Table of contents for No. 168 in GamesTM

Have you ever taken a step back and surveyed just how much gaming has had an impact on your life? And I don’t mean the number of hours it’s eaten up in your lifetime, the family gatherings you’ve been late for because you were searching for a checkpoint, or the evenings you made excuses about being able to go out, when in reality you were busy collecting resources for a sword you really wanted to forge. No, what I mean is the degree to which a life of gaming has influenced how you perceive and make sense of the world. I had reason to begin to ponder this recently for a couple of reasons. First, since the beginning of the year I’ve been wearing a fitness tracking wristband. It seemed…

For the most part, it feels like the age when games came out in Japan years before anywhere else is done. There’s the odd exception, sure – an oddity that gets picked up for localisation long after launch for instance – but generally, all the major players seem to be either hitting, targetting or moving towards global release dates. It’s a positive step as in this connected generation, importing is easier than ever. I have no fewer than five different PSN accounts to make sure I don’t miss out anything, and I’m sure I’m not alone on this one. But with Nintendo still refusing to budge on region locking, its chances of turning Yo-Kai Watch into a global phenomenon rather than just a Japanese one might not be all that…

“A lot of my gaming background was in sports games, so I grew up in the US playing a lot of Madden, but most of my friends in Asia were huge fans of Winning Eleven – or PES, now. The idea of combining sports with games, and making it about competition dovetailed nicely into what would become my career. The reason people care so much about eSports is that they like to play the sport or the game themselves, but there’s excitement to be had in the way they can enjoy the best people in the world playing, too. I loved PES becauseit introduced me to that intersection of games and sports.” “The idea of combining sports with games, and making it about competition dovetailed nicely into what would become…

CONCEPT • A nostalgic side-scrolling beat-em-up of the sort that filled the arcades of old, albeit with HD graphics and ear-splitting HD audio. INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PC, Mac, Mobile Origin: United Kingdom Publisher: MakinGames Developer: In-House Release: Q1 2016 Players: 1-2 Developer Profile MakinGames was set up in 2014 by husband and wife, Nic and Anna Makin. Nic worked at Rare for 10 years and is currently employed by Precious Blue Dot but together with freelance artist Jay Howse and musician Steve Burke, he has been making Raging Justice in his spare time. Anna is the game’s co-director and is also responsible for both marketing and publishing the title. Developer History Kameo: Elements of Power 2005 [360] Perfect Dark Zero 2005 [360] Kinect Sports 2010 [360] High Point…

CONCEPT • Set amid some very hazardous environments, Gang Beastsis a retro-inspired multiplayer beat-em-up involving colourful, gelatinous characters that move like they’ve had a few beers INFORMATION Details Format: Windows, OS X, Linux, PS4, Xbox One, Wii U Origin: UK Publisher: Double Fine Developer: Boneloaf Release: 2016 Players: 1-8 (1-4 on PS4) Developer Profile Boneloaf was formed in 2011 by three brothers, James, Jonathan and Michael Brown, none of whom had worked directly in the games industry before. While Michael had studied games design, Jonathan worked in retail and James was lecturing part-time. They were inspired to start making Gang Beastsin 2013 after taking part in a series of game jams. High Point Boneloaf's endeavours began attracting crowds at gaming shows which brought them to the attention of Double Fine.…

There’s talk of a strike right now – a strike amongst voice actors that fear they aren’t getting the recognition they deserve for the work they put in. It’s a rational fear; film actors often become the main focus of the pictures they star in, whilst gamers are much more selfish with their avatars – characters on the screen are often a blank slate for our personalities to come through. Or, that’s how it used to be. Look at the recent trailers for Star Citizen, look at Kevin Spacey’s appearance in Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Look across to Quantum Break and the way Remedy Entertainment is fusing live-action footage with digital doubles in-game, or look at the likenesses between the main protagonists of GTA V and their in-game representations…

