Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 183 i GamesTM

There’s nothing quite like the excitement and tension that surrounds a new first-party exclusive that’s also a brand new IP. In fact there are few things in gaming that I look forward to seeing more. Sure, it’s not always a great success and more often than not it’s not the first game that really sets the bar (Uncharted being a good example), but when you have the combination of new ideas, an unknown world and first-party backing, you have a baseline of expectation that’s higher than your typical game release. For me, Horizon Zero Dawn adds another fascinating element and that’s seeing a developer move out of its comfort zone into ambitious and untested territory. Making an open-world RPG is nothing like the kind of structured first-person shooter games this…

As expected, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games are going to have another incredible year. With eSports on a seemingly unstoppable rise, the genre’s premier games show no signs of dipping in popularity – if anything, they are only growing. That’s impressive in and of itself; many of these games have been running for a decade (if not longer), while League Of Legends alone boasts a current server population of over 100 million monthly active players. The MOBA is in for one hell of a year and publishers are aware, with many of the genre’s biggest titles undergoing serious revisions in preparation. Whether you’re an existing fan, a lapsed player or a cautious observer standing on the Twitch sidelines, now is the time to choose your side and get involved. 1…

“ It’s so abstract that you can sort of forgive the clunky combat that it has and some of the block pushing puzzles ” PHIL DUNCAN, CO-FOUNDER AND DESIGNER, GHOST TOWN GAMES “I replayed Ico recently and absolutely adored it. There’s just something about the atmosphere of that game. As a designer I like the mechanics that are at play, but they’re sort of hidden behind the world and it all just fits together so nicely. And it’s so abstract that you can sort of forgive the clunky combat that it has and some of the block pushing puzzles. It just feels like such a nice world and it makes you question who you are in that world and what you’re doing. I…

“ The biggest change coming to the world of Knack is two-player co-op ” CONCEPT • A direct sequel to the 2013 original, Knack 2’s linear 3D platforming and combat returns with a greater emphasis on exploration and two-player co-op. INFORMATION Details Format: PS4 Origin: Japan Publisher: Sony Developer: Sony Japan Studio Release: 2017 Players: 1-2 Developer Profile Formed in 1993, Sony Japan Studio (or SIE Japan Studio) has been involved in some of PlayStation’s most memorable exclusives, including the Ape Escape games and LocoRoco. It’s also made a career of collaborating with other Japanese studios, including Team Ico, FromSoftware and Level-5. Developer History Ape Escape 1999 [PS1] Shadow Of The Colossus 2005 [PS2] Puppeteer 2013 [PS3] Bloodborne 2015 [PS4] High Point Bloodborne remains the most impressive outing the studio…

“ Leveraging the trueSKYTM technology and developed utilizing Unreal Engine 4, Ace Combat 7 will astound players with beautifully rendered skies and highly detailed cityscapes ”PRESS RELEASE BANDAI NAMCO CONCEPT • Ace Combat makes its debut on the eighth generation of consoles, as the flight sim comes exclusively to PlayStation 4 with PSVR support – a first for the franchise. INFORMATION Details Format: PS4 Origin: Japan Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment Developer: Project Aces Release: TBC 2017 Players: TBC Developer Profile Formed in 2001 as an internal studio under the Bandai Namco umbrella, Project Aces is dedicated to both leading and assisting in the creation of all things Ace Combat. The studio is led by long-serving director and producer Kazutoki Kono – a veteran of the company for 20 years. Developer…

WILL KILLZONE EVER RETURN For now, it seems, Guerrilla will be taking a long hiatus from the Killzone franchise. That isn’t to say that the studio won’t one day return to it, but for now it is fully focused on Horizon and for whatever the future might hold for its new series. “We have never said that we will not go back to Killzone,” says managing director, Hermen Hulst. “We still love that series very much, but in the near future we are just so deeply engaged with Horizon that is the only thing, frankly, that is on our minds at the moment. Killzone is a franchise that a lot of us grew up making and we still really like that universe, so who knows what is going to happen?”…

Brian Fargo has two principle priorities at inXile, keeping his studio in business and keeping the quality of its games high; that’s something he isn’t willing to waiver on, and it’s only been possible because of his incredible success in crowdfunding. “I’ve got to be the rainmaker, I’ve got to bring the money in and pay everybody so we can do this stuff. In the past, when we were a developer [for hire], almost all I could do was to hustle around to try to get us the next project. I’d have a team of 70 or 80 people working on a game and the publisher would say, ‘Well, we will have to see how well this one does before we decide’,” said Fargo, noting how crippling publisher indecision could…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Kinmoku DEVELOPER:In-house PRICE: £2.49 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Awkwardness is the name of the game in One Night Stand . You wake up, naked, disoriented and hungover, in a strange bed – and when you turn over, there’s some woman next to you. No matter what you do, she runs out of the room to throw up. So far, so good. As the game progresses, you’re offered a few limited choices – do you snoop around the girl’s room to find out her name to pretend you totally remember her, and save her the humiliation of realising you don’t? Do you try to find out more about her so the conversation isn’t so awkward? Or would you…

