Tabla de contenidos para No. 198 en GamesTM

Stick or twist. It’s the dilemma of every long-running game franchise. Most stick, feeling with good reason that if it isn’t broken then it shouldn’t need fixing. But I think we know that this mindset can ultimately lead to diminishing returns. A great idea may be able fuel a project for a long time, launching it forward with tremendous speed, but eventually inertia, gravity or just a lack of energy will take hold. Games like Assassin’s Creed, Gears Of War and Call Of Duty have experienced this to greater or lesser extents, some finally making changes to reinvigorate their releases (and to great success). And so we come to God Of War and how massively Sony Santa Monica is changing up the formula around Kratos, the gameplay, the camera, the…

FORMAT: PC | PUBLISHER: KURTRUSSELLFANCLUB | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: TBC | PLAYERS: 1 Some videogames immediately arrest the attention and threaten to never let you loose again. We first caught a glimpse of Dead Static Drive a number of years ago after creator Mike Blackney took to sharing gifs of the game in action on Twitter, and have been following its evolving development intently ever since. It’s got this hyper-slick animation and gorgeous visual style that make it difficult to turn away from, with a premise that sounds as ridiculous as it does intriguing. Dead Static Drive presents an existential road trip adventure game through small-town America; it’s you and your whip against the world, left to survive as otherworldly creatures claw their way out of the maw of…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE | DEVELOPER: ROGUE FACTOR | RELEASE: TBC | PLAYERS: TBC 1 INTO THE UNDERHIVE Warhammer 40K fans were delighted to see the return of Necromunda last year, the popular tabletop game as excellent today in its revival as it was back in 1995 with its debut. Still, we approached this videogame conversion with trepidation – could Rogue Factor really capture the spirit and chaos of Necromunda’s unique setup, punk attitude and compelling systems? Turns out we were worried about nothing, as our first look at the game in action has left us feeling incredibly positive over the direction the studio is taking. 2 DYNAMIC PRESENTATION Necromunda: Underhive Wars is relatively unique in that it is blending real-time strategy with turn-based…

VERY FEW GAME FRANCHISES AND EVEN FEWER HEROES IN THOSE SERIES ARE AFFORDED THE OPPORTUNITY TO GROW OR AGE. VERY FEW GAME SERIES MANAGE TO SPAN THREE GENERATIONS OF CONSOLES. VERY FEW DEVELOPERS ARE GIVEN THE TIME AND TRUST NEEDED TO PURSUE SUCH EVOLUTIONS. BUT THEN, VERY FEW SERIES ARE GOD OF WAR, AND VERY FEW HAVE A LEAD AS ICONIC AND MAGNETIC AS KRATOS. But times have changed, and the angsty, tortured, anti-authority antihero is moving with the times, much as his makers have. “We as developers here have grown,” Sony Santa Monica creative director Cory Barlog tells us. “I personally feel a lot of parallels in the fact that he left Greece and wandered, and I feel like I left Sony and I sort of wandered, and during…

THE NORDIC VISION “Honestly it was like he crawled inside my head and captured a still image, but it was a still image I don’t think my conscious brain was able to see,” Barlog reveals. “I wrote a short story about them going on their first hunt and then had some conversations with [Peña], and what he came back with, to me, was that touchstone.” AN UNFRIENDLY WORLD One element Peña captured immediately was the sense of constant threat in the world, according to Barlog. “For me, the big thing was that I wanted to make sure they were isolated not just in this part of northern Europe that is not very populated, but isolated from literally anybody that is friendly. They have a very small cast of people that…

TURN ‘GUESS WHAT THIS CHARACTER DOES NEXT!’ INTO A DRINKING GAME AND YOU’D BE UNCONSCIOUS – OR DEAD – WITHIN AN HOUR As you reach Metal Gear Survive’s title screen, your protagonist will glance over at what remains of Mother Base, its maze of stairs and walkways bent and broken, the Diamond Dogs insignia faded. You watch on as it struggles under its own weight, snapped struts jutting out like a shattered steel rib cage. It’s a touch conspicuous, perhaps, this metaphor, but it’s clear: Metal Gear, as we know and love it, is dead, and a new incarnation is rising (quite literally) from its iron bones. What we know about Konami’s messy divorce with its hitherto golden child Hideo Kojima is probably nothing compared to…

