Games Inbox: Was the latest PS5 State of Play a good one?

The Friday letters page is unconvinced by Sony’s current God Of War plans, as one reader blames Highguard’s art style for its failure.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

A promising year
I thought it was a great State of Play, but I do get the issue about Sony not doing much themselves to make it good. The whole thing was basically Konami feat. Sony with none of the exciting stuff having anything to do with first parties. (Which was probably for the best as that God Of War game by the no-name developer looked rough.)

I was much more interested in the John Wick annoucement, Castlevania, Silent Hill, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Yakoh Shinobi Ops, and the two Capcom games. That’s a pretty good line-up and while at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if they’re by Sony or not it’s a shame their stuff wasn’t on top of this – because imagine how good that would be!

One of the best things about the show was that the majority of the games seemed to be out this year. So I think this is a going to be a really good year for gaming, especially once you add in GTA 6 (and Wolverine, which is a Sony game, but they didn’t mention that!).
Cranston

God of confusion
That was a good State of Play, but I have to say the most disappointing part of it was Sony. I really don’t think a God of War remake trilogy is a very good idea, especially given they’ve barely started work on it. So when is that going to be out? Not till 2030 at least I would assume. And if that is by Santa Monica Studio themselves that is tying them up with a backwards looking game (or games – I assume they’re releasing it as a compilation?) for a long time.

I’d be much more interested in hearing about the next mainline God Of War and this rumoured new IP. What I’m not interested is that rubbish looking new Metroidvania. That looked like just a generic indie game that you’d find dozens of on Steam, so I don’t really get the point.
Paulie

A good State
RE: State Of Play. Wow. As a Castlevania, Metal Gear, God Of War, Legacy Of Kain, John Wick, James Bond, andCapcom fan… that was great.

I also liked to look of Crimson Moon. Yakoh: Shinobi Arts, obviously Saros, Darwin’s Paradox, and I’ll try Dead Or Alive 6: Last Round.

Crikey…
Beastiebat (PSN ID)

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Cautious-vania
Surprising to see how big a part Konami was of the State of Play but I’m all for it. I do find their attitude towards Castlevania to be really strange though. I can get maybe wanting to test the waters with a lower budget 2D game, but isn’t that something they should’ve done years ago, instead of prioritising * checks notes * GetsuFumaDen and Stranded Kids.

Why did they plan a dozen Silent Hill games, all of which were fairly high budget 3D games, and not a single new 3D Castlevania? They missed their chance getting FromSoftware to do it but there’s loads of other Soulslikes makers that could do a good job, I’m sure. Maybe a lower profile one like Mortal Shell, who I bet would be fairly cheap to get on board.

Of course, I’ll give Belmont’s Curse a try but my problem with it so far is that Dead Cells still looks more like Castlevania than it does, which isn’t a good start. I just hope the music is good.
Ishi

Face in the crowd
Sad to see Highguard fail so quickly, but if you ask me the problem with that game is that it all looked so generic. I played it a bit and it is actually fairly original for that sort of thing, but I think the issue is the negative buzz from The Game Awards and the fact that it has such a boring name and art style.

I’ve no idea what the story or lore was supposed to be, although I’m imagine it was very generic too. But then all the characters just looked like… video game characters. You could’ve dropped any of them into almost any other game, especially an action game or role-player, and they would’ve fitted in fine, which is not a good thing.

Too many companies try not to put off casual gamers with anything weird, but I don’t think it works. You need to stand out from the crowd, not hope someone plays your game because they mistake it for something else.
Heathcliffe

Vocal minority
I appreciate your article about the lack of a High On Life 2 review and I have to say I am no very put off from it and will definitely wait for a lot more trusted reviews from a variety of sources.

It made me think of the discussion a few days ago about pre-orders and why you’d pre-order anything before you saw a review or had some kind of reliable idea of how good it is.

I guess you could say you like the first one, and that’s good enough for you, but the people making the sequel have changed a lot since the original so it wouldn’t actually be surprising if the new game was very different – whether that’s better or worse.

Then again, I do wonder how many people really buy games day one anyway. You see a lot of people talking about it online, but I wonder if that’s the usual internet thing of it making it look like more people do a thing just because there’s a minority that’s always going on about it.

I don’t know anyone in real life that rushes out to buy a game the second it comes out and I definitely don’t know anyone that pre-orders anything. All my friends are like me and wait at least a couple of months until they’re cheap.

Almost everything will be at least a tenner off within two months, so it seemed madness to me to jump in straight away, especially if Black Friday is near or something like that.
Cordon

2D or not 2D
Do we know for a fact that Nintendo is even planning to make a 3D Super Mario game? We all assume they will but as far as I understand the 2D ones tend to sell better and I bet they’re a lot cheaper and quicker to make.

I guess the most logical guess would be the next one is going to be Super Mario Galaxy 3, but I don’t think Nintendo tends to do late sequels like that. You could say the movie tie-in is the reason to do it, but it will still be a little odd. Here’s hoping we get some clarification as soon as possible.
Grant

GC: We know absolutely nothing about Nintendo’s future plans for the Super Mario series.

Multiformat bomb
Thanks for the Super Bomberman Collection review, I had no idea at all that it was coming out until I saw your review that morning.

I could have bought it for cheaper on the Xbox Series X/S – it’s a few quid cheaper – but I went and got the Switch 2 version anyway, as I’ve got a full squadron of controllers for multiplayer on that.

I’ve got Bomberman R and R2, which I really enjoyed but felt they lacked some content on the Switch and have always been a fan since first coming across it on the Amiga 500 at a mate’s house, in the form of Dyna Blasters. I had no idea about Eric & The floaters but I have watched a video on YouTube and the game case reminds me more of Indiana Jones than anything else. Thanks for the education on that.

As a kid we had the Mega Drive four-way play attachment and spent hours upon hours on Mega Bomberman. It holds cherished gaming memories that will last a lifetime. Going toe to toe with friends in the same room, where it was a real even match-up, was always fabulous.

The NES versions in the collection are so playable too, just because the formula of the games has always been so addictive and simple and the simple graphics just don’t matter as the gameplay is what it’s all about.

I never had a SNES but a friend who did always said it was better on the Mega Drive. Having just played each game in the series on the collection I think the games are also great on the SNES and I’ll be dipping in again and playing all the single-player versions through. The rewind feature does make it too easy though and there’s a lack of challenge using it.

All in all, great collection, love spinning the original SNES game boxes on the artwork menu to see the packaging difference in all the releases.

Thanks GC. This was very unexpected and a nice surprise for me.
Nick The Greek

GC: It was a shadow drop, which we always feel is a mistake, but publishers keep doing them.

Inbox also-rans
I really want to play Super Mario Bros. but I only have an Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, and a PlayStation 5. Can you please help me?
Dave

GC: We’re not sure what to suggest – assuming you don’t want to buy a Switch 2 – other than to try and pick up an older Nintendo console second-hand.

Now you come to mention it, it is odd how uninvolved Disney has always been in gaming. They could’ve easily bought all the big companies back in the 80s and 90s but they just didn’t bother. They don’t seem to have learned either because they really should’ve probably bought Roblox or Minecraft too, considering their audience.
Bosley

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