 Oh, why am I in my attic? And why is there PlayStation 5 games everywhere? Eh, oh well. It's almost been an entire year since the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X release hasn't time just flown by. Does anyone still go outside? What's it like out there? Will I ever feel the autumn breeze upon my cheeks once more? Does freshly cut grass still smell like my youthful summer times? Is the McRib currently at McDonald's? Well, it's probably about time I took a break from this thing. And took a look at what fun exclusive games the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series... Oh, I'm sorry. Aw, buddy. Still no exclusives, huh? Oh, hey, hey, hey, come on, cheer up, Buttercup. You got Halo coming for Christmas and don't you have that limited edition Halo console releasing as well? I mean, that's gotta make the early adopters super happy. Aw, there you go, player. Video game player. Uh, I guess we'll just be looking at PlayStation 5 games again for now. Last time we did this, it was back in November. We took a look at Spider-Man, Demon's Souls, Bugsnax, Sackboy, Poopful, and, uh, oh yeah, Astro's Playroom. So consider that video a prequel to this video. Today we're taking a look at five new exclusives that have released on the console, since that... I'm back in the attic. Aw, this must correlate with the first game I need to review. I'm stuck in some kind of death loop. Oh, wait, that game got delayed. It can't be that one. Hmm. I'm sure I'll figure it out. So why? What game would it have been? I mean, Devil May Cry, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet and Clank, Returnal. That's it. Returnal! Returnal is a third-person psychological horror shooter roguelite. We've seen many indie roguelites over the years, from Binding of Isaac to Hades, but this is the first time I've seen a AAA version of the genre nailed, with big-budget visuals over-the-top gameplay and organic storytelling. You play as Celine, an explorer who crashes on an off-limits planet. There, she finds herself stuck in a loop. Every time she dies, she loops back to the moment she crashed. To make matters worse, every time she loops, the planet drastically changes, leaving you as the player constantly lost in all the branching paths of alien-filled rooms. I'm not even done reviewing Returnal. Why, hey, you know what? I'll just stay up here then. I'll stay up here forever. I don't know what I'll do, because there's no PlayStation up here, and I threw my Switch in the trash. I could just play Mech Arena. Mech Arena is an actual, fun, free-to-play mobile game that the devs should consider bringing to Switch, that's all I'm saying. At first, I was hesitant to check it out, because I'm not big into mechs, but I ended up really liking the strategic flow to the battles, and I've been playing the game a lot lately. It's pretty competitive. You can unlock and set up to five different mechs. They are completely customizable, so it's a good idea to get yourself a good mix of speed, tanky mechs, and all-rounders. I unlocked an Iron Man-style rocket launcher that is just shredding enemies right now and stuck it onto my beefy Paragon mech. Then, once you're done gearing yourself up, head into 5v5 online PvP battles. Everyone brings in their own mechs, but you gotta be careful, because if a mech gets destroyed, you can't use it again that match. So if you blow through all your mechs, you'll just have to sit there and watch everyone else play. I love all the different map variations, and visually, it's super vibrant and clean. There are different mode types, like Control Point, where you just go for points, or Deathmatch, where you just blow up the entire enemy team. You can even create custom lobbies, and I'm creating one right now, and I'm leaving the room code and my friend ID down below, so you can jump right into my game and play with me now if you're quick. Best part is Mech Arena only just launched globally, so they're celebrating in-game with loads of events and amazing daily welcome rewards during the first week. Mech Arena is completely free to play. It's Android and iOS, and if you use my personal link or the QR code right now, you'll get a Black Carbon Skin, 308 coins, and 50,000 credits to help kickstart your game. Okay, that's it. It's far too hot up here. I'm going back downstairs. I don't care what happens. Every time you play, you start from scratch, collecting new weapons, power-ups, and strange abilities, most of which are, of course, temporary, but as you get better at the game, you progress further, you'll discover permanent upgrades that will stay with you through loop resets, like the ability to grapple or explore underwater. That said, this game is pretty brutal from start to finish. No matter how great a run you might feel like you're on, it can all end in a moment if you're not careful. Oh, and the bosses, by the way? Super cool. Each one was terrifying, intensely difficult, and my favorite part of the experience. The gameplay is incredibly smooth, running at 60 FPS on this beast and managing to hit a dynamic 4K resolution most of the time. Visually, it's stunning. As