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PS Plus adds Evil Dead, OlliOlli World, and more in February

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PlayStation Plus Essential’s February game lineup was announced today, and it consists of four titles: OlliOlli World, Evil Dead: The Game, Mafia: Definitive Edition, and Destiny 2: Beyond Light. These games will be available to download starting February 7. Overall, this is a really solid batch of games.

The key art for this month's PlayStation Plus games.

OlliOlli World was one of my personal favorite games of 2022 because of its amazing level design and 2D skateboarding gameplay that only becomes more fun as you get better with the game. “Like the best games of the genre, it knows that easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master mechanics, rewarding obstacles, and high speeds that test one’s reaction time are the hallmarks of a great platformer,” I wrote in a four-and-a-half star review of the game last February.

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Meanwhile, Evil Dead: The Game is an asymmetrical multiplayer game based on the long-running horror franchise that’s getting a new movie this year. While it’s not dethroning Dead by Daylight, Digital Trends called still called Evil Dead: The Game “the rare asymmetrical game where playing as a human is just as exciting as controlling a monster,” after playing the game at launch.

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After that comes Mafia: Definitive Edition, which is a 2020 remake of a 2002 crime game about the Italian Mafia during the prohibition era. I played the game for a series retrospective last year, and noted that Mafia: Definitive Edition’s “setting and game structure are distinctly refreshing in the 2020s.” Definitely check it out if you like old-school open-world games or find the early 1900s setting novel.

Finally, there’s Destiny 2: Beyond Light, an expansion for the popular sci-fi MMO shooter that we said “freshen up years-old experiences and make parts of the game feel new again,” in a three-and-a-half star review. The base version of Destiny 2 is free-to-play, but the PlayStation Plus expansion allows players to access to the planet Europe, Stasis subclasses, and the Beyond Light campaign free of charge.

OlliOlli World, Evil Dead: The Game, Mafia: Definitive Edition, and Destiny 2: Beyond Light will be available to download from February 7 until March 6. Sony Interactive Entertainment will reveal the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium additions later this month, while PlayStation Plus Collection games will only be available until May 9.

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Tomas Franzese
Tomas Franzese
Gaming Staff Writer
Tomas Franzese is a Staff Writer at Digital Trends, where he reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…
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Despite all of those factors, Jim Ryan made it clear that he does not want AAA PlayStation Studios games on PlayStation Plus Premium or Extra on day one during an interview with Games Industry.
“We feel like we are in a good virtuous cycle with the studios where the investment delivers success, which enables yet more investment, which delivers yet more success,” Ryan said. “We like that cycle and we think our gamers like that cycle … We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle will be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want."
His argument makes sense from a business standpoint, but data from Microsoft shows that people play more games (and games they might not have played initially) when they are available on a subscription service. Even if it seems unfair to judge, many people weigh the amount of new, entertaining content a game offers to its price tag. Sony's can't truly say whether The Last of Us Part I is worth $70, but it can shift the discussion in its favor with an act of goodwill.
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