Tabla de contenidos para No. 197 en GamesTM

A phrase I find myself saying a lot more than I imagined I would is, ‘I’ll wait to play that when it arrives on Switch’. Why? Not because of the fidelity, of course, or the control feeling any better. It’s simply because if a game is on the Switch I know I can play it anywhere and at any time. This has been especially true of indie games where the art style and engine behind the game means that it makes no great difference to the experience whether I’m playing it in 720p on the Switch or 4K on the Xbox One X. In these circumstances I can find the time in my day on Switch to pick up on the smaller titles and fill out my day with games.…

FORMAT: PS4 | PUBLISHER: SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT DEVELOPER: SANTA MONICA STUDIO | RELEASE: 20 APRIL 2018 | PLAYERS: 1 God Of War is back this year, and it’s breaking new ground for Kratos. While retaining the iconic essence of the series, Santa Monica Studio has updated every aspect for the latest instalment. Moving from Greek to Norse mythology, we’ll experience brutal battles while hacking and throwing the Leviathan Axe in a freshly redesigned combat system that integrates both Kratos and his son, Atreus. Following Kratos’s uncontrollable rage in previous titles, the new God Of War reveals his restrained side as he juggles his paternal instincts, keeps his emotions in check and faces a combination of new threats. Unaware of his demigod father’s past and his own true nature, Atreus will…

FORMAT: IOS | PUBLISHER: IN-HOUSE | DEVELOPER: THATGAMECOMPANY | PLAYERS: 1-8 | RELEASE: TBC 2018 What made Journey such a heart-warming and uplifting experience? Was it the open world and moments of discovery? The segments of breathless movement? The terrifying moments when the challenge seemed insurmountable? Or perhaps the moment once it was all done and you realised that all those hooded figures like yourself that you met along the way were really other players? Possibly it was less so that last element, although the realisation was a potent one and it’s that reveal thatgamecompany is doubling down on with Sky. Having played through the game in an early test build this feels every bit like a successor to Journey. It has the same kind of…

FORMAT: PC | PUBLISHER: SEGA | DEVELOPER: CREATIVE ASSEMBLY | RELEASE: AUTUMN 2018 | PLAYERS: TBC It feels as if this has been a long time coming. Creative Assembly is finally taking a step back from the world of Warhammer and is returning to what it does best, a Total War rooted in real-world history. It’s the first in five years and that alone ensures that expectation is already running high, although that’s not all that surprising given that Total War: Three Kingdoms is taking us into a time period that we’ve never seen the famed strategy series tackle in the past. Three Kingdoms brings Total War to China and into one of the most turbulent times in the nation’s history. The Han Dynasty is crumbling and the stage is…

FORMAT: SWITCH | PUBLISHER: NINTENDO | DEVELOPER: CAMELOT | RELEASE: Q1 2018 | PLAYERS: 1-4 1 KEEP THE MADNESS, LOSE THE INSANITY What has kept the Mario Tennis games feeling fun and accessible over the years has been their willingness to play around a little with mechanics and power shots, embellishing the sport of tennis. Where that’s fallen foul though is when power-ups take over and skill begins to be subsumed by fortune on the court. So far, Aces looks to be leaning more towards a skill-based game with power-up flair from time to time. 2 ATTENTION TO DETAIL We’re loving some of the finer details we can already see in Mario Tennis Aces. For a start, those outfits are actually tennis-appropriate for a change, rather than having the Mushroom…

Minecraft is one of the biggest games in the world, with 74 million active players. Was it important to get the game out on Switch so early in the console’s cycle? Roger Carpenter, Executive Producer, Microsoft/Mojang: If I’m honest, getting it out early in the cycle wasn’t our main driver. We were already on a roll with working with Nintendo with the Wii U edition. The community were fab to interact with, Nintendo were great to work with, and when Nintendo asked us if we would be interested in bringing the game to their new console during their launch time, I don’t think we missed a beat in saying yes. Being there with your players from the start of something new means you get to grow together. Has…

Campo Santo is in the business of exploiting the contradictions that exist all around us and exploring them under the guise of interactive entertainment. The inherent happiness and horrors so commonly associated with human nature; the obvious power and secret terror so often found lingering in areas of natural beauty. The studio approached these dichotomies to great effect with its 2016 debut, Firewatch. In it, the studio delivered a transfixing narrative adventure as isolating and combative as it was all-encompassing of your attention, taking great pleasure in bending your perception of reality – of forcing you to confront the demons of past indiscretions as they emerge from the long shadows cast from towering trees. For its second outing, the indie outfit is leaving the lush desolation of Wyoming’s Shoshone National…

