State of Play Analysis, Suicide Squad & Nintendo News
State of Play 2024 Deep Dive
This week’s episode is primarily dedicated to analyzing the latest Sony State of Play presentation. We evaluate a variety of upcoming titles and their technical performance:
• Death Stranding 2: Hideo Kojima’s latest title shows off the Decima engine running in a dedicated current-gen capacity, featuring astonishing environmental variety and potentially new Ray Traced Global Illumination.
• Stellar Blade: A UE4-based title that impressed the team with its combat animations and stylistic choices, reminiscent of Nier: Automata.
• Dragon’s Dogma 2: An evolution of the RE Engine that provides impressive physical interactions, though the studio notes concerns regarding variable frame rates.
• Sonic X Shadow Generations: A surprise reveal that we analyze through the lens of the Hedgehog Engine and existing console legacy.
• Judas: Ken Levine’s new project heavily evokes the Bioshock aesthetic, raising questions about whether it will return to deeper immersive sim roots.
• Metro Awakening: A VR entry that appears to leverage Unreal Engine, likely following a Half-Life: Alyx gameplay model.
• Rise of the Ronin & Until Dawn: Team Ninja’s new title faces scrutiny over visual consistency, while the Until Dawn remake moves to UE5 to potentially relaunch the franchise.
• Silent Hill Content: We discuss The Short Message and the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, noting that the latter's action-heavy trailer feels a bit disjointed from the original's atmospheric dread.
Industry News & Analysis
Beyond the State of Play, the team covers several critical industry topics:
• Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League: John has been hands-on with the game and finds the narrative and acting surprisingly compelling, despite the baggage of being a live service title. We highlight severe PC optimization issues, including stuttering and poor frame pacing that differ significantly from the console experience.
• Nintendo Hardware Rumors: Reports suggest a potential 8-inch display for the next Nintendo console. We discuss what this means for ergonomics, potential controls, and the likelihood of departing from the traditional Joy-Con form factor.
• Game Preservation: We praise the decision to patch Gran Turismo Sport to support offline play for single-player content, setting a positive precedent for games that would otherwise become unplayable when servers are shut down.
"I genuineely did not expect that. I did not think they would do it. And so few companies would. That's time, money, engineering efforts spent on something for a product that's being discontinued."
Q&A
We answer supporter questions regarding:
• The efficacy of TSR versus DLSS.
• The difference between per-pixel motion blur and sample-and-hold persistence blur.
• The future of VRR in an era of better frame generation.