Playstation 5 Titles Part 1

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jun 16, 2020

Filed under: Industry Events 131 comments

Last Thursday Sony had a livestream event where they showed off their next-gen console and their upcoming lineup of games. If you missed the event and are in the mood to watch three hours of gaudy salesmanship, then here it is:


Link (YouTube)

Dear IGN, Gamestop, and other sites that have the permission / connections to upload this footage to YouTube: Is it too much to ask that you throw this video into an editor and chop off the initial FORTY MINUTES of bumper footage? That huge block of nothing is a pain in the ass to scan through, particularly for people using mobile devices. I’d do it myself, but the last time I uploaded an industry event I was peppered with a flood of endless copyright claims regarding tiny snatches of barely-audible music, and also from major publishers who didn’t want me to show people their advertisements. The claims dragged on for weeks after the fact. You folks evidently have special dispensation, or you’ve got dedicated staff to deal with this. In any case, since you’ve been entrusted with this data, please be responsible with it and make it convenient for the masses. Okay? Thanks.

In any case, the PlayStation 5 reveal event showed us a whopping 25 new titles. That’s an awful lot for a new console. I don’t think the PlayStation 3 had that many titles in its first year. Here are my thoughts on what Sony had to show…

Grand Theft Auto V: Aw shit. Here we go again

This screenshot is from the PC version and not the upcoming Playstation 5 version, which is fine since THEY ARE COMPLETELY INDISTINGUISHABLE.
This screenshot is from the PC version and not the upcoming Playstation 5 version, which is fine since THEY ARE COMPLETELY INDISTINGUISHABLE.

So GTA V is the new Skyrim: The ancient, once-popular game that gets ported everywhere, in an effort to milk that popularity for all it’s worth. It looks like you’ll get the game for free on Playstation 5, where “free” has a bunch of qualifying asterisks that I’m too lazy and disinterested to decipher.

What I found obnoxious is that the game looks exactly the same. They went to all the trouble of leading the PS5 reveal with this GTA V trailer, and the game looks identical to how it looked in 2013. Fine, do a lazy re-release. But if that’s all you’re doing, then why is it one of the headlining titles for your next-gen console? Why are you trying to sell me next-gen hardware using a game that looks unchanged from 2013? You couldn’t even throw in an HD texture boost? 

Of course, all of this is just to make sure people keep coming to the obnoxious GTA Online cash shop after the next-gen jump. Gross.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

We need a name for the dread you feel when you know an upcoming game is going to disappoint you but you know you're going to buy it anyway. Maybe 'Preemptive Buyer's Remorse?'
We need a name for the dread you feel when you know an upcoming game is going to disappoint you but you know you're going to buy it anyway. Maybe 'Preemptive Buyer's Remorse?'

I was very positive on the 2018 Spider-Man game and I even named it my GOTY for 2018. Yes, it had some rather flagrant structural problems with the story, and the gameplay needed refinement. At the time, I assumed this was something that would get smoothed out in subsequent efforts.

Sure, the secondary villains were a bit of a mess, but the main villain was really good. Some of this story probably came together at the last minute and maybe their plans were tripped up by external studio politicsLike Sony Studio’s flailing around trying to create a cinematic universe with their collection of B-list Spider-Man supporting characters.. There was enough good in the first story that I figured the team just needed to work the bugs out.

But then I watched the Silver Sable DLC on YouTube, and I no longer think this is a good storytelling team that made a couple of mistakes. Instead, this looks more like a broken clock that managed to be right twice a day.

Sure, the main game gave Silver Sable a character arc that wasn’t set up, didn’t make sense, and failed to give the character a reason to be in the story, but like I said… maybe we can blame that on studio politics? 

But then here comes the DLC that not only fails to patch any of these problems, it clumsily walks back that undeserved character arc and then doubles down on every blunder that made the character so annoying in the first place. There’s no indication that the team realized their mistakes, which suggests they’re going to keep making them.

Fine, made a dull generic villain. Make her an obnoxious and smug jackass that wins by writer fiat in every cutscene. Make her a dumb incompetent hypocrite. Give her an unearned personality switch at the end of the game and then undo that switch in the DLC. That’s annoying and lazy, but whatever.

But do not make Spider-Man long for the friendship and approval of a brutish fascist thug. You can have them team up out of necessity, but Spider-Man should never be this morally blind without a really spectacular explanation. The game kept showing us that Sable was a treacherous, murderous, trigger-happy hypocritical jackass that puts her self-interest above the lives of innocent civilians, but then Spider-Man behaves as though she’s just a really grouchy hero. That’s not just annoying, that’s wrong. You can’t do this with Spider-Man. This level of moral blindness destroys his character, which is built around the idea of always doing the right thing despite the personal cost. 

I’ll probably play the new Spider-Man, but if this writerAgain, I realize we’re actually talking about a team of people, but I don’t know who to point the finger at and it doesn’t matter. is going to mess up Miles Morales the same way they messed up Peter Parker, then I’m going to bitch and moan the whole way through this sequel. I find this sort of thing to be extremely off-putting because it attacks the very thing I look for in this genre of fiction, and this hero in particular.

Then again, maybe the PS5 will retail for $Ridiculous and I’ll end up skipping this game because it’s a platform exclusive. I guess we’ll see.

Gran Turismo

We're STILL having trouble making photorealistic humans in realtime, but we've gotten really good at cars.
We're STILL having trouble making photorealistic humans in realtime, but we've gotten really good at cars.

I was confused the whole time I was watching this trailer. I kept waiting for something to HAPPEN. There were no crashes. No crazy stunts. No explosions. No voice-over dialog from characters talking about how everything is on the line and you need to push yourself to the limit. No sexy girls starting the race. No antagonist. No drama at all. It was just cars driving quickly and uneventfully through a very pretty course. 

Then I saw the GT logo and it all made sense. This is what Gran Turismo is all about. While it looks like a typical racing game, it actually has more in common with Microsoft Flight Simulator than with Need for Speed and Burnout

This is not my series, but I’m glad it’s staying true to itself. They didn’t add any of the crap I mentioned two paragraphs ago. It’s surprising devs can still make something that dry and technical in this day and age, but also kind of encouraging. 

Destruction Allstars

I SAID, I CAN'T HEAR YOUR SALES PITCH OVER THE CASH REGISTER SOUNDS THIS DLC IS MAKING.
I SAID, I CAN'T HEAR YOUR SALES PITCH OVER THE CASH REGISTER SOUNDS THIS DLC IS MAKING.

This doesn’t look like a game, it looks like a platform for selling overpriced cosmetic items. Now you can pay to customize your character AND your car!

Publisher: Are you trying to make an Overwatch clone, a Fortnite clone, or a Rocket League clone?

Developer: Yes.

Me: Whatever. 

I look forward to ignoring this when it comes out. I have no interest in the game, but it might serve as a useful shorthand symbol for “everything wrong with the industry these days”.

Goodbye Volcano High  

I have questions about how reproduction works in this world where every character seems to be a member of a different species. Actually, nevermind. I don't want to know.
I have questions about how reproduction works in this world where every character seems to be a member of a different species. Actually, nevermind. I don't want to know.

Huh. A story of humanoid animals, stuck in the void between adolescence and adulthood. It looks like the main character is a young woman from a small town who is part of an indie band. This reminds me of Night in the Woods, although I’m willing to bet the similarities are strictly superficial. I’d be very surprised if Goodbye Volcano High was about supernatural cults.

Although, I wouldn’t mind knowing what it is about. The trailer was all mood and no story, so we’re going to have to wait a while to know what kind of game this is.

Hitman III

Well, looks like death is going to have to keep waiting, because the game isn't due for seven more months.
Well, looks like death is going to have to keep waiting, because the game isn't due for seven more months.

So IO Interactive is going to self-publish this one? Square Enix published the 2016 quasi-reboot, and Warner Brothers published Hitman 2 in 2018. Also, what’s up with this naming scheme?

  1. Hitman
  2. Hitman 2
  3. Hitman III

Dear IO Interactive: If you’re going to do this sort of thing, then you need to go all-in. I suggest…

  • Hitm4n
  • Hitman the Fifth
  • Hit Six
  • Hitman: Seventh Coming
  • OctoHit
  • The Hitman
  • Hitman: Origins
  • And then the 11th game in this series would be called… Hitman X!

Come on, IO Interactive. You’re self-publishing now. Embrace the stupidity. Nobody can stop you. DO IT.

Demon’s Souls Remaster

So these souls belong to demons? Doesn't that make them really dark?
So these souls belong to demons? Doesn't that make them really dark?

