Innehållsförteckning för February 2019 från Edge

The theme of the 2010s in videogames has been one of separation; of the magic that can happen when developers choose their own adventures, turning their backs on big publishers and striking out on their own. Many of the biggest games of the decade have been born not in the boardroom but the bedroom, made free from corporate interference and finding success through hard work and word of mouth. Yet with the decade running down, perhaps that is changing. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the first Edge of 2019 is characterised by the spirit of collaboration; of creatives working together to reach some higher plane, instead of standing alone. In Hype, we check in on the new game from Simogo. It is one of Edge’s favourite developers, the maker of…

For all the talk of celebrating the year’s best, the evening was really about what is coming in 2019 We are starting to understand why Sony is skipping E3 next year. Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards project is five years old now, and has grown in stature to a point where it rivals the world’s biggest videogame event for new announcements. Prior to this year’s event, the 2019 release calendar was looking a little sparse. Now Keighley has shown his hand, what looked like a troubling transitional year at the fag-end of a generation now appears to be a cracker. In half a decade Keighley has, in effect, built a December version of E3. A key element to the show’s appeal is that it is platform-agnostic, so largely free of…

WEBSITE CLOTHING Barking Irons x Red Dead Redemption 2 bit.ly/barkingred Videogame-themed clothing isn’t great, as the gigantic pile of XXXL promo T-shirts we use for padding in fragile parcels will attest. While this collaboration between Rockstar and New York-based clothing label Barking Irons exists to promote Red Dead Redemption 2, to the naked eye it has nothing to do with videogames: it’s simply a well-made (and appropriately priced – the ‘gunslinger coat’ will run you $250) collection of western workwear. Look closer and there’s branding – a subtle R* stitching on a shirt pocket, Arthur Morgan’s name printed inside an undershirt’s collar, ‘The Van Der Linde Gang’ on a jacket’s inside pocket – but this collection is about having something to wear, rather than to advertise, and it’s all the…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar I love it when I have a game I can play every day, and that rewards me for doing so, but doesn’t punish me if I don’t Some months back I wrote about the problem with videogame intros: that, as games get bigger and developers and publishers obsess over how to keep us engaged in hour 100, they are overlooking the importance of hour one. Ever since I wrote that, something’s been niggling at me. There’s a problem with that argument: developers aren’t exactly nailing their endgames, either. This was really rammed home to me this month by Destiny 2’s new non-expansion, Black Armory, which turned out to be even more annoying than its spelling. Bungie’s trying something new here, doing away with the sort of mini-expansions it…

Developer/publisher Hypixel Studios Format PC Origin Canada Release TBA Next year marks Minecraft’s tenth anniversary. After a decade of continual development, not only at Mojang but also in the community of server operators, mod developers and world builders that’s grown up around it, now the kids who got into Minecraft in its early days are in their late teens and 20s. The Minecraft generation has come of age, and in Hytale, we’re seeing it starting to make its own games. Hytale is fundamentally a heightened version of Minecraft. It boasts prettier graphics, more user-friendly features, more dynamic systems and more dramatic action. Players will explore a huge procedurally generated continent of different biomes, find pre-designed dungeons to raid, fight monsters, craft items and cultivate farms. You might feel a little underwhelmed at the prospect…

Audio is a crucial component of most horror games, but Creaks’ evocative title promises a lot. “It was the biggest challenge to find the voice for the dog,” Jurda says. “We took a lot of tries finding something that would be between barking and some object doing the sound. I think, in the end, Matouš [Godik, sound designer] did it on cello somehow.” Scottish composer Joe Acheson, aka Hidden Orchestra, provides the score, and each of the game’s five sections has its own appropriate musical theme. “In the beginning in the attic, we use percussion and try to keep it kind of simple, almost prehistoric. Then there is the Librarian’s world, which is kind of spiritual […] We’re getting more and more modern as we descend through this house.”…

