Innehållsförteckning för February 2017 från Edge

This year may be a testing one, and it’s tempting to stew over everything we don’t want to see come to pass, but let’s be positive and focus instead on what we’d like to see emerge throughout videogames in 2017. First, there’s the small matter of an entirely new platform from Nintendo. With Sony so dominant in today’s landscape, it makes sense that Switch has been designed as a console that doesn’t attempt to battle PS4 head on, preferring to fish in the handheld waters where Nintendo has been so successful since the introduction of the unassuming Game Boy nearly 30 years ago. We want to see the portable aspect work harmoniously with the hardware’s function under the TV, we want a mind-bending new Mario title, and we want The…

When the annual Independent Games Festival was founded in 1998, indie games felt like gaming’s ugly stepchild. They were often literally ugly, for starters, and usually pale imitations of what the mainstream industry was doing or had already done. No one was buying them, no one was selling them. The idea of an indie-game millionaire would have seemed laughable, let alone a billionaire. The IGF awards, held each year as part of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, have been part of moving the form from the fringes to the very centre of the industry, by helping unknown games find funding and secure access to digital distribution platforms on console and PC. Now, in an age where Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter exist, and where Sony and Microsoft knock on…

Game The Walking Dead Manufacturer Play Mechanix While Play Mechanix’s The Walking Dead lightgun game distinguishes itself from Sega’s House Of The Dead series in plenty of ways, the most noticeable is a pair of hulking, mounted crossbow controllers. The units sport a chunky stock and trigger at the rear, and a robust – though easy-to-use – double-sided lever for reloading. While bolts constitute your basic ammo, the game also arms you with hatchets, knives, hammers, explosive and incendiary projectiles, and even a nailgun. As should always be the case, zombies only expire if you land a headshot, which makes Play Mechanix’s introduction of bullettime sections particularly helpful. In some sequences you might need to rescue survivors, with a few seconds to neutralise the approaching undead threat without harming the…

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a year’s subscription to PlayStation Plus, courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment “Are games too grown up now to indulge the simple fantasy of feats of heroic derring-do?” Virtual reality There has been a lot of talk recently about the ‘simulation hypothesis’: the suggestion that we live inside a computer simulation. The hypothesis itself isn’t news: The Matrix was a big hit in 1999, and Descartes’ Meditations was all the rage 400 years ago. But now that it’s got the attention of some scientists, and of entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, it gets to feature prominently in newspaper coverage. There are different arguments for the hypothesis, but one goes something like this: videogames…

For all that we praise games that prize player agency, freedom can come at a cost. While being penned in by a stringent designer’s hand can be frustrating, too much choice can be crippling. Finding the right blend is no small challenge for developers, who must find a way to balance freedom and direction in such a way that doesn’t feels contrived, leave players feeling lost, or break any of the systems on which the game is built. It’s a challenge that Arkane Austin and Dontnod are both tackling head on. In Prey (p34), Arkane is embracing player whims to the fullest extent, endeavouring to create a game that says ‘yes’ to anything you might attempt, or even conceive of. To that end, you can tackle objectives in any way…

W’ve seen fuller trophy cabinets than this. They’ve been more prominently displayed than this one, too, which sits at the back of the main development floor at Supermassive’s Guildford HQ. There’s no shame in it: the studio has been in business for only eight years, during which time it has worked largely in niches. Yet standing alone, gleaming on the middle shelf, is a BAFTA, and a coveted one at that: the 2015 award for Best Original Property, awarded to Supermassive’s breakout hit, the teen slasher Until Dawn. “It’s such a difficult thing to do,” managing director Pete Samuels tells us. “It always has been, in our industry, to create something from scratch. It’s opened some doors for us, for sure.” After eight years in which it has worked so…

As with every other aspect of the game, Trico’s reaction to these glass barriers is neither guaranteed nor binary There isn’t a single audio diary in earshot, nor any logs to read through. Cutscenes, meanwhile, say only as much as they need to, never outstaying their welcome. Director Fumito Ueda and his team at GenDesign, formerly the core of Team Ico, have always tackled storytelling in a restrained way, but while The Last Guardian’s narrated journey and broader geographical reach contribute to this feeling like the most extensively explained – and directly told – Ueda story to date, it also represents the pinnacle of the team’s singular approach. Much of that is down to the unprecedented expression possible through the extraordinary Trico. Communicating with AI characters has hitherto been a…

Developer Capcom Vancouver Publisher Microsoft Studios Format PC, Xbox One (tested) Release Out now It’s hard to complain too much about the absence of peril when you’re wearing the bottom half of a chicken suit LENS FLAIR The return of the first Dead Rising’s hero Frank West means a return of his camera, and while you can still snap scenes – and selfies – of comic violence in exchange for a chunk of Prestige Points, Capcom Vancouver has devised plenty of other ways for you to use it. The most common is an investigation, where you survey a scene for evidence using either the regular lens, a night- vision attachment, or the Spectrum Analyzer, a sort of UV filter which reveals handprints or access codes that grant entry to secret…

