State Of Play 9/3/22 – Recap

State Of Play 9/3/22

The 9/3/22 State Of Play stream had a lot of hype to live up to. After the hugely disappointing previous State Of Play, this one had a lot of making up to do to PlayStation fans. Add that to the fact that we have been teased for months from industry insiders that this was ‘the big State Of Play that we have all been waiting for.’

Was it? Well, you can watch the stream below and decide for yourself.

If, (for whatever reason,) you don’t want to watch the stream in its embedded form above, you can also watch it on PlayStation’s Twitch or YouTube channels.

After Sony officially announced the stream via the PlayStation blog, I wrote a piece speculating what we could see. You can check that out here. Whilst I only ended up getting one fairly obvious prediction of something Final Fantasy-related being shown correct, I surprisingly didn’t come away from this stream disappointed. I will explain why further down this article.

Below, I will give a summary of everything shown during the 9/3/22 State Of Play stream. Then, I will go one by one through all of the trailers shown and give my analysis for each one.


Summary

We were told going in that we would be hearing from mostly Japanese studios, with Sony’s blog post stating that the stream would; “focus on highlighting great games coming from some of our beloved Japanese publishers, though we’ll have a few updates from other developers located around the world, too.” This proved to be true with all but one of the games shown being developed by teams based in Japan.

We also knew prior that the 9/3/22 State Of Play stream would last around 20 minutes, below are all of the games shown during that 20 minute runtime:

  • Exoprimal (Reveal Trailer)
  • Ghostwire: Tokyo
  • Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
  • Forspoken
  • Gundam Evolution
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection (Reveal Trailer)
  • GigaBash
  • Trek to Yomi
  • JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R (Reveal Trailer)
  • Returnal Ascension (Reveal Trailer)
  • The DioField Chronicle (Reveal Trailer)
  • Valkyrie Elysium (Reveal Trailer)

You can see all of the trailers shown below, along with my thoughts on each of them.


Exoprimal

Well this looks exceedingly Japanese and also exceedingly fun. Exoprimal is a Capcom game where you play as a team of futuristic soldiers who wear ridiculously cool-looking exo-suits. The teams primary objective is to protect the people of Earth from the hordes of dinosaurs who are arriving through various portals to wreak havoc towards the human race. It looks just as insane as it sounds.

Exoprimal is a third-person shooter and looks like it would be a ton of fun to play through with friends in online co-op, though the game will also undoubtedly include a single-player option. Exoprimal is set to release sometime in 2023 for PS4 and PS5.


Ghostwire: Tokyo

I really hope that Ghostwire: Tokyo is as weird and as cool as the trailers are making it out to be. This game is a weird carry-over from the era before Microsoft acquired Zenimax Media and Tango Gameworks. Therefore, – technically speaking, – this is a game developed by a company owned by Microsoft, releasing exclusively for PlayStation 5; which is kind of hilarious.

Ghostwire: Tokyo was first announced a few years ago and we have already seen multiple trailers for the game. Although, this trailer gave us a good look at some gameplay and reassured us that the title will indeed release later this month, on the 25th of March.

I loved Tango Gameworks’ previous effort; The Evil Within 2, which you can check out our review for here.


Forspoken

Sadly, this trailer for Forspoken brought with it a delay. Instead of releasing on May 24th this year, the game will now drop on the 11th of October. Although, this detailed trailer showed us much more of Forspoken than we have previously seen and it looks fantastic. I loved the energy of the gameplay shown in this trailer and I hope that feeling is also present in the final game.


Stranger Of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin

Now we get to the filler section of the stream. Yes, even in a 20 minute stream, there is still unfortunately a filler section.

A brief trailer for Stranger Of Paradise Final Fantasy Origins was shown. This thing releases next week. It is a Final Fantasy spin-off; a franchise I have never cared too much about. Therefore, I wasn’t really fussed about seeing this trailer included in the stream.


Gundam Evolution

Next up, we had a trailer for a game called Gundam Evolution. This game takes place within the same universe as the Gundam anime series. The game’s, ‘network test,’ will apparently go live in both the USA and Japan sometime this Spring.

It is a mech-fighting game based on an anime series. What do you want from me? This does not sound like my thing at all, but for those into this genre, I’m sure this will do what it says on the tin.


GigaBash

Have you ever wanted to play an isometric kaiju fighting game with a juvenile art style? Probably not I’d wager, but if for some reason that sounds appealing to you, then GigaBash is the game for you.


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection

Did seek out that elusive PS5 and spend hundreds of pounds on it to play arcade games from 40 years ago? What do you mean no?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection will come out later in 2022. Whilst I would love to see a modern AAA TMNT game be announced, I think I’ll be skipping this one.


Trek to Yomi

Every time that I see a new trailer for Trek to Yomi, I cannot help but feel conflicted. A black-and-white samurai game in the style of Akira Kurosawa sounds awesome… if Ghost Of Tsushima hadn’t already come out.

This game looks like a side-scrolling version of Ghost of Tsushima. In fact, every aspect of the thing looks like GoT-lite, which is frustrating because it does look really cool. Hopefully I am wrong and Trek to Yomi does enough to differentiate itself from its peers. The game is set to release in Spring of this year.


JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle

Another game based on an anime. You can probably already tell how I feel about this trailer for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle. It is PlayStation All-Stars or Super Smash Bros for this specific weird anime. If this is your niche, look out for it dropping on PS4 and PS5 later on in the year.


Returnal: Ascension

The only non-Japanese trailer shown during the stream was for a Returnal expansion called Ascension from the Finland-based studio Housemarque.

Returnal, the PS5 roguelike exclusive which dropped last year was not for me. Although, I believe I am the exception as that game was pretty popular, so fans of Housemarque will probably be looking forward to this. Returnal: Ascension be made available on the 22nd of March 22 for PS5.


The Diofield Chronicle

A trailer was then shown for this anime-looking, high fantasy, strategy/RPG Square Enix game titled The Diofield Chronicle. Damn, I hate almost every single word in that sentence.

If this nonsense appeals to you, then look out for it releasing later in 2022.


Valkyrie Elysium

Now this is the kind of anime-looking bullshit that I can get behind, because as opposed to the last game shown, this one actually looks fun. Valkyrie Elysium looks like it will borrow heavily from the fantastic NieR: Automata, which is by no means a bad place to pull from.

In the same way that NieR: Automata was a rot of spiritual successor to the original NieR, rather than a direct sequel, Valkyrie Elysium looks as though it could be a spiritual successor to Square Enix’s cult classic Valkyrie series from years ago.

Although we may not have gotten a trailer for God Of War: Ragnarok during the stream as speculated, we did at least get one trailer showing the events of Ragnarok, as that classic myth seems to be the basis for this game’s plot. Valkyrie Elysium will drop on both PS4 and PS5 later this year.


Overall Thoughts

There you have it. Everything shown during the 9/3/22 State Of Play stream.

Sure, many may look at this State Of Play livestream as a let down following the previously high expectations that many had going in, but I was actually fairly pleased with what was shown. Sure we didn’t get to see any of God Of War: Ragnarok or Hogwarts: Legacy, but what we did see looked fun and interesting for the most part.

One thing is for sure, this lineup was a darn sight better than what they rolled out during the previous State Of Play stream back in October of last year.

What did you think of the 9/3/22 State Of Play stream? Were you disappointed by the games on display, or were you pleased with what was shown? Let us know in the comments section below.


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Daniel Boyd

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Daniel is a 26-year-old writer from Glasgow. He loves sci-fi and hates fantasy. He also hates referring to himself in the third person and thinks that bios are dumb.

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