PS Plus vs. Xbox Games with Gold: Which Free Games Were Better in 2018?

PS Plus vs. Xbox Games with Gold: Which Free Games Were Better In 2018?

Sony PS Plus

For years, the general consensus was that Sony’s online service was holding back on quality “free games.” After 2018, that’s surely been well and truly stamped out. What a superb 12 months it’s been in that respect, with multiple AAA titles generously stacked throughout the year.

PS Plus started strong and managed to keep up the momentum throughout. January’s Deux Ex: Mankind Divided basically laid down the marker and then Sony kept rolling out the big guns. With Bloodborne, Mad Max, XCOM 2, and Destiny 2 gazing down the list of headline PS4 games this year you can honestly say that there’s enough quality to have never spent a penny on additional games beyond your subscription fee.

I don’t think you can really say any of them are “bad” months. Even if the genre or particular game wasn’t your cup of tea, they were generally of a very good standard.

Perhaps October is the only month we’d flag as a slight question mark. The headline titles of Friday the 13th and Laser League weren’t quite of the same caliber as other months.

Although it’s easy to get sidetracked looking at each month’s headline games, it’s worth pointing out that Sony continued its support of PS3 and Vita games in 2018. Highlights include Read Only Memories 2064, Grand Kingdom, and Zero Time Dilemma, which were often cross-buy compatible with PS4, a functionality that further bolstered the overall service this year.

Despite inconsistent support, PSVR had its share of “free games” throughout the year too, such as psychological horror Here They Lie. Again, the variety of games across multiple systems meant that PS Plus’ value was in its quantity as well as quality.

You can check out the full list of notable PS Plus releases below, broken down into different months:

• January – Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• November – Knack/RiME
• March – Bloodborne/Ratchet and Clank
• April – Mad Max
• May – Beyond Two Souls
• June – XCOM 2
• July – Absolver/Heavy Rain
• August – Mafia 3/Dead by Daylight
• September – Destiny 2/God of War 3 Remastered
• October – Friday the 13th
• November – Yakuza Kiwami
• December – SOMA

PS Plus vs. Xbox Games with Gold: Which Free Games Were Better In 2018?

Xbox Games with Gold

PS Plus wasn’t alone in its efforts to step things up for 2018. Xbox Games with Gold also delivered some excellent “free games” this year, with the brilliant backward compatibility feature of the Xbox One proving a huge boon.

In fact, you’ll notice as you glance down the list of notable monthly games that many of the headlines are actually Xbox 360 titles. But playable, and sometimes enhanced, on Xbox One, Microsoft was able to swap in older games when contemporary ones weren’t available.

Normally that would mean something substandard as a replacement, but because of the strength of the backward compatible library, they were often just as good as PS Plus’ PS4 current-generation offering. Specifically, we’re talking about games like Hitman Blood Money, Forza Horizon 2, and Dragon Age 2.

But Xbox Games with Gold hardly needed to lean too heavily on older games to supplement its lineup in 2018. Standout months like May and November saw Metal Gear Solid V and Battlefield 1 were a big highlight, as was the one-two punch of April’s The Witness and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.

Given that Games with Gold services just two platforms –Xbox One & 360– compared with PS Plus’ four, there isn’t quite the volume of free content on offer. Still, the generally great quality of the titles available definitely made it a worthwhile investment in 2018.

• January – The Incredible Adventures of Van Hellsing 3/Zombi
• February – Shadow Warrior
• March – Superhot/Trials of the Blood Dragon
• April – The Witness/Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
• May – Metal Gear Solid V
• June – Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia/Smite
• July – Death Squared
• August – Forza Horizon 2/For Honor
• September – Tomb Raider Definitive Edition
• October – Hitman Blood Money, Overcooked
• November – Battlefield 1/Assassin’s Creed
• December – Dragon Age II/Never Alone

PS Plus vs. Xbox Games with Gold: Which Free Games Were Better In 2018?

Who Wins?

I said earlier that players could have been content playing only Sony’s PS Plus lineup of “free” games in 2018 and I meant it. As good as it has been this year also, the same can’t quite be said of Xbox Games with Gold. Just glancing down the list of games comparing the headline offerings, there’s just no comparison overall.

Sony managed to find a way to include games of all different genres and pepper them in at appropriate moments throughout the year: story-driven RPGs like Deus Ex, critically acclaimed exclusives such as Bloodborne, and even a contemporary smash hit in Destiny 2 right before its best-received DLC (Forsaken) launched.

There’s just such a pleasing spread of different games being offered, and it felt as though Sony’s PS Plus was the trendsetter in stepping up the quality of games included in its online service this year. Microsoft started slowly by comparison, and even when they did finally get going with titles such as Metal Gear Solid V, there were too many mediocre months in which the momentum was then lost.

One can’t ignore mention the sheer quality of games offered by Sony, too. It’s something that we won’t see next year as PS3 and Vita support ends but it’s incredible to think that the entire Sony console ecosystem has been kept afloat by the service in 2018.

Sure, they weren’t often particularly interesting games, but owners of PS4, PS3, PS Vita, and sometimes even PSVR had months in which their subscription was feeding them free games across all platforms. You can’t knock that value.

Yet in gushing about Sony’s service, it isn’t to say Xbox Games with Gold was a bad deal. On the contrary, it raised the bar similarly and 2018 will go down as the best in its history. It just didn’t quite have the wow factor to topple Sony’s PS Plus, which surprised us that little bit more often.