Not E3 2025: Sony

It's a destabilising thing to keep to a regular posting schedule for years on end and then suddenly break that chain. It's not what I wanted to do. I enjoy the consistency and sense of productivity that comes with expressing my thoughts here every week or two, but in the last month, my personal life got in the way. I cannot recommend becoming involved in such a thing, and I can't guarantee this blog is back to "normal". The summer game events are, however, a chance to get back into the groove, to take something from notes to final version at Formula One speed. I'm gonna do that with the summer's Sony State of Play.

Not E3 always serves as a reminder that video games have their roots in Japanese culture. That heritage was more pronounced in the SGF and State of Play briefings this year than in most previous. There was an action platformer here where you are origami. Sony's Japaneseness is a world away from what you'll see at the Microsoft conference but also somewhat distinct from the Japaneseness of Nintendo. The Switch 2 preview was almost germaphobically clean, it was plush, it was soft, it was about friends connecting. Sony, however, isn't afraid to get its hands bloody and has traditionally had a place in its heart for artsy experiments like Tetris Effect, Silent Hill, Journey, or the mirages of Suda51. Those titles were succeeded at this State of Play by Lumines Arise, Silent Hill f, Sword of the Sea, and Romeo is a Deadman, respectively.

Tetris Effect believed immersion has less to do with an enveloping world and more to do with creating a flow state in the player. Today's publishers think block puzzle games go on phones and VR games all need environments, but Tetris Effect received a VR incarnation without a map you explore. Monstars and Resonair developed that port because they wanted you to block out all distractions and enter a euphoric tunnel vision that the game compares to meditation or being a member of a drum circle. In our forums, audiovisuals sometimes get derided as the superficial wrappers of games, while the gameplay is called "the meat". Yet, in media like music and paintings, what you hear or see can be recognised as the highest art. Tetris Effect is cut from the same cloth. It not only respects particles, fire effects, and choirs as much as it does mechanics, it broke down the barriers between the visual, audio, and mechanical. When you interact with one, you interact with all three.

There is room for improvement, improvement which I hope Lumines Arise brings. There was little replayability in Tetris Effect's single-player, and the sound didn't synchronise perfectly with my button presses, but putting Lumines on the Tetris Effect stage stands to elevate a block puzzler that's been overlooked for too long. The fixed timing with which squares are vapourised in Lumines could be the perfect companion for a rhythmic fugue. Speaking of synergies, Sword of the Sea looks like if Journey and ABZÛ opened a joint chequing account together. After what Giant Squid did with their slumbering ocean in ABZÛ, I will follow them anywhere. Sword of the Sea is putting you in touch with its ground; it's a bit Tony Hawk, maybe even a bit F-Zero, but with the feel about the peaks and troughs of a desert rather than flat tracks or humanmade ramps.

In 1999, Silent Hill loaded up a freighter with Japanese body horror and sailed it westward to Centralia. In that way, Silent Hill f is the series coming home. It's not the downward domestic spiral of P.T. or the rain-soaked streets of Silent Hills we were promised before, it's a Japanese graveyard. Considering this is a series that is most interesting when it psychologically disturbs, there was an excess of physical contact in this trailer. However, the dialogue and scene composition did to speak to deeper themes of loneliness and vulnerability. It is the experience of the depressed teenager: everyone feels like a ghost or out to get you. Neobards have truly pressed f to pay respects.

There was a hard cut between the swimmy cel-shaded cutscenes of Romeo is a Deadman and its photoreal hacking and/or slashing. It's shocking how the animation style of a developer can be so unique that you can look at Romeo twirling his sword and know he was moved to life by the No More Heroes guys. I had a similar moment of recognition with Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and that dude punching a man on the ground. I do hope Romeo is a Deadman isn't a Shadow of the Damned or Lollipop Chainsaw repeat. Some of Suda's later games have a personality in their set dressing but combat that could have appeared in any one of hundreds of other titles. Romeo's spaces also look oddly empty, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

There was somewhat of a pattern this year of leaning on games' weaknesses rather than their strengths. E.g. There are all these anime-inspired games inside and outside of this briefing like Pragmata, Digimon Story: The Time Stranger, or Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement, where the script and VO are so overblown you'd think that they might go the comedy route and not ask to be treated too seriously. But no, there's not a smirk on their faces, and you end up getting a deathly serious read on "Stop it, that egg is very important". There are also countless trailers putting characters first even when the personalities aren't the appeal of their series. Are the characters why we like Hotshots Golf or Bloodstained?

Personally, I also think that IO Interactive making a James Bond game is a downgrade for their escapades in the spy genre. Hitman took James Bond out of James Bond. You got the ostentatious locales and villains, the secret bases, and the neat gadgets without the fuckboy protagonist: win-win. The actual main character kept pretty quiet. Now we're stuck with that smarmy dickhead again. IO should also be doing more to show where this experience deviates from Hitman's.

Then there's FBC: Firebreak, where Remedy seems to think that what we want from Control is less of its weird fiction containment foundation and more of the shooting. I had a blast with Control, but by the time I was firing at my hundredth hover-janitor, I just wanted to get the action over with and continue listening to the whispers of the Oldest House. And why does the Sea of Remnants trailer have these karaoke-style lyrics for a song we've never heard before? Why does the Marvel Tokōn: Fighting Souls segment have developers spending so long bragging about what they're going to do with the "IP" when they also have tons of gameplay footage to show us and don't have to just hype it up? The Tokōn tribute went on so long, you got the Ghost of Yotei lady saying, "You still here?". I'm also not sure the original framerate is what I'd take from Final Fantasy Tactics when remaking it, but this is a really seminal strategy game that should be reintroduced to people, people like me.

Moving on, it might sound unlikely that a 2008 Flash game could have a tsunami influence on titles today, but looking at Cairn, I'm reminded how often QWOP comes back around to haunt this creative medium. There's a mantis-like precision to where the characters plant their limbs in Cairn. Digimon actually looks kind of cyberpunk now, but I think the Digimon themselves are crusty little freaks. The anime comes up with original monsters, sometimes with accessories. I've not vibed with that character design the way I did with Pokémon's approach of mostly sketching real animals with an elemental twist.

Let's see, what else have I got on the notepad here?

• I do like the tropical container city of Tides of Tomorrow, but I would like some elaboration on what exactly makes it a multiplayer story.
• Pragmata's equipment looks like the porcelain armour of Platinum's Vanquish.
• The sound mix makes some of these presenters sound like they've been dubbed over themselves.
• Loved hearing the Hirogami lady say, "A hardy armadillo and a powerful ape".
• Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound got its own Guille's Theme.
• I wish I was that player called "(MonsterMan)" in Tides of Tomorrow.
• They should make a Metal Gear Solid game that's all end stingers.
• Sea of Remnants is Tim Burton's Cheeseburger in Paradise.

Look, sometimes we were staring at these games ass-backwards, but this State of Play had a lot of creations that show a lot of respect for the medium and belief in its ability to be transcendent and transportive and funny. We can all get down to that. Thanks for reading.