Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 195 i GamesTM

What a year. What a selection of games. What a large pile of things I haven’t gotten around to yet. Chances are you’re familiar with the term ‘pile of shame’, but if not we tend to throw it around a fair amount on games™ and it’s essentially all the games we were meaning to play for the year, but haven't get around to yet. And it feels particularly pressing when you reach the year’s close and they’re still sitting there. This year, it’s a rather large pile, although I take no small amount of pride in the fact I managed to finish Horizon Zero Dawn and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. Both ate up a lot of playing time, though, so some other things slipped away. At…

ANTHEM • PS4, Xbox One, PC • BioWare • Q4 2018 CRACKDOWN 3 • Xbox One, PC • Sumo Digital, Reagent Games, Ruffian Games, Cloudgine • TBC 2018 STAR CITIZEN • PC • Cloud Imperium Games • TBC 2018 BEYOND GOOD & EVIL 2 • PS4, Xbox One, PC • Ubisoft Montpellier • TBC 2018 ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF THE GAMES INDUSTRY THAT MAKES IT UNIQUE IN THE WORLD OF ENTERTAINMENT IS THAT IT IS NOT SIMPLY DRIVEN BY CREATIVITY OR NEW CONCEPTS; IT IS ALSO DRIVEN BY INNOVATION. ‘What if…’ are two of the most powerful words in our industry, and 2018 has some of the most ambitious and innovative experiences that we’ve seen in the last few years. “TARGETING THE SHARED-WORLD EXPERIENCE OF THE LIKES OF DESTINY…

METRO EXODUS • PS4, Xbox One, PC | • 4A Games | • TBC 2018 Bar a two-for-one re-release in 2014, things had been super quiet on the Metro news front. That was until the surprise reveal, at E3 2017, of a semi open-world third instalment. With its atmospheric underground setting, mutated enemies and post-apocalyptic melancholia, the series has made its name by splicing horror chills with traditional shooter mechanics. That makes the prospect of heading into larger locales (4A has confirmed Exodus won’t be open world, but will have sandbox environments) – with the ability to approach monsters and hostile survivors from multiple angles and the power to craft weapons – an exciting one for 2018. Don’t worry, there will still be plenty of dark, claustrophobic moments, but exploring…

WE’VE FOUND OURSELVES WONDERING WHAT MORE THERE IS TO COME FROM THIS GENERATION. With releases starting to hit the theoretical limits of what the stock PS4 and Xbox One can pump out and the Pro/X versions edging ever-closer to being the ’ideal’ edition of modern triple-A titles, there’s definitely a reasonable argument in favour of hitting the reset button and starting afresh with a whole new generation. But is it too soon? And would a PS5 and Xbox Two really kickstart a new wave of innovation? To the first question, it might feel too soon for a new console – but if we look at history, by the time Sony or Microsoft release their next consoles, it will be at least five years since this generation began. That’s around the…

DRAGON BALL FIGHTERZ • PC, PS4, Xbox One | • Arc System Works | • 26 January 2018 [1] The logical conclusion of Arc’s fine work in the fighting field to date, this tag-team brawler is a dream come true for many a fan of virtual pugilism. Using the same incredible tech as employed in Guilty Gear’s recent revival, characters, environments and effects all accurately mimic their 2D anime counterparts while actually being 3D models – we’ve seen cel shading and similar techniques used to capture the feel of shows such as Naruto, Bleach and Dragon Ball in the past, but Arc’s solution is very much the final form of this kind of tech. On a gameplay level, the three-on-three setup, partner assists, OTT super attacks and frantic pace will…

“CAN ANY OF THE GAMES RELEASING IN 2018 PUSH INTO THE ESPORTS SCENE IN A BIG WAY?” PLAYER-UNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS • Xbox One, PC • Bluehole • Q1 2018 TOTAL WAR: ARENA • PC • Creative Assembly • TBC 2018 BUILD SOMETHING INTERESTING AND THE PLAYERS WILL COME. That’s how this industry has a tendency to function. When a developer chooses to let its product out into the wild, it does, to a certain extent at least, become property of the community – a success or failure forged in the fires of Reddit and Steam reviews. The rise of competitive gaming works much in the same way, wherein the most popular games are propelled into the global spotlight and maintained by a player base eager to watch professional gamers play their favourite…

