Category: Sony

With great power comes great repetition?

Publishers are pretty risk-averse when it comes to a major new release – and for good reason. Video games are expensive, and you don’t want anything getting in the way of a return on that lofty sum of cash you’ve put forward just to make your game happen.

But surely DLC gives you a chance to tear up the rulebook and try your hand at messing with the formula? It’s far less expensive, so there’s a chance to try something new. Perhaps you test a new idea for a potential sequel or give players an entirely new experience.

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

‘People would get upset with whatever we did’.

Real-world politics, in case you haven’t noticed, are particularly charged at the minute. It’s a climate that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, who told GQ he’s “thankful” his company isn’t working on Grand Theft Auto 6 right now. The firm’s obviously always been brilliant at social commentary, but he admits that he doesn’t know how he’d approach a sequel in the era of Donald Trump and Brexit.

“It’s really unclear what we would even do with it, let alone how upset people would get with whatever we did,” he said. “Both intense liberal progression and intense conservatism are both very militant, and very angry. It is scary but it’s also strange, and yet both of them seem occasionally to veer towards the absurd. It’s hard to satirise for those reasons. Some of the stuff you see is straightforwardly beyond satire.”

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

We understood that reference.

It’s not long before the return of Castlevania on PS4, with Castlevania Requiem bringing both Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood to the modern console. Along with the usual improvements this sort of compilation offers is a slew of trophies, and it’s clear the people responsible for naming them have had some fun.

Take a look through the trophy list and it won’t be long before you spot a reference to something from popular culture, or just some silly word play. Even the Platinum pokes fun at an infamous line from Symphony of the Night’s original script: ‘A Miserable Little Pile of Secrets’ is the name of the top gong in Requiem. Elsewhere, you can see trophy names such as ‘Nothing but Annette’, ‘The Full Belmonty’, and ‘You Are Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!’. Listen, any game that recognises The Room is okay with us.

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

Still no date though.

For fans of Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, it’s been a painfully long wait to hear more about the RPG’s season pass. It was more than four months after the game’s release before we got any kind of information, and even that was worryingly vague. However, Bandai Namco has at last coughed up another sliver of detail on the first of the two main add-ons.

The first DLC pack, supposed to be releasing this winter, is now called ‘Labyrinth of the Ghost King’, according to the latest Weekly Famitsu. The story focuses on King Lamikyl, the leader of Endrance, who players will be tasked with taking down. New equipment will be included, as will a new battle mechanic called the Gokui System. Unfortunately, we’re still missing a concrete release date, but it shouldn’t be too far off now.

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

Always believe in your soul?

The soul still burns, but it does so from a trashcan in Japan these days. SoulCalibur VI endured a disastrous opening in its native Japan, selling a feeble 24,049 copies on the PlayStation 4. That’s way down on previous entries, and with the sequel also struggling in Western territories like the UK, it’s not looking great for this epic series of swords and shields.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, meanwhile, is having a whale of a time. The first-person shooter topped the Japanese sales charts for a second successive week, shifting another 95,572 units, bringing its total up to 321,347 units. That’s a really impressive number when you consider the country’s usual tastes, and we’re eager to see whether Red Dead Redemption 2 can replicate this kind of success. The marketing’s certainly looking good.

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

Fangs a lot.

If you still have your PS3 kicking around, you might want to take advantage of a freebie that’s been spotted in the Sale of the Dead Halloween offer on the US PlayStation Store. inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood can be picked up for zero cents if you’re a PlayStation Plus member, so if you’ve never had the chance to play it, now’s the time.

Originally released as DLC for inFAMOUS 2, the standalone Festival of Blood infests New Marais with vampires, and our electrical hero Cole is, of course, bitten. It’s pretty short, but it’s the perfect little game for the Halloween season, and no one can complain about getting it gratis. The Sale of the Dead offer ends on 2nd November, so if you’ve still got your last gen machine, get it downloaded.

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

Full announcement coming soon.

We’ve not heard a great deal from the Trine series for a while, have we? Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power didn’t really go down all that well, and the series has remained dormant in the years since. It looks like that’s all about to change, though, as Frozenbyte has confirmed that it’s working on Trine 4, and it’ll arrive on PS4 next year.

The developer is partnering with Modus Games, who will publish the new title. It’s all sounding pretty positive; a press release from Frozenbyte CEO Lauri Hyvärinen says the follow-up is “going to be the best in the series.” He continues: “We have rekindled our love for the franchise, heard and seen the fan feedback, and our hearts are set on exceeding those expectations. Trine is back!”

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

Alley-oops.

In 2017, NBA Playgrounds came out of nowhere and slam dunked its way onto the PlayStation 4, giving basketball fans a solid alternative to the ultra-realistic simulation the NBA 2K series offers. It was something we hadn’t seen since NBA Jam’s last entry in 2010, and while it wasn’t perfect it did provide a lot of fun. It seems that Saber Interactive got set to working on a sequel almost immediately, however a major delay of the release coupled with publishing being taken over by 2K Sports showed signs of trouble. Could NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 suffer from the dreaded sophomore slump?

The original gameplay loop of playing matches to earn in-game currency and buy card packs to unlock new players is still here and has been majorly beefed up this time around. The player roster has increased significantly, and practically any player you could ever want to see in cartoon form is here, from Michael Jordan to World B. Free. With the first game there was a serious lack of players, and we found that once we had played through the entire single player mode we had unlocked most of the best cards. Here that isn’t the case and players who enjoy the loop of unlocking new players will have a lot of fun. For those that are impatient or just can’t seem to find the players they want, there is an option to buy a special card pack that unlocks the game’s entire roster, and you can buy individual players too if you’re just after one specific guy.

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

Won’t be there for launch.

Battlefield V is set to arrive in just under a month’s time on 20th November, and EA has mapped out some of the updates coming to the game post launch. Interestingly, this includes Firestorm, the WW2 shooter’s equivalent of the wildly popular Battle Royale. The mode, which is largely being developed by Criterion, won’t be present when the game is released, but will arrive a few months later, in March of next year.

“During spring, DICE and Criterion start the fire with Battlefield V’s battle royale experience,” EA states. “Firestorm elevates the mode by bringing in the best of what Battlefield is known for. Mix a shrinking playing field with trademark Battlefield elements such as team play, powerful vehicles, and destruction, and you get many unique Battlefield moments coming your way.”

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico

Echoes of an elusive age.

There was concern about Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, as the anticipated JRPG didn’t exactly release at an ideal time. Launching just three days prior to PlayStation 4 juggernaut Marvel’s Spider-Man with next to no marketing at all, fans expected the worst for the latest entry in Square Enix’s iconic franchise.

As it turns out, the title did absolutely fine in the United States, debuting in 11th position on the latest NPD software charts. Even better, analyst Mat Piscatella revealed on Twitter that it set a franchise record, with “dollar sales more than double the previous best, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels”.

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

Powered by WPeMatico