We can finally conclude, after a quiet few months, that the Summer Video Game Hype Season has now well and truly started, as Sony unleashed its big State Of Play press conference today—just a week ahead of Geoff Keighley’s Summer Games Fest, which we can safely assume will bury us all under an avalanche of game trailers very soon.
The PlayStation company took a decent shot at starting the impromptu burial today, though, rolling out a bunch of exclusives and big titles that will come out either in a few weeks, or next year, depending on where in the hype cycle they’re at. (We also got a few more tidbits of information about the PSVR 2, which is getting a bunch of Resident Evil content whenever it actually comes out; as eternally hopeful adopters of the original hardware, we can’t help but hold out hope for a successful launch for the new one.)
Anyway: Here are the biggest trailers from today’s State Of Play:
Resident Evil 4
Normally, it would be a bit of an indictment of a slate of trailers to have their most unquestionably exciting entry be a remake of a 17-year-old game. But the new Resident Evil 4 is a bit different, both because Capcom’s previous remakes of the franchise’s early entries have all been generally fantastic, and because Resident Evil 4 is, well… Resident Evil 4. Seeing the classic game running in the company’s latest engine is undeniably thrilling; we can’t wait to see how iconic sequences like the village attack or the cabin defense look and feel like when this new version of an old favorite arrives next year.
Final Fantasy XVI
When we first got a look at the 16th main series Final Fantasy game back in 2020, it was notable for how much Game Of Thrones DNA had apparently slipped into the series’ standard mix—what with all the gritty violence, washed-out colors, and political maneuvering. That stuff is all still on display in the game’s new “Dominance” trailer, but there’s also plenty of eye candy, most especially in the form of a focus on the series’ beloved summons, now acting almost like kaiju as war and bickering plays out under their feet. Add in a combat system that looks like an evolution of the action-heavy work the series has been doing in Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Stranger Of Paradise, and it’s an intriguing package currently set for a June 2023 arrival.
Stray
“Adorable cat explores robot world” was always going to be an easy sell for a lot of people; there’s a reason Stray made our Most Anticipated Games list for 2022. Now we finally have a slightly better look at what playing BlueTwelve Studio’s futuristic exploration game will entail: A lot of wandering around, some stealth, and some very cute cat noises. It’s still not clear how much Stray will actually add up to once we’ve got it in our hands, but the trailer certainly promises something unconventional.
Street Fighter 6
Let’s start with the biggest bullet point in the new Street Fighter 6 trailer: Ryu’s got dad-bod now! More interestingly, the Capcom franchise seems to be taking its single-player gameplay seriously for once, adding in a “run around a city doing stuff” story mode that literally nobody has been clamoring for. That being said, SF6 looks big, colorful, and technically demanding, which is presumably exactly what fans of the franchise have been hoping for with its latest big return.
Rollerdrome
Honestly, we’ve never been playing one of Roll 7's super-slick OlliOlli skating games and thought, “Gosh, this would be better with some guns in it.” But, then, we also hadn’t seen a trailer as eye-catching as PS5 exclusive Rollerdrome, which marries the animation-aping look of the studio’s recent OlliOlli World and marries it to some oldschool deathmatch-looking gameplay. The game’s success is going to come down to how it handles in the hands, of course, but the trailer is a hell of a first impression.
The Callisto Protocol
You can tell this is a new sci-fi horror game from some former Dead Space devs because the main guy has a light bar on his back that shows you how bad the monsters have been munching on him.
But we kid The Callisto Protocol, which is not shy about showing its Dead Space influences—and why should it be? That franchise might have died an ignoble death, but its early installments are still unimpeachable, and The Callisto Protocol looks to be replicating that “hunted by horrors on a dead spaceship” vibe extremely well.