Issue 092 january 2014 ÂŁ5.99 officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk
2014 begins with a knightmare
Contents highlights The big 10
008 ps4 launch We hit London to experience the midnight madness as Sony’s machine smashes records. pREVIEW 004
034 the witcher 3: wild hunt A detailled look at 2014’s big RPG hope. Join us, dear Fiend. feature
046 game of the year Counting down your favourite 20 games of 2013. No DmC, though? Harsh! featurE
058 playstation in 2014 Fresh looks at all the biggest games coming to PS3 and PS4 in the next 12 months – starring The Elder Scrolls Online, MGS V and more. review
078 fifa 14 EA’s footballing colossus lands on PS4 – and mercifully, it’s more Arsenal than Aldershot. review
086 battlefield 4 The PS4 leap brings scorchingly hot visuals – but how does 64-way multiplayer hold up? retrostation
106 devil may cry 3: dante’s awakening Travelling back in time with the PlayStation’s finest sword-wielding, platinum-haired emo.
January 2014
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BATMAN ArKhAM OrIGINS Exclusive verdict
NEXT-GEN REVIEWS!
KILLZONE: SHADOW FALL ASSASSIN’S CREED IV: BLACK FLAG CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS
on bruce’s asskicking prequel
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KOJIMA TALKS MGS V THE DIVISION IN DETAIL BEYOND, PES 2014 & f1 2013 rEVIEwS
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Latest info, screens and playtests All the hottest news
CHRISTMAS 2013
maTeS WITH OUr PrO TIPS
Of THE bEST LITTLEbIgPLANET LEVELS EVEr crEATED
reviews
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retro STATION
To-the-point, detailed analysis
In-depth verdicts on every big new game
Max out your PS3, online and off
Classics revisited
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NEXT-GEN GAMES TESTED
IT’S HERE!
gta online SmaSH YOUr
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MEET YOUR NEW CONSOLE
with the launch line-up 1Hands-on Six TVs that it sing 2make All your questions 3answered
black flag
Massive PS4 playtest of the series’ best game yet
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the big 10
ISSUE 091 CHRISTMAS 2013 £5.99 officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk
PS4 ExCLuSIVE
ASSASSIN’S CrEED IV
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ISSUE 091 CHRISTMAS 2013
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2014’S BRIGHTEST PS4 HOPES INFAMOUS: SECOND SON DESTINY DRAGON AGE: INQUISITION
“I GOT WEDGED IN THE PIER STAIRS!” Your funniest tales of GTA Online lunacy
Your day one guide to the future of gaming 11/7/13 3:18 PM
THE Games index 014 a ssassin’s creed iv: black flag 086 battlefield 4 094 batman: arkham origins Blackgate 105 beyond: two souls 052 bioshock infinite 098 call of duty: ghosts 067 castlevania: lords of shadow 2 094 Castlevania: mirror of fate hd 067 child of light 088 contrast 020 the crew 060 dark souls ii 071 destiny 106 devil may cry 3: Dante’s awakening 067 The division 071 driveclub 070 the elder scrolls online 071 the evil within 078 fifa 14 084 flower 016 gran turismo 6 053 grand theft auto v 040 hohokum 066 infamous: second son 099 killzone: shadow fall 082 knack 022 the last of us 038 mad max 095 madden nfl 25 074 metal gear solid v: The phantom pain 072 middle-earth: shadow of mordor 042 murdered: soul suspect 085 nba 2k14 084 nba live 14 090 need for speed rivals 075 the order: 1886 089 ratchet & CLank: NEXUS 083 resogun 092 skylanders: SWAP FORCE 012 Uncharted 4 084 velocity ultra 068 watch dogs 034 THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT 075 THE WITness 069 wolfenstein: The new order 094 wRC 4 099 wWE 2k14
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Hello.
ISSUE 92 / JANUARY 2014
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Game of the month FIFA 14 BIG 2014 hope MLB 14: The Show
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“the biggest series in the world got fewer goty votes than duck tales: remastered.”
o this is Christmas, and what have you done? Played a lot of PS4 over the last month, I’d wager. But many of you also voted towards our Game Of The Year, producing two shocks in the final chart placings. Firstly, GTA V didn’t win. (And was resoundingly beaten into second place by… you’ll see.) Secondly, Call Of Duty: Ghosts failed to crack the top 20. That’s right: the biggest series in the world got fewer votes than Duck Tales: Remastered. If that’s not a silent protest for the series to be rebooted from scratch, I don’t know what is. It seems unlikely, then, that 2014’s inevitable COD sequel will feature in the race for the same gong in 12 months’ time, but elsewhere we feature plenty of games that surely will. Our man in Japan plays Dark Souls II, RPG expert Jason delves deeper into The Witcher 3, and we’ve new insights into Watch Dogs, MGS V and The Elder Scrolls Online. Enjoy, and have a very happy new year. Even you, COD.
Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW, United Kingdom Tel +44 (0) 1225 442244 Fax: +44 (0) 1225 732275 Email opm@futurenet.com Twitter @OPM_UK Web officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk
EDITORIAL Editor Ben Wilson @BenjiWilson Associate editor (online) Leon Hurley @leonHurley Managing art editor Milford Coppock @milfcoppock Deputy art editor Phil Haycraft Production editor Dom Reseigh-Lincoln @furianreseigh Features editor Jason Killingsworth @jasonkill Games editor Phil Iwaniuk @PhilIwaniuk CONTRIBUTORS Writers Emma Davies, Matt Elliott, Matt Gilman, Joel Gregory, David Houghton, Dave Meikleham, Louis Pattison, Matthew Pellett, Daniel Robson, Oliver Smith, Iain Wilson Designers Andrew Leung, Andy Ounsted Production Damian Hall Photographer Adam Casson ADVERTISING Advertising sales director Nick Weatherall Advertising sales manager Andrew Church Account sales manager Ricardo Sidoli MARKETING Trade marketing manager Colin Hornby Senior product manager Adam Jones Group marketing manager Sam Wight Senior marketing executive Tilly Mitchell Marketing executive Antonella Matia CIRCULATION International account manager Rebecca Hill Head of trade marketing James Whitaker PRINT & PRODUCTION Production manager Mark Constance Production co-ordinator Vivienne Turner LICENSING International licensing manager Regina Erak FUTURE PUBLISHING LIMITED Editorial director Jim Douglas Creative director Robin Abbott Managing director Nial Ferguson Deputy managing director Clair Porteous Head of games Lee Nutter Group senior editor Tim Clark @timothydclark Group art director Graham Dalzell SUBSCRIPTIONS Phone our UK hotline on 0844 848 2852 Phone our international hotline on +44 (0)1604 251045 Subscribe online at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk NEXT ISSUE ON SALE 17 January 2014 Printed in the UK by William Gibbons on behalf of Future. Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT. Tel: 0207 429 4000 The ABC combined print, digital and digital publication circulation for Jan-Dec 2012 is
Ben Wilson
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Editor ben.wilson@futurenet.com Future produces high-quality multimedia products which reach our audiences online, on mobile and in print. Future attracts over 50 millions consumers to its brands every month across five core sectors: Technology, Entertainment, Music, Creative and Sports & Auto. We export and license our publications.
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Leon Hurley
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Won’t play any PS4 game without broadcasting it on Twitch – share in his triumphs (and pratfalls) by subscribing to LeonHurley. Game of the month Warframe GREAT 2014 hope The Order: 1886
Jason Killingsworth FEATURES editor Pulled the game no one wanted out of the reviews hat: Knack. Find out whether it surpassed his lowly expecations on p.82. Game of the month Resogun great 2014 hope The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Phil Iwaniuk
GAMES EDITOR Still recovering from PS4 launch night madness in London town. (Though the machine he bought on the night is certainly helping.) Game of the month NBA 2K14 great 2014 hope The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Dom ReseighLincoln
Production editor Earned office-wide pity on day one of his new role by revealing he supports the New York Jets. Poor guy. Game of the month Assassin’s Creed IV great 2014 hope The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Chief executive Mark Wood Non-executive chairman Peter Allen Chief financial officer Graham Harding Tel +44 (0)207 042 4000 (London) Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 (Bath)
© Future Publishing Limited 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. The registered office of Future Publishing Limited is at Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. All information contained in this magazine is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this magazine. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage. We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from well managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. Future Publishing and its paper suppliers have been independently certified in accordance with the rules of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).
The Big10 Stories everyone’s talking about
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within just 48 hours, 250,000 PS4s found their way underneath UK tvs and christmas trees.
12 Pirate LATITUDES
A new Uncharted teased for PS4.
18 Return of the marston
Readers’ most wanted PS4 games.
20 don’t jump!
The Crew’s mystery man spotted.
TheBig10 Stories everyone’s talking about
PS4 conquers London – and the record books
New console fastest selling in history on the back of triumphant midnight launch “What’s everyone queuing up for?” asks a confusedlooking trio of Spanish tourists as they pass HMV Oxford Street at 11:30pm on Thursday, 28 November. It’s a question we’ve had to answer numerous times since arriving here an hour ago, mingling with the mass of gamers standing in line by the entrance, each hoping to become a PS4 owner before sunrise. In the midst of such an enthusiastic and committed bunch, it’s easy to forget there are people out there who have no idea why tonight’s a special one. In 48 hours we’ll have a new fastest-selling console in UK history, with over 250,000 PS4s having found their way underneath Christmas trees and TVs up and down the country. Occupying the first two positions in the line are Sam Wigmore and his fiancée Corina Petrea. “We got here at 4am,” says Sam. Nearly 20 hours
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The snaking line outside HMV attracted plenty of perplexed attention from passers by.
later, they find a group of over 100 like-minded PlayStation fans waiting behind them. It’s cold enough to see your breath in the air, and even in their winter togs the couple must be fighting off the urge to pack it all in for a nice hot bath. How have they been occupying the time, we ask? “Just by being excited for the console,” says Sam with a smile. “Reading a book,” says Corina. FInal Countdown Their obvious excitement is mixed with anger, though. Earlier in the day, they tell us, HMV staff had assured them solus consoles (just the machine and controller, no games) were available for £349.99. Less than an hour ago though they were told only bundles were available tonight – for an extra £150. “We don’t even know if we’re buying one tonight now. They’re forcing us to pay extra money which neither of us has. Who brought along an extra £150 on launch night?” Sam asks the nearby crowd, to a chorus of disgruntled agreement. (HMV couldn’t be contacted for
009
The Big10
4 the players
Left: “Everyone’s been very social. I’m here on my own actually, I’m waiting for my friend” – Ren, London. Right: “I’m gonna get to Christmas and have two weeks off work, and if I haven’t got it then I’ll be gutted” – Chris, Isle Of Man.
Stories everyone’s talking about
comment at the time of writing, but once inside the store we only saw bundles – no solus machines.) News of the bundle situation works its way down the line at roughly the same pace we do, but the atmosphere remains positive. Among the youngest outside the store are Charlie, Abdullah and Othman, and they’re bounding around with so much energy it’s hard to believe they’re been here “about four hours”, according to Charlie. “We were supposed to be over there [points towards the front of the queue], but then we left.” Something of a bold new approach to the whole ‘midnight launch queue’ thing. Abdullah challenges our Call Of Duty prowess: “What’s your high score on Zombies? Mine’s better.” Sensing he’s probably right, we move further down the line in an attempt to save face. 010
Night on the tiles As we befriend one line of cold and weary PlayStation fans, hundreds more across the country are readying themselves for zero hour outside supermarkets, specialist retailers such as Game and the #4 The Players event at the PlayStation Rooms, Covent Garden. PlayStation’s managing director Fergal Gara is in attendance at the latter, along with Tinie Tempah, who performs for those who make it
through the doors. If you wanted to secure first place there, you would have had to get there before Imran Choudhary did… the previous Tuesday. Now that’s commitment. Back on Oxford Street, we’re chatting with a young man named Ren who’s been keeping himself busy by, um, “pulling this out every now and again and having a little dance.” Don’t worry, he’s referring to a laser pen. “You have to keep yourself occupied or you end up going a bit loopy.” Well, quite. At 11:45pm, people are still arriving at the back of the queue. Two such opportunists are Chris and Lindsay Cubbon, who say they “came out looking for a burger, then saw the queue and thought would try our luck”, according to Chris. “You’re probably talking to someone who won’t get a console tonight.” As for launch titles, he’s saving them all for the Christmas break, he tells us. Otherwise the time off work would drag. “Yeah, what would you do with your time if you didn’t have a game to play?” asks Lindsay jokingly. “I thought you were standing over
there?” he retorts. Before we become unwilling mediators in a mid-queue spat, we cross our fingers for them, and head inside for PS4 zero hour.
He’s been, um, “pulling this out every now and again and having a little dance.”
HAPPY CUSTOMERS If you’re imagining a scene from The Walking Dead once the clock strikes 12, we should point out that the HMV staff are only letting 10 people in at a time. A very civilized group make their way to the counter, and become among the first people in the country to hold the PS4 in their lucky mitts. We catch up with Sam and Corina – who’s been given a Vita for being the first customer through the door – and are happy to see they did land a bundle after all, albeit for the extra cost. PS4 and Killzone: Shadow Fall in hand, Sam tells us “I’m going to go straight home and play Killzone. Multiplayer, Share button, awesome stuff.” An exhausting night for anyone who stood in lines, and behind the counters, across the country – but a rewarding one too. And for Sony as well as consumers, with 2.1 million PS4s sold worldwide by the first week of December. Happy faces on both sides of the fence, then. Even so: any chance of a balmy August midnight launch for PlayStation 5? Follow @OPM_UK on Twitter for more of the latest happenings in PS4 land.
■ Watch and learn, rest of the world.
This is how it’s done. We rule at queuing.
Driveclub was playable at the PS4 Lounge, despite just missing the launch.
■ First through the door, Corina Petrea
wins a free Vita for her troubles.
Spare a thought for the retail staff who gave up their nights to dish out the consoles. Troopers.
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■ The celebs were out in force at London’s OXO Tower to usher in a breathtaking new console generation. Also: drink mojitos. Steady with that glass, Huey.
Sam Wigmore and fiancée Corina Petrea, showing off the fruits of their 20-hour labour.
The Big10 Stories everyone’s talking about
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PlayStation 4 enters Uncharted territory But what can you expect from Naughty Dog’s next-gen debut? Huzzah! At last the PS4 party can finally begin, and look, here’s Drake armed with a 12 pack, Hungry Hungry Hippos and a hella exciting teaser trailer in tow. Next-gen Uncharted was confirmed at a November launch event for Sony’s wonderfully angular new baby, where Naughty Dog co-founder Evan Wells and co-president Christophe Balestra unveiled a minute’s worth of tantalising footage hinting at pirates, a trip to Africa and a potential new nemesis for Nate. “Some chains can never be broken,” hisses a betrayed sounding narrator, outed as actor Todd
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Stashwick by community manager Arne Meyer. Stashwick is best known for starring in The Riches (an American show about a family of Irish con-artists), and while his character is yet to be revealed, he sounds awfully miffed at our favourite mancrush. “I lost 15 years. Buried alive. Erased. You left me, rotting in that hell hole and never looked back.” As we said: miffed. Of course, this fellow mightn’t be the villain of the no doubt ruggedly handsome piece. Naughty Dog could be playing it particularly daring and have perhaps decided to shunt Nate to the sidelines for the series’ PS4 debut in favour of this mysterious martyr. That seems unlikely, though, with Drake Deception’s game director
uncharted on ps4 promises more technical witchcraft.
dev talk “Amy, Justin, and the team are hard at work on an amazing new instalment of the Uncharted series, to be released exclusively on PS4. Our goal is to continue what we’ve done before and once again deliver the best in storytelling, performance capture, technical innovation and graphics.” Arne Meyer
Community manager, Naughty Dog
Justin Richmond telling us during an interview in 2011 that “there are tonnes of Drake adventures out there and we haven’t told all of them.” He also informed our sister magazine Edge, “We’re not done with Drake yet. We haven’t done all we wanted to do.” BarkING back Assuming Naughty Dog isn’t about to ditch PlayStation’s most iconic trinket-nabber, can we at least ascertain where and when the new adventure takes place? Well, the narrator discussing almost two decades of likely incarceration would seem to rule out a prequel, unless Nate duped him when he was the tender teenager we see early on in Drake’s Deception? As for the location, glimpses at panning shots of the series’ traditional globe from the trailer
“For God and Liberty.” And, presumably, the promise of another look at Chloe’s backside.
SYXX BOMB
Miss the golden days of WCW? Try WWE 2K14’s new DLC pack, featuring NWO faves such as Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Scott Steiner. And, er, Syxx. Hey, every faction needs a sacrificial lamb…
The Big10 Stories everyone’s talking about
Jericho and Edge duke it out in the ace WWE 2K14 – but expect even bigger, better things next year.
WWE series boss talks PS4 secrets Creative director on the future of virtual rasslin’ Utter the words ‘PlayStation 4’ in the company of anyone connected to the WWE games and you’ll get a response much like that elicited by a R-Truth vs Ryback match: deathly silence. That said, creative director Cody Ledesma does admit developer Yuke’s already has an eye on the next generation of rasslin’ titles, even if he won’t go as far as confirming we’ll see one in the coming year.
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point to South Africa. The eagled eyed will spot ‘Cape Agulas’ and ‘The Cape Of Good Hope’ scrawled on the map, both rocky headlands straddling the Atlantic Ocean. A perfect setting for some pirates. Regardless of whether it turns out to be the true canonical sequel to Deception, Uncharted on PS4 promises more technical barriershattering witchcraft from the Santa Monica-based developer. Balestra says the game will “push storytelling and performance capture” and that fans should be “pretty amazed” by what the team is currently cooking up. We’re hoisting our hopes up the flag of 1080p/ constant 60fps gameplay. If Naughty Dog can nail that down, you should be looking at PS4’s best game. For a full breakdown of the new trailer, head to http://bit.ly/qbWGJV.
audience members performing identical cheers and taunts, then, and not before time. Stablemate NBA 2K14 has recently upped genre expectations in the areas Ledesma mentions (see our PS4 review on p.85), and he admits that series will directly influence his game’s development going forwards. “Exactly,” he responds when asked if the astonishingly lifelike commentary in the company’s basketball series could make its way to WWE 2K15. “I mean, that seems like a natural fit. We see [commentary] as an area for big improvement.” The single downside to this talk of improved visuals and souped-up presentation? A closeto-lifelike Great Khali invading your living room. Not even the most ardent grap lover deserves that.
expect an end to audience members using the same old taunts, etc.
Light Fandango “We’re really excited about how we can push things on the technology side,” Ledesma explains in an exclusive interview. “Like graphically, what we can do to get some other elements that surround the WWE superstars on par with the quality of the models: the crowd, the referee, the environment, everything else. We’re looking just to see a big quality bar raised there.” Expect an end to
WWE 2K14 is out now on PS3. Expect the series to leap to PS4 in late 2014.
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Invest every last penny into your ship – it’ll make you super tough to take down in naval warfare.
How to rule the high seas Ten tips that’ll turn you into an Assassin’s Creed IV ocean master 014
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Before heading into a battle at sea, it’s imperative you get a good idea of what you’re up against. Use the spyglass to get info on ships you’re about to engage. Handily, this tool also outlines what resources and loot are on board so you know if it’s worth the risk.
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fleet admiral This month’s expert is online ed Leon – who’s played Black Flag so much he insists we call him Blackbeard. (No one does.)
EYE SPY
BE WINCeY WILLIS
The waves at sea can actually play a vital part in battle, stopping shot or even giving you a more advantageous firing position. In some cases it can actually be in your interest to seek out bad weather to even the odds.
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PICK YOUR POISON
Once engaged, don’t just fire blindly at your target boat. If your objective is to cripple a vessel ASAP, aim for the lower hull at close range. If you’re trying to stop them moving, fire a chain shot at their masts and sails. Only use mortar blasts from distance, and be aware that these are tougher to aim – particularly at a moving target.
4
WHO DROPPED ONE?
Drop barrels whenever you can. Even if there’s nothing behind you at the time, the circling combat means you make things harder for your enemy in the long run. Upgrading your ram also
means you can plough through smaller ships while still blasting out broadsides – maximising the damage done.
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SLOW IT DOWN
Don’t treat the Jackdaw as a speedboat – it patently isn’t, and a touch of subtle handling can go a long way. The slower you move, the more agile the ship, and when stopped you can actually make turns quicker than at one or two sails – avoiding mortar shots in the process. If in doubt, halt and reassess. You’d be surprised how effective this tactic can be.
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BOOMER SCHOONER
It’s easy to lose track of priorities and key targets during sea battles in the thick of a storm. Avoid going up against a Man Of War class ship until you’re truly ready, and keep an eye out for smaller boats – the little swines can cause real damage if left unchecked.
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FULL BOARD
Boarding another ship effectively protects yours from taking any further damage. Before you do so, however, use the swivel guns to thin out the enemy crew. Keep an eye out for any red barrels – as these can cause the most destruction – before you pop over for your sword-themed tea party.
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CAPTAIN JACKDAW
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WATCH YOUR WALLET
Focus as much as you can on fully upgrading the Jackdaw. That means looking for buried treasure to find design plans, as well as suping up your mortars, heavy shot and ram. There’s good stuff to be had in the southern waters, although you’ll need a few upgrades before you can really explore. Tangible character improvements come from hunting animals rather than buying fancy swords, so put all your cash into ship upgrades. Metal is rare, so get as much as you can and keep hold of it. Capture forts to snag valuable gear, and sell rum and sugar in order to earn big cash.
IT REAL 10 KEEP Don’t only focus on the naval
gameplay – you’re occasionally dropped into the modern day Abstergo Entertainment, a place packed with entertaining secrets ranging from audio files to email exchanges to video clips. If you enjoy the wider Assassin’s Creed story, there’s some laugh-outloud parody to be found within. For our elite ACIV ship upgrades guide, head to officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk.
■ We reviewed ACIV in last month’s OPM, awarding it 8/10 on PS4 – but even if you’ve not gone next-gen yet, it’s still well worth checking out on PS3.
The the bigBig shot 10
Stories everyone’s talking about eagle-eyed analysis
Lights, camera and… traction GT6’s show-stopping new cars And you thought the new Gran Turismo was all Skylines and moon buggies, ah? Well, this is the 2011 Audi R18 TDI Audi Sport Team Joest – a name that, er, really rolls off the tongue. It really rolls on the track too, able to hit a mesmerising 200mph, generating torque of over 850 Nm from its turbocharaged V6 engine. If you didn’t enjoy all those statistics, then yeah… maybe Gran Turismo 6 just isn’t for you.
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Rival Le Mans 24 hours teams tremble in fear at those rings – Audi’s bagged 12 wins to date.
This beast from Audi is just one of the game’s 1,197 vehicles (not the claimed 1200 then? Lies!), 124 of which are all-new additions to the series. And yes, one of those 124 new cars is a moon buggy. More important than the numbers, though, is the feel, and with overhauled tyre, suspension and aerodynamic systems informing the new handling model, GT6 edges closer to that ‘real driving simulator’ tag. What do you want to see from Gran Turismo 6? Tweet us @OPM_UK.
There’s no standard/ premium car divide in GT6, so every car has its own hi- res cockpit view.
number game we do the maths
300MB The size of the firmware update (1.51) that you’ll need to download for PS4.
This R18’s been tricked to the highest degree, but tuning still plays a huge part in lower class racing.
$381 This is the estimated build cost of a brand new PlayStation 4 console.
1080p
24 The eye-wateringly pretty res AC IV: Black Flag runs at on PS4.
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Number of parties rumoured to be vying for the defunct IPs of 38 Studios.
1,000,000 Sony sold this many PS4s in the first 24 hours of its American launch.
£9.99 You can see cars sway and squirm now as their weight shifts from side to side through tight corners.
The individual price of upgrading most of the games on the PS3/PS4 scheme.
5,000
15 Number of matches needed to buy everything in Blacklight: Retribution.
Yokohama tyres have been heavily involved in development, providing real track telemetry data.
Total number of Ruby Relics needed to unlock a vampire Knack in, er, Knack.
John Marston on PS4? Highly unlikely – think about it – but Red Dead in some form is a cert.
The Big10
Stories everyone’s talking about
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Your most wanted PS4 resurrection Red Dead named the next-gen sequel you just can’t live without The king is dead, long live the king. That was the overwhelming sentiment expressed by you guys when we took to Facebook and Twitter to ask which unannounced game or series you’d most like to see on next-gen, with Red Dead coming top of the pile (despite John Marston’s glorious-yetupsetting demise). “It’s the greatest game ever to come out of Rockstar,” wrote Danny Collins. “All it needs now is the shooting mechanics from Max Payne 3.” The latter point is a dubious one, but we certainly agree that the series needs to come to PS4.
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Rockstar’s cowboy caper was far from the only longstanding franchise you clamoured for, with more than 50 trusty PlayStation faves receiving votes. Coming a close second to Red Dead was Timesplitters, the groundbreaking multiplayer shooter last seen on PS2 in the form of 2005’s Future Perfect – and skipping an entire console generation has only served to whet your appetite for its eventual return. “It’s time to launch the ass-kickulator,” was the verdict from Chad Crayston. A faithful old Sony exclusive rounded out the top three in the shape of wonder-racer Wipeout – a staple of every PlayStation format so far, but placed indefinitely on hold
more than 50 games picked up votes, with timesplitters in second.
fan talk “The unnanounced PlayStation 4 game I want most is an original, genuine Ratchet & Clank. None of this bitesize epilogue stuff, but a proper, massive, Pixar-dwarfing Ratchet & Clank. I can only replay A Crack In Time so many times, you know. 50 or so at last count. Make it happen, Insomniac…” Thomas Edwards Colchester
after developer Sony Liverpool was shut down last year. “Imagine those beautiful futuristic tracks with next-gen graphics,” opined Max Deutsch. “The series still has so much potential. I’d love to see another studio pick up the franchise and possibly even improve on it.” The good news is that all three franchises are vague PS4 possibilities at some point in the future. Red Dead has established itself as Rockstar’s second strongest IP behind GTA by a big distance, so a next-gen sequel is inevitable – though you might have to wait a few years for it. Crytek remains adamant that it has no imminent plans to revisit ‘Splitters, but studio founder Cevat Yerli said as recently as last year that he “wished we were working on it”. And a source insists Sony Liverpool had been hard at work developing a PS4
shock omission
Your list is ace, yet one series picked up surprisingly few votes: Bioshock. So we’re proclaiming a Songbird vs Big Daddy adventure the PS4 game we want most.
The Big10 Stories everyone’s talking about
info patches update your brain
■ Liverpool Studio’s closure left PS veteran Wipeout in a state of flux.
Wipeout for “12 to 18 months” before its doors were closed for the final time in August 2012. Somewhere in the corridors of Sony, that code still exists… Titanfall: Part Deux A controversial choice at number four on the list was Titanfall, the debut game from Respawn Entertainment – the studio formed after Modern Warfare creators Jason West and Vince Zampella’s acrimonious departure from Infinity Ward and Activision. Their online blaster is coming to next-gen, but – cough, spit – only on Xbox One. However, Microsoft does not own the rights to the series, and EA CFO Blake Jorgensen has admitted that there’s every chance sequels could land on PS4. “I’m sure that there will be future Titanfalls at some point that may be on multiple product
platforms,” he said. “That’s up to the teams that are going through that now.” Yes, Mass Effect fans, we’re getting a sense of déjà vu here, too In something of a boon for Konami, the top five was rounded out by PES – with Rock Band 4, The Last Guardian (of course) and The Last Of Us 2 (wait, how was that not number one?!) running it very close. Clearly, the series’ illustrious history and FOX Engine’s PS4 potential has ensured the turf war with FIFA isn’t ending any time soon. But while a next-gen debut for Japan’s biggest footy series in late 2014 appears nailed-on, other, more abstract choices seem less likely. (And it’s probably for the best that they stay that way.) G-Police 2, @waylander100 on Twitter? Ah, if only. Ape Escape 4, Andrew McCluskey? That, chap, is simian stupidity. However, Shin Singh wins the award for most excruciating suggestion of all with the nowimmortal words, “There really should be a ‘The Getaway 3’ game. Don’t you agree?” Sorry, man, but nu-uh. Even a Kane & Lynch comeback would be preferable to that. And we really, really hate those pillocks.
flower blossoms Champagne all round at Thatgamecompany: with a Metacritic score of 93, Flower has earned the honour of being PS4’s highest rated launch game. Second spot is split three ways with FIFA 14, Battlefield 4 and NBA 2K14 all averaging 86. Bringing up the rear? 48-rated NBA Live 14. Court short, indeed. 019
back in the zone Tearaway is our Vita game of the year, but Killzone: Mercenary ran it close – and support for the handheld blaster is continuing into 2014. January updates include a patch to help reduce connectivity problems, online Botzone and Guerrilla Warfare modes (price TBC), and two new, completely free, multiplayer maps.
