Table of contents for June 2024 in PLAY

What’s better than one superhero? Two superheroes! And even better than that? Getting to watch ’em beat the snot out of Nazis. So it goes with the Captain America and Black Panther game from Skydance New Media (helmed by Amy ‘Uncharted’ Hennig), now titled Marvel 1943: Rise Of Hydra. It’s set in Paris during the Nazi occupation during World War 2, with Captain America and Black Panther’s interests perhaps not quite aligning (though we’ll eat vibranium if they don’t team up by the end). The former is along for the ride with Howling Commando ally Gabriel Jones, and the latter has the assistance of Nanali, head of the Wakandan Spy Network. All four are playable as you avoid enemy detection, sneak into base camps, and brain fascists. With a third…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 28 MAY / PUB WARNER BROS GAMES / DEV PLAYER FIRST GAMES / PLAYERS ONLINE MULTIPLAYER Too often live service games explode onto the stage only to evaporate from the scene for good maybe a year later – but this platform fighter is about to break that pattern. After debuting in July 2022 and spending two seasons in open beta, this free-to-play free-for-all disappeared in a cartoony puff of smoke last summer. However, it’s been given a serious technical makeover, and will be jumping back into the ring. “A PVE MODE WILL BOLSTER THE EXISTING SET OF GAME MODES.” In case you’re blinking in the dark on this one, MultiVersus pits characters from many different universes owned by Warner Brothers against each other; if you…

“IF YOU FAIL, YOU LOSE EVERYTHING. YOU LOSE YOUR WEAPONS, YOUR MECH, EVERYTHING.” FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2024 / PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV GAME STUDIO INC / PLAYERS MULTI Usually we here at PLAY love rain. When the sky is weeping outside, we have the perfect excuse to stay inside and play Baldur’s Gate 3 all day. But Synduality’s toxic showers have us swearing off stupid skywater for good. What’s the point of a game that puts you in a massive heavily-armed mech if you’re just going to be destroyed by a light drizzle? The mech’s name should’ve been a red flag. We’re piloting a Cradle Coffin, a moniker for a machine that feels like it’s really tempting fate. The apocalypse happened, and the planet’s surface is now more hostile…

Open world design has dominated videogame settings for over a decade, and you can learn more about that history by reading our feature beginning on p62. However, more goes into building your favourite spaces than slapping Caspar David Friedrich’s painting ‘Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog’ on the mood board. When it comes to immersive worlds, we’ve never had it so good. Recently we’ve crashed through the material plane of Faerûn, run through the zombie-infested streets of Villedor, duelled with Fatui Harbingers across Teyvat, popped wheelies all over New Island, and disappeared into the seedy underbelly of Night City. Losing ourselves in these spaces, we emerge to seek the insight of the master world builders behind them, asking what exactly goes into setting the scene. “Above all else, immersion and…

Sword fights that demand skill and patience, historical authenticity (to a degree), apparently effortless decapitations that are equal parts horrific and hilarious… whatever you want from a game featuring samurai, there’s a chance it’s in here somewhere. There are some undeniably shonky elements, sure, yet they melt into the charm. Writing on the PlayStation Blog at the end of 2023, Team Ninja’s Fumihiko Yasuda described Rise Of The Ronin as “Our biggest game to date”, and as we play we see that this can be interpreted in multiple ways. The obvious interpretation, of map size, certainly applies. Taking place in late 19th-century Japan, in the final years of samurai and ronin, the story is spread across three areas of the country: Yokohama; Edo (renamed Tokyo shortly after the events of…

At first glance, you would be forgiven for thinking that Unicorn Overlord is just another JRPG, most likely very middle-of-the-road, with attractive art but shallow characters and a very basic story. As soon as you start to play it, however, it becomes apparent how much of a misapprehension that is. For one thing, it’s actually a strategy RPG, and a unique one at that. Many SRPGs follow the lead of Fire Emblem, but with Unicorn Overlord Vanillaware and Atlus decided they wanted to do more, and more again. What results is a beautiful hybrid of SRPG and RTS that marries auto-battling with the code-your-own-combat of Final Fantasy XII’s Gambit system (which it’s really about time someone did something with again). While the game is kind enough to pause while you’re…

The boundary between innocence and maturity is often marked by the realisation that your parents are fallible human beings – just like you. Here, you play as 16-year-old Tess as the dust settles in the wake of her grandma’s passing and subsequent estate sale. Tess is losing her childhood home, and embarking on an uncertain future with her divorced mum Opal… until the pair find a trunk full of evidence that Tess’ grandmother had a secret life. From many of the same devs who made 2016’s Gone Home and 2018’s Tacoma, this project sees a freshly formed team finding their own way after an extremely tumultuous span of development. The compromises that clearly had to be made as a result never fully disappear from the rearview mirror. “You’re given a…

