Next-Gen Gaming
Here's every PS5 launch game Sony just announced
No, it doesn't include Knack 3.
Sony just announced a murderer's row of launch games for its upcoming next-gen console, the PlayStation 5. The lineup includes Resident Evil VIII: Village, Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo, and new games starring Sackboy and Ratchet & Clank.
The presentation opened, weirdly enough, with GTA V, which we were told would become free to PS4 Plus members and would be available on PS5 in 2021.
- Spider-Man: Miles Morales is swinging in our way for Holiday 2020 from PlayStation Studios. Holy crap, it came true.
- Gran Turismo 7, of course, with an all new campaign mode, from PlayStation Studios and Polyphony Digital, featuring the series' signature jaw dropping graphics.
- Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart from PlayStation Studios and Insomniac Games is a dimension shifting adventure that looks like a Pixar movie (or at least a Minions movie) with ray tracing on Clank and a female Ratchet lookalike.
- Project Aitha from Square Enix, exclusively for PS5. We trust Square Enix to churn out a good game but, honestly, by the time this trailer ended we had already forgotten about it.
- Stray from Annapurna features robots and a cat with a backpack, who we are obsessed with. We stan the cat. Give us the cat. We want the cat. Cat. Cat. Cat.
- Returnal is from PlayStation Studios and Housemarque. It's an Alien and Annihilation inspired space adventure starring an older female lead (yay!), slowly going insane (boo!).
- Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a Nintendo Switch style platformer from PlayStation Studios and Sumo Digital. It looks adorable and like it will be a worthy competitor to Mario & Friends.
- Destruction Allstars from Lucid is basically Rocket League on stimulants and steroids. Twisted Metal by way of Splatoon, anyone?
- Kena from Ember Lab seems to be the movie Brave meets Horizon Zero Dawn. More like Horizon Zero Yawn.
- Goodbye Volcano High is an animated story about furry (like the people in mascot suits, not just, like, hairy) teenagers from K_Op coming in 2021.
- Oddworld: Soulstorm is a new Oddworld game for anyone that was checking for that.
- Ghostwire: Tokyo is an incredible looking game clearly inspired by iconic J horror monsters. We're instantly obsessed.
- Jett: The Far Shore is a beautiful, slightly odd cry-fi game from Superbrothers and Pine Scented.
- Godfall from Counterplayer which looks like Infinity Blade meets Bloodborne. Meh. Too Kingdom Hearts (the bad half with all the lore) for our taste.
- Solar Ash from Annapurna and Heart Machine is a game that looks like She-Ra and plays like Inception.
- Hitman 3 from ioi is the next in the wildly successful series starring Agent 47. This time it's set in Dubai, so that's different. It'll be available in January of 2021. Should be as fun as all the others but nothing to write home about.
- Astro’s Playroom is a sequel to the VR smash Astro Bot Rescue Mission from Japan Studio. If you played the original, you're extremely hyped up for this one.
- Little Devil Inside looks to be a survival game with an art style inspired by cell-shading and the recently canceled J.K. Rowling (may she rest in peace).
- NBA 2K21 is of course coming to the PS5 and the graphics look good for what amounts to an annual roster update. There's a lot of sweat in this trailer.
- Bugsnax is a game with talking animals and talking… food? They’re called bugsnax? Okay! Holiday 2020.
- Demon’s Souls remake from PlayStation Studios and Japan Studio which we’re supposed to think is epic and awesome and hardcore like Dark Souls but the trailer for which emitted a huge eh from our team. Sorry, nerds.
- Deathloop from Bethesda is a first-person shooter that borrows its art style from Overwatch and its mechanic from Life is Strange. Josh liked it. I thought it was a little too paint by numbers; featuring every trend that was hip in 2014. To each their own!
- Resident Evil VIII: Village is coming in 2021 and do we even need to explain why we’re shaking with excitement for it? Even a bad trailer will not keep us from this game.
- Pragmata is a game that reminds us of Bioshock and is presumably about the future (if we go by the holographic cat, who is not as cute as Stray's cat but is nonetheless a Good Boy) which looks like it was inspired by the way New York is in 2020.
- Horizon Forbidden West is the sequel to the blockbuster sensation that was Horizon Zero Dawn from Guerrilla, Sony Interactive, and PlayStation Studios. This is the system seller and it knows it.
The last of them — Notably absent from the lineup were franchises such as Twisted Metal, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Spryo the Dragon, Final Fantasy, Jak & Daxter, Killzone, and Tomb Raider. This isn't to say they aren't coming but we didn't see even a teaser for them today.
Live in your world, play in ours — Exclusives for the console include Demon's Souls, Gran Turismo, and Horizon Forbidden West, which should help the company fight off rivals from Microsoft like Halo and Gears of War.
Dual shocked — Overall, we think this line up is stacked enough to hold its own through the holiday season but we're going to need to see a bit more than just souped-up versions of the last generation's heavy hitters if we're plopping down, presumably, a few Benjamins.