PlayStation Plus Monthly Games for May: Ark: Survival Ascended, Balatro, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun https://ift.tt/dIG5Op6
Tame dinosaurs to survive an island paradise, mix and match card decks to win big and head to the far-future for some retro shooting action with May’s PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup. Ark: Survival Ascended, Balatro and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun will be available to PlayStation Plus members from May 6.
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Ark: Survival Ascended | PS5
Are you ready to form a tribe, tame and breed hundreds of species of dinosaurs and other primeval creatures, explore, craft, build, and fight your way to the top of the food-chain? Your new world awaits in this survival sim, reimagined from the ground-up with Unreal Engine 5, with high-end graphic features, advanced physics systems and quality of life revamps in every area. Ark: Survival Ascended includes access to all of Ark’s worlds, including Scorched Earth, Aberration, Extinction, Ark Genesis Part 1, Ark Genesis Part 2, and more. The game supports public online multiplayer for up to 70 players, private-session multiplayer for up to 8 players, and local split-screen for 2 players.
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Balatro | PS5, PS4
In this poker-inspired roguelike deck builder, it’s all creating powerful synergies and winning big. Play illegal poker hands, discover game-changing jokers and trigger outrageous combos in this roguelike strategy experience. Combine valid poker hands with unique joker cards in order to create varied synergies and builds. Earn enough chips to beat devious blinds, all while uncovering hidden bonus hands and decks as you progress. You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.
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Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun | PS5, PS4
Load up your Boltgun and plunge into battle headfirst! Experience a perfect blend of Warhammer 40,000, classic, frenetic FPS gameplay and the stylish visuals of your favourite 90’s retro shooters. Play a battle-hardened Space Marine on a perilous mission across the galaxy, as they battle against the Chaos Space Marines and daemons of Chaos. In glorious boomer shooter style, unleash your devastating Space Marine arsenal as you blast through an explosion of sprites, pixels and blood. Run, jump and charge across huge levels to shoot, shred and slice the worst heretics across the galaxy!
All three games will be available to PlayStation Plus members on May 6 until June 2.
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Last chance to download April’s games
PlayStation Plus members have until May 5 to add RoboCop: Rogue City, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory to their game library.
Watch the Borderlands 4 gameplay deep dive State of Play on April 30 https://ift.tt/E36PNcG
Get ready for a deep dive on Borderlands 4! During this special State of Play, I’ll be joined by other members of the Gearbox team to share the nitty-gritty details of how you’ll wreak havoc across Kairos and take down the Timekeeper.
Catch the show live on PlayStation’s Twitch and YouTube channels on April 30 at 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10pm BST / 11pm CEST.
Back at February’s State of Play, we unveiled the game’s Launch Date Trailer, which showcased a taste of the explosive action, fearsome enemies, and powerful loot. Since then, we’ve announced that Borderlands 4’s launch has moved up to September 12, 2025, meaning you’ll get to enjoy the looter shooter action even earlier!
In this upcoming State of Play, strap in with me and Anthony Nicholson, Senior Project Producer, for over 20 minutes of developer-guided gameplay, including missions, killer weapons, exciting Action Skills, new and returning characters, and more.
While you wait, check out the game’s key art, which we just revealed today, and remember to wishlist Borderlands 4 at PlayStation Store. We’ll see you on April 30.
Hey, everybody! Sid, Brett, and Tim are back this week to discuss the release date reveal and new trailer for Ghost of Yōtei. This episode also includes interviews with Doom: The Dark Ages Director Hugo Martin and Days Gone Remastered Creative and Product Lead Kevin McAllister.
Stuff We Talked About
Next week’s release highlights:
Days Gone Remastered (out today) | PS5
Forza Horizon 5 | PS5
Despelote | PS5, PS4
Days Gone Remastered — New accessibility options revealed
Onimusha 2 Samurai’s Destiny remaster — Developer Q&A with Capcom
Ghost of Yōtei — October 2 release date, new trailer revealed
F1 25 — Dev interview and new Braking Point story mode trailer
Doom: The Dark Ages — New Cosmic Realm details revealed
The Last of Us Complete — Now available on PS5
The Cast
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Sid Shuman – Senior Director of Content Communications, SIE
Brett Elston – Manager, Content Communications, SIE
Thanks to Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music.
