Innehållsförteckning för September 2016 från Edge

Exclusive subscriber edition It used to be fairly straightforward to explain the console landscape to a friend looking for some guidance on how they should be getting into games. In the mid-’90s, Sony’s PlayStation was a certainty to crush Sega’s Saturn from the word go, and it was difficult to recommend an N64 to a dabbler when its cartridges clocked in at £60 a throw. It was hard to put your shoulder behind Sega’s Dreamcast, too, with PS2 on the horizon, poised to steamroller both Nintendo’s rather half-hearted GameCube and Microsoft’s initial stab at this console-making lark. Then, when Sony fluffed its PS3 launch by making many of the same mistakes suffered by its competitors in previous years, it presented Microsoft with an open goal for Xbox 360. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s…

WEBSITE Happy 20th Birthday, Quake bit.ly/quake20th To mark the 20th anniversary of Quake’s release, game director and designer John Romero has published material from the months leading up to its 1996 launch. The trove includes screenshots showing off some pioneering lighting tech, but of more interest are press clippings, emails and chatlogs from its gestation, including the 1990 reveal of an adventure in which players would wield a “hammer made of thunderbolts” and where every NPC would have a life, personality and objectives. Former business manager Jay Wilbur, speaking to Flux, underscores the process: “Anything I tell you today could be a complete lie tomorrow, because things are changing so rapidly. In all of our games, we take what we learn from the past and we amplify the bitchin’ stuff.”…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar During one particularly dreary E3 press conference I had written in my notebook the word ‘bleh’ six times There is a saying in this line of work: never read the comments. Ever since some bright spark realised you could boost traffic by letting readers weigh in below the line, writers of all stripes have found themselves mocked, threatened and dismissed. Say what you like about 8chan, Twitter or Stormfront: news-site comment sections are the Internet’s true armpit. Mercifully, my work doesn’t appear online too often, so I work in relative isolation. In the old days, actual physical letters, written on paper – and not always with green ink – would arrive in the Edge office daily, but today there are so many other ways of sharing views that…

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney has the look of the prototypical nerd engineer, with thicklensed specs, a nervously twitching nose, and a wardrobe full of black hoodies. Where Sweeney breaks from cliché, however, is in his arch outspokenness. “[Microsoft is] subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers,” he wrote in The Guardian earlier this year of what he sees as the company’s anti-consumer policies. It’s fighting talk from a man who has made millions from Gears Of War, a series published by Microsoft. Sweeney, however, can afford to be bolshy. His company, which he founded in 1991 at the age of 21, has produced not only some of the best-selling blockbusters of the past 20 years, but also Unreal Engine, the middleware…

Adversity is a key element of many good yarns. But too many developers still reach for a simplistic shorthand, letting violence stand in for something more nuanced where it’s not required. It can even happen in a game, it turns out, whose developers have made a concerted effort to remove gunplay. DICE’s Mirror’s Edge Catalyst (p108) trades on agility and momentum, never placing a weapon in your hand or forcing you into cover, and even helping you avoid affray altogether. But this otherwise progressive design still forces players to endure the game’s undercooked, awkward hand-to-hand combat in progresshalting arena encounters. A desperate scrap to clear the way makes sense, but these walled-in moments add nothing to our understanding of Faith’s struggle. At least DICE’s misstep can be blamed on genre…

Developer/publisher Capcom Format 3DS Release Out now As ever in Monster Hunter, there’s no greater adversary than your own complacency The lesson comes surprisingly early. The Great Maccao is Monster Hunter Generations’ Jaggi: an underarm serve of an opponent designed to acclimatise new players to the rhythms of combat against larger beasts. We’ve softened it up with a few whacks from our hammer; the Maccao’s speed has allowed it to strike back once or twice, but we’ve got plenty of potions in reserve. Then we make a fatal miscalculation as it rears back and launches itself forward at an alarming velocity, leaving us trapped between monster and tree line. We pick ourselves up, but it’s too late, and with a whip of its tail it flattens us once more. Shamefully,…

Developer Comcept, Inti Creates Publisher Deep Silver Format 360, 3DS, PC, PS3, PS4 (tested), Vita, Wii U, Xbox One Release Out now (360, PC, PS3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox One), TBC (3DS/Vita) This is very much Inafune by numbers, a Mega Man game in all but name, and not a particularly good one So this is what $4 million gets you these days. Comcept might have asked for a more modest sum of $900k, but with Keiji Inafune in charge and a promise to combine the best of vintage sidescrollers from the 8- and 16bit eras with contemporary ideas, Mighty No 9 quickly became something of a standard-bearer for crowdfunded games. The pressure of such an elevated status seemed to have taken a toll on production; the game missed its…

Developer RedLynx Publisher Ubisoft Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now TRIAL HARDER RedLynx has, at least, learned from the terrible implementation of voiceovers in Trials Fusion. Here, the game’s underwhelming performances play out to their conclusion, and don’t repeat, even if you skip back to a checkpoint (though you’ll still have to listen to it all again if you restart the track while going for an A+ rating). But this solution to a problem that needn’t exist underscores the increasing liberties RedLynx is taking with the series. With Trials Of The Blood Dragon, RedLynx – keen to distance itself from the accusations of mechanical homogeneity and repetition so often levelled at publisher Ubisoft – seems to have gone out of its way to ensure Trials fans no…

