PS Plus May 2016

   Exactly one year on from when I last talked about that months PS plus offerings, I'm back to do it again. Wondering why? Well, several times before I've wondered what many of the games on PS plus or games with gold (the Xbox equivelant) are about, and how good they are. That leads me to scouring my favourite gaming sites and searching through Youtube to find some game footage without having to listen to some arsehole chatting shit. These things can be useful, but I would like some sort of service from a large gaming site of popular gaming youtube channel that tells you what these games are like all now, how they hold up (if they're old), and if they're worth playing based on what games are out this month. Now, I can't do the latter as I haven't played Doom yet, and have little interest in (the most overrated game series of all time) Uncharted. But the rest I'll give a go.

Tropico 5

   This is the game I'm really writing this for, as this is what I really wanted to know about. I've heard talk of Tropico for many years now, since 3 came out on 360, but I've never been interested enough to buy it, now it's free though, it was time to try (sorry Haemimont games).
   You might be wondering what kind of game this (or maybe not based on the above picture). It's a city builder (remember Sim City) but with a twist that you're on a Tropical island. Although it is an interesting twist on the classic formula of such games, in reality it just leads to different types of buildings to the classics, even though they serve basically the same purpose. The other difference, rebels. If you're performing badly, like having too many homeless (even though there's loads of apartments with spaces but for some reason people aren't moving in), or more likely, don't let your citizens vote, you're likely to get an attack by rebels or an uprising of the population. I'm already terrible at these types of games, hell, I'm playing it on the easiest possible setting (don't think I've ever done that before in my life, even as a 5 year old) and it still takes me some time to get the economy sorted. My point is, as it's hard to really get started on each mission (yes, there are missions to play, of course there is a sandbox mode too), and you have to do things that focus on making money rather that pleasing citizens in the early game, it often leads to rebels attacking and destroying many buildings, which are very hard to build back as you don't have the money to do so at the time, and they tend to destroy the building that make you money, which starts a visious cycle.
   Overall though I'd say it's a competent world builder, but with no new ideas (and that's without having played one since 2010's Sim City 4). If you like world builders of any type, from Sim city, to theme hospital, Roller coaster tycoon and beyond then give it a go, it's free after all. It's not the greatest example of all time, but it's very playable, if not damn hard.


Table Top Racing: World Tour

   I can understand why you may think this game is trash and not worth playing, mostly based on the fact that it's an indie car game that's gone straight on PS plus on release with little fan fair. But so did Rocket league. Obviously it's not that good, very few game are, but don't make this assumption without giving it a chance. It's an interesting idea here. Part micro machines (in so much as you're a toy car playing around large snooker balls and all the other cliched micro machines items), while also sharing much of the gameplay with karting games, like Crash teems racing, Sonic and Sega all star racing transformed, modnation racers, M&M's cart racing, Digimon racing... feel like I'm missing one out there. There is a shade of more traditional, speed based racing games in here as well, like Need for speed, Juiced and so on (I'm not making another list). This is done by having karting like weapons while also focusing on modding your cars to get them as speedy, and drifty (is that a word?) as you can.
   It is fun to play, honestly. There's the main game mode, challenges and online modes which can last you many, many hours. There's coins to collect so you can buy better cars, upgrades, decals and rim jobs (wheels, yeah), all of which makes you want to play more. There isn't a large amount of locales, but each one has several variations on the tracks so there's plenty of choice. At times though this can lead to getting lost when you see a new part of a track that you thought you were familiar with for the first time.
   Now, my favourite part, criticism. Maybe it's me, but I sucked at drifting on this. I've seen Youtube videos where people seem to breeze though it, but I'm not one, it's a nightmare that you can't skip. Playing online can be painfull too, getting in to a match that actually starts can take a long time, and as I found out yesterday, there's no local multiplayer. Come on guys, it's perfect for it.


   Apart from the fact that all PS plus games are free (assuming you have it) so why wouldn't you download them all anyway? (seriously, I don't understand why you wouldn't, yet so many seem to not do so, why???) these are both worth a shot. Not the greatest of all time, but don't write either of them off, provided they're your bag.