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Welcome back! This week the team dives deeper into their thoughts on Resident Evil Village and Returnal.

Stuff We Talked About

• Resident Evil Village
• Returnal
• Mass Effect Legendary Edition
• Subnautica: Below Zero
• Destruction AllStars
• Hood: Outlaws & Legends

The Cast

Sid Shuman – Senior Director of Content Communications, SIE

Tim Turi –  Manager, Content Communications, SIE

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Last week, we asked you to revisit the beginning of Aloy’s journey in Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition. While tuning Aloy’s Focus and fighting off feral machines, you shared your best moments using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights: 

AscensionDawn shares a warm portrait of Aloy.

SP_Al3xis01 found a well shaped place to take a rest.

FloPop10 shares a bombastic encounter.

coalabr14 shared a mesmerizing portrait.

Gamingbyframe takes in the beautiful scenery.

ameeba37 shares this fierce image of a Stormbird about to take flight.

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: Monsters

SUBMIT BY: Wednesday 9 AM PT on May 12

Next week, we’re feeling dangerous. Share ferocious creatures and monsters from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. 

Get ready, Hunters! This is Mantisco and we are excited to announce our closed beta for Hunter’s Arena on PS5 and PS4 on May 14.

Hunter’s Arena, a new era of Battle Royale

For those of you joining us for the first time, Hunter’s Arena is a 30 player PvP & PvE combat based Battle Royale set in the ancient age of Demon Hunters. In this dangerous world, you will become a Hunter who must fight forbidden demons that started to appear as a long forgotten seal broke loose. Beware of other Hunters as well as it is no secret that the seal was broken free by no one other but one of your own, a Hunter. With no one to trust, you must defeat everything that crosses your path and bring an end to chaos in Hunter’s Arena.

PvP & PvE

We are most excited about bringing you a fresh style of Battle Royale experience in our game. We focused on providing an experience that is enjoyable to both players who prefer engaging in PvP and to players who lean towards exploring in a PvE environment. In Hunter’s Arena, you are not restricted to only fighting each other but you can also choose to enter high-risk, high-reward dungeons. You may encounter Boss demons and slay them to collect powerful items and level up faster than others in dungeons. We suggest that you choose your strategy wisely to gain the upper hand on your road to victory.  

Characters 

In the upcoming closed beta, you will be able to choose from 12 different Hunters each with  unique and powerful skills and swordplay. We are excited to finally be able to show you our unique Hunters. A few of our team’s favorite Hunters include Tau and Samjang. Tau is a Demi-Beast Hunter who can inflict massive amounts of heavy damage despite his cute furry look. Samjang is another favorite Hunter ours who is essentially a monk with an afro. He came to Hunter’s Arena to bring peace to his people but look out, as his way of restoring the world includes summoning a giant Buddha’s hand upon his enemies!

Combat that’s easy to learn, hard to master

In Hunter’s Arena, even players new to the game can easily engage in dynamic fights. However, as you face stronger and smarter foes, be prepared against strategic mind games and various tricks up your enemy’s sleeve.

Wait patiently with your Super Ability charged up and pounce on your f

We are excited to finally announce the release date of Astalon: Tears of the Earth, coming to PS4 on June 3! We also have a brand new trailer that reveals a closer glimpse into the world of Astalon and a snippet from the upcoming arrange album.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is a 2D action-platformer that follows three unique warriors on a perilous mission to save their town in a post-apocalyptic world. Having made a pact with the Titan of Death, Epimetheus, the characters are granted the power to grow stronger each time they die and must surmount the mysterious Tower of Serpents in search of answers. Players can switch between the three heroes and must use their unique skills to take down monsters, solve puzzles, find artifacts, and progress through the game, all while uncovering the intriguing backstory behind the Titan, the tower and the heroes.

As the first foray into the Astalon universe, Tears of the Earth is the long-awaited new title by Matt Kap (Castle in the Darkness, Binding of Isaac) and Jon Lepage at LABS Works, featuring character design by famed manga artist, Ryusuke Mita (Dragon Half).

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Meet the Heroes

Switching characters and utilizing their special abilities is key to progressing in Astalon. Players will have to decide which character works the best for each predicament, whether it be a puzzle, platforming situation, swarm of enemies, or boss.

Arias, the Fighter

Arias is a quick, short-range character who slashes with his sword. He starts the game with greater defense than his allies, and can use his sword to cut through vein doors in the tower. He is a young fighter who is willing to jump head-first into anything that stands in his way. As the son of the warrior named Silas, the wielder of the powerful Crystal Sword, he tries his hardest to live up to his father’s legacy.

