Innehållsförteckning för June 2024 från Edge

Sometimes – when you’ve just seen the third stor y within a week about a bunch of talented, hard-working game developers being laid off for no fault of their own, for example, or maybe you’ve accidentally broken a ver y important rule and allowed yourself to notice the honking opinions of some dickhead on the Internet – it’s a good idea to sit down and load up one of your old favourite videogames. Even if it’s something ostensibly as challenging as Dark Souls, spending some time with a game that has given you so much pleasure in the past can be just the balm required when ever ything else is feeling just a bit too much. The comfort found in familiarity is, after all, why we say that there is…

T here’s this strange skill you gather, reading videogame reviews – or at least I did, as a kid relying on magazines as my portal to all games beyond the annual Christmas and birthday purchases. You learn to internalise a game’s ruleset, as laid out by the writer, in order to run a kind of dodgy emulation in your head. Nowadays, though, with virtually any game available within minutes of reading about it, these aren’t muscles I need to stretch very often. So I’ve found another way of exercising them: detective novels. Take Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, which opens with Ronald Knox’s ‘Ten Commandments Of Detective Fiction’, the rules of engagement between writer and reader, as established during the genre’s 1920s Golden Age. Example rule:…

Developer Creative Business Unit IV, Ouka Studios Publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series Origin Japan Release Summer Back in its ’90s heyday, the Mana series’ realtime action set it apart from its RPG peers. But as the first mainline entry since 2006’s Dawn Of Mana, Visions arrives in a changed landscape, with many of its genre contemporaries having abandoned the idea of taking turns. So what does it have to offer these days? On paper, there’s little to choose from, though were we to pick one aspect from our hands-on, it would be the air-dash. As we freely explore Fallow Steppe, one of its semi-open world areas, it’s an action that’s effortless to execute. When we leap off a cliff to lower ground, we discover we can…

They say the camera never lies, but that doesn’t mean it always tells the whole truth. So accustomed are we to the concept of a sidescrolling platform game whose viewpoint exists purely as our window into a world that it’s a shock to discover it might be someone else’s perspective too, someone keeping tabs on our every move. Fortunately, in American Arcadia, that someone is on your side, under your control even, along with the little running man at the centre of your screen. It may have been no small feat to collapse first- and thirdperson views together like this, but for Madrid’s Out Of The Blue Games, the idea felt like a natural next step. While still developing their first game, Call Of The Sea, the studio heads decided…

The release of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is already causing consternation among a subset of players. Accustomed to triple-A games that place them at the centre of their worlds, praising their every action and pandering to their every whim, these players have found some of the idiosyncrasies of Capcom’s game confounding to the point of inducing fury. From its miserly number of warp points to its lack of quest markers and similar forms of navigational assistance, these design choices have meaning and purpose in the context of the world Hideaki It suno and team have built. But there is no denying that they are also wildly off-trend. While some of the reactions have been extreme, it’s possible to feel a crumb of sympathy for those who went in expecting a more…

Developer Team Ninja, Koei Tecmo Publisher SIE Format PS5 Release Out now According to Koei Tecmo, the planning phase of Rise Of The Ronin’s development began before the release of Nioh, way back in 2017. Its lengthy development time speaks to the grand ambition of this new Team Ninja game, which is by far its biggest production to date, but on the flip side it also explains why it sometimes feel like a project from another time. Team Ninja president Fumihiko Yasuda has spoken of taking notes from the Assassin’s Creed series when Ronin was conceived, and too often the game feels in thrall to others rather than having the confidence to carve out its own identity. In that sense, it cannot help feeling dated. That Ronin resembles an artefact…

Developer/publisher Slow Bros Format PC (tested), PS5, Xbox Series Release Out now Arriving at the energy lab to retrieve a rock sample, we’re surprised to learn it’s already been sent to its destination. What would be the point in having a tube mail system, scientist Brigitte asks, if not for cases such as these? It’s a fair point, but also a cheap joke at our expense given that every other task we’re asked to perform in Harold Halibut demands legwork, criss-crossing the space station to pick things up, deliver messages or see what someone wants. And as the game continues to test our tolerance of fetch quests as much as Harold’s shoe leather, it hardly becomes more amusing. The station in question is the Fedora 1, an evacuee from a…

