DEBUG
Vol. 1 In this issue: Celeste: The Little Indie That Could Sable: Preview Super-Bario Apex Legends: First Thoughts
"Players are artists, who create their own reality within the game� - Shigeru Miyamoto
WELCOME TO DEBUG!
STORIES Page 3 - NEWS
Page 4 - Celeste: The Little Indie That Could Page 7 - Apex Legends First Thoughts Page 10 - Sable Preview
HI THERE!
Thank you for picking up this edition of Debug! I’m Dominic Cassidy, the Editor, Designer, and sole Writer, and have collected what I hope is a good range of gaming stories and features, considering anything fellow gamers will be interested in. Going about putting this magazine together, I wanted to have a good range of stories which would showcase the world of video games, including stories about gaming communities, and those who break down games I hope you enjoy! Dominic Vincent Cassidy Editor
Page 14 - Game Maker's Toolkit
PAGE 4
Page 16 - No Man's Sky: Community
Page 25 -Super Bario Page 28-Physical Health in Gaming
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Page - 5 IPs We'd Love To See Again//For The First Time
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Page 22 Spider-Man DLC Review
NEWS ROUND-UP MORE POKÉMON ANNOUNCED
APEX LEGENDS SMASHES RECORD
In the Recent Pokémon Direct, Nintendo finally put us out of our misery and announced a new mainline pocket monsters game.
In it’s first month of release, Apex Legends, a free to play battle royale game, has broken Fortnite’s record, gaining 50 million downloads in the first month of release.
Titled Sword and Shield, the games are set in the new Galar Region, with the requisite three new starters, in the classic trio of fire, water, and grass types. Very little is known of the game yet, the three starters are known as Scorbunny, Grookey, Sobble, and being on the switch the series might finally see the graphics that can do it justice – but the predictions for the game are really interesting! From the small bit of early gameplay footage from the trailer, it is thought the region may take some inspiration from the UK, with a Big Ben looking structure in the background of one of the shots; as well as the shot of the trainer walking onto a field through a tunnel wearing a football-esque outfit, football obviously being popular in the UK. The series have been out of the loop for a while, minus the recent Let’s Go! Pikachu/ Eevee, and it will be good to see the Pocket Monsters back in action, with a mainline release.
MORE STEAM CONTROVERSY TW: Rape/SA In the most recent Steam controversy, a game has been released called Rape Day. This game is currently being reviewed by Valve, over whether or not it is fit to be sold on the Steam platform. Scottish MSP Shona Robinson decried the game in a tweet, urging her followers to report the game to the Video Standards Council. The game is currently on hold, while Steam decides if it will sell it on the platform, however the games page is available. In the game you play as a rapist serial killer in the zombie apocalypse, and is structured like a visual novel. Upon visiting the games website, you are able to enter into a mailing list so the creator can alert you when the game is available, as well as a FAQ section which is more of a disclaimer. The game, while being reviewed, technically breaks no rules against being sold on steam, however due to the public outcry, whether or not it is sold on the platform will hold a precedence on these adult only games which will come out in the future.
The game, developed by Respawn Entertainment, picked up traction immediately, as it was announced and launched on the one day, and very quickly took Fortnite’s spot, atop the Twitch Streaming charts, as while early on there were less people actually streaming Apex, there were far more people watching it. For the pop culture impact Fortnite had with a smaller player base, time will only tell what Apex will do with the mammoth player base. With more maps, weapons, and legends being talked out, this number may increase. The pedigree seen in the team at Respawn is second to none, and shows that players do value an actual free to play game, where the gameplay is insanely tight. The only way, appears to be up for Apex Legends, but maybe another 150 million to catch up to Epic’s insanely popular BR would be nice.
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Indie game Celeste, which debuted in January 2018 on all major consoles and PC to immediate critical acclaim, and like many games in the torrent of new releases was almost forgotten. It wasn’t until the end of the year, during the video game awards and top ten season, that the game, developed a small team was nominated for GOTY at the Video Game Awards, and featured prominently on various outlets top games of 2018 lists. But what made Celeste so much fun to play? Developed by Noel Berry, of Skytorn, and Matt Thorson of the fantastic Towerfall Ascension; the game features the player character Madeline navigating her way up a mountain, despite calls for her to abandon her journey. Things hot up, as they normally do, in side scrollers quite quickly with the challenges increasing constantly and the story being revealed piecemeal. The gameplay is a standout, even in this renaissance of ultra challenging platformers, it does shine with a nostalgic simplicity which is balanced with twitch controls and the verticality which seems hereditary from Thorson’s previous opus Towerfall. And while the massive jump in difficulty can be frustrating, it is the perfectly paced and pitched gratification that stops the player
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THE LITTLE INDIE THAT COULD
getting too frustrated. Luckily, should a challenge not be what you are seeking, there is an assist mode, which should not be seen as a way out, just a backup due to the integral part the difficulty plays in the gameplay. Each stage has one long unbroken level, which segments off slightly for bonus Strawberries (the games bonus collectible) and feels perfectly contained, less like one linear Super Mario stage, and more like a metroidvania world, but again a little more segmented between eight levels. The pacing of these levels is to be absolutely commended, with everything seemingly considered. The time you will spend stumped on a puzzle will never make you quit but it is by no means a walk in the park. It was at the 2018 Video Game Awards (VGAs), which has arguably become the cornerstone of video games events, as it has embraced the internet aspect much more than
the likes of PAX or E3, when the announcements were made public. There was a degree of surprise, seeing the little indie darling Celeste was nominated for four awards, and while that is half as much as the likes of God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2, for an indie game made by two people, being nominated for four awards is unprecedented. Nominated for best score/ music, most impactful game, obviously best indie, and most impressively, game of the year. The big boy.
