We’ve been thrilled by the incredibly positive feedback from the free public demo of Fracked which launched last month. On August 20 people can finally jump into the full Fracked experience (or from today, August 17, if you’ve pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition). So, grab your PlayStation Move controllers and get ready to take on this fast-paced action adventure, only on PlayStation VR.

Fracked launches on August 20 as both a Standard Edition ($29.99 / €24.99 / £19.99) and a Deluxe Edition ($34.99 / €29.99 / £24.99). The Deluxe Edition provides players with exclusive digital rewards such as an artbook, soundtrack, and the unique Earth Defender equipment skins for you to enjoy!

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Tips to becoming the Action Hero

Fracked provides the ultimate power fantasy of stepping into the shoes of the action hero. It’s inspired by classic action cinema, made possible by video games, and enhanced by the power of VR. Take on the legions of interdimensional foes known as The Fracked, with total freedom of movement, one-to-one cover-based combat, and an arsenal of interactive and powerful weapons.

To celebrate launch week, let’s get into three key tips that’ll really help you kick crystalline butt this summer.

1. Use the environment to your advantage

Just like any great action movie, you’re outnumbered and outgunned. You’re the first line of defence. Become the action hero. Save the planet. With a varied assortment of weapons, you’ll outsmart and outmanoeuvre the enemy. Using the environment to your advantage will be key to your success.

We’ve implemented an immersive grabbable cover mechanic, which totally grounds the player in the world. If it’s grabbable, it’s cover. On their own, The Fracked can be tackled easily. But once they descend in number, you’ll need to use cover tactically to avoid the onslaught and press your advantage. Run from cover-to-cover, get the best angles on your opponents, and feel like the unstoppable hero of the story that you are. Just don’t get cocky.

You’ll also have total freedom of movement at your disposal, with zip-lines allowing you to drop down on enemy positions. When the Fracked begin to swarm, you’re going to be thankful for these methods of escape and redirection that allow you to wrestle back control of the situation.

The Mainframe: A retro futuristic virtual world

The landscape of the Mainframe is completely open and explorable. We’ve crafted a small yet fully-realized environment bursting with character and details. There are multiple biomes, each representing a single function of the computer system you’ve been tasked to infiltrate. From the heavily armed security fortifications of Tet to the authoritarian engineered world of Hex, each location requires different skills and strategies to master.

To create the Mainframe we combined stylized 3D environment assets with innovative use of shaders and technical art, giving Recompile a striking art style to immerse players on a whole new level.

Rocket League is celebrating the beloved Ratchet & Clank series from Insomniac Games by bringing the characters onto the pitch for the first time! Get the free Ratchet & Clank bundle in Rocket League beginning August 18 just by logging into Rocket League on the PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5. 

The bundle includes the Ratchet & Clank Punk Decal for Octane, Negatron Collider Boost, Clank Balloon Topper, and the Ratchet Balloon Topper. 

Jeremy Dunham, product & content strategy director at Psyonix, is excited about bringing this beloved series to Rocket League. “We’re big fans of Ratchet & Clank here at Psyonix and it’s one of PlayStation’s most iconic franchises,” Jeremy said. “That’s why teaming up with Insomniac to make cool content for the PlayStation community was both a thrill and a privilege to work on!”

Get it only on PlayStation through January 3, 2022, and play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart available now on PlayStation 5. 

Play Rocket League at 120hz!

Also starting on August 18, enjoy Rocket League on the PlayStation 5 at 120hz. A new “Video Quality” setting will be added within the Video Settings menu allowing players to select Quality or Performance modes. Here are the details for each setting: 

Quality:

• 4K resolution at 60 FPS with HDR 
• HDR requires HDR10 compatible display and HDMI 2.0 cable or better
• 4K capable display required to experience 4K. If a 1080p display is used, the game will render at 1080p supersampled from 4K

Performance:

• Game runs at 2688×1512 resolution (70% of full 4K) at 120 FPS with HDR 
• Game UI runs in 4K 
• 4K capable display required to experience 4K UHD. If a 1080p display is used, the game will render at 1080p supersampled from 2688×1512
• HDR and 120 FPS require a compatible display, as well as Ultra High Speed HDMI 2.1 cable

New PlayStation Plus Pack

Get ready to see stars. The PlayStation Plus Pack containing customization items just for PlayStation Plus subscribers is getting refreshed. Claim the new Pack including the Goop GE Animated Decal, Hard Hat GE Topper, Magmus GE Boost, and the Reaper GE Wheels at PlayStation Store on August 24!

