Welcome to Urgent Fury

Last week, we asked you to share shots of the sun from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights: raphxander_ shares Arjun facing the eclipsed sun in Saros jobolts_ shares Atsu watching the sun set from a cliffside in Ghost of Yōtei honeysinghzzz shares Aloy raising a hand up towards the sun in Horizon Forbidden West Mur4dQ shares the sun hiding behind a mountain in Sea of Stars pavesoint shares the sun’s rays shining in the background in Infinity Nikki CaptainGG_R shares an orange-drenched sky during sunset in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme, or be inspired by other great games featuring Photo Mode. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? THEME: Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on July 22, 2026 Next week, raise the sails and share moments from Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. Use #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. View the full article

It’s the February 12 State of Play. Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse has just been announced, and Evil Empire, the team developing this action adventure for the past four years, is having a nervous watch party. “We were waiting because you never know when your trailer is about to appear,” says Marketing Director Bérenger Dupré. “Then we saw it and started freaking out. And the video’s chat moves so fast that you can’t read the reactions. Then we received a message from a fan showing a version of the ‘absolute cinema’ meme, and I was like, okay… we’re doing fine.” Since that nerve-wracking reveal, Konami and Evil Empire have been hard at work to ensure Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse meets its October 15 launch on PS5. Which has also included offering some hands-on time to peer into the gothic depths that await. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image In this coffin of treasures I discovered lots for Castlevania traditionalists to enjoy, combined with modern quality of life design choices, smooth combat, and an expansive magic and abilities system giving this entry in the series a fresh feel. In fact, this approach is symbolised by the entirely new character who fronts the game… Meet Rose Belmont Set after Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, 1499 Paris is in ruin and on the brink of Dracula’s resurrection. The city’s only hope? Trevor Belmont and his daughter Rose, who are infiltrating the city after a suspicious letter from the Bishop. While Trevor seeks out the clergy, our protagonist Rose is left to explore the city itself, burning, ravaged, and rampant with the undead. After a fun animated scene setter, Rose’s introduction blends both thoughtful aesthetic design and hints towards a character arc befitting of the Belmont family tree. She’s determined, but burdened with guilt over her mother’s death, a scar visually represented by her tarot deck and the fiery red curse creeping from her elbow to hand, both things which have greater significance as the game progresses. Modern-yet-classic Castlevania Belmont’s Curse feels exactly how a modern Castlevania game should feel, steering away from roguelite elements of permadeath or procedurally generated levels. “We really wanted to capture the essence of the series,” says Konami producer Tsutomu Taniguchi. “When we started discussing the game with Evil Empire, we said we’d like to go back to its core.” From its massive map with destructible secret walls, to clearly visible areas which are inaccessible until you gain a certain skill (and the suitably gothic soundtrack of organs and synths) all the expected elements are here. There’s a familiar weight to how Rose controls, but it’s graced with an agile responsiveness that makes both combat and platforming feel intuitive. During my playthrough, I was able to swiftly guide Rose with wall jumps, swing across instant death spikes, and mix it up with crafty skeletons, lumbering zombies, and cowardly bats, all of which can be damaged by the environmental hazards. And while there was no double jump available, not only were there noticeable level design clues that it would be introduced later, but my questions to the dev team about the ability were met with a wry grin. Fast and fluid combat Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse also places strong emphasis on snappy combat, with versatile evades and combos. Rose’s dodge and slide on the Circle button gives you the ability to flip backwards with a double tap, while the Arcana Whip grapple on R2 can be chained into an instant attack or traversal swing. Mana – something you can recover by defeating enemies – is used for spells with the Triangle button, or healing via L1. The weapons system is also substantial, with seven different types each with their own style and special moves. For example, the balanced longsword comes with a perk of extra damage when attacking immediately after a backdash. While the cestus gauntlets are shorter range but have faster combos, and increase in damage the more I hit enemies with them. “We are very focused on combat, which was a great opportunity to add something new in this specific genre,” explains Evil Empire’s creative director Emmanuel Nouaille. “We want to get the right balance between the spirit of Castlevania and what we want to have to modernize.” Unleash the power of Relics Also making their return are Relics, which offer bonuses for combat and exploration. Rose can equip up to three, so you can tailor