Happy first birthday, PlayStation 5!

The new-gen console is now one year old. We look back at its highs and lows

Time flies! We’re already 12 months into a new-gen story. PS5 made its worldwide debut on 19 November 2020 and had an impressive lineup of games at launch, including the Demon’s Souls remake, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and charming freebie Astro’s Playroom. PS Plus subscribers could also redeem family-friendly body horror Bugsnax until the new year.

2021 got off to a particularly strong start with Hitman 3 in January. Capping off the World Of Assassination trilogy, this entry introduced a whole new murderous dimension thanks to VR support. On the subject of PSVR, in February we were given the first few details of its single-wire successor, while in March we got a good look at its sleek, orb-shaped controllers and learned that the haptic feedback we’ve experienced on the DualSense will make its way to PSVR 2 – talk about living in the future! You can use the original five-year-old headset on a PS5 via backwards compatibility but the new tech (which is still a way off having an official release date) is built for current-gen hardware.

March welcomed indie heavy-hitters such as hand-drawn horror Mundaun and the long-awaited console debut of detective RPG Disco Elysium, but April ushered in an all-new PS5 exclusive with roguelike Returnal. The sci-fi third-person shooter’s use of haptic feedback and 3D audio is impressively immersive, but unfortunately we were left feeling it missed the mark in other ways, awarding it 7/10.

LIKE A PHOENIX