- Platform
- PS5 only, PS5 Pro Enhanced, 15 September 2026.
- Difficulty
- Five Challenge Levels, changeable at any time; no difficulty trophy.
- Length
- 15–20 h for the platinum; the story takes about 20 h for Push Square, about 14 h for Vandal.
- Missables
- None. Mission Select opens at the 2nd Nightmare Door.
- Collectibles
- 102: 68 Material Crates, 20 Whisky Bottles, 14 Nightmare Doors.
Decide before you start
🎚️ Challenge Level
There are five, from gentlest to hardest: The Man, The Hunter, The Mutant — the recommended default — The Weapon and The Best There Is. They can be mixed and matched from the pause menu at any time, so nothing is locked in by the choice you make at the start.
🎛️ The individual sliders
There are separate controls for enemy health, the damage enemies deal and how quickly you are detected during stealth, alongside global and combat speed settings. If one part of the game is the problem, it can be turned down on its own.
👃 Senses toggles
Since update 1.001.006 (25 September 2026) the settings have separate on/off switches for the Whisky Bottle scent trails, the Material Crate audio clues and the Nightmare Door roots. Story-critical Senses still appear with them switched off. Some directions on the collectible pages follow a bottle's scent trail, so they read best with that toggle left on.
🩸 How graphic it is
The August features trailer showed filters for bad language and for blood and gore: swearing, blood detail and dismemberment can each be switched off. The accessibility list is described as impressive, but no total is given, and the official Insomniac support page we tried to read for the full list would not load.
🖥️ The picture
Insomniac has said that Performance Mode runs at 60fps with ray tracing on a standard PS5, and that this is the first of its games to ship with that mode as the default. PlayStation's own page lists the game as PS5 Pro Enhanced with PSSR support. Since update 1.002.000 (1 October 2026) the game also uses QSSR, Sony's new AI upscaler for PS5, and Insomniac's patch notes say it is on by default; the same update fixes Navigation Assist, Lock-On, High Contrast and Screen Reader issues.
🏆 None of it costs you a trophy
The platinum is rated 2/10 with no difficulty requirement: there are no difficulty trophies, and any level earns the full set. Play it however you want to play it.
What the opening missions hand you
Missions 1–3 · Telambang
Back in Action, A Debt Repaid and Last Meal hold no collectibles at all. What they do hold is the combat grounding: Hot Head, for hitting Rage Tier 3, pops during A Debt Repaid, and Omega Red is beaten at the end of Last Meal for Omega Dead.
Mission 4 · Homecoming
The first collectibles arrive together: two Material Crates — the first is story-mandatory, since Walter asks you to bring him the supply crates — the Uncanny Whisky bottle, and the first Nightmare Door, The Enemy of My Enemy, which you walk into automatically after a cutscene. Suit Up pops for crafting your first suit.
Mission 5 · The One That Got Away
The mission that changes the rules. Its Nightmare Door is the second one, and Mission Select unlocks the moment you reach it — from here nothing in the game can be lost. Also here: four crates, the Incredible 181 bottle, Callisto's journal behind the "Do not enter" panels for Greased, and the highway chase for Road Rage.
Mission 8 · Something Much Stronger
Berserker Unleashed is story-related after this mission, so the berserker state is something the campaign gives you rather than something you unlock by spending. Four crates, a bottle and a door here as well.
Nothing is missable, and that should change how you play
There are zero missable trophies and one required playthrough, and everything can still be found through Mission Select after the story. The in-game tracker is per chapter and is visible both in the pause menu and in Chapter Select at the Nightmare Cabin. The practical effect: there is no reason to sweep a mission twice on the way through. Play it, and clean up from the Cabin afterwards with the finder Adaptations equipped.
What the reviews warn about
- The combat is the draw and the complaint at once. GameRant, at 8/10, calls it visceral but says it becomes repetitive in long encounters and that the gameplay does not evolve much from beginning to end.
- Stealth is thin. GameRant describes it as fairly straightforward and rote — approach an enemy, press a button — and Push Square's review does not treat it as a system worth discussing.
- It is strictly linear. Push Square, at 8/10, praises a focused experience but criticises invisible walls and a design that wants you to play it its way; GameRant makes the same point about the structure feeling restrictive.
- The story divides people. Push Square calls the narrative relatively uninteresting and badly presented in places; GameRant says it meanders and that the stakes are unclear. Metacritic shows 76 on 25 September 2026 (134 critic reviews), a reception more mixed than Insomniac's Spider-Man games.
- Two outlets scored it low: IGN at 6/10, saying the combat wears thin well before the end, and GameSpot at 6/10, calling the combat solid but the rest basic.
- The praise is consistent on one thing: how it looks and sounds. Push Square calls the visuals outstanding, GameRant calls it one of the best-looking PS5 games, and both single out Liam McIntyre's performance.
Two Adaptations that do the collecting for you
Two passive Adaptations — Crate Finder and Whisky Finder — mark those collectibles from a long distance and through walls. They cost Adaptation slots, so they compete with the combat passives; on a cleanup run from the Nightmare Cabin, that trade is free.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 22 September 2026 and re-checked on 2 October 2026 against the guides of PowerPyx, Push Square, Dayngls' Guides, GameRant and Vandal, EliteGuias' trophy list, the Push Square and GameRant reviews, TechRadar's report of Insomniac on Performance Mode, PlayStation's official game page, Insomniac's patch notes for updates 1.001.006 and 1.002.000, the PlayStation Blog's QSSR announcement of 1 October 2026 and Wikipedia, which also gives the IGN and GameSpot scores. Not from a playthrough: nobody here has played it, and what the sources do not describe is not on this page.