them to your individual playstyle. The main one I found was the Crypt Key which fully restored Rose’s health and mana whenever she opened a chest. Which was especially useful because: This game packs a challenge True to its roots, Belmont’s Curse doesn’t spare your feelings. Hasty mistakes are punished fast and hard, but I never felt like the game was unfair. The reliance on learning patterns, using your dodge’s invincibility frames, and mastering Rose’s attacks were essential to surviving, especially when it comes to the visually impressive boss fights. Whether it was leaping over The Fallen’s Holy Cross or screen-reaching whip attack in the sewers, or dodging Joan of Arc’s flaming sword swipes, backstabs, and fireballs during an explosive rooftop battle, my first encounter with the game’s bosses were vicious and reflex testing, respecting repeated and patient play. The cards are the key The satisfaction of defeating the tricky bosses is also rewarded via the loot you earn from them. As well as occasional weapons – Joan’s Burnt Sword of Fierbois and its charge attack was a particular favourite – each boss gets merged into Rose’s tarot deck, turning them into Arcana which unlocks spells, skills, and special actions. So that Holy Cross The Fallen repeatedly bludgeoned me with? Well, as a Castlevania mainstay it should be no surprise that it’s yours once you’ve ‘tamed’ him. While Joan’s Holy Light allowed me to traverse through previously solid Chaos Shards by holding down L2, an ability which also deflected enemy attacks if I timed my press perfectly. Additionally, each Arcana has up to three Works of Mercy, a specific task to be completed like hitting an enemy five times with its spell, which then unlocks a Blessing to improve it. This comes with an unlockable bonus ‘Gift’ once you assign it – for example, the Cursed Flame’s fireball can be enhanced to become bigger and pack a heavier pushback. Whip smart design decisions While the nerves are still there for the development team, my playthrough so far captured what made the Castlevania series fun in the first place, without alienating modern day expectations. And it’s an excitement echoed by the people behind the eagerly anticipated action adventure. “We’re happy and overwhelmed with the great response,” says Tsutomu. “I feel a lot of pressure, because everyone is expecting a lot, but it’s a good feeling.” You’ll be able to finally revisit Dracula in all his gothic glory when Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse arrives on PS5 on October 15 – just in time for Halloween. View the full article

The wait is almost over. The MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls Open Beta is nearly here, and we can’t wait for players to jump into the action. Whether you’re returning after last year’s Closed Betas or stepping into the fight for the very first time, here’s everything you need to know before the Open Beta begins. Play Video Open beta schedule The Open Beta will run for 72 hours, starting on: Start: July 24, 12:00am PT / 8:00am BST / 4:00pm JST End: July 26, 11:59pm PT / July 27, 7:59am BST / 3:59pm JST The Open Beta will be available on PlayStation 5 console, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. No registration is required: simply download the Open Beta from your platform store and start playing. Pre-downloads will be available two hours before the Open Beta goes live, so you can be ready to play as soon as the servers open. A PlayStation Plus subscription is not required. However, all players will need an internet connection and an Account for PlayStation to access the Open Beta on both PS5 and PC. 15 playable Heroes and Villains Fifteen of the game’s twenty launch characters will be available during the Open Beta, including Blade who becomes playable for the very first time. Fighting Avengers Captain America Iron Man Black Panther Unbreakable X-Men Storm Magik Wolverine Danger Amazing Guardians Spider-Man Ms. Marvel Star-Lord Peni Parker Samurai Outriders Ghost Rider Blade Knights of Doom Doctor Doom Magneto Players will also be able to battle across six iconic stages, each inspired by legendary Marvel locations: Marvel’s New York (Day), Savage Land, X-Mansion, Knowhere, Wakanda, and Marvel’s New York (Night). More than online battles Many of you have already experienced online matches during the Closed Betas. This time, we also want to give you a taste of the additional modes and features waiting for you in the full game when it launches on August 6. Online Casual and Ranked Matches Jump into Casual Match to quickly face opponents of a similar skill level or test yourself in Ranked Match and climb the competitive ladder against the best of players. Want to battle locally? Versus Mode will let you challenge friends on the same system or practice against the CPU whenever you like. Explore the open lobby The Open Lobby is your hub between battles, featuring miniature versions of the game’s iconic stages. Choose from 16 unique avatars, each with four color variations, then explore the lobby, meet other players, and communicate using free chat, preset messages, stamps, and emotes. Ready for another fight? Head over to one of the arcade cabinets scattered throughout the lobby to challenge other players. Practice time New to MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls? Start with Start Up Battle, an interactive tutorial designed to introduce the game’s core mechanics. Learn the fundamentals of 4v4 combat, understand team-based systems, and