sony

May 2023 Sony State of Play

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Hey Folks! Yesterday was a big Sony State of Play event revealing a good number of games to be released largely in the remainder of this year. It has been a while since I have done a post where I talk about a game presentation so I thought I would do so this morning and cover my personal highlights. There are some big-name games that I am not going to spend much time on. For example, a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 was announced… and given that I hate stealth gameplay that series is very much “not for me”. Similarly, a new Assassin’s Creed game was announced that is supposedly a return to the stealthy gameplay form of the original games… but again… not my jam, and I preferred the more Witcher-3-inspired Open World gameplay.

You can watch the full presentation in the above link, without anyone annoyingly talking over it. Maybe this is just Old Man Bel talking here… but I detest the modern tradition of streamers milking these things for content and giving their moment-to-moment commentary. I’m largely frustrated by this because the Streamer SEO is way better than the official companies and it is much harder to find a “clean” stream link than any number of “talking head” ones. Right now Sony is winning the console power struggle… but that might change rapidly as folks shift to more and more cloud gaming options like Gamepass. At the moment… Sony is well behind the curve in their cloud gaming options and needs to rapidly catch up. However, the majority of the show really plays towards their strength of console domination.

Teardown

The show started off with a rather bland heist game called Fairgame$, but what caught my attention was a voxel destruction-based heist game that appeared not that far after it. I know nothing about Teardown but it looks outrageously fun. The idea of rampant voxel destruction combined with smash-and-grab gameplay looks like it would be a heck of a lot of fun to play. One of the games that I remember the most fondly was Midtown Madness 2, and the “capture the gold” gameplay mode where you had to pick up the loot and make it back to your base before someone crashes into you and steals it back. Teardown looks like it might be a similar style of multiplayer gameplay. I’m on board with this particular brand of nonsense.

Tower of Fantasy

I am calling this one out only because I think it is probably good for the longevity of Tower of Fantasy as a whole. I’ve written at length on this blog about how much I enjoyed my time spent playing TOF. It is my hope that I will be able to link my existing PC account to my PS5… which is not a thing I can do with Genshin Impact given that I played it exactly ONCE on the console and as a result cannot undo the fact I have a different account on the console. I personally liked TOF much better than Genshin Impact, and the pull rates and freebie currency were much more beneficial to the players than a Hoyoverse game. If you’ve never played TOF then you might check it out when it launches here.

Granblue Fantasy Relink

I know next to nothing about the Granblue Fantasy universe because while I have downloaded it a few times… I’ve never really gotten into the mobile game. I am just not much of a mobile gamer at the end of the day. That said I think this game looks awesome and I am looking forward to its release. I greatly enjoy the Genshin-Impact-style action combat gameplay, and based on how many people are gaga for this setting… it would be an interesting way to learn about the world of Granblue Fantasy. That said… this game has been teased for years at this point so I have no real confidence that we will actually see it this year.

Dragon’s Dogma II

I feel like I largely missed the boat with Dragon’s Dogma as a franchise. I’ve attempted to play it a few times and largely enjoyed what I played of it. That said the general clunky nature of the original game… made it hard for me to attach. It is my hope that maybe Capcom has learned a thing or two about system design in the intervening years. However… I also played Monster Hunter World and we loved that game in spite of its completely scuffed UI and multiplayer settings. I am somewhat taking a wait-and-see approach for this one. I will have to see what else I am playing at the time to determine if I am going to give it much attention when it ultimately releases.

Spider-Man 2

Okay, this trailer looks really freaking cool, and I am excited to see Symbiote Peter Parker in action. That said I should probably actually play Spider-Man and Spider-Man Miles Morales before getting too excited about this one. I am not sure why but it has never really been the right time for me to dive into these games, and I should fix that. Essentially it feels like I have homework to do before I can look forward to this game. We will see if that actually happens before it launches. Still looks freaking cool and I dig the setup for Kraven. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out given they are blending a bunch of existing storylines.

Marathon

So this is the fastest I have gone from excited to uninterested in a long while. I am not and have never been an “Apple Guy” and as a result, Marathon is just a piece of gaming history that I have no real context for. I was absolutely a rabid ID Software fan and Bungie devouts have told me that Marathon was effectively “better than Doom in every way”. So when I saw that this funky trailer I was watching was for a reboot of that franchise… I was admittedly pretty pumped. Then those hopes were immediately dashed when I read some more information about the game and saw that it was a: “sci-fi PvP extraction shooter”. I am just completely uninterested in a PVP-only game full stop, no matter how cool the universe looks. After the recent Overwatch 2 debacle… I won’t hold out hope for a PVE version of the game either. I guess I will follow this one from afar.