What games would you love to see on PS4? Let us know by tweeting @OPM_UK.
a gran plan
■ A new ‘Splitters has been rumoured for years, but sadly it remains MIA.
With Polyphony Digital’s history of basing their calendar on dogs’ years, you’d be forgiven for expecting a long wait for GT on PS4. Studio boss Kazunori Yamauchi has other plans. “We don’t want to take too long on Gran Turismo 7,” he told Top Gear. “Best-case scenario? Next year.” We’ll believe it when we see it.
The Big10
The Crew’s big jumper mystery Stories everyone’s talking about
Ubi responds to strange fan spot Don’t do it, precariously placed NPC guy! Sure, the local roads are being terrorised by maniacs in souped-up deathmobiles in Ubisoft’s The Crew – but ignoring that, you have so much to live for. It’s open world anyway, so they’ll be gone in a bit. Eagle-eyed OPM reader Richard Darling spotted the worrying figure looming above the freeway when this screenshot first appeared in a preview back in issue #90, and once you see it, you can’t un-see it. Is it a giant bird? A subtle cameo from Ubi stablemate Ezio? Or, the most apparent explanation, an NPC about to jump into the path of all those angry cars? Fearing for the poor silhouette’s well-being, we contacted Ubisoft Reflections and Ivory Tower to uncover the truth. “Nice work to the OPM reader who spotted it,” said a studio spokesperson. “Their eyes are
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20
clearly less tired than ours. Whether it’s a just a NPC glitch caught on screen or one of our artists putting an Assassin’s Creed-like parkour expert into the shot as an Easter egg, please rest assured there are no conspiracies or dark stories behind this one.” “The Crew is all about constant action, unprecedented freedom, shared experiences and exciting challenges,” he continues, “and the team is hard at work [aiming] to deliver the best and biggest actiondriving game you’ve ever seen.” NPCs have become a rarity in driving games of late, and after the spookily deserted cities the last few Need For Speeds have offered, it’s great to get a glimpse at an open world of this size being populated accordingly. Just don’t blame us for keeping one eye on this overpass when The Crew speeds its way onto PS4 next summer.
please, rest assured, there are no dark stories behind this image.
You’d never notice that fella overhead at race pace, which makes him all the spookier.
For even more on The Crew, head to officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk.
the rumour machine
Grizzly pirate legend Blackbeard could be coming to ACIV’s multiplayer via DLC.
our sources understand…
A recently leaked email may have revealed the titles of the four DLC map packs for COD: Ghosts. It seems they’ll be called Onslaught, Devastation, Invasion and Nemesis.
Looks like Telltale is working on a Game of Thronesinspired series.
Reports suggest a Definitive Edition of this year’s Tomb Raider reboot is coming to PS4 soon.
A recently filed trademark hints a sequel to Canis Canem Edit may well be Rockstar’s next big project.
Big winner
MLB: The Show is Metacritic’s highest rated sports series, with annual ratings around the 90 mark. Between 2009 and 2012, we gave it four 10/10s in a row. Pretty decent, then.
ThePlayStation Big 10 voices
Stories everyone’s talking about
the month in mouthing off
“If you’re playing a twitch fighter, you might not want to be [using it] for that.” Mark Cerny talks PS4 Remote Play lag.
Nationals outfielder Jayson Werth’s all-over whiskers are perfectly recreated in-game.
The benchmark in sports sims returns
“I feel terribly sorry that I have kept my fans waiting.” The Last Guardian’s Fumito Ueda shares our woe.
MLB 14: The Show looks just beard-iful on PS4 When you’re making a sports game that’s come close to perfection year after year, how do you mark a generational leap? Easy: better beards. Facial fluff has become a feature of modern day baseball, and MLB 14: The Show’s PS4 debut reflects that trend: each of its Brian Blessed wannabes now has up to 40,000 individual hairs.
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■ Even Fenway Park’s legendary old scoreboard looks just like the real thing.
“It’s like the handcuffs have been taken off,” says community manager Ramone Russell of the game’s new and improved visuals. “On PS3, we could only do 42 different unique models of people in the crowd. On PS4, we can do 1,000.” “[Last-gen], we used 150,000 polygons,” adds lead stadium artist Shawn Robles. “Now we’re using about a million.” Enhancements aren’t only visual. The new Quick Counts option enables you to skip the first couple of balls of an at-bat if you know you’re going to leave them anyway (to increase the chances of a walk). And best of all, your career – either as player or as a team manager – can be ported over to next year’s game, and the one after that. Keep the last week of March clear in your diary, because this looks set to be a sure-fire home run. For further MLB 14: The Show news, stay tuned to blog.us.playstation.com.
“I’m now on my second run of Knack and Resogun at a higher difficulty.” Shuhei Yoshida likes a challenge on the PS4.
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instant opinion
Well, that loud, brightly-lit carousel definitely won’t attract every zombie in the surrounding area.
strong vs wrong
little ripley
Our radar is bleeping madly for PS4 game Alien: Isolation – find out why when we visit developer Creative Assembly next issue.
ryse and fall
Early sales figures confirm PS4 crushed Xbox One in the UK, as in much of the world. Well done to you folks for making the sensible call. Group hug? No? Okay.
big numbers
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One week after PS4 went on sale, eight games in the all-format top ten were on the Sony machine. Nice work Killzone: Shadow Fall, FIFA 14 and co.
closed asylum
New Bats game Blackgate is another lazy Vita port. We still heart Sony’s handheld, but these type of releases don’t do it any favours at all.
engine trouble
No Gran Turismo 6 review this issue as we only received the game three days pre-launch – apologies. You can instead read our verdict online right now.
Ellie’s left for undead in new DLC The Last Of Us gets its first narrative add-on Just when you think you’ve put the fungal apocalypse to bed with a lullaby about shivving and a nip from your ‘special’ flask, the doomsday after tomorrow arises from its mossy slumber. As Naughty Dog’s first ever slice of delicious single-player DLC, Left Behind is a colossal deal for The Last Of Us mythos. Not only will it illuminate Ellie’s pre-Joel adventures, but it also marks what could be the last time you ever boot up your PS3. Due for release early next year, the narrative expansion was announced at the same time as
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left behind will illuminate ellie’s pre-joel adventures.
wallet wounds
One very-well known high street retailer was selling DualShock 4 controllers at £5 more than the RRP when PS4 launched. Naughty. Don’t get ripped off, folks.
the debut trailer for Uncharted on PS4. And while Team Nate’s short was a big barrelling flirt, there’s much more meat to your favourite Clicker-stabbing gal’s teaser vid. With glimpses of a decaying mall, a series of rotting, raffled sports utility vehicles and some rather dilapidated looking carousels, it all suggests The Last Of Us is taking more than a gory paragraph or two out of Dead Rising’s blood-stained book – all the fun of the fair, eh? “Left Behind takes place while Ellie is attending a military boarding school in the Boston quarantine zone, prior to meeting up with Joel,” explains Naughty Dog’s community strategist Arne Meyer. “Joining Ellie on this new adventure is Riley, her best friend and also a mentor of sorts at the military boarding school.” As you never hear about said bezzie pal in the story of the main game, we can only assume a great dollop of tragedy is on the menu when Left Behind clicks its way onto PS3.
■ Ellie and Riley are all-smiles in the vid, but we’re sure the tears will flow.
Delve further into Ellie’s story via the new American Dreams comic, out now.
The Big10
BLAST FROM THE PAST
Good ol’ 2013 has given us some mind-blowing current-gen titles, but what about last gen? Back on the PS2, 2001 stood out among its peers with MGS2, Devil May Cry and the seminal GTA III.
pristinely
Stories everyone’s talking about
just one more question…
10
the team debate this month’s burning issue
Has 2013 been the best year for gaming?
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Phil Iwaniuk Games Editor
Dom Reseigh-Lincoln Production Editor
Jason Killingsworth Features Editor
Ben Wilson Editor
The games were stupendous, but the industry is growing ever more cynical.
Like any good swansong, 2013 has redefined the heights modern gaming can reach.
From a technical standpoint, maybe. But in Willy Wilson World, nothing will ever pip 1993.
Putting aside my rabid fondness for 1998 (Half Life, Resi 2, MGS, Thief, Baldur’s Gate, etc), this year’s harvest has been plentiful, yielding three of the top five games in our PS3 Hall Of Fame, and other less-advertised titles. You’d expect as much in a console gen’s sunset phase, but a year should be judged not just by its releases, but by industry attitudes, too. In 2013, Metacritic, DLC and deeply iterative sequel strategies further cemented themselves as part of the furniture – and however weak at the knees I get about GTA V, that gaudy furniture weighs on my mind. Also, 1998 obviously wins. n
When it comes to the best year for games it’s easy to kick back and let the rose-tinted shades of yesteryear take over. But even with those smileinducing specs removed, 2013’s blinding brilliance shines through. The most powerful games console ever came out this year, and each PlayStation platform saw genredefining titles surface. Tearaway wowed on Vita, Bioshock Infinite blew our PS3 minds, The Last Of Us took emotional storytelling to a new plain and GTA V, well, it showed us that heists, male cross-dressing and gentle bike rides could indeed co-exist on one disc. Your move, 2014. n
If developers are always building on what’s come before, every year ought to be the best, right? My hunch is that any given year will tend to feel like the best year for games (ever, of all time!) simply because the games we’ve played over the past 12 months are naturally going to be the freshest in our minds. Not to mention the fact that the industry’s recent slate of games ought to represent the most impressive current benchmarks of technical wizardry. But even still, 2013 seems particularly anointed: The Last Of Us brought tears to our eyes in record time and the new Bioshock jumpstarted our brains by exploring theocracy and bio-ethics. What a ride. n
You say The Last Of Us, GTA V, and Bioshock Infinite, and I doff my cap. But we knew those games would be great. Two-decades-younger me had no such expectations on tearing open a trio of Christmas gifts that to this day I consider the holy trinity of Mega Drive gaming: FIFA International Soccer, Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition, and Sensible Soccer. Back then, one tiny flaw didn’t have hundreds instantly declaring a game awful, so you could enjoy it for what it was – to this day I miss that widespread innocence and enthusiasm. Oh, Sensi. Where are you now, my sweet? n
rePlies F facebook.com/OfficialPlayStationMagazine T @OPM_UK W officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk E opm@futurenet.com
ISSUE 091 CHRISTMAS 2013
#91 A full guide to the
PS4 launch and reviews of AC IV and Killzone: SF.
ISSUE 091 CHRISTMAS 2013 £5.99 officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk
20 NEXT-GEN GAMES TESTED
ISSUE 091 CHRISTMAS 2013
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As next-gen seems to be going this way anyway, an open-world Uncharted 4 would be amazing. Imagine planning your own treasure hunts and collecting clues to plot your journey. Dale Thornton via Facebook
I am a HUGE fan of the Uncharted series. I have them all and have played them multiple times over and over on Hard. I am excited for the new one, but Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag still rules. Ryan Randall via Facebook
Pirates are quickly becoming the new
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Drake expectations
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Tweet gold (and one troll) from this month’s @OPM_UK timeline
@yosp PS4 has sold through over 1 million units within 24 hours of the launch in North America!!! :D
Joe Riddiford via email
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zombies. Based on what Naughty Dog did with the zombie genre in The Last Of Us, we’d love to see Uncharted’s take on an epic pirate adventure.
Double dipping
After reading reviews of Forza 5’s microtransactions, along with news that Polyphony has made the tragic decision to go down a similar, ahem, road in Gran Turismo 6, I was disgusted by the idea
If the micro-transactions affect progression or game balance, we’ll be right behind you with torch and pitchfork. But if they’re cosmetic and not aggressively pushed, we’re all for game companies making more money – and, as a result, making more games.
I have stuck with Call Of Duty through the years, mainly for the developers’ uncanny ability to use more tricks than simple QTEs to pull the player into the action – such as interrupting a villain’s aim or inventive knife actions. However, as of late developers see new games as just the first instalment and if the profits are good, the half-assed ending where the villain survives will carry on to the next. So you pay £40 for a game and really – story-wise – it’s part one! Beginning, middle and end is what makes a game for me. Matthew Wilson via post
You make a convincing point. Since you’ll need something to tide you over during the long wait to find out if Mr COD Hero survives that hanger of a cliff, have a year’s subscription to OPM.
@MitchyD Honestly, the simplicity of Twitch streaming is the biggest appeal of PS4 right now. It all looks rad.
Don’t jump
I was wondering if you could confirm or dismiss something from issue #90 (Dec 2013), page 46. In the preview of The Crew I noticed something on one of the screenshots. Inbetween the inset quote “The game will feature…” and the left side of the page, there’s an overpass in the middle of the shot.
IMAGINE PLANNING YOUR OWN UNCHARTED TREASURE HUNTS AND COLLECTING CLUES TO PLOT YOUR JOURNEY.
Star letter Cliff haranguer
@Xbox Congrats @Playstation. From, #Xbox.
However, there appears to be the silhouette of a person on the very edge, seemingly contemplating throwing himself off. I just wanted to know if you had noticed as well, or if it’s a trick of the light/ink and Ivory Tower/ Ubisoft Reflections didn’t intentionally add it as a morbid easter egg. Until you drew our attention to it, we hadn’t noticed anything amiss, but you can check out page 20 for a bit of further investigation.
@schillingc Tearaway, Tearaway, Tearaway. #orinocoflow #nowyouresingingit
troll of the month
MEET YOUR NEW CONSOLE
of micro-transactions being used in a full-priced game. I strongly feel that a lot more noise needs to be made about this. Maybe then the industry as a whole will take more notice of consumers.
@linedrag Oh gosh this Vita deal, I don’t want a Vita though, I promised I wasn’t going to get one, but… @BrendanSinclair PS4 died while I was playing Need For Speed and having a beer. Don’t drink and drive, kids. @aurich Man, PS4 owners sure are touchy. If you don’t fellate their console just right, you must have an agenda.
@therealcliffyb My wife had never gotten around to playing the Uncharted series. First one still looks fantastic. @IGLevine Got my PS4 running. Thanks to my friends @ Sony and congrats on the launch! It sure is purdy! @JimSterling Dear @PlayStation, do an ad where a man pushes grapes into his eyes and says “Grapeness Awaits”.
best comments from officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk
“While something like an open-world God Of War III with even bigger scale could be epic, I still think the series could do with a break.”
“The DualShock 4 controller feels soooo goooooood!”
Leucocyte THINKS OL’ KRATOS needs a bit of a breather.
we think LiLTom approves…
readers’ most wanted 1
Which games are you most fired up for?
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Uncharted 4
You knew this was coming eventually but now that it’s official, you’re all getting hyped up for another slice of cinematic adventure goodness. You didn’t even need to see Drake’s handsome mug in the recent reveal trailer – a camera panning across a dusty map was enough. Consider our undies sharted.
The Division
Format PS4 eTA 2014
With the first-person shooter genre mostly marking time at the PS4’s launch, the idea of a game that explodes not just enemy combatants, but expectations as well is enough to attract plenty of votes for Ubisoft’s new shared-world shooter.
Format PS4 eTA Q4 2014
2
vote now!
inFamous: Second Son
That screenshot of Delsin Rowe using his superpowers to rocket up into the air is a fitting image for the ascent of the game in the Most Wanted rankings. Maybe he can use his powers to light up the number one slot if he ever hits the top.
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Tell us the five games you can’t wait to play at opm@futurenet.com.
4
Format PS4 eTA 21 Mar
Watch Dogs
3
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
“Videogames? More like Hideo games,” we hear you saying loud and clear as the Afghan stealth adventure gallops closer to its 2014 release date. Koj’s habit of tweeting teaser pics seem to be building enough hype all by itself.
Format PS4 eTA Spring 2014
Format PS4/PS3 eTA 2014
exit poll
Our Facebook fans answer a final question
What’s the first game you’ll play on your PS4?
Ubisoft’s decision to push the game’s release date to next year seems to have blunted the immediate excitement around Ubisoft’s next-gen hack-tion adventure and its clout as a proper PS4 system-seller.
17% Are taking to the high seas on a badass pirate galleon in Black Flag. 10% Were dying to jog through the tunnel into FIFA’s world of next-gen footie.
51%
Couldn’t wait to blast through next-gen Helghast in Shadow Fall.
5% Wisely trusted the 9 we awarded Resogun last month. 8% Are shouting insults into headset mics of the 9% below. 9% Are stoked that next-gen BF4 is 1% more exciting than Call Of Duty: Ghosts.
next month
Tell us what you thought of the Game Of The Year picks. Did The Last Of Us deserve to edge out GTA V for the top spot?
Opinion
Phil Iwaniuk
You’re not playing enough bad games, and it’s hurting your experience of the good ones. It’s time to visit the bargain bin. Why you shouldn’t separate the wheat from the chaff
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T
his is me telling you to ignore every buyer-beware sentiment we write the next time you see a sub-5/10 review appear in the mag. Instead, put that collapsing shambles of half-baked ideas and outdated genre tropes at the very top of your shopping list. You’ll thank me in the end. One of the considerable perks of writing about games for a living is that you get to sample a lot of the good ones during office hours. However, having to also play the Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Busts and the Fast & Furious: Showdowns of this world initially puts a damper on that rookie enthusiasm. You got into the job to enjoy eight hours of Skyrim while on the clock, but now you’re stuck with a chauvinist puzzler whose frat party wisecracks corrode your soul. No, I’m not asking for sympathy, and I haven’t forgotten that maverick statement I made earlier. It’ll all come together, just watch: after spending some time with games so inept they couldn’t even tie their own shoelaces, you load up something of The Last Of Us’ calibre and it’s like Morpheus just gave you the red pill. You notice all the inconsequential details, like how its minimal, graceful UI always shows you exactly
Writer bio Phil has spent more hours playing Alone In The Dark than The Last Of Us, and counts critically maligned PC abandon-ware title Jurassic Park: Trespasser as an all-time fave. Having recently inherited the bargain bin column in Reviews, bad games are here to stay.
the information you need without intruding on the drama unfolding. You know this, because you’ve played the Game Of Thrones RPG, and so understand how badly the simple flow of on-screen info can go horribly wrong. Spending time wandering the graveyard of conceptually flawed, mechanically ruined and artistically feckless videogames gives you a newfound appreciation of good sound mixes, thoughtful control layouts and well-lit muzzle flashes, as well as the bigger brushstrokes – the visuals, worldbuilding, characterisation and route signposting. Because we’re naturally inclined to only play the good games, we’re also naturally inclined to take many of the things that make them good for granted.
That leads to thinking such as: “Bioshock Infinite was terrible, because within that unbelievable game world and story, the shooting was so-so” or “every Call Of Duty since time immemorial sucks, because they re-used that particular texture again and again”. When the margins of the videogame landscape we expose ourselves to are set so narrow, the difference between what we perceive to be an awful game and an excellent one balances on a knife edge. One lone element of an otherwise imperious title falls short, and suddenly Mass Effect 3’s right up there with Michael Gove and piles on the collective hit list.
Blinkers off
I implore you to widen those margins, even if it means contributing to the sales figures of a studio that should, by all rights, be paying you an hourly rate to mind its wretched offspring. There’s an added bonus that comes along with doing so: most bad videogames contain at least one good idea. Often, that idea wasn’t given the time or the budget to blossom and redeem the rest of the experience, but it’s worth appreciating nonetheless. You might even find a niche title that suits your particular peccadillo for outer space mini golf, big game hunting or domestic league handball. The game might have been produced on a budget of spare change and – sure – it lacks a little polish, but it’s victorious in a field of one for sating your extremely specific desire. We’ve got more good games on tap than ever, so when you’re getting bored of right – why not try a little wrong?
Opinion
Tim Clark
Jason Killingsworth
We’re going to have to wait a little longer for the real next-gen to start.
The console war isn’t over. There’s simply a new tactic: kill them with kindness.
There might be some shiny new tech under your TV, but the future is still way off
Sony and Microsoft are hugging it out via social media – welcome to the war in sheepish clothing
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T
he first thing I did with our secret pre-launch PS4 was to stuff it in a bag. The second thing I did was begin worrying about being ‘that guy’ who left one of the first PS4s in the UK on a bus. My career just about recovered from the God Of War/goat’s head incident (Google it), but I doubt Sony do third chances. Disaster averted, the third thing I did was coo at the beautiful boot-up menu. I ought to be over this stuff by now. I’m in my thirties. It’s my fourth ‘new PlayStation’. It’s just a fancy menu screen. Except it’s not – it’s also the promise of a bright future. To be honest, the increditimes are not quite upon us yet. As with every PlayStation launch, the quality of the initial wave of software is a little, well, soft. Having spent so long making Killzone games, you’d think Guerrilla would’ve narrowed the gap between startling visuals and satisfying design by now, while Knack appears to have convinced everyone Mark Cerny should stick to his new gig in console design. With Driveclub and inFamous: Second Son absent until 2014
that left Resogun as the unlikely but worthy standout first-party title.
First and third
But with Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and Polyphony waiting in the wings, games that stretch the PS4 will clearly come. Where it’s less like previous launches is with the multiformat stuff. Thanks to the length of the previous gen, coupled with snowballing dev budgets, all the significant third-party launch games are cross-gen – essentially halfway houses with higher textures and snappier menus. That might leave you a little miffed after spending that much money on a console. Not me though. For the first time in pretty much ever I’ve got some extra cash and I’ve been waiting so long for this that the possibility of not being involved now didn’t bear thinking about. For me, it’s enough to play the definitive versions of these games, with swankier resolutions and framerates. But the challenge for both new systems will be how quickly they can persuade publishers to commit entirely, without an eye on milking the user bases of the old consoles.
hough we’re probably all tired of the melodramatic idea of a ‘console war’ – a crass metaphor, really – the term exists to describe something far more real. Historically, war has proven one of the grim inevitabilities when one or more powers vie for control of a limited resource. Sure there are two next-gen consoles, but there’s only one of you, and given the fact that you’re reading this magazine, chances are you tend to gravitate to a single platform. It’s not necessarily a fanboy thing, either. On a practical level, my archaic Samsung flat-screen TV only has a single HDMI port so I have to change wires around when I switch between consoles. Call me lazy, but that tiny additional layer of hassle is often enough to keep me from floating between each available platform. In the case of videogame consumers – despite the lack of contractual obligation to cling to a single platform – few have enough discretionary cash to drop nearly a grand on a pair of next-gen consoles and the accompanying launch titles. Most players will be forced to choose which
console they want the most and accept the pros and cons that go with such a decision. As we’ve seen, console wars are all about passiveaggressive tactics. It’s uncouth to name your rival. Sony simply takes to the stage at a press conference and says it will allow gamers to play and trade used games or take their consoles offline, and in goes the dagger with a good twist.
Play nice
Microsoft communications guy Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) knows a thing or two about passive-aggression. “Announce a console without actually showing a console? That’s one approach,” he tweeted following the PS4 reveal. But even he has recently taken to Twitter to congratulate Sony on their successful North American launch. The Microsoft’s official Xbox Twitter feed offered similar well wishes. Sony exec Shuhei Yoshida offered pleasantries in response, but it’s hard to read these public-facing comments as a legitimate truce and not a calculated PR maneuver. The stakes are simply too high. And Major is still a military rank, is it not?
writer bio
writer bio
Old man Clark was once the editor of this parish, but his mind isn’t what it was and he now spends his days fiddling with leads and faffing in the ‘secret’ TV settings to eke out an infinitesimally better picture.
Jason Killingsworth really does wish that we could all just get along. He’s not trying to be cynical by questioning the sincerity of it all, but he also suspects boxers don’t touch gloves at the start of a fight out of goodwill, either.
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1
weddings
Weddings Walking down the aisle with PlayStation’s most memorable matrimonies 1
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The Sims 3
EA’s life-managing simulator isn’t all about neglecting to take out the rubbish or locking your virtual chavs in the toilet. With enough simulated wonga to hand you can propose to a single Sim, regardless of gender. Living a wedded life will also happen to increase your Lifetime Happiness stats. So, just like real life, yeah? 2 Grand Theft Auto IV
My couseeeen! We see American chest globes now, yes? Oh, I’ve been gunned down on my own wedding day. Depending on your choices as Mr Niko Bellic, Roman’s marriage will end either in tragic murder – courtesy of the Liberty City’s Italian mob – or in the offing of your brutal Balkan’s love interest, Kate McReary. 3
Final Fantasy X
Ain’t love a grand old thing? Actually, no. If church-based ceremonies are anything to go by in Final Fantasy, your special day is likely to be ambushed by an airship and the bride trying to magic her groom into a supernatural realm. In fairness to Yuna, her fella Seymour is a pretty evil, dude. In our opinion, Tidus is real hubby material.
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Sleeping Dogs
It’s a nice day for a white… uh, red wedding? Well, Wei Shen may be a Serpicorivalling cop when it comes to undercover pig work, but he can’t stop his gangster pal’s special ceremony from ending in grisly mob warfare. At least the barbaric big day spawns one of the game’s best missions. Just accept that no amount of dry cleaning will ever make that white suit clean again. 5 Hitman: Blood Money
You are cordially invited to the wedding of a murderous redneck couple. Of course, we may revoke said invite if you’re a seven-foot, bald assassin. Sent in to whack Pappy LeBlanc and his daughter’s new hubby, Agent 47 can disguise himself as a member of the clergy and end the nuptials with one hell of a ceremonial bang. 6
Fallout 3
The sacred post-wedding night of intimate bliss is an extremely intimidating event for some new couples. Take Angela and Diego, a seemingly happy, loving duo. Their entire ceremony rests on your Wanderer obtaining ant pheromones, so the bride can seduce her new man.
7 Octodad: Dadliest Catch
Oh, to be an ink-spewing invertebrate. As if sporting eight separate limbs wasn’t enough, your squishy pa has to juggle a wedding while concealing the fact he’s a seafood critter who should be served up with a nice slice of lemon, rather than exchanging vows and knocking over cake stands.
8 Assassin’s Creed III
A couple getting betrothed can be a huge hassle for an assassin acquaintance. Take Connor and his soon-to-bemarried chums Norris and Myriam. To complete the ceremony, your killer must gather food, find someone to provide matrimonial garbs and get Big Dave to smith the wedding bands.
9 the elder scrolls V: Skyrim
Bethesda’s role-playing life choice isn’t all stabbing scaly lizards and scraping your irises out over awful lag. Follow the right path, and your Dragonborn can take time out from saving the epic tundra to get hitched. Nab the Amulet Of Mara during your travels and a ride on the matrimony pony awaits your hero.
Honourable mentions Metal Gear Solid 4
Hoping Meryl and Snake would tie the knot in the end? Sadly, she couldn’t resist the charms of a dude with dodgy bowels.
Catherine
One of this saucy puzzler’s eight endings has Vincent marry the straight-laced (and oh so very dull) Katherine. Boo!
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Uncharted 3
Curse you, Naughty Dog. By hitching Elena and Nate off-screen, it deprives you of the ultimate happy ever after.
