Play uk 281 2017

shadow of war middle-earth levels up ISSUE

281

the final verdict

dishonored meets system shock… what could possibly go wrong?

plus: battlefront 2 • gwent • agents of mayhem

ISSUE 281

Welcome pS4 PSVR pS3 Vita pSN

A closer look at all of the best games on the horizon cloud power

30 GeT IN TOuch!

given that i started out working on multiformat magazines, I naturally like to keep an eye on what’s going on all over the industry, not just in PlayStation circles.

Recently, Switch’s relatively successful launch was great to see and now, the curtain has finally started to twitch on Project Scorpio, Microsoft’s ultra-powerful Xbox One-Point-Five designed to outpower the Pro and give MS the performance advantage in a generation for the first time since the original Xbox. The stats all look good on paper and tech analysts seem impressed with what they’ve seen, but at this point in the generation, is raw power really going to be enough to turn the tide?

Getting the hardware specs out in the wild early was a good play, but leaving the actual reveal for E3 worries me. If there’s one thing MS likes to do at E3, it’s talk about things that aren’t games – TV, sports, motion control, home entertainment – and dedicating a presumably large chunk of its conference to Scorpio will be a risky play. It’s clear to all that it’s games rather than grunt holding Xbox back, and good as some of the exclusives are, there are just a fraction of the number that we enjoy on PS4.

Tech enthusiasts might be excited about the prospect of upgrading to run Forza at 4K60, but your regular Joe just wants to see the same breadth and quality of exclusives that the likes of Sony and Nintendo have.

Either way, between Pro and Scorpio, it’s becoming increasingly evident that we’re moving away from the traditional console generation model. Iteration has been working in other parts of the tech sector for years and assuming that compatibility doesn’t suffer too much, it’s actually quite an exciting prospect. After all, who doesn’t like getting a new console?

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luke Albigés editor @LukemonMGJ PSN: PorthMinster currently playing The Binding Of Isaac: Afterbirth

Contents The future of PlayStation gaming looks something like this…

04

prey: the verdict

First look at Monolith’s beautiful and ambitious return to Mordor

4 Middle-earth: Shadow Of War 24 Vita: Dead And Loving It 30 Prey 38 Ten Of The Best: Roguelikes 50 Play Classics: Crash Bandicoot

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30 40 50

middle-earth: shadow of war

FeATUres

play@imagine-publishing.co.uk

previews Star Wars Battlefront II Battalion 1944 Songbringer Gwent: The Witcher Card Game 20 Agents Of Mayhem 12 14 16 18

Does Arkane have a hit on its hands?

mass effect: andromeda

Oh, how the mighty have fallen…

reviews 40 Mass Effect: Andromeda 44 Yooka-Laylee 46 Drawn To Death 48 Toukiden 2

56 58 60 62 64 66

marsupial madness

Celebrating Crash, a true PlayStation icon

PLUS

Interview: Vulajin Extended Play: Adventure PS Plus Trophy Guide Join The Play Community You Haven’t Played…

Playlist

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ow do you create an original story within one of the most analysed, celebrated and scrutinised works of fantasy of all-time? It’s simple, you don’t build just one, you build thousands.

Monolith Productions – much like JRR Tolkien himself – is in the business of ‘mythopoeia’, of establishing myth and of cultivating adventure within the war-ravaged land of Middle-earth. Set in the six-decade window between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, Monolith seized the space it needed when it came to creating 2014’s Shadow Of Mordor – even if it meant treading on so much of the entrenched lore and tone that was established by Tolkien so many decades ago. Not that it sees much of a problem with that.

“Lord Of The Rings is kind of like a religion,” says Kevin Stephens, studio head at Monolith, already having to deal with questions surrounding the canonical placement of Middle-earth: Shadow Of War, which sees Sauron returning to physical form to fight off a new threat: the Bright Lord of Mordor, equipped with an all-new Ring of Power forged in the fires of Mount Doom. “Different people interpret the canon in different ways. If you look at the end of The Hobbit – even if you just look at the movies – Sauron is there in physical form and then when you get to Lord Of The Rings he is this eye in the tower. So what happened? We hope to answer the question,” he says with a smile, announcing the return of dual protagonists Talion, a Ranger seeking revenge for his fallen family turned Bright Lord, and Celebrimbor, the ancient Elf master craftsman he inadvertently fused with. “The way we look at it is this,” he continues, “what happens in Mordor stays in Mordor! Nobody knows what happened in the 60 years between the end of The Hobbit and the

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beginning of The Lord Of The Rings – there are a lot of incredible stories that we feel happened in Mordor that we are trying to tell.”

But that’s the beauty in building myth; it is ultimately open to interpretation and manipulation. In Shadow Of War you too are able to become a master of mythopoeia, free to forge your own destiny in the shadow of Barad-dûr. With a vastly expanded Nemesis system and a renewed focus on procedural, personalised storytelling, Shadow Of War has the potential to tell a tale greater than that of any of Tolkien’s, because it is yours to create and yours alone to enjoy. But to appreciate just how Shadow Of War is positioning itself to solve some of the biggest problems in open-world gaming, you first need to understand the system at the heart of the experience.

n Middle-earth: Shadow Of War will

take Talion across various regions of Mordor, each with an enemy Fortress at the centre to conquer.

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“I get asked this question a lot,” laughed Kevin Stephens, studio head at Monolith, as we wondered aloud why nobody had ripped the Nemesis system off in the last three years. The impact of it seemed seismic back in 2014; almost every open world title released since felt like it could have benefited from it in one capacity or another, from Batman: Arkham Knight to Mafia III and even the likes of Breath Of The Wild.

While Stephens wouldn’t be drawn on pondering the potential (and subsequent failings) of other IP, he did agree that the Nemesis system has brought a new dimension to the open world design model.

“It changes the way you look at open world games. If you play games that don’t have it, it feels like something is missing, like it is lacking in some way.”

“I think right when we launched Shadow Of Mordor, being the studio head and being the business guy, I was nervous. I thought people would try to copy us,” says Stephens, though it didn’t take long for the studio to understand and appreciate just why this is the case, noting that a postmortem alleviated (most of) his fears. “I started to get more relaxed, because I realised it is hard [to copy].

There are a lot of things about our IP, and about the way the game is structured, that are required for the Nemesis system.”

The structural implications, Stephens tells us, are far reaching, but can be as simple as “the fact that time always moves forward”. While many games may operate with a ‘dynamic’ day and night cycle, this doesn’t actually have any true impact on play; in Middle-earth, NPCs change, power shifts and the game world evolves. “A lot of games just aren’t set up that way,” he says, and he isn’t wrong.

“There are so many systems that interact with each other… anybody that wants to follow up and kind of do what we did, well, they have to commit to it; they can’t just tack it on to an established game,” he says, adding. “It’s a special thing. We are committed to it. We are going to keep on evolving the Nemesis system, hopefully forever; we see lots of directions it can continue to go in – we aren’t done!”