This is Obviously Not My Thing, but I am interested to hear what diehard SoulsBorne fans think of it. The name of Demon’s Souls isn’t invoked very often when discussing this series / genre. Informally, I get the impression that the original Dark Souls is where this sort of game really hit its stride. It feels like Demon’s Souls is to Dark Souls as Catacomb 3-D is to Doom: It was a necessary intermediate step in the creation of a new genre that doesn’t really hold up the way its descendants do. 

Or maybe I’m reading this wrong. Are people excited for this?

Death Loop

I think that 'Bethesda Softworks Presents' is basically a warning label at this point.
I think that 'Bethesda Softworks Presents' is basically a warning label at this point.

On one hand, this looks like a fun idea for a game: Two assassins caught in a time loop, endlessly trying to kill each other. On the other hand, Bethesda is the publisher, and they have a horrible track record lately. The last few Wolfenstein games have been a mess. Fallout 76 was a disaster of broken technology, broken promises, and rapacious monetization. Rage 2 was tepid dreck. Their recent mobile offerings have been cynical and underwhelming.

I guess Doom Eternal was okay, although their batting average remains abysmal. I’ll check out Death Loop because I like the look of it, but I’d be surprised if the publisher didn’t find a way to annoy and disappoint us.

So that’s a handful of the titles Sony had to show us. Okay, I didn’t really comment on the games themselves. Instead I used them as a launching point for a bunch of random tangents. Whatever. I’ll talk about the rest of the games later in the week.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Like Sony Studio’s flailing around trying to create a cinematic universe with their collection of B-list Spider-Man supporting characters.

[2] Again, I realize we’re actually talking about a team of people, but I don’t know who to point the finger at and it doesn’t matter.



From The Archives:
 

131 thoughts on “Playstation 5 Titles Part 1

  1. DeadlyDark says:

    No, no, no, we need to have Hitman’s Eleven somewhere in there!

    1. Adam Faulconbridge says:

      That should be DLC for Hitman III

    2. Philadelphus says:

      OctoHit

      The wacky Hitman-Octodad crossover you never knew you wanted!

      1. hewhosaysfish says:

        Nobody supspects a thing!

        1. BlueHorus says:

          Nobody suspects a thing!

          I came here to make this exact joke. Good on you, hewhosaysfish.

          In other news, I would play the absolute hell out of a Octodad-Hitman crossover game…

        2. Philadelphus says:

          I’m kicking myself for not having thought of that, so thank you. These continued joke chains are of the things I most enjoy reading these comments. :)

      2. Chuk says:

        Octodad was in the itch.io BLM fundraising bundle, perfect excuse to play it for $5.

    3. Content Consumer says:

      The twelfth game would be…

      Hitman: Revenge of the Return of the Son of Hitman: The Final Confrontation: Revelations

      And the thirteenth game would be a reboot just titled “Hitman” again.

      1. Decius says:

        H1tman.

        1. Ninety-Three says:

          If it keeps going long enough, H17man.

    4. Jeff says:

      The 11th Hitman game should be properly called Hitman 11, except the font used will have “1”s indistinguishable from “I”s. Thus Hitman II.

      1. Lino says:

        And after that, they can just call it a day and use cuneiform. That way people will not only be confused which entry in the franchise we’re on, but it will also be nigh-on impossible to type the name in an online discussion!

  2. Dev Null says:

    I love being outside the target market of an ad campaign. They explain to me in excruciating detail why under no circumstances should I even consider buying their product, and I agree with them, and then we part ways amicably. All good. Are their any rumours about the PSix yet?

  3. Liam says:

    I’ll be getting it just for GT7 :)

    You’re correct in saying the title has stayed close to its roots; It’s what makes it enticing and refreshing!

    To give some context, my dream car has always been the Mazda MX5 (Miata in the US). I fnally bought one in 2001.

    By some stroke of fortune, after I bought my MX5, I ended up (back in the PS2 days) at a playstation Gran Turismo lan party with Bob Hall, ex motoring journalist, the guy who came up with the idea for the MX5 and worked with Mazda to develop it, and who lived in Sydney, working for Wheels Magazine at the time. His wife was Japanese, and he’d spent a lot of time there, including lots of visits to polyphony digital. He had all sorts of cool cars that weren’t released with the game (mostly MX5s funnily enough; a surprising number of PD staff drove them, and all their personal cars were modelled. NA MX5s with roof down, fully modelled interiors including aftermarket seats and harnesses). He even had an NA MX5 with the 26B quad rotor from the 787B in it. It was hilarious!

    I’ve owned every GT except for GT Sport; the online only e-sports nature of it and the lack of car mods meant a lack of interest for me.

    I’m excited to see the used car section return too!

    In terms of other titles that looked cool or intersting, I liked the idea of Stray, the aesthetics of Kena: Bridge Of Spirits, and the insane load times displayed by Ratchet and Clank

    1. Cynic says:

      tbh, I felt the coverage of that one was really unfair. I’ve been through multiple Gran Tourismo games.

      They have never been my thing, and I worked hard at them, first with the controller, and then the much superior steering wheel setup. The MX5 was the first car I used in that one. I had a cherry red one with metallic blue rims, that never went quite as fast as I would like no matter how I modified it.

      GT is not a game that needs explosions or shit like that, and criticising it on that is super unfair. It’s a realistic driving and racing sim, where the results of races come down to learning to perform corners and maneuvers perfectly, without losing speed, and driving in realistic ways-you don’t lose because your car EXPLODED, you lose because you braked too gently during your deceleration in a corner, and lost your racing line, potentially going into the rough, or because you pushed it too hard and entered a corner at too high a speed.

      And there’s been basically one per Playstation console generation for more than a decade, and they’ve always been the flagship racing game.

      1. Shamus says:

        “GT is not a game that needs explosions or shit like that, and criticising it on that is super unfair.”

        Are you talking about my article? Because I very clearly and obviously did not criticize the game for that.

  4. noga says:

    Hitman are useing the exact complement of Naughty Dog’s Jak series. I find it lovely.
    Then again, if theyv’e used Roman Numerals for Hitman 2, it would have been easier to difrentiate it from 2: silent assassin.

  5. Wangwang says:

    Apparently death fill his quota with the pandamic and assasination would have to wait for its turn.

  6. Olivier FAURE says:

    DeathLoop looks like the kind of concept Arkane Studios would be really well-suited for. I’m curious to see how they pull it off.

    1. John says:

      Yeah, I thought Shamus would be more excited about a new game from the makers of Prey.

      1. Thomas says:

        With what sounds like the gameplay mechanic of Prey: Mooncrash

        1. Zekiel says:

          I’m a bit sad about that. Mooncrash didn’t really appeal to me in spite of having adored Arkane’s Prey. There’s something about a lack of saving that really changes the game, and not in a good way from my perspective. I find the whole thing more anxiety-inducing, and it disincentivises you from doing any experimenting – I just end up doing the safest thing all the time. Which is realistic, but not as fun. Deathloop looks like it’ll be the same.

          Which is a shame since the style looks great, and I was surprised (I don’t know why) that the gameplay looked exactly like Dishonored 2 (which is not a bad thing).

          1. Decius says:

            You don’t have to save, because you never lose.

      2. Simplex says:

        > Yeah, I thought Shamus would be more excited about a new game from the makers of Prey.

        Same here. It almost sounded like he did not notice it’s Arkane and focused on Bethesda being publisher.

        1. Shamus says:

          Total truth: I’m really disappointed we aren’t getting more Prey.

          Making another Prey game would make NO financial sense, and making new IP is always a good thing. And this game looks cool and has a unique premise and style. And it would be massively small-minded of me to demand another sequel instead of a new franchise. After years of bitching about running games into the ground and milking IPs, I didn’t know how to comment on this without sounding like a MASSIVE hypocrite.

          But damn it, I REALLY liked Prey.

          1. MerryWeathers says:

            Guess you could pray for another Prey amirite?

            1. Geebs says:

              Speaking of which Praey for the Gods, the early access SotC / BotW mash-up which had to change its name because Bethesda got litigious, is shaping up really nicely considering it’s made by a three man indie team.

              1. Dalisclock says:

                I’ve had that in my Steam Wishlist for years now. The only thing that’s been keeping it there is that(with very, very few exceptions) I’m not really Keen on Early Access. It’s really hard for me to shake the idea I’m buying on potential and that any flaws with the game can be handwaved away with “It’s not complete yet”. Which just leads me to “Cool, call me when it’s complete. If it looks good, I’ll buy it and judge it then”.

  7. Contribu Tor says:

    Hey, Shamus, did you know YouTube supports linking to a specific spot in a video? Just append a time parameter to the url.

