Iron Man VR, Vacation Simulator And Mortal Kombat: Everything From PlayStation’s ‘State Of Play’
This morning, PlayStation live-streamed its first State of Play video to eager anticipation. As Sony is not attending the world’s biggest video games conference this year, many fans expected to be fed those sweet video game announcement nuggets via these new video updates instead.
Running for 20 minutes, the PlayStation live stream showcased a selection of upcoming games, and shared new details and release dates. It also placed a lot of focus on virtual reality games, with the majority of announcements pertaining to VR.
Here is a list of everything announced during PlayStation’s first State of Play stream:
- An Iron Man virtual reality game, practically titled Iron Man VR, is coming to PlayStation VR later this year. The announcement trailer showed Tony Stark (AKA the player) talking to AI Friday, before being blasted out of his private jet and subsequently blasting some hostiles. An enemy that looked a lot like Ghost of Ant-Man and the Wasp fame also appeared.
- Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, a remaster of 1999 game Crash Team Racing, will include content from 2003’s Crash Nitro Kart as well. Further, the PlayStation edition will have polygon-tastic retro skins so you can party like it’s 1999. The Crash Bandicoot racing game is arriving on 21 June 2019.
- No Man’s Sky Beyond, a free update arriving in winter 2019, will add VR support to the space exploration game.
- New game ReadySet Heroes was announced. A multiplayer dungeon crawler featuring anthropomorphised animals, players compete against an opposing team. Reaching the end of a dungeon triggers a winner takes all arena brawl. ReadySet Heroes supports four players, both local and online, and is scheduled for release some time this year.
- VR game Blood and Truth got a release date of 28 May 2019. Set in London, you’re a soldier on a mission to save your family. It looks a little like a British Taken.
- There was a montage of release dates for PlayStation VR games:
- Mini-Mech Mayhem – 18 June 2019
- Jupiter and Mars – 22 April 2019
- Falcon Age – 9 April 2019
- Trover Saves the Universe – 31 May 2019
- Everybody’s Golf VR – 21 May 2019
- Table of Tales – 16 April 2019
- Vacation Simulator – 18 June 2019
- Observation, not a VR game, got a release date of 21 May 2019. You play as a space station AI in this science-fiction thriller, helping an astronaut find out what happened to her missing crew mates. Personally, this is one of the the games I’m most excited about in this showcase.
- Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted, the first VR game in the Five Nights at Freddy’s series, is set for release in autumn 2019. It will feature some levels from the original game, as well as completely new levels.
- Concrete Genie, a game in which a bullied kid uses magical street art as an escape, is delayed until spring 2019. However, it will now come with a VR mode.
- A new gameplay video for Days Gone showed off Deacon St. John’s skill with a Molatov cocktail, as well as an intimidatingly muscled Freaker type called a Breaker. It further hinted that Deacon’s beautiful wife may have an important role in the story. The game will be released 26 April 2019.
- Mortal Kombat 11, due for release on 23 April 2019, confirmed that veteran fighters Jax, Kung Lao and Liu Kang are joining the lineup.
Some fans were disappointed by how VR-heavy the first State of Play was. While much more affordable than some other VR options, a PlayStation VR headset is still a pricey investment that many have held off from. Many of the announcements were thus irrelevant to the majority of gamers.
I love Playstation to death, but wow…I’m in absolute shock after State Of Play…That hurt. I excuse them, I forgive them, but this I can’t really, it was so misleading unless you’re a VR user which is NOT the majority of the PS4 community in any way! Just wow, so disappointing
— The Keyblade Master (@Pokezard) March 25, 2019
EVERYTHING SHOWN AT THE #StateofPlay could've been tweeted about
EXTREMELY BAD 1st Impression
WHY WOULD I TUNE INTO THE NEXT ONE?— HMK (@HMKilla) March 25, 2019
PlayStation VR games is the State of Play equivalent of Nintendo showing 3DS games during the directs
— Digi 😺 (@DigiDriver) March 25, 2019
PlayStation may have been concerned that coming out blazing with big announcements in the very first State of Play would set expectations for future videos too high – a legitimate concern. Further, we’re still relatively early in the year, and the time for big announcements is still a little ways off.
Hopefully, now that standards have been set, State of Play will be able to keep players up to date with more day-to-day announcements without deflating their excitement.