Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Edge

Sometimes Edge covers go through multiple iterations before we land on the one that goes to press. The original draft for this issue’s, for example, featured the PSVR2 hardware at a kind of three-quarter view. The headset looked inviting enough, as Sony’s hardware has a long-established habit of doing, but there was a problem. Its poised, pristine form was accompanied by a dangling cable, spoiling the overall appearance with a single black, somewhat random-looking line. This just wouldn’t do. A very long time ago, certain models of TV and VCR were capable of being controlled from a distance not by means of an infrared beam but a cable linking the appliance to a remote in your hand. It was certainly better than having to get off the sofa and walk…

Art reflects the anxieties of the era. Cold War nuclear tension inspired the creation of everything from the alien invasion flicks of the 1950s to Atari’s hit 1980 coin-op Missile Command. Now, with anxieties increasingly focused on the climate crisis, it’s only natural that game developers would respond. Bleak forecasts of catastrophic sea-level rises have inspired both Highwater, a forthcoming turn-based PC strategy adventure made by Demagog Studio in Serbia, and Vile Monarch’s Floodland, a PC city-builder launched in November that puts you in charge of scattered survivors attempting to rebuild society from whatever scraps they can find in half-submerged cities. This has gained the latter game an unlikely champion in the form of Sir Tony Robinson. Robinson is of course well known for his TV roles in Blackadder and…

As Iapproach my third decade in the game industry, my natural curiosity about new technologies is now mixed with worry: that if I don’t learn them quickly enough, they might also bring about my obsolescence. I don’t want to be that person who refuses to use a new tool and declares that it’s the children who are wrong, so I keep wondering if now’s the time to pick up Godot or start getting serious about VR. Specific technologies aren’t what keep me up at night, though. You can always adapt to them pretty quickly. It’s entirely new ways of working that are the most challenging to adopt, whether that’s going from working in an office to working remotely, or going from a single game release to making games as a…

Developer/publisher Bonsai Collective Format PC, consoles TBA Origin UK Release TBA The sci-fi horror genre is currently enjoying a major resurgence. Alongside the likes of Returnal, The Callisto Protocol and Signalis, a host of forthcoming games are exploring the more sinister side of the cosmos – and there’s even a Dead Space remake among them. As such, it would be easy for any game to get lost amid the tentacle-filled crowd. Good thing, then, that Luna Abyss has plenty to catch the eye. The debut game of UK studio Bonsai Collective, it’s a curious mix of firstperson platforming and bullet-hell combat. Yet the focus is also on vibrant worldbuilding, with an intriguing storyline enticing players to venture farther into its depths. Playing as protagonist Fawkes – aprisoner serving a life sentence…

Developer Tributary Games Publisher Team17 Format PC Origin UK, US, Canada, France Release Early 2023 Political scheming, underhanded coups, chaotic governance? It might sound unnervingly similar to real-world events, but fear not: a rather more light-hearted ministerial squabble can be found in Tributary Games’ King Of The Castle. This party game is divided into two modes, so you can play it either with a small group of friends or as part of a thousands-strong Twitch stream. Yes, you read that correctly – up to 3,000 people can play at once. At the centre of it all is, of course, a monarch: a single player who presides over a fictional kingdom. It’s their job to cling to power long enough to produce an heir and fulfil their chosen ambition. Naturally, the…

In last year’s Edge Awards, we suggested there was cause for optimism, which was borne out by the quality of videogames released in 2022. Two Edge 10s in one year (the 23rd and 24th) has precedent – it’s happened six times before, which suggests great games tend to come in pairs – and they were just the start. Even discounting remakes and expansions, we had too many 9s to fit in our top ten. Had we extended our list to squeeze in all the 8s (some of which came perilously close to a higher mark), we’d have needed to make it a top 40. Such has been the standard that you’d never realise that the wider industr y is still in something of a transitional phase, the impact of the…

