I'm calling it, I'm finally letting go of Alan Wake. There is more to Remedy than its hoodie-and-tweed-wearing writer hero, and more to the studio's trademark brand of pulpy sci-fi than his gravelly, never-ending voice-overs. This is a good thing. Six years on from Wake's last outing, with no sequel in sight and Remedy's odd, live-action hybrid Quantum Break out of the way, Control feels like a clean break for Remedy.
Control is the studio's first game for PlayStation 4 - its first for any Sony platform since Max Payne 2 on PS2 - something underlined by its unveiling at Sony's E3 conference. ("It felt like a good way to announce it this way and make this statement," Sam Lake, Remedy's chief writer and public face of the studio tells me after.) Control is also a clean slate to tell a new story with a more modern approach - albeit one which will still feel familiar to the studio's fans.
The demo shown to press at E3 2018 is a proper peek at what everybody saw during the game's Sony conference trailer. You play as Jesse Faden (Courtney Hope, AKA Beth in Quantum Break), who like all Remedy protagonists is skilled in third-person shooting and physics manipulation while exploring dark, mysterious surroundings. These surroundings will host a big change for Control - a space to explore with a narrative path, but also side-missions and Metroidvania-inspired exploration. At one point in the demo we pass a series of prison cells, the unlucky occupant of one screaming for help. It's a side-mission which we can return to later.

A former Sony developer has said the great PlayStation 4 cross-platform block is all about the money.
John Smedley is the ex-boss of Planetside 2 and H1Z1 developer Daybreak Game Company, which changed its name from Sony Online Entertainment in 2015.
In a tweet referencing the fact , Smedley said Sony's controversial policy comes down to money.

Fallout 76 will get a beta - and it begins first on Xbox One.
In a recently updated , Bethesda said the beta for Xbox One will begin first, followed by other platforms (PlayStation 4 and PC via Bethesda.net).
Bethesda has yet to say when the Fallout 76 beta will kick off, but we do know you have to pre-order the game to get in. Bethesda said that's the only way to get access to the beta.

If you watched Bethesda's E3 conference, you saw all of Fallout 76 that the publisher was willing to show last week. If you missed the conference and only care about Fallout and don't want to watch an Andrew W.K. mini-concert or talk about The Elder Scrolls Online before getting to what you want, Bethesda has made the Fallout 76 gameplay portion of the conference available online.
You can hear Todd Howard talk about the new online Fallout here. 
Fallout 76 releases on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

After nearly a decade of struggling to field a competitive basketball game, last year EA Sports that signal a better future for the NBA Live franchise. NBA Live 19 looks to continue the upward trajectory with some needed changes to the on-court action and some interesting additions to The One mode. Here's everything we learned from playing a couple games and chatting with creative director Connor Dougan.  GAMEPLAY

• NBA Live 19 introduces the Real Player Motion technology recently seen in EA Sports titles like FIFA 18 and UFC 3, which EA Tiburon believes has resulted in more realistic player animations. "When you compared us to 2K in the past it just wouldn't feel as smooth; we had this kind of stiffness," Dougan says. "With Real Player Motion and changing our player skeleton and models, we feel we have a nice jump in animation quality."
• Some of the new animations I saw in gameplay included new contested dunks, players fighting through screens during pick and rolls, and way more physicality off the ball.
• The new animation system comes hand-in-hand with reworked dribbling. Expect to see many more signature animations like LeBron James puffing out his chest and James Harden coming up the court with more relaxed body language and his standard crossovers. You can also pull off basic moves by flicking the left analog stick; you no longer always need to use the right analog stick, but if you do expect to find more moves for star players than before.
• EA also did a lot of "live environment" work to make the players better interact with the world around them. Expect to see players crashing into the stanchion, diving into the crowd, taunting one another, and even exchanging pleasantries with the opposing team's bench along the sidelines. 
• Overhauled triple-threat controls integrate new jab steps and a new pump fake system. 
• Building off last year's one-on-one gameplay, EA is bringing the cat and mouse game to off-ball interactions as well, which should hopefully make playing in space more engaging. You use the left trigger to engage in off-ball defense, which tries to slow down your mark. The offensive player has counters like V-cuts and L-cuts to break off your defending. 
• The reworked shooting system now includes varied jump heights and release points for different players, which should make it feel more authentic. 
• Last year's CPU A.I. had problems feeding star players. EA says this year's dynamic gameplay A.I. does a better job of recognizing when a star is heading up and will continue to feed a hot hand. Stars will strong personalities will start to talk trash when firing on all cylinders. 
• You can now switch to take control of an off-ball player in versus by holding the RB and flicking the analog stick toward the player you want to control. 
• You can triple-tap the steal button to perform a hard foul when you need to stop the clock.
• The transition game also gets a jump in CPU A.I. Expect to see players on the break cut to the hoop stronger and the trailing wing players space out for open threes.
• If you own a player by continually scoring on them or breaking their ankle, you can affect their mentality. When a player is adversely affected, their ratings take a hit. 
• To mix up replays, NBA Live 19 introduces cell phone cutaway highlights, where the perspective shifts to a person in the crowd capturing the play of note.