Developer Ahr Ech  Publisher Devolver Digital  Format PC (tested), Switch  Release Out now When we talk about games being designed with their hardware in mind, it’s generally in reference to unconventional interfaces. The Wiimote duels of Skyward Sword, say, or Half-Life: Alyx’s ‘Jeff’ chapter requiring you to clap both hands to your mouth to stay quiet. Pepper Grinder, though, demands only that you play it with a controller – keyboard controls are technically possible, but bound in such a counterintuitive way that it’s almost certainly intended to deter you from trying. Because at its heart, this game is a celebration of the humble analogue stick. Not that this is initially obvious. The movements of your avatar, Pepper, are simple enough – left, right, jump – that you could tap them…

Fight test I love playing games. As an almost 40-yearold with a family, though, I spend more time reading about games and writing lists of the games I want to play than actually playing them. As I look down my list, I have noticed one thing: a growing trend where the games I want to play do not involve as much violence and killing as they used to. Whether I am getting squeamish in my old age or whether it is being a father, I have come to the realisation that violence doesn’t have to be integral to every game’s design. Whether you’re an Italian plumber stomping on a turtle so you can use its shell as a missile or a green-tunic-wearing boy slicing nasty pea-shooting shrubs in your local…

Today I played a game set in a mysterious world, full of wonderful hints of a forgotten past that were never clarified. I remember vividly the first time I played a game that did this – it was Team Ico’s Shadow Of The Colossus, 20 years ago, and my friend and I rode around its empty landscapes on horseback assuring each other that, since they’d gone to all the trouble of building this vast space, it must have something to say. It didn’t. It was just vibes, y’know; perhaps the legacy of cut content. And while I loved that experience, I found I couldn’t do it again – when ThatGameCompany’s Journey came along a few years later, I enjoyed the mechanical play but I didn’t buy the world at all.…

Developer Odd Bug Studio Publisher United Label Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin UK Release TBA 2024 Things might be a bit parky in the aptly named Winter’s Edge, but young rat Arlo is looking on the bright side. After all, his father is about to take him out on his first hunt – a rite of passage for which he’s been preparing for some time. Within this fortified settlement, the rodent townsfolk seem rather satisfied with their lot, if the hubbub around the castle is anything to go by. And they don’t have to worry about the amphibious aggressors their kind in the south are constantly having to fend off. “Why,” narrator Doug Cockle asks, his bassy growl ladling on thick helpings of portent,…

Developer Patattie Games PublisherTBA Format PC Origin Scotland, Spain Release TBA Before your first shift behind the till at Repeater Records, you’re regaled with a tale of how fictional pop foursome Becoming Violet split up. It’s got the lot: sibling betrayal, a hit solo album, a love triangle, a frontwoman disappearing from the public eye. Only that apparent recluse, Morgan MacIntyre, is now standing right in front of you, explaining that this is less a job than a calling. “A new record can become a gateway to new love and connection,” she tells you. It’s your responsibility, then, to open up that gateway by recommending the right piece of vinyl to each customer. If Wax Heads begins with a story of acrimony, its creation was congenial from the start. Both…

Founded 2010 Employees 7   Key staff Jonathan Chey (founder), Ben Lee (creative director) URL twitter.com/bluemanchugames Selected softography Card Hunter, Void Bastards  Current projects Wild Bastards After BioShock, Irrational Games co-founder Jonathan Chey tried not being a game developer. In fact, for two years after leaving 2K, a noncompete clause in his contract actively prevented him from being one. Instead, he sat the entrance exam for medical school, and passed – before being knocked back for being “too old”. So he went back to university, to study chemistry. “Because I literally couldn’t do anything else for two years,” he tells us today. “I could have worked in some other job, but I didn’t have the skills.” Once his period of creative confinement was up, Chey still hadn’t discovered a new…

Developer/publisher Capcom Format PC, PS5 (tested), Xbox Series Release Out now The road from Vernworth to Bakbattahl is scenic but arduous. Ignore the dawdling mobs of goblins, and duck beneath the chanting harpies that circle on the currents overhead, and even moving at a hurried clip it is impossible for a party of four to complete the journey by nightfall. So, at the midway border checkpoint, you’ll find a settlement named, instructively, Checkpoint Rest Town. Even the saviour of the world needs a stop-off, it seems – a place to stow the day’s harvested trinkets, and to repair their damaged health bar. Still, even Checkpoint Rest Town is a stretch. For all its leathery monsters, its array of combat vocations, its Monty Python And The Holy Grail acting (this is…

