Podcast Beyond - IGN's PlayStation Show

The PlayStation 5 Pro has finally arrived (or arrives very shortly) and we’ve got IGN’s reviewer Michael Higham joining us to break down how much of an improvement this mid-gen hardware refresh actually is, from enhanced performance modes to PSSR upscaling, Sony has definitely released a powerful machine, but it might not be enough of a leap to justify its pricetag. In other news, Wolverine’s creative director has left to oversee Perfect Dark instead, and Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart’s game director and creative director are taking over the much-anticipated gamification of everyone’s favorite adamantium-plated Canadian. In lieu of any concrete information about Wolverine, we have a list of outlandish demands of features the game should include, as well as some beloved Marvel characters Beyond community suggested. Monster Hunter Wilds is shaping up to be a behemoth of a game, and Jada shared some of what got her the most excited during her time with the beta this weekend. This week’s show is Max Scoville, Jada Griffin, Michael Higham, and is produced by Nick Maillet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Call of Duty is here and we’re enjoying it! In fact IGN gave it great scores across the board so far with a 9 on the Campaign where you get to take pictures of Bill Clinton, and an 8 for the Multiplayer which feels pretty fun this year, Zombies hasn’t been scored yet but we talk about it a lot because Jada is having a great time with it full of Zombie raves, Bowling parties and other zany easter eggs that have been hidden in it. Jada also does her best to explain her early thoughts on Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the lore behind it, and Nick Maillet steps in front of the camera to discuss his review of Life is Strange: Double Exposure which he also gave a 9! We also discuss the shutdown of Firewalk Studios and Neon Koi by Sony and the removal of the Resume Activity button on PS5. So Join Max, Jada, Akeem, and Nick as we dive into yet another week of excellent game releases. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s true! The remake of the 2011 game heaps on a ton of new content that makes it one of Jada’s favorite entries in the series to date, as indicated by her 9 out of 10 review score. How can SEGA and Team Sonic keep this momentum going with future games? Meanwhile, Insomniac is hard at work at something, but that something isn’t story DLC for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and maybe that’s okay? At the very least, the wallcrawler’s last PS5 outing is coming to PC as well. Jada got hands on with LEGO Horizon Adventures, and says it’s more of a Horizon game than a LEGO game, Max is nuts for Squirrel With a Gun, Brian makes some noise about A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, and Akeem is cutting through the fog in Silent Hill with his newly unlocked chainsaw. This week’s show is Max Scoville, Jada Griffin, Akeem Lawanson, Brian Altano, and is produced by Nick Maillet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tis the season… No, the OTHER season. That’s right, it’s that time of year when everything is covered with bats and skeletons and fake cobwebs and other macabre and ghoulish decor. So, we took the opportunity to reach out to our listeners and have them share the stuff in video games that’s terrified, creeped out, haunted, startled, or otherwise scared the crap out of them. It’s an excuse to talk about some of our favorite games, from tried and true survival horror franchises like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Dead Space, to older favorites like Condemned: Criminal Origins, Cold Fear and Alien: Isolation, to games that we don’t think of primarily as horror, but which definitely have one foot in there, like Bloodborne (of course) and BioShock. What game has scared you the most? Share your video game scary stories in the comments. This week’s show is Max Scoville, Jada Griffin, Akeem Lawanson, Brian Altano, and is produced by Nick Maillet. Opera GX: IGN Edition brings the Internet’s number one destination for news, reviews, gameplay, trailers and more, into your browser: https://operagx.gg/IGN_Article Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wow! That episode title uses a lot of words to list just three games, but those three games are all some of this year’s most anticipated releases. We’ve all gotten to delve into Silent Hill 2’s long-awaited remake courtesy of Layers of Fear studio Bloober Team, Persona and Shin Megami Tensei developers ATLUS’ brand new JPRG, Metaphor Re:Fantazio, and Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero, which is basically the 4th entry in the Budokai Tenkaichi series that fans have been asking for since 2005. Video games! You couldn’t find a more drastically different bunch of games, but they all have a whole lot to offer, whether you want to have the crap scared out of you, make the protagonist take a crap, or hear Chi-Chi talking crap about Super Saiyan hair. This week’s show is Max Scoville, Jada Griffin, and Akeem Lawanson. Opera GX: IGN Edition brings the Internet’s number one destination for news, reviews, gameplay, trailers and more, into your browser: https://operagx.gg/IGN_Article opera.com Opera GX | Gaming Browser Opera GX is the browser built specifically for gamers. Get unparalleled gaming and browsing features, packed in a powerful revolutionary browser. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The limited edition 30th Anniversary PlayStation 5 hardware that was announced last week went up for pre-order, and statistically speaking, you probably weren’t able to get one. On top of maybe TOO limited quantities of the very cool retro-style versions of the PlayStation 5, PS5 Pro, PlayStation portal and both DualSense and DualSense Edge, the whole online pre-order system turned out to be something of a disaster. People waiting in queues for an hour or more, just to be told everything was out of stock. Or worse, being able to add stuff to their card, but blocked from purchase by technical problems. Considering how much of a mess the launch of this generation was thanks to scalpers, you’d think Sony would’ve handled this better. Actually they did, but only in Japan, where pre-orders of the highly sought-after special editions were limited to PSN account holders with more than 30 hours logged playing games, which presumably helped make things a bit more orderly. We also scratch our heads about the pricing of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, which is only ten bucks for people who own the game on PS4, which mysteriously doubled in price overnight on the PlayStation Store. And like, we get it, but also: c’mon. In other news, Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ delay into next year puts in a literal Samurai Shodown with Ghost of Yotei, and that probably isn’t great for either game. We also reflect on how it’s going to be difficult to narrow down what this year’s game of the year will be. Despite a handful of really good games, there don’t seem to be any clear crowd-pleaser standouts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The latest PlayStation State of Play happened, and the Beyond crew broke down the biggest PS5 news and trailers from the event. There were various PlayStation 5 titles revealed, the biggest one showcased was Ghost of Yotei, which takes place in 1603 and is releasing in 2025. PlayStation is releasing various remasters, like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 and 2 Remastered, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Lunar Remastered Collection. Sega is apparently bringing back the whole movie tie-in trope with a special DLC coming to Sonic X Shadow Generations coming in the form of Keanu Reeves voicing Shadow, a special level and movie-accurate skin, which will be included in the digital deluxe edition. And more games were shown off on the #PS5Pro, including FF7 Rebirth, Horizon Forbidden West, The Last of Us Remastered, Jedi Survivor, Spider-Man 2, The Crew, Stellar Blade, Assassins Creed Snake Eater, Resident Evil Village, and many more. Listen in or watch as Akeem Lawanson, Brian Altano, Jada Griffin, and Nicolas Limon discuss all these and more in a very special #PlayStation State of Play #PS5 episode of BEYOND! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now that the dust has settled on the PlayStation 5 Pro’s underwhelming reveal and overwhelming price tag, let’s actually discuss what it would take to get us seriously interested. Sure, Grand Theft Auto 6 at 4K 60FPS would be nice, but is it realistic? Will Rockstar save that for the inevitable PS6 version? We read some of the Beyond community’s thoughts on the matter. Speaking of PlayStation 6, we know basically nothing about the next generation of consoles, other than there will be one, and that it’ll feature an AMD chip, after Sony’s deal with Intel allegedly fell through. This would suggest backward compatibility, which is a blessing and a curse, considering the PS5 is still getting a lot of cross-gen games that also come to PS4. Meanwhile, they don’t make fall/holiday video game release lineups like they used to, and we wax nostalgic about a graphic showing all the amazing games that hit PlayStation 2 back in 2001… And maybe their timed exclusivity had more to do with the PS2 hitting the market a year before Xbox and GameCube than anything Sony was doing. Finally, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster rises from its grave looking better than the last time we saw it, but showing its age in other ways. Beyond is Max Scoville, Brian Altano, Jada Griffin and Akeem Lawanson. Check out our facebook group at - https://www.facebook.com/groups/podcastbeyond/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After months of leaks and rumors, Sony finally revealed the PlayStation 5’s mid-gen refresh, the PS5 Pro. The 8-minute technical presentation from Mark Cerny spent its first three minutes singing the base PS5’s praises, and then highlighted the “big three” improvements the new model boastsl: a larger GPU, advanced ray tracing, and AI-driven upscaling. This new tech was showcased in a montage of side-by-side comparisons featuring some of the PS5’s most popular games, and while there’s some subtle but noticeable difference seeing how these games look running on new tech, nothing really blew us away… at least, until the price was announced. The PS5 Pro launches November 7th with an MSRP of $699 in the US, €799 in Europe. Bear in mind, the stand and the disc drive are sold separately, and the base PS5 isn’t getting any price cut that we’re aware of, which is usually what happens to consoles mid-generation. So many of the PS5’s games so far have been backwards compatible that it’s hard to justify a new console to begin with, let alone a more powerful one. We’re all riding high on Astro Bot, and while that game is gorgeous and technically impressive, at no point did it seem like more powerful hardware would improve the experience. As for what upcoming games can truly take advantage of the PS5 Pro, that remains to be seen. Grand Theft Auto 6 is obviously a big huge deal in 2025, and it’ll undoubtedly sell some PS5 Pros, but aside from Insomniac’s Wolverine game, so much of Sony’s first party lineup is still under wraps, which makes it hard to get excited about this thing, let alone justify spending money on it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Astro Bot is finally here, and surprise! It’s awesome! Simon Cardy joins us to discuss his review of Team Asobi’s full-sized follow-up to Astro’s Playroom, which is a rock-solid 3D platformer jam-packed with references, easter eggs and playful nods to thirty years of PlayStation history. We do our best to avoid spoiling any of the fun surprises, but really, it’s impossible to spoil the best part of this game, which is just the unadulterated joy of playing it for yourself. Anyway, if that was all that was going on, it’d be a good week for Sony, but we just got word that Concord had such an underwhelming launch that Sony is pulling the plug indefinitely, taking the game offline, and offering full refunds to the people who did actually buy it. This is part of the ongoing issue across the industry of live-service games not being able to sustain themselves. What’s next for Concord, a free-to-play relaunch, or is it just gone for good? We’ll have to wait and see. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re back to our normally scheduled Beyond program, and would you look at that! A few massive games came out for us to talk about. Star Wars Outlaws is full of high highs and low lows, and as much as we were hoping this would be Watch Dogs with Womp Rats or “Assassin’s Greedo,” its game design cherry picks mechanics from the Ubisoft’s stealthy open-world action adventure formula in odd ways. Still, zipping around that galaxy far, far away on a souped-up speeder bike with your alien Muppet sidekick is awesome when it clicks. Meanwhile, Mitchell reviewed Black Myth Wukong and thought it was great out of ten, but anyone thinking it’s a soulslike may want to adjust their expectations. Meanwhile, Concord may have launched with more of a bang than whimper, but Jada’s having a blast, which has us questioning the future of Sony’s latest live-service that’s been long in development. Oh yeah, and there’s some news too: the PS5 and a variety of accessories get a price hike in Japan, the Dualsense Edge now works on PC with the Accessories app, LEGO Horizon’s release date may have leaked, and Foamstars goes free-to-play. This week’s episode features Max Scoville, Brian Altano, Jada Griffin and Mitchell Saltzman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beyond and hello! Welcome to a very special gamescom edition of IGN’s weekly PlayStation show. This week, a whole bunch of the IGN team is in Germany covering the show, including Max, Brian, and our producer Nick, so putting together a regular Beyond episode was a little tricky. Instead, we’ve pulled together a bunch of our interviews about upcoming PlayStation games. We kick things off with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which we just learned is coming to PS5 next year. Then, Mouse: P.I. for Hire, which is sort of like if Cuphead was a first-person shooter about a rodent detective. To cap things off, we’ve got a trio of upcoming games based on some of our favorite movies that take place on barren, sandy desert planets: Starship Troopers: Extermination, Dune Awakening, and Star Wars Outlaws. We’ll be back with a normal episode next week, but we hope you enjoy some of what the team produced at Gamescom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, it was announced that Stellar Blade sold a million copies, which has us optimistic we’ll see a sequel to ShiftUp’s much-discussed hack and slash. Something we definitely won’t be seeing is a PlayStation presence at gamescom 2024, which definitely doesn’t have us feeling particularly optimistic about Concord, the multiplayer FPS that Sony’s publishing that same week. A massive video game event with hundreds of thousands of attendees sure seems like a good spot to demo a brand new live-service game, but hey, what do we know? Helldivers 2 launched just fine without. Then again, is it fair to compare Helldivers 2 and Concord? They’re both Sony-published multiplayer live-service games that are hitting PS5 and PC day and date, but they’re clearly very different. One is a shameless knockoff slash heartfelt love-letter to Starship Troopers, a 27-year-old cult classic, that has a very clear idea of what kind of video game it is, while the other seems to be equal parts Guardians of the Galaxy and Overwatch, but combined in a way that’s