Dragon Ball FighterZ may well be up there as one of the best uses of a license ever – a perfect harmony of source material, genre, developer and execution not seen since, well, probably Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum (although that Platinum Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game should’ve been an all-timer). Of course, the team behind the brilliant Guilty Gear Xrd, with that game’s fast-paced combat, air-dashing and OTT super-moves, would be able to capture the season-long battles between the characters in Dragon Ball. Its graphical style, which looks like stunning 2D art but is actually fully 3D and therefore allows for instant changes in perspective during fights, captures Akira Toriyama brilliantly, looking like a fully-interactive episode of the long-running animated series. If you’re a…

THE GENIUS OF THE GAME IS THAT WHILE THE RULE SET IS COMPREHENSIBLE TO JUST ABOUT ANYONE, IT REALLY IS AN OPEN EXPERIENCE THAT ALLOWS FOR SO MUCH DIVERSITY What is there left to say about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds ? When the game hit Early Access in March 2017, it was everywhere. Like a tidal wave, it was unstoppable. While we see titles come out of nowhere and get big audiences every year (see Stardew Valley and Undertale for recent examples), nothing has felt as impactful and immediate as PUBG. If you’ve played a videogame in the last 12 months, you’ll likely have played or seen it in some capacity, and already formed some sort of opinion on it. And yet here it is, emerging from Early Access…

Supermassive Games is no stranger to VR, having created the terrifying rollercoaster/lightgun game Rush Of Blood for the peripheral’s successful launch. The Guildford-based developer’s second VR game once again utilises horror, but in a way that’s completely different to what it attempted with Rush Of Blood. It’s also nowhere near as effective. Set once again in the Until Dawn universe, the events of The Inpatient are set 60-years prior to the original game. You start off as an inpatient of the notorious Blackwood Sanatorium, unaware of where you are and desperate for answers. It’s a cliché-ridden start that can be found in so many similar games, but the immersive nature of VR drives home the futility of your situation (strapped down in a chair with a…

Shadow Of The Colossus has lost none of its potency. It’s really quite incredible that 12 years since its release, in an age of procedurally generated universes, cities recreated street by street and performance capture that preserves every nuance of the human experience, this game about a single young man felling 16 hulking creatures remains so compelling to play. And it’s to the great credit of Bluepoint that the game feels so well preserved and recreated here. Some minor tweaks have been made to the overall experience, which we’ll cover shortly, but for the most part this is a masterful remake. The world feels fuller, littered with more granular details than before, yet no less bleak and lonely. We had been concerned that the temptation to flood Shadow…

Developer: Midway, Iguana (Consoles) Publisher: Midway (Arcades), Acclaim (Consoles) Released: 1993 (Arcades), 4 March 1994 (Mega Drive, SNES, Game Gear) System: Arcade, Mega Drive, SNES, Game Gear How fun and flamboyance trumped realism and rules to land a slam-dunk for arcade sports games WHATEVER HAPPENED TO the arcade action sports game? We’re not sure, but it’s a question that seems to pop up every now and again. As ever, the indie scene is keeping the dream alive as best it can, but the likes of EA and 2K, the licence-holders for the biggest sports associations, don’t seem all that interested in supporting easy-to play, high-octane sports endeavours anymore. And that’s a shame, because there was a little period there when arcade action was the pinnacle of sporting excellence. On top…

FORMAT: VIVE PRO | PUBLISHER: HTC | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: TBC 2018 | PLAYERS: 1 The few weeks we got to spend with a HTC Vive headset in the office during the summer of 2016 are some of our fondest memories of gaming in recent memory. The fidelity and immersion of the experience was outstanding and really sold us on the power of what VR could do. In the time that has passed VR has become a regular part of our gaming lives, made more affordable and attainable through PSVR, but barriers still remain and HTC is returning to guide us forward. The most obvious improvement with the Vive Pro is the resolution of the lenses. HTC has achieved a 78 percent improvement in resolution by increasing it to…

