Table of contents for No. 173 in GamesTM

It’s not always the one who breaks new ground that gets the plaudits, so much as the one who proves that the ground is fertile. Such is the case with Gears Of War, a game that I would never dream of calling innovative or original, but which I would call impactful, influential and resonant. The third-person cover shooter had its vocabulary established by Gears Of War; it was given a gameplay benchmark to reach for and the industry as a whole was given a visual standard for the generation. Being the first is noteworthy, but being the best is ultimately what counts. Conversations about Gears invariably turn to Resident Evil 4 and Killswitch, but whether these games were the true innovators or not doesn’t really matter. Well-established franchises like Tomb…

• IS SONY’S ‘FOR the players’ mantra more than a clever marketing slogan? It’s worked wonders for the PlayStation 4 so far, adorning every game and system announcement over the three years – not to mention all of the backhanded assaults made on the Xbox One – helping in no small part to grow the user base of the console to 40 million worldwide. But it seems as if Sony is finally being put to the test by a surprising revelation from Microsoft regarding multiplayer server parity. Xbox made an unexpected announcement: the Xbox One is opening itself up to support cross-platform play. Not only between Xbox One and PC owners, but for PS4 owners too – were Sony to allow it. The idea that we could play with friends…

“I just love the attitude in Darkest Dungeon – people would complain about my games, but I think this went grimmer than I ever have ” LUKE CRANE, HEAD OF GAMES, KICKSTARTER “One of my favourite games – and this actually came out through Kickstarter in the last couple of years – is called Darkest Dungeon. Oh, man; I design fantasy role playing games, and I just love the attitude in Darkest Dungeon – people would complain about my games, but I think this went grimmer than I ever have! The art, the sound design, the character voices… it is all just so good and so interesting. It’s just a great take on the dungeon-crawler genre. It’s been made by a great team as well – they are…

“We have so much content planned for the base game so we can’t wait to share that with players”JESSE RAPCZAK, CO-FOUNDER AND CO-CREATIVE CONCEPT Forage, build a base and aim to survive in a lush world populated by bloodthirsty dinosaurs that want to feast on your stranded form. INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PS4, PC Origin: United States Publisher: Studio Wildcard Developer: Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Virtual Basement, Efecto Studios Release: June Players: 1-70 (per server) Developer Profile Based in the state of Washington, developer Wildcard Studios is a relatively new outfit having been formed a mere two years ago by a number of veteran devs including co-founder Jesse Rapczak, a former technical art director at Microsoft Game Studios. Ark: Survival Evolved is the studio’s first game. Developer History Ark:…

“We created the world and the ‘unbalanced’ character at the same time. We want them to match one another”STEPHANE BEAUVERGER, DONTNOD CONCEPT As a vampire you must decide how to live your life under the knowledge that you need blood to survive. Do you kill or not? INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Xbox One, PC Origin: France Publisher: Focus Home Interactive Developer: Dontnod Release: 2017 Players: 1 Developer Profile Based in Paris, Dontnod has created a strong reputation off of the back of only two releases. Life Is Strange was near-universally praised for its telling of a story about a troubled teenage girl, whereas Remember Me, despite its questionable combat mechanics, provided a vividly drawn world to explore. Developer History Life Is Strange 2015 [Multi] Remember Me 2013 [Multi] High Point…

The MOBA may just be the most popular videogame genre on the planet right now, and yet it has found itself in an oddly precarious position. Despite its enduring success over the years, the games that fall under the MOBA umbrella have a habit of being inherently divisive; communities have been divided and friendships have fallen. As with anything in life, passions can turn poisonous, and perhaps that’s why those with little to no experience of MOBAs attempting to try one out typically receive such furious condescension from more experienced players in-game. A similar fury can then be found mirrored in those that, as a result, scorn the insular, cryptic MOBA-playing community. Which is surprising, really, when you consider that industry leader League Of Legends has a somewhat ridiculous 67…

