LAST MONTH ON PS PLUS

Okay, I’ve got to be honest: I didn’t get around to writing the Bayonetta-andDante-eat-pizza fic I promised last issue but I did eat A LOT of Hawaiian pizza (for the purposes of research). And, weighed down by pineapple and ham, I think now is the best time to catch up on my own backlog of games. PS Plus last month seemed to think so too.

Having offered the Nathan Drake Collection in January, last month’s inclusion of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End gave you increasingly few excuses to let Naughty Dog’s premier action adventure series pass you by. Nolan North returned to one of his best-known roles in a final chapter that saw Drake and the gang search for the long-lost treasure of 17th-century English pirate Henry Avery. At last I can recover from the shame of never having played an Uncharted game (though I’m also hoping a future PS Plus completes the series with spin-off Lost Legacy sometime soon). Nobody mention Golden Abyss to Oscar: he hasn’t been the same since PS Plus dropped PS Vita games from the lineup.

Moving on, trailing stringy mozzarella behind us, the second PS Plus offering was Dirt Rally 2.0. The latest instalment in the Colin McRae Rally series, I have fond memories of playing an OG entry with my family on PS2 and watching with abject horror as my sister made it over the finish line with only one wheel left on her chassis. She likely wouldn’t last long in Dirt Rally 2.0 with its sophisticated damage system. The surface of every globetrotting stage degrades over time as other racers pass over it, so keep your wits about you for whatever the track throws at you. If you just blaze through, you risk sustaining terminal damage and the dubious honour of ‘DNF’.

I plan to correct my DNF status on the Uncharted series and much more besides... now, back to that fanfiction.