From friends working out of a “dive in Deptford” to the Fitzrovia boardroom of international publishing giant Take-Two Interactive, its marble meeting table so long that Tony Hawk himself would struggle to grind it – it’s been a long ride for the founders of OlliOlli developer Roll7. As Simon Bennett and John Ribbins sit at that imposing table and explain that journey, it becomes clear that the change in setting reflects a much deeper transformation, in culture and ambition, in attitude to crunch and diversity, and in clarity of mission. The hope is that Roll7’s 55 members of staff – now with a clean slate of projects and big-money backing thanks to the 2021 acquisition by Take-Two subsidiary Private Division – will be well-placed to do their best ever work.…

When Jake Solomon and his team at Firaxis reinvented Julian Gollop’s original X-COM design for more modern sensibilities, they tried many things. As Solomon shared in E368’s Collected Works, two entire prototypes were scrapped, over the course of multiple years, for being too complicated. But eventually the team settled on a simplified format: two actions per soldier per turn, one of which is generally used to move them on a gridded map. (On PC – the grid was hidden for console players.) It ended up working so well that, as XCOM: Enemy Unknown nudged the turn-based tactics game back into fashion in the west, this format became the norm. In its wake came a flood of lesser games that essentially redecorated the same systems for whatever setting was chosen –…

Developer Digital Eclipse Publisher Atari Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now Lop-sided and unavoidably incomplete, this ‘interactive journey through Atari history’ has been made to commemorate a major milestone for a company that helped define a medium. But even with a panegyrical approach suggested by its subtitle, it can’t help but highlight the sad decline of one of gaming’s most important pioneers. Essentially a playable museum exhibition, Atari 50 splits the company’s history into five categories: from Arcade Origins and Birth Of The Console to The Dawn Of PCs and the euphemistically titled The 1990s And Beyond – and it’s impossible to miss the torrent of emulated games dwindling to a trickle, or the timeline in the latter category skipping straight from 1998…

Developer/publisher EA (Criterion) Format PC (tested), PS5, Xbox Series Release Out now When your tyres scrabble for grip on Lakeshore’s tarmac, a cloud of cartoon smoke bubbles up around them like escaping vapour from an anime just beneath the game’s surface. Need For Speed Unbound takes the series to a place it’s never been before, not visually at any rate – somewhere brighter and sillier than reality, where the tenets of tuner culture spill out from beyond the vinyls and spoilers, like the cars are being scribbled over, before your eyes, at 140mph. For a series this longstanding and famously formulaic, it’s quite a statement. It has no right to work as well as it does, this odd marriage of cartoonised effects, Fortnitelike avatars dressed in Fila hoodies, and photorealistic…

Developer Flying Wild Hog Publisher Focus Entertainment Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now We’re almost disappointed when the first gun shows up. As Jesse Rentier, son of William, vampire hunter, and a man who definitely strikes matches on his stubble, we’ve been having a jolly old time pummelling otherworldly creatures into a paste with our metal gauntlet. The six-shooter, however, turns out to be more like a special with a cooldown – albeit a useful crowd-control option, given that these creatures of the night lack the decorum and sense of fair play to take turns attacking you. The same applies to the subsequent ranged weapons you’re given – arifle is naturally useful for distant and airborne opponents, and we’re sure we don’t need to…

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins an exclusive Edge T-shirt. Memory play With reference to Vladimir Lyubovny’s quote in Soundbytes, E377, I have no idea what the 100 greatest moments in my life are – beyond the obvious ones like getting married and becoming a parent. However, I do remember hours of laughter (and the odd punch) playing Chaos on the ZX Spectrum with my brothers. The noises, smells and general excitement from wandering around arcades as a teenager looking for OutRun or Gauntlet. How blown away I was when my then-girlfriend bought me a PS1 for Christmas; and how much she loved it when she thrashed me at Tekken 3 on our honeymoon. The cheers after my…

As we sit on the cusp of a new year (given print lead times, it’s a pretty wide cusp), it’s only natural to reflect on the one that’s just gone. Which is why we’ve given over a chunk of the mag to the annual Edge Awards (p56). But, this being the Hype section, for the next 18 pages we’re looking forward. As many of us are thinking about what changes we’ll make for 2023, we look at several games that are doing things differently. Not that you should expect to see Tyler Glaiel and Edmund McMillen’s Mewgenics next year: their cat-centric tactical RPG won’t be with us until 2024. As we play through its first chapter, McMillen discusses the importance of taking risks in order to give players “something they…