It is here that life really starts imitating art, a small game, climbing to unimaginable, and previously unseen highs, as there has never been an indie game given the nod for GOTY. What makes this all the more impressive, is the other games nominated; God of War, Spider-Man PS4, and Red Dead Redemption 2 among other heavy hitters – the little mountaineering game, was able to nestle itself amongst games made by companies with bottomless resouirce pools and dev teams spread across
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continents. This both goes a long way to change the way games are made, and also how they are perceived; maybe next year there will be two indies on the GOTY list, but the change that Celeste looks to really be kickstarting is finally changing the way games are seen, not by the public, but by the industry and the community itself. Games like Journey and Gone Home have really furthered the conversation “Are games art?” but it may be Celeste which will be remembered for changing the way games are awarded, not for having the most content or having the best graphics, but stripping the rubric right back to the basics. It is in the story that Celeste really shows what it’s made of, with a small cast of characters, an instagaram obsessed climber, a crazy old woman, and you’re frenemy Badeline, the vulnerable parts of Madeline’s psyche given life from the mountain. Even though the story isn’t grand and cinemat-
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ic like in Red Dead Redemption 2, or sewed through the world like in Dark Souls, it is a personal, funny, and relatable tale of mental health, and determination. It has threads which everyone will understand on some level and may well bring you to tears. It is this aspect of the game which makes it the little indie that could; it puts across a beautifully well crafted story, not in a walking simulator like Gone Home or Firewatch, but in a pixelized platformer – and it’s beautiful because it works. At this stage we expect games from Matt Makes Games to be nothing less than spectacular, but Celeste really raises the bar, and is likely to be a game fondly remembered, often talked about, and often imitated in the years to come.
A BATTLE ROYALE FOR ADULTS: APEX LEGENDS Apex Legends did by all intents and purposes come out of absolutely no where. It launched with very little build up and (at the time of writing) is currently one of the most watched games on switch, sitting at about 89 million hours since the games debut this is currently sitting above Fortnite for both hours watched and hours streamed. Epic Games, the guys that brought Bulletstorm and Gears of War to consoles near you reworked their fairly unnoticed PvE co-op survavl title Fortnite into a free to play battle royal game, and pretty much dominated the internet for a year, making Twitch streamers like Ninja superstars. The game which popularized the game mode Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has fallen out of the limelight in the wake of this, as every game has taken the lead from Epic to include a Battle Royale mode in the game, with heavy hitters like Call of Duty and Battlefield wanting a piece of the action. Respawn’s battle royale entrant was announced and released on the fourth of February, and came straight out the gates to 25 million downloads in the first two weeks. The studio, which was
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founded by the two guys which created Infinity Ward of Call of Duty fame way back when, and took some of the talent from that studio over with them, shows it’s pedigree brilliantly here, the previous two games the team has developed, Titanfall 1 and 2. While the first entry left a lot to be desired, the second game was truly a work of art, giving players the kind of affecting cinematic story that had arguably been missing from Call of Duty’s yearly releases for a while, and released to critical acclaim boasting a median score of 87 points on Metacritic. The game was slow to pick up sales however, releasing at the same time as Battlefield and CoD’s newest entries.
