Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 167 i GamesTM

I always love looking at Japanese sales figures via the Media Create charts – partially because it’s really nice to see actual candid performance data when the Western market is generally so secretive with such information and partly because I can’t help but laugh at the Xbox One’s absolutely pitiful performance. It’s actually quite a good window into how publishers spin stats – Microsoft would likely boast that, at the time of writing this piece, Xbox One sales were up 10 per cent week-on-week. But the part it would probably be less inclined to tell you would be that this seemingly quite impressive figure constituted an extra 21 units sold, taking the total to 224 for the week. For reference on just how bad that really is, Sony shifted 670…

“Well, I guess the game that I love and have put the most hours into is a game called Sacrifice – a game that Shiny Entertainment did back in the late Nineties. It’s an obscure title, but one that I enjoyed thousands of hours playing. It was just a wonderful two versus two multiplayer game and I just had a blast with that. I always like to cite that one when people ask what my favourite game is, especially because it’s not a typical Mario Bros. or something like that!” “It’s an obscure title, but one that I enjoyed thousands of hours playing ” BRIAN FARGO, FOUNDER, INEXILE ENTERTAINMENT…

HOLD YOUR GROUND or go on the offensive? That’s the challenging question you must always answer when defending in Rainbow Six Siege. Here’s the team that will get you through to the end regardless of your tactical choice. PULSE Armour: Light Speed: Fast Special Weapon: Cardiac Sensor ROOK Armour: Heavy Speed: Slow Special Weapon: Armour Pack MUTE Armour: Medium Speed: Medium Special Weapon: Signal Disrupter BANDIT Armour: Medium Speed: Medium Special Weapon: Shock Wire SMOKE Armour: Medium Speed: Medium Special Weapon: Remote Gas Grenade…

CONCEPT • Three disciplines of the martial art of combat clash in a multiplayer battlefield as Knights, Samurai and Vikings go toe to toe INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Xbox One, PC Origin: Canada Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Release: 2016 Players: 1-8 Developer Profile Jason VandenBerghe is heading up the huge Ubisoft Montreal team on this project and has been working on ideas around sword combat for a good few years. His previous creative director roles have seen him in charge of a fair few high-profile titles experimenting in different genres and fields. Developer History Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands 2010 [Multi] Far Cry 3 2012 [Multi] Assassin's Creed III 2012 [Multi] High Point Far Cry 3 was a massive step for this series, establishing its sandbox credentials and…

CONCEPT • Yggdrasil is dying, and it’s down to you – an uncompromising shield maiden – to restore life to the tree and save the nine realms INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Vita, PC Origin: UK Publisher: Devolver Digital Developer: Eneme Entertainment Release: 2016 Players: 1 Developer Profile Eneme Entertainment was set up by David Wright (artist/designer) and Tobi Harper (coder/developer) with the aim of creating a game that mimicked all the best bits of Dark Souls, but with a real strong RPG focus. Both developers are hardcore gamers, citing Zelda, Street Fighter, Smash Bros, Dark Souls, Diabloand Path Of Exileas their favourite games. Loki is a treacherous bastard, isn’t he? When he’s not out and about lying to the Gods and fiddling with the Fates, he’s tampering with young girls…

The sky looks like it’s dying. The sun looks sick, its light poisonous in the air. There’s an ashy quality to everything, like the core of the earth is burning itself out. There’s misery in the heavy stone of the buildings that pick at the skies above us, buildings whose spires are dilapidated, void of life. This is Dark Souls all right, and we’re about to die. We’re in a courtyard, outside a huge double door leading into some kind of cathedral. This courtyard wouldn’t look out of place in Barcelona or Madrid – well, it wouldn’t if there had been some sort of awful cataclysm, anyway – and the wrought iron fences and intricate stonework almost lull you into a false sense of security. Almost. It’s the two advancing,…

We’re scrambling over a broken chain-link fence and you can hear us grunting beneath our gas mask. Our urban camouflage – that is, a backpack and a leather jacket – feels distressingly lacking right now; we can see another group of survivors clambering over debris across the street from us. They’re armed, we know that – why the hell would you be out here if you weren’t? – and they’re coming in fast. We kneel down behind a crumbling concrete barrier and (for the fifth time) make sure our gun is loaded. It is. We’re ready. The rest of our crew forms up on us. They hunker down, too – you can’t rush this, it’s not worth it – and we’re all silent. There’s a guy at the back, the…

