Do you really need a VPN, though? Well, it depends on what you want to achieve with it. If security is on your mind, the best PS4/Ps5 VPN (or ‘Virtual Private Network’) can protect you from possible DDoS attack by rerouting your data through a server. What’s more, the best VPN for gaming (opens in new tab) will get around bandwidth-throttling that your provider may run during peak hours (though this isn’t guaranteed, and could potentially have the opposite effect – proceed with caution). While lag is frustrating at the best of times, it’s a different kettle of fish altogether when it’s forced on you.

Finally, you can use a VPN to access another region’s streaming services. That means you can try out the best Netflix VPN (opens in new tab) and watch a show not normally available in your country. Cool, right? If you want more details on the pros and cons of VPNs and gaming, you can get the skinny in our handy guide for do I need a VPN for gaming (opens in new tab)?

In the meantime, we’ve gathered up examples of the best VPN for PS5 and PS4 below. Each of our picks is secure, quick, and reliable. To save you some cash, we’ve also tried to include as many deals as possible.

The best PS4 and PS5 VPN

1. ExpressVPN

The best VPN for PS4 and PS5

Specifications

Number of servers: 3,000+Server locations: 160IP addresses: 30,000Maximum devices supported: 5

Reasons to buy

+Great speeds +Tons of locations+30-day refund policy 

Reasons to avoid

-Not the cheapest around 

As the best all-rounder when it comes to PS4 VPNs, ExpressVPN allows you to hop between 148 spoofed locations in 94 countries. That provides plenty of choice in terms of international access. Plus, it has plenty of advice about setting up a VPN on PS4/PS5 on its website (opens in new tab). It’s a reliable service you can count on, and with a 30-day money-back guarantee, you can feel secure in your ability to test it without major financial commitment. 

Better still, connection speeds are pretty good as far as VPNs go. Because it’s a tried-and-tested service when it comes to streaming services like Netflix, it’s also versatile. This isn’t just a good VPN for PS4 and PS5 – it’s a winner for everything else, too.

2. NordVPN

The best PS4/PS5 VPN for security

Specifications

Number of servers: 5,500+Server locations: 55+IP addresses: N/AMaximum devices supported: 6

Reasons to buy

+Great performance +Great server selection+Really tight security

Reasons to avoid

-Monthly billing is pricey

Want to make sure your PS4 is as secure as possible? NordVPN is a safe bet. It takes the matter very seriously, with 2048-bit security and optional DDoS protection on certain servers. And with over 5,000 servers in total, you’re spoilt for choice. 

Naturally, that kind of extensive coverage comes at a price. Although it’s an excellent service, NordVPN is one of the pricier VPNs on this list. As such, we’d recommend paying monthly – you’ll get the best possible deal, particularly if you’re able to commit to a longer membership.

Just be aware that you won’t be able to get NordVPN directly on your PS4 – you’ll have to set it up via your router. You can find out how below.
Connect NordVPN to PS4 (opens in new tab)

3. VyprVPN

The fastest PS4/PS5 VPN for downloads

Specifications

Number of servers: 700+Server locations: 70+IP addresses: N/AMaximum devices supported: 5

Reasons to buy

+Fast downloads+Free trial+Secures entire home network

Reasons to avoid

-Some usage logging

VyprVPN is an impressive beast. It’s got hundreds of servers across multiple locations, has an NAT firewall to block unwanted traffic, and offers blazingly fast speeds in terms of downloads. In testing, it managed to boost download speeds by 2.5 times compared to a vanilla connection. That’s awesome, especially because of PS4 gaming’s frequently chonky file sizes.

All the same – and as with the options listed above – you can’t download VyprVPN directly onto your PS4. Instead, it works via your router (the VyprVPN Router App, more specifically). As a result, it protects your entire household network at once. Sweet!