2. Don’t alert the guards

Being spotted by guards has several consequences. Firstly, you’ll be highlighted in red, revealing your position to the entire enemy team until you manage to regain stealth. Secondly, you’ll initiate lockdown, causing portcullises to close and limit your options, or even trap you. Remember that several characters can shake chasing guards using their thrown item, s

Hey everyone, today’s the day – Season One Hotshots is now live in Destruction AllStars, exclusively on PS5! The team at Lucid are thrilled for you all to start getting your hands on what we’ve been working on these past few months and there’s still more to come. You’ll be seeing loads of new content making its way into the game over the coming months as part of Season One. We’ve got a brand new launch trailer to celebrate along with a road map detailing all the cool new stuff coming your way through the season.

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Let’s dive into what’s new today. Our brand new AllStar, Alba, is now available for Destruction AllStars players. This veteran of the competition has returned to whip the AllStars into shape and she’s well equipped for the challenge with her high-tech battle suit. We gave an overview of her character ability and Hero Vehicle in our last blog post if you fancy doing some homework, or you can dive right into the game and get to grips with our latest AllStar.

Arriving alongside Alba is her Story Mode (formerly known as Challenge Series). Learn more about what motivates Alba as an AllStar and unlock exclusive cosmetic rewards as you compete in seven gameplay challenges. Some of these challenges are exclusive game modes that aren’t available in online multiplayer and can really test your skills in new ways. In an unexpected twist, Alba is facing off against all of the other AllStars. Be sure to complete the additional star challenges to unlock all the rewards.

Also arriving today is the AllStar Pass. This is a brand new way to earn cosmetic rewards in Destruction AllStars through online multiplayer*, no matter how you choose to play. Be sure to check out the new daily and weekly seasonal and sponsor challenges to give your AllStar Pass a boost.

Whilst today is bringing a lot to the arena, the fun doesn’t stop here. Photo Mode will be arriving very soon on May 19, offering you news ways to get up close and personal with the mayhem and destruction! Take it for a spin in single-player activities and look for that perfect angle on a wreck, evade or pose. 

After that, our brand new game mode Blitz will arrive on June 2. This game mode is all about team based coordination as four teams of thr

Creating sneaker collaborations with PlayStation and Nike Basketball has been one of my favorite pastimes in recent years, and I’m so thankful to this community for supporting me and sharing in my passion. Like many of you, I’ve been a die-hard PlayStation fan all my life, so it’s an honor to introduce my newest creative project with my favorite brands: the PG 5 PlayStation 5 colorway.

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Just like the PlayStation 5 console, the PG 5 is my platform to take my game to the next level, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bring these two elements together in this new partnership with PlayStation. Nike and PlayStation designers, including Yujin Morisawa – the artist behind the PS5 console’s design – worked closely together to bring the spirit of my game and the look of PS5 to life in this unique collaboration. 

Here’s a peek at what you can expect to see in the design this time:

• As with all my PlayStation collaborations, the tongues of the shoe have the PG and PlayStation logos on them.
• The colors of the shoe are heavily inspired by the industrial design of the PS5 with references on the sock liner and outsoles.
• It wouldn’t be a true collaboration with PlayStation if we didn’t include the iconic PlayStation shapes, which are spotted along each shoe in the same pattern as on the DualSense wireless controller. 

Before working on Dark Alliance – the action RPG set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons – I was a game cinematics director at a few major gaming studios. My time before Tuque taught me to not just care about the look of a world.

The “vibe” and the characterization of a world is what brings it to life. That’s what I’m here to talk about today with Dark Alliance. Plus, I want to share a lot of concept art from our artists Vincent, Stanimir, Victor, Dimitri, Fred, Jorge, and Even.

Finding Dark Alliance’s Art Core

The concept of Dark Alliance is simple. It’s you and your friends versus this alliance between legions of monsters. The monsters really started to take on a life of their own as we developed the game. In a way, they’re the stars of the show. They’re what you are going to remember when you talk about Dark Alliance with your friends.

I was interested in exploring the various cultures of these monsters. To me, the best way to showcase a culture is through its music and dance.

This is what drove the game’s style, music, and tone. But it also needs to feel fresh in the high fantasy genre. So, one day I was asked to sum up the game’s art style in two words.

We’re heavy metal.

Heavy Metal Inspiration

When I say heavy metal think art style, not music. The game’s music is fully orchestral. Think of the look of heavy metal album covers, or Mad Max, or Apocalypto. Or even one of the original masters of metal – Mozart.

We also obviously take a lot of inspiration from Dungeons & Dragon art that has come before us. The cool thing about D&D is there have been so many unique interpretations of its art over the decades. There is no one set style. But it all still looks high fantasy at the end of the day.

Dark Alliance is that too. When you put everything together, we still look like the fantasy of D&D. The team took care to bring D&D to life in a way fans will get excited about. Our journey there started with heavy metal inspirations, though, to create our own unique flavor.

The Companions of the Hall

The next challenge was bringing four of the most iconic characters in D&D lore to life. We wanted to stay true to R.A. Salvatore’s descriptions of Drizzt, Bruenor, Catti-brie, and Wulfgar in his books. Here is their early concept art.