put your new skills to the test in a trial match before jumping into the action. Whether you’re learning the basics or mastering advanced combos, Training Mode gives you all the tools you need. Experiment with every character, practice combos, learn game mechanics, and customize a wide variety of training scenarios and dummy settings to sharpen your skills. Experience Episode Mode For the first time, players will also get an early look at Episode Mode. Play through the three first chapters of the Amazing Guardians storyline as Spider-Man begins assembling his team to confront a mysterious threat descending upon Earth. Experience how beautifully illustrated motion-comic storytelling blends seamlessly with explosive battles. Finally, the Open Beta will reflect the full localization players can expect at launch, featuring localized voice-over and text in US English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Latin American Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese (Mandarin VO). Text-only support will also be available in UK English, Arabic, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Thai, and Traditional Chinese.  If you played during last year’s Closed Betas, you’ll notice that MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls has continued to evolve. Based on community feedback, we’ve refined gameplay, improved mechanics, and made numerous adjustments across the experience to deliver an even more exciting and accessible tag fighter. We’re incredibly excited to welcome both returning players and newcomers into the fight and can’t wait for everyone to experience the ultimate 4v4 tag team fighter when the Open Beta begins on July 24. Assemble your dream team and get ready to fight! View the full article

Australian Rules Football, Australia’s favourite sport, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players, where they chase a ball on a cricket oval, and score goals by kicking the ball between two gigantic posts. For many, Aussie Rules sounds like a completely made-up sport – and that’s where our game comes in: we redefine the rules of Aussie Rules Football. Welcome to Pro Jank Footy, launching August 12 on PlayStation 5. Play Video I’m David Ashby, Creative Director for Pro Jank Footy, a love letter to Aussie Rules Footy, retro sports games of the 90s, and our cultural irreverence. Now, there have been many “Footy” games over the years, but there was never one that leaned into the high-energy arcade sensibility shared by titles such as NBA Jam or NHL ‘94. We leaned right into both the fun and absurdity of our sport and I’m excited to share more about it with the PlayStation Community. The “jank” Aussie Rules Footy is a high-scoring game, akin to basketball and hockey, which makes it fast by design, which allows us to implement a simple core mechanic whereby whenever a player scores a goal, the opponent gets to choose one of three random power-ups. This is how we put the jank in Pro Jank Footy. There are over 150 power-ups in the game. These powers range from making your team better, making the opposition team worse, or changing the rules of the game. Not only does this allow players to bounce back, but it also allows players to change the game from retro sports into pure, unhinged, janky chaos. Personally, I suck at sports games. There’s nothing worse than just sitting there, taking an absolute belting. With our power system, you’re rewarded for losing. Tyler Roach, who co-created this game with me, is a genuinely dominant player (and to be fair, he did make the game). When we play each other, my only tactic is to concede a bunch of goals so I can get a decent power-up build to turn the tide (note: he still beats me most of the time). There are simple power-ups that make your team faster or gigantic. There are brutal powers that reset the scores. There are even powers that add a third team to the game or turn all the players into seagulls (a very real fixture of Australian football, who hang around ovals to eat everyone’s food). One of my favourites turns one of your players into your dad’s beat-up sedan. There’s even a trophy you can pop if you ram it into a shopping trolley. There are also power-ups that are deliberately vague, such as Burnt DVD and Where’s the Remote? – figuring out what they do is part of the fun! From a challenge to reality The project started as a dare in 2024, when I was challenged to get into video games by Cam Rogers, an entertainment lawyer (who later came on board as producer), while at a fantasy football league BBQ. Cam made the argument that there aren’t a lot of funny video games being made, despite the appetite, and I should give it a go. It occurred to me pretty quickly that footy was the answer. Like that fantasy draft, we had to put a team together. In addition to Tyler and Cam, there’s Broden Kelly, known for his work with Australian comedy collective Aunty Donna. He performs in-game commentary and completely understands the intent and humour, bringing a performance that is both sincere and comically absurd. Hyemin Yoo, a Korean artist based in Adelaide, animated all the amazing goal celebration cut scenes. Not only did she bring a voice of authenticity to the project, but her humour and distinct visual style really elevates the project to a whole other level. Oscar Armstrong-Davies singlehandedly built the online functionality for the game, and Dario Russo composed all the music, including all the team songs. Umbrella Entertainment, a film distributor