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On today’s Save State, Persia talks about the PlayStation 5 reveal event. We got our first look at the console with its tall, two-toned design and got a chance to see dozens of titles that we’ll get our hands on when the PS5 is finally here.

Persia also talks about Call of Duty Season 4 details, which include new multiplayer maps, game modes, and more for both Modern Warfare and Warzone.

E3 might not be happening this year, but we’ve got you covered. This summer, GameSpot is hosting Play For All, a multi-week event that is going to be the best place for you to get all the latest gaming news, features, interviews, and livestreams.

Not only that, but we’re also partnering with Direct Relief to raise funds for healthcare workers risking their lives daily on COVID-19 relief efforts, as well as Black Lives Matter. We’ll have over 100 hours of awesome content featuring the GameSpot team, as well as friends from across the industry, including the Giant Bomb crew, Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller, NoClip’s Danny O’Dwyer, and many more we’ll be announcing over the coming weeks.

It happened, folks. Sony finally lifted the curtain on the PlayStation 5 in an online presentation this week, revealing a curvy two-toned console that looks like it came from some parallel dimension where our inevitable cyberpunk reality is more bright and optimistic than it actually is. 2020 is the year video games move into the next generation. The way we play games is going to change irrevocably. I definitely heard the phrase ‘paradigm shift’ dropped like a cannonball in the ocean.

The future of gaming is here, again. We are witness to it, right now.

Anyway, the whole thing opened with Grand Theft Auto V, a game from 2013 that you’ll also be able to play on the new PlayStation. Cool.

But before they revealed the hardware, Sony showed a diverse selection of games we can look forward to playing on the console as soon as the end of this year, and as far out as 2022. There were nine games from PlayStation Studios, Sony’s new branding umbrella for first- and second-party developers. We also got a good look at close to 20 other games from third-party publishers, almost all of them for the first time. There was a lot to see, and it was exciting to keep seeing trailer after trailer, wondering what the next surprise would be.

But looking back on it, leading with GTA V framed everything in a way that says, “Those games you love are never going to go out of style.” And looking more closely at a lot of the games that were revealed, it’s very easy to imagine the feel of playing a lot of these experiences right now, technical prowess aside, of course.

The reveal of Insomniac’s Ratchet And Clank: Rift Apart is the best example of this push and pull of old and new. It was an impressive showing: Start with a wild, world-tripping cinematic and then show how all of that actually exists and works in the game itself. The impressive loading speeds touted by the company can be seen practised in the way Ratchet flies between completely different worlds in a blink. The debris flying everywhere as enemies and the environment are demolished is wonderfully chaotic, and the lighting design that ray tracing allows helps give this fake cartoon world a beautiful edge for sure. I have an idea of what the PlayStation 5 is capable of on a technical level, and that’s great.

But I can also pick up my DualShock 4 while watching the video and mimic exactly what is happening on screen. That’s how familiar it feels. It is a much more beautiful version of what I know I like to play. There are some hints of how these games might fundamentally change in a mechanical sense–hopefully, the portal hopping will exercise my brain in brand new ways later on in that game–but not enough for me to stand up and yell “paradigm shift!” to no one in particular.

There were a lot of other exciting reveals. Most of them were sequels. Sequels of things that I like, but sequels nonetheless. I can’t wait to see how Miles Morales’s story unfolds in the next Spider-Man game from Insomniac. Really looking forward to traversing an even bigger open world in Horizon Forbidden West and taking a bunch of screenshots. Excited to play another Hitman game, another Resident Evil game, another Oddworld game, and just straight-up play Demon’s Souls again. But I’m getting excited to buy a new console so I can play more of the same stuff.

There were brand-new properties in there that piqued my interest, sure. Housemarque’s Returnal intrigued me with its setup, and I love its dumb name. Kena: Bridge of the Spirits and Project Athia also raised an eyebrow. Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop are games that seem incredibly up my alley. But I still came away with a sense of knowing how all these games play.

Then, there were the ones that I didn’t quite get a true sense of, the ones that really got me to sit up. Goodbye Volcano High, Jett: The Far Shore, Little Devil Inside, Solar Ash, Stray and even the utterly strange Bugsnax were really the only projects that got my mind wandering a little bit, wondering, “How is that going to translate to an actual game?”

I guess that’s the feeling I’m always looking for whenever we move onto a new generational cycle. The look of the box? I think it’s interesting enough, it’s fine. But I’m chasing the feeling that reminds me of opening up a copy of EGM as a kid, looking at screenshots of Mario 64 for the very first time, thinking: “Wow, that looks amazing. I have no idea how it’s going to work.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those games, the ones that came closest to getting that reaction out of me during the PlayStation 5 presentation, were independent games from publishers like Annapurna, from developers like Superbrothers and Heart Machine. And you know what? I love the fact that all these games were exhibited proudly, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Horizon and Resident Evil and Demon’s Souls rather than being corralled into a specific indie section of the show or worse, a montage. These are the games we’re going to get our truly new gaming experiences from.

Do I absolutely have to get a PlayStation 5 to get those experiences? Judging by all the multiplatform announcements that happened after the show, probably not. We always kinda suspected that the next console cycle would be more of a step than a leap. Maybe the next generation of gaming has been here all along. They just needed a place to be seen.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Sony is releasing two PlayStation 5 consoles this year. One has a disc drive and the other doesn’t. In a new interview with GameSpot sister site CNET, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan explained why Sony is releasing the disc-free console.

He explained that it’s a reflection of what many consumers want these days. Basically, people are consuming more and more digital content as opposed to physical media, and Sony is releasing a new PlayStation console for those who align more with this vision for the future. “We’re just acknowledging here that as time passes our community is becoming more digitally orientated,” Ryan said.

The executive pointed out that, in the first quarter of 2020, a whopping 66 percent of PlayStation games sold were digital. This uptick in digital game sales was no doubt driven by the fact that people are staying home during the COVID-19 crisis, but in any case, the percentage of digital game sales at Sony–and other game companies–is growing.

“People increasingly, as they are with their music and their video, they prefer digital and we want to recognize that,” Ryan said.

The PS5 is not Sony’s first game platform without a physical media drive. The company released the PSP Go back in 2004, but the PS5 is Sony’s first home console without a physical media drive.

Looking across the industry, Microsoft released the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition in 2019, and the company is rumored to release a next-generation Xbox without a disc drive, too.

Going back to PlayStation’s strategy, Ryan said the regular PS5 with a disc drive and the disc-free model are “identical products” outside of the small difference in form factor. Both systems will be available at launch when the PlayStation 5 ships in Holiday 2020. Pricing has not been announced for either system.

For more on everything Sony announced today about the PS5, check out GameSpot’s roundup of all the game reveals and more.

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.