Today, Sony released their first ever PlayStation "State of Play" livestream, which is supposed to be their equivalent of Nintendo's "Nintendo Direct". I think I found a list of all of the games touched on here and now I am going to talk about my thoughts on them similarly to my OGIGACA (Only Games I Give a Crap About) posts. I will probably add anything new and particularly interesting to the OGIGACA revisited post towards the end of the year or early 2020 depending on what happens. Fair warning: I do not have any VR peripherals and I am not really interested in the medium. I know firsthand that there is fun to be had with VR games but I have yet to see or play anything up my street. So I am pretty closed-minded when it comes to VR games, as you will soon see.
BLOOD AND TRUTH
excitement: 0/5
Blood and Truth is a game that wishes it was a James Bond movie.
VR FPS with mo-cap trying to do some James Bond stuff. Don't care. Next.
CONCRETE GENIE
excitement: 0/5
Concrete Genie is a very artsy game about an artist bringing a grim city back to life with a magic paintbrush.
There was not much in the trailer I saw that fully explained the gameplay. As visually impressive as the game looks and how it seems to be using those visuals to actually affect the gameplay and tell a coherent story, nothing seems engaging enough for me to care as a video-game enthusiast.
CRASH TEAM RACING: NITRO FUELED
excitement: 2/5
Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled is a PS4 remake of Crash Team Racing for the original PlayStation.
There were many things that pissed me off about the N. Sane Trilogy. One was that there was an unskippable opening to the game that featured an HD polygonal model of Crash that looked great and you have to watch him get skewered into a photo-realistic fursuit. Another thing that pissed me off was that they flubbed a lot more than they improved in terms of general gameplay and somehow menu design. One last thing: it reminded me that Activision still owns Crash Bandicoot. After the financial and commercial success of the N. Sane Trilogy, I figured they would do something else to pee on Crash Bandicoot's grave but I was not sure what. I will never side with Activision in the grand scheme of things but I am going to give Beenox the benefit of the doubt. Beenox is known for a lot of shovelware and some Skylanders stuff but the exact same was the case for Toys for Bob who developed the remakes of the original trilogies for Crash and Spyro. I also really like that they added polygonal models for Nitro Fueled because I really did not like the vast majority of the visual "upgrades" in N. Sane Trilogy. The realistic-but-not style is still in the game in a general sense but the option for the characters to not look like this is a really nice touch. I don't think what is publicly known about Nitro Fueled is enough to sell me on the game yet, especially because I don't like giving Activision money and I already have the original CTR on my PS3. If they do more with it that I find interesting, I may consider actually buying this one. On the other hand, I have literally already played this one since it is a remake of an already pretty well-made PS1 game. Time will tell.
DAYS GONE
excitement: 0/5
Days Gone seems to be another cinematic shooter.
Everyone is bored with these right? Aren't we all done with these? I couldn't find much on the gameplay and the story that the game is based on looks pretty fucking boring. More accurately, it's nothing I haven't seen before. The problem with making your video games more like movies with real people and motion capture is that you still have to do something that separates it from being a movie, otherwise you are just making a movie with physical, interactive rules. Maybe there is something I am missing but I highly doubt it.
EVERYBODY'S GOLF
excitement: 0/5
Everybody's Golf is what you think it is.
VR bores me almost as much as golf does. Next.
FALCON AGE
excitement: 0/5
Falcon Age is a game where you raise a bird.
VR and crafting. No thanks. Next.
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S VR: HELP WANTED
excitement: FUCK OFF/5
Can we PLEASE be done with this?!?
I have no interest in FNAF and I CERTAINLY have no interest in a VR edition of that. If there is such a thing as negative interest that goes beyond general disdain or apprehension, that's what I have for this. NEXT!!!
IRON MAN VR
excitement: 0/5
Iron Man VR is a VR game where you play as Iron Man.
It looks like it is trying to cash in on the MCU rendition of Iron Man. A game where you control Iron Man and do Iron Man things should be fun by default but it doesn't look like anyone knows how to do it and make it fun, probably because every major attempt at this I can think of is either a game that is not an Iron Man game specifically and the MCU is still an unrelenting media success. The little gameplay shown looks pretty bland. There are games like this you can play on your phone for free with VR technology that don't interrupt themselves with one-liners and 360-degree cutscenes. Definitely skipping this one. Next.
JUPITER & MARS
excitement: 0/5
Jupiter & Mars seems to be a story-driven adventure game starring two dolphins named Jupiter and Mars.