[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]
Last week, we asked you head to the great outdoors (inside your favorite games) and share nature-filled moments using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:
Mur4dQshares Astro Bot and a cow napping in a meadow
PattyGnandshares the girls of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage dangling their legs over a lakeside overlook
Amianan_NiRaGuBshares the Shadow-cursed lands of Baldur’s Gate 3
cenriceshares riding alongside a reflective mountainside in Neva
CamisGuishares a plant-like tortoise in God of War Ragnarök
dlazdagamingshares the northern lights shining in Snowrunner
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: Days Gone Remastered
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on April 30, 2025
Next week, we’re riding the broken road in Days Gone Remastered. Share epic moments from Deacon’s journey using the game’s new Photo Mode feature using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.
Revealing Cosmic Realm gameplay from Doom: The Dark Ages, out May 15 https://ift.tt/InVHlLE
Hello from id Software! This is Hugo Martin, game director on Doom: The Dark Ages, releasing May 15 on PlayStation 5—it’s right around the corner, I can’t believe it.
If you’ve been following along, you already know that Doom: The Dark Ages is a premium single-player campaign featuring three core pillars of engagement: story, combat, and exploration. I’m guessing you’re reading this because you want to hear something new, something about the game no one else has heard about. Well, I’ve got a good one for you.
We think Doom: The Dark Ages is the best Doom game we’ve ever made (but that’ll be for you to decide). We gave this everything we had, left no feature unpolished: we have 22 levels of incredible FPS single-player combat; tons of gameplay innovations like the Shield Saw, flail, and new crazy guns; and an awesome roller coaster ride of an action story to carry you through to the finish.
AND—we have huge worlds for you to explore.
One of them is totally unique for a Doom game, a space we’ve never been to but a world we’ve wanted to incorporate into the Doom universe for a while: the Cosmic Realm. You will bear witness to the cyclopean architecture of this Lovecraftian dimension as you explore its darkest secrets and battle its most insane enemies.
An unholy union between Hell and the Cosmic Realm has been formed. You’re going to have to experience the story to find out why—but this partnership has given birth to a new host of adversaries for the Slayer to confront.
Enemies like the Cosmic Baron. A twin-bladed brute, he attacks with relentless pressure, and at range he releases a flurry of psionic attacks that can block your projectiles and rip through your precious health. But fear not, because embedded in his attacks are parry windows that a skilled Doom Slayer should be able to exploit, should he or she be brave enough to stand and fight him.
All the strongest foes in Doom: The Dark Ages require this kind of aggression. You’ll weave your way through a maze of projectiles, just like in classic Doom, to then go toe-to-toe with the biggest demons we’ve ever created.
After you’ve dispatched the Cosmic Baron, be careful, because rising above the dark horizon you’ll find the powerful Cacodemon, a hybrid between the two dimensions and newly designed for this game. This floating mass of telepathic terror will immobilize you with his advanced shield attacks and cripple you with his tentacle strikes, should you allow him to get close.
But—you can counter these enemies’ assaults with a new weapon, an ancient tool from dimensions beyond our own: the Reaver Chainshot, a brutal ballistic iron mace of death.
Fire it quickly to unleash a light attack to a single foe, or hold down the trigger to charge its Chaos Sphere and unleash vicious long-range melee strikes, turning your enemies’ insides into demonic pulp. This weapon is unlike anything we’ve ever had in an id game; it brings the Doom: The Dark Ages’ fantastic melee combat to a whole new merciless level of bone-breaking destruction. The sound, the design, the visuals, this weapon is amazing and you’re gonna love using it in battle.
There are so many more secrets to reveal and legends to forge here in this new world we’ve crafted for you. I think you’ll find your time in the Cosmic Realm to be full of intrigue and bloody, bone-crunching mayhem. And it will look amazing on your PlayStation 5, featuring cutting-edge, ludicrous mode graphics powered by the all-new idTech 8.
The innovations in this latest version of idTech allow us to have more content visible on-screen than ever before—bigger spaces with longer views; more enemies to fight; more destruction; better feedback; a better overall gaming experience. We have fully dynamic lighting powered through raytracing, which has allowed us to iterate faster during development and empowered our team to make better art more efficiently. idTech 8 is a purpose-built engine with performance that’s buttery-smooth at 60 fps on PlayStation—this game will play every bit as good as it looks.
And there’s plenty more to talk about, but we wanted to give Sony fans something special as we head into launch. We cannot wait to share this experience with you. It is the biggest and most complete, epic game we have ever made at id and it plays fantastic on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro. There will be more to explore, weapons and abilities to unlock, and demons to crush in Doom: The Dark Ages when it releases on May 15. (You can also start slaying as early as May 13 if you purchase the Premium Edition!*)
From all of us at id—thank you so much for your time and continued support.