Shelby from Girlfriend Reviews said, The thing Housemark apparently likes the most is diarrhea Christmas lights. You'll spend most of the game ducking and weaving through that holy jolly display, while that and dying. The story elements are creepy and really well delivered. I both looked forward to and dreaded exploring Celine's old house whenever I would find it on a run. Now, for the hate, I guess I'm just a hater. It's not as much of an issue anymore, but at launch, this game would crash constantly. I blue screened more on this game than anything else I've ever played, which normally is fine. You just boot the game back up and keep playing, right? Well, you're wrong. You have to start all over again. Due to this game having no checkpoints or save states, if the game crashes two hours into your best run yet, bad luck, Bob. I'm still not sure why this game hasn't implemented save states, and now I don't mean save slots. I mean checkpoints that the game remembers internally in case your PlayStation 5 crashes or, God forbid, you want to pause the game mid-run and, I don't know, play something else. Once you pick up and start playing Returnal, your PlayStation 5 will get stuck in its own loop, becoming a dedicated Returnal playing machine. So just make sure you finish that run you're on before you start playing more GTA Online. Yeah. Gonna play some Sac Boy. No! Wow, what? You guys stopped doing that. Actually, while you're here, last time we did this, we did review Sac Boy together, so it would be fun if we could review another game. And I know that It Takes Two isn't technically a PlayStation 5 exclusive, but the two of us did play that. And it is on PlayStation 5. So technically. Technically. Nothing, but we're gonna do it anyway. It Takes Two is the quintessential co- Hey, hey, hey. You know how you wanted the waz in the last video? Yeah, I mean, he couldn't make it, but- Well, you should probably watch that then. What is this? I got it. You got waz? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God, how did you? I would. Yeah, it's me, Steve Wozniak. You know, and I'd love to say hi to you today. Your girlfriend, Kimberly, wanted me to send you a shout out. Scott. You said get me the waz. Scott the waz. This is waz. This is the Apple guy. That's Steve Wozniak. That's the great and powerful waz. That's all you said to get. Well, thank you, Steve Wozniak, for the cameo. If there's no more wazes coming in. It Takes Two. That was all. That was all. It's the quintessential co-op experience. Developed by Hazelight Studios, Hazelight has been making a name for itself as a brand new developer, solely focusing on two-player adventures. Which is why you only need to buy one copy and then your friend can play with you on their console for free. Or you can play in the same room like we did, which is the much better time. No Way Out was their first release and I do highly recommend checking that one out too. But from that gritty raided M for mature tale of two convicted prisoners busting out of prison to the cartoony raided T for teen tale of two adults turned into dolls because they were bad parents. I don't think that was necessarily why. Oh, they weren't great. Hazelight took a lot of that unique storytelling and gameplay from Away Out and refined it into a near-perfect action platformer with quirky characters, beautiful environments and fun as heck gameplay. Didn't you just have a heckload of fun? Yeah, it was a good game. Oh. Cody and May are planning a divorce. Their daughter Rose doesn't like that idea very much, so she, accidentally, puts a curse on them, turning them into little dolls. Dr. Hakim, an anthropomorphic relationship book, Did I pronounce that correctly? Good. informs them that to return back to normal, they need to fix their relationship. So off you and your friend or in my case, my wife, go. Each chapter has a different theme and with each theme comes different abilities and challenges. In the first chapter, you're stuck out in the shed. Whoever's playing as Cody will have a set of nails they can use for various things like throwing them to create platforms for May to swing on. May will have half a hammer that she can smash things with, but that's the great thing because each player's experience will be different. I was always impressed every time we visited a new area just to see how unique it was. We went from the shed to the backyard with squirrels that were cute and also scary and then we ended up in space at some point and everywhere we went, there was mini games to play. Some of them were really fun. We did like the mini games, they were fun. We did almost everyone. It turned the cooperating game into a competitive game even just for a little mini game. The voice acting and animations were fantastic. The story was cute and honestly refreshing. Yeah, I think that's part of the fun also is you're probably gonna play with somebody that has a different playing style than you and both are helpful in getting through the game. I thought it was interesting with all the little abilities and stuff. It was very similar to Sackboy, but no offense better. I forgot about the space