PlayStation Plus October: F1 25, Hunt: Showdown, and Giant Robot Bug Blasting

PlayStation's October Essential lineup is set: F1 25, Hunt: Showdown 1896, and Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 — all claimable from October 6 through November 2, per Insider Gaming and GamesHub. It's a weird trio on paper. In practice, it's one of the better-balanced months in a while: a racer, a shooter, and pure chaos.

Start with F1 25, the official game of the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship. Career mode, My Team 2.0, and the F1 World multiplayer hub. Here's the feel-first take: racing games live or die on the first ten seconds, and F1's handling model is the reference point for sim-arcade — the rear end steps out just enough to feel dangerous and just late enough to feel fair. If you've ever wanted to know why people pay real money to pretend to drive in circles at 200 miles an hour, this is the free version of that answer.

Hunt: Showdown 1896 is the interesting one. An extraction shooter set in the corrupted backwaters lost to history, where you're hunting twisted monsters and other hunters are hunting you. Extraction shooters are the genre that demands the most from your nerves — every decision has a price, and the price is your loadout. Landing this one in October is smart scheduling: it's horror-adjacent without being a horror game, which makes it the perfect gateway drug for spooky season.

And then there's Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2, the voxel-styled bug-blasting sequel — available on PS5 and PS4 — where you fight enormous swarms of enemies, build your squad, and pick your loadout across 4-player online co-op or 2-player split-screen. EDF is a game about turning your brain off and turning giant ants into fireworks. Every subscription service needs one of these. This month, PS Plus has it.

Two pieces of homework. First: September's games — Sniper Elite: Resistance, MLB The Show 26, Wobbly Life, and Chained Echoes — have to be claimed by Monday, October 5. Set a reminder. Second: Sony's running HorrorFest extras alongside the monthly games — a Call of Duty: Warzone Horror Bundle from October 1, a Hunt: Showdown 1896 Starter Pack from October 6, and an Overwatch 2 Dragur Reinhardt pack with five tier skips from October 7 — plus limited-edition Spider-Man: Brand New Day avatars in Sony Pictures Core from October 6 through the 20th. Claim the games, grab the packs, and don't sleep on EDF. The ants aren't going to blast themselves.

The announcement itself came from Adam Michel, Sony's Senior Director of Content Acquisition and Operations, on the official PlayStation Blog on September 30 — which is worth noting because of what this is and isn't. This is the Monthly Games benefit, available to every PlayStation Plus tier including Essential, not the separate Game Catalog refresh for Extra and Premium. Once you claim a Monthly Game, it's yours for as long as you keep any Plus subscription active. You don't need to install it before November 2. You don't need to finish it. You just need to hit the button while the window is open, and the game sits in your library waiting.

Take the headline act first. F1 25 is the official game of the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship from Codemasters and EA Sports, and the Plus version is the full package: Driver Career, the Braking Point 3 story mode, and My Team 2.0, where you run the outfit yourself — hiring two drivers, choosing who races each weekend, and spending development money on staff and car upgrades. Online, F1 World adds squad-based multiplayer where you team up with friends and race against AI drivers instead of lobby chaos, which is the gentler on-ramp the series has needed for years. One caveat worth printing: Sony lists F1 25, not the separate 2026 Season Pack, which EA sells separately. Don't assume the seasonal extras ride along.

Hunt: Showdown 1896 is the dark horse that will eat the most hours. Crytek's PvPvE extraction shooter runs on a loop that sounds simple and plays like a panic attack: track a boss through a corrupted 1896 bayou, kill it, take the bounty, and try to leave the map alive while rival hunters — alone or in teams of up to three — hunt the same prize. Every gunshot tells the whole map where you are. It's multiplayer-only, it's the most demanding game of the three, and it's the one October scheduled perfectly: horror-adjacent for spooky season without being a horror game. Note that the Hunt: Showdown 1896 Starter Pack dropping October 6 is a separate Plus benefit, not part of the base game — you'll need the game claimed to use the pack.

And then there's Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2, the blocky spin-off of the long-running EDF series and the only game this month PS4 owners can claim. You rescue soldiers across voxel-styled battlefields, build a four-soldier squad from the ones you collect — each with different weapons and abilities — and take on giant insects, aliens, and robots in four-player online co-op or two-player local split-screen on one console. It's the arcade antidote to the other two: no stakes, no extraction, just enormous swarms and the deep satisfaction of turning them into fireworks with friends on the couch.

Zoom out and the month has a shape. All three are built for playing with other people — squad racing, three-player extraction, four-player co-op — which reads like a deliberate counter-programming move against the solo prestige releases crowding the fall calendar. Add the HorrorFest extras and the Spider-Man: Brand New Day avatars in Sony Pictures Core from October 6 through the 20th, and October 2026 stacks up as one of the stronger Plus months of the year. For more on what's landing in games this month, see our coverage of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve and the games hub — and if spooky season is your thing, our Halloween horror surge rundown has the rest of October's scary calendar.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day avatars via Sony Pictures Core, Oct. 6–20.