It’s Launch Day for the PlayStation 4, and the Internet has been exploding with PS4 news. How does the console look? How does it feel? Where is the power button? WILL IT BLEND?
For those of you who preordered the newest Sony console or braved the storefronts today, there’s really only one important question left once you set up your new shiny and start putting stuff into your download queue.
What games are you going to play?
After dropping top dollar on a PS4 (and let’s face it, at $399 MSRP, even compared to the $499 Xbox One, it’s not like that bad boy came cheap), how much are you really willing to shell out for games?
Well, you’ve got to have them. It’s out of the question to get a launch day console just to hold it and nuzzle lovingly while you wait for the possibility of really good holiday gifts.
But what are some of the options open to you if you don’t really want to keep breaking the bank?
Lucky for you, if you have PlayStation Plus already, Sony’s already got that covered too, with some pretty sweet free titles available at launch for you to try out.
Contrast free for PS Plus
That’s right, like Housemarque’s side-scrolling shoot ’em up RESOGUN, the long-awaited 2D-to-3D puzzle-platformer from Compulsion Games launches today, and is free for PlayStation Plus users.
Contrast‘s producer, Derrick Elliott took to the PlayStation Blog to wax effulgent over the process of making such a unique game:
“This feedback was crucial to us in fuelling our inner creative fire, that positive reinforcement that gets burned deep down to keep us going through the tougher times as we hit points in the development where we realized “well that is clearly never going to work.”
The team uses that fuel as their inner strength that keeps growing with each positive Tweet, Facebook message, and simply seeing the response after putting a controller into the hands of a brand new player. We funnel it like Imhotep (well maybe not quite like that…) and maybe our hearts would grow two sizes that day. Either way, it’s what’s kept us going.”
While quite the opposite of succinct, Elliott emphasizes the passion that has been put into this unique little project for over four years of development. And while it is also quite evident that the post was written a little while before making it onto the blog, such small details matter very little in the face of the pride and excitement of a very little studio (a “small, rag-tag group of seven devs”) with a very big release.
Those of you with PlayStation Plus should seriously consider checking it out, and, even if you haven’t bought a PS4 yet, add it to your download queues. There’s no telling whether or not this title will stay free forever, but as long as you have it in your queue, you should be able to get your hands on it without any extra charge.
Similarly, chatter about other free title RESOGUN has been making waves recently. The spiritual successor to Housemarque’s previous (and highly rated) games Super Stardust HD and Super Stardust Delta is one of the top games being chosen for Twitch streaming and Day 1 “Let’s Play” videos. It is uncertain whether or not this is only free for a certain period of time, but it can’t hurt to keep it on your download queue as well.
Others that you might consider trying out (and which are always free-to-play) are the console versions of Blacklight: Retribution, a first person shooter that lets you build out your character and play style using the latest in military weaponry; and Warframe, a third-person co-op action game where you fight as one of the Tenno race, newly awoken after years of cryo-sleep into a solar system at war.