*Actual playtime depends on purchase date and applicable time zone differences, subject to possible outages.
EA Sports F1 25: details on massively revamped My Team mode and more, launching May 30 https://ift.tt/yN1dH3G
The buzz of excitement is ramping up into a full roar as EA Sports F1 25 gets ready for lights out on May 30. And with it comes a whole paddock of improvements, tweaks, and new features to ensure unfamiliar racers and track veterans alike all feel at home. I recently had an opportunity to talk with the developers at EA Codemasters about the upcoming racing game’s newest gameplay features.
“We’re never short of feedback,” says EA Codemasters’ Creative Director Gavin Cooper. “We listen to the community and that informs a lot of our features this year.”
The wealth of voices offering reactions over the figurative team radio don’t just include the official forums and other close sources, but also Esports drivers and content creators who had the opportunity to get their hands on F1 25, early during its development.
The result is a game which has aimed to sharpen up everything from its car handling, to a glossier TV-style presentation, and enhanced real driver voice over. “Hearing the real drivers’ voices as you’re playing really brings a degree of authenticity to the experience,” says Gavin. “We’ve got almost double the number of voice lines in F1 25 that we had in F1 24, and you experience them in more context, too.” So not only can you hear directly from some of the principals, you’ll also have back and forth exchanges between the real drivers and the in-game race engineers, offering the sort of camaraderie – and tension – of the real thing.
Gavin is also keen to point out that for fans who were frustrated with the samey engine noises in the comprehensive My Team mode, that bugbear has been addressed. “You’re now able to attach the correct audio to the different engine suppliers – so depending on which supplier you pick, it’ll actually make your car sound different. That’s something I know people have wanted for a long time.”
Your very own dream team
On the subject of My Team, the popular mode has received a significant boost, designed to get fans’ hearts racing. This time, rather than being the owner-driver, you’re now the team owner having to manage a pair of drivers. “We know being an owner-driver is not authentic to the sport,” says Gavin. “But now having to manage two drivers opens up a lot of interesting decisions for the player. Previously whenever we’ve asked you to prioritise one driver over the other it wasn’t an interesting choice – you’d naturally choose yourself. Now you have to think about who’s the most important in things like contract negotiation and upgrades.”
While you’ll choose who to control on the track itself during race weekends, managing two different personalities and egos offers more complexity to juggle, on top of running the detailed Engineering, Personnel and Corporate facilities, which can also spill out into how your team, competitors and prospects perceive you. Even when added to the expanded R&D and sponsor systems which interact with perks, upgrades, and relationships, and increased control over Driver Icons to allow AI teams to recruit iconic drivers, it’s still only a selection of the additions you’ll have at your racing gloved fingertips.
Braking Point drives the narrative experience forward
Fans of Braking Point, F1’s massive story mode series, aren’t left on the starting grid, either. “We’re always looking for ways to increase the players’ impact on the narrative,” says Gavin. So now when key events happen, you have the option to choose from the two Konnersport drivers available in that scenario, resulting in various ripple effects which can not only impact some of the race objectives, but also the end of the story itself. Implementing this expansion and various branching narratives was no small task for the development team.
“We’re keeping track of the core narrative, which is supported by various other threads, subplots, and other little storylines that we deliver through the secondary narrative, like phone calls, social media and news posts,” explains Gavin. “And those different threads might be more relevant to one driver but can come back and intersect with the main story. So it’s making sure you’re still getting something that feels specific to that driver and the storylines that you’re engaging with, and still have a coherent overall narrative that everyone can enjoy. It’s difficult, but it’s been a really fun process as well.”
And when you finish Braking Point? Well, there’s a special bonus that will allow you to bring your Konnersport team directly into the Career Mode, for the first time in the series. It’s just one of the many ways F1 25 has stepped up a gear to give you a variety of flexibility in how you want to race.
“There’s a whole matrix of possibilities you can pursue in the game,” says Gavin. “You can play as an official driver, or a custom driver, but there’s also kinda an 11th team, via Konnersport or Apex. Do you still play as a custom driver on an official team, or go for an official driver? And that’s all before you even get into bringing Icons into My Team, too.”
