PlayStation is betting that its fans are willing to pay top dollar on Day 1 for new installments of exclusive franchises like “Marvel’s Spider-Man,” “The Last of Us” and “Ghost of Tsushima.”
If you own a PlayStation console, chances are you are a PlayStation Plus subscriber, which allows you access to online gaming features, multiplayer, and two or more “free” games every 30 days for a monthly fee.
In June, the definition of PlayStation Plus will change.
A direct response to Xbox’s GamePass service, the revamped PlayStation Plus will have three tiers of service:
• PlayStation Plus Essential, which is the same as what you have now, for the same price: $9.99 monthly, $59.99 yearly.
• PlayStation Plus Extra adds a library of up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games, all of which can be downloaded to your console. It’s $14.99 monthly, $99.99 yearly.
• PlayStation Plus Premium adds another 340 games from past PlayStation eras (some you download, some you stream), for $17.99 monthly or $119.99 yearly.
For those of us who have owned Sony’s consoles since the first PSX dropped in 1995, the top tier is a no-brainer. More than 700 games in my library for an upfront price equivalent to two new releases? Sold.
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But as a direct competitor to Xbox’s similar and more modestly priced GamePass service — it tops out at $14.99 a month — it’s missing a key component: first-party games on Day 1.
Sony’s new PlayStation Plus won’t allow you access to highly touted exclusives like “God of War: Ragnarok” at release; you’ll still have to pay full retail price for those. But when a developer under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella drops an AAA release like, say, a new installment of “Halo,” “Doom” or “Hellblade,” GamePass subscribers will be able to play it without paying extra.
That’s why I will continue to recommend that newcomers to next-gen gaming choose Xbox over PlayStation; you just plain get more for your money. (And the consoles are easier to find!)
“Rise of the Tomb Raider,” released in 2015, remains one of the best value-buys for Xbox and PlayStation owners. The single-player campaign is as solid as you’d expect from the series, but the “Endurance” mode is its secret weapon. – Associated Press Back to the future of ‘Tomb Raider’
Video game developer Crystal Dynamics announced Tuesday that Lara Croft will return for another interactive adventure thanks to Unreal Engine 5, new game-making software that consumers first saw late last year in a free “Matrix”-inspired demo that further flattened the uncanny valley. Filmed footage of the real-life Keanu Reeves was nearly indistinguishable from Unreal 5’s computer-generated Neo in a peek at the kind of visuals available to players of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.
Promo art on the official “Tomb Raider” Twitter account suggests the next game will be a souped-up remake of the original 1997 adventure, with Lara wielding dual pistols against a T. rex. That’s probably the right move for the franchise after a solid reboot trilogy that ended with a bit of a commercial whimper in 2018 with “Shadow of the Tomb Raider.”
If a revived “Tomb Raider” plusses the experience in the same manner as Capcom’s outstanding, genre-defining 2019 remake of “Resident Evil 2” — and knocks us out with a next-level, photorealistic presentation — Lara Croft may again generate the kind of buzz that descendants like Aloy (“Horizon Forbidden West”) and Nathan Drake (“Uncharted”) have enjoyed the past decade.
But we need a release date first; dare we hope for Christmas 2023?
Speaking of ‘Uncharted’
The big-screen adaptation of Nathan Drake’s adventures is a fine entry in the genre of Fortune Hunters With Torches, Non-Indiana Jones Division. (That was a category at Blockbuster, wasn’t it?) It’s far above all three “Tomb Raider” movies, yet nowhere near as fun as Brendan Fraser’s “The Mummy” or Nicolas Cage’s “National Treasure.” But Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg trade some funny one-liners, there’s a nice variety of action scenes, and the climactic sequence shows us something we’ve never seen in a movie before — and even manages some thematic closure.
“Uncharted” comes to 4K, Blu-ray and DVD on May 10, with a digital release in just a few weeks on April 26. No word on streaming yet, but a Sony deal with Netflix means you’ll probably see it there by year’s end.
I’ll take all the guns-and-torches movies I can get.
• Sean Stangland is an assistant news editor who finished “Horizon Forbidden West’s” main quest around the 47-hour mark.
