Saros stands as one of 2026's best releases, a relentlessly hardcore shooter that demands mastery over many repeated runs and deaths. But even though it's not a game designed for you to just slow down to admire the view, that doesn't mean it's short of eye-catching art direction, even if it's a different aesthetic to PlayStation Studios' mainstream blockbusters – a little more arthouse, if you will.
PlayStation's first-party output these days, from The Last of Us to Ghost of Yotei, can be summed up as being blockbuster-driven, where every game is a cinematic spectacle pushing the PS5's hardware to its limits. But all the acclaim of the God of War reboot, for instance, diehard fans will still tell you that Kratos' original adventures were more interesting to play. Against this backdrop, a major exception has been Housemarque, the Finnish developer that Sony acquired back in 2021 and which still prides itself on being a gameplay-first studio, and it's a reason Saros remains an outlier for PS5 releases.
