January 2022's PS Plus games have been officially revealed, and it's safe to say that Sony is starting the year off with a bang. As is becoming the natural order of things, this is the same lineup that was leaked one week ago.
Here's what we've got:
- DIRT 5 (PS5, PS4)
- Deep Rock Galactic (PS5, PS4)
- Persona 5 Strikers (PS4)
Again, it's a strong selection — at least in our humble opinion. DIRT 5 is a rock solid racer, and Persona 5 Strikers is an especially stylish action RPG. Given that it's a new release, we'll have to wait and see how Deep Rock Galactic holds up (it does have space dwarves, to be fair) — but even if it turns out to be a bust, we're still looking at one of the best months for PS Plus in quite some time.
In our DIRT 5 review, we described the racer as "raucous", and awarded it an overall score of 8/10: "If you've just got yourself a PS5, don't sleep on DIRT 5. It brings bombastic, arcadey racing to the console's launch lineup, giving you something totally different to play alongside the heavy hitters. Although the haptic feedback implementation is basic and one or two visual bugs remain, the core experience is seriously fun, and well worth checking out if you like driving sideways."
We were similarly impressed in our Persona 5 Strikers review, calling it a must-play for fans of essential JRPG Persona 5: "Persona 5 Strikers is a fantastic follow up to a beloved JRPG, carving out its own identity with an excellent action-based combat system. It presents the perfect excuse to hang out with the Phantom Thieves one last time, and does a great job of building upon the established characters and themes of its predecessor. While we doubt that Strikers will be remembered anywhere near as fondly as Persona 5, the game goes beyond expectations to provide a classy companion piece. A must-buy for existing fans."
All three games will be available to download from Tuesday, 4th January.
That's nine consecutive months of correct PS Plus leaks, by the way. We might finally see this run come to an end when Sony combines PS Plus and PS Now into one subscription service — heavily rumoured to be happening in early 2022 — but right now, it doesn't look like the leaks are going anywhere.
What do you think of January 2022's PS Plus games? Pretend to be surprised in the comments section below.
Comments 77
Well what do you know, a month of PS+ plus games where I have none of them already, result!
Pretty excited for Persona 5 Strikers, assuming I can find time to play it. My grumbles with Persona 5 are well documented, but the different style of gameplay may appeal to me more.
Would like to give it a try, anyway.
Persona 5 Strikers rules, so that automatically makes this a good month.
Really happy to see Strikers. It's a fantastic game and more peeps can give it a try.
Held off buying Strikers due to the rumour and I'll give the others a go. Great start to the year!
@Futureshark buy less games then...
Do you have too have played persona 5 too understand strikers or does it stand alone?
Not really a month for me but happy folks will get to try P5S! It's definitely one of the better Persona spin-offs. The rest on the list don't really speak to me much but oh well.
N.i.c.e. definitely excited for persona 5 strikers.but i will finish the instant classic persona 5 royal edition on my ps4 pro.and the other 2 games looks cool also.nicely done sony.word up son
Deep Rock Galactic and Dirt 5 are amazing. DRG online community is really pleasant. You can solo it but I'd join groups for most of it.
@QualityGeezer
I wouldn't say it's required necessarily but definitely recommended to play P5 first. There's lots of references you wouldn't understand otherwise.
That said if your only interested in the gameplay then by all means jump in!
@QualityGeezer Strikers does have its own story, but it's still a sequel to Persona 5. To get the most out of it, you should probably play Persona 5 first, because Strikers assumes that you're already familiar with the main characters and what they've been through.
You can still have a lot of fun with Strikers even if you haven't played Persona 5, but a lot of the character dynamics might be lost on you.
@lolwhatno they are too absorbed in Fortnite to care about any other game!
Great month BUT, I traded in my PS4 Pro and two controllers to Game Stop for $384 store credit! I bought a Nintendo Switch Oled in white to go along with my PS5. Jan games may have to sit in my back catalog for a few weeks.
@korgon @ShogunRok thanks for the reply, I did try persona 5 but didnt really get into it, maybe I may try again at some point
Pretty good month. First time in since I quit subscribing to Plus (april this year) that I feel I'm really missing out on something.
I’m looking forward to playing Deep Rock Galactic. Persona 5 Strikers and Dirt 5 are both great games that I completed last year.
It's a good start to the year for sure.
Already got DIRT, it's good fun. Deep Rock - meh.
Very much looking forward to Strikers, need to push on with my Royal run through before starting it though.
I guess I will play P5Strikers, then! I was never hyped enough to buy it but it looks fun!
@crazykcarter Dirt five is a 12 and we did get a Lego game last month.
Time to replay P5 Strikers on PS4!
It'll be nice playing this at a higher framerate.
Only dirt looks interesting.
It’s a good lineup, just not for me personally. Already played both DIRT 5 and Deep Rock Galactic on Xbox.
