Tabla de contenidos para October 2017 en Gamesmaster

Fantasy Flight Games, maker of the X-Wing Miniatures Game and its black-hole-for-cash expansion packs, is launching two new boardgames in its ongoing quest to pull videogame franchises out of the digital world and into a strange, boxed dimension of cardboard and plastic. Fallout and Civilization are being run through the analoguiser this time, following Doom and The Witcher, and the latter game manages to keep its signature hex grid during its transition to tactility. Called Civilization: A New Dawn, it’s actually the second boardgame based on Sid Meier’s series produced by Fantasy Flight. It follows the classic Civ structure of taking over the world through the course of history, with players using Focus cards to gain influence and completing set Agendas to achieve victory. Military conquest of the globe is…

Games don’t vanish once they’re released. In many cases, developers support them months and even years post-launch, evolving the experience with extra modes, fresh features, and entire new locations. The following four titles have undergone massive transformations. If you’ve played them, try giving their latest incarnations another go. And if you haven’t, now is the perfect time to hop on board. RAINBOW SIX SIEGE Assault and bettery Format PS4, XO, PC Publisher Ubisoft Developer Ubisoft Incredibly, more people are playing Ubisoft’s tactical squad shooter now than when it launched in December 2015. Back then it had scant few modes, plentiful bugs, little anti-cheater implementation, and a litany of imbalances. After two years of updates, however, it’s now fighting fit. First off, five free maps take the total to 16. They…

STAR WAR Explore the universe, encounter new life-forms and, um, shoot them in sci-fi blaster Morphite. FIRST IN THE NET Or first footie sim in the shopping basket – PES 2018 launches today. If FIFA 18’s more your thing, wait till 29 September for that. OUTSIDER IN Is it even possible to kill a god? Grab Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider and help deicidal Billie Lurk find out. NOT SAMUS BEFORE Metroid: Samus Returns should be a retro blast for 3DS owners. CATCH SOME Z Today you could get scrapping with Goku et al in Dragon Ball FighterZ. Just Saiyan… CAPCOMIC CAPERS Game stars take on superheroes as Marvel Vs Capcom: Infinite brawls onto consoles. FLAUNTING CURVES! Feast your eyes on the beautiful Project Cars 2. Maybe even play it…

Microsoft’s Xbox One X packs the muscle to push games further. From first-party exclusives, to cross-platform titles, this heavily upgraded Xbox One unlocks a new universe of graphical fidelity and enhanced performance. But is it worth £444.99? Let’s break it down. First off, Xbox One X is capable of 4K resolution, potentially resulting in richer colours and crisper lines across every single upcoming release. Patches, meanwhile, will upgrade existing games to leverage that new power. All current titles work on it, operating just as they do on Xbox One, but developers are specially optimising dozens. And for those without 4K tellies? All those high-resolution textures, dynamic shadows, and improved reflections still carry through to 1080p. There’s also the boost to frame rates, a buttery-smooth 60fps now within reach. Hardware advances…

Format PC Developer Derek Yu, Eirik Suhrke, Jon Perry, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto Publisher Mossmouth ETA Summer 2018 From the creator of Spelunky comes a collection of retro minigames… except, no, they’re not minigames. Each of UFO 50’s 8-bit-styled offerings is a fully-fledged game in its own right. The limited colour palettes and chunky sprites are apt for a collection that takes us back to the days of 100-in-one Game Boy carts and those dodgy Spectrum tapes you could buy from car boot sales. That the 50 games on offer here are legitimate titles, each helmed by a director with his own development history (Spelunky, Downwell, Time Barons, and more), with at least an attempt at originality and modern design despite the obvious inspirations, makes it even better. There’s a…

“YOU SOLVE PUZZLES WITH WORDS. ‘OPEN’ USED IN A SENTENCE CAN BE DRAGGED OVER TO A GATE” Format PS4, XO, PC Developer Fourth State ETA 2018 Web http://bit.ly/gmlostwords Words matter. Look, you’re reading some right now, and if you’ve survived the first pun, you’re probably prepared to get through the rest of the page. While the importance of story varies from game to game, for Lost Words: Beyond The Page, the story isthe game. Every sentence and every word matters to how it plays out. Not only that but you can toy with the words themselves, bringing their meanings to life. And it all takes place within the pages of a diary. A labour of love from newly indie dev Mark Backler, Lost Words originally looked very different. “It started…