Developer/publisher Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel Format PC Origin US Release 2024 Clark, the tank of our four-strong cat crew, walks into an alleyway to prompt a random event. Watching us play their game over Discord, Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel react with unfettered delight at what happens next. “It’s a meteor shower!” McMillen says, cackling gleefully. An equally surprised Glaiel reveals he’s been playing Mewgenics for “hundreds of hours” and hasn’t seen this event play out during a run before: “This is a very rare one”. It’s new to McMillen, too. As we move onto the next node on the map, there’s real anticipation in his voice as he tells us that “it’s time to fight a mini-boss… in the middle of a meteor shower!” Immediately, he realises something else:…

The end of a year hits differently when you’re making magazines. A short deadline means that, as most of our peers look back, we’re focused more on what’s immediately in front of us. Still, the annual awards debate has allowed us some room for reflection; likewise Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. Although in the latter case we’re not thinking about what’s happened over the past 12 months but how games have evolved over the past five decades. In archive footage, Nolan Bushnell outlines plans to “bring the amusement game to age”, adding “if we can give it a new zip and pizazz, then it’s going to [play] a serious part in the leisure time activities of the American people”. (Don’t forget the rest of us, Nolan, old chap.) Only in…

Developer Striking Distance Studios Publisher Krafton Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now The Callisto Protocol is easily reduced to what it borrows from Dead Space – it’s a spiritual sequel, after all, helmed by Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield – so let’s start by looking at the game in a vacuum. It’s the tale of Jacob Lee, a vanilla action hero with big biceps and the obligatory buzz cut, played by Transformers movie actor Josh Duhamel. As the story begins, he’s delivering medical supplies to the infamous Black Iron prison on one of Jupiter’s more hospitable moons when his ship is boarded by alleged terrorists, including Karen Fukuhara’s vengeance-driven freedom fighter Dani Nakamura. After his ship crash-lands on Callisto, Lee is immediately incarcerated, only…

Digital Eclipse’s Chris Kohler (editorial director), Rich Whitehouse (Jaguar emulator creator), Jason Cirillo (engineer), Jeremy Williams (engineer) and Stephen Frost (head of production) join us to explain some of the planning considerations and engineering challenges behind Atari 50 – and hint about what’s next. How did you choose the games to include? Chris Kohler We didn’t want to just narrow things down to only the fan-favourite games; we also selected for historical importance. Few people would name 3D Tic-Tac-Toe as their favourite Atari 2600 game, for example, but it was the first game published by Carol Shaw, who was the first woman ever hired as a full-time game creator. And because we were presenting these games in this contextualised, history-first way, from the player’s perspective it makes sense to…

Developer Iggymob Publisher Prime Matter Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now How fit is your right index finger? Is it ready for a workout? These are questions you might want to consider before taking control of Grave, a pistolpacking lunk whose only method of communication is the non-stop chatter of bullets. There’s no autofire in Gungrave GORE, you see – holding the fire button charges a power shot – and this gothic gun turret of a human is restrained by butt-hugging leather trousers and an iron coffin chained to his shoulders. As murderous gangsters and mutants stream in from all sides, then, the hammer action of your trigger finger can’t afford to falter. We’ve barely warmed up our tendons, however, before we need to…

For a while, Tarn and Zach Adams couldn’t figure out a peculiar bug: why the poets, bards and other entertainers in the new release of Dwarf Fortress would saunter into a tavern, completely naked. “It turns out that they had left their civilisation for some reason – and if you don’t have a civilisation, you don’t have clothing, you don’t have anything,” Zach explains. “And so when [the game] tried to load them and say, ‘OK, what kind of clothes are you gonna wear?’, it [decided] they’re all naked.” A rather important detail – but one that, as the Adams brothers point out, wouldn’t be noticed in the free ASCII version, where all you’d see is a blur of symbols, glyphs and fluorescent colours. These kinds of bugs have long…