Did we miss your favourite do-over? Got a brilliant In The Mood For idea? Show and tell at twitter.com/opm_uk.
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34 the witcher 3: wild hunt Using new witcher senses and the pointy end of your blade, get ready to slay some epic beasties.
contents The witcher 3: wild hunt 34 | Mad Max 38 hohokum 40 | murdered: soul suspect 42 the latest on‌ 44
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“stop the fiend using magic by slicing the nerve on his forehead.” Format PS4 / ETA 2014 Pub Warner Bros / Dev CD Projekt RED
The witcher 3: wild hunt
Massive next-gen open-world looks to claim the RPG throne You see that grotesque, threeeyed beast over there? Yeah, the one with the antlers big enough to impale a dozen men with a single head flick. What do you know about him besides the fact that he’d appreciate it if you’d kindly refrain from picking wildflowers in his pasture? Well, if you don’t mind us spoiling the surprise, he’s called a Friend. (Oh wait, our mistake – it’s Fiend, definitely not Friend.) He’s got a devastating ram attack and a third eye on his forehead that emits a debilitating spell. In short, he’s a nasty one. Slaying monsters is an essential component of any RPG, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt wants to make the experience feel fresh and momentous. Instead of having you grudgingly hack your way through hundreds of interchangeable orcs to reach your goal, the game’s designers have introduced a new monster-hunting mechanic. The game’s sprawling open world is filled with unique creatures such as the Fiend and uses lore to weave each one into the world. When asked what he considers the biggest departure from previous games in the series, Wild Hunt’s lead gameplay designer Maciej Szczesnik points to the thrill of stalking these epic beasts. “What’s special about monster hunting is how we embed each creature into the world,” Szczesnik tells us. “Remember the Leshen we showed during E3 and
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Preview Left Only two spells have been revealed so far – this fire attack and a force push that knocks surrounding enemies back. Right Prepare to set sail across icy seas. If a storm dashes your boat on rocks, you won’t survive long in the frigid waters.
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Sure, these hideouslooking beasts may have wings, but Geralt has that game-changing ponytail.
Witch you were here
Four postcard photos from the biggest RPG world ever made
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Witness the horrific fate of people who donate their bodies to science in Wild Hunt’s world. How long ‘til these bodies zombify, you reckon?
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Skyrim may have seemed like it had a patent on snow, ice and frost, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is just as eager to send chills down your spine.
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Because of the concentration of people living in cities, expect to see many quests and missions originate in their bustling squares and alleyways.
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Being an exclusively nextgen title, areas with moody lighting such as this grimy kitchen ought to look particularly mesmerising on PS4.
Preview Gamescom? The creature is part of the local folklore – an entire village is, in a way, dependent on its presence. There are even internal tensions between the villagers over it. You can choose to get involved or leave everyone be and there are consequences.”
UNLIKE A BOSS
Above Since Wild Hunt’s map is 30 times larger than The Witcher 2’s, nobody’s going to call you lazy for going on horseback.
“Huge worlds mean a big commute, so you can journey by horseback, boat or simply fast travel.”
The game’s developer has made it clear that these monster battles aren’t traditional boss fights, which have a tendency to break up the flow of a game. You could almost view them as exceptionally dangerous NPCs, each possessing their own backstory and influence on Wild Hunt’s unfolding tale. Before charging into these confrontations, you’ll need to do your homework, uncovering weaknesses and attack behaviour by consulting with townsfolk and other references scattered throughout the game world. The Fiend mentioned earlier can have his spellcasting ability short-circuited by slicing the nerve to the eye on his forehead. And his ability to charge can be interrupted by attacking a specific muscle in his legs. Don’t worry, Geralt won’t need to whip out any textbooks during battle to remember these details. Wild Hunt has given its hero Witcher Senses – just like Batman’s Detective Mode. “Remember that witchers are bred for combat,” Szczesnik says. “Their mutations give them the upper hand when it comes to fighting the monsters they’re paid to kill. Since we’re factrick introducing the new Monster Hunting 1. Wide World Quest mechanic, we decided the presence of Wild Hunt’s world is these senses needs to be emphasised, hence enormous, huge, the additional way Geralt sees the world.” gi-mongous – 30 times
larger than its predecessor. 2 . L o st L o v e
Above The Leshen is a forest-dwelling beast that holds a curse over the woods as long as it continues to survive.
Above CD Projekt RED has promised hundreds of unique stories. No random and repeatable filler here.
MAP PACKED
It remains to be seen if Wild Hunt will be bigger than Skyrim commercially, but CD Projekt RED spawned many a web article when it confirmed that its open world 3. Your Call is roughly 20% bigger than Bethesda’s Decisions in the game will impact the plot, even to the epic RPG in terms of sheer size. That’s an impressive statistic, but it could easily point of determining who wears the crown. prove a liability if Wild Hunt doesn’t furnish that space with enough excitement to make it feel dense and alive. “We fill each region with stories that are just around every corner,” Szczesnik assures us. “It’s something very characteristic to Slavic mythology that partially inspires the game. In Slavic mythos, you don’t need to venture to far away lands to experience adventures – something really amazing can live in a nearby forest or hide deep in the cave you pass by when you travel. We populate the world with adventure and this glues everything together.” Huge worlds also mean big commutes, but in addition to your own two feet, Wild Hunt gives you the option of horseback, fast travel and even a boat for traversing its frigid oceans. We’ve been told those bodies of water are treacherous “and not only because of the weather” either… CD Projekt RED claims that the game will redefine the genre, but haven’t we killed monsters and completed quests many times before? Szczesnik claims it’s what we haven’t seen yet that makes the difference, the way the game manages to weave the plot intensity from closed-world RPGs with the freedom of a dizzyingly vast open-world. That’s a lot of space in which the Fiend can hide, but we’ll hunt him down eventually. Those giant antlers will look amazing on the wall of the OPM hunting lodge.
Plot teases from devs suggest we’ll finally catch up with Yennifer, Geralt’s true love. How sweet.
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on the box
“A brutal journey with all the right ideas at its core.”
judged only by their covers
Destiny Rarely has a hideous car wreck looked so pretty. Well, not pretty, but you know what we mean.
Format PS4/PS3 / ETA 2014 / Pub Warner Bros / Dev Avalanche
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Even in a post-apocalyptic future universe, the fashion show must go on. Shabby-chic grey robes are definitely the in thing this season. Rifles and pistols replace small, yappy dogs as the must-have survival accessory of tomorrow. Format PS4/PS3 ETA 2014
Mad max
Just Cause 2 brain brings the pain to a Gibson-less wasteland Don’t write off Max as just another rusty retread of the apocalyptic junkyard world you’ve seen in so many games already. The Mad Max film series invented this stuff in 1981, and any variant you’ve seen in a game since has sprouted directly from that movie’s less-than-verdant ground. With games having profited from Max’s influence for decades, it’s about time that the original Road Warrior took his rather dubious turf back. Combining hectic, deliciously violent vehicular action with open-world exploration and more directed hand-to-hand and stealth combat, Mad Max is a teeth-rattlingly aggressive game. Its brutal beatdowns in particular transcend their roots in the Arkham series’ combat system by way of their pounding, matter-of-fact depiction of violence. Like Batman, Max is no superhero. But unlike Batman, he’s not a trained martial artist with a plethora of expensive gadgets and non-lethal takedown options. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Brutal melee
His combat style is heavy, meaty, and bluntly effective, with a no-messing world-weariness absolutely fitting to the character. Expect broken bones, snapped necks, smashed skulls and incredibly nasty environmental kills. Ever seen a shotgun blast used as a melee execution? You will here. But the game is as beautiful as it is brutal, particularly on PS4. Set beneath savagely pretty skies the like of which make Red Dead Redemption look tame, Max’s wild, rolling wasteland transfixes and
intimidates all at the same time. And you’ll be covering a lot of its ground in Mad Max, because driving is going to be a very big deal indeed. Avalanche is promising longterm, meaningful customisation to Max’s car, the Magnum Opus, with a plethora of gadgets, armour upgrades and mechanical tweaks bringing real evolution to the beast and how it performs. With breakneck, wildly freeform car combat another cornerstone of the game, you should effectively be able to reshape how the game plays by adapting your automotive avatar to your every whim. Overall, the game looks a dizzying, uncompromisingly brutal spectacle, with an affecting, oddly human vibe underpinning all the visceral aggression. As such, as an adaptation of the Mad Max mythos, it seems to have exactly the right idea.
Dying Light
Subverting many of the typical zombie clichés, Dying Light has you play as a lone barber tasked with trimming back the arms and hands growing off this poor wretch’s scalp. Just a little off the top, sir? Format PS4/PS3 ETA 2014
Thief
Above Prettiest open-world yet? Quite possibly. Now get out there and tear it up.
In this exciting stealthbased urban adventure, a lazy but resourceful graphic designer sneaks around grabbing logos off the front of boxes so he can pass them off as his own creations. Format PS4 ETA 28 FEB
“A tiny animal emerges from a cave, saluting our triumph.”
Preview This sort of caption which sits on the image doesn’t have the little coloured box at the start. 4 lines.
The game’s name is a deliberate misspelling of Hohokam, an ancient Incan culture in Arizona.
Format PS4/PS3/PS Vita / ETA 2014 / Pub sony / Dev Honeyslug
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hohokum
Gleeful, acid-trippy indie game wants all the smiles It’s unfortunate that the word Hohokum sounds a bit like ho-hum, because it’s hard to imagine ever growing bored while immersed in the bizarre subconscious of artist Richard Hogg. There are just too many interesting little flourishes piled on top of each other, too many colourful oddities flying and walking and buzzing about. You play as one such critter, in fact – a stripey snake called The Long Mover. Your job is simple: weave around the screen like a kite-tail ribbon in a breeze, explore and have fun. The game avoids telling you what to do, instead letting you poke about and factrick enjoy the second-to-second revelations 1. afterburners about how the world functions and how its If you wiggle the left stick back and forth while flying, scattered puzzles function. The Long Mover gets a During our own hands-on in the sudden speed boost. Honeyslug office, we fly past a tree with 2. text free little buds that sprout and snap shut each Beyond what’s needed to time we bump into them. Immediately help you start the game, there will be no text in the we forget about what we’d been exploring game to convey the story. before and fixate on trying to get all the 3. no-op buds open. Hohokum’s designers Sounds like a five-second job, right? The considered co-op early on, but decided to focus on the catch is that the buds on the branches act solo adventure instead. like pinball bumpers, knocking you away when you collide with them. Failing to get our angle of approach right means ricocheting between several buds and messing up our perfectly uniform arrangement. We do finally nail it – after unleashing swears as colourful as the game itself.
The world is packed with snacksized distractions of this sort. Having completed the tree challenge, a bizarre little animal emerges blinking from a cave beneath the trunk to silently acknowledge our triumph. It’s the little things, as they say, and Hohokum proves that an avalanche of little things can really add up.
Small wonder
“I want to have more things like this [tree],” Hogg tells us. “I want to have rewards that feel like they’re worth the effort.” The game’s other lead designer Ricky Haggett thinks trophies will be enough: “I don’t feel like it’s important to have a really amazing reward for doing a hard thing. The reward is that the game recognises that you did a really hard thing, and I think trophies will be a nice way to do that.” Though more mechanically involved than the similarly kooky Proteus, Hohokum does share its desire to cultivate exploration and build a soundtrack that reacts to what you do. Each of the blissed-out electronic tracks from Ghostly label artists, such as Tycho and Shigeto, are carved into multiple sonic layers, which fade in and out dynamically based on where you are in the level or what you’re interacting with at any given time. n
Above Since Hohokum is broken up into lots of floating islands, you’ll offer a much-needed taxi service to the local population.
Preview
Artist Richard Hogg borrows ideas from different cultures, but adds plenty of weird. 041
Call Of Dookie
A guide to Hohokum’s very own Guano Factory
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We didn’t come across any toilets in the Hohokum, which may be why this level needs bee-like insects to pick up and remove the waste that’s lying about.
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Making sure the waste doesn’t go to waste, a factory has been built to process the poo – as a retail product! Gather these collectors to help fill the tank.
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There’s a boss in his office sulking over the factory’s steadily declining output. Good thing The Long Mover has come to get the pipes flowing again.
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Although you don’t appear to get any shares in the company for your poop-related efforts, you do get to enjoy watching piles of poo roll off the assembly line.
Left Even though we didn’t get to go hands-on with this area, it’s not hard to imagine what you’ll be doing. An a-pot-alypse, if you will.
Above The fun thing about this level is that we had no idea the watery world inside the orb existed until bumping into its surface.
Preview Do ghost-bullets work on living targets? Is that guy even alive? We don’t know. It’s a mystery…
“A gritty, battered detective dies by way of a windowshattering fall.”
Format PS3 / ETA 2014 Pub Square Enix / Dev Airtight Games
murdered: soul suspect
Crime noir with a supernatural twist What would happen if John McClane died during Die Hard? It’s a perverse notion, yet a concept that’s apparently inspired a whole game: an adventure in which a gritty, battered, chain-smoking detective dies by way of a Hans Gruber-esque, windowshattering fall and fights to solve his murder from the other side. Actually, yeah, we can see the thought process now. Above Turns out crossing a police tape barrier is easy when your legs are made of spectral fog.
Three reasons why…
Murdered: Soul Suspect could be a killer mystery
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Cerebral crime-solving takes priority. Ronan’s primary tasks revolve around clues, witnesses, and smart creative thinking, rather than messy violence.
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It has an atmosphere you could choke on. The soup-thick fog and murky lighting look to blend horror and noir into a deliciously grimy vibe.
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Oddly, there is combat, but again it’s brainy rather than brutal. Ronan has to evade and outsmart roaming demons with his ghostly cunning.
An unholy hybrid of Silent Hill and LA Noire, Murdered sees its protagonist, Ronan O’Connor, traversing a parallel spirit world, seeking out clues on a search for non-corporeal justice. You might think that there’s little a ghost can do by the way of detective work, but Ronan seems quite handy. He can manipulate witnesses to tell his side of the story to the police. He can eavesdrop conversations relating to his case in order to find new leads (actually easier when you’re dead and invisible). He can even view events he was part of from a third-person perspective in order to find extra clues. It’s an odd mixture of ideas, but that’s no bad thing. If Murdered can nail the required blend of creepy supernatural intrigue and moody noir, while telling a coherent, engaging story, it should be one of 2014’s surprise hits.
Preview
preview round-up
Fear not, dear reader: we wrestle the might of 2014’s coming bounties so you don’t have to, and serve you up a feast of prospective morsels. This month we’ve got a parkour nightmare, a familiar mullet/bandana combo from the ‘80s and the return of a legendary JRPG…
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Rambo The Video Game
Format PS3 / ETA 17 Jan Pub Reef Entertainment Dev Teyon
Next year will see John Rambo, the action hero with big muscles (and even bigger hair) make his first appearance on PS3 in the excitingly titled (hmm) Rambo The Video Game. A shooter with more of a first-person persuasion, Rambo will give you the chance to blow up various locations from the First Blood trilogy with bows and bandanas aplenty. Ol’ Sly won’t be returning to voice the one-man death machine on PS3, but publisher Reef has promised us a slew of soundbites and tracks from the scores pulled straight from the films. Game Of The Year candidate, right?
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z Format PS3 / ETA 2014 Pub Namco Bandai Games Dev Artdink
Sorry anime fans, the world of Goku isn’t coming to PS4 (at least, not yet), but the ever-tusslin’ roster of colourful characters is making a return to PS3 in the new year. Dragon Ball Z: Battle Of Z is a team-based beat-em-up with a big focus on customisation and co-operative play. Alongside a single-player campaign and a new online mode, there are also four-player and eight-player Battle Royale modes, so you can select your favourite team, customise their individual stats and bring the fit-inducing pain with friends. (Assuming they haven’t disowned you).
Dying Light
Format PS4/PS3 / ETA Jan / Pub Warner Bros Dev Techland
Polish studio Techland loves making games with undead flavour, but its latest project, Dying Light, looks to be doing more than just upping the z-count (and trust us, they’ve really upped it this time around.) Blending an open-world environment with a faster, parkour-esque sense of movement, Dying Light will be looking to create some of the most realistic lighting effects ever seen in a next-gen zombie game. Just make sure you’re indoors before nightfall – pretty lights won’t stop the rampant horde.
Persona 5
MXGP
While a Western release has yet to be announced, we plied enough hours into Persona 4: Golden on PS Vita to be plenty excited for another slice of role-playing demon-summonage from Atlus. Details are extremely thin on the ground, but rumours of a new full instalment in the RPGmeets-high-school-drama series was in development have been circling for months – and it’s a relief to see them come true. Persona 5 isn’t the only new arrival in the series, either: if you’re looking for more Persona-related fun, the rhythm action game Persona 4: Dancing All Night was also announced for Sony’s handheld.
The developer behind the long-running WRC rally series certainly loves its filth-caked motorsports, hence this latest crack at the two-wheeled variety. Like its officially licensed stablemate, MXGP also features a tonne of real-life content: 60 riders, 60 bikes and 12 tracks from the recent 2013 season in both MX1 and MX2 categories. The Italian dev has plenty of experience with bike racers over the years, having cornered the market with SBK and MotoGP tie-ins aplenty and the 2012’s Dirt-esque MUD-FIM Motocross Championship. So this just might – might – be wheely good. (Sorry.)
Format PS3 / ETA TBC Pub Atlus / Dev Atlus
Format PS3/PS Vita ETA 2014 / Pub Milestone Dev Milestone
Preview
South Park: The Stick Of Truth
Format PS3 / ETA 7 Mar Pub Ubisoft / Dev Obsidian Entertainment
Despite more release date slippage, we’re still holding out hope for Cartman’s Skyrim knock-off. Now scheduled for release in March, The Stick Of Truth combines the 2D animation style of the show with turnbased strategy and plenty of RPG features. Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were on hand to soothe their fans, saying: “Getting the game up to the crappy standards of the show has been a real challenge and we’re excited to say it’s taken way longer than we thought it would.” One more delay and we’re leaving Mr Hankeys on Obsidian’s doorstep.
Lego The Hobbit
Thief
Format PS4/PS3 / ETA 28 Feb Pub Square Enix / Dev Eidos Montreal
Rejoice fans, for your voices have power! In recent months, developer Eidos Montreal totally scrapped a planned XP system after it left something of a bad taste in the mouths of players and critics alike, and it looks like another feature has been dropped in the face of even more belly-aching. Now the Canadian dev has also removed a number of QTEs following a further bout of negative feedback. When asked if these QTEs had been updated to avoid breaking the immersion of Thief’s stealth gameplay, the studio’s response was simple: “It was an easy decision to do away with [QTEs] entirely. So we’re not doing them. No quick time.” Have removing QTEs and the XP system improved the game? We’ll have a more detailed look – and hands-on – next month.
Format PS4/PS3/PS Vita ETA 2014 / Pub Warner Bros Dev TT Games
It was swirling round as a rumour for a few weeks, but now it’s official: the first two Hobbit films (An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation Of Smaug) will be cemented together into one block-building Lego-branded adventure. The game features a bunch of locations from The Hobbit trilogy and offers a huge cast of playable characters, including Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf The Grey, Thorin Oakenshield and other names which sound made-up but fit with Hobbit canon. On which note: if there’s a playable Lego version of Smaug, we’re definitely in.
Planetside 2
Format PS4 / ETA 2014 Pub Sony / Dev Sony Online Entertainment
As Planetside 2 celebrates its one-year anniversary on the PC, the PS4 version is gathering steam for its upcoming release. Coming from the same devs that also brought you DC Universe Online, Planetside 2 is a free-to-play online FPS with a big focus on multiplayer action. In a similar vein to EVE Online’s companion PS3 shooter Dust 514, it promises large-scale battles (we’re promised up to 2,000 players on one map) with the option to upgrade weapons and armour via in-game progression, or by purchasing new items with actual moolah. This could get expensive.
Toukiden: The Age Of Demons Format PS Vita / ETA 14 Feb Pub Tecmo Koei / Dev Omega Force
Freedom Wars
Format PS Vita / ETA 2014 Pub Sony / Dev Sony Japan STUDIO
If you happen to own a handheld console that isn’t PS Vita (fear not, we’ll forgive you sometime around 2017), chances are one of the games you love most is that monster hunting effort once so beloved on PSP. (In Japan, anyway.) Thankfully, multiplayer beast slaying is returning to PlayStation next year via Freedom Wars. Set 100,000 years in the future in a world called Panopticon (isn’t that a Transformer?), you choose and customise a character before taking on huge nasties in a post-apocalyptic setting. So not unlike a night out in Croydon.
Transistor
Format PS4 / ETA 2014 Pub Sony / Dev Supergiant Games
Alongside The Witness and Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, Transistor is one of the standout titles in Sony’s push to elevate independent studios on PS4. Developed by the sevenperson-strong team at Supergiant Games – you know, the one that brought us the excellent Bastion in 2011 – Transistor is a turn-based strategy game that mixes real-time movement with a special ‘planning mode’. With an art style that combines classical sci-fi with art deco (and a splash of anime), this may yet turn out to be the megastar in PS4’s glittering indie line-up.
Telling the tale of humanity’s last battle for survival against an invasion of bloodthirsty demons called the Oni, this handheld RPG serves up another slice of Monster Hunter-style action – just in case the wait for Freedom Wars is making you incontinent. Arriving from Omega Force, the long-time developer of the Dynasty Warriors series, Toukiden blends the endless customisation options of classic JRPGs with all the over-the-top action you’d expect from the studio. You’ll be able to choose from six different character classes – each with upgradeable skill trees to flesh out – along with over 200 historical and fictional characters from Japanese history. Like Catman here. (Not his real name, sadly.)
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The very best of the last 12 months on PlayStation, as voted by you – will it be Ellie, Elizabeth or everyone’s favourite open-worlder that takes home the gold?
game of the year
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T H E W O LF AM O N G US
Hell Hoth no fury for PS3’s premier chiller
Episodic series of this year – and next?
