What were the highlights from the PlayStation State of Play Winter 2024? | Team Talk

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​After Xbox fired the starting gun for the year at their Dev_Direct, now it's PlayStation’s turn to blow us away with the fun and games they have in store this year.

They may have saved the creamy filling for next week for some, as they invited SquareEnix to show off Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at an exclusive event tomorrow.

In the meantime there was a mixed bag of titles to get salivating about. What tickled your fancy? Let us know over on our Discord.

​by Team PTC

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​@pass_controller

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Judas | James Parry

​While Stellar Blade did promise a fun combo of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta energy, it strikes me as a game I would go into with the best of intentions but ultimately give up on.

Judas on the other hand, from industry veteran Ken Levine and friends, is set to bring back the atmosphere of the iconic BioShock trilogy with a fresh new spin.

What we know so far from what we've seen is the game is a sci-fi action game, set in a dystopian world – the last part of that is probably fairly easy to guess.

There's exciting potential, as Levine himself has billed this game as “exploring new approaches” to the classic story-driven, single-player narrative experience he and his team are known for.

What they have shown off does look very much like BioShock and its predecessors, but given it's been over 10 years since Infinite, many players’ appetites are already whetted.

I hope the game will push the boundaries in every way and inspire a whole new generation to get into storytelling in games.

Elsewhere, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach was given ample time to show off what Hideo Kojima in store for us in his surreal sci-fi sequel, and while it's not one I'm likely to play, I'm still excited to experience it vicariously through one of the many hundreds of excited YouTubers who will be putting it through its paces.

Legendary Tales & Metro Awakening | Liam Andrews

​Even though I don’t own a VR headset yet, the VR games were my highlight. I really liked the look of Legendary Tales, especially the combat, which looked like loads of fun. Being able to grab weapons out of the air or use broken off bits of an enemy to block or do damage on the fly is a very cool idea.

I enjoy playing Baldur’s Gate 3 in multiplayer, so I’m not put off by the idea of this being an RPG to be experienced with others, however I doubt I’ll be able to convince a few of the regular adventurers I accompany to invest in a headset purely for this game, even though it looks like it would be a lot of fun with friends.

Still, I would happily dive into the game solo, if only just to try what looks like a very engaging combat system (it doesn’t get more interactive than throwing a skeleton through a table, then picking it up and giving it a good pummelling!).

Metro Awakening VR also looked interesting. I liked Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light, and this looks like it’ll be just as atmospheric as those titles, more so in VR. I am a coward when it comes to horror, however, so I’m not sure how well I would handle the jump scares or gloomy locations, they were sometimes scary enough on a regular TV screen.

Legendary Tales | Chris Brand

This was a meatier outing than Xbox's, rather light, presentation a couple of weeks prior. There were a few titles on show which would have piqued my interest on any other day, Judas is looking like it could really be something special and the Silent Hill series is still as spooky as ever. I could have been writing about a handful of titles, if not for one which stood out far above the others.

At first, I assumed Legendary Tales would be nothing more than filler, to pad out the smaller selection of VR titles, but it turned out to be one of the greatest trailers I've ever seen. When games brag about destructible objects the results are usually disappointing, like Battlefield's structures which topple in the exact same way each time, or whatever the hell we got in Crackdown 3's bare-bones multiplayer mode. Legendary Tales not only lives up to its promise, it goes a step further by giving us the thing we all wanted without even realising (the aforementioned skeleton pummelling).

The name suggests there's a robust narrative to be experienced and after doing some cursory research I discovered there's quite a lot more on offer than powerbombing skeletons, with skill trees, crafting, legendary items and a quest-driven story, playable solo or with friends. That being said, it all comes back to the combat.

I can think of few things more satisfying than defeating a horde of enemies with whatever debris is lying around from the last battle. It's a certain kind of freedom that is missing from most games and something I've been discouraged from doing in real life.

As I don't own any VR-capable devices, I've now got to convince one of my friends to take the plunge, which should be an easy task once I show them a video of someone punching a skeleton until it's dead (deader?).