(For Southeast Asia) PlayStation Plus Tokyo Game Show promotion starts 17 September

(For Southeast Asia) PlayStation Plus Tokyo Game Show promotion starts 17 September https://ift.tt/VkwqtDG

Players who join PlayStation Plus during 17 September to 30 September can save up to 25% on a PS Plus 12-month membership!

Current PlayStation Plus members can save big on the remainder of their membership when upgrading a current plan to PlayStation Plus Extra or Deluxe.*

With PlayStation Plus Extra and Deluxe, get access to monthly games, exclusive discounts, online multiplayer, and hundreds of games through the Game Catalog and Classics Catalog, including hit titles like Helldivers 2, Ghost of Tsushima and many more. Explore the Classics Catalog with PlayStation Plus Deluxe, try select games like the epic Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with Game Trials, and more.*

*Availability of Classics and Game Catalog varies over time, region/country, and plan. See https://ift.tt/fpCUqQ6 for details and updates on PlayStation Plus offerings. PlayStation Plus is an ongoing subscription subject to a recurring subscription fee taken automatically (at the then-current PS Store price) at the frequency you choose at purchase until cancellation. Terms apply: play.st/psplus-usageterms

A Close Quarters Look at Proto Man in Mega Man: Dual Override

A Close Quarters Look at Proto Man in Mega Man: Dual Override https://ift.tt/YK4GujC

At long last, the Blue Bomber is leaping back into action with Mega Man: Dual Override. However, he’s not the only one making a return in the highly anticipated game. Capcom’s latest evolution of the Mega Man series also features a second playable character!

Proto Man is making his comeback in Mega Man: Dual Override, and the fan favorite is armed with a powerful playstyle that’s entirely his own. Today, we’re excited to share a closer look at Proto Man and the unique arsenal he’ll unleash in this all-new adventure.

Proto Man’s return in Dual Override is something we’ve been teasing from the very jump. Fans may have heard his signature whistle in our reveal trailer, but now it’s official. Proto Man is back, and in the latest footage, you can catch the first look at him in action.

Alongside the arrival of Mega Man: Dual Override, next year marks the 40^th anniversary of the series. It’s a long legacy, and Proto Man has been a key part of that story over the years. As Dr. Light’s first creation, he’s the legendary prototype who started it all. The mysterious red-clad robot originally debuted as an adversary in Mega Man 3. Over time, however, Proto Man has moved beyond his rivalry with the Blue Bomber. Now, he’s a trusted ally who appears when Mega Man is in trouble, lending a hand when it matters most.

It’s been a bit since Proto Man’s last appearance as a playable character in Mega Man 10, but he’s picked up some new tricks since then. Over the course of Dual Override, players will discover Proto Man and Mega Man each excel in different areas, possessing their own distinct strengths, combat philosophies, and even progression systems.

Contrasting with Mega Man’s longer-range approach to combat, Proto Man excels in close quarters. The wandering warrior has a more aggressive but technical playstyle that rewards rushing into the fray with precision. His iconic weapon, the Proto Buster, may have a relatively short range, but it packs a serious punch with high attack power at point blank.

The Proto Shield also returns in Dual Override, and this time around, players will have the chance to wield it on both offense and defense, as part of Proto Man’s special abilities. Unlike Mega Man, who replicates the powers of Robot Masters he defeats, Proto Man walks his own path. By defeating bosses over the course of the journey, he’ll unlock new attacks (many of which revolve around his shield), reinforcing his role as a close-range fighter.

Instead of switching between these tools one at a time, Proto Man will develop a versatile loadout of Shield Actions that can all be used on command to tap into more offense and mobility on the fly. However, this power comes at a cost. Overreliance on these skills puts a strain on Proto Man’s body, causing him to overheat with repeated use. So please be mindful of Proto Man’s temperature to help him stay cool in the heat of battle.

Choice and customization are also at the core of Dual Override. Beyond selecting between Mega Man and Proto Man, players can also enjoy added flexibility with the Custom Chip system – one of the brand-new gameplay features in Dual Override.

There are more than 50 chips in the game, each of which grants an active ability or passive effect, so you can experiment by creating tailor-made builds with countless combinations. Whether it’s more offense, survivability, or something else entirely, Custom Chips open up a whole new world of tactical options for Mega Man and Proto Man to explore.

Another one of the game’s key features (it’s in the title, after all!) is the Override system. This new addition allows the game’s dual protagonists to transcend their normal limits, unleashing tremendous power and amplifying their abilities for a short period of time.

