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Official PlayStation Podcast Episode 540: Surviving Saros

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Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com!

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Hey, everybody! Sid and I are back this week to celebrate the launch of Saros with a special interview featuring Actor Rahul Kohli and Creative Director Gregory Loudeni from Housemarque.

Stuff We Talked About

  • Next week’s release highlights:
    • Wax Heads | PS5 
    • Mixtape | PS5

  • Arc Raiders PS5 Pro update — The new PS5 Pro update is now available and it brings PSSR upscaling and other enhancements to the third-person extraction shooter.

  • 4:Loop The Scanner boss design — The feature offers a walkthrough of the design process behind this ominous cube from the developers at Bad Robot Games. Learn how staying in motion is key to survival, and how each boss encounter is a unique puzzle. 

  • The Blood of Dawnwalker impressions — Coming to PS5 on September 3, dive into the unique time mechanics where time passes by a little or a lot, depending on your actions. Will you be able to save your family in the 30-day timeframe?

  • NBA The Run gameplay reveal — Get your first look at the high-octane, momentum-based gameplay inspired by classic streetball video games. Make sure your sneakers are laced up for when this game comes to PS5 this June.

  • 007: First Light hands-on — The latest look uncovers how Bond deploys stealth, action, and charm in his origin story. The game launches on PS5 May 27.

The Cast

Share of the Week: Cozy

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Last week, we asked you to share moments from your favorite cozy games using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:

elizado_ shares a plant and book-filled room in When The Past Was Around.

PattyGnand shares Swann laying in bed with her cat in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage.

call_me_xavii shares the comfy quarters of Stardew Valley

 xenobitz shares a grilling picnic in progress in My Time At Sandrock.

KevinFerna43259 shares the titular stray cat taking a nap in Stray.

FuchsFeuer22763 shares a cozy sweater and scarf-based outfit in Infinity Nikki

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: Celebrate
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on May 5, 2026 

Next week, share moments from your favorite game where characters are celebrating. Use #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.

Control Resonant: Remedy shares first details on New Game Plus

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The first playthrough of Control Resonant is built around discovery: learning how the world behaves, shaping your build, and understanding what your version of Dylan can become.

For those who want to return, New Game Plus offers a different way to experience that journey again – building on what you’ve already learned and unlocked. 

New Game Plus in Control Resonant allows you to start a fresh playthrough while carrying over much of what you’ve already earned. Your Aberrant upgrades, health and combat ability resource improvements, unlocked supernatural combat abilities, talents, and artifacts all persist into the next run. What does not carry over are traversal abilities, as those remain tied to story progression and how the world unfolds. 

Rebuilding your approach 

One of the goals for New Game Plus is to give players more room to experiment with builds that weren’t possible during the first playthrough, as you cannot unlock everything in your arsenal in one go. 

As you progress, you’ll unlock new talent nodes, expanding how your abilities and Aberrant attacks work together in combat. In addition, New Game Plus introduces new flexibility in how abilities are combined. You’ll be able to equip multiple different combat abilities from the same boss, opening up new combinations and synergies that change how encounters play out. 

It’s not just about becoming stronger; it’s about becoming more precise in how you play. 

Customization systems working together 

One of the ways you can shape your build in Control Resonant is Artifacts, a system we haven’t explored in detail before. Artifacts are equippable items with passive modifiers that allow you to fine-tune your build. They can affect survivability, combat performance, exploration, or the resource economy – and some come with conditions or trade-offs. Rather than being purely additive, they encourage you to tailor your setup for specific situations. 

You can equip up to three artifacts during your first playthrough. In New Game Plus, a fourth slot unlocks, allowing for more complex combinations. 

Artifacts are also tied to the crafting loop in the game. You’ll discover untapped artifacts throughout the world, which can be crafted into usable artifacts in the Gap. As your collection grows, so do your options for adapting your build. 

A world that pushes back 

Returning to Manhattan also means facing a more demanding version of it. 

As you progress through Control Resonant, the world itself evolves. Enemies grow more dangerous, encounters shift, and even familiar fights can take on new dimensions. Some bosses may surprise you with new behaviors, forcing you to rethink strategies that once worked. A fight you handled one way before may require a completely different approach the next time you face it. 

New Game Plus continues that escalation. While you return with more tools and knowledge, the world keeps pushing back – reshaping encounters and raising the stakes as you move forward. 

It’s not just about becoming more powerful. It’s about adapting t

007: First Light hands-on report — using stealth, action, and charm to become a legendary spy

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When it was first announced that Hitman: World of Assassination developer IO Interactive was taking on the James Bond franchise with 007: First Light, it sounded like the perfect match of license and studio. The Hitman games focus on stealth, cunning, planning, and improvisation — a perfect fit for the legendary spy.

I recently went hands-on with 007: First Light across three missions, and saw first-hand how IOI has created a Bond game that combines action with a more thoughtful spy experience.

Bond from the beginning

Unlike the Bond film series, 007: First Light tells a new story, set in the modern era, that delves into Bond’s origins. When we first meet IO’s take on James Bond, he’s serving in the Royal Navy, a crewman on a mission in Iceland. Suddenly, missiles hit the two helicopters on the mission, and they crash on a nearby coastline. Bond makes it to shore and immediately finds himself sneaking past hostile mercenaries as they search for any survivors.

