With Final Fantasy 16, the PS5 generation finally truly begins

It’s been a lethargic start to the generation. Years into the lifespan of both the Xbox Series X/S and the PS5, it feels like there hasn’t really been any one game that’s juiced the hardware for all it’s worth – that’s really put the pedal to the metal and gotten drunk on the power of all the SSDs and GPUs crammed into these waiting machines. Demon’s Souls, Horizon Forbidden West, Forza Horizon 5, Halo: Infinite, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart… they’re all good, decent games in their own right, but none really feel like the proper watershed moment for new-gen gaming.Final Fantasy 16 does. Whether it’s in the combat or the sublime graphics, Square Enix’s latest game feels like the new generation that we were promised a lifetime ago, back before the days of Covid, when we were all poring over spec sheets and leaked concepts of the new consoles, wondering what the hell Sony and Microsoft were thinking as they assembled these unsightly monoliths. In some of the most impressive facial mocap I’ve seen in a game, in battles that somehow thread the line between Hollywood-level action setpiece and Devil May Cry boss fight, in environmental rendering that makes even Elden Ring look old hat, Final Fantasy 16 is truly one of the most promising games out there at the moment – the sort of game that makes me actually thankful I got a PS5 from a scalper on eBay back at launch (look, I had a job to do, OK?) Read more