NAILING THAT RUN THROUGH A CAVERNOUS GAP IN A MOUNTAIN IS REWARDING AND VERY MOREISH, BEGGING TO BE PERFECTED DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PC ORIGIN: France PUBLISHER: Ubisoft DEVELOPER: Ubisoft Annecy PRICE: £42.00 RELEASE: Out Now PLAYERS: 1 (2-4 online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes It should be the perfect time of year to have a winter extreme sports game to sink your teeth into, but Steep’s biggest selling point is also its biggest mistake: it’s yet another open world, this one offering snowboarding, skiing, wingsuiting and paragliding. Sports games usually pick either an arcade or simulation angle, but Ubisoft Annecy tries to straddle the line between both, and takes itself far too seriously with daft cut-scenes unveiling a newly found mountain with a voice-over…

“ Persona 4 is actually one of the reasons that I’m in the industry ” TOMASZ PRUSKI, SENIOR LEVEL DESIGNER, CI GAMES “Persona 4 is actually one of the reasons that I’m in the industry. In a good and bad way, because when I first started playing Persona 4 I played for three weeks straight. I didn’t go to school, I missed all of my classes, so when I came back there was too much backlog. I was doing two majors so I dropped one and focused on the one that was more game-design related. So, I focused on games and now I’m here. That’s why Persona is a very personal game for me and I’m really…

NINTENDO CLASSIC MINI: NES MANUFACTURER: NINTENDO PRICE: £49.99 IT’S FAIR TO say that we’ve taken our time over the NES Mini, playing every game, testing out its saving system, trying it out on different sizes of TV (even a 65-inch 4K display) and, frankly, we’re impressed. This is everything we could have wanted it to be. The selection of games includes some of the highlights of the original system, offering a trip down memory lane for anyone who had the pleasure of growing up with the NES, and is a fantastic showcase of how the console evolved over its lifetime and was pushed by new software over time for anyone approaching it as a new system. The NES Mini as a piece of hardware is largely excellent with only a…

“ A handful of impressive new announcements have once again raised the bar for commercial-grade VR ” With headset sales stagnating and an ever-growing list of developers claiming that there is no money to be made in ongoing virtual reality development, it looked as if the VR revolution might be coming to an abrupt, inconclusive end. But don’t tell that to HTC, as the company clearly still sees huge room for growth in the technology’s future; undeterred by the problems and inspired by its potential to continue innovating and evolving. A handful of impressive new announcements have once again raised the bar for commercial-grade VR, leaving Oculus – and to a certain extent, Sony – in danger of looking woefully behind the curve. HTC Vive is the most expensive of…

1 SCALEBOUND Described by director Hideki Kamiya as unlike anything PlatinumGames had done before, and a massive challenge for the studio, it would appear Microsoft viewed it as a challenge too far. Platinum still has a great reputation, but its recent output has received a mixed critical reception. No details on why Microsoft cancelled its participation have been stated, although Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, responded to fans on Twitter saying, “We believe result is better 4 Xbox gamers, still disappointing.” It’s ambitious online co-op and monster hunting gameplay had looked promising. 2 FABLE LEGENDS This one really stung, not least because it also saw the closure of Lionhead as a studio after years of restructuring, which left it in no shape to release anything other than Fable Legends, a…

CONCEPT • Forget everything you thought you knew about Prey as Arkane wipes the slate clean and reboots the franchise. This is more than Dishonored set in space, it’s an entirely new take on action-sims. INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PS4, PC Origin: USA Publisher: Bethesda Softworks Developer: Arkane Studios Release: 2017 Players: 1 Developer Profile Formed in 1999, Arkane Studios has spent many years learning from the best in the business. After stints working with Valve in secret and providing assistance on BioShock 2’s level design, the studio made a name for itself with the release of Dishonored. High Point Dishonored is a classic of the last generation. It effortlessly filled the gap Thief had left in the hearts of many stealth fans, proving the studio has what it…

“ Gigantic is an entirely new action MOBA experience that combines high twitch skills and deep strategic choices… Gigantic is way beyond Overwatch or Paladins ”CHRIS CHUNG CEO OF MOTIGA CONCEPT • Gigantic is a free-to-play MOBA designed specifically around the limitations of the controller. Team-based action combat breaks away from traditional MOBA form to create something faster and more immediate. INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PC Origin: USA Publisher: Perfect World Entertainment Developer: Motiga Release: TBC 2017 Players: 1-10 Developer Profile Founded in 2010, Motiga was started by Chris Chung (ex-Trion Worlds) and Rick Lambright (ex-Starwave) in an attempt to build a game company that would be first and foremost focused around building and servicing a community of gamers. The studio’s first project, Gigantic, has been in production since…

“ This is our biggest project we’ve ever worked on and the entire team is pushing really hard to make the entire experience more polished. ”MAREK TYMINSKI CI GAMES CONCEPT • The Sniper series moves to Georgia for an open-world outing where civil war is being used to cover up a darker purpose. INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Xbox One PC Origin: Poland Publisher: CI Games Developer: In-house Release: 4 April 2017 Players: 1 Developer Profile The Warsaw-based developer and publisher has been involved in dozens of projects since its formation in 2002, but its most prominent releases have definitely been the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series and, most recently, Lords Of The Fallen. It now has more offices in Poland, Romania, Germany, USA and the UK. Developer History Sniper: Ghost Warrior…

There are thousands of people working in games today who have an impact on the titles we play and the way they’re made. Attempting to collate, judge and list so many individuals on the degree to which they impact the industry is something of a foolhardy endeavour, but one that we’ve attempted to complete all the same. In attempting to apply some form of methodology to our madness we’ve used a series of criteria to help us work out the degree to which each of these individuals influences the industry. The first is authority, a measure of their control over the company or immediate area they work in. Reach is a measure of how far the things these individuals do can be felt through games. Impact is about the depth…

YOU KNOW SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT WHEN YOU ROUND A CORNER TO SEE HUNDREDS OF ZOMBIES AND YOUR FIRST THOUGHT’S ‘OH, NOT AGAIN…’ DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PC ORIGIN: Canada PUBLISHER: Microsoft DEVELOPER: Capcom Vancouver PRICE: £49.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 (1-4 Online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Like an old joke incapable of eliciting anything more than a snicker from its audience, there’s something that's just a little tired about Dead Rising 4 . All the right ingredients are here, from the series’ signature over-the-top weaponry, to its endless undead hordes. But there’s a distinct whiff of something stale – and it isn’t just the zombies. Overly-repetitive gameplay and a distinct feeling of déjà vu have their parts to play. But it’s the way the game has been…

DETAILS FORMAT: 3DS ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: Level-5 PRICE: £28.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A The 3DS is no stranger to large JRPG releases, with Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse and Pokemon Sun And Moon releasing in 2016, but there’s still room for another gigantic journey, and Dragon Quest VIII: Journey Of The Cursed King fills that niche excellently. Dragon Quest VIII kicks off with an evil mage named Dhoulmagus turning innocent people into different creatures and animals, and it’s up to you and your party to find a way to stop this curse, as well as Dhoulmagus. Accompanied by Dragon Quest’s lighthearted tone, it's not a hugely mature story. Instead, the game captures…

CONTEXT-SENSITIVE ACTIONS AND THE INTRODUCTION OF LOCK-ON Z-TARGETING ARE JUST TWO OF THE GENRE STAPLES THAT OCARINA OF TIME INTRODUCED Released: 21 November 1998 Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo EAD System: N64 HEY! LISTEN! When it comes to legitimate industry game changers, they don’t come much bigger or influential than The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. Developed in tandem with Super Mario 64, the hero of time’s N64 debut would land two years later (in 1998) but would arguably have a larger impact on the design and direction of 3D adventure games in the years to follow. Ocarina Of Time established the template for the genre; it impressed with its bold and intricate dungeon design, engaging narrative and vast, sprawling overworld. In Ocarina Of Time, Nintendo didn’t just have the…

The ability to track real objects is, quite honestly, incredible. While we can only imagine the sort of simulation games this could inspire developers to create – imagine an FPS game where a life-sized gun is tracked accurately across the screen, down to your most intricate movements – its real, truly impressive application is going to come in the field of education. Imagine a tennis game where the digital re-creation of Andy Murray actually helps you improve your swing, racket in hand; or the ability for emergency services to help teach up and coming firefighters how to manage and operate expensive equipment in a virtual environment. Between the Tracker, and a suite of upgraded VR cameras and VR gloves (designed to accurately track 1:1 hand movements) the price and potential…