01 Synapse Telekinesis and guns make a wonderful combo in VR. With one mapped to your left hand and the other to your right, you feel like a conductor of chaos as you blast your way through a rogue colonel’s mind to uncover secrets. Eye-tracking is wonderfully used to target your telekinesis, meaning you can slam enemies all over the place as you reload your arsenal. It’s got a roguelite structure, so you’ll keep coming back. 02 Horizon: Call Of The Mountain Manages to make level after level of climbing compelling with different environments to pull yourself up through, the Sense controllers allowing for neat player expression. Just make sure you take a break, or all that spider monkeying will make your arms throb. 03 Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge Who shot…

2008’s Turok reboot (PS3) allowed you to stealth-kill dinosaurs. ReBoot was a 1998 PS1 game based on a Canadian TV show. Twisted Metal: Black (2001) had a stronger emphasis on story. 2013’s PS3 Tomb Raider reboot included PvP. SPYRO MANIAC Movie production can dragon With top-tier Hollywood talent on the cast list, you might have thought that a Legend Of Spyro movie was inevitable. So did Activision, at one point – work on The Legend Of Spyro: 3D began, but was never finished, with the publisher apparently deciding to can the project in 2010. There are scraps to be found if you’re interested; the script was leaked online over a decade later, in 2022. PS2’S THE LEGEND OF SPYRO: A NEW BEGINNING FEATURED ELIJAH WOOD AS SPYRO. DAVID SPADE AND…

“As spin-offs co-developed by Marvelous, Stories games are rather different beasts to the mainline series.” You may find it hard to believe, but it’s been more than six years since Monster Hunter: World roared its way onto PS4 and transformed Capcom’s once-niche series into a global success. Its momentum has only accelerated in the years since, following the equally excellent Iceborne expansion in 2019, and culminating in the announcement of Monster Hunter Wilds at last year’s Game Awards. Yet between these, much of the series’ expansion has taken place away from PlayStation. There was the 2020 movie adaptation (although its star Milla Jovovich did make an appearance in World via a special collaboration event) and the AR-based mobile title Monster Hunter Now, not to mention an appearance in the Oscar-nominated…

We’ve all seen top-down RPGs before, so you might wonder what’s new about Arranger. Well, to begin with, its developers are calling the game a ‘Role-Puzzling Adventure’, after the unique fusion of genres that defines it. While the RPG genre has always featured puzzles about pushing blocks around to some extent, we’ve never seen them forming as integral a part of the game world as they do here. Lead character Jemma’s entire world is mapped to a grid that’s easy to see, and as she moves so does everything in the same row or column, items shifting about the static screen and even looping around when they get to the edges. (Jemma herself also does this.) “We’ve never seen block-pushing puzzles forming as integral a part of the game world…

“SYSTEM SHOCK DOESN’T NEED TO CHEAT TO GET UNDER YOUR SKIN.” FORMAT PS5 / ETA 20 SEP / PUB PRIME MATTER DEV NIGHTDIVE STUDIOS / PLAYERS 1 Nightdive Studios’ swanky, ground-up remake of 1994’s genre-launching classic System Shock is finally heading to PlayStation – which should make you very excited if you have any interest in crawling through vents or bonking cyborg mutants on the head with blunt objects. Which, let’s face it, as a PLAY reader, is pretty much a given. System Shock casts you as a nameless hacker, blackmailed with the threat of prison by a megacorp executive into the incredibly sensible act of disengaging the ethical safety locks of SHODAN – the artificial intelligence governing the corporation’s space station dedicated to all kinds of shady biological and…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 2024 / PUB SQUARE ENIX / DEV OUKA STUDIOS / PLAYERS 1 Once one of Square Enix’s core RPGs, this series has been all but on ice for 17 years. Mobile releases, spinoffs, and remakes are all that have been released since PS2’s Dawn Of Mana. Now it’s back, and not missing a beat – it feels of a piece with the latest offerings from cousins Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t feel more modest. Few games will ever have the same budget as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. But Visions Of Mana feels immediately good in the hands. Starting in a large and colourful open field, we run around, double-jumping, mounting a wolf-thing called Pikul, finding chests, and taking on…

To escape the Cold War and the destruction of all life on Earth, the enterprising passengers of the spaceship Fedora set out for the stars to begin hunting for a new planet. Over 200 years later, the Fedora, which had ended up sinking into an alien ocean, receives word that actually… Earth is sort of… okay? However, many of the people now on board know no home other than the Fedora, among them the game’s protagonist, humble ship’s janitor Harold Halibut. Harold is a simple soul. If you wanted to be less nice, you could call him a dweeb, an airhead, not the strongest of characters. But given the Fedora is a spaceship the size of a small city, Harold’s crucial to people’s everyday lives, even if they can’t see…

