What is Sony up to? (Thoughts on the May 30 Sony State of Play)

    During the Summer months, there is always a lot of gaming news, and I'm out of town this week. I'll try to get right to it with a relatively short update of the things that I cared about with the Sony State of Play from May 30! It wasn't a super strong showing, but there were some things that I definitely felt good about from the show. I hope you're ready for a few announcements and updates, because we're into that season again!

Time Mismanaged...

    The showcase began with a CGI trailer for Concord, a new game from a new Sony developer called Firewalk Studio. The trailer here looked fun, and the characters were harmless (while being guilty of the Guardians of the Galaxy cheesiness that so many are annoyed by today), so I was hoping we had a fun sci-fi single player adventure on my hands, but then the trailer ended and transitioned into gameplay footage where the lead developer reported that, "Concord is a 5-v-5 Competitive First Person Shooter." The gameplay shown revealed that the game is basically Overwatch but set in space. There's nothing wrong with that, but I just can't get excited about that anymore. It's coming out in August after a beta in July, and they spent what felt like probably 10 minutes of what already was a fairly short presentation. Needless to say, I didn't feel like this was a good use of their time.

    God of War Ragnarok is coming to PC on September 19, which should always be anticipated as far as I'm aware, as the game was fantastic. Later in the show, they continued the PC gaming trend when they discussed the port of Until Dawn for PC and PS5. Dynasty Warriors: Origins looks like it could be good, especially since I've enjoyed the recent Warriors games on Switch. Part of that is their link to different Nintendo properties, but hopefully it'll be fun! Infinity Nicki may have been my biggest surprise game of this presentation, being described by Sony as an "Open-World Dress-Up adventure." It looks like it could be a really cool and interesting time, though it also looks really trippy, and could potentially end up as another Balan Wonderworld situation. I'm hopeful that it will end up as something pretty special, and it said there's going to be a test in Q3 of 2024, so hopefully we'll be able to get our hands on it pretty soon. The test component hints at it potentially being an online game, in the vein of Genshin Impact or something, that you can play with friends. Let's just hope that they handle those elements in a good way. Along with Infinity Nicki was Ballad of Antara, which looked like a Souls-like game from the same developer. It had some anime elements, mostly just in the character designs, but we'll have to see how it turns out.

    They announced a few new VR games, Skydance's Behemoth (which looked like a pretty cool fantasy game where a giant beast is following behind you for you to avoid), and Alien Rogue Incursion, which is a game that takes place in the world of the Alien movies, which is sure to be extremely nerve-wracking in the Virtual Reality space. In the vein of things that I could potentially see myself being interested in comes Marvel Rivals, which looks a bit like a Marvel version of Overwatch, which again, I'm not super interested in, but it could be cool if done correctly. 

    The remake of Silent Hill 2 is slated to come out October 8 of this year, and I'm really excited to see how that game is, since I've heard so much about it, and yet, was too young to play it back when I had a working Playstation One. This game seems like it will be very different from the original, since that game was essentially a puzzle game based on what I've heard. I have already told a few people that I'm going to try it out, so I hopefully will enjoy it when it's out. Monster Hunter Wilds had a gameplay trailer, which looks really good and I'm sure the fans of the series are really excited, but sadly I just don't care that much about it. It looks pretty at the very least! To finish out the showcase, they showed off a new Astro Bot game, called... well, Astro Bot. Very straight forward, and I think it looks really good, allowing the Playstation Cameos to play more of a role this time, which I'm very excited about! It's always good to get another 3D Platformer, and I loved Astro's Playroom, even though it was really just a tech demo for the PS5. I'm looking forward to a much more complete experience coming this time, especially since we don't even have to wait all that long for it, it's coming out on September 6.

    It's always so exciting to get games news, and we're in for a good few weeks of it, with Summer Games Fest beginning on June 7 (the day that this post is going up) so I'll probably talk about some of that next week if anything catches my eye especially. I hope you've enjoyed this little look into some of the things that are coming soon, friends. I know I have a tendency to go too deep into detail, but hopefully this has been able to be kept fairly concise. Let me know if there's anything that you're looking forward to, as always I love hearing about what others are excited for! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Games Journalist, and I'll talk to you again soon!