“REDEEMER’S BEST OFFERINGS ARE ITS ARENA BATTLES: TENSE, HORDE MODE-LIKE FIGHTS” Format PC Publisher Good Shepherd Entertainment Developer Sobaka Studio ETA Out now Players 1 You are Vasily, an assassin with a troubled past. As you started looking into cybernetic augmentation and alteration, it all got a bit much, and you wanted to leave. It almost cost you your life but you got out. 20 years later, after living in peace with a sect of monks, your ex-employers have tracked you down. After having the life you’ve cherished for two decades ripped away, you are nothappy, and everyone who’s ever crossed you will find out just how much. Redeemer mixes Gauntlet-style top-down brawling with the sort of close-up gory kills that the likes of Mortal Kombat and God Of War…

“THE BUILD-UP RAMPS UP THE TENSION FOR WHEN YOU FINALLY PUT YOUR PLANS INTO ACTION” Format Switch, PS4 (reviewed), XO, PC Publisher Team 17 Developer Team 17, Mouldy Toof Studios ETA Out now Players 1-4 One of the best things about games is the way they let us experience madcap scenarios that would otherwise be confined to vivid, cheese-induced dreams. While we hope to never experience prison firsthand, the concept of becoming an escape artist, employing all manner of canny crafting and out of the box (er… cell?) thinking, is the stuff of gaming gold. Like in its predecessor, the idea here is to keep your head down and adhere to the routine of prison life, while orchestrating a getaway plan. Mornings start with a roll call and cell searches,…

“THE ARENAS LOOK FANTASTIC: YOU FIGHT ON TOP OF RAINBOWS AND IN A CLUB WITH SPIKED DISCO BALLS” Format PS4 (reviewed), PC Pub Messhof Games Dev Messhof Games ETA Out now Players 1-8 The first game was one of the best titles of 2014. It was a side-scrolling sword fighting game with simple visuals and mechanics: you held your rapier in one of three stances (low, medium, or high), and tried to stab your opponent while blocking their strikes. You could throw your weapon, roll, jump, and that was about it. Playing with a friend – or even better, a group of friends – was a tense test of skill. Nidhogg 2 rings the changes, adding more weapons, more gore, and a completely new art style. The good news is…

Awesome Boss! Civilization Format PC Developer MPS Labs Released 1991 Civilization might not seem like a strategy title with defined boss battles, but anyone who has pitted their wits against the walking contradiction of a nuke-loving Gandhi can vouch that it feels like it has them. He’s true to the pacifist icon one moment, a warmonger with a ton of ICBMs the next. Navigating his many whims has been tense as any final fight throughout the series’ history. Classic Moment! Crash Bandicoot Format PS1 Developer Naughty Dog Released 1996 Hog Wild was the first time in the mad marsupial’s debut adventure when you got a sense of the variety on offer. Ditching the traditional platforming for a ride through a tribe’s village, the tension generated by the need for fast…

THE MOST DEDICATED TEAM IN THE BUSINESS In honour of Wolfenstein II, the team’s been attempting to reminisce about the ’60s. “That was when people wore ruffs, right?” “Nah, ’60s was all top hats.” “Did they have dinosaurs back then?” Ben Griffin We like to get Ben out of the office regularly, mostly so we can empty out his drawers of mouldy fruit. This month he was sleepless in Seattle, playing Destiny 2 all the hours that God allows, and returned with tales of drunkenly high-fiving the game’s project lead. Who’d be your perfect co-op buddy? Mr Motivator – team morale would never falter Rob Crossland This art editor gig must be going alright after all: Rob’s just bought himself a boat. It’s a surprisingly savvy move, considering our office…