FORMAT: XBOX ONE, PC | PUBLISHER: MICROSOFT | DEVELOPER: RARE | RELEASE: 20 MARCH 2018 | PLAYERS: MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER 1 IT’S GOOD TO TAKE A BREAK A pirate’s life can be all sailing, rope-pulling, swashbuckling and cannon-firing, but it’s also good to take a moment and appreciate the finer things. Rare has done a wonderful job of creating this game world and just taking a moment to watch a sunrise can really be something to behold. 2 SOLO PLAY IS ENLIGHTENING Rare suggests that playing solo should be for experienced players only, but we would add that it’s a good place to have the fundamentals hammered home. When sailing solo you really come to appreciate how your vessel needs to be managed and how a full crew can add to…

Is there a reason Pikachu is wearing a miniature deerstalker? Aside from it being, like, the cutest thing to ever feature in a video game, Pikachu has donned the attire of famed investigator Sherlock Holmes for this wild Pokémon spin-off. It sees the series mascot teaming up with a human, Tim Goodman, to solve a variety of mysteries, cause trouble for the local police and lend further credence to the need for all wild Pokémon to be stuffed inside of Poké Balls. Wait, how can a Pokémon solve mysteries? Seriously, that’s your sticking point? Okay, fine; you see, this is no ordinary Pikachu. Wicked dress sense aside, it also carries a variety of human characteristics – including the ability to speak English in a gripping baritone voice, the capacity to…

“ All I’m interested in is getting The Murder Boys together, jumping in a car and getting into some trouble ” SEAN VANAMAN, CAMPO SANTO “I spent a lot of late summer/early fall playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds . But why do I love it? It’s probably because I started playing it with a really great group of people that Olly Moss introduced me to – we always like to game together, but it’s hard because we live so far apart. All the people have varying skill levels, but none of us are hyper competitive, so that game, to me, meant that every night I got to go on a long simulated road trip with three friends – where we all hop into a car and…

Why do you think remasters and third-party ports are succeeding on Switch? Jeremy Dunham, Vice President, Publishing at Psyonix: Given that it’s still the Switch’s first year, it makes a lot of sense to release remasters and ports, because those are much quicker and (usually, but not always) easier for a team to build versus an all-new game. It’s also a good idea to experiment on a new platform with a game you’re already intimately familiar with; it allows you to quickly understand that platform’s strengths and weaknesses, and it might also spark some creative ideas, since you have a real-life product to compare against in reality instead of theory. It should also be mentioned just how powerful nostalgia is. There are few things in life that carry that kind…

Chucklefish CEO and designer Finn Brice is contemplating the “beginning of a pushback,” as we start discussing gaming culture, and the way that Chucklefish has been offering something nicer, lighter, more wholesome to gamers since its inception in 2011. “People want to reclaim games as something fun, something nice, something to connect with.” “The response to our titles seems like a direct contrast to all the cynicism around [games] media out there at the moment,” continues Jay Baylis, artist at the studio. “There has almost become a wholesome culture that’s cropped up around our games. Around Stardew Valley particularly, you’ve got this community that’s intentionally trying to be lovely and friendly and helpful to reflect the values of our game. It’s something that’s clear on the Switch too – it’s…

Capturing the essence of such a freeform and athletic style of street dance in a videogame was never going to be easy. As an outlet for artistic expression, the form and culture surrounding breakdancing has always been defined by the wild creativity so actively displayed by its best and brightest. Were any game to try and do it justice, it would need to bottle that enthusiasm and unleash it against an intimately crafted core design. One consisting of a dedication to slavishly exploiting a beat, of finding an appropriate balance between technical footwork and physical power, and of utilising a unpredictable blur of Toprock and Downrock style drops to push a crowd from passive observers to wilful participants – the energy setting the tempo as much as the blast of…

In our favourite scene in The Red Strings Club , you take down a colossal multinational corporation using nothing but a telephone. You’ve already got your fingers on the threads of a secretive corporate scheme that may or may not end with everyone being brainwashed thanks to some fancy cyberpunk tech, and it is time to give those threads a final tug, untie the knot of conspiracy and bring it all crashing down. With the help of an implant that lets you impersonate other people’s voices, you punch in numbers on your keypad to call up execs, engineers and HR personnel, navigating a network of relationships with bluffs, lies and intel to manipulate them into revealing vital secrets. The hacker you are playing as never moves from…

