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This week the team celebrates 5 years of PlayStation VR and shares more games they almost missed out on.

Stuff We Talked About

• PlayStation VR
• Sheepo
• Moss 2
• Jackbox Party 8
• Jett: The Far Shore
• A whole bunch of games we almost missed out on

The Cast

Sid Shuman – Senior Director of Content Communications, SIE

Tim Turi –  Manager, Content Communications, SIE

Brett Elston – Manager, Content Communications, SIE

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Last week, we asked you to take a stroll through the moonlight of your favorite games using #PSshare #PSBlog. From moon-soaked portraits to nights out on the road, here are this week’s highlights: 

Gamography_ shares a side profile of Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn.

dee_danya shares Dani making a daring dive in Far Cry 6.

Jin rides his horse through a field under the moonlight in this Ghost of Tsushima share from foxghost181.

ZacheryyyEduard shares Deacon hitting the road under the crescent moon and stars in Days Gone.

Amianan_NiRaGuB shares Eivor’s raven Synin seemingly grip the moon in its talons in this Assassin’s Creed Valhalla share.

mett981 shares Ratchet gazing towards the cosmos in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? 

THEME: PlayStation VR
SUBMIT BY: Wednesday 9 AM PT on October 20

PlayStation VR turned 5 this week! To celebrate, share moments that shook your reality from a PlayStation VR game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. 

Jett’s out now, it’s resonating, and we’re thrilled. It’s the latest videogame from Superbrothers A/V and Pine Scented, it was co-created for years by two full-time people and composer scntfc, then bolstered by an all-star Jett Squad of contributors. It took a village to get Jett done, and we’re all immensely proud of our efforts together.

Jett is my second video game as director, writer, art director, and music coordinator, among other roles. Unlike Sword & Sworcery, Jett is grandiose, with depth and breadth, intricate, and byzantine.

So, I had a pretty heavy workload for a while there. However, an advantage of being at the intersection of those roles is the opportunity to try to craft something very distinct, in keeping with the Superbrothers A/V approach.

The Superbrothers A/V approach goes roughly like this:

1. You start with a vision, and a vibe.
2. You marry the picture to the sound, get them to stew together.
3. You get it to move right and feel right.
4. You present a world with intriguing narrative concepts, with credible naturalistically-proportioned intelligent characters with heart and soul, who have interesting concerns.
5. You choose your moments, intimate or epic, a few here and there, and you get those exactly right.
6. Nested within all this, you figure out a design that supports that vision, and that vibe.

Foundational to creating a distinctive vibe, and powering Superbrothers A/V’s approach, is audio. Sound and music, and how they fit. Getting the spirit of the music and sound right is essential, as music ends up being foregrounded in our videogames, often becoming almost the primary text.

For Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP we collaborated with Toronto composer, maestro Jim Guthrie, whose immediately appealing and memorable score accounted for so much of sworcery’s magic. 

As an album it found its way into headphones and speakers around the world, and resonated.

This time out, for Jett, we were so fortunate to have on deck the brilliant Seattle-based composer scntfc since day one, with whom we collaborated for years. 

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C Andrew Rohrmann, known in the biz as scntfc, has since composed beloved scores to several video games, most notably Oxenfree. However, scntfc’s first videogame contribution was to Sword & Sworcery back in 2010.

On Sword & Sworcery we had the idea for a “number station transmission” and we were put in touch with scntfc, who cooked up some relevant audio in his laboratory, audio that ended up in Sworcery’s “moon grotto” as well as at Sworcery’s memorable fi

As we near the release of Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: Vanguard on November 5, we’re excited to share with PlayStation players a deep-dive on two of the game’s core modes. It’s time to take a closer look at the epic characters and stories you’ll encounter across the single-player Campaign mode and in Zombies, the latter of which is developed by Treyarch, the studio responsible for bringing Zombies to Call of Duty more than a decade ago. 