“ Players must use their wits to decipher the challenges and secrets of an expansive world strewn with rugged terrain, wild creatures and the crumbling ruins of a long-forgotten civilisation ”TEQUILA WORKS PRESS RELEASE CONCEPT • Rime is a single-player puzzle adventure game focused around the pursuits of a shipwrecked boy trying to escape a mysterious island following a torrential storm INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PS4, Switch Origin: Spain Publisher: Grey Box and Six Foot Developer: Tequila Works Release: May 2017 Players: 1 Developer Profile Formed in 2009 by former employees of Blizzard Entertainment, MercurySteam and Sony Computer Entertainment, Tequila Works has been slowly and diligently creating independent games out of Madrid, Spain. Deadlight, released in 2012, was the studio’s first game, though it is yet to follow that…

“ We’re humbled by the outpouring of support, and admittedly a bit shellshocked. We can’t thank our supporters enough. We are prepared to give everything we have to make an unforgettable game ”DAN VÁVRA WARHORSE STUDIOS CONCEPT • It’s a time of war in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the son of a blacksmith is caught in the middle. How you choose to progress in this world is up to you. INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Xbox One, PC Origin: Czech Republic Publisher: Deep Silver Developer: Warhorse Studios Release: TBC 2017 Players: 1 Developer Profile Founded by former writer and game designer from 2K Czech, Daniel Vávra, and Martin Klíma, a producer who worked at Altar Games, Codemasters and Bohemia Interactive, the team was founded in 2011 but Kingdom Come is…

1 OLD TIME HOCKEY Format: PS4, Xbox One, PC Publisher: V7 Entertainment Developer: In-house ETA: TBC 2017 Inspired as much by classic, simpler ice hockey titles from around the late Nineties as it is by the Seventies, Old Time Hockey is the kind of arcade sports game we’ve missed. It’s got all the classic hockey moves, plus cartoon action and lots of violence. And, of course, it’s got a retro Seventies look to it, too, just for some added flavour. We’ve not had a good tongue-in-cheek sports game for a while and this one looks to have strong gameplay and a sense of humour. The fact that games can descend into fistfights with full punching controls is evidence that V7 Entertainment knows what hockey is really about. 2 BATTLE CHEF…

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF IS NOT JUST BENEFICIAL TO THE GAME – IT’S ESSENTIAL DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Sony DEVELOPER: Japan Studio/ GenDESIGN PRICE: £49.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A We’ve done all kinds of difficult things in the many years since this magazine first appeared on the shelves. We managed to put every Souls game to bed long before guides existed or summoning for help was an option; we solved The Witness and Fez when there were no YouTube guides to lend a helping hand; through the fire and flames, we carried on to delicious five-star victory when even the best pretend guitar players in the business were struggling. Though it may sound like it, this isn’t just shameless bragging (although any little we can…

GRASSHOPPER MANUFACTURE DOESN’T DEAL IN BLOCKBUSTERS, BUT THIS IS LIKELY TO BE A CULT HIT DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: GungHo DEVELOPER: Grasshopper Manufacture PRICE: Free-to-play RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Getting a surprise release during Sony’s PlayStation Experience keynote, Let It Die is the latest from Grasshopper Manufacture, the studio helmed by Suda51 – one of gaming’s most intriguing producers – and true to his usual form, it’s bloody weird. Although he didn’t direct this title himself, it has all the hallmarks of a Suda joint. Any game that has you liaising with a skateboarding, foul-mouthed Grim Reaper called ‘Uncle Death’ between sessions might seem extremely odd, but this is pretty much standard Suda fare. Heavy metal? Check. Wrestling moves? Of…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC OTHER FORMATS: PS4, Xbox One, Android ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Telltale DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £18.99 RELEASE: Out Now PLAYERS: 1 MINIMUM SPEC: Windows 7 or higher, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 3 GB RAM, 8 GB hard drive space, Nvidia GTS 450+ with 1024MB+ VRAM A New Frontier begins with its graphics settings turned up to max. It is nearly unplayable. Telltale’s optimism here is admirable, but misplaced: their newest addition to the steadily growing Walking Dead series suffers from the same issues that every Telltale game has. Input lag makes quick time events almost impossible; scenes freeze at points that are supposed to be tense, but instead end up being comedically awkward. Turning the settings and the resolution down makes the game run – not…

ENEMY TARGETING • Attacking enemies in a 3D space was always a little cumbersome in 3D action-adventure games. Or at least, it was until Ocarina Of Time arrived with its ingenious Z-Targeting lock-on system. A staple of the genre today, it allowed the player to intuitively snap the camera to an enemy, giving Link the freedom to circle and strafe around monsters without losing the ability to follow or dish out attacks; where would we be today without such an important game system? PLATFORMING EXCELLENCE • Super Mario 64 is a classic, a showcase for the brilliance of Nintendo in the Nineties, but it also showcased some of the pitfalls of platform navigation in a 3D space. As the two games were developed in tandem, it gave the team plenty…