THE ONE

• Last year, you played as a former blue-chip college prospect trying to overcome a horrific injury. This year you start earlier in the journey as a hot high school prospect. Rather than go to college, you try to build your rep on the street courts. 
• Eventually if you earn enough prestige, you get invited to a pre-draft camp where you can prove your mettle by playing in a few prospect games. 
• During your rise to stardom, influencers and broadcasters will show off your highlights. 
• The dialogue system returns from last year, but it leans more heavily toward meaningful choices this time. 
• Expect to see more hairstyles, tattoos, and clothing options this year. 
• Cosmetics are no longer locked behind loot crates. You can buy what you want when you want. 
• The progression system is similar to last year, but adds a new wrinkle with the icon abilities. These abilities give you branching choices that let you to have more say over what type of specialist you are. Say you choose shot blocking as your icon ability. Eventually, you may be presented with a choice. For instance, do you want a higher percentage of success for each shot block, or extend the radius where your shot block is effective?
• EA has added several new traits to the progression as well. 
• EA realizes there were too many ball hogs in online team play last year, so it reworked the grading system to give players more points for teamplay and less for being selfish. If you take a bad shot, you will get hit with a -10. Doing it again knocks you another 20 points, and it continues to scale the punishment so people have way less incentive to try to shoot out of slumps. 

SQUAD

• Last year in The One's  Street mode you went to different venues to play with random collections of players. This year you can custom build your squad by earning players as you rack up Ws. As you beat different teams, you can add star players to your lineup that can be swapped out as you see fit. 
• The players you start with are largely scrubs and low-level NBA benchwarmers, but you can eventually earn stars and even NBA legends. 
• Your streetball endeavors take you to new courts around the world, including France, Brazil, and the Phillippines. Expect a few new North American courts as well. 
• Many of the live events in NBA Live 19 will be centered on earning new squad players who are only available for a limited time. 

We still have a lot to learn about how EA Tiburon plans to improve the Ultimate Team and Franchise Mode experieince of NBA Live 19. Stay tuned in the coming months as we dive deeper into the title. 
The free NBA Live 19 demo releases on August 24 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The First Trial starts on September 3 on Xbox One, and final release drops for both consoles on September 7. 

Developer Sumo Digital landed a hit with its 2012 kart-racing game Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Now, the developer is partnering with Sonic Team, stripping away the non-Sonic characters, and adding a new layer of team-based strategy for Team Sonic Racing.
In this new kart-racing title from Sega, the developers are focusing entirely on the Sonic universe, which means no Aiai or Ryo Hazuki this time around (sorry, fellow Shenmue fans). Instead, players get a roster of 15 Sonic characters. In the build I played, I could choose between Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, Shadow, Rouge, and E-123 Omega. Each character fits into one of three classes: speed, technique, or power. Once you choose a character, you're placed in a team of three based on the character's alliances; Sonic was always placed with Tails and Knuckles, while Rouge raced alongside Shadow and Omega.
When the race begins, it plays out much like a standard kart racer. Characters drift around corners, acquire consumable items, and avoid zany obstacles in the push to be first. In addition to the tried-and-true formula, players can help their teammates; you can gift items, request items, and slingshot around teammates by following their path. The game will also include a solo mode that removes the team-based mechanics, but outside of an occasional pure kart-racing foray, I don't foresee myself playing that mode much.
At the end of the race, it assigns points for your team based on where each member finished. This means you must help your team in order to actually win. In one of my races, my team finished third, fourth, and fifth, but because we were the most consistent team, we came in first in the race. In another race, I finished first, but my teammates were in the middle of the pack, so we came in second overall. I like that twist of having to keep an eye on your standing in the race, as well as your teammates.
When the game ships, it will feature stages that are both brand new to the Sonic universe, as well as familiar levels. While the developers wouldn't spill any additional details, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka tells me that some stages will feature recognizable songs from Sonic's past, and that Jun Senoue is composing the game. In addition, Senoue's fan-favorite band, Crush 40, performs the main theme.
Team Sonic Racing may not have the fancy transformations or characters outside of the Sonic universe, but it makes up for it with thoughtful team-based mechanics that add new twists to the formula. Sonic Team Racing is set to launch this winter on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.