“INSPIRATION FOR HAVING A SEAMLESS WORLD CAME FROM, FUNNILY ENOUGH, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME” In 2006 we thought we were getting Final Fantasy Versus XIII. 2013 saw that expectation dashed, with the same project becoming Final Fantasy XV. Now, in 2016, the latest revelation is that the next major instalment in this most venerable of Japanese roleplaying game franchises is not simply a standalone game at all. Instead, it’s what Square Enix is calling a ‘universe’; an entire system beyond the actual game itself, comprised of releases across various forms of media, all of which are designed to enhance the experience of Final Fantasy XV. ‘Reclaim Your Throne’ is a simple tagline bookending one of the numerous trailers revealed during a Los Angeles-hosted event dedicated to communicating…

“I find it so compelling that Bungie is able to tell a story in a genre that could have been considered so horribly dudebro ” MARTIN FIELD, ART MANAGER, NDREAMS “A game that I love? It has got to be from the Halo series. I find it so compelling that Bungie is able to tell a story in a genre that could have been considered so horribly dudebro throughout the entire thing – with all of these space marines everywhere – but the team always made such an effort to tell a story with every episode, I love it. The one I love the most though, that probably has to be Halo 3. I played Halo 2 more; but the way that Bungie ended things with 3, who…

IT FEELS A LITTLE UNFINISHED, RATHER THAN BEING TRULYEPISODIC AND CONSIDERED DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PC ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Square Enix DEVELOPER: IO Interactive PRICE: £11.99 RELEASE: Out Now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes What is it that compels a criminal to return to the scene of a crime? There’s an air of arrogance to it, right? The opportunity to watch as hapless investigators struggle to follow the trail of (cold) blood towards a lead. Perhaps it’s seen as a chance to monitor missed opportunities, the window to see what could have been were more attention to detail paid. Maybe, just maybe, there’s simply a desire to heartlessly revel in the chaos created by their hand. Whatever the reason, it could feel like a redundant act if…

QUANTUM BREAK IS A CONFIDENT AND DRIVEN ACTION-ADVENTURE GAME THAT REWARDS THOSE THAT ARE WILLING TO PACE THEMSELVES DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PC ORIGIN: Finland PUBLISHER: Microsoft Game Studios DEVELOPER: Remedy Entertainment PRICE: £49.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A This is largely dependent on which side of the console war you fall on, but the Xbox One was either dead on arrival or in need of a true killer IP to sell itself to the masses. While Quantum Break isn’t likely to have the same sales impact as an Uncharted or a Halo, it does feel like the game this generation needs: inherently ambitious in its design, creative with its execution, and stylish as all hell. But then again, we’ve come to expect nothing less…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PC ORIGIN: US PUBLISHER: EA DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £44.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes The feeling we get as we enter the third round of a bout in EA Sports UFC 2 is not entirely unlike how we feel in a Dark Souls boss battle. Our shoulders are hunched and tense. There’s a sense of fear, foreboding and determination looming and a furrow in our brow. Every move we make, every gesture towards attack or defence could be our last, or it could win us everything. In this respect UFC 2 does a great job of embodying the inherent threat and chaos of mixed martial arts, but it’s still not gotten the mechanics to a place where that can be…

DETAILS FORMAT: Android OTHER FORMATS: iOS ORIGIN: Ireland PUBLISHER: Nordeus DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: Free-to-play RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 (2 online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes What a joy it is to win a match in Top Eleven. You can play friendlies with AI teams, but the crux of the game is scheduling matches with other players – you pick an opponent, then come kick-off you receive a notification telling you it’s time to watch. And after so much trawling through menus( Top Eleven has A LOT of menus) it’s a thrill, and a relief, when your squad walks off the pitch victorious. It’s almost primordial. When you’ve spent hours scouting for new players, signing sponsorship deals and arranging your training drills you can’t help but want to message your defeated opponent…

