I probably won’t post this. Sony’s State of Play presentations are always a bit lame. The last State of Play actually had several interesting announcements, with the problem on Sony’s side being that there was nothing exclusive, so all the cool announcements were PC and Switch games. Good job Sony.

So if I feel like this will probably also sucks, but I could be surprised. Maybe a PC game or two will pop up!

Live reactions!

Yes I’m writing this whole section as I’m watching. We’re just at the end of the countdown now.

3.24.2023. R. Resident Evil 4. So the remake is coming, in March next year. Yay I guess. The visuals look darker than the original. And we’ve got some boring cutscene shit going. And that’s it. And it has PSVR2 content. I am not interested, but I know people are super hyped for this.

4 games in development for PSVR2. VR games still suck in general other than Beatsaber so my hype is below zero.

First up… I guess this is just a VR version of RE Village. That sure isn’t exciting at all. You can already play RE Village. Just do that.

This looks like… Dying Light? I dunno, generic zombie FPS game. Looks very not fun. Okay not Dying Light, it’s a Walking Dead game. Didn’t look good.

Spaceships now. I thought it might be some new thing… but it’s literally just No Man’s Sky VR, isn’t it? Yeah… Okay why?

And this had a screenshot on the twitters, it’s a Horizon VR game, though I think it’s a new game rather than just “the same game but in shitty VR”. I’m not impressed. They make it look exciting, but it’s VR so it’ll be awkward and limited. Horizon VR Call of the Mountain.

Some patch for Horizon 2… Why? Do they just have nothing to reveal?

A Playstation favorite is coming to PC. Oh it’s Spiderman from the PS4. That game sucked, but hey, you can play it on PC now. August 12, 2022.

Stray. This was shown a few times but I think without any gameplay, this seems like… Gameplay? It’s just the cat walking and some robots running away from it… Okay there’s some automatic contextual platforming (so no skill required). And semi-stealth, and running from things. Looks super lame. July 19.

Another spaceship. Takes place on Callisto, one of the moons of Jupiter. It looks like a horror-ish thing. Looks pretty generic third-person shooter-y action-y horror-y in dark hallways. The Callisto Protocol, December 2. Seems okay.

Some cel-shaded thing… Arenas, for some bloodsport. There’s people shooting at each other and riding on roller skates. Can’t even tell if this is meant to be a multiplayer game or a single-player game… Rollerdrome, August 16. Not a good trailer but if it’s single-player, might be cool. I will look at another trailer later.

Anime dude gets his arm cut off… And now a new, better, light arm grows there, and he’s fighting monsters. Not just him, but other teenagers with superpowers. Seems the world is right about to end and you have to stop that. This looks like it might actually be kinda fun. Eternights. Early 2023. Cool.

Capcom again, with a heavy hitter. So SF6 probably. Or maybe not? You seem to walk around the city and explore shit. Maybe it has a story mode. Okay now that’s just regular modern SF gameplay with no UI. A few new characters in the cutscene and gameplay parts. Chun-Li looks weird. 2023.

Tunic coming to PS5 and PS4. Okay. I should grab it on PC at some point, haven’t yet. September 27.

And this is… no idea. Walking simulator where you take photos of things. Looks boring AF. I missed the title and if it had a release date, don’t care.

I know this guy. Guess he’ll be showing FF16. Let’s see that trailer. It’s still action combat, as we know. Dude’s morbin’ at all those guys. Cool-looking cutscenes with giant creatures which you seemingly can summon (those are all well-known FF summons here like Ifrit, Shiva and Titan). Yup those are definitely being summoned in actual gameplay as well. Might be interesting, hard to say. The trailer looked really cool though. Summer 2023. Okay… Why show it now?

And that’s it.

Overall thoughts

I get RE4 remake is a big deal to some… But in my mind it’s just another old game that they’re re-doing because… fuck new games I guess? RE4 is great. This will probably be great. I just don’t care. Most interesting thing though is that it ISN’T announced for PS4 and Xbone. WHOA.

The VR stuff all looked lame, and it’s not like PSVR2 even has a release date so… who knows when any of this will be out. This is a problem with VR in particular though, modern VR remains too restrictive to good gameplay design.

Announcing a patch is weird. Announcing a PC port of a previously-PS-exclusive will make the fanboys mad but it’s fine, even if it’s Spider-man which wasn’t a good game. Games being multiplat is just good for the consumer.

Then there’s all the middle-stuff. Stray looks boring. Callisto Protocol looks kinda decent. Rollerdrome should’ve had a better trailer. Eternights looks okay, I will buy it.

SF6 had a very confusing trailer that explained nothing that it showed so… excitement remains zero. I’m not getting fooled by SF again, they’re certainly gonna release barebones garbage to sell the majority of the roster as scam overpriced DLC season passes for the next few years. Fuck you Capcom.

The 2 indie things weren’t particularly interesting (since one is already out elsewhere and the other just looks awful).

And the grand finale being for a game coming out in over a year… I mean, it looks like it might not be shit, it’s hard to say with FF. I enjoyed the trailer very much. But would’ve been nicer to not show this here and wait until we’re closer to release. Game devs need to be better at timing their reveals.

Overall not an exciting State of Play at all. There were 4 themes here.

First theme was 2023. RE4 is 2023. Eternight is 2023. PSVR2 is… who knows. SF6 is 2023. FF16 was 2023. The 2022 stuff is either old (Tunic) or not interesting (Stray)… or is Callisto Protocol which might be good (I will watch the Gura streams). All the big stuff is 2023, and it seems like the PS5 has no other big stuff this year… Would’ve been nice if they had something big to show for the rest of the year. I guess maybe we’ll see God of War at a later State of Play, if it’s not delayed.

Second theme was multiplats. Squeenix is actually being secretive about FF16, but the very first trailer for that game did say it was using footage from the PC version, so there you go. RE4 is on Xbox and PC. Callisto Protocol is on Xbox and PC. Stray is on PC. Rollerdrome is on PC. SF6 is on Xbox and PC. Eternights is on PC. The shitty bicycle game is on PC. Tunic is already out on Xbox and PC. Many of those are on PS4.

The third theme is no new announcements. We knew about literally every game here except maybe for Rollerdrome (which already had a website) and maybe Eternight. What was the point of this?

The last theme is, as usual for Sony at this point, the PS5 being not worth buying. Everything they showed here, except the Horizon VR game maybe, is playable on other, better platforms. And some of these are also on PS4. Why is fucking everything still coming to PS4, why are you not killing the platform Sony? Why is Sony so reluctant to make the PS5 worth buying at all? Why is every single semi-interesting reveal at Sony State of Play presentations something I’ll get on PC, rather than something that makes me think “MAN, I NEED A PS5” like it should be? Why is there still not a single reason to get a PS5? I did say, multiplats are good for the consumer, and that’s true, but if you have a console on the market, you need to justify it. And the only way to justify a platform is to release strong first-party exclusives that aren’t on any other platform. If they’re on PS4, or likely to come to PC… That’s not enough, Sony. If you’re not justifying your 600$ console, get the fuck out of the market.

The more I think about it, the worse this State of Play gets. It was awful. 0/10. Try harder Sony.

Not sure I’m posting these reactions, still.