Innehållsförteckning för February 2024 från Edge

As the debut trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI arrived this month, parent company Rockstar Games was celebrating its 25th birthday. The UK-born publisher’s success is taken for granted nowadays, but at a time such as this, when it feels as if the entire world is watching its every movement, it is worth taking a step back to size it up. The most notable achievement? That it took the company just 15 years from its formation in 1998 to launch the fastest-selling product not just in the history of games but of entertainment as a whole, with GTAV. In terms of game industry successes from standing starts, perhaps only Atari and Nintendo measure up. At the beginning, Rockstar’s energy, powered in part by co-founders with a grounding not in games…

Visions E392’s article on Ultros – which I truly loved, by the way – brought to the fore the dialogue around games being potentially the highest art form available to us, should the auteur have the freedom and impetus to bear part of their soul to the player. In Ultros, the auteur’s position on humanity, theology and spirituality has seemingly bled into the work in a powerful way. And I agreed with some of the sentiments. So, to games as art, then: Ultros, almost transhumanistically conveying the fraught relationship humanity has with technology and nature (we only have to look at the current furore around AI for an example of the former), demonstrates again that the indie game space will always push the artform orwards over triple-A. It is…

Developer/publisher SFB Games Format PC, consoles TBA Origin UK Release 2024 The time is four o’clock – in the morning, of course, because mysteries never sleep, and neither do those who solve them – and Grimoire is naturally up and ready to get started. His assistant Sally, on the other hand, is slumbering sweetly – at least for the time being. An eerie green light creeps through the gaps between the beams across the windows of their dilapidated temporary headquarters. Outside The Stonetop Inn, meanwhile, a mist hangs over the dock like a ghostly shroud. By the pier, a submarine’s fin pokes out of the dark waters like that of a shark waiting in the shallows for its unwitting prey. Opening the case file reveals the details of the…

Developer Memorable Games Publisher Humble Games Format PC, Switch Origin Italy Release 2024 From a curious deer in Beacon Pines to a raccoon PI in Backbone – and not forgetting, of course, everyone’s favourite amphibious investigator, Frog Detective – animals solving videogame crimes is becoming something of a trend. Perhaps they’re simply better at it. In the case of Memorable Games’ narrative adventure, it’s a chamois journalist, Diana, who’s tasked with solving a string of mysteries in the fictional Italian coastal village of Borgo Marina – a veritable hotbed of creature criminality. Borgo Marina represents Italy at its most picturesque and idyllic. “We really wanted to make a game that is unapologetically Italian,” creative director Mauro Fanelli tells us. “A version of Italy filled with the most Italian, most…

Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Developer Geometric Interactive Publisher Annapurna Interactive Origin Denmark Release 2023 When Jeppe Carlsen and Jakob Schmid left Playdead to make their own games in 2016, after the release of Inside, the aim was to start small. While working on that game, the pair had collaborated on a minimalist platformer called 140, which left them pining for another project on a modest scale. And what could be smaller than Carlsen’s next idea, in which worlds are so tiny you can carry them around? Well, most things, it turned out. From minuscule seeds of inspiration grew a game that took six and a half years to complete, longer than the development period of Inside itself. The concept at Cocoon’s heart – that these…

Every industry has its quiet periods – those lulls where nothing much seems to be happening, or at least nothing especially exciting. If you’re reading this on or around the date issue 393 was published, we’re just about to head into January, which in the movie industry is traditionally known as ‘dump month’. This is the time when distributors release into cinemas films they believe have little chance of commercial or critical success – either in the vain hope that no one will pay much notice if their box-office performance is poor, or that given the lack of competition they might just attract enough curious cinemagoers to turn a small profit. (Outside of the US, of course, January can be catnip for cineastes, as potential awardseason contenders belatedly make their…

To say that this is merely a retrofuturist sciencefiction version of Left 4 Dead feels reductive, but after two full runs through its surprisingly slight campaign and a brief tour of its additional modes, it’s a difficult conclusion to avoid. If you’ve played Valve’s classic fourplayer co-op zombie-grinder, you know exactly what you’re getting with Stray Bombay’s debut title, for better or worse. Although it hits its marks, by and large, it does little to make itself stand out from the crowd. As easy as it is to nitpick about The Anacrusis, it is undeniable that it looks a treat, its disco-tinged ’70s vision of the future a joy to run around. Among the curved plastic furniture, shag carpet, conversation pits and lava lamps, you can practically smell the Hai…