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The gameplay of Apex is lifted almost directly from Titanfall, but with none of the boosters and wall run abilities, and combined with the map lets players run and slide around a frenetic bullet soaked playground. It’s this pedigree which seperates Apex from a lot of games in the Battle Royale Genre – it keeps the shrinking playable area, but adds in hero characters, here called Legends, as well as a chance to revive downed characters and even respawn murdered team mates. The games balancing is perfectly done, being launched with a good range of about 20 weapons with only a few duds on the roster, the hit boxes are done with absolute perfection, and makes veteran
players double deadly, lends a stern helping hand to newbies on how to improve. At the time of writing the game is only playable in a squad mode, with yourself and two other players dropping in in groups of three to wreak havoc on the other squads – and while this isn’t completely traditional for battle royal it works so well in the game. The Ping system compliments the squads greatly, and lets you point out ammo, weapons, and enemies to team mates and is truly inspired; something we will start seeing in FPS games over the next few years this journalist suspects. The only part of the game that can prove hit and miss for early players however, is the Legends system. With eight hero characters debuting at launch, players have a choice of six if they don’t use microtransactions to unlock the other two. These characters have a range of abilities, from Gibraltar’s gun shield when
aiming down the sights, to Pathfinders grappling hook for quick traversal, each character can be used in an offensive, defensive or stealthy way – and while using the skills and supers isn’t immediately necessary, especially if your lucky enough to be in a squad of hardened players – it is a skill that you should get to grips with to give yourself an edge over players, or even a quick out in a sticky situation. The topic of microtransactions always comes up in todays age of gaming, especially as Apex is published by EA, but shockingly enough, aside from cosmetic items like character or weapon skins, and character quips, the only main unlockables are the two heroes Caustic and Mirage. These two characters, with very useful abilities, can actually be unlocked in game, just by playing the game and not in the grindy way we all saw in EA’s Battlefield 2. This reporter found
the market place to be very set aside and non invasive, and if it’s just the game you’re there to play, shouldn’t come into it at all. It should also be noted Apex Legends is a free to play game, from a group of devs who have obviously put a lot of time and skill into the game to make it run as well as it does, and seeing microtransactions in a free to play game is much easier on the soul that seeing them in a £50 game bought brand new. All in all, Apex Legends is something you should try out as soon as possible if you think it might be your thing, as the other players will only get better, and with a new gun just been dropped in the game, as well as promise of more characters, maps and weapons, the game too looks only to be on the up – our only hope is the microtransactions stay as far away as possible.
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PREVIEW
Announced at E3 2018, the cel-shaded indie Sable stole the hearts of many gamers with the stunning trailer, Polygon also postulated that it “could be E3 2018’s prettiest game,” and since then the game has fallen silent, with development aiming for a 2019 release. We managed to get some more information on the game from Greg Kythreotis, the art portion of Shedworks two man garden hut team (there are more than two members of the team, but the shed only accommodates two full time devs). “looking at as much research material as possible in the time we have” We firstly asked about the gorgeous, art direction of the game and what the influences were present, an immediate similarity this journalist made was the games aesthetic and that of prolific French comic book artist and writer Jean Giraud, who worked under the
name Moebius, we delved into the inspiration of the design first: “Moebius was definitely an inspiration - expressing a ligne claire style in 3D was certainly a conscious decision we made but we are also massively inspired by other things like Studio Ghibli, Star Wars, Zelda, 80 Days, Archi-
tecture and Literature. We draw from a lot of places, we do a lot of research in our methodology and process involves looking at as much research material as possible in the time we have.” The game being developed in tandem by Dan and Greg, Dan handling the programming
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technical side of things while the latter is in charge of the artistic side; what’s on the surface of the game, the part we will see. From what has been showcased in screenshots and trailers, the game looks to show how these two facets of game design working perfectly balanced in tandem can achieve a real beauty, inspired by French comics and artforms the world over.
has made aided the creation of Sable he had this to say: “For sure, if we had started Sable from day 1 of starting the company I think we would have struggled immensely. On a technical level we lacked so much that we have now and this directly informs how effectively you can implement ideas and how fluid the creative process can be.” Everything is about experience, especially in making something, but it The team has worked on a does not take away from the few other games, including fact that Sable looks to be an iOS game which was feaa tremendous undertaking, tured on the App Store, called something solely focused on Swing King and The Temple of the exploration and discovery Bling, as well as the Nintendo of the world, and from what Switch launch title Snipperclips, the world at large has seen of which holds a score of 80 on the game, does not look unlike Metacritic at the time of writJourney and almost like a sci ing. fi Shadow of Colossus, games which are critically lawded These games however, can despite being light on story, pale in comparison with what which is possibly what is being is envisioned with Sable, howdone here with the alien exploever when asking Greg how ration sim. the previous games the studio
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“The goal behind Sable from the beginning to now was to make an experience that was about exploration and discovery” On the technical side of things, working as a small studio can’t be easy; trying to create things which stack up to industry standards, while also keeping that X-factor indie charm, so asking Greg about the difficulties on the production side of things was obvious: “The biggest challenge has probably been going to events and travelling quite a bit. It's really exciting but (especially early on) whenever we travel the game isn't getting made and that's really what we care about.” If a small teams main concern is the travelling for events, of fans hungry to see the game your making, that’s a good sign surely? On small teams, we finally asked Greg about working as a two man team, and we were quickly corrected, “The team has
always been bigger than 2 members, we just only had 2 people working in the shed on the project fulltime. We have expanded a bit since E3 but not dramatically. I don't think this is a game we want to make with an enormous team because it's something we have no experience in managing.” This small indie company could well come up with a Moebius inspired desert crawler, and a modern day explore-athon, but time will tell if it finally comes through, with Shedworks keeping the final release date close to their chests:
“We are saying 2019 for now.”
