Author: Trafficblast

Sony finally revealed the form factor of the PlayStation 5 during its reveal event, and the design was probably not what many expected. The system–both the model with a disc drive and without–sports a futuristic-looking design that is more out-there than previous PlayStation systems.

PlayStation boss Jim Ryan explained to GameSpot sister site CNET that PlayStation’s goal with the form factor was to create something unexpected and “daring.”

“We wanted to do something that was bold and daring almost. We wanted something forward facing and future facing, something for the 2020s,” Ryan said.

The CNET report goes on to say, “The PS5’s design is meant to demonstrate Sony’s belief that the technology inside and the games that run on it are as eye-catching as the outside you see.”

Separately, Ryan told the BBC that the form factor of the PS5 is meant to “grace” your living room.

“The PlayStation sits in the living area of most homes, and we kind of felt it would be nice to provide a design that would really grace most living areas. That’s what we’ve tried to do. And, you know, we think we’ve been successful in that,” he said.

This being the internet, people were very quick to mock the PS5’s design with some delightful memes.

For what it’s worth, Microsoft’s next-gen console, the Xbox Series X, also sports what could be considered a non-traditional design. In short, it looks like a small refrigerator.

Both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X are due for release this holiday. Although we finally know what both systems look like, neither Sony nor Microsoft have announced a price point yet.

Before you’re even 100% certain of what you’re doing or who you are in Project Warlock, you’re put in a room with a magical throwing knife, a staff that shoots lightning, and a couple of pissed-off spiders who aren’t there to thank you for playing their game. Within 10 seconds of starting, I’m back in high school, in 1998, installing any old creaky Doom WAD a friend tells me about over AIM for the hell of it, without a single blessed clue what needs doing except that anything that isn’t me must die.

That’s really the main draw of Project Warlock, a game that wears its ’90s FPS inspirations loudly and proudly. Despite a few interstitial cards between areas, there’s no deep story or motivation or pageantry to be found here. It’s just you and your arsenal of magical and military weaponry vs the supernatural hordes. At any given moment, it’s paying deep homage to Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic, Quake, Duke Nukem–the list goes on. The question, however, is what exactly does Project Warlock bring to the table that’s unique? The answer is, ultimately, not a whole lot, but what it does, it certainly does well enough.

The style clash between all the game’s wild, anachronistic elements certainly counts for something. This is a game where you can take out lurching cyborgs with a crossbow, wield laser rifles against abominable snowmen, and kill Lovecraftian horrorbeasts with a submachine gun. That mix makes for a smirking, free-wheeling sort of game where every problem has a brute-force solution from somewhere in the annals of history or legend. If a shotgun can’t fix all your problems in this game, a fiery magic spell probably will, and vice versa. There isn’t necessarily a wrong approach for many of Project Warlock’s challenges. As long as you know which button pulls the trigger and which one opens doors, you’re generally fine. And no matter which weapon you wield–from magic staffs to double-barrelled shotguns to sticks of dynamite–the vast majority of your arsenal packs an absolute wallop when it hits.

The catch, of course, is that Project Warlock periodically does demand more of you than just killing everything in sight, and the game’s dedication to not getting in your way with pesky exposition or rudimentary tutorials can work against it. When you start the game, it’s safe to assume that your basic melee weapon for when you run out of ammo–which happens quite a bit in the early hours–is a slow but powerful axe. It’s not until you take a look at the controls in the options menu that you realize each weapon has a magical alternative. Instead of the axe, you can switch to an enchanted dagger of some sort that can shank enemies that get too close–but it can also be thrown an infinite number of times, often doing more damage than the weaksauce capgun they give you and call a pistol. New weapons, spells, and powerups just kind of spontaneously happen in this game for the most part. Those that don’t just randomly drop out of enemies and barrels, you can get by spending perk points–currency gained every time you level up–but the XP needed to gain them is slow to accumulate, and it’s not until you experiment with the various upgrades for your weaponry, stat boosts, and spells that you start to get a handle on how to do some real damage instead of chipping away at the more formidable foes. That can take some time, and it’s a real problem that there’s nothing in-game that tells you about any of it.