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Immersive details at every turn
As in-depth as many of the existing modes go, the development team haven’t forgotten about the fun little extras, either. In-depth customisation means a better decal editor, there’s the ability to change driver number fonts and colours, and LIDAR scanning has provided millions of referenced data points for a more authentic look and feel for five tracks (Bahrain, Miami, Melbourne, Suzuka, and Imola), including safety barriers, fan areas, and even accurate vegetation.
And now you can also race around Silverstone, Zandvoort, and Austria in reverse track layouts in Grand Prix, Time Trial, Multiplayer, and from the second season of the Career modes. “It’s the feature that seems to catch people out the most,” smiles Gavin. “You think you know those courses, but when you actually get to play them they really do feel like brand new tracks. There’s a lot of nuance, you’re not just driving them backwards. It really spins people’s heads out a little, having a very different experience in a familiar location.”
With F1 25 taking pole year in, year out, it’s no secret that creating these games is arguably as complicated as mapping out a real-life racing campaign, with the development team split into those who work specifically on the ‘even’ year iterations of the series, and those who work on the ‘odd’ years. “We started a central team that works on the stuff that we do every year, so things like handling, AI and so on,” Gavin explains. “They still work on yearly cadence. But having that split team model is really valuable, it lets us set up all of these big features every year. It’s tricky because we overlap, and are essentially working in the game’s build at the same time, but fundamentally a lot of it comes down to good process, good communication, and the right people in the right place.”
It’s a method which, like the best F1 teams, relies on the keenest of teamwork – but comes together every year when it matters. You’ll be able to experience it all for yourself when EA Sports F1 25 launches on PS5 on May 30.
RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business coming to PS5 July 17 https://ift.tt/s83IwWK
It’s time to settle some Unfinished Business. This standalone game picks up where RoboCop Rogue City left off. Though it’s not required to play (or own) RoboCop Rogue City before getting into Unfinished Business, you’re more than welcome to.
Unfinished Business starts with a group of mercenaries tearing into the Metro West precinct, leaving after stealing components from RoboCop’s medical chair and making off for OCP’s latest project, the OmniTower.
Welcome to the OmniTower
The OmniTower is a massive housing complex designed to house residents evicted from their homes in Old Detroit to make way for Delta City. This tower is also a potential power source that, when combined with those stolen components, could give the mercenaries access to all OCP’s technology, including RoboCop.
Pulling this plan off will take time, so they’ve seized control of the tower, turning each floor into a dangerous maze of enemies, traps, and bullets. One that you’ll need to contend with.
As you ascend the tower, ghosts from Alex Murphy’s past will come back to haunt him. The leader of the mercenaries is a former colleague of Murphy. These two have the same goal, protecting Old Detroit, but their motives differ.
A change in gameplay
It’s the appearance of this old friend that triggers something within Murphy, causing him to remember events from his past. As seen in the classic films, these moments are core for the development of RoboCop’s character, and we wanted to capture that in Unfinished Business. During a flashback sequence, you’ll play Alex Murphy when he was a beat cop in Old Detroit.
Playing as RoboCop can make you feel like a walking tank, powerful and indestructible. That’s a far cry from when you’re playing as Alex Murphy, after all, taking one too many bullets got him turned into RoboCop in the first place. You’ll need to be careful, taking advantage of the terrain and keeping cover between you and your opponents as you fulfill your duties to the precinct.
But wait, there’s more!
While tackling the OmniTower, you will be aided by Miranda Hale, a former OCP scientist who worked on the RoboCop project before being ousted so Bob Morton could take the credit. For a while, Miranda worked alongside the mercenaries. But disagreements in their approach caused her to sever ties with them. Regretting what she’d done, she teams up with RoboCop to atone for her mistakes.
In addition to RoboCop and Alex Murphy, you will have the opportunity to play as Miranda and others throughout the story of Unfinished Business.
These vignettes will delve deeper into the story, giving you a better understanding of how far people are willing to go for their ideals and how if RoboCop ends up coming for you, then perhaps you’ve gone too far.
A love letter to the series
We’re huge fans of RoboCop; the opportunity to tell these stories, work with Peter Weller, and to add to the universe of RoboCop is an indescribable honor.
Beyond that, we’ve been constantly floored by the amazing response from fans across the world. We wouldn’t be able to create this standalone without your support and hope you enjoy your experience tackling the OmniTower.RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business will be coming to PlayStation 5 July 17 and you can download the game now as a April 2025 PlayStation Plus Monthly Game. Also, we’re happy to note that Peter Weller will again reprise his role for this standalone!