Expand your Garage with the new Starter and Standard Packs 

Season 4 is bringing new Starter and Standard Packs! Here’s everything in both:

Road Hog XL Starter Pack (Available August 17 for $4.99)

• Road Hog XL (Sky Blue Painted)
• Yuzo Wheels (Sky Blue Painted)
• Hypernova Boost
• Lightspeed Trail
• Kinda Koi Decal (Sky Blue Painted)
• 500 Credits

Werewolf Pack (Available August 24 for $19.99)

• Werewolf (Crimson Painted)
• Voxel Goal Explosion (Crimson Painted)
• IO: Infinite Wheels (Crimson Painted)
• 1000 Credits

Saddle up for Season 4

Season 4 is live

Bonjour, I’m Jérôme from 1P2P Studio, an indie studio based in the north of France. Today, I’m happy to announce that our first game, Young Souls, is coming to PS4 this fall! To celebrate, we put together this PS Blog post to give you some insights into the game and the bosses you’ll fight. 

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Young Souls and boss fights

With Young Souls, our goal from day one was to make boss fights the core of the game experience. Once you’re all geared up, you’ll face goblin warriors, ninjas, giant spiders, and 30-foot trolls.

The gameplay was partly inspired by games straight out of the old-school, 2D beat ’em up genre and partly by our personal influences, which lean towards 3D beat ’em ups and more modern games. Probably the best example of the latter’s influence is the fast-paced gameplay we’ve infused into Young Souls; things definitely move quicker than the classic titles, which tend to be more deliberate in nature (but no less captivating!)  

Creating enemies

Over the course of the game, you’ll face a bunch of mid-bosses whose main role is to introduce a new enemy behaviour or a weapon/accessory that the player collects and gets to use once the mid-boss is defeated. Defeat Mohm, a spooky giant spider, and you’ll be able to fight with its mandibles that can spawn friendly poisonous spiders – the perfect weapon to deal with an enemy crowd.

The main bosses are a key part of the story, and so these confrontations constitute recognizable peaks in both the story and the gameplay. Gameplay-wise, the main bosses represent true challenges to your progression through Young Souls, testing your mastery of the game’s combat system by unleashing a combination of different attacks that you’ll need to defend against and counter.

A balance between art-direction freedom and gameplay

For the art direction, we worked with Xavier Houssin, one of our favourite character designers in the business. He designed all of the characters in Young Souls, including (obviously) all of the

The War for Wakanda Expansion is the next free update to our game, and it’s our biggest one yet. Whether you’re new to Marvel’s Avengers or one of our veteran players with multiple max-level heroes, there’s never been a better time to play. Let’s dive into everything that comes in the Expansion.

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The War for Wakanda

We know how important story is to you all, so we worked incredibly hard to create for you an epic Black Panther narrative that adds hours of new cinematic story content to the game.

War for Wakanda is an original story set in our Marvel’s Avengers universe. The Expansion picks up years after the events of A-Day — T’Challa rules over Wakanda, and the country’s borders are closed to everyone… until the devious Ulysses Klaw finds a way in. When Klaw invades the country in efforts to harvest its wealth of Vibranium, T’Challa has to team up with outsiders – the Avengers – in order to protect his home.

Our team collaborated with Black Panther comics writer Evan Narcisse in crafting our original story. Narcisse is known for the popular “Rise of the Black Panther” comic run!

Enter: Black Panther

Black Panther is our new playable character in War for Wakanda, and his martial arts-inspired playstyle with feel totally different from the other Avengers on our roster. Some of his moves include: Pounce, which allows him to leap at and grapple-attack enemies; Percussive Blast, which drains your Intrinsic Meter with a blast of stored up kinetic energy; and Devastating Daggers, which is a ranged attack that allows you to do increased damage to enemies that are embedded with your daggers.

