Scarlet Nexus game director Kenji Anabuki and producer Keita Iizuka have said […]

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Managing to grab a PlayStation 5 is still one of the hottest tickets in town to get you a ride to next-gen gaming. Once you’ve got the monolithic black and white console set up, what should you play on it? What are the best PS5 games available to play right now that you really need to be checking out? We’ve compiled a list of these must-play PS5 games, picking a range of titles that show off the new generation’s power and graphical potential, as well as some cross-gen staples and games from less expected corners. This, however, could all change in the next few months. Sony have some huge games like Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo 7 coming out to start 2022, so we’ll pop back in to change the list as we go. The Best PS5 games As ever, this is just the beginning, and we’ll definitely be updating this with new games as worthy ones come out. Oh, and just so we’re clear, you’ve got Astro’s Playroom pre-installed and you absolutely need to play that game! Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Returnal Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Kena: Bridge of Spirits Deathloop Demon’s Souls Scarlet Nexus Hitman 3 The Pathless Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart If you want a showcase of what the PlayStation 5 can do, then look no further than Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. So much of Rift Apart will be familiar to fans of the series, but Insomniac are able to turn everything up to 11. The PS5 is able to throw lovely ray-tracing effects up on screen, it can power more detailed environments than ever before filled with more enemies to battle, and the PS5’s build-in SSD lets them throw you from one world to the next in what feels like the blink of an eye. Then there’s the DualSense controller with all manner of tricks being played through the controller’s adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. This is an early spectacle for PlayStation fans to savour. Returnal Returnal was a statement game from Housemarque, taking their mastery of arcade bullet hell shooters to new places. The game is a third person shooter roguelike, but that does nothing to get across how slick the gameplay feels and the exhilarating pressure of the game’s inventive boss battles. Being a roguelike means this won’t be for everyone – whenever you die, you lose all your weapons and gear and have to start over from scratch – but there’s an intriguing story that the game tells, and a mystery that can easily get you as hooked on blasting your way through the alien world before you. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Insomniac’s second entry on this list comes from their PS5 launch game Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, an interquel between the 2018 original and the upcoming Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. As you probably guessed from the title, this game stars Miles Morales, the other Spider-Man who’s just learning the ropes and getting a handle on his surprisingly different abilities and powers. It’s another great adventure set in the open world of New York City and shows off some of the PS5’s ray-tracing capabilities with different graphics modes. Not played the original Marvel’s Spider-Man? The Ultimate Edition of Miles Morales comes with Spider-Man Remastered on PS5, and there’s an in-game option to upgrade the original game as well. Kena: Bridge of Spirits Another example of what the PS5 can do, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a gorgeous looking game and comes from an independent studio making their very first game! From the gorgeous Pixer-esque visuals, to the glorious orchestral score and rock-solid gameplay, this game shows the potential for smaller studios to weave fantastic experiences. Deathloop Deathloop takes the excellent immersive sim gameplay of Arkane’s previous games and build a fun and engrossing new tale around it. You play as Colt, an assassin who’s stuck on the island of Blackreef that’s trapped in a day-long timeloop, with his only possible way to escape being to break the loop by exploring the island and taking out the eight Visionaries that want live forever within the loop. Out to stop him is Julianna (and literally everyone else on the island, but mainly her) and the relationship between the two of them makes for one of the best single player games of the past year. Or, you know… the best single player game of 2021. Demon’s Souls Were you expecting to see a remake of a cult classic PS3 game on this list? FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls wasn’t a big seller on PS3, but it led to the birth of the Dark Souls series and everything since then. Bluepoint Games remade Demon’s Souls from the ground up for PS5, and it’s a huge upgrade that fills the world with graphical nuance and detail, not to mention a better frame rate – you have a choice between 30fps and 60fps graphics