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A WRITTEN ESSAY ON THE VIDEO ESSAYS OF:
Video essays excel in the field of video games, with people like Joseph Anderson and Raycevick producing excellent long form videos breaking down issues in gaming and some games themselves, and tend to take some of elements of entertainment into the production, with Anderson turning his hour long breakdown of Fallout 76 into an stimulating piece to watch, through the use of humour and characters, while still making points. One of the finest content creators in this genre is Mark Brown. Mark is a journalist who has taken a step back from writing to run the YouTube channel ,Game Maker’s Toolkit, wherein he breaks down design and functionality of video games. His series include Boss Keys, where Brown breaks down elements from certain series, like The Legend of Zelda and Dark Souls, he also makes the general Game Maker’s Toolkit series, where he breaks down level design from a wide range of games, and at the time of writing has 81 videos in this category. On top of this, he was included on a list by Polygon for the best video essays of 2018 for his series Designing For Disability’s. We managed to get an interview with Mark, talking about how he got started on YouTube and how he gets his ideas. The Game Maker’s Toolkit channel received praise for it is series Designing for Disability’s, in which Mark breaks down how video game developers either make right decisions to help people with different impairments, and what could be done to aid more. The videos in this series looks at how to improve the experiences for people with hearing difficulties, sight
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impairments, motor disabilities, and cognitive disabilities – and uses games which include functions which offer a kinder experience to people, and suggests how other developers could implement these options themselves. We asked Mark how it felt to be put on a list to showcase his work: “Very good! Accessibility is a really important topic for games. This can be the most inaccessible medium, because they require sight, sound, motor, and cognition skills. But at the same time, games let you change the experience more than films or books or anything else. So developers should try to offer as many options as possible - and I’m pleased to see my series has been of some help in that regard.” With the rise in the amount of games, like Celeste and Super Mario Odyssey, and Microsoft releasing a more accessible game pad for gamers with motor limitations, there has never been a time where the issues of equality and accessibility have been more important. It opens up the conversation, that if games are intended for everyone, then why make them inaccessible to part of the community. We have seen this with gender, when the Assassin’s Creed Series gave players the choice between playing an open world game as a man or a woman, with full voice acting. As well as with race, as you only need to boot up the freshly released Apex Legends to see a plethora of characters or different races, gender identities, and orientations. But in the world of accessibility in gaming, very little has been done; and this is the conversation Mark opens
up with developers themselves. We asked him, why he had taken time off from conventional journalism to pursue the YouTube Channel; “I was worried about the future of more traditional, written journalism. It seems like people these days are less likely to read full length articles, and spend much more time on places like Twitch and YouTube.” It was then he decided to take the plunge: “So I decided to at least give it a shot, so I’d have some video making experience. I ended up liking videos way more than writing, so I made the switch.” With the growing decline of viable written word journalism, it is sad to see a journalist move away from the craft, but the way Mark’s work translates into the medium of video is staggering, we asked him about how he got started making videos: “I was inspired by video essays for movies like the ones made by Every Frame a Painting. I wanted to see if I could make a
similar type of video for games, and decided to give it a shot. I didn’t have much video-making knowledge so I had to figure everything out for myself - but I’ve really enjoyed learning these different tools and techniques.” In a world, where citizen journalism becomes a more and more plausible idea, and with people becoming more reluctant to pay for good journalism, it is refreshing to see a talented person, bringing structure and real finesse to the video essay world. Finally we asked Mark how important he thought video essays were to the games industry: “I’ve been incredibly lucky to hear that my videos have been useful to lots of developers big and small. I try to make my stuff educational, but easy to digest. 10 minute bursts of info with relatable examples, instead of dry hour-long lectures. Analysis is also important because these can be more insightful and detailed than a quick review.”
He went on to raise a very interesting point, regarding how media is consumed: “Videos also start a conversation with players and get them thinking more critically about the media they consume. I think the world of games would be a lesser place without YouTube.” Showing that, while the work he does isn’t new, it is something hugely important in the world of the media, it is something that does start conversations, in a way traditional media on print has had trouble with. This comment really illustrates the idea that YouTube has really evolved into a platform which – if you can find it – allows users to find and devour some excellent pieces of entertainment/ news/media.