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n The Orcs are now split into various factions, each offering different strengths and weaknesses to the presiding Overlord and region.

n As you build your own army of

Followers in Mordor, you’ll be able to select and bring your favourites into battle alongside you.

“In Shadow Of Mordor, one of the features that really hooked players was the Nemesis system. It dynamically created unique and personal enemies for every player based on the fact that they remembered all of their interactions with you and grew over the course of the game,” says Michael de Plater, Monolith’s VP of creative, charged with bringing more unforgettable and unique storytelling opportunities to Mordor than have ever come before. “What we have tried to do this time is building on that idea by having even richer and more diverse stories with the NPCs that you encounter, only now we are extending that idea to the world itself.”

Regardless of your thoughts on traditional open-world game design, Shadow Of Mordor – and, by extension, its sequel Shadow Of War – tells a story that could simply never exist in any other medium. That, in truth, is where the magic of the experience lives and breathes. Because, at its core, Shadow Of Mordor can still be lazily broken down to resemble Arkham Knight meets Tolkien – a sprinkling of Assassin’s Creed II thrown in for good measure. You move through sparse maps filled with predetermined points of interest, fighting enemies in a fashion perfected by Rocksteady long ago. You scale the environment with agility, working diligently to sync with towers and take control of regions whose art assets were most likely in a colour palette

grouping dubbed ‘50 shades of brown’. But sat behind that all too familiar design structure is the Nemesis system – arguably the first significant overhaul to open-world game design convention in a decade.

But what is it that makes it so important? It’s easy to celebrate the Nemesis system without understanding the heart behind the mechanics of it all. So let’s break it down: since the dawn of the last generation, as design proficiencies have improved and ambitions evolved, developers have worked hard to give you an illusion of choice.

But even the most story driven games – the likes of Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and any game out of the Telltale factory – are still bound by traditional narrative structure and convention. It doesn’t matter how complex a dialogue tree or branching path may seems on the surface, ultimately you are arriving in the same story state as another player. Shadow Of Mordor subverted this excellently, willing you to dismantle a syndicate of powerful, personalised Orcs as you fight towards the ultimate end goal of forging your very own ring of power – that’s the moment Shadow Of War picks up.

The Nemesis system creates an unlimited array of personalised encounters, an army of anecdotal stories and a potentially endless supply of memorable enemies to fight that are all unique to you. Did you

fail to kill a Captain but manage to scar them for life with burns? They will remember that, running in terror at the first sight of fire in the next encounter.

Did a scrawny Orc beat your Ranger into submission in a rare moment of weakness? The next time you meet them on the field of battle they will have been promoted for their efforts, their proficiencies shifted to better counter any abilities you attempted to utilise before. As you begin to pick apart the Orc ranks, new randomly-generated NPCs will fill their place and arrive unannounced as you push for further supremacy over Mordor. Double agents can be embedded in armies, unforgettable rivalries will be forged with lowly Orcs and powerful Warchiefs and, ultimately, your attention becomes driven by a desire to resolve conflict in the most bloody and gruesome form imaginable. All of this has been wildly expanded upon in Shadow Of War and the results are striking.

Tolkien would have been proud.

For Stephens, he likes to think of it as a system that brings the rivalries and unpredictability of multiplayer gaming to the single-player arena. “In single-player games, when facing off against AI, you never really have an experience where it feels personal; like there is a real person behind the AI. That was always the goal of the Nemesis system,” he says, noting that the back and forth” play that emerges with the various Orcs isn’t dissimilar to the rivalries that organically form in multiplayer deathmatch sessions, as too is the satisfaction that succeeding eventually brings.

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It is the Orcs that you encounter, and how you chose to fight them, that became the real story of the game. And in Shadow Of War that will extend out into the people and politics that govern Middle-earth, one embroiled in a civil war on the eve of Sauron’s return to the physical realm. The sequel offers up a series of detailed and diverse ecosystems to conquer; at the heart of each a large Fortress that not only signals control of the region, but the true ambition behind Monolith’s renewed intentions here.

“Every single one of these regions is really significantly larger than any of the areas that we had in Shadow Of Mordor and much more detailed,” says de Plater, recognising many of the complaints levied at the variety and diversity of the landscaping back in Shadow Of Mordor. “And every one of these regions is controlled by a Nemesis Fortress. Each one of those Fortresses is personalised depending on the characters that are actually ruling over it.”

Shadow Of War doesn’t just remember your decisions, it leans on them to create a believable, persistent world. The Fortresses expand the Nemesis system in a way we never knew we wanted, let alone could be achieved.

Shadow Of War isn’t just focused on fostering rivalries, but friendships and camaraderie too. Now you will be given the opportunity to build your own armies – of Orcs and powerful Olag-hai trolls, Warchiefs and dissenting trouble makers – in an effort to expand your power and influence across Mordor, wrangling control and territories from Sauron and his Nazgûl in the process.

It’s all done in an effort to improve the scale and scope of the game, Stephen tells us, because by building an army of followers (each of which have met you in battle and been turned to your side thanks to the returning Domination ability), getting to know each of their personality traits, strengths and weaknesses before then leading them into large-scale sieges against an army of tailor made enemies was the inevitable next step for Monolith. “We wanted to have larger and bigger battles that satisfy the fantasy for anybody that loves Tolkien and has seen the movies.

The other huge focus was personal stories; every design decision comes back to each individual player having their own personal stories that aren’t exactly the same as anybody else.”

That manifests itself first and foremost in the followers that you accrue: “You can pick and choose who your followers are and then relationships build [them] over time. Followers can betray you or they can save you,” says Stephens, noting that this all depends on each character’s personality and the way they are treated by you throughout the game. That said, being the best boss in Mordor doesn’t always make for an easy life, you know how the popular saying goes; Orcs will be Orcs, after all. “You don’t really know what they are going to do at times, because at the end of the day they are all Orcs. How loyal are they ever going to be to you? It’s hard to know!”

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n Once you overthrow a Fortress

you’ll be able to put one of your Followers in charge, with the visuals and speciality shifting accordingly.

What this means is that “no two players will have the same experience", Stephens teases. “The key thing that we focused on always was player stories; to ensure that players had more unique stories to tell and a deeper, richer experience.” This all comes to a head in the Fortress Sieges. They set the stage for some visually impressive, player-driven war stories; effortlessly bringing about memories of the exhilarating Battle of Helm’s Deep and the thunderous siege of Minas Tirith from the movie universe. Each Fortress comes with its own chain of command – an Overlord overseeing defences with four Warchiefs in tow, each defending a specific sector of the fortified castle, each needing to be conquered (or turned to your side) to help your army push forward in a tantalising real time fortress assault.

The battles themselves are immense. Not only massive in scope but full of many organic, procedural cinematic moments that get the blood pumping.

It’s widespread Orc-on-Orc violence; the scale is something akin to Dynasty Warriors meets the cinematography of Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings.