    One site with a clear and simple explanation:
    https://www.h3xed.com/web-and-internet/link-to-a-specific-time-in-a-youtube-video

    1. Steve C says:

      That tends to not work well in embeded videos. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Either way it is completely useless if you want to add your own personal commentary on top of it though. Which Shamus has done in the past.

      1. Contribu Tor says:

        Embedding is always a potential challenge because the variety of ways to do it.

        That said, this is a wordpress site, and I’ve never had an issue with embedded videos with timestampts on wordpress. But YMMV.

        Putting a commentary or other track over the top is a whole nother kettle of fish. But the issue Shamus complains about here is the need to fast forward through the dreck to get to the good part, and I’d argue that specific issue has mostly (though not always) working solutions in place that don’t require the effort of downloading, editing, and reuploading hours of HD footage.

  8. MerryWeathers says:

    I guess I’m the only one who thought Deathloop was the best game shown in the event, mainly because of that great trailer and it was the only AAA+ game that actually showed gameplay (which looked fun).

    Arkane must be under some kind of curse that pushes most of their games into obscurity.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      I want Deathloop to be good. On the one hand it’s Arkane (but do studio names even mean anything nowadays?), and the concept is interesting (though it’s somewhat vague how it’s going to be handled exactly), the space shown feels a touch cramped compared to Dishonored but there is a touch of surreality to the aesthetics… On the other hand we’ve seen the character kill a few people pacing around, do one of those Dishonored leaps and get sniped? I’m still not sure what kind of game it’s supposed to be, doesn’t feel as empowering as Dishonored gameplay but the trailer also gives me neither a “you’re being stalked” vibe nor “you’re two demigods duelling” vibe… I just don’t know what I’m even expected to feel about the game to be honest.

      1. Lino says:

        It seems kind of like a roguelite – what with the 8 targets, and constant reset-by-death. But the prevalence of the chick assassin seems like it’s going to be multiplayer. So a multiplayer roguelite Dishonored? But I still don’t understand how breaking the loop is going to work, as you can’t really “beat” a multiplayer game. So it might just be single player with a very smart AI assassin as the chick?

        I don’t know. But I sure love the 60’s spy aesthetic. I hope it’s more prevalent in the game as well, not only in menus, as that’s the feel I get from the trailers.

        1. MerryWeathers says:

          Basically kill all eight targets before midnight and avoid the assassin.

          You can choose if the assassin can be controlled by an A.I. or a player. Interestingly, the assassin can kill enemies and disguise herself as an NPC. I bet there’s going to be that one cheeky guy who’ll lure the player into a false sense of security before killing them at the last second.

          The game is basically a resurrection of the cancelled Crossing game that Arkane was making a decade ago, it has a similar concept.

          1. Lino says:

            Well, then, colour me even more intrigued than I originally was! Now, if there’s an actual interesting story, then this is definitely a game I’ll be watching!

      2. NotetheCode says:

        but do studio names even mean anything nowadays?

        From what I read, Arkane has two studios, one in Austin, US and the other in Lyon, France. Arkane Lyon worked previously on Dishonored 2, while Arkane Austin worked on Prey. And it’s Arkane Lyon which is working on Deathloop.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          I think I’d be fine with a game from either of those, I meant more in the sense of constantly changing staff, ownerships and publishers.

          1. NotetheCode says:

            I don’t know about the staff (one would need to go digging in the credits of the recent games Arkane had worked on), but it seems that it’s stable in Arkane’s case, since their owner and publisher hasn’t changed for nearly 10 years.

  9. Mattias42 says:

    Demon’s Souls was rather rough around the edges, but at the time there was really no other game like it. Big part of why it got such a cult-following, me thinks. Even the later Souls & Bloodborne weren’t quite so bold and crazy in spots, but obviously way more cohesive and polished.

    Judging by just the trailer I must admit I’m a bit torn on the graphic ‘upgrade.’ The original has this really cool mix of heavy, at times pitch black darkness, and this really heavy bloom. Made the game have this dream-like, nightmarish bleak shimmer to it that set this oppressive mood. Personally, I think it still holds up, now almost two generations later. While the new look is way more clean, letting you actually see the enemy and area designs in all their gothic glory.

    It’s kinda reminds me of that one dude at the set of Alien that tried pushing for floodlights on set, because nobody is going to be able to tell quite what’s going on. And… he wasn’t wrong, but dead wrong at the same time, you know?

    SO… yeah, a bit of a vibe that this remaster is missing the point a bit, but I’m still cautiously optimistic.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      I had no idea that trailer was for Demon’s Souls until the name drop and I was all “huh, someone is really trying to capture that Dark Souls feel”. I’d actually be pretty excited to play it… so wake me up when it comes to the PC. Now as for the game’s status in the series in my experience it’s… weird? It definitely has a die hard following, I’ve seen a few people essentially call it “the Dark Souls of the Souls series”, and I’ve also seen some people mention it’s a bit buggy, janky and exploitable but always with a sort of endearment… but the thing is it’s been very few people. Even the “you must play Dark Souls, playing Dark Souls proves your worth as a gamer and a human being” crowd tend to be quiet about it. It’s like in the soulslike household Demon’s Souls is this ancient patriarch-progenitor who lives in a separate wing, whose name nobody speaks and who does not meddle with the rest of the family yet still holds some kind of occult power over them, and the few who go there either disappear or join this mysterious cabal that shares some secret but is not telling.

      1. Thomas says:

        I always figured it’s exclusivity held it back from it’s place in the Dark Souls conscious – although Bloodbourne is very much part of the equation, so maybe that isn’t enough.

        1. galacticplumber says:

          One was a reasonably obscure first push that was platform exclusive. The other was a BIG different push with system seller coverage. Basically exclusivity is bane/boon for exposure based on circumstance, as opposed to simply bane.

        2. JakeyKakey says:

          The crucial thing is that FromSoftware already had a dedicated multi-platform fanbase by that point. When Bloodborne came out, it was either a thing you loved as a PS3 Souls fan or a thing you were envious of as a non-PS3 Souls fan.

      2. Cynic says:

        It’s a two console removed exclusive from before the games began hitting their stride when it came to fluidity of combat.

        Of course it hasn’t the same reach as the multi-platform, more polished sequels.

        Who’s going to buy a PS3 just to play the precursor to Dark Souls that is uglier than 90% of Unity Cashgrab games on Steam that were abandoned 2 months into development, where the gameplay is both unbalanced and clunky, and yet somehow, less challenging because you are obliged to grind for healing and get an essentially infinite number-it’s worse than the healing gems in DS2, because in DS2, once you got your adjustability up, you really didn’t need gems unless you wanted to try something, or really were having that much trouble-so you would BUY some that were good enough-whereas Demon’s Souls literally just has you farm it as a default-ain’t nobody stopping you grabbing a few extra and trivialising things. One who’s multiplayer literally used region stats of the deaths of OTHER PLAYERS to control the descent of your world into darkness, and as a correlary: The difficulty of the game and the spawn rates-FUCKING STUPID AYE. Everything wrong with Dark Souls 2? Came DIRECTLY from Demon Souls baby! Kind of makes me want to love it as someone with a soft spot for DS2, but every mistake they made in that game came from copying mistakes from Demon’s Souls.

        It’s the broken bastard that somehow became a king and spawned a line going generations-call it the Athelstan of Dark Souls. It’s in desperate need of an update, and I’m glad it’ll see one. It’s the version of the game for people who would be into eurojank and exploitable games and modding Bethesda titles, but spent that console generation on the doomed PS3 instead of building PCs. People deserve a version of this game with the worst ideas removed, and maybe some balancing to remove exploits and restore challenge.

        1. RandomInternetCommenter says:

          “Who’s going to buy a PS3 just to play the precursor to Dark Souls”

          I did, and I don’t regret one penny out of my purchase. Soysauce explains it well further down in the comments. If you’re looking for a combat game with replayability, challenging your twitch skills and with a healthy multiplayer component, DeS is pointless compared to the newest entries. But for someone who wanted more of the exploration/atmospheric/puzzle vibe from DS 1, DeS hit the spot.

    2. AzzyGaiden says:

      As someone who’s only tangentially familiar with Soulsborne and has a Shamus-like aversion to the series to begin with, what struck me about the Demon’s Souls was how generic all the monsters looked. The monster designs in the other games have this characteristically elegant, graceful, yet also grotesque and otherworldly look. But these guys look like Doom expats, which I suppose makes sense given that From hadn’t yet hit its stride, design-wise. But it does somewhat temper the grandeur for me, a person who isn’t going to play the game anyway.

