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I’m back from GamesBeat Summit 2023, and I somehow managed to catch the PlayStation event on crummy airport wifi a few moments after my plane landed. They thought they could bamboozle me by broadcasting it while I was still in the throes of post-event tiredness, but I persevered! Now I’m not sure what the point was, because seriously, what was that show? Most of the PlayStation’s first-party studios missed it, and very little of what they showed piqued my interest. Also, what is that handheld and why does it look like bad photoshop job?
Out of the games they did show, the only one that made me feel anything was the extended Spider-Man 2 gameplay trailer. I enjoy the notion of Peter trying to cope with Venom, the black suit and Kraven all at the same time — it’s definitely better served in a game than it is in a movie, for example — with Miles playing the beleaguered straight man whose friend starts acting weird. Though it did make me wonder why they hyped up having Tony Todd as Venom’s voice only for him to say three words in the teaser trailer and sit the gameplay trailer out entirely.
Speaking of voiceless characters, I pegged that weird jungle trailer as being Metal Gear Solid as soon as I saw that dead frog. Hopefully David Hayter returns as the voice of Snake after Kiefer Sutherland’s snooze-worthy performance. Of course, the funniest part of the event came afterwards, when Xbox very passive-aggressively posted an image of all the games in the showcase that will also be coming to its platform. I live for corporate pettiness. Besides, it’s encouraging because we know that Xbox fans are also looking at more new releases in the next several months.
In personal news, I’m going to take the weekend to catch up on some games, and try out The Lord of the Rings: Gollum now that it’s finally crawled over the release line. I was pretty skeptical about Gollum over two years ago when I saw a preview build. Specifically, I thought the game was having an identity crisis and said it looked like a lesser version of Styx: Master of Shadows. I’m not claiming to be prophetic and I was very willing to be proven wrong about the game. But judging by what I’ve seen already, somehow that was the jazzed-up version of Gollum. That was Gollum with make-up on. I’ll give the game a fair shot, but what I’ve seen so far was not very encouraging.
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What to play this week
What’s new:
- The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
- Planet of Lana
- Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun
- After Us
- Convergence: A League of Legends Story
- Star Trek: Resurgence
- Sunshine Shuffle
- Railway Empire 2
- Above Snakes
- Blooming Business: Casino
New on subscription services:
- Cassette Beasts (Xbox Game Pass)
- Massive Chalice (Xbox Game Pass)
- Super Mario Advance (Nintendo Switch Online)
- Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 (Nintendo Switch Online)
- Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3 (Nintendo Switch Online)
- Beasts of Maravilla Island (Prime Gaming)
- Calico (Prime Gaming)
- DKO: Divine Knockout (Prime Gaming)
- Double Kick Heroes (Prime Gaming)
- Shattered: Tale of the Forgotten King (Prime Gaming)
- Tiny Robots Recharged (Prime Gaming)
- Tandem: A Tale of Shadows (Prime Gaming)
- Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Prime Gaming)
- Deathloop (GeForce Now)
- Grounded (GeForce Now)
- Lawn Mowing Simulator (GeForce Now)
- Pentiment (GeForce Now)
- The Ascent (GeForce Now)
- Patch Quest (GeForce Now)
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