There’s a free trial, too; you can safely try before you buy.
Setting up VyprVPN on your router (opens in new tab)

4. Buffered VPN

The PS4 VPN for a low ping

Specifications

Number of servers: 37Server locations: 29IP addresses: N/AMaximum devices supported: 5

Reasons to buy

+Low latency +Good refund policy+Great ping

Reasons to avoid

-On the pricier end 

If responsiveness in a game is important to you, Buffered VPN is your best choice. While other VPNs may increase latency, this beauty ended up lowering it in our tests. That’s a cool feature worth shouting about. 

Even if downloads weren’t quite as fast, upload speeds were strong as well. What’s more, Buffered VPN offers a refund so long as you haven’t gone over 10 hours, 100 sessions, or 10GB of useage. That allows you to dip a toe in the water and decide whether the service is for you or not. 
Set up Buffered VPN on PS4 (opens in new tab)

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ASUS TUF Gaming H3 – Design

As soon as you take the ASUS TUF Gaming H3 out of the box, one thing becomes obvious: this looks like a much higher-end headset than it actually is (I tested the black variant). Thick earcups are held by a solid stainless steel headband and leather cushions make for a slick aesthetic. Thanks to the memory foam inside the cushions and how lightweight the build is, wearing them for extended sessions doesn’t cause any strain whatsoever.

The microphone is a permanent attachment and is on a flexible metal arm that can be bent out of the way whenever you’re not using it. However, it always, it sits frustratingly just inside your peripheral vision unless you bend it below your chin. Doing this means it often hits your shoulder if you turn your head; a minor inconvenience for an otherwise stylish budget headset. There’s also a good range of colour options including black, blue, red, and silver available so you can pick one to accompany your console’s or setup’s aesthetic.

ASUS TUF Gaming H3 – Features

Impressively, the H3 boasts 7.1 virtual surround sound, the same system used in both the H5 and H7 headsets. For the most part, you can tell; gunshots and in-game chatter in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer beta are clear and vibrant, and chainsawing someone in half in Gears 5 sounds as gruesome as you’d expect, no matter which way you’re facing.

Rather than featuring controls along the cable as you often find on gaming headsets, the volume and mic toggle are on the underside of the left earcup. I prefer it since it means the cable doesn’t catch on anything, but the downside is that the cable provided is much shorter than you tend to find with gaming headsets, so it’s not great for any situations where you need to be further from the audio jack.

ASUS TUF Gaming H3 – Performance

The most important aspect; how does the ASUS TUF Gaming H3 perform? One of the first things I noticed when I started playing Borderlands 3 was how effective the noise-cancelling is. Even when there’s very little going on in-game, the memory foam leather cushions provide an almost flawless escape from the real world, so much so that when talking to friends on Discord I’ve had to make sure I’m not shouting by accident since I can hardly hear myself. It’s also worth noting that the leather makes it much warmer to wear than a headset with cloth cushions, so if you tend to get warm easily, you may need to wipe down the headphones frequently.

For competitive multiplayer games, the H3 does a fine job of immersing you and balancing the in-game sounds with other players’ voices. But not without a few caveats. One key aspect to games such as Modern Warfare, Rainbow Six Siege and Fortnite is to listen out for enemy footsteps and pinpoint their exact location simply through audio. You won’t find that the H3 helps you out here: in all three aforementioned games I struggle to tell whether an enemy is above or below me, even being surprised from behind one or two times. Having the ability to help you pinpoint enemies and in-game audio cues is really the bare minimum requirement for a gaming headset so this is disappointing. Microphone quality on the other hand is absolutely fine on both PS4 party chat and Discord; not exceptional but nothing to complain about either.

If you’re someone who has one headset for both gaming and music, it’s hard to recommend the H3 for this either. These headphones don’t quite do the music in recent games like Borderlands 3 justice, and even listening to music through Spotify the audio sounded somewhat tinny thanks to a lack of depth.