“The £150 price gulf between the Rift and PSVR isn’t actually as big as you may expect” Sony has found itself in quite the precarious position. Thanks to the unprecedented success of the PlayStation 4 – and an enthusiastic reveal of PlayStation VR – Sony is now in a domineering position of power in both the videogame and technology industries. The company now has the ability to influence the market in a very tangible way, and it’s one bad decision away from tearing years of hard work and success to the ground. That’s something of a terrifying realisation, because in 2016 the company could either strengthen the PS4 user base or irretrievably split it; it could successfully bring virtual reality into the homes of millions or sully the VR-dream before…

“You’ll need to stay in constant motion to stay alive; every map is constructed to keep the action brutally fast-paced”.BETHESDA PRESS RELEASE CONCEPT Over a decade on from Doom 3, id Software returns with yet another reboot of the seminal FPS franchise; designed to be bigger, bolder and more badass than anything that’s come before it INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PS4, PC Origin: USA Publisher: Bethesda Softworks Developer: id Software Release: 13 May 2016 Players: 1-12 Developer Profile One of the most important videogame studios to ever emerge, id Software not only laid out the framework for the first-person shooter genre, but it’s also widely responsible for improving 3D computer graphics and enhancing game engines. Without founding id members John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack, the…

“ The Solus Project is a work of love for us, two independent teams set out to build their dream game”JAKUB MIKYSKA CEO OF GRIP DIGITAL CONCEPT The Solus Project arrives on Steam Early Access and Xbox One’s Game Preview programme as a showcase of Teotl Studios and GRIP Digital’s effort to create a sci-fi survival simulator. INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PC Origin: Sweden/Czech Republic Publisher: Teotl Studios/GRIP Digital Developer: In-house Release: June 2016 Players: 1 Developer Profile Following its work on Unmechanical in 2012, Teotl Studios joined forces with GRIP Digital to developer its first Unreal Engine 4 game, The Solus Project. The studios have collaborated in the past, with the latter team brought in to finalise the Unmechanical: Extended port to next-gen consoles last year. Developer History…

“WE BELIEVE THAT COMPETITIVE GAMES SHOULD BE EVERYWHERE WHERE THERE ARE COMPETITIVE GAMERS. THAT INCLUDES CONSOLES” “It’s been fun… it’s a constraint, but developers love constraints. From day one, a problem we knew we would have to tackle early is the number of input buttons we use – because the keyboard has many buttons, but the controller has significantly less. That made us make tough choices, and really, we got a win-win. Paragon is paced in such a way that people can understand how combat was happening and be able to respond to it – which really helped us settle in to the idea that MOBAs have stories that are created inside of combat – and we were able to bring that control scheme over to the controller. We believe…

BIG WINNERS PILLARS OF ETERNITY OBSIDIAN ENT. RAISED: $3,986,929 METACRITIC AVG: 89 Thanks to fantastic support on Kickstarter, Obsidian was able to give the isometric fantasy RPG a breath of life last year and in so doing created one of the best titles we’d played in a while. It was yet more proof that with the right team and an underserved fanbase you can create something great together. WASTELAND 2 INXILE ENTERTAINMENT RAISED: $2,933,252 METACRITIC AVG: 81 How long had it been since the last Wasteland, since original Fallout fans had to wait for the post-apocalypse to get its classic isometric look back? With those two questions in mind, the inXile team (many of whom worked on both those original games) were able to garner a lot of attention and…

THE FEAR OF ANOTHER PLAYER TURNING ON YOU IS REAL, BUT IT DOESN’T HAPPEN AS FREQUENTLY AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PC ORIGIN: Sweden PUBLISHER: Ubisoft DEVELOPER: Ubisoft Massive PRICE: £44.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: Massively Multiplayer ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes So, what next? That’s the question that hangs over every persistent online gaming experience and that is once again the question that players of The Division will be left with as they reach the Level 30 cap. But unlike many games that have sought to blend the MMO with more accessible experiences, Ubisoft has created a template for a world that feels far better placed to answer that repeated question time after time. This is in no small part thanks to this being one…