Tencent is perhaps more famous in the west for buying up chunks of the game industry than it is for making games. Founded in 2003, it owns 100 per cent of Riot Games, an undisclosed minority stake in Activision Blizzard, a five per cent stake in Ubisoft, 11.5 per cent of PUBG maker Bluehole and 40 per cent of Epic Games, to name just a few of the big hitters within its portfolio. It’s already a big name in battle-royale gaming, then, albeit one mentioned far more in investor calls than conference streams – and is an attractive partner for any company looking to break into China, where games can only be officially released through a native company.…

Mike Zaimont Lead designer, Skullgirls Which pro players were useful for giving feedback on the game? Before it came out, there were several – Pulsar and Severine, Funboy Bepop and MegamanDan. Skarmand built the New Players section on the forums completely. He turned out to be one of the best players in the world, and got hired to work on the mobile game. For those of you who are interested in getting a job in games, that’s one way to do it [laughs]. You took on Smash Bros in the Evo drive, and almost won. How do you feel about it now? It was a pretty pivotal moment in the fighting-game community. Smash had only ever been at Evo once. It was treated pretty poorly. Melee won, and had one of the…

When Picasso said ‘great artists steal’, he wasn’t telling his peers and colleagues to abandon their canvas and reach for the tracing paper. Whatever the artform, good ideas will always spread, yet if you’re going to borrow from someone else, you should probably try to be subtle about it. There’s a profound difference between wearing your influences on your sleeve, and simply tearing your inspiration’s arm off. Heading this month’s Play section is Just Cause 4 (p104), the latest in a series that’s all about physics and the carnage they can cause. Developer Avalanche knows a good idea when it sees it, and Metal Gear Solid V’s Fulton balloon is a perfect conceptual fit for Just Cause’s brand of explosive slapstick. It’s a welcome addition, and a necessary one for…

‘Double-A’ as a term offers to bridge the gap between mega-blockbuster and niche indie Just Cause 4 has been described online as a ‘double-A’ game, generally in tones of furtive appreciation. It’s worth pondering what exactly that term has meant and means today. On the one hand, it’s a very shaky commercial label derived from the better-known ‘triple-A’ (which was itself reportedly coined by marketing teams at gaming conventions), referring to a scale of production somewhere south of Grand Theft Auto V but rather north of Spelunky. It evokes, moreover, a period leading up to the midnoughties, when the high street remained a force to be reckoned with, retail games weren’t quite as expensive to make or distribute, and there was more room for more adventurous experiences from smaller teams.…

Early on in Ashen, you’ve given a piece of wisdom by Bataran, the big (mostly) friendly giant who provides your induction to the world: “To walk alone in the darkness is to walk in the company of death.” And lo, there was co-op. At the outset, your AI partner picks up the role of guide from Bataran. This is how a fight tends to go, they implicitly say, and this is a good time to chug from your Gourd. Eventually, though, they hand over to a real human player, who generally has less interest in helping you learn anything. There’s no voice chat, or any way of communicating beyond a single ‘beckon’ command – which, together with the choice never to announce when your game connects with another, recalls Journey’s…

One of Mutant Year Zero’s best features is its UI. It’s not pretty, but developer The Bearded Ladies clearly knows that a satisfying tactics game is one in which your decisions are based on good information. You always know the hit and critical chances from firing from any given location, what damage you’ll deal, which enemies it has line-of-sight with, and whether you’ll break your character’s stealth if you go there. And while the game’s ancestor is XCOM, it shares its philosophy for simplified hit chance with Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Your chances are only 25, 50, 75 and 100 per cent, making every option clear and reducing the frequency of – or at least making more bearable – those moments when you miss an apparently point-blank shot.…

