It’s the last week of May, which means Sony has rolled out information concerning its PlayStation Plus games for June. Get ready for plenty of guns and speed with Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and Sonic Mania.
In case that seems like slim pickings, remember that Sony altered PlayStation Plus earlier this year to no longer include games for the PlayStation 3 or Vita. That means Plus subscribers now only get two games instead of the traditional six each month, which is kind of a bummer.
But at least this month’s games are good. First up is Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, which includes Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. Borderlands 3 is set to arrive on Sept. 13, so now might be a good time to dive in if you’re looking to reacquaint yourself with the universe before returning to Pandora to enjoy billions of guns and thousands of things to shoot them at.
Consider this a reminder that Borderlands 3 is unfortunately an Epic Games Store exclusive, but only for about a year. It will expand to “other digital markets” in April of 2020, which basically feels like “why even bother?” at that point. So the upcoming sequel being exclusive is lame, but you can still get plenty of enjoyment out of two earlier Borderlands offerings at no extra charge on top of a Plus subscription. Not telling you how to spend your money, just letting you know it’s an option.
The other game hitting Plus next Tuesday is Sonic Mania, easily the best Sonic game to drop in over a decade and that’s kind of funny since it began life as a fan project. Boasting multiple playable characters with unique abilities, sprawling and intricate maps, rad boss fights and more, Sonic Mania shows us that classic series still have legs so long as they’re being developed by people who understand what made them great in the first place.
It’s also kind of nice to see Sonic zipping about while not looking like a deranged Hollywood experiment gone horribly wrong.