one is less than 5 minutes from starting – right near Valentines Day! Rumours and theories have been swirling, but it’s mostly the expected – Ghost of Yotei release date? Death Stranding 2 trailer before it gets its already-announced presentation in March? God of War remasters? Gears of War remasters? And, of course, it wouldn’t be a State of Play lead-up without some Bloodborne copium. I’m hoping to see something cool that comes out of nowhere – that’s tough these days, but as we saw with the recent Ninja Gaiden announcements, not impossible.
Monster Hunter: Wilds
Sony smartly kicks things off by getting the “big game that’s out in a few days” out of the way quickly with an extensive, gameplay-focused trailer for Monster Hunter Wilds. It’s all you need for a game that’ll be in your hands very soon – a nice bread-and-butter showoff of the monsters you’ll be fighting and the weapons you’ll be doing it with. At this point, who needs to be sold?
Sega Brings It
Following Monster Hunter Wilds was a Sega double tap – Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, and Sonic Racing Cross Worlds. Honestly, I think these two are a surprisingly good pair, as they clearly demonstrate the level of variety Sega is bringing to the table. A violent, painterly 2D action side-scroller and a cartoonish 3D kart racer combined cover a wide breadth of players, and both look very competent at what they do – I’m on board for Shinobi at the very least.
Digimon Goes Big with Digimon Story: Time Stranger
With an opening reminiscent of Akira, I wasn’t expecting this title reveal – and I do think that was meant to be the point. With the fact that this is a Digimon game being played like a reveal, it’s clear that Bandai Namco is trying to really kick the door down here. MaximillianDood suggested on his livestream that this might have been inspired by Palworld, and I think he’s onto something there – a big, open, high-budget Digimon game taking ideas from a huge recent success has a lot of opportunity to make the already popular IP go into overdrive.
Lost Soul Aside Is Finally Coming
This has been a LONG wait, but Lost Soul Aside, that Chinese action game inspired by Final Fantasy Versus XIII/XV and initially revealed as being made by solo creator Yang Bing before a full team was built up, is finally dropping on May 30th. Bing himself appears to commemorate 10 years since he began work on the game, and show off the new trailer, complete with release date. The game looks to keep its “Final Fantasy meets Devil May Cry” vibe, and while I worry it might come out generic or dated after having been in development for so long, there’s many worse things a game can feel like than “early-2010s character action game”.
Extra Updates
Shawne Benson of PlayStation’s third-party branch appears to drop some smaller updates. The Like A Dragon series is up first with a demo (for Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii) and a crossover DLC with indie darling Dave the Diver. Both of these look like great fun and are lighting a fire under me to get back to my Like A Dragon series playthrough. For the second update, the new Alpha for arena shooter Splitgate 2 is coming later this month – the genre isn’t my thing, but the “Overwatch with Portals” approach has a lot of appeal. Good luck to all Splitgate players.
Wrasslin’ Is Life, Wrasslin’ Island
A new update on WWE 2K25 shows off “The Island”, a seeming mix of Street Fighter 6’s World Tour Mode and PlayStation Home. The open multiplayer space features WWE memorabilia, quests, and shops with various customisations. I’ve never been into wrestling myself (the closest is a few SuperEyepatchWolf videos), but as an outsider I feel this new mode is a shrewd move. You can’t talk about wrestling without talking about wrestling fans and the impact they have on the careers and stories that play out both in and out of the ring, so a community-based mode like this seems, if anything, overdue.
Identifying Borderlands… Yep, It’s Borderlands
Another release date trailer, this time confirming Borderlands 4 for September 23rd. The trailer is all guns, all the time – Gearbox knows what the Borderlands audience wants, and it’s exactly what they’ve brought. The biggest surprise here is the announcement of a Spring State of Play specifically dedicated to Borderlands 4 – I feel like any fan of the series has seen all they need to see, so it’ll be interesting to find out what’s justifying a whole show. I think they’ll need more than “even more guns”.
