Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2016 i Edge

Dishonored 2 and this year’s Doom reboot both carry the Bethesda logo, and they’re both firstperson-viewed action games, but in terms of tone, presentation and scope, they’re quite unlike each other. But both games faced the same challenge: what to retain from their predecessors? The starting point for every sequel – or reboot – should involve pinpointing the root appeal of the thing that was successful enough to leave people wanting more. For Arkane Studios, the process involved looking at how Dishonored was received, not only by critics but also the community. What did players like? What might they want more of? What would they be happy to never clap eyes on ever again? There was no shortage of opinions, shared via all sorts of media, to take into account.…

Frédérick Raynal wrote his first videogame at age 14, and went on to create 1992’s Alone In The Dark, kickstarting the survival-horror genre in the process. The next year he co-founded Adeline Software International, which was responsible for the Little Big Adventure series and Time Commando. When the company was acquired by Sega in 1997 it was renamed No Cliché and worked on Toy Commander, Toy Racer and an unreleased Dreamcast survival-horror project called Agartha. Now, together with Yael Barroz (an artist on Alone In The Dark and Little Big Adventure) and two other experienced collaborators, Raynal is returning to the genre he helped to define with the creepy, dimly lit 2Dark. Here, we discuss his return to survival horror, Capcom’s years of silence regarding Alone In The Dark’s role…

Wikimedia commons “This game is the biggest social crusade of all, as we safeguard the weak and helpless. You don’t get that from Pokémon Go.” Decreasingly charming man Morrissey launches his Meat Is Murder-themed mobile game for animal rights group PETA “We have to do a better job… Make sure people understand the concept, make sure you’ve got a great library of games, and when you do that, you tend to do well.” Reggie Fils-Aimé readies his body for the imminent unveiling of Nintendo’s NX “We need to find a way to address the future gamer, [who] doesn’t necessarily play the games their parents and grandparents played. We’re looking at how we appeal to that generation.” Konami’s grand plan, then, exec Steve Sutherland? More Frogger slots in Vegas casinos “If…

WEBSITE XCOM 2 concept art bit.ly/xcomconcept Firaxis concept artist Dongmin Shin has shared a batch of marvellous XCOM 2 concept art on his ArtStation page. There are several 3D models of in-game tools such as the X4 charge, Overdrive Serum applicator, Battle Scanner and Magnetic Cannon, but better still are the examples of in-game advertising signage. The collection takes in propaganda and recruitment posters, adverts for boxy futuristic-looking cars, fashion and domestic appliances, and – a particular highlight – fast food. The latter category uses clean, abstract designs to market dauntingly proportioned burgers, ice cream and milkshakes. But the geometric prints used by some of the propaganda posters are equally beguiling. It’s a fine opportunity to ogle the angular aesthetic of XCOM’s universe up close. BOOK A Boy Made Of…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar Less than two weeks into my brief spell at a London university, I was staggering home through Soho late at night and spotted an unmistakeable figure up ahead. It was 1996, and there wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind about who the lanky, bespectacled ginger fellow was. I picked up the pace and there, indeed, was Chris Evans. These days he’s the voice of BBC Radio 2 in the mornings and the face of Top Gear’s post-Tory-gobshite-era ratings nosedive, but back then he was actually, like, cool. But not, in turns out, in person – at least not when accosted by a drunken student on Shaftesbury Avenue at midnight on a Tuesday. He was brusque; I, offended and full of teenage bravado, said some unpleasant things.…

Developer Publisher Format Origin Release Tarsier Studios Bandai Namco PC, PS4, Xbox One Sweden 2017 W hen we previously saw Tarsier Studios’ paean to childhood fears, in mid-2015, it was still called Hunger and running in Unity. Since then, the name has changed to Little Nightmares, Bandai Namco has signed the project as part of its new focus on indies, and Unreal Engine 4 has been adopted to do the heavy lifting. It’s also our highlight of this year’s Gamescom. To recap, the game casts you as a young girl called Six who, after being kidnapped by monsters, finds herself trapped within the bowls of a sprawling submersible called The Maw. A small portion of the vessel sits above the surface, topped with a single chimney that belches out smoke.…

Developer/publisher Ubisoft Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin Canada Release February 14 We’re at ‘Break’ time in our match of Dominion. But far from being a moment of respite, this end-ofround showdown, where the last surviving members of each four-strong team face off against one another with no respawns, is adrenaline fuel. The map we’ve been darting around, picking our opponents while tactically eyeing up each of the three capture points, has been a close one, and the points earned here could steal the game. Moments such as these are what For Honor does brilliantly. While a standard multiplayer shooter might fade in some music, show you the final scores and be done with it, here, thanks to the sense that a skilled single player could still take out your…

To gain access to Climax Studios’ premises, we have to enter a four-digit code into a jury-rigged keypad that sits above the lift’s standard controls. And as if to further underscore this company’s relationship with videogames, the numbers on the four keys that we need are all but rubbed off, while the remaining buttons look brand new. We’ve seen this obstacle in games before and, using a combination of the smarts gained from a recent fortnight spent breaking into buildings as Adam Jensen and, er, the receptionist telling us which combination to use, we ascend to the office unhindered. That your first act on entering the building immediately calls to mind a videogame puzzle is appropriate, but those worn-away buttons also suggest a longstanding routine. Until recently, such a charge…

Developer Hello Games Publisher SIE, Hello Games Format PC, PS4 Release Out now While No Man’s Sky delivers on its promise of lushly forested planets populated by strange and unique indigenous creatures, the most affecting moments in Hello Games’ ambitious space adventure occur further from the seeds of life. Despite the added time pressure of an issue cycle bisected by Gamescom, we find ourselves spending an inordinate amount of time stood on clifftops looking out over barren, but astonishing, landscapes. The rocky, Prussianblue surface of a planet baked dry by a nearby sun that sits in pink and turquoise skies, for example. Or the one in which undulating, dark purple tubes of rock snake across a craggy landscape bathed in a green-blue dusk. And then there’s that memorable, deep-red sphere…

Developer/publisher Prospect Games Format PC Release Out now Double jumps? Pah. Triple jumps? Yesterday’s news. Unbox’s contribution to the platformer is the septuple jump, a thrilling, physics-defying feat that lets you cross the kind of chasms that would make Mario gulp. Not a problem for the Newbie, a sentient parcel that can, after a single leap, shed its outer cardboard shell – or ‘unbox’ – for up to six midflight boosts: a press of the right trigger followed by as many squeezes of the left as you need to make a safe landing. Sometimes, you’ll use it for exhilaratingly swift traversal. More often, you’ll use it to recover from a fall, or to gain that bit of extra height you need to get over an obstacle. The springy physics are…

Splatoon must surely rank as one of the most unlikely hits of recent years. If you doubt that, try relaying a story about a favourite multiplayer moment and consider how ludicrous you must sound to a casual observer. Our moment of triumph, for example, came during the final Splatfest, a contest designed to crown the global favourite of the two Squid Sisters, the game’s resident idol duo. It happened at Moray Towers, a parking lot spread across two elevated structures, with ramps zigzagging down towards a central zone liberally coated in lurid neon ink. Wearing our pink T-shirt with pride, paired with a fashionable snorkel and a pair of turquoise trainers, our time came in the final 30 seconds of battle, as we swam up a wall carrying a washing-machine…

Who in their right mind would spend two months in the Swedish wilderness, with just a bunch of indie game developers for company and epically vast deciduous forests for a backdrop? Lots of people, apparently, if the Swedish nonprofit project Stugan (‘the cabin’) is any indication. But even though many want to sample the delights of the Swedish back country, few are chosen. Those who are get to enjoy local home cooking, falling stars, evening dips in the lake, an awful lot of boardgaming, and, if they’re lucky, the Northern Lights. The Stugan accommodation is quite large, comprising several buildings, situated at the edge of an abandonedfor-the-summer ski resort. Its isolation, though, is no exaggeration. The radio cuts out as we approach, and it won’t be back again until we…

Inclusiveness: if there’s one overriding quality that defines this year’s Dare ProtoPlay festival, it’s a communal sense of unifying passion. You can see it in the eyes of countless families who flood the marquees of this constantly expanding Dundee-held event, and you can certainly feel it in the 16 student games all vying to win recognition from BAFTA at the festival’s showpiece Dare To Be Digital design competition. “Games are embraced by the community here in a way unlike any other place I’ve seen,” says Dr William Huber, who acts as both ProtoPlay’s director and the head of School of Arts, Media and Computer Games at Abertay University, the event’s host institution. “It’s very intergenerational.” A stroll around Dare To Be Digital’s floorspace confirms this, with scores of children partnered…

Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene Game Densha De Go!! Manufacturer Taito There is some consternation in coin-op circles at the resurgence of virtual reality, because of the threat a 3D headset poses to the arcade’s last great competitive advantage: the sense of immersion of playing a game in an enormous cabinet. With its chain of 40 arcades across Japan, Taito has a vested interest in keeping the scene alive, which goes some way to explaining why it’s celebrating the 20th anniversary of traindriving sim Densha De Go! with a frankly ludicrous train-cockpit cabinet. Inside, three widescreen displays mimic a windscreen and side windows, while a touch panel replicates the dials and meters of a real-world subway train. Set to debut in the spring, only Tokyo’s Yamanote line…

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a New Nintendo 3DS XL, supplied by the Nintendo UK store The oracle Whenever I think about Nintendo NX, the first thought that springs to my mind is that it must not fail. Nintendo announced NX in March of 2015 at a conference, along with several other things, including mobile games – one of which has succeeded and rocketed Nintendo’s share price. The mobile games have seriously showed that innovation has benefited Nintendo once again, as the N64, DS, and Wii did. However, Nintendo tried this with Wii U. It didn’t exactly succeed. Wii U has flopped massively, becoming Nintendo’s worst-selling home console. It has sold, to this day, only 13 million…

MOST WANTED Frostpunk PC The first step towards getting people to take your emotionally resonant survival game seriously is to avoid naming it anything along the lines of Frostpunk. While 11 Bit has fallen at the first hurdle, the studio’s previous form earns it the benefit of the doubt for now. Forza Horizon 3 PC, Xbox One While the Forza Horizon 3 build at Gamescom was exactly the same as the one on show at E3, we couldn’t help but hop on for some more time with what is shaping up to be the most intoxicating blend of petrol and Australia since George Miller’s return to Mad Max. Steep PC, PS4, Xbox One There remains the potential for some of Ubisoft’s worn-out open-world design tendencies to encroach on the company’s…

Developer Id Software Publisher Bethesda Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin US Release 2016 Doom. Marty Stratton had thought he’d known the meaning of the word. But only now, looking back at three years of hard development work and realising it would all have to be thrown out, did he truly understand. Binning dozens of your designers’ levels and concepts, telling the publisher you were abandoning a project and would need the money to start from scratch – this was doom. Stratton and Id had made Hell for themselves. It just wasn’t the kind they’d intended. Production on what was originally called Doom 4 had started back in 2008. Stratton had overseen creative direction; John Carmack, the last of Id’s four original founders to remain at the studio, had designed…

Elite Dangerous PC Anybody underwhelmed by No Man’s Sky’s current condition should look to Frontier’s game and take heart at just how far it’s come since launch. The latest update allows you to hire crew to pilot deployable attack craft, or look after your ship while you do, while an alien wreck has been discovered by hardy explorers. That’s all very well, but is it OK that we’re more excited about the prospect of ferrying tourists around the galaxy in space buses? Red Dead Redemption Xbox One Microsoft’s 360 backwards compatibility initiative continues to provide much-needed incentive to turn on our Xbox Ones – every login is met with an old friend to revisit – but now Rockstar’s marvellous open-world western is available, nothing else will get a look in.…

Getting around No Man’s Sky’s galaxy is almost frictionless. Epic journeys from planet to planet or across light years between solar systems are executed with the tap of a button (or two), requiring you to do little but point the nose in the general direction of your intended destination and hold on to something. It means hopping between colossal celestial bodies is a trifling matter. Which is not to say that the result doesn’t feel epic. That, even compared to other space-based games, it manages to delivers sights that feel fresh is a remarkable technical achievement. It’s an experience born out of the idea of a boundaryless galaxy that lets you explore at every scale. Yet while the experience of landing on a new planet never fails to get the…

Developer Next Level Games Publisher Nintendo Format 3DS Release Out now Well, our 3DS hasn’t exploded. We haven’t considered quitting games for good. And, believe it or not, our fond memories of Metroid Prime remain entirely unsullied. How odd. Wasn’t Federation Force the game destined to ruin not just a much-loved series, but to bring down Nintendo and destroy the medium, too? Away from the howls of disgust and horror that greeted its announcement, Federation Force is far from the absolute disaster it was immediately assumed to be; nor is it the kind of game to inspire feverish devotion. It’s a firstperson co-op adventure that hardly disgraces the Metroid name it should never have been lumbered with, even though it falls some way short of the series’ finest outings. Having…

Yorkshire is one of the UK’s most prolific, longest-standing game development hubs. Numerous iconic studios have called the region home, from Team 17 and Revolution Software to Rockstar Leeds and Sumo Digital. Quite rightly, then, there’s a little Yorkshire pride when it comes to games. The general public may not primarily associate the county with the craft and business of building digital worlds, but game development arguably deserves a place on any list of local archetypes. In an attempt to share what games mean to the region – and to help stimulate and bolster the area’s industry – Bradford’s National Media Museum is hosting the Yorkshire Games Festival this November. “We’ve hosted a number of game events here over time,” says Kathryn Penny, festivals director and film business manager at…

Adam Drucker (AKA Doseone) is a prolific producer and rapper, and co-founder of indie record label Anticon. More recently, he’s produced music for videogames, including Samurai Gunn, Gang Beasts and Enter The Gungeon, and is currently working on Absolver. You’ve made indie rap for years – how did you get into game music? I had to bail myself out of all my music debt, so I took this shitty gig working for Viacom – MTV, Nickelodeon. I worked on everything from Spongebob to a Facebook Jersey Shore game. I did it for five years. It was torturous. But I learned the ropes like nobody’s business, and when that was ending I reached out to my friend Chris Dahlen, who co-founded Killscreen, and he put me in touch with Brandon Boyer…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar The year was 1984, and a young boy came home from a computer fair at Olympia clutching the most amazing game ever made. It was a space combat game in which you could warp at lightspeed from one star system to another throughout the galaxy. If you spotted a planet you could fly straight at it and smoothly transition to surface flying, in order to destroy enemy outposts and liberate the planet. The universe seemed limitless and epically suggestive. Dark Star, by Design Design Software, was surely the apogee of space games. Decades later, I want to go into space again, but this time it’s not so easy. I awaken on a luridly coloured planet, and the first thing I have to do is go shopping. Here is…

Developer/publisher Format Origin Release Bossa Studios PC UK 2016 The solid-gold engine was a mistake, in hindsight. Lightning lashes the screen as our squat, lop-sided airship struggles to hold a sou-westerly heading through a boiling mass of cloud. This is a storm wall, one of the regions of inclement weather that break up Bossa’s Worlds Adrift, separating the MMO’s biomes and the different grades of resource they contain. Somewhere below us, designer Luke Williams dangles from a grapple line, frantically zapping hull panels and turbines with his repair gun before the wind can prise them free. Another blast of lightning and the helm’s artificial horizon disappears in a flurry of sparks. Without it, we’re unable to distinguish up from down. Producer Herb Liu winces. “I think you might have to…

Developer Arkane Studios Publisher Bethesda Softworks Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin US Release 2017 Prey’s lead designer, Ricardo Bare, is clear about his upcoming game’s relationship to the 2006 firstperson shooter of the same name: there is none. “In terms of a highlevel concept, it’s aliens on a space station – survival stuff,” he says. “But there’s no fictional or universe connection.” This isn’t a reboot or remake, and it certainly hasn’t anything to do with Human Head’s nowcancelled Prey 2, which was about a bounty hunter on an alien planet. No, Arkane Studios wanted to make a sci-fi game, and Bethesda happened to own the name to a sci-fi series. Square peg, meet square hole. Whatever the internal politics behind Prey 2’s cancellation and Arkane’s acquisition of the…

