I really didn’t expect to be writing this post.
I had originally planned to drop my review for MIO: Memories in Orbit today. I was aware of the State of Play coming this week, but it had barely been on my mind because these shows rarely get me all that excited. State of Plays are fine, but they are usually not exciting enough to warrant their own “winners” post for me.
But within 30 minutes of starting the show, I suddenly began realizing that I was probably going to need to write about this one, and thus, here we are. PlayStation delivered a showcase of games here that would have been legitimately worthy of an old school Sony E3 presentation. That was traditionally a pretty high bar (outside of a few famous years).
This State of Play did some things that will be almost impossible to replicate in most future shows. There was some elite looking gameplay from big upcoming releases. There were multiple massive surprises, there were release dates, and then there was a freaking shadow drop of a pretty big release to top it off.
Here are my 10 biggest winners from the show. These were the games that got me even a little more excited than I was before. Keep in mind that it almost always takes gameplay footage for this to happen, so cool surprises like the new God of War trilogy are not on here. I feel like this number would have been more like 5-6 in many past State of Plays. What a great job by Sony and their partners. It seems like 2026 is set to be yet another unbelievably good year of gaming.
I linked to the trailers in the titles of each game.
I enjoyed Neva, but I found the hype around it to be a bit overblown. There were some incredible highs in that game, but the storytelling and the gameplay variety fell way short of GRIS in my view. So when I saw that the game was going to have a prologue, I was ready to mostly ignore the trailer. But that changed quickly as it began. The prologue shows way more interesting and cinematic gameplay than almost anything that I can recall from the main game, and of course, the visuals look incredible. I have a feeling that this will just be a 30 minute to one hour experience, and surprisingly, I might very well be on board to give it a try, even though I rarely play DLC.
I was very hyped about Control: Resonant after the original trailer late last year, even though I didn’t love the gameplay I saw in it. I was mostly thrilled at how they were swinging big for the sequel.
Part of the reason I was so happy that they were swinging big is that, as much fun as Control is, I feel like it gets a bit simple after a while. The combat isn’t all that deep, and it slowly loses steam as it goes on. It ends up getting carried more by its story, general atmosphere and weirdness.
Watching this trailer both excites and mildly concerns me. On one hand, the atmosphere looks amazing yet again, and the way you navigate the world looks really intriguing. But the combat still looks kind of simple to me. You have a few cool looking abilities, but a lot of enemies barely seemed to be able to get one attack in before they were getting shredded. Obviously, this could just be how they wanted to showcase the gameplay, but this isn’t higher because I still came away with a few concerns.
In the end, it’s still Remedy. They are one of the best developers out there right now. I am absolutely going to play it, and I won’t be shocked if I come away thinking it’s amazing. This still has a lot of promise.
I’ve never seen a John Wick movie, and frankly, I’ve never been particularly interested in watching one. I don’t watch many movies in general, but over the top action movies have never really been my thing. Perhaps it’s because these movies tend to just make me wish I could “play” them instead.
Obviously, this makes turning John Wick into a video game very cool for me. I love the idea of being able to interact with this world instead of just observing it. There wasn’t much real gameplay shown here, so this could be bad, but I certainly came away wanting to see more.
Just the concept of this one is very exciting. I actually liked Star Wars Episode 1: Racer back on the N64. Pulling off that concept with more modern production values would be incredible. And sure enough, the quick glimpses of gameplay here all look so intense and fun. It really seems to capture the speed of these machines, and the race environments all look so good.
I’m a bit more skeptical on the story portions of the game, but this is the rare racing game that I am pretty excited about.
I have been excited for Saros from the moment that they said “come back stronger” in one of the first trailers for it. That seemed to indicate a bigger emphasis on “roguelite” elements than Returnal, and they finally deep dived on it here. Sure enough, there will be plenty of permanent upgrade options in Saros, which is a very big deal to me. Admittedly, the roguelite elements didn’t look like anything overly special, but they don’t need to do much there, because the gameplay still looks top-notch.
The third-person shooter and bullet hell combo looks even better than Returnal did. Saros seems to have even more dynamic navigational abilities than that game had. This really is shaping up to potentially be the “Game of the Year.” I truly believe that. They did their job well here.
God of War: Sons of Sparta looks like a really crisp 2D action game. I came away pretty impressed with the short trailer they showed of it, and it likely would have been on this list either way, but the shadowdrop bumped this up a few spots in my ranks, as that was a very cool moment.
Now, since this isn’t a “Game Pass” type situation, and you have to pay for it, I’m admittedly not going to pick the game up for at least a few weeks. I don’t like paying money to be one of the first to play a game. It always feels risky to me. But what I saw here looked very promising, and I hope I hear some friends and reviewers confirm that for me in the coming weeks as they bravely dive in first.
The last Kena game was a very pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect much from it, but it ended up being my #6 game of 2021. But I also haven’t really been clamoring for a new one. That changed with this trailer. This was one hell of a reveal. It feels like Kena: Scars of Kosmora might level up the series in every way. It looks even more striking visually, it’s much more open looking, and the combat looks way deeper than last time. This has a hell of a lot of promise to return to my top 10 list again this year.
I think at this point, everyone is sold on this game. Yet, this might have sold me more than anything else I’ve seen so far. My hype levels officially jumped again after watching this.
I’m still mildly skeptical about the Grace segments, but man, the Leon sections just look amazing. I loved the balls to the wall pacing in Resident Evil 4, and this feels like it might be able to match it during the Leon portions of the game. Also, the story is sort of grabbing me. I feel mildly intrigued, and I almost never enjoy the storytelling in this series outside of some of the more over the top cutscenes. I really need to clear some games from my current playlist so I can be all in on this one in a few weeks.
2. Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse
I am currently writing a review for MIO: Memories in Orbit, and in that review, I comment on how the Castlevania series has been “MIA” for quite a while now. Then, on the same day, this gets revealed. I honestly thought it would come back one day, but I wasn’t expecting anything like this so soon.
It’s also exciting to see that they have talented developers Motion Twin and Evil Empire (of Dead Cells fame) making this. The funny thing about those developers is that I tend to enjoy their games as Metroidvanias way more than as roguelites. So I’m pretty excited to see them truly try their hand at a more traditional style of the genre. This looks set to have very strong combat and platforming, and I’m sure the exploration will be great as well. I’m not sure if I can call this a “surefire indie banger,” since it has Konami’s backing, but I think I’m just going to go with that anyway. I can’t wait for this one.
This showcase had so many insane surprises, but my easy winner of the show is a game that blew me away with how good its gameplay looks.
I already got hyped up for Beast of Reincarnation at the last Xbox showcase, which was a much longer showing, but this somehow amped up my hype many levels more.
First off, as I’ve said before, I genuinely can’t believe Game Freak is making a game that looks this good. This has some Final Fantasy or Nier spin-off story vibes in all the best ways. I love the style, and the music seems great.
But I think this trailer showed how truly hardcore the combat is in a way I didn’t pick up on in past trailers. The enemy attack patterns you face seem really intense, and the parry has some of the most satisfying audio and visual effects that I’ve ever seen. The game looks so smooth, but also weighty. That can be a hard thing to pull off, but I really think they may have done it here. Having this combat, mixed with turn-based elements and deep RPG elements, seems like an incredible mix to me. This has shot up to being one of my top 5 most anticipated for this year. I thought this ruled, and I feel like people aren’t talking about it enough.
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