Sony’s State of Play broadcast on September 14 released even more gameplay footage from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Insomniac Games’ PlayStation 5 exclusive.

PlayStation seems giddy to share more about Spider-Man 2, the direct sequel to 2018 action-adventure Marvel’s Spider-Man, and the third installment in the series that also includes 2020’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

In a new gameplay trailer, we got a look at how the game’s updated progress system works as well as how it will let you switch between Miles Morales and Peter Parker “almost” instantly thanks to the PS5’s SSD. The game will also feature over 65 suits and over 200 different ways to wear them via a new suit-style system. Insomniac says the suits are based on looks Spider-Man has worn in past comics, movies, TV shows, and more.

Pre-order Spider-Man 2: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

At its May Showcase, PlayStation released 12 minutes of gameplay footage that confirmed Spider-Man 2 would keep pulling on its predecessors’ throughline—web-swing from buildings in (a now more realistically congested) New York City and clobber bad guys by the dozens. In the upcoming sequel, players will be able to control both Spider-Man’s Peter Parker, who gains never-before-seen abilities while wearing his black symbiote suit, and Miles Morales.

You’ll help the spider-boys do what they boyishly do best: take down obviously bad guys like big-game hunter Kraven and liquid alien Venom. The latter infiltrates Parker like a parasite, in a way creative director Bryan Intihar compares to addiction.

“The theme of addiction is prevalent [in the game],” Intihar told Eurogamer in a June interview, “especially because of the symbiote.”

“Not to go into too many things about how it plays in the narrative, but we want to treat it very seriously,” he continued. “It’s about really playing into those themes of addiction, how that can impact someone’s personality, impact the people around them, and you’re going to see that it’s not just how it’s impacting Peter on his own, but also those close to him. You’re going to see that play out throughout the game.”

You can see for yourself just how well it pulls that off when Spider-Man 2 comes out on PS5 on October 20.

Pre-order Spider-Man 2: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

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Today Sony held another State of Play event, showing off upcoming titles for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. Today’s event featured expansions for Resident Evil 4 and Tales of Arise, another look at a very funny walking simulator, and one epic, mega huge trailer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which will launch on two (count ‘em) discs on February 29 of next year.

Let’s get into it.

Baby Steps

You know, sometimes you just wake up in a mud puddle in the forest and need to figure out how to walk. Well if you’re lucky or something and haven’t experienced that in reality, then Baby Steps looks like a solid simulation of such an experience. Try to walk, fall down, talk to yourself, rinse and repeat.

Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord

PS VR2 will be seeing some cooperative ghost-capturing action soon with Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord.

Resident Evil 4 Remake VR mode

Ready to play Resident Evil 4 yet again? PS VR2 will soon be home to a VR mode for Resident Evil 4, featuring the reimagined gory violence of this classic, undying entry in the legendary horror series.

Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways

Starring Ada Wong, Resident Evil 4 will see an expansion by way of Separate Ways, which will tell a parallel story to the main events of RE4. It releases on September 21, 2023.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

James Cameron’s brightly colored fantasy world is coming to the land of video games by way of a first-person adventure adaptation (though you’ll get to ride some flying creatures in third-person, it seems). Like in the movies, those pesky humans are out to destroy the serene and lush environments of Pandora. It’s up to you to stop ‘em.

Ghostrunner 2

Ghostrunner 2 will be arriving on PS5 on October 26. You can download a free demo of this fast-paced run-and-slash game today.

Deep Earth Collection PS5 plates and controller colors

If you’ve been looking for some new colors for your PS5, there are some on the way with Volcanic Red, Cobalt Blue, and Sterling Silver.

Helldivers II

In a close look at Helldivers II gameplay, today’s State of Play showed off the cooperative nature of this third-person shooter. With four players taking on some beastly lookin’ aliens, this looks like a pretty good excuse to round up some friends to devastate some alien wildlife.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

Today we got a closer look at the open-world environment of Spider-Man 2. Not only will you have Manhattan Island, but also Brooklyn, and Queens—also known as the best borough.

Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn

Tales of Arise will see a new DLC expansion hit PS5 on November 9, 2023.

Honkai Star Rail

Featuring eye-pleasing combat and some slick anime style, Honkai Star Rail launches for PS5 on October 11, 2023.

Foamstars

This Splatoon-like trades ink for foam and features specific characters similar to that of a hero shooter. The open beta launches in late September.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Anticipation is at a fever pitch for the continuation of Final Fantasy VII’s remake project. Today’s trailer showed off some classic environments and scenarios from the original game, as well as some wildly unexpected twists (what’s with Zack carrying Cloud into Midgar?). We also saw some vehicular travel including an, uh, Segway? There’s a ton of stuff packed into this trailer, so you can bet we’ll be watching it several times over. And then some more.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth launches on February 29, 2024.

And that was it for today’s brief but very cool State of Play event. Now, I’m gonna go daydream some more about Final Fantasy VII.

Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a suite of AI-based chatbots, including one that portrays rapper Snoop Dogg as a role-playing game Dungeon Master, during the Meta Connect 2023 Keynote on September 27. Each of Meta’s 28 new bots (which are not yet available to the public) is a curated character represented by a celebrity, like tennis star Naomi Osaka, who represents an anime superfan, or Mr. Beast, who acts as “the big brother here for the jokes the banter and not the feels,” a reveal trailer indicates.

The Verge reports that Meta’s core chatbot assistant, Meta AI, is trained on a “custom-made” language model grounded in Llama 2, Meta’s reaction to OpenAI model ChatGPT. Zuckerberg said that, unlike Meta AI, the characters “don’t, for the most part, have access to real-time information yet” but didn’t specify what they were trained on; Kotaku requested comment.

It doesn’t seem like the bots take on the conversation patterns of the celebrities they resemble, the way musician Grimes’ Twitter bot, which is trained on her real Twitter, mimics her. The actors, “a bunch of pretty awesome people,” Zuckerberg said, ranging from basketball legend Dwyane Wade to 19-year-old TikToker Charli D’Amelio, seem to only be involved for visual flair.

Zuckerberg pulled up his Snoop Dogg bot for a live demo, telling it that he wanted to “forge ahead” in the medieval narrative it created.

“You gather your weapons and armor, ready to face whatever dangers lie ahead,” the bot replied while an image of Snoop Dogg nodded a bit incongruously in the top right corner. “The villagers bid you farewell, wishing you luck on your quest.”

“I mean, who hasn’t wanted to play a text adventure game with Snoop Dogg?” Zuckerberg wondered, placing emphasis on the “Dogg,” while the bot spun a generic questline involving a “mysterious elven rogue” and “wise cleric.”

To take you deeper into the uncanny valley, Meta will add voice to its characters “probably early next year,” Zuckerberg said, promising that these characters aren’t “just gonna be about answering queries,” but “about entertainment, and about helping you do things to connect with the people around you, and helping you accomplish the things that you want across whatever your different goals are.” And if one of your goals is to generate a lifeless, single-player RPG while a rapper stares at you like he’s falling asleep, then this is a great day.

Newly released dashboard camera footage shows two Los Angeles Police Department officers ignoring an active robbery in order to catch some rare creatures in Pokémon Go. The footage shows how the driver ignored stop signs, sped through quiet residential areas, and drove the wrong way down a one-way road. All this was done to catch a Snorlax and Togetic.

In 2022, we reported on then-newly-released court docs that revealed a 2017 incident involving two LAPD officers who drove dangerously and ignored direct orders while playing the hit mobile game, Pokémon Go. Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell skipped out on their job to catch some rare digital critters and then lied about their actions. The two law enforcement officers had a combined 28 years on the force. After a 2017 investigation revealed what they had done, the two officers were fired. Last year, we didn’t have footage of what happened. Now, six years later, video has finally emerged.

Thanks to 404 Media’s Jason Koebler, the dashcam footage from that day in 2017 is now publicly available following years of requests. As Koebler notes, the footage proves that the previously mentioned report was accurate. But this new video also reveals more details about what happened and shows just how recklessly the officers acted.