As chief experience officer and chief technology officer of Microsoft’s consumer products division, J Allard oversaw the launches of the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Zune, but ended his 19 year run at the company in 2010. Since then Allard moved to Portland, Oregon where he launched a bike security start-up called 529 Garage. Having been such an influential figure in the creation and design of the Xbox 360 back in 2005, it seemed only right to sit with him now to get his thoughts on the impact Microsoft’s second generation of hardware had on the industry and how some of its most iconic ideas came about. Could you tell is a little about your specific role during the planning for the Xbox 360? I had two different jobs on the…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: PC,Xbox One ORIGIN: Canada PUBLISHER: Ubisoft DEVELOPER: UbisoftQuebec PRICE: £54.99 RELEASE: Out nowPLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Even if it weren’t set in London during the Industrial Revolution (and even if Charles Dickens didn’t appear as a pivotal character) Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate would still have the demeanour of Oliver Twist politely asking for more workhouse slop. Cap in hand, Ubisoft wants to cordially remind fans of the high qualitative peaks that this franchise is capable of reaching, and would love it if we could all just forgot about last year’s asinine little boo-boo. Looking for a spot of entertainment, guv’nor? Look no further… For all its faults, Syndicate is a thoroughly respectable return to form. The fluidity and slickness that was comprehensively lacking from Unity…

DETAILS FORMAT: 3DS ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £34.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 or 3 (1 or 3 online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Where’s all the Zelda love gone? We’ve noticed a distinct lack of hype around this latest instalment and it’s not entirely clear why. Perhaps it’s because a multiplayer-focused game doesn’t quite get the pulse racing for fans of a series that’s consisted of predominantly solo affairs, or maybe it’s just because all eyes are focused on next year’s Wii U entry. Regardless, Tri Force Heroes is still an accomplished title, if not necessarily theone Zelda fans have been waiting for. The game’s plot is unlikely to be considered canon. Set in the idyllic and style-conscious region of Hytopia, the fashion-setting Princess Styla has been cursed…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PC ORIGIN: England PUBLISHER: FrontierDevelopments DEVELOPER: FrontierDevelopments PRICE: £29.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: MassivelyMultiplayer ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Much like its PC incarnation, the Xbox One version of Frontier’s vast vehicular MMO is a game of extremes. One moment you’re fighting intergalactic pirates, running a desperate gauntlet as you wrestle with your starship against a backdrop of moons, planets and stars; the next moment you’re trundling through seemingly empty space, mindful of the parking fines you’ll almost certainly be slapped with when you eventually dock. That’s the compelling yet alienating dichotomy at the heart of Elite: Dangerous – the majestic and the mundane weaved together amid a vast universe of smuggling, trade and combat. Dogfights remain an important part of proceedings, but you’ll spend most…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC ORIGIN: Russia PUBLISHER: Wargaming DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: Free-to-play (microtransactions) RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: Massively Multiplayer MINIMUM SPEC: Windows XP or newer, Dual-core CPU (2.6GHz), 2GB RAM, 30GB HDD space ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Wargaming’s latest military bonanza suffers slightly at the hands of its predecessors and its subject matter, despite being one of the boldest and most intriguing online games available. It’s a shame, really, that it lacks the frenzied, intense approach of World Of Warplanes and theinfallible, innate playability of World Of Tanks. Every sortie is quite a slow burner, resulting in some maps being a little bit of a slog as you drag a lumbering battleship through archipelagos in order to reach your objective. There’s no jumping straight in and blowing up your mates. Limitations of…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, Wii U, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, iOS ORIGIN: US PUBLISHER: Activision DEVELOPER: Vicarious Visions PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 2-4 ONLINE REVIEWED: No Games that try to add something new to their genre can go one of two ways. The first is a glowing review, in which we gush over the new mechanics. The other is a sadder tale, of why the developers should’ve have just stuck with what they knew. Unfortunately here, it’s definitely the latter. The big change this year is the addition of the new vehicular sections, which require you to plonk a plastic vehicle onto your portal in order to play. In the game, this translates into racing areas, driving missions and even small levels in which you…

DETAILS FORMAT: Wii U ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: Koei Tecmo PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: 30 October (Japan: Out now) PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A The fifth game in Koei Tecmo’s Project Zero series (known elsewhere as Fatal Frame) is that rarest of beasts: a third-party Wii U exclusive, albeit one for which Nintendo has opted to take over publishing duties. The mysterious Mount Hikami is the setting this time. The forest area around the mountain is reportedly the place people go to commit suicide, and the game follows three different characters as they visit the forest for individual reasons. More important than these reasons is the fact that the forest is swarming with ghosts. Those familiar with previous Project Zero games will roughly know what to expect here: once again…