Developer/publisher Schell Games Format PSVR, Rift (tested) Release Out now LOOK AND TOUCH While I Expect You To Die can be played with a controller or mouse, and is also available on PSVR, Oculus’s Touch motion controllers are a particularly good fit for the game. Dials can be intuitively grasped and turned, and pressing any of the big, inviting buttons in the game is a simple matter of sticking out your finger and giving them a prod. Having two triggers – split between index and the rest of your fingers – also makes grabbing levers and guns feel particularly good. Right from the epic, ’70s-flavoured opening credits, I Expect You To Die immerses you in the fantasy of being a superspy. But Schell Games is peddling something that’s more Archer…

Illustration box-kite-curve.com Perhaps our weighty task as game developers is to put people off doing things the world would be better without Like most people in game development, I can’t really be bothered with real life and the people it contains. They’re too random. They say things, not as a response to my actions, but just because they can. They don’t even react realistically to being shot or having swords waved at them. Worst of all, they have complicated backstories which go nowhere. I refuse to waste hours fulfilling their quests, only to find that they don’t have gold to give me. They are distractions that can sod off, frankly. Against the run of play, though, it turns out one of my neighbours was a major in the Parachute Regiment.…

Stuart Goldsmith is a standup comedian and street performer who also hosts the popular The Comedian’s Comedian podcast. Here, he takes a break from preparing for his new tour to discuss another of his passions. Do you find much comedic inspiration from playing games? I actually wrote some material for the last show I did [Compared To What], which I’m touring, which was about Clash Of Clans. I love strategy games, and I thought there was a funny element to be found in the fact that because I spend so much time playing them, I don’t get anything done in real life. Which is not much of a strategy. I only got into Clash Of Clans because my ten-year-old godson had got into it, so because I had him in…

My co-op partner and I are piloting a spaceship through hostile star systems. It’s a pretty good spaceship: it has an engine that lays mines, four guns (one of which has lately become a giant flail), a shield resembling giant shark’s teeth, and a massive cannon that shoots out multiple homing missiles. The only problem, really, is that there are just two of us, and in order to switch from operating the top gun to, say, the shields, one of us has to physically move from one end of the ship to another, by means of platforming and ladders. And quite often we don’t communicate fast enough and we both rush to the engine, leaving the guns unmanned. Cue hilarious recriminations. Such are the delights of the excellent Lovers In…

Developer SMAC Games Publisher Mode 7 Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin UK Release 2017 Sometimes it helps to get a fresh perspective on things. In Tokyo 42, however, doing so is absolutely essential. In this top-down world, threats are everywhere. Moving and shooting are, as such, tremendously important. But just as vital to your chances of survival are the camera controls, which rotate your perspective to the left or right. This is a game of manipulating space, denying enemies line of sight whether in or out of combat. “Perspective is the key thing,” says Maciek Strychalski, co-creator of Tokyo 42. “Because we’ve got blocking buildings and stuff, you’re having to constantly rotate the camera. In terms of level design we’ve made sure that at any point you’re visible from…

CENTIPEDE Developer/publisher dK’Tronics Format ZX81 Release 1982 GRIDRUNNER Developer Llamasoft Publisher HESware, Quicksilva Format Atari 8bit, C64, VIC-20, ZX Spectrum Release 1982 HOVER BOVVER Developer/publisher Llamasoft Format Atari 8bit , Commodore 64, Intellivision, PC Release 1983 LLAMATRON: 2112 Developer/publisher Llamatron Format Amiga, ST, PC Release 1991 TEMPEST 2000 Developer Llamasoft Publisher Atari, Interplay Format Jaguar, PlayStation, PC, Saturn Release 1994 TEMPEST 3000 Developer Llamasoft Publisher Hasbro Interactive Format Nuon Release 2000 TXK Developer/publisher Llamasoft Format Vita Release 2014 SPACE GIRAFFE Developer/publisher Llamasoft Format 360, PC, Xbox One Release 2007 MINOTAUR RESCUE Developer/publisher Llamasoft Format iOS Release 2011 POLYBIUS Developer/publisher Llamasoft Format PS4, PSVR Release 2017 B ack in 1978, a 16-year-old Jeff Minter wandered into a room at his sixth-form college and found a fellow student sitting in front of…

