Another year, another slate of PS5 releases – and on paper, 2026 should be a strong one for players. Unfortunately, the first PlayStation 5 exclusive of the year has already delivered a brutal reality check. Code Violet was widely hoped to be a worthy spiritual follow-up to Dino Crisis, yet early reviews suggest it’s closer to a broken mess than a proper successor – and it may already be in the running for the worst game of the year.
A new year means a new wave of video games arriving on the PS5, and if everything hits its planned release window, 2026 should end up being a solid year for gamers. Still, not every launch is going to land – and that includes the very first PS5 exclusive of the year, which many players expected to be a respectable spiritual successor to the beloved PS1 classic Dino Crisis.
That exclusive is Code Violet, a third-person action-horror title developed and published by TeamKill Media. From the moment it was revealed, the game caught attention largely because of how closely it resembled Capcom’s dinosaur survival horror series. However, based on early reviews, the final release doesn’t come anywhere near living up to those expectations or earning the “successor” label.
At the time of writing, Code Violet only has three critic reviews on Metacritic, meaning there is no official Metascore available yet. Even so, the outlook is bleak: every outlet currently has it rated at 40 out of 100, which translates to 4 out of 10 on our scale. OpenCritic has collected a few additional reviews, but the average remains essentially identical, making it hard to ignore the conclusion that this game has launched in a disastrous state.
For anyone still morbidly curious, here is the official description of Code Violet, which outlines what players can expect:
“In the 25th century, a cataclysm has left Earth uninhabitable, driving humanity’s survivors to Trappist 1-E. Facing extinction due to sterility, the Aion colony harnesses cutting-edge time-travel technology to abduct women from the past to be surrogates in a dark yet desperate bid to save mankind. But their mission conceals a sinister conspiracy. As Violet Sinclair, torn from your time, you awaken in the Aion Bioengineering Complex, swarming with ferocious prehistoric dinosaurs and hostile forces. Carefully manage your inventory, uncover Aion’s dark secrets, fight to survive, and escape during a chaotic evacuation protocol.”
Source: 3djuegos