T’Challa’s Assault Heroic is King’s Mercy, which sees him summoning a Vibranium spear and hurling it at hapless foes. His Support Heroic is Kimoyo Beads, which hover around the area to support allies or stun enemies. Finally, his Ultimate Heroic leans into the spiritual side of his character, summoning a spectral projection of the panther goddess Bast to grant him a major damage buff.

Tandem: A Tales of Shadows is an original puzzle platformer game featuring around 45 levels where players will have to alternate between two characters: Emma (top-down view) and Fenton (side view). Players will have to solve puzzles by using Emma and Fenton’s unique abilities and perspectives. Together they’ll face a variety of obstacles and enemies such as bosses that stand in their way. 

The unique thing about our game is a feature of two controllable protagonists. We thought that controlling two characters, each with their own personality and characteristics, is a fun, creative exercise for the player. It’s satisfying, especially as players enter later stages. We designed the game with Sherlock Holmes and Watson in mind. They rely on each other to solve investigations.

We were fascinated by the late 19th century, which was one of the most creative and innovative periods in history. We thought the Victorian period was appropriate for our game, but we didn’t want to include steampunk elements. Tandem: A Tale of Shadows is not a historical game, but we tried to faithfully recreate every detail. We also fully assume the casual side of the game which often provokes the wonder of childhood but with a strong Burtonian influence! As its name implies, the game’s art direction plays a lot with the chiaroscuro (the importance of lights and shadows), so we also drew inspiration from the golden age of Dutch paintings.

The strategy between the two characters is in two dimensions.

The player controls Emma in a top-down view — and thanks to her lantern, it lights the scene and forecasts shadows. When it comes to Fenton, the player controls him on a side-scroller view and has the power to walk on the shadows projected by his friend’s Emma lantern. 

In the first universe, the shadows on which Fenton can walk are mainly generated by scene assets and simple objects that Emma can move.  As the player discovers the different universes, new shadow mechanics will be proposed. Emma operates a system of transparent pipes with valves and branches in order to cast shadows.

Emma attracts enemies with a bait to eat each other and grow up to cast shadows large enough to allow Fenton to walk.

Controlling two characters who each have their own personality and characteristics is very enjoyable and creative for the player. The further you advance in th

After more than two decades, the legacy of the Dark Wanderer and the demonic burden he bears is making a resurgence in the realms of humanity. Blizzard Entertainment’s resurrection of the acclaimed action role-playing game that defined a genre is nearly here! For the first time, console players who pre-order Diablo II: Resurrected will be able to experience first-hand the remastered epic of Diablo II with Early Access to the Open Beta, now live on PS5 and PS4.

Diablo II’s legacy will continue on new platforms over 20 years after its original release on PC in 2000. New players and veterans will be able to experience this iconic chapter of the Eternal Conflict through the extraordinary capabilities of the PlayStation consoles and DualShock 4 controller on PS4 and DualSense wireless controller on PS5.

Bringing the classic keyboard-and-mouse gameplay to a controller was a unique challenge. To illustrate the Diablo II: Resurrected team’s approach to adapting the feel and controls to PlayStation controllers, we invited Design Director Robert Gallerani to share his insights.

When we set out designing the controller control scheme, we broke down the work into a handful of categories. Each of these were core considerations we wanted to be mindful of as we brought Diablo II: Resurrected to console players.

With a keyboard and mouse, the player acts as an “eye in the sky” telling their character what to do and where to go by clicking somewhere. Do you perform a ranged ability on a monster? Do you walk over to a chest and open it? Perhaps you open a door? With the mouse, the players’ primary input is a click that conveys aiming or a specific ability or action. The game then guides the character to the place where it can perform the action, finding a path for you.

On a controller, however, the player is more directly acting as their avatar. This starts to have serious ramifications at many levels—but to our players, it all just needs “to work.”

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Watch the iconic intro cinematic, remastered in Diablo II: Resurrected