      1. Cynic says:

        The fact that they still did the thing where the monsters have a light source in their midsection where targetting hits, yet it’s OOPS ALL BLOOM really makes it hideous. Feels like a Doom game where you never get to the high level monsters outside of boss fights that are also HIDEOUS.

    3. Cynic says:

      Trust me: it doesn’t. The bloom is obnoxiously bad, just incompetent-it’s like everyone ate a tab of radium before smearing vaseline on the camera lens, and the models are gross.

      The game was in drastic need of an update. Truly hideous, one of the most ugly popular games ever made, ESPECIALLY on the bloom front. If the update stays in line with the remake of Dark Souls (Which, admittedly, changed less of the atmosphere), then it’ll be great-that thing improved so many QOL issues, problems with the look of the game, yet it still felt the same. The changes to Demon’s Souls look more drastic, but then again, the graphics were drastically more hideous, and the gameplay in need of far more fixing.

      They have significantly changed the mood, and time will tell what that means.

      But people are definitely looking at it with rose coloured shades when they approve of the graphics of the original. The game is hideous and the graphics are massively outdated and do not serve the gameplay.

  10. Geebs says:

    I’m hyped for the Demons Souls remaster. The original does have some significant differences in gameplay and atmosphere from Dark Souls, and would be nice to see scrubbed up and running at > 25 fps.

    Also, the Bluepoint PS4 version of Shadow of the Colossus was terrific, and one of the most gratuitously pretty things on the entire system. I could go for some more gorgeous bleakness.

    I think this and Horizon, along with some of the cute and cartoony stuff they showed off, would be a valid reason to go for a PS5. I already have a PC that’ll, in some capacity, run anything bound for the Xbox Series X.

    Aside: was anybody else slightly turned off by the EXTREME CONTRAST settings throughout the presentation? I get that they were going for making everything “look HDR“, but it was getting quite tiring on the eyes towards the end.

    1. Geebs says:

      As for Goodbye Volcano High….. meeeeeeeeeeh. I have a particular loathing for Young Adult depictions of what it’s like to be in a band, because it’s absolutely nothing like the reality of playing music whatsoever. Gone Home was a major offender in this area, as well.

      1. Lino says:

        It was certainly a weird choice for a flagship title on a console that prides itself on graphical fidelity. You can get games with similar aesthetics for $10 on Steam, and you can run them on an old laptop. It could have sparked some interest if the story was something the world has never seen before, but based on what little they showed, I find it a very strange marketing move.

        1. Retsam says:

          Yeah, I feel that was less their for technical merits and more about showing off a well-rounded lineup, which has always been a big part of the Playstation “brand” more so than Xbox which tends to focus on the “Rated M for Mature” side of the spectrum and Nintendo which tends to focus on the “Rated E for Everyone” side. (Of course, there’s exceptions to both camps)

          So while most of the lineup was pretty standard “AAA-fare” aimed at the stereotypical gaming audience, Goodbye Volcano High was an inclusion for the more “visual novel” side of gaming, Sackboy was an inclusion for the more family-friendly-oriented audience, and Bugsnax was an inclusion for the crazy people (I assume).

      2. Syal says:

        Just watched the trailer. One sentence in and I hate it.

      3. Decius says:

        It’s going to either be a complete flop or among the most controversial games of its time. Some people will be completely uninterested and some will love it unreasonably, and there’s nothing wrong with either position.

        Some people will disagree and say that one of those two positions is wrong, and there IS something wrong with that position.

      4. Cynic says:

        I’m glad someone else is in that boat. The worst was Bohemian Rhapsody:

        “We need to get creative” cut to Freddy musing around part of the title song he’s been messing with since the openning of the film, cut to the next day, recording the full song, despite the fact that it was apparently written, sleep deprived, by the vocalist the night before, and the guitarist literally hasn’t had time to rehearse the solos.

        Fucking garbage man. And NITW, I love the game but, being in a band is not about just showing up to rehearsals and just “Jamming man”, band people will get MAD at you for doing that, they have come for rehearsal and they have limited time, they learned their parts, you’re there to put them together, not to try to site read and put it together on the spot, and the hardest thing about a band is managing all those people, because there is always someone not pulling their weight-no way you add a new member who someone else doesn’t like because they noodled something at a rehearsal. The people you WANT in your band will hate this-the people who can write and arrange and understand the basic “You learn your part on your own, you put it together, together, and that’s when the magic happens”, not just some Marty McFly playing the Fantasy Under The Sea shit. This isn’t Ithaca in ’91, nowadays you rehearse in houses and sheds till you get a couple of police visits, then you pay for rehearsals and people don’t just show up, and you’d feel they were wasting time you paid for if they did.

    2. Redrock says:

      I don’t really get the idea of a Demon’s Souls remaster, to be honest. Not in a post-Bloodborne/Dark Souls III world, as least. The improvement to kinesthetics that recent Soulslikes bring to the table is tremendous. Even the Dark Souls Remaster feels more than a bit clunky when compared to recent releases, but at least it’s supported by its cultural footprint and lore connections to the sequels. I reckon that a lot of new Dark Souls converts went to play the DS Remaster after experiencing one of the sequels. Demon’s Souls, despite being the true DS progenitor, would feel much worse to play, and if the Shadow of Colossus remake is any indication, Bluepoint will go out of their way to preserve any clunkiness for posterity. Now, if we were talking about a remake of Demon’s Souls using the DS III/Bloodborne engine, Yakuza Kiwami style, that would indeed be something. As is, I’m pretty sceptical about this one. I’m still probably getting it once it’s on sale, but I can already taste the preemptive buyer’s remorse like ashen estus in my mouth.

      1. Cynic says:

        They’ll obviously change the kinesthetics. You can’t change the models that much without having to consider the kinesthetics, to make it as clunky as Demon’s Souls would be a deliberate effort to make the game worse.

        I think in that light, it makes perfect sense: Update the game, update the many things that were broken or sucked about the original, update the graphics, put in some of the mod-cons, omnidirectional rolling, improved hitboxes and models, etc, and put it on a new platform.

        What DOESN’T make sense to me is why to remaster a ps3 exclusive as a ps5 launch title: Hardcore PS fans already have it, and while the Souls fanbase is dedicated, there’s a lot of jealous people (Myself among them) who weren’t gonna buy a PS3/4 for Bloodborne. Seems like a title for whom the remaster makes sense to sell more to a general audience-you’ll get more of the playstation souls audience than the first time, but since then, the legend has spread, and people across the board would like a crack at it. But From just keep fucking around with their brand deal with Sony.

    3. Cynic says:

      I am so psyched for it, and I hope the exclusive is only temporary.

      I’ll be interested to see the difference between the two games and the feelings of Demon’s Souls fans on it, but I get tired of the fetishisation of the older games in the series. There have been so many improvements to levelling, item design, omnidirectional rolling, the concept of “hollowing” over the series, fixing parrying, literally taking out the shields and making a game that is parry or dodge only, going back has never appealed considering the effort involved.

  11. ElementalAlchemist says:

    maybe the PS5 will retail for $Ridiculous

    There’s a reason they haven’t revealed the price yet, and it’s not because they want it to be a surprise (not a pleasant one, anyway). I imagine that Sony Japan execs are praying like mad that MS announces a price of over $599 for the XboxSex, because there’s no way the PS5 is likely to be under that. On the other hand, MS is clearly waiting for Sony to blink first so they can undercut them by $50.

  12. MerryWeathers says:

    Is Shamus going to talk about Bugsnax in the next post? Because that was the most cursed game in the presentation and I found it more unsettling than Resident Evil Village

    1. Lino says:

      I haven’t watched the RE trailer for two reasons:

      – Not that into horror games
      – I can’t imagine they could produce a more unsettling trailer than Bugsnax

    2. Echo Tango says:

      I just watched the official trailer for Bugsnax, and I think it might be one of those things, where it seemes weird to adults, but fine for children? I definitely don’t know what type of gameplay the game has, because the “””gameplay””” trailer is almost identical, with sloppier cuts and edits, and no music playing. Anyways, I don’t know why they have your characters mutating based on what they eat. It ruins the nice character-models they have, and replaces them with random nonsense, like everyone’s just wasted their paycheques on loot-boxes. If it’s to tell jokes like the “I tried to do X, but my hands were turned into Y, so I Z” from the trailer, then I hope they improve – that one fell pretty flat for me. :|

      1. Retsam says:

        I think it might be one of those things, where it seemes weird to adults, but fine for children?

        Yeah, I’m 80% sure this is the case. … but that last bit of the trailer makes a small part of me hope that they’re pulling a sneaky here and going for the “obnoxiously cute looking thing turns out to actually be horrifying”. (Like a certain 2011 anime…)

        I suppose it’d be spoiled by the rating on the box, probably, so it’s a small hope.

        1. MerryWeathers says:

          “obnoxiously cute looking thing turns out to actually be horrifying”. (Like a certain 2011 anime…)

          Madoka already gives a lot of hints to it’s true nature, from just looking up the creator of the show, paying attention to the lyrics of the opening, and the off-putting first scene.

          That said, calling it horrifying would be an exaggeration, it’s more sad and bittersweet than anything else.

      2. Richard says:

        That looks like a horror game!

        In less than a minute we see a sentient being eaten whole, and the supposed hero’s hand turns into a pair of strawberries…

        It’s a world filled with body-horror parasites!

      3. Cynic says:

        Looks like Viva Pinata with a better aesthetic.

        I think pretty obviously they’re going for the same vibe as Octodad: Something you might have seen when you were a kid, but with the veils ripped wide to reveal how weird and creepy it all is. Octodad makes it clear: The Elmer Fudd figure in his game really wants to kill him, butcher him, cook him, and serve him up to be eaten, which is HORRIFYING, he has a wife and kids!

        Thing is, Octodad is charming because he’s just charming, whereas RNG creatures aren’t-a bad Steve Irwin caricature with a fucking JOKE of an Aussie accent bugs me (As an Aussie, there is no media outside of Australia that gets our fucking accent right, and there is no mass media that has the guts to get our vernacular right (Hint: It involves about 8x as many uses of the F word as I have done here, and a good chunk of the nouns and pronouns would be replaced with a word starting with C that Americans find very offensive-but is just like “Buddy” to Canadians here-meaning at times, it’s fighting words and deadly insult, and sometimes it’s a term of endearment for a friend you love a lot)). Seriously, stop putting Steve Irwin accents in things. Stop getting your “aussies” to talk like it. Just stop. You would never put the language every Aussie hears down the bus mall in a game-because you’d have to rate it so highly that it wouldn’t sell-same thing with Aussie media-we censor it all to the point that real Aussies are like “Who the f*** is that c*** and why are they pretending they’re one of us the f******* pr*****”. Cobber was an Aussie who was playing it up for foreign audiences-you’re being weird, and reminding of us of a dead, true blue Aussie legend. Genuinely can’t explain how people here feel about that man without violating the standards of public decency and not using language regarded by the rest of the English speaking world as monstrously indecent. Dude literally died trying to be friends with a stingray-all heart, no fear. The Australian Legend, come to life.

        Octodad is a sitcom incompetent father figure-but he’s incompetent because TWIST (All sitcoms needed a twist for the pitch), HE IS AN OCTOPUS. I don’t wanna see knockoff female Steve Irwin (Australia already tried to make his damn kids into TV stars and traumatised the entire nation-we don’t wanna see another damn Bindi Irwin! Dude literally rescued Brown Snakes living under people’s houses, don’t turn his kids into reality Stars! He was a regular working stiff! Classic archetypal Australian mate!) who is also a Beaver? For some reason, (Not even an Australian animal, and that is NOT a bloody platypus), try to be him. Damn insulting to a national hero. We live in a country full of venonous snakes, almost all of the deadliest snakes live here, the biggest crocs outside of Black Caiman’s live here in the greatest number in the world, he showed us there was a peaceful way, a local mate who could come by and deal with it for you, instead of killing it with a shovel, and all Americans remember is his accent. TBH, seriously pisses me off, I know I got extra angry there, but he was my hero, and the hero of so many my age, and seeing him turned into a joke like that-makes me madder than a brown snake-and they’re super aggro bruv. We already saw the Hollywood Crocodile Hunter film: It sucked, we wanna watch the Deadliest Snakes special by Steve again.

        If anything, the issue I take is like with the Pinata games and those of the like-too much of the gameplay seems to be minigames. It was more fun with Octodad, which was more physics based, this seems less so, and more culturally insensitive.

        When you make a character talk like Steve Irwin, it’s like an Australian show depicting a character, a born New Yorker, wait, no, a Noo Yawker, speaking with a slow Southern Drawl.

        Then again, Americans already did that, when they got the only man in Hollywood with a real Aussie accent (That he was too bad an actor to shake) to play a man born in Anchorage, Alaska, in Call of Duty Black Ops. You wanna hear how Australians talk? Watch Sam Worthington in the film “Rogue” and then imagine a bunch of c-bombs.

    3. Syal says:

      Bugsnax: the long-awaited crossover of Pokemon and The Binding Of Isaac.

  13. Lino says:

    As with any console reveal, the most annoying part is having to look up which of the games are going to be cross-platform. As it stands, I’m mainly interested in Godfall, Little Devil Inside, and Solar Ash.

    I’m also tentatively excited for Ghostwire: Tokyo and Star Wars: Squadrons. I’m tentative for the former, because I like a bit more crunch in my FPS – either through fun guns, or some visceral melee. And I didn’t see any of that in the trailer.

    And I’m tentative about Squadrons, because even though I’m a huge Star Wars fan, I’ve never been into flight sims. But if it’s more like Rogue Squadron, then I’ll defintiely try it. Especially if the monetization isn’t a pile of crap. But since this is EA we’re talking about, I’m not holding my breath…

    1. Thomas says:

      Trying to decipher the lingo of the timed exclusives is especially tiresome. What does “Designed for the PS5” mean?

      1. MerryWeathers says:

        Probably graphical upgrades and making use of the new Dualsense controller

        1. Thomas says:

          I think it means ‘timed exclusive’ in this case. But i had to look that up on another website.

          1. Cynic says:

            All exclusives mean “timed exclusives”. This is just basic lingo. When you read “Launch title” “Only on the X” “Exclusive” you should read “Timed exclusive, where we’ll consider a port and a wider release if the initial game is successful and market research suggest’s it’ll pay off”.

            It’s 2020 now, this language has been around for a decade.

    2. Christopher says:

      I was pleasantly surprised that Nakamura’s “It’s S P O O K Y” was such an accurate description of Ghostwire. I’m not that big on horror games but I’m more than happy to try an action game where you fight ghosts in Tokyo with your Naruto Skyrim spells.

    3. John says:

      Squadrons is really frustrating. The trailer was cool-looking, but it contained almost zero information about the game. The only thing I learned from the trailer is that Squadrons is some sort of 5-on-5 multiplayer . . . thing. Probably. I can’t even tell what genre it’s in. This is exactly why I usually try to ignore hype. There’s no point getting excited about a game until it’s out and I can tell what it is. Fantasizing about what it could be doesn’t do me or anyone else any good.

      1. Lino says:

        Fantasizing about what it could be doesn’t do me or anyone else any good.

        *Big publisher watching with confusion, swimming in his pool filled with pre-order money*

        1. John says:

          I thought about making that joke. Then I got depressed, so I didn’t.

      2. Supah Ewok says:

        Gonna be a gameplay stream on Thursday, which I’ll be tuning into. I have no faith in EA making either a new X-Wing/Tie Fighter or Rogue Squadron, but I’ll be paying attention regardless just in case the lead dev is an honest to god saint capable of miracles.

        I have a very small hope that it’ll be more on the X-Wing side of things. Pretty much the defining feature of those games were managing power to shields, weapons, engines. There’s a shot early on in the trailer where the New Republic pilot declares “full power to engines!” or somesuch, and you see a blue bar max out while a red and a green bar recede. Absolute callback to those old space sims. But EA’s never going to try to release a full-out space sim for consoles, that’d be a nightmare for a control scheme.

        My hope is that it’ll be Ace Combat in space. But my suspicion is that they’ll just spruce up the flying vehicle combat from Battlefront and throw it out there for people who want to cut out the FPS portions of those games. I suppose we’ll see on Thursday.

        1. John says:

          There’s apparently a press release, which keeps emphasizing “first person” combat. That doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of a space-dogfighting game, so I assume, as did the podcaster I heard reading the press release, that this means you play from within a cockpit, as in X-Wing or Tie Fighter, rather than from behind the ship, as in Rogue Squadron or its ilk. Doesn’t necessarily mean that the game will resemble X-Wing or Tie Fighter in other respects though.

          1. Supah Ewok says:

            I’m 70% sure I remember a “cockpit view mode” from Rogue Squadron 3.

            Even without that, I’ll believe in a XW/TF successor when I see it.

          2. Cynic says:

            Several Star Wars Starfighter games in the Starfighter series and the X-Wing series and the Tie Fighter series have had first person combat.

            It makes perfect sense in that context, so I don’t know what your ish is.

            The other complaint is far more real: I doubt they would make a true successor to Tie Fighter or Rogue Squadron. If they made it, they would want to tie it to something more marketable, or dumb it down. So I have little hope. Like Ewok says, I’ll believe it when I see it.

    4. Sleeping Dragon says:

      Until this trailer all I knew about Ghostwire was it was in development, I kinda put it in “horror games I’m probably not going to be interested in” but the trailer looks a bit more actiony than I expected and I’m somewhat okay with that? Also the sharp visuals speak to me on some primal level for some reason.

  14. tmtvl says:

    Demon’s Souls is better than Dark Souls. The worldbuilding is better realized, it’s more forgiving, and you can get whole stacks of healing items instead of a whole stack of Humanity and 20 Sunny D’s.

    But if we’re being serious for a bit, I kinda prefer DeS over DaS because of the variety in environments and enemies. I also like having the Nexus as a hub to sally forth from. It also keeps the same kind of tempo going through the game, whereas DaS kindo runs out of steam after Leo and Snorlax.

    1. Cynic says:

      Humanities aren’t for healing and that’s a waste, if you’re literally up to the point in the DLC where you can farm them, you’re good enough to not need them. 20 Sunny D’s, or however many estus are allowed, is still a better system. Instead of dying mean you go “Do I need to farm more?” And fights being “Do I need to heal more?”, the system was made PERFECT by the inclusion of the Estus Flask: “You need this much health and no more-if you’re still losing, you’ll have to try harder, because this is how you learn”-DS2 tried introducing grass style mechanics again, wasn’t as good as the Estus Flask. DS3 stuck hard. Bloodborne included farming but introduced a max cap because it’s meant to be a finite challenge you can’t beat with farming.

      Like, just no.

  15. Christopher says:

    Demon’s Souls’ exclusivity coupled with only word-of-mouth marketing kinda inherently made it less of a thing. When I bought a used PS3 back in 2014, it was one of the main reasons.

    Demon’s Souls has a lot of disadvantages compared to Dark Souls. But it does have a lot of unique qualities. The Lost Soul Arts of Demon’s Souls comes to mind. However, even the man who made that video prefers playing Dark Souls. The gameplay improvements and polish help a lot to make the experience more enjoyable, it’s the one game in the series with some lush colors that doesn’t also have huge problems with lighting and shadow effects, it offers a huge interconnected world, the estus system isn’t quite as abusable as the grass system and doesn’t require any farming, the death system isn’t half as punishable, etc etc.

    So there’s a lot you could improve in Demon’s Souls, but the advantage DeS has is that its atmosphere is so palpable. It’s got the least ruined and most comparatively down to earth environments of all the games, the least outlandish designs, music that’s more strange and melancholic than dramatic and bombastic, and so on. The colors are barely there, not so much a product of the grey and bloom trend at the time as a quality of strange JRPGs like Eternal Ring from the same company. And this quality is probablythe most at risk from some other devs drawing over Fromsoft’s work. It’s really bizarre to me that this and Shadow of the Colossus is what they wanted to work on. It would be much easier to redo, say, Ratchet & Clank 2, than trying to paint over the kinda games people hold up as art because they’re such holistic, minimalistic and immersive experiences.

    That said, I think it’s a great business move for everyone involved. Fromsoft gets to work on something new instead of redrawing old work, Bluepoint gets to work on a game much larger than Shadow of the Colossus, and Sony gets an exclusive soulslike that’s a proven cult classic but hasn’t been played by that many out in front of a big audience of fans. But it’s hard to say I’m hyped after the trailer when it looks like they aren’t able to keep the same tone and atmosphere going at all. You can’t put the massive knight in the big brown castle that fell to ruin like a month ago, replace the bloomy skybox with a bright blue sky, paint the walls light gray and blue, add some nice grass to the floor and expect it to have the same vibe as before.

    Even if the devs are the same, it’s no guarantee a remake turns out good. FF7 Remake I ended up really souring on, and all my gripes ended up being tied to the new things they added and changed. But at least it feels more authentic when it’s the same guys giving it another shot with the help of younger devs who were fans of that old game. Bluepoint really can’t come across as more valid artistically than Fromsoft, because all their titles are remakes. When they change things, judging from SOTC and the trailer for DeS, it just seems pointless. Like did you think Vanguard looked too dumb? ‘Cause now he looks like a Diablo demon.

    I’m mostly curious if they’ll do the cut content. All games have their lost levels, but Demon’s Souls kept the access point in the game’s hub, only ruined, so it’s taken on sort of a mythical quality. If Bluepoint has any communication with Fromsoft at all, I want it to be about how that level should be designed.

    1. Cynic says:

      Agreed, I sort of want to see how the unfinished content turns out, and I get making a Souls exclusive for a platform now that the series is much more popular.

      I think that’s a much better deal for Sony than From though: Sony benefits hugely from making this a sales point for dedicated Souls fans-but many MORE Souls fans exist who will not buy a PS5 for it-literally, I’m still waiting for a PS4 for Bloodborne-the cost of the game and the console have been so high that they literally LEAKED the Steam listing for Bloodborne’s PC port in the meantime-won’t buy a PS4 now. From doesn’t benefit from keeping a remake of one of their classics from the wider audience-their deal with Sony must be goooooood.

  16. Redrock says:

    I find it weird that Sony seems to be confused about what the Spider-Man: Miles Morales game is supposed to be. They called it an expansion at one point, but then Insomniac seemed to clarify that it’s a standalone game. All this makes me think that we’re talking about a sidequel, something that was possibly planned as an expansion and grew into a standalone, like Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Which is fine, really, but also kinda odd for a lauch title? On a related note, totally called it! Well, no, not totally, but I specifically remember arguing that Insomniac are goinf to replace Peter with Miles. It just seemed to happen much sooner than I expected. I wonder if they’ll have the balls to actually kill off Petey, which is basically a requirement for any decent Miles story.

    1. Thomas says:

      I think it’s similar to Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which Sony had similar problems explaining.

      My other hypothesis is that “launch titles” mean less this time round. Sony took a swath of the games they already had in development and bumped some up to PS5. A standalone expansion spiderman is probably an easy one to do quickly that will show off the SSD but come out on time and not be a mess (see most other Sony launch titles)

  17. eldomtom2 says:

    My primary opinion on Goodbye Volcano High is that it is fucking ugly. Generic furries that are hideously tweened.

    1. MerryWeathers says:

      Can dinosaurs actually be furries? They don’t have fur…

      Maybe feathers, but apparently not in this world they don’t.

      1. Redrock says:

        Isn’t “scalies” the proper nomenclature? I think I saw it in a comedy sketch somewhere, or, possibly, a web comic.

        1. Decius says:

          “Scalies” is often used to refer to dragonkin; someone with an ego of a reptile or theropod would still be furry, I think.

        2. Moridin says:

          Scalies is definitely used, but I think most people just consider them to be a subtype of furries(despite not having any fur)

    2. Christopher says:

      It’s taking me back to my old local amateur free-for-all webcomic hangouts. Some artists were 50-year olds with old pencil drawings taken from their cupboards, some made exciting shonen battle manga parodies exquisitely drawn in MS Paint with one page every other month tops, some made comics inspired by belgian adventure-style comics with very big noses.

      And then some artists made romantic drama comics with anatomically questionable, gay lizard dudes, all with neon-colored hair and modern clothing. I’m not sure I would have preferred the pencil drawings, but jeez louise. It’s like they decided to challenge Dust: An Elysian Tail and Freedom Planet for the position of most embarrassing amateur furry art in games.

      I do think the trailer was sort of impressive, however. It has a lot more animation than I’d have expected.

  18. ccesarano says:

    In regards to video sources, I do my best to go straight to the publisher. Sony’s got the whole presentation without any pre-show yammering by …”personalities”… Just right into it.

    GTA V
    You pretty much hit the major point on this one. I feel like this is for both the audience playing GTA Online wanting to know if they’ll be able to move onto the next platform, as well as the investors wanting to know if their microtransaction market will also be available. It’s curious that this wasn’t put into a whole feature section, as Bungie has announced Destiny 2 players will be able to move onto next-gen as well, and I imagine Final Fantasy XIV players will be hoping to make the jump.

    I’m glad they got it out of the way, but it really did seem an odd way to open the presentation – all while using [i]PlayStation 4[/i] footage at that. It actually set a very bad tone for my friends and me on voice chat, but they immediately course corrected after.

    Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
    On one hand, a more condensed stand-alone game doesn’t seem like a bad idea, but it also seems kind of strange to have as your big launch title. I have to imagine they got something else to announce for launch, because this isn’t going to occupy folks that long.

    Regardless, I suppose I’m down for it. I found Spider-Man enjoyable enough, just wished more abilities were available in combat at the start and it had fewer of the more irritating activities. Given the first DLC, however, I don’t know if I’d count on it being a more streamlined game so much as just more condensed. We’ll see what happens, I suppose.

    Gran Turismo 7
    Not my thing, but Sony has at least learned to better present their GT segment so as to get the point across without boring everyone else.

    Destruction Allstars
    I guess it shows my naivety that I wasn’t even thinking about the cosmetic DLC element to this. Most people seem to have gotten a Twisted Metal vibe, but to me it definitely had that Rocket League element combined with the latest trend of free-to-play character design to appeal as much to middle-schoolers as anyone else. So, yeah, the Fortnite (and somewhat Overwatch) crowd.

    I wouldn’t mind trying it as it seems like it could be fun, but I doubt it’d be anything more than a curiosity.

    Goodbye Volcano High
    I am not this game’s target demographic and that’s okay. It is letting its target demographic know that they’re seen and will be provided for.

    Hitman III
    Haven’t played the other entries in the series, so no real thoughts on this one. Were the other two really driven by a narrative, though? They seemed to be more focused on playgrounds rather than a story proper.

    Demon’s Souls Remaster
    Christopher above is in part correct regarding the exclusivity of Demon’s Souls being one of the reasons it didn’t make as big a splash. I remember plenty of folks talking about this “hardcore new game”, and it might be one of the reasons the PS3 started to make a turn around towards the end there. However, the PS3 wasn’t really a big system until late in the console lifecycle, and by time its market share began picking up Demon’s Souls had kind of come and gone.

    Dark Souls, however, was multiplatform and also when Twitch was starting to become a big deal. So not only were PC and Xbox players also able to play, but being able to stream the game helped spread word about it. Plus, the popularity of Dark Souls and the like have steadily grown, allowing people to go back and play it. Without backwards compatibility, Demon’s Souls was locked to the PS3, meaning you’d need to still have a working PS3 in order to play it.

    I might give the Remaster a shot, but having tried to dip back into Dark Souls after having enjoyed Bloodborne, I’m thinking I still am not big on the majority of From’s work in this genre. Bloodborne is more aggressive and doesn’t have some of the limitations of the Souls titles, and as a result works better for me. I might keep dabbling in Dark Souls but their style just doesn’t sink as well with my tastes (or the game engine’s limitations, for that matter).

    Death Loop
    The actual mechanics of this game look fun. A more combat-focused Dishonored. The problem is that Roguelike repetition isn’t my deal (and after I just mentioned playing Bloodborne), and I’m not sure what the single-player possibilities of this game are as the other assassin looks like a second human player. If it’s a small game designed to be played in matches with an opposing human player (something like Left 4 Dead’s versus mode, just far fewer players), that makes a bit more sense. That isn’t clear by the trailers, though.

    1. NotetheCode says:

      Demon’s Souls was locked to the PS3, meaning you’d need to still have a working PS3 in order to play it.

      I’ve heard Demon’s Souls can be emulated rather well on PC, with an emulator called RPCS3. Thought I’ve never tried it.

      1. ccesarano says:

        You’re not going to get a lot of people with the knowledge or willpower to try and get that sort of emulation working on their PC. It’d be an insignificant percentage of players that would work to experience the game that way.

      2. Addie says:

        It works fine, although RPCS3 needs the unusual combination of a beast of a bleeding-edge CPU, and any old discrete graphics card from the last decade or so that can do Vulkan. Not what you might call a typical gaming set-up. The graphics chip in a PS3 is pretty weak compared to modern ones, so as long as your CPU is up to emulating a Cell then you can run most PS3 games at modern resolutions no problems, possibly with a frame-rate patch to get 60 Hz.

        The art of Demon’s Souls still holds up pretty well at higher res than was ever originally intended, too, much like Dark Souls did – all a remaster really needs is to support modern resolutions and frame-rates, and possibly some higher-resolution ‘distant views’, as the Boletaria horizon can look pretty janky at 1440p.

    2. aitrus says:

      Bethesda says the female assassin character is AI-controlled by default and she hunts you throughout the game. Similar to Dark Souls invasions, she can be taken over be a real player and you have to defeat that player for them to leave your game. That invasion feature is optional.

      1. ccesarano says:

        That’s not too bad, then.

  19. Grimwear says:

    In terms of Demons’ Souls it’s pretty exciting though I can’t say it’ll make me buy a ps5. The problem that the initial Demons’ Souls had was that one the whole the movement was much too floaty. Your character never felt like he had any weight and he felt like a feather, which was especially brutal when you were falling. I’m hoping that the remaster will fix that. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t but this also means that ideally they’ll improve the boss encounters as well. Demons’ Souls is very much the worst souls game because it’s the worst in terms of tight controls and amazing hitboxes. Them fixing that alleviates a lot of the problems though them fixing that may also make the bosses into a joke since you’ll be able to dodge roll around them with ease.

    However, the thing they can’t fix is the horrible way the story is presented. Demons’ Souls has 5 worlds that you need to progress through. The problem with the game is that it’s done in the dumbest way possible. Each world has its own self-contained story but unfortunately you can’t experience it in one sequence. You start in 1-1, can do 1-2, but then are hardblocked from progressing the game until you kill another world’s end boss. So you MUST abandon the World 1 story to go explore elsewhere. That’s the only hard block you come across however the game is very much designed for you to do the first levels of the worlds then loop back rather than doing a full world in one go. You go into a world, go until you die a bunch, then go to the next world down the line for more leveling, repeat. I doubt they’ll be able to fix that and it’s unfortunate.

    1. Echo Tango says:

      Dang, that sounds like a really gross way to tell a story. Did they start making the game, assuming you’d have one linear story that goes from world to world (so they added the locks), and then changed it to be self-contained stories in each world (but didn’t remove the locks)?

      1. Grimwear says:

        No it’s all very odd. In fact there are actually 6 worlds but the monument to get to world 6 is broken. It was said to lead to the land of giants so some people assume they ran out of time and turned the land of giants into Anor Londo from Dark Souls. Each World is self-contained with no overlap but World 1 is Boletaria Palace and it is essentially the main story. The king fell to the demons and created all the big problems so they start you off there like hey here’s Boletaria who’s in trouble and needs help. But the game can’t have you go in, kill the final boss, then move on so after 1-2 you just get a fog wall you can’t pass through that goes “go kill some arch demons first”. Now I BELIEVE though it’s been years since I played that you only need to kill 1 archdemon before you can pass through so in theory you could do 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, unlock gate, 1-3, 1-4. But again the game is designed so that the further you get in a world the harder it becomes (with the end of World 1 being the hardest) so you are nudged by the game to constantly jump between worlds which makes the story telling of each world next to impossible to follow. And since it’s a Souls game getting any story is hard enough as it is.

      2. Cynic says:

        Like most games, the final story came together at the end of development to serve development ends.

        It’s a poor mechanic, but it’s based on a game with explicit cut content, so we can’t say what they intended, only that what they ended up with was poor.

    2. Decius says:

      Is it Demon’s Souls, or Demons’ Souls? Do the souls all belong to one demon, or do the collectively belong to all the demons, or do the individually belong to different demons?

      1. Syal says:

        They all belong to one demon, but he loans them out to the other demons at 10% interest.

        1. Soysauce says:

          You joke (I assume) but it’s actually pretty close to the story of the game.

  20. Dreadjaws says:

    Wow, I couldn’t get past the first few minutes of this Silver Sable video. Jesus Christ, things are somehow even worse than in the main game, and that’s even before reaching the unnecessary, unjustified and forced boss battle between Spidey and Sable that it has no business existing for at least a dozen reasons.

    I’m glad I never purchased this DLC. I wouldn’t get it even for free. Holy crap that’s awful.

  21. Mr. Wolf says:

    They headlined the PS5 presentation with a PS3 game? That made sense to somebody, but I’m kind of lost.

  22. MechaCrash says:

    I agree with Bethesda being a warning label, but a thing to note is that it used to be “use caution and/or lower expectations depending on the developer,” but after Doom Eternal did the incredibly invasive Denuvo Anti-Cheat thing, it turned into a “do not buy” indicator for me.

    They walked back the Denuvo really fast after the complaints and review bombs, but a screwup of that level shows some deep misunderstandings.

    1. Echo Tango says:

      There’s so many good games out there, I just stopped getting their games after Skyrim. (So, skipped Fallout 4 and 76.) If I wanted shooters, looters, RPGs, action-games…everything else is done better in a different game. ^^;

      1. Moridin says:

        I’ve actually been thinking of getting Fallout 4 just for the mods. The main thing stopping me is that it still isn’t available on GOG.

      2. Addie says:

        Well done on skipping Fallout 4; I got burned by that not-an-RPG with an idiotic premise and story with more holes than a fine Emmental. Am not going to get burned by enthusiasm for a Bethesda release again.

    2. Cynic says:

      tbh, after their first Doom, they became a “Do not buy” for me.

      Sure, I’ll still play them. I just won’t pay for rootkits, or untested software with misleading hardware requirements and poor QA, even if iD is behind the game.

  23. Decius says:

    Volcano High appears to be geared towards the ‘otherkin’ audience. Marketing towards that audience has to be subtle and indirect, because if a different segment of the market notices something that segment likes it becomes a flaming turd pile. (Which is why I chose to use a more obscure and less technically correct name for the target audience)

  24. Kathryn says:

    With the advent of iRacing, is Gran Turismo really going to retain enough customers to stick around? I mean, I know(/assume) those rigs are expensive, but seems to me if you’re taking your simulated racing at all seriously, that’s the direction you’d go.

    (As you may remember from my previous comments, I prefer the kind of video game racing that involves banana peels and shrinking mushrooms.)

    1. tmtvl says:

      I think the racing game market is large enough to support multiple games. I also see the appeal of getting a game that you pay for once and you can play for years without having to pay extra rather than having to pay a subscription fee.

    2. Cynic says:

      Yes: it’s a known brand that has been around for a while and has a dedicated audience. Not a loud one-they’re fans of simulationist racing, and half of them have had gearstick steering wheel setups for 2 decades

      It’s not a console SELLER on it’s own. It’s a console filler. It’s like saying “Yes, the latest EA sports titles will be available: Yes, the new Playstation will have a Gran Tourismo”

  25. Soysauce says:

    One thing that is not often talked about when it comes to the souls “series” and Demon Souls in particular, is that there has been a gradual genre shift as the series has progressed. Every installment is becoming more about the combat than the rest. It’s not bad by any means (I consider Sekiro to be the culmination of that, even though its aesthetic and lore is very interesting too) but it does mean that there has been a gradual value shift in kind with the genre shift: people do not value or care about the same things when playing the souls series now, than they did earlier on. To put it in more familiar terms, it’s a bit like what happened to the “Bethesda” genre, going from (let’s say) Morrowind to Skyrim and to Fallout 3 and then Fallout 4. Every entry is becoming a bit less RPG and a bit more Looter-Shooter.
    The reason I’m mentioning all this is that this is a major reason people today don’t talk much about Demon Souls (and similarly, tend to consider the earlier entries in the Souls series to be clunky and kind of outdated). Modern souls games are very much about cool boss fights with frenetic, fast-paced action and uncomfortable, unexpected attack patterns. When you present that audience with Demon Souls where the bosses are more like puzzles, they’re bound to be dissatisfied a little. You can count on one hand the amount of bosses that are straight up combat checks. On the other hand, you have the boss where you need to make sure you can always run away, the boss that respawns unless you kill the NPC reviving her that is outside her boss room, the boss where you have to use a weapon you find by exploring the boss room, the boss that is blind and even the boss that suicides in front of you when you kill her lover. The combat of Demon Souls was a lot more clunky, less dynamic and nervous and precise than, say, Dark Souls 3 but it’s because it wasn’t really the point. Combat was a vehicle for exploration, which is what Demon Souls was really about. I’d recommend the video The Lost Soul Arts of Demon’s Souls (by Matthewmatosis ) that touches on the subject.

    1. Vinsomer says:

      I was going to link exactly that video.

      The hope with a Demon’s Souls remaster is that they make the game they always wanted to make, but couldn’t.

      The fear is that they ruin much of what made Demon’s Souls special because they desire to ‘fix’ the ‘mistakes’.

      I suppose that’s a fear fans have whenever something is remastered but Demon’s Souls did so many unconventional things that it’s easy to see them changing world tendency, or soul form, or healing mechanics with the intention of improving them only to make them worse. And if Game Freak couldn’t remake Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire without partially ruining them, FromSoft absolutely can screw the pooch here.

  26. Dalisclock says:

    I have the original DeS on PS3 and I’ve played a couple hours of it but I’ve yet to get farther then 1-2. Part of the problem is how clunky it feels……that and I had a problem where my controller would keep randomly swapping to the other weapon which is a really, really good way to die(god I hope the controller was the problem). I keep meaning to go back into it, I keep running into the problem of “Well, I could go back to DeS….or I could play DS2/BB/Sekiro”. I still haven’t touched DS3 either and honestly, that looks far more interesting then DeS does.

    Of course the problem being, Elden Ring is coming out in a couple months,…maybe and then I’ll want to play that as well. DeS Keeps getting sorted to the back of the list in favor of other FROM games and I don’t play then fast enough to reach the end(because it takes me a month or more to beat one of these games if I’m plugging away at it as much as I can reasonably can). The Pandemic has actually given me less game time, since everyone is stuck at home, so taking care of the 3 year old takes priority over game time.

    Though I am curious for the Remake. I loved the SoTC remake by Bluepoint so I imagine this one will come out just fine.

  27. Dalisclock says:

    Re: Goodbye Volcano High
    “I have questions about how reproduction works in this world where every character seems to be a member of a different species. Actually, nevermind. I don’t want to know”. -Shamus

    Not that I know anything about the game, but I imagine it’s probably like the show Bojack Horseman, where anyone could reproduce with anyone and if the parents are say….a horse and a human, the child will be either a horse or a human.

    I doubt it goes any deeper then that and trying to think too much about it is not advised.

  28. EOW says:

    Demon’s Souls remastered look quite interesting.
    DeS was a stepping stone for Dark Souls and it does feature some annoyances that dark souls did away with, but all in all it’s still a game worth playing that offers a totally different experience than that of dark souls.
    If anything, playing it surprised me at just how much they got right on the first attempt (well, unless you count king’s field). Demon’s Souls world feels much more different than dark souls or bloodborne. The kingdom of Boletaria is still going through the apocalypse and you visit the place as a civil war against the scourge of demons is going on.

    Tho as for the trailer… i’m cautiously hyped. The art direction looks cool, but i feel they got overzealous with details and foliage everywhere (it’s supposed to be a medieval castle under siege, not ancient gothic ruins). Also we really don’t know what differences are gonna be there if any, so i can’t really judge it.
    DeS had some cool concept that were implemented quite badly, leading to them being more annoyances requiring a guide than stuff you are supposed to experiment with.

    1. Syal says:

      Also we really don’t know what differences are gonna be there if any,

      This version prominently features Sephiroth in World 1.

  29. BlueHorus says:

    but if [the writer of the Spider-Man games] is going to mess up Miles Morales the same way they messed up Peter Parker, then I’m going to bitch and moan the whole way through this sequel.

    YAAAAAAY!

    I look forward to the upcoming article series :-D

  30. Cubic says:

    “GTA V trailer, and the game looks identical to how it looked in 2013.”

    On reading this, it strikes me that GTA Online really has killed the GTA franchise.

  31. Cannongerbil says:

    “I have questions about how reproduction works in this world where every character seems to be a member of a different species. Actually, nevermind. I don’t want to know.”

    Oh don’t worry, the internet will be happy to tell you exactly how reproduction works between those species in extremely lurid detail.

  32. The Big Brzezinski says:

    A “death loop” is what we call it in Empyrion (and probably lots of other survival games) where you get stuck in a hostile area and can’t escape. This happens because you dropped all your weapons, tools, and materials on death as a way of discouraging death. Except now that you’re an unarmed trespasser in shoot-on-sight territory, you just keep dying and respawning over and over again. Hopefully you’ll eventually be able to exploit AI frailties and other mechanics until you can get back your corpse bag before it despawns. Otherwise, you just keep running and dying until you get outside aggro range to safety, where you can have a long hard think about how naughty it was of you to even think of taking a risk, you dummy.

    But, “Death Loop” was the name they chose. I guess “XP Grind”, “Bear Asses Quest”, “Patience Play”, “Don’t Fail the QTE”, “Punishment For Discovery”, and “Bullet Sponge” were already taken by other projects.

    1. Bloodsquirrel says:

      Does Empyrion still not have any kind of sane respawn system?

      1. The Big Brzezinski says:

        You can spawn nearby (creating the death loop), at the nearest cloning chamber, or at your home spawn. The second and third options are reasonable. The first feels like an old broken placeholder.

  33. Cassie B. says:

    The protagonist of Goodbye Volcano High, Fang, is Non-Binary. Just an FYI.

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