ambitiously blending an ongoing narrative with multiplayer live-service. In other news, after all our grousing and moaning during the Ubisoft Forward post-show about Ubisoft’s failure to acknowledge Beyond Good & Evil in any way… they just released a 20th Anniversary 4K remaster of the game, with a bunch of bonus content and quality of life improvements. Why wasn’t this announced during that week when everybody was making big announcements? We don’t know. But here’s what we do know: Elden Ring is a good video game, so we’re gonna talk about that, and if you’re avoiding Shadow of the Erdtree spoilers, don’t worry, you’re probably farther along than most of us. Which is your favorite farming spot, Ball Hill or Bird Cliff? Sound off in the comments. This week’s Beyond is Max Scoville, Jada Griffin and one-man band/producer/panelist, Tom Jorgensen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we’re joined by the wonderful Jared Petty, formerly of IGN, currently of Limited Run Games, to talk about (among other things) Tomba! Special Edition. Who is this pink-haired feral child, and why is he biting all those pigs? We had questions, and Jared had some answers. Plus, Jada ventured into No Man’s Sky in VR and was very impressed, further highlighting just how much Hello Games managed to transform that game since it launched way back when. On a more serious note, we got word that Meta has shut down Ready At Dawn, the studio responsible for some beloved PlayStation games, including the ambitious and underrated The Order 1886, as well as some PSP bangers like God of War: Chains of Olympus and Daxter. Meanwhile, Bungie had a massive round of layoffs amid restructuring, which has us discussing the unrealistic expectations and unsustainable business models of the games industry. On the bright side, Krafton, publisher of PUBG and The Callisto Protocol, has scooped up Tango Gameworks, along with the Hi-Fi Rush rights, so maybe we haven’t seen the last of that rhythm-based hack-and-slash. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Jada makes her return to the hosting chair along with Taylor Lyles, Cam “Final Mix” Hawkins, and Kevin Diaz to talk about the biggest games coming out of China Joy 2024 and Sony’s China Hero Project. Ganes like Lost Soul Aside, Exiledge, AI Limit and many more that are building momentum as we get closer to their releases. We also talk about other games that showed up at China Joy 2024 not directly from Sony with new teasers and trailers including Monster Hunter Wilds, Dynasty Warriors: Origins, and Phantom Blade Zero. There was also a new teaser for Season 2 of The Last of Us tv series on Max, to discuss and theorize who Catherine O’Hara will be playing and what storylines could be expanded on beyond what we got in the games. And oh yeah Astrobot and his controller are almost here so we had to talk at least a little bit about one of our favorite up-and-coming mascots of PlayStation. We also acknowledge the PSVR2 PC adapter and hope that will help entice more people to play and make more things that are PSVR2 compatible. There is also a new segment called Out This Week highlighting all the games coming out this week that we are excited for like Twin-Stick shooter Cygni: All Guns Blazing, Volgarr the Viking 2, Steamworld Heist 2, and of course Cat’s Quest 3 where you can take over the Purribean, I’m not sure if that's a tagline for the game but either way that's the pun I’m going with in this description for it. Finally, we do a lightning round of what we’ve been playing recently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we’ve got plenty to talk about. Jada just reviewed Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, the open-world souls-like action RPG from the studio behind Ashen. She breaks down the combat, both ranged and melee, as well as traversal, how the world is laid out, and the novel approach of earning bonus experience by chaining together combos. We also delve into bosses, as well as what’s up with that little rat dog. Concord had its first Beta this weekend, and we discuss our early impressions of Firewalk’s relatively budget-priced but still pay-to-play live-service shooter. Will it have the same success as Helldivers 2, or attract disgruntled Apex Legends and Overwatch players? We’ll have to wait and see. Jada also spoke to Neil Jones the developer of, Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield, about the upcoming indie narrative runner. We also have time to weigh in on other stuff we’ve been playing, including Chants of Sennaar, Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail, Alaskan Road Truckers, and yes, Elden Ring’s expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree. Have you heard of it? This week’s panel is Max Scoville, Jada Griffin and Brian Altano with special guest Neil Jones. Presented by Wendy’s Saucy Nuggs 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:17 - Concord First Impressions 00:14:35 - Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Impressions 00:32:17 - Wendy's Saucy Nuggs Featuring Unnecessary Inventions 00:33:37 - Aerial_Knight's We Never Yield Interview with Neil Jones 00:50:56 - Brian likes Elden Ring 01:04:04 - Chants of Sennaar, Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail, Alaskan Road Truckers Discussion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is one of the more expansive expansions in recent memory, which has just pondering what exactly the sweet spot is for add-ons to games we love. Is waiting two years for a $40 expansion to a $70 game better than waiting five or six years for a full sequel? Regularly updated live-service games like Destiny 2 and Final Fantasy XIV have no trouble keeping existing players interested, but how do you attract new players when a game’s been going for over a decade? Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was nearly an expansion for GTA III before Rockstar made it a standalone release, and we got some wonderful expansions to Grand Theft Auto IV with The Lost & The Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, and then GTAV’s story DLC was allegedly scrapped to focus on the more granular and lucrative updates added to GTA Online. Meanwhile, plenty more great games got their start as DLC, like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Halo 3: ODST and Hollow Knight: Silk Song… Though that last one is still MIA. In other PlayStation-adjacent news, Astro’s Playroom has been getting some free sneaky little updates ahead of the release of Astro Bot, including some indication that someone working at Sony actually remembers that Bloodborne exists and that people love it. The Shapes is a new line of collector-grade action figures from Spin Master, featuring some familiar faces from God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, and Horizon Forbidden West. We got a couple little updates on the Watch Dogs movie we forgot was in the works, as well as the Metal Gear Solid movie that’s been in the works for almost 20 years. This week’s episode features Max Scoville, Jada Griffin and Matt Kim. Presented by Wendy’s Saucy Nuggs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Capcom had a few surprises for us with this week’s Next showcase, including the full reveal of Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster, the second time the 2006 survival-action-horror game has gotten a fresh coat of paint. Apparently a deluxe remaster is a little more involved that your run-of-the-mill HD upscale, but not quite on the same level of a remake, like Capcom’s recent Resident Evil do-overs. Whatever the case, it looks great, and we’ll happily jump back into Frank West’s shoes for some zombie mayhem when the Deluxe Remaster drops in September, and for anyone not excited about the news, rest assured Resident Evil 9 IS in development, so chill out. Aside from re-visiting the familiar to varying degrees, Capcom is also showing it’s not afraid to try something new, as demonstrated by Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, an interesting hybrid of tower defense, real-time strategy and escort mission that’s surprisingly hard to explain, which is somewhat unusual in this day and age of established game genres checking boxes of what kind of mechanics they involve. Kunitsu-Gami drops in a few weeks, and while July isn’t particularly packed with big releases, it does have some coming up, like Final Fantasy XVI’s Dawntrail expansion, First Descendant, Zenless Zone Zero, Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, College Football 25, and Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Game. This week, Beyond is Max Scoville, Jada Griffin and Logan Plant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Arise, once again, Tarnished! FromSoftware’s long-awaited DLC expansion to Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree is almost upon us and Mitchell Saltzman joins us to give his spoiler-free thoughts on why it’s yet another 10 out of 10 review score for IGN. Obviously, FromSoft games are challenging from the jump, but it should be no surprise that an expansion for people who know their way around The Lands Between packs a punch for even the highest level players. Plus, we run down a couple games from the various Summer events that caught our eye, including Kunitsi-Gami: Path of the Goddess, which takes a novel approach to tower defense with an aesthetic somewhat reminiscent of Okami, as well as Starship Troopers: Extermination, which takes a more conventional approach to tower-defense, but with 16-player co-op in first-person, which should be more than enough to set it apart from Helldivers 2. Mixtape looks like a gorgeous whimsical indie adventure to let us relive our mischievous teenage glory days to the tune of a great soundtrack, and Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta Triangle Remake Eater has a gross mechanic that sounds like something Kojima would’ve dreamed up. This week’s Beyond is Max Scoville, Jada Griffin and Mitchell Saltzman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another very special episode of IGN's weekly PlayStation show. Today we’re taking a look back at our past coverage of Horizon Forbidden West, including a review discussion plus a spoiler-filled breakdown with some of the developers from Guerrilla Games. So, if you haven’t finished the game, this might ruin the ending, and if you haven’t played the game at all, it probably won’t make any sense. You have been warned! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices