ENTERTAINMENT

Sony has announced the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for February 2025.

Revealed during the State of Play 2025 broadcast, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, TopSpin 2K25, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1 and more hit the subscription service this month.

Sony also confirmed a first look at games launching into Game Catalog and PlayStation Plus Premium in the coming months. This includes several games that launch day and date into the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog.

It highlighted two new indie games set for Game Catalog: Blue Prince, launching day one into Game Catalog this spring; and Abiotic Factor, available in Game Catalog when it launches this summer.

Blue Prince is a “genre-bending architectural adventure. Every door is a new decision as you build out a sprawling manor, with 45 shifting rooms adding layers of strategy, puzzles, and exploration.”

Abiotic Factor, meanwhile, is a six-player survival crafting game from Playstack and Deep Field Games. “Stranded miles beneath the surface, you and a team of scientists must craft ingenious gear and traps to outwit your enemies and make this bizarre underground complex your new home.”

Elsewhere, three FromSoftware mecha action games hit PlayStation Plus Premium later this year. The first three Armored Core titles from the original PlayStation – Armored Core, Armored Core Project Phantasma, and Armored Core Master of Arena – launch soon.

On February 18, as part of Game Catalog’s February lineup, expect Don’t Nod’s first instalment of episodic narrative adventure Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1. Tape 2 launches into Game Catalog as part of April’s lineup on April 15.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and TopSpin 2K25 are also a part of February’s PlayStation Plus Game Catalog lineup, and will be available to play from February 18.

Two classics join PlayStation Plus Premium on the same day: PSP’s rhythm game Patapon 3 and PS2’s combat flight simulation Dropship: United Peace Force.

Be sure to check out IGN’s round-up of everything announced at State of Play 2025 for more on what’s coming to PlayStation 5 in the years ahead.

PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for February 2025

PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium | Game Catalog

• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor | PS4, PS5
• TopSpin 2K25 | PS4, PS5
• Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1 | PS5
• SaGa Frontier Remastered | PS4
• Somerville | PS4, PS5
• Tin Hearts | PS4, PS5
• Mordhau | PS4, PS5

PlayStation Plus Premium

• Patapon 3 | PS4, PS5
• Dropship: United Peace Force | PS4, PS5

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Hot off the heels of Dynasty Warriors: Origins, another Koei Tecmo game is out today, putting a new spin on the musou genre. Warriors: Abyss is a new roguelite starring the famous faces of the Warriors games, and it’s out today.

Revealed during today’s PlayStation State of Play, Warriors: Abyss lets you assemble a squad of characters and slash through wave after wave of enemies. It’s got an isometric camera, reminiscent of both Diablo and the Greek pantheon-centered roguelite, Hades.

It looks like you’ll assemble a team to fight through the forces of “hell”, fighting some demonic enemies along the way. Characters from across the Warriors games were shown in today’s footage, including Zhou Yu, Nobunaga Oda, and Sunshang Xiang.

Per the PlayStation Blog, each character can be recruited and added to your team over time, giving you additional summoning actions to call upon. Players can use up to seven active heroes in battle, and a pool of 100 warriors will be available on launch today.

Koei Tecmo plans to add more new characters over time, starting with some from the Jin kingdom in Dynasty Warriors. The developer teased more waves after that, and said “there might even be characters outside of the Warriors series” joining the game later on.

Warriors: Abyss is out today on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam. It’s also coming to Nintendo Switch on February 13, 2025. Those who want an in-game Dynasty Warriors Costume Set should pick it up before March 14, 2025.

For more on everything announced today during the PlayStation State of Play, check out our recap here.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Gearbox has officially confirmed the release date for Borderlands 4.

At the new State of Play, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford announced that Borderlands 4 will be coming out on September 23, 2025.

To commemorate the release date, Gearbox premiered a new Borderlands 4 trailer at the State of Play. In addition, Gearbox announced that a special Borderlands 4-themed State of Play will premiere this spring. The Borderlands 4 State of Play will show off new gameplay and tons of guns.

Developing…

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

During the Feburary 2025 State of Play stream, the stylish fast-action game Lost Soul Aside got a new gameplay and story trailer alongside a release date announcement. Lost Soul Aside will launch on May 30, 2025 for PlayStation 5 and PC.

It was initially started as a solo project from developer Yang Bing, chanelling clear inspirations from Devil May Cry and other PlatinumGames-style action games, as well as Final Fantasy XV.

You can check out our roundup of the stream to catch up on everything we learned from this latest State of Play.

This story is developing.

Obsidian has confirmed the early access release times for its upcoming role-playing game Avowed.

Early access, available to Avowed Premium Edition players, kicks off on February 13 at 10am PST across PC and Xbox Series X and S, Obsidian confirmed in a tweet. Avowed launches to those who pay the standard price on February 18. As a Microsoft first-party title, Avowed is an Xbox Game Pass day-one launch.

Last week, Obsidian confirmed Avowed can hit 60 frames per second on Xbox Series X, having previously indicated it was aiming for 30fps.