“There are only two games I’ve ever played twice – it’s something I don’t do because usually I just don’t care enough [laughs]. But these two are: The Last Of Us and Silent Hill 2. Both of these influenced me profoundly – Silent Hill 2 I played when I was still a teenager, and I was just amazed by how deep the story was and how much it made me feel… I just wanted to continue on through it and find out what happens to the characters and everything in the story… 15 years later, The Last Of Us came around and it made me care for all of the characters completely, and the way [Naughty Dog] told the story… it was sublime. These two games really left a lasting…

CONCEPT • It’s terrorists versus counter-terrorists; like Counter-Strike but set in the rich and diverse Tom Clancy universe INFORMATION Details Format: PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin: Canada Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Release: 1 December 2015 Players: 1-10 Developer Profile Ubisoft Montreal is responsible for the Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell series, among many more. Practising since 1997, the studio is one of the biggest contributors to the gaming industry. It’s very much the lynchpin that holds the bigger Ubisoft empire together. Developer History Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag 2013 [Multi] Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon 2013 [Multi] Just Dance 3 2011 [Wii, 360] Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction 2010 [Multi] High Point Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was a totally left-field game that was announced on April…

CONCEPT • The sandbox exploration and survival of Far Cryturns to Stone Age-era hunters as you seek to become the leader of a primitive tribe INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PS4, PC Origin: Canada Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Release: 23 February 2016 Players: 1-TBC Developer Profile You’ve probably played more than one game from Ubisoft Montreal. It’s been at the epicentre of triple-A production for most of the last two generations, although some recent releases have started to look a little tired. It’s a studio that keeps pushing boundaries though. Developer History Far Cry 4 2014 [Multi] Assassin’s Creed Unity 2014 [Multi] Watch Dogs 2014 [Multi] High Point Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was a big moment for the studio, not least because it showed that if you take…

CONCEPT • It’s really rather simple: take the Warhammer franchise and tag it onto the hugely popular Total Warseries of strategy games. The only surprise is that it’s taken this long INFORMATION Details Format: PC Origin: UK Publisher: Sega Developer: Creative Assembly Release: 2016 Players: TBC Developer Profile Creative Assembly is one of the UK’s most successful developers, having begun in the late Eighties porting different games over to DOS. It wasn’t until the release of Shogun: Total War in 2000 that the developer’s success really took off. Developer History Shogun: Total War 2000 [PC] Rome: Total War 2004 [PC] Empire: Total War 2009 [PC] Alien: Isolation 2014 [PS4] High Point Strategy has long been Creative Assembly’s staple, but Alien: Isolation was quite a shift in focus for the company…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, PC ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Konami DEVELOPER: PES Productions PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-8 (2-22 Online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Balance is everything in a football game. For FIFA in recent years the balance has been more or less right for a long time and it’s felt as if the designers were simply moving some sliders around each year, tweaking the game before release. With PES it’s felt more like entire chunks of game were being added and updated with each edition, making for a more satisfying journey over the last few years, even if it also meant that the game itself felt a little cobbled together. The balance ultimately was always off. PES 2016 is easily the most refined…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: Vita ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Sony Computer Entertainment DEVELOPER: Media Molecule PRICE: £34.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A When it was first released on the PS Vita, Tearaway was much more than the game it was often compared to – Little Deviants. That game felt like a tech demo, a cautious exploration of the Vita’s unique hardware. Tearaway was something else – an actual game that explored what the Vita could do. It used the back touch screen in an inspirational way; it made great use of the relationship it built up with the player’s fingers, but did it without gimmickry. So in transferring the game to the PS4, did the game lose any of its extremely format-reliant charm? In a word, yes.…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4 ORIGIN: Canada PUBLISHER: EA DEVELOPER: EA Canada PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-12 ONLINE REVIEWED: No It feels so good to enjoy NHL again. The frustrating, glitchy, hurl-your-controller-across-the-room gameplay of NHL 15 has been, for the most part, rectified and improved upon with some interesting new elements and the welcome return of old favourites. As your winger makes the pass you actually told him to, your defenseman storms across the ice to execute a brutally satisfying hit against the boards and players are actually where they’re supposed to be, goddammit, this isn’t as good as NHL has ever been but it’s getting there. Series regulars will be pleased to see the return of classic modes that were either absent or just plain…