However, it is important to mention that the H3 is almost perfect for Nintendo Switch players, but only when in handheld mode. Dragon Quest Builders 2 and Yoshi’s Crafted World both sound clear and crisp, and while they’re not games lauded for their audio design, they did a more than adequate job and I’d have no qualms with taking this headset travelling. The only downside is that the headband doesn’t fold in any way, so it can be awkward to pack — especially due to the protruding microphone.

Overall – should you buy it?

My initial impressions of the ASUS TUF Gaming H3 were strong, but as I use it more, discrepancies and weaknesses started to become more prevalent. As someone who plays a lot of multiplayer shooters, the lack of directional audio is a real frustration, as is the poor bass quality when listening to music. This product is ideal for someone looking to dive into a gaming headset for the first time, perhaps to quieten their gaming sessions late at night, but if you’re looking for top tier audio then you won’t find it here. The build quality is fantastic and the noise cancelling is some of the best I’ve experienced, but when it comes to where it really matters, the H3 comes up short.

The Verdict

3

3 out of 5

ASUS TUF Gaming H3 gaming headset review: “Fantastically built but a headset that is found wanting where it matters”

Not a world beater, and the weaknesses help to define the H3, but it has a great build quality and good noise cancelling resulting in a decent value set of cans.

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Gain access to the VIP demo this weekend and walk away with a bonus gift card, too.

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For those who aren’t familiar with the shared-world shooter, Anthem’s closest equivalent feels like Destiny. The focus is on exploring a dangerous world with your friends, getting loot for your Javelin mech suit, and busting out ridiculous emotes at the most inappropriate time. There’s a story to be had as well within the single-player hub (Fort Tarsis), but it’s largely been kept a secret thus far. In fact, the developers had an entire team dedicated to ‘stripping’ story references from the Anthem alpha (opens in new tab) to avoid spoilers.

We got a chance to play the Anthem game ourselves recently and felt that it has echoes of Mass Effect and Destiny, but seems to lack its own identity (opens in new tab) nonetheless. As GamesRadar’s Sam Loveridge noted, “its grand world and fantastic flying feel hollow without a strong story or fun quests”. Time will tell if those issues resolve themselves by launch (much of the game’s content is still hidden, after all), but in the short term we’ll keep you updated as we take on the demo this weekend.

Don’t have a VIP access code? No worries: here’s how you can still get involved with the Anthem demo (opens in new tab).

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The humble save point is an endangered species in this day and age. Modern games, not wanting to interrupt or burden players with a need to remember to slide a digital bookmark into their progress, either save your game automatically or let you save whenever you please. The little glowing ports in a storm, where no enemy will attack you, where you can catch a breath before a boss, or you can make some badly needed progress are eternally memorable if done right. These ten are the best and strangest in PlayStation history.

Dead Rising 2

Even in zombie infest Las Vegas, the bathroom is a safe space to collect your thoughts, to mark a moment in time to return to again and again, to consider: how many times have I duct-taped a baseball bat and a weed-whacker together now? Dead Rising 2’s lavatory save points are not only more convenient than the lonely security office couch Frank West had to use in original, they’re also apparently magical, hiding secret shortcuts within. 

Alien: Isolation

Beeping sounds are not comforting in the world of Alien. If you hear an insistent electronic tone, it’s usually coming from a motion tracker indicating precisely close you are to having your face eaten by a hulking two-mouthed bug monster. In Alien: Isolation, though, beeping can also indicate the presence of a blessed save point, a taupe colored electrical panel that represents a few more minutes of survival. Only problem: it seems to take a billion years for for Isolation’s save stations to register Ripley’s key card. Not that there’s any hurry because of face eating bug monsters.

Metal Gear Solid

Snake’s Codec is not a comforting piece of technology. Is it convenient to have a communication device that interacts directly with your ear’s delicate bones? Sure but what if it malfunctions! That’s stressful. It’s also not particularly convenient to have to use it to call a separate person just to save your game. Sure, Mei Ling is a personable and intelligent individual always willing to cough up some philosophical bonmot to ease the pain of extreme espionage, but isn’t there a better way to mark your time at Shadow Moses? Apparently not, because that’s how you have to save there.