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his year’s most bitingly frigid horror jaunt scores a warm reception – even if the h-word is being generous there. Unshackling itself from the nerve-jangling overtures of its haunted-house-in-space predecessors, DS3 roasted your cockles using its excellent Strategic Dismemberment and disarmingly brilliant weapon customisation. Where ice planet scuffles against parka-sporting humans may fall flat, forging a half-flamethrower/ half-RPG that spews electrified nails is a big win. Visceral may have decided scares are passé in pursuit of a more universally palatable actioner, but Isaac’s Necromorphmangling DNA still just about endures. The future of the franchise is skating on thin ice, but if this is to be the end for Mr Clarke, at least he let you finish his undead pests with a firearm that barbecues alien genitals while stapling them to nearby walls. Format PS3 / Pub EA / Score 7/10
following up a five-episode series that many held as their game of the year for 2012 would be a tall order for some developers, but Telltale made it look easy. Even with a single episode currently in circulation, The Wolf Among Us has proved to be one of the true highlights of 2013. Despite lacking the growing sense of dread and isolation that made The Walking Dead such a tense experience, the world of Fables perfectly suits the interactive cutscene style of a Telltale game. Being a noir detective story at its heart, The Wolf Among Us lets your instinctive decisions and dialogue choices guide the story, weaving new threads and outcomes as you delve deeper into a web of murder and deceit. Everything from the atmospheric synth soundtrack to the perpetual night of Fabletown adds another layer of style and substance to this quality-howling new IP. Format PS3 / Pub Telltale Games / Score 8/10
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b at t l e f i e l d 4
d u c k ta l e s : remastered
splinter cell: blacklist
Quacking the decks against you
Contextual kill manoeuvres in the dark
Beware of cracks in the DICE
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y rights, BF4’s gorgeous visuals and brilliantly wild 64-way multiplayer should see it pushing the top 10. Yet its surprisingly low placing – albeit still ahead of the shunned-altogether Call Of Duty: Ghosts – suggest you guys are simply tired of playing the same old shooters, no matter how spangly they look on next-gen. A particular problem is solo play – with so much focus paid to getting online right, the main single-player mode feels like a cut-and-paste job from every merc blaster in history. We expect better, and clearly you do, too. Though if Titanfall succeeds, what are the odds on DICE ditching offline play altogether? Depressingly short, you’d wager. Format PS4/PS3 / Pub EA / Score 7/10
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’all clearly like to snuggle up with unrelenting punishment like a pre-warmed blanky. Frequently purdy, often infuriating, yet occasionally uplifting in the most shamelessly nihilistic fashion: they sure don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Though Duck Tales’ brutal lack of continues makes traversing its elegantly painted levels a daunting prospect, there’s something tremendously refreshing about its Uncle Scrooge-inspired toughness, particularly in a year of giant tutorial arrows and 25-minute QTEs. The tagline ‘Duck Tales, woo-oo’ never felt more appropriate. Format PS3 / Pub Capcom / Score 7/10
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ou couldn’t move in 2012 without having a stealth game emerge from your ears. Hitman Absolution, Dishonored, Far Cry 3… see? Easily more games than ears on the average person. Displaying expert timing, Sam Fisher chose this year rather than last to launch his comeback, where his gadgets, reliable cover mechanics, strong AI feedback and – did we mention those gadgets? – really stood out. Only Blacklist’s chest-beating plot, which seemed to have been penned by Fox News, holds it back from the upper echelons of this list. Play it again, Sam. Format PS3 / Pub Ubisoft / Score 8/10
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game of the year
15 m e ta l g e a r rising: revengeance Proof Raiden’s a man of his sword
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acking the polish and guile of Ninja Theory’s Dante reimagining, this is a surprisingly high placing for a game that didn’t cut as deep as it should have – particularly with DmC failing to chart. It surely speaks more for your love for all things Kojima than the rough action Revengeance often plates up. That said, master its katana-precise counter windows and Raiden’s adventure comes to life in gleefully overblown style. After all, who doesn’t want to slice up Metal Gear Ray like particularly tinny-tasting sushi? Format PS3 / Pub EA / Score 7/10
13 t e a r a w ay
r ay m a n legends
Ripping up the handheld rules
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ou had to wait a long time for a game that really grabbed PS Vita’s unique control-set by the horns and turned it into something that made sense, felt fun and didn’t make you look like a prize pillock when you played it in public. Tearaway makes up for the wait, and then some. Media Molecule’s handheld adventureplatformer lacks only for satisfying combat – otherwise this is all gold: beautiful, playful, tactile and capable of making a grown man (well, our reviewer at least) cry with its affecting story. Plus it’s literally your only chance to populate an innocent world with bright pink, phallic snowflakes and draw moustaches on squirrels. Format PS Vita / Pub Sony / Score 8/10
Good clean armless fun
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ow fitting that one of the worlds in Rayman Legends has you tunnelling through cake and watermelons and other cartoonishly oversized entrées. Ubisoft Montpellier’s best game to date offers an gluttonous buffet of fun to keep you occupied for hours, racing from one tasty design idea to the next. Highlights: scraps with laser-shooting clockwork dragons, time-trials to free captive Teensies strapped to bottle rockets, and Guitar Hero-style levels that align your jumps and kicks with giddy tunes such as Eye Of The Tiger… on the kazoo. Oh yes. Format PS3/Vita / Pub Ubisoft / Score 9/10
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11 ho t l i n e m i a m i
b r o t h e r s : a ta l e o f t wo s o n s
This one’s not for you, Will Smith
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eriously, ignore its chart position: nothing else on this list feels as instantly satisfying to play as Devolver’s PSN murder-’em-up. There’s no sour, sentimental aftertaste. There’s nothing to ponder. You play, you die, you splurge out a man’s eyes with your thumbs. Then swiftly die again. And frustrating as that process sounds, you bloody love it. A sharp restart after each messy demise prevents any frustration from the stern difficulty, while a relentless, throbbing soundtrack goads you into being the worst person that ever existed. Yes, more horrid than Piers Morgan. The closest you come to ‘emotion’ is stepping over the bodies of your murderised enemies in the silent, post-orgasmic mess of a finished level. Sure, there’s a story with a twist present too, but Hotline Miami exists to be a proudly repellent and utterly unapologetic game. Format PS3/Vita / Pub Devolver Digital / Score 9/10
One plus one equals an engaging interactive fairytale
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iven the unremarkable nature of Starbreeze Studios’ last outing – 2012’s soon forgotten reboot of Syndicate – you could be forgiven for thinking that this extraordinary little puzzler came out of leftfield. Shunning challenge in favour of atmospheric storytelling and charming character development across its four-hour campaign, Brothers puts you in charge of the titular duo. Independently, yet simultaneously. It then sends you out on a cinematic journey across a magical, Nordic-influenced land to obtain healing waters for your dying father, pitting you against joyously original obstacles that never repeat themselves. Inventive, surprising and heart-wrenching, it’s no surprise this is the highest-placing PSN title here: there was simply nothing else like it in 2013. And after all, two is company… Format PS3 / Pub 505 Games / Score 9/10
game of the year
9 fifa 14 Truly, the beautiful game
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istorically, sports titles have a tricky old time cracking this list – no one wants to declare a game their annual fave after losing 0-3 away at QPR – so it’s encouraging to see FIFA crack the top 10. But to our eyes, it should have been even higher. (Cease booing. You’re not at White Hart Lane now.) EA’s footy giant served up the perfect template for a PS3 to PS4 upgrade, offering immediate familiarity, but also the feeling of an entirely fresh experience. Subtler movement, new passing and shooting animations, and more intelligent AI significantly enhance the on-pitch action, while broadcast-style camera angles and working scoreboards raise the presentation to MLB: The Show’s genre-leading standard. In short: an instant next-gen triumph. Format PS4/PS3 / Publisher EA / Score 9/10
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k i l l z o n e : s h a d ow f a l l Guerrilla warfare kicks off next-gen
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ou had three big-name FPS options on PlayStation 4 at launch: the PS3 versions of Call Of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 with prettier textures and more particle effects. Or this, a bespoke next-gen game built from the ground up to max out the tech with incredible good looks, impressive set-pieces and lighting that makes it hard to go back to old-gen. That alone would have been sufficient this early in the generation, but this also mixes up the usual shooter formula with truly open-ended levels and options that go beyond just more guns, giving you additional tactical choice. It’s not a revolution, but it’s refreshing – especially as the other two options increasingly feel like HD remixes of old levels. Then there’s the incredibly satisfying multiplayer. The streamlined classes contain surprising depth, while the to-and-fro of gunplay has a real grit and weight to it rather than insta-death respawns. In all, a well-rounded introduction to the shooters of the future. Format PS4 / Publisher Sony / Score 8/10
b at m a n : arkham origins Rebooted Bruce capes up nicely
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redit to Warner Montreal: it may have built its Batcave’s foundations on the shoulders of giants, but the unproven studio somehow manages to surpass Rocksteady in several key areas on a fiendishly festive Xmas Eve for the Dark Knight. That Origins places so high on your list is surely down to a continuation of the series’ class-leading combat, spliced with a wonderfully eye-opening look into the dynamic between Bats and The Joker during their first encounters. Spinning the best yarn to grace a superhero game yet, it illuminates the vigilante with a pleasingly ambiguous 50 shades of grey… and black and blue. Yep, Brucie boy still packs one hell of a meaty punch. Format PS3 / Publisher Warner Bros / Score 8/10
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game of the year
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6 assassin’s creed iv: black flag
n i n o k u n i : w r at h o f t h e wh i t e w i t c h
Turns out piracy does pay
Family-friendly quest makes its mark
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e have to agree with William Wallace’s memorable last words – well, word – when asked at his execution what he liked most about Black Flag. What an intoxicating sense of possibility boarding the Jackdaw for the first time and clipping along the top of those surging ocean swells in search of fortune and misadventure. If the pirate fantasy is all about being the Master And Commander of your own destiny, Assassin’s Creed IV perfectly captures this ideal in its intoxicating openworld Caribbean. It’s hard to remember an open-world with so many fun ways to ignore the main quest: swearing off dry land for hours at a time, sailing across open water, relieving merchant vessels of their precious cargo, sending broadside cannon barrages ripping through coastal naval forts, even swimming to ocean-floor wrecks in search of sunken treasure. One of 2013’s most enjoyable time sinks and an epic maiden voyage for new PS4 owners. Format PS4/PS3 / Pub Ubisoft / Score 8/10
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emember February? We were so young back then – so full of dreams and ambition, sticking firmly to our new year’s resolutions… Yeah, Ni No Kuni really put paid to that gym membership. Only a hyperactive cyborg would choose to pop down Fitness First rather than spend some time with Ollie-Boy and Mr Drippy, drinking in those gorgeous Ghibli graphics and training familiars by feeding them 99 flakes. In case it’s been a rough year for your long-term memory capacity, Level-5 and Studio Ghibli’s JRPG about a young boy who finds a way into a magical realm found widespread critical acclaim, as well as massive sales back in Q1. Every negative association you have with the genre – the grinding, the menus, the half-arsed localisation – was turned on its head here, some were even turned into strengths. Has there been a more memorable voice-acting turn in 2013 than Steffan Rhodri as the instantly loveable Lord High Lord Of The Fairies? Not a chance, boy-o. Format PS3 / Pub Namco Bandai / Score 9/10
game of the year
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5 b e y o n d : t wo s o u l s
tomb raider
A tasty finish for 2013’s Marmite game
Lara finds gold in Uncharted territory
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omeless Ellen Page, delivering a baby in an abandoned tenement block, through the medium of right stick gestures. That’s why we heart Quantic Dream – it exists outside of the industry bubble. Except for a peculiar penchant for SWAT teams, Beyond barely goes near the usual subject matter. The end result is a game filled with moments like the above. Some don’t work at all (cough, entire-Navajo-chapter, cough) and some work so well they alone are worth playing the whole game to experience. While this doesn’t match Heavy Rain for narrative cohesion, by bringing characters to life through full performance capture tech and persuading two of Hollywood’s biggest names to don the ping-pong balls, it leaves Ethan and the gang red-faced by comparison in the production value stakes. We still can’t believe how good both characters and environments look. Strong opinions surface whenever David Cage is mentioned, but the pro camp among you has made its voice heard loud and clear – placing Jodie and Aiden as PS3’s bronze medallist couple. Format PS3 / Pub Sony / Score 8/10
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he first lady of PlayStation’s long-awaited comeback was more than just a reboot of an iconic franchise. It saw a developer finally getting the chance to bring a classic character out of the depths and into the bright new era of open-world gaming. Every other PS3 Raider felt like a prettier version of its PS2 ancestors, complete with all the tropes and issues that had dogged the series for years. Not this one. New Raider was Crofty’s answer to the rise of that upstart Nathan Drake. It took all the hallmarks of the games that prospered in its absence – Assassin’s Creed’s deft sense of movement and open-world freedom, Far Cry 3’s rich upgrade structure and the rise of XP systems in general – and moulded them all to fit a rejuvenated and captivating franchise. Even the multiplayer was addictive, with a strong mix of dynamic maps and an upgrade system that rewarded multiple playstyles. Dark and brimming with mystery, this was a fine return to form for one of gaming’s most beloved heroines. Good to have you back, girl. Format PS3 / Pub Square Enix / Score 8/10
game of the year
b i o s ho c k i n f i n i t e
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Cloud gaming of a truly different kind
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en Levine’s Big-Daddy-shunning sequel had two massive problems to overcome. Its predecessor – the proper one, as opposed to Bioshock 2 – featured not only the best setting in a game ever, but also the greatest twist. Yet instead of a pointless arm-wrestle against the original, Infinite wisely took a different, far more pleasing path. There was no need to challenge the horrific, claustrophobic failure of Rapture. Instead Columbia feels like a real place visited in some half-remembered dream. Every alleyway tells a story, every boastful achievement reflects a society’s ingenuity and arrogance. It’s an irresistible place to
team c ho i c e s The OPM squadron names its personal picks of 2013…
explore: you find yourself straying from the breadcrumb trail, just so you can wander the nonessential path and rummage through trash cans for fruit and trousers. On its own that would be great, but you’re also accompanied by one of gaming’s greatest ‘sidekicks’ – to use a word that in no way does Elizabeth justice.
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Yeah, Ellie’s up there in top spot, but in many ways Elizabeth is a more real, vulnerable character. The truly amazing thing is her range: effortlessly flowing from fear to anger to disappointment without a word. It’s all about the eyebrows. And, as she grows
from caged bird to conqueror, the range of feelings you have for her is unparalleled. When the twist comes, it doesn’t hit you with the bloodied golf club of ‘would you kindly’, but instead succeeds where so few other games do: by actually making you think. While contemporaries struggle to tell a tale in half as literate a manner as any film, Infinite could not exist in any other medium. You feel like a small part in a narrative that existed long before you got involved, and which will persist long after you’ve gone. It’s a humbling, intelligent, unforgettable tale about choice, consequence and the perils of eating pears from bins. Format PS3 / Pub 2K Games / Score 10/10
ben wilson
LEON HURLEY
I’m sorely tempted to say FIFA, but it has to be Joel and Ellie’s post-apocalyptic jaunt – which took everything you loved about Uncharted then made it grittier and scarier. No game ending on PS3 has haunted me like that final line from Joel – I have to have a sequel now in order to set things straight.
A perfect merging of cinematic experience and videogame. The part when David offers his take on ‘the crazy man with the little girl’ that’s been killing his people is a watershed moment in game narrative – the point where it stopped being about scoring points and instead about making them.
Editor THE LAST OF US
associ ate Editor THE LAST OF US
game of the year
2 grand theft auto v
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A shock number two placing for the three unwise men
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ny other year this is not only game of the year, but the generation. There’s a strong case to be made for the Los Santos sandbox being the finest package ever squeezed onto Blu-ray. With near unparalleled scale, the most polished mechanics of any open-world game, and an incredibly ambitious, persistent online multiplayer, it’s the most effortless 10/10 we’ve ever awarded. Instead of buckling under the hype that preceded GTA V, Rockstar North somehow surpassed it – speaking volumes for the quality and care lavished on the Scottish studio’s brutal baby. Filing off every rough edge from Niko’s bleak Liberty City spree,
JASON KILLINGSWORTH
fe atures Editor THE LAST OF US The prologue to ND’s end-ofdays adventure is the gaming equivalent of “you had me at hello”. 20 minutes in, I was dabbing away tears and leaning so far forward in my chair, my forehead was practically touching the TV. And it just kept getting better and better.
the mix of fluid gunplay, vastly improved vehicle handling and seamless character switching form Rockstar’s greatest sandbox.
CHOP MEAT
Epitomising the term ‘all killer, no filler’, the trio’s constantly inventive missions would rather let you mind-jack a Rottweiler to go sick Grove Street balls than force you to endure a vanilla tailing exercise. Both thrillingly imaginative and subversive, you obviously appreciated not only the game’s cracking story objectives, but also the brilliantly distracting array of side missions. Forget taxi rides or bowling; the embarrassing array of riches spanning
PHIL IWANIUK
games Editor grand Theft auto v
I wanted to pick something edgy, made by two dudes in their bedrooms. Ah well, million-selling phenomenon it is. Why? Because GTA V is the closest I’ve come to playing the everything-simulator I dreamed of when I first got into games. Nothing comes near to its freedom and variety.
bounty missions, parachute jumps, fully working games of golf and tennis blow away the optional activities of any other openworld pretender out there. When we tell you certain OPM writers clocked in 100+ hours to 100% the singleplayer without giving the truly excellent GTA Online a look-in, you should understand the breadth of this incredibly generous package. The sharpest, funniest and most ambitiously tailored game of the year, we can’t help but think GTA V would be straddling the number one spot with a blood-smeared crown while listening to Radio Ga Ga if it hadn’t been for a certain PS3 exclusive. Format PS3 / Pub Rockstar / Score 10/10
DOM RESEIGH-LINCOLN
PRODUCTION Editor BIOSHOCK INFINITE Quite simply, my game of the year and generation. Nothing else – even Rapture – comes close to Columbia’s radiant brilliance, the endless joy of fighting on skyhooks, and a narrative that puts film, TV and literature to shame with its sheer depth and scope.
game of the year
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1 the last of us Closing out the generation in style
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hen Game Of The Year voting opened last month, every OPM man and his COD dog fully expected a grudge match for the top spot – with the chart position between Naughty Dog’s gritty survival epic and Rockstar’s anarchic open-world masterpiece being decided by just a handful of votes. We were prepared to recount and then re-recount the votes to make sure we crowned the rightful champion. But you had other ideas, promptly burying us in a landslide of votes for The Last Of Us. It wasn’t even close. In this fight, Naughty Dog sent Franklin’s lovable hound Chop whimpering home with his tail between his legs. If you stop to think about it, maybe the result shouldn’t be that surprising. Naughty Dog has proven itself more skilled than any other developer at harnessing the incredible horsepower of PlayStation 3, and using it to fill our virtual passport with stamps from one globe-trotting adventure after another. This time, instead of a jaunt around the world in search of ancient treasures like the Uncharted games, The Last Of Us had a much different sort of journey in mind – a road trip across a scarred and ravaged American landscape that managed to be as beautiful as it was emotionally devastating. You have to marvel at the level of confidence it takes for a developer to wade into the shambling mob of zombie games
crowding the market and succeed in making the experience feel fresh again. The Last Of Us accomplished this feat by giving us characters like Joel and Ellie, who felt so real that it didn’t even matter what form of opposition they encountered. You simply wanted to help them survive to their journey’s end, simply because you genuinely cared about them. If that threat happened to be a deluge of grotesque fungal monstrosities, then okay, bring them on – we’d gladly scrounge for the bricks, bottles and bullets it took to bring them all down.
END OF DAYS
Much like Celine Dion’s robot heart, PS3 will go on – but this nonetheless feels like a perfectly climactic way for the hardcore to bow out and move on to PS4. With games having matured technically and artistically over the past decade, The Last Of Us bravely sets aside the light-hearted romp of the Uncharted games to deliver an experience with sufficient thematic weight to be mentioned in the same breath as revered literary figures like Cormac McCarthy without anyone rolling their eyes. And Naughty Dog’s crowning achievement does this without sacrificing fun. If for some reason the world ended in 2013 and there were no more games to look forward to, The Last Of Us would’ve been a damn fine send-off. Format PS3 / Pub Sony / Score 10/10
dev talk
FAN talk
OPM talk
For the ending, we wanted sunlight to shine on the town, with dark shadows creeping in – casting a shadow on Ellie and Joel, perfectly representing the future’s uncertainty. Erick Pangilinan Art director, ND
The Last Of Us is the only videogame I’ve ever played that made me stop and think for at least a second about the other survivors my character (Joel) had to kill during his journey. Ahmed Shaheta Alexandria, Egypt
From heartbreak to elation and back again,Joel and Ellie’s tale traverses the entire spectrum of real human emotion – yet never stops being fun to play. A masterpiece. Ben Wilson Editor, OPM
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2 2014
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0
the year of Chicago, Seattle, Tamriel, Mordor: pack your bags, OPM Airways for a heart-stopping, eye-popping
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2014
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Playstation check your passport’s in date and jump on board tour of the next 12 months on PS4 and PS3…
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PLAYSTATION IN 2014
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Dark Souls II’s visuals are amazing. Even your fur-lined armour looks badass.
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playstation in 2014
nyone who’s played Dark Souls knows the hard swallow that occurs on being briefed that someone with an intimidating PSN ID like Psycho_Punisher666 has invaded your world. You see that person’s glowing-red phantom sprinting across the map with Zweihander at the ready, hunting you like prey and closing on your position fast. No survival-horror game has matched the terror of the seconds leading up to that fateful clash. Forget, for a second, about Dark Souls II’s enhanced, almost photo-realistic graphics, fluid mo-cap character animations and tantalising new story. The game-changer in the upcoming sequel is how it pushes the series’ “loose connection” online play to the fore. Prepare to be invaded. “Our main intent is not to foster a greater frequency of multiplayer, but more to give players the opportunity to interact even within the ‘loose’ parameters allowed,” From Software’s Yui Tanimura, Dark Souls II codirector (along with Tomohiro Shibuya), tells OPM. The franchise has always made innovative use of online features – and then evolved them for future titles. In Demon’s Souls, players could choose to leave messages with hints for the road ahead. In Dark Souls, players who used Humanity to take on a living form could be invaded via PvP or summon some additional help, and in DSII
Dark SoulsII A fantasy-RPG sequel to die for Format PS3 / ETA Mar / Pub NAMCO BANDAI / Dev FROM SOFTWARE
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THE INSIDE VIEW
PLAYSTATION IN 2014
Name yui tanimura, CO-DIRECTOR
“We do concentrate on Dark Souls II being an enjoyable game even when you’re playing offline, but for the full experience, online is definitely a critical element. However, even when playing offline, we have implemented AI elements and enemy components that will function as if the player is playing within a wider online space.”
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a new server-based network will bear the load as even players in a Hollow (undead) state are vulnerable to invasion from other human adventurers.
INVADER GRIM
Scared? Don’t be. Namco Bandai producer Takeshi Miyazoe explains that the game will be balanced in other ways to ensure that newcomers are not constantly griefed by professional invaders. “Before, the matchmaking was based upon player level,” he tells OPM. “That will remain, but we also want to focus on how much time you’ve played the game. Also, there will be penalties for players who invade, but still lose. There are risks. And there will be ‘policemen’ against invaders and a ransom system where if you constantly invade or kill NPCs there will be motivation for summoned players to go after you.”
“An improved covenant system will ensure the players in need of help can find protection.” This is where the game’s next online enhancement comes in. An overhauled Covenant system means that players in need of protection can find their protectors. Way Of Blue members who are invaded will automatically summon members of the Blue Sentinels, while the Heirs To The Sun will act as benevolent heroes who get summoned by priority to players in PvP and PvE situations. The Brotherhood Of Blood, meanwhile, get to role-play as the bad guys, with an increased capability for invasion, while the Bell Keeper apostles will
automatically invade players who enter a certain area of the game. There will be seven or eight Covenants in all, and another of these will be the policeman class that Miyazoe mentioned earlier, who will reap bounties on the heads of “wanted” serial invaders. Summoning itself has been enhanced, too. Dark Souls’ soapstones are back, but now carry a time limit. Large White Soapstones have a generous timer, but smaller ones give a shorter window of around 15 or 20 minutes, which gets narrower with every kill – offering clearer rewards for players who choose to go into battle for others. Some boss fights will also make creative use of online for a more immersive world – such as the Mirror Knight. This hulking armoured swine summons real-life players with his reflective shield to attack the player. Of course, if all
Which is more frightening: a pile of bodies aflame or that cave behind them?
playstation in 2014
You can now warp between bonfires much earlier in your quest.
This boss fight feels like a skeletal take on the infamous Four Kings. 063
You will mutter curses anytime you need to swap your shield for a torch.
of that sounds nightmarishly difficult or just too complicated, there is also an Offline mode on offer as well.
ALONE IN THE DARK
“Even when playing offline, we’ve implemented AI elements and enemy elements that will function as if the player is playing in the online space,” says Tanimura. “You won’t be able to see blood messages and bloodstains, though,” adds Miyazoe. “You won’t be invaded, but you also won’t be able to summon – and there are
As in the first game, keeping a pillar between you and any boss is a vital tactic.
difficult bosses out there. But the bosses and the venue structure will be the same offline, and the challenge and sense of achievement and satisfaction when you overcome something will be there. We’ve also implemented some elements that will make you feel as if you’re online, like you might be invaded by an AI enemy.” The recent network beta gathered 30,000 fans in the Huntsman’s Copse woodland area as a means to test server load and the functionality of invasions and summons, but it also offered a
PLAYSTATION IN 2014 Inner demons
Takeshi Miyazoe, producer on Dark Souls II at Namco Bandai talks betas and spoilers
OPM: Is there any reason the network beta test was set in Huntsman’s Copse, a forest area that resembled Darkroot Garden and Oolacile Sanctuary? Takeshi Miyazoe: The forest is just a single part of the whole world; there are going to be castles, dungeons and caves as well, but as soon as we start to step into castles or caves there will be a lot of puzzles and gimmicks that we want the players to figure out for themselves when the game is released.
OPM: How did you decide what to include and what to effectively spoil in the beta test? TM: That was a tough one. There was the technical aspect, where we had to test things like summoning and invasions. And then we tried to put elements in there to keep players excited. There were a couple of mid-level bosses in there that we were forced to spoil, and the venue too, of course. But there are a lot more elements that we’re still hiding from you guys!
OPM: Is there a difference between what the fans think they want and what they appreciate when they actually get to play it? TM: From Software doesn’t directly sway based on what fans say they want from a Dark Souls game. A lot of fans say they want friend summoning and voice chat, for instance, but we don’t put that in because it’s simply not Dark Souls. We trust that the fans will enjoy our game so long as we stay true to those core concepts.
One major change to Covenants is phantoms who help invaded players.
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glimpse into the aesthetics of the new game. A puzzle-based design philosophy adds a new dimension of exploration, with paths branching off to hard-toreach bonfires or non-essential items that may tempt die-hards aiming to 100% the game. “Our brand new engine allows us to illustrate more photorealistic visuals and make more effective use of the contrast between light and dark,” says Tanimura. “We have put emphasis on moving shadows and movement of light, which are not only visual enhancements but will also have a lot to do with the strategies and tactics the player might decide to take.” One example of this is in a pitch-black cave or room, of which there seem to be many. Will you brave the darkness and tiptoe a treacherous path over an abyss? Light a flaming torch off a nearby brazier to illuminate the path at
Unlike the first demo, Huntsman’s Copse is utterly daylight-free.
the expense of equipping a shield? Or maybe search the walls for a stone face in whose mouth lies an item-activated light switch? Most likely you will try all three, until multiple deaths reveal a solution. Motion capture, too, has been implemented not only to make the game look prettier, but also as a way of giving players more subtle feedback as they fight their way through the hordes of darkness.
Using ranged attacks such as sorceries continues to be the safest approach.
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“environmental effects and sounds will signal clues for those who take the time to notice.”
It’s really too bad you can’t snack on these wall mushrooms to get a power-up.
“We hope that the natural movements will help players make reflex decisions as if they were actually the ones fighting in the world,” says Tanimura.
dark sounds
Environmental effects and sounds will signal clues, for those players perceptive enough to notice. For instance, the grass could simply be swaying in the breeze, or it could be a sign that something is
approaching – “Something big, perhaps,” Miyazoe teases. The visuals are incredible in places, squeezing triple-A graphics out of a less-than-triple-A budget. In the opening movie, which Miyazoe shows us (it may be previewed online in January), a soft-spoken old hag fixes the camera with a gaze so deep you could get lost in her milky-white cataracts, while stone ruins are reach-out-and-touch realistic – and all this on PS3. Storytelling and descriptions, meanwhile, will be opaque as ever. While the UI has been upgraded for legibility’s sake and NPCs will help flesh out the information, you’ll have to fill in the blanks with your imagination – or better yet, be clasped to the bosom of the Dark Souls online community. “The start of the game is crucial for new players to get involved in
the game, so at least we will try to relay the key elements, such as the sense of achievement and the loose connections, earlier on so that they can taste what Dark Souls is about from the beginning,” says Miyazoe. “But as the publisher, it’s very interesting for us to see the community setting up forums and whatever online, so we don’t intend to provide too much more in-game context.” And that of course is the charm of Dark Souls. The network beta, trade-show demos and info revealed online have provided plenty of feedback from fans on what could make the game better: optional avoidance of invasions, brighter environments, clearer explanations of how to light a torch, heavier character movement. And From Software is tuning just the unbalanced parts, while ignoring the rest. “We’ll create what we think we need to create and it will be up to the fans to dissect it how they want,” insists Miyazoe. And that’s what it’s all about. Although hardcore Souls fans may be convinced they know what they want from Dark Souls II, From Software still knows better.
2014
inFamous Second Son Next-gen open-world is looking oh-so-super Format PS4 / ETA 21 mar Pub sony / Dev Sucker Punch
E
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ven though it’s hard to find a person in the real world who’s grumpy enough to dislike superheroes, the residents of Second Son’s virtual Seattle are split. People who are sympathetic to your supernatural abilities refer to you as a Conduit. Residents who view them as a threat use a much less friendly term: bioterrorist. Expect to encounter plenty of both as you guide hero Delsin Rowe through the game’s remarkably detailed open-world. You’re the equivalent of a celebrity, so everybody’s quick to point out whether or not you’re a good thing for society. It wouldn’t be an inFamous game without a crazy toybox of powers, and Sucker Punch wants to make sure you don’t come away disappointed: “We try and go after powers that aren’t done to death and are also part of the urban landscape itself,” creative director Nate Fox tells us. “So that’s why Delsin has this ability to absorb the powers of other conduits into himself. The two we’ve shown are smoke and neon. People are like, why did you do neon? And the truth is that it’s because nobody’s done neon. We have the freedom to show you things you’ve never seen before.”
best of bros
Another thing you’ve never seen before in an inFamous game is the detailed facial animation being used to bring the actors’ performances to life in this game. There’s a personal story here about the relationship between two brothers anchoring the game and now you can see every pained or grinning wrinkle crossing Troy Baker’s face as he throws himself into each scene. Skipping cutscenes was so last-gen.
Like X-Men’s Rogue, Delsin can absorb the powers of any other Conduit.
“IT WOULDN’T BE AN INFAMOUS GAME WITHOUT A CRAZY TOYBOX OF POWERS AT YOUR DISPOSAL.”
playstation in 2014 Child Of Light
Unlike early JRPGs there are no random enemy encounters or level-grinding.
Ubisoft Montreal injects some new life into the age-old JRPG Format PS4/PS3 / ETA 2014 Pub Ubisoft / Dev Ubisoft Montreal Child Of Light’s creative director Patrick Plourde headed up Ubisoft Montreal team that gave the world Far Cry 3. Having finished making rucksacks out of dingo pelts, he’s crafting a fresh take on the turn-based JRPG. Behold the gorgeous hand-painted art style, which uses a modified UbiArt Framework engine, allowing the game’s fairy-tale heroine Aurora to be rendered in 3D but displayed on a 2D sprite. Turn-based battles make a return, but with what Plourde refers to as a “theatrical feel” where each character steps forward to “recite their lines through battle”. Genre innovations, like asymmetrical co-op and controlling a sidekick named Igniculus using the touchpad, prove the quest to triumph over ancient evil can still be fun.
the inside view
Name PATRICK PLOURDE, CREATIVE director
“The asymmetrical co-op is something that I haven’t seen done yet. What we’re doing with Child Of Light is allowing you to bring somebody to be partner in your adventure, but with a different experience. Since they are complementary, it brings a whole new dynamic to play, exploration and battle.”
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Latest FF saga bows out in style Format PS3 / ETA 14 Feb Pub Square Enix / Dev Square Enix
The Division
Making the apocalypse fun again Format PS4 / ETA Winter 2014 Pub Ubisoft / Dev ubisoft Massive Combining tactical squad shooting with MMO sensibilities, The Division quite rightly stole last year’s E3 with a stunning real-time demo. Already boasting a striking take on an apocalyptic New York that’s been devastated by both a global pandemic and a ruthless winter, the game looks to wrap survival horror and tactical gunplay around a persistent online world governed by the threat and mistrust which comes from trying to survive in an environment populated by player-controlled factions. Rocking devastating good looks and ambitious second-screen tactical support, Ubisoft certainly aims to shatter boundaries on PS4.
Lightning’s concluding chapter almost seems like a moot point in light of FF XV’s next-gen wonderment, but for anyone invested in the Fabula Nova Crystallis trilogy thus far, Lightning Returns is still going to be a powerful draw. Mechanically it’s markedly different, requiring less studious menu-examining and more button-bashing. You’ve got four separate ability cooldown bars in combat to manage now, each with their own abilities, so by switching regularly you can avoid depletion mid-fight. Exploration and storytelling are broadly similar to the last games, admittedly with wider boundaries to wander through. Square’s focus is inevitably now on XV, but Lightning could still be a fine FF adventure.