“It’s clear that loot boxes give rise to many of the same emotions and experiences associated with poker machines and other traditional gambling activities.” ”All games should have a main menu item called Relearn Controls, and it’s just a twominute tutorial.” ”This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing videogames and brain development.” “No one has heard of your game. The only person who cares if your game succeeds is your mom – and if she is dead, no one cares. Players want to play games, not movements.”…

What is the destiny of technology – to bring us together or to divide us? The question is a false dichotomy, of course, since tech can very easily do both at the same time: Twitter, for example, brings us together into what Elon Musk calls the global “town square” so that we can sort ourselves into ceaselessly warring factions. Meanwhile, the wide adoption of communication tools such as Zoom by necessity during the pandemic was a way of bringing people virtually together when they could not meet in person; their continuing popularity now is more a means of keeping them apart so that remote workers do not have to brave the commute. But since technology in the form of portable communication devices infiltrated society at all levels, there have long…

Publisher Square Enix Developer In-house (Luminous Productions) Format PC, PS5 Origin Japan Release January 24 As Frey prepares to slip out on to the streets of Cipal – the final bastion of humanity, a walled town where Frey’s magical powers and outsider status are enough to mark her as a fugitive – her one ally in this world offers a change of clothes. Frey wraps herself in a dun leather cloak to hide the ripped jeans and waist-tied flannel shirt that would give away her identity to the locals. One thing, though, sticks out: the pair of battered white trainers on her feet. The ally points this out, but Frey won’t be parted from her beloved kicks. Not because they’re magic (they are) but because they’re an essential part of her…

Developer Superbrothers, Pine Scented Publisher Superbrothers Format PC, PS4, PS5 Origin Canada Release Q1 2023 The ending of Jett: The Far Shore wasn’t really an ending. This bravely ambiguous final chapter left plenty unspoken and unresolved, its team of pioneers confused and despondent, forced to ponder their place and purpose in the universe before being cast back into torpor (cryosleep, if you’re unfamiliar with the game’s terminology). In some ways, it felt like an elegant solution to a practical problem; many read its abruptness as its maker having run out of time. The title of this 12- hour expansion, then, is fitting: Superbrothers and Pine Scented have been afforded the room to create something that isn’t quite a sequel but is a bit more than your average DLC. Though it’s…

RUNNER-UP ROLL7 Rollerdrome managed to frustrate players as much as it thrilled, but the game was the studio’s second release in a year that also brought us the excellent OlliOlliWorld. Leaving 2022 with a clean development slate and the added benefit of Private Division’s funding, Roll7 is working to avoid crunch and make even better games (a story told in full on p94). A year with two absolute bangers coming from this developer might yet be on the cards. RUNNER-UP OBSIDIAN Microsoft’s acquisition frenzy might have borne relatively little fruit thus far, but Feargus Urquhart’s lot will be the apple of its parent company’s eye after a bountiful end to the year. In September, co-op survival adventure Grounded emerged from two years in early access to strong reviews, its Honey…

Developer Ojiro Fumoto, Team Poinpy Publisher Devolver Digital  Format Android, iOS The problem with Poinpy is that pinpointing how and why it works so beautifully is doomed to make it sound like a coldly mechanical construct, when the process of actually playing the thing is so wonderfully instinctive. The other problem is that any attempt to do so means picking up your phone to study it some more, and before you know it an entire afternoon has disappeared. Nintendo EPD alum Ojiro Fumoto’s follow-up to Downwell is built around a control scheme that will be second nature to just about anyone who has played games on their phone. Bouncing Poinpy up and around this narrow vertical passageway is a simple matter of pulling your finger back to set the power…

Format 360, PC, PS3 Developer Monolith Productions Publisher Vivendi Universal Games Origin US Release 2005 Speaking to the developers of FEAR, we’re asking them to dig up memories from almost two decades ago. But to trace the game’s origins properly, we must go back further still, to the firstperson shooter boom of the mid-’90s. “I played the hell out of the Duke Nukem 3D shareware,” FEAR designer Craig Hubbard tells us wistfully. “So I downloaded the Build editor and taught myself level design.” The 2.5D engine, created by Ken Silverman, powered the 3D Realms shooter, but it was another game created with Build, still in development, that caught Hubbard’s eye. “I was especially interested in Blood – that sounded right up my alley.” The brainchild of Monolith’s Nick Newhard, Blood…