Resident Evil

The Umbrella corporation’s boundless capacity for horrifying technological advancement is matched only by its adoration of technological anachronism. If you can build massive, secret underground base’s for developing futuristic, biological military ordinance, why do you need typewriters to save everyone’s progress? They’re not even electric typewriters! You need old fashioned, messy ass ink ribbons to use them. There will be hell to pay if that ink gets all over the jewels and bizarre keys in this inventory full of stuff needed to get through Umbrellas various mansions. At least the music playing in every save room near the typewriters is beautiful.

God of War 3

Kratos is not the kind of guy you’d expect to regularly genuflect. Indeed Kratos’ whole thing is hating gods, killing gods, and yelling about how he’s going to kill all those gods he hates so much. And yet every time he wants to save his progress during some gluttonous revenge rampage, he steps into an altar, gifts from Zeus’ daughter Athena  in God Of War III. Zeus himself is the one who granted the Spartan his progress-stashing ability in the first game. I’m not calling you a sellout or anything Kratos, but if you were for real you wouldn’t need to save your game at all! Just kidding. Your new Viking beard frightens me.

GTA: Vice City

Over the past decade, saving your game in Grand Theft Auto has always been a homey experience. Returning to your base of operations is part of it, but it’s all about where you rest your head permanently. Niko Bellic’s apartments, Michael de Santa’s house of Hollywood strife, etc. Back in Grand Theft Auto Vice City, though,  Tommy Vercetti saved his progress in a seedier, more transient locale. The Ocean View Hotel, with its gaudily decorated bed and a floating cassette icon, is where he needed to save his game. It is simultaneously the least comfortable and the most in GTA history. No one likes to live in a hotel, but at least you can trash the place and someone else will clean it up.

No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise

Old Chuck Greene saves his game in the bathroom, but we don’t know that he’s actively relieving himself in there. Guy could just be washing his hands. Tucking his shirt back in. Wiping off a bloodstain or something. Travis Touchdown in No More Heroes? There are no illusions about what this assassin nerd is doing when he saves his game. He walks right into his WC, drops trou, and goes to town to mark down precisely where he is on his journey to becoming the number one hired killer with a lightsaber. It’s ridiculous but I have to admit that I admire his comfort level. You do you, Travis.

Dead Space

When you’ve been trundling through the darkened halls of a crumbling space station infested by monsters made up of the ripped up limbs of the terrible warped crew that used to live there, a little light goes a long way. The welcoming glow of a USG Ishimura save terminal goes the longest in Dead Space. Warm, reassuring and a temporary salvation from all that getting your brains sucked out through your eye socket by some gasping monstrosity. That said it doesn’t quite make sense that there are terminals everywhere for the crew to just randomly record their thoughts on. Is the Ishimura like a giant sci-fi episode of the Real World with confessionals everywhere? Weird, Dead Space. Weird.

Ico

So this creepy, vaguely medieval society is terrified of boys born with horns, right? So they lock them up in a rotting castle ruled over by some inky witch with blue electric magic powers and a legion of living shadows at her command. If everyone doesn’t want the boy to escape with the ghostly magical young girl he just met in the castle, why are there inexplicably comfortable couches all over the place for the two of them to take naps on, thus saving their game? One second, you’re in a crumbling hallway of death. The next, you’re on a windswept terrace with a couch ready for popcorn and binge watching John Hughes movies. This castle and its save points make no sense, Ico.

Tomb Raider (1996)

We’re not saying Lara Croft doesn’t run a high probability of finding precious jewels during her grave robbing adventures in the original Tomb Raider. In fact, it’s all but guaranteed that at some point after she’s shot a T-rex in the face and solved the instant death puzzles of an evil statue with the midas touch, Lara’s going to find some shiny, valuable rocks. But why do all the jewels in Tomb Raider let her save her game? And why are there only a few of them inexplicably scattered around the tombs all over the world? MAGIC JEWELS DON’T SAVE GAMES IN REAL LIFE, TOMB RAIDER!

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As a series, Uncharted isn’t really known for having overly developed characters. Incredible action, yes, stunning set pieces, definitely, and a grasp of scale that borders on genius, but deep interpersonal storytelling? Less so. Nate gets written off as a sociopath a lot, given his predilection for killing loads of bad guys, cracking wise all the while. 

That Elena falls for Nate is inevitable, not only because that’s what’s the Plucky Heroine does, but also because Nate’s charming, exciting, and has a really nice butt. That they get married, however, is rather surprising. Rather than follow the formula of giving the rugged hero a new squeeze in each adventure, Naughty Dog humanized Nate by having him commit to a single, amazing woman. And then humanized him even further by having him screw everything up.

‘Cause here’s the thing – yes, Nate is very sexy and exciting, and the idea of traipsing all over the world courting danger and discovering lost treasure is almost unbearably romantic. But the reality of the situation is that a spouse who’s rarely home, is regularly out of touch, and apparently has a deathwish, given how often he shimmies up ancient ruins without a rope is a lousy partner. Loving Nate is easy, but living with him is next to impossible, and so Elena does something basically unheard of in gaming: she leaves him.

It’s a glimpse at the reality of marriage that games rarely afford. Gaming wives are typically either inspirationally alive (“I must save the world for my family!”) or inspirationally dead (“I will avenge you!”). Elena is that most unusual of fictional wives – an ex who isn’t evil or out for revenge. She’s just a woman who decided she deserved better than a husband who’d rather dodge bullets than order takeout and snuggle on the couch. As Uncharted 4 opens, she and Nate have reconciled, each making sacrifices to try and make their marriage work, with moderate success. When Nate sneaks off to track down pirate gold, Elena doesn’t write Nate off with a dramatic “It’s over!” speech, and when she leaves the hotel room where she’s confronted him over his deception, he doesn’t chase after her with a speech about forgiveness. They don’t resolve their conflict with a hug and a quip, because that’s not how life works. 

It takes a certain amount of bravery not only to cast your hero in such an unflattering light but also to inject such authenticity into a treasure-hunting romp. Naughty Dog could’ve just kept Nate as a lovable half-tucked rogue, dropping in to loot various ruins and run from gunfire, and the games still would’ve been great, because who doesn’t want to buy into that fantasy? We don’t need Nate to be a real person in order to enjoy his exploits, which makes Naughty Dog’s decision to make him an addict who’s slowly ruining every relationship he has all the more engaging. There’s no after school special-level talks, no tear-stained pleas to get help… just people trying to get through to someone who loves his fix just a little bit more than he loves anything else.  

The conversations Elena and Nate have as they navigate the jungle and evade Shoreline mercs are full of marital truth. Loving someone and being able to live with them are two very different things, as just about every married couple has discovered at some point. A good, functional marriage requires more than just scheduling date nights and remembering anniversaries; it needs honest communication, which often includes facing flaws head-on and saying, ‘Ok, now what?’. When Elena and Nate say they have a lot to talk about, that’s not code for a quick shag and suddenly everything’s fine. They mean there’s a lot to talk about if they really want to deal with the things that are broken in their relationship. The fact that Uncharted 4 manages to balance the reality of marriage with the fantasy of a ruined pirate city is fairly miraculous. 