GAMES YOU MISSED DON’T LET THESE GEMS PASS YOU BY PROJECT CARS Price Range: £39.99/$49.99 Formats: Various Score: 9 • On Xbox One all the recent attention has been on Forza 6, and with good reason, but for everyone else it’s still been too quick to forget the year’s first sim racer; a fine example of what the genre could be doing to push forward from Slightly Mad Studios. The big move, albeit a rather simple one, was to have all content unlocked for campaigns from the start. No working your way up from a Ford Focus to a McLaren F1 in this game. Strap in and drive. While we wait on Gran Turismo, Projects CARS remains an essential driving experience. CRYPT OF THE NECRODANCER Price Range: £10.99/$14.99 Formats: PS4,…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: Xbox One, PC ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Activision DEVELOPER: Treyarch PRICE: £44.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 (2-16 online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Treyarch’s vision of Call Of Duty has always been more fantastical than other studios’ take on the franchise. Therefore, it comes as little surprise that the Californian outfit has taken it upon itself to deliver what is arguably the most disruptive new element Call Of Duty’s main event of online multiplayer has ever seen. As you might imagine, the ability to run across walls like you’re a parkouring cyborg changes enormously the way you view and interpret the environment around you. No longer does that gap represent an impasse. No longer does storming a well-guarded room or building mean going in through the ground…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, iOS, Wii U ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Activision DEVELOPER: FreeStyle Games PRICE: £64.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 (1-10 Online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes This isn’t the Guitar Hero you remember. This isn’t the Guitar Hero that was butting heads year on year with Rock Band. This isn’t the Guitar Herothat would likely have faded into the background against Harmonix’s genre rival this year, in a marketplace that – despite a five year absence – still manages to feel somewhat tired. No, this is new. This is the shot in the arm the peripheral-based rhythm action game needed, and it’s all presented so well. From the second you boot the game up and you’re given a tutorial from a roadie who wants…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: 2K Sports DEVELOPER: Yuke’s / Visual Concepts PRICE: £54.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 (2-6 online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes It’s been a strange year for the WWE’s top star, John Cena. Since he won the United States championship at Wrestlemania, he’s restored prestige to the belt by putting on great matches week after week, working with fresh opponents and trying new moves to keep up with them. But even in a banner year, he’s still drawing the same criticisms he was last year – his character hasn’t evolved in over a decade, and his “overcoming the odds” gimmick doesn’t work because he rarely ever loses. In many ways, WWE 2K16 is like John Cena – it’s the…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC ORIGIN: US PUBLISHER: Digital Extremes DEVELOPER: Digital Extremes/n-Space PRICE: £31.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-5 MINIMUM SPEC: 64-bit OS, 2.66GHz Dual Core CPU, 4GB RAM, 512MB GPU, 20GB HDD space ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes The prestige surrounding Sword Coast Legends really does hold it back. Its isometric viewpoint in a Forgotten Realms setting recalls genuine classics Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, while its pride as a D&D game creates an expectation of depth. As an RPG completely removed from such inspirations it is, if nothing else, an enjoyable experience with a robust set of mechanics. It might not compete alongside recent, stellar examples of the genre – such as Divinity: Original Sin or Wasteland 2 – but it at least provides enough to get you involved. The campaign…

Nintendo’s financial reports for the year of 2015 were weaker than expected. Much weaker. It outlined two things to the company – that its traditional business model wasn’t working in this age of online and mobile-focused products, and that, under the direction of its new president Tatsumi Kimishima, it has to try out new tactics if it wants to really compete. For the first time in five years, Nintendo’s stock was reported publicly back in October… but that report revealed Nintendo’s actual gross profit fell short of what the software and hardware developer’s internal financial analysts forecast – highlighting a weakening Wii U console and ageing 3DS platform. It’s time for something new, then, and that’s why – on 29 October 2015 – Nintendo announced its first ever official mobile-only…

You became well known for DayZ – which was originally made as an ARMA mod. Was working from scratch a faster process? So ION is a game that has been in prototype form for quite a while but has been in development for about [18] months proper now, working with London company Improbable and RocketWerkz, the company I set up. But it was a faster process. What helped from the start was Improbable’s technology. All the tech was done and all the team I’ve been working with have really helped us. Working with guys who have worked on Gravity (film), Fallout, RYSE and loads of other games. It’s what has helped us to get to a workable prototype. So it could be argued you’re making a triple-A game? Well, that’s…