Castlevania: LOS2
An action game to sink your teeth into Format PS3 / ETA 27 feb Pub Konami / Dev Mercury Steam When the first Lords Of Shadow arrived in 2010 it did more than just revive a franchise that had been in a quality slump for years – taking the fluid combat of God Of War and beating Kratos into a petulant pulp. Four years on and developer Mercury Steam has carved out another slice of blood-drenched goodness, redesigning the game to suit a protagonist with near god-like powers. Gabriel has been reborn as Dracula and he’s got a coffin full of new toys to play with. There’s a renewed focus on breaking up the combat using puzzles and light platforming, while the enemies have risen in difficulty to renew the bloody balance.
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playstation in 2014
Watch Dogs This Windy City is all the pretty
Format PS4/PS3 / ETA summer / Pub Ubisoft / Dev Ubisoft Montreal
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bisoft Montreal’s hackloving open-worlder should have been the unchallenged star of PS4’s launch line-up. Not only has it topped almost every Most Wanted feature we’ve run in OPM over the last year, but Watch Dogs was even scheduled to have its own PS4 bundle. A few months ago, unwrapping that shiny day one half-matte/ half-begging-to-be-coveredwith-slimy-fingerprints wonder box without Aiden Pearce’s peeping adventure would have be damn near unthinkable. And yet, like Driveclub before it, the delay until Spring will likely do the ambitious open-world good. You already know about its big online plans for players hacking into each other’s games, forward-
set hands on Ubi’s glistening 1080p Windy City, those memories of parachuting off fleecing the Los Santos First Union Bank will be somewhat foggier. Pearce has enough truly next-gen ideas of his own to set his adventure apart from anything else on PS4. Aiden may have kept you waiting, but there’s no question this pooch is going to hack it.
“just like driveclub before it, the delay until spring should benefit watch dogs.” thinking tablet support and a geographically dense take on Chicago. What none of us can quite grasp yet is how Watch Dogs’ core story missions will really play out. Considering we’ve all just been treated to GTA V’s breathless array of inventive objectives, that extra time should give the devs ample time to craft a memorable story to accompany its ambitious online plans. Besides, placing some distance between itself and inarguably the greatest open-world ever constructed can only be of benefit to Watch Dogs. When you finally
THE INSIDE VIEW Name ALAIN CORRE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
“In Watch Dogs you can hang around in the streets with your car if you want. You can play, and you can have friends that help you while you play, or try to block you while you play. It’s all part of our plan at Ubisoft to make living worlds that are more real, and that bring you better immersion.”
Sometimes a good old firearm and a baseball cap are all you need to get the job done.
playstation in 2014 Armoured Nazis toting gatling guns? We don’t remember learning that in History class.
Wolfenstein The New Order A ‘90s era shooter coming good? We did Nazi that coming… 069
Format PS4/ps3 / ETA 2014 / Pub Bethesda / Dev Machine Games
T
ired of playing the same shooter every year? Along comes Wolfenstein: The New Order, a blast of lead, some pesky Nazis and a tank full of thumping weaponry that plays refreshingly like a first-person blaster straight out of the ‘90s. That’s no bad thing, by the way. In a genre waddling under the bloat of tiresome military settings, predictable set-pieces and uninspiring stories, Wolf bucks every trend by looking back to a time when shooters were all about the carnage. Enemies spill out of corridors, machine guns spray gleefully and returning player character B.J. Blaskowicz feels like a chiselled bastion of power. “We combine the frantic, freeform action of old with the weighty, visceral gunplay of today,” promises senior gameplay
designer Andreas Öjerfors. “It’s about bringing back the great things shooters lost along the way.” Much like those old school games, this new Wolfenstein is a single-player only experience. Over the course of an hour of our hands-on we counted at least
horrific torture and death. Finally, as B.J. awakened from a vegetative state in a Nazi-ruled version of ‘60s America, we were treated to a tense dash through a besieged, burning-down psychiatric hospital. With twin Uzis. Remember when games used to have Uzis in them? “It’s the difference between a tactical approach and a more gung-ho assault approach,” says Öjerfors. “If you want to use cover and try to take out your enemies from a distance, a single weapon is preferable. If you want to rush forward screaming while dealing an ungodly amount of damage, dual-wielding is for you.” Can the incredible pace we witnessed the opening stages play out at be maintained over the course of the whole game? We don’t have to wait long to find out.
“we were running around a burning hospital with an uzi. remember uzis?” three instantly memorable moments. One minute we were locked in an incinerator feverishly hammering pipes to stem the flames. The next we were forced to condemn one of our (considerably well characterised) squad mates to
The bad news is that the Nazis have won WW2. The good news is B.J. Blaskowicz is ready to make them pay for the privilege.
The Elder Scrolls Online
2014
Skyrim-dwarfing epic looms large Format PS4 / ETA 2014 / Pub Bethesda / Dev ZeniMax Online
R
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emember that feeling at the start of Skyrim? The sense of an impossibly vast world sprawling out before of you, rich with history and high adventure? Well, compared to The Elder Scrolls Online, Skyrim feels like playing with a bunch of broken toys in an icy garden. This year promises to deliver role-playing on a scale never before seen on console, set in a continent flavoured with the most varied, detailed lore of any video game franchise. Finally, you’ll get to see the homelands of every race in the Elder Scrolls, experiencing landscapes as varied as the sickly swamps of Black Marsh to the parched deserts of Elsweyr. It’s not just rocks and trees, either – every location is thick with story and intrigue. It’s deep enough that the dev team even requires a dedicated, Gandalf-alike Loremaster. This a series built on an almost biblical timeline, dedicated to satisfying its fans.
tamriel tales
But all of that narrative is meaningless if the game doesn’t play well. Thankfully, ZeniMax Online Studios is a team with a robust MMO heritage, dedicated to applying their vast knowledge of the genre to an already established franchise. That’s a long-winded way of saying that smashing monsters with your shield still feels deliciously meaty, and quests are familiar without ever being predictable. Better yet, that feeling of isolation found in Skyrim’s quieter moments will be entirely absent; instead, you’ll be surrounded by other players invested in a story that lets you decide the true fate of Tamriel.
THE INSIDE VIEW Name Nick conkle, lead gameplay designer
Player choice is back. Will you kill him with your left- or right-handed axe?
“We’re making a game designed to be played for a long time, and that’s reflected in the classes and the plans for endgame content and PVP. That’s what people want from an MMO – something they can get invested in for a long period of time, so all of our game design philosophies are based around that.”
playstation in 2014
Being able to visit every land, realm and isle of Tamriel will make this one epic journey.
Even in the war-torn corridors of the future, a flaming gun is still hella cool.
Destiny
Space sheriffs report for persistent online duty Format PS4/ps3 / ETA spring / Pub Activision / Dev Bungie Of the countless games set in the future, few manage to explore gameplay that feels forward-looking in and of itself. Bungie’s space-shooter Destiny does precisely this by taking the company’s expertise in player matchmaking and using it to retool the MMO genre. With the gameplay of the Halo series stagnating even as its presentation gets more polished, Destiny is poised to bring new life to the shooter genre by embracing
the potential of seamlessly networked play. “Competitive modes are absolutely part of the package,” community manager David Dague tells us. “What sets Destiny apart from previous Bungie games is that the rewards and upgrades you earn in co-op can be used when it’s time to compete against other Guardians for prestige and glory.” Despite straddling hardware generations, Destiny is one of 2014’s most promising cross-gen games.
The Evil Within
Driveclub
Format PS4/PS3 / ETA 2014 Pub Bethesda / Dev Tango Gameworks
Format PS4 / ETA spring Pub SONY / Dev Evolution studios
PlayStation’s been home to terrors every bit as frightening and as memorable as any icon of the horror world and, if Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami gets his way, Bethesda’s upcoming survival scarefest The Evil Within will be adding to that list. Shuffle forward the game’s newest foe: Boxman. Quite simply a hulking brute sporting a bloodied apron and gloves, it’s neither the spiked Hessian sack he swings nor the giant meat hammer he wields that has us measuring the crawl space behind the sofa in anticipation, but the giant rusty safe that’s chained over his head. It’s safe to say that’s one vault we’d rather not loot.
In the same way you wouldn’t want to drive a car that was rushed off the assembly line without a proper paint job, we’re to wait a few more months for Driveclub’s arrival. In addition to extra development cushion, the social racer also stands to benefit from Sony having time to wrinkle out any launch issues with PlayStation Plus and the networking experience of the PS4. Given how central to the Driveclub experience its social functionality happens to be, arriving on a fully stress-tested PSN could make or break its ability to form the best possible impression. Plus if you don’t have any friends, there’s now time to remedy that.
Shinji Mikami’s new nightmare
“that sense of isolation found in skyrim won’t be an issue in tHIS NEW LAND.”
Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
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Middle-earth Shadow Of Mordor
2014
Monolith’s latest is no conjuror of cheap tricks Format PS4/PS3 / ETA 2014 / Pub Warner Bros / Dev Monolith
Y
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ou’ve just earned the ominous task of crafting a game set within the meaty embrace of a much beloved franchise. What do you do first? If Rocksteady’s take on the Dark Knight in Arkham games Asylum and City taught us anything it was that these first steps should be onto fresh turf. Monolith was clearly taking notes when preparing Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor. Rather than slap The Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit onto the box of its thirdperson, open-world action adventure, Monolith is setting SOM betwixt Tolkien and Jackson’s well-trodden tales. The story centres on Talion, a Ranger of Gondor who’s posted to patrol a human garrison at the Black Gate of Mordor. Chief bad guy Sauron has been gone for 2,000 years and tribes of humans are eking out a life in the slowly recovering landscape. Until, that is, the Dark Lord stops slapping the snooze button and sweeps back into town.
afterlife, and with powerful new abilities, Talion has to penetrate into Mordor as the orc armies begin their inevitable growth. “We’re trying to explore what Power means in Middle-earth,” director of design Michael de Plater tells us. “We were very inspired by the idea of what would have happened if Boromir had managed to take the Ring Of Power from Frodo and use the weapon of the enemy against him.” How to explore this tale of Tolkien-esque temptation? With rhythmic, combo-based combat and across a distractionfilled sandbox world. A unique Nemesis AI System means every foe you encounter has a name, a rank and a memory. Orcs will remember you and how you fight. They might take on personal vendettas against you. If they manage to slay you, Talion won’t die in the traditional sense but will respawn after the passing of time in the world. The individual orc that struck the killing blow will remember doing so. He may have even been promoted for it. Or perhaps he’ll have been backstabbed by another orc vying for his power. This year might mark the last excuse to watch dumpy men climb mountains, but if Monolith pulls this off we’ll be more than happy to swagger back into Middle-earth.
“a new nemesis system means that enemies will remember you and adapt.”
POWER RANGER
In true badass forging style, Talion’s family are killed in the ruckus. Rather than die himself, the sword, bow and daggerwielding hero suffers a mysterious curse which bestows him with a dark wraith personality. Unable to die and rejoin his family in the
Shadow of Mordor’s gorgeous concept art gives a sense of how vividly Monolith wants to capture the sense of being in Middle-earth, while an open-world map
Talion sets out to avenge his murdered family. Let the orc bloodbath begin!
2014
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the inside view Name Michael de plater, director of design
“It’s extremely important to have balance and contrast, and it’s part of what makes it so interesting to explore Mordor in this time period. Mount Doom is dormant, Barad Dur is a ruin and there is life in Mordor. As well as bringing sunlight and contrast to the game it gives you a heroic purpose in helping save the people trapped by Sauron’s return.”
design promises to enhance the sense of exploration. Monolith promises lots of side paths and story missions nestled within Mordor’s fantasy sandbox.
2014
Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain Supreme sneaker will Snake your day Format PS4/ps3 ETA TBC / Pub Konami Dev Kojima Productions
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e’re not in Outer Heaven anymore, Toto. Comfortably the biggest departure for the undisputed sultan of stealth since the series went Solid, it’s difficult to fully comprehend just how much MGS V’s open-world shakes up Kojima’s hide-and-seek sensibilities. Not only will you now be able to lose yourself in side missions thanks to the much larger geographical canvas, but features such as day/night cycles and bullet drop physics will completely alter your approach to stealth. Bullet what? If you’ve been partial to sending guards to the Land Of Nod with well-placed tranq darts, you may have to shake up your tactics with next-gen Snake. Now complex physics systems realistically alter the trajectory of projectiles, meaning no more wielding your tranq gun like a sniper rifle.
eye for detail
This attention to detail is typical of Kojima Productions, but it’s particularly rife on PS4. Koj is a massive fan of the DualShock 4 and has even dedicated one of his team to getting the most out of the über-pad’s tremendously responsive sticks. Couple this eye for detail with the incredible lighting and particle enhancements the Fox Engine brings to the espionage party, and you could be looking at PS4’s prettiest game. Though the main Phantom Pain portion is still a way off, the Ground Zeroes prologue (being released separately) ensures 2014 will be the year of the Snake. If it meets the lofty standards set by MGS4, you’re looking at a masterpiece in waiting.
“complex physics systems realistically alter the trajectory of projectiles.” Why opt for stealth when you can just walk up and punch a dude in the face?
playstation in 2014 The Witness Braid dev’s exclusive sequel isn’t just Blow-ing smoke
The serene forests of The Witness already has us sighing with a zen-like inner calm.
Format PS4 / ETA Spring Pub Sony / Dev Number None INC If you want to get right down into the nitty gritty of The Witness, this is a game about guiding a line from point A to point B on a panel with your analog sticks. With that in mind, the fact that it’s also 30-50 hours long seems unthinkable. Who wants to play ‘solve the virtual maze’ for that long? Everyone, if those puzzles are dotted around a world as full of colour, natural wonder and mysterious atmosphere as The Witness. Anyone who played Braid on PC will know Jonathan Blow has a talent for layering meaning and metaphor into puzzles, and that’s just as evident in this surprise PS4 exclusive. For thoughtful gameplay and therapeutic visuals, this quirky effort’s your one-stop shop.
the inside view Name JONATHAN BLOW, creator
“I really enjoy designing puzzles. It’s what I’ve done for two games in a row. But it’s not as if it’s all I’m ever going to make. I think that as this game progresses you start to see that the puzzle-solving is a form of communication, where you end up with things that you didn’t start with earlier.”
The Order: 1886
Final Fantasy XV
Trials Fusion
Where’s wolfie?
New hero from school of hard Noctis
Crash and burn in next-gen style
Format PS4 / ETA 2014 Pub sony / Dev ready at dawn
Format PS4 / ETA Winter 2014 Pub Square Enix / Dev Square Enix
Format PS4 / ETA 2014 Pub Ubisoft / Dev RedLynx
The plot set-up of The Order: 1886 could almost be an allegory for the newly arrived PS4 generation. Instead of developers using a leap forward in technology to combat technical challenges, though, you have an order of dapper-dressed knights using the wave of innovations emerging from the Industrial Revolution to combat a race of half-breed werewolves terrorising 19th century London. (Okay okay, fair enough, maybe we’re over-reaching a bit with our allegory here.) If the bizarre historical overlap of laser rifles and stagecoaches appeals to you, then this atmospheric shooter will be just what the doctor – wait for it – Order’d.
Like a particularly well-groomed butterfly emerging from a seven-year cocoon, Final Fantasy Versus XIII metamorphosed into XV before our very eyes on the E3 2013 show floor. What’s in a name? Well, the technical possibilities of PS4 for starters, plus a new lead character. Noctis Lucis Caelum is the prince of a shady royal family who controls the one remaining crystal (yep, still crystals) and uses it to retain power. Good for him – until an invading force tries to bag the gem. You’re well-equipped for the ensuing war, with the ability to teleport and slice multiple targets with your blade at once. It looks gorgeous in motion, but don’t expect it too soon.
The next-gen debut of the Trials series is finally landing – with a backward triple flip – on PS4. But Redlynx isn’t just taking its motorbike action to a gleaming sky metropolis so you can see beautiful vistas. The higher the altitude, the harder you fall – and it’s all part of the masochistic charm. Fusion has some new tricks up its sleeve – quite literally. “A tricks system has been a wanted item for a long time, so we’re bringing that to Trials Fusion with our FMX game mode,” the game’s creative director Antti Ilvessuo tells us. “On designated tracks, you can perform death-defying aerial acrobatics on your motorcycle.”
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OPM Scores
Gold award Gold Award
Awarded to a game that’s brilliantly executed on every level, combining significant innovation, near-flawless gameplay, great graphics and lasting appeal.
editor’s award Editor’s Award
Not at the very highest echelon, but this is a game that deserves recognition and special praise based on its ambition, innovation or other notable achievement.
10 incredible The kind of phenomenal experience rarely seen in a console generation.
9 Outstanding Unreservedly brilliant – this
should be in every collection.
8 Very good A truly excellent game, marred by just a few minor issues.
7 Good A great concept unfulfilled or
the familiar done well, but still well worth playing.
6 decent Fun in parts, flawed in others, but more right than wrong.
86 BATTLEFIELD 4 The definitive verdict on DICE’s 64-player next-gen warzone. Is it a COD-beater this year?
5 Average What you expect and little
more, this is for devotees only.
4 Below average Any bright ideas are drowning in a sea of bugs or mediocrity.
3 Poor A seriously flawed game with little merit on any level.
2 Awful Disgraceful: the disc would be more beneficial as a coaster.
1 Horrific Own this and you’ll be swiftly,
justifiably, exiled from society.
contents FIFA 14 78 | KNACK 82 | Resogun 83 | VELOCITY ULTRA 84 | FLOWER 84 | NBA LIVE 14 84 NBA 2K14 85 | BATTLEFIELD 4 86 | CONTRAST 88 | R&C: NEXUS 89 | NFS: RIVALS 90 SKYLANDERS 92 | Castlevania: LOS - mof HD 94 | BATMAN: AOB 94 | WRC 94 | MADDEn 25 95
077
review “There’s an attention to detail IN THE PS4 VERSION that borders on surgical.”
078
New shooting animations mean even more ways for that swine Suarez to find the onion bag, dammit.
review
Gold award Boy wonder
fifa 14
@BenjiWilson
Footballing superstar sparkles on long-awaited next-gen debut
info Format PS4 Also on PS3 ETA Out now Pub EA Dev EA Canada
I
f there’s a single word that summarises EA Canada’s first crack at next-gen football, it’s ‘intricacy’. The big-money transfer to PS4 United has seen this longstanding franchise change in ways too numerous to count, but it’s the subtle touches on and off the park that really stand out. Passing that’s just that one iota more delicate. Movement that earns you, and your team-mates, a critical extra split-second to fire over a cross or curl in an effort on goal. And an attention to detail that borders on surgical when it comes to all the trappings surrounding the beautiful game. It’s critical to state that this is still the FIFA you’ve known and loved for a number of years. For all the noise its developer made regarding the ‘brand new’ Ignite Engine, a sense of familiarity pervades from the second you’re thrown into a Real vs Barca derby in order to learn the ropes. Except if you’ve dabbled with current-gen FIFA, these ropes feel more like silk scarves draped by angels, with the same liquid-smooth gameplay and TV-style presentation making itself known from the get-go. It’s as comfortable a transition from PS3 as you could have wished for, and within seconds you know you can never go back. That’s just the beginning. The more you play, the more the game evolves into a nigh-on perfect footballing dream – not quite on par with doing unspeakable things to Penny Race after a Melchester Rovers cup final win, but very, very close. The most crucial of those subtle tweaks is additional time on the ball, brought about chiefly by a raft of new animations, such as a player shuffling his feet around an under-hit pass from behind and turning to face forwards in one fluid movement. Instead of waiting an instant for your man to gain control, that extra moment becomes time where you can think about what to do next – and as a result, you no longer feel constantly rushed to get a pass or shot away. Not that those are your only two choices when in possession. Now, ball retention – such as when protecting a lead or mimicking the slow build-up play of a Roberto Martinez side
079
review
080
Right Ibra gets the better of the opposition here, but generally defending is much improved.
Left The pad thuds like a heartbeat before a penno, symbolising your boy’s nerves.
– isn’t only possible by ping-ponging the thing all over the shop in the hope of keeping it away from opponents. Instead, properly-implemented physicality – Gareth Barry holding off a challenging midfielder rather than letting him whip the ball away with next-to-no-effort every single time – coupled with that more intricate movement, enables you to play at your own pace, even in a crowded midfield. Speed still matters, but power and control are just as vital.
Smooth moves
Naturally, everything mentioned here is contextual and attribute-based – you’re unlikely to see Jermain Defoe holding off Vincent Kompany down by the corner flag for more than a couple of seconds – but that only adds to the authenticity, and therefore the magic. Play as Arsenal and you can mimic their smooth attacking play so realistically you’ll believe you’re Arsene Wenger and develop an instinctive blindless to every foul committed. Take control of Chelsea, with that strapping spine of Terry,
“EA CANADA HAS GONE TO GREAT LENGTHS TO STUDY EVERY ASPECT OF FOOTBALL.”
Lampard and Eto’o, and you really feel the benefits of the newfound physicality. Getting its teams and players to feel unique is the one area where EA has struggled to outclass Konami in recent years, but PS4 changes that. Here every squad feels different, every match a unique experience. This huge development isn’t borne out of on-field tweaks alone. EA Canada has also gone to great lengths to make nextgen FIFA feel like real football by exhaustively researching every aspect of both the stadium experience and the tellybox equivalent. That means the end of cutscenes when you make a substitution or win a corner – instead, everything happens in real time once the ball goes out of play. Earn a penalty and you see the other team debate with the ref while your designated spotman prepares himself for the forthcoming pop at goal. Same for Freddy Fourth-
Official readying electronic subs boards, goalies retrieving the ball for place kicks, and so on.
fifa 14: the show
Astonishingly, that’s just one facet of PS4 FIFA’s improved presentation. You also see home and away fans seated in the correct part of every stadium, and celebrate appropriately after each goal; working, correctly-placed scoreboards; replays of key moments (complete with Tyler and Smith discussing them) throughout matches; ball boys chucking extras onto the pitch from time to time; and lots, lots more. I’ve evangelised MLB: The Show for details like this for years. Now, EA Canada can absolutely consider itself on a par with Sony San Diego where attention to detail is concerned. And the main beneficiary of that is, well, you. These changes combine in a direct gameplay sense via a new, default camera angle.
review the opm breakdown w h at y o u d o i n… f i fa 14
37% Marvelling at just how beautifully the ball spins. Really.
9% Losing
22% Admiring all the little things that happen off the pitch.
possession after getting a bit cocky with the right stick.
16% Wondering how PES can ever hope to top this in 2014.
Above Yes, even Leeds vs Norwich serves up fluid footy in PS4 FIFA. Miraculous, no?
12% Breezing effortlessly through menus and exclaiming “About bloody time, EA!”. 4% Telling yourself that this year you’ll definitely get that fabled black Messi card. (You won’t.)
second opinion casual foot y fan
It’s the increased bank of animations that really makes FIFA a different ball game on PS4. It must have been miserable for the poor mo-cap actors having a stream of awkardly placed balls thrown at them for hours on end, but the sheer breadth of shot types and stuttering dribbles now found in-game truly speak for themselves. Phil Iwaniuk
Right Prematch imagery from all over the stadium really ups the believability.
friends & enemies
hn Terry
081
Jo
ob
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Above Having the crowd on-screen at all times makes each ground feel unique. The king of cheat players reigns supreme thanks to extra time on the ball.
It still manages to cram in around a third of the pitch at any one time, but is lower and steeper than you’re used to – providing a more intimate view of your individual players than on PS3 (which is a good thing, given the improved sense of control) and enabling a significant portion of the crowd opposite onto the screen, too. That may sound like a purely aesthetic tweak, but in practice it turns an away game at Exeter City – with the home fans on top of you in a tiny, cramped ground – into a genuinely nerve-wracking experience. Nicely done, EA Canada. I’ve not delved into Ultimate Team and Career here because they’re essentially identical to the PS3 version. Swifter menus make for an overall more user-friendly experience, but those critical of the new scouting system in Career will continue to find it heavy going. (And only that fansplitting mechanic prevents this
earning a double-digit score.) It is worth noting that you can carry over Ultimate Team (and Seasons) data from PS3 to PS4, so your all-gold, all-blonde, allsurnames-beginning-with-Van Eredivisie side can make the leap to next-gen with you. And it’s a leap you need to make the second you acquire that half-matte, half-shiny black box. FIFA 14 is one of the few launch games to have evolved in ways that aren’t solely graphics-based, and every one of its changes brings a clear, distinguishable improvement. This is an essential day one purchase and is – quite literally – the football game you’ve waited generations to play.
Additional shooting animations make RVP even more deadly.
Strength means more on PS4, making Terry a big asset to your side.
h o w t o… S c o r e a p e n a lt y 1
2
3
1 This isn’t as tough as the whiners claim. First, hold shoot for just under a second and let go when It’s in the green bar. 2 The instant – and we mean instant – you release shoot, hold the left stick toward to the top-left or top-right of the goal. 3 Two steps before your man strikes the ball, release the stick. Now watch as pigs bladder flies past flailing keeper and safely into the onion bag. Works every time, making you the virtual equivalent of Richie Lambert. Congrats. is it better than?
verdict
An outstanding first crack at next-gen football that surpasses almost the entirety of PS4’s launch line-up, instantly establishing itself among the new console’s elite. Ben Wilson
yes
yes
no
Basketball-playing broski is a handsome upstart, but years off the court has left it with plenty of rust.
Another looker, but this Gridiron gang hasn’t achieved the same advances as its Britball stablemate.
It’s so close – but 2K’s all-star baller just about wins out thanks to its immersive MyPlayer mode.
review
As super-sized Knack your punch packs a lot more... punch – but you can still die in a flash. Crap bandicoot
082
@jasonkill
knack
D’oh of the Colossus
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info Format PS4 ETA Out now Pub Sony Dev Sony Japan Studio
rom the very first glimpse of Knack at Sony’s PS4 reveal, something seemed off. Had Japan Studio really assembled the game’s star from scraps of gaudy costume jewellery, or did it just seem that way? And the parts of his body that didn’t consist of turquoise gemstones and etched gold took the form of claw-like shards. Even if you felt compelled to hug him, you’d risk succumbing to multiple puncture wounds. Knack’s character design was driven by functional imperative. He had to be able to morph, reassemble or fall apart on cue – a handy excuse to showcase the PS4’s extra power and its ability to simulate flurries of tiny onscreen elements. Having now played it, I can confirm that Knack the game is just as difficult to love as Knack the character. Mark Cerny and Japan Studio aspire to uphold the design tradition of old-school PlayStation platformers such as Crash Bandicoot and Jak And Daxter – double-jumps, cramped arenas, cartoony bad guys, collectible trinkets. But the result is so bland that it almost tempts you to cross-examine your nostalgia for PlayStation’s earlier hardware generations.
“Knack is a an adventure full of ancient relics that plays like one as well.”
Knack’s story is a hodgepodge of medieval fantasy, sci-fi and comic book plot elements. Waves of trolls have rolled into town with war machinery looking for trouble. There’s a billionaire industrialist and robot-building hobbyist, a la Tony Stark, who practically starts twirling his moustache the second he walks onstage. A kindly scientist has brought Knack to life in the lab by animating a pile of ancient relics and must now rely on his help to save the day.