As your army pushes on, Talion is able to scale the walls and take on enemies individually, cutting through assailants with an array of new combat techniques – empowered thanks to the power of the ring. Clearing the ranks gives you an opportunity to set traps to take down large groups of enemies or even the chance to utilise environmental objects to create new breach and flank points for your army.

Just as the rival Warchiefs can be dismembered and brutalised, so too can your friendly Warchiefs and long-standing allies; it’s genuinely affecting too, not all that dissimilar to loosing a veteran soldier in X-COM or Fire Emblem. It’s liberating to see a well placed double agent save you from certain death and frustratingly motivating to see an old companion show up as a renewed, Dark Lord-empowered, adversary.

It’s all incredibly impressive – both from a technical and gameplay perspective – even more so when you consider that all of this is procedural, the outcome undetermined until either you or the rival Overlord stands defeated.

n Powerful Drakes can now be

pulled under your rule, giving you scope to sweep over armies and toast ‘em from above.

Middle-earth: Shadow Of War is the first game confirmed to launch on Microsoft’s upcoming ‘premium’ Project Scorpio console – it will be one of the first games to release on the system later this year – and that presents something of a familiar challenge for Monolith. The studio is no stranger to working across generational divides and retooling its games for more powerful hardware after the fact. This is a process that studio head Kevin Stephens describes as “challenging” but ultimately rewarding.

“Monolith has always built its own technology, so we are used to it. Back in the day, when the focus was on PC, it was always, ‘Well, what PC are you focused on?’ I think it is in our DNA to build concurrently across platforms,” he says, confident that the release of 2014’s Shadow Of Mordor across Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and PS4 proves that the studio is more than capable – not to mention the wonderful 4K upgrade the game later received for PS4 Pro in 2016.

But what about Project Scorpio, the mysterious Xbox One upgrade due for release at the end of 2017? Stephens wouldn’t be drawn on details, but he did indicate that Microsoft is still being cautious with firm details – even to a studio deep into development and quickly approaching the finish line. “We are really excited about Project Scorpio. What Microsoft is saying seems true to us, that it will be the fastest console ever created when it releases. What developer is not excited about having their game on (in the moment) the fastest console?”

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Each of the different regions in Shadow Of War features its own Fortress, dictating the swing of power in Mordor.

It’s up to you to gain the necessary power, followers and advantages in the sandbox areas before you march on the stronghold and begin your assault. In this instance we’re going to take a look at an assault on the Terror Fortress of Seregost.

Fortresses are typically maintained by four Warchiefs – many of whom you will have already encountered out on your adventures – and is ruled over by a powerful Overlord. This is your opportunity to assess their strengths and weaknesses. Ur-Hakon The Dragon is immune to fire, so it’s worth leaving your flaming arrows back in Minas Ithil.

Once you’ve got a beat on the enemy Fortress and its leading powers it’s time to select your strongest Followers – Warchiefs that have defected from Sauron’s army – and prepare to launch your assault. It’s a cinematic moment, echoing the calm-before-the-storm moments the Peter Jackson movies fostered so excellently.

As your comrades charge forward in a vicious rush of blood and fury, pushing through the initial bevy of Fortress defences, it’s now up to you to find a way over the gate. You can knock on the front door, blow a hole in the walls using environmental traps or, ideally, use parkour to scale it – this will give you an opportunity sneak behind enemy lines.

Your friendly Warchiefs are able to turn the tide of large scale fights, but they are also expendable. It’s up to you to watch their back and ensure their survival, with encounters being determined in realtime. You can also use any double agents you’ve planted in the Fortress to help turn the tide in your favour.

Even in the heat of battle, enemy Warchiefs can be turned to the Bright side. You should be on the look out for any opportunities to cast Dominion and gain new allies; looking for the option to shame enemies (reducing their level for a fight another day), fight them to the death or recruit them into your own army.

Just because you’ve killed an enemy dead doesn’t mean they are out of the game entirely. Like in Shadow Of Mordor, Warchiefs can return from the dead imbued with the power of the Dark Lord.

These surprise encounters can throw your plan out of the window, so be sure to keep an eye out for surprises at all times.

Once you’ve battled through the Warchiefs and helped your army push up to the inner sanctum of the Fortress, it’ll be time to face the Overlord in a fight to the death. It’ll be a difficult battle but, if you’re lucky, a friendly Warchief will appear and save you from certain death.

n Shadow Of War is visually

impressive, with Monolith making full use of the power offered by Project Scorpio and the PS4 Pro.

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As you begin moving through areas of the Fortress you’ll need to begin taking on enemy Warchiefs. You’ll recognise many of these foes – they will bring past grudges and indiscretions to the fight from previous encounters, and it’s only by beating these powerful enemies that your army will be able to push forward.

Once you’ve defeated the Overlord you’ll take control of the Fortress, being given the opportunity to promote one of your own Warchiefs, not only giving you rule over the region but affecting what materials your war machine will gain – each Fortress is fully customised by the type of Overlord sitting on the throne.

What will continue to keep the fortresses and accompanying sandbox areas fresh is the personalised flavour that comes with each Overlord in charge of events. Each Fortress reflects the specialities of the Overlord at the top and this is not only reflected in the design and defences of the castle itself, but will also resonate out into each region’s sandbox. “The Orcs now belong to different tribes that reflect all sorts of different elements of the game and the environment,” reveals de Plater. “For example, the Beastmaster is a part of the Feral Tribe. They are specialists in hunting, catching, killing and taming monsters and beasts to use as a part of their war machine. If we go down into the sandbox and out into the open world here, we would be encountering hunting parties and different creatures and the fort would also represent that,” he says, also giving us a taste of what to expect from Overlords who specialise in fire weapons and the impact that will have on Fortress assaults. “If he is a specialist [in fire], we are going to be facing things like flaming arrows, flaming catapults, boiling oil and fire traps. The interactions between the Nemesis system and the forts means no two fort assaults are going to be the same.”

This customisation also extends to the allied Nemesis system too. After successfully ousting an Overlord you are able to install one of your own Warchiefs into position, promoting them and allowing their tribal alliances to spread through the Fortress and out into the region, helping Talion’s own war effort. If this sounds familiar, it’s because last year’s Mafia III attempted (and largely failed) to implement a similar system – albeit on the streets of New Orleans rather than the war-scorched fields of Mordor. Without the Nemesis system behind it, Mafia III’s push and pull between associates felt hollow and ultimately ineffective; in Shadow Of War it’s empowering and exciting, to see a game react so dutifully to your presence, victories and mistakes.

What continues to surprise us is how much work Monolith is putting into answering the criticism levied at Shadow Of Mordor. It would, quite honestly, have been enough for the studio to come out with this upgraded Nemesis system in an effort to distract from its other untended areas, but Monolith has clearly been eager to use up every second of its two and a half year development cycle.