That’s fine in situations where failing miserably is expected, and failing has low stakes. On its normal difficulty, however, Project Warlock has a set number of extra lives to use, after which it’s game over, and progress is completely wiped with no continues. Much of Project Warlock is fairly easy to navigate, with difficulty often ramping up in terms of sheer numbers of enemies rather than any one particular enemy type posing a threat. Bosses, however, have a habit of smacking you around with cheap hits, and throwing yourself against that wall without being mindful that you are mortal is a disheartening shock to the system. The casual difficulty option thankfully gives you the infinite lives such a game demands, but it’s logical to be a bit disappointed about a roguelike element being thrown into a game that otherwise rewards haphazard bravery.

The only other modern flourishes the game has mostly come from the look and sound. While it’s still using garish 2D FPS sprite mapping for the graphics, there’s an impressive level of interactivity with the environments, from being able to break a castle’s stained glass windows in an explosion to the light spell you can use to brighten a dark area at will. The art style isn’t without its flaws, however. The way every object in range turns with you to remain flat is a bit dizzying after a while and is all the more pronounced given the big, bright, Minecraft-y voxels used to build everything. In general the way each stage is laid out starts to feel constrained and uninspired after a while. There isn’t really a sense of verticality or an architectural logic to how these areas are designed. But again, in its own weird way, that, too, is a gentle reminder of what it was like to play FPS games in the ’90s. The soundtrack, on the other hand. is actually the best part of the game, melding old-school synth riffs on thrash, speed, and prog metal with dark, modern EDM beats. It sounds like a Hotline Miami game that takes place in Hell, and in the later hours, hearing what kind of tune we get next became a primary motivator for me.

When I look back on ’90s FPS games, there are things unique to each series that immediately come to mind. It’s easy to remember Doom’s Martian landscape desecrated with Satanic symbols and the distant snarls beckoning me closer. I remember feeling like an all-powerful wizard in Hexen, burning orcs and sorcerers alive with the fire I conjured from my hands. I remember the instantly iconic nailgun in Quake, and Nine Inch Nails telling me in the background that everything around me is about to learn a harsh lesson. But there isn’t really anything particularly memorable about Project Warlock that’s separable from its inspirations. The game isn’t without its charms in the moment, but when its inspirations are so readily available, it doesn’t really have much to offer against the real deal.

Sony debuted the PlayStation 5 today, and one of the first announcements was that Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V is coming to the next-gen console in 2021. It’s launching in the “second half” of 2021, Rockstar said in a post on the PlayStation blog. A post on the Rockstar Newswire confirms that Grand Theft Auto V is coming to “new generation consoles” plural, so you can expect it on Xbox Series X, too.

GTA 5 was originally released on the PlayStation 3, before coming to PlayStation 4, so PS5 will be the third platform that Rockstar’s open-world action game is released on. It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it seems very unlikely that GTA V would be exclusive to PS5 on next-gen, so you should expect an announcement for Xbox Series X in due course.

Sony did not provide any details on any potential new content or features for the PS5 and Xbox Series X editions of GTA 5. However, a trailer confirmed that the game will be “expanded and enhanced” on PS5 and Xbox Series X.

“The new generation versions of GTAV will feature a range of technical improvements, visual upgrades and performance enhancements to take full advantage of the latest hardware, making the game more beautiful and more responsive than ever,” Rockstar said.

Rockstar also confirmed that the next-gen version of GTA Online will have “exclusive” content not available on the other editions. Additionally, there will be a new standalone version of GTA Online that PS5 players can pick up at no cost for the first three months after release.

What’s more, on PS Plus members on PS4 are getting $1 million GTA$ every month they play GTA Online until GTA Online releases on PS5.

Sony and Rockstar have had a special relationship for many years. Sony announced the PS4 edition of GTA V during its E3 briefing in 2014. Before that, Sony announced an exclusive deal with Rockstar for the espionage game Agent, but that game was never released.

GTA 5 is one of the most successful games in history. It has shipped more than 130 million copies to date, and the GTA Online multiplayer mode continues to make tons of money from microtransactions.

Rockstar is said to be working on GTA 6, but it presumably will not be released for some time. A recent report said it could launch in 2023 at the soonest, but this rumor was shot down.

For more next-gen games, remasters, and reboots, check out our full list of all the PS5 games announced during Sony’s event today.

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Wrestler John Morrison competed in WWE from 2002 to his departure from the company in 2011. After spending time working promotions like Lucha Underground, AAA, and Impact, Morrison returned to WWE in 2019, reteaming with his former tag team partner The Miz. Now, the duo is taking on Braun Strowman for the Universal Championship at Backlash.