As Netflix’s spectacularly point-missing Squid Game: The Challenge crassly indulges in that which its source condemned, conversations about the ethics of reality TV have been reignited. Which gives the second release from Madrid’s Out Of The Blue Games a timely feel – despite it taking place in a 1970sstyled false utopia, and borrowing liberally from a film now 25 years old. The idea of a protagonist who realises there’s a different world beyond the walls of the ones he’s always known, and is forced to choose between blissful ignorance or the brutal truth, is hardly new. Still, it’s refreshing that The Truman Show, rather than the Matrix, should be the pop-culture touchstone here. American Arcadia’s script certainly isn’t shy about acknowledging its debt to Peter Weir’s 1998 satirical dramedy, from…

There’s a moment in the Uncharted movie (perfect post-lunch viewing for the Christmas holidays) when Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) climbs down into a secret cubby-hole aboard an old ship full of gold that is being flown around by a helicopter and has just been boarded by numerous guntoting enemies. He says to his unreliable partner Sully (Mark Wahlberg): “You could stay up here and get shot in the head or come down here for a quick cuddle: up to you.” They only recently spent ten hours hiding in a car boot together, but Sully reluctantly joins him and they elude the bad guys. It’s a telling as well as funny moment because it’s so anti-videogamey. In a videogame, being aboard an old ship full of gold that is being flown…

Developer/ publisher Good-Feel Format Switch Origin Japan Release Out now (Japan) Sure, it might seem unwieldy to the uninitiated. But to give its full title, Otogi Katsugeki Mameda No Bakeru: Oracle Saitarou No Sainan is actually a straightforward summary of Good-Feel’s action platformer – a spiritual successor to the Ganbare Goemon games, with which studio president Etsunobu Ebisu has been involved for several decades. Literally translated, the first part denotes the genre, a fairytale action game, followed by the name of its mascot protagonist, Bakeru, a tanuki boy who can morph into human form. The subtitle, meanwhile, introduces Oracle Saitarou, a Joker-esque villain whose festivals have brainwashed the people of Japan. Sent on a journey to restore order across each of the nation’s 47 prefectures, the immature tanuki boy…

Only a stone’s throw from West Ham’s London Stadium, in a trendy development of glass-fronted office buildings, sits Sports Interactive. Walk through the doors and you’re in a dressing room where signed shirts from giants of football line the walls: Messi, Ronaldo, Beckham, Totti, Cannavaro. You walk into the studio space and discover that framed shirts line the walls of the entire space – there’s Ruud Gullit’s Netherlands shirt from Euro 1988, hanging just above the espresso machine. There are meeting rooms with names such as The Terrace, and on the back of every office chair there’s a football shirt, from the staff member’s favourite team, with their name printed on the back. There can be no confusion about the kind of game this studio makes. This studio makes football…

Perched on a high branch at the edge of a rainforest, we spot a six-legged colossus stamping about by the shore of a lake, a membranous plate rising along its spine like a sail. Close by is a crop of tottering plants that shrink into themselves as we approach, passing a group of Na’vi spearfishing in the shadow of a levitating mountain. We go there later, flying on our pterodactyl-like ikran, to see the exotic plant life and animals from above. The world of Pandora is vivid, intriguing and genuinely alien. Its many parts – swamps, rainforests, grasslands, misty mountaintops – all possess their own shades of extraterrestrial personality. Yet enjoying them can be difficult. Pushed through the Ubisoft open-world mincer, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora has not come out looking…

We squeeze one hand into a fist, and flick out our wrist like Spider-Man preparing to shoot a web. Shinnnk. Out pops Ezio’s hidden blade; an instant later, it’s buried in the throat of some unfortunate guard. As a translation of Assassin’s Creed into VR, it’s the perfect three-second snippet, the kind of mechanical loop you could build a game around. Which, we suspect, is exactly what has happened here. Playing Nexus, you can almost picture the Ubisoft conference-room whiteboard, all the component parts of Assassin’s Creed scribbled in marker. Parkour. Map-syncing towers. Leaps of faith. Hiding in bushes. Disappointing combat. A time-hopping story. All the series’ hallmarks, good and bad, are present here – with one exception. An open world, it seems, remains beyond the reach of Quest’s onboard…

Surely this can’t be just another farming sim? Not from Turnfollow, which dazzled us with the delightful comic tale of Wide Ocean Big Jacket? Whereas that game made you feel like the director of a hilarious silent comedy about a family camping trip, tilling Green Moon’s ugly fields can feel like getting back to the tedious post-holiday grind of work. Its hooks sink in nevertheless. The timeworn formula of turning an overgrown mess into a functioning money-printing machine remains a horribly moreish loop, even if we have seen it too many times. Admittedly, it’s rarely this (deliberately?) hideous: Green Moon looks like the climate apocalypse has come for your N64. Yet the sparsely animated cast of low-poly oddballs you meet still manage to charm, thanks to writing that’s as often…

Adam Chapman loves his job. His face lights up when he talks about it. Even towards the start of his career in videogame voice production in the early 2000s, when he was required to sift through thousands of lines of dialogue in his role as a sound engineer, his enthusiasm for the task would remain undimmed. “I just never got bored,” he says. “I’d just listen and listen and listen and listen, and I just loved it.” Chapman worked at Babel Media in Brighton in the mid-2000s, before going on to found the voice production company Liquid Violet in 2011. That was purchased by videogame services company Keywords Studios in 2014, and Chapman remained as director until 2021, when the pandemic prompted him to pause and reflect, just as it…

Until very recently, I’d never encountered the word ‘cruciverbalist’. But, having done the required etymological backwards-engineering to decipher its meaning, I think this word tells you a lot about the people to whom it refers. Of course we’re talking about crossword enthusiasts here. Who else would jigsaw-puzzle together a term out of Latin with this kind of glassespushed-to-the-bridge-of-the-nose smugness? Alas, I must confess, the reason I came across this word in the first place is that I have recently joined their spectacle-nudging ranks, as a paid-up subscriber to both the NYT’s puzzle section and Puzzmo. While I dutifully chew through the daily selection each offers, really I’m here for one thing and one thing only: the undisputed king of the newspaper puzzle page, long may it reign. One reason the…

Developer/ publisher HoYoverse Format Android, iOS, PC, consoles TBA Origin China Release TBA Still basking in the success of gacha hits Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, HoYoVerse is adding another string to its live-service bow with this ARPG. It’s only natural to be cynical about the studio spinning up another game within the same framework, but after working through its opening chapters and a slew of side-missions, Zenless Zone Zero stands out from its labelmates. In part, that’s thanks to an art style that’s not afraid to squash, stretch, and morph. It kicks off with a frantic escape by The Cunning Hares – your archetypal thieves with hearts of gold – as a heist in a rival gang’s hideout goes wrong and they tumble into a Hollow, one of…

Bzzzt PC There’s something to be said for a game that does the basics well. This throwback platformer casts you as diminutive robot ZX8000, which must double-jump and dash through a series of compact rooms filled with hazards and enemies, collecting glowing bolts en route to an exit teleporter. You can afford to take three hits per stage before restarting a room on Easy, but you only have one on Normal, while Hard grants you a mere seven lives to make it through all 52 chambers. To earn trophies, meanwhile, you’ll need to beat par times that effectively demand you don’t stop moving. Brisk and bouncy, with responsive controls and appealing pixel art, it’s proof that sometimes they do still make ’em like they used to. Enjoy The Diner Switch…

Quite why the legend of Robin Hood continues to inspire so many gritty reboots is a mystery. All the same, it’s not hard to see why the story of a folk hero keenly invested in the redistribution of wealth has endured to this day. Where last year’s Hood: Outlaws & Legends focused on multiplayer heists, Gangs Of Sherwood seeks to offer catharsis from present-day hardships in the form of a hack-and-slash, as Belgium’s Appeal Studios drops you into an imaginative alternatetimeline version of Nottinghamshire. By acquiring the Lionheart – presented as a magical crystal rather than a title held by King Richard – the Sheriff Of Nottingham has advanced his army’s technology far beyond that of this medieval setting, conquering the land with airships, spider tanks and monsters of flesh…

The third – and, thus far, best – of the unimprovably named ‘Pixel Pulps’ series sees Argentinian duo Nico Saraintaris (writing, design) and Fernando Martinez Ruppel (art, music) sharpen their formula. But, crucially, not too much. These are games made deliberately quickly – not dashed out, but rather made to be modest in scope and not subject to endless refinement. At their cores, you can detect the raw energy of the creative spark that birthed them – the corollary being that rough edges go with the territory. But between its lurid art, flavourful text and crunchy sounds, Bahnsen Knights simultaneously captures both the sensation of devouring a pacy page-turner late at night and the alluring, illicit quality of an early ZX Spectrum game you were perhaps too young to play…

Storytellers working in videogames could learn a thing or two from the brisk economy with which Black Tabby Games’ visual novel establishes its conceit. It begins, seemingly, in medias res: you’re in a forest and, via a matter-of-fact voiceover, you’re told you’ve been charged with a terrible duty. Once you’re through the woods, you’ll see a cabin. In the basement of that cabin is a princess. And the only way for you to save the world is to kill her. Even if you believe this possibly unreliable narrator, the chained-up royal doesn’t look or sound the worldending type – though her innocent demeanour could be an affectation. Then again, maybe you should ignore those instructions completely and instead attempt a more conventional rescue. Picking up the blade at the entrance…