PLAY February 2023 - n.23

Thought it would take a while for the year to get busy? Think again. 2023 feels like one of the busiest starts to the gaming calendar we’ve ever had, and we’re bringing you an issue to match, starting off with historical ass-kicking courtesy of Like A Dragon: Ishin! (p42). Taking Yakuza historical with the samurai swords to match, Ishin! is a big revamp of a game we’ve never had in English before, making it feel extra fresh. We’ve played it, and had a lovely chat with new studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama about the approach to spin-offs like this, and the future of the series. While Ishin! was inspired by period dramas, The Last Of Us is looking to the future, and we take a look at it on p6. The doors have…

We wanted to see more of the family in a way that would be hard to do in the videogame. Getting you closer to PlayStation’s most exciting stories, people, and culture The first 20 minutes of the TV show The Last Of Us are an exercise in dread. Rather than starting with the outbreak, the first episode begins by following Sarah throughout the day before all hell breaks loose. Thanks in part to the strength of actress Nico Parker’s performance, we spend these 20 minutes willing it to go any other way – after all, we all know how Sarah’s story ends. There’s a passion for the original work on display that’s no surprise when you consider the series is helmed by the game’s creative director Neil Druckmann. He’s joined by Craig Mazin,…

Even if you haven’t heard of PlayStation’s China Hero Project, you’ll know the games it’s produced. It’s an incubator project to help fund new talent from China that’s brought us the likes of FIST: Forged In Shadow, Anno: Mutationem, and In Nightmare. More titles are to come, with phase three set to kick off in a big way, and PlayStation itself stepping in to publish the already-announced Lost Soul Aside and Convallaria. At the time of writing, the search is under way to find the games to spotlight for the new batch. Talking to Reuters, Sony’s head of China game production, Bao Bo, said that this phase was looking to exceed the scale of the previous ones (the project began in 2017), so we may be in for a deluge of…

Frictional Games is returning with another horror game so scary that there’s a high chance you might not be able to play it. The likes of Amnesia: The Dark Descent and SOMA are nothing compared to the unpredictable horror in the newly announced Amnesia: The Bunker. It’s the First World War, and French soldier Henri Clément has only gone and got himself trapped in a bunker. With but a revolver with a single bullet (a first for the Amnesia games) and a rattling dynamo flashlight to his name, plus whatever he can scavenge, getting out isn’t going to be easy. Nor is seeing where you’re going through the inky blackness. The problem is that as you try to figure out where to go in the abandoned, semi-open world, your actions won’t go…

The online shooter is a popular but merciless genre – you could say it’s its own battle royale, with only a few left standing after any length of time. Any developer trying to launch one has got its work cut out for it simply to avoid having to close its servers after a year or less. But if any studio can offer something fresh, it’s Creative Assembly, which gave us the terrifying Alien: Isolation. Hyenas represents the latest evolution of the team-based shooter: the extraction shooter. These are PvPvE matches in which the goal is for each team to raid the setting for loot before trying to make off with the others’ spoils. Hyenas’ loot is one of the game’s main attractions, as rather than hoovering up glitzy macguffins you’ll be…

Just when we’d grown comfortable with seeing the baby-in-a-jar BBs, Death Stranding 2 was announced, pulling the rug out from under us. Added to the mix are a real baby (in a flashback), and what appears to be an… evil BB? This sequel to the often-odd post-apocalyptic deliver-’em-up looks to be leaning even further into Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima’s strangest tendencies and we couldn’t be happier. Even those who could take or leave Norman Reedus’ gruff Sam Porter Bridges from the first game may be more at ease here. Léa Seydoux’s Fragile appears to play a much larger role, seeming to share a connection with the new, almost cult-like antagonists clad in mysterious red suits. She even has a very Metal Gear-like hovership, inviting Sam to meet her crew. BLACKING OUT But…