DETAILS FORMAT: PlayStation 4 OTHER FORMATS: Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Activision DEVELOPER: Bungie PRICE: £40.00 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: Massively Multiplayer ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes It’s quite easy to look at all of the things that Bungie has altered for The Taken King andhonestly wonder why it didn’t just do all of it the first time round. All the bizarre systems, the lack of a coherent story, the repetition – all of it has been identified and destroyed, resulting in a more enjoyable, more considered experience overall. Rather than just being a set of new missions, a couple of Strikes and a Raid, this update represents a considerable shift that even goes as deep as the game’s previously under-baked RPG mechanics. Despite its undeniable playability and…

DETAILS FORMAT: 3DS ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £34.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Happy Home Designer is a release Nintendo will be watching with great interest. The game itself is one thing, but Nintendo is hopeful its success will trigger a new craze: amiibo card collecting. It’s a shame, then, that this focus on NFC gimmickry has come at the gameplay’s expense. Players create their own Animal Crossing villager and are immediately chucked into a new job at Nook’s Homes, a home design firm run by Tom Nook. The town’s animal residents each have home design or improvement work that needs doing, so it’s up to you to have a chat with them then get to work creating their dream home. The majority of…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC ORIGIN: Russia PUBLISHER: tinyBuild DEVELOPER: Pinokl Games PRICE: £9.99 RELEASE: Out Now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Party Hard tells a familiar tale: a bunch of arseholes have moved into the place next door; they care not for common decency and proceed to pump out banging trance tracks past 3am – meanwhile you sit in bed, bloodshot-eyed, wishing it would all stop and that your party aggressors would go straight to hell. Look, we’ve all been there, it’s a natural part of getting older and growing up. Where we differ from the protagonist to Party Hard, however, is that we’ve never been driven to donning a mask, crashing said party and murdering anyone with a penchant for shuffling. Not yet at least, damn students. Like Hotline Miami…

FOR MANY, THE birth of home gaming started with the ZX Spectrum. While the ZX80 and ZX81 came first, the affordability of Sir Clive’s successor meant that even more people were able to access it. Many coders who have gone on to big success in the industry all started off coding for the ZX Spectrum. David Perry, the Stamper Brothers, the Oliver twins and many more cut their teeth on the machine and their games and companies have subsequently helped to create the industry. The Spectrum was originally released in 1982 and became instantly famous due to its rubber keyboard. Later models corrected this, but there was something endearing about the home micro that helped turn it into one of the defining computers of its era. While it might not…

MS. PAC-MAN (1981) • JUST ONE YEAR after Pac-Man’s release, an unofficial ‘kit’ for it was made by General Computer Corporation called Crazy Otto. The studio showed its game to Midway, and the publisher commissioned it, changing the sprites to make them more like Pac-Man. Midway didn't actually own the rights to Pac-Man though. PAC-MAN CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION (2007) • THE GAME THAT attracted Toru Iwatani back to Namco to create another Pac-Man – it’s a much faster version of the game everybody knows, and alters the maze slightly so it has two distinct halves. It was designed around high-score chasing. PAC-MANIA (1987) • THIS WAS THE first real sidestep the series took from the top-down maze genre. As with many games of the time, Pac-Mania opted for an isometric angle…

Right, let’s do it. Let’s talk about the Indiepocalypse; the is it/isn’t it crash of game revenue on Steam. A few months back I wrote about how the closure of Tale of Tales following Sunset’s poor sales could be seen as a tragic blip. Oops. Apparently I jinxed it, because according to SteamSpy, revenue is flat-lining across the board, and in about six month’s time, regional indie get-togethers will be like something out of The Road. Is it true? Well, the jury is still out, but it’s definitely scary. Sometimes it feels like the best business model for a start-up is to make just enough game to get onto Early Access and never plan on finishing the thing. It’s cheaper and easier to make the first quarter of a game…

IN CALL OF Duty, Titanfall and other modern FPS games, you can practically pick whatever class you like and hedge your bets… but it’s a bit more complex in Siege. Here are our recommended teams for both attackers and defenders. THERMITE Armour: Medium Speed: Medium Special Weapon: Exothermic Charge MONTAGNE Armour: Heavy Speed: Slow Special Weapon: Extendable Shield TWITCH Armour: Medium Speed: Medium Special Weapon: Shock Drone FUZE Armour: Heavy Speed: Slow Special Weapon: Cluster Charge SLEDGE Armour: Medium Speed: Medium Special Weapon: Breaching Hammer…

