The Wednesday letters page is worried about the September release schedules, as a reader is unconcerned at not being able to afford a ROG Xbox Ally.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Unexcited state
So that God Of War Laufey looked good… can’t say anything else surprised me or excited me about the State of Play though. I don’t feel we really need a new God Of War game, and would’ve preferred to see Santa Monica Studio do something new, but I’m sure it’ll be a good game.

I’m not sure how much the State of Play being a little dull is the fault of Sony, compared to the fact that everything leaks out in advance, but while this might be happening at the same time that E3 used to, you’re definitely not getting the swarm of new announcements you used to get back then.

Lots of the games looked good but apart from release dates I don’t feel I really learned anything new about any of them. It was informative rather than being exciting, is probably how I’d put it.

I’ll be interested to see how it compares to Xbox on Sunday, because I expect they’ll try and go all out with reveals and such, even if Sony don’t need to be that desperate. I’m not sure what I’m expecting from Summer Game Fest but that’s such a slog given how long it is – I think I’ll just see the edited highlights the next day.
Gorf

A familiar mess
Watching the State Of Play and it seems everyone was so terrified of being out at the same time as GTA 6 they’ve decided all to release in September instead.

Even if Nintendo or Microsoft don’t announce anything for September (which is unlikely) the Sony presentation has already packed out the schedule in a way which means some titles are going to suffer.

I’m hoping the new Control game isn’t one that suffers in the scrum, as it looks excellent.

You would think that when putting together this show someone might go ‘Hang on, these are all a bit bunched up aren’t they?’ But then logic and sense rarely seems to feature in release schedules.
Euclidian Boxes

GC: The problem is only Sony knew all the release dates ahead of time and most of these publishers will be finding out about them at the same time as everyone else. Now that everything is made public, they have the chance to change them, as that last week of September is madness. We share your pessimism that they probably won’t though.

As predicted
I don’t regret staying up late to watch the State of Play but now it’s just finished I can barely remember any of it. God Of War Laufey looked good but also not very surprising. I know nothing is allowed to just end nowadays but I’m really not sure there’s much point in making the game, especially when the only new gameplay idea seems to be making it more like Devil May Cry.

Couldn’t you just… play a Devil May Cry game if that’s what you wanted to do? It looks great though, so I’m sure it’ll be cinematic and all that, so I might give it a go if I can get it cheap, but I’m not exactly going to pre-order it or anything.

It was fine, I guess, but the days of being blown away by these kind of livestreams, where it’s shock reveal after reveal are long gone. Now it’s more like waiting to see how much of the rumours were right, which this time was almost all of them.
Focus

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Game of the show
Well, I know what must have been GC’s favourite game in the otherwise predictable State of Play: The Lost Wild! Anything with dinosaurs is good with me too and this one looked really good. Weirdly I got confused with it at first, as I thought it was the trailer for the movie The End of Oak Street, which the beginning of the game trailer seemed very similar too, whether on purpose or not.

I’m not clear what the explanation for the dinosaurs is in the game, but I appreciate it using current scientific information and for making it look so cool and realistic. Here’s hoping it plays as good as it looks. Even better, let’s hope it’s the start of a new trend for dinosaur games, then we can finally get Capcom to take notice!
Radar

Unwanted story
I would be very glad if the success of Forza Horizon led to lots of games trying to do similar kind of things but as much as I want to see Clutch succeed, I’m really not sure adding a story is the way to make your game seem different.

I don’t think it’s an accident that other racing games have little or not story so I’m not really sure what they think they’re going to gain by bucking that trend. At best, if the game’s good, I’ll just end up ignoring the story. After all, as bad as the tournament stuff is in Forza Horizon it’s fairly easy to ignore and switch off.
Tolly

Luxury device
I agree that releasing another ROG Xbox Ally (I still don’t understand what the ROG bit means) seems a bit silly but I think the other reader has it a bit wrong. Obviously, spending a grand or more on a handheld console is not something most people are going to want to do but I also don’t think they’re really missing out on much.

None of these PC handhelds have exclusive games, they’re just a way to play existing PC games on a specialist device. If you want to be portable most ordinary laptops can play indie games at the very least, plus the Switch 2 has most of the same ones. So you’re not even really missing out on that portability front.