I will be trying out Persona 5 Strikers however. Not sure what to except, never played a Persona game before.
@Ralizah By a higher framerate, do you mean in double digits this time 😂
Poor month for me but will give dirt a go
Still playing isaac repentence and hell let loose
So not bothered about these tbh
Great month for me. May even get time to play them at some point!
@nessisonett ?
P5 Strikers runs at a very stable 30fps on Switch. It's one of the best optimized ports on the platform.
looks like a quality month for sure 😁🙌
Already finished p5 strikers but traded it in. Might try the harder difficulty to fight the reaper
@PenguinL it’s really not too difficult to get into Persona 5 but as someone who plays JRPGs a lot, it can be extremely overwhelming with the amount of unique activities and events you can do. Especially in comparison to Western RPGs. It’s really worth it. My advice is learn how the confidants/social links work and utilize your time wisely.
It is a very long game. The base content is 80 -100 and the new content adds about 20 hours of required stuff and around 10ish of optional stuff (related to the story).
Removed - inappropriate
Quite a good selection this month. I’ll take a look at all of them I think but I do need to play P5 first.
P5S is on Switch and the other two belong to red zone genres when it comes to Remote Play, but outside this context it would be a pretty awesome lineup. I mean, a racer, an action RPG and a first person shooter starring space dwarves? And once again, no PS5-only items either.
dirt 5 is a bit boring and nowhere near what dirt rally 2.0 offered in terms of quality and content..EA bying codemasters has me worried...
Dirt 5 is fun for a bit, lots of flash and roar, but it wore out surprisingly fast for me. The weekly challenges are just trick courses, not real races, so that's disappointing. The races can be wild, but in limited doses.
Decent selection for me this month, especially Dirt 5 which I wanted to give a go but no sure when with the Christmas backlog!
WOW! I'm in the middle of Persona 5R now so P5S is more than welcome along with Deep Rock Galactic.
So it looks that Sony cuts PS5 games definitely. Last month only demo (Godfall) and now only PS4 games.
@djlard erm dirt 5 and deep rock galactic are the PlayStation 5 versions 👍
Pretty solid month if not the best month since the ps5 came out, two playstation 5 games and a solid action RPG (which I've already played)
Keep this up sony
P5 Strikers. Nice. I just hope that it's not too button mashy.
More months like this, please. PS+ is a very good service.
@lolwhatno They are paying $330 for PS4 Pros, and $27.50 for controllers. The trade in values are listed on there web page.
@UltimateOtaku91 version doesn't mean game.
if you give cow wings, it looks great, but it doesn't make it holy cow - it is still just cow (with wings)...
@djlard what? We get the PlayStation 5 games if we have a playstation 5, I don't get what your trying say?
If you mean games that also aren't on playstation 4 then how many is that? There's only demon souls, ratchet and clank, and Returnal
Hope you guys enjoy Dirt 5. Nothing revolutionary but a really fun racing game and an easy double platinum if you're into that!
Really like Dirt 5. Previously had both Dirt 4 and Dirt Rally 2.0 and found 2.0 got old really fast, simulation driving games are not for me I suppose. Having played both recently I prefer Wreckfest over Dirt as you can have a direct impact on the other cars but both are fun (the multiplayer Wreckfest trophy is a nightmare though). Not sure the other 2 are for me this month but seems like a good month in general!
This is nice. I hope to see more indie titles in Feb.
Have zero interest in Persona 5 but may add Strikers to my library if I ever fancy something a bit buttons mashy. Will defo add Dirt 5 as that has been on wish list since it was released.
Yep i shall be on 1st thing on the update dsy, got my plan all figured out, just have to hope my wishes cooperate!
@JohnKarnes Dude, you got a great offer right there for that ps4pro. Great timing.
A really great month, in my opinion. 2/3 of them I have been keeping an eye on for a while.
Persona 5 Strikers is one of the best games of 2021. Def should play Persona 5 before playing this sequel. Don't let the trailer of Musou style gameplay fool ya though - if you play that way and just hack&slash, you'll lose.
Is the persona 5 story the same as the anime. I've seen that and didn't get the game because I've been down that road with the dragon ball and naruto games. Having to skip cutscenes in a game you haven't played is a very hollow feeling indeed. If its the same then I'll just get strikers as that's an original story.
@lolwhatno I think, as a gamestop pro member, you get a little more on trade-ins. And you get more in store credit, than you would cash, normally.
Looks like it’s time to do that second persona run for the plat I always meant to do. Need to remind myself of the story in that way. I think the working resume function on PS5 will make the the run much more enjoyable than my first play through where I was forced to finish incredibly long and tedious dungeons before being able to stop.
@thefourfoldroot Same here and I picked up the deluxe version of Royale for £16. So I've a lot of Persona to play in 2022!
