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PS Plus Free Games For October 2020 Are Need for Speed Payback & Vampyr
Sony's PlayStation Plus lineup for October 2020 gives subscribers access to EA's arcade racer Need for Speed Payback and Focus Home Entertainment's bloodsucking RPG Vampyr. October is the last month where the PlayStation 4 is the top Sony console, as November will bring new machines from both Sony and Microsoft. The PlayStation Plus service isn't going away with the launch of the PS5, and is in fact being upgraded, at least for owners of Sony's next-gen console.
One change that has been announced for PS Plus on PlayStation 5 is the PlayStation Plus Collection, a set of 18 titles that will be added to the service for next-gen console owners.PlayStation 5 owners who subscribe will get to sample titles like Mortal Kombat X, Batman: Arkham Knight, Final Fantasy XV, and Battlefield 1, as well as to a good chunk of Sony's first-party output for the console. The collection serves both as a response to Xbox's Game Pass subscription service as well as a way to offer PlayStation 5 owners something to play on Plus while the PlayStation 5 library begins to expand.
As players await the next generation, they can dig into both new games that PlayStation announced are coming to PS Plus in October. The more thematically appropriate for the Halloween season is Vampyr, an ambitious RPG that casts players as a recently turned blood-sucking night-crawler that must balance his life as a doctor with his newfound thirst for blood. In Screen Rant's review of Vampyr, Robin Burks called the game good looking and unique. Although the narrative can feel overcrowded, she came away saying that "Vampyr isn't really like any other title out there." Elsewhere, the reception was equally mixed, with critics saying that the game felt like a throwback, complete with the technical issues one might expect from that.
Shifting into the driver's seat, October's other PlayStation Plus game is Need for Speed: Payback, a laid back racing campaign that has players engaging in Fast and Furious-esque stunts in the streets of a faux Las Vegas. Screen Rant's Rob Keyes reviewed Need for Speed: Payback at launch, calling it a game that "squanders its potential" due to excessive microtransactions. The game released alongside Star Wars Battlefront II, another game with notorious microtransactions. The combined force of gambling mechanics in these two EA games made governments the world over start investigations into gaming's love of loot boxes. While the game has changed since then to reduce the grind, free is still probably the right price to pay.
Overall, players should be excited to look into both Vampyr and Need for Speed: Payback this month on PlayStation Plus. Despite any misgivings toward either title, they're both big releases with plenty to offer when money is taken out of the equation. It will be interesting to see how Sony adjusts PlayStation Plus to accommodate the next generation. For those leaving their PS4s behind after next month, there are certainly worse ways to send the console off.