DICE IS STILL YET TO PROPERLY INCENTIVISE OBJECTIVE AND SQUAD-BASED PLAY ON CONSOLE DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PC ORIGIN: Sweden PUBLISHER: EA DEVELOPER: DICE, Motive, Criterion PRICE: £54.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-40 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes This is almost everything that a good sequel is supposed be; much of the loudest criticism was not only heard, but acted upon. EA addressed the lack of a single-player campaign by putting Motive Studios on the case, a brand-new studio created to oversee production of the publisher’s Star Wars games. The furore surrounding the lack starship battles was solved by giving Criterion Games a far larger part to play in production, while concerns surrounding the lack of content, troubled implementation of vehicles and heroes, and general lack of enjoyable career…

PLAYERS IN THIS 2018 EDITION COME WITH GREATER EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE DETAILS FORMAT: PC ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Sega DEVELOPER: Sports Interactive PRICE: £37.99 RELEASE: Out Now PLAYERS: 1-16 MINIMUM SPEC: Pentium 4, Intel Core or AMD Athlon – 2.2 GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel GMA X4500 or better, DirectX 9.0c, 7GB ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes The cult of the football manager grows ever stronger. Pep Guardiola moves closer to become a religious symbol with each passing game, Alex Ferguson and Bill Shankly are already there and Jose Mourinho continues to draw plaudits and wrath in unequal measure. David Moyes is, of course, the immortal court jester that any realm of self-respecting, self-aggrandising demi-gods needs. The cult of Football Manager grows stronger too, thanks to a constant stream of meaningful tweaks and additions to…

Sometimes you come across a game that’s just fine. It’s not going to change your life, it’s not going to impact you in any great way, it may entertain for a little bit, but it’s not really excelling in any way. Enter Super Lucky’s Tale, a game that’s about as bang average as you could hope to find. And we don’t mean for that to sound like we’re knocking it as being bad in any way. Average is fine. Average will get you through a weekend. And on the Xbox One right now with so few exclusives to enjoy and with so few family-friendly platformers to pick from, average fills a nice gap for anyone looking for something new. It’s just not a game we would be shouting about. This…

“ Mechanics blend seamlessly into storytelling in a way that is both poetic and utterly harrowing ” ANNA HOLLINRAKE, SENIOR ARTIST, CLIMAX STUDIOS “What Remains of Edith Finch is a game of vignettes. Each one tells a tragic tale about the Finch family, and in the factory worker Lewis’ story, mechanics blend seamlessly into storytelling in a way that is both poetic and utterly harrowing. Lewis loses himself in his own mind whilst he unendingly chops off fish heads at the plant, and I remember the factory floor melting away, still putting more fish through the guillotine, and forgetting how grim that reality was. I lost myself in the motions of it all, just like Lewis did, and in that moment I was completely in…

NINTENDO DS 2004 The original DS is rather ugly in its design, and has a weak display screen, but it’s relatively comfortable to hold, and has Game Boy Advance compatibility. NINTENDO DS LITE 2006 Nintendo’s redesign was slimmer and more lightweight, with a better quality screen that offered four levels of brightness. It retains the ability to play Game Boy Advance games. NINTENDO DSI 2008 This was a significant upgrade, adding two cameras, an SD card and the ability to access a digital eShop. It lacks a GBA slot, and all DSi specific software is region-locked. NINTENDO DSI XL 2009 While it retains the annoying region locking of its predecessor, the DSi XL is generally considered the best DS system to use due to its fantastic screen size and display.…

AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH EXISTS WITHIN THE VAST WEB OF SPIDER-MAN GAMES, HIDDEN BEHIND THE WELL OF NOSTALGIA, AND OBSCURED BY RAMPANT FAN EXPECTATION. In spite of a variety of studios trying for 35 years, with various degrees of success, we are yet to receive a videogame that truly delivers on the fantasy of being Spider-Man; one that gives an opportunity to confront and navigate the duality at the core of the character, the chance to embody the life of Peter Parker, and experience the insurmountable responsibility that exists in his role as the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man; a game that can find the balance between each of the various aspects that have helped define the character in the comic book, cinematic and animated entertainment mediums – his acrobatic movement, improvisational combat,…

“WE ARE NOW LOOKING TO THE NEXT CROP OF STUDIOS PUSHING GORE AND EMOTIONAL DEPTH AS THEIR FOUNDATION” GOD OF WAR • PS4 • SIE Santa Monica • Early 2018 FAR CRY 5 • PS4, Xbox One, PC • Ubisoft Montreal • 27 February 2018 DAYS GONE • PS4 • SIE Bend Studio • TBC 2018 2 018 IS GOING TO BE A LANDMARK YEAR FOR THE INDUSTRY – this much should be clear by now; after all, this issue of games™ has dedicated 49 pages to investigating the biggest and most exciting releases that have been revealed for it thus far. Look closely enough and you’ll see a handful of studios attempting to do something quite extraordinary. As an industry, the biggest franchises – the ones that truly stand…