You can catch a glimpse of Proto Man activating his explosive Override in the latest trailer. This dramatic transformation shouldn’t be undertaken lightly, though! Once Override ends, our heroes will find themselves in a more vulnerable state. So, it’s important to choose the perfect moment to pull the trigger on harnessing this high-risk, high-reward maneuver.

With two playable heroes, each with their own unique playstyles, and new features that add layers of strategy to the experience, fans can look forward to plenty of variety of depth in Mega Man: Dual Override when it launches in Spring 2027 for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. Until then, you can wishlist the game now on the PlayStation Store.

Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth launches on September 18

Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth launches on September 18 https://ift.tt/DfnZv4b

My name is Kristina, I work at the indie studio Hyper Games. We’re based in Norway, so you can be sure we know a lot about snow, which is great with our upcoming cozy adventure game, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth.

It is our second Moomin game and it is coming to PlayStation 5 on September 18. Our first was the cozy spring and musical adventure Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley.

The main character, Moomintroll, wakes up from his hibernation, but winter is still lingering and no one else in the family is ready to rouse from their slumber. Our reluctant hero then decides to bring back spring to wake everyone up and get his best friend, Snufkin, back to Moominvalley.

The Moomins were created by Tove Jansson, and the first story was published in 1945. Having lived through World War II, Tove created a world away from war and facism. The stories of the Moomins reflect life itself and contain a mixture of darkness and humor, and how to get along with it all.

Tove was a private, but courageous person and in addition to war, she lived through a period where having a same-gender partner was illegal. She used concealed language and creative storytelling to express love in her stories. For example, in our game you meet a character named Too-Ticky, which Tove created based on her life partner, Tuulikki Pietilä.

The interactive storybook

It has been such a joy creating games from the stories made by Tove Jansson and we have done our best to bring to life a world that reflects both the softness and emotional complexity of the Moomins.

For Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth, we wanted to create a game that gives the players a storybook atmosphere with an aquarelle look, inspired by Tove’s own visual works. To achieve this we combined 3D shapes with proper 2D painted elements, using several shading and texturing tricks to achieve a coherent mix of the two. It is made to look like the watercolors have tinted the paper, but imperfectly like it typically can be.

We try to do as much as possible in our game development engine Unity, with shader and texture work, as this makes for a concise look of it all.

You can find references to Tove’s art, characters and stories in Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth. Did you see the carpet in the screenshot above? Let’s take a closer look.

You can find both the Ancestor, and the Hattifatteners on the carpet.

And then we have a beautiful red chair in the living room, and an X-ray of Moomintroll in his bedroom that some fans might recognise.

The snow of Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth

As mentioned, to get the storybook look, we have mostly flat structures, landscapes and items in the game, but we wanted the snow to feel like it has weight and move in relation to Moomintroll.

The game’s terrain is created from simple shapes, and a deformable layer of snow is added. The layer will respond to interaction from characters and other elements and give the feel of actually walking through the snow.

In the engine it looks like this…

In the screenshot above, you can also see bushes that are flat and maybe look similar to stage props used in theater? Clever use of perspective and camera angles are possibly the closest we come to creating magic.

The result are areas where soft snow gets brought up and thrown down as weighted and textured substances. It looks perfect to make snow figurines with.

Available from September 18

Thank you for reading our little art deep dive, we hope you find a lot of fun art and details when playing through Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth and feel the hygge, as we would say, of Moominvalley.

We leave you with concept art for a dark and cold winter forest and Moomintroll who realizes he is braver than he thought.

Silent Hill: Townfall creators break down PS5 features, out September 25

Silent Hill: Townfall creators break down PS5 features, out September 25 https://ift.tt/jfbE8Zr

Silent Hill: Townfall incorporates multiple elements that draw players into its tense, unnerving world. In this post, we would like to present what developer Screen Burn focused on to realize this level of immersion, as well as how PS5 features are integrated in the game’s experience.

I would first like to give a brief introduction of the game for players who are learning about Silent Hill: Townfall for the first time. This is the first full-length game in the series that is presented in first-person, and this allows players to be truly immersed in the world that the game has to offer. The limited scope of vision in this perspective turns sound into a crucial element, and 3D audio convincingly recreates nearby sounds.

Simon, the protagonist, drifts through the cold seas and shores up on St. Amelia, wandering through the empty town with nothing but the objective to “put things right” to guide him. Replacing the iconic radio is a device called the CRTV, which players will hold in one hand to scout roaming monsters, search for clues to puzzles, and explore the island.

Screen Burn are masters of narrative-driven puzzles, and players will get to experience the story not just through cinematics alone, but also through various puzzles in a fragmented fashion. Scattered secrets and pieces of the story come together to gradually reveal a gruesome past. As a very socially conscious story in the series, the game will present a deep narrative between the individual and the corporate as well as the individual and society at large.

Building immersive horror 

Generally, Silent Hill: Townfall’s style of horror is less about jump scares and gore, and more about tension and escalating uncertainty. Building that tension, sustaining it, and releasing just at the right time is one of the secret ingredients in all good horror. When that horror is interactive, and the player is free to explore at their own pace, you need complex visual, auditory and tactile systems to understand the current experience, deliver crafted moments, and react to the player’s actions. 

Sound from all around 

The sound design, background audio, and musical score all work together in harmony to create a truly nightmarish soundscape that conjures images and scenarios in the player’s head, even when they can’t see anything unusual in front of them.  

Working with Audio Director Byron Bullock, and composer Pilotpriest, the team have gone to great efforts to ensure that the sound of the environments and its horrific inhabitants lift the believability when navigating the town, all delivered through complex and finely-tuned custom 3D audio systems, that truly give you a sense of depth and space. 

A believable world to explore 

St. Amelia is densely layered with true-to-the-era details, all drawn from our developers’ own experiences. 

The town isn’t as dilapidated as many fans of the series will be used to. Instead, St. Amelia feels like a place that has recently gone through its own trauma, rather than left to rot after countless years of abandonment. Its world is recently lived in, and it’s deeply important to the story that players get a sense of the community that inhabits the island, and ultimately care about the issues it has faced, and what it stands to lose.  That level of detail and storytelling in the environment pulls players in, and doesn’t let go. 

Ray-traced lighting helps to not only paint these scenes in beautifully soft ambient lighting from the foggy world outside, but it also means the environments react believably with your flashlight, flashing alarm lights, or the sudden shocking change from the blue-grey fog to the bright red Otherworld, layered in pipes, alarm lights, broken buildings and stained walls.  

Horror in your hands 

The last piece of the puzzle is in your hands as you play. Using the array of features on the DualSense Controller, we give every swing of a weapon, pull of a trigger, or thud of a heavy footstep from a nearby enemy a tactile sensation via Haptic Feedback. You can feel the weight of the trigger of each weapon uniquely via Adaptive Triggers. You can even use the Motion Controls of the controller to fine tune the CRTV, or give aiming your firearms an intuitive feel, all customizable in the game’s menu options. 

Ultimately, all of the lengths we go to are designed to have you forget you are playing a game, and instead immerse you in the moment, scared to move on, but compelled to continue. That rich, atmospheric experience complements the desire to know what truly unfolded in St. Amelia, and what Simon, Zoe and Richard have to do with it all…  

Silent Hill: Townfall is a brand-new, first-person Silent Hill brought to life by the PS5. We hope players will find their minds flooded with all sorts of thoughts and emotions that come from being a member of the complex modern-day society. Please experience for yourself the deep contemplations and narrative journey that Simon embarks upon. The game launches on September 25, but we will continue to share updates on Silent Hill: Townfall, so stay tuned.

Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember launches March 4, 2027, demo live today

Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember launches March 4, 2027, demo live today https://ift.tt/jIkA3VK

Today is a big day for the Wo Long team and fans alike, as we have two incredible announcements to share. First off, we can finally let everyone know that Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember is scheduled to launch on March 4, 2027. Even better? If you want to jump into the dark action RPG early, the Alpha Demo is live today and available until September 30!

In the Alpha Demo, you can play part of the Changban stage, utilizing Chinese martial arts that blend offense and defense, traversing the Three Kingdoms battlefield where demons run rampant, and engaging in combat with legendary heroes from history.

As you’re waiting for the demo to download, be sure to check out our new trailer that showcases not only our hero, but the legendary figures of the Three Kingdoms as they battle against an onslaught of demons.

Acrobatic Chinese martial arts with total freedom of movement

As you play through the Alpha Demo, you’ll experience tense battles against powerful enemies. The gameplay balances the flow between offense and defense, so make full use of Deflect, which nullifies and redirects enemy attacks, along with the wide variety of distinctive Martial Arts techniques and weapons at your disposal.

In Wo Long 2, the key is to make effective use of Insight Skills, which enhance the protagonist’s actions. These Insight Skills allow you to stave off and counter enemy attacks and send foes crashing into walls, or to slam enemies that strike from above down to the ground.

Open battlefields of the Three Kingdoms where the war situation is always changing

In this title, famous Three Kingdoms battlefields such as Changban and the Red Cliffs are depicted in open fields, but they’re not the same as the ancient China you’ve read about. As you cross these expansive maps, you’ll find everything from enemy strongholds to demonic lairs. How you approach them is up to you. One method is to employ a range of strategies—flank enemy lines, capture bases, set traps, or even recruit enemy generals to your side—to turn the tide of battle when the odds are stacked against you.

A dark fantasy set in the turbulent age of the Three Kingdoms, brought to life by warriors and demons

In Wo Long 2, an original story unfolds in a dark fantasy version of the Three Kingdoms. Elixirs of immortality and demons inspired by legendary beings from Chinese classical literature exist alongside some of the era’s greatest warriors. Characters from the previous title will continue to play important roles, but the story is designed so that even newcomers to the series can enjoy it without feeling lost.

The game features multiplayer co-op and character creation, which can also be enjoyed in the limited-time Alpha Demo.

We hope you’ll take this opportunity to play the Alpha Demo. Defeating the boss Wuzhiqi will earn you the special Fledgling Phoenix Helmet for use in the full game. We also ask that you share your thoughts in the survey; the development team truly appreciates all player feedback, and it makes a huge difference in shaping the final product before launch.

Pre-orders are available starting today. The digital pre-order bonus includes the full Creator Goddess Garb set. In addition, the Digital Deluxe Edition is also available for pre-order. It includes the Season Pass, digital mini soundtrack, and digital mini art book. Please be sure to check it out!

Introducing the next line of PS5 audio products: PlayStation Pulse and Pulse Edge Wireless Headsets

Introducing the next line of PS5 audio products: PlayStation Pulse and Pulse Edge Wireless Headsets https://ift.tt/fGlus3j

When we introduced Pulse Elite in 2024, our first wireless headset featuring planar magnetic drivers and PlayStation Link connectivity, we saw positive feedback from players who enjoyed the greater precision, clarity, and level of detail it brought to their games and entertainment.

Today, we’re excited to share a first look at our refreshed lineup of PS5 audio products: PlayStation Pulse Wireless Headset and Pulse Edge Wireless Headset. 

Superior sound quality remains at the heart of the new headset lineup, with custom studio-inspired planar magnetic drivers that deliver exceptional sound separation and spatial accuracy. This makes it easy for players to pinpoint directional cues, such as footsteps or reloads in competitive first-person shooters. Larger planar drivers have been added to PlayStation Pulse and Pulse Edge headsets, creating fuller, deeper bass, while keeping the clean sounds players have enjoyed from Pulse Elite. 

PlayStation Pulse Wireless Headset in White and Midnight Black

PlayStation Link support for the headsets provides lossless, ultra-low latency audio, along with the flexibility to seamlessly switch between devices that support PlayStation Link, including PS5 consoles, PlayStation Portal remote player, PC, and Mac. The headsets can also simultaneously connect to supported Bluetooth devices. 

For crisp, in-game chat, both PlayStation Pulse and Pulse Edge headsets feature AI-enhanced noise rejection in their integrated mics to filter out background noises. Both headsets also feature an updated form factor designed for lasting comfort and durability, with rotating earcups that allow the headsets to lay flat for easier portability. PlayStation Pulse and Pulse Edge headsets will be available in White and Midnight Black.

PlayStation Pulse Edge Wireless Headset in White and Midnight Black

For players looking for a premium audio experience, Pulse Edge offers additional features including planar magnetic drivers with double the magnet volume compared to PlayStation Pulse to deliver even richer, deeper bass while maintaining the precision and clarity that lets subtle details shine through. It also includes active noise cancellation to reduce unwanted ambient background noise, and a detachable boom mic for crystal clear voice chat – with the option to use a hidden mic when detached. It’s crafted with premium materials and includes a carrying case to keep the headset protected. 

Feature	PlayStation Pulse Wireless Headset	Pulse Edge Wireless Headset
Custom Planar Magnetic Drivers	4 Magnets Per Planar Driver	8 Magnets Per Planar Driver
PlayStation Link	Adapter with USB Type-C Connector Included	Adapter with USB Type-C Connector Included
Microphone	Integrated Mic with AI Noise Rejection	Hidden/Detachable Boom Mic with AI Noise Rejection
Built-in Volume Control	Yes	Yes
Built-in Game Audio and Chat Balance Control for PS5	–	Yes
Active Noise Cancellation	–	Yes
Carrying Case	–	Yes
Audio/Microphone Jack	–	Yes

Whichever option players choose, both headsets are designed to deliver high-quality, lifelike sound and immersive audio experience for gaming and entertainment. 

PlayStation Pulse Wireless Headset will launch in select markets starting this holiday season, with Pulse Edge Wireless headset launch starting in early 2027. We’ll have more launch details soon, including pre-order start date, launch date and price, so stay tuned. You can learn more about PlayStation Pulse Wireless headset and Pulse Edge on our website.