The PlayStation Europe Twitter account recently announced that Horizon Zero Dawn would be released in the territory two days early. Within seconds, some wag had replied: “So a day later than the rest of the world, then.” A day? We used to wait months for the localisation of the latest big thing from Japan – and by the time it finally arrived, it would be bordered and running 17.5 per cent slower. Frustrating, sure, but when a long-awaited game finally arrived on local shop shelves, it meant something. It’s a feeling that’s somewhat absent from the modern game industry, with its simultaneous – or, in Horizon’s case, as good as simultaneous – worldwide releases. Nowadays the closest we get to that tantalising anticipation is hammering F5 on a webpage while…

Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now Since Noctis is soon to be married, it’s apt that what follows should capture the camaraderie of a stag holiday Yu Suzuki posited recently that the most interesting games aren’t the ones whose every element combines harmoniously, but those with jagged edges. He’d probably like Final Fantasy XV, which proves to be spikier than any of Tetsuya Nomura’s designs. That such a luxurious production should turn out to be so scrappy in places isn’t really a surprise: ten years of development means ten years’ worth of accumulated ideas, and the finished game suggests that director Hajime Tabata and his team weren’t sure quite what to leave out. The results are inconsistent. Here we have an open-world game that ends…

Developer/publisher Ubisoft (Annecy) Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now There’s something quietly wonderful here when you step away from the corporate nonsense PEAK FITNESS The quickest way to progress and unlock new mountains is to compete in events. These come in six different varieties, which are tailored towards specific playstyles, though you can’t really afford to ignore too many of the kinds you’re less keen on since you accrue XP much more slowly elsewhere. Our habit of finishing events by simply carrying on down the mountain meant we ranked up as an Explorer a little sooner than in the Extreme Rider category, though by happy accident we ended up doubling as a Bone Collector. As you level up and complete events you’ll earn new gear, but with…

Developer/publisher Superhot Team Format Rift Release Out now SLOW GUNS There is, sadly, no katana, but Superhot VR’s assortment of weapons still represents a satisfyingly violent stockpile. Pistols, SMGS and shotguns comprise the base armoury, but you’ll find yourself tossing ashtrays, snooker balls, hatchets, hammers, shuriken and even coffee pots as you fight for your life. You’ll need plenty of space to do so, though: in one particularly painful instance, the robust- feeling jaw of an enemy turned out to be our living-room wall. We’re bent over backwards, holding a handgun sideways and taking aim at our next target’s head. Bullets are slowly fizzing through the air as another enemy recoils, as if through treacle, from the hammer we just threw at his head. We can’t imagine this looks particularly…

It was largely a reprise of last year’s PSX show with the same names filling the same roles Those of you who would like to take something positive from 2016 can look on it as the year in which the convention circuit completed its transformation from industry knees-up to fan-focused hype onslaught. Things had been heading this way for a while, admittedly, but 2016 was the year in which sales graphs were consigned to the bin, where trade shows were pretty much abandoned in favour of fan events, and where stage events were made primarily for the people watching at home, rather than those whooping their lungs out in the room itself. In that sense PlayStation Experience was a fine way to round out the year, even though it showed…

“I do like Minecraft... That’s something we should have made. Back in the N64 days we had some designs that were very similar.” Other things Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto definitely thought of first: Star Wars, Netflix, and the McRib “What happened to Kojima last year was a tragedy, but he never complained. He just sat in an isolated room for months, looked inside himself and focused on his art.” Careful, Geoff Keighley: focus on your art for too long and you’ll go blind “There is no money in it. I don’t mean ‘money to go buy a Ferrari’. I mean ‘money to make payroll’… Developers made these deals because it is the only way their games could come out.” DayZ creator Dean Hall sketches out an apocalyptic landscape for VR development “We need…

BOOK Phoenix IV bit.ly/phoenixiv Though many outside of the US were unaware of it at the time, America’s videogame crash of 1983 ripped an industry to pieces, leaving a trail of high-profile casualties in its wake. The rebuilding process in the following years was the focus of Leonard Herman’s Phoenix in 1994, and the book retained its subtitle, The Fall & Rise Of Videogames, for two subsequent editions. With the arrival of its fourth iteration, however, we get a subtitle that encapsulates the book’s mission statement today: The History Of The Videogame Industry. At 828 pages, it is the most farreaching of all game-history studies (for arcade and console games, at least – it avoids computer games), Herman’s hardened dedication to his mission baked into every one of its 43…

Since becoming a father, I’ve not really had a hangover. I mean, I’ve had plenty – the pounding head, the churning stomach, the waves of nauseous regret – but not like I used to, where you just spend a Sunday curled up in the foetal position on the sofa watching five straight hours of the worst channel on the television because the remote is two feet away and you simply can’t summon up the will to move. These days a hangover means desperately urging a toddler to finally discover his indoor voice, sadly tidying up Mega Bloks, and trying not to puke when 15 kilos of seemingly infinite energy knee-drops your diaphragm. Yet I’ve been thinking a lot about those old hangovers lately, and specifically that apparent physical inability to…