Alan Wake II

This was one of my highlights of the show, seeing more footage of the continuation of the Alan Wake story. I’ve become a zealot of the “Remedyverse” and I am so on board with more of this game and more of the funky shared universe they have created across multiple titles. I did not love the flashlight gameplay of the first Alan Wake game, and I am happy to see folks roaming around with more “traditional” weapons in this game. I have so much hope for this title and I am ready to geek out about the deep lore of this series once again. I want even more entangling with Control which is my favorite of the games in this series. I would LOVE it if the agent we see in the trailer crosses paths with the Federal Bureau of Control or even Director Faden herself. So pumped folks!

Revenant Hill

This was the highlight of the show for me. I love beyond love A Night in the Woods, and this is from a studio created by the two remaining creators of that game. The cat that you see in the trailer has deep Mae vibes and there is absolutely a statue from NitW about 10 seconds in. I have no clue if this will actually connect up to that game, or if those are just easter eggs for the faithful… but whatever the case I am here for it. If you have not played A Night in the Woods, please stop whatever you are doing and proceed directly to whatever platform you probably already own it for thanks to copious giveaways. It was a relatively short game and honestly… I kinda hope this one is as well. In reading there are books that I consider a “comfy read” or a “light read” and NitW was sort of the gaming equivalent of that. I really need to mix in more games like that as palette cleansers between my bigger titles.

The Not-Vita-2

On an investor call on Tuesday, CEO Jim Ryan indicated that Sony was about to announce some aggressive plans for cloud gaming. When you combine this with the fact that in the show they announced Project Q a game streaming handheld… my guess is that Sony is about to make a bigger play for the Gamepass/XCloud market share. The biggest problem with that is that right now… their product offering is pretty lousy. I have access to the rebranded PlayStation Now which is now confusingly called PlayStation Plus… and it isn’t that great. The gameplay hitches constantly and there is zero support for auto-resuming your last progress like you can with XCloud. Fundamentally if Sony wants to make a play for this market they need to update their infrastructure and improve their overall product offering.

That is not to say that they can’t do precisely this… and honestly, I HOPE they do. What I want from Sony is the ability to stream every single game that I own on my account over a PC or Mobile device with full access to the latest save state for all of them. That said I likely won’t be buying this device that looks like Earl from R&D sawed a PS5 controller in half and J-B Welded it to an Android Tablet. A device like this needs to come in around $100 for it to really be successful, and knowing Sony we are probably looking at another $300 appendage to an already $500 console. Until then it will just be better to keep buying cheap Android devices for this purpose.

What were your favorites?

I am sure I missed some that were crowd favorites. Like I did not talk about the Destiny 2 expansion trailer that shows the return of Cayde-6. I am not entirely certain how I feel about that one. If they can bring back a character that they spent so much time killing off… maybe they can bring back all of that content that I paid for that is now cut from the game. I’m largely checked out of Destiny 2 so I didn’t spend much time on this one. What were some of the games that I did not talk about that excited you? Drop me a line below. I think for the most part it was a very strong showing for Sony, and with the news coming out that it is likely going to be three or more years before exclusives release on PC… I guess I will have to suck it up and learn to enjoy playing on a console with a controller so I can experience some of these games.

AggroChat #425 – Check Your Filter

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Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Tonight we start off with some light discussion about Guild Wars 2 and more specifically the new patch that dropped on the 28th including a brand new map called Gyala Delve.  We talk briefly about wrapping up Diablo 3 Season 28 and looking forward to the Last Epoch Multiplayer patch landing next Thursday.  We talk a bit about Microsoft getting to subpoena Sony for records about their practice of paying companies to keep games from GamePass.  We also talk about the practice of corporate write-downs and how Wizards of the Coast and Funko have gotten caught throwing massive amounts of product in landfills recently.  From there we have a sort of rapid-fire discussion of a bunch of mech names, namely Mechwarrior Online, the upcoming Armored Core game, and Mass Builder.

Topics Discussed:

  • Guild Wars 2
    • Gyala Delve Content Drop
  • Diablo 3 Season 28 Finished
  • Last Epoch Multiplayer Patch on 3/9
  • Phantom Brigade
  • Beating Wagon World
  • Microsoft gets to Supoena Sony
  • Wizards and Funko Land Fill Disposals
  • Mechwarrior Online
  • Armored Core
  • Mass Builder

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Snagging Playstation Plus Games

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Playstation Network Trick

This is a trick that my good friend Ashgar showed me some time ago, and I have talked a bit on the blog… but given several comments from my twitter feed I thought it was probably time to create a dedicated blog post about it.  One of the awesome things about Playstation Plus is the way that it synergizes between all of the available Sony platforms.  For the longest time I had only a Playstation 3, but had even intent of some day picking up both a Vita and a PS4.  At one point I think I was lamenting having to go upstairs and log in my PS3 because I had forgotten to grab that months free games.  It was then that Ash shared with me that you could in fact log in through the Playstation Network website and not only grab games for the systems you owned but also for everything that was currently available.  What was great about this is that for several months ahead of picking up my Vita and PS4 I was able to start stockpiling a library of games to play on it, so when I finally purchased them I had more than enough content to keep me interested.

PSN_PlaystationPlusGames

Having done this now for a couple of years… I have to say the Sony Network site is less than easy to navigate.  Since their site is somewhat resistant to deep linking, I sorted out the best path to get to where I needed to go in a matter of clicks.  As a way of demonstrating the path, I threw together a quick image.  Once logged into the website, from the site header click the “Games” tab in the menu bar.  On the next screen that loads click “Playstation Plus” which is confusing because there is also a Playstation Plus Specials option that doesn’t really lead where you want to go.  Finally on the next page click “Free Games” which will then get you to the area of that months games.  Now something I have noticed is that it sometimes takes a few days for the PS+ titles of the month to show up in this section.  From here it is simply a matter of adding all of the games to your cart and checking out.  The games will all have a $0 price on them, but you still have to formally check out with them to get them added to your account.  If you encounter games saying that you are “not eligible” generally speaking that means the game supports cross buy and you only need to have one copy of the game for it to work on all platforms.  The store however will be showing a separate copy of the game for each platform it is available on.  Go ahead and check out with what is available, and if you refresh the page all of the games should then show up as “Purchased” like the below screenshot.

PSN_FreeGames

Game With Gold As Well

The other thing I have realized is that this sort of trick works with Games with Gold from Microsoft as well.  Their system of releases is a little bit more fiddly as they seem to like to stagger them throughout the month, and when the next batch is released you generally lose access to the previous batch.  I have however been successfully adding Xbox One games to my account, without actually owning an Xbox One.  I figure at some point I will pick one up, and it will be nice to have a huge batch of games to play on it when I do.  The quirk with Games With Gold is that you have to check out with them individually, and often it still shows a price tag associated with the game… until you get to the final step of the checkout process.  Hopefully this post helps some folks out, because it is nice knowing that you can quickly snag your months worth of games without booting up the individual consoles.

E3 2015 Day Zero

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Microsoft E3 2015

MinecraftHololens Yesterday was a huge day of E3 shows with Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft and Sony all strutting their stuff with big press conferences.  While I still stand by my statement yesterday, that Bethesda software is winning this E3, everyone involved had some interesting things to show off.  Mainly for me this is the year that Microsoft figured out how to do a relevant press conference.  The past two years since the announcement of the Xbox One have provided extremely awkward and disconnected moments, but for the most part Microsoft nailed it this time around.  They provided a wide scope of games to appeal to all genres, and while I don’t believe in their exclusivity after seeing titles appear on steam months later, I do feel like they are trying really hard to wrap up a large stable of winners as far as software goes.  The big title that I am interested in is the new Tomb Raider game, which makes me realize that I really need to finish the last Tomb Raider game.

I’ve never been a huge Halo fan , but even I have to admit that the Halo Guardians demo looked pretty amazing.  The title I was most amped about seeing again however was The Division, since we had not really seen much since the last E3.  It seems like now we have a pseudo release date and a beta beginning towards the end of this year.  My big concern was with the lackluster showing of Destiny so far, that this title might have simply quietly been cancelled.  Thankfully that is not the case, and we will be exploring a new action role-playing game setting early next year.  The video that takes the cake however for Microsoft is the Hololens demo showing off a special Hololens version of Minecraft.  The more I see of Hololens the more I think it is going to be a real force in gaming, and not just another gimmick hoping to find a Market.  Virtual Reality headsets extract you from the world, and Augmented Reality keeps you interactive with the world…  I think that is going to make a big difference.  The little I have played with the Occulus Rift was cool, but I suffered a pretty massive headache and was dizzy as hell as my mind tried to readjust to the “real world” after being in the unit for only around fifteen minutes.  I cannot imagine what it would be like after some of my marathon gaming sessions.

