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The best games announced for PlayStation 5 so far

There’s a lot to be excited about!

Playstation 5 console on table
Image: Sony

With the big reveal of first-party Xbox exclusives coming on July 23, we decided to recap what Sony has been doing so far with PlayStation 5 games. Having “won” this current generation with a more powerful PS4 and massive amount of great games, Sony is investing heavily into content here.

Yet, this year Microsoft will try to turn the tables: the Xbox Series X will have more raw processing power, but there’s a caveat. All new Xbox games will have to be compatible with both Xbox One and the new console, limiting the developers in scope.

Sony, however, is taking a different approach, with an impressive line-up of exclusive games that will only be possible on PS5. Plus, there are tons of interesting features that PS5 has over Xbox Series X: the new DualSense controller, a unique 3D audio engine, and a super-fast SSD that will developers to instantly switch between different worlds.

With that in mind, here’s our list of the best games announced so far for PlayStation 5.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

If anything, Ratchet & Clank truly shows the SSD magic that PlayStation 5 boasts to empower. During its E3-style presentation, developer Insomniac showed ultra-high-speed transition between multiple universes without a single hiccup or loading screen. The tech at work here is really, really impressive. Coupled with tessellated reflections, destructible objects, and particle effects so dense and varied, Rift Apart puts games from the supposedly more powerful Xbox Series X to shame. All wrapped in a promising Ratchet & Clank game from the series creators.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

There’s been a slight confusion about the nature of the new Spider-Man game, so we’re here to put your expectations in place.

Nor a full-fledged sequel, nor a story addon add-on, it’s a standalone game similar to Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Building on the foundations of the brilliant PS4 exclusive, Miles Morales will feature the same (but prettier) New York City with, you guessed it, a new protagonist.

If you finished the original game, you probably can guess how Miles story links to the Peter Parker’s, and if not – check it out, it’s one of the best platform exclusives around here. Expect more story, but also more graphical bling in the new game. The best part? It’s gonna be available this Fall when the PS5 launches.

Gran Turismo 7

Damn, this game has a lot of reflections. Reflective floors, reflective helmets, and reflective micro-details suit this game’s gorgeous car models really well. Can we really tell more about it? Well, it’s Gran Turismo, so expect proper car models with proper physics, handling, and 1:1 modeling. GT7 doesn’t look as phenomenal as some of the other PS5 exclusive, but it does look shiny enough to get our attention.

Horizon Zero Dawn 2: Forbidden West

Oh, man. Where do we even begin? One of the most amazing and stunning-looking games on PS4 is getting a sequel. And oh is it beautiful.

Perhaps, of all the PS5 games Sony showed so far, this is the one that looks like a true generational leap. The trailer will easily give you chills, with its enormous scale, breathtaking-looking nature, and CGI-quality visuals all around. Yet, it runs on PlayStation 5, and coming next year. It is real. And for a lot of people, this will be the single most important reason to get the new console.

Stray

In Stray, you play as a cat in some kind of robot-occupied, neon-lit cyberpunk city (most likely Hong Kong set slightly in the future). There are no firm details about the gameplay, but judging by a title, the cat is stray.

According to this blog post, the development team is inspired by their own cats. There’s also gonna be a dedicated “meow” button, so you can meow endlessly to annoy bystanders. Puzzle-solving and “fast-paced action sequences” are also on the list, although Stray looks to be a more grounded experience than The Untitled Goose Game. Oh, and it’s also coming to PS4, in case you’re ready to sacrifice some pretty tesselated reflections (the PS4 version will probably have some reflections too, but, you know, gotta sell those new consoles).

Project Athia

Another unreasonably good looking game (we’re @ing you, Xbox), Project Athia from Square Enix shows us how a future Final Fantasy game could easily look like, coupled with some fast-paced traversal gameplay and, well, dragons.

Realistically, Project Athia could end up anywhere, from a simple tech demo to a full-fledged open-world adventure, but it does show the commitment of Square to support the platform with a big, ambitious exclusive game. Square and Sony have some history here: Final Fantasy games used to be PlayStation exclusives (most of them still are, including the recent FFVII remake), so it only makes sense for them to continue with the collaboration.

Demon Souls (Remake)

Three years before Dark Souls, there was a PS3 exclusive game called Demon Souls that basically started the Souls-like Action-RPG genre and brought suffering right into our living rooms. Sword and shield, dodge and parry, bonfires and shortcuts – it was all there, together with messages from dead players and a not-so-obvious story that you had to learn bit by bit and make your own conclusions.

The hopes for this remake are super high for two reasons. First, it looks damn gorgeous, both graphically and artistically – courtesy of PS5 hardware. Second, it’s being handled by Bluepoint Games, developers of another beautiful remake, Shadow of Colossus. That means Demon Souls is in very good hands. And with Hidetaka Miyazaki busy with Elden Ring, it might easily be the first next-gen Souls game you can get your hands on.

Destruction AllStars

At first glance, I got my hopes up thinking that we were getting a new Twisted Metal game. I wasn’t far off, as it seems: the developers, Lucid Games are founded by the same people who worked on the Project Gotham Racing series, Blur, and The Club, games that were created in the same fun spirit of all-around destruction and super-powers.

Destruction AllStars seem to combine the tropes of vehicular combat game with the newly spawned “hero shooter” genre: you choose your hero/car, and they will have unique super moves and a fun personality. All this looks like a mashup between Rocket League and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, so let’s hope the devs will get the couch co-op just right.

Returnal

Very few details are known about Returnal, an atmospheric looking game set in a time loop. The developers, Housemarque, are known for their fast-paced twin-stick shooters (see Alienation and Nex Machina which both did pretty well on PS4), so expect similar gameplay here. Does it pair well with the psychological horror vibes we were getting from the trailer? Uhm, we’re not so sure about that.

Resident Evil Village

Weird logo spelling aside, the eighths installment of the Resident Evil franchise seems to be a true sequel to the first-person Resident Evil 7. Moreover, it features Chris Redfield from Resident Evil 4 and puts us in a setting that is strongly reminiscent of that amazing game. The amount of stuff Capcom managed to put in the announcement trailer requires months of decoding, so we’ll just skip to this: Resident Evil is back, and while the recent remakes were fine, I’m pretty sure you all are pretty hungry for a true, new installment.

NBA 2K21

Sweaty basketball players aside, the real killer feature of NBA 2K21 will be its price point. Expect to pay 70 bucks for the next-gen version compared to 60 bucks for the PS4 and Xbox One title. A 10 bucks premium for a nicer graphics? I really hope that other publishers won’t follow this suit.

Astro’s Playroom

Good news: Astro Bot Rescue Mission, a wonderful, inventive platformer for PlayStation VR, is getting a sequel. Even better: Astro’s Playroom will be pre-installed on all PlayStation 5 consoles and will showcase the features of the new console like enhanced haptic feedback and the vastly improved 3D audio engine.

Hitman III

The new Hitman game is playing it on the safe side. This means that Hitman III is looking A LOT like Hitman 2, which in turn was very similar to the Hitman reboot that first introduced the episodic gameplay to the series. There are pretty reflections and large crowds of NPCs, and it looks like good fun, but I wish the new game took more creative risks like the story-driven Hitman Absolution that still remains my favorite Hitman game to date.

GhostWire: Tokyo

In this supernatural first-person action game, you are put into a futuristic-looking Tokyo that’s being overrun by otherworldly spirits of all kinds. You’ll be using various spells and psychic abilities in the first-person combat to defeat those ghosts. While it all looks rather fresh and unique, it’s hard to ignore the outdated visuals, as the game has been in development for quite a long time already. The team behind GhostWire is led by Shinji Mikami, the director of Resident Evil 4, Vanquish, and other great games, so we’ll be keeping an eye on it nevertheless.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure

Let’s be straight here: our dude Sackboy fully deserves his own game. Lots of people bought Little Big Planet games for platforming, not exactly for the level editor, so having a light, feel-good platformer adventure looks like a smart move on Sony’s side.

Pragmata

This bizarre Capcom game gave out some strong Death Stranding vibes. The teaser shows an abandoned Earth (though not as devastated as in Kojima’s art piece) corrupted by unknown entities, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within-style. There’s a main character in a spacesuit that meets a girl on an urban square reminiscent of Times Square. Next thing you know they are standing on the moon. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was another stunt from Kojima himself – he did try to trick the public once when he announced a “Phantom Pain” game from an unknown studio – which turned out to be Metal Gear Solid V.

Bugsnax

Look, I don’t know about you, but this game gives me creeps the way the Sausage Party movie did back in the day. There’s a lovely, animated strawberry with sad eyes, and it’s being eaten by a beaver-like creature. That creature then grows strawberry hands. There are centipedes and crabs, and creatures with hotdog ears, too. If that still passes your acceptable level of weirdness, make sure to also check out Octodad, the last game from this developer

Oddworld Soulstrom

It’s always nice to see an old game returning after what has been quite a long hiatus. Oddworld Soulstrom is claimed to be a reimagining of 1998’s Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus, and it’s a 2.5D platformer where you, Abe, interact with other odd-looking creatures called Mudokons to save them from slave labor. It looks truly interesting and will also launch on PS4 and the Epic Games Store.

…And a dozen more multi-platform games included on the PlayStation 5

In addition to all those sweet PS5 exclusives we just covered, there will be a good bunch of next-gen ports and cross-gen titles.

Fortnite will get Unreal Engine 5 treatment on PlayStation 5. Destiny 2 owners will get a free upgrade to PS5, too. Plus, there’s Watch Dogs: Legion, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Warframe, Outriders, Godfall, and many more games that will try to capture both current-gen owners and next-gen early adopters. We’ll keep an eye on the news and will update this list as more games are being announced.

What do you think? What are you most excited for on the PlayStation 5? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

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Based in Europe. Writing about gaming for 10 years. Favorite things: coffee, traveling, cheesecakes. I love snowboarding and boxing because they’re video games you can play in real life. Follow me on Twitter. Pitches: k.perevozchikov@gmail.com

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