Three of the best RPGs of all time land on PS Plus soon Leave a comment
Look, if I were you, I’d be dubious of that headline, too. But I am going to go even further here, now, in the opening paragraph, now that you’ve clicked and I’ve got your attention. Mass Effect isn’t just the best RPG series of all time – I think it’s also some of the best sci-fi of all time.
No, I’m not being hyperbolic. I’m being deadly serious. I would put Bioware’s trilogy of games up there with Asimov, with Star Wars, with Ballard, and with Star Trek. Whether Mass Effect is taking you on a tour of sentient life in the universe and forcing you to examine the macro patterns that it all follows, or dialling down into the minutiae of a doomed, intimate romance, it is beautiful and it is tragic. It is hopeful and it is doomed. It captures and celebrates the paradox at the heart of everything.
And it’s free – free! – to download and play if you have a PS Plus Essential subscription in December 2022. Imagine that: to me, downloading this game via PSN represents the same value as being handed the entire Star Wars saga (including Rebels) on 4K UHD Blu-Ray by some random passer-by in the street. It’s the same as a rogue librarian palming off the collected works of Ursula K. Le Guin to you in a dusty old library, and telling you not to worry about bringing them back. It’s like getting all of the good Star Trek on Netflix. Oh, wait – that one you might be familiar with.