FROM SOFTWARE HAS MANAGED TO DELIVER BOTH A STANDALONE GAME AND ONE THAT CAN GIVE RETURNING FANS EVEN MORE OF A SENSE OF PURPOSE DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: Xbox One, PC ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Bandai Namco DEVELOPER: FromSoftware PRICE: £49.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 (2-6 online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes It’s not a game – it’s an ordeal. That’s the best way to look at Dark Souls III if you want to cling onto your sanity until the credits roll, since FromSoftware does an excellent job of bending many typical gaming conventions in order to deliver something that will continually erect walls in the way of your progress without the dangled carrot of reward for your trouble. There’s no gold star for victory, no back-patting results screen and often…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC OTHER FORMATS: Mac, Xbox One ORIGIN: Poland PUBLISHER: Superhot Team DEVELOPER: In-House PRICE: £17.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 MINIMUM SPEC: Windows 7, Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4GHz CPU, 4GB RAM, GeForce GTX 650 1GB GPU, 4GB HDD space. ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Superhot is a spectacular example of the current indie development scene’s bold innovation, and yet it feels like a game that – in it’s current form at least – doesn’t quite live up to its full potential. Superhot is a first-person shooter in which you use pistols, shotguns, assault rifles and various thrown objects to kill a bunch of red guys in a series of short, snappy set pieces. But there’s one significant twist; when you’re stood still, time itself is paused. When you move, time…

“I just thought the spectacle and the ambition of that game was amazing ” PATRICK O’LUANAIGH, CEO, NDREAMS “I’m going to have to go old school to find a game that I love. There’s a game called Midwinter, an old Atari ST game that I just always loved. It was kind of an open world game and you could explore all over the place… look if I try to explain the features of it now it’s going to sound limited. But you have to understand: it had ice and mountains, shooting and vehicles, you could talk to people and it had stats for your character… it was just really cool and it opened my imagination. If you look at it now it has dated quite a bit. But…

“It’s the freshest game in terms of new features and new gameplay opportunities”TIM WILEMAN TT GAMES CONCEPT The family friendly LEGO series takes on the latest in the Star Wars saga while seeking to innovate INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, PC, 3DS, PSVita, Xbox 360, PS3 Origin: UK Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment Developer: TT Fusion Release: 28 June 2016 Players: 2 Developer Profile TT Fusion has been developing LEGO games since 2007 when it was acquired by TT Games. Its first title was LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga and it went on to create some of the most beloved LEGOtitles like LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 and LEGO Lord Of The Rings. Developer History LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Sage Xbox 360/PS3/Wii/PC [2007] LEGO Harry…

“The events in our game are very over-the-top, but we want to get you thinking that this is a reality that’s not so far away from our own”JAN KLOSE, DECK 13 CONCEPT Tough-as-nails action RPG set in a future in which giant conglomerates and the artificial intelligence they’ve created are out to rule the world INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Xbox One, PC Origin: Germany Publisher: Focus Home Interactive Developer: Deck 13 Release: 2017 Players: 1 Developer Profile Based in Frankfurt, Germany, Deck 13 built its reputation on adventure games featuring a slice of action on the side. Over the years its focus has changed to include action as a priority, with the studio’s most recent release, Lords Of The Fallen, representing this trend best of all. Developer History Lords of…

“We were afraid that if we tried to do things that were too revolutionary we would be judged harshly” “When we first came in, we talked about the Tim Burton Batman and the Christopher Nolan Batman,” Rod Fergusson tells us as we talk ahead of the launch of the Gears Of War 4 beta. “When I first came in that was one of our things: ‘We’re going to be Christopher Nolan’s Batman’. But as we started doing it we realised ‘This just isn’t Gears. This is something else’. So we’re trying to find this middle ground when you hear the banter, even in our tease at E3, with Kait and JD talking to each other. I don’t want to make a humourless game.” The Coalition’s studio head comes back to…

