Edge March 2022

In the beginning, bigger was always better, mostly because we had so little to start with. To a kid trying to persuade a computer with 1K of RAM to play games in the early 1980s, 32K felt like an outrageous luxury, 64K almost beyond the realms of understanding. If your machine could display eight colours, you envied the rival with 16, while on the audio side there was little shame to touch that of those with just a solitary blooping channel to their names. It was a numbers game, with entire marketing campaigns built around scale. In 1984, Mike Singleton’s acclaimed strategy adventure The Lords Of Midnight was hailed for the 32,000 possible “views” it was capable of generating. (Just three years earlier the original Donkey Kong’s four unique stages…

Following the explosion of interest in modern VR thanks to 2012’s Oculus Rift Kickstarter, the energy surrounding the scene has fluctuated, spiking with the launch of hardware such as PSVR and Oculus Quest, but nowadays taking a back seat to metaverse and cryptocurrency hype in many investors’ eyes. Rather than harming the efforts of VR hardware and software developers, however, this reduced profile may end up benefitting everyone involved. Out of the spotlight, the market has continued to grow significantly – driven lately by strong Oculus Quest 2 sales – while on the big stage Sony chose PSVR2 as it headline story at CES 2022 on January 4. “The challenge with any new technology is that it’s easy for everyone to get excited about its potential, but that excitement can…

While Sony’s second PSVR headset was announced in 2021, CES was used to reveal technical specifics, placing PSVR2 as a rival to higher-end sets on the market today, with a resolution of 2,000x2,040 pixels per eye and a 110-degree field of view. Valve’s Index may improve on the latter point, but Sony is nevertheless committed to considerable performance, alongside refined accessibility, with a single cable connecting the unit to a base PS5. Eye tracking is perhaps PSVR2’s standout feature, although efforts underway with Meta’s Project Cambria headset suggest that it will include similar functionality. Where Meta may not match up to Sony’s approach is with the PSVR2 headset’s feedback mechanism, which is based on the lauded rumble technology used in DualSense controllers, albeit powered via a single motor rather than…

Following up on 2009 puzzle masterwork Drop7 is no small task. Frank Lantz’s elegant game has arguably never been surpassed in its genre, but an idea born from the mind of his son and collaborator James Lantz is having a run at it regardless. Glance at Babble Royale, and it looks every part like a playful subversion of the very form from which it takes its name. To a degree, that is exactly what it is. Ostensibly a blend of the conventions of Scrabble and PUBG: Battlegrounds, the game has arrived as the latest work from family-run studio Everybody House Games. When it was revealed by Lantz Sr on Twitter in the closing weeks of 2021, Babble Royale appeared almost to be a joke told in game form – a…

The Lantzes’ ultimate ambition for Babble Royale is for it to attract players who stay for a long time, investing hundreds or even thousands of hours in it – something the original Scrabble has obviously achieved without a drip feed of updates and tweaks. James and Frank are keen not to meddle with Babble Royale’s form too much as they bring players fresh ideas. They talk of tournaments, custom lobbies, potential squad modes, hypothetical themed maps, and their admiration for Rocket League’s approach. “We’re not sure, of course,” Frank concludes, with a glint in his eye. “Part of the fun of this is seeing where it goes.”…

Historical games can be educational, whether or not they’re designed to be, but rarely are they this relatable. As the opening of Strange Sickness puts it, “You’ve read the stories of kings, queens, knights and bishops. You’ve heard tales of the battles they fought, the schemes they spun and the castles they built and defended. But this is not one of their stories.” It is, in fact, taken from Aberdeen’s ‘common book’, a record kept for hundreds of years that documents the lives of ordinary people and the impact of events on their day-to-day existence. In this case, taking us back to the 1490s, and the imminent arrival of the Great Plague. And it’s impossible not to see the parallels between what follows in this absorbing piece of interactive fiction…