II was sceptical of this game after Mass Effect 3 – I won’t lie, it had a lot to live up to. The plot is basically ‘find a new home for humanity’, but there is a hostile new alien race (surprise, surprise) that play as the villains. That’s pretty much it – no plot twists, just forgettable moments till the credits roll. It’s a huge shame that a AAA studio with a large budget and years of development time could not address the obvious flaws before release. Soundtrack was unnoticeable for me. The customisation is weak. The gunplay is not very good, nor is the cover system. It’s a buggy game and load times were too long, cutscenes were repetitive, and the planet visits were so tedious, I groaned each…

“UP TO FOUR PEOPLE CAN PLAY, TURNING EACH CHOICE INTO A DECISION-BY-COMMITTEE” Planet Of The Apes is enough of a phenomenon now that if you use the acronym ‘POTA’, then people may just know what you’re talking about. Three hit films and nigh-on $2bn later, it was inevitable that a game would follow. But with Planet Of The Apes: Last Frontier, debut developer Imaginati isn’t content to slap the POTA licensing on the trendy genre du jour and claim its paycheque. This is a super-cinematic interactive drama, incorporating a clever multiplayer element that’s unlike anything we’ve quite seen before. Last Frontier takes place after civilisation’s collapse following the simian flu pandemic. Switching between the perspectives of a young simian in a rugged ape tribe and the leader of an agrarian…

“WHAT WE ARE INTRODUCING IS SINGLE-PLAYER, CO-OPERATIVE PVE STORY-DRIVEN CAMPAIGNS” For console players, it always felt like something was missing from World Of Tanks. Over the years the online vehicle-shooter has only grown in popularity, becoming one of the biggest games in the world (it’s got well over 100 million registered players), but the console and PC iterations have only grown more disparate. Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PS4 players have often complained that it feels like they are being taken for granted, especially as PC players enjoy faster updates and a greater focus on authenticity. And Wargaming listened, finally delivering significant new content designed specifically for the console space: War Stories. “With this add-on to World Of Tanks on console, we think this is going to deliver the ultimate…

“THE IMAGE OF AMERICA RULED BY ITS NAZI OCCUPIERS IS A STRIKING ONE. SUN-DAPPLED STREETS TAINTED BY THE NAZI FLAG” Format PS4, XO, PC Publisher Bethesda Developer Machine Games ETA 27 October The New Colossus takes its name from the sonnet engraved at the base of the Statue Of Liberty. But the line about ‘huddled masses yearning to be free’ has taken on an entirely new, much more sinister meaning. America has been conquered by the Nazis in Wolfenstein’s alternate history, which makes Blazkowicz’s homecoming a bitter one. But if there’s one thing he likes, it’s killin’ Nazis, and he’s never had a better excuse. “We had America in mind when we started working on The New Order,” says Tommy Tordsson Björk, narrative designer. “It was one of the places…

“THE CORE COMBAT IS A SMOOTH AND ACCESSIBLE COMBINATION OF MELEE, SHOOTING, AND ABILITIES” Format PS4, XO, PC Publisher THQ Nordic Developer Experiment 101 ETA Autumn 2018 Take the open-world playground stylings of Rico’s adventures in Just Cause, and end of the world vibes à la Mad Max. Add to that some Chinese cultural influences, a healthy dose of Kung Fu Panda, and a mutating mammal that’s capable of near-limitless weapon crafting, and you’re in for one undeniably offbeat adventure. This newly announced action-RPG is a mashup of a broad range of concepts, but many of the influences make sense when you know the development team, Experiment 101, consists of ex-Avalanche developers. Sporting the most vibrant and colourful landscape the post-apocalypse has ever seen, Biomutant aims to give you the…

Format PS4, PC Publisher Spike Chunsoft Developer Spike Chunsoft ETA Summer 2018 Currently in Steam Early Access, this license-free grappler gets away with stipulations official games can’t: barbed wire boards, exploding landmines, and even MMA cage brawls. Those thinking that sounds slightly outlandish should remember it all actually happened in pro wrestling’s storied history. Nowhere is Spike Chunsoft’s affection for sports entertainment more evident than in the editing suite – you just have to assemble the bits. A rummage through the Steam Workshop reveals thousands of player-shared creations from every era: Terry Funk, Kamala, Sabu, TMNT’s Krang, Street Fighter’s Akuma, and a dozen Kane variations. They’re basic approximations rendered in a dated engine, sure, but this simplicity makes customisation easy. You can quickly combine and colour individual layers to make,…

