If you haven’t seen Sony’s latest State of Play video presentation, which ended up on YouTube earlier today, consider this a quick guide to the presentation’s best reveals of previously unknown games – along with mostly good news for enthusiasts outside of the PlayStation. console family, thanks for many cross-platform launch guarantees.
exoprimal reveal gameplay.
exoprimal (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, XB1, PC) — “2023”
In this brand new series, Capcom enters the class-based co-op shooter universe, and the results look like a cross between overwatch and Earth Defense Force† In exoprimalThe Earth has been overrun with, er, dinosaur outbreaks — so much so that TV weather reports revolve around the appearance or not of a mysterious floating orb that dumps hundreds of hungry dinosaurs into cities on any given day. To drive home this point, the trailer starts with a ridiculous number of velociraptors falling from the sky and stomping through the city streets. Other dinosaur species soon follow. (I’m going to call that a “high pressure system”.)
Earth’s mightiest mechsuit warriors appear during dino outbreaks in four-player co-op teams, each focusing on familiar co-op combat roles (tank, DPS, etc.) and have their own special abilities to face waves of dinosaurs. Though I wish this was somehow connected to Capcom’s classic Dino Crisis series, the trailer left no room for such a connection. But what if this game somehow feels as good as Capcom’s better-every year? Monster Hunter series, it could be a welcome over-the-top co-op option.
TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection to reveal.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, XB1, Nintendo Switch, PC) — “2022”
Almost all of the Ninja Turtles arcade and console video games released in the ’80s and ’90s come to this retro-minded collection. In even better news, the filled to bursting Coabunga Collection will not lock on PlayStation consoles. The full Game Boy, NES, SNES, Genesis, and arcade output from Ninja Turtles, including every cross-platform variant of titles such as tournament fighters-will eventually land on PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch as well.
The Cowabunga Collection really does its best to include every TMNT game from pop culture’s greatest heyday in the comic and cartoon series. That means you can look forward to banging your head against a wall as you take on the brutal difficulty of the series’ first NES game. (You can also look forward to using that game’s nifty new instant rewind feature.) Meanwhile, other games in the collection will be bolstered by online versus and co-op modes as needed.
For completers, here’s the full list, confirmed shortly after the Sony event ended:
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Gameboy)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewer (Gameboy)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Gameboy)
Return Ascension reveal expansion.
Return: Ascension (PS5) – March 22
This unexpected expansion, arriving as a free patch in two weeks, offers two ways to, uh, return to Return† The first adds full-fledged online co-op to the game’s existing procedurally generated campaign, which could very well help anyone who is still struggling with the game’s punishing but satisfying difficulty. (As a fun exercise, go through my colleague Kyle Orland’s recent post and map out how Return corresponds to the Ars Difficulty Matrix™.)
The second part of the patch adds an all-new, even more difficult chapter, available exclusively to players who have reached the “Icarian Grapnel” content in the normal campaign. The new chapter promises an increasingly insane amount of high-speed alien-enhanced combat for those who get the hang of it Return as far. Considering how much I loved this game and how high I placed it on the Ars 2021 games list, I have nothing but optimism about this completely free update.
The DioField Chronicle to reveal.
The DioField Chronicle (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, XB1, Nintendo Switch, PC) — “2022”
This is probably as close as Square Enix fans will get to a Final Fantasy Tactics continued in the near future. The DioField ChronicleUsing stylized drawings with pen strokes for the main characters, this new game is very similar to FF‘s first game on PS1. But the teams behind DioField Chronicle have chosen not to give a blow FF branding on this hybrid of turn-based and real-time tactical combat. This decision was probably made because: DioField‘s mechanics stray considerably from the slower tempo and three-quarter perspective of the FF spin off.
Plus, Platinum Games is on board as a co-developer, and Square Enix may not be ready to let Platinum take over for its most well-known game series (which will celebrate its 35th anniversary later this year).
Still, Platinum’s expertise with frenetic action games can pump excitement and new ideas into the long-in-the-tooth JRPG tactics genre, and Platinum’s love of ridiculous visual bombast is fully apparent in today’s new trailer. The trailer teases a combat system that generally seems to make movement and basic attacks available on a regular basis, while “special” attacks require spending character-specific points and waiting for cooldown timers. Exactly how these mechanics will play a role in the game’s flow of combat remains to be seen.
For the rest of the State of Play event reveals and game updates, including a highly anticipated return to Square Enix’s Valkyrie Profile series, check out a brief summary below. Or you can click here for the longer version.
Sony State of Play Shutdown, March 2022.
