I played Honkai Star Rail on PS5, and now I fear for my life

You ever play a game, and within the first few minutes, you start thinking “oh, oh no”. Because you know it’s got you. You know its little tendrils have begun wrapping themselves around your brain, coddling your cortex, forcing you to think of ways to min/max characters, unlock new skins, get the most out of the game? I have, somehow, managed to resist the lure of the HoYoverse until now; the PC/mobile siren call of HoYoverse’s games have fallen on willfully deaf ears, and I’ve been pumping my mobile time into other ventures (hi, Monster Hunter Now).

But, at Gamescom, the canny devs behind Honkai Star Rail, Genshin Impact, and the upcoming Zenless Zone Zero managed to convert me. It felt like some sort of low-key psy-op; I walked into the developer’s booth dubious, immune… yet I came out a complete convert, willing to shout at anyone that will listen about how ‘the interstellar train game is good, actually’.

In fact, I’d go further than that. I’d say it feels like Honkai Star Rail was made for the PS5. Everything about it – how the UI works, how the pad feels in your hand, how it loads, how it looks – it all just screams “this is the perfect console game”, right from the off. Since my apparent brainwashing, I have booted the game on both mobile and PC, and the PS5 version, despite not being completely released yet (we’ve just had a technical test), is in no way worse.