CONCEPT • There are 25 people left – the so-called “Battleborn” – who can prevent the last star in the universe from dying at the hands of an encroaching dark force INFORMATION Details Format: PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin: USA Publisher: 2K Games Developer: Gearbox Software Release: February 2016 Players: 5-10 (online), 1-2 (offline) Developer Profile Gearbox has 15 years of development talent up its sleeve and has recently become a name synonymous with polished, quality products. Provided that you ignore Aliens: Colonial Marines, the studio has a watertight back-catalogue. Developer History Half-Life: Blue Shift 2001 [Linux, Mac, PC] Borderlands 2009 [PC, PS3, Xbox 360] Aliens: Colonial Marines 2013 [PC, PS3, Xbox 360] High Point Borderlands 2 perfected the formula that the original game set out, combining excellent gunplay with…

CONCEPT • A furry engineer and his little metal friend set off on a quest to grab loads of money and have a good time – oh, and save the world, too INFORMATION Details Format: PS4 Origin: USA Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Developer: Insomniac Games Release: Spring 2016 Players: 1 Developer Profile Based in California, the studio is famously headed up by leading developer Ted Price and has an affiliation with Sony since the PlayStation era (a trend that was broken by the company’s infamous game, Fuse). A resilient studio, Insomniac has come back from many disasters (the aforementioned Fuse and its first game, Disruptor, for example) and has remained deservedly popular. Developer History Spyro The Dragon 1996 [PSOne] Ratchet & Clank 2002 [PS2] Resistance: Fall of Man 2006 [PS3]…

We’re at the Wembley SSE Arena. It’s almost 5pm and the air is buzzing with chatter. 12,000 people pack the stands – from front row seats to full rows up in the rafters, the event is sold out. The audience flashes red and blue – wristbands and balloons and signs and all sorts of other gadgetry are loaded with LEDs, and everywhere you look you can see the words “League Of Legends”. It’s on banners, it’s on merchandise, it’s on clothing, it’s on stage. The stage – illuminated with an array of lights that’d make the FA Cup Final’s lightshow look paltry, the competitive area looks like something straight out of an Eighties sci-fi flick: two rows of computer setups, each with branded and sponsored equipment, sit empty, waiting for…

“The big game for me that really got me into eSports was the original StarCraft. I was a big fan of SlayerS_BoxeR, I was a big fan of Bisu. I remember following it through grade school/middle school, and I remember my sister driving me to tournaments that were an hour’s drive away because I was too young to get there myself, and I remember winning one match and then bombing out but not caring because I got to play in a WCG qualifier! That was the first game that, at age 13, opened me up to wanting to be a pro-gamer – but it wasn’t until StarCraft III that I started to actually get better at it! But it wasn’t until League Of Legends that I actually got good at…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One ORIGIN: US PUBLISHER: Microsoft Studios DEVELOPER: 343 Industries PRICE: £44.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-24 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Halo 5 claims to contain 15 missions, but there are actually only 12. Missions 4, 9 and 11 only earn their title in the sense that an Achievement pops up when they’ve been completed. At around 90 seconds in duration apiece, they each demand that players press X to trigger a conversation or two before the screen slowly fades to black. Even before the realisation arrives that one fifth of this campaign is essentially an illusion, it’s already clear that Halo 5 represents a fairly brutal fall from grace. Of course, everything is relative, and if the rest of the story mode was filled with captivating gunfights and…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: PS3, PC ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Bandai Namco Entertainment DEVELOPER: Bandai Namco Studios PRICE: £49.99 (£39.99 PS3/PC) RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Can an unapologetic JRPG cut it on PS4? It’s an approach that has served the Tales series well during the PS3 years, while its peers seem content to chase the western RPG aesthetic and experience. Bandai Namco’s series has carved a niche among Japanese games by sticking staunchly to tradition. Zestiria’s structure may be familiar to series veterans, but it packs in enough new ideas and tweaks to its reliable formula to appeal to new and old players alike. The biggest improvement? It’s closer to having an open world now, removing the sense of running through corridors that hampered earlier entries,…

DETAILS FORMAT: Vita ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Atlus and NISAmerica DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £29.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A There’s a simplicity to Persona 4: Dancing All Night that treads the line between choreographic genius and rhythm game fury. The presentation of the game is impeccable – you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a ‘full’ console release, rather than for a handheld console: the character models (remade specifically for the game) look gorgeous, the animations are fluid and whatever motion capturing magic Atlus has used to make the dances look real is, frankly, hypnotic. So the problems, then, come into how the game is charted. You play as the main cast of Persona 4 (andonenewcharacter)that quite literally have to dance for their lives. Pulled back into the…

