Playstation news time! (Playstation Showcase 5/24 in review)

    Hey friends, I didn't have a chance to write anything last week because I unfortunately got sick with Covid, but I'm back this week, and I hope this will be a fun one! As of right now, it's only the 22nd of May, and there's a playstation showcase on the books for Wednesday, so this is a great way to get back into the swing after my first week off my pace in nearly 3 years. I really don't know what at all to expect to see here, though I'm assuming we won't see any more Final Fantasy XVI before it's release next month, especially since it got a lengthy segment during the last presentation a month ago or so. We may see something of Tekken 8 or perhaps some gameplay of the newly revealed Mortal Kombat 1, though I would imagine that may be a little too hot off the presses, even though it's coming in September. I would love to see anything about Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 or Wolverine game, with Spider-Man 2 coming out later in the year with still no gameplay to speak of. The sky's always the limit with these kinds of showcase, so I don't really want to speculate too much and get too hyped up, let's just see how this presentation goes!

    Alright, so the presentation has happened now, and let's talk about the stuff that stuck out to me! There weren't a ton of games that stuck out, so this probably won't be an incredibly long post, let's just see how it goes. There were a few games that were shown off right away that I wasn't interested in really, Fairgames which I thought was going to be another Watch Dogs game, a 4 player PVE game called Helldivers 2, which I honestly thought was a trailer for Exoprimal, and a few others. They revealed Ghostrunner 2, which seems super cool as the first game was a lot of fun, definitely some speedrunning Mirror's Edge vibes to it. Phantom Blade 0 has a similar artstyle to Sekiro or Ghost of Tsushima, it looks really cool, though I'm not sure how it's going to play. It could be a Souls-like, or it could be an action RPG without the Souls mechanic of losing your experience when you die, but either way, I'm going to keep my eye on it, especially since it comes from a studio that I didn't recognize, S-Game. When it comes to studios that I did recognize though, there was a lot to show! Giant Squid and Nomada Studios, the developers of Journey and Gris respectively, both showed off new games that they're working on, which are slated for next year! Giant Squid showed off Sword of the Sea, a game that really looks like if you had a hoverboard in Journey. It looks like a really pretty game, as you would expect, especially considering it has some of the lovely water visuals that the team utilized so well in Abzu, but the hoverboard mechanics look like they'll be a lot of fun in practice. Nomada Studios brought another game that looks like it's going to tug at the heartstrings in the same way that Gris did when it came out. In the trailer, we see the main character being extremely close with a giant wolf, and they band together to fight some enemies made of darkness and the giant wolf dies. A smaller wolf then comes and they comfort each other. They didn't show any gameplay, but if this game is a puzzle platformer (with some combat, as co-founder of Nomada studios, Adrian Cuevas, stated in a post on Playstation Blog) along the lines of the studio's first game, we have a lot to look forward to. Teardown is an indie game all about destroying a fully destructible environment  to pull off a variety of heists, and the game is now coming to PS5 sometime this year! While I'm talking a bit about these indie games, I have to talk about The Plucky Squire, a really fun looking game that takes place around a child's picture book that the main character is able to come out of. It looks to have some 2D Zelda vibes, but maybe also with some 3D elements to it when he comes out of the book as well. Either way, this game caught my eye when it was first shown off last year, and I can't wait to hear more, especially since it's set to come out this year!

    Let's take some time now to talk about some of the games being put out by big name studios now. Square Enix had a few trailers to show off during the presentation, one being a new trailer for Final Fantasy XVI, which is coming out on June 22, and looks really good, and one was for a new game called Foam Stars. Honestly, Foamstars looks like Square Enix's take on Splatoon, but instead of ink, you're battling with bubbles. It looks kind of interesting, though not really my cup of tea. Bungie revealed a new game that it's working on called Marathon, described as a, "PVP Extraction Shooter," according to the post on Playstation Blog about the game. The post also explains that this is playing off of a series starting way back in 1994. The game will stand on its own it seems, but there will be some elements of that classic game, just to call back to some of the deep lore of the world, according to Christopher Barrett in this post. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they have a single player campaign in the works, so I'm not super interested, but I hope people like it a lot! In addition, Bungie showed off a teaser for Destiny 2 called "The Final Shape." It was really just a teaser, but it revealed that Cayde-6 is back from the dead somehow! It's an exciting development to be sure, especially for you Destiny fans out there. Capcom also had quite a few announcements that they brought to the stage, of course they brought a new Street Fighter 6 trailer, which is looking to be a lot of fun, but also the first look at Dragon's Dogma II! I still need to play the first game, but based on what I've played so far of the Action RPG, I understand why so many people are excited for this new one, especially so long after the release of the original. Konami had an actual game announcement with a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, though it looked like Metal Gear Solid Delta according to the logo? I don't really know what was up with that. On top of that, they're making a Metal Gear Solid remaster collection containing the original first three games in the series which will be releasing later this year (according to Video Games Chronicle). This last one probably isn't a big deal to a lot of people, but Alan Wake II is looking really interesting, especially considering how Remedy Entertainment is now working with the concept of a "shared universe" between all of its games. It's going to be interesting investigating the town of Bright Springs as someone other than the titular character, but I'm certainly looking forward to it.

    There were a lot of announcements about PSVR2, but none of those really interested me much, though maybe you'll be interested in the Queen DLC for Beat Saber, as that game is certainly popular and lots of fun! To end the show, Sony had one more game to show off, and it was of course an extended gameplay section from Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which included confirmation of Kraven the Hunter and the Lizard both as characters that appear in this new title! Honestly, I just have to advise you to look up the trailer for this game. it looks so good and I'm extremely excited to play it when it comes out later this year! We see here that we will be controlling both Miles Morales and Peter Parker throughout the course of the game, which both have different powers in this footage. Miles has his electric webs and shock powers (confusingly called venom shocks in Spider-Man: Miles Morales) while Peter had his Symbiote suit on, which we know will eventually turn into Venom, after making Peter much more violent and angry. We see some of Peter's change at the end of this trailer, and I'm honestly so excited for the story that this game tells. How will Miles's involvement change Peter's reaction to the symbiote suit? We'll just have to see.

    You know how much I love video game news, friends, so it's my pleasure to write about some of my favorite things that I saw at the showcase the other day. Did you have a favorite announcement? I would love to hear from you all if you watched the showcase! Thanks so much for all the support, I always appreciate it much more than I can ever really say. Sorry that I didn't post anything last week, as I said, I just wasn't really feeling up to it while I was sick for the first time in several years. I hope you're all staying well and that you'll all have a great week! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed videogame reporter, and I'll talk to you all again soon!

Resources:

    Neva article: https://blog.playstation.com/2023/05/24/introducing-neva-the-beautiful-new-game-from-the-developer-of-gris/

    Marathon article: https://blog.playstation.com/2023/05/24/bungie-unveils-marathon/

    Metal Gear Solid article from VGC: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/official-konami-announces-metal-gear-solid-3-remake-and-remaster-collection/

    Definitely just check out the Playstation Blog to learn more! There's a lot of information there, thanks for reading!