23 January 2023 , 16:11
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Eight games are leaving Sony's PS Plus Game Catalogue at the end of February, including GTA Vice City.
It's the end of January, which means it's time to give up on your new year's resolutions, the gym and any other nonsense you decided to do to get healthy and catch up on all the PS Plus Premium and Extra tier games you've had your eye on, before they leave the service for good.
Of the titles leaving the PS Plus Game Catalogue by February 21. the most notable is probably GTA: Vice City Definitive Edition. This stand-alone version of the remaster for PS4 and PS5, featured in the GTA Trilogy, was only added to the catalogue in October (via PlayStation Blog) along with The Medium, Inside and Assassins Creed Odyssey.
The following list of games leaving the PS Plus Premium and Extra Game Catalogue in February:
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – The Definitive Edition
- Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders
- Pure Farming 2018
- Rad Rodgers
- Sine Mora EX
- SkyDrift Infinity
- Sparkle Unleashed
- The Book of Unwritten Tales 2
- The Turing Test
Although February's essential tier games have yet to be announced, I recommend bagging January's PS Plus bangers, Including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, while you still can. Though it's not all bad news – a slew of new games were added to the catalogue last week, including Back 4 Blood, Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition and Life is Strange.
PS Plus February 2023: free games lineup includes a groovy treat for subscribers
Free still feels like a steep price for the GTA Vice City remaster
It's no secret that the GTA trilogy remaster is seen as one of the biggest disappointments in recent gaming history. Made all the worse by how utterly essential each of the three titles included is for anyone who is either interested in game design and history or is old enough to remember when they first came out. (I am both).
What was an opportunity to give some love to three of the best games from the sixth console generation (that's Xbox, PS2, Gamecube and Dreamcast for those at the back.) Smooth a few rough edges and give us the definitive way to play gaming's holy trinity was utterly squandered. Instead, we got a rushed port of the sub-par mobile versions, touched up by AI.
In short, a complete and utter mess. The gaming equivalent of that time a pensioner ruined a 19th-century fresco of Christ in a Spanish chapel. But far less well-intentioned.
More than a year after the release of GTA Trilogy, and although each game is in better shape than it was at launch, though that's a bar you could trip over, Vice City and the other games in the Trilogy collection are still far from 'Definitive'. If you have fond memories of GTA Vice City, leave them in the past. Other games are set to be taken off PS Plus soon that are far more demanding of your attention, like SUDA51's time-bending diesel punk shooter Sine Mora EX.
But if you had your heart set on playing a brilliant open-world crime epic set in the 80s, why not take a trip to Kamurocho and play Yakuza 0 instead?