It is said that good things come in threes, and today is no exception.  We at PlayStation are thrilled to spotlight our latest trio of vinyl soundtrack releases, brought to you by our friends at Milan Records: Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Ghost of Tsushima: Music from Iki Island & Legends, and Returnal.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

The Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart soundtrack features the exuberant, BAFTA-nominated score by Mark Mothersbaugh and Wataru Hokoyama, plus the brilliantly performed, award-winning song, “Join Me at the Top,” from the latest entry in Insomniac Games’s critically acclaimed franchise.

For the vinyl design, we were lucky enough to land the amazing illustrator, Shan Jiang, who truly knocked it out of the park with his rotatable panoramic cover art.

As Shan describes, “The cover concept focuses on duality and traveling among parallel universes. I learned that the game’s core idea is finding who you truly are through understanding yourself. Rivet and Ratchet became better versions of themselves through the adventures they experienced together.  It is like Ratchet and Rivet are looking in the mirror, but in the mirror is another universe. So you can see the cover from Rivet’s point of view or Ratchet’s point of view, depending on how you want to hold the cover.”

The interior panels showcase the main characters and their diminutive counterparts in a rare, pensive moment, giving us an intimate portrait of the Rift Apart crew as they take a breather from the game’s non-stop action.

The album is available from Milan Records and a variety of retailers, each featuring exclusive, eye-popping disc color “variants.”

Ghost of Tsushima: Music from Iki Island & Legends

Following up their 2021 release of the BAFTA-nominated score for the original game, Milan Records delivers a second volume from Sucker Punch’s epic with Ghost of Tsushima: Music from Iki Island & Legends.

Featuring Ilan Eshkeri’s iconic Jin Sakai theme woven into beautiful new compositions by Chad Cannon and Bill Hemstapat, the album is wrapped in striking key art from the titular Director’s Cut expansion and multiplayer DLC.

The image of a lone Jin agains

Last month saw our first major No Man’s Sky update of 2022, the Sentinel update, and it’s been so exciting to see our PlayStation community powering up their combat mechs and joining the fight against these new threats and challenges in such large numbers. 

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Today we’re pleased to announce our next and 19th update! The Outlaws update launches today across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation VR, featuring smuggling, improved space combat, your own recruitable squadron, a new expedition, and the introduction of the first new starship to No Man’s Sky since the Living Ship two years ago.

Pirates have taken over space stations all across the universe, using them as bases from which to conduct smuggling operations and attacks on neighboring planets and settlements. Players have a choice: join them as renegades and assist them in their nefarious activities, or take them on head-to-head in the newly rebalanced and dynamic space combat.

Fortunately, you are not alone in this fight. Players can now recruit their own squadron of pilots, who will warp in and join the fray as needed. Explore the galaxy to find your perfect wingmen, or upgrade your loyal crew from their humble beginnings into an elite unit.

At the heart of the update is a brand new starship, the sophisticated new sail-equipped Solar class. This highly-varied new ship comes with unique technology and is most commonly found in pirate-occupied systems. 

What’s more, keen ship hunters will be able to find their perfect version without losing any of their existing vessels, as the maximum number of ships has been increased from six to nine. All ships now also come with a specialist high-capacity cargo inven

Hello everyone. We have some exciting news from all of us here at DigixArt: Road 96 is coming to PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on April 14! choose your own road trip adventure. 

In this choose-your-own-road trip adventure, you play as different teenagers fleeing a fictional country called Petria. Things inside the country have gone off the rails and – as you journey across the map –  you’ll meet a very strange mix of people; some will help you in your escape, others won’t.

When we started working on Road 96 in 2018, we wanted to create a procedural game with a story that would be different for every player. Our mantra was “nobody’s road is the same.” We worked on various prototypes, designing a viable system that creates a unique and compelling story that would fit to a player’s personal taste. This is why the game starts off by asking you a few questions.

The AI uses these parameters to determine your starting position, abilities, money and (yes) a hidden karma element too. At the end of this first sequence, you then choose how you want to leave. And – as you’ll discover – it’s not a linear branching system, but more a pool of sequences that the AI will pick and tweak, depending on your journey. 

There are various modes of transport. If walking is your thing then, obviously, it will take longer to reach the border. As time is not standing still in the summer of ’96, after a few journeys (between 6 – 15) you’ll trigger one the many endings, the nature of which will depend on your various choices and the behavior on your travels.  

If we look closely at the routes on the map, you can see that they are never the same for each character; that’s the beauty of a procedurally generated system. And it’s almost mathematically impossible to have the same path between each of your characters (which makes us really happy). 