“I went to university and I studied car design, and I was there for four years. I can attribute my near-failure of every year to a videogame… the original Tomb Raider just fucking blew my mind. I’m a big nerd, right? I grew up with all this sci-fi, all these board games, all this action adventure, and when we first got Tomb Raider, me and my buddy just sat there playing this game and we were fucking blown away. The first time you do the swan dive off the highest waterfall… we must have done that over and over for an hour – just doing it, climbing back up, and doing it again. It was moments like that that actually made me want to make games – in my final…

Released: 1993 Format: PC, Mac, Sega-CD/ Mega-CD, 3DO Publisher: LucasArts Key Staff: Vince Lee (designer, programmer and project lead), Ron K. Lussier (lead artist), Daniel Colon, Richard Green (artists), Aaron Muszalski (lead art technician), John Williams (music) REBEL ASSAULT WAS NEVER EXPECTED TO MAKE ANY MONEY FORMED IN 1982, Lucasfilm Games made its name in the mid-Eighties with 8-bit games such as The Eidolon and Ballblazer, before later in the decade beginning its successful line of adventures games, mainly based around the popular SCUMM engine. Unable to develop games based around its most famous IP, it wasn’t until 1993 that the company (by now renamed LucasArts) finally released its first Star Wars title. Space sim X-Wing was a predictably huge hit, finally giving gamers and Star Wars fans the chance…

Released: 1980 Publisher: Epyx Developers: Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman System: BSD UNIX (Amiga, Amstrad, Atari ST, DOS, Macintosh, ZX Spectrum etc) ROGUE: EXPLORING THE Dungeons of Doom – to give the game its full name – is one of the precious few games that managed to achieve worldwide fame and recognition, despite originating on the UNIX platform… a base initially designed for science and industry rather than videogame coding. UNIX platforms lacked a dedicated audio/visual interface, and instead featured only character-set graphics, meaning bored programmers could only make games in ASCII or ANSI graphics. Rogue’s creators – Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman – had been involved in videogame development before, but had been limited to creating text-based adventures. Thanks to another programmer’s development of a script called ‘curses’ – which…

It wasn’t so long ago that in the eSports scene it would be new IPs helping us to get our vitamin D deficiency as new titles took greater advantage of new technologies, innovated more and generally left legacy titles built from the days of LAN connections in the dust; nowadays it’s the job of sequels and remakes. So this Autumn we are blessed with a game which is not only a sequel but includes flashbacks to some of the many highlights its franchise has produced over the last decade. I’m talking about Halo 5, which is not only back with a flashy single-player campaign (not that I would be seen playing such a thing), but also with a mission to regain the crown it once wore with pride. Halo is…

CONCEPT • A new interactive, filmic experience from Quantic Dream that aims to tackle the fragility of identity and humanity INFORMATION Details Format: PS4 Origin: Canada Publisher: Sony Developer: Quantic Dream Release: TBC Players: 1 Developer Profile At the head of Quantic Dream, the French studio he founded back in 1997, David Cage has become one of the most recognisable and outspoken developers in the industry. As potentially controversial as his creative choices have been, Cage has taken the QTE, the interactive cutscene and the concept of consequence-based gameplay to new heights. Developer History The Nomad Soul 1999 [PC, Dreamcast] Fahrenheit 2005 [PS2, Xbox, PC] Heavy Rain 2010 [PS3, PS4] Beyond: Two Souls 2013 [PS3, PS4] High Point It may have spawned enough memes to fill a small corner of…

Naughty Dog is a studio invested in the human side of videogames: the human stories, the human animations, the human reactions, the human empathy. It revels in grand drama, Hollywood-inspired characters and narrative arcs that take you on an emotional journey as varied and intense as the physical voyages its characters embark upon. The multiplayer facets of Naughty Dog’s games, therefore, go somewhat unnoticed in the grand scheme of things: rarely are the multiplayer efforts of the studio’s games even reviewed, let alone written about in the many essays that come out about its games. In the years after The Last Of Us’ release, practically every editorial, forum post or tweet waxing lyrical about great interactive storytelling gave the game an explicit name-check, and academics and enthusiasts alike have gone…