monkey. He was awesome. There's no other studio that's solely working on co-op games that you need to play with a friend and you literally can't play. It's only a two-player experience. That is a problem I feel like we've run into a lot of times when we're looking for games to play together. There's not very many couch co-op games. To have an adventure game, 10 out of 10 for that. But I'm just glad we got through the game without hating each other. Yeah, on that note. Now that's over. I thought we were done with this bit. You know, the whole me dying and then coming back to life like some kind of... Turns out this video is just full of games that I loved weeks, if not months ago and never got around to talking about them. But now I have a reason to do it. Ghost of Tsushima, Directors Cut, which I only have digital, is another one of those. Just a few weeks ago, a Directors Cut version of the game was released. This new version features new story and new island, new minigames, additional enemy types. It plays in dynamic 4K at 60fps with DualSense haptic feedback and adaptive trigger support and more. It even includes an up to four-player co-op mode, which is a whole nother game called Ghost of Tsushima Legends. The base game, however, is where it's at. Ghost of Tsushima is an action-adventure stealth game featuring a massive open world set in 2074 Japan. The world is gorgeous. Alive with vibrant colors, rolling gusts of wind, blowing through the hills, grass, flowers and other particle effects flowing through the land, the atmosphere is alive. It's a world so enchanting, it gives you the best excuse to put off progressing through the story and rather traveling the environments, completing side-tails, discovering hidden areas and taking on minigames. You play as a samurai named Jin, left for dead during battle and revived by Yuna, who informs Jin the battle was lost and the island has fallen to the Mongols. Now Jin, a ghost back from the dead, must rescue his uncle from captivity and free the island. Now, we get to the good part, the combat. It plays out a little like the Batman Arkham series where it feels weighted but smooth, waiting for the right moment to counter or strike with an arsenal of fighting moves, sword moves, bow attacks, even kunai aimed at throats. Of course, nothing will be as cool as just driving your sword into someone's belly button to begin fights. You can either stealth assassinate entire camps, you know, if you're sneaky enough or you can go the alternative route and just literally scream out and cause a standoff. Here you can chain a series of fatal blows, taking out a good amount of enemies before the action begins. You have four different stances, stone, water, wind and moon. Each stance is effective against different enemy types like swords, shields, spears and brutes. Oh, and you have ghost stance, which is, um, badass. There are many different ways to play and to take on enemies. So do what works best for you, visuals, gameplay, story. I mean, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't think this game is worth the price. Yeah, yeah, yes. I know what some of you were thinking. Technically, Ghost of Shishima is a PlayStation 4 game but the director's cut is only on PlayStation 5. So I think that, hey! Oh, almost got me that time. You could say that I really left my death stranding. I left my death stranding. Death stranding. Yes, it's another director's cut. And I know that this director's cut isn't even out yet while I'm filming this. But the base game is, consider this me just future-proofing this video. That said, people usually fall into one of two camps with this game. They either love it or they want every copy of it to burn in a fire. Thankfully, I'm in the love it category. I played death stranding on release and I couldn't put it down for days until the credits rolled and I had tears in my eyes. At the time, I wrote a six-page thesis on why I felt death stranding was misunderstood. I still have the whole book report that I wrote though, so maybe one day, death stranding comes from the visionary mind of one Hideo Kojima. It's an action game set in America, yes, the entire country. Following a cataclysmic event which caused terrifying and destructive creatures to begin roaming the earth, you play as Norman Reedus, who is essentially a mailman, tasked with delivering supplies to isolated colonies and helping set them up with better wifi so that the country can be connected again. It does start out slow, very slow for a fairly long time. The first few chapters and about 15 hours of this 60-hour adventure will have you simply delivering packages around America. Sounds boring, right? Well, that's kind of the point. Even Norman Reedus' character tried to refuse the job as who wants to walk across America handing out letters? So the start of the game makes you feel that and I fully believe that that was the intention to just be a little boring. But in chapter four, Norman finds himself stumbling upon something much greater as he gets tangled up in a story that will shape the future of the world. From there, it was nonstop action and storytelling for