PlayStation Plus - Page 23

I have a free month coming to me for buying the new Slim Summer Bundle. I'm wondering when I should activate it so as to not have it run out right before something good becomes available.

Seeing as we still don't even know everything we are getting for August, your best bet is to hold on to it until an absolute must-have is about to expire (regularly check the PS Plus Last Chance section) and redeem it at the last possible date in the hopes that the next 30 days also brings something you want. That's what I did with my last 30-day free trial—I redeemed it at the end of May when Trine 2 was about to expire and was rewarded with a pretty good June. Of course at that point I was finally sold on an annual sub.

My three month subscription ends in September. If I let it cancel and then start it up again for a year (because it's cheaper) will I regain access to the free games that I downloaded?

You should, but it doesn't always work like that. It depends on how Sony's licensing system feels about you that day.

Why not just buy a full year now? Subscriptions stack. No need to wait for your 3 month to run out.

Yes, that is the way that it is supposed to work. That is also how the rules have been stated since day one.

As we've seen with other users here though, sometimes the licensing system hates you and decides not to let you have your product. Then when you call customer support, they tell you "Your subscription lapsed. You lose everything." and are very reluctant to do anything else for you.

I think we've seen , what? Two examples of that?

Speaking from experience, I let my subscription lapse, and didn't have Plus for about 4 months. When I signed up again, everything was back. I bet it's the same for 99% of the people who have let their subscription lapse for a period of time. But, people don't start threads to say, "Hey, everything worked as expected."

Oh cool. Thanks.

Cloud storage finally becomes useful by being upgraded to 1GB. At 150MB it was so small as to be useless. Should become available in September.

Yup. I complained about this and Sony listened. Haha. Well, either way this is good news.

Thought this was only announced for Europe?

It was announced in Europe, but the news showed up on the US Playstation blog.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/08/14/playstation-plus-coming-to-ps-vita-online-game-save-storage-getting-upgraded/#utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PSBlog+%28PlayStation.Blog%29

Cool. Think that pretty much clinches it, then. PS+ it is.

LBP2 for free clinched it for me. Renegade Ops, The Walking Dead, Choplifter HD all just bonus at this point. Super offerings for just 49.99 and I don't even know what is coming for the next 12 months!

Good tip!

For me it means I'm going to drop my Gamefly service ($15x12months=$180/yr compared to $50/yr for PS+). It also means I'll be buying a lot fewer PSN titles at launch since I'd rather wait to see if we get them for free down the road. And for those games that I absolutely must get right away, I can get them at a few dollars' discount. Should save me quite a bit of money, and I'll have more than enough "free" games to play each month. For everything else, I'll just run to a brick and mortar rental store/kiosk.

Good job, Sony, for finally making PS+ service a real value. Already dropped my XBL Gold service (last May) and I don't miss it. Trying to "clean house" with all the unnecessary monthly subscriptions I've accrued over the past few years.

So everyone gets 1GB? Good stuff as my Skyrim and GT5 saves are getting gigantic.

Anybody have an opinion on Walking Dead? I tried Sam & Max and they weren't worth the time to download. Somebody convince me to spend my HDD space

I love the Walking Dead TV series, so this was a no-brainer for me, and I wasn't disappointed. The environmental puzzles are pretty simple and the characters aren't annoying like the ones in Sam & Max (I couldn't get through the first sequence of the first episode of that).

The WD is more story and dialogue driven; you are mostly talking to people (decent voice acting), making snap decisions to select a dialogue response (there's a timer), and spamming a button when a zombie surprises you. The replayability lies in the fact that your decisions effect future outcomes (like an RPG or Heavy Rain), so in subsequent playthroughs you can change whom you align your loyalties to, whom you "save" in attack situations, whether you lie or are truthful with people, etc. It's well written and well done and definitely worth trying the first one at least.

I really am enjoying the Walking Dead (been playing on my Macbook). I haven't seen the TV series, but I've read the comics up through about issue #80 or so.

The games capture the right tone of the comics. Like the comics, the focus is very much on the interpersonal conflicts rather than on fighting zombies. For me, the Walking Dead does what Mass Effect never did well: your choices matter and affect the story as it proceeds. Mass Effect always felt too much like Mad Libs with your answers being obviously "plugged in" at key moments. But in the Walking Dead, it all gets integrated seamlessly. And more importantly, even while characters might treat you differently based on your choices, they always remain true to their personalities. Mass Effect always bugged me because characters would often act out of character just to accommodate some choice you made. In the Walking Dead, there is no stupid "morality" system or RPG-like "point value" assigned to relationships. You can't spit in someone's eye (minus 5pts) and then expect them to like you again just because you give them some money (plus 1pt per gold). Characters act consistent with their character. And there's no clear right or wrong. You just act in a way as best (and as quickly!) as you can. Love it.

But the big payoff to me in the Walking Dead comes from the split-second decision making. If you turn off the indicator that tells you when a dialogue choice is game-changing, it all feels wonderfully organic. I let the game play out with the choices I make without feeling the need to go back and make the "best" decision. It all just feels right. It's both similar to and utterly different from Heavy Rain. Mostly because it isn't as ambitious, but more importantly because the Walking Dead is much, much better written and acted.

It's got some funky old adventure game issues (finding item x by aligning yourself in just the right position, otherwise you totally miss it). But on the whole, I'm really enjoying the experience and can't wait for Episode 3. I've never been into Tell Tale's games because they always felt like poor imitations of the classic PC point-and-click games. But this series finally gets it right. It feels faithful to the genre, faithful to the comics, and still manages to do push both the genre and the comics forward.

Also, fair warning: the payoffs don't really start coming until Episode 2. The first one is more an "epilogue" or "proof of concept." But in Episode 2 you start to really care about the characters and storylines. And it very much feels like your story since it's filled with details and directions that you've set in motion.

If you can't tell, I highly recommend it.
Edited by confidenceman - 8/17/12 at 12:48pm

Giving a new release free from the start is new for PS plus, isnt it? Nice.

I could have sworn I read somewhere that borderlands is also coming to instant game collection.

Borderlands will be free starting tomorrow. In fact, I've been spending my Labor Day weekend clearing my gaming plate to jump right into it.

There have actually been a number of times that Plus members received games for free the day they released on the PSN. To the best of my recollection, in the past year or so, there's been Virtua Fighter 5, Rock of Ages, the Simpsons Arcade Game, Stacking, and Hydrophobia Prophecy. I imagine some of the minis were free the day they released as well.

hmmm I bought Borderlands 3 weeks ago for $19.

Can't buy games anymore as a Plus + members lol.

anyways, pretty cool game,...reached level 21 but lost interest. Might finish it sometime.

This is what I realized also. For me, it's an either/or proposition. Either I keep buying new games as they come out, or I subscribe to PS+. Otherwise, I'd end up kicking myself each time something like that happens.

One of the few strokes of true marketing genius on Sony's part this generation.

Yeah, I've got quite a few games that have been subsequently featured on plus, borderlands included. Im reconsidering buying some B level games, cause they might end up on plus eventually.

Kind of a great problem to have. It'd be a great showing of goodwill if they threw in another two weeks of plus to anyone who's already bought a featured game.

I'll give Borderlands a shot since it's free. But I'm still wondering why we didn't get Dead Space 2 like Europe did. We're a much larger market than they are. Plus, EA is based here, so it's odd that they get it and we don't. I hear they're getting Red Dead Redemption as well, but we're not.

I suppose it's just different people making different deals. We've got some stuff they haven't, although I did recall reading something that Europe was going to cycle through more games at a quicker pace than the US.