I’d put this sort of thing into the same category as the PS5 Pro, where even quite hardcore gamers see them as an unnecessary luxury and not something they want to spend money on or, more importantly, feel like they’re missing out on if they don’t have one.

We’d all love to own whatever hardware takes our fancy, I’m sure, but they’re just not essentials or anything that’s going to have a big impact on the rest of gaming. I feel that Project Helix will fall into that category as well. It’s a neat option if you’ve got infinite funds but it’s not something any ordinary gamer actually needs.
Grando

GC: ROG stands for Republic of Gamers, which is a brand Asus uses for most of its gaming hardware. They seem really keen on it.

Nintendo discount
Good Star Fox preview, GC. I pre-ordered the game from Currys straight after reading it.

I don’t normally pre-order but there was a 10% discount for doing so, which meant I only paid £40.49 for a physical copy with free delivery too.
Arteta26Legend

GC: Currys almost always seems to have that sort of deal for Nintendo games, to the point where it almost seems like an official relationship.

Spaceship adventures
I really like the sound of the Star Fox 64 remake, but I also like the idea from the Reader’s Feature at the weekend, of turning the series into a space trading game. I feel this would be a great idea as the problem with all the games after Star Fox 64 is that they’ve got so far away from the original game, which was focused on the spaceships.

They kept trying to turn it into a generic modern shooter, but Star Fox needs to be either an on-rails shooter or something where you’ve got a bit of freedom. To me, using something like Elite as your starting point sounds great, especially as I’d love to see what Nintendo would do with that kind of idea.

I consider the absolute worst Star Fox game to be Star Fox Adventures, which had nothing in common with the original games. It was just a boring Zelda clone, with no puzzles or anything that makes Zelda good, and then the Star Fox characters dumped on to top. I know it used to be a different game, before Star Fox was added, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a bad Zelda clone.

So I think you’ve got to stick to the spaceships as the focus first of all. The characters are cool (or amusingly not cool, depending on how you want to think about it) but you shouldn’t base the gameplay around them, in my opinion. I don’t even pick Fox in Super Smash Bros.
Curly

Inbox also-rans
My kids are going to love those Lego Pokémon sets. I was shocked at the prices of the first lot they announced but these are pretty reasonable. It’s crazy how much adults are willing to pay for Lego nowadays.
Olliephant

These Pokémon sets are all well and good but where’s my Lego Arwing?! Don’t tell me that wouldn’t sell, and if it wouldn’t make it anyway!
Benson

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As Sony announce Until Dawn 2, they also reveal release dates for multiformat games including Onimusha: Way Of The Sword, Silent Hill Townfall, and Ace Combat 8.

It may have been one of the longest State of Plays ever, at over an hour, but Tuesday night’s showcase was a little short on surprise announcements. There was God Of War Laufey, which took up 20 minutes at the end, but that had been heavily rumoured beforehand – not that that took anything away from the actual reveal.

In fact, almost everything shown, including both first and third party games, looked interesting and the one thing the event did provide was lots of release dates, with games such as Silent Hill Townfall, Control Resonant, Ace Combat 8, and Onimusha: Way Of The Sword finally revealing their schedules.

Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis was also dated, but unfortunately it confirmed previous rumours that it has been delayed. Either that or it’s trying to get out of the way of GTA 6 in November. It’s hard to tell, but at least it didn’t go with a September release date, unlike seemingly everything else.

Marvel’s Wolverine – September 15

Surprisingly little time was spent on Wolverine, which may mean there’s a dedicated State of Play coming up in the future. It looked great, just as you’d expect, and extremely gory, with a cameo from Jean Grey and confirmation of villains such as Mystique and Sabertooh. Its release date wasn’t news though, as that had been previously announced.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls – August 6

The release date for Arc System Works’ one-on-one fighter also wasn’t a revelation, although Sony did announce a number of villains for the game, namely Doctor Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, and Carnage. We weren’t sure who the character sitting on the throne was but apparently he’s called the Champion of the Universe (aka Tryco Slatterus) and he’s the big bad of the whole game.

Rayman Legends Retold – October 1

There’re almost no surprises in preview events nowadays, with everything being leaked out weeks and often months in advance. The reveal of a 3D remake of 2013’s Rayman Legends was a surprise though, in the fact that it looked really good. There are a few new into-the-screen sections but the gameplay is still mostly 2D and the new 3D visuals look really nice, and seem to maintain the same charm as the original.

