PlayStation Plus Latest Free Games Slammed By Fans And Critics

As I'm sure you know by now, June will see the arrival of an all new, multi tiered PlayStation Plus subscription service.

PlayStation Plus Essential, Extra, and Premium roll out in the UK in a matter of days, bringing their own unique benefits and free games.

Take a look at some of our favourite PlayStation 4 games below!

Of all three tiers, it's PlayStation Plus Premium that has fans most excited. Why? Because after years of begging, a select number of classic PS1, PS2, and PSP games will finally be available on PS4 and PS5. The new service has already rolled out in Hong Kong, giving us some idea as to what retro games we can expect - and there are some bangers on the horizon.

Unfortunately, it sounds like these classic games just aren't running anywhere near as well as we would have hoped on modern consoles.

YouTuber ElAnalistaDeBits shared a detailed video analysis that compared the original versions of certain games with how well they perform on PS4, PS5, and the popular PSX emulator. As you can see via this link (or below), the results are... disappointing.

Many of the rough edges and uneven framerates picked up on by ElAnalistaDeBits have been echoed by the always reliable Digital Foundry, who recently uploaded their own detailed analysis of how the classic games perform. Again, the findings are not great.

One of the biggest issues is the use of PAL 50Hz ROMs over superior NTSC 60Hz versions for certain games. While Sony appears to have released a patch that attempts to emulate 60Hz for the 50Hz titles, the result has led to a rather ugly "ghosting" effect, as you can see below.

Sony has released a patch for a few PS1 Classics on the PS4/PS5 that "improves" the PAL output.

The patch upscales the PAL code to 60hz by blending frames.

But the technique has introduced these horrible ghosting artifacts.

Here's a before and after comparison.#ps5 #ps4 pic.twitter.com/S1yphRrKuQ

— Windy Corner TV - Robert (@windycornertv) May 27, 2022

All in all, the consensus seems to be that, at least for now, the PS5 is the absolute worst way to replay these retro delights. After waiting so long for something resembling backwards compatibility on PlayStation, this is not the news we were hoping for.