Face the pain, no escape, can you step to this? So goes a line in one of the UFC’s theme songs. It’s a sentiment that applies to the real sport as much as it does here. To master EA Sports UFC 3, you must submit to the fact that there are no shortcuts, that you will have to dedicate serious time to it and that lessons learned in other fighting and/ or sports games don’t necessarily apply here. More so than the rest of its EA Sports stable mates, UFC 3 is an experience aimed squarely at connoisseurs of the subject matter. Where casual fans of football can enjoy FIFA and watching only the Super Bowl provides enough knowledge to understand Madden, the part-time UFC fan is not catered for…

The Dynasty Warriors games have always attracted a fair bit of criticism. For being repetitive, for being the same game with slightly sharper graphics, but these comments undermine how well refined the series had become. Each entry a hugely enjoyable hack-and-slash romp with a solid and surprisingly versatile combat system at its core – one which continues to lend itself to many licensed spin-offs, such as Dragon Quest and The Legend of Zelda. Developer Omega Force was eager to try something different with this ninth instalment to the main series, and it has taken something of a bold step in an attempt to freshen up the formula. The familiar button-mashing battles now take place across a large open world and, oh wow, what a mistake that has been. The concept…

“As soon as I start thinking about it I’m back there in Hyrule ” DAVID DEDEINE, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, ASOBO STUDIO “Of course this is going to be a huge cliché, but I’m absolutely in love with The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild . I know that everybody loves it right now and I’m sorry that I don’t have anything different… but, honestly, it was a big surprise for me. Personally, I know that everybody thought that [Skyward Sword] was so great, yeah, okay, but it was not my favourite game ever. But Breath of the Wild is just, wow. As soon as I start thinking about it I’m back there in Hyrule – I’m right…

I WANTED TO CREATE A JOHN WOO EXPERIENCE ON A CONSOLE, BECAUSE THAT WASN’T SOMETHING THAT ANYONE HAD EVER EXPERIENCED AT THE TIME Released: 1999 Format: PlayStation Publisher: 989 Studios Key Staff: Richard Ham (Design lead), John Garvin (Designer/Art Lead), Christopher Reese (Programming lead), Darren Yager (Design), Marc Blank (Executive producer) THE GAMES INDUSTRY IS RIFE WITH EXAMPLES OF HEROIC PERSEVERANCE. There’s a particularly cruel challenge in creating interactive entertainment, as developers struggle not only with the constantly evolving and expanding capabilities of the hardware of the time, but figure out how to make all these moving parts work seamlessly and effectively while making something that everyone’s personal tastes and varying skills can appreciate. And while some developers find resistance in the widespread acceptance of their novel or untested ideas,…

“MATCHES WE’VE SEEN HAVE A TENDENCY TO GET TO THE FINAL SAFE ZONE WITH AT LEAST TEN TEAMS STILL IN THE MIX” FORMAT: PC | PUBLISHER: DAYBREAK GAMES | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: OUT NOW | PLAYERS: 4-120 The history of the battle royale genre, its path from DayZ game mod to multi-million selling behemoth, takes a route straight through H1Z1 and Auto Royale is Daybreak Games’ response to the increased competition it now faces in the market. As responses go we would call this one loud, clear and perhaps just a tad insane. Auto Royale feels like a mode built by a development team that was paying close attention to console players of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds when it…

“ONRUSH IS LOOKING TO INJECT SOME FUN BACK INTO OFF-ROAD RACING” FORMAT: PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: DEEP SILVER DEVELOPER: CODEMASTERS | RELEASE: 5 JUNE 2018 | PLAYERS: 1-TBC Codemasters isn’t being coy about it – this is not another Fuel . The influences feeding into Onrush should be clear for all to see, spotted at a glance as 24 off-road vehicles battle it out for lane supremacy at breakneck speeds across sprawling dirt tracks. It features the real-time scoring of DriveClub fame and the intricate track design that helped elevate Motorstorm all those years ago. These disparate elements in turn collide with the frenetic bumper-to-bumper action of Burnout and the infinitely suave style of SSX. Onrush is looking to inject some fun back into off-road racing,…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: THQ NORDIC | DEVELOPER: EXPERIMENT 101 | RELEASE: TBC 2018 | PLAYERS: 1 Ever since its reveal late last year we’ve been keeping a watchful eye on Biomutant , the open world, action-RPG from developer Experiment 101. Biomutant is, after all, a different take on a genre that can feel pretty worn at times – it’s exciting to see a title tackle an open world and RPG game design in way that feels decidedly fresh and different, even if it does look a little rough around the edges after two years of development. Biomutant is a game interested in exploring environmental conservation, positioning you as a literal force from nature intent on ensuring the survival of the world. At…