EA and UbiSoft E3 2015

As good as Microsoft did with their press conference, EA doubled that effort in the opposite direction.  The entire thing was this awkward and disjointed mess trying to play towards too many different demographics and just coming off as frustrating to I believe all of them.  The biggest frustration for me personally was the fact that this press conference was about one thing for me… getting to see the new Mass Effect game.  We got a minute and a half trailer…  and that was quite literally all we saw of Mass Effect.  Similarly with Mirrors Edge Catalyst… the game so many people have been amped to hear more news about…  we got a two minute trailer.  It seems that all EA actually cares about is peddling the new years edition of the same damned sports titles they have been selling for decades.  From what I can tell roughly an hour of the presentation was tied up in these sports titles with blips at the beginning and the end about something interesting.  I do have to say though that Star Wars Battlefront still looks amazing, however I have had that on preorder from the Playstation network since the Fan Fest announcement.  They didn’t really need to sell me on that title, but I am looking forward to it all the same.

UbiSoft on the other hand unleashed a whole bunch of interesting stuff.  We are apparently going to colonize the moon in Anno 2205, which looked amazing.  They are releasing a version of Trials Fusion where you apparently play a cat that rides a flame breathing unicorn.  We got to see even more staged footage of The Division, this time centering around the “Dark Zone”PVP area.  The game I never thought I would be interested in however was Ghost Recon Wildlands, which for all intents and purposes seems to be their answer to the Just Cause franchise.  Big open world game where you take on drug lords in whatever fashion you see fit.  It looks like it is going to be extremely fun in the same way that I lost serious amounts of time to Just Cause 2.  The real triumph of the show however is that Aisha Tyler is amazing, and I want her to host every press conference from this point on.  Additionally they brought out Angela Basset at one point, who is the absolute badass mocapped leader of the new Rainbow Six.  While there was not a whole lot that I was extremely interested in, it was nonetheless a good show or at least looked amazing as compared to the train wreck that was EA.

Sony E3 2015

ff7remake_cloud Finally we wrapped up the night of E3 events last night with the Sony Press conference, and honestly even hours afterwards I am not 100% sure how well it went.  They dropped some massive bomb shells on the crowd, but it only really plays to the folks who were already PS4 fans.  Ultimately the goal of an E3 press conference for both Microsoft and Sony is to sell hardware, and at the end of the day I end up with the same equation.  Most Xbox One exclusives also come out on the PC, and I own a fairly solid gaming PC.  Most PS4 exclusives don’t, and as a result that is the hardware I chose to buy.  This years game conference only serves to give me more reasons to be happy with my decision.  The show lead off with finally giving a date to a game many had just expected got cancelled…  The Last Guardian.  This game was originally slotted for the PS3, and it was questionable if it had survived the generation hop.  The big reveal of the night however is that Final Fantasy 7 is in fact getting a Remake.  It was glorious to see at least glimpses of Cloud and Barret as they moved past the camera in all their ps4 glory.

18225727733_fb611b7f50_z The title that both came from out of nowhere and stole the show for me however was Horizon Zero Dawn from Guerilla games.  This apparently ushers in a brand new breed of post apocalyptic storytelling, that manages to do so without weaving in a zombie premise.  We live in what seems like a Clan of the Cave Bear like setting, until we see the first giant robot roaming the landscape.  This is Turok the Dinosaur hunter, meets Last of Us, meets Zoids.  We get to see the female bow hunter protagonist take down a giant robot t-rex like creature.  As Tam commented during the stream, we have apparently gotten really good at making fighting giant monsters seem awesome.  Had I not already purchased a PS4, this would have been the title that sold me the console.  I am really hoping this ends up being a vast open world landscape that lets us wander around and explore, hunting the big game and unfolding what happened during “the darkness” that lead to the machines roaming the earth.  There were of course other titles announced that looked great, and that I will likely play, however at six in the morning… the day after the show…  the Sony conference was all about FF7 and Horizon for me.  You can check out the full show trailer below.