CONCEPT • Nico is coming home…But it’s not the home he left. A despotic ruler has risen up and holds the island in an iron fist. It’s time to take it back INFORMATION Details Format: PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin: USA Publisher: Square Enix Developer: Avalanche Studios Release: 1 December 2015 Players: 1 Developer Profile Founded in 2003 by brothers Linus and Viktor Blomberg alongside Christofer Sundberg, Avalanche is both a game developer and game engine creator that specialises in making new IP within its own engines. Based across Stockholm and New York, the studio has a unique trans-Atlantic flavour to its games. Developer History Just Cause 2006 [PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PC] The Hunter 2009 [PC] Renegade Ops 2011 [PS3, PC, Xbox 360] Mad Max 2015 [PS4, Xbox One,…

CONCEPT • The world is overrun with dinosaurs and mammals we thought were extinct. You’ve also got a selection of guns and can do what you like INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Xbox One, PC Origin: USA Publisher: Studio Wildcard Developer: Instinct Games Release: 2016 Players: 1-12 Developer Profile Studio Wildcard – publishing and part developing the game – acquired the Egyptian Instinct Games to help them facilitate development of Ark: Survival Evolved. The game has been in development since 2014 and both teams have been researching as much as they can about dinosaurs in palaeontological journals. There are over 60 dinosaurs in Ark: Survival Evolved. If that doesn’t hook you and draw you in straight away, nothing will. It’s DayZmixed with Jurassic Park, except more brutal, more open, more fun.…

OUR LOVE of Star Wars is primal. That’s the best way we can explain it. This universe reaches down deep into the hearts of those who grew up with it and can be easily triggered with the right visuals or sound effects. It’s one of the reasons why Star Wars Battlefront has seen such passionate and ferocious advocates and detractors in recent months. We care about this universe and by extension we care very much about this game. We needit to be incredible. We need it to deliver on the promise of what a game in this universe could be. The weight of expectation is great and it takes a studio with the assurance and demeanour of DICE to keep its cool when all around it appear to be losing…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: Xbox One ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Mad Catz/Harmonix DEVELOPER: Harmonix PRICE: £69.85 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 ONLINE REVIEWED: No Rock Band 4 isn’t a reboot, or a restart, or even a direct sequel. Rather, it’s a relocation – a migration of the brand across generations. We want to start by saying this: our review is of what comes on the disc. Rock Band 4 intends to be a platform, an iteration, a game kept alive by the DLC and services it will put out at, apparently, regular intervals. Right now, that’s a relief. Because what comes on the disc is a step back from Rock Band 3. We’ll take the defences Harmonix has put out when it comes to stripping away Pro-mode – this is…