If we look at the classic five stages of grief, we can see a path for Kratos that saw him through the early stages in the original games and now in the later stages in this new release. 1 DENIAL Having been tricked into killing his own family, Kratos had his memories wiped of the event, something that was only corrected after killing Orkos in Ascension. This could be taken as a very literal form of denial of the loss of his wife and daughter, removing the memory and guilt he felt. 2 ANGER Well, this is the big one, isn’t it? It would be fair to say that Kratos was lost in this stage of the grief cycle for pretty much the entire time we’ve known him. From the…

IT FEELS LIKE SHOULD YOU DO ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY OUT OF THE ORDINARY, THE GAME WILL CRASH OR OTHERWISE BREAK Let’s take the elephant gun to that particularly large pachyderm in the room immediately – Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a game with a hell of a lot that’s problematic about it. Arguments about people of colour not featuring are backed up by the notion that there would be a very small chance of meeting a travelling merchant from a far-off land in such a small region of central Bohemia. At the same time there are plenty of references to bards throughout the game, a profession seen mainly in Gaelic culture. Each is as unlikely to be seen as the other, but one features and one does…

The first rule of a successful fighting game is that you need an iconic, recognisable cast of characters. This is arguably Dissidia Final Fantasy NT’s greatest asset, having drafted an excellent 28-strong who’s who of classic JRPG heroes and villains for its battles. As a fighter Dissidia NT is fairly unique, its closest relative the 3D Gundam brawlers. Rather than the tightly enclosed encounters of a Street Fighter or Tekken there’s instead full 3D movement across large-scale arenas and 3-on-3 battles that more closely resemble a full-blown action game. It’s a smart decision that leads to over-the-top, exhilarating combat that resembles the choreographed action featured in the FF movies. Combat is satisfying and impressively deep, though it’s also difficult to understand at first. Dissidia NT bombards you with a complicated…

When a struggling private investigator gets a knock on their door – a new case landing neatly in their lap – you just know that it’s never going to be as simple to solve as it may first seem. That is one of the cardinal rules of hardboiled detective fiction, a convention of which A Case of Distrust is well aware and to which it faithfully adheres. This is, after all, a game clearly inspired by the novels of Chandler and Hammett, full of tough-talking gangsters, corrupt cops, infidelity and shady secrets for you to untangle. You play as former-cop-turned-detective Phyllis Malone – a reference no doubt, to Chandler’s famous PI, Philip Marlowe. Investigating a threat and, before long, a murder case, you travel around a prohibition-era San Francisco to…

COMMODORE’S 8-BIT HOME computer made a huge impact when it landed in 1982. The company was no stranger to the 8-bit market, having already released systems like the Commodore Pet and VIC-20, but Commodore’s owner, Jack Tramiel, wanted to dominate the market, and he aggressively marketed the C64, cutting its price by $200 a few months after its release, as well as using a casing that was extremely similar to the C64’s predecessor, the Commodore VIC-20. The C64 may have looked extremely similar to the humble VIC-20, but there were huge differences beneath the bread bin-like exterior. For starters, it featured a whopping 64 KB of RAM with an additional 20 KB of ROM, better resolution and incredible sound thanks to the SID (sound interface device) chip, which allowed talented…

Thanks to Sumthing Else Music Works we have a selection of Jesper Kyd soundtracks on vinyl and some signed CDs to give away to one lucky reader. All you have to do to win is answer the following simple question: WHAT WAS THE NAME OF KYD’S FIRST GAME, USS JOHN YOUNG, IN THE US? A. Battle Stations B. Oh Captain, My Captain C. Ship It! Send your answer to gamestm@futurenet.com with the subject line “Kyd Comp”. We will accept entries up to 18 April 2018, after which point we will draw a winner at random. See gamestm.co.uk/competitions-terms-and-conditions for terms and conditions.…