Format PS4, XO, PC Dev Space Mace ETA Spring 2018 Web bit.ly/gmjoggernauts We’re getting pretty good at all playing together. Be it the heady interstellar delights of Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime or the delicious Overcooked, shouting at your friends has never been this much fun, and probably saves thousand of pounds in psychiatry bills as repressed frustrations are released. Well, it’s time to stress-test those fraying friendships once again with a fiendish platformer that requires constant communication. Joggernauts seems simple at first. All you have to do is hurtle sideways through a world of pretty colours, with your team of up to four people, matching the first person in the party with the colour of the incoming obstacle. Got a green wall? Make sure your grass-coloured friend is out…

Format PS4 Publisher Sony Developer Naughty Dog ETA Out now Players 1-10 Where do we start? The slow-burning and intelligent relationship between protagonist Chloe and hired merc Nadine, or the towering stone statues of Hindu gods jutting out from the jungle canopy? The immaculate pacing, or headshots with the golden silenced pistol? You’d better get comfortable, because we’ll be here a while. First: yes, The Lost Legacy is an expansion done right. And after 2014’s superlative-defying The Last of Us: Left Behind, this six(ish)-hour spectacle further demonstrates that Sony’s prized first-party studio understands how to do narrative expansions better than anyone. The secret, it seems, is to narrow the scope, and drill down into the characters. Naturally, then, protagonist Chloe Frazer and hired gun Nadine Ross find themselves at the…

“FEELS LIKE A GREATEST HITS MONTAGE WITH A FEW NEW TRACKS THROWN IN TO TIDE YOU OVER” Format Switch, PS4 (reviewed), XO, PC Publisher Sega Developer Headcannon, PagodaWest Games ETA Out now Players 1-2 When Sonic the Hedgehog burst onto the gaming scene back in the early ’90s he was a fast and furious breath of fresh air. Riding the spiked shoulders of its blue hedgehog, Sega fought back against Nintendo’s monopoly and earned a place among the gaming elite. Unfortunately, Sonic hasn’t exactly aged well. Over the years the little blue hedgehog-that-could has been through a bit of an identity crisis. His 2D games, like Sonic 4, missed the mark, and his 3D excursions are a mixed bag ranging from atrocious to just about passable. Sonic Mania seems at…

One of the most successful stylistic choices Hellblade makes is to forgo any sort of HUD, which helps stop any videogame conventions dragging you out of Senua’s world. It could have been a complete disaster: games will always look better with minimal visual clutter, but the functionality they bring often outweighs the stylistic damage. However, here, there’s a careful marriage of style and substance, with conventional HUD elements carefully mapped into the game’s reality. The missing health bar, for example, is translated into heightened visual distortions, with double vision and intensified bickering from the voices in your ears when Senua is close to dying. The voices also double up as a method of detecting off-screen attacks, as they screech “Behind you!”, signalling the need to block. Meanwhile, the lack of…

“WHILE AGENTS ARE GOOD IN COMBAT, THEY’RE STEREOTYPES WHEN THE ACTION STOPS” Format PS4 (reviewed), XO, PC Publisher Deep Silver Developer Volition ETA Out now Players 1 No game where you call down laser strikes from space, skate through rooftop raves on a rampage with a minigun, and ram car bombs off the road at 100 miles per hour should ever be boring. Yet somehow Agents Of Mayhem is bland. Its combat has some original ideas that will hold your attention for a few hours, but its missions are repetitive, its imagining of a futuristic Seoul lifeless, and its jokes – which vary from Uranus gags to characters repeating ‘giant balls’ over and over again – fall flat. It’s an open-world game from Volition, the team behind Saints Row, with…