One of the best PS+ months that I can remember fair play.
@UltimateOtaku91 that was the point. I don't mind if we get 3 games, thats great. But in principle, we get only PS4 games. PS5 upgrade is just better graphics and maybe loading times, but it is still PS4 game.
@djlard but that's pretty much 99% of the games out now? Name me 10 games that don't have a ps4 version? Even on xbox there's only one true next gen game and that's flight simulator, the rest are also on xbox one.
What you're asking for is impossible until another 2-3 years when developers leave the last gen consoles behind
@djlard "better graphics and maybe loading times" - as opposed to what, exactly? Granted, there's also the Dualsense which is by far the PS5's USP, but there are plenty of games where the PS5 version has some degree of Dualsense support.
Better graphics and loading times though - for the most part, that's the main difference between console generations this time round. The PS4 really isn't holding back PS5 games as much as know-it-all PS5 purists like to think. Look at the world of PC gaming, where there are thousands of combinations of CPU/GPU/memory to choose from, and there are still plenty of HDD users who haven't got an SSD yet. You don't hear the PC crowd complaining that PC gaming is inferior because of all the people who have to set all their graphics settings to "Very Low" (plenty of your PS4/PS5 games are also available on PC, so if anything the "very low" PC users would be holding things back, even after game devs ditch the PS4, if that logic actually holds up)
The fact is that there are just not many games that really require the PS5's power, and won't run on a PS4 with a bit of a graphical downgrade. Even Rift Apart could have been built to run on PS4 - it wouldn't have been built the same way as it was for PS5, for sure - but apart from some slightly longer loading times (at the start of the game/when dying) and some inferior graphics/frame rate, you likely wouldn't have even noticed the difference if it wasn't pointed out to you
I'll happily claim Persona 5 Strikers digitally, but hard pass on the other two games.
@UltimateOtaku91 I understand perfectly. And also must say it is sad fact...
Still no knack 2, I am beginning to lose hope.
@danlk1ng Thank you for your elaboration. Yes I forgot your to heavens beloved DualSense that I consider as average and that rumbling or feedback is rather annoying than "wow" thing.
What I wanted to say was that even if you put furr on keg it doesn't make it lamb...
in other words story makes new game, not graphical update.
It is sad that after one year (yes yes pretty hellish year but...) there are only 2 games for PS5 (you cannot count Demon's Souls, because it is PS3 game).
Been playing dirt 5 on stadia and it feels pretty basic, nothing like the depth or detail I remember older rally games having.
P5 strikers - whatever the P5 in the plus collection is is way way down my need to play list so this will go even further down.
DRG probably sit in my library for years.
Not the strongest of months for me but I had a lot of good ones last year
@djlard it doesn't matter how many turns of phrase you use, your point is still dumb. Your whole point seems to be "a game doesn't truly exist on a hardware configuration unless it's exclusively playable on that hardware configuration". If that were truly the case then nobody in their right minds would buy an RTX 3090 (I mean, you could argue that nobody in their right minds would buy one right now anyway, what with the markup on the things even from regular retailers) just to play a bunch of "souped up GTX 1060 games"
Granted, Sony still likes to categorise games as "PS4" or "PS5" (IMO the Xbox model makes more sense in that regard) but effectively the PS5 is really more of a "PS4 Pro Pro" right now. But that's just where we're at with console generations right now - it's not like a decade or so ago where a new generation of consoles would be able to play games that were completely incapable of running on old hardware
Nothing for me ☹
@ApostateMage there are actually COMBOS, that if you exploit them for each character the chains do different things. I wouldn't call it "mashy" but its definitely hectic. It may take a while before the controls feel fluid to you..
If you have a compatible tv try dirts 5 120hz mode..it plays like butter and even big frame drops aren't noticable in such high frame rates.
@zebric21 it will be even better once the VRR update for the Ps5 will arrive.
Playstation (plus) start new year with a bang, I like it 😃
At least I don't own any of them already. Can't say I'm thrilled with any of them though. I'll add them to my library, but I doubt I'll ever play them, particularly Persona. None of them are my style.
These are awful games. The quality of offerings the last 6 month or so, aside from the VR material, has been shocking
@PhhhCough @lolwhatno It not much more for pro member. The Trade in value was $330 for pro and $300 for the normal for trade in. I havent been to a game stop in years. We bought a switch light for the granddaughter for Christmas. The Only place I could find a yellow one was at GameStop online. I joined Pro for the points from the sale to maybe get a used game later.
I havent turned on the PS4 Pro in a year because I connected my Seagate expansion 8T Hdd to my PS5 with most of my PS4 games on it. I have all my past PlayStations I was hard to let the PS4 Pro go. Only because backwards compatibility working so well I did it.
@TheDudeElDuderino It's still listed at that price for trade in for store credit! . It may be a regular thing now.
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