GIANT LETDOWN
Knack’s designers do their best to capture the heady player progression of the Mario series where Nintendo’s plumber starts out looking like he’d be crushed to death by a falling leaf but quickly overpowers enemies by super-sizing and stacking on powers. But the mistake Japan Studio makes is dragging out that weakling phase. The Knack’s health bar looks like he’s caught the basilisk curse from Dark Souls and he shatters to rubble
with just two or three attacks, forcing you to backtrack to reclaim your progress. Oddly, buffed-up Knack may be as large as a house but he can feel just as brittle. Mastering hard games can be rewarding, but overcoming a punishing encounter in Knack more often draws a sigh of relief rather than fist pumps. You have such a narrow range of basic attacks that staying alive is more about spamming the dash-evade mapped to the right stick. You have three, very effective, super attacks, but it takes so long to harvest enough yellow crystal shards to activate them that you never feel good about burning one. It all adds up to a handsome but joyless grind of a game – an adventure full of ancient relics that plays like one as well. verdict
Knack sets out to pay homage to old-school PlayStation platformers, but the result is a generic, slow-paced, frustrating and charmless experience. Jason Killingsworth
review The lighting in Resogun has a real menace to it. It also helps incoming threats stand out.
editor’s award
bullet hell yeah
@jasonkill
Resogun
083
Super Stardust dev moulds more PSN gold
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info Format PS4 (download only) ETA Out now Pub Sony Dev Housemarque
hen you complete a level in Resogun, the robot voice of the game’s announcer (Anne Droid, we’ll call her) emerges from the DualShock 4 in your hands and makes a simple observation: “Armageddon”. As gloomy a proposition as the end of the world may be, our bionic master of ceremonies still sounds rather pleased. Apparently, even synthetic beings dig colourful firework displays. This is where you stop blinking for about 25 seconds. Bolts of lightning fork through the terminally black sky. The hovering cylinder that makes up the Sentients’ home world explodes into miniature cubes – voxels, as the developer calls them. Completely unflustered, your spaceship barrel rolls in money-shot slow motion through the neon devastation all around. “Damn it feels good to be a gangsta!” you think to yourself as you and loosen your panicked stranglehold on the controller. Even if you’re playing this twin-stick shooter on Rookie mode – the easiest of four available difficulty tiers – witnessing the laser light show described above feels like payment for a hard
“resogun pulls off the feat of balancing design innovation with familiarity.”
day’s work. The follow-up to Housemarque’s critically adored shoot-em-up Super Stardust HD, Resogun pulls off the notoriously difficult high-wire feat of balancing simplicity and familiarity with meaningful design innovation.
Flight path
Housemarque’s neon setup sets your navigation along a cylindrical plane, and this isn’t just a cosmetic touch either. The architectural structures populating the world are sparse enough to allow a clear line of sight to the other sides of the ring. In order to boost your score and collect bonuses, you need to rescue a bunch of imprisoned humans. These little green dudes can die once they’re released from their holding pods, so you spend half your time speeding around the level to pick them up before they meet an untimely demise. The tease of being able to clearly see your destination on the other side of the turntable-style level makes getting there even tenser.
Fly over these humans and they automatically cling to your ship, which allows you to carry them up to the safety pods where a tractor beam automatically extracts them. If you’re busy blasting away a wave of enemies, you can even fling them through the air into the path of the beam by hitting p and pointing the left stick in the direction you want to throw them, too. Resogun’s equivalent of Pac-Man’s power pellet is the Overdrive meter. Once you’ve filled it by hoovering up green power cubes left behind by vanquished enemies, you can unleash a foe-vaporising laser. And so the first twin-stick shooter of the next generation has a good chance of being PS4’s dark-horse killer app in its first few months of release. verdict
It’s hard to remember ever having quite this much fun blowing up things in space. Resogun shows just how beautiful arcade games can look on PS4. Jason Killingsworth
review info
Format PS3 (download only) ETA out now Pub sony Dev Futurlab, Curve Digital
Format PS4 (download only) ETA OUT NOW Pub Sony Dev ThatGameCompany
info
Format PS4 ETA OUT NOW Pub EA Dev EA TIBURON
Velocity ultra
Flower
nba live 14
Arcade shooter warps onto PSN
Jen Chen gem blooms on PS4
Balls by name, balls by nature
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084
info
he initial excitement around PS Vita was fuelled by the promise of consolequality titles running on a handheld. But what about when this progression is flipped, and games developed specifically for portable formats make the leap to your tellybox? Velocity Ultra’s PS3 port1 is a perfect test case for this scenario. It’s one of Vita’s highest-rated offerings, and surely combining a stellar game with a larger screen and a controller is a sure-fire win? Your answer is a bittersweet one. The good news is that Ultra’s innovative take on traditional arcade-shooter design continues to exert the same tractor-beam pull as it did on handheld. Zipping around the interstellar backdrop in your sleek prototype Quarp Jet, leaving a streak of nightclub neon in your wake, still feels amazing – and the mechanic of warping over walls by holding r, while using the right stick to steer the warp reticule to your desired destination, remains a stroke of genius. However, there is a but. Nobody likes big buts when it’s obvious that gripes are incoming, but the larger format screen and DualShock 3 just don’t do Ultra any favours. The vivid anime-style art panels that precede each level look sumptuous on your bigscreen, but also accentuate the fact that the level furniture itself is more functional than gorgeous.2 The extra travel time between the face buttons and right stick on DualShock 3 is a nuisance, as is repeatedly wobbling the larger non-Vita analogue stick. If you don’t own a Vita, Velocity Ultra for PS3 is still a must-play – just keep in mind that you’re getting a less-than-flattering upscaling of a modern handheld classic. Jason Killingsworth
hat’s right, Jenova Chen and co’s premier daisy-picking platformer is back to massage your psyche with splashes of colour and harp notes, like it did in 2009 – but this time on PS4. Scratch that, better than it did in 2009. We’re talking about a game that has just a few component parts – motion control, undulating natural landscapes dotted with life-giving flowers, and stabs of orchestral music when you collide with them. So now that the visuals meet your eye at 1080p and 60 frames per second, and the motion control exudes all the benefits of the DualShock 4’s improved gyroscope, you’d better believe you’ll fall in love with the experience all over again. Even the controller’s speaker has been recruited to augment the already bewitching original.1 This is a game only as far as the fact you interact with it using a controller via your PS4. There are no high scores, tutorials, upgrade trees or characters. Just a petal, and the exhilarating feeling of whooshing that petal up and down, side to side in the air, gathering other petals and breathing life into the dark and brooding environment.2 If you were desperate to find greater meaning, you’d say Flower heightens your appreciation of nature with the purity of its gameplay and its fantastic use of colour. Its use of smog and mangled iron constructs to corrupt the landscapes you’ve been so enjoying will make you feel guilty for every Chomp wrapper you threw just shy of the bin. Best of all, it’s free for anyone who bought it on PS3, along with Thatgamecompany’s debut, Flow. Embrace it like a comfortable pair of old shoes. Phil lwaniuk
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FOOTNOTES 1 Curve Studios evidently couldn’t afford to make the game Cross Buy and sacrifice revenues. 2 Vita’s smaller screen helped mitigate this. The game isn’t ugly, just unspectacular.
FOOTNOTES 1 The speaker in the DualShock 4 still makes me jump every time. 2 The electrical pylons that populate later landscapes can hurt you on impact, making them the game’s ‘enemies.’
FOOTNOTES 1 America’s most popular sport doesn’t fare much better on PS4 – see our Madden review on p.95. 2 The commentary is about the only facet of Live that does flow semi-smoothly.
n a word: why? EA’s once-beloved b-baller disappeared off court, seemingly for good, in 2009 after being regularly trounced by heated rival NBA 2K. And in the near halfdecade since, Take Two’s slam dunk series has developed into one of the best games not just in the genre, but on PlayStation full stop. There’s simply no reason for Live to exist, other than EA desperately hoping to cash in on the popularity of America’s third most lucrative sport. That’s why.1 And despite a multi-year development process, it really does play like a cheap cash-in. The visuals look decent in freeze frame, but watch the game in full flow and everything unravels. Player expressions lack believable emotion, animations transition with a constant awkwardness, and running gaits just look plain weird. And the action’s as jarring as the aesthetics, with some bizarre AI – like opposition players constantly ignoring team-mates unguarded directly beneath the hoop – and the tactic of driving straight to the basket from the half-court line annoyingly successful. Sure, I love winning, but I shouldn’t have to ban myself from being cheap to feel fulfilled in victory. It’s not an entirely joyless experience. The spot-on ESPN presentation leaves you longing for the channel to return to the UK,2 and a really neat feature is the option to have a player’s attributes, rather than your timing, dictate whether a shot goes in. (Especially handy for noobs merely looking to sling some baskets with a bunch of All-Stars.) But there’s simply nothing here to justify you buying it ahead of 2K’s b-ball champ, reviewed opposite. Doing so amounts to one endless personal foul. Ben Wilson
review Kobe feels like Kobe, thanks to the wealth of signature moves in the animation bank.
Signin’ LeBron
@philiwaniuk
NBA 2K14
085
No signs of fadeaway from this annual hall-of-famer
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info Format PS4 ALSO ON PS3 ETA Out now Pub 2K GAMES Dev Visual Concepts
amn, those shorts swish realistically. Short-swishing isn’t the most crucial facet of such a technical sports sim, but all the same there’s been a team of people at Visual Concepts pulling all-nighters and subsisting on takeout pizza until the shorts swished perfectly. Because that’s what it takes to reach these heights. NBA 2K has evidenced a clear mantra of late: if it’s in the game, it’s polished like a championship ring. In this graphically disarming PS4 version of 2K14, Visual Concepts puts the same effort into flowing garments as it does player animations, AI or presentation. The result of its obsessive attention to detail is the most enjoyable and convincing game of basketball ever. This is a very different game to the listless PS3 release. Wholesale changes have been made to MyPlayer mode (FIFA’s Be A Pro, only much better), transforming it into a kind of interactive movie starring your user-created NBA hopeful as the leading man. There are heroes, villains and dialogue wheels where last year there were only menus. The array of high fidelity facial hair for your avatar is worthy of praise by itself.
“FROM THE FIRST BOUNCE, IT FEELS LIKE A NEW GEN OF SPORTS GAME HAS ARRIVED.”
One-player court control feels human and responsive. With countless new animations in the bank, your lumbering 7ft center feels grounded yet athletic (in 2K13, controlling bigger players felt like dragging a dog about on its hind legs). Together with the off-court melodrama, MyPlayer’s depth of control is enough to have you forget about burning so much Virtual Currency on last year’s instalment.
Gimme a D
As with the PS3 version, blocking and stealing is less about contextual animations and stats and more about timing and anticipation – though outside of MyPlayer, defensive situations can get a bit soupy with you controlling a full team. Having three men attempting a block within a foot of each other is a common sight as you struggle to retain control. Time on D is frequently frustrating – not because you feel underequipped to deal with scoring threats, but because there’s a
tonne of control options you haven’t committed to muscle memory yet. While offence can be sussed with some right stick experimentation, control of the other side of the court isn’t communicated particularly well. Less significant are odd moments of sloppiness like Doris Burke’s courtside interviews, in which NBA stars stand beside what appears to be an animatronic doll. These chats add to the atmosphere by using real sound bites, but there’s no denying that Doris lacks that polish – as do the backdrops in MyGM’s many cutscenes. Still, in amongst the relentlessly exciting court drama, such flaws only frustrate for a split-second. From 2K14’s first bounce, it feels like a new gen of sports game has arrived. Swishy shorts and all. verdict
All the depth, drama and longevity you take for granted from NBA 2K series, with some new ideas to match its suitably silky-smooth presentation. Phil Iwaniuk
review eview
This might look like Joey from Friends but it’s actually Pac, Tombstone squad’s Staff Sergeant. “How you doin?”
086
War torn
@leonHurley
BATTLEFIELD 4
An almost-amazing start to DICE’s next-gen ambitions
A
n interesting discussion (okay, argument) I had while reviewing this was how to define next-gen gaming. Is it just good looks? Or is it something you couldn’t have experienced on a previous generation? Battlefield 4 manages to deliver a partial tick in both boxes with some of the loveliest-looking warzones on PS4, and an online spectacle that’s likely to leave you standing in gob-smacked amazement as planes crash into mountains, flaming helicopters drop out of the sky and 64 people turn the map orange with gunfire and explosions. The multiplayer will be traumatic to anyone used to PS3’s 20-odd sized matches. Maps are huge, and that increased player count creates chaos that has to be seen to be believed – planes duke it out overhead, helicopters strafe the ground and troops trade bullets in scattered skirmishes that individually feel bigger than entire PS3 matches. I’ve got many a memorable story to swap in the virtual mess hall of BF4, such as a crashing helicopter that interrupted a firefight between my squad and an enemy group, forcing us to scatter in panic as burning wreckage tumbled by. There were incredible scenes on the Operation Locker map as the entire lobby met in the middle for a 15-minute stand off in a tiny tunnel. Or just prowling the periphery: crawling through bushes
info Format PS4 also on PS3 ETA out now Pub EA Dev DICE
as a sniper waiting for the perfect mile-long headshot. Stuff like that’s incredible in a way PS3 could never manage. The first time a tropic thunder rumbled on the Parcel Storm map I just stopped to stare in awe as driving rain rattled trees and lightning flashed across a sky full of black clouds.
battle damage
Sadly, there are black clouds deep within Battlefield 4’s code too: the multiplayer is currently unstable as hell. Sound drops out regularly, and the game’s likely to crash at any point. At time of writing, it’s averaging about one ‘unexpected error’ an hour. One night I failed to bank a single point of XP because I didn’t see a single
match to completion. I’d say it’s inconvenient more than anything else – except one crash also corrupted my single player save as well. Bearing in mind that this is one of the most expensive games on PSN, it’s a lot of money for something that doesn’t fully function yet. The single-player at least avoids technical issues, although it suffers instead from being very, very familiar. That’s not Battlefield 4’s fault though, it’s just getting to that point in the contemporary military FPS’ lifecycle, much like when WW2 shooters simply ran out of Nazis to clobber. Call Of Duty’s having the same problem – there are only so many combinations of man/gun/
“nothing else i’ve played online offers the same sense of scale as bf4.”
review Right Lighting and particle effects all look gorgeous, both online and off.
the opm breakdown w h at y o u d o i n… B at t l e f i e l d 4
22% Lining up the perfect long distance headshot.
Below There’s a fair bit of sea conflict, thanks to a naval-set command post.
4% Feeling a bit sorry for Dunn. [Salutes.)
23%
13% Trying to work out the almost utterly random online unlock system.
Marvelling at the sheer spectacle of 64 player online carnage.
22% Having to reload your match after yet another crash.
16% Wishing the AI was more of a challenge. Or simply awake. how to… Get things done As squad leader you’re able to order your team to attack via a pair of magic binoculars. Holding u brings them up and highlights enemies. Not only does this help you track threats, but a tap of u orders squads and vehicles to attack, too. the first five hours… 1
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Above left Locations are impressively detailed, even when they’re full of holes.
second opinion series expert
Perhaps this is damning with faint praise, but I found Battlefield 4’s campaign far more coherent and polished than DICE’s previous effort. I’d go so far as to say its the best of the FPSs on PS4 so far. If you’ve got a decent HDTV and a nice surround sound setup at home, this is the game you’ll want to make your friends jealous with. Tim Clark trophy cabinet ay
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you have to take out an enemy tank… A tank, might I add, that patiently orbits a little circular road, waiting for its inevitable explosive demise. So I have a bit of difficult relationship with BF4. I love the multiplayer – I don’t think I’ve ever played anything online with such a sense of scale, or that looked this good while over 60 people hoof it about on foot, wheel and wing. But the frustration of crashes and lost progress means it comes with a guarded recommendation: it’s amazing, but brittle. And, while there are soaring highs, there are also painful lows that hold back an otherwise exciting military shoot-athon.
It w a s o n t
boom you can string together before you start to feel like it’s all happened a million times before. Much like Activision’s entry this year, there are entire levels that feel like HD remakes of previous shooty dust-ups. If I had to line them up for inspection, then COD’s got better single-player, embracing the ridiculous and running with it, bayonet clamped firmly between its teeth. Battlefield 4, on the other hand, has a far more impressive multiplayer (even with the issues). The single-player? Well, that’s still less impressive. Visually, it sets new highs for both the genre and the platform, but the pushing-apull-door AI is hard to forgive – enemies run to their marks once triggered, but rarely move after that. Combat is less about dynamics and more about removing all the people to continue. Many of the levels feel too much like delineated combat arenas. At one point
1 Things start as all wars should, with Bonnie Tyler and exploding helicopters in Baku. 2 That leads to a VIP rescue in Shanghai as conflict breaks out in China and an EMP fries everything. 3 With the US on the back foot, a rescue is launched to retrieve intel from a scuppered aircraft carrier. 4 The retrieved data sends the team on a classic beach assault, backed up by tanks. 5 Things go wrong, however, hence the meet and greet with crazy Ivan here in a Russian gulag.
verdict
The issues aren’t ruinous, and in the case of the multiplayer more an inconvenience that EA need to address, but it’s enough to take the shine off what should be one of the most enjoyable shooters on PS4. Leon Hurley
bronze
BF4’s collectables are surprisingly hard to spot, so snagging nine of them will net you a bronze trinket.
silver
gold
You’ll get this simply Reach level 25 online to for finishing the main nab this gold trophy. game on Normal. Turns However, you’re certain out the harder version to be called far worse in is silver, too. every net-based match.
review Forget about portals – it’s time to start thinking with the power of light and shadows.
Dark matter
088
@furianreseigh
contrast
Stylish charmer steps out from the shadows
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info Format PS4 (PSN DOWNLOAD) Also on PS3 ETA Out now Pub Focus Home Interactive Dev Compulsion Games
ere’s the thing. It’s almost impossible not to love Contrast, with its noirtinged glitz and Parisian swagger. Set in a dreamscape snapshot of Europe in the ‘20s, it’s a puzzle-platformer full of interesting ideas, beautiful designs and a story that’ll break your heart if you let it. But, like any true romance, your love affair with Contrast won’t be without its domestic hiccups.
get the hang of pressing a single button beside a brightly lit wall. These sections are by far the strongest feature of Contrast, ranging from simple platforming puzzles to expansive set-pieces that span a whole shadow-laden street.
As you might have noticed, this isn’t a freeto-play version of a certain car porn racer, and while it’s easy to judge Contrast as a last minute replacement for the delayed Driveclub, the game’s brimming with character and certainly deserves recognition on its own terms. The story of Contrast follows Didi, a young girl whose desperate attempts to reunite her wayward parents leads her on a journey through seedy bars, circus tents and backstreet workshops. You take on the role of Dawn, her silent imaginary friend, a character with the rather handy power to shift between the real world and the shadows that line the walls of this Burton-esque world. Switching between the 3D world and the 2D environment of the shadows is easy once you
The 3D world that Dawn explores with Didi may be the prettiest by far, but it’s also the most difficult to traverse. Considering she was trained to be a circus performer, Dawn has the acrobatic flexibility of a breeze block. Controlling her in the 3D realm is stiff and unsatisfying, but thankfully most of the platforming is resigned to the lip-smackingly good shadow sections. Light and darkness also play a key role in the world of Contrast, and as the game progresses from preconstructed shadow sections to increasingly dynamic areas with moveable lights and cut-outs that allow for custom platforms, you realise that this is more than a Limbo rip-off:
“THIS IS MORE THAN A LIMBO RIP-OFF: IT’S A GREAT IDEA IN NEED OF A BIGGER CANVAS.”
Breaking Dawn
it’s a genuinely great idea that would thrive on a bigger canvas. And this brings us to the unravelling thread at the heart of Contrast: length. Initially designed and constructed as an indie project, the Contrast that resides on PS4 still feels like the prologue to something far grander. It’s a shame, as some of the environments are incredible, but just as Compulsion Games start to build on their own ideas and rules, the game wraps up and you’re left clamouring for more shadow-hopping moments. With a soundtrack that radiates class and a platforming style that’s far from gimmicky, Contrast offers a charming and engaging glimpse into the blurred realities of a child’s imagination (while still being a fun lil’ platformer to boot). verdict
A heartfelt story and genuinely unique take on the age-old platforming genre combine to make Contrast an engaging, yet sadly short-lived, adventure. Dom Reseigh-Lincoln
review Generic robo-baddie, say hello to Ratchet’s Warmonger – a vicious rotating rocket launcher.
bolt action
@mgelliott
ratchet & clank: nexus Sprightly sci-fi jaunt has fangs beneath the fur
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info Format PS3 ETA Out now Pub Sony Dev Insomniac Games
erhaps there’s no right time to be a Ratchet & Clank game. But now, on the cusp of the next generation, with Knack trying to tempt kids away like a shiny new Christmas toy, it seem tougher than ever. But here’s the thing – you’re missing out if Nexus passes you by. Why should you care? Firstly, it’s a surprisingly solid sci-fi story. Ratchet and his boxy robot buddy Crank start off transporting the imprisoned space-witch Vendra Prog, before she’s violently liberated by her knuckle-dragging brother Neftin. Yeah, you read that right: I said violent. Nexus isn’t dark in a mascara-wearing, ‘everything’s dead’ kind of way, but the tone is set early when two characters are offed in the first act. The whole thing is pure Pixar and it isn’t afraid to tread a difficult path in order to tell a story, either. And, much like the best kids’ films, even the evil characters are refreshingly human – actually-being-aliens stuff aside – and their motivations always make sense. In the Ratchet universe, nobody is beyond redemption – a cool waft of optimism in an industry reeking with the stench of torturous cutscenes.
“don’t be fooled by the cartoon guns – think mass effect with fuzzy ears.”
Your quest to recapture Vendra takes you on a frantic adventure to haunted planets, ghostly cities and bubbling swamps. That’s why that Knack analogy is actually a bit off. Don’t be fooled by the chunky cartoon finish of the weapons: these are gnashing tools of destruction. Think Mass Effect with fuzzy ears. The Nightmare Box, for example, looks like a rubbery Halloween toy, deploying a pop-up zombie to jump-scare enemies. In reality, it draws fire like a ghoulish squad member, letting you hang back and blast off enemy soft bits with a sniper rifle. Every shooter can be upgraded with Raritanium ore that’s scattered around the levels, adding extra weapon traits.
lombax in action
Guns alone don’t justify that juicy eight, though. Pacing is smart throughout, and the shooty bits are segmented with gentle, explorative puzzling. Battery bots have to be located and ker-chunked into power sockets, bolts have
to be tightened and gravity lifts traversed – complete with accompanying jazz-tastic muzak. Crank can also enter dimensional rifts – gravitytinkering 2D sections that would give Isaac Newton the collywobbles. These could have been disastrous, but in limited numbers they’re a crisply executed distraction. There’s also an irresistible Lego feel from smashing up the scenery, rewarding you with gently tinkling bolts, which can then be used to buy new gear. You’re won’t get particle effects here, but it looks almost as lovely as any big-budget animation – enemies explode in shards of metal, pods erupt with luminous ichor and all with a score that lifts the action, underpinnning all that end-of-the-galaxy stuff. verdict
Whether you’re ready for the next generation of consoles or not, Ratchet & Clank: Nexus is an effortlessly explosive adventure on your PS3. Matt Elliott
089
review eview
Shockwaves and ESFs often knock opponents further into the lead, oddly. 090
Apex predator
@Philiwaniuk
need for speed rivals
To protect and swerve on the streets of Redview County
I
t’s surprising that debut PS4 racer Need For Speed Rivals feels like one you’ve played before (okay, I’m joking, it isn’t that surprising at all). What’s happened here is that the best bits from the last few games – Hot Pursuit’s police chases and weapons, Most Wanted’s asymmetrical multiplayer – have been cherry-picked and placed in an openworld powered by the Frostbite 3 engine. On top of that, there’s a seamless online system called Alldrive that has six of you sharing the game world at once. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Really. Alright, I’m a bit disappointed. I heard ‘openworld’ and imagined Skyrim with spoilers; an urban sprawl filled with distractions and challenges, but in reality the landscape’s broadly unengaging. There is one particular bridge you always enjoy driving when you come across it, because its supporting architecture becomes a fantastic jump when you approach it at 190mph. It’s a great place to nudge cops into the water or set a jump distance record that your friends will see whenever they pass it. However, places like that bridge are all too rare in Redview County. There’s little variation, just miles of open road. You make use of that tarmac either by working your way through the ranks of the local street racing community, or the cops trying to stamp
info Format PS4 Also on PS3 ETA Out now Pub ea Dev Ghost Games/ Criterion Games/ EA Vancouver
them out. On the RCPD beat, you unlock shinier cars and new pursuit tech (think Hot Pursuit’s weapons, but… no, that’s it, actually) by completing ‘response’ time trials, taking down other racers one-byone or busting organised events as they take place. As a racer, you’re tasked with the usual time trials, races and cop evasion missions. It’s an involving, yet very familiar structure to anyone who’s played a Need For Speed title in the last three years.
Party of six
Ghost Games, making an assured if safe debut here, would point you towards Alldrive, the mingle-player online system that populates
your game world with five other people, either cops or racers. If you’re connected to the internet when you load the game, this simply happens automatically. It’s impressive on a technical level, but there are significant design flaws. The thing is, having six players driving around doesn’t feel like it’s enough to make the world feel alive. You rarely bump into another human by chance, which detracts from the emergent gameplay openworlds are supposed to yield. You also can’t spawn directly next to someone, so instead have to spawn at a safehouse and chase them down. Which leads us onto another point – not many people actually want to race PvP.
“having six players just isn’t enough to make this open-world feel alive.”
review Right Wrecking a car has less penalty for cops than racers, who lose their session SP.
the opm breakdown w h at y o u d o i n … N e e d F o r S p e e d R i va l s
7% Wondering what Vin Diesel would make of all this.
Below “Nice aftermarket vinyls, much better” – no car designer, ever.
19% Obsessing over the frame rate. That looks like 60 now, right? Right?
27%
15% Listening to gravelly voices telling you they live the life you’re too scared to try.
Feeling like you’re playing Mario Kart with Porsches for Peaches.
11% Searching in
21% Being too scared to use your massively powerful level 3 turbo boost.
vain for the wide body kits and neon custom options.
s tat pa c k
275 19 50% 6
Top speed of the Previous series The proportion The number Hennessey entrants. Only of street racers of Ferraris in you’ll actually Venom GT in the Test Drive the car list, mph. It’s so fast series has been catch after you returning after it actually hurts running longer in turn on the siren an 11-year hiatus as a cop. to drive it. the racer genre. in fine form.
m u lt i p l ay e r On entering Redview County, you find other players already cruising the virtual roads. This way you’re be able to share the landscape with others, but if you want to get more involved a few flicks of the D-pad quickly initiates an online event.
Above left Just like the Frostbite-powered BF4, weather effects are dazzling.
how to… lose the cops 1
2
3
1 In previous games it was all over once you lost your speed, but the RCPD blues aren’t as good at fencing you in, so J-turns and U-turns are far more effective manoeuvres. 2 Rather than looking for 90º turn-offs, swap onto parallel roads then make a U-ey back the way you came to create some much-needed breathing room between you and the cops. 3 If all else fails, bring up your GPS and head for the nearest hideout – it doesn’t matter if you swing in with five cops on your tail, either. trophy cabinet ace
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Then, there’s Frostbite 3 and its lovely weather effects and wonderful vistas. Here, Rivals feels like a next-gen title, adding buckets of atmosphere to your drive as a storm cracks the sky open and turns the world blue-grey. It’s a beautiful game, but it doesn’t run at a smooth 60fps, and that’s a big deal for Rivals as an arcade racer and a PS4 launch title. Maybe it’s the victim of unrealistic expectations, or maybe it’s fallen foul of concurrent development across separate console generations, but Ghost Games’ debut racer lacks focus and fails to deliver anything meaningful from its purported innovations.
