With February almost upon us, Sony has revealed the next batch of monthly games it’s making available to subscribers of its PlayStation Plus Essential tier – and it’s also announced a two-hour trial of developer Insomniac’s acclaimed Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for Premium subscribers.
Starting with the games, February’s first Essential offering is Foamstars, Square Enix’s stylish, Splatoon-esque 4v4 live-service game in which players furiously hose each other into submission with a torrent of slippery soapsuds. It’ll be available on both PlayStation 4 and PS5.
Next up is Rollerdrome, from OlliOlli developer Roll7. Set a world ruled by corporations, where the public is kept placated by a brutal blood sport known as Rollerdrome, it sees players donning rollerskates for some high-speed third-person shooting action, where performing tricks restores ammo and bullet-time-style slo-mo can be deployed against opponents.
It’s superb stuff – Eurogamer called it “one of the most breathlessly stylish and casually, outrageously cool games you’ll ever play” back in 2022 – and it’ll be available on PS4 and PS5.
Last but not least is Greedfall developer Spiders’ Steelrising, a third-person Soulslike in which players, as one of Marie Antoinette’s automaton bodyguards, must track down their maker and stop Louis XVI’s army of rogue robots in a heavily reimagined version of 18th century Paris. It’s “clumsy, but well-intentioned and ambitious” – as Eurogamer put it in 2022 – and certainly not without its charms. And if it takes your fancy, it hits PlayStation Essential for PS5.