“ There is so much environmental storytelling in there… it was really cool to play through these spaces and feel as if there was history there ” CLAIRE HUMMEL, ART DIRECTOR, CAMPO SANTO “I’m going to go old school with Riven : the sequel to Myst . It’s probably the one game where even though I played it when I was so young, it’s still just this visually striking game in terms of the gutsiness of the visual design; the shape language, the colours, the spaces you are exploring. It’s all so iconic. It didn’t look like anything that had come before it. Riven is always haunting me when I’m working on my own games. Like, how can I…

WHILE SHADOW OF MEMORIES released on the PlayStation 2 in 2001, the game has had an unusually long shelf life for a title that, outside of its hardcore fans, has been largely forgotten by many. In 2002, an Xbox version was released exclusively for Europe. The same year a PC version, ported by Runecraft, was released for both Europe and the US. Then, a whole eight years after it was initially released, a PSP port made its way to Japan in 2009, followed by Europe in 2010. Apart from the PSP version, each version is near identical. For the PSP port, the voice work in the game was recast and rerecorded, the DigiPad is strangely renamed the Z-Pad, more NPCs were added to Lebensbaum and a better save feature was…

• This is a wired mouse rather than wireless and while many manufacturers are moving in the direction of bluetooth, we still often preferred a wired mouse for gaming. It just seems reassuring. • These side panels can be removed to reveal slots of additional weights to be added. The mouse comes with eight 4g weights that you can simply pop into a rubberised setting. • As you would expect from a modern gaming mouse, there are illuminated elements running up and down the device. The scroll wheel and the two angle lines on the side can have their colouring customised. • Unlike some illumination settings you don't need to just pick one colour or even just a few colours that rotate in and out. This mouse can actually have…

ARMS • The new design is intended to evenly distribute the weight of the headset across your head, similar to the PSVR halo design. WIRELESS ADAPTER • This adapter, sold separately, is compatible with both Vive headsets and powered by Intel WiGig technology for an optimal streaming experience at 60Ghz. HEADPHONES • In-built headphones offer a 3D spatial audio experience. Combined with dual microphones, they offer active noise cancelling as well as an Alert Mode and Conversation Mode for more social play. HEADSET • 2880 x 1600 resolution (615ppi). CAMERAS • Vive’s Chaperone feature creates a virtual outline of your environment to make avoiding objects much easier. CUSHION • Redesigned cushioning around the nose and cheeks means that the Vive Pro blocks even more light from getting into the headset…

FORMAT: PC | PUBLISHER: SEGA | DEVELOPER: TWO POINT STUDIOS | RELEASE: TBC 2018 | PLAYERS: 1-TBC Ah, 1997, it was a golden year. The Verve were stomping the streets shouting about Bitter Sweet Symphony, Oasis asked us if we knew what they meant and the Backstreet Boys insisted that backstreet was back, alright? Yes, our clothes were terrible, and no, we didn’t really know what to do with our hair, but those were halcyon days, my friend - and that’s before we remind you that 1997 also gave us Goldeneye 007, Final Fantasy VII, Fallout, and Grand Theft Auto, all in a single 12-month period. Yes, really. 1997 was also the year Theme Hospital opened its doors to new patients. The second game from the team behind the sensational…

THE NINTENDO SWITCH HAS DEFIED ALL EXPECTATION IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS. TO CELEBRATE ITS ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY, WE SPEAK WITH DEVELOPERS TO GET A SENSE OF ITS SUCCESS, DEEP DIVE INTO NINTENDO’S NEW AVENUES OF INNOVATION AND TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT ITS 28 HOTTEST GAMES FOR 2018 IT’S DIFFICULT TO REMEMBER A TIME WHEN NINTENDO FOUND ITSELF IN A POSITION AS ENVIABLE AS THIS. Publicly and privately, developers and publishers are quick to paint a picture of Nintendo reborn; the company thriving as it continues to defy all expectations and predications in the marketplace. “I think even the most diehard Nintendo fans have been surprised by the numbers achieved during these first 12 months,” admits Adolfo Aguirre of Lienzo, the studio behind upcoming action-adventure game Mulaka. And truth be…

ALL OF THE PROJECTS DEMONSTRATED THUS FAR HAVE AN EXCITING, ALMOST MAGICAL QUALITY ABOUT THEM GIVEN THE SUCCESS OF THE SWITCH AND THE IMPRESSIVE LIBRARY OF FIRST-PARTY GAMES WE’VE RECEIVED IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS, YOU’D THINK THAT NINTENDO WOULD BE ALL OUT OF GREAT IDEAS. But here we are, barely into 2018, and the company has turned the industry on its head all over again – come on already, give somebody else a chance! Nintendo Labo is launching on 27 April, and it’s going to change the way our imaginations coalesce with the wonderful world of videogames. It could be the evolution of play as we know it and, once again, it all starts here on the Nintendo Switch. It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Back in 2012,…

Far Cry 5 is launching with a lot of attention on it for a number of reasons. It’s the first triple-A release from one of the major studios this year, it’s the fifth game in a long-running, much-loved series that stands a chance of breaking really big and it appears to be priming itself to take on some serious modern societal commentary with its setting and enemies. With all of that weighing on it, there’s been a lot of talk about how and why Far Cry 5 is approaching its mechanics and missions, but little on how, and that’s what we wanted to concentrate on with our last hands-on before review to offer our final verdict before Ubisoft’s opening release of the year. We’ve had a few chances to play…

THE BATTLES CAN BE INTENSE AND BREATHTAKING, THOUGH THEY CAN ALSO BE LONG AND FRUSTRATING For all of Capcom’s talk of improved accessibility, Monster Hunter: World is still something of a force unto itself. For the uninitiated, it can so often feel like a perplexing action-RPG that seems to take great pride in flittering haphazardly between delivering uninhibited fun and smashing you over the head with its unassailable grind. For veteran hunters, this is an entry to the series that you’ve likely long dreamed of playing, as Monster Hunter finally leaves the handheld platform behind in favour of a supercharged edition designed specifically for play on home console. The execution of this shift back to console is long overdue, and is in many respects a glorious…

This should never have worked. While it has never been particularly constructive to approach a new game with cynicism at heart, that was easier said than done when it came to Life Is Strange: Before The Storm. As far as episodic narrative adventures go, this one just felt a little unnecessary. Life Is Strange seemed so perfectly paced and considered, with original developer DontNod having achieved so much, and with so much style, with its angsty meditation on millennial youth. Did we really need a three-episode prequel starring the absolute personification of small town rebellion, Chloe Price, with a different developer, Deck Nine, working behind the polygons alongside a new voice actor for Price in Rhianna DeVries? As it happens, we really, really did. Before The Storm is impressive in…

With western design influencing modern RPGs across the globe today, there is an appetite for a classic-style JRPG in the vein of the SNESera Final Fantasy games. I Am Setsuna developer Tokyo RPG Factory is looking to fill that void (the name alone feels like a mission statement), however, its follow-up, Lost Sphear, shows the developer has a lot to learn. The game isn’t bad, exactly. It’s just so ‘okay’ that it’s frustrating. It doesn’t do anything to offend genre fans, nor does it do anything to set itself apart from its inspiration. It just exists. The story is competent, but it’s hamstrung by its presentation – and it’s not the visuals that are the problem here. In fact, they’re fine and even evocative. It’s the way the story…

What is it about videogames and their desire to sexualise just about everything imaginable, be it anime-eyed teenagers, sentient robots, dreamy daddies, undead creatures and even talking animals with a penchant for wining and fine dining? That’s videogames for you, folks; they do it (or should we say, let you do it) all. It’s fast becoming the signature of the flourishing visual novel genre; dating sims that look to subvert the somewhat perverse aspirations of their retro predecessors with sharp writing, unique visual styles and interesting observations on dating in the millennial world. On the surface, Purrfect Date looks to be another in a long line. A visual novels crossed with a dating simulator, one specifically designed for those that have an unruly desire to see out their lives paw…

NBA JAM (1993) A pioneering game for arcade sports titles, NBA Jam’s simplification of basketball’s rules and gameplay made it accessible to all gamers, regardless of their basketball knowledge, while also making it easy to play for anyone who was new to the realm of digital sports altogether. Its high-octane gameplay made sure that once you started playing, you would be hooked within minutes. While many arcade action games would follow, this remains one of the best of all time. FEVER PITCH SOCCER (1995) While Fever Pitch didn’t have licences for real-life professional players, it compensated for that fact by giving its international teams a selection of fictional superstar players, each of whom had special abilities. The better the rating of the team, the more stars you would have. Those…