“LAWBREAKERS DRAWS HEAVILY ON OLDER ARENA SHOOTERS LIKEQUAKE AND UNREAL TOURNAMENT” Format PS4, XO, PC (reviewed) Publisher Nexon Developer Boss Key Productions ETA Out now Players 1-10 With a smorgasbord of games competing for our time nowadays, a multiplayer-focused title has to shine to capture a player base. Evolve and Battleborn were decent games that were unable to attract users already dividing their time. Lawbreakers has revived a neglected subgenre, turn-of-the-century arena shooters, to lure in players. In this online multiplayer shooter, 5v5 matches take place across eight maps, with modes including Uplink (a sort of ‘king of the hill’) and the Justin-Roilandvoiced Blitzball (sorry, Deathmatch lovers). You have a choice of nine character classes, each with its own abilities and loadouts. The inevitable comparison is with Overwatch, but any…

Format PS4, XO, PC (reviewed), Mobile Pub Telltale Dev Telltale ETA Out now Players 1 The first season of Telltale’s Batman was frustratingly mixed – an overall tense, clever superhero story marred by often ham-fisted dialogue and clumsy scenes – but served to establish one of the most interesting, strikingly different takes on the hero we’ve seen. This first episode of season two builds on that foundation deftly, ushering in a series that looks set to surpass its predecessor. In the aftermath of the Children Of Arkham, it seems Batman’s inadvertently let the genie out of the bottle. As far as Gotham City’s villains go, sleazy mafiosos are out, and costumed weirdos are in. Enter new antagonist Riddler and returning proto-Joker John Doe. Bats isn’t alone in dealing with them,…

Here’s a crafting recipe for you: combine four blocks of ink, four of paper, and a big old scoop of expert Minecraft knowledge. What do you get? This month’s competition prize! Three lucky winners will each receive a full collection of official Minecraft guide books created by developer Mojang, thanks to our friends at Egmont Publishing. Each set is the perfect library of hints, tips, schematics, and blueprints to help you get the most out of the world’s biggest game. The set includes the Guide To Creative, a tome packed with advice on creating the best builds; and the Guide To Exploration, featuring everything you need to know about surviving and adventuring in the Minecraft world. There’s also the Guide To Redstone, full of info on how to make mad…

The deadline-filled, scoop-chasing, coffee-slurping world of games journalism is not one conducive to moments of calm and focus. It’s with some sense of trepidation, then, that we approach Champions Of The Shengha – a mobile card game controlled by your state of mind. A bio-sensor clipped (painlessly) to your ear, dubbed the ‘Magic Transmitter’, tracks your heart rate, and uses that to determine your arcane power moment-to-moment. Your current level of magical focus then dictates what cards you can play. Want to unleash your most powerful spells and minions? You’ll need to stay cool under pressure and carefully regulate your breathing. Trust us: it’s easier said than done. The one-on-one card duels are real-time, rather than turn-based, so the tension’s always high. Balancing reacting to your opponent’s moves on the…

Most MMOs are noisy things full of people showing off gear and bragging. Worlds Adrift is completely different: an almost contemplative exploration game about building airships to sail between a network of floating islands. It’s soothing. When Leon isn’t plummeting into a void after messing up another grappling hook swing, that is… 5 MINUTES Gravity, it turns out, is a bit of a git. I never thought of it as a living entity that might personally hate me before. However, after a few minutes inside Worlds Adrift I’ve decided it’s really got it in for me. Oh, sure, you could blame my inexperience with a grappling hook and the way I go leaping blindly over hundred-foot drops, but I’m not going to. I’ve seen Spider-Man, I know how this works…

The name ‘Wolfenstein’ is now synonymous with Mecha-Hitlers, Panzerhunds, and handing out straight lefts to the far right. Since 1981 it’s switched from top-down adventure to mobile RPG, has pastiched movies in The Great Escape and political coups in Operation Valkyrie, and has been banned in Germany on several occasions. We round up four decades of Wolfenstein in our über-cool series guide. 1 CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN Dev Muse Pub Muse Year 1981 Achtung! Before the days of William ‘BJ’ Blazkowicz, you played an unnamed Allied POW who had to elude Nazis, sniff out secret war plans, and escape the titular castle-turned-prison alive. You could sneak past foes, force them to drop their weapons at gunpoint, or simply shoot them in the back. There wasn’t an incentive not to end every encounter…

