Every year, Sony Computer Entertainment of Japan and Asia conducts an award ceremony that honors games of particular commercial success released on PlayStation. Last year, Phantasy Star Online 2 and Yakuza 5 received distinction.
This year’s winners have been announced, and SEGA games are well-represented!
It’s the 15th anniversary for Rez today, and Enhance Games (who recently released Rez Infinite for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR) are giving away a free PlayStation 4 dynamic theme to celebrate the occasion! The “Area X” theme is based on the new area in Rez Infinite of the same name and was created by Truant Pixel, who are known for releasing high-quality dynamic themes. The theme is up on both the EU and US PlayStation stores, and we added the links to the theme on the US and UK PlayStation stores below. You can also read a special thank you message from Enhance Games to their fans here, and a trailer showcasing the free theme can be found below. Note that the theme is only free until January 9th, 2017.
The list of nominees for The Game Awards 2016 has been revealed, and while there’s no game developed by SEGA or Atlus on the list, there are still two games that have some link to the companies. First of all, Enhanced Games’ Rez Infinite, the enhanced port of the original Dreamcast game, is nominated in two categories: “Best VR game” and “Best Music / Sound Design”. The VR port of the game has received very positive reactions, particularly for its new Area X, a new mode specifically designed to take advantage of the PS4 hardware. Having played the game, I can say that it certainly deserves the nominations.
The official Sony PlayStation blog has posted a new article, written by the President and CEO of Enhance Games, Tetsuya Mizuguchi. In the article, Mizuguchi talks about the benefits of playing Rez Infinite on the upcoming PlayStation 4 Pro. Rez Infinite will take advantage of the increased performance offered by the PlayStation 4 Pro at the system’s launch, but what sets it apart is the fact that it will run at a native 4K resolution. Most games offering PlayStation 4 Pro support have resorted to a technique called “checkerboarding” to reach a 4K resolution output, rather than rendering the game at 4K natively. Rez Infinite on the other hand won’t use upscaling and instead renders a 4K resolution directly.
Enhance Games has uploaded a new video giving us a behind the scenes look at the development of Rez Infinite. In the video Tetsuya Mizuguchi looks back at the release of the first Rez, and explains his goals with this improved version of the original. You can find the video below!
Rez Infinite is scheduled to be released as a PlayStation VR launch title on October 13 in North America and Europe.
We already know Rez Infinite, the port of the original Rez to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR, was getting a new area added to the game, called “Area X”. Enhance Games has now released the first trailer featuring this new area, and I’m quite impressed by the result. It also reminds me quite a bit of Rez’s spiritual successor, Child of Eden. Rather than try to explain why I found it so impressive, I’ll just ask you to watch the trailer below. Let us know what you think about the new area in the comments or on our social media!
There’s a new post over on the official US PlayStation blog where Tetsuya Mizuguchi talks about Rez Infinite. It’s well worth a read, as it reveals among other things that the game will have both a VR Mode and a regular mode where you can just play the game on a TV. Below you can find a quote from Mizuguchi that explains why this version of the game will be the closest to what the team had originally envisioned, as well as a bunch of newly released HD screenshots of the game.
We just got a surprise announcement at PlayStation Experience 2015, as Tetsuya Mizuguchi himself appeared on stage to show Rez Infinite on PlayStation VR! Running in true 1080P, the game appears to be a port of Rez HD (in itself an HD remake of the original Dreamcast game), but this time playable on PlayStation VR! We’ll post more details as they become available!
UPDATE: PlayStation Lifestyle uploaded the demo shown at PlayStation Experience to their Youtube channel, you can view it below!