“The experience and [subsequent] success of making Shadow Of Mordor, our first third-person open world action game, really gave us a chance to be more ambitious with the sequel,” continues de Plater. “It has allowed us to do something that is as epic as what we imagine and dream of when we approach Lord Of The Rings and Middle-earth. And that goal of creating this

truly epic game applies to the ambition of the story [and] Nemesis system, but it also applies to every other aspect of the game.”

While Shadow Of Mordor contained just two regions, the sequel is made up of many. We’ve seen five so far, including Cirith Ungol, the Gondorian city of Minas Ithil (known more commonly as Minas Morgul), the mountain valley Seregost (up behind Barad-dûr), Gorgoroth on the slopes of Mount Doom and another in the Sea of Núrnen. “Every single one of these regions is really significantly larger than the two areas that we had in Shadow Of Mordor and much more detailed,” says de Plater of the regions, each of which contains a Fortress to be conquered – instanced away from the emergent chaos, story objectives and collectibles found in the accompanying sandboxes.

When we first sat down with Stephens, he began by telling us that Monolith’s goal was to just do “more of everything”. That can too often sound like hype from a studio trying to engineer a little excitement, but once you see the game in action any fears will quickly fall away. Shadow Of War is an impressive concept backed up with precision execution. “We wanted to improve the story, we definitely wanted to improve the Nemesis system, we wanted to make a bigger world and a more epic world,” Stephens continues and, we can confirm, Monolith has eagerly followed through on its ambitions. The Nemesis system is impressive; the combat has seen subtle improvements and the RPG customisation systems have been greatly improved. Shadow Of War has the potential to make Shadow Of Mordor look like a gorgeous, glorified tech demo – a proof of concept before the real fun and ingenuity begins.

“We have put a lot energy into making a really compelling, satisfying game,” says Stephens. “We want a very robust and full experience for everybody; for the person that loves to explore, they will love the game; for the person that loves story, they will love the game; for the person that loves the Nemesis system, they will love the game; we don’t want to leave anybody out, we want this to be a game that everybody loves.”

Given what we’ve seen of Shadow Of War so far, Monolith is certainly on the right path. With the game set to launch on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One on 25 August – not to mention alongside Project Scorpio when it launches ‘Holiday 2017’ – you won’t have long to wait to get this game in your hands; to begin building your own destiny in the realm of Middle-earth, battling to leave an impression on the scorched lands of Mordor. If you’ve ever dreamed of stepping into Tolkien’s world, Middle-earth: Shadow Of War is your best opportunity to do so yet.

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eta november

Star WarS Battlefront II

Pub eA

dev dice

Star Wars Battlefront 2 “Wipe them out… all of them” As much as it might have nailed the look, the sound and the feel of the Star Wars universe, 2015’s Battlefront reboot just felt like it was missing something. Well, lots of things, actually, especially compared to the PS2-era releases, which featured things like class-based gameplay, myriad settings and modes, and free transitions between infantry and vehicular combat – something that DICE already does remarkably well in the Battlefield games. Battlefront II, then, is exactly what a sequel should be, building on the solid foundations built by the original and adding to the overall package in some exciting new ways.

Chief among these is the addition of a single-player campaign, addressing one of the biggest complaints about the original. This brand-new story will, interestingly, be told from an Imperial perspective, more specifically that of elite TIE pilot Iden Versio in the midst of the chaos of the second Death Star’s destruction at the end of Return Of The Jedi. It’s been suggested that the campaign may also feature other playable characters, including Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker.

Even more classic heroes, villains, locations and vehicles will pop up in multiplayer too, since the game now draws from the original, prequel and sequel movies. This will mean a much greater sense of variety – something the original’s minimal spread was sorely lacking – and with no Season Pass to hide content behind, the Force already seems pretty strong with this sequel.

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star wars battlefront II is set to improve on the original by having Criterion and Motive help out DICE for optimal results. Find out more here: ea.com

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pS4

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Battalion 1944

ps4

The focus for Battalion’s map design is on tight, asymmetrical and intricately designed spaces. They are easy to navigate and learn but difficult to master, and those with an eye for positioning will quickly find themselves in a position of dominance.

ETa 2017

Pub Square enix

dEv Bulkhead interactive

Battalion 1944

Hands-on with the WWII shooter you’ve been looking for You’ve never played a game quite like Battalion 1944.

Okay, well, that isn’t exactly true, because at its heart its a firstperson shooter directly inspired by the likes of Call Of Duty 2 and Day Of Defeat – decade-old games with multiplayer components built to a very specific design template. But where Battalion 1944 differs from other games that lean heavily on nostalgia to sell themselves is that it feels like a modern interpretation of the genre – taking lessons learned in the last ten years and applying them to a familiar array of battlegrounds, mechanics and weapons.

The World War II shooter is in for one hell of a resurgence in 2017 and developer Bulkhead Interactive will be leading the charge. Battalion 1944 is on the precipice of entering Alpha and that’s given us the opportunity to get our hands on the upcoming, self-proclaimed ‘oldschool shooter’ in a four-versus-four LAN scenario. Initial impressions involve damning the steep learning curve and violently coming to terms with the fact that our skills have been unknowingly dampened over the years by shooters leaning on auto-aim and course correction as balancing tools.

Battalion 1944 is uncompromisingly basic in this respect; there are no perks, enhanced abilities or loadouts to play about with here in an attempt to artificially turn the tide of battle in your favour.

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When it comes to shooters of this ilk, you’ve either got it or you don’t. It’s as simple as four soldiers dressed in American garb grabbing hold of the single-shot powerhouse M1 Garand rifle or the short-of-clip Thompson sub machine gun and pushing forward against another four playing the part of German Nazis, each seemingly equipped with an overpowered MP40 – which Bulkhead tells us it is already working on tweaking and balancing.

Skill is everything in Battalion; managing sight lines with cautious positioning is half of it, twitchy reaction times the rest.

Where Battalion 1944 differs from, say, jumping into a legacy server of COD2, however, is that it feels modern. The gorgeous environments – a mixture of houses, tight streets and low trenches – powered by Unreal Engine 4 certainly help to modernise play, but it just feels tighter to play.

Handling is vastly improved over the decadeold shooters it takes so much inspiration from, aligning with how you remember them to be (as opposed to the somewhat sticky reality).

Movement is smooth and the weapons are precise; should you get the hang of aiming for the brutally small headshot hitboxes (which will be tougher on controller than with a mouse), you’ll quickly be rewarded by progression up the leaderboard. In many ways, despite being marketed as a shooter for the begrudged generation of FPS players that feels like the industry left them behind, it feels like a welcome alternative to Counter-Strike:

Global Offensive. A little rougher round the edges, as it stands, but as competitive and regressive, all the same.

Speaking with the folks from Bulkhead during our session, two things became immediately clear: the young team, largely responsible for existential puzzle games Pneuma: Breath Of Life and The Turing Test, have a deep appreciation of Call Of Duty 2 and a genuine desire to hear its fledging community out. This Kickstarter success is being built by an passionate group and they want the fans to guide its development forward. At EGX Rezzed, the team could be heard at the end of sessions asking for suggestions from players, meticulously noting any bug reports and seen at panels imploring fans to come forward with any criticism or concerns. So many videogames are developed in bubbles, which can often mean mistakes are unwittingly made early in development – Bulkhead is looking to avoid such a scenario. This is especially true as it looks to open up access to the game for Kickstarter backers and fans alike, giving everybody the opportunity to not only help guide development, but drop into a truly authentic, exhilarating online multiplayer experience the likes of which has been gone for too long, but certainly not forgotten. baTTalion 1944 is waiting in the trenches with Bulkhead Interactive for the order to go over the top. More here: battaliongame.com

What makeS thiS game great?

An honest return to simpler times, in terms of both hardware and mechanics.

It rewards precision, skill, patience and coordination with satisfying plays.

Good WWII games have been few and far between for the last decade or so.

It could just do the impossible and get the drop on Call Of Duty.

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eTA 2017

Songbringer

Pub Wizard-Fu

pS4

dev in-house

Songbringer The power of one

Adventure begins with a six-letter code. Songbringer is procedural, but not in the way that you might expect; there are over 308 million unique environmental combinations in this beautiful action-RPG, and the world you receive is born from your very first decision in its embrace. When starting a new adventure you are asked to input a random six-letter code that will then generate a unique world dynamically and deterministically – a unique space that can later be shared with friends should you remember the combination. The result is an adventure that is never the same for any two players, unless you want it to be, of course; an opportunity to enjoy something that feels unique and tailor-made just for you, while still ensuring that friends can revel in secret hunting and speedruns together.

Songbringer is being built by Nathanael Weiss, a one-man development outfit dubbed Wizard Fu; the entire development streamed from start to (eventual) finish on Twitch – catalogued on YouTube in over 500 videos –

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creating a lesson in the maddening challenges and enjoyment to be found behind the game design curtain.

Thematically, Songbringer immediately invokes the challenge and joy of Hyper Light Drifter – each built around precision swordswinging and lightning-fast reactions as sullen synth-wave thunders through your setup’s speakers – whilst still offering an experience that seems to owe a debt to the earlier Legend Of Zelda adventures. It’s a style of game that has become so popular in recent years that it’s essentially carved out its own genre, retro-grade aesthetics bound to a familiar yet challenging design ethos. Where Songbringer tries to distance itself from the pack, however, is through its open and non-linear world design, with your overworld conquerable in any fashion that you see fit – you don’t even need to pick up the sword, should you be interested in a nightmarish challenge. The generated overworld is built in such a way that you can play any of the nine dungeons out of order – tough, multi-layered areas in which you’ll encounter strange puzzles, horribly difficult

enemies and beautifully designed bosses to do battle against.

While Songbringer’s design is familiar, it’s also somewhat mesmerizing to play.

The movement and motion of hero Roq Epimetheos seems almost hypnotic when guided by your hand, the twisted pixel-art futurescapes a beauty to behold and an everpresent challenge to tackle. It’s fun and the handling is tight, once again proving that one developer with passion and perseverance can too often create an experience that feels as mesmerizing and engaging as any other triple-A production. songbringer is a million adventures in one from one-man studio, Wizard-Fu. It only has one website, though: songbringer.com

What makes this game great?

Seed-based world generation lets players enjoys their own unique adventures.

The stunning pixel art is even more impressive in motion.

Freedom of approach will make it great for the streaming and speedrun scenes.

PS4 is home to tons of great indies, but there’s always room for one more.

While it doesn’t yet have a release date, Songbringer is expected to arrive later in 2017. Players should expect to get plenty of value for money as it offers literally millions of game worlds to scour thanks to its unique procedural design.

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preview

GWenT: The WiTCher Card Game

ps4 Positioning is imPoRtant Each card needs to be assigned to its applicable row – melee, ranged and siege – as denoted by the icons on the left side of the card, though the importance of this only comes into play as you attempt to mitigate adverse weather affects placed onto the board. The other type of unit positioning means you can now choose where you want to place cards on the row, heavily factoring into how abilities interact with allied and enemy units.

etA 2017

Pub CD PRojekt ReD

dev in-House

Gwent: The Witcher Card Game Hits the Rivia of dreams

Gwent proved to be so hugely popular within the pubs and streets of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s world that it made perfect sense for developer CD Projekt RED to spin the game out into its own standalone release.

Already in beta on PC and Xbox One – with the PS4 version expected to launch shortly thereafter – Gwent has proven to be a monstrously fun time vampire, offering TCG action without any of the hang-ups or convoluted card mechanics that can too often hold titles such as Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering back from their true potential.

There’s a considered simplicity and untold depth to Gwent at this early stage, its balance held intact by a relatively contained array of cards and factions; a recent update brings the number of cards available in the game to over 60 cards, split between five factions – Northern Realms, Scoia’tael, Skellige, Monsters and Nilfgaard. There is a real pleasure to be had from getting into such a complex and deep game at the ground level – it’s the perfect opportunity to enjoy the release and learn its basics before it becomes flooded by new expansions and proficiencies. Gwent has already proven to be a challenging delight.

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gwent is no longer a pastime just for Witchers – we all get to play now! Believers in the heart of the cards would do well to visit playgwent.com

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attaCk stRategy Every card has different properties that can often affect your attack and defence strategies. There is a scalable difficulty to this and it’s here where the real gulf in skill and survivability begins to present itself; knowing when to place a unit down that can attack and subsequently lower an enemy’s strength is vital, as too is knowing when to use spy cards, giving your foe an initial strength boost while preparing for a later windfall, or when to drop rowaltering weather cards is half the fun.

BuilDing stRengtH The objective is to have a higher strength rating than your opponent, with each game played out across a best two out of three rounds. It isn’t merely about getting your highest strength cards out early though, as you’ll need to plan ahead to ensure you have enough cards to make viable plays in future rounds. Minimal amounts of cards are returned to your hand between rounds, and sensing when to forfeit is as important as knowing when to push on for victory.

DeCk BuilDing As with any great card game, deck building is a true skill. While you can gain cards for winning games and advancing your rank, you’ll want to focus on earning in-game resources to build out specific cards, all done in an effort to better serve your optimal build. Knowing how to scale strength cards versus round-altering potions and defence-orientated units is a skill that’ll emerge after many hours of trial and error, allowing you to make a tailor-made deck to suit your play style.

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preview

ETA 18 AuGust 2017

Agents Of MAyheM

Pub DEEp sILvEr

ps4

dEv vOLItION

Agents Of Mayhem A battle of bad versus evil

There are no ‘good guys’ in Agents Of Mayhem, all of the primary characters being ones other games would typically task you with killing. An evil organisation has attacked the world, and so the world has turned to a load of baddies, played by you, to restore order.

