Sony’s gone and taken a page from Nintendo’s Direct event and made State of Play a thing. State of Play is a live-stream Sony will be using to update players on what’s coming next from the company — in the near future and a little further off. Their inaugural event took place last night, while Apple was doing its thing, and a fair amount of good stuff is headed our way. If you’re willing to crunch through the whole thing (it’s a little over 20 minutes), you’re welcome to but we’ve also collected and curated the highlights for you.
Days Gone has a story to tell
Sony’s got one heck of an exclusive heading our way later this year. Days Gone, a post-apocalyptic open-world game involving zombies (just don’t call ’em zombies, please) will see players stepping into the shoes of Deacon St. John. We’ve seen quite a lot of gameplay to date but State of Play had something a little more tightly controlled and story-based for us to check out. It’s not all going to be panic and hunting for gasoline, Days Gone also has quite a tale to tell.
Everything old is new again in Mortal Kombat 11
It’s almost time for a dash of the old ultra-violence. We’re obviously talking about Mortal Kombat 11, the kombat title from NetherRealm Studios. Sony and NetherRealm had a new trailer to show off, detailing the intersection of the past and present. As it pertains to the MK universe, that is. That means there’s more than one Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade and Jax… what the hell is Jax’s last name? They’ve got very different personalities, which would make sense if there’s some time-travel involved, but the short trailer also hints at an absolutely bonkers story. There will be nut-punches, and Liu Kang’s old MK 2 fatality, and more than a few nods to the original Mortal Kombat film, by the look of things. We can’t wait.
We’re going to have to keep this one under Observation
Here’s an interesting game concept. Players of Observation, a space-based thriller, aren’t going to be floating around a large space station situated near Saturn. Instead they’re going to be the large space station, in the form of S.A.M (Systems Administration & Maintenance), an artificial intelligence that controls the whole thing. It’s a bit like being HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but without the homicidal tendencies. We think. The point is to use S.A.M’s systems to assist Dr. Emma Fisher in finding out what’s happened to the mission, and the people on the station. It’s a very unusual idea for a game, and one we’re keen to get to grips with. It’s just as well that Observation drops this May. The wait… isn’t that long.
There are a couple of VR titles headed in the direction of PlayStation VR
There are two pieces of VR-related news that stand out in this month’s State of Play. One is that players will get to be Iron Man, by sitting inside the suit and doing superhero-y things. Iron Man VR looks and sounds good on paper but we’re… not wholly convinced yet. Still, it’s an Avengers fantasy and that’s going to snag a few players. And then there’s No Man’s Sky, the space-exploring, resource-harvesting, item-crafting game. That’s getting VR support as well, a function that we’re sure is going to go over well right up until you need to launch into space from the atmosphere. There’s no denying that the game could almost have been built for VR and we’re going to give this one a shot just as soon as we’re able. The update is part of a free upgrade (for existing players) called No Man’s Sky: Beyond and it’ll be available later this year. Oh, yes, and Beyond has one more component in addition to the already announced multiplayer and VR updates. That’ll be revealed later.
And the rest
There was a fair bit more to Sony’s event. Horror game Five Nights at Freddy’s VR is coming to PlayStation, multiplayer dungeon crawler ReadySet Heroes was announced, Concrete Genie got a new story trailer and there’s a surprising amount of other PS VR content on the way. It’s a very good time to be a gamer.