This anthropomorphic sequel makes the leap to console after its stint on PC, and it fits PlayStation beautifully. The original Freedom Planet started life as a fan-made Sonic game, but the aim for this followup was to “leave nostalgia behind” and cement the series’ identity as a great action platformer in its own right. It’s certainly an ambitious offering, but is it actually good? The answer is yes. The four playable characters have enough personality to make their stories worth playing, especially as their moves and abilities change the experience even though the levels themselves are the same. Whether it’s Carol the wildcat collecting an item mid-stage that enables her to ride a motorbike (which is just so cool) or Milla the hound using her powers to throw short projectiles,…

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League – Season One Set the whole world laughing The rocky launch period for this live service shooter is over, and season one begins. The Joker has been added as a free character, and he’s well-designed and fun to play in combat. The problem? Everything else, from a head-scratching meta to even more rehashed missions and baffling progression. The clown prince of crime from an alternate dimension (though largely the Joker you know, it’s mostly for plot reasons) is free. Sort of. You can pay to skip unlocking him and get him right away. Want to do it normally? Okay, grind through 35 levels of asinine, tired content. In fact, even if you do pay to unlock him, you will still have to grind until…

01 Red Dead Redemption 2 You won’t find another open world quite like this, the streets of Los Santos paling in comparison to this gorgeous, realistic western sprawl. Arthur Morgan’s wild west adventure is epic, emotional, and has enough teasing mysteries on every horizon for no two cowboys’ journeys to feel the same. With train robberies, tootin’ headshots, and racists to kill, there’s never a dull moment in Rockstar’s greatest. 02 Grand Theft Auto V Laughing in the face of other cross-gen ports, GTA V on PS4 is more than a mere HD remaster. Upped to a glorious 1080p, it weaves together everything that made the PS3 original great, with new music, more dynamic weather, and a game-changing FPS mode. 03 God Of War A departure in some ways but a resounding return…

FC 24 might be the biggest football game going, but you’d never want a single match to last 90 minutes. The average NFL playbook takes pro players months to learn: Madden would lose three-quarters of its audience if such tactical options weren’t streamlined. Essentially, all sports sims have to compromise a degree of legitimacy in order to function as a videogame. All, that is, except MLB 11: The Show. No digital recreation has ever blended activity and authenticity quite like this one. Every strikeout, every leaping catch, every home run looked and felt like the real thing – but was also satisfying in the purest gaming sense. Pitcher repertoires were as deep and detailed as their real-life counterparts, yet required a brilliant mix of timing and dexterity to pull off.…

FORMAT PS4 / PUB DOTEMU / DEV DOTEMU, LIZARD CUBE, GUARD CRUSH GAMES / RELEASED 2020 Given how the Streets Of Rage series started back in 1991, it’s quite the shock to see Axel, Blaze, and co thrown behind bars. Where once they used to call upon their police mates for backup, now the law is on their backs. To be fair to the cops, vigilante justice is illegal. But what if the police chief has ulterior motives? Fortunately, a cell can’t hold your chosen beat-’em-up hero for long, as they literally punch the barred door from its hinges. From there it’s chaos as alarms wail, cops converge on your position, and all the other cells open, pouring violent thugs into the mix. The resulting brawl is all-against-all, as the…

Despite having been doing some version of this job for 16 years now, 2024 was my very first time at Game Developers Conference (GDC) at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. I’ve done PAXs and I’ve done E3s, Summer Game Fests and Gen Cons and more. But never GDC, until now, and if there’s one takeaway to sum up my experience, it’s this: I was a fool to have waited this long. From my admittedly neophyte perspective, GDC is really what you make of it. There are talks, the expo floor, and meetings galore to be had. There are also numerous extracurricular events and parties. You can even just sit out in the nearby gardens chatting to folks if you really want to. For journalists like me, GDC is one long meeting…

Coming from new studio Yellow Brick Games, formed by former Bioware and Ubisoft veterans, this Unreal-Engine-5-powered action game is certainly going big. You play as Brynn, who’s a Weaver, a kind of magical warrior able to bend the world to their whims (think telekinetically hurling both objects and yourself into the air, or freezing the air to create bridges to aid in exploration). Mastery of this world is all about using physics tricks to gain an advantage. And you’ll need them, as exploring the dormant nation of Enclave will prove dangerous. The ruins are full of creatures out to pull at your threads, and extreme weather events wreak havoc on the environment (though a skilled Weaver can use them for their own ends). On top of it all, you’ll need…

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 8 MAY / PUB 11 BIT STUDIOS / DEV ODD METER / PLAYERS 1 Seeing a studio take risks always gives us a buzz, and Odd Meter’s mind-bending game Indika makes one hell of a first impression. It tells the tale of a nun who leaves her monotonous life in a convent to travel across 19th-century Russia, but here’s the kicker: her travelling companion is the devil, leading to a fierce tension between religion, reality, and authority. This is a story-driven adventure in a distorted world, and one that Odd Meter is allowing us to view through an aggressively stylish lens. As headstrong young nun Indika leaves the safe walls of her convent for a greater purpose, the devil seems to be living in her head…

