Joe Dynamite

I won’t do this most weeks, but a few exciting things happened, and I wanted to share my thoughts. I’ve included links in case you missed any of it and wanted to check it all out for yourself.

• A first look at Unreal Engine 5 – We got a first look at Unreal Engine 5, the next-gen version of the popular game development engine. The demo was supposedly running in real-time on Sony’s PlayStation 5 hardware, so this was also the first time we got a peek at what the PS5 is capable of. I was totally blown away. It did a better job of demonstrating next-gen visuals than many of the demos in Microsoft’s First Look Xbox Series X Gameplay presentation from last week. Unreal Engine is used for development on both platforms, though, so just because this particular demo was on PS5 doesn’t mean the Series X will be any less powerful. We’ll just have to wait until later in the year to really see.
• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 – Activision announced that an updated and remade collection of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 will be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in September of this year. Development is being handled by Vicarious Visions, who recently worked on the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. I’d love to eventually see a non-4K version on Switch to play on the go. Hopefully, this can revitalize the series, I was pretty let down by 2015’s lackluster Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5.
• Paper Mario: The Origami King – Announcement Trailer – There was a surprise announcement trailer from Nintendo for a new Paper Mario game. I haven’t played many of them but have always been interested in the series. I know a lot of people love them, especially The Thousand-Year Door on GameCube. Paper Mario: The Origami King will release in July on Nintendo Switch (obviously). And I just found out that this series is developed by Intelligent Systems who also work on Fire Emblem, and in the past, Advance Wars.
• Ghost of Tsushima – State of Play – Sony put out a State of Play video dedicated solely to Ghost of Tsushima. We got to see over 18 minutes of gameplay, and we got a good look at some of the game’s features and play styles. Ghost of Tsushima looks like it may be able to unseat Genji: Dawn of the Samurai as my favorite samurai game. I’m really looking forward to its release in July.