Godfall: Challenger Edition On PlayStation Plus Isn’t A Great Look
After being leaked around a week ago, the PlayStation Plus December 2021 games have been revealed. They aren’t as Christmassy or festive as you might think. We’re not getting a Jingle All the Way movie adaptation (someone pitch it, please), but we are getting Godfall: Challenger Edition on PS5 and PS4 along with Lego DC Super-Villains, Mortal Shell, and the same PSVR games last month. Overall, it’s a good month on paper, but Godfall: Challenger Edition is not quite right.
Godfall: Challenger Edition, rather than being a fully-fledged, polarising PS5 launch title, is a stripped-down version of the “looter slasher,” which will not have the same amount of content as Plus. This one is tough.
Plus, subscribers have the option to play the Lightbringer and Dreamstones modes. These are the final content of Godfall. Endgame-level skills and gear will be available to players to tackle more difficult content. Players can also use cross-play to join two other players in co-op.
Many Godfall fans, all nine, agree that the endgame content is the best part of the game. However, the absence of a story campaign for the Challenger Edition feels strange at best and opportunistic. Red Dead Redemption 2 was split from its online component to selling separately in the past. However, to do the same for Godfall, specifically for the subscription, feels cynical.
Players can upgrade their Challenger Edition to the Deluxe Edition for an additional fee, unlocking the full Godfall experience. This feels counter to the purpose of PlayStation Plus over the years and generally provides less value. Plus has been a great way to get people invested in obscure or struggling games. Godfall fits that bill perfectly, but this move will probably only alienate people. After the leak, I was eager to try Godfall. However, I am now more disinterested than ever because I have been offered what is basically a vertical piece.
The trouble with multiplayer/online-only releases of games and franchises that should have or traditionally have had single-player, narrative-focused content is that it’s hard to place yourself within its world. Some games are just too easy to forget without context. A single-player campaign can give you why you should be interested in the game and provide a chance for you to learn about the game’s mechanics and systems outside of a sometimes brutal multiplayer environment. This is partly why Battlefield2042 sounds like the most unappetizing Battlefield ever.
As well as being just a plainly cynical move to squeeze a little extra money out of the deal (and, if I were to be equally cynical, I’d suggest splitting Godfall up like this is a move to ease in microtransactions), the Challenger Edition is yet another live service/online-focused PS5 release for PlayStation Plus. Only A Plague Tale: The Innocence has been an online-focused, single-player PS5 experience since June’s launch of Operation: Tango. Since then, we’ve had Hunter’s Arena Legends and Hell Let Loathe, First Class Trouble, Knockout City, and Overcooked: All You Can Eat. Single-player players have been hungry.
As someone who prefers offline games you can play alone, I know that I am in the minority. However, none of these sound half as valuable to me as A Plague Tale, Maneater, or Oddworld Soulstorm. Sony must have seen the success of Fall Guys and Rocket League, and they are now trying out multiplayer games with mixed results. Another sign of their strategy is taking out Godfall’s single-player story. This is the part I would be interested in as someone who doesn’t have the time or commitment to the endgame grinds.
We hope Godfall: Challenger Edition doesn’t signify that 2021 is over. If you don’t want Plus to be a fragmented future, what is the best thing? Do not add it to your library.