“THE CITY LOOKS LIKE ANY TYPICAL AMERICAN SMALL TOWN… EXCEPT FOR THE ROAMING HORDES OF ZOMBIES” Format PS4, XO, PC Publisher Bethesda Developer Tango Gameworks ETA 13 October With the introduction of broader levels and an open style of play, you might worry that this survival horror shocker would lose its predecessor’s power to give you the creeps. Don’t. Within our demo, we encounter enough gore and weirdness to ensure that sleep will be much harder to get when October rolls around. That’s because poor ol’ detective Sebastian Castellanos is hopping into the STEM machine once again. If the convoluted mythology of the original is hard to follow, this sequel presents a simpler narrative. Seb discovers that his dead daughter, Lily, is in fact alive and being used by…

Format PS4, XO, PC Publisher 505 Games Developer Roll7 ETA Summer 2018 Truly great local multiplayer games are a unique breed. The likes of Towerfall and Nidhogg stand evergreen and immortal, ready to treat you to an amazing time with your mates at a moment’s notice, still exciting years after their original release. It’s no small thing, then, for us to say this: Laser League is shaping up to join that pantheon. Like all the greats, it starts simple: in a Tron-like arena, you must race to capture moving nodes before the opposing team. Grab one, and it’ll extrude lasers of your colour. These are deadly to your opponents, and theirs are deadly to you. Outlive the enemy, and you win. And, as in all the true greats, that accessible…

“YOU CAN BUILD YOURSELF A HOME ALONE DEATH HOUSE IN LESS THAN 30 SECONDS” Format PS4, XO, PC Publisher Epic Developer Epic ETA Autumn 2018 Scavenging for resources has never felt so good. Take chopping wood: you whip out your axe and hack at trees as they wiggle and bounce, icons representing planks and twine streaming out upon each exaggerated swing before the trunk explodes in a puff of smoke and showers more building materials on you. It’s a good job this, mining for ore, and smashing up cars for metal parts, are so rewarding. You’ll need everything you can get by nightfall. In Fortnite, Epic’s co-op sandbox survival in development since 2011, a mysterious weather phenomenon known as The Storm has wiped out 98% of humanity. You must unite…

“HE’S GOT FAR MORE ON HIS PLATE THAN A FEW MISSING POSTCODES” Format Switch, PS4, XO, PC Dev Villa Gorilla ETA 2018 Web bit.ly/gmyoku If ‘metroidvania pinball adventure’ has always been your dream mash-up then it’s your lucky day. The combination of flippers and sidescrolling might not be the most conventional, but the adventures of Yoku the dung beetle in his new job as a postman will be enough to convince you. Welcome to the tropical island of Mokumana, where physics are your new best friend. Inspired by the world of Studio Ghibli, Mokumana is a beautifully lush hand-painted environment for Yoku to fire his way around. While he starts out just delivering letters, it’s not long before ancient gods are awakening and he’s got far more on his plate…

Regardless of the species you choose, whether brightly coloured Awoken, robotic Exo, or human fleshbag, all attire choices fit perfectly. You won’t see this grenade launcher coming. Mainly because its explosives have a brief blinding effect. For fans of scientific misuse, try the black hole rifle. Every third shot rips a hole in the space-time continuum to deal extra damage. As before, you can customise your Ghost with paint jobs. This fetching camo comes with an increased radar to identify far-off loot.…

“YOU EXPERIENCE SENUA’S ANGUISH AND HER PAIN, FEARING THAT, RATHER THAN HER” Format PS4 (reviewed), PC Publisher Ninja Theory Developer Ninja Theory ETA Out now Players 1 What might you expect the first two titles to be in a game’s opening credits? Producer and Director, perhaps? In Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, it’s Mental Health Advisor and Historical Consultant. The reason becomes quickly apparent, as does the fact that Hellblade is like little we’ve ever seen before. For a start, it does an excellent job of avoiding conventional labels: there’s DNA of Ninja Theory’s earlier, action-oriented works here, but also spatial puzzling, harrowing audiovisual storytelling, and a blend of unusual new ideas. Combined, those elements create an unconventionally brilliant narrative showcase. Hellblade charts both Celtic warrior Senua’s quest to rescue a loved…