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NO MAN’S SKY: COMMUNITY
It has been almost three years, since the deep space exploration sim No Man’s Sky was finally released to the public. A quick look back at what went down then included class action lawsuits being filed, and an internet wide witch hunt targeting the figurehead of Hello Games, Sean Murray. The top result when
you type “No man’s sky lies” into google, a video from YouTube by user TerakJK being the top result. It is a three minute compilation of every lie told by Hello Games regarding the game in the press rounds. In the three years since the universe simulator’s release, there has been six major free
updates, ranging from more minor expansions, like Abyss which brought a greater diversity of aquatic life, as well as underwater base building; to the biggest one, titled, Next, which implemented so many changes in the game, it is unrecognisable from the launch day version. The free updates have added complex base
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building, larger ships for you to captain, with the help of a crew, land vehicles, a greater variation in biomes and fauna, character customization and most importantly – multiplayer is finally live in the game (and not with glowing orbs but real character models!). Mr original promise of bumping into another player drifting across the cosmos is now a reality. Another way these lies have been laid down in code, is in looking back, at the original launch trailer, at the screenshots from pre release development which still linger on the No Man’s Sky press page, and with some deviation, they now fairly accurately display what the game is like now. Something which is a cornerstone of No Man’s Sky is its community. They are a tight knit group, sharing screenshots of planets and their discoveries all over the internet. So we reached out to those who inhabit the Euclid galaxy
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on the community’s very active subreddit, and got replies from people telling their stories. It is this community, split between a very active “main” subreddit, as well as social media pages for different groups and goverened bodies. One user we talked to was MatadorNMS, who told us of the excitement he felt prior to the launch of the game, “I'm a day 1 player of No Man's Sky and had been following the game for over a year before release day. I remember it's the sole reason I purchased
the PS4. I then pre-ordered NMS as soon as it was available for $80 Canadian. I downloaded NMS at midnight when it released and stayed up all night downloading and playing the game.” The excitement that this user exhibits was not unusual amongst people for the game, and is almost like an Icarus instinct, to reach for the stars in any way they can, which MatadorNMS puts perfectly here, “I had always dreamed flying off into space and exploring planets and No Man's Sky made that dream come true for me.” It is this that made people want to play the game, to see something that you will never get otherwise. MatadorNMS is one of the many players who plug into NMS every day, and have not tired of the procedurally generated universe. The No Man’s Sky community is absolutely booming, with much more cohesion than what is normally seen in video
game fandom, while there are many groups with different social media pages, the main r/NoMansSkyTheGame is booming with over 200 thousand subscribers, some lurking and some posting beautiful stories and screenshots which really show the game off beautifully. The range of the game is truly staggering, with some groups dedicated
to trying to figure out how the games procedurally generated ships appear throughout the universe. We caught up with one user, Pandrew1452, who picked up the game again, like so many others when the NEXT update dropped, he talked about joining a small community for the game, “I joined a group on Facebook that was just about
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sharing photos taken in game. It was nice to see a small but happy group of fans make a little sub community on one aspect of the game they liked” he goes on to talk about how, even though the group is not used much anymore, when a new batch of content is dropped, it will be revisited. It’s things like this, the way the game can draw people together that make it, and by extension it’s community so special. No Man’s Sky is also quite remarkable in the way it’s communities actually form alleigances, for instance, groups like the Federation are a democratic government which inhabit a small group of safe planets. They build things in game for the benefit of all players, they take votes via social media on how they will operate, they even have a capital planet. The No Man’s Sky Wiki is something which really channels the idea of
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documenting the universe, with a collated list of major in game events in the civilized space, which includes wars, which usually end with the signing of treaties and the handing over of planets (as seen in the Maxing and Chillaxing accords), as well as an annual event known as Unification Day, in which players travel, by way of portals to one world, and meet up.
The No Man’s sky community is one that has truly stood the test of time, going from the day one disappointment and spiking time and time again when a new update launches; it is marvellous to see how a game which is designed to be an intended solitary experience has led to massive groups of travellers coming together to explore their own universe.
IS THE DLC THE FULL PACKAGE? Insomniac’s version of the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man released in September last year, to immediate acclaim, both commercial and critical; with many players snagging the platinum trophy within days of the games release. It was no surprise then that when the game was released, it came with a now customary optional add-on for the staggered release of downloadable content. What was surprising however was the price that the three arachnid focused stories were priced at, for three stories and extra suits and things like that, the package came to £15, which is an absolute steal – especially in a world of microtransactions and loot boxes. The developers, Insomniac, who are famous for creating the magnificent Ratchet & Clank series, as well as the Xbox One exclusive Sunset Overdrive; have subverted this money focused industry again by releasing a whole host of free updates and patches which have included a number of Spidey Suits which the community was crying out for. The story packages which had a staggered release once a month from October to December where moder-
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ately well received from fans and critics, with this journalist feeling that while they brought nothing new to the formula of Spider-Man PS4, they didn’t need to. The vignettes which focus on some supporting characters from the wall crawlers full adventure including Yuri Watanabe, Detective extraordinaire from the main campaign, and well as Silver Sable, owner of the private army brought to New York to stop escaped criminals. The first DLC picks up shortly after the end of the main story, and instead of furthering that story, focuses instead
on a burgeoning gang war, one front being lead by classic Spidey bad guy Hammerhead who’s trying to take over the big apple’s organised crime gangs, in the vaccum left by the stromash in the main story. Spider-man’s story leads him to meet up with Felicia Hardy’s Black Cat, who is played totally right, and when the costumed city slickers are together it feels like your watching a Saturday morning cartoon rather than playing a triple A game. Working with an episodic DLC is a
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challenge though, making sure the right story beats are remembered and things are paced right can be an issue and that is where the trio of chapters does fall short. While the action is the same as the man game with the difficulty turned up to reflect end game content, the challenges do not reflect this quite as well, as instead of new more complex puzzles, the difficulty and number of enemies you face down becomes far more challenging at even the lower levels. It would have been nice to see more challenges with a more immediately grabbing story like the Taskmaster challenges in the initial campaign, but Screwballs do have a nice accomplishment feel when they are finally over. Story wise the three chapters, The Heist, Turf Wars, and Silver Lining, while shorter bursts of the enjoyment of the main story do feel lacklustre, the same Hollywood vibes are retained. From chasing Black Cat in the Heist to fighting Mecha-Hammerhead in Silver Lining the story is full of ups and downs and flies from some of more realistic elements to full balls to the wall insanity (invisible boats and lasers do crop up towards the end), and while the full game had a story which missed the mark on occasion, the times this happens throughout the DLCs are far more apparent. The most glaring let down, painted as a cliff hanger, is in Silver Lin-
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ings side mission in which you track down the bodies of murdered criminals who got off with their transgressions, only for the main meet of this story to be left teased for the eventual sequel. While the story threads were left open in the DLCs themselves, putting them in as a side mission feels cheap. While the three chapters are in no way bad, they do feel almost studio mandated, it lacks the heart and soul of the main game, and with continued play does show some of the cracks which existed their too, and how repetitive some aspects of the world can be; but with a price tag of ÂŁ15, which is sure to be slashed during the Playstation Store's summer sales, it is a must for fans of the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man's full priced outing.
