PlayStation Experience 2015

The PlayStation Experience took place over the weekend and I would have just glossed over it were it not for some of my friends on Facebook who posted about it. The company sponsored event actually had some decent surprises including gameplay footage of the Final Fantasy VII. Here are the games that piqued my interest from the event.


Final Fantasy VII Remake

At first I doubted that it would ever happen but it was confirmed at E3 this year. Then I thought we’d have to wait awhile for gameplay footage and details but that was revealed this past weekend. From the shown footage, the remake is looking good. Very good. I think that Square Enix is doing a great job capturing the feel of the original while modernizing it for today’s audience. The combat looks fast and exciting and it looks like it might be taking cues from Final Fantasy XV. Apparently the lack of an obvious, if any, turn based combat is a point of contention for some fans but anything done for the remake is not going to make everyone happy. One thing that was not revealed at the presentation was that the remake will be split up into parts. How this is will be done and what will be included in the parts remains shrouded in mystery.

Psychonauts 2 and Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin

The original Psychonauts is one of my favorite games of all time and while there was a brief tantalizing moment of a sequel from Markus 'Notch' Persson I have accepted that a sequel will more than likely not happen. That changed with the announcement of Psychonauts 2 doing a Fig crowd funding attempt. I seriously cannot wait for the game to be funded which has already made more than half of its target goal with 36 days left to go.

While Psychonauts 2 wasn’t officially part of the PlayStation Experience, it was announced close enough to warrant inclusion and Double Fine Productions announced another Psychonauts game that would take advantage of the PlayStation VR headset. Virtual Reality is something I’ve been tepidly excited for and think that Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin and a few other games will push me over the edge to jump on VR. Other than the title and a jab at the infamous Time magazine cover photo on VR there is very little information about this title.

Full Throttle Remaster

And speaking of Double Fine, another classic LucasArts adventure game is getting a remaster: Full Throttle! A post-apocalyptic heavy metal biker adventure game is getting a remastered rerelease which if it’s like the Day of Tentacle remaster then it’ll basically keep the same art style except it’ll be run through an upscaler filter. For games like Full Throttle the upscaler will actually make it look pretty decent since there are enough pixels in the original game that the upscaler doesn’t have to make broad interpretations that would make the game look awful like most console 16-bit games look when run through an upscaler.

Rez Infinite

And speaking of virtual reality earlier, this is one of the other games that will push me to get PlayStation VR at the very least. I loved playing this game on the PlayStation 2 and for Xbox 360 Live Arcade. A brilliant music, rhythm shooter from Tetsuya Mizuguchi. This appears to be more a remake (sequel?) than a straight up port. Rez Infinite can be played without VR but I think that the experience will be greatly enhanced with the addition of VR.

Ni No Kuni 2

I’ve only played a demo of the original Ni No Kuni but I enjoyed what I played and it’s on my never ending list of games to get. Thankfully the original did well enough that Level 5 is going to be releasing a sequel to the PlayStation 4. I don’t know much about the story but the game already looks fantastic.

Yakuza 0

I never played any of the Yakuza games but I’ve only heard good things about the series. They’re basically Japan’s answer to Grand Theft Auto with some light RPG elements thrown into the mix. Well there’s no better place to start than with the first or I guess the zero game of the series.

Brutal

This looks aesthetically interesting. Take the ASCII style from rogue-like games of the past and transport them into a 3D environment and you get a unique art direction in Brutal. The gameplay looks like it’ll be a dungeon crawler and there will be a dungeon creation mode. I would like to play this game simply for the graphics.

Ni Oh

This is a new title from Team Ninja, a company whose library I played very little of. My exposure to them was a demo of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive 2 on the Dreamcast. From the look of the trailer, I’m getting an Onimusha vibe from it which is alright with me. I like games that utilize Japanese mythology and this one looks like it could be interesting.