CALL OF CTHULHU: DARK CORNERS OF THE EARTH Dark Corners Of The Earth was a revelation when it first launched for Xbox in 2005, utilising a smart, first-person design to evoke a near constant sense of dread throughout. With no discernible HUD to be found, the player condition is relayed entirely through sound cues and a Sanity meter. The character’s escalating mental degradation manifests itself as graphical anomalies and the alteration of control sensitivity. AMNESIA: THE DARK DESCENT Amnesia earns its place in horror history by making players powerless to stop the encroaching darkness. With no obvious weaponry to be found, survival is made all the more difficult by requiring Sanity to be managed, forcing players to weigh up the risk/reward of embracing light and dark – punishing players who…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE | DEVELOPER: NEW WORLD INTERACTIVE | RELEASE: 2018 | PLAYERS: 1-16 In many respects, Insurgency: Sandstorm feels like the direct antithesis of the Battlefield multiplayer experience. For one of these titles, the oft-shouted phrase “Play The Objective” has become something of a running joke in the community – with players largely accepting that the vast majority would rather engage in a thinly veiled Team Deathmatch variant over working together in any obvious fashion. For the other, it’s a creed that runs to the very core of the game’s theme and composition – where doing anything but playing the objective is the fastest route to failure and frustration. Insurgency: Sandstorm is a challenging military shooter inspired by the glory days of…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE | DEVELOPER: SPIDERS | RELEASE: TBC 2018 | PLAYERS: 1 1 IT’S AN ACTION RPG GreedFall is an action-RPG set in the 17th Century across a fictional fantasy continent, a newly colonised land full of mystery, magic and monsters. A new land brings about fresh dangers for the settlers, with much of GreedFall focused around the rising tensions between the arriving humans and the native elves who once were the sole inhabitants of the land. 2 IT LOOKS GORGEOUS We were recently treated to a behind closed doors demonstration of GreedFall in action and were impressed by what we saw. Visually, the game looks stunning; GreedFall’s visual style is heavily inspired by Baroque artwork from 17th Century Europe – meaning…

FORMAT: PS4, XBOX ONE, PC | PUBLISHER: FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE DEVELOPER: CYANIDE | RELEASE: TBC 2018 | PLAYERS: 1 After years languishing in development, a very public false start, a change of developer and yet another hands-off demonstration, we’re starting to get a little worried about Call Of Cthulhu . It isn’t that it doesn’t show promise – because it certainly does – but there’s something about this Lovecraftian-infused detective game that doesn’t sit right with us. Before we get into it, let’s circle back to the premise: you’re a moody private investigator tasked with exploring an ominous and muddy island off the coast of Boston, Massachusetts; a grizzly murder requires your expertise and it’s only through keen investigation and an almost obsessive-attraction to invading personal space…

“THERE ARE THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF RATS THAT OCCUPY ALMOST EVERY SPACE THAT IS CAST IN SHADOW” FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE | DEVELOPER: ASOBO STUDIO | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 It’s fascinating to see how far a dedicated and passionate team can take a project in just 12 months. This time last year we were given the opportunity to see an early technical demonstration of A Plague Tale: Innocence, with developer Asobo Studio looking to showcase a killer concept driven by some truly exceptional technology. That’s what tech demos are for; they are purpose built to immediately impress and ignite the imagination of all those that see them. We leapt at the opportunity to see the game properly in action for the…

“ It stopped being a game for me anymore and just became my religion’” JANE NG, LEAD ARTIST, CAMPO SANTO “A game that I recently fell in love with was Dragon Age: Inquisition – I love that game to bits. For a while I was so obsessed with it that it stopped being a game for me anymore and just became my religion. I don’t know, I play a lot of games and I’ve got to know a few of the leads from that project – which is such a privilege – and there’s just something about that game that is super special; it really made me feel about video games a way that I never thought I could feel anymore. Like, you know when you…