“IF YOU’VE EVER PLAYED RESOGUN, MATTERFALL WILL FEEL INSTANTLY FAMILIAR” Format PS4 Publisher Sony Developer Housemarque ETA Out now Players 1 It takes us almost two hours to beat the final boss in Housemarque’s particle-showered, side-scrolling shooter. Two hours of pain. But when the huge, alien-matter-manipulated industrial drill (Drill Git, we like to call him) finally succumbs to our hail of bullets, it’s a sweet release. The best feeling. Dropping the final boss isn’t the end, though – we’re just getting warmed up. It’s almost like you’re being mocked by Housemarque when you eventually clear Matterfall, with a PS4 trophy popping as voxels rain around you. “Training Complete,” it says. It’s a knowing wink. Your pain (and pleasure) has just begun. If you’ve ever played Housemarque shmup Resogun, Matterfall will…

Format PC Publisher TeeDoubleuGames Developer TeeDoubleuGames ETA Out now Players 1 Good games attract a lot of imitations. Great games, though, the ones that really change things, attract very few. The Sims is a fine example: who among the big publishers wouldn’t want a rival product to Maxis’ masterpiece? Yet except for Singles: Flirt Up Your Life, the bandwagon never arrived. Don’t worry, this is all terribly pertinent to Immortal Planet, we promise. Because despite its progeny of lacklustre Soulslikes, Dark Souls is another one of those moments in ‘too brilliant to effectively clone’ history. It’s also very clearly the inspiration for every melee swing and bitter death in this game. The good news: combat’s risky and enjoyable. The stamina bar is king, of course, and since both yours and…

Format PC Pub Size Five Games Dev Size Five Games ETA Out now Players 1 This game was created by someone with zero understanding of, or interest in, football,” warns creator Dan Marshall’s relentlessly incorrect interpretation which, in the process of wilfully misunderstanding the sport, invents a new one entirely. The rules are thus: you ‘do a goal’ by kicking the football into the goal. The further from goal you are, the more points you get. Oh and the pitch is round, rather than oblong. There’s training, quickplay, and a campaign in which you’ll encounter characters like Pedro Brutus, whose Brazil United wins the World Cup “every year”, and the cigar-chomping Coach, who sucks all romance from the Beautiful Game by stressing financial obligations. Perform well, see, and jabbering fans…

“FIGHTS WOULD BREAK OUT OVER THE ETHICAL DILEMMA OF USING THE MONKEY IN MULTIPLAYER” Developer Free Radical Design Publisher Eidos Released 2002 Format GameCube, Xbox, PS2 Get it Ebay There’s never been a better time for shooting your mates on a console. Whether it’s the drama of Call Of Duty’s blisteringly fast deathmatches or screaming at simpleton Steve to “Get. On. The. Payload!” in Overwatch, multiplayer shooters are all the (gamer) rage. Rewind to 2002, however, and shooters on consoles were seen as inferior cousins to the mouse-and-keyboard darlings of PC gaming. Enter a silly multiplayerfocused FPS, which soon became the king of sofa sessions, and helped popularise the genre on consoles using little more than a horde of monkeys and one killer level. The origin TimeSplitters 2’s roots can…

Let’s not beat around the shaven head wearing imitation Burberry. Hooligans aren’t celebrated role models. Traditionally they’re people – okay, men – who are known for having a few too many ales, getting a little too invested in the idea of someone looking at them a bit funny, and finding any old excuse to fling their fists at high speeds into other hooligans’ faces. But we’re not here to demonise. Instead we’re looking at the digital cheeky chappies who, over the years, might have had that wild spark inside them, but are more than an errant headbutt away from a holiday at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Now, come and have a go if you think you’re ’ard enough. • BIRDIE Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES – 1996) A bar-room brawler whose…