A New Split/Fiction Trailer
Following up from its announcement at The Game Awards, Hazelight’s newest co-op game Split/Fiction shows off more footage of its charming protagonists Mio and Zoe, writers travelling through their disparate sci-fi and fantasy stories and learning to work together and respect each other – much like some of the people who’ll play as them, I imagine. The theme of their approaches to writing clashing against each other really clicks with me, and gives the Tron and D&D-inspired worlds more meaning. I’m looking forward to tackling this with a friend.
The Dark Pictures Goes Sci-Fi
Directive 8020, starring Lashana Lynch of No Time To Die and Captain Marvel fame, gets its first really major trailer, with a significant amount of footage that lays Supermassive’s inspirations right on the table. The visuals and exposition make it very clear that a blend of Alien and The Thing is the order of the day here – this is very much my shit and I strongly doubt I’m alone in that. As another “cinematic choice” game like Until Dawn and the previous Dark Pictures games, Directive 8020 will need to lean on its visuals and performances more than most – based on this trailer they’re well up to the task.
A Cute-Horror Double-Up
Fittingly, the new Five Nights At Freddy’s title Secret of the Mimic is paired with The Midnight Walk, a claymation-style horror game coming with both regular and PSVR2-compatible modes. The PSVR2 support automatically gets me more excited about The Midnight Walk, but these both look like interesting approaches to the basic concept of a horror game warping classically cute characters into something uncanny. The heads of Moonhood Studios appearing in person with the clay dolls likely used in the development of The Midnight Walk is an especially nice touch, and adds to that tactile feeling that I’m sure will be further enhanced in VR.
Darwin’s Paradox
An octopus stealth game? Since this is coming from Konami, the Metal Gear jokes are just a little too obvious. Sadly, Darwin lacks the impeccable disguise skills of Octodad, but he still seems capable of making it through the seafood processing plant in which he finds himself. Now he just needs you to help him through. I’ll be there – the classic real-life octopus abilities lend themselves very well to a stealth game, and I appreciate the imagination on display.
Warriors: Abyss
Koei Tecmo steps into the Roguelite ring with a new spinoff of its long-running Warriors game series. Roguelites are a popular genre nowadays, with developers needing to offer something different to stand out. KT clearly know what they’re good at and have gone with “MORE”. More enemies, more allies, more battle styles. Oh, and a shadowdrop/immediate release. I’ll always respect those.
Onimusha: Jubei and Musashi Cut In
An Onimusha double bill? So soon after the Capcom show? Honestly, Onimusha: Way of the Sword isn’t feeling like a 2026 game at all, despite that being the confirmed release year. We’ve now gotten 2 extensive trailers, both very polished, with this one revealing the protagonist as Miyamoto Musashi – legendary swordsman of the Edo period and the main character of the Netflix Onimusha series. Clearly this recent Onimusha push has been in the works for the while. We also got confirmation of the Onimusha 2 remaster coming on May 23 – as the only mainline Onimusha game I’ve never played, I’m looking forward to this.
Metal Gear Solid Delta, Coming In August
Konami pops back up with the release date trailer for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, which you’ve probably already seen by now. The only major leak of the show, the trailer was seemingly uploaded to PSN early. It’s a shame, as it’s a dame fine trailer and probably would’ve been one of the bigger reveals of the show. It’s also a shame that it’s still quite a ways off, coming over two years after its initial reveal, but hopefully the wait is worth it. The visuals are the main star here, the voice acting and animation being deliberately unchanged, and they don’t disappoint.
Hell Is Us, And I Want More
Hell Is Us is one of the more mysterious games I’ve followed in a while. It’s been called a mix of Dark Souls and Death Stranding, and it definitely takes after the latter with a seemingly bizarre setting that mixes old and new technology with supernatural elements in ways that don’t make the most sense at first glance. This combined with Souls-style gameplay just makes me so much more intrigued, and is making me consider going on blackout from this game’s marketing before it releases on September 4th.
Lies Of P Brings The Chills
Lies of P: Overture is a frosty new DLC that’s making me really want to finally go back and play the main game – I only played the demo originally, and apparently the final game contained several major gameplay improvements. This is a classic DLC trailer, showing off a snowy new setting and (I assume) new enemies and weapons, with an overall fairytale vibe that contrasts nicely with the rampaging violence. Don’t forget this one.