Paragon doesn’t feature a traditional storefront, it’s one of the ways Epic is attempting to make the pace of rounds faster – not to mention more organically focused on skill and perception. Instead of farming for coins and spending your earnings on in-round items, instead you’ll be able to activate specific cards from a deck you have pre-assembled ahead of the game starting. The cards can give you specific buffs or enhance certain character traits and statistics. Understanding this system and building a solid deck is as important as mastering the combat and movement mechanics. It has quite the learning curve attached to it – not unlike road-testing a new Hearthstone build for the first time. Only, a game of Hearthstone will typically take closer to ten minutes, not 45…

EXPECT A LOT OF GRINDING TO LEVEL UP JUST ONE POKÉMON TO THE MAX LEVEL OF 100, LET ALONE ALL OF THEM DETAILS FORMAT: Wii U ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: Bandai Namco PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: No Pokkén Tournament is a surprising game. It’s surprising in a number of ways, not least because it even exists in the first place. For The Pokémon Company – usually notoriously protective over its IP – to give its blessing to a game in which Pokémon kick seven shades of Scizor out of each other is something few could have expected. Perhaps even more remarkable, however, is that Pokkén Tournament bucks the trend set by most Pokémon spin-offs by actually being an accomplished, entertaining game. Although at first…

NINTENDO’S FIRST 8-BIT console was a tremendous success, helping to turn around the company’s fortunes and making it one of the industry’s most important publishers. It had virtually every big name developer and publisher producing games and a lucrative licensing deal ensured that it received a huge amount of money in the process. Despite the popularity of the NES (or Famicom as it was known in Japan) Nintendo nevertheless worked hard on its follow-up console. Leaving nothing to chance it once again left the design to NES creator Masayuki Uemura and continued to court a great many popular developers and publishers to ensure that it had a strong range of games. In a move that seems unthinkable in light of the Wii U’s performance, Nintendo had virtually every major developer…

IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE THAT RESIDENT EVIL DEBUTED AS ONE OF THE FIRST PLAYSTATION GAMES TO RECEIVE A MATURE RATING Released: 22 March 1996 Publisher: Capcom Developer: In-house System: PlayStation SURVEY THE wreckage of the Resident Evil brand in 2016 and you’d be hard pressed to find a reason for resuscitation. It’s a bloated disaster of entangled timelines, conspiracy conditions, and B-movie nonsense that seems to actively seek out new ways to irritate its fervent fan base. Still, were you to rewind time by 175 - 200 hours, you’d be looking at something of a different story: Resident Evil shambled out of the shadows and into the spotlight for the very first time, changing the landscape of gaming forever. It did it quickly, too; Resident Evil was an…

RESIDENT EVIL 5 • Following the success of Resident Evil 4, Capcom elected to take the franchise further towards action, and the result is a game that sold well, but stood in stark contrast to the reasons we fell in love with the original Resident Evil. This co-op-led action-adventure game would forever be viewed as a misstep. RESIDENT EVIL 6 • Resident Evil 6 should have been a big success for Capcom, but it suffered from a problem we very rarely see in this industry: it included too much content. So much, so in fact, that it tried to appease all of the different fans of Resident Evil that it had cultivated with a four-part split narrative adventure, but failed to do any one section with finesse. RESIDENT EVIL: 0…

FIGHTSTICK TE S+ MANUFACTURER: MAD CATZ PRICE: £179.99 FOR THOSE THAT want the authentic arcade experience with Street Fighter V, this customisable fightstick offers the perfect blend of great build quality and fantastic gameplay feedback. Pop the screws on top of the panel and you can remove the top casing, giving you the option to change buttons, positions and even the top plate itself for a different design of your choice. In terms of control, the fightstick is everything SF fans could want. The stick itself and the buttons beside it feel sturdy and well-made; we were happy to bash away at them during an intense match without fear of damaging anything. The great news for fighting fans in general is that a small switch on top of the casing…