansion content has been added through 2021 and even into 2022, so kiss goodbye to your social life for a few weeks and say hello to an axe.