New footage shows LAPD officers trying to catch ‘em all

As seen in an edited version of the three-hour dashcam video put together by 404 Media, the officers can be seen driving quickly in their patrol car. The two tailgate dangerously behind numerous cars, forcing the other drivers to move out of the way. At another point in the video, the police can be seen speeding in a residential area, running a stop sign, and flying over speed bumps.

The police were apparently driving so quickly because they were concerned the Snorlax would despawn after a short timer ran out, saying in the video: “It’s gonna go pink and change into something else.”

After losing the Snorlax, the two officers track down a Togetic and while catching it, talk about Pokémon lore. According to 404 Media, the two cops mentioned that Togetic is Togepi’s evolution and discussed that the creature knows “Hidden Power,” a rare move in the series. Later, Officer Mitchell suggests that Master Ball items are buried in the game’s code and that one day they will be added to the game. He was right, but it would take another six years before the Master Ball would be added to the game.

After finally catching the Togetic, Mitchell can be heard shouting, “Holy crap! Finally!” He adds that the guys back at the station are “going to be so jealous.” Mitchell further celebrated, telling his partner—while the pair reportedly drove the wrong way down a street—that he “got a new high-level Pokémon today.”

A few minutes later Mitchell and Lozano were questioned by a higher-ranking officer, who was confused why the two of them—who were near the area where the robbery occurred—had failed to report in for 40 minutes. Their superior added that it’s “concerning” that they didn’t hear the radio or respond in a “swift manner.”

At this point the two officers decided to lie, and explain that they didn’t hear the radio, claiming they “were not always” in the car when the backup requests were transmitted. However, the video shows that at least one of the two officers was always in the patrol car during the incident. As mentioned, the two were fired in 2017 after an investigation by the LAPD.

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Overwatch 2’s new tank hero will be playable this weekend, at least that’s what a post on the Nintendo eShop says.

According to the news post, Mauga, OW2’s 39th hero, will be playable during a limited-time trial starting later today, November 3. The trial will run through November 5. Blizzard was likely planning on announcing the Mauga trial during BlizzCon, which kicks off today, but the Switch listing has spoiled that and the new hero’s abilities, too.

Mauga (which translates to Mountain in Samoan) is a giant of a man who specializes in close-range battles. Mauga’s kit includes two chainguns named “Gunny” and “Cha-Cha.” Gunny can deal burning damage to enemies while Cha-Cha delivers a “finishing blow.” He’s also got a passive ability called Berserker that gives him temporary health whenever he deals critical damage to his enemies.

Read More: Overwatch 2 One Year Later: Why Am I Still Doing This?

Mauga also has a charge ability called Overrun that “cannot be stopped by any crowd control abilities, and stomps into opponents dealing a powerful knockback.” The store page also reveals Mauga has a pseudo-support ability called Cardiac Overdrive that “engage both of his hearts” (weird) “and create an aura that reduces incoming damage, allowing allies to heal themselves while dealing damage.”

By far the scariest part of Mauga’s toolkit is his ultimate ability, Cage Fight. Cage Fight will trap nearby enemies in a “cylindrical fighting ring” while its barrier blocks enemy damage and healing. If you get trapped in one of these, your whole squad gets to watch as Mauga stomps your ass in.

“If you can’t take him down quickly, the last thing you might see is his charming smile,” Blizzard wrote in the news post.

Although Mauga’s existence has been a bit of an open secret among players (he’s in a couple of Baptiste shorts) it wasn’t clear when he would debut—and players may not have expected it to be so soon. Mauga’s imminent release is the latest in Blizzard’s efforts to keep the popular hero shooter well-fed with new heroes, game modes, and story content. Counting Mauga, the shooter has added six new heroes since the game launched in October 2022.

Kotaku reached out to Blizzard for comment.

Be sure to leave a candle out for your support players this weekend for anyone playing against Mauga. We’re gonna need it.