Beyond the campaign and multiplayer, Reach packages together disparate features reflecting trends when it was made and indicating where games might have been headed. Firefight is a cooperative horde mode where players work together, sharing a pool of lives and the occasional ordnance drop, to defend a point from waves of enemies. Theater’s replay editing tool seems to prefigure the next generation’s emphasis on share buttons and photo modes, and acknowledges Halo’s strong machinima community. That focus on user-generated content shines through in Forge mode, which lets you customise maps and create your own game modes, shareable through an in-game browser. None are unique to Reach, but it was the first time all three appeared in a single Halo title.…

You don’t hear so much talk about the so-called ‘squeezed middle’ these days. Sure, between bedrooms and blockbusters can still be a risky place to be: a no-man’s-land where mid-tier games struggle to gain traction, lacking the development and marketing budgets to compete with the big boys, and with overheads higher than indie teams who don’t need millions of sales to stay in business. And yet that niche seems to be widening. The recent spate of Japanese hits is testament to that, and as the ambitions of successful indies grow, and as high-profile developers leave major franchises to pursue smaller-scale projects, a new wave of publishers is stepping in to help these studios realise their visions. Enter Private Division. Conceived by Take Two ’s Michael Worosz and Ed Tomaszewski, the…

Amid the celebration of consumer capitalism were moments of heart. Matt Thorson’s acceptance speech for Celeste, which won Best Independent Game, was a tribute to sufferers of mental illness. The night was interspersed with a mini-documentary series, Global Gaming Citizens, shining a light on people making and playing games against the odds. Yet the biggest tug of the heartstrings came from Dominique ‘SonicFox’ McLean, who accepted an esports award in full furry get-up. “I’m black, gay and a furry – everything a Republican hates,” he said. “And the best esports player of the whole year, I guess.”…

Name The National Videogame Museum Location Sheffield A slight change of pace this month, with all eyes on the UK for a change. The NVM first opened its doors in Nottingham in 2015, but was forced to close last June after finding it increasingly difficult to operate in the listed building it called home (regulations restrict, and often ban outright, what kinds of alterations occupants can make to the interiors of historic buildings, which isn’t much use for a museum). No matter: the museum has moved 40 miles up the M1 to Sheffield, and a city-centre venue where it hopes to stick around a little longer – and early signs are certainly positive, with the opening weekend a sellout. As in its original home, there’s an arcade space filled to…

Issue 327 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 Song for junior He many only be 15 months old, but I’m already thinking about how best to educate my son in the world of videogames. He’s already shown an interest in electronic entertainment having developed an unnatural ability to locate any electronic device in the room, no matter how well hidden, and I feel that I somehow need to cultivate this. Our early interests are influenced by our parents’ own hobbies until we are old enough to develop our own opinions. This is why, like my dad, I loved Manchester United (despite being from Somerset) and, for a…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar We’re tired of grey and brown and escaping the apocalypse. Let’s all go on an adventure vacation off-planet Barring some unforeseen disaster or catastrophic hard-drive failure, our game, Journey To The Savage Planet, was announced on December 6 at The Game Awards in Los Angeles. We really hope it piqued your interest. It feels like we just started but already we’re coming up on the second anniversary of the studio, so it feels amazing to finally be able to talk more openly about the game. Based on the name, you can probably guess that there’s a pulpy sci-fi quality to the game, and while it’s definitely not retro, we wanted to recapture the days when the genre was filled with optimistic and hopeful stories, the days when people…

Much of Hypixel’s success as a Minecraft server was based on its knack for pushing Minecraft into doing things it was never meant to, offering a network-wide party system, anti-cheat tools and new models and sounds. “Eventually we started to hit the technical ceiling of what Minecraft could do,” programmer Nick Krecklow says. One game, Turbo Kart Racers (which used the bat as the basis for the kart) was a remarkable achievement, but it suffered because it was stuck with Minecraft’s base camera and controls, so looking and driving directions were separate and the view couldn’t be set back far enough behind the kart. “Our mechanics couldn’t keep speed because we were still in Minecraft.” With its own game, Hypixel can break free.…