modes. Plenty of other quality-of-life changes mean this is a must for Souls fans, and another option for anyone curious to see if the genre is for them. Scarlet Nexus Scarlet Nexus manages to mix an intriguing story, a constant sense of intrigue, and a wonderful over-the-top battle system together into a game that’s a blast to play. On PS5 it comes with a crisp and clean anime visual style that makes the truly wild enemy designs really stand out as you battle for the future of mankind. This is easily one of the best JRPGs to come out in the 2021, and that’s saying something in what was a great year for anime games and JRPGs. Hitman 3 Capping off a six year journey for Agent 47 and IO Interactive, Hitman 3 remains one of the smartest, most stylish games around where luxurious, labyrinthian levels, clever kills, and slick stealth gameplay mesh together with some surprising and fun twists along the way. It wraps a bow on the World of Assassination trilogy, even letting you import all of those great levels from the first two games to create what is the definitive Hitman game. The Pathless One of the more striking indie games from the launch of the PlayStation 5, The Pathless certainly takes some influences from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but plays with those fundamentals in interesting ways to create an open world adventure that you glide through with real pace. Your bow is not just a weapon to use in the game’s epic boss battles, but a way of enhancing your movement through an open world that is accessible despite not having a world map. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade Remaking Final Fantasy VII has become a huge undertaking for Square Enix, but it’s one that’s been worth the wait as the first episode was easily one of the best PS4 games released in 2020. The next step was to bring the game to PS5, making some graphical improvements along the way and releasing the Intermission DLC as a new generation exclusive. Intermission introduces everyone’s favourite ninja extraordinaire Yuffie. She’s a lot of fun in this standalone story and we can’t wait to see how she’s woven into Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2, whenever that’s released. Did you pick up Final Fantasy VII Remake for PS4 when it was included with PlayStation Plus? Well, good news, you can now get a free upgrade to the PS5 version!

What are the best Xbox games you can get your hands on in 2022? With Microsoft continuing to push its multi-platform strategy, the company’s gaming ecosystem now includes the newly-released Xbox Series X|S as well as Xbox One and PC. We’ve seen plenty of crossover between the three platforms, so pinning down which games to talk about can be tricky, but we think we’ve done a pretty good job. In recent years, Microsoft has been busy snapping up some of the industry’s best talent by acquiring studios left, right, and centre. On top of that, the past several months have given us some of the best Xbox games in years with the return of major flagship franchises. For our picks of the best Xbox games to play, we’ve gone for a selection that includes brand new must-play exclusives that show off the console’s power, old Xbox faithfuls, and a handful of likely less well-known options. The Best Xbox Series X Games As ever we’ll be closely monitoring this list as new Xbox games arrive, adding those titles worthy enough to make the cut. As we push through 2022, we’ll hopefully see exclusive upcoming games like Hellblade II, Starfield, and Scorn step into the ring. For now, let’s took a look at best games Xbox players can dive straight into. Forza Horizon 5 Halo Infinite Ori and the Will of the Wisps & Ori and the Blind Forest Microsoft Flight Simulator Gears 5 Sea of Thieves Yakuza: Like a Dragon Halo: The Master Chief Collection Psychonauts 2 Scarlet Nexus Forza Horizon 5 Forza Horizon 5 is one of the best racing games in general, and it’s definitely at its best on the Xbox Series X. You’ve never played a better-looking racing game than this, and the way the recreation of Mexico weaves from one biome and one event to the next makes it stunning to play too. If you want to make your way around a huge world and just soak in the sheer beauty of it all, Forza Horizon 5 is one of the best Xbox games around for that. Oh, and Forza Horizon 4 looks pretty special with its Series X upgrade as well… Halo Infinite It might have been a year late, but Halo Infinite was worth the wait. 343 Industries have really nailed down the feel of Halo, while also taking the series in a new direction. The campaign and Master Chief’s battle against the Banished now has an open world structure, with the Zeta Halo providing a great playground that’s made all the better by having a new grappling hook. Then there’s the multiplayer action which is just a lot of fun, and fully free to play if you don’t fancy the campaign. There’s more to come for Halo Infinite, such as co-op campaign and changes to multiplayer progression, but it should be high on your “to play” list for Xbox and PC. Ori