Disney at the 2021 PlayStation Showcase

Well I’ll be honest I wasn’t expecting to write much of anything about this week’s PlayStation showcase even if it was going to be a really good one, who would know there’d be so many Disney-related games to write about? But Disney and Specifically Marvel really had a big presence at today’s presentation. Let’s break it down:

Guardians of The Galaxy

Look I’m excited for this, it’s a day one buy for me, I expect it to be a pretty solid game. Even if you are basing your expectations on not being to keen on Marvel’s Avengers, the general consensus is that the actual campaign stuff in that game is pretty darn good. Like ignore the endgame stuff and now Marvel's Avengers is a pretty solid 15ish hour game. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is all campaign (probably with optional side missions thrown in) so there’s reason to expect it to be pretty satisfying. But you can almost feel the apathy whenever this game is shown, very few people seem to care. Hopefully, the game is both good and finds an audience, while I doubt I’ll play enough to write anything up before the end of October as it’s out on the 26th, you can definitely expect some in-depth thoughts in early November.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake

The greatest Star Wars game of all time gets a modern remake. This has been sort of a known quantity for a while now. We knew this was more or less happening, the most surprising thing is that at least at launch it’s exclusively on PlayStation 5 and PC. Aspyr is certainly known for re-releasing old Star Wars games like Republic Commando, Jedi Knight and more. But those are more or less straight ports with some minor enhancements here and there, this is a full-on remake updated for a more modern look and feel. I think the biggest question here is can Aspyr, who has never done something like this before, pull it off successfully? I really think so, I just wish there was a release period mentioned, it feels like with this being all we see it could easily be a late 2022 game instead of something we’ll be playing real soon.

Marvel’s Wolverine

The worst part about this reveal is it just feels so early (especially thanks to a certain game starring a certain wall-crawling superhero that’s still two years off itself). Like this was so much just a “vibe” trailer that shows nothing except a game is being made. I have nothing but faith in Insomniac, and Logan will be a fun character that plays and feels super different from anything they’ve done before and Insomniac knows how to do amazing combat and aren’t too bad at storytelling either. I look very forward to Marvel’s Wolverine but I also don’t expect to be playing it until at least 2024.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

Marvel’s Spider-Man was easily my favorite game of 2018. Spider-Man: Miles Morales was my favorite game of 2020. It wasn’t even that these were far and away the best or most original but I loved how well they represented the characters and the world and the fact that they were both incredibly solid superhero games which we just don’t see a lot of.

I’m sure Spider-Man 2 will be awesome and I really love that Kraven the Hunter seems to be one of the featured villains because while he certainly is a major Spider-Man villain, he’s one that hasn’t gotten much representation in video games and none whatsoever in the movies. He’s long overdue for a major role. Venom on the other hand, while I’m sure he’ll be handled well, seems like the really obvious route to go. Granted, he wasn’t the end villain of the game but I loved that a good chunk of the first Spider-Man game focused on Mister Negative, a villain even most Spidey fans have never heard of. I hope some other good but lesser-known villains also get the spotlight, and it’s great that Miles has a big role. Maybe they’ll introduce a version of Spider-Gwen as well? Would love for it to happen. It’s a ways off but I imagine Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be a GOTY contender in 2023.

Well, that’s it for today. Like I said I really wasn’t expecting much out of the PlayStation showcase in terms of stuff I would be writing about so this was a pleasant surprise. I probably won’t be writing again this weekend but look for something early next week, so see ya real soon!