Any good pop song needs a strong vocal, and Flesser says it was only with the addition of singer-songwriter Linnea Olsson that everything really started to come together. With Daniel Olsén supplying instruments and production for Jonathan Eng’s vocal tracks, Flesser began to look in earnest for a singer. As fate would have it, almost a year to the day after their first meeting at a record store gig, where a star-struck Flesser asked if Olsson would like to collaborate on a videogame, she emailed him to ask if he was still interested. “It was really magical how that clicked into place,” he says. “We sent her a track, she basically loved it, and that was that. I’m a fan of Linnea’s solo work so it’s been a real honour.”…

Developer Kong Orange Publisher Daedalic Entertainment Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One Origin Denmark Release 2019 We’re not sure what Felix is meant to be made of exactly, but one thing’s for sure – this pillowy potato sack can’t half cut a rug. Watching the big lug don his headphones and dance across a level to a disco beat is joyous stuff. His movements are absolutely infectious: as his curvaceous body bumps and grinds to a funky bassline, his disembodied head bouncing on his shoulders while he cha-cha-slides into the next square, we begin to feel the rhythm too. This may be a game of grids and logic, but its hard edges are padded with irresistible whimsy. “We’re reminding everyone that we’re all going to die – but we try…

Boundless is a sandbox MMORPG of uncommon resilience. Consider, for one thing, the hardiness of its geography. Four years since entering Early Access, it still resembles Minecraft with a splash of Avatar, but where Minecraft’s voxel vistas can be stripped to the bedrock, the planets of Boundless slyly repair themselves in your absence. Quarries are sucked back into the soil, trees regrown, structures erased save for those safeguarded by Beacons, each player’s means of establishing ownership. The resources each region contains, however, vary their distribution each time, so even if you know the terrain you’ll still need to poke around a bit. All this reflects a careful balance between allowing seasoned players to leave a mark while ensuring that there’s plenty of ‘unspoilt’ wilderness for newcomers. “You don’t want to…

Developer Avalanche Studios Publisher Square Enix Format PC (tested), PS4, Xbox One Release Out now If any game needs a button dedicated simply to blowing things up, it’s this one Just Cause 4 is an open-world game that delights in frustrating itself, tipping upside-down mid-stride as though caught on one of its own tethers. Its fundamental issue may be sheer overfamiliarity – this is, once again, a straight-to-VHS superspy escapade in which agile bullet-sponge Rico Rodriguez blows up any and all red objects while toppling a tyrant – but its more aggravating trait is how it introduces brilliant tools only to bury them in moribund mission and interface design. It remains a hoot in short bursts, and grows on you with practice, but there’s the strong sense here of a…

Constellations are a big theme in Gris: while the usual implications of fate and chance don’t appear to fit the story here, we suppose this wouldn’t be millennial catnip without somebody slapping galaxy print all over it. Your rewards for completing platforming puzzles are tiny, sparkling stars: collect enough, and you’ll unlock the next section of the game, form new paths and, subsequently, a way out of the melancholic mind palace. While the platforming required for game completion is fairly basic, there are a number of optional collectibles that require ever so slightly more dexterity to grab. They have seemingly no effect on anything in the game – we can’t even see how many we’ve collected – but they help add challenge without forcing it.…

The publisher’s assistance goes beyond dev support, particularly for new startups. As much as anything, Murray says, it’s important to relieve the pressure on the studio, even if it’s simply asking questions to nudge them in the right direction. “Do you have a good business partner? Who’s doing payroll? Do you have a good tax accountant? We poke at them like that and say, ‘Make sure you go and find those people because this is stuff that’s going to take up energy.’ Because if you’re an artist we would rather have you making art than figuring out your taxes.” His experiences have taught him a studio needs time and space. “We try to give them the freedom to just create and be along for the ride, and then help guide…

