While many hoped the PS Plus free games for May 2022 would redeem April’s selection, it seems that it instead falls to the May curse like past years.
Prior to May, Sony has had a touch-and-go year with PS Plus. January and March received a pretty good selection of games, while February and April lagged behind. April was so poorly received that many hoped the PS Plus free games for May 2022 would redeem them. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case—not in full.
PS Plus tends to follow certain patterns, if for a certain amount of time. This doesn’t make it easy to predict what games will be on PS Plus, nor is it easy to judge when something is a new pattern. One thing that has remained constant, though, is the March rule and the May curse. In short, March tends to be one of the best months of the year every year and May tends to be one of the worst.
It’s easy to look back at past months to see how this pattern became established. Back in 2018, for example, there were 6 games given out for March, with most of them being smaller games. The reason this month follows the March rule is that two of the games were Bloodborne and Ratchet and Clank, which is a hard month to follow even if those were the only two games.
In 2019, March 2019 added The Witness and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered. The former had excellent reviews, even if it doesn’t have the biggest appeal as a puzzle game, and Modern Warfare Remastered joined at the perfect time. There was a lot of hype and speculation that Call of Duty 2019’s game would be a new Modern Warfare, and PS Plus helped seal that deal. After all, first-person shooters are one of the most popular genres out there, and Modern Warfare is one of the most popular games among them.
Come 2020, March saw the addition of the Shadow of the Colossus Remake and Sonic Forces, which is pretty much enough said. Both games have huge followings and were instantly appealing on the service. March 2021 then saw a PS5 puzzle game in Maquette, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Remnant: From the Ashes, and Farpoint VR. It had a nice spread and a new PS5 game, even if Maquette was not the best-reviewed. Pair that with a Soulslike shooter and a big JRPG remake, and March 2021 was an awesome month.
That’s the thing about the March rule. Not only do some of the best games of the year appear on the service usually in March, but it usually helps set the tone for the year. March 2021 was awesome, and PS Plus had a pretty stellar 2021. The PS Plus free games for March 2022 were no less impactful as past years, with Ark: Survival Evolved, Ghost of Tsushima Legends, Ghostrunner, and Team Sonic Racing hitting the service.
If May shows the potential highs of the year, May tends to show the worst of it. The thing is, it’s not because they’re bad games, it’s because they don’t tend to have the audience appeal needed on something like PS Plus. The aforementioned Witness is a great game, but many still wouldn’t touch a puzzle game. May tends to have these blunders where the appeal is just sucked out of the games.
May 2018, just like March 2018, had a big spread of games, but the three headliners were Beyond: Two Souls, Rayman Legends, and Risen 3. The first is described as an interactive drama and action-adventure game, which is very heavy on QTEs. It definitely has its audience, but not the broad appeal PS Plus needs. Risen 3 falls into the same boat. It's an RPG, which tends to be one of the most popular genres out there, but this is also a Eurojank game, meaning it tends to be “jankier” than AAA RPGs. This is a major dealbreaker for many. Rayman is perhaps the best of the bunch, but still, many grew up without Rayman and so the appeal for younger audiences is perhaps lost.
This is repeated in May 2019, with Overcooked and What Remains of Edith Finch. Both are good games, but neither really has the most appealing style of gameplay options. They both have their followings, but not the broad appeal the service needs. May 2020, though, was perhaps the worst month of the May Curse.
If Modern Warfare Remastered rode the speculative high of the franchise in March 2019, May 2020’s games followed the perfect storm of false information. This one isn’t even so much on Sony. A wild rumor managed to gain traction for some reason, with many believing that PS Plus would release Dying Light and Dark Souls Remastered in May 2020. To then have Sony actually release Farming Simulator 19 and Cities: Skylines was a punch to the gut. Both are good simulators, but farming and city simulators are about as niche as they come. This even led to a huge petition of fans asking Sony to change the games.
Finally, May 2021 wasn’t the worst the curse had seen. Wreckfest, Battlefield 5, and Stranded Deep hit the service, and the broad appeal of these games here may be a notch above prior years. But again, 2021 was a special year for PS Plus, and even these games didn’t hold too much of a candle compared to the rest of the year.
Many hoped May 2022 would redeem April, but as with past May, the appeal needed for many PS Plus subscribers isn’t there. FIFA 22, Tribes of Midgard, and Curse of the Dead Gods are the PS Plus free games for May 2022, and none of them are bad games. Arguably, it’s a much better month than May 2020, but it’s a worse one than May 2021. Sports games are high sellers, no doubt, but they don’t tend to do well on the service.
That’s because the majority of sports game fans will get their preferred game, like Madden or FIFA, as soon as they can. Thus, the ship for FIFA 22 has largely sailed. Curse of the Dead Gods, meanwhile, is another excellent game—a dungeon-crawling roguelike perhaps comparable to Hades—and yet the dungeon crawling aspect of it may be hit or miss with fans. Tribes of Midgard is a nice blend of roguelike, action, and survival, but the blend and top-down aspect limit the appeal too.
Again, this is not to say these are bad games—far from it, in fact—but their general appeal is limited on a service where broad appeal and variety tend to help month after month. It’s not the worst May ever, but it’s clearly part of the May curse. However, if these find themselves near the bottom of the year, perhaps the rest of PS Plus’ free games for 2022 will knock their months out of the park.
PS Plus subscribers get a handful of free games every month.
When Joshua Duckworth received Pokemon Yellow for Christmas at 5-years-old, his fate as a gamer was set. Since then, he’s been involved with every step of the gaming industries’ growth from the golden PS1 era and the dying days of the arcade to any current gaming trend. When he’s not writing, playing his own games, or thinking about writing or playing his games, he’s probably the second player to his son’s Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! file. Joshua has an MA degree in English from Jacksonville State University, and the best way to contact him is at jduckworth874@gmail.com.
