Plus PSVR2 is coming to PC and all the highlights from the Summer Games Fest
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SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Courtney Borrett, Daniel Ang, Adam Christou and Chris Button. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Audio Technica Australia for their support of SIFTER.
GIANNI: Hi I’m Gianni Di Giovanni
KYLE: and I’m Kyle Pauletto
GIANNI: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
KYLE: We’ll go through all our standouts from the Summer Games Fest, Yakuza is getting a TV series, and PSVR2 is coming to PC.
Here is the news for Sunday 9th of June. Let’s go!
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PROMO: Join the SIFTER community on Discord at sifter.com.au/discord
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GIANNI: Geoff-a-verse fans Summer Games Fest is here which is a selection of adverts! By that I mean here are all the interesting games.
But mate they got me with Lego Horizon Adventures, seriously that game looks cute as hell and this spin off of the Horizon Forbidden West and Zero Dawn PlayStation series looks very silly. It’s coming to PlayStation 5 as well as PC and Nintendo Switch towards the end of this year.
Alan Wake II is getting a physical edition, it’s going to be bundled with the first DLC for the game, a three chapter episodic mode called Night Springs. Looks like you’ll get to play as Jesse Faden too bringing Control and Alan Wake even closer. Night Springs is out today!
And Civilization 7 which was accidentally leaked early is officially coming, it’ll be here by the time you finally finish your current game of Civ 6.
How about you Kyle, anything stick out to you?
KYLE: I’m a sucker for Harry Potter so I'm excited to see how Quidditch Champions plays when it releases in September.
And Neva looks right up my alley, with a stunning art style and Hollow Knight-esque combat. Really looking forward to getting stuck into that later this year.
GIANNI: We also heard from Blumhouse Productions, the blockbuster hollywood horror-movie production company. They’re moving into the video game publishing business and announced six games in development including ‘Fear the Spotlight’ a PS1-style 90s puzzle game set in a high school and a new Sam Barlow release called ‘Project C’.
KYLE: They’re not the only company to move into publishing. Innersloth - the team behind Among Us launched ‘Outer Sloth’, a new indie games fund designed to help give small games creators a leg up. They announced funding support for 9 games including locally made Mars First Logistics and new releases from the devs behind Venba and El Paso, Elsewhere.
We haven’t even scratched the surface of everything that was shown, so click through the link in our show notes to check out all the trailers for yourself.
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KYLE: One of the most anticipated releases of the year is almost upon us, with the Elden Ring DLC launching in just a couple weeks time, some lucky folks got early access and have revealed details of just how big this expansion is.
Out on the 21st, Shadow of the Erdtree will be around 40 hours long, and have players facing off against at least 10 new major boss battles that are promised to feature stronger and faster baddies to be killed by over and over.
GIANNI: Alright Nerdtrees, More than 100 new weapons, eight new weapon types, additions to the levelling system, and a bunch of new enemies and mini-bosses. You know the things that are already in that base game
Keep an eye on sifter.com.au for more news on Shadow of the Erdtree, and hit that follow button for Walkthrough on your podcast player or YouTube.
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GIANNI: Hot off the back of the hit Fallout series, Amazon is continuing to go all in on video game adaptations, announcing that a Yakuza Like a Dragon series is coming…and soon…like this October soon.
Now I won’t pretend to be an expert on the Yakuza series, but they are generally pretty wild so this could be a really fun series if they lean into the wackier moments.
But I do know that if they are faithful to the games, this show is going to be wild.
KYLE: The six-episode series will have two time settings, 1995 and 2005, and will follow the story of a justice-driven Yakuza warrior.
Thankfully the series will be filmed in Japan, featuring Japanese actors, speaking japanese, with a dubbed option available on release.
That’s about all we know so far, for more details you’ll just have to wait for the first three episodes to drop on October 25th.
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KYLE: Sony announced this week that the PlayStation VR2 headset will become compatible with PC on August 7.
Through the use of an adaptor that will cost $60, it’ll allow players to access SteamVR titles but of course that does mean you need a Steam account and your PC needs to meet the minimum specs.
GIANNI: Sorry VR fans I’m not convinced this will be enough to save it, even though it’s actually a quite cheap way to get into PC VR, with some caveats, not all the features available on the PS5 will be compatible.
I’m happy to be wrong but until now yeah hasn’t grabbed me.
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GIANNI: That’s it for the big headlines, here are the games coming out this week.
KYLE: Hot off of early access on PC last month, V Rising is now coming to PlayStation 5. This vampire RPG has been a massive hit so far, pick it up on PS5 on the 11th.
GIANNI: After patiently waiting for what felt like forever, PC players will finally be able to Play the full Kingdom Hearts series on Steam this Thursday.
KYLE: Another former exclusive coming to PS this week is Monster hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin. If you never got around to playing this series-adjacent sequel on PC or Switch, and are still rocking a PlayStation 4, give it a go when it hits stores on the 14th.
GIANNI: Also out on the 14th is Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. Join the war between angels and demons as a demigod in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo when Vengeance releases on all platforms this coming Friday.
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PROMO: Articles to read, videos to watch and podcasts to listen to on sifter.com.au
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GIANNI: This has been Walkthrough by SIFTER, my name is Kyle Pauletto.
KYLE: And my name is Kyle Pauletto, thank you so much for listening.
GIANNI: Had a look at our videos on YouTube lately? We publish all our episodes in video format, including Walkthrough so if you’d like to get a better look at what we’re talking about head to youtube.com/sifterHQ. While you’re on youtube.com/sifterHQ don’t forget to hit subscribe and turn on the little notification bell so you can get an alert when we post something new!
KYLE: SIFTER is produced by Fiona Bartholomaeus, myself, Adam Christou, Courtney Borrett, Daniel Ang and Chris Button. The episode is edited by both Senior Producer Mitch Loh and Executive Producer Gianni Di Giovanni, who is also Walkthrough’s script editor.
GIANNI: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune, and Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER’s podcasts.
KYLE: We’ll be back with more news next Sunday. See you then.