Niamh Houston is a Northern Irish musician recording under the name Chipzel. After releasing a string of EPs and albums, she began to soundtrack videogames including Super Hexagon, Spectra, Interstellaria and Crypt Of The NecroDancer. Here, she talks about the joys of making music with Game Boy, how Cities: Skylines brings out her perfectionist streak and the pain of losing a 400-hour save. What’s your earliest gaming memory? My first memory of games was my older sister playing Super Mario on the Super Nintendo, and me never being allowed to play because if I took a turn on a level then I would just mess it up. We had all the classics: Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Mario, Kirby. I remember being obsessed with the music and sound, how different…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar In their capability to implant new desires in us, games have more cultural power than they are often given credit for The mainstream conversation about sex’n’violence in videogames is one of, generally, two positions. One side says that to participate in virtual depictions of evil acts will normalise those acts in the player’s mind, and risk encouraging the player to behave likewise in real life. The other side cleaves to the “catharsis hypothesis”, which holds that such games provide a safe outlet for the enaction of our brutish desires. But what if there is a third possibility? What if we don’t have those desires already, but games are programming us to have them? This is one fascinating suggestion in a book entitled The Playstation Dreamworld, by Alfie Bown.…

There was a time, believe it or not, when a game’s release date was considered the beginning of the end of its story. Its marketing campaign and time in the preview-stage spotlight were over; it was now in the review section, and would be discussed on bulletin boards (under-30s, ask your dad) for a spell before being forgotten about in favour of the next big thing. As we take our first tentative steps into 2019, it’s worth reflecting on how different things are now – for better, and for worse. Of all the games listed on the opposite page, only one can be expected to follow the well-worn path of the ‘traditional’ game. Sega’s Judge Eyes, now known as Judgment, will arrive on western shores some six months after its…

Developer/publisher Amanita Design Format PC Origin Czech Republic Release 2019 Radim Jurda’s greatest fear is being misinterpreted. His response to our question is perhaps not so unexpected: this is the artist and designer’s first ever interview, after all, and he’s keen to get his point across clearly. Indeed, Creaks is an oddity that requires explanation, a puzzle-platformer in which things are frequently not as they may appear. It’s a horror game – although it’s more unsettling than scary – in which you must tiptoe through a ramshackle house in search of an exit. Its inhabitants are frequent obstacles to this. They mess with your head, too. Did that hatstand just move, or did we imagine it? Creaks was born from the shadows in the edges of the eyes, the anxiety at not knowing what…

Paring down the script has been crucial in a game where you’re against the clock – there’s an option to pause time while you’re reading, but Mobius Digital has still had to be economical with its text. From what we’ve seen it’s nailed it: the dialogue is brisk and witty, never bogging you down with lengthy exchanges or creeds of exposition. “Every piece of writing in the game is either communicating a clue, doing a little bit of characterisation or setting up some important piece of world lore. Usually all three at once,” Beachum says. It has provided some difficulties for localisation, too, as designer and producer Loan Verneau admits. “There’s so much subtext information that we have to make sure is getting translated. That was quite a challenge, but…

Developer/publisher Format PC Origin China Release TBA The game industry has proved time and again since PUBG’s unlikely ascendance that it is perfectly possible to match it for quality, and even exceed it, without garnering the merest fraction of its audience. Ring Of Elysium, from planet Earth’s biggest game company Tencent, might prove the exception to that rule. Already possessing a player base large enough to crack Steam’s top 20 during Early Access, it evidently has the power to lure some old stalwarts out from the comfort of their Erangel hidey-holes. The major deviation from battle royale 101 here is in traversal. Rather than leap out of the plane to escape the voice-chat DJs of PUBG or board the Fortnite battle bus, in Ring Of Elysium you choose a location…