Very, very pretty but nothing enticing beyond that. The thing with VR games is that a game might still sort of passively pique my interest with something more visual or story-reliant but in a VR game trying both, I don't see much room for focus enough to make it that interesting. But now I'm just bitching about VR. This definitely does not look bad, it just is not something I find particularly interesting.
MINI-MECH MAYHEM
excitement: 1/5
Mini-Mech Mayhem is a game where you play games. You design a player mech and then sit at a little table where you and a few other people can play some kind of strategy game together. It looks kind of like X-COM but instead of facing a wave of aliens, you face other players' soldiers.
This is one of the few VR games that I think would just be a cool idea without VR. The game within the game seems more complicated than I expected from a cutesy VR game called "Mini-Mech Mayhem". I'm not really stoked for it or anything but, and this is going to sound incredibly pessimistic, I'm interested to see if it flops or completely falls off the radar. I hope that's not the case for the developers' sakes. At the same time, I am not buying this day one unless something really thwaps me in the face. I am assuming you can play this without VR. If that's the case, I am somewhat interested in it but mostly just curious if it has more than what's on the surface in the final product. Otherwise, I would probably say excitement 0/5.
MORTAL KOMBAT 11
excitement: 0/5
Mortal Kombat 11 is a fighting game. I probably do not have to explain or introduce what this is.
It looks pretty crazy and silly. I gave it 0/5 excitement because I am not a huge fan of Mortal Kombat. I don't have a whole lot against it, just not a fan. I hope it fulfills whatever wishes fans of the series have for it. I'm sitting this one out. Again. As usual.
NO MAN'S SKY BEYOND
excitement: 0/5
No Man's Sky Beyond is a free update to No Man's Sky. It allegedly will have actual online multiplayer this time along with a lot of stuff I would have to care about No Man's Sky to give a shit about.
No Man's Sky has always been a huge disappointing trainwreck. A lot of people have been vouching for it after that giant update they did recently but I still just don't see it being any fun. The design of the game as a whole really did not change enough for me to justify ever buying it. Passive multiplayer is not going to sway my opinion on what is already a Frankenstein creation of a game.
OBSERVATION
excitement: 1/5
Observation is a game where you get to control a space station. Not as a character but directly. As normal games would have you controlling a character or controlling a character controlling the station, you as the player are personified in the game as the station itself.
That idea is pretty cool in its own right. I could not find very much gameplay at all but it reminds me of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I am curious to see what kind of game comes from such a concept and whether or not it will actually be fun. I'm probably not going to actively follow it every day or anything but I hope the idea is fleshed out enough to be as cool as it initially seems.
READYSET HEROES
excitement: 1/5
Readyset Heroes is Gauntlet for little kids. The twist that separates it from most top-down dungeon action-RPG's is that other co-op groups can be in the same dungeon as you. At the end of these dungeons, you can fight other groups. The faster you get to the end of the dungeon, the more powerful you will become against your opposing explorers.
I don't know what it is but something about the overall presentation of this game rubs me the wrong way. The character designs and their Fortnite-esque animations look really cheap to me. The game doesn't necessarily look like complete shit but nothing about the physics or visuals seem to be very exciting. The idea is cool but I think it would be better suited for something like actual Gauntlet or something like Divinity - Original Sin.
TABLE OF TALES: THE CROOKED CROWN
excitement: 0/5
Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown is another VR game where you play a game within a game. You control board pieces and they attack other pieces on a constantly morphing, enchanted game table.
Another game that looks like a decent enough idea but it is VR and it makes it instantly exponentially less interesting. Next.
TROVER SAVES THE UNIVERSE
excitement: 1/5
Trover Saves the Universe is a VR adventure game written, voiced, and directed by Justin Roiland. A creature with two eyeholes has stolen your two dogs and put them in his eyeholes to give him devastating power. The world is mad at you and your dogs. A smaller eyehole creature is hired to get you to save the universe from this eyehole monster.
I really like Justin Roiland's work and his personality really shines through in this game but I just don't care about VR as much as he does. It looks like a very entertaining and clever ride and I am glad it exists. It's still... just... VR.
VACATION SIMULATOR
excitement: 0/5
Vacation Simulator is almost exactly what it sounds like.
At least it looks stylized and has a silly backstory to what you are doing. I definitely do not want it but I respect it to a degree. I would say "next" but there were no more games touched on in the livestream to my knowledge.
Overall, I think the State of Play was just as serviceable as Nintendo Direct. The problem here is just that none of the titles were very enticing. Maybe some of it is just personal preference but most of what was shown looked outright bland and tasteless to me. I probably won't talk about all of these in OGIGACA Revisited this year because it would just be a waste of both my time and yours.