BLOOD & TRUTH • PSVR | • London Studios | • TBC 2018 [1] Coming from London Studios (yes, the same developer that gave us The Getaway series on PS2), Blood & Truth is another round of knee-slapping, cor-blimey-ing Cockney violence – only this time it’s channelled through the witchcraft of VR. Building on its experience with the surprisingly fun The London Heist, the British outfit plonks you in the boots of a former special forces soldier who returns home to do battle with a gangster threatening his family. Okay, the story sounds like something out of a throwaway Chris Ryan novel, but with the promise of stealth (with silenced pistols, natch), full-on gunfights and more exploding Cockneys than a Guy Ritchie wet dream, we’re fully on board with this…

PHANTOM DOCTRINE • PC | • CreativeForge Games | • Q2 2018 [1] It would be far too easy to dismiss Phantom Doctrine as another XCOM clone, one that was merely shaking off its science-fiction flavour in favour of heading into the Cold War. That would be doing the game a huge disservice, because Phantom Doctrine is clearly one of the most exciting strategy games coming in 2018. In returning to an era barely touched since Sid Meier’s Covert Action, and in taking a handful of familiar strategy elements and employing a hearty amount of iteration over them, there’s an almost irresistible pull to CreativeForge’s creation. Set around a rich alternative history, one that is anchored by historical figures and events, Phantom Doctrine sets about exploring the next generation of…

“THE GAMES INDUSTRY HAS BEEN WOEFULLY INADEQUATE IN TAKING ADVANTAGE OF ITS EVER-INCREASING POPULARITY” PAID LOOT BOXES, IN WHICH PLAYERS PURCHASE ACCESS TO A RANDOMISED SET OF REWARDS, HAVE BEEN PART OF THE GAMES INDUSTRY FOR A DECADE NOW. The idea was popularised in Asia as a means for publishers to make a monetary return from those consumers without enough disposable income to pay full price for a game, however, the system has now become a Western staple. At first the practice was a copy of that used in Asia and was limited to games, such as Team Fortress 2, that came without an initial fee for entry. Nowadays, though, the likes of the FIFA series and the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront II – as well as other games that…

CAN NINTENDO POSSIBLY HOPE TO MATCH THE YEAR IT HAS JUST HAD WITH THE SWITCH AS WE HEAD INTO 2018? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that what’s to come on the Switch is a complete washout. Some of Nintendo’s favourite franchises are in the works and primed to keep the universal love of the Switch going for a few more months. These are just a few of the exclusives you can expect and we’re sure more third-party games will be winging their way to the system soon. POKÉMON SWITCH • Nintendo Switch | • Game Freak | • TBC 2018 [1] After cries of ‘please release Pokémon Snap on [Nintendo’s newest console]’ for years and years, Nintendo has finally listened! Ha, of course it hasn’t. You’re never getting Pokémon…

BREAKAWAY Game development is hard. It’s really hard. Even hugely promising titles can hit a rough patch, and that’s what has happened to Double Helix and Amazon Game Studios’ Breakaway. The competitive action game is going in to a period of heavy iteration following the closed Alpha that ran over summer 2017, with Double Helix working behind the scenes to ensure this exciting new game not only gets the love it deserves, but also has the systems in place to make a splash on the competitive and spectator scenes when it does eventually launch later in the year. FORTNITE It’s difficult to get a sense of Fortnite’s popularity or how large its staying power will ultimately prove to be. Epic’s co-op shooter turned Battle Royale experience is still in early…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PC, PS4, Switch ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Warner Bros DEVELOPER: Traveller’s Tales PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Following the Marvel Cinematic Universe is all well and good, but we prefer it when developers are allowed to have a little fun with famous heroes and tell their own stories. It’s something that the first LEGO Marvel Super Heroes title did brilliantly in 2013, and the sequel goes even further. Borrowing and tweaking a storyline from Marvel’s summer event, the plot revolves around Kang the Conquerer, who is using time-bending powers to bring together multiple time periods in a single Kingdom – Chronopolis – with him as its all-powerful leader. This massive area makes up the game’s hub world, and there’s a…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe DEVELOPER: Supermassive Games PRICE: £15.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-6 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Hidden Agenda succeeds in demonstrating the delicacy of real-life decisions and how they would affect a criminal investigation. Unfortunately, in doing so, Supermassive Games has also highlighted some of the downsides of developing a story-driven game with multiple plot alterations. While Hidden Agenda goes beyond the regular standard of just a handful of multiple endings, its complicated structure doesn’t necessarily entice us to continue replaying the game until we achieve the preferred ending. We were initially impressed by the concept of our actions influencing chunks of the story, but it soon became apparent when parts of the plot were missing. Across multiple playthroughs, many of…