At this point in time, with discussions about the value of console exclusives creating so much noise, it’s worth considering what Rise Of The Ronin represents as a game that will only appear on PS5 (at least until a PC version arrives). What does Team Ninja’s game say about what a PS5 exclusive should look like in 2024? Most prominently, it says that all exclusives are certainly not equal. Even with seven years on the clock, and with no doubt hundreds of dedicated staff having put in their share of late nights, Rise Of The Ronin is just a bit tatty around its edges. The result feels below-par next to even an old PS5 game such as Demon’s Souls. (To be fair, barely anything stands up against Bluepoint’s remake in…

Developer Open Roads Team Publisher Annapurna Interactive  Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series  Release Out now Exploring a rundown summer home, our gaze alights on a set of louvre doors that have seen better days. Pulling them aside to reveal a shallow alcove, we see an air rifle leaning upright against the back wall. Dragging the tiny reticule in the centre of the screen over it yields no prompt to examine it more closely, let alone take it with us. We turn instead to the tall, narrow shelving unit on the right, upon which lies a red stuffed bear. This time there is a prompt: this can be picked up and turned over in our hands, resulting in an observation from teenaged protagonist Tess. It’s a…

Developer Spike Chunsoft Publisher Reef Entertainment Format Switch Release Out now There may be no finer setting for a mystery dungeon game than a place called Serpentcoil Island. It speaks to the procedural pain and pleasure of Spike Chunsoft’s series. Going in, you instinctively anticipate something possessed of sleek formal elegance, distinguished by its twists and turns. Yet you know it’s equally capable of constricting in an instant and choking the life out of you – either steadily or swiftly, depending on its mood and whether you wriggle or accept defeat and submit to its crushing embrace. Such is the Faustian bargain you strike with the developer upon entry: yes, it can be cruel and capricious, sometimes viciously so, but you accept that deal for the opportunity to experience moments…

One thing interactive entertainment has always been short on, when it comes to covering life’s essential subjects: games about tea. Correcting this imbalance might not have been V Buckenham’s intent in developing game-creation app Downpour, but it does seem to be infused within it. In January 2022, Buckenham began tweeting short games made using a tool she’d been tinkering with since leaving her role of lead game designer at Niantic (see ‘Passing Go’). The first of those games, posted on New Year’s Day, opens on a photograph of a kitchen counter holding a kettle, teabags and milk, which must be tapped in the correct order, lest you find yourself scolded. In March, when Downpour launched in app stores, developer Terry Cavanagh tried his hand at the nascent teamaking genre, with…

“I actually hate achievements and what they’ve done to games and our ability to enjoy them without needless gamification and meaningless rewards…” “To my parents up there, thank you for giving me guitars and drum machines instead of videogames.” “I don’t think you really can set out to please the fans of anything, or please anyone other than yourself.” “We’re a business. I’ve said it over and over. I don’t get any luxury of not having to run a profitable, growing business inside of Microsoft.” ARCADE WATCH Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene The Utah-based Alan-1 started out making hardware such as reproduction yoke controllers for Atari’s Star Wars arcade machine, but its ambition has since grown to incorporate game development. Its debut production, Avian Knights, has been…

An on-rails driving simulator can be surprisingly immersive. I may be pootling along strictly under the speed limit, but as I turn a corner I find myself leaning over in my seat as though that will help me get a better view of what’s around the bend. And it could be anything: a motorcyclist coming towards me on the wrong side of the road, a pesky jogger veering drunkenly into the gutter, a white-van man breaking all the rules of the Highway Code plus some that haven’t even been invented yet. Speed of reaction is of the essence. My clawlike hand hovers over the mouse button as we trundle slowly around the corner and I find myself holding my breath. Gran Turismo, eat your heart out. What about the graphics,…

With Hyper Light Breaker, Heart Machine finds itself doing something that is increasingly rare. When polygons first took over from sprites, it was more commonplace. But a series moving from a top-down perspective to a fully three-dimensional world doesn’t happen often in 2024. So you can forgive a few teething issues translating combat that works beautifully from an overhead view on a single screen to a world where enemies can attack from any angle. Or perhaps the issue is ours – and we simply need to adjust to the fact that we can’t play Breaker as we did Drifter. Either way, the studio has the chance to fine-tune the game in Early Access. And when we’re not getting repeatedly destroyed, there is much to admire. Were Alx Preston seeking inspiration,…

