As February comes to a close, Sony has removed the cloche to unveil March’s PlayStation Plus cuisine. (I’m feeling hungry right now, leave me alone.) The crop of free games you get next month for being a PS Plus subscriber is actually pretty solid, with the offerings including one of the best martial arts brawlers of recent years.
You get a handful of games for free every month if you have a subscription to Sony’s very confusing PS Plus service. This March, you can download four games with that active membership of yours: the racing sim EA Sports F1 23, The Witch Queen expansion for the first-person shooter Destiny 2, the horror survival adventure Hello Neighbor 2, and the martial arts beat ‘em up Sifu.
F1 23 is the latest entry in Codemasters’ Formula One-licensed racing sim series, so if you’ve played one of these games, then you know what to expect. A sequel to Eerie Guest and tinyBuild’s 2017 puzzler, Hello Neighbor 2 is a frightening first-person exploration sandbox about snooping through people’s business to track down the creepily mustached neighbor, Mr. Peterson.
As part of Bungie’s Year 5 content drop, The Witch Queen for Destiny 2 focuses on taking down Oryx’s sister Savathûn, and introduces a new raid as well as new gear, missions, and PvE and PvP maps. (Of course, you need Destiny 2 to play this expansion, but Sony notes on its blog that the shooter is “available for download at no extra cost” on the PlayStation Store.) But the one that I think is seriously worth checking out is Sloclap’s 2022 martial arts action-adventure, Sifu.
Sifu follows a young martial arts student who seeks revenge on the assholes that killed their dad. With fast legs and even faster hands, the unnamed protagonist must take down every goon in their path while avoiding getting taken down themselves. If you do get beaten to a pulp, you get revived by a magical talisman that then ages your character, making them something of a glass cannon. As you get older, you hit significantly harder but also take significantly more damage.
It rules, primarily because the fighting mechanics are so crunchy and fluid, allowing you to effortlessly flow between attack strings to really lay the smack down. Enemies are also pretty smart, flanking and ganging up on you to ensure you almost never have the positional advantage. It’s easy to get overwhelmed here, which makes Sifu an exhilarating romp that could effectively be called a playable version of the 2011 Indonesian action thriller The Raid.
And that’s it. Four games you can add to your backlog, all of which will be available to download from March 5 until April 1. Here’s the list of March’s PS Plus offerings for easy browsing. Happy gaming, folks.
PS Plus’ March 2024 Offerings
Adding on March 5:
- EA Sports F1 23
- Destiny 2: Witch Queen
- Hello Neighbor 2
- Sifu
Leaving on March 4:
- Foamstars
- Steelrising
- Rollerdrome