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2024 PUB CAPCOM / DEV CAPCOM / PLAYERS 1 Fancy strategy with a twist? How about a game featuring the one-two step of parading demons meeting crowd control in the form of twirling, dancing blade strikes? Many of the genre staples are here (protect your special unit, build and fortify your base, mop up enemies) but all set within a frame drawing heavily upon Japan’s indigenous religion, Shinto, with the developers even going so far as to call this a “kagura action strategy game.” So, what is kagura? In the simplest of terms it is a ceremonial dance that, as a living folk tradition, can take many forms – in Kunitsu-Gami’s case, that’s a purifying procession led by the Maiden, Yoshiro. You play as Soh, Yoshiro’s…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 21 JUN / PUB BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT DEV FROMSOFTWARE / PLAYERS MULTI Let’s hope you’ve not grown rusty since you last battled your way to the Erdtree and reclaimed the Elden Ring. Shadow Of The Erdtree will put you to the test. Expanding FromSoftware’s debut true open world, the Land Of Shadow isn’t merely a massive new area to explore, it also reveals the developer has learned from developing the base game and thrown many more ideas into the mix (which is partly why this DLC has taken so long to come out). In a sense, this is FromSoftware’s second go at making a world worth exploring. Make no mistake, Elden Ring’s Lands Between were already worth spending time in, but the density of design…

Greetings, traveller. Have you heard the tale of the adventurer who spent a whole day levitating from balcony to balcony in the capital of Vernworth, looting chest after chest? Or of the one who fought off a legion of lizard-like saurians by flinging the corpses of their scaly comrades back at them? Or of the one who rode a minotaur off a cliff and into the salty clutches of the forbidden brine? Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an open world adventure like little else. At a glance the map might make you think of the likes of Assassin’s Creed or Elden Ring, but in truth this is more of a dynamic sandbox, designed so you can be let loose on the world to discover your own adventure. After your heart is…

When business simulators arrive on console, fans of the genre take a collective deep breath as the control schemes can be trickier than most to master. And when you begin playing Planet Zoo you might have to take just one more meditative moment, because diving head-first into sandbox mode to create your zoo of dreams is intimidating, to say the least. Instead of being quickly humbled by the sight of how much space you’ve got to play with in the vast plains of Africa, career mode is your best place to start. Here, after choosing your desired difficulty level you’re introduced to zoo owner extraordinaire Bernie Goodwin. Panning over his twinned zoo and home proves impressive, but you aren’t being hired to poke about the peafowl enclosure, you’re being employed…

Great stories often centre on normal people given no choice but to step up and become heroes. They’re a frequent choice for narrative games like (just think of Telltale’s The Walking Dead or Life Is Strange) as we all think we know how we would react as ordinary people in extraordinary situations, and interactive dramas such as these can let us live out some of these common fantasies. In As Dusk Falls, you primarily need to make decisions during a hostage situation. Vince, his wife Michelle, father Jim, and daughter Zoe make an unplanned stay at a motel and are attacked by three brothers, Tyler, Dale, and Jay Holt, who are fleeing the police after a robbery. The story is split in two – during the hostage situation, you mostly…

Mention X-Men Origins: Wolverine to a cinephile and they’ll probably burst into tears. It’s a movie so terrible that it made the swine flu epidemic only the second-worst global disaster of 2009, and it honestly wasn’t even close. But mention X-Men Origins: Wolverine to people who played the PS3 game and you’ll get a very different response. “The game was genuinely better than the movie,” says reader Aaran Mecalfe, who isn’t simply damning it with faint praise. “If Insomniac’s upcoming Wolverine game has taken any inspiration from this magnificent game, then we’re all in for a treat.” Magnificent? It’s a view shared by Kyle Lipford. “This didn’t feel like a tie-in, but like an honest effort to make a great Wolverine game. And they accomplished that.” These comments aren’t outliers.…

Another PS Plus addition, another PSP entry in a series that no longer exists. In this case, we’re looking at the final game, which was quite the send off. But while it was impressive at the time – especially for PSP – it’s showing its age now. Two things run through our minds as we play. The positive thing is ‘Wow, the developers really made an effort to give their audience variety’. Technically speaking, this is an action platformer, but it’s harder to pigeonhole than most games of its time. There’s jumping, there’s shooting, and even some puzzles, but there’s more, too. We have a small number of rudimentary NPC-filled hubs to wander around,1 and some sequences where Daxter (the furry fella) mutates into a powerful beast to solve puzzles…