More Gaming News? Always a Good Thing! (Thoughts on Playstation State of Play 2/12)

 Hey friends! I'm in San Diego right now, and as such, I was going to take a little break this week, but then I got the notification after I landed a few hours ago that Sony had this presentation today! I guess I missed the news somehow in all the rush to get everything packed up. Today I'll just spend a little time going over the things that I thought were most interesting, while doing my best to touch on the few things that I didn't care as much about, but I know are a big deal to some other folks!

Let's Sum It Up!

    I'm going to get this out of the way right now, Monster Hunter is not really my cup of tea, so I don't really care about Monster Hunter Wilds. I do know that so many people are really looking forward to that game, and I'm excited for you to play it if you're excited for it when it comes out on February 28. It should be a great time, especially if you really liked Monster Hunter World or Rise. For things that I'm really excited about, however, there's a new Shinobi game coming out from one of the developers of Streets of Rage 4, Lizardcube. I don't know if I've ever played a Shinobi game before, but I love The Messenger, which came out a few years ago, and was partially inspired by that game, or games like it, so I definitely want to give it a try. The animation looks so good, and I'm excited to check it out when Shinobi: Art of Vengance comes out on August 29. Sonic Racing Crossworlds was first shown off at the Game Awards a few months ago, just with a few seconds of teaser footage involving Shadow getting into a car and driving into a portal. During this presentation, we got a trailer with just a little more meat on the bones. So far, we've only seen Sonic characters again, but there is more hope for a crossover on the scale of Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed this time around. The trailer began with a fairly basic, but definitely cool, track that mostly looked like a futuristic stadium, but then two rings appear in the air, Shadow flies through the one that drops down to continue the track, and he ends up in a setting reminiscent of the Panzer Dragoon level in Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, and later we see a track that reminds me of the After Burner track from that same game. I'm hoping that we'll see some crossover characters, such as Ulala or Amigo, but at least we did see Jet the Hawk in this trailer, who we really haven't seen in a while. There are definitely some elements of cars transforming in different ways, with Sonic's car getting monster truck wheels, and with Tails's car being able to fly after grabbing a certain power-up. Either way, I'm excited! It looks like a more interesting time than Team Sonic Racing, which isn't exactly a high bar to measure up to, but it is nice to see something of a return to form.

    Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is coming out next Friday, and it was announced that it's getting a demo, coming out on Friday (meaning it's out by the time that you're reading this), which is pretty exciting for folks like me, still unsure about buying it. On top of that, the Like A Dragon series is getting a crossover with Dave the Diver, which sounds like a pretty wild time. Borderlands 4 is coming out in September, and I'm very excited to get a release date. They also announced that they're doing another State of Play between now and then that is just about Borderlands 4, so we can expect to learn a lot about the different Vault Hunters that we can play as, as well as some of the different mechanics. It looks pretty cool for sure! I will definitely be playing that game with some of my friends, maybe even more than once. We got another trailer for Split Fiction which still looks great, and is coming out next month, on March 6! We got a look at gameplay for The Midnight Walk, a horror game designed to look like Claymation. It looks like it's going to be really creepy, so I'm not sure if I'll play it or not, but it looks very unique to say the least! We saw quite a few more games that take place in Feudal Japan, being Warriors Abyss (Shadowdropped yesterday, shortly after the presentation), Onimusha 2 (A remaster of the PS2 game, coming May 23), and Onimusha: The Way of the Sword, which is coming next year. I don't really have any thoughts about any of them, though I do think it's interesting that they made a "Warriors" game with a Rogue-like basis to it. It also is interesting how we're continuing to get more and more games set in Feudal Japan, but that's not the point. 

    We got another trailer for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, which is still looking really impressive. For those not in the know, this is a full remake of the PS2 game, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, definitely gets thrown around in the conversation for best game on the PS2, and was later remastered for the 3DS back in 2012. It was revealed in this new trailer that the "Ape Escape" minigame where Snake had to track down the monkeys in the jungle is coming back in this remaster. Honestly any time that we get a nod to anything Ape Escape related, that's cause for celebration if you ask me, so I'm very excited. Lies of P is a game that I've been playing a lot recently, since it's on Gamepass, so I was interested to see Lies of P Overture, a DLC extension to the original campaign, featuring new abilities and weapons to be announced to be coming out this Summer. It looks like Gepetto's Puppet is going to Pleasure Island this time, so we'll have to keep a sharp eye out, I'm sure. Tides of Annihilation and Metal Eden looked really cool, definitely pretty high octane games that I'll be checking out at some point. I can't be talking about all this all day, so I'll wrap this up with just two more titles that stuck out to me. Dreams of Another seems like a cool game as well, utilizing shooting mechanics to create the world out of a mist instead of just for combat. It's a fitting title for this game, because it definitely looks very dream-like. The last game I have to mention is Saros, which is a new game from Housemarque, the makers of Returnal. It seems like it's going to play similarly to that older title, since this one also seems to be taking place on a planet that's always shifting, and the main character (played by Rahul Kohli), is going through an endless loop watching a sun burn out and taking out enemies that may be somehow connected to that phenomenon.

    That's about all I have, friends. I could probably go on for a while with more of what interested me, but I don't want to keep you here all day! It's a pretty exciting time to be invested in games, which I say a lot, but I really mean it! There are lots of times where I feel like the next big game is just around the corner, and I hope I'm not alone in that thought. Not that we need another game necessarily, but it's nice to get more information about what is going down the pipeline every now and then. 

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I hope you're excited for something coming soon, and if not, I hope there's something that'll be announced really soon that you'll be able to get excited about! Thanks again for all of your support, and I hope you're doing well. Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Games Journalist, and I'll talk to you again soon!