The Metro Exodus E3 2018 demo was based on the same content we saw back in February for the March cover story, giving the world its first chance to see the boundary-pushing graphics, unforgiving gameplay, and ambitious transition from the linear focused Metro underground to the harsh, more open Russian countryside that convinced us to put the game on the cover of Game Informer. Running at 4K on the Xbox One X console, the game's beauty won over many. But the demo wasn't without its share of gameplay hiccups.
The shooting felt good, and all of the game's systems were online, but we noticed a few rough spots as well. Collision issues made moving across the countryside more burdensome than it should be, framerate drops disrupted the gameplay, and the rowboat Artyom uses to explore the Volga River region outside Moscow was tough to steer. When we brought these issues up to executive producer Jon Bloch, he said the team is keenly aware of the current build's shortcomings and the team has more than enough time to hone the experience. 
"We've never shown Metro on a console this early before, and we felt like it was appropriate for showing off this content on Xbox One X in 4K – it's already there," Bloch says. "Yes, we have some polish to go, and yes, there's still some performance stuff to nail, but it's already in good shape, so trust us when we say this extra time really is focused on polish. We're not still making the game at this point, we're smoothing it out."
Since the game is content complete and feature complete, the 4A Games to-do list in the lead-up to Metro Exodus' February launch includes raising all the levels up to the quality bar the team has set, smoothing out environmental collision both on foot and in vehicles, plugging narrative gaps they noticed once they strung the levels together, and fine-tuning performance.
Given 4A Game's strong track record, we're inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that the game will be running smoothly by deadline. Metro Exodus is scheduled to launch alongside a surprisingly strong lineup (Anthem, Days Gone) on February 22 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. 

Omega Labyrinth Z, an adult-orientated anime dungeon crawler, will not be released on PlayStation 4 or Vita after Sony stepped in.
The game, which mixes chibi-style dungeon exploration with a slideshow of provocatively-dressed young anime characters, had been set to launch in Europe and North America.
Here in Europe, Omega Labyrinth Z was given a , although a physical UK launch had already been scrapped after the Video Standards Council (VSC) for a UK boxed release back in March.

I'm calling it, I'm finally letting go of Alan Wake. There is more to Remedy than its hoodie-and-tweed-wearing writer hero, and more to the studio's trademark brand of pulpy sci-fi than his gravelly, never-ending voice-overs. This is a good thing. Six years on from Wake's last outing, with no sequel in sight and Remedy's odd, live-action hybrid Quantum Break out of the way, Control feels like a clean break for Remedy.
Control is the studio's first game for PlayStation 4 - its first for any Sony platform since Max Payne 2 on PS2 - something underlined by its unveiling at Sony's E3 conference. ("It felt like a good way to announce it this way and make this statement," Sam Lake, Remedy's chief writer and public face of the studio tells me after.) Control is also a clean slate to tell a new story with a more modern approach - albeit one which will still feel familiar to the studio's fans.
The demo shown to press at E3 2018 is a proper peek at what everybody saw during the game's Sony conference trailer. You play as Jesse Faden (Courtney Hope, AKA Beth in Quantum Break), who like all Remedy protagonists is skilled in third-person shooting and physics manipulation while exploring dark, mysterious surroundings. These surroundings will host a big change for Control - a space to explore with a narrative path, but also side-missions and Metroidvania-inspired exploration. At one point in the demo we pass a series of prison cells, the unlucky occupant of one screaming for help. It's a side-mission which we can return to later.

Spider-Man on PlayStation 4 includes a raft of famous villains, with everyone from Electro to Rhino and Scorpion to Vulture confirmed to make an appearance.
Well, now it looks like we know one other villain set to star in the game - via a likely source: a loose-lipped voice actor.
THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD.