Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 177 i GamesTM

Pokémon fever has returned, and while I was always keen to see how Pokémon Go would be received and assumed that the usually rabid fanbase would flock to it, I couldn’t have dreamed it would be to this extent. Pokémon Go is a true gaming phenomenon, and like many such phenomena in recent years, it sits in that gap where you might even feel you could question whether it is really a game at all. It lacks many features and functions of classic Pokémon titles, but at its core it has the most important element, the one that made so many of us fall in love with the series from the start – it makes you want to find and collect Pokémon. All the other bells and whistles of augmented…

After three years of ID@Xbox what are you most proud of? I think the relationship we’ve built with the development community. It’s fair to say that three years ago the relationship wasn’t the same as it is today and I think we managed to show the community that we mean business and we’re serious about ID@Xbox. We keep expanding, we keep using resources to do things with ID and we’re not moving away from it. Quite often people are praising us on Twitter; there are some people who are complaining about us on Twitter and that’s fine. It’s just that constant dialogue. I mean, I have a lot of air miles as you can imagine. We travel to as many events as possible because the feeling is that, if you…

What is Pokémon Go Plus? It’s a small Bluetooth device that links to your smartphone. You can wear it on your wrist or clip it to your clothing and it will vibrate and light up when in-game events take place, such as a Pokémon appearing nearby. What else can it do? It can actually catch Pokémon for you without getting your phone out of your pocket or bag. When it lights up you can press its button to automatically attempt to catch the creature. If you’re successful it will light up to let you know you’ve caught it. You can only use standard Poké Balls and catch Pokémon you’ve caught before with this method. Won’t it drain my battery even more? It could do, but The Pokémon Company says it…

While some have been concerned about safety with regards to Pokémon Go, many have been equally keen to explore potential health benefits to playing the game. There have, for instance, been a number of anecdotes about people with anxiety or other mental health issues finding Pokémon Go helpful in getting outside and interacting with strangers. “We know that exercise, getting outdoors and socialising are all beneficial towards supporting good mental health. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that some users of Pokémon Go are reporting mental health benefits,” senior media officer of the Mental Health Foundation Cal Strode informs us. “Though formal links between augmented reality gaming and mental health have not yet been established, it is good to hear that people are finding new platforms and activities that…

The Atlas, Ogre and Stryder chassis have been decommissioned as Titanfall 2 brings six new Titan designs into the fold. Respawn has spent much of the last two years assessing critical and fan feedback, paying particular attention to complaints levied against the Titan on Titan combat. As a result, a lot of time and resources have gone into ensuring that there’s more tactical depth to clambering into the belly of one of these hulking mechanical beasts. The changes are immediately identifiable. Battling in a Titan no longer feels like a next-generation edition of Rock‘Em Sock’em Robots, with each mech feeling distinct and powerful in its own right. “We now have 6 distinct Titans, says Alderman. “Think of them like Street Fighter characters. Purposely designed for certain playstyles but then as…

CONVERGENCE Elements from all three timelines can be seen in Breath Of The Wild. That’ leading many to consider that this new instalment is in fact a convergence of the parallel universes. There has been a strong insinuation that the Link we are playing as is one we have spent time with in the past, so which one is it? Is this the Hyrule ravaged in the Fallen timeline or the one swallowed by the sea in the Adult variant? Nintendo should probably have left the timeline bickering to the fan theorists in the first place, its introduction in 2011’s Hyrule Historia has only given them more headaches – is this the way they finally clear this (awesome) mess up? FALLEN HERO GANONDORF DEFEATS LINK AT THE CONCLUSION OF OOT…

DETAILS FORMAT: 3DS ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: Capcom PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes If you’ve ever managed to reach the top of the Monster Hunter food chain by besting the series’ mightiest challenges at G Rank, you’ll know how rewarding the view from the summit is. You see the creatures below in a whole new light. Every hunter makes their own memories, meaning that a greater spread of quarries and hunting grounds should naturally lead to even more legends for players to write themselves into. While Generations cannot be said to be lacking in that respect, the lack of G Rank content means that it can feel like it is. There are analogues in place to ensure end-game hunters can still be challenged, most…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: PS Vita, PC ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Square Enix DEVELOPER: Tokyo JRPG Factory PRICE: £32.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: No Imitation, so the proverb goes, is the sincerest form of flattery. So if the JRPG veterans that are Chrono Trigger and the early Final Fantasies had faces, they’d almost certainly be blushing. Tokyo Game Factory’s debut game makes its mimicry clear from the outset – and there a few better examples to have on your bedroom wall – but there’s a handful of fresh ingredients the new Japanese studio adds to the mix that makes for a satisfying, if poignant broth. Know this: I Am Setsuna is a relentlessly sad experience. Not a crushing one, forcing you to squirm at every moment like…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One ORIGIN: Holland PUBLISHER: Through Games DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £11.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Fru is a casualty of the Microsoft marketing machine, a distant reminder of what could have been. Had Kinect taken off in the way the publisher so feverently promised, Fru would be received as one of the smartest platformers of the generation, instead it’s the swan song of a maligned peripheral. It may have started as a quirky tech demo, but it has evolved into an experience that sells Kinect as a viable platform for gaming. Fru makes great use of Kinect’s camera; it captures your silhouette and transposes it to the screen – an inverse version of the world is revealed wherever it falls. It’s here…

“I WAS LOOKING AT THIS SITUATION AND THINKING, 'NINTENDO IS WINNING, WHAT DO WE DO NOW?'“Trip Hawkins “I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A FREEDOM FIGHTER FOR DEVELOPERS“ TRIP HAWKINS IS a confident man. He describes himself as an innovator as well as an entrepreneur and he’s certainly not someone who would shy away from taking a risk. When he got wind in 1987 that Sega was looking to make a new console, he could have overlooked it, given Nintendo had some 90 per cent of the market and Sega’s 8-bit Master System had failed to take off in the way it had hoped. But he didn’t. He made a determined effort to get involved and he effectively turned his company – Electronics Arts – on its head in order to do so.…

THEY SAY THE simplest concepts are the best and that was certainly true of Konami’s Frogger. It was one of Konami’s earliest arcade games, appearing in 1981, a few short years after the developer made its arcade debut with titles such as Block Game and Space Ship. Compared to some of Konami’s earlier games, Frogger was a revelation. It featured smart, vibrant-looking visuals, a selection of popular Japanese tunes and tight, finely honed gameplay. It had universal appeal too, being nothing like the testosterone-fuelled shooters that Konami had been releasing up to that point. Released by Sega in the West, after the company licensed it from Konami, it became a big hit, going on to receive a number of official conversions and a whole host of copycat clones. Despite its…

I GOT TRADED FOR $300-WORTH OF SOFTWARE AS A REFERRAL BONUS WHEN MY EDITOR AT HERO GAMES GOT ME AN INTERVIEW AT INTERPLAY’S D&D DIVISION What was your first videogame experience? Haunted House on the TRS-80 (4K). It was a text adventure game that was full of lies and deception and I rue playing it to this day. I got to the second to last level and no amount of verb or noun combination ever allowed me to prevail. It also turned me off enchanted swords forever. Given your career has a strong background of storytelling and literature, did you study this at school? Actually I went to the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which saved me from ever thinking I was smart. I was at the…

“MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE SEEING THEIR CHILDHOOD DREAM COME TRUE” “I’ve never seen a force so powerful to bring people together as Pokémon Go has done.” That’s no overstatement from the founder of the Pokémon Go New York Facebook page. Going by the handle Dankizard, he has borne witness to some of the incredible scenes of Pokémon Go players in New York you may have seen online. The footage of hundreds of players flocking into the park as a Vaporeon spawned there was, for many, the moment where the true scale of Pokémon Go’s impact became clear. This wasn’t some cash-in of a classic brand or a half-measure towards converting classic Nintendo titles to mobile devices. Niantic and The Pokémon Company had hit upon something truly captivating. And perhaps that…

WATER HIGH SPAWN RATES: Rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, docks, beaches, oceans, canals LOWER SPAWN RATES: Wetlands, parks FIRE HIGH SPAWN RATES: Farmland, arid areas LOWER SPAWN RATES: Cities, residential areas, beaches, parks GRASS HIGH SPAWN RATES: Gardens, parks, golf courses, woodland LOWER SPAWN RATES: Farmland, hiking trails, nature reserves ELECTRIC HIGH SPAWN RATES: Universities, college campuses LOWER SPAWN RATES: Cities, commercial areas ROCK HIGH SPAWN RATES: Farmland, quarries, parking lots LOWER SPAWN RATES: Hiking trails, nature reserves, parks PSYCHIC HIGH SPAWN RATES: Hospitals, cities LOWER SPAWN RATES: Residential areas (at night) BUG HIGH SPAWN RATES: Parks, golf courses, gardens, meadows LOWER SPAWN RATES: Farmland, woodland, nature reserves GROUND HIGH SPAWN RATES: Farmland, woodland, quarries LOWER SPAWN RATES: Hiking trails, fields, golf courses, parks POISON HIGH SPAWN RATES: Wetlands, ponds, lakes…

GRAPPLE Used for quickly moving across the map, making use of the verticality and pulling enemies in closer, Grapple is the standout addition to Titanfall 2. A swinging mechanic hasn’t felt this intuitive since Spider-Man 2 back in 2004 - and yes, you can quote us on that. PULSE BLADE Active Radar Pulse has been replaced by the Pulse Blade, a projectile that carries dual uses. Not only can it be used to one-hit kill enemy Pilots, but driving one into a surface will also provide a brief sonar pulse that detects enemy movement in your immediate vicinity. HOLO PILOT Designed to assist snipers, Holo Pilot mimics the Pilot’s last move in a surprisingly lifelike fashion. This can be used to send an enemy chasing shadows or could be used…

MEAT & MUSHROOM SKEWER 1 x Steak 1 x Hylian Shroom Restores three red hearts, perfect for a jolt of health when you need it most. HEARTY STEAMED MEAT 1 x Steak 2 x Hearty Truffles 2 x Hearty Radishes Full health recovery and eight bonus yellow hearts, for those occasions where you’re facing a tough boss; delightful. HASTY ELIXIR 1 x Bokoblin Fang 1 x Frog Found yourself lost on a mountain with no way down? This elixir speeds up Link’s movement speed for two minutes and forty seconds, perfect for a quick clamber. SPICY ELIXIR 1 x Bokoblin Horn 1 x Sizzlewing Butterfly Lost in the cold without a jumper? This Spicy Elixir warms your body from its core for little over three minutes.…

You wake up on the floor of the family room, your only direction: “Get Out Of The House.” From there, an hour-long crawl through the unknown begins. Using simple navigational cues and a selection of items hidden throughout the vaguely familiar hallways, Capcom is able to produce tension and scares the likes of which we haven’t seen this generation. The mansion is filled with secrets and mysteries to uncover, and you’ll be caught between wanting to discover them and wanting to get the hell away from there. This is how a surprisingly simple design and a committed team can create a short-form horror masterpiece, the items breadcrumbs leading to you inevitable demise. A LOCK PICK “A tool for opening simple locks. Breaks easily” • If you look between the cabinets…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: PC ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Capcom DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £24.99 RELEASE: Out Now PLAYERS: 1-6 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes The Resident Evil franchise may well have shambled its way back into the good graces of gamers with the sensational reveal of Resident Evil VII: Biohazard , but many are still haunted by the brand’s decade long love affair with bullets and body counts; blind action over tempered thrills with Resi 5 , 6 and Operation Raccoon City . Diehard fans are being catered to, finally, with Biohazard in 2017 though Umbrella Corps is the result of a company that wants to continue banking on action in the interim period. But make no mistake: Umbrella…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: XBOX ONE, PC ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Activision DEVELOPER: FireForge Games PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Do you like Diablo , but wish it didn’t have any soul, imagination or a sense of progression? Do you like the new Ghostbusters film but wish the characters were flat and lacking in motivation? Do you like boring games that are both repetitive and easy? Well you’re in luck! Everyone else: run. This latest Ghostbusters spin-off sets us in the same universe as Paul Feig’s 2016 movie reboot, but instead of the film’s protagonists we get four nameless Ghostbusters. We would talk a little more about them if they had any sort of personality… But they don’t. They do talk a…

DETAILS FORMAT: Wii U OTHER FORMATS: 3DS ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: Sega Sports R&D PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 ONLINE REVIEWED: No The abiding feeling we have having spent many hours wearing down the tips of our thumbs on the latest Mario & Sonic Olympic escapade is that this series really ought to have grown a little more in the last four years. There are a good selection of events, from favourites like 100m sprinting to archery, but it’s all very stripped back and sometimes, a little dull. The exceptions to this are the Duel events; Mario Kart-esque mutations of Football, Rugby Sevens and Beach Volleyball that bring real mayhem to the field. As you kick plasma attacks at defenders or run through rainbows to commence…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: PS3 ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: PQube DEVELOPER: Arc System Works PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes If Street Fighter V’s modest spread of modes and options left early adopters feeling short-changed, Revelator can be seen as the polar opposite – a celshaded Santa Claus barrelling onto the scene after one too many sherries for his grasp of the Gregorian calendar system to hold up. A feature-packed update to -SIGN-, there are new toys galore for everyone to play with here, from brand new characters and returning staples to enhanced tutorials and trials as well as a whole new slab of beautiful nonsense in its story mode. Whatever you want when you pick up a…

FREEWAY ATARI 2600 This excellent arcade-style game by Activision’s David Crane was created after Crane watched someone try to cross Lake Shore Drive on foot. FROSTBITE ATARI 2600 This was another Frogger clone from Activision. Frostbite Bailey must leap back and forth across ice floes in order to rebuild his igloo. CAVEMAN ZX SPECTRUM Incredibly tough game where you play a caveman trying to retrieve delicious eggs while avoiding lots of deadly dinosaurs. HOPPER BBC MICRO The BBC Micro had some excellent arcade clones, so it should come as no surprise to discover this Frogger rip-off among them. CROSSY ROAD IOS This excellent effort from Hipster Whale has already found huge success on mobile devices and turned Frogger into an endless runner.…

Of Hideo Kojima’s first game post-Konami, we've actually got very little information. The teaser trailer ended up asking more questions than it gave answers, but then that’s no surprise, the developer has always been a master of misdirection. Despite Kojima and Cerny engaging on a world tour to visit studios and hunt for the right technology to build this project, he is still yet to settle on a game engine - though it looks as if Norman Reedus is in for the long haul, The Walking Dead actor looking in fine form with his photorealistic reproduction at E3 2016. “Right now we’re choosing an engine. We should have a decision soon,” admitted Kojima. “We’re making many experiments, this new title that we are making has many unique aspects – some…

FIRE EMBLEM Strategy titles have proven to translate rather nicely to smartphones and tablets over the years and have, of course, already been integrated nicely with touch interfaces on DS and 3DS. Fire Emblem isn’t a game that will easily be simplified in the way that Pokémon Go has been and as such may not have quite the same easy access for new players, but even so it has just as passionate a fanbase to build upon. It will be releasing for free and is being developed by DeNA, the same developer that made the Miitomo app. ANIMAL CROSSING Also being released for free and developed by DeNA, Animal Crossing seems a far more likely candidate for replicating the kind of widespread appeal of Pokémon Go than Fire Emblem, not…

Titanfall 2 still has many months of playtesting and tweaking ahead of it. And for good reason, we’ve already identified a couple of areas that concern us, particularly in the way that Pilots interact with the environment. To be clear, the game is still incredibly fun – unlike anything else on the market in fact – though some of these decisions may baffle Titanfall veterans. HEAVIER CHARACTERS In the version of Titanfall 2 we played, both jump speed and jump height had been significantly reduced. Your character feels heavier than before and that increased weight seems to have made an impact on the over-the-top parkour antics that made the original game so frantic; they don’t exist anymore. It’s still fast, but a little more tempered. PILOT VULNERABILITY Perhaps it’s because…

