Developer Housemarque is a well-established studio that has always managed to make the most of whatever hardware it's working with, filling its games with flashy effects, countless particles, and oodles of visual flair.
Saros, its upcoming PS5 exclusive shooter, looks to be no different. This is its first game as a PS Studios subsidiary (it was acquired shortly after the release of Returnal), and as such it's absolutely going to be using every last drop of juice from PS5 and PS5 Pro.
It's visually a step up from its predecessor, and looks like it's performing incredibly smoothly with every new gameplay snippet we see.
On top of that, though, Saros is going to be another first-party games that really utilises all the console's bells and whistles, as emphasised in this new trailer:
The roguelite third-person shooter will be taking full advantage of the DualSense controller's capabilities, of course, including haptic feedback and the adaptive triggers.
If you're playing with headphones, you'll be able to enjoy proper 3D sound — a feature you don't tend to hear many studios shouting about at this point.
PS5's speedy SSD will mean near-instant load times.
All of these features were put to excellent use in Returnal, so we're really hopeful for a game that feels truly built for the platform.
Not mentioned in the above video is PS5 Pro support, but that's confirmed for Saros too. What's exciting is that this is the first PS Studios game to release since the arrival of PSSR 2, and we presume Housemarque will be putting that to good use as well. Hopefully we hear more on all that soon.
For a good while, Returnal could be pointed to as one of the best examples of what makes a PS5 game a PS5 game — we think Saros could supplant it in that regard. Here's hoping, at least.