It certainly helps that Uncharted has had four games over which it could develop both Nate and Elena both as individuals and as a couple; forging that kind of depth in a single 15-hour outing is a tall order unless you want to club your players over the head with shortcut tropes or cut scenes. And certainly not all games would benefit from adding ordinary life struggles to their narratives, but as a married person who’s been on both sides of those tough talks with her spouse, I appreciated the pockets of relatability that added so much depth to my explorer escapism. Chucking it all and living out of a backpack as I hunt down antiquities sure sounds like a great way to live life to the fullest, but the real world will always find you. Having a partner to face it with is a pretty great idea.

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Don’t worry, Wattam is still delightfully odd. It follows a little cuboid mayor and his efforts to repopulate a town in the aftermath of a surreal cataclysm. You’ll frolic and clamber about, experimenting with each new resident’s abilities to create ever-larger people explosions (not a metaphor: characters soar into the air and go bang), which bring joy to potential residents and Funomena’s curious sandbox to life. It sounds, and looks, bizarre, but it’s an instantly arresting and entirely charming proposition once you get your hands on the controller. And Takahashi’s right: it really does feel like a happy mix of the best elements of his best-known games.

“You have that really structured time-based gameplay with Katamari, which I think Keita felt was a bit too [constrained]; then there’s the open-ended playspace of Noby Noby Boy, which is kind of Keita’s dream, but for me felt a little unstructured,” Funomena CEO Robin Hunicke explains. “You can play Wattam in the way you would play Noby Noby Boy, or if you want to play it as you would play something more directed, you can. Then in the middle of those two styles is a game where you sometimes play the story, and then sometimes take a break and experiment with the characters… It’s a conscious decision.”

Ironically, that conscious decision has resulted in something that feels dreamlike, though surreal, disparate elements somehow fuse into a whole that makes sense within the context of play. For example, explosions are triggered by a bomb stored under the mayor’s bowler hat, but first you must stack a certain number of characters on top of each other, switching control between those you’d like in the detonation until the swaying tower reaches the requisite number of bodies. Hold down the bomb button at this point and the group will take off in a swirling formation, leaving trails behind them as the skies light up, which encourages yet more residents to move into your town. It’s a manifestation of unrestrained joy – the satisfying culmination of each delightful experiment that preceded it. It feels apt for a game with only a passing interest in traditional design principles.

“I think at the very beginning, we bit off more than we could chew,” Hunicke says. “We tried to write a physical solver that would allow us to have stretchy, bendy attachments between characters, so all the stacks could be really wobbly, because we wanted to get that sensation of Jenga-esque teeter-totting. Then as we iterated on it, and we realised we didn’t need all that power. We just needed to make the characters appealing and childlike. So instead of spending a significant period of time developing that physics system, we invested more time in AI behaviour and animation that allows us to put a lot of character into each person that’s in Wattam.”

They’re a memorable lot. Take the coffee bean: he can run really fast, but also wake up dozing characters who succumb to the Midas-like curse of a lonely pillow who puts to sleep those he touches. The cloud can float around and rain on grass to grow flowers, a bunch of which can be plucked and added to your character list. Then there’s the piece of sushi with the jetpack and the turntable who can start a party anywhere. Mucking about and seeing how each person’s abilities affect those around them is an amusing, open-ended distraction, and some add a puzzle element to creating stacks once you choose to press on with the game’s loose objectives.

There’s still plenty to firm up, but while Funomena is allowing the game the space it needs to evolve naturally, the ideas at the centre of it have remained core to Takahashi’s vision, inspired by watching his children play. “[It’s been] two years, and it’s not finished yet,” he says, “but my concept, my idea, hasn’t changed. It’s very clear, I guess. Maybe [it’s because] it’s so crazy…”

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“The lock screen on my phone right now is Keita and his son playing the game!” says Hunicke. “When he was two years old, they were stacking stuff and playing with wooden blocks, and Keita started doing stuff that was pretty crazy with them, and the kid was laughing and responding really positively. Now he’s four, and he can play this game! So when we finish, he’ll be five, and Keita can say, ‘Hey, I made this for you!’ I think that’s the best thing a parent can give to a child – something that’s really inspired by them.”

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