Illustration box-kite-curve.com If a game gives me a hammer, I will use it on everything I see, whether it looks like a nail or not It’s always a pleasure to visit developers whose HQs are in city-centre business tower blocks. One reason is they’re usually easy to find – once you rock up, there’ll be no more than four similarly faceless monoliths, and the signage will be good. But the teenager in me loves walking across a huge marble-andchrome vestibule to see a smart selection of receptionists, who have to be professional. Looking like a toddler who’s dressed himself in the dark, I shamble across, past smart businessfolk, and I say I’m here to see, not the Zinc Insurance Corporation, but Fat Grinning Monkey on the seventh floor. I announce…

Spencer admitted that, unless you own a 4K TV, “Scorpio is not going to do anything for you” Well, to be fair, it’s a new personal best. Three-and-a-half years after Microsoft messily unveiled Xbox One, it went to E3 2016 and botched the announcement of not one, but two consoles in one fell swoop. For 85 minutes or so, we were excited for Xbox One S, with its smaller, prettier form factor and redesigned controller, its integrated power supply, its support for HDR and 4K displays. Then Microsoft spent the next hour and a half explaining that, as part of its Play Anywhere initiative, we’d be able to play almost every firstparty game showed on its stage on the PC we already own. Then Phil Spencer – the man who…

“The real magic happens when teams are free to create. Because when you are free, there is no failure, there is only forward.” Yves Guillemot closes Ubisoft’s E3 press conference by facing down a rumoured Vivendi takeover with his best Yoda impression “[In 1080p] Scorpio is not going to do anything for you. Scorpio is designed as a 4K console, and if you don’t have a 4K TV, the benefit we’ve designed, you’re not going to see.” Phil Spencer proves that Xbox’s PR problem didn’t die with Don Mattrick’s departure “I was surprised by the step of announcing something over a year ahead of time. There’s a much heavier emphasis on immediate gratification than there was.” Andrew House glosses over Sony’s out-one-day E3 lineup to have a pop at Scorpio…

“I fear publishers of smaller ninerated games will diminish and never be heard of again” Oracle of rages For once, my letter to Edge is not prompted by an article in your fine magazine. I just watched the PlayStation conference at E3 and I’m so disappointed as to be borderline angry! Not Donald Trump angry, but close… Firstly, the hardware: lots of talk about PSVR but no mention of PS4K (or Neo or PS4.5 or whatever they end up calling it), no confirmation, no specs, not even a hint of a release date. Considering that every serious gamer knows that PSVR will be a subpar experience with the ‘old-spec’ PS4, this is not just clumsy, it’s downright disrespectful. Where did “this is for the players” go? Secondly, the games. Where…

Developer DICE Publisher EA Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now DICE, nervous about Catalyst’s idiosyncrasies, has deferred to traditional progress gating despite it being inappropriate Each time you die in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, protagonist Faith lets out a final breath while the game reloads. It’s an exhalation that echoes your own exasperated sigh as you come to terms with yet another frustrating death resulting from either hectoring enemies, poorly signposted pathways or the game’s occasionally argumentative controls. In a world that offered so much potential, it’s crushing to find so much of it in disarray. Catalyst is at its most confused when it comes to combat. DICE’s well-meaning attempt to avoid the turgid gunplay of the original game has resulted in a melee system that, while workable…

Publisher Capcom Developer In-house Format PC, PS4 (version tested) Release Out now There’s little satisfaction in downing an enemy who can’t see you, less in getting flattened by an unseen assailant THE BITTER SPEND Umbrella Corps doesn’t bear the Resident Evil name – a wise decision for the brand, as it turns out – and also doesn’t include any classic RE characters unless you’re willing to hand over £11.99 for an upgrade pack featuring skins of Wesker, Chris, Hunk et al. For another £2.49 you can buy six new colours to paint your gear and weapons. Given that the base game doesn’t do enough to justify its own price tag, if feels rum for Capcom to ask for more money on top, but you’ll spend so long loitering in game…

Developer/publisher Playdead Format PC, Xbox One (tested) Release Out now ADULT ASSISTANCE Periodically, the boy will stumble across glowing helmets that allow him to guide the otherwise immobile avatars in the background. As the boy flails a little way off the ground, you essentially assume control of these brainwashed characters, guiding them to push or pull objects. It’s a clever twist that allows PlayDead to vary what might otherwise be repetitive environmental puzzles, eventually leading to a stirring sequence where they’re able to assist you more directly. It does hold up on a second play, then. Inside’s mesmeric climax is such a fearless shift – where escaping suddenly means breaking out rather than getting away – that it’s easy to forget that much of what precedes it displays a similar…