Developer Heart Machine Publisher Gearbox Publishing Format PC Origin US Release Summer (early access) Given that one wrong move can potentially mean having to start the whole thing again, lending tension to every enemy encounter, Roguelikes are among the most high-pressure games you can play. Throw in time constraints and that tension heightens further. And when you’re sharing your screen with a game’s director, as we are here with Heart Machine’s Alx Preston silently observing our every mistake, well, that’s a new level of pressure entirely. Our session begins gently enough, with our nimble, blue-haired Breaker warping from a peaceful (read: empty) floating city hub down to the more verdant but hostile Overgrowth below. The generic slimes we bat away with our sword quickly give way to more challenging…

Developer Finite Reflection Publisher Modern Wolf Format PC Origin US Release 2025 Lead designer Kartik Kini introduces this top-down dungeon crawler as “Geometry Wars meets Dark Souls”, but while playing we’re transported back in time to one of videogames’ formative moments. As an abstract shape exploring a maze-like map with enemies to avoid and secrets to discover, it recalls Atari’s Adventure, with its minimalist aesthetic and foreboding atmosphere, as much as Kini’s contemporary reference points. Otherwise, Kini’s description fits the bill. As our triangular hero dodges jabs from pointed blades and fast-moving projectiles from archers, breakcore music from composer Vivi Mouse kicks in, capturing a similar mood to Bizarre Creations’ twin-stick shooter. Yet we also find ourselves resting at bonfire-like sparks of light, where we can refill our healing flasks…

STILL PLAYING/ NEAR MISSES Doronko Wanko PC Bandai Namco’s New Employee Training Project is a scheme wherein the publisher’s incoming staff are encouraged to work on smaller titles to hone their skills before being moved onto larger projects. Three games from this year’s programme have been released via Steam for free, and this time they come with English-language support. Nottolot is a compact and moderately engaging action-puzzle game in which you ‘hack’ various robots by launching your own spherical bot into their conveniently sized ports to advance through a series of chambers. Then there’s Boomeroad, which isn’t a residential estate for sexagenarians, but rather a platformer of sorts in which you launch a boomerang to create mid-air rails that you can then grind along to reach your destination: an enjoyable…

Received wisdom – or, at least, prevailing narrative fashion – proposes that maintaining a consistent band of fellow adventurers is the best way to create a sense of team-based camaraderie and closeness in fiction. After all, where would Frodo be without Sam and Aragorn? Or Cloud without Barrett and Tifa? Or Shadowheart without Astarion and Gale? The fellowship of any band of adventurers would, tradition suggests, be undercut if the hero had to work with a rotating cast of party members. It’s one of many conventions overturned by Dragon’s Dogma 2, in which the protagonist is supported by one loyal but dispensable pawn, who levels up alongside you, and up to two additional pawns, who are borrowed from other players across the network. To fill out your team you must…

Developer René Rother Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC Release Out now René Rother’s acrid revenge thriller – an action game with its limbs broken and forcibly rearranged into the shape of a spatial puzzler – is at once a bona fide original and an unlikely throwback. Cast your eyes right and you wouldn’t blink if we told you this was a forgotten Grasshopper Manufacture game from the early PS3 era (we won’t be at all surprised if this finds a spot on Suda51’s end-of-year list). But otherwise it feels like a Devolver Digital joint from the publisher’s early days. We’re thinking of one game in particular: the perspective might have changed, but the abrasive, video-nasty vibe of Hotline Miami is here in abundance. Like in that game, you’ve effectively got…

Developer Tomas Sala Publisher Wired Productions Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now Anyone familiar with the concept of kitbashing is already halfway to understanding what Tomas Sala’s open-world builder is all about. For those who aren’t, it’s the practice of combining pieces from separate model kits to create something unique – such as the way Industrial Light & Magic’s model-makers took pieces from car, plane and train kits and combined them with everyday objects to create some of Star Wars’ most distinctive ship designs. It’s a form of model-making that prioritises experimentation, in other words, and it’s easy to see how this practice inspired the design of Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles. As a city-builder, this is a game about combining pieces from different factions to…

Developer Pieces Interactive Publisher THQ Nordic Format PC, PS5 (tested), Xbox Series Release Out now The psychiatric hospital housed in Derceto Manor may be filled with occult artefacts, haunted rooms and supernatural creatures, but its most perspective-shifting moment comes upon entering the office of Dr Gray. Our viewpoint swings from behind our shoulder up to the ceiling, mimicking the fixed camera of the original Alone In The Dark, complete with tank controls. It’s a clever moment in a game with plenty of good ideas. Yet by invoking its progenitor so directly, this reboot highlights its own deficiencies. Failing to live up to the defining characteristics of the survival horror genre, it settles into a bland middle ground. Events start promisingly upon first meeting Emily Hartwood, who has hired private detective…