DETAILS FORMAT: PlayStation 4 OTHER FORMATS: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U ORIGIN: United Kingdom PUBLISHER: Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment DEVELOPER: Traveller’s Tales PRICE: £99.99 (£89.99 PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U) RELEASE: Out Now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A With the toys-to-life genre becoming such a success for Activision and Disney, it was perhaps inevitable that Warner Bros would target it also. LEGO Dimensions is the end result and it’s a game that delights as much as it infuriates. It’s also the game which is most likely going to break the genre, as it’s highly unlikely that all three brands are going to be able to compete in such a highly competitive space. Before we discuss LEGO Dimensions’ greatest failing however, let’s first look at everything the game…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PS3, PC ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Activision DEVELOPER: Platinum Games PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A By all accounts, Transformers: Devastation should have been a high-speed disaster. A mess of twisted steel and discarded teenage dreams, the bright, epilepsy-inducing style and recognisable cast of Autobots and Decepticons nothing but a nostalgic wail in the wind, like a siren on the seas. But Platinum Games, the industry’s leading action developer, has finally found form with licensed properties. Hollywood might have ravaged the corpse of Transformers down to its bare nuts and bolts, but don’t write off Transformers: Devastation just yet, there’s more to it than meets the eye. Huh, who’d have thought we’d have gotten thatreferencein there totally…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, PC ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: 2K Sports DEVELOPER: Visual Concepts PRICE: £44.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 (2-10 online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes It was destined to happen at some point. The grand and often incomparably brilliant NBA 2K series, the jewel of sports games, has finally shown a wobble in its bounce. While it’s still unquestionably a sports sim of elite quality, its usually universal high standards of execution are not quite at the level we’ve come to expect from a franchise that has been staggeringly consistent over the past decade or so. The wobble comes in the form of Livin’ Da Dream, a narrative-heavy game mode written and directed by Spike Lee that aims to bring more life and character…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PC ORIGIN: Toronto, Canada PUBLISHER: Asteroid Base DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £11.99 (Xbox One), £10.99 (Steam) RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: No It may have the ‘L’ word in its title, but should you wander all doe-eyed into the metroidvania depths of Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime, there’s a good chance you’ll get your heart broken… or see it blown to space dust. Whether you’re tackling this cartoon caper in co-op or solo with an AI friend, Asteroid Base’s cutesy curio is anything but affectionate. At the helm of a circular starship with four cannons, a shield, a heavy blaster and a map, Lovers tasks you with scouring four interstellar campaigns. Turns out a ton of Anti-Love (yes that’s a thing, just go…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360 ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Activision DEVELOPER: Robomodo PRICE: £49.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-20 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Riddled with bugs and generally irritating failings, it’s clear to see why so many of the gaming public have railed against Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5. This is not the way it should be – the potential last hurrah for the series (with the Activision/Hawk contract running out by the end of 2015) should have been a triumphant return to the classic action of the 16-year-old original. It is not. Beyond the superficial issues of glitches, clipping and skipping music, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 suffers from issues far worse than those on the surface: Robomodo’s latest Hawk’s gamegetsa hell of a lot of…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 ORIGIN: Germany PUBLISHER: Kalypso Media DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-8 ONLINE REVIEWED: No Grand strategy is a funny old genre, a sort of Stockholm syndrome for the gaming world. As long as the mechanics are functional and your decisions tactical, then the longer you play the more forgiving you may find yourself becoming towards the game, a benefit that Grand Ages Medieval enjoys. Favouring a more historical approach – akin to Crusader Kings and Europa Universalisrather than Civilization – the idea here is likely familiar to strategy fans: begin with a single settlement, build it up over the course of years and expand out, trading with other settlements and waging war with those who won’t bend to your will. Here the focus is…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC OTHER FORMATS: PS4, Xbox One ORIGIN: France PUBLISHER: Focus Home Interactive DEVELOPER: Cyanide PRICE: £34.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-2 MINIMUM SPEC: 2.5 GHz Dual Core CPU, 3GB RAM, 768MB GPU, 8GB HDD space ONLINE REVIEWED: No Though American Football and Warhammer might seem incongruous, the two are surprisingly complementary. The previous attempt was misguided in many ways but Cyanide has returned unperturbed and done a good job of improving on the original, bringing the game more in line with its potential. The addition of a campaign mode helps introduce the admittedly complex mechanics more slowly by introducing new elements with each match. While more could be done to ease in complete newcomers, it makes the game easier to pick up and learn, and though it will…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC OTHER FORMATS: iOS ORIGIN: US PUBLISHER: Devolver Digital DEVELOPER: Tendershoot,A Jolly Corpse PRICE: £7.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Most adventure games are concerned with you saving the world, and for better or worse, this sense of grandiose purpose can alienate you. It’s boring, too, right? Dropsy subverts that trope somewhat – you’re introduced to the physically repulsive clown as he visits his mother’s grave. She passed in a fire that’s largely perceived to be his fault, and as soon as you see the 16-bit pixel graphics showing Dropsy looking genuinely sad, you know this game is going to be a bit different to all those other adventure games out there. Dropsy isn’t concerned with saving the world: his purpose (and his game) is…

Released: 2000 Format: Nintendo 64 Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Left Field Productions Key Staff: Mike Lamb (coding and production), James Maxwell, Allen Fernandez (production), Sam Baker, Ben Stragnell (coding), Henry Sterchi (Nintendo producer), Jonathan Evans, Allan Hayburn, Richie Romero, George Simmons (art), Matt Furniss, Chris Lamb (music and sound effects). BY 2000, THE NINTENDO 64 LOOKED LIKE A CONSOLE FROM A DIFFERENT ERA. The PlayStation had debuted five years earlier, and Sega had released the Dreamcast just a year earlier. The European and American release of the PlayStation 2 was just around the corner, and all these systems embraced the new CD storage medium in contrast to Nintendo’s steadfast belief in the longevity of the cartridge. Yet the Nintendo 64 was far from short of classic games, many of them updates…