UNLESS YOU’RE MESSING ABOUT WITH A FRIEND OR GUIDING A YOUNGLING THROUGH THE GAME, IT CAN OFTEN START TO FEEL TEDIOUS DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMAT: iOS, PC, Mac, 3DS, PS3, PS Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Warner Bros. DEVELOPER: TT Fusion PRICE: £49.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A If there’s one element from the source material this latest addition to the ever-growing LEGO family absolutely nails, it’s the ability to create a new product without doing anything vaguely original – much as Abrams’ movie was more or less a beat-for-beat retread of A New Hope , so too does TT Fusion’s take on it raid the archives for gameplay elements used in previous games. That’s not exactly anything…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: PC ORIGIN: France PUBLISHER: The Game Bakers DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £19.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Platinum might be pretty much untouchable in the modern character action field, but that doesn’t mean it can’t and should not be challenged. Ninja Theory and Team Ninja continue to throw down with the master from time to time, but it’s even more exciting to see a skilled challenger come out of nowhere – we saw it with Ivent’s Strength Of The Sword 3 a few years back and we see it again now with The Game Bakers’ superb Furi. As a boss rush game, mechanics need to be absolutely on point, and they are. Options are limited – you have a slash, a dodge and…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: PS3 ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Square Enix DEVELOPER: Tri-Ace PRICE: £35.00 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A If we had to name a series that has continually disappointed us, it would be Star Ocean. Despite its superb Final-Fantasy-meets-Star-Trek setting, the Star Ocean series has fallen flat with its last release, The Last Hope, and this new title in the series continues the downward trend. Like its predecessor, it’s not that the game is bad, it just isn’t ambitious. It doesn’t set out to wow you, yet it fulfils the bare minimum requirements of game design so that it doesn’t really offend anyone. This is why Integrity And Faithlessness disappoints us: it has brand heritage, it has a seasoned developer and publisher behind it, it…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC OTHER FORMATS: Mac ORIGIN: Venezuela PUBLISHER: Ysbryd Games DEVELOPER: Sukeban Games PRICE: £10.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 MINIMUM SPEC: Windows 7/8/10, 1.6 Ghz processor, 1 GB RAM, 256mb graphics card, 250 MB available space ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Few games in recent memory have left us as utterly torn as VA-11 Hall-A. It’s a game that swings wildly from smart, delicately paced and intriguing cyberpunk noir, to adolescent, boob-obsessed, poorly written nonsense. And yet we can’t help but admire certain elements, as a cast of amusing characters engage in casual conversations and banter that feels about right for a pub environment. When it clicks it can work rather well, it’s just it too often becomes distracted by memes and pandering to a web-centric audience. Each character feels…

WORLDWIDE SALES FIGURES Sega’s new console wasn’t the only machine launching at the time. NEC had produced the TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment SuperSystem, or PC Engine, which had an 8-bit CPU but a 16-bit video colour encoder and a 16-bit video display controller. It could display 482 colours on screen from a palette of 512. But even though NEC had a lot of marketing dollars behind it and had become, at one point, the top-selling console in Japan, Trip Hawkins still believed Sega would win. “I thought, Sega is a pretty good software company and it made good first-party titles,” Hawkins says. “I thought they’d know what game hardware features to have.”…

What’s your earliest memory of playing Frogger? It was only once. I was eight [and] we had a dedicated system in the house. Before that, my exposure to videogames was in the fish-and-chip shop or in the videogame arcade while on holiday. For Frogger Iremember the machine was located in the caravan park foyer where we used to stay in Robe, South Australia. We spent quite a lot of that holiday in the park and not at the beach. What was it you liked about the mechanics? Of all those early arcade games, it's the one that strikes me as having the broadest relatable theme. A frog crossing the road dodging traffic? Why not? The sound design was well above some of the other games of the time too. The…

THE MONEY TREE Don’t listen to Hawker; money doesn’t grow on trees. What 20,000G will get you, however, is a tree with a bell on it. It’s a handy item that gets all of your animals inside automatically at night. It saves you so much time, and time is money in Harvest Moon. DOG WATCHER We understand that you want to keep your adorable dog inside the house with you, away from the elements. But if you leave it outside at night your fences will never break – unless it snows or rains, of course, as the dog will creep back inside the house. WEATHER REPORT Every morning you’ll have the option of hearing a weather report. This is useful as it can change the plan of days. Rain negates…

THE GOLDEN MASK A smart design inspired by Deus Ex, this golden mask ties together the beautiful art design of Eidos Montreal’s game with the decadent lifestyles of some of the universe’s richer inhabitants. www.musterbrand. com DROWNER While The Witcher 3’s Drowners wouldn’t have been our first choice of subject when putting together a shirt, we can’t argue that this isn't a very cool piece of artwork. www.musterbrand.com PLAYSTATION FIVE MORE MINUTES It’s the motto of the truly addicted gamer, when you find just the right title (Rocket League perhaps?) that you just don’t want to walk away from. You need that next fix and, five more minutes is all it will take. www.thinkgeek.com…