That’s the setup.

Thankfully, the details of interaction are much more complicated and offer a greater means for Mayhem to express and differentiate itself. On paper, it could be accurately described as an openworld third-person shooter, but such labels fail to communicate the character switching system that is its core concept and main point of interest.

Prior to the start of missions you are asked to select three agents to take into the field from a group of misfits that include a drunken roller derby player, a disgraced ex-military officer and an obnoxious reality TV star. Only one agent can be used at a time, but you can instantly switch between them at a press of a button as often as you like. This is an ability explained away, in the vaguest terms, as a ‘teleportation technology’ that happens to exist in this vision of a futuristic Earth.

The switching provides numerous tactical options for approaching combat situations that tend to rest on the more extreme end when it comes to quantity of enemies, explosions and general carnage. You might choose to select your agents with a view to having a diverse range of abilities at your disposal, bringing in those that between them cover short, medium and longrange possibilities. Or you might load up solely on immediate damage-dealers or sneakier snipers so that you can concentrate your firepower towards a specific approach.

In a sense, the teleportation concept is an extension of the more common idea of allowing players to select loadouts, with your arsenal here determined by a choice of characters rather than guns. Team choices are made more important, however, by the abilities and narrative exposition coupled with them.

Once you’ve built up a dedicated meter you can unleash a special ‘Mayhem’ ability, each agent boasting one that works best in different situations.

Some are better used when surrounded by many enemies, others are effective at dealing with fewer, but more powerful, individuals.

Agent Hollywood, the reality TV star, for

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This is not a game that’s afraid of ramping everything up to 11 when it comes to explosions, lasers and death.

instance, can summon bombs that explode all around him whilst simultaneously enjoying unlimited ammo and increased firing rate for a short while. This becomes an extremely powerful Mayhem ability for those times in which you find yourself surrounded.

Roller derby superstar Daisy, on the other hand, deploys a Mayhem attack that can damage a single enemy quickly. When triggered her standard minigun becomes more powerful and easier to aim at smaller targets, which is great when you’re facing down a boss packing a lot of hit points.

Your team decisions also play a part in what dialogue you hear during missions and, in turn, this can impact how you interpret the tone of certain events and missions and the wider narrative. Daisy is frequently drunk and her lines play into that, while Hollywood tends to make everything about himself and, as a result, makes you feel more like a stereotypical action star. Fortune, a Colombian pirate, is feistier and comes packed with wittier quips than the others, the thematic sensation having a more roguish, sarcastic quality.

LEGION Of DOOm

To put it lightly, Agents Of Mayhem’s narrative foundations make Deadpool look like a serious take on life. Things begin with an attack that subsequently came to be known as ‘Devil’s Night’, the super-villain organisation LEGION attacking armies and economies with the help of a teleportation technology they created.

With the world in panic, a former LEGION minion, Persephone Brimstone, is tasked with putting together MAYHEM in a bid to deflect the attacks and restore balance to the world. This group is made up of individuals that society has deemed less than affable, resulting in a battleground populated on both sides by the kind of characters you’d expect to be on the wrong end of Superman’s fist or Thor’s hammer.

WhAt mAkEs thIs GAmE GrEAt? That classic Saints Row silliness, with an all-new setting and cast.

Whatever your preferred trio, the activities presented to you remain the same. Main quests define the critical path, with side missions revolving around destroying this or rescuing that, obtaining a treasure or killing a foe. Those with an interest in obtaining every resource with a view to upgrading abilities to their maximum will want to pay close attention to these side missions as they appear.

Given the wider comedic tone, the openendedness of the environment and potential for varying playing styles, there’s a strong hint of Borderlands about Agents Of Mayhem; the key difference between the two being that loot has been replaced by the ability to switch characters on the fly. Such a comparison is no bad thing, and with Volition’s history, which covers the Red Faction and Saints Row series, there’s little reason the studio shouldn’t be setting sights on sitting alongside such a well-respected peer.

Switching characters is surprisingly empowering for such a simple mechanic.

If you like making things go boom, you’re probably going to really like this.

It was probably a good idea to give the Saints a rest for a bit…

While it makes sense to define your team composition based on how their skills compliment one another, it’s almost impossible not to be swayed into a decision by gravitating towards those character designs you like most.

AgEnTs Of mAyhEm is apparently what happens when you let Volition out of Stillwater.

Gulp. More here: aomthegame.com

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YOOKA-LAYLEE A NEW DYNAMIC DUO IS BORN ISSUE

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PERSONA 5 IN-DEPTH

GAMES RATED

HEROIC HANDS-ON!

INJUSTICE 2 HOW NETHERREALM GEARED UP TO GET BATMAN VS SUPERMAN RIGHT THIS TIME

PLUS: TEKKEN 7 • NIER AUTOMATA • DIRT 4 • LEGO WORLDS

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Ask the average gamer about the current state of Sony’s PlayStation Vita and they’ll most likely confidently reply that the console’s been dead in the water for some time. It’s a valid comment to make, particularly when you consider the number of great Vita games that rarely get covered in today’s mainstream gaming press, but it’s not wholly accurate. In fact, if we’re completely honest, it’s downright wrong.

There were 126 games were released for the PS Vita last year – sure, a large number of them were digital or exist only as weird and exotic delicacies in Japan, but they’re out there and they add further weight to the proof that Sony’s supposedlydead console is actually doing surprisingly well, particularly when you consider that Sony’s last big physical release for the system was 2014’s Freedom Fighters. So what went wrong for Sony’s second portable, and why does it now have such a vibrant and passionate community, one that’s easily comparable to the Dreamcast, another console that failed to do the business in the eyes of consumers?

It all started off well for the handheld. It was the successor to the PSP, a system that eventually shifted more than 80 million units – in comparison, the six-year-old Vita is struggling to hit the 5 million mark in Japan – and its launch lineup and early

period of releases were absolutely stellar, with epic triple-A blockbusters such as Uncharted Golden Abyss, WipEout 2048, Gravity Rush and Killzone Mercenaries all looking like they could have been released on PS3. But support for the system slowly began to dry up, not as quickly as on the Wii U, but at a rapid enough pace to suggest that big hitters such as Activision, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and even Sony, weren’t happy with the direction the console was heading in. “I think triple-A tent pole games are critical to a platform’s mainstream success, and the decline of the system coincided with the decline of those releases,” says Brain Provinciano, the creator of Retro City Rampage and a huge supporter of Sony’s console. “As much as I love indie games personally, I don’t think a mainstream platform can succeed on a large scale with them alone.”

Sony’s choice of proprietary memory cards also added to the woes of the system. While plenty of physical Vita games were available, the company

was also aggressively pushing digital sales for the console, particularly with the release of many acclaimed PSone and PSP games that all look absolutely fantastic the Vita’s OLED screen. Its memory cards were stupidly overpriced, however, with the 4GB and 8GB being largely pointless due to their lack of sensible capacity, and the more desirable 16GB and 32GB offerings costing a staggering $69.99 and $119.99 on release – ludicrous when you consider the Wi-Fi-only version of the console was launching at $249. Sony eventually released a 64GB card in Japan, but even with eventual price reductions it’s rare to pick one up for less than £70, something that Josh Fairhurst, one half of the duo running Limited Run Games, a company still publishing games for the Vita, finds particularly galling. “Most games released on Vita are only available digitally and many are 1GB or larger. A 64GB memory card may only be able to hold 20-50 games and it costs nearly as much as a used Vita console!”

A focused librAry filled with unique niche gAmes thAt you wouldn’t find on Any other plAtform

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InsIde danganronpa

Producer, Yoshinori Terasawa discusses one of ViTa’s biggesT franchises What sets Danganronpa apart from similar games?

[The way] you can make selections from character’s actions is what sets Danganronpa aside from other mystery solving games. i believe other mystery games do not have this much action. furthermore, it is a mystery game, but the characters in the story do not seek to actually solve the mystery. instead, they choose the 'blackened one' by any means necessary, although we end up completely solving the mystery by the end. (laughs).

Why doesn’t it feature multiple endings? each character is considered as a main character, therefore each of their lives and their deaths have a significant meaning. This is beautifully woven into one story by Kodaka, so it is very difficult to create another ending. however, we have included bonus content for fans that want to enjoy a 'what-if' scenario.

How did the creation of Monokuma come about?

The Danganronpa series has a strong horror side to it, so we felt that we needed a character to be a symbol that would represent the storyteller and the bad guy, which resulted in the creation of Monokuma. Monokuma was created by the scenario maker Kodaka and the character designer Mr. Komatsuzaki. They started off with a quick sketch over a conversation, and i heard that within 15 minutes they came up with a design. i often see Monokuma’s personality in Kodaka. i can say for certain that Monokuma is part of Kodaka’s character [laughs].

How did you choose the content for Danganronpa 3’s limited edition?

The art book and strap were a very popular item in past editions, so we followed tradition and put them in the limited edition. The soundtrack is also a standard item that comes in limited editions. as for the anime, last year we did a Danganronpa 3 animation and we felt that would resonate with anime fans well, so we went for it. by making nagito Komaeda the main character, we felt that fans from previous editions would be very happy with our choice.

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Perhaps the biggest nail in the Vita’s coffin, though, was Sony’s proud reveal of Remote Play for the PlayStation 4 in June 2013. A greatly enhanced version of what had been available for PS3, it works extremely well and massively opened up the Vita’s library of games (providing of course that you had a good enough internet connection). It can’t be a shock to learn that it’s also the point that you could start seeing support for big triple-A publishers dropping off from the system. After all, why spend additional millions making a game for a small pool of players, when they can easily access and enjoy (odd button issues aside) your existing PS4 games?

We’re big fans of remote play, but we also feel it was a crushing blow to the console.

While the PS Vita barely registers a pulse in the West, it’s still doing exceptionally well in Japan, supported by some of the country’s biggest publishers, including Square Enix, Namco Bandai, Koei Tecmo, Idea Factory, Atlus, Sega and NIS America. So what has allowed these companies to thrive and why is Sony’s system still so popular there?

“Commuting via train to work is the norm and commutes can be in excess of one hour one way,” reveals Alan Costa, NIS America’s senior associate producer. “It makes sense then that a dedicated gaming handheld would be a great way to occupy the time. Although this has recently been changing, the Vita has often had exclusives that have contributed to its popularity in Japan.”

Arianne Advincula, Idea Factory’s marketing coordinator is in agreement with Alan, but she also feels that specifically targeted games have helped the machine gain interest with certain types of gamers. “Idea Factory games appeal to gamers who like Japanese-style video games and PlayStation Vita games appeal to Japanese players. So, it only makes sense that they would continue to put their titles on the PS Vita.” For Josh Fairhurst it just comes down to ensuring gamers have the games

they actually want to play. “For me, it’s the perfect platform for visual novels, shoot-‘em-ups and RPGs,” he explains. “It’s easy to develop for versus the 3DS (and more powerful) and the beautiful widescreen display makes these genres really shine on the platform. I feel like if those genres were more mainstream in the West, the Vita would be much more successful here. Unfortunately, the Vita was marketed in the West as a triple-A portable and in hindsight I don’t think that really played to the console’s true strengths.”

Despite questionable marketing in the West, the Vita nonetheless has an excellent community of passionate gamers there, many of whom are big collectors of the console. Facebook groups like PS Vita Gamers Unite! have become robust communities for members, while Vita exclusive websites like TheVitaLounge and Vita Player remain dedicated to sharing the news that passes many bigger multiformat sites by. One such supporter of the Vita is Karim Delawalla who currently has every available English-language PS Vita game, some 250 titles. “I love the Vita,” he tells us, “I like the quality and variety of games.

While the Vita may be heavy on RPGs, there is still a variety of great games and the Facebook group Playstation Vita/PSP Collectors definitely motivated me to collect for it.” So as a loyal follower of the machine how does he feel about Sony’s current support in the West? “Well it’s currently non-existent except for giving discounts on the PS store,” he reveals. “As I write this, I recently read an article about how PS Now support on the Vita is going to be pulled next year. I understand that business decisions have to be made and the Vita is now quite an old console, but it’s still frustrating. Sony needed to fully back the Vita by releasing more first-party titles than they did and made it more accessible by sticking to standard

the VitA, like psp before it, hAs mAny unique, quAlity titles on it thAt Are quintessentiAlly JApAnese

n Many collectors are now turning to Asian suppliers like HeavyArm U-Store and Play-Asia for English-language versions of games that didn’t receive physical releases in Europe

nEw ‘n’ tAStY: oDDworlD: ABE’S oDDYSEE

another early Limited run game with another extremely low print run (2,500 units). its current asking price will make you regret you never picked it up for $25 on release. expect to pay: £100+

Ar noSUrgE PlUS subtitled, ode To an unborn star, gust co’s sci-fi tinged rPg is an enhanced port of the Ps3 game. an extremely small print run now means it’s one of the most expensive western games you can buy. expect to pay: £250 - £350

SUPErDiMEnSion nEPtUnE VS SEgA HArD girlS

The neptunia limited editions always sell out quickly, so it was no surprise to see this highly anticipated crossover immediately sell out. expect to pay: £90 – £120

BrEACH & ClEAr

for many this is the jewel in the crown of any Vita collection. only 1,500 copies of the game were produced by Limited run, making it stupidly hard to get hold of. expect to pay: £150-£200

PErSonA 4 DAnCing All nigHt The rising popularity of the Persona series means that this over-the-top boxset is only going to rise in price, especially if it’s still sealed. expect to pay: £50 – £80

AtEliEr ESCHA & logY PlUS: AlCHEMiStS of tHE DUSk SkY

This coveted limited edition never received a european release, which has pushed up its desirability. You’re doing extremely well if you can get it for under three figures. expect to pay: £150 – £250

rEtro CitY rAMPAgE

brian Provinciano’s highly-entertaining homage to the nes and eighties gaming is rumoured to be getting a reprint. if that’s the case, expect the current price to drop. expect to pay: £40 – £100

YS: MEMoriES of CElCEtA

with a new game released later this year, expect interest in this lavish boxset to rise even higher, especially as it was only released in the states. expect to pay: £50 – £80

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BuIldIng grand KIngdoM

grand KingdoM’s ToMohiKo deguchi on The besT ViTa gaMe You’Ve noT PLaYed Where did the idea for Grand Kingdom originate?