SUPER-BARIO:GAMES NIGHT//OUT Nestled at the edge of Glasgow’s Trongate area is a weird little bar, the sign harks back to the classic age of Super Mario, and fittingly so this weird little bar is called Super Bario. When you walk in to the cosy pub, you see the arcade machines placed around at the walls, with plenty of classics that will immediately grab the eye – it really is a time warp that you can get pissed in. We managed to have a chat with Scott McLachlan about the bar, the games and the players - Scott being one of
the owners of Super Bario, which opened in 2017 with the help of Kickstarter. Firstly we asked him why open an arcade/bar in the heart of Glasgow: “The bar was set up by myself and two friends as we wanted to do something different and which hadn’t been done before in Glasgow. We wanted to give people somewhere in town where you could go and have a beer but also chill and play 80s/90s arcade machines”. This goal has wholeheartedly been met with the space on offer, the bar is there as you walk in, and then it's a free for all to play
the games, Crazy Taxi, Mortal Kombat II, and anything in between. With the interest of getting enough change to get around as many games as possible, we asked Scott how much the games actually were to play, as well as what the range of games were, “Our machines are a mix of free play, 50p and £1 per game. We have such classics as House of the Dead 1 and 4, Tekken Tag, Mortal Kombat 2, Pac-Man, Metal Slug, Street Fighter, Star Wars, Simpson’s, Deadpool pinball etc. We have a good back
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catalogue of machines and cartridges which we try to rotate every few months or if a machine needs repaired.” Now that alone is a great selection, and with classics like X-Men VS Street Fighter free to play it’s easy enough to have a wee cheap night out and experience some of the history of video games in a nice relaxed environment. In this day and age, where you can download a 90 GB video game in a couple of hours, gamers have no shortage of playable content to access whenever they like. Arcade machines however are the most primordial form of physical gaming material, and getting your hands on the classics can be expensive. We took the time to ask Scott if there were any that he sought for his collection: “There are a few out there we want to get our hands on like Adams family pinball, time crises, Daytona USA to name a few,” these are, without any shadow of a doubt absolute classics, and the right fit for the bar. Rage quitting has become a stalwart part of gamer culture, at this point it’s part of peoples social consciousness that swearing obscenities down an earpiece is just a part of online gameplay, and the frustration that difficult games can illicit (here’s looking at you Dark Souls and Mega Man) can be controller smashing. Finally we asked if Scott had any issues with custom-
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ers and players in the past, “We get very few problems with people on the machines other than the odd spilled drink or a case of rage at getting beat but I think people appreciate that these machines are not only expensive they are also old and a bit delicate if not treated
properly.” Obviously alcohol can make people a bit more anti-social, but whats a bar without booze? Super Bario has a good range of local and craft beers, as well as the regular line ups of vodka, rum, and bourbon. Scott goes on to hope that gamers can be kinder, “Most people are happy to just have a place to either relive their youth or play some machines they have never seen before.” If you’re looking for a chill way to kill a couple of hours, and maybe have a beer, Super Bario is the place to be, get some coins in the machines and off ye go.
MACHINES TO TRY House of the Dead 1
Pacman
Crazy Taxi
The epitome of light gun zombie destruction, best played with a pal for maximum anxiety, it is a must play just to see how far shooters have come. £2 will get a nice co-op game going for you and a pal, and as long as you can pull the trigger you’ll get a cracking game!
A classic so engrained into the pop culture, that it would be a challenge to find anyone who hasn’t heard of the hungry little guy. This machine is small and nestled right beside the bar, get some 50p’s into it and relive a time you probably weren’t around for.
A sun soaked driving game, played standing up and pressing the peddles you ferry customers from their pick up spot to your destination, in the early stages if you know what you’re doing it will be fine, but as it goes on, the timer going down can be very unsettling. £1 for as long as you can last.