Developer/publisher Capcom Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin Japan Release January 24 Alot has been said about what’s different this time out of the gates for this long-running survival horror series. Gone is the thirdperson viewpoint and over-the-shoulder gunslinging. Gone is the camp dialogue and unbelievable characters with overly styled hair, skin-tight leather costumes or arms like tree trunks. But while the decidedly PT-like firstperson direction in which Resident Evil is heading does feel stark, fresh, and very much what the series needed, it turns out that Resi 7 still recaptures many of the iconic elements from the series’ past. During the game you discover notes that flesh out the story. There are puzzles to solve along the way. And as you move around the Louisiana plantation where the game…

We’re in the engineering and computing building at Coventry University, attending the Games For Health UK Conference. It’s an irregularly shaped construction, slanting and jutting in ways that defy old-fashioned architectural thinking. And it’s held together by giant hexagons, themselves irregularly proportioned, their imperfections speaking of the natural world. It feels like an appropriate setting for a discussion of what is increasingly touted as the future of medicine. As Pamela Kato, professor of serious games at Coventry University and chair of the conference, introduces the day’s proceedings, the audience sits back in ergonomic chairs. The auditorium is packed with academics, developers and practitioners keen to thrash out the landscape of serious games; where they are, and where they can go. After an initial boom in the early 2000s, with a…

Hugo Martin Creative director, Id Software From your perspective, what was the hardest part of Doom to get right? The first ten minutes of the game. We went through so many versions. So many people worked on that intro, just to get the tone right for the rest of the game. Probably half the team was involved in that. When people say they like that opening, I feel like sagging back in my chair and saying, ‘Oh, thank God'. How would you describe Doom’s art style and the tone it sets out? Everything in Doom looks like it was drawn in the back of a notebook by some 15-year-old during math class. And it’s all meant to make you giggle. The canvas that is Doom is massive. We put as…

It’s a heck of a month for players of a certain vintage. For all that this is a medium defined by, and inextricably wedded to, the forward march of technology, developers aren’t afraid to use more powerful hardware to riff off the past, rather than look to the future. Some do both. To those of you grey enough about the temples to remember when it was your imagination, rather than a procedural algorithm, that filled in the blanks between Elite’s stark vectors, No Man’s Sky (p106), despite its problems, feels like a childhood dream come true. Though, admittedly, we don’t remember fantasising about being a spacefaring carbon-gatherer. If you’re a little too young for that to resonate, first of all, congratulations and enjoy it while you can. Then, perhaps we…

Developer Bulkhead Interactive Publisher Square Enix Format PC (tested), Xbox One Release Out now These tests, we’re told, are beyond the capacity of machines; they can only be solved by a human brain. Well, perhaps not this one. Oh, we get there in the end – it turns out that this isn’t an example of needlessly finicky puzzle design so much as a reminder to look up occasionally – but it’s enough for us to concede that maybe we don’t represent the ideal of intelligent behaviour to which Turing’s paper referred. Such sticking points are, thankfully, rare, which says much for the elegant escalation of challenge and complexity in Bulkhead Interactive’s designs – not least since it’s all accomplished without a word of assistance. These conundrums are built around the…

Developer SNK Publisher SNK (JP), Atlus (US), Deep Silver (EU) Format PS4 Release Out now Well, look, it’s got a lovely personality. While The King Of Fighters XIV has come a long way in visual terms since it was unveiled late last year, that’s damning with faint praise. Terrifically ugly back then, it’s merely thoroughly disappointing at launch, especially so given that KOFXIII’s spritework was some of the best in the business. Here, rather than call back to the golden era of fighting games, SNK seemingly wants to evoke the early days of PS3. This is the first game in this storied series to be rendered in 3D. We rather hope it will also be the last. It’s particularly galling given SNK’s stated ambition to make KOFXIV the world’s number…

Illustration box-kite-curve.com If I sometimes appear cynical it’s because the world is rubbish and always lets you down. But, just occasionally, nice things happen. I was approached at a party recently by two trendy guys. They looked like they were in their 30s and also like they were in the ’30s, thanks to their hipster clothes. I was preparing to tell them I was not in a position to sell them any drugs when they mentioned that they recognised me as one of the people who worked on Lionhead (RIP)’s Black & White and Big Blue Box (Lest We Forget)’s Fable. It’s one thing to have your name spotted. This has happened before, because I was also a member of the US House Of Representatives from 1977 to 2007. Or…