The best PS5 Games to play in 2022

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

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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!

Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/01/11/best-ps5-games-playstation-5/