PLAY July 2022 - n.15

Unsurprisingly, putting together the Top 100 (p48) that adorns this issue’s cover was no easy task. But it’s a testament to the strength of PlayStation as a platform that squeezing our favourites in was quite a challenge. You could easily make a list twice as long, as it’s home to some real classics. No doubt you’ll be both nodding away in agreement and shaking your head in disbelief. After all, that’s what any good list should make you do – there’s always something personal to the prospect, even when the whole team contributes. With all its surprises and little oddities, this is a PLAY list, after all. But we’d love to hear your own thoughts and favourites as well – our usual email address is printed just below my name over…

Rachel Watts STAFF WRITER Learning from A Space For The Unbound, Rachel can hop into her own dreams for a power nap. GAME OF THE MONTH The Stanley Parable BEST BOSS Malus (Shadow Of The Colossus) Jess Kinghorn GAMES EDITOR She’s levelled up her snack game to match Bugsnax, her lunches now cartoonish, comically large sandwiches. GAME OF THE MONTH Bugsnax – Isle Of Bigsnax BEST BOSS Fox Face (Shadow Hearts) Miriam McDonald OPERATIONS EDITOR Who needs to play the new Lego when you’re handy at making the dioramas yourself? Not Mim. GAME OF THE MONTH VTM: Bloodhunt BEST BOSS Krystalinda (Dragon Quest X) Milford Coppock MANAGING ART EDITOR After cutting out every character on the cover, Milf has developed an uncomfortably steady knife hand. GAME OF THE MONTH Lego Builder’s Journey BEST BOSS The End (MGS 3)…

“Your look says a lot about you, but you can also express yourself with emotes.” Stilwater and Steelport are tiny dots in the rearview mirror as Saints Row tears away towards a fresh start. This reboot resets the entry numbering to zero, aiming for a new beginning in the Las-Vegas-inspired setting of Santo Ileso. Set to make its grand debut on 23 August, in this game your custom protagonist will take centre stage. You’ve always had a wealth of options when creating the leader of the 3rd Street Saints but the reboot takes that many steps further. To start with, you have eight Boss presets to pick and either play as immediately or tweak to your heart’s content. There are eight voices to choose from in addition to these pre-made looks, though…

Time to stop emailing Square Enix every day begging for a new Deus Ex. The Japanese company is washing its hands of it all, selling off Crystal Dynamics, Square Enix Montréal, and Eidos and their associated IPs to Embracer Group for $300 million. As well as Deus Ex, that includes Tomb Raider, Thief, Legacy Of Kain, Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel games, and more. It’s possible you haven’t heard of Embracer Group, but you’ve almost certainly played its games. The Swedish holding company, which formerly traded as THQ Nordic (which remains a division of the group), owns over 100 studios across multiple subsidiaries. The company has been swelling in size in recent years, acquiring Perfect World and board game maker Asmodee at the end of last year, and even buying comic publisher Dark…

According to a Bloomberg report, Sega is working on “big-budget” reboots of Dreamcast-era cult classics Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. It’s part of the Japanese gaming giant’s Super Game initiative, a plan that involves revisiting dormant IPs to improve the company’s global reach, by creating blockbuster live-service games that will generate recurring revenue while maintaining huge communities of players. Basically, Sega wants its own version of Fortnite. Fortnite built its success upon cross-platform play, microtransactions for cosmetic items, and being free-to-play. Bloomberg doesn’t state that Sega will be copying that exact strategy, but pretty much all live-service games have those three features at their core. The games are said to be still in their early stages, but’s exciting to imagine what they will look like. With Jet Set’s factions and competitive…

“VRR means the television can respond to display shifts, smoothing out things like unlocked framerates.” Long-awaited VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) support was enabled on PS5 in a recent update, and a number of games have been patched to make use of it – though you can switch it on for any game. Like 120Hz support, to use VRR your PS5 has to be connected to a television that supports HMDI 2.1. When enabled, the PS5 communicates with the television to make sure they’re both on the same page with how often your display needs to refresh, which helps eliminate screen tearing (where parts of the image briefly don’t match up, which happens most often when you spin the camera around) and poor frame pacing (when the number of frames per second aren’t…