me. It was a wild ride that I couldn't put down. Just like a roller coaster, the first 15 hours was a very boring, steady climb waiting for something to happen but then when it hits that peak of chapter four, it's just hands in the air screams all the way to the end. And because I spent that 15 hours with Norman just being a glorified mailman, when things did hit the fan, I felt much more connected with him as a character. From a gameplay side, I get that it doesn't make a lot of sense to start your game that way, but from a story side and investment in a character and really feeling it, it felt real. And yet, even after chapter four, I'm sure there were some slow parts of the game in between key story missions, but that's where this director's cut seems to be trying to patch things up. Like new battles, advanced combat mechanics, a firing range, Mr. Legs over here who I can't wait to hitch a ride on. I gotta say, this stuff is a dream come true. Not to mention a race track where you can compete in time attack races against other players. I hope this version of the game will give players a chance to try it again or try it for the first time. Many players gave up before chapter four and I don't blame them at all, but then the game got a bad reputation because people just reviewed it on their first 15 hours and it became the Amazon mailman simulator game. When it is just so much more than that, if you can finish chapter four before deciding if the game is or isn't for you. Okay, time for our final game. What is going on? Oh, I know. I'm stuck in a dimensional rift. Xbox has exclusives. Sorry, there we go. Sometimes you just have to confuse the space time continuum and it all kind of levels out. You know what game all of that business kind of reminds me of? Ratchet and Clank. This one's a tough one for me not to be biased. I've played almost every game in the franchise and I have fond memories of playing the original games back on PlayStation 2 after primary school. I was 12 visually. Rift Apart is one of the cleanest, most detailed and impressive games to behold from the expansive environments with ridiculous draw distances allowing objects even super far away from the player to be rendered perfectly down to the character models being so detailed you can pause at any moment while playing, bring out the in-game camera, zoom all the way in and see a level of detail so pixel perfect you can trick people into thinking it was a still shot from a Disney movie. What makes it even more impressive when the camera pans around that and the game seamlessly transitions into the player's control. It doesn't just end with the character in world detail. Then we could go into this game's diarrhea Christmas lights or it's ray tracing or it's shadows. Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart is pure eye candy. The best is smashing open a bunch of boxes and watching these metallic nuts and bolts pour all over the screen. Like, I have no use for nuts and bolts in my day to day life but if they looked this collectible you bet your butt I'd be stashing a bunch of them in my desk drawer to just look at them whenever I get bored. Play with those nuts. Ah, later on in the game you can unlock different modifiers for certain aspects of the game and changing the nuts and bolts to Zelda rupees was wonderful dumb fun. Okay, well that was a lot about the visuals. Sorry, let's talk about the gameplay. You know, the actual game part of Rift Apart almost is more of a showcase for what the PlayStation 5 can do because what's more impressive than these perfectly rendered worlds you might be asking, oh just switching between multiple of them in the blink of an eye with no load screens to be seen. The old school Ratchet and Clank gameplay is very much alive here. You progress through the game collecting bolts and using them to buy more and more insane weapons to suit your play style. Everything from a negaton collider that shoots a massive charge beam at enemies to a topiary sprinkler that sits there just turning bad guys into flower beds for you to weigh along. You name it, this game's got it. Bouncing saw blades, little robots that bite ankles, lightning. Um, it's not all perfection however. The story is a bit trifle. The enemy variation is lackluster at best with most fights feeling very similar and it is a short game at about seven hours long. That's assuming you don't wanna try collecting and upgrading anything or doing any of the extra side or bonus content. Purely the story is like seven hours long and as joyous as that switching between worlds very quickly was, it was only implemented in certain aspects of the story and you had no control over where you went and when. I was excited at the concept of instantaneous world travel but sadly that's still done by getting into your ship and just loading a new world. But don't get me wrong, I still fully believe this game is worth full price. Personally, I don't base a game's value on its run time so for me, $70 was well worth my money and I'm sure sometimes soon it'll come down in price. I do have to say though, out of this game and all of the games I talked about,