Genre hybrids have only become more prevalent as games have matured as a medium, but there’s always the risk of developers spreading their efforts too thin. While a dash of RPG mechanics here or a branching narrative there may help to freshen up otherwise traditional experiences, there’s a delicate balance to strike to avoid ending up with something muddy and/or needlessly convoluted. On paper, then, something like Hand Of Fate should be almost doomed to failure – it cherry-picks key elements from not only videogaming but beyond into the tabletop space, blending seemingly disparate ingredients into a unique and exotic dish. With Arkham-style action combat, loot pools based on pre-assembled card decks, visual novel-style exposition and development and more, such a muddled mix of mechanics has no right to work……

WHEN NINTENDO FIRST announced its innovative handheld, it was heralded as a “third pillar”, a system that would complement both the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance. History had other plans for the handheld, however, and it went on to become Nintendo’s most popular console of all time, selling over 154 million units in the process. The success of Nintendo’s machine seems obvious with the help of hindsight, but on release it seemed ludicrous. The machine itself seemed to be on the same power level as the N64 (Super Mario 64 DS was actually a launch game), and was facing stiff competition from Sony’s incoming PSP, which was (wrongly) seen at the time as being on the same power level as the PS2. Many felt the stylus controls of the…

ASSASSIN’S CREED II Ubisoft has always marketed Assassin’s Creed in the same way: that it was able to use ‘history as its playground’. To its credit, it certainly is a playground wherein actual history collides with inane mutterings of conspiracy theorists. According to Assassin’s Creed, just about everything good in this world is secretly a Templar organisation. NASA, for example is actually a Templar front, designed so that Buzz Aldrin could retrieve an Apple of Eden from the surface of the Moon. CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS Revisionist history is basically what Treyarch used to build the monstrous success of the Black Ops series. But that’s all okay, because Call Of Duty’s maddest instance of twisted history comes in the form of ‘Five’; zombies are descending on Washington, and the…

[1] CHUCHEL • PC, Mac, Android, iOS | • Amanita Design | • Q1 2018 If you’ve ever played weird, slightly creepy point-and-click Samorost adventures, you’ll know what to expect from Chuchel, which is by the same studio. It’s equally confusing and weird, but it’s also strangely cute. A host of strange-looking characters accompany our hero Chuchel on his quest to get cherries – it’s like an entire game about the squirrel from Ice Age, but way, way more interesting. There’s a nonsensical humour running through Chuchel that makes it incredibly hard not to love, even if it occasionally borders on a Minions level of absurdity. Samorost 1, 2 and 3 were all great, so this will be too. [2] UNTITLED GOOSE GAME • TBC | • House House |…

CYBERPUNK 2077 • PS4, Xbox One, PC • CD Projekt Red • Q4 2018 RED DEAD REDEMPTION II • PS4, Xbox One • Rockstar Studios • Q2 2018 THE LAST OF US: PART II • PS4 • Naughty Dog • TBC 2018 THE UNKNOWN IS A WONDERFULLY ENTICING THING. It’s that very notion that makes a preview special issue like this work, constantly looking forward to the future and casting our minds to what might be. And so it is that often the most exciting, scintillating upcoming releases are also the ones with the most closely guarded or little-revealed details. We could hardly know less, so we’re desperate to know more. In this regard, three games stand out as particularly exciting and promising: The Last Of Us: Part II [1],…

GHOST OF TSUSHIMA • PS4 | • Sucker Punch | • TBC 2018 [1] This is going to be the year in which game design finally catches up with the constant escalation we’ve seen in visual fidelity; 4K gaming arrived on the home console scene in 2016 thanks to the release of the PS4 Pro and we are finally starting to see studios taking advantage of the power afforded by the upgraded system. Ghost Of Tsushima is one of the year’s most anticipated titles, and that’s not only because it looks stunning, but because it’s coming together as a true product of its time. Sucker Punch has spent the last few years building a sprawling open-world samurai game, set in the fires of feudal Japan, and we couldn’t be more…