The WWE PPV is taking place on Sunday, June 14 at the Performance Center, and the interesting caveat is that it’s a handicap match for the championship, meaning Miz and Morrison (Hey hey, ho ho) will be facing the champ as a team. But how does that work? Who becomes champion if they can defeat the Monster Among Men, Braun Strowman?

“We’ve talked about it both ways,” Morrison told GameSpot. “Co-champions would be nice. We could cut the belt in half and make some sort of a Universal Championship pendant. Sell that as merchandise, and probably get a really nice royalty check for that. Or the other way we were thinking it is whoever gets the fall would win. If I win–if I beat Braun–then Miz would get the first shot at me. Or if Miz pins Braun, then I would get the first shot at him.”

While the aftermath of a possible win is an interesting one to think about, Morrison went on to explain that the duo is more focussed on the actual match. And the lead up to that has been the numerous pranks the tag team duo have played on the champ, which led to Strowman flipping over a surveillance van they were in on the June 5 episode of Smackdown.

While Morrison was the Smackdown Tag Team Champion since his return–along with Miz–this is the highest-profile match he’s been in since his return to WWE. “One of the reasons I was excited about Backlash–one of the reasons I came back to WWE–because I never got that big win,” Morrison said. “I was, at the end, a multiple-time tag team champion, but never the World Champion, never the Universal Champion.

“That is one of the things that I want to achieve. In addition to that, there’s a lot of guys on the roster that I have not yet taken [on]. Guys like Roman Reigns, [Seth] Rollins, Kevin Owens, Aleister Black, Ricochet, which is funny that I say that because I wrestled Prince Puma [Ricochet’s ring name in Lucha Underground] plenty of times, but Ricochet not much. There’s a lot of unfinished business that I feel like I have, which to me is exciting. The other reason I came back was to have fun. I feel like I missed that a little bit on the first run. And now my mentality is everything I do should be fun.”

While discussing the current roster at WWE, Morrison brought up his infamous quote, made on The World According To Wrestling podcast years back, about Roman Reigns. “Someone asked me if I wanted to wrestle [Reigns],” said Morrison. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to wrestle that guy. Maybe in 10 years once he learns how to wrestle.’ And they screen capped that with a really jerky picture of me smiling. And I stand by that then, but I’ve been in the ring with him once now, right down to seeing the caliber of matches that he’s capable of now. That’s another example of a guy who has really come into his own.”

Although Morrison spent some time away from WWE, he feels his journey through other promotions made him an overall better wrestler. “I’m a complete wrestler now that I wasn’t before,” he explained. “I won Tough Enough. I’ve trained at OVW. And everyone probably says this about themselves, because you’re always the hero of your own story, but I sell myself as the hardest working guy at OVW on the road. I was always in the gym. I was always watching tapes. And when I left it’s like my world expanded.

“I went to Mexico. I was the first ever Triple Crown Champion of AAA. Champion of Lucha Underground, Champion of Impact wrestling, Champion of Five Star Wrestling in the UK. And each one of these organizations is a different style. A different group of people. And just that experience, for me, over the past nine years has leveled up my thought process about the business, my strategy, my in-ring ability. My skillset is more diverse than ever, more diverse than anyone on the roster.”

More importantly, Morrison found what he loved about wrestling during this time. “When I was here before, I put so much pressure on myself that a lot of times I forgot to have fun,” said Morrison. “And that’s one of the things that I have been trying really hard to make sure I do every time I’m in the ring. Wrestling is supposed to be fun.

“I had fun when I was watching when I was a kid, and I want to have fun every time I’m in the ring. And that doesn’t mean don’t work hard. That doesn’t mean don’t take it seriously. That just means enjoy it. So that, for me, has unlocked what I feel was kind of blocked from me before, which was the personality, and how I was on the mic. That one thing is the most important thing, and there’s a lot more to it than that, but I feel like I’ve leveled up that aspect of my pro wrestling game to just who I am.”

You can see Morrison and his teammate The Miz take on Braun Strowman for the Universal Championship at WWE Backlash on Sunday, June 14.

If you want to dive deeper into the weird world of wrestling, check out GameSpot’s weekly podcast Wrestle Buddies. Each week, Mat Elfring and Chris E. Hayner talk about the fun side of wrestling, from silly gimmicks to their favorite PPVs. Also, they occasionally interview wrestlers. New episodes arrive every Thursday, and you can check it out on Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts.