The PS5 Is Still Waiting For Its First Truly Hype Moment – It Might Never Get One
The first Tanker section of Metal Gear Solid 2 was a breathtaking experience. The way objects seemed to behave like real ones, possessing physics, and reacting to your bullets was mind-blowing. This level came in the form of a demo, shipped with Zone of the Enders, which along with The Bouncer and Onimusha, was a first-year release for the PS2.
The PlayStation 2 had an incredible run of early games and I remember key moments from trailers and images at the time. The way light filtered through the trees in Trial Mountain on Gran Turismo 3. The astonishing cutscenes in Final Fantasy 10. The slowly dawning realization that GTA3 was so free, like a hilarious playground, before open worlds became a common thing.
Related: Metal Gear Solid 2 Is Still One Of The Most Daring Video Games Ever Created
All these games arrived within a year of the PS2’s launch in Europe and ushered in a new era of hype. Everything seemed possible with all those polygons and the ‘Emotion Engine’. The leap from the PS1 to its successor felt like a promise for great new things.
Cut to March 2022, 16 months after the launch of the PS5, and it feels like Sony’s powerful next-gen console is still waiting to take off, ready to deliver us properly into what should be the current gen. But beyond a tiny handful of PS5 exclusives – Returnal, Demon’s Souls, Ratchet & Clank – it feels like the PS5 is a glorified SSD, sitting atop a PS4 Pro.
I want that emotional experience again. You know the one. That feeling of everything changing forever. Or, at the least, a run of exclusives that definitively cuts ties to the last gen and gets everyone talking about the possibilities; maybe a game that points the way to the future.
With the PS3, we saw the likes of MGS4 and
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