“ If you ask me my favourite game I just don’t know it. There’s one every generation ” GLEN SCHOFIELD, CEO, SLEDGEHAMMER GAMES “I love a lot of games, and if you ask me my favourite game I just don’t know it. There’s one every generation; the Uncharted games, before that, Mario Sunshine … there’s just so many great games! I’m a giant fan of Resident Evil 4 as well, it was a big influence on Dead Space … newer games like Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare , which came out while I was at another company – I was at EA – and it absolutely blew me away. My…

INSTEAD OF A TEST OF SPEED AGAINST AI, IT OFTEN FEELS LIKE YOU’RE RACING AGAINST A DIRECTOR WHO’S CONTROLLING THE FLOW OF THE RACE DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: PC, Xbox One ORIGIN: Sweden PUBLISHER: EA DEVELOPER: Ghost Games PRICE: £49.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 (4-8 online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Sometimes a game should just work. There’s a gap in the market for a game of its kind, the developers have made the right noise and in the end, what’s been shown looks like fun. That was true of Need For Speed Payback. It should have been a great arcade racer, which are a rarity right now; it should have benefited from Ghost Games having taken a year off; and with a focus on modern Fast And Furious-like frolics,…

Sonic Forces is a mess. Even without the unenviable platforming competition offered by the luscious playgrounds of Super Mario Odyssey and the throwback pixels of Sonic Mania, the latest adventure for Sega’s mascot and his endless array of furry associates would feel like a game torn between identities, at a loss for a reason to exist. Does Forces want to evoke the 2D originals of the 8- and 16-bit era, the 3D mixed bags that followed or serve as a sequel to the one game that combined aesthetics without representing an unmitigated disaster, 2011’s Sonic Generations? It fails on all three fronts. It’s definitely a hand of friendship to the Sonic fan art community, with its inclusion of a custom-created avatar. But Forces only casts the player as…

What were your thoughts when Nintendo unveiled the DS? I’d been a fan of Nintendo handhelds since I got a Game Boy in the mid Nineties, so I was really looking forward to the DS. It sounds silly now, but for me, being able to play Mario 64 on the go was mind-blowing. I ended up getting the original DS on launch, I enjoyed Mario 64, but it was playing WarioWare Touched! that made me realise the system was something special. I ended up getting each of hardware models on launch (DS lite, DSi, DSi XL), and this continued through to the 3DS (I only stopped with the 2DS). What do you think the strengths of the DS are? For me, the DS is such a great system due to…

AT THIS VERY moment, Marvel as a company is at the height of its powers. Though it’s always been a force to be reckoned with since it first began in 1939, the company has gone through countless successes, troubles and money issues, but always remained successful throughout. However, in 1996 that was an entirely different story. Though the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties were deemed the golden years of the comic-book giant, the Nineties fared worse. Regardless of the reason as to why this was, its success bubble had seemingly burst, and over a mere three years, Marvel’s stock value had been decimated. For instance, shares that were once worth $35.75 each in 1993 had dropped to $2.375 by 1996. This didn’t stop Marvel from working with Gorden to bring X-Men:…

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Publisher: Ubisoft Released: 13 November 2007 System: Xbox 360, PS3 THE BIGGEST FRANCHISES often have the humblest of beginnings. For Ubisoft, the road to establishing a billion-dollar brand began in 2003. Production had wrapped on Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time and a team of aspiring developers, engineers and programmers were immediately tasked with taking the beloved actionplatformer to the next level, envisioning a sequel that was bold, expressive and innovative. It didn't go as planned and they may have accidentally killed the series entirely. But what arose from the ashes was far greater and more potent in the marketplace, with the power to entice audiences outside of videogames, its allure seeping out into everything from cinema and comics, to toys and anime. Assassin’s Creed was born…

• Special cards like this one can completely change the shape of a board in competitive play, or just really change up the beat for a fun party mix. • The Dropmix app works on iOS and Android, so a smartphone or tablet is all you need to get the game going out of the box. • Placing cards on the Dropmix deck will add a new section or beat to the song. The card on top is always the one in play. We still can't explain mechanically how that’s possible. • The colour-coding of the cards makes it really easy to see where you can place them and what they will change about the track being played. Some cards have multiple functions. DROPMIX MANUFACTURER: HASBRO PRICE: £119.99 WE’D BE…