and the Will of the Wisps & Ori and the Blind Forest This is a bit of a cheat, because we’re actually going to go ahead and include both Ori and the Will of the Wisps along with Ori and the Blind Forest here, because they’re both excellent games. The Ori games are very challenging “Metroidvania” titles where you guide a little forest spirit through increasingly challenging situations. If you want something that feels a little retro but with loads of modern extras, then check this out. Microsoft Flight Simulator Microsoft Flight Simulator should be the dullest console offering of the new generation, but it’s not. Exclusively on PC and Xbox Series X|S, Flight Simulator lets you take out a growing hangar of different light aircraft as you explore and traverse planet Earth, and it’s a perfect example of zen gaming. Peaceful, tranquil, and yet utterly immersive, you can’t take your hands off the controls for fear that your aircraft will plummet into the ground. While the only real downside is that you’ll have to take off again, you’ll still lose precious moments you could have spent performing yet another fly-by of your house. Gears 5 Gears 5 might have released a year before the Xbox Series X came out, but it’s easily one of the best looking games on the new hardware thanks to a free game update that enhanced lighting and other effects. Not only that, but The Coalition released Gears 5: Hivebusters, a DLC campaign to play through solo or in three player co-op that takes the series to new and truly gorgeous locations. If you’ve completed Gears 5 in the past, then Hivebusters is well worth checking out (and bundled in with Game Pass Ultimate). Not a fan of the Gears series’ chunky cover shooter combat? How about a slick XCOM-like spin off in Gears Tactics? Sea of Thieves Nobody would have expected Sea of Thieves to grow into the fantastic game it is today when it launched, but here we are. Sea of Thieves is a multiplayer pirate game that basically lets you live out any and every dream of the high seas you’ve ever had. If you want to play it and make up a crew to sail around looking for booty, then you can, if you’d rather get into ship-based combat, then you can, and if you want something more relaxing, you can always just go fishing. There’s been years of updates that have improved and polished the game, not to mention a whole Pirates of the Caribbean tie-in story that you can play with your swarthiest chums. Yakuza: Like a Dragon It’s always cool to see a long-running game series mix things up a bit, and that’s exactly what Yakuza: Like a Dragon does. Rather than being an action game, Like a Dragon goes full RPG with turn-based battles, characters who serve different roles, and some of the strangest summons in gaming history. Basically, if you’re looking for a good time, get on this. Make sure you check out our Yakuza: Like a Dragon guide series to get the best head start and scoop some of those hard-to-find collectables. Halo: The Master Chief Collection Sure, Halo Infinite might be the shiny new thing, but it can’t hold a candle to the absolutely vast collection of Halo gaming that you get within Halo: The Master Chief Collection. You’ve got the entire Xbox and Xbox 360 saga with Master Chief at its centre as you start, continue and then finish the fight against the Covenant, but there’s also Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach and Halo 4 bundled in as well. The collection has been significantly updated (and its multiplayer fixed) since its 2014 Xbox One release, so if you’re playing on Series X you get the games in running 4K, dozens of hours of campaign to play through, and more multiplayer game types and modes than you can shake a sticky grenade at! Want to fully finish the Halo fight? Well, Halo 5: Guardians is also playable via backward compatibility, and there’s also the real time strategy spin-offs Halo Wars and Halo Wars 2. Halo Wars 2 is the first game to feature Halo Infinite’s Banished foes. Psychonauts 2 Psychonauts 2 is a worthy successor to Double Fine’s cult classic. The platforming and combat gameplay is tighter, the world design is as varied and inventive as ever, and while the story is full of twists, turns and comedic moment, there’s also a wonderful sense of empathy and tenderness throughout. The game has a bit of a leg up over the PlayStation 5 on Xbox Series X. Where the PS5 plays the game at 1440p thanks to running in backward compatibility, the Series X has a native version of the game that can target native 4K. The varied and inventive worlds that Double Fine has created shine through regardless of where you play it. Scarlet Nexus Scarlet Nexus manages to mix an intriguing story, a constant sense of intrigue, and a wonderful over-the-top battle system together into a game that’s a blast to play. On Xbox Series X it comes with a crisp and clean anime visual style that makes the truly wild enemy designs really stand out as you battle for the future of mankind. This is easily one of the best JRPGs to come out in the 2021, and that’s saying something!