Dreams Of Another: Creation Through… Guns?
This is a weird one. The world looks to be made out of voxels like Resogun, and lets you create through shooting in a deliberate subversion of normal shooter games. At least, that’s the claim of Director Baiyon of Q-Games, who describes it as materialising the world out of the abstract chaos it starts as, as well as discussing the “point cloud rendering technology” used to make a “dreamlike world”. I think he’s achieved what he set out to do, but this is one of those games I’ll need to see more of.
New Updates
Kristen Zitani shares several Global Content updates – Days Gone Remastered, Stellar Blade DLC with a Nikke collaboration, the February PS Plus games including DontNod’s Lost Records and Jedi Survivor, Blue Prince, Abiotic Factor and several PlayStation Plus Classics reveals including the first 3 Armored Core games and Patapon 3. I’d recommend looking up this entire slate, it’s varied and has something for everyone. I appreciate the (likely) $15 upgrade for Days Gone Remastered – it comes with both technical upgrades and a new Horde Assault mode.
Tides of Annihilation Brings A Sense Of Scale
This one went directly from “never heard of it” to “near the top of my list” over the course of one trailer, and that takes something special. Coming from Eclipse Glow Games – again, never heard of them – it takes place in a fantastical setting that combines swords, magic and surrealistically gigantic titans with post-apocalyptic Britain. The protagonist is, if my ear is right, voiced Jennifer English of Baldur’s Gate 3 fame, which is as efficient of a sales pitch to me as anything. The gameplay looks more God or War or Devil May Cry than Dark Souls, though there’s a heavy focus on visually elemental magic and summoned allies fighting beside you. Combine all this with some truly impeccable visuals, and you should watch this one closely.
Metal Eden
From Reikon Games comes what looks to be a very cyberpunk-y FPS with a heavy focus on speed and traversal – lots of jumping, wall-running and grapple-gunning in this trailer. For now, it looks appealing to any sci-fi action fan (me), but I’ll need to see more – though some of the dialogue seems to hint at some very Ghost of the Shell-esque story and character themes, which is a hell of a start.
MINDSEYE
Leslie Benzies is a long-time producer and director on the Grand Theft Auto series who recently left Rockstar North behind, and he’s clearly taken his decades of experience into his new game Mindseye. The new trailer shows off shooting, driving, and even shooting while driving. It hardly looks like a GTA ripoff though, clearly aiming for a more serious, very-near-future sci-fi story focused on untrustworthy biotechnology and the corporations controlling it. I strongly recommend that any GTA fan look at this immediately, and hope it doesn’t launch alongside GTAVI.
SAROS
Oh, hell yes. Housemarque’s Returnal was a fantastic evolution of their smaller budget “bullet hell” games into a cinematic rogue-lite that somehow managed to make weaving through shots work well in an over-the-shoulder game. Saros, apparently not a sequel but rather just “Housemarque’s new roguelite”, looks to build on this trend further. A new planet, a new protagonist voice, performed and motion-captured by the excellent Rahul Kohli, and a new visual approach combined with some truly cutting-edge visuals that are already confirmed to be enhanced for PS5 Pro would be enough to get me on board, but the devs have also confirmed that the game design approach will now also allow you to become more capable after every single death. This might not be to everyone’s taste, but the tagline “Come Back Stronger” clearly demonstrates that Housemarque is going all in on it. Sony seems to have decided to cap off each State of Play with a nice first-party game reveal rather than concentrating them in Showcases, and I like the approach. Hell of a finish.
Final Thoughts
Well, I guess Sony let the dreams be dreams this time. I’m sure the lack of MASSIVE REVEALS I discussed in the opening paragraph will result in a lot of people trashing this show, but me? I’d go so far as to call it (barring personal tastes) objectively good, and a great showing of brand new titles. I love remakes and sequels as much as anyone else, but we need new blood in the games industry, and this show packed an absolute surfeit and new IP that I hope will grow into next-gen franchises. Onimusha, Tides of Annihilation and Saros are probably my games of the show, but looking back over the list, there’s a great deal here to love. As long as you look at what’s here instead of what’s not, you’ll find a game for you.