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Frien
That’s because of the geargating structure, which means whoever’s completed the most solo missions and unlocked the fastest car just blows everyone else away. There are no bespoke online race types like Most Wanted’s well-judged carnage catalysts, just cops and robbers and straight races, so if you’re in a slower car there’s nothing to do but accept your fate. These are serious missteps, but they’re not so severe that you can’t enjoy the parts that Rivals gets right. And what it gets right, it does so with masterful finesse. Handling doesn’t feel a world away from the Criterion model, but it’s been tweaked to allow for easier manoeuvres, which come in handy when you’re either side of a police chase. Subtle angle changes and zoom depth in the external camera really add drama to these manoeuvres. And, of course, the sense of speed when you get past 150mph is unrivalled.
verdict
Expect an open-world Hot Pursuit and you’ll be enthralled in the maniac violence of weapon-fuelled cop chases. View Rivals as an ambassador for next-gen racing, and it falls a little flat. Phil Iwaniuk
bronze
Beat someone on your friends list to strike bronze. Not really exerting themselves on the naming front here.
silver
Yep, you guessed it. Bust 50 racers in the cop career for this imaginatively titled silver trophy.
gold
You’ve really got to get the fuzz hot under the collar to secure this one. Reach the max heat level and it’s yours.
091
review Choosing the right Swap Force combo makes a big difference to your Skyland trip.
@furianreseigh
Portal power
092
Skylanders: Swap Force
Toy-related collectathon returns with a new trick info Format PS3 Also on PS4 ETA Out now Pub Activision Dev Vicarious Visions
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rying to explain to your other half why a 27 year-old man is sat in a dark room surrounded by kids toys might sound a tad weird, but there’s something unhealthily moreish about the sugar coated world of Skylanders. It’s a bit like the way FIFA’s Ultimate Team taps into that childish (read: OCD) glee to fill your latest Premiership sticker album with endless boosters. A few toys and a couple of collectables later and I’m ten years old again and living life to the max. Swap Force is the third instalment in Activision’s other big cash cow and while it doesn’t break too far from the classic formula, it does give the series a much needed burst of life. For those of you who don’t have children/an inner-child locked in a middle-aged body, Skylanders is a colourful platformer-cum-dungeon crawler that uses a series of toys to represent in-game characters – think Diablo III minus all the soul reaping and auction houses. Plug in your Portal Of Power peripheral, place your Skylander of choice on top and your character pops into life on screen. Each toy has its XP progress and gold saved direct to the model for easy levelling, too. Unlike the Giants characters from the previous game, the new Swap Force characters finally feel more than larger versions of the regular models. Each one separates in the middle, allowing you
to mix and match the 16 Swap Forcers for up to 256 different in-game combinations.
Pick ‘n’ Mix
Vicarious Visions has done a grand job of combining the vibrant and safe realms of Spyro & co with some genuinely fresh ideas. The multiple dungeons, zones and areas have all been tightened up to give each level a much punchier feel, and finally including the ability to jump gives the whole experience a much-needed lift. The new dev has even gone as far as adding jump animations for every single character, past and present, which is no mean feat considering the big roster. There are brand new skill paths to upgrade as you collect loot, and the various attributeboosting hats return for the digital fashionistas among you. Each of the new Swap Force characters comes with an extra ability linked to their base, so
whether it’s rocketing through a series of aerial rings or climbing a waterfall of honey, you’re getting more than just looks for your cash. Justifying the existence of another game that’s more famous for the toys that accompany it was always going to be a challenge, but Vicarious Visions has managed to create something that finally makes good on the potential of the first two. Even if you just own the Starter Pack models there’s still hours of fun to be had levelling up in the returning Arena modes. And being able to use all of your old Skylanders means that longtime players can dust off their collection and dive right in. verdict
Fun, colourful and more than a match for Disney Infinity, Skylanders finally embraces its platforming roots. Spyro of old would be welling up with pride. Dom Reseigh-Lincoln
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#91 Christmas 2013
n Watch Dogs n GTA V n The Elder Scrolls Online n Saints Row IV
n Battlefield 4 n Christmas Pre-Order Guide n FIFA 14 n Need For Speed: Rivals
n Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag n Batman: Arkham Origins n GTA Online n LittleBigPlanet’s best levels
n PlayStation 4 Launch Special n Killzone: Shadow Fall n Call Of Duty: Ghosts n Dragon Age: Inquisition
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review info
Format PS3 (PSN download) ETA Out now Pub Konami Dev Mercury Steam
info
Format PS3 Also on PS Vita ETA Out now Pub Big Ben Games Dev Milestone Interactive
info
Format PS Vita ETA Out now Pub Warner Bros Dev Armature Studio
Castlevania: Lords WRC 4: World Rally Batman: Arkham of Shadow – Championship Origins Blackgate Mirror of Fate HD Tired update gains no traction Deserving of a very firm Bat-slap Keeping it all in the family
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s far as holiday destinations go, citysized castles full of unimaginable evil are a pretty poor choice. For those choosing the setting of a beast-slaying, platformer however, it’s more than ideal. The latest outing for PlayStation’s most corrupt family tree sees Simon Belmont – grandson of blood-vomiting angry man, Gabriel/Dracula – tracing the downfall of his father and hunting for appropriately crimson-coloured vengeance.1 Walking boldly in the footsteps of its forefathers, Simon’s impressively ambitious adventure takes on nearly all of the mechanics established in Gabriel’s previous exploits. And while not all of them work, it’s an admirable attempt to fit the most amount of game into an admittedly small space. At its heart, Mirror is a refined exhibition of quality side-scrolling combat. Several of the early boss fights act as hard-fought example of how to brawl, Castlevania-style. In traditional fashion, heavy and light attacks are offered seamlessly alongside blocking and dodging, weaving together a system that will keep you hooked.2 Levels are open and layered with platforming opportunities, adding a satisfying dimension of verticality. Not all of them are instantly accessible, but the locks put in place simply act as a welcome excuse to revisit and explore this magnificently mysterious world. Biting into the succulent artery of Mirror of Fate HD reaps all manner of visceral fun. Although the game can look a little rough around the edges, it’s a still a thoroughly worthy addition to the blood-soaked legacy of Castlevania. Oli Smith
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n official license will only get you so far. Not long after nodding in approval at the true-to-life liveries and licensed driver pics in WRC 4, the disappointment begins to set in. “Is that… is that supposed to be a tree?” you wonder, dumbfounded at its pop-up-book environmental detail and checking that something isn’t wrong with your TV. Lip-smacking visual splendour has never been a strong suit of the Milestone rally games, but you’d expect a little more this so late in PS3’s life cycle, and after a number of games developed on what seems to be the same wheezing engine.1 That sinking feeling is kept only partially at bay by the handling model, which, to pay WRC 4 its dues, is slippery enough to hold your attention through the rainy Welsh forests and icy Swedish roads2 – particularly when driving with the cockpit view. But like last year’s game, you rarely have to correct the car’s weight distribution mid-corner, and that robs you of the satisfaction a rally game should give you in spades – of wrestling your machine into submission. Like a broken Buckaroo set, the back-end just never kicks out, so there’s very little challenge to be had. The moment when you find all last year’s classic cars inexplicably gone, it ties a lead weight around your already drooping enthusiasm. The only reason this game appears to exist is to deliver the 2013 car liveries, a task that could have been handled just fine with a DLC pack. If you bought last year’s game, there’s nothing for you here. If you didn’t, the palatable handling – and a career mode that sees you ascend through the ranks ‑ offers a decent afternoon’s leisure at best. Phil Iwaniuk
robably the most frustrating experience I’ve had” might not be the box quote Warner Brothers would want, but it sums this up well – an infuriating time spent trying simply to get from one point to another in a space that quite possibly invents extra dimensions. The main problem is its 2.5D set up. Firstly, while you can only move Batman left and right, that can actually take him in and out of the screen. Secondly, the map is viewed top down. Combine these and the end result bends space time in a way that leaves you with a face like the ‘I can see forever’ cat.1 At one point I spent 20 minutes circling a corridor I needed to find. The map said I was right on it, but every attempt to reach it involved corners so Bruce Wayne’s alter-ego ended up in front of it, behind it or over it – anywhere but actually in it. Compounding the issue are elements in the game that can only be interacted with once scanned, and other stuff that isn’t visually distinct – so I got lost because I didn’t scan the thing I need to use the Batclaw on, or because an open grate was impossible to distinguish from a wall. Mechanically there’s potential: the combat really works,2 and in both small doses and areas the gameplay delivers an interesting take, too. It’s just a nightmare to get around, not helped by the gear-gated progression structure that truncates the whole game. Almost every objective involves finding the magic thing you need to reach a new area. Blackgate has its moments, but it’s barely worth the patience needed to find them. If you want a proper Metroid-vania experience, give the excellent Guacamelee! a whirl instead. Leon Hurley
FOOTNOTES 1 Mirror Of Fate HD fills in the gaps left between the first LOS game and its upcoming sequel. 2 The combat can be uncompromising at times, urging you to learn its very precise flow.
FOOTNOTES 1 Car detail outclasses the environmental fidelity ten to one. 2 Rather than the real, 15-minute stages, you’re playing three-minute versions, filled with way too many left and right turns.
FOOTNOTES 1 If you can master the navigation then the rest of the game is well presented. 2 One of the nicer surprises is the combat; it mirrors the reactive flow of the main game’s FreeFlow system.
review info
Format PS4 Also on PS3 ETA Out now Pub EA Dev EA Tiburon
Straight to the bargain bin @philiwaniuk
Brady bunch
madden nfl 25
@BenjiWilson
If there’s one area of pop culture that I really don’t think has been explored in quite enough depth as of yet, it’s got to be the idea of a zombie apocalypse. Good news! How To Survive is about that very thing. Self aware to the extreme, it knows you need a USP to stand out in today’s crowded market, and so cleverly corners the ‘most aliased isometric zombie game’ pitch. There’s more craftsmanship on show in Eko Software’s hack ‘n’ slash/RPG than usually frequents this column, but there’s only so long you can spend looking at that piss-poor running animation before you start seriously wondering ‘What if I just looked out of the window for a few minutes instead?’
Expansion team forgets its personality
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icture yourself ordering the world’s largest steak sandwich – only to discover that while it looks succulent on the outside, there’s little actual taste to it. PS4’s first American football game is that stuffed sanger in virtual form. Everything is here that should be: Ultimate Team featuring players past and present, a career mode packed with off-field distractions, realistic looking stadia and players – yet there’s just something missing. And sadly, it’s more than a side of béarnaise sauce. On the surface there are positives: pass blocking is noticeably improved from the PS3 version, and running backs are able to move with more subtlety than on lastgen – squeezing through really narrow gaps between defenders. But whereas FIFA feels like an entirely fresh experience on PS4 (see p.78), this plays like a halfway house between the two gens. Graphics aside, it’s not all that different from last year’s PS3 Madden – let alone the little brother version that came out two months ago. What it lacks, more than anything, is soul. A big issue in this regard is commentary, with Jim Nantz and Phil Simms recycling numerous lines that were gratingly overused even in 2012 – and often more than
once per match. It’s offset to an extent by sideline reporter Danielle Bellini providing injury updates, but this trio still has a fair way go to match the seamlessness of Stelling, Tyler, Smith and McInally in FIFA.
Powder blew
On the upside, new animations mean your players perform tiptoe catches near the sideline (grabbing the ball while staying in-bounds) properly for the first time since the PS2 era, while weather effects (and field degradation) are spot-on. It’s impossible not to enjoy a snow game under classic, grey New England skies – even with Tom Brady racking up yards on your frozen defence. The final score is a toughie. I awarded the PS3 version 8/10 and while this is a marginally better game, the final product has to be considered a disappointment when gauged against its lofty expectations – and a sphere-kicking stablemate that has already set the bar high for PS4 sports sims. So 6/10 it is, then, with the hope that John-boy takes more cues from FIFA between now and next August. verdict
Fun and functional, but still a letdown in the bigger picture. Madden 05 on PS2 remains EA’s best NFL game – and that really has to change next year. Ben Wilson
With Joel’s functions now reduced to a), rocking gently back and forth in his maximum security retreat, and b), muttering the names of previous bargain bin entrants, it’s up to me to subject myself to similar miseries for your pleasure. Let me start by telling you that the best thing about Adventure Time: Explore The Dungeon Because I Don’t Know is its title. Presumably, the devs thought the absolutely prosaic Gauntlet-lite dungeon crawling within would be approached with such a level of titleinduced good humour on your part that it wouldn’t matter when you realised you just paid £25 for a browser game on a disc. Not so.
Below Improved D-line AI means super-mobile Michael Vick is now less of a cheat player.
You know what? I don’t mind CastleStorm all that much. If that sounds like it might be faint praise, keep in mind that this is literally a trebuchet sim, the highlight of which is breaking a wall. With explosive apples. I’m not totally clear on the level of historical accuracy there, but why would Zen Studios lie to us? Still, there’s something satisfying on a primal, Angry Birds level that keeps you invested for roughly half the time needed to destroy the firstlevel fort. The game feels a lot like it was designed for PS Vita’s touchscreen and found its way onto PSN, where it’s a bit lost.
abomination of the month If I stopped to process the notion that I’ll never get the time back I spent wrestling with A-Men 2’s spongy, imprecise jumping and clunky puzzles, I might never stop trembling with impotent rage. Just jump over the box and shoot the men, guy, you’re a soldier. It’s rare to find a game where a spy who won’t shut up about beaver-based conspiracies isn’t the low point. Phil Iwaniuk
095
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096
O n S a l e 17 Jan Subscribe on page 56
castlevania: lords of shadow 2 There will be blood as we sink our teeth into Belmont’s return
this month online
dlc
movies
music
how to
trophies
on the store 100 Beyond: Two Souls – Advanced Experiments We put Quantic’s Portal-esque first DLC drop through its paces. If you’re not into QTE puzzles, look away.
097
on your xmb 102 Man Of Steel Zack Snyder refits the allAmerican superhero in post-911 pagentry and serious tones.
music
online tests
Call Of Duty: Ghosts
Is the next-gen incarnation of Activision’s globestomping shooter fit to hold onto its fanbase?
98
103 This month’s hottest tunes
how to… 104 Upgrade a game to PS4
platinum club 105 Beyond: Two Souls
online tests what we’re playing now
multiplayer modes put through their paces by our team of experts
review
F1 2013
Phil Iwaniuk takes to the Formula 1 servers to rewrite an annus horribilis for the sport If, like me, you watched those hesitant men in their tyre-ruining machines coast from Albert Park to Interlagos on TV this year, scared to floor the throttle in case their Pirellis burst into farcical ribbons, the cavalier spirit of F1 2013’s online racers is a breath of fresh air. Usually when I play a Formula One game I wonder what the devs can do to increase the realism; this season I’ve been wondering what the FIA could do to make its procession of oil company advertising more like a videogame.
098
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
Dom Reseigh-Lincoln gets his feet wet I’ve never been convinced that Assassin’s Creed really needs a multiplayer mode, but after forking out for a PS4, I’m still determined to plunder its murky depths. Wanted remains the best mode on the roster with its all-out murdery chaos. I’m not even that good, but there’s something oddly satisfying about shivving your target in a busy marketplace, only to have your own hide skewered by a sneaky, roof-leaping buccaneer.
GTA V
Alert the authorities – beach bum Iain Wilson’s causing chaos in GTA Online With the much-anticipated arrival of the Beach Bum DLC I don a tropical shirt, board shorts and flip flops, then head down to the shore in my new buggy to try and get a beach party started. My invites sent to other players seem to be falling on deaf ears, until I hear a growing rumble and look up to see a huge Titan plane swooping in overhead. After a textbook landing on Vespucci Beach, the pilot sprints over to my campfire and we chug down bottles of Pißwasser together as the sun lazily sets over the ocean.
info Format PS4 Pub Activision Dev Infinity Ward review issue #91, 8/10
Call Of Duty: Ghosts
Most overpowered weapon? Your headset mic
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hen considering places you’re least likely to find polite conversation, Call Of Duty multiplayer can consider itself right up there with prison wards, London night buses and Joey Barton’s Twitter feed. And of all the lingering anachronisms that seep from last-gen to current (yep, PS4 is current-gen now), it’s the gushing stream of puerile voice chat that feels the most outdated. Haven’t we, the gaming populace, progressed beyond poo-flinging yet? No? And I suppose I’m a f*cking camping noob for even asking? Oh, alright then. Haters gonna hate, of course. And although they’re presented with a generally excellent array of online modes and maps, COD’s infamous trolls do have some fodder. At the time of writing, PS4’s not out in the UK so we were forced to venture into stateside servers to find a match, and inevitably
that led to sluggish matchmaking and in-game lag. The local servers going live will remedy this, but they’re not going to make COD’s online play flawless. It’s currently not unusual to respawn just metres from the player who just killed you, or find yourself in a team of almost exclusively low-ranked players struggling to keep your heads above water against six level-50+ guys and their
attack helicopters. These are problems that can be easily fixed in patches – and they will be, if previous dev support is anything to go by. Once it’s been ironed out a bit, Ghosts offers just as much adrenaline and longevity as the best of its predecessors, and that’s largely down to its maps. Obvious highlights so far are Whiteout and Stonehaven, both huge arenas with dozens of paths that shy away
the weapon feedback and map design philosophy hasn’t changed in years, and with good reason.
Game changer
New to the series is a dynamic weather system and destructible scenery that changes a map’s pathways mid-game, such as Stormfront’s lashing rain getting heavier with each passing minute.
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■ Lcipsandae nis alibus rese del ium fuga. Ut exped explandundit re cum, que voloria
Killzone: Shadow Fall
Red-eyed blaster dares to be different online info Format PS4 Pub Sony Dev Guerrilla Games review Issue #91, 8/10
s any leathery lothario will tell you, variety is the spice of life. As such, Shadow Fall’s strongest online asset is that it plays completely differently to shooty PS4 rivals Call Of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4. Alright, not completely differently – there are still guns, but those guns do less damage, and that means firefights extend beyond COD’s quick draws. During most of its ten online modes (including cream of the crop 24-player Warzone), killing is the means to an end rather than the main attraction. K/D ratios are hidden away, overall points tallies for helping to complete objectives stand in their place. Its matchmaking and team balancing are also the strongest of the three so far, so you’ve plenty of cause to take a change of pace. verdict
Radically different approaches to map design, weapon power and an emphasis on objectives over K/D puts Guerrilla’s gunplay at the top of the pile. Phil Iwaniuk
from box and crate cover in favour of undulating terrain, foxholes and trenches. The 14 total maps are versatile enough to feel fresh and different from mode to mode, although it’s a shame most modes are limited to 12 players – only a handful like team deathmatch extend to the billed 9v9. Co-op Extermination mode is hampered only by dull alien enemies, but for the sheer challenge of maxing out its own gear upgrade path, it’s still worth a go. It’s not particularly big or clever, and it certainly doesn’t feel like the step forward Modern Warfare was on PS3 – so why can’t I stop playing it? It’s because Infinity Ward’s smart enough not to break the formula. The map designs and weapon feedback and philosophy hasn’t really changed in six years, and with good reason. It isn’t broken, so why fix it? verdict
Still potty-mouthed, still quick on the draw and still not without its hiccups. Just like weaning yourself off a heavy caffeine habit, Ghosts’ immediacy and chaos is hard to pass up. Phil Iwaniuk
R WWE 2K14
More Triple H than triple A info Format ps3 Pub 2k games Dev yuke’s review Issue #91, 8/10
emember how Ultimate Warrior used to make you dizzy by spamming one running attack after another? 2K’s online brawler has the same effect, with nigh-on every opponent charging around the ring like a Red Bull-powered toddler. It makes for a farcical experience, but there are still some net gains here – all of them found under the ‘Community Creations’ banner. Literally thousands of past and present grapplers are available for download, all created by fellow rasslin’ fans – and some, like Curtis Axel, are actually better than the real models in the game. Spent years wanting to book a WrestleMania main event of Max Moon vs Adam Bomb? Finally, you have the canvas to realise your pro-wrestling dreams. verdict
Online bouts are a nonsensical experience, but it’s still worth hooking this up to the web in order to flesh out the roster with your faves. Ben Wilson
099
on the store
empty your wallets now with the latest downloadable diversions expansion
dlc £1.99
Killzone: Shadow Fall – Owl Skins pack
Dress your loveable OWL attack drone/ faithful robot friend in a variety of new skins, such as ‘taxi cab’, ‘pink tiger’ and ‘digital camo’ for two quid apiece in this initial DLC drop that doesn’t feel at all like futuristic horse armour.
£3.99
Beyond: Two Souls – Advanced Experiments 100
£3.39
Mr Cage thinks inside the box with new missions
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ather than tacking an addendum onto the narrative, Beyond’s first DLC pack sensibly exists in its own vacuum – a bit like Metal Gear Solid’s VR missions. Scratch that, a lot like those VR missions – the experiments in question take part in large, featureless rooms populated with the occasional box or switch. It feels like the more interesting world of the Kara demo is behind the next set of futuristic doors, if you could just figure out that bloody switch puzzle. Weighing in at 30 minutes of new content (more realistically 15 for all but the most dunderheaded test subjects), Advanced Experiments is a cunning cross between Portal and those French adventure games you stopped playing in
the late ‘90s because they made the blood vessels in your eyeballs burst. The supernatural wing of the agency has Jodie and Aiden hitting switches, shifting crates to and fro and activating elevators for its own data-gathering purposes. We can only assume it’s for a research paper called ‘Measuring
Compliance And Conformity With A Series Of Mundane Tasks’. As a series of secret chambers to test your supernatural abilities, it sounds like a decent excursion from the narrative-driven game – but the absence of any well-designed puzzles nullifies that potential from the off.
It’s like portal meets those frustrating french adventure games you played in the late ‘90s.
£3.99
It might rip off every Japanese RPG there is from Zelda to Chrono Trigger, but this finely matured adventure from the PS1 is all the better for its fine imitation.
£3.99
Crash Bandicoot
Before Naughty Dog brought the likes of Drake, Sully and Elena to your widescreen, it was busy giving this marsupial pig-rat plenty of apples to gather and gaps to jump.
If you prefer cosplay to spin-kicks, your day has come: this new themed skins pack has six new dress-up options for The Dark Knight and The Boy Wonder, with some classic looks that include Batman Noel and One Year Later Robin. £27.99
Grid 2 – All-In Pack
ps1/ps2 games
AlundraPS1
Batman: Arkham Origins – New Millennial Skins pack
£1.99
DriverPS1
Some groundbreaking narrative-focused driving from the days of the PS1, with a ‘70s cop show angle and miles of ‘Frisco streets to swerve this way and that through.
£7.99
Max Payne PS1 £2
The grimacing cop-gonebad’s PS2 debut is looking more David Guest than Demi Moore these days on a visual level, but his bullet-time action is still addictively difficult.
£3.99
Theme HospitalPS1
It’s the game that trained a new generation of healthcare-oriented civil engineers, back from ‘90s oblivion to give you the power to give life (and move radiators around).
A host of cars and tracks make their way onto the Grid (2) in this hefty DLC package from Codemasters. There are some new circuits on offer, including the Spa-Francorchamps and Bathurst, and on the motors side there’s everything from Skylines to Sierras. However, it is tad pricey for DLC.
Gaming essentials
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coming soon Battle Of The Damned
26 DEC
Dolph Lundgren is 56 now, but there’s still enough shooting and frowning left in the old dog to facilitate this zombies vs robots flick.
blu-rays
Elysium
26 DEC Matt Damon lives on a decrepit future-Earth, while Jodie Foster resides on Elysium, a satellite where everything’s great – from District 9’s Neill Blomkamp.
What Maisie Knew
6 JAN
A stirring adaptation of Henry James’ novel, it follows a bitter custody battle between Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan.
Insidious 2
6 JAN James Wan has a formula, and it worked just fine for Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring. Why lose the creepy dolls and jump scares for this sequel?
The Elephant 13 JAN Man One of two classic David Lynch movies finding their way to Blu-ray. This biopic of Joseph Merrick is both haunting and touching.
102
Man Of Steel
Kal-El reboot is fanboy-kryptonite
W He may be built like a house, but Ralph boasts the proverbial heart Amid the coming-of-age gold. plenty of space story,ofexpect age beards and big pecs.
hen 300 and Watchmen director Zack Snyder was revealed as the man that would helm a Superman reboot, expectations of another Nolan-esque superhero series lowered a bit. Then this fanboy-baiting and resolute fashion Man Of Steel descends from the stars, devoid of outside underwear, bristling with ominous Zimmer synth notes and demanding to be taken seriously. If the moody blue-black colour palette doesn’t tip you off that this is no ReeveHackman high camp, the peppering of 9/11 imagery will leave you in no doubt. The truth is there’s no subtlety to Man Of Steel (we know he’s Jesus in spandex, we don’t need to see him literally float through space in a crucifixion pose). However, in a movie landscape obsessed with re-skinning old heroes and retelling origin stories, Snyder’s take strives to up the adrenaline (and testosterone) further than its peers as it whooshes, billowing
cape in tow, towards its city-shattering finale. Leading man Henry Cavill fills those crimson boots with a humility that helps ground such a godlike being, but his performance could have done with a little more humour. You know, to provide some relief from watching thousands perish when metahumans start flinging buildings at each other. It’s no thigh-slapper then, but with strong performances from a supporting cast that includes Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner and Amy Adams, you’d still be hard-pressed to turn down an evening with the new Man Of Tomorrow. Dom Reseigh-Lincoln
Mulholland Drive
13 JAN
Lynch at his most mercurial/ pretentious, depending on how you feel about two-hour dream sequences – oh, and that soundtrack.
You’re Next
13 JAN A gang of killers terrorise a picturesque country mansion, seemingly at random. Like Home Alone, if you swapped the out paint cans for rusty axes.
The Third Man
13 JAN
My Cousin Vinny
13 JAN
A touch of high-brow from 1949: pulp fiction writer Holly Martins investigates the death of a black market dealer friend in WW2 Vienna.
In this courtroom comedy, loudmouth lawyer Joe Pesci defends his brother – that lad from the Karate Kid – from a murder charge.
The Graduate 13 JAN Before MILFS, there was Mrs Robinson. This seminal ‘60s flick, referenced in every TV show and movie that’s followed, finally gets a Blu-ray release.
Like all of Nicolas Winding Refn films, Only God Forgives is heavy on the ultra-violence.
music
Toy Join The Dots Format Album ETA Out now Price £7.99
Five London longhairs set the controls to ‘trippy’, make a beeline for the heart of the sun and drop by some of London’s finer vintage clothing emporiums en route. Sure, people were doing this as far back as the ‘60s, but fans of The Horrors should love it. toy-band.com
Only God Forgives Gosling’s ganders can’t steer this on track
E
ven though I’m telling you not to, I know you’re going to go into this Gosling-Refn reunion expecting Drive 2, set in the Far East and with a bareknuckle boxing overlay. So I’ll say it again: this is a very different proposition. There is some overlap, most notably the bracing violence and minimal dialogue (though this is even lighter on the words), but Only God Forgives is a far less approachable, and far more challenging proposition. It’s also, to be frank, nowhere near as good a film – although it is the kind of piece that reveals certain qualities only upon further consideration. What’s most challenging at first – apart from that violence, which is a stern test for even the most hardened gore-lover – is how obscure the whole thing is; Refn seems to be being intentionally cryptic in his direction, but in a manner that tends to infuriate rather than intrigue. The story, such as it is, concerns Julian (Gosling), who is a player in the Bangkok criminal underworld, and his collision course with a ruthless lieutenant in the local police force.
