PlayStation State of Play: packed with games, but lacking real star power

You might well disagree with our assessment of last night’s State of Play, the latest in a series of Sony livestreams in which upcoming games strut around to catch your eye. Whether you do or not probably depends on how much you love James Bond, samurai swords and fighting games.

If you do like those things, you sound pretty hard, so we’re happy to just defer to whatever you think and then buy you a new pint. Sorry. Have a good evening.

To us, though, it felt like a decent showing that lacked a real hype machine. There was a big new IP reveal in the form of 007 First Light, some admirable screen time given to more niche propositions like Baby Steps and Grasshopper Manufacture’s Romeo is a Dead Man, and an exciting reveal from Nioh 3.

Still, if you find yourself watching an extended reveal of an official PlayStation fightstick at one of these livestreams, a nagging sense emerges that this probably isn’t one for the ages.

Hang on, what about that Bond game though?

No, fair enough. 007 First Light has a bit of triple-A glitz and glamour about it. And handing that franchise over to Io Interactive, the Danish studio behind the Hitman games, makes all the sense in the world.

It was probably the biggest moment of the show, but seeing James Bond as a young floppy haired man who might easily have walked on from an Uncharted game left us neither particularly shaken nor stirred. Maybe we’re just being harsh because of what they’ve done to Thief.

What have they done to Thief?

You’ll want to take a seat: they’ve turned it into a VR game. No disrespect to the project or the platform, but this is a seriously respected series of immersive sims from the late Nineties to early Noughties we’re talking about.

The 2014 reboot suffered for having been pushed through the square hole of triple-A blockbuster conventions instead of being allowed to retain its aloof, slow-burning, hardcore qualities, so watching footage of someone waggling their hands cartoonishly around the screen while they pickpocket guards and shoot water arrows into fireplaces doesn’t exactly quell the fears that might happen again. It’s like hearing your favourite band have reformed, but only to appear on The Voice.

Enough moaning, let’s hear about some good games.

Quite right, those exist too. Romeo is a Dead Man is the latest project from Grasshopper Manufacture, the legendarily idiosyncratic studio who made No More Heroes, Let it Die, and, in a supreme act of irony, No More Heroes II & III. This one sees you fighting hordes of undead, Dead Rising-style, and the combination of slick combat and a hyperactive mashup of visual influences makes it punch through the noise. It ought to be a lot of fun.

Capcom’s Pragmata looks like some imaginative sci-fi action with a faint whiff of Death Stranding to it. And speaking tangentially of Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid Delta will be too, and although that’s a rather more known quantity at this point (it’s MGS3 running in Unreal Engine), it’s a nailed-on part of our gaming diet this year when it arrives on 28 August.

Quite a lot of ninjas too, weren’t there?

Glad you noticed. Nioh 3 and Ghost of Yotei provided a one-two punch of feudal era Japan swordplay, and demonstrated two distinct approaches to that time, place, and activity. The Nioh threequel will offer more ultra-demanding duels that reward deft inputs and quick reactions, while Sucker Punch’s follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima will do that, but with a bigger health bar and more narrative choices.

Anything else worth keeping an eye on?

Now that we’ve had a cup of tea and put the Thief VR thing behind us, yes there is. The show might have been missing that ‘Hold on, what?’ reveal moment, but its smaller beats were very pleasing.

Like the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection, which takes an archival approach to the first four classic beat ‘em ups plus their various spinoffs, bundling them all into one place where they’re super complete – sorry, Komplete – and playable on modern hardware.

And Silent Hill f, a horror spinoff from the famously misty mainline series, which invites you to ‘find the beauty in horror’. At first sight this one seems to be about the worries of a girl in adolescence made manifest as gore-drenched nameless horrors with blades all over them. 

Um, is it ok if we have a go at finding the beauty in that while the lights are still on and we keep pausing to decompress with restomod Tiktoks? Ok, deal.

This is only the start of all the big announcements and trailer-spamming though, with Summer Games Fest 2025 due to start in earnest on Friday 6 June. You can keep abreast with all its happenings by checking the official schedule.