PS5 Pro Reactions, Destiny Anniversary Feels, And More Of This Week's Spiciest Takes

Image: Sony / Kotaku / bowie15 (Getty Images), Bungie / Sony, Capcom, Screenshot: Kotaku / Infinite Fall, Brynjar Á, Sindri H

This week, we got a look at the upcoming $700 PS5 Pro and what it will be capable of when it launches later this year—amd we have thoughts. We also celebrated a bittersweet milestone with Destiny 2, went hands-on with some Capcom classics, and recommended a few games you should absolutely play. Click through for all the big opinions of the week.

Image: Sony / Kotaku / bowie15 (Getty Images)

Today, Sony officially unveiled the PS5 Pro, a mid-gen refresh of the 2020 PS5 console that boasts some new bells and whistles and a $700 price tag. During the 9-minute-long technical presentation, system architect Mark Cerny showed us all the new features, from advanced ray tracing to an upgraded GPU, and the upcoming console’s ability to hit higher frame rates at high resolutions. Some gamers are ecstatic that the PS5 Pro (which costs more than any other game console ever has) can produce beautiful graphics at the highly sought after 60fps, but I couldn’t care less. - Alyssa Mercante Read More

Image: Bungie / Sony

This week marks the ten-year anniversary of Destiny, a game that accidentally became my whole personality when it launched back in September of 2014. I’ve loved it since the days of its alpha tests and I still love it now, in the form of Destiny 2. Sometimes it’s been hard to love , whether that’s due to stumbles in its live-service offerings or its reckless ownership that resulted in years of creative turbulence and constant overhaul. Perhaps, in the wake of mass layoffs earlier this year and these massive changes, the celebration of this tremendous milestone has been somewhat muted, but that hasn’t stopped me from getting in my bag about it all. - Moises Taveras Read More

Image: Capcom

Folks, I think Capcom is doing the work that most of the industry seems allergic to. Companies like Digital Eclipse are enshrining historical moments of gaming culture with releases like The Making of Karateka, but Capcom appears to be one of the few AAA devs and publishers actively preserving its own legacy for the future.After all, 2005’s Resident Evil 4 has been ported to every conceivable system since it was released, and the company has recently established Capcom Fighting Collection, a compilation of all its classic fighting games through the years. The latest one of these, subtitled Arcade Classics, focuses on some of my favorite titles like Marvel vs. Capcom games, but it’s also got older gems that I’m grateful to have any access to at all, which feels like the greater point of preservation efforts like this. - Moises Taveras Read More

One of the best things about the flagship Super Mario games—the likes of Galaxy, Galaxy 2, and Odyssey—is the incessant inventiveness. So often they’ll feature a level that makes you exclaim, “That could have been the basis for a whole game!” So it is with full understanding of the gravity of the claim I’m making when I say that Astro Bot, Sony’s wonderful new 3D platformer, has a level that could have been the basis for a whole Mario game. - John Walker Read More

Screenshot: Kotaku / Infinite Fall

It has been seven years since I first set foot in Possum Springs, and some days, it feels like I never left. Maybe it’s because the stories of the people who live in that “idyllic” town from Night in the Woods just hit that hard. Maybe it’s because my room is covered in figures, shirts, and other miscellaneous paraphernalia from the game, and has been for years. As I write this, the protagonist’s best friend Gregg is staring at me from across the room. A hat that says “Crimes” on the underside of the brim sits on a rack on my door. I think I just live there. - Moises Taveras Read More

Screenshot: Brynjar Á, Sindri H

Gaming tags on Steam are used with wild abandon, to the degree that they’re fairly useless. “Point-and-click” has been reduced to any game with a cursor, and “action” appears to mean any game where you move. In general, rather than draw you toward a game, their main use is to warn you off one. And generally, when I see the words “precision platformer,” I know it’s not for me. I love platforming, but I hate being punished for every imperfection—just let me be. So I’m not sure why I found myself installing Slash/Jump despite its “precision” description. Perhaps it was that it was accompanied by “Short” and wasn’t by “Difficult.” Oh, and also “free.” - John Walker Read More