looking to branch into games, is supporting us as well. Through them, we’ve even started rolling custom arcade cabinets into pubs around Australia to build a real tournament scene, created by Louie Roots, the cabs can run on car batteries so they can be played anywhere, and they even have AM radio transmitters so you can tune in your radio to the game audio for that true footy experience. Get ready to have a ball There are multiple game modes in Pro Jank Footy. You have the option to play the true “Pro Jank Footy” experience, with all the power-ups activated, or you can play the appropriately named “Normal Footy” which is, as the name suggests, normal Aussie Rules footy without power-ups. The game is designed to be a couch co-op experience, but you can play solo against bots, and you can play online too. There’s also a single-player Season Mode, where you start the campaign with a random set of powers and fight your way through ten increasingly ridiculous teams – one team of giants, one made entirely of cars, one that’s just a single unstoppable player – to become Pro Jank World Champion. There’s also a Watch Mode where you can just watch the AI battle it out (which is surprisingly entertaining) and a Kick-to-Kick Mode, which is a throwback to the classic “Aussie Rules Footy” game. We’ve found that a lot of younger kids gravitate towards this game mode more than anything else. Pro Jank Footy is both a love letter to arcade sports games from the ‘80s and ‘90s, and to a sport that is arguably Australia’s game, one that is worth sharing with the rest of the world for all its charm and absurdity. We can’t wait for the PlayStation community to share a slice of Australia when Pro Jank Footy comes to PS5 on August 12. View the full article

Hi, I’m Emil Esov from Saber Interactive, and we are excited to have Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival coming to PlayStation 5 on October 8, 2026! The team has been hard at work over the past 4+ years creating a game that brings life to Clive Barker’s unique style of horror and we’ve got the first look at an exclusive behind-the-scenes developer diary to share with you that covers what building this game has been like for us: Play Video Hellraiser separates itself from other pieces of horror media by having villains, the Cenobites, who aren’t so easily viewed as being morally bad. As the Hell Priest (aka Pinhead) explains in the original Hellraiser movie, they are “Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some, angels to others”. We like to think of them as monks – whether it comes to extreme pain or pleasure, they are interested in exploring sensations and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Your Hellraiser: Revival experience will come from the perspective of Aidan Lynch, our story’s protagonist. He first encounters the Cenobites after his girlfriend Sunny activates the Genesis Configuration, a mysterious puzzle box with unknown power and purpose. The Cenobites appear and unceremoniously tear Sunny in half. At first this seems like some kind of fever dream to Aidan, but he quickly comes to learn that Sunny’s soul can still be saved and that the Cenobites are integral to accomplishing that goal. While Cenobites exist as godlike explorers of experience from another realm, there are people in the real world who are seeking that same kind of enlightenment. This is where one of the groups of enemies that you’ll face in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival come in… the members of the Scarlet Church. Led by a charismatic figure named Marlowe, this cult is working to establish contact with the Cenobites and seeks to use the Genesis Configuration in order to create a debauched paradise for themselves. But the cultists of the Scarlet Church aren’t the only people that will stand in Aidan’s way. There are people, maybe now better described as wretches, who once sought out greater experiences but were denied by Leviathan, the creator of the Cenobites and ruler of the otherworldly Labyrinth. We call these creatures, who are essentially Hell’s rejects, the Unworthy. They are drawn to the Genesis Configuration as a potential path to redemption, and will instinctively seek out Aidan in an effort to obtain it. You’ll be able to fight back against the cultists of the Scarlet Church and the Unworthy by attacking while dual-wielding weapons (R2) and Genesis Configuration powers (L1). Aidan’s journey fighting against these groups will be full of pain, pleasure and everything in between. In a way, this mirrors our experience developing the game over the past few years. Some of us have even uncovered our own fears and phobias through the development process. I found out that I suffer from trypophobia, a condition where you feel sick from looking at clusters of holes or bumps! Luckily, if you run into anything you find too disturbing or find yourself needing to make a quick escape away from a certain Cenobite, you can either turn your Flashlight off (R3) and hope the problem goes away… or make a quick 180 degree turn (Left Stick + L3) and run for your life! If you’ve made it this far into the blog, congratulations! You might be exactly the type of person who will enjoy exploring that which Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival has to offer. But I’m not one to pass judgment – Leviathan is the ultimate decider. Will you be worthy? We’ll find out on October 8 when Hellraiser: Revival launches both digitally and on physical media. View the full article