Sci-fi horror shooter Killing Floor: Incursion gets a PS VR release date

Tripwire is very excited to announce the release date for Killing Floor: Incursion for PlayStation VR: 1st May 2018!

We’re also happy to announce that Killing Floor: Incursion will be playable by the public for the first time at PAX East in Boston this weekend at the PlayStation booth.

Previously on PlayStation Blog, we shared the news that there was a special bonus level coming for PS VR players. We’re happy to now share details about this level with you. It’s called “The Crucible” — and it’s a blast to play!

 

The map contrasts sharply with the realistic style of the rest of the levels in the game with its Tron-style virtual sci-fi aesthetic. The Crucible started out as our development arena for trying out gameplay ideas in the Holdout game mode. When playing it though, we found the map was so fun that we made the decision to fully flesh it out and add it in for PS VR players to enjoy.

Killing Floor: Incursion is the first time we’ve done a game with an entire story arc in the Killing Floor universe. This was one of the most exciting aspects of developing the game, as we could bring a depth to the Killing Floor universe that we’ve never been able to do before. Not only that, but the feeling of true presence in VR, that feeling of “Wow, I’m really standing here in this other world,” makes storytelling in VR that much more impactful.

Let us set the premise for the game’s story — we’ll do our best to avoid spoilers, but if you don’t want any surprises spoiled go ahead and skip the next paragraph.

In Killing Floor: Incursion the player is a Horzine security forces soldier that has been wounded in combat against the zeds. You are placed in a neurological simulation to keep your brain stable while Horzine medics can repair your body.

Emma Rose, a Horzine training officer, is your only link with the outside world, and is trying to guide you safely through the simulation. We say safely, because if you die too many times in the simulation your mind might lose coherence and you could die. This would have been a simple task for Emma to guide the player through if there wasn’t some sort of viral corruption taking over the neurological simulation and sending all kinds of genetically engineered monsters at you! Still, something about all of this just seems off to you…

When Killing Floor: Incursion launches for PlayStation VR on 1st May you’ll learn who Colin is, why Foster is a giant head, and just how scary four story genetically engineered monsters can be! So grab a friend, get those Move controllers charged up, and get ready to battle through one of the most exciting PlayStation VR experiences to date.

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Take a 360° tour of Torn, a sci-fi mystery coming to PS VR this spring

Hi there! My name is Neill Glancy, and I’m the Creative Director of New IP at Aspyr Media.

Last month at PS Blog, we introduced the world to Torn, a dark science-fiction mystery in the style of the Twilight Zone and Black Mirror. If you missed the announcement, you can check out the trailer here.

Today, we’d like to take you on a brief tour of just a few of the locations you’ll explore in the Mansion of Torn. From the beginning, it was a major design goal that the Mansion be a tourist destination for fans of classic science fiction. We want this mansion to feel alive, to grow and change as the story progresses, to slowly reveal its secrets, just as our characters will do through the narrative.

So please, sit back, relax, and enjoy these 360-degree images of The Mansion, exclusively at PS Blog.

The Grounds

Our team spent a significant amount of time pouring over concept art and movie art books to discuss what we felt were the right DNA characteristics of the Mansion. One of our early inspirations was the mansion seen in Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.

We felt this building most matched the size and scope of the home we wanted to create — not too big, not too small, not too happy, not too creepy, with just enough Willy Wonka style machines jutting out to make you wonder what the heck is going on here. For the mad dimensional scientist Dr. Talbot, it’s just right.

The Observatory

The Observatory is special location and the mansion’s highest point. This is where, 64 years ago, Talbot and his wife Rena experimented with a radio telescope to locate in galactic space the place they named “The Parallel.”

Space is vast and this was no easy task, so they brought the comforts of home to help pass the time as the aimed the telescope at star after star. One of the central puzzles we wanted to player to be curious about in this room was “How do I get upstairs?”

The Music Room

The Music Room was where Talbot and his wife entertained guests in the Mansion’s heyday. One can only imagine the wild parties and late night card games that took place here. If only the walls could talk!

The room features a large and very bizarre looking self-playing organ. We loved the outlandish size and presence this instrument brought to the room, but it’s certainly not the only thing you can play with here.

The Parallel

The Parallel is the mysterious realm that Dr. Talbot finds himself trapped in. It’s been Talbot’s home for 64 years — home to his consciousness, at any rate. The whereabouts of Dr. Talbot’s physical body are, at present, unknown.

The Parallel exhibits strange, physics-defying properties. Here, thoughts are made manifest simply by thinking them. After spending so much time here, the Parallel reacts to Talbot’s emotional state. But what — and where — the Parallel is, remains a mystery.

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The PlayStation Blog quiz: How well do you know your Monster Hunter?

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He’s back! Spyro Reignited Trilogy roars onto PS4 this September

Toys for Bob has long admired the original Spyro trilogy. Long before Skylanders, way back in 1998, the very first Spyro the Dragon was an inspiration to us. The level design, the controls, the art style, the humour, the music, the sense of discovery – it was groundbreaking in so many ways. There’s no getting around the fact that the feisty purple dragon is one of the most important and influential heroes in 3D platformer history.

Now 20 years on, we are deeply honoured to have the responsibility of remastering Insomniac’s historic trilogy, and our most powerful motivator is knowing how important Spyro is to millions of passionate fans across the globe.

Updating a classic

Remastering a classic is a unique undertaking for a game developer – unlike the creation of a new game where you have to find the fun, you’re starting with a game that already has proven, time-tested fun.

The real challenge lies in how to remaster a beloved classic in such a way that is true to the spirit and feel of the original while also maximizing fidelity (art, animation, visual effects, sound effects, music, controls) and integrating quality-of-life improvements that modern players expect (analogue stick camera control, auto-save system, more fast-travel options, etc.).

Staying true

Given the intense passion the fans have for the original trilogy, we are approaching development with reverence – a deep respect for all the decisions that went into making the original games.

 

In the interest of getting the feel right, one of the first things we agreed upon internally was that Spyro’s original movement metrics — speeds and accelerations for walking, running, jumping, charging, gliding, flying, swimming, hovering, and more – should be matched as closely as possible.

And in a similar vein, an authentic recreation of the platforming gameplay throughout the expansive and enchanted levels of the original trilogy would require the dimensions and collision details of the world geometry to come very close to matching the originals. Needless to say, the Dragon Realms of 2018 utilise considerably more polygons than their 1998 counterparts.

Engineering magic

In the interest of recapturing the enchanted details from the classic trilogy in fine detail, our programming team set out to magically slurp inspiration directly from the original games. Spyroscope was born.

 

This internally developed tool sends fairies into the original games who convert game details into a format that designers can easily interpret, allowing for extremely accurate game object placement and motion.

Ultimately, we were also able to leverage many of the original assets such as level models, level collision, animated objects, character models, music, game text, and game sounds through a combination of other in-house tools and a few payments to Moneybags.

“Thank you for releasing me!”

Upon this solid foundation of data from the original trilogy, we’ve set out to craft a remaster trilogy worthy of Spyro’s 20th anniversary celebration. Each day, we’re working hard to fill the Dragon Realms, Avalar, and the Forgotten Realms with all the magic you remember. We can’t wait to share it with you all later this year.

 

Stay posted for more updates from the team – we look forward to revealing more details with the PlayStation community as the release date approaches. In the meantime, we hope you don’t have too much trouble with the trolley.

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Fan-favourite character Blue Mary joins the King Of Fighters XIV roster

Hey KOF XIV fans, we have some really big news for you today! As most of you may already know, we have a big Ver. 3.00 update releasing for KOF XIV in the coming days, which includes four new DLC characters!

Today, I am pleased to announce that the final DLC character to be added in Ver 3.00 is Blue Mary! She was one of the most requested characters by fans, and will now be playable in KOF XIV!

Check out her official trailer below to see her in action!

For the uninitiated, Blue Mary is a veteran of both the Fatal Fury and KOF series. I was involved in her creation when she made her original debut in Fatal Fury 3, and she quickly became one of the most popular characters from that series. Her popularity meant that she was also selected to make her KOF debut a couple of years later in KOF ’97, after Japanese fans voted for her via gaming magazines.

A total of three characters were chosen that way to form the ’97 Special Team, and now that same team can be re-created in KOF XIV!

’97 Special Team

’97 Special Team

Blue Mary has always had a very unique fighting style, with moves that are based on the Soviet martial art, Sambo. Her move set includes a lot of grapple moves and as you can see in the trailer, we worked very hard to faithfully recreate all of those bone crunching attacks in KOF XIV!

Blue Mary has always been a challenge to design as a result of how complex her grapple moves are to animate. Back in the day, when we were designing her for Fatal Fury 3, not many people on the team knew much information about Sambo. At one point, one of the designers working on Blue Mary, Youichiro Soeda, actually used me as a training dummy to show off some of the attacks he had in mind to the rest of the team. Just watching this new trailer of hers, I think I can feel my neck hurt a bit…

We got to have a lot of fun while creating Blue Mary for KOF XIV thanks to the new engine. It was always difficult to put an emphasis on her grappling moves when they were created with 2D sprites, but with KOF XIV we were able to use the 3D camera and go crazy with the cinematic shots for her flashier moves, which meshed really well with her unique fighting style.

 

Blue Mary is the last DLC character to be announced for this update, and we have previously announced three more additions to the roster!! Feel free to check out the previously released trailers below for more info! The new Ver. 3.00 Update will also include character balance adjustments, which we know the fans have been waiting for!

These characters will be available for purchase when the Ver. 3.00 Update goes live on 12th April 2018!

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Acclaimed sandbox RPG Divinity: Original Sin 2 is coming to PS4 in August

Hello everybody! My name is Michael Douse, Director of Publishing at Larian Studios. In 2017, we released a PC game called Divinity: Original Sin 2, a sandbox RPG with the singular goal of bringing interactivity and exploration to new (sometimes ridiculous) heights.

Since that release, we’ve been inundated by letters and comments asking us to bring Divinity: Original Sin 2 to the PlayStation 4. We heard those requests loud and clear, and we’re very excited that it’s finally happening.

If you haven’t heard of Divinity: Original Sin 2, it’s a massive RPG in which you control a party of one to four, chosen from six origin characters with their own personal agendas and histories, or a custom avatar you can build from the ground up. You can play alone or with friends, in split screen couch co-op or online.

The game world consists of a fantastic realm built to react to players’ creativity. Combat rewards experimentation, and elemental spells can be layered for max impact. You can cast rain on burning allies, teleport them to safety, and electrify the battlefield to stop enemies in their tracks. If an opponent is too close, you can lash them with temporary tentacles, summon a demon to fight for you, and fly away on your own pair of wings.

While DOS 2 was highly reviewed (it’s Metacritic’s highest scoring PC game of 2017), we knew we still had room for improvement, and bringing the game to PS4 was the perfect opportunity to introduce a massive number of much-wanted tweaks and additions.

We’ll be talking more about the specifics of those changes in coming posts but suffice it to say we’ve been hard at work bringing the entire experience to a new level.

So stay tuned for more news on what’s coming to the PlayStation 4 version of Divinity: Original Sin 2, and come and chat to us on the socials — we’re always here to say hello!

Thanks for reading!

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Marvel’s Spider-Man releases on 7th September, Collector’s Edition revealed and more

You all have been waiting for it for a long time – we’ve got e-mails, phone calls, tweets, Instagram posts, and impassioned pleases. You want to know when Marvel’s Spider-Man will finally be in your hands.

Everyone here at Insomniac Games is thrilled to announce that Marvel’s Spider-Man will launch on Friday, 7th September 2018 exclusively on PlayStation 4 consoles.

It’s been an incredible experience for us to spend the last few years working on this game. From getting to create our own unique universe and story for our favourite Super Hero, to working with our talented collaborators at PlayStation and Marvel Games, to developing relationships with the Spider-Man and Marvel fan communities (#SpideySquad represent!), it’s been an amazing journey thus far.

Along with the release date, we get to show you the final box art for Marvel’s Spider-Man! Insomniac has a history of excellent game covers, from Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time to the bold Olly Moss Resistance 3 cover. We went with a pure red background and a striking image of the web-slinger. Take a look.

Our more experienced Spidey in his brand new Advanced Suit can be seen confidently web-swinging against a bold red backdrop. To juxtapose the unique look of our Spider-Man, his pose takes inspiration from over 50 years of fan-favourite Spider-Man comic book art and artistry. Astute fans of the wall-crawler will see nods to the work of J. Scott Campbell, Mark Bagley, John Romita Sr., John Romita Jr., Joe Quesada and (of course) Steve Ditko, as well as many other iconic Spider-Man artists.

You’ll see this cover adorning the standard edition of Marvel’s Spider-Man when it is available at retail and digitally. While many of you have been asking us to show the cover for the game, many more have wondered: will there be digital deluxe and collector’s editions of the game? You betcha, true believers – we’ve got both.

The Digital Deluxe edition of the game will include a copy of the game as well as new story chapters with our post-launch DLC series – The City That Never Sleeps. That’s right, we’ll be supporting the game post-launch and you’ll be getting three new chapters each with new missions, new villains and characters, and additional suits for Spider-Man. More details on that a bit later down the road.

Of course, for those collectors out there who want an incredible Spider-Man collectible alongside Marvel’s Spider-Man, we have just the edition for you. The Collector’s Edition includes all of the digital content from the digital deluxe edition, as well as a Steelbook case featuring the iconic white spider, Mini Artbook from Titan Books, and an awesome Marvel’s Spider-Man statue by Gentle Giant.

Pay extra special attention to the statue though and you’ll notice something is obviously missing. We haven’t revealed the entire statue for the Collector’s Edition, just Spider-Man perched on top of something. What could that be? It’s too spoilery to show you now, but stay tuned!

That said – no matter where you buy it, or which edition you get, you have a chance to grab these pre-order items.

Whether it’s a Spidey-Suit Pack featuring Spider-Punk, as well as a couple suits we will reveal this summer, the Spider-Drone gadget, a PSN Avatar, an original PS4 theme designed by renowned comic book artist Adi Granov, or just some extra skill points to unlock faster web-swinging sooner – our pre-order bonus is the total package. Check out this video of Spider-Punk and its suit ability in action below.

That’s a lot of info – but I realise some of you have been dying to get your hands on new information about the game itself as we haven’t said much since Paris Games Week and PSX last year.

That’s all for now – we can’t wait for you to get your hands on the game on 7th September 2018 exclusively on PlayStation 4 consoles. In the meantime, get your pre-orders in for Marvel’s Spider-Man on PlayStation Store, or a friendly retailer online or near you. And for all the latest from Insomniac Games, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook!

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