LAST MONTH ON PS PLUS

In my conversation with Oddworld series creator Lorne Lanning (which you can read all about starting on p8), he passed on some wise words from one of his favourite teachers: ‘creativity is simply two things being put together that weren’t connected before.’ Lanning said to me, “I was like, ‘really, is it that simple?’ But it kinda is.” The job of this intro paragraph is to introduce the improbable throughline that connects all of last month’s PS Plus titles and I’ve got my work cut out for me this time.

Leading the charge in August was an unexpected move to offer a new game,

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout,

for free. We’ve got six words for you: online multiplayer obstacle course party game. Pick up your wee little Fall Guy, make him your own, and then plop him into a 60-player online match filled with physics-based obstacles and flailing limbs. While there were server issues at launch (we suspect even the developers hadn’t expected it to be as popular as it is, with 120,000 people playing concurrently at one point on launch day), those should be sorted by the time you read this. And with so many players, you’re guaranteed to get a game.

Taking a hard left away from fun and games, August’s second title was

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered.

You followed the deeply questionable tactics of

Task Force 141 – each member an impossibly muscle-bound power fantasy differentiated from the others only by their code name and facial hair – as they searched for the leader of the Russian Ultranationalist party in the wake of a horrific terrorist attack. The attack in question was the infamous civilian-shooting ‘No Russian’ mission, the existence of which remains a development choice that is as baffling and cynical today as it was back in 2009.