With PlayStation 5 firmly on the horizon, and Epic Games showcasing their new engine running within PS5 hardware, showing the capabilities and speeds that it will be able to pull off with new game experiences as the market grows and evolves, there has never been a more exciting time to be a fan of Sony’s video game products.
Are you a PlayStation owner or fan, and want something to look forward to in the coming weeks and months throughout 2020? Here are some different examples of titles coming to PlayStation that you won’t want to miss, as well as some general information about the company’s new branding and treatment of its first-party titles.
The Last of Us Part II
The sequel to one of the greatest games on the PlayStation 3, and even perhaps one of the greatest video games of all time, The Last of Us Part II will tell the story of Ellie specifically, with players taking control of her rather than Joel as they did in the last game. Originally announced in December of 2016, fans have been waiting quite a while for this one, and it has been described by Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann as their “most ambitious game yet”.
It’s been a hard road for The Last of Us, and for developer Naughty Dog. Not only has the game been subject to some leaks surrounding its story, which has been disappointing and upsetting for many fans who wanted to experience the narrative as intended by the developer, but launching in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic has caused some expected logistical issues within the production of the game (likely to do with physical copies and console bundles). Nevertheless, the game has now gone gold, and fans are still looking forward to playing in its sombre, post-apocalyptic world when the game launches at the end of May. Keep an eye out for this one, as it is likely to be a game of the year contender!
Ghost of Tsushima
It’s been years since Sucker Punch Productions has released a game, with their last project being Infamous First Light back in 2014, and with the release date of Ghost of Tsushima so close to The Last of Us Part II, as well as the fact that the game has not been shown an awful lot since its original announcement, there has been quite a bit of uncertainty surrounding the title. However, with the recent State of Play showcase giving gamers a clear vision on what the title will look like in its moment-to-moment gameplay when the game launches on the 17th July , minds are a lot clearer and excited!
Here are some of the key features in Ghost of Tsushima that can be gleaned from the most recent PlayStation State of Play showcase, and that are well worth getting excited about:
- Combat in Ghost of Tsushima will take a couple of different forms, giving you the choice to either go in all katanas blazing and fight your enemies head-on, or taking the stealth route and sneaking around villages, assassinating targets as you go. The game also has a beautiful open-world environment, explorable via horseback and directed via wind.
- A homage to the Samurai films of old, such as the classics from the likes of Akira Kurosawa, Ghost of Tsushima even features a fully-fledged black and white cinematic mode, for fans that want to establish a filmic vibe in their samurai playthrough. The game’s visuals and settings already look beautiful as it is, but those playing on PS4 Pro with HDR support on their televisions are in for a real treat, bringing a completely new meaning to ‘fifty shades of grey’.
A New Look
When talking about PlayStation’s future and some different reasons to get excited about the video games, one interesting thing to note that was updated recently was some of the branding and logo treatment surrounding PlayStation Studios. The company announced that their first-party titles would all come under the same umbrella, with each game development studio receiving a PS Studios crest on their game’s box art and also a video segment that will play as the game boots up. The video itself is very similar to the Marvel Studios clip that plays before the Avengers films, showing some of the PlayStation greats that are exclusive to the platform, and playable nowhere else.
Similar to how Nintendo established its first-party dominance back in the day with the ‘Seal of Quality’ badge (something that stays on the boxes of Nintendo games/products to this day), this branding and marking on PlayStation games will let consumers know in the future that they’re looking at benchmark, quality titles.
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