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A trope that is so far past being funny, is that of the fat, neck-bearded gamer, sitting in his mothers basement, living of Cheetos and mountain dew – and if this is you, then power to you! But a good chunk of people who enjoy video games are not like this at all. We decided to look into how video games could fit into a healthy lifestyle. Unless you bought into VR, gaming is not a physical activity in the slightest, more on the side of reading, in the sense that it stimulates your mind more than your body, but the difference is you can easily sink hundreds of hours into one game, which you can see just by checking out the reviews on games’ steam pages. We talked to Jemma Moir, a personal trainer, fitness enthusiast, and gamer – on the best ways to stay fit and healthy while still enjoying video games. We asked her
Physical Health in Video Games: Keeping Your Body As Fit As Your Thumbs
how she manages keepin fit, while also gaming as a hobby: “As a personal trainer, most folk imagine I'd be far too immersed in the gym to bother with gaming, but it’s quite the opposite! I've balanced both since I started properly gaming as a child. I often spend a few hours at a time playing [role playing games] such as Oblivion, Skyrim or Witcher but will be cycling away on my exercise bike as I go. Two hours cycling is no easy feat but you almost forget you're going it while your wrestling with a dragon or a bear” and while not everyone who plugs into a game for a couple of hours at a time (this reporter included) will be bothering with a spin class while it’s going on, it is something that works for people. In the last couple of years, fit bits have really become vogue, with everyone and their da’s seeming to be sporting the space age pedometer, and it was a couple of years ago too, that Pokémon Go launched. This mobile game,
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developed by Niantic, allowed the player to create an in game avatar, and tracked the walking progression of the player as they caught, trained, and battled the famous pocket monsters. While the game has waned in popularity somewhat since launch, it still has a monthly player base estimated around 150 million, and around 800 million unique downloads, there are still people playing. Over it’s lifespan the game has implanted many updates, new items, new generations of Pokémon, and quests. Jemma brought this up when we asked her what games were good for folk getting out and about: “Pokémon go. Regardless of whether or not you were a fan as a child, if you say you're weren't stop lying to yourself, there is something quite magical about floating around and some weird looking Pokémon appearing out of nowhere on your screen. I don't use it so much for the buzz of reliving episodes of Indigo League but more as a
tracker and tool to make sure I'm being active throughout my day. I can calculate how many km I've walked by adding up my eggs hatched over the week. Sound sad but as someone who is very type A - having something light hearted and fun but that is also about collecting and gaining rewards is an absolute win, win for me.” Now this is much more accessible then using an exercise bike for hours, and while there are issues in the accessibility of games, when it comes to people with motor or visual impairments it can be a great way, as Jemma says to relax and unwind.
In a world where we are plugged in, and around technology all the time, it is easy to get stuck in a loop of constant input, and needing to take it easy and escape, but if used in a way which is not detrimental to daily life, it could be alright, and probably more on the side of beneficial to take some time out of your day to kick it and just wander about a digital world.
Finally, we asked Jemma what she thought regarding the trope of gamers being lazy, out of shape dudes, she had this to say: “There is a misconception that people who game are lazy. And it's just not true to all gamers. I run my own business but still find time in my day to game, not because I feel an impulsive need to, rather because I enjoy it and want to. That's having freedom. Only when you can't pull yourself away from a game does it become an issue”
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5
IPS WE’D LOVE TO SEE IN GAMING FOR THE FIRST TIME//IN A WHILE
We live today in a land of remasters and reboots, with the big three games of the 2018 awards season (God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Red Dead Redemption 2) all being reboots, or sequels of existing IPs, and by no means is this a bad thing. Red Dead 2 is a game of breath-taking cinematic moments, and there was no finer game in 2018 than God of War. The new IPs are fewer and further between now, coming from independent studios or from established master game devs. With the video games business still drawing in more money than God, the corporate big wigs see no reason to change and probably won’t as there is a reduced risk with releasing something the target market is comfortable with. That being said, there are plenty of existing IPs out there which desperately deserve to be revisited and be allowed to truly shine: so here is our list of games which deserve a come back.
RESISTANCE FALL OF MAN The resistance franchise is Insomniacs guilty secret. The first Resistance was a PS3 launch title, and featured excellent, responsive gun play, a good selection of weapons, and a good mix between balls to the wall action and tense horror elements. Resistance Fall of Man featured great progression in the form of guns which level up as you use them, ala Ratchet and Clank, and as the trilogy builds the games only got better. Resistance 2 was much more commercial in the way the games story unfolded, but kept the fantastic story sensibilities. But it was the third game which really set the bar for series – it did this by changing up the protagonist, skipping a few years and taking the world into the post-post-apocalypse. The last game was probably one of the best shooters of the last generation, with excellent gameplay and story. The reason the Resistance deserves to make a come back is because it was mishandled to the point that the game never really took of with a strong fan base. The first game was released at the time when the first person shooter to beat was Halo, and it wasn’t until the third game that it felt like it really came into it’s own.
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Featuring more scares than you can shake a stick at and some tense creepiness which gives Bioshock a run for its money. A soft reboot could really boost the scares and incorporate some light survival horror elements – and take the attention away from being the new Halo or Call of Duty and really try to become something darker and much more story driven. With Insomniac busy developing games for Marvel now after the success of Spider-Man, the developers could pass it on to a different team to make it their own. Basically, we just need more scary, story-focused alien-killing games.
