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With great power, as they say in Spider-Man, comes great responsibility. Sony knows a thing or two about power. One of the brilliant things about PlayStation is that the people behind it acknowledge the power that games have. They are capable of taking games seriously. It sometimes seems, however, that they are struggling to do games justice when showing them off en masse. I guess everyone is, really. As the material games choose to work from gets broader, it gets harder to pile them all together at a press conference. Sony had many brilliant-looking games at its Paris Games Week press event yesterday, but my main takeaway, I think, is that events like this are no longer a particularly good way to showcase modern games in the first place.Spider-Man was there, as it happens. Did you spot him? A minute or so of glorious four-colour action that landed just before a blast of domestic abuse. "Wooh, anybody else need a breather?" asked Peter Parker as his moment in the spotlight drew to a close. No breather was forthcoming. With no obvious warning, save the mournful strings that broadcast serious artistic intent, we were off to Detroit where David Cage's latest - not satisfied, right, with exploring the wholly untapped subject of what makes us truly human - has decided to clomp about inside the theme of child abuse.
One of the weird things you have to get your brain to accept in modern video games is that there is violence, and then there is violence. I am still getting my head around this, and I doubt I'm alone. For now, though, I think the reason Detroit's showing brought PlayStation's showcase to a halt so suddenly is that this is violence that is meant to shock and disturb. It is meant to ruin your day and make you think about the injustices of the world. Will David Cage pull any of that off with any success? I have my suspicions on this front, but that's not the point right now. The point is that he needs context for his game to do its job, otherwise the whole thing can't help but feel gratuitous. What he definitely doesn't need is an on-ramp that involves web-slinging, Far Cry 5's stunt planes and the tumbling, sparking delights of the candy-coloured racers of Onrush.
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