LIGHTS MoCap studios are typically very bright – the white nodes on the actors suits need to be keyed onto all cameras at all times, so visibility is vital CAMERAS Depending on how many frames of data per second the animation team requires, more cameras will be installed in the studio ACTORS Actors wear special suits that are interpreted by the cameras in the room and feed back to a computer, ‘mapping’ the animation in a 3D field PROPS Guns, swords and other objects might also be fitted with special white nodes that will be tracked and – separately – recorded in the animation data MICROPHONE Some studios (like Ubisoft Toronto) decide to film movement, voice and face at the same time, going for true-to-life 3D performances STUDIO DIRECTOR Either…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PC ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Bethesda Game Studios DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £54.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Nobody wanted to set the world on fire, but it still happened anyway. What makes this story unique, though it’s been told many times over throughout this series, is that in Fallout 4 you get to see one of the initial blasts that ended the world. It’s not something you’d call brave or particularly emotive, but it is damn cool to finally see that end of the world we’ve heard so much about for almost 20 years now. Once the introductory sequence, covering the alternative, 1950s-inspired history/future has run its course, though, you’re back into very familiar territory. In a literal sense less so,…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4OTHER FORMATS: PC,Xbox OneORIGIN: SwedenPUBLISHER: EADEVELOPER: Ghost GamesPRICE: £44.99RELEASE: Out nowPLAYERS: 1-8ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes What a horrible task it must be to reboot a racing franchise. The likes of shooters have it easy with a fairly simple and prescribed goal: make it dark and gritty, make it an origin story – thanks Christopher Nolan. But when it comes to a racing game, what exactly are you resetting? The objective is still going to be to drive through a series of checkpoints as quickly as possible, that’s never going to change. For Ghost Games, its Need For Speed reboot is about setting the tone for the name; about giving a showcase for players to know what those three recognisable words actually mean; about denoting the type of experience you’ll…

DETAILS FORMAT: 3DS ORIGIN: JAPAN PUBLISHER: NINTENDO DEVELOPER: SKIP PRICE: £29.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A This year, Chibi-Robo turns ten, but this fifth outing for the robotic handyman will only provide further frustration for fans praying he’ll one day become more than a bit player in Nintendo’s roster. While past Chibi-Robo games have been 3D free-roaming affairs, Zip Lash is Skip’s first attempt at putting the character in a 2D side-scrolling platformer. The result is a game that shows ambition but doesn’t quite nail the execution. The main gameplay mechanic is Chibi-Robo’s power cord, which hangs from his back. He can aim the cord and throw it to defeat enemies, break blocks and create a makeshift grappling hook. Initially, he starts with a relatively short cord,…

When it comes to racing games there is a long list of well-known and reputable names that come to mind. On the simulation side of the genre the likes of Gran Turismo and Forza rule the roost, but when it comes to more arcade-based racing there is a much greater variety of titles. Need For Speed has been around since 1994, and in that time 22 different core NFS games have been released – it goes without saying that at this point it’s fairly synonymous with the racing genre. Need For Speed has been a fairly eclectic franchise, too, and while it hasn’t always maintained its crown as the number one arcade racing game – a fairly prominent battle with the Burnout series occurred during the PS2 era – the…

What did you think of Rebel Assault’s concept? I thought it was fresh and interesting. Most of the 3D games were rendered at runtime but Rebel Assault was rendered at development time, so it was possible to have more detail, although this suffered a bit when reduced down to 1x CD-ROM speed. Was it always intended to use newer technology? Yes. Vince was a big Amiga fanatic and used 3D rendering software on it. One day he brought in a 3D-rendered video stream of a trench run, and this became the game concept. I think there was some early discussion of shipping on floppy discs, but it wasn’t very serious. Was there a worry that would limit its market? There were some concerns. However, after the game shipped, LucasArts was…

BENEATH APPLE MANOR (1978) • ONE OF THE earliest commercial Apple II games, it predates Rogue and even came with a primitive graphical display to accompany the text-based version. Its fantasy setting set the standard for randomly-generated games. TELENGRAD (1982) • HIGHLY REGARDED AS one of the first professionally produced computer role-playing games, Telengrad riffed heavily on D&D but did so in a more interactive way. You played in real-time, but it wasn’t randomly generated. MORIA (1983) • BASED HEAVILY ON Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, this is the game that’s often cited to have influenced Blizzard’s Diablo series. It gets its name from its main quest: kill the Balrog deep in the mines of Moria. It’s simple, but certainly effective. SCARAB OF RA (1988) • A FIRST-PERSON PERSPECTIVE…