The rollout of Next Gen only games has been painfully slow. Xbox exclusive The Medium was met with middling reviews and the next major release from Sony (Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart) isn’t coming until June. This week however, Sony and Microsoft attempted to sate fans’ appetites by giving us all a glimpse of what’s to come.

PlayStation State of Play

Sony went live and shared a plethora of trailers, for games new and old, that demonstrate the variety you’ve come to expect on the PlayStation platform. While everything looked at least competent, there were a couple games that stood out as potentially special. Kena: Bridge of Spirits, from Ember Lab, is a third person action adventure featuring a magical young girl who shepherds spirits from this life to the next. The gameplay looks fun if uninspired, Kena uses melee, ranged spells and area attacks on various monsters much like every other action game you’ve played. What made Kena stand out was the setting. An incredibly dense and lush forest environment filled with fantastical creatures drawn in a style that makes you believe you’re watching a Pixar or Netflix feature.

The other was Sifu, an over the top third person martial arts brawler scheduled to come late this year. Sifu features a young Kung Fu student out for revenge following his family’s murder. I get the impression that the story will matter little and less as you plow through countless generic thugs in city streets, apartment buildings, night clubs etc. The twist in Sifu comes with your failure. Your character cannot die thanks to a magical pendant but “death” does have a cost. When a player dies, the main character ages, losing years of his life but gaining wisdom and new abilities. It’s an interesting mechanic for sure but the appeal here lies mainly in playing out those uber violent Kung Fu movies we all love. Check out the entire show here:

Halo Infinite

Microsoft didn’t have an event of their own but also didn’t want to be left out of the news cycle so…. here’s some screenshots from Halo Infinite!

As you can see, the level of detail, art direction, and lighting have all seen major upgrades since the last time Halo Infinite was shown. It’s an encouraging update for Microsoft’s flagship series.

It Can’t All Be Good News

On the other side of the news spectrum we have Anthem and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. In February 2020, famed developer BioWare announced that they would be completely overhauling the underwhelming and financially disappointing Destiny clone, Anthem. This past week, after a year’s work, BioWare announced further development would cease, disappointing tens of fans around the world. Anthem made huge waves with its reveal trailer at E3 2017 (https://youtu.be/EL5GSfs9fi4) but never lived up to the hype, and now it never will.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is the sequel to 2004 cult PC hit Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. A title probably best known for its ridiculously long name, VTMB was actually a deep and engaging RPG experience, allowing players to choose from multiple different vampire races that actually affected the gameplay and storyline. The sequel was announced in 2019 with an intended release date in spring 2020. It predictably slipped, as most games do, but this week came the devastating news that development was being taken away from Hardsuit Labs and handed off to a new studio. Along with that news comes an indefinite delay and Epic Games Store removing the ability to preorder the title. At this point I’m considering VTMB2 vaporware until further notice.