Felix The Reaper’s friendlier approach to death is rooted in the cultural tradition of memento mori, as is its charming art style. “Memento mori typically pictures beautiful things in decay, so that’s the reason why most of the game’s world looks as if it is falling apart,” Maltesen says, pointing to the half-dissolved buildings and animals on the board. “Still, I love colours, and we decided to go for a clear and vibrant colour scheme to contrast the gloominess of the game.” Felix’s journey through different historical periods is informed by art; he’ll only visit eras in which the dance of death was culturally depicted. But Kong Orange has more ideas in store: “Mexico, for instance, has a great tradition of celebrating death. I really hope that we will be…

Format 360, Android, Arcade, iOS, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Vita, Xbox One Publisher Autumn Games, Konami, Marvelous Developer Lab Zero Games, Reverge Labs Origin US Release 2012 This is not a typical story. Skullgirls is, in itself, no ordinary game: it’s a fighting game made by a team that had never made a fighting game before, that began life as a student coder’s homebrew experiment and, 13 years later, would launch and sell two million copies. Yet it’s also a story of what happens when just about everything that could possibly go wrong goes wrong, and how a team keeps going when the universe seems to be telling them to pack it all in. It is often said that game development is a miracle. Much of the story of Skullgirls…

STILL switching Sega Mega Drive Classics Collection Switch This retro compendium has been available elsewhere for an age – it first launched for PC in 2010 – but Switch feels like its natural home. With PlayStation Classic such a disappointment, this faultless selection of games, generous array of graphics filters and pleasingly daft ‘90s-living-room UI is a timely reminder that retro classics, when done this well, can still be quite a delight. Into The Breach Switch The Edge Awards are always an awkward time: everyone’s exhausted from the Q4 rush and needs a break, and now we have to go to a meeting room for a three-hour series of arguments. But the deliberation process is also an excuse to revisit some of the year’s best games. Into The Breach was…

As in Just Cause 3, you can have weapons, vehicles and props delivered to your current location by parachute – this time, there are several pilots with customisable loadouts, allowing for multiple deliveries at once. This abundance of backup makes it easy to create chaotic scenarios, even when the vicinity is quite bare. Every base looks better with a couple of wind cannon emplacements, for example. The shipping crates items arrive in also double as blunt implements when surrounded by enemies. Be wary of calling them in while wandering the higher ground, however – the crates won’t disgorge their contents unless they’re on level ground, and you may find yourself chasing a stray one down a hillside.…

Ashen opens with a creation myth which borrows, especially in its world tree, imagery from Norse mythology, but quickly veers off in its own direction. The titular Ashen is an enormous bird god, who created the world with three breaths, each triggering a new age – of the Elder Dark, the gigantic Listeners and finally humans. You enter its world just as the last of those ends. As well as Dark Souls, there’s more than a pinch of Destiny to all of the carefully crafted waffle about magical light-wielding creatures. You’re directly contributing to and interacting with this myth as you play, so it isn’t just a case of someone being too keen to show off their story bible, and, depending on your tolerance for this kind of thing, is…

There’s a hub area to which you can return via Vulgrim – to call it ‘fast travel’ would be generous with loading times this long – where a blacksmith will upgrade your weapons using adamantine slivers or fragments you’ve found. However, it’s the various equippable enhancements that make more of a difference. These have their own upgrade paths, unlocked by obtaining angelic or demonic artifacts, and they each confer active and passive bonuses. Damage returned as health is a good start, but there’s one that not only lets you regenerate Havoc passively but also gives you a damage boost when health is low. It’s a slow process, mind: the time and effort it takes to obtain the necessary trinkets is often better spent simply levelling up.…

The story shares its biggest problem with the game as a whole: it’s an intriguing setup that doesn’t really go anywhere. Earth is dying, and thanks to government subsidies, most of its inhabitants have upped sticks to Mars. The subsidy scheme is about to end, prompting you to hurriedly raise the cash to get there yourself. Twenty minutes later, you’ve arrived, and if there’s a story to be told here about what the human race does when faced with a new, unscarred home planet, Brittain has no interest in exploring it. And to add insult to injury, typos are frequent. We’ll take our chances on Earth, thanks.…