PlayStation's State of Play 2024: big announcements, not sure about all the VR

We don’t know about you, but one of our favourite indulgences is to stay up late and watch games industry keynotes. The obvious stress on each presenter’s face. The little jokes they’ve rehearsed a thousand times beforehand. The awkward pauses between someone finishing their script and a trailer playing. It’s humanity at its most vulnerable and compelling – and as a nice bonus, you often find out some stuff about upcoming video games, too. 

Such was the case at Sony’s annual State of Play conference, which you can watch in full here. It was an evening with a determined focus on VR titles, but in among all the waggly first-person hands were some big announcements for traditional console gaming too, and we’re not just talking about the Fortnite controller. 

For your consideration and delectation, these are TG’s State of Play 2024 highlights.

Something’s up with this one. The newly announced sequel to 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima is almost magically gorgeous. We’ve never seen feudal Japan looking quite this artistic and flowing before, and that’s definitely the most high fidelity dog snout in gaming to date. 

What we’re seeing from Sucker Punch’s samurai sim sequel is very likely the result of the newly announced PS5 Pro’s increased technical headroom, and while that means you’ll have to part with £700 to play the game in its very finest finery, the luxurious quality of action-adventurey bits isn’t in doubt. Due out in 2025, it’s almost certainly going to challenge for some game of the year awards.

BioWare’s next epic RPG has crept up on us somewhat. For years it existed only as rumour, whispered in hushed tones. And then all of a sudden, it turns out that it’s a real game and it’s out on 31 October this year. That’s not nearly enough time to stockpile the excuses required to play a 100-hour game, BioWare, and you know it. 

Its latest showing gives us a nice deep dive into the Mage class, and in doing so demonstrates how combat works. The series hasn’t all been slam dunks – Dragon Age II is remembered with all the fondness of a lingering cough in some corners of the RPG community – but the industry groupthink is cautiously optimistic about this one.

On a night with no small amount of VR announcements, Agent 47 gave us the most compelling reason to don the headset with a trailer for this December-bound assassination sandbox. 

While we’d never previously been clamouring to get closer to the action while we poisoned crime lords and garrotted poor guards in public toilets, Hitman in VR makes a lot of sense when you actually see this PSVR 2 version in action. It’s all about dark slapstick humour really, isn’t it? That’s always been key to the series’ appeal, and although the first stab at VR was underwhelming, now that you can waggle your hands about in real-time, the potential for Keystone Cops-level assassinations has surged.

A couple of fondly remembered PS1 and PS2 classics are getting the renovation treatment next: who remembers 1999’s Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and its 2001 sequel? The dark action-platformers that made clever use of switching your character between the material and spectral realms were essential gaming on release, and they’re back in high-def textured glory on December 10th for PS4 and PS5.

Our love for Alan Wake 2 runs deeper than the metro trains under Mariana’s trench, so if we’re being honest, even if Remedy had announced some DLC for it that did nothing but called you mean names and somehow slapped you in the face we’d probably still have bought it. It’s the best game we’ve played for years, as we noted in our review back in 2023. 

Fortunately it looks like Lake House has a good deal more to offer than that. Developer Remedy has carefully interwoven the universes of Alan Wake and Control, and this DLC, due October, takes you to a Federal Bureau of Control facility – the titular Lake House – for a seasonally spooky extra helping of mind-melting metanarrative.