From the international heroes forming the original Special Forces group, Task Force One, to the undead threat of Kortifex the Deathless, Vanguard is set to take PlayStation players on one wild ride on November 5, in addition to the massive amount of content players will experience with 20 maps coming to the Multiplayer mode at launch.

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“Der Anfang”: The Next Chapter in the Zombies Saga

The next iteration of Zombies, developed by Treyarch Studios, is coming to Call of Duty: Vanguard on November 5.

Prepare to face a new type of evil, bond with new allies, and meet terrifying new enemies in a gameplay experience that gets you to the fun faster, all wrapped in a brand-new dimension of Zombies that you’ve never experienced before.

In Call of Duty: Vanguard, Treyarch is introducing a Zombies experience that builds on the Dark Aether universe introduced in Black Ops Cold War, in a franchise-first crossover that provides continuity from a lore standpoint while innovating on the core gameplay loop.

It began with the opening of the Dark Aether gateway at Projekt Endstation. As the Nazi experiment went catastrophically wrong, punching a hole through the dimensional veil, the effects traveled far and wide.

You are now stranded in the snowy graveyard of Stalingrad, held in by the dark magic of Kortifex the Deathless, one of five Dark Aether entities bonded with mortals via their otherworldly artifacts. The other four — Saraxis the Shadow, Norticus the Conqueror, Inviktor the Destroyer, and Bellekar the Warlock — are in revolt against Kortifex, and are now there to help you defeat him and Von List.

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How high are the stakes in the all-new Battlefield Hazard Zone? Let’s just say it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. A tense, squad-focused survival experience, Hazard Zone combines edge-of-your-seat gameplay with the best of the Battlefield sandbox. 

Before we dig into the details, let’s give you a little of the in-game history that will help you understand this new mode. In the year 2040, a worldwide event known as The Blackout took out roughly 70% of satellites in orbit – decimating worldwide communication, navigation, and surveillance. Prior to this mounting tensions caused by rising sea levels, economic collapse, and massive waves of the displaced set the stage, but it was The Blackout that completely destabilized a world already on the brink. 

International distrust inspired both the US and Russia to engineer a surveillance solution: the use of satellites equipped with capsules containing radiation-hardened data drives. These capsules (and the precious intelligence they contain) are dropped into their respectively controlled territories for the Occupying Forces to secure.

Of course information isn’t only prized by the superpowers, many of the Non-Patriated (or No-Pats) are very interested in getting their hands on the data drives as well. Some want them for the price they’ll fetch on the Dark Market, while others are more focused on using it to keep themselves and their friends and families safe. Regardless of their reasons, the No-Pats are very motivated to intercept as many data drives as possible – so much so that they’ve organized and funded Task Forces for this sole purpose. And in Battlefield Hazard Zone you and your squadmates will make up one of these teams. Your job: locate, gather, and extract data drives before a storm overtakes the area. 

Oh, and did we mention you only get one life to do it? Hey, we did warn you the stakes would be high.

So how does this all play out? Well, there are five elements to every match:

Step 1 – Strategize and equip 
Step 2 – Insert on all seven maps from 2042
Step 3 – Retrieve the intel 
Step 4 – Extractions
Step 5 – Pat yourself on the back and claim your rewards

You’ll start with a Mission Area Briefing where you’ll get the info you need to succeed, from regions of the map with a high probability of enemy combatants, data drives, and Uplinks. The latter are powerful items that can turn the tide of battle. Three types of Uplinks will be available at launch: Vehicle, Ranger, and Reinforcement Uplinks. Whether you need to bring back a buddy, gain a quick tactical advantage, or get the heck out of Dodge – Uplinks have got you covered.

You’ll then select the Specialists and loadouts you and your squad will join the fight with. Choose wisely (and strategically) at this stage and you’re likely to do well. So balance your squad and skills carefully before you deploy. 

From this point on you’ve got just one mission – securing those capsules and data drives. Of course you won’t be the only ones doing so. Rival squads will have the same objective and then there are Occupying Forces who will guard the contents of those capsules with their lives.