It is E3 season! But with no E3! So there are presentations that will probably happen. We just got the Playstation Showcase which was… a thing… And there’s an Xbox one that will happen soon-ish, so I’ll comment on that one too, and we’ll see if anything else noteworthy happens, may it be some Nintendo thing (which there should be… something? Because Nintendo has nothing this year past Pikmin 4) or other summer game presentation thingies.

So usually when I do this I just react to everything as it happens and then post those live reactions, I’ll just post the highlights, lowlights, and a few “eh?” things, then rant about it a bit.

And first up is Sony being lame, so let’s go!

Highlights

Ghostrunner II. Ghostrunner was a fantastic game. This looks like much the same thing. Of course it’s first-person, so get the PC version.

The Plucky Squire. Still looks really interesting, though this gave no info the original trailer didn’t, so why waste our time? Still a highlight, for anyone who missed the original reveal of this Nintendo Switch game.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink. This exists. Like, actually it exists, I am surprised. This was originally developed by Platinum Games but another company that I forget took over development, and news has been sparse since. Thing’s been announced for 7 years now (so probably in development a few more years before that). No idea if it’s gonna be good but it looks cool. A bit annoying that it just gets a vague 2023 release date, but it’s still good to know it’s still alive and, barring any other delays,  might actually be out this year.

Dragon’s Dogma II. I actually wasn’t a big fan of Dragon’s Dogma but I may not have given it enough of a chance. Maybe I was mad the DMC team was doing something that wasn’t DMC (while they were letting a shitty company ruin the series with DmC). Maybe I’ll give this one a more proper chance on PC.

Maybe highlights?

Immortals of Aveum. I think this looks fun conceptually, being a magic-based FPS. The gameplay shown here looks like it could be pretty fun. But also it’s an EA game (I think they’re only the publishers) so I’m wary. Still might check that out, we’ll see.

Phantom Blade 0. This has that Nioh/Sekiro feel to it, though the gameplay does look faster and has a lot of crazy shit going on like some fast-paced target-switching when several enemies are surrounding you and you need to very quickly defend from multiple directions. Might be interesting, a bit hard to say right now.

The Talos Principle 2. I think people liked the first one. I never played it but I think I watched a Hololive JP member playing it. It looked decent. This should be okay.

Five Nights at Freddy’s Help Wanted 2… I mean, it will probably pretty meh as a game, but for the people consistently going crazy about FNAF lore shit, I’m sure it’s exciting. MatPat gets to make like 30 more videos so that’s good for him.

That was pointless

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater Triangle. I have no idea why they announced this, then also announced a collection of the first 3 MGS game… Like, the collection already has Snake Eater. Why are they wasting money and time on a remake when they could, you know, MAKE A NEW FUCKING GAME? There really is no need to release the same game twice. This industry is so fucking stupid man.

Final Fantasy XVI. Like… I dunno. This trailer was pointless, showed nothing new, had no useful info, and the previous State of Play which did have more info made the game look… kinda eh overall. I feel like the enemies are too bullet spongy, and the big moments with summons look pretty boring on an actual gameplay level despite looking cool visually… But yeah we knew the release date, we know it’s about to come out, this didn’t need to be here if they didn’t give new info, and they didn’t. I will buy this game when it comes out on PC. Or not, if it ends up not being good. Like, FF hasn’t been good since 10 (with a brief moment of okay-ness with FF13-2), so I think it’s pretty safe to be wary of a new FF game.

Street Fighter VI. It exists. We know it exists. This trailer did nothing. This was a pointless trailer. Why was this here?

Some Destiny 2 DLC. It’s Destiny 2, which is a shit game, and it’s like the millionth DLC for it. Okay? Cayde’s back though, somehow. Okay.

Lowlights

Fairgame$. Talk about the weakest start for a presentation Sony could’ve done. We don’t know what this game is. Probably a shooter? Probably team-based? They showed no gameplay. So we don’t know. So this was really pointless, and one of the least interesting things in this presentation. Why reveal a game with no gameplay? That’s so dumb.

Helldivers II. I don’t know what Helldivers is. I don’t know what this one is either because they showed no gameplay. The fuck?

Sword of the Sea. It’s Journey, pretty much. Journey is a shit walking simulator that is not fun to play, and is only kinda pretty as its only positive point. This is the same thing again. These “games” are fucking stupid.

Foamstars. It’s literally Square Enix’s version of Splatoon with more normal-ish-looking human characters and the gameplay looks substantially lamer. If this is a free-to-play game I’ll try it, but I was not impressed by this trailer.