Though she offered no further insight, game director Carrie Patel told MinnMax that “you can get up to [60fps]” on Microsoft’s more powerful console, though the Xbox Series S version will be limited to the 30fps as previously confirmed.

Video games used to thrive on their iterative feedback loops: a short run, from which you’d learn new skills, then repeat to put those skills into practice and hopefully get a bit further. It’s a powerfully addictive model that gave retro games a big part of their appeal and, while gaming has become bigger and better since, there are still games that leverage it effectively, such as Dead Cells. In theory, that iterative model should work just as well on tabletop, and now you can find out with this board game adaptation.

What’s in the Box

Rules and How It Plays

Each player takes a character and their starting combat deck and then the team, represented by that single standee, ventures into the board for the first “biome” of the game, the Prisoner’s Quarters. This is a simple path of interlinked spaces, with a couple of decision points, and each space has a face-down tile hinting at what might be found there, such as treasure, or enemies. This is a cooperative board game, but one player is designated as the first player and they get to make decisions for the group while they’re wearing that crown. Certain spaces or actions change who is currently first player, and it’s a neat solution to the cooperative dilemma of having the most experienced or bossy participant order the group round.

As you move into the space you resolve the encounter tile, allowing you to pick up that treasure, or fight enemies, although there are a few board features that vary the mix up a bit like merchants, where you can buy stuff, and skill checks, which let you gamble a card for a small bonus. Most spaces will see you facing off against foes drawn from a deck specific to the biome you’re in. Each card marks that enemy’s health, starting position on the combat board, and actions over three rounds of combat, and a reward for defeating them. Players then choose cards, each of which shows what they’ll do over each of those three rounds. You then run each of the rounds deterministically: hearts do damage and the aim is to try and knock out enemies before they can take damaging actions.

There’s a lot more to combat than this. Some attacks can hit different positions on the board and, as well as damage, there are effects like bleed, fire and poison. Players also have skills – different for each character – they can employ, and equipment can add extra actions to the palette. This makes every single combat a fascinating tactical puzzle, based on the card you have. There is one peculiar wrinkle: to ensure exactly three player cards get used in each fight, two- and four-player sessions see someone doubling up or missing out, which makes Dead Cells: The Rogue-Like Board Game feel like it’s really a one- or three-player game, no matter what it says on the box.

Fighting is also remorselessly lethal. The Prisoner’s Quarters features enemies that can easily put out 2-3 hearts of damage in a single combat, you’ll face two or three of them at a time, and each character starts with 3 life. If a single player dies, it’s game over. In all likelihood, you won’t even make it half way through the Quarters on your first play. At which point, the reason you spent all that time sorting cards in the box begins to become apparent.

During play you’ll collect various rewards, such as gold teeth you can spend at merchants, equipment and so on. But you’ll lose these at the end of each run. A far more valuable currency is dead cells, because these can be spent at the conclusion of a session to buy new stuff that’s permanent. It might be some upgraded combat cards, the chance to start play with a random piece of equipment, or even a one-off shot that kills an enemy, but each gives you an incrementally higher chance of surviving for another space, potentially earning more cells, and eventually getting you to the exit door that leads to the next board, the Toxic Sewers.

Once you’ve made that goal, another card type you can collect as a reward, blueprints, come into play. These are upgraded equipment options that you can shuffle into your equipment deck if you finish a run with them. Again, incremental improvements lead to longer survival and the chance for more goodies. While there’s a great deal of gambling involved in whether you get good rewards or not, some do offer the chance for strategic fine-tuning, such as the choice of which inferior starting equipment cards to permanently can, or which character is best-suited to a particular upgrade.

Again, like combat, there’s a whole lot more to this system, including the collection of runes that act as prerequisites for more abilities. You store it all on the cleverly designed inter-biome board which has poly pockets in which to keep permanent upgrades, making it relatively easy to tear the game down and set it up again. And that’s fortunate, because the problem with Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game is that it’s a board game, not a video game. On screen, the feedback loop for putting those tiny iterative advancements into play takes five minutes. On the table, while the rules replicate that feeling magnificently well, it takes twenty minutes to half an hour.

This might be okay if you got more stuff on each run, or if you had more control over your fate. But the initial gains are frustratingly small and it’s quite common to draw a selection of enemies that will end your run despite your best efforts, just because you don’t have the required cards to deal with them. Eventually, once you make it through the Toxic Sewers, there’s a boss to fight which adds some new challenges and excitement but it can easily take 10 plays, several hours of table time, before you get that far, and each of those 10 plays you have to run through the Quarters and the Sewers, seeing encounters you’ve already seen. It doesn’t take that long before even the enjoyable combat system starts to lose its shine.

As you get further into the campaign you start to ignore the earlier boards so the issue doesn’t get incrementally worse, but there’s still an awful lot of repetition. It’s enlivened by new encounters and equipment, the constant trickle of new and better gear and skills to incorporate into your games and even some secret envelopes to open if you get far enough, yet the sense of deja vu each time you open up a familiar biome board is palpable.

Where to Buy

• Amazon
• Miniature Market

More Board Games Inspired by Video Games:

You can also check out our list of the best board games based on video games for more recommendations.