Here are the 5 best (and 2 worst) trailers from PlayStation's big State Of Play event

Sony held one of its semi-regular State Of Play events today, a press conference/video game trailer showcase that was only slightly upstaged by massive new civic precedents in the American legal system. (Don’t you hate when that happens?) But despite featuring the conviction of a former world leader on not even a single felony, State Of Play was still an interesting showcase for what the PlayStation brand has cooking at the moment—for good and ill. Because while there were a couple of cool trailers and announcements at today’s show (including the welcome news that God Of War: Ragnarok is making the trek to PC, albeit with the still-odious PSN login requirement that pissed off Helldivers II fans a few weeks back attached), there are also big trailers that were, well, kind of duds. And so we’re here to do the wheat/chaff thing, pointing you toward the coolest trailers from the show, and the ones that didn’t quite pass muster.

The Best: Monster Hunter: Wilds

A new Monster Hunter game is always a cause for at least mild celebration, especially if you, like us, have an obsession with Capcom’s ongoing love affair with the concept of fighting gigantic, gorgeous creatures and then turning them into pants. The new gameplay trailer for next year’s Wilds looks cool as ever, showing off what seems to be new herd behavior from monsters, a couple of neat new moves from the games’ signature big-ass weapons, and a continued evolution of the series, from something that used to be a bit on the clunky side, to one of the slickest action franchises around.

The Best: Astro Bot

The Astro Bot franchise is low-key one of the best series in the PlayStation library, with its two previous games—VR adventure Astro Bot Rescue Mission and PlayStation 5 pack-in game Astro’s Playroom—proving that Sony can match some of Nintendo’s best efforts when it comes to making incredibly adorable mascot platformers that are also super-slick demos for the company’s new technology. The existence of a brand new Astro Bot game, then, is cause for joy, something borne out by the trailer, which showcases a mixture of big monsters, nostalgic references to past games, and a kickass soundtrack to get us very excited for another journey with these cute little Bots.

The Worst: Marvel Rivals

There’s nothing inherently wrong with taking the world of Marvel heroes and villains and applying it to the Overwatch “hero shooter” template. Superheroes fight each other all the time, after all, and while it’s kind of weird to see every Marvel hero have their powers get translated into some flavor of “gun,” there’s still a ton of potential in watching Storm, Venom, The Punisher, and other Marvel stalwarts duke it out. But god, does the trailer for Marvel Rivals, which got announced for consoles as part of State Of Play today, look listless. After all, who doesn’t remember their very favorite Marvel battles—you know, the ones where Magneto and Spider-Man juke slightly back and forth in an arena while firing their powers together to whittle down each others’ health bars? Marvel Rivals could be cool; nothing in today’s trailer suggest that it is.

The Best: Where Winds Meet

It takes a lot of confidence to directly ape Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in your video game teaser trailer, but Where Winds Meet kind of sells it. Not so much in the pre-rendered footage, but the actual gameplay on display here, focused on dramatic looking one-on-one battles and potential boss fights, looks genuinely cool as hell. (See also the trailer for Ballad Of Antara, which has similar vibes, albeit with more explicit nods to the Dark Souls style of character action games.)

The Best: Infinity Nikki

Look, we have genuinely no idea what to expect from Infinity Nikki, which is being described as a “cross-platform open world dress-up adventure game.” But its combination of pretty dresses and oddball concept definitely made it stand out from the competition at State Of Play, and we’ll always stump for something that we genuinely weren’t expecting. We’re a little worried that the game is basically ready-made pervert food, what with having what appears to be a pretty heavy photography element, combined with the pretty anime girls in fancy dresses. But we’re also suckers for novelty, so… Fingers crossed, and bring it on.

The Best: Silent Hill 2

We’ll be honest: We haven’t been expecting a ton from the upcoming remake of horror classic Silent Hill 2, a game that managed to push past an enormous amount of survival horror bullshit to create one of the sharpest doses of psychological terror we’ve ever encountered in a game. But the trailer for said remake (which is being developed by Bloober Team) does at least confirm that the studio can make something that looks good, even if it can’t quite match the creeping dread of James Sunderland’s original descent into that creepy lakeside town.

The Worst: Concord

Developed by Firewalk Studios, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment itself, Concord got pride of place at State Of Play, getting not just a 5-minute “narrative” trailer—basically, a short film introducing some of its characters—but also a two-minute showcase of its actual gameplay, a five-on-five online shooter experience. The former mostly tried way, way too hard, attempting to channel the banter and energy of Guardians Of The Galaxy, in a way that resolutely fell flat. (One of the things nobody grasps about doing the Guardians thing is how incredibly hard it is to start from “charming dipshits” and then build from that; the charming dipshit really has to come from within.) Following that indulgence up with a gameplay trailer that makes it clear that Concord, rather than a madcap explosion of constant improvisational energy, looks a lot like games like Valorant or other team-based shooters, only makes the whole thing feel even more disappointing. Nice CGI, though.