I rarely buy games the same week they come out. I am a Cheap Ass Gamer to the core. I can and will wait out a publisher’s optimistic opening price and pick up a game when it hits the used rack, the Greatest Hits collection or a summer doldrums online sale.
So it was no surprise that PlayStation Plus struck me as a clumsy way to separate fools from their money, and it shocked the hell out of me when I actually purchased Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – The Game this week.
Scott Pilgrim is the first pitch-perfect nostalgia game I’ve ever seen. Its low-resolution graphics, chiptune soundtrack and shit-ton of 8-bit Nintendo in-jokes just sweetened the fact that it is, at its core, an adventure fighter the quality of which we old gamers have not seen since River City Ransom or Legend of the Mystical Ninja. I salivated for this game ever since I saw it previewed at E3 this summer, and I snatched up the demo when it appeared on PSN this week. Then I promptly unlocked the full game.
This episode has made me severely question the whole PlayStation Plus premise. Would I have paid $50 for a full-year subscription to the service just to get early access to a demo for Scott Pilgrim, the only game I actually rushed to buy this year? Probably not. The game itself only cost $10. And it wasn’t even on PS Plus’s radar. The service is currently trying to sucker kids into joining in order to play the demo for the sequel to Kain and Lynch, a game that didn’t exactly set the world on fire, as I recall.
Given the history of the Kain and Lynch franchise, I have to wonder why this particular game was targeted for Plus treatment. It seems to me that the most likely reason is that Eidos’ PR team is willing to throw money at whatever increases the game’s profile. They did a huge advertising blitz with Gamespot for the first outing, which likely cost the site’s editor his job. So, I have to wonder, is Eidos paying to have Kain and Lynch promoted on Plus? If so, why the hell is anyone paying money to get “exclusive access” to a PR blitz?
This whole affair makes Plus look like inexcusable ignorance multiplied by greed. It seems to me if Sony is really serious about this service, they would take advantage of withholding access to really good games, like Scott Pilgrim, rather than just taking cash to lend an exclusive cache to crap like Kain and Lynch. As it is, Plus members are only getting access to cheap icons (icons!?); old or terrible games; and previews for whatever title companies pay them to promote. Not really worth $50 a year.