Developer Firaxis Games Publisher 2K Games Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now The ‘KO’ that pops up whenever an enemy is defeated in Midnight Suns might insist that this is all good, clean, bloodless Marvel fun. But that’s a little hard to swallow as Blade darts between foes at supernatural speed, chaining katana slashes with salvos from his twin submachine guns. Or, indeed, as his teammate Captain Marvel pulls a telegraph pole from its mooring and brings it down on a pack of Hydra soldiers, then boots a straggler into a freshly opened hellmouth. A final victim is left bloodied but still standing – until Blade pounces, draining their life force in order to feed his own. He certainly seems every bit as…

We’ve called on The Callisto Protocol to think more seriously about life in prison, but here’s an alternative: Striking Distance’s game could have been a fine horror comedy. Consider its canned death animations – some of them sold separately, in the umpteenth twist on Oblivion’s horse armour DLC – which seem to be pitched for laughs where the rest of the game aims unwisely for solemnity. After an hour or so of Jacob Lee’s wishy-washy heroism, it’s a profound relief to watch him get his legs ripped off by some festering abomination. There are other moments that have comic potential, though we doubt they were designed with this in mind: fleshpots that sprout jack-in-the-box heads, dragging you to your doom unless swiftly QTE’d into submission, and the occasional locker or…

Developer/publisher Fatshark Format PC Release Out now Futility wriggles through Warhammer 40,000: Darktide like a maggot beneath a poxwalker’s skin. Where players were heroes of legend in Fatshark’s previous game, Vermintide 2, in Darktide you’re grist for the mill – condemned prisoners given a chance to prove their mortal value by clearing the Hive City Tertium of plague-infested masses. With impossible architecture and vicious combat, Darktide offers a thrilling depiction of 40K’s colossal, callous universe. But Fatshark goes a bit too far in trivialising the player’s role, presenting a live-service structure that is repetitive and listless. Like the Vermintide games, the game centres on the cooperative ruleset established by Valve in Left 4 Dead, but with a heavier emphasis on close-quarters melee combat. Here, that melee combat is better than…

Developer Supermassive Games Publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now There’s something profoundly fitting about the setting for this season finale of Supermassive’s anthology. Imprisoned in a labyrinthine hotel furnished with trapdoors and shifting walls, we feel as much part of a metaphor for the constraints and fractures of its interactive TV show formula as we do a gripping horror story. Still, it seems Supermassive too has begun to consider the limitations of its construct. New features in The Devil In Me arrive in the form of extra navigation controls in exploration mode, such as the ability to climb or jump gaps, plus a small inventory providing characters with personal belongings that may come in handy in a pinch. While these…

Publisher The Pokémon Company, Nintendo Developer Game Freak Format Switch Release Out now See that mountain? You can go there. Though since your Pokémon squad will probably get wiped out, you might want to reconsider. At the year’s outset, Legends: Arceus took a tentative stride towards it; as 2022 approaches its end, Game Freak finally makes good on the promise of the truly open-world Pokémon game for which fans have spent years clamouring. And while the absence of level scaling means it’s wise not to stray too far from the critical path – though in this case you have three distinct story threads to follow – there is an undeniable frisson when wandering into areas full of monsters you are ill-equipped to take on, and scraping through with some smart…

Developer/publisher Half Asleep Format PC (tested), Switch Release Out now This gently captivating rhythm-action game makes no attempt to hide its biggest influence: thanking Japanese songwriter Tsunku and artist Ko Takeuchi in the credits, David Huynh has essentially brought us Rhythm Tengoku for tired millennials. If it doesn’t quite have the same vibrant energy and colour, that’s deliberate: the whole thing takes place across a few nights of an exhausted-looking young person, their present preoccupations bleeding into their dreams. Surrounded by takeaway boxes and empty cans, when they first drift off they imagine themselves floating through the air, gulping down burgers and pizza; little wonder that by night two they’re considering a fitness regime, pumping iron alongside a taller, more muscular version of themself. And following an evening glugging energy…