“YOU’RE LITERALLY PLOPPED IN FRONT OF A CORKBOARD AND ARE LEFT TO PIN UP AND REARRANGE CODEWORDS” A CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE IS OFTEN HEALTHY. WE LOOK ON OTHERS THROUGH OUR OWN EYES, NOT TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THEIR EXPERIENCE. We judge those we aren’t fans of by the standards of those we are. We look at history through a predefined lens – one which doesn’t take into account the experiences that millions of others have had in other parts of the world. Phantom Doctrine isn’t a game aiming to change the very notion of how the West sees the Cold War, but coming from a Polish developer, it’s always going to have an underlying difference to the end product. Paweł Kroenke, narrative designer on Phantom Doctrine, makes it clear the turn-based…

“Our game is based on high-tension, that anticipation, that’s what it’s all about” It’s the late 19th century, and the undead have taken root in the sweltering bayou of Louisiana. Lurking somewhere amid the cypress trees and dilapidated shacks is a monster that would make John Carpenter proud – huge, tough and deadly. But this fearsome predator is about to become your prey. You’re a professional hunter for hire, and killing this creature will earn you and your hunting partner a substantial reward – provided you can survive long enough to get out of the swamp, that is. Unfortunately, you don’t know where the monster is, and you’re not the only person seeking out the prize; other groups of Hunters roam the swamp. You don’t know where they are either,…

Would you be willing to die 4,612 times in pursuit of a few hundred strawberries? Celeste quickly posits that its focus is in scaling a mountain, in confronting and overcoming your demons even as they scream at you to stop. But we all know that it’s really about the strawberries. Celeste’s challenge (and to be clear, much of its magic) is self-imposed. It lies in you making an assumption that the game is lying to you in its earliest hours. “Strawberries will impress your friends, but that’s about it,” reads a postcard addressed to Madeline in an early loading screen. “Only collect them if you really want to!” That’s game director Matt Thorson goading us. It has to be. He wants us to ignore the bloody strawberries so that…

WHERE THE WATER TASTES LIKE WINE SETS A SLOW TEMPO TO ITS PLAY AND EMBRACES IT WHOLEHEARTEDLY What is life but an endless collection of stories? We are, after all, all storytellers at heart. We funnel the wealth of experience, interactions, memories and second-hand anecdotes we accumulate on a daily basis and translate them all into relatable tales. As a species, it’s our way of communicating to those that exist in orbit of us, a succinct way of passing on knowledge and information with our peers and perfect strangers alike. That is to say that telling stories is an inseparable part of the human condition, perhaps the sole element of our lives that has remained consistent throughout history. It’s here where Dim Bulb Games is looking to play, and where…

Harmony is meant to be at the heart of Fe . Sing to the animals of the forest to bond with them in this action-adventure game and use their abilities to stop the mysterious Silent Ones. It doesn’t get much more wholesome than that. Yet even though the world is a bewitching, colourful menagerie, Fe is more likely to leave you frustrated than enthralled. Pairing up with the creatures of the forest on your travels is undeniably uplifting, thanks to the gentle crooning that you control with R2. Finding just the right pitch requires the most delicate of touches, making you feel how precarious the balance of nature is with every gentle tap of the trigger. Magic seeps through the design of Fe’s world too, its stylised…

WHERE ETERNAL DARKNESS TRULY SUCCEEDS IS IN LEVERAGING YOUR SANITY AS A COMMODITY Developer: Silicon Knights Publisher: Nintendo Released: 23 June 2002 System: Gamecube WHAT WOULD IT mean to see beyond the veil of our reality? To cut through shadows and peer into the souls of those that dwell in the darkness, just beyond reach; the maleficent feeding on the fragility of human nature at the behest of an arcane force? It’s a tantalising question, one that cult-classic Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem presents to you in its opening hours. The journey that follows is an unrelenting one as you are challenged to sacrifice your own sanity in search of an answer to what these dark forces really want. Eternal Darkness carved out its own space in the history of interactive…

NES30 ARCADE STICK MANUFACTURER: 8BITDO PRICE: £64.99 • The stick has a nice level of resistance to it and some very satisfying clicks as you move it around. It may not be snappy enough for pro fighters, but for some arcade authenticity it does the job nicely. • The build quality of this stick isn’t necessarily at the highest end, but it’s still pretty good. It has a great weight to it, and will sit nicely on your lap as you play your favourite fighter. While its colouring and styling make it look at if the N30 is a classic NES arcade stick brought back to life, in actuality the NES never had a stick this robust. The N30 has a gorgeous retro style to it, but that’s all in…