JAK & DAXTER Another Playstation exclusive title here a game which deserves a return to the limelight is the Naughty Dog developed Jak & Daxter series. The PS2 era game had a great mix of platforming and story, adding more as the series progressed, with gun play in Jak 2, and vehicular racing and combat in Jak 3. The eco energy based hero and his furry pal have featured heavily on the Playstation store under the Classics banner – remasters of older games from previous generations. The series even had a couple of successful PSP spinoffs, in the form of Daxter, and The Lost Frontier. Despite the series’ success, the characters haven’t had an outing in any form since 2009.
While it does fit in with Naughty Dogs production timeline of three mainline entries, and a bonus game (Jak X, which was a damn good racer), it is a real shame that one of the most influential franchises from the Playstation 2’s era has been largely forgotten. While it would not bode well to goth it up to add some depth, there would surely be demand for one of the best platformer
series on consoles. This one is by far the least likely, as Naughty Dog have moved onto pastures new, with the earth shattering success of the Uncharted Series and the Last Of Us there is next to no chance the very serious devs would make a new story about a wee furry dude and his angry pal. But we live in hope.
FABLE DON’T FUCKING LET PETER MOLYNEUX HAVE A THING TO DO WITH THE FABLE FRANCHISE EVER AGAIN. Ok, sorry had a wee blip there, Molyneux has pretty much destroyed his brand in the world of video games, with decades of constant lies - he was the Sean Murray before Sean Murray, but always with an edge of aloof condescension. It’s also really sad because at it’s heart Fable had the bones of a great series. Putting you in the shoes of a hero, who overcomes odds and hardship to save the day. Or you could be a hero so evil you literally sprout horns and turn purple Darth Maul style. The Fable games let you make these choices and live in a world so perfectly twee you couldn’t help but giggle, it was voiced marvellously and despite some repetitive combat was
quite enjoyable to play. It wasn’t so much what the game was that was the issue, it is what it was compared to: what we were promised by the leader at Lionhead Studios. The classic lie of planting an acorn and watching it grow throughout the game has been memed to death now in the “lies told by devs” subsection of the internet but it holds up - why say things that aren’t true? Fable 3 had a wonky ending and stripped back quite a lot of the role playing elements that fans enjoyed so much, Here, we are not asking for a reboot, we’re not asking for a Kinect powered on the rails shooter, or a boss based unbalanced multiplayer game. More Fable, however would be good, as the franchise has so much still to offer.
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LAKE OF FIRE Cheating a little bit here, I know, but of the games that we see getting created from comic book IPs, they are normally one of the big two, Marvel and DC. With DC’s Batman Arkham series doing tremendously well early on, and the purchase of Marvel by the House of Mouse possibly playing a part in the spectacular (or amazing, or ultimate, but always friendly neighbourhood) Spider-Man game for the PS4; it’s a wonder that the likes of Dark Horse or Image haven’t taken a franchise and shopped it around a bit. Sure, stories like Invincible, War Mother, or Dark Matter are far less iconic, and lack the star appeal that Superman and Wolverine carry – but with that comes something these games don’t always have tied up in literal decades of canon – creative licence. But the recommendation we at Debug are thoughtfully giving, is without a doubt Lake of Fire. Published in 2017, it features crusaders fighting aliens, and would make a spectacularly simple hack and slash horror/ horde game. The gameplay is not where the power would be with this game, there would have to be great story, which is already set out in framework in the comic – but it is the fact it might, just might change things up! The big superhero games recently have been thoroughly established heroes, with little else to add into the stream of pop culture consciousness – but to see something truly new in the medium of video games is where things get really special.
EARTH ABIDES
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Written in 1949, George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides is an often overlooked post-apocalyptic classic, spinning the yarn of Isherwood Williams surviving a devastating plague to find himself one of few surviving humans. The book was referenced in a lovely set of notes in The Last of Us’s dam sequence. While post apocalyptic games have begun to die out as a staple genre in video games, with Far Cry New Dawn being greeted with a ho hum rather than acclaim - some games still do the genre justice, like the aforementioned Last Of Us and its coming sequel, which deal more with the post-post-apocalypse. It is this that would service Earth Abides best, dealing with the devastation of the end times.
This is an IP which could come as a game in many ways, but would work best as a loose survival/resource management sim, with a tribe of people battling natural conditions and plagues rather than hulking mutated monsters, ala Fallout. Seeing a game which concerns itself with the consequences of the human condition in the face of Armageddon would have to be a lonely, thoughtful affair, almost like Everybody’s gone to the rapture; and in the beginning of the end for apocalyptic adventurers, it would be a self aware, beautiful swan song for the genre. Or y’know, you could just make an I Am Legend game, it’s not been adapted enough anyway right?
GAME OVER! If you made it here, I'm happy to let you know you've finished DEBUG! I'd like to take now to thank everyone I interviewed, anyone who let me use their amazine screenshots, and anyone that put up with me while I made this. If, for any reason, you'd like to get in touch, my email follows, as does my Twttier handle: dominic.cassidy00@gmail.com @Lyre_of_Apollo