Bancho The Chef – TBA

Speaking of charm, we’re not sure it’s a good idea to create a spin-off from not-indie game Dave The Diver that doesn’t maintain the same pixel art style graphics. That made the visuals look rather bland in comparison, but nevertheless there was a good energy to the trailer, with a prequel that shows how Bancho became the talented sushi chef you see in the original game. There was no mention of a release date though.

Kemuri – 2027

One of the only major surprises of the night was the latest from The Evil Within’s Ikumi Nakamura and her new studio Unseen. It seems to be a co-op action adventure, somewhat in the style of Devil May Cry et al. There’s lots of jumping and gliding around, as you fight yōkai and then… turn them into clothes you wear in order to use their powers. Because why not.

Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis – February 12, 2027

A delay for the (second) remake of the original Tomb Raider seemed inevitable after the rumours began but at least it still looks good, with some impressive visuals and lots of focus on dinosaurs. There was also lots to suggest the game is sticking pretty close to the original story, although we’re yet to see much evidence of how it will handle platforming, which was originally the antithesis of the Uncharted style action from the more recent games.

The Lost Wild – 2027

Speaking of dinosaurs (and there’s few things we enjoy doing more) this new game comes from Annapurna Interactive and is by a new British studio called Great Ape Games. It seems to be some kind of survival games, and a lot more scientifically accurate than most dinosaur media, with a lot of feathered dinosaurs and some gigantic Quetzalcoatlus flying reptiles (pterosaurs are not dinosaurs, ackchyually).

Dune: Awakening – September 22

A survival game and MMO that takes influences from both the books and movies, this has been out on PC for almost a year now. It’ll come to PlayStation 5 this September, bringing with it a new single-player story mode, which we imagine will also be made available for the PC and Xbox Series X/S versions.

Dynasty Warriors 3: Complete Edition Remastered – October 1

Not a remaster we look forward to with much enthusiasm but there you go. Like most of these games it’s available on Xbox Series X/S and PC at the same time, although unsurprisingly the State of Play made no reference to that.

No Rest For The Wicked – October

Despite what we just said this is coming to PlayStation 5 first, sometime in October, with Switch 2 and Xbox versions arriving only at a ‘later date’. This will be the final 1.0 version of the game, which will hopefully improve on the slightly questionable impression made by the early access release.

Onimusha: Way Of The Sword – September 25

This release date would’ve been one of the bigger reveals from the State of Play, except it leaked out early too. Either way, Capcom’s Resident Evil-esque zombie samurai game was already one of our most anticipated games of the autumn, as we were very impressed by our hands-on preview last year. Although you can give it a whirl yourself now, as there’s a free demo out today.

Silent Hill Townfall – September 24

For a game set in Scotland we’re still yet to hear a single Scottish accent in any of these trailers, which is weird because developer Screen Burn are actually Scottish. They’re responsible for the excellent Stories Untold and the awful Observation, so we’re not sure what to expect with this one, although in terms of Silent Hill atmosphere everything does seem to be on point.

Ace Combat 8: Wings Of Theve – October 2

Available in early access from September 29, presumably if you buy one of the more expensive editions, you can see what we mean about September getting very busy. It’s all obviously GTA 6’s fault but we hope this doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. Although there’s a pre-order bonus of a port of PlayStation 2 game Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War on offer, to tempt you into making an early purchase.

Stuntman: Hollywood – TBA

It probably says a lot about us that the only licensed car we didn’t instantly recognise was the first one, which is apparently from Fast & Furious. Although apparently that’s not Mad Max towards the end, but the Jason Statham version of Death Race. The game itself is a revival of the old Stuntman series from Driver creator Reflections, which is surprising as the original’s trial and error gameplay made it an acquired taste.

Ill – 2007

There’s no doubting the craft in this first person action horror game but it is a very grim prospect, with some truly horrible imagery and some extremely difficult to kill zombie style enemies. It’s certainly going to scare off a lot of more casual Resident Evil fans but in terms of hardcore horror thrills this is definitely one to watch.

Control Resonant – September 24

A lot of these publishers will be finding out about the release dates of other games at the same time as you, so if they’ve any sense some of them will change them pretty quickly, because at the moment Remedy’s Control sequel is coming out on the same day as Silent Hill Townfall and a day before Onimusha: Way Of The Sword – which isn’t good news for any of the games.