Iron Man VR and No Man’s Sky Beyond VR coming to PS4

Marvel's Iron VR is another Sony exclusive — Marvel’s Iron VR is another Sony exclusive

Death Stranding enters ‘critical phase’ – still nowhere near finished

The minute Sony announced their first State of Play show it sounded like their take on a Nintendo Direct, and that’s exactly what’s it turned to be.

With just a robot-voiced American voiceover (they didn’t even bother changing the date format for Europe) the stream lacked the personal touch of Nintendo’s shows, but otherwise the format was very similar.

For its first outing most of the focus was on VR titles, starting with Iron Man VR by République developer Camouflaj. No real gameplay footage was shown but we think that might be Ghost, from Ant-Man and the Wasp, as the baddie. The game’s out sometime this year and seems to answer the question of whether Sony has any other Marvel licences beyond just Spider-Man – although it is odd that they haven’t talked about it openly yet.

The other big news is that the No Man’s Sky Beyond update is getting a VR mode this summer. Like all the updates Beyond is free but it’s so big it’s being split into three: a ‘radical new social and multiplayer experience’, the VR mode, and a third secret element.

Also showcased was VR game Blood & Truth from the makers of The Getaway, a spiritual sequel to The London Heist from the PlayStation VR Worlds compilation. That remains one of the best VR experiences on PlayStation 4, so we’re very much looking forward to the release on 28 May.

Coming this spring is Five Night at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted, which will feature both new and existing scenarios from the series and is no doubt properly scary once you put the headset on.

Sony’s support for PlayStation VR really is admirable as even AWOL graffiti-themed game Concrete Genie is now confirmed to have a VR mode. Although its date is still a vague ‘autumn’ (or fall as voiceover lady would have it).

There were plenty of other VR games with confirmed release dates though, including Falcon Age on 9 April, Table Of Tales on 16 April, Jupiter & Mars on 22 April, Everybody’s Golf VR on 21 May, Trover Saves The Universe on 31 May, and Mini-Mech Mayhem and Vacation Simulator (sequel to Job Simulator) on 18 June.

Other non-VR titles were also showcased, including brand-new game ReadySet Heroes, whose gimmick is that it’s a four-player dungeon crawler where you’re competing against a rival team in a matching dungeon, who you then have to fight when you get to the end.

Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled was also given a spot in the limelight, but while the voiceover said there were PlayStation exclusive features it never said what they were – perhaps the retro-looking character models that the game kept switching to?

Days Gone and Mortal Kombat 11 were there too (confirming Jax, Kung Lao, and Liu Kang as playable characters) but more interesting was new science fiction thriller Observation, from the makers of Stories Untold. It wasn’t entirely clear what was going on, but the graphics look great and it’s out on 21 May.

Despite being a slightly underwhelming start to the State of Play concept we still saw plenty to look forward to and whether you like it or not this, and subsequent episodes, might be all you get in terms of Sony reveals as they’re not at E3 this year.