The Last Of Us 2 and nine more Playstation games to get excited for in 2017

Excited to kiss goodbye to 2016? Of course you are. It’s been a stinker. All the celeb death. All the political turmoil. That insanely bad update to iPhone Mail. Stinks, the lot of it.

God bless Playstation, then, for giving us a little taste of what’s to come in the new year, and giving us a huge amount of hope that a big line will be drawn under the 2016 sh*tshow come midnight December 31. At their massive Playstation Experience Keynote over the weekend, they teased a spectrum of incredibly exciting new releases, sequels and remasters that’ll have us gazing on our thumbs come this time next year and wondering how they came to resemble muscular He-Man thighs.

Here’s the ten upcoming releases that’ve got us gasping for the new year more than ever... 

The Last of Us Part 2

Look. At. That. Trailer. Those four minutes alone, more gripping, emotional and visually stunning than about 95% of blockbuster movies that came out in 2016. Ellie and Joel’s post-apocalyptic adventure continues from its incredible and gory PS3 beginnings, and many are calling this phenomenally exciting news the highlight of the Playstation Experience Keynote. The annoyingly bad news, though, is that it’s still very much in early development, meaning you’ve got a while before you can get your thumbs stuck into it. But dry your eyes, because whenever it does eventually drop, we’ll put a wedge on it being a list-topping game of the year.

Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy

The blue-shorted marsupial that stopped you from doing your homework through primary school is back, and it’s all the front flipping, spin kicking and Oogah Boogah-ing you know and love from the PS One repackaged with up-to-date graphics. This is a “remaster plus”. Not a remake. Not a remaster. A “remaster plus”. Yeah, no idea what that means either. Let the game’s director Dan Tanguay explain. “Using the original level geometry from Naughty Dog as a guide, we rebuilt the Crash gameplay from scratch, capturing its simplicity and precision. As the levels began to take shape, we layered in our own lush and zany art, animation, and audio.” Cool, yep, we’re sold.  

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

Another enormous money-spinning trailer now, from enormous money-spinning Uncharted. The giant adventure series lives on beyond the Nathan Drake narrative with a new stand-alone starring Chloe Frazer (from the second game) at its centre. Chloe’s on a mission to recover an ancient artifact from a ruthless war profiteer that’ll take her through the mountains of India. Another dose of pure unfiltered Uncharted awesomeness, then.   

Horizon Zero Dawn

All the coolest parts of Far Cry Primal – the sweeping scenery, the hunting with crude weapons, the beast-taming – but with loads of giant badass robots in there. We don’t need to sell it any more, do we. No. Thought not. Word has it it’ll be out 28 Feb. 

Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite

Prepare to get a-kicking and a-punching with all the faces you recognise from the Marvel and Capcom universes, all wrapped up in some real air-punchingly tasty graphics. Get what you see with this one, really. It’s one to bust out when the boys are round for beers, we say. 

Persona 5

Want to know just how nerdy your nerdy friend is? See if he’s got 4 April circled on his calendar. If he does, you’re chilling with a big beautiful hypernerd as he’s counting down the days until the long-awaited Japanese RPG Persona 5 hits digital shelves, after being delayed by its publisher Atlus. The gist of this one is kinda really weird – the silent schoolboy protagonist “has the ability to enter the hearts of people and force them to confront their true selves” apparently. Er, sure, why not! 

Windjammers

Recongise this one, don’t you. Spent far too long in arcades as a kid, didn’t you. Uh huh. This competitive flying disc game, which first made an appearance on Neo Geo arcade machines back in 1994, is being revamped for PS4 and PS Vita. The sights, the sounds, the cooldude shades and bandannas, the utterly baffling coming together of street fighting and Ultimate Frisbee – let’s hear it for sweet sweet nostalgia! 

The Last Guardian

A gotta-try for fans of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus now. This is the “long-awaited tale of the bond between a boy and a giant beast” – the beast appearing to be a cross between a hyena and Falcor from The Neverending Story – and has been twiddled with for so long (it was meant to be released on PS3) that everyone’s just a little bit suspicious of it finally seeing the light of day this 6 December. Still, by the looks of that soothingly beautiful trailer, it’s probably a great one to test out during the Xmas-New Year period of purgatory. 

Nioh

Looks a lot like Dark Souls, don’t it. Taking things back to the bloody historical Sengoku period in Japan, Nioh follows a rogue samurai named, er, William, who gets all cutty and slicey and stabby on humans and demons using a whacking great sword, and looks a lot like an even more Swedish Jaime Lannister. Out at the start of Feb.  

PaRappa The Rapper Remastered

This is us, throwing our wallet at the screen and screaming “Take it! Take it all!”. Chop Chop Master Onion, Instructor Mooselini, Cheap Cheap The Cooking Chicken are back for more acid-trip rap school weirdness as part of a big 20^th anniversary 2017 re-up of the most ‘how did this become a thing’ game ever. And we’re going to love every second of it.