Few studios take quite so long to make games as Finnish studio Remedy. After 2003’s Max Payne 2 it was seven years before the company shipped Alan Wake, and it took another six years after that before Quantum Break saw the light of day. But with Remedy entering its third decade, it’s restructured so it can work on two games at once, thus reducing the gap between releases. Here, business director Johannes Paloheimo and head of communications Thomas Puha explain the pitfalls inherent in rebuilding a creative company to better meet the challenges of an ever-changing market. “This is the 21st year of Remedy, and there aren’t many triple-A independent studios left” When did you decide that you wanted to make multiple projects at once? Johannes Paloheimo Well, you have…

Pete Donaldson is a voiceover artist, roving reporter and presenter who currently hosts several shows on Absolute Radio, and is one quarter of The Football Ramble podcast team. He’s played a few small roles in games, helped to judge the BAFTA Video Game Awards, and has two LucasArts-inspired tattoos: one of Ghost Pirate LeChuck, and a more recent rendition of Manny Calavera. Given your tattoos, is it safe to assume you’re a big adventure game fan? Yeah, huge. Huge. I was really into all the Sierra series and LucasArts ones. Police Quest was a really big favourite of mine on the Sierra side – this really dull procedural police adventure. There’s no reason why an eight-year-old should know the correct flare procedure when dealing with a broken-down car on the…

Illustration kaeru.com.ar Can’t we also have a carrot, promising positive consequences to things we would like more of? How should we encourage the kind of art we like, and discourage the kind we disapprove of? It is an age-old question. For most of modern history some form of official censorship was the norm: you couldn’t just publish whatever you liked, for fear of prosecution. In our age we continue to have a kind of ‘soft’ censorship in the form of age ratings by the British Board Of Film Classification. In theory you can make whatever film you like, but it will be very difficult for anyone to see it if it doesn’t get a rating. Still, the existence of censorship after the fact is a stick: it threatens negative consequences.…

PICO-8 has everything you’d expect from a console. It has technical specifications, cartridges, developer tools, a dedicated fanbase, and console-exclusive games. All that’s missing is the console. Creator Joseph White calls PICO-8 a ‘fantasy console’. In reality, it’s a piece of software that runs on your computer, or in a browser, or on a tiny computer such as a Raspberry Pi. The cartridges, meanwhile, are actually just cute pixel-art images of cartridges that secretly hold all of the game’s code, including graphics and audio, in their metadata. Like a console, PICO-8 has strict limitations on what it can deliver. Games output at a boxy 128x128 resolution, which is slightly smaller than the original Game Boy screen, while the 32-kilobyte cartridge size is identical to that of Sega’s old Master System…

“THE CONSTRAINTS OF VR FORCE US TO LOOK AT CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE WAYS OF SOLVING THESE OBSTACLES” There is no shortage of people in the videogame industry who believe in the vast potential of virtual reality, but few companies are quite so heavily invested in it as nDreams. Its future product slate is focused exclusively on VR platforms, from Oculus to PSVR, HTC’s Vive to Google’s forthcoming Daydream. So what prompted an established UK studio to go all in on a niche, nascent sector like this? CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh, an industry veteran formerly of Codemasters and SCI Games, was already excited by the prospect of VR – he enthusiastically recalls his Virtuality experiences at London’s Trocadero all those years ago – but it was a more recent incident that convinced…

It’s no surprise Catalyst’s best moments coincide with the times it focuses on the simple purity of movement Out in the open, away from the perplexing chokepoints that link its hubs, the City Of Glass is a masterclass in environmental sandbox design. This gleaming, towering metropolis has been hand built to showcase Faith’s parkour move set, offering a multitude of potential routes in any direction you choose to set out. But while it’s a remarkably accommodating space, it fails to be a believable one. It’s a surprising regression from Glass, the setting for the first Mirror’s Edge, which feels considerably more convincing as a city. Despite its sparsely populated rooftops and streets, Glass feels lived in and constructed for daily life in a way that City Of Glass, in all…

Developer Tri-Ace Publisher Square Enix Format PS4 Release Out now As often as it threatens to break the shackles of convention, it’s just as content to fall in line with JRPG custom FIDEL ABOUT So long as you’re not actively avoiding battles, you’ll rarely find yourself underpowered at any stage, though at times it’s worth wandering off the critical path. You needn’t go too far: this is the kind of JRPG in which you’ll visit a bulletin board to pick up extra jobs only to find you’ve completed five or six objectives already. When you’re in a town, meanwhile, approaching a whistle icon sees your party split up: talking to individuals at this stage will often trigger optional conversations that can lead to unlocking some of the more esoteric roles.…

Developer/publisher The Game Bakers Format PC, PS4 (tested) Release Out now A LIFE LESS ORDINARY Each boss fight is split across multiple phases, dictated by their stock of health bars: empty one meter, and you move onto the next phase, your health bar restored to full and an extra life awarded. Lose, however, and the phase resets, restoring your enemy’s health; lose all your lives and it’s back to the start of the battle. Death comes frequently as you learn each fight, but we suggest you resist the temptation to lower the difficulty: doing so turns fights into two-minute cakewalks. One-on-one combat is a game of taking turns. You evade, block or repel your enemy’s attacks until your moment comes, that little window of opportunity inviting you onto the front…