Alan Wake 2. I actually never played Alan Wake, it looked okay, people love it generally. I know people are hyped for this and it looks fine by me… though right now everyone is very very mad at this for being digital only, seemingly putting it squarely in the lowlights section for most people. I think it’s a bit dumb, but it’s where the industry is going so… yeah, it’s to be expected sometimes. Also it was a pretty pointless trailer overall. Yay! To be nice to everyone else, I’m also putting this in lowlights.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Assassin’s Creed has always sucked balls. This will suck balls. There you go. Stop buying this garbage series please.

All the VR shit. Beat Saber, Synapse, CrossFire Sierra Squad, Arizona Sunshine II, VR mode for RE4… As per usual, Beat Saber is pretty much the only non-shit VR game that exists, and if we keep going like this, that will never change.

Marathon. By Bungie. Bungie’s Marathon, from 1994, is something of a classic… that I never played. Looks pretty decent though, I should check it out at some point (it was a Mac game back in the day and no one had Macs, let alone people who played games). However this is… I don’t know, it doesn’t look anything like the original Marathon by Bungie so I don’t know if it’s related except for the title. And they showed no gameplay so… who cares? I dunno, maybe don’t reveal games without gameplay. Idiots.

Concord… SPACESHIP. And that’s all we know. Don’t reveal games without gameplay you dumb fucks. What a stupid reveal this was.

Project Q. It’s literally a controller with a screen, used solely for remote play… Why? Seriously I don’t get it. At least the Switch is the console itself when you take it out of the dock so it’s still useful. This is just “you can play your PS5 while not in front of your TV while in your house while connected to Wifi because doing it from any other network will have so much lag the games will be unplayable” which merits at most a 50$ price point, and they’ll probably charge like 250$ for the thing. Why not make a Vita 2? The Vita was great? In fact, cancel the PS5 and make a new Vita as your new main console. Just give it a dock to play it on a TV. Literally release a Playstation Switch.

Gran Turismo, the movie… Looks like shit I dunno. This was an eventless trailer that gave me nothing to grab on to.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. It’s a highlight for people who like really boring games. The first Spider-man was crappy, this one looks like much of the same. They even revealed it the same way, showing a QTE-driven chase scene as their first gameplay demonstration. And they didn’t even have the decency to give a release date even though it’s out this year. But hey at least it’s out this year.

Why is the PS5 a thing?

Seriously, why did they release this shit 3 years ago and there’s still fucking nothing to play on it? Like, let’s just look at this presentation alone. What games, in here, are only on PS5? Well, Final Fantasy 16, despite being originally announced for PC before any platform, will be PS5 only for a little bit… you can just wait, no need to get a PS5. And there’s the bonus advantage that, if it’s shit, you save both the cost of the game and the cost of the PS5. What a deal! Spider-man 2, well, the first one’s on PC, as is the Miles Morales one, stands to reason this will also come to PC. Literally everything else shown is multiplat.

Outside of this presentation, if you have a PS4, you can play the big PS5 games already so the PS5 is pointless, and if you game on PC, you can just wait and they’re all gonna release on there. What’s the point of the PS5?

Fuck this console. Only game it has is Ratchet and Clank (EDIT: OOPS this didn’t age well). Not worth buying a whole console for (Moreso now that it’s about to come out on PC). Being able to play a bad Spider-Man game and a hopefully-not-shit FF game (FF has not been good for a long time so it’s better to be doubtful) a year or two before they come out on PC is not worthwhile either. Sony needs to leave the console business and just publish PC games at this point.

Overall

Sony sucks balls. Like, wow this was bad. I can’t believe a presentation where so many games were shown had almost nothing interesting, and there were no big hitters. Over 25 games, and I can’t even scrounge up 5 proper highlights. Even what I listed as highlights, I was kinda choosing the best of a bad batch… Like, yeah there was a Final Fantasy trailer, but it showed literally nothing you didn’t see from the State of Play just a few weeks ago, and FF hasn’t been good since 2001 so it’s not that worth getting excited for. It could’ve not been in this presentation at all. Sony desperately needs to give a reason to buy their terrible console because right now literally all they have is “it’s a playstation” and that’s enough for some people I guess. But it shouldn’t be.

These presentations need new big announcements, and there weren’t any. All the big games were things that were announced years ago. All the new announcement showed no gameplay so there’s no reason to be excited about anything. It’s so fucking stupid.

This gets a big old 2/10, good job Sony.