Developer Dontnod Entertainment Publisher Focus Home Interactive Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin France Release 2017 Among the things we disliked about our first glimpse of Vampyr, Dontnod’s tale of occult predation in wartime London, was its combat – a graceless thirdperson mishmash of three-hit combos and pistol exchanges, peppered with crowdcontrol spells and teleport dashes. It was a shaky advert for a developer now wandering back into action-adventure territory after the success of episodic adventure Life Is Strange, but the addition of Teppei Takehana to Dontnod’s ranks goes some way towards addressing our misgivings. Hired as animation director in June 2016, he brings ten years of experience as an animator at Kojima Productions and Quantic Dream, whose games tread a similar line between motioncaptured plausibility and outright fantasy. While…

Developer/publisher Stellar VR Format PSVR Origin UK Release February This is not going well. It’s our fault, in fairness: a couple of minutes into our first play of Korix, we had watched as our laser turrets ripped a small troop of enemy soldiers to shreds and joked that it was too easy. “You’ll see,” creator Mark Taylor said – and we did. The threat in Korix’s singleplayer campaign ramps up quickly, and exponentially; before long the masses of onrushing troops are smashing down walls, destroying units at a canter and marching on towards our base, which falls in seconds. Win or lose, a campaign level of this pacy blend of RTS and tower defence will never last more than 12 minutes. That’s perhaps a necessary design decision for a game…

Between Oculus Rift’s astonishing Kickstarter success in 2012 and its official launch last March, the VR conversation was almost entirely technical – one of screen resolutions, framerates and latency; of optimal control systems; of the design and manufacturing of headsets, and of the processing power required to run them. Yet with the first year of consumer VR coming to a close, those problems have been solved, and the question now is how this remarkable technology can best be harnessed by games. Enter Jason Rubin, Naughty Dog co-founder, former THQ president and, today, head of content at Oculus, where he is charged with defining the software strategy for the company that brought VR back from the grave – and for the VR industry in general. Here, Rubin reflects on the first…

Developer/publisher Drool Format PC, PS4 Origin US Release 2016 Harmonix was riding high in 2009. Sales of Rock Band and Rock Band 2 were in the multi-millions and Viacom, the series’ publisher, was on its way to becoming one of the largest videogame companies in the United States. Its future was secure, but Harmonix was about to go even further – with the finishing touches being applied to The Beatles: Rock Band, its reputation as the predominant creator of music games would, by the end of the year, be cemented. On the verge of its biggest success to date, Harmonix had little time for a strange new prototype created by one of its effects artists, Brian Gibson. His short video, showcasing a basic, unfinished-looking rhythm game, had made the rounds…

Developer GenDesign Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment Format PS4 Release Out now It shouldn’t work, and yet it all coheres to create the most naturalistic creature to ever exist in a videogame We’ve been waiting a long time for this. Not the near-decade that has passed since work on The Last Guardian began, but rather the 15 years that have elapsed since we first sat through Ico’s credits, processing what we’d just experienced. In all its brave and sometimes rickety construction, The Last Guardian feels every bit the Ico sequel we’ve pined for during that time. And although we share the young protagonist’s trepidation at setting out into the unknown, our fears are allayed with each step taken deeper into GenDesign’s captivating world. For the most part, that reassurance is provided…

Developer Grasshopper Manufacture Publisher GungHo Online Entertainment Format PS4 Release Out now You repurpose traffic cones as helmets and turn in crafting materials to a chap wearing a spacesuit and a Hitler moustache YES EXPRESS While the most immediately productive way of spending real cash is on bundles of Death Metal so you can continue when you die, you can also pay up to improve your quality of life, rather than just brute-force your way up the tower. The Express Pass lasts for 30 days, and offers a daily login reward of a desirable perk – increasing XP gains, improving health regen, reducing durability issues or increasing carry capacity. But you’ll also get to travel by lift and train for free and in comfort. There’s just one problem: at the…

Publisher Nintendo Developer Nintendo EPD/DeNA Format iOS Release Out now RUMBLE IN THE FUNGAL Toad Rally mode provides an asynchronous competitive twist on levels you’ve unlocked in the main game. You’ll pick one from a selection of opponents to race against, as you compete to earn the most coins, with your tally boosted by an audience of Toads that gathers to watch and applaud skilful play. Win, and the Toads you attract will join a Mushroom Kingdom of your own design in a rudimentary city-building aside that rewards you with new playable characters. Cards on the table: we didn’t like it at first. This was, we now realise, a matter of old habits dying hard – after 30 years of training, vaulting over Goombas rather than jumping on them takes…