Before long, Bond is contacted via radio by an MI6 operative, and with no one else left, he’s pressed into service to retrieve some mysterious item. The mission gives a sense of Bond’s capabilities — even at this early point in his career, he’s able to keep his cool and analyze the situation thoughtfully, quickly donning a parka to disguise himself among the mercenaries and gather information.

Playstation Plus Monthly Games for May: EA Sports FC 26, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Nine Sols

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May’s PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup features three games available to all PlayStation Plus members*. Show your skills on the pitch in EA Sports FC 26, battle monsters in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers and fight your way across a 2D world in Nine Sols. 

All three titles will be available to all PlayStation Plus members from Tuesday May 5, and PlayStation Plus members can also enjoy additional exclusive content for EA Sports FC 26, Read on to find out more!

EA Sports FC 26 | PS5, PS4 

The club is yours in EA Sports FC 26. Play your wa

Meet the new enemies of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2

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Auroch Digital’s upcoming title Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 is the sequel to their explosive retro shooter promising more – more enemies, weapons, and new ways to purge.

Today Matt Bone, lead designer, and Mark Chambers, lead artist, share their favourite new enemies and provide some insight into their creation and role. There are a few exclusive reveals to discover too as you read on.

Matt Bone: One feature of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 we’re really excited about is including all four Chaos god factions for the first time. That means players will be fighting against Nurgle, Tzeentch, Khorne, and Slaanesh enemies, as well as the returning Black Legion forces. 

Slaanesh: Daemonette 

Bone: For me Daemonettes are the quintessential Slaanesh unit, so it was not only vital we include them as a new enemy, but that we really spent time doing them justice. 

With the Slaanesh faction we’re leaning into themes of elusiveness, showing off, and disorienting the player. So, the Daemonettes have a bunch of ambitious abilities we’ve never done before in Boltgun. They perform huge arcing leaps around the battlefield, as if playing with their prey below, before rapidly closing the distance with a zigzagging phase attack. Up close, their beguiling presence causes a special screen effect at the same time they’re trying to claw you to death. They’re quite a handful.

Mark Chambers: We wanted to make Daemonettes a visual spectacle, particularly when they’re performing these phase attacks, in which we’ve developed a freeze frame technique to capture a sprite trail across the screen. 

I’m also a fan of how we channeled the unsettling nature of Slaanesh into a horrific facial change when seen up close, and an underwater motion effect that’s been applied to details like hair animations.

 

Khorne: Bloodcrusher 

Bone: The Bloodcrusher was another technical challenge for us. This is the first mounted unit we’ve done in Boltgun and was worth the effort in terms of gameplay. 

During combat, the Bloodletter rider can leap off the Juggernaut mount, meaning you now have two bloodthirsty Khorne enemies to deal with. I have a particular soft spot for the Juggernaut’s consume ability, where it gorges itself on any nearby corpses on the battlefield to regain health – sometimes including its former rider.

Chambers: We really pushed the complexity of our animation rigs by combining two separate enemies into one. Not only is this an impressive visual feat, but the effects used on the charge ability in particular really emphasizes the unrelenting force bearing down on targets like a daemonic runaway train. 

The sheer height scale involved here also adds to the in-game presence, as these enemies tower above players on the battlefield.

 

Nurgle: Blightlord Terminator 

Bone: It was important to us that if we were going to commit to including all four Chaos factions, we include Chaos Marine units for each. This meant adding Plague Marines and Blightlord Terminators to the Nurgle faction. 

4:Loop – designing the ominous cube-shaped Scanner boss

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Hi, I’m Mike Booth, Chief Creative Officer at Bad Robot Games, and Game Director of 4:Loop. In my last post, I shared how our core gameplay systems come together to create an unpredictable and endlessly replayable experience. Today, I’d like to share more details on one of our co-op shooter’s high-stakes boss fights. 

Specifically, I’d like to talk about how our team approaches designing these battles, and how these considerations led to one of our most unique enemies so far: The Scanner. 

No two bosses are alike

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One of our main goals when designing bosses in 4:Loop is making each of them unique – not only in their visual design, but in how they behave. We know we’re on the right track when a boss requires players to adopt new forms of cooperation, improvisation, and combinations of equipment and abilities. All of this results in the kind of creative problem solving at the heart of 4:Loop. When we first started exploring the Scanner, or “The Cube,” as it’s called internally, I wanted to do something a bit different: create a boss battle that wasn’t about direct combat, but navigation, spatial awareness, and cross-map coordination.

Keep moving to stay alive

For some of our boss battles, players can succeed by finding cover, hunkering down, and dishing out heaps of damage. But with the Scanner, that’s a sure-fire way to get yourself killed. Rather than attacking players directly, the Scanner emits a Laser Matrix over the entire map. This “Grid of Doom” (to use another internal name) is an interlocking grid of bright red and extremely dangerous lasers. One hit is enough to knock a player down. A second hit and you are out of the fight. 

The grid is slow moving and easy to see, making it manageable enough at the start of the encounter – and seemingly safe enough to lull you into a sense of complacency. But as the fight progresses, the laser grid becomes tighter and tighter, making navigation and survival increasingly difficult to manag

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