And we’re really happy that with the different parameters it is mathematically almost impossible that you’ll have the same path as another player. With a lot of simplification and without taking in account all the variations possible inside each sequence, the number of different variations would be 60 x 59 x 58…  

As each sequence can happen either in the southern deserts or the mountains further north, we had to create different graphics for each environment – along with both a day and night setting – creating 4x the work for the art team;

Hey Playstation fans! I’m Kevin Zuhn, creative director at Young Horses. If you haven’t heard, Bugsnax is getting a free update soon called the Isle of Bigsnax, and the release is tantalizingly close. Given that, I thought I’d take some time to dive into the delicious details of five new features coming to Bugsnax.

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Exploring a new island

The titular Isle of Bigsnax is a whole new biome to play in, twice the size of any other. The Bugsnax there are equally oversized (but more on that later). You and your fellow grumpuses are shocked when this new land mass bursts out of the ocean just off the coast of Snaktooth Island. You’ll quickly gather up a party of volunteers including Chandlo, Floofty, Triffany, and Shelda, and raft your way over to investigate its mysteries.

With this area, we put a greater emphasis on environmental puzzles that put your tools to the test. You’ll come across vertical mazes that can only be navigated with your buggy ball, and they ramp up in complexity; some are even inhabited by mischievous snax. There are also mechanical ruins that can be opened with clever use of your trip shot and its ability to spread fires. Fun fact: A temple door opening from a lit fire may sound fantastical, but we took inspiration from the works of the real-life Archimedes.

Catching Bigsnax

As I said, the new island is host to a collectio

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This week, we’re joined by the ever-passionate Josef Fares, founder of Hazelight Studios, to celebrate the first anniversary of 2021 GOTY winner It Takes Two. Plus, more Elden Ring chat, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands impressions, and more. Listen in!

Stuff We Talked About

• It Takes Two
• Elden Ring
• Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
• Nobody Saves the World
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Monkey Island

The Cast

Kristen Zitani – Content Communications Senior Specialist, SIE

Tim Turi –  Content Communications Senior Specialist, SIE

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Last week we asked to journey back to Atropos to share epic moments from Returnal: Ascension using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:  

TheNanoWarrior shares a daring leap around fiery beams.

mellydarkeyes shares Selene joined by a fellow Selene in co-op.

MdeavorVP shares the daunting Tower of Sisyphus.

JRPyznar shares Selene in front of a massive blue orb.

QuellaTsundere shares a moment of calm in the dust.

RyanSkursky shares Selene rushing into action.

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: Elden Ring
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on April 13, 2022

Next week, take on the journey of Elden Ring. Rise as Tarnished and share your most challenging or haunting moments using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.

2022’s busy release calendar continued past February and into March. Last month saw the launch of the likes of Gran Turismo 7, Ghostwire Tokyo, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, and the PS5 debut of Grand Theft Auto V, all of which performed strongly in the charts for US/Canada and Europe. 

Check their final positions below and let us know in the comments what you think will be strong contenders in April.

PS5 Games

*Naming of products may differ between regions
*Upgrades not included

PS4 Games

	US/Canada	EU
1	ELDEN RING	FIFA 22
2	WWE 2K22	Gran Turismo 7
3	Gran Turismo 7	ELDEN RING
4	NBA 2K22	F1 2021
5	Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands	Minecraft
6	Grand Theft Auto V	Grand Theft Auto V
7	Minecraft	WWE 2K22
8	FIFA 22	Fall Guys
9	Batman: Arkham Knight	Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
10	Horizon Forbidden West	NBA 2K22
11	Madden NFL 22	Among Us
12	Marvel’s Spider-Man	Star Wars Battlefront II
13	Star Wars Battlefront II	The Last of Us Part II
14	Red Dead Redemption 2	Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
15	The Last of Us Part II	Need for Speed Heat
16	Need for Speed Heat	The Forest
17	Among Us	Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
18	Cuphead	Horizon Forbidden West
19	The Sims 4	Cuphead
20	Read more Hand-to-hand combat – Crafting Ghostwire: Tokyo’s signature Ethereal Weaving Game Ace Pro / Thursday, April 7, 2022 0 0 Following a paranormal disaster plunging Tokyo into a world of real-life urban legends and conspiracies, players take up arms to battle otherworldly Visitors that have taken over the city…literally! In Ghostwire: Tokyo, players combine conventional gear with a special technique called Ethereal Weaving – fusing spiritual energy with the elements of wind, water and fire – to fend off foes and save the city. Play Video Hands-on Rather than a special weapon or conduit, Ethereal Weaving utilizes just two hands, weaving motions together hypnotically in-game to unleash your power upon Tokyo’s hostile apparitions.  “The evil spirits that appear in Tokyo are supernatural, non-physical beings, so we tried to think of what the most intuitive way would be to combat them,” explains Kenji Kimura, Game Director for Ghostwire: Tokyo at Tango Gameworks. “Japan has a long history of warding off bad events such as natural disasters or disease through prayer at shrines and temples. If a child got injured in the neighborhood, their parents would wave their hands over the wound while saying incantation-like words, as if to magically alleviate the pain. It’s this historical reliance on nature and other unseen forces controlled by hand movements that inspired their use in the game.”