There’s also some family affairs thrown in there (Kristen Scott Thomas is brilliantly terrifying as Julian’s mother), and a whole church-load of biblical undertones. What is easily appreciated is how good the film looks and, in particular, sounds, thanks to a pulsing, unsettling score from composer Cliff Martinez. Less so is the message it’s trying to send, which seems to be a confused crossover of fatalism, revenge, responsibility, and amorality. In trying to elicit meaning from minimalism, Refn seems to have pushed things too far. The smouldering deadpan looks of Gosling can save you to a certain extent, but only so far. Joel Gregory
Kele Okereke Heartbreak Format EP ETA Out now Price £3.99
It’s him from Bloc Party, taking the opportunity of his band being on hiatus to carve out a career as a buff techno DJ. And he certainly knows what he’s up to, going on the likes of Get Up and God Has A Way, pneumatic stompers neatly attuned to the dancefloor. iamkele.com
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Childish Gambino 300 Format single ETA Out now Price £0.99
Fans of NBC comedy Community will recognise Donald Glover as student Troy Barnes, but alongside his TV career, he’s also been making waves as a rapper. New single 3005 proves his 2011 debut album Camp was far from a lyrical fluke. childishgambino.com
Katy Perry Unconditionally Format single ETA Out now Price £0.99
The former Mrs Russell Brand spreads her heart wide open on this stand-out-single nabbed from mega-selling 2013 album PRISM. Its full-on power ballad histrionics suggest that she might have outgrown the perky teen-pop of Last Friday Night, but she remains our biggest guilty pleasure regardless. katyperry.com
how to… doctor playstation
Our console medic fixes your tech woes with actual science
Use a PS4 upgrade code Enter next generation gaming the thrifty way…
1 2 3 STEp 1 Pick either the digital or physical disk route
STEp 2 Redeem your code from the psn store
STEp 3 Download the PS4 game with your stats
the problem
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You heard about the ‘PS4 version for cheap’ thing when you bought your PS3 copy of Assassin’s Creed IV, but now you’re not sure how to upgrade to PS4. Fret no more.
Here’s how the PS3 to PS4 digital upgrade program works: many of PS3’s twilight big hitters, including Call Of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4 and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, come with a download code that’ll unlock the PS4 version for a significantly discounted price (for a limited time, mind you). In all but NBA 2K14’s case it’ll cost $10, or £10, because publishers think you don’t know how conversion rates work. However for 2K14’s baller sim you’re looking at £11.99 for the PS4 upgrade, so it’s basically the Wild West out there. The good news is, you’re entitled to get with the program whether you plump for a physical or digital copy of the five participating games (Injustice: Ultimate Edition is the one we haven’t mentioned yet), so thus far step one can be reduced to: buy game. Nice and simple, eh?
the verdict
So, it seems purchasing a digital copy of the PS3 version is the easiest route to take, but even with a physical disc the digital upgrade progam’s a cinch. Now go forth and explore the new horizon with our helpful tips.
It’s at this point that the confusion sets in. You’ve got one code, two consoles, and a growing sense of dread that you’re somehow going to muck this up. Don’t worry, it’s surprisingly simple. Let’s begin by assuming you plumped for the physical copy of the PS3 game: once it’s installed, head to the PSN store and enter the code as it appears on the voucher in the ‘redeem code’ menu at the top of the screen. Follow the on-screen instructions until the process is completed, and that’s all you need to do until your PS4 turns up. Digital owners have it even easier: the PSN store will automatically recognise that you own the PS3 version of the participating game, so as soon as the PS4 one becomes available you’ll be able to download it straight onto your next-gen hardware once it turns up.
You’ve done all the hard work, if you can call it that. In this final stretch – before you bask in discounted next-gen gaming ambrosia – you need to sign into the PlayStation Network with your existing account details, then search for the game you discounted earlier. Apparently if you have the PS3 disc in your drive at this point there’s a danger it’ll muck everything up so, you know, don’t. Purchase and download your cheaper copy from the store, and only once the install’s completed, whack that PS3 disc back in the PS4 drive, because you’ll need it to play the souped-up version. Digital owners: this really is easy street now. With no discs to worry about, it’s simply a matter of heading to the store after signing in with your old login details, finding the PS4 version and downloading it on the cheap.
next month
The doctor shows you how to get the most out of that share button on the DualShock 4 by uploading your stuff online.
Look away!
Spoiler alert
Mr trophy
Iain Wilson’s PSN ID is Wilbossman, and his trophy cabinet is bigger than yours.
Platinum x 50 Gold x 263 Silver x 1,073 Bronze x 4,473
Jodie takes a well-earned breather before replaying that particular Black Sun mission, because trophies.
Platinum Club
Our man delves into the Infraworld for gold in Beyond: Two Souls
N
o one knows what happens to us after we die, but with the promise of supernatural silverware calling us to the other side, we bravely delve into the great wide Beyond. As the game is heavily story driven, almost all of the trophies are hidden, which is great for avoiding spoilers, but means a guide is essential if you want to bag them all in the minimum two playthroughs required. From the start you should select Duo mode, then use two pads to guide Jodie and Aiden all the way through for Together Till The End – since you only control one at a time, this can be done easily on your own. The first run is about being good, succeeding in all QTEs and helping the key characters survive to the end, so make sure Walter, Jimmy, Paul, Norah, Cole and Ryan all make it to unlock Saved All. When you reach the ultimate decision in the Black Sun chapter, returning to reality awards Chose Life and opens up a choice of four endings. Pick any one to get The End once the credits have rolled,
and if you used a guide you should also receive Explorer at this point for discovering all of the bonuses. You now need to replay the Epilogue three more times to see all the other endings, which, tediously, takes about 15 minutes a go (thanks to all the unskippable scenes). Once they’re taken care of, go back to Black Sun and save
the dinner date with young Ryan. Naughty Aiden, indeed. Take the appropriate actions (or inactions) so that the key characters you saved during the first playthrough die this time around, then choose Beyond to unlock A Better World by joining them all in the Infraworld for the sixth ending. Use chapter select to play through Black Sun yet again and let everyone die, then pick Life followed by Alone for ending number seven. You’ll no doubt be utterly sick of this mission by now, but go through Black Sun one last time and fail the QTEs when you get attacked in the condenser to reveal the final outcome for All Endings…, along with Beyond: Two Souls Master. Jodie talks about “watching the same film looping over and over again” during most endings and that’s exactly how going for the platinum feels, but if you can cope with all of the repetition then you should be able to polish it off in around 20 hours or so.
If you cope with all the repetition then you should be able to polish it off in around 20 hours or so. everyone as before, but then select Beyond to collect Chose Afterlife and view the fifth ending. After being mostly good up to this point, the gloves are off for the second playthrough as we are now aiming to be as bad as possible. Uncontrollable requires you to take every opportunity to be evil with Aiden, but this can be tricky. You must choke Kathleen during the initial experiment, jump the possessed Embassy guard off the balcony, set the teen house party on fire, strangle the kid during the snowball fight, throttle Jodie’s adopted father Philip when he abandons her and totally ruin
Next issue Our man swashes all the buckles as we comb the Caribbean for silverware in Assassin’s Creed IV.
join the club
Hey! What’s the hardest trophy you’ve snagged? Tell us at opm@ futurenet.com
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info pub Capcom Dev CAPCOM released 2005, PS2 get it now PSN, £10.99 (DMC HD Collection)
need to know
1 2 3
Bad bro Vergil was playable in the special edition. The game sold a total of 1,300,000 copies worldwide. Dante has since been redesigned in DmC: Devil May Cry.
Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening remains a shining example of how to blend hack ‘n’ slash combat with gunplay.
retrostation
Brotherly love
GA me
by balancing the increasing difficulty, dmc3 becomes firm but brutally fair.
c
ever witnessed. Slashing and shooting hoards of demonic nasties, everybody’s favourite demon-hunter surfs across the shop atop an unlucky crony, while mixing things up on the nearby jukebox and juggling slices of pizza alongside the iconic red coat. It sets the tone for a game that never lets up with either its unique Japanese style, or its utterly intoxicating speed of play. The breakneck pace at which the story whizzes by only adds to the frenetic energy that this third iteration gives off in its every waking second. Like being bellowed at by a brickbuilt personal trainer, DMC3 loves nothing more than to pump you up, face you with near-insurmountable challenges and watch as you crash them into completion by all manner of stupendously cool means.
si
S
ibling squabbles can be thoroughly problematic at the best of times. Arguments over who gets Tuesday night TV rights, or the last slice of pizza, can quickly descend into all manner of unfortunate anarchy. So when two half-demon brothers start scrapping over the fate of humanity, you know things are headed south. Fortunately for the PS2 crowd of 2005, this pair of bad-tempered brutes also brought with them one of the most refined hack’n’shoot combat systems ever. Hurtling along at bullet train pace, this outrageously melodramatic slash-a-thon may well be sillier than the outtakes of a Naked Gun film, but beneath the facade of over-the-top nonsense lies a razor sharp core of perfectly-constructed combat. The opening hour of the game perfectly encapsulates what Dante and co have planned. Starting out in a tightly enclosed shop, Dante and his 2001 haircut fight out one of the most unnecessarily elaborate battles
as
Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening
Cl
Each month we celebrate the most important, innovative or just plain great games from PlayStation’s past. This issue we visit our favourite demon hunter Dante, as he attempts to resolve some nasty family issues – with the help of a massive sword
Devil May Cry 3 oozes fun in its every action, constructing a whole that’s truly unforgettable, thanks to a combination of overtly-stylised gameplay and similarly showy cutscenes. And once you’ve entered the city’s imperious castle after an hour of play, you’ll be utterly engrossed with new weapons such as nunchucks, gauntlets and a guitar-scythe (yes, really), all with their own upgrades to purchase and master, using the rather gothic currency of demon blood.
DEVILISH FLAIR
Each of these weapons possesses its own totally unique style, allowing you to deal death in a variety of ways. Cracking out the super-fast Cerberus nunchucks keeps those low-level demons from ever getting anywhere near your vital organs, but up against the more sluggish heavy-hitters, you might find yourself smashed into the ground like a blonde-red pâté. Balance is imperative to any successful hack ‘n’ slasher and it’s something that Devil May Cry 3 nails. The Dante show’s increasingly high difficulty is justly grounded within an absolute system that never sees the blonde-bombshell minced out of anything other than player fault – it’s firm but brutally fair. Subsequent additions to the genre have offered up an added level of cinematic clout, yet none quite hold the balance and purity of Devil May Cry 3’s thumb-numbingly addictive combat system. It’s a lightning-fast rollercoaster ride that, in amongst its brotherly battles, mesmerises and reassures that combat is king.
■ DMC3 was actually a prequel to the original game. ■ Achieving an S rank was a real challenge in DMC3. ■ The third game remains a firm favourite with fans.
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T IME MACHINE
Name that game Guess the four games, and their scores, from these review quotes
1
opm time machine
5 years ago Heavy Rain caused us to break out our brollies in OPM #27 – then use them to fend off Resi 5’s reanimated shufflers
The problem is that the actual walking itself sucks, by the measure of every other game on PS3 that manages to feature walking of any kind.
2
3 The co-op campaign fares much better. There’s no turgid scripting and irrelevant plot, just carefully focused tactical fighting with one of your comrades.
Above The dead rose again as we went hands-on with Capcom’s fifth instalment in the Resi series. To celebrate our love for all things zombirific, we put together the most comprehensive guide to Resident Evil found this side of Raccoon City.
Below left Sonic Booms and stretchy limbs abounded as SSFII’s HD Remix earned a Zangief-sized 9/10. Below right The magic behind Heavy Rain was revealed in a trip to Quantic Dream’s French HQ.
4 moments of brilliance and a curious story make the flood of mediocrity worth dipping into. 1. Skate 2, issue #28, 8/10 2. Red Dead Redemption, issue #45, 10/10 3. Battlefield 3, issue #65, 8/10 4. Silent Hill Downpour, issue #70, 6/10
Answers
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Of more substantial impact are the side-quests you can undertake on your journey, and the dynamic events that unfold around you.
Far left With Xmas 2009 right on top of us, we debated whether or not the big winter release schedule was a good thing or a bad thing for gamers. Left Ted Price gave us the lowdown on Insomniac’s next sci-fi shooter, Resistance 2, in an exclusive chat.
retrostation
don’t make me play!
who?
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force of the team to play their most feared game
info pub Rockstar Games
Dev Rockstar San Diego released 2008, PS3 get it now PSN, £19.99
what? The fourth entry in the Midnight Club franchise (and the first and only to grace the PS3), Midnight Club: Los Angeles is an open-world racer from Rockstar San Diego that wears its arcade DNA and boy racer stylings with pride.
■ For a game that arrived in 2008, Midnight Club: Los Angeles still looks great and plays surprisingly
well for a five-year old racer – but then again, this is the studio that gave us Red Dead Redemption.
A
Dom Reseigh-Lincoln has about as much time for driving simulators as he does for the footballbased variety (which isn’t very much, if the sarcasm failed to leap out at you from the page).
h, driving sims. The feeling I get from playing one of these damnable things echoes my reaction to watching Mrs Brown’s Boys for more than three seconds: I slam my head against a desk until all the bad things go away. Before going any further, a confession: I’ve already dabbled in the genre. In 2006 I picked up Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec in the hope of scratching a sudden, nagging ‘play-vehicular-pornnow!’ itch. And I loved it, and I mean really loved it. I chased every license and won every race it took to soup-up my trusty little Mazda RX-8. But 30-odd hours later I was done – my driving sim quota filled for this lifetime. So as my PS3 fires up Midnight Club: Los Angeles, I sit back without very much hope for the next few hours.
My nippy little vw golf feels more like a bumper car than a racer. Without much fuss I’m asked to pick my rusted banger of choice, and a moment later the entirety of a semi-accurate LA opens before me. Being thrown straight into an open world is surprisingly liberating, too. After changing the default controls around (using the right stick as an accelerator – really, Rockstar?) I’m given my first little race. My VW Golf is far nippier than it should be and the bouncy controls make it feel more like a bumper car than a racer, but never to the point the I lose control. The soundtrack is your standard mix of electro, hip-hop and ubiquitous ‘metal’ and it complements the whole package. Midnight Club plays like a less refined version of the truly underrated Driver: San Francisco, and is clearly aimed at Fast And Furious fanboys with short attention spans, but these things aren’t negatives. It’s dumb fun, and LA’s a fine location to hare around. Meaning that, unlike that guady Irish sitcom, this doesn’t drive me crazy after all.
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eL AL Hth OF top 0M E F5A
THE definitive guide to this-GEN’s greatest games
ps3 Hall of fame 1
2
Grand Theft Auto V
No game could live up to the pre-release hype that surrounded Rockstar’s latest open-world effort, and yet somehow expectations were surpassed by the phenomenal final product. The largest entry in the series is also one of the most ambitious games ever, but its fusion of thrilling missions, entertaining characters and scathing satire looks effortless. There can be no better way to bring a generation to a close.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
9
The game that sparked a million mancrushes, with a perfectly pitched script, crunchy combat and set-pieces like no other. In three words: unprecedented. Unequalled. Uncharted.
3 110
Red Dead Redemption
A near-perfect open-world fusion of engaging storytelling, truly compelling characters and a living environment ripe for experimentation. No sandbox since has got us quite so invested, and the bold ending still resonates to this day.
10
Batman: Arkham City
The most compelling bit of Bats action money can buy… that doesn’t involve Heath Ledger’s Joker. Thanks to an acutely detailed open-world chunk of Gotham, Rocksteady’s classic is simply the best superhero game ever made.
Ico/SHADOW OF THE COloSSUS HD
The only double bill that lets you hold a princess’ hand before stabbing up a labradoodle-cute monster the size of a shopping centre. Both games share the capacity to make you cry like nothing else on PS3.
4
The last of us
11
Portal 2
5
Bioshock Infinite
12
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
PS3’s premier developer proves a misbehaving pooch can learn new tricks in this extraordinary apocalyptic adventure. Blending intense horror, ferocious shooting and a wonderful script, this is one of the most emotive games in history.
Perhaps the best narrative of the entire generation brings one of its finest series to a staggering climax. The original game would be well deserving of a place, but the mind-boggling revelations here run a whole lot deeper.
Only Valve could turn advanced physics, impossi-puzzles and a voice cast comprised of a disembodied AI and Stephen Merchant into such a unique and undeniable work of genius. Hands down the funniest first-person experience on console.
Had it worked from the off? Top ten, no doubt. It’s testament to this impeccably detailed dragonblasting RPG that even after the issues, Skyrim is still one of PS3’s biggest and best open worlds.
6
Mass Effect 2
13
Heavy Rain
7
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots
14
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow
Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
15
While Bioware’s trilogy-ender sends Shepard out in fine style, it’s the middle slice of the delicious sci-fi sandwich that remains its best. A brilliantly scripted action-RPG, the closing ‘suicide mission’ provides an incredible finale.
Best-in-class adventure-brawler that manages to refine every mechanic of the genre, all while layering on inventive puzzles and an epic narrative. Plus the ending is jaw-drop fodder, make no mistake.
The most gleefully playful and imaginative stealth game ever. Whether you’re watching a monkey slurp soda or revisiting the site of the PS1 original, no game honours its past so poignantly.
8
Simply the finest COD ever made. From that nuke to Captain Price’s mesmerising ghillie suit stealth mission, few games can match Modern Warfare’s thrilling scripted spectacle.
From controversial purveyor of interactive cinema, David Cage, comes this psychological thriller that plays like no other game on the system. So many games promise real consequences to your actions, but none deliver like this masterpiece.
Dark Souls
Akin to nothing else you’ve ever played. It may be as impenetrable as an Amish girl’s undercrackers, but persevere and there’s a brutal and beautiful challenge within that you will never, ever forget.
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Far Cry 3
The open-worlder that lets you duff up a komodo dragon with your fists is a brilliant example of thoughtful sandbox design. With a hugely addictive crafting system, Jason Brody’s island shooter is stuffed full of wonderful distractions.
The Orange Box
It’s not a great port. But it’s a not-great port of one of the all-time best games in Half-Life 2 (plus Episodes One and Two), magnificent puzzler Portal, and fearsomely well-designed class-based online shooter Team Fortress 2. Absurdly good value.
MENAGE-A-JEUX
Personal picks The games that we – and you – hold in the highest regard Te a m O P M
Tekken Tag Tournament 2
Assassin’s Creed II
Dom Reseigh-Lincoln goes cuckoo for KOs in Namco’s finest fighting hour
Undoubtedly the finest entry in one of PS3’s foremost franchises, this is the realisation of all the promises made in the original. An engaging lead character, open-ended hits and diverting sidemissions are what this series should be about.
For years, the real quality of the Tekken franchise remained locked in the dusty, burger-scented halls of the arcade. Then Tekken Tag 2 swaggered onto consoles with its seamless online code, a huge roster and more customisable hats than ever. More importantly it gave us a fighter that wasn’t diminished by its arcade origins – in fact, it was stronger for it.
LA Noire
If the delivery had matched the scale of its ambition we may well be talking about the greatest game ever made. And while it couldn’t quite manage that, what we’re left with here is a deep, bold and thoughtful experience.
R e a d e r
Thomas Was Alone
Chip off the old block Simon Duddy voices his admiration for the Mike Bithell puzzler
Gran Turismo 5
This game is, in my opinion, a work of pure puzzle genius. Yes, the graphics are really simple and yes, everything is presented in 2D (it should have been mediocre at best), but the humour and personality injected by the voiceover, mixed with some genuinely puzzling puzzles, makes this a must-buy for anyone with a PS3 or a PS Vita. Go and buy it. Go and buy it now!
Still the king of racers, even though it trundled up to the starting grid in neutral upon its tardy release. Polyphony’s patches have since made this an irresistible love letter to locomotion, with more Skylines than the view from the Shard.
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Bulletstorm
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Super Street Fighter IV
Uproarious shooter with an ingenious twist – a scoring system that rewards kills according to their goriness. As colourful as it is crass, there’s nothing on PS3 like it, and its lack of a sequel is one of this generation’s greatest tragedies.
Earns the distinction of PS3’s best fighter for adding an unbelievable amount of polish and tweakability to SFIV’s endlessly playable comeback kid. New characters arrive perfectly balanced and drenched in that wonderfully distinctive art style.
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Dishonored
24
FIFA 14
25
Borderlands 2
A daring new IP that came from nowhere and at once resurrected a treasured bygone era of open-ended stealth gaming, turbocharging it with supernatural abilities. You’re empowered on the streets of Dunwall like nowhere else in the genre.
thomas was alone is a must-buy for anyone with a ps3 or a ps vita. go buy it! Developer
God Of War 2 HD Edition
Kratos is king to Michael de Plater, director of design at Monolith Productions It’s really close between the HD edition of God Of War 2 and Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us. I think I’ll go with God Of War 2, mainly because of the upscaled resolution and having it running at 60fps made an already amazing game even better. There’s not that many games I play through as many times as I have GOW2, but I never get sick of revisiting that chapter.
Some changes are small (midfielders better at finding space), some are big (improved off-theball running), and some we’ve begged for for years (new menus!). But what they add up to is the most realistic and immersive football game on console.
The best co-op experience on the system, and one of a precious few that manages to weave a worthwhile plot in among those multiplayer mechanics. It also looks gorgeous and features the most (bizarre) weapons in history.
■ The ultraviolent and ever downward-spiralling journey of Kratos
in God Of War 2 HD edition never gets old for Monolith’s de Plater.
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HA LL OF FA ME
A MUST-OWN SELECTION OF DOWNLOADABLE CLASSICS
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Journey
An object lesson in how less is more, this two-hour voyage crafts an incredible, immersive narrative and a genuine emotional connection using little more than near-silent figures, marvellous sand physics and floating pieces of cloth. A remarkable and unique experience, as well as a new high for PSN gaming.
the walking dead
With this episodic zombie series now drawn to a close, it stands among the best downloadable games ever, with emotional ties and tangible consequences for your actions.
braid
If you want to make the argument that games are art, this is the place to start. An achingly beautiful handdrawn style combines with brilliant but brutal time-bending puzzles.
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Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons
Engrossing, varied and touching, this Nordic puzzler offers a unique mix of single-player co-op as you take control of one sibling on each analogue stick.
10
Lara croft and the guardian of light
Ignore the looks and know that this is one of Lara’s finest outings ever. Great two-player action plus loads of treasure hunting. A co-op essential.
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MLB 13: The Show
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pixeljunk shooter
5
resident evil 4 hd
12
Stick It To The Man!
The long wait is over: the best sports series around has landed in the UK with ace presentation, deep but approachable gameplay, and a life-sapping Franchise mode.
One of the best games on PS2 gets a hi-def makeover. Still the pinnacle of survival horror, you’ll get scared, shooty and decapitated by a chainsaw. And that’s a triple win, quite frankly.
NEW!
It was expanded on by the sequel, but the inventiveness and satisfyingly simple twin-stick gameplay mechanics of the original mean that this is still the best PJ title around.
Brilliantly leftfield platform-puzzler with a calibre of laughs and head scratchers that’d make Schafer proud. Guide Ray and his mind-reading phantom limb through a breezy, cartoonish dream.
6
Hotline Miami
13
limbo
7
stacking
14
Okami HD
8
flower
15
thomas was alone
Part puzzler, part top-down murder-‘em-up that’s as brutal as almost anything else on PlayStation. It’s hard but never frustrating, with instant restarts and lightning-fast gameplay.
A Tim Schafer puzzler-cumadventure-cum-headtrip in which you solve mysteries by stacking Russian dolls with unique abilities. Intelligent, insane and totally immature.
More ‘experience’ than game, this collect-’em-up sees you steering a petal on the breeze by tilting your Sixaxis. It’s a soothing mix of colour and music; a lovely deviation from frantic action.
This understated, monochromatic tale of a lone boy’s escape from a danger-filled forest is as gorgeous as it is frustrating. A glorious combination of eye-caressing art and gut-punching gore.
As beautiful as Nathan Drake standing in front of a Hawaiian sunset, this tale of a wolf goddess and her celestial paintbrush is still unique six years after its original release.
Platform-puzzler that manages to imbue a bunch of quadrilaterals with personality thanks to a witty script and clever gameplay mechanics. A shining example of making a lot out of a little.
retrostation
YOUr EVERY NEED FOR on-the-go GOODNESS
ps VITA Hall of fame 1
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Persona 4: Golden
If ever a game could make you forget the existence of anything outside the Vita’s screen, it’s this thoughtful and unique JRPG epic. Essentially it gives you another stab at high school – this time with intrigue, mystery and superpowers instead of acne, nerves and an unpredictable vocal register.
Virtue’s Last Reward
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Gravity Rush
10
This visual novel/puzzler just gets better over its 40 hours. The dialogue’s engaging, and however tough it gets, you’re never left rage-scouring for clues.
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Use a gravity-defying cat to break the laws of physics and zoom across the skies of a floating steampunk city. With stylish comic-book looks and a sassy heroine, this is a rush to remember.
LittleBigPlanet
Sackboy’s back, smaller but just as loveable as ever. His platforming antics work perfectly on Vita, and the new control inputs complement the level creator brilliantly. Also: d’awwww.
11
Lumines: Electronic Symphony
12
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection
13
Uncharted: Golden Abyss
14
Tearaway
15
NEW!
More crafty platforming from Media Molecule, this time using the Vita’s controls to surprise and delight you in new ways for hours on end – all within its pretty-as-a-picture papercraft world.
The sequel’s a shameful rip-off that only updates kits and rosters, so unless you find them both for the same price, this entry is still the best way to get a footy-on-the-move fix.
Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack
Super Stardust Delta
Blazblue: Continuum Shift Extend
There’s almost too much content here – the wealth of game modes is a total nerdgasm for fans, and the characters are insanely diverse.
Drake proves he’s just as adept at adventuring on the go. A prequel story that’s classic jungle action, and crammed full of typical Uncharted charm.
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FIFA Football
HR policy frowns on heroin, but we can’t imagine this is any less moreish. An ace port of the PSN shooter, you’ll never stop scratching the high-score itch.
Two of PlayStation’s finest adventures scale down beautifully, with enough cutscenes to fill a transatlantic flight. Even less excuse not to play, then.
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He of no limbs finds the perfect home on Vita’s OLED screen. Beautiful visuals and flawless platforming make Rayman a handheld delight of quirky cartoon ridiculousness.
Simple but gloriously addictive. Make your ball of goo grow to vast proportions in this B-movie romp, taking in all the pop-culture zingers in the background.
Part block puzzler, part mobile disco, this is as certain to have you nodding along to ace choonage as it is to keep you returning for more reflex-testing action.
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Rayman Origins
Urban Trial Freestyle
Taking more than a little inspiration from its Xbox counterpart, this tricksand-tracks biker is absurdly addictive. ‘Restart’ will take quite the hammering.
Unit 13
Free of any half-arsed story or COD-posturing, this shooter embraces Vita’s features without being gimmicky. Its solid mechanics make the generic warfare more than forgivable.
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Parting sh t
Look away!
Celebrating PlayStation’s finest moments
Spoiler alert
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No.8
Killing with kindness Taking orders from Bioshock’s shattering plot shocker Last Month Ico
Take a little trip to the seaside for one of PS2’s most savagely upsetting closing images.
Format PS3 / Pub 2k games / Dev irrational games / Released 2007 / score 10/10
W
ould you kindly… put down this PlayStationloving publication and finish Ken Levine’s seminal submerged shooter if you haven’t already done so. Back in the room? Splendid. Now that we’ve all witnessed last generation’s mightiest spoiler, let us raise a giant drill hand in celebration of a moment that will forever make us suspicious of unfailingly polite Irishmen. Bioshock constantly probes at the nature of what defines free will. Are we the author of our own fate in games? Do we ever truly
have the final say regarding virtual choices? In Irrational’s shooter, Levine gives you just enough rope to hang your concept of choice. After toiling through the drowning dystopia of Rapture, you eventually confront Andrew Ryan, the unhinged mastermind who erected the twisted city under the sea. Painted as the conspiring arch villain of the piece, the encounter that ends with you staving his head in with a nine iron is a doozy. “A man chooses, a slave obeys,” hisses the master manipulator just before he demands you cave in his cranium. Not only were you
destined to slay Ryan, but you never had a say in the matter. Thanks to the revelation every key action has been preempted by the trigger “Would you kindly?”. After the Irish deceiver reveals himself to be Ryan’s nemesis Frank Fontaine, the wheels for the game’s underwhelming climax have already been put into motion. Yet the lingering impact of Ryan choosing to end his life on his terms – defying both his enemy and your powerless puppet hero – remains one of PS3’s defining moments. In a game of hidden servitude, choice is everything. ■
Next Month Condemned 2
Battle a grizzly that’s more homicidal than your average bear in Sega’s psychological horrorfest.
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