There’s a raft of PlayStation 4 exclusives coming in 2016, and these are the five most exciting games to be included in that prestigious line-up.
Compared to this year, 2016 is a massive one for exciting PS4 games, particularly those exclusive to the platform. Throughout 2015 you’d struggle to count more than three Sony exclusives before stopping to think for a minute, scratching your head, then giving in to Google it. 2016, however, looks like it could be something truly special for the incredibly successful Sony home console in terms of games, such as the five that follow. Granted a handful of these are merely timed exclusives or also available on PlayStation 3, but come on let’s be honest, people will no doubt care the most about the PlayStation 4 version.
Horizon: Zero Dawn
Let’s face it: shooting robots is fun. Whether they come in the form of Vanquish’s behemoth bosses encounters or the Prometheans of Halo 5, destroying metallic machines hell bent on stomping your tender booty into a wet stain on the ground rarely ceases to be an enjoyable experience. Horizon: Zero Dawn, from the fine folks behind Sony’s premier first-person shooter franchise Killzone, promises to take the aforementioned staple of gaming and flip it over.
From what we’ve seen so far, Horizon: Zero Dawn will feature humans, who’ve fallen back into a tribal state, trying to survive in a world populated by mechanical fauna of varying sized. Rumblings of Guerrilla’s intent to back away from the Killzone property had already been circling the world for years, but when they came out at E3 2015 and showed off Horizon: Zero Dawn, everyone stepped back in unison, mouths agape in awe at what presented itself on screen.
The size of its world, the extent to which fauna vary, and their interactions with each other and protagonist Aloy are all veiled in a hazy sense of mystery. We know there’ll be hunting and we know there’ll be battles against gigantic predatory mecha-beasts, but outside of that, little seems certain. Don’t worry though, because Horizon: Zero Dawn is slated to arrive as one of a slew of PlayStation 4 exclusives sometime in 2016 and we’ll all find out then.
Persona 5
High school is never an easy time for anybody, let alone when you’ve been sent to stay with friends of your parents because you were transferred to a new one aged 16. So imagine doing all that only to be flung into a situation where shapeshifting cats and a mysterious palace created by the hearts of people in which you must work alongside other members of the “Phantom Thieves of Hearts” on a quest to steal ill-intent from people.
Suddenly a little freshman hazing doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?
Persona 5 – the sixth chronological installment of the popular Persona series which is itself a part of the much larger Megami Tensei franchise -will see the return of staples like the Social Link system and a whole host of engrossing, dungeon-crawling action. Basically, everything you loved in Persona 4 but ratcheted up to 11 and given a fresh lick of paint across its narrative should make this one of the go to PlayStation 4 exclusives for JRPG fans.
No Man’s Sky
Way back in 2013, the SpikeTV VGX awards were broadcast, leaving only two takeaways: Joel McHale really didn’t fit in, and No Man’s Sky. Since then, Sony snapped up a deal with developer Hello Games ensuring that No Man’s Sky will arrive first as a headliner for PlayStation 4 exclusives. We’ve been waiting a long, long time for this but now it looks like the culmination of our patience may be in sight as signs point toward No Man’s Sky entering the atmosphere sometime in June of 2016.
No Man’s Sky will put into action an extremely powerful procedural generation system capable of creating over 18 quintillion (that’s 18,000,000,000,000,000,000) worlds ripe for exploration. While the game will feature activities such as space flight, seamless descent and ascent from planets, crafting, and all manner of others, it’s likely that No Man’s Sky will hinge upon the overarching goal of exploring as many planets as possible to drive players forward.
The celestial bodies will not all be the same thanks to the procedural system and should each feature something special to be found on each planet. When people talk about open-world games getting too big, you’ve got to wonder what they’re going to think when there’s a veritable universe chock-full of stuff to find. Hopefully this year, finally, we’ll get our collective mitts on what’s likely to be Hello Games’ biggest release ever.
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
Nathan Drake has been seen as the poster boy of the PlayStation brand since he first swung onto the scene in 2007. In the years that followed, we’ve seen him return to his archaeological action ways in two further PlayStation 3 games, the PlayStation Vita’s Golden Abyss and, most recently, the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection on PlayStation 4. Everything has been building up to this moment though as, in 2016, we’ll bear witness to the fourth and perhaps final installment in Drake’s main story arc when A Thief’s End lands.
We’ve already seen glimpses of the game and by gosh there’s a whole lot of graphical sexiness going on, attesting to Naughty Dog’s dogged determination to ensure that Uncharted releases are as much visual treat as they are narrative experience. Of course we’re all interested to see what’ll come from Naughty Dog being given free reign to play with the PlayStation 4 hardware but something else popped up too which may give rise to interesting tidbits in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
During Sony’s 2015 PSX conference, footage showing what appears to be the opening scene of Uncharted 4 popped up on screen and with it came the revelation that the game will feature dialogue options. Whether they will have any effect on the game’s outcome remains to be seen, but it does give us a glimpse of Drake’s closing chapter and how it may end up differing from the previous installments to bring his story to a satisfying conclusion.
The Last Guardian
At E3 after E3, people have predicted that Sony will show something of The Last Guardian at their press conference. Initially it was genuine hope. Then it became forlorn pining until after so many years it became more of a joke to many. Fast forward to 2015 though and Sony finally delivered, silencing critics who bemoaned the apparent cancellation of the much-anticipated game.
What we’ve seen so far doesn’t seem to be that far removed from Team Ico’s original creation, although it’s now being crafted by the hands of genDESIGN and SCE Japan Studio. The cat/dog/bird hybrid Guardian is still there in all its glory, as is the child who appears to be working alongside this oddly adorable beast to overcome precarious environmental challenges.
The Last Guardian may be arriving five years later than originally expected, having hopped from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4 in the process, but there can be no doubt that for PlayStation fans, the prospect of finally getting their hands on The Last Guardian is the most exciting prospect of 2016.