Mr watanabe, a producer at spike chunsoft, was a fan of my previous game Grand Knights History and told me he would like to work together on a game that carried on that legacy. i also personally wanted to create an rPg with the theme of mercenaries.

Have you been surprised by its cult status? we put our blood, sweat and tears into this game, so it makes me extremely happy to know that people enjoy the game. we take all the encouragement of our fans and continue to create titles that many people can enjoy.

What makes it so suited for play on Vita? in Japan, people commute to work via train, so this was a main Vita target. further, with the Vita, we also thought that game lent itself to a style where people would be able to take on quests on the go and participate in the online war portion at home.

What was the hardest thing to create from a gameplay point of view?

The development team was only about 15 people, which is extremely small for a project, and it was difficult to create the many assets the game requires. however, because the team was small, communication was comparatively smooth and thanks to that, we were able to create this complicated game.

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memory cards. We would be looking at the Vita very differently if that was the case.”

It’s fortunate then that Limited Run Games, NIS America, Idea Factory and PQube remain strong supporters of the system in the West, creating exclusive low print runs of previously digital-only games in the case of Limited Run, or delivering lavish limited editions of big hitters such as Danganronpa 3, the Hyperdimension Neptunia games and Steins; Gate Zero. Limited Run in particular has become a big player in the West, with its focus on targeting the system with key releases ranging from Thomas Was Alone, The Swapper, OddWorld: Stranger’s Wrath and Soldner X2 delighting and frustrating collectors in equal measure.

While many love physical versions, the range of PS Vita and PS4 games have become the target of scalpers, who take advantage of the small print runs and the ability to often order two games at a time.

“Initially it was just this self-serving goal to put my own games (Breach & Clear and Saturday Morning RPG) into a box,” recalls Fairhurst about setting the company up. “I hated that my digital games would have no legacy and would disappear into the digital ether when PSN on Vita inevitably shuts down. I wanted to preserve them even if no one else really cared. When we saw the response to our Breach & Clear release, it was clear that we needed to support the Vita in a much higher capacity than we originally planned. The fanbase on this platform is amazing and we want to do whatever we can to bring them more physical games.” Costa is also aware of the strong thirst for exclusive Japanese games here and it’s allowed NIS America to become

n limited editions have helped many third-party publishers build a thriving fanbase on the PS Vita. You’ll need deep pockets mind…

a prominent player thanks to the incredible success of the Danganronpa and Persona franchises. “Our mission is to bring Japanese entertainment to fans in the West,” he continues. “The Vita, like PSP before it, has many unique, quality titles on it that are quintessentially Japanese. Fans have caught on to what’s available on the platform and they know who is providing it.

Of course, we can’t talk about games that are ‘quintessentially Japanese’, without briefly focusing on the ‘Waifu’ games that can be found on the Vita.

While titles like the Senran Kagura games can be seen as the Vita equivalent of Carry On films, due to the ridiculous antics of their big bosomed protagonists, the likes of Gal*Gun Double Peace, Dungeon Travellers 2, Monster Monpiece, Criminal Girls and Dead Or Alive Xtreme 3 – which received such a backlash that Koei Tecmo decided against releasing it in the West – have received far more criticism, as they effectively allow the player to rub and touch the young female protagonists to do anything from level-up characters to simply advance the story. The primary argument in their defense is that it’s Japanese developers responding to a clear niche in the market born of cultural norms that are different from those in the West.

Understandably, that’s not stopped the Vita and these titles from coming under fire. “Each of us has their own personal tastes and what makes us happy,” is Advincula’s take on such games. “I’m just as passionate about my own hobbies and interests and can relate to fans who know what they want, especially when I’ve had the pleasure of meeting plenty of them.”

doMInatIng tHe VIta

Josh fairhusT on The success of LiMiTed run gaMes

n limited run games typically sell out on the day of release, making them highly collectible and very expensive if you miss out.

As over-the-top and controversial as some Vita games are, they pale in comparison to the many lavish boxsets that exist on the system, which in turn make Sony’s console highly desirable. Typically the vanguard of big triple-A releases, virtually every physical game from NIS America, PQube and Idea Factory comes with an equally elaborate box set that range in price from £40 to £80 and very quickly sell out, leading to astronomical prices online. It’s become a crucial stream of revenue for many Vita publishers, so great care is taken during their creation. “At Idea Factory International, it is part of the marketing team’s job to propose and handle the creation of the limited edition items,” confirms Advincula. “We also work closely with the design and production team to finalise how the collector’s box and packaging will look. Of course, we also work with the original licensors in Japan in order to approve each item we make for these limited editions.” Costa also feels that they offer great value for those buying them. “Japanese games often offer a unique world or setting in which players love to lose themselves,” he reveals. “A good LE helps the player get closer to the worlds and characters they love, so we spend a lot of time incorporating user feedback to make LEs that our users enjoy. The LE market is very important to us because it allows us to help directly connect our fans with the worlds in the games. A quality localisation is also paramount to the game’s reception and we take that aspect of the project very seriously. The team begins looking at the game early on to get a feel for it and a translator works closely with an editor to ensure the text is faithful to the original while still being natural English.”

The critical combination of quirky Japanese releases, high-quality limited editions and a continuing stream of titles from Limited Run (it’s currently publishing Runner 2, it’s 20th Vita release) has made Sony’s console into a highly

desirable system for collectors, who are flocking to the machine; which in turn is convincing many publishers to stay with the system. “I like to think of the Vita as the Dreamcast of its time,” concludes Fairhurst. “I love my Dreamcast for the same reason I love my Vita: a focused library filled with unique niche games that you wouldn’t find on any other platform. In the same vein as the Dreamcast, the Vita is the underdog, the diamond in the rough that the mainstream is missing out on. It’s an easy platform to feel passionate about. As a diehard fan myself, I take every opportunity I get to sell people on the Vita. Once they get one and start diving into the library, they get it and they become diehard too.”

Provinciano, who is still planning to release a physical version of his incoming game, Shakedown: Hawaii, is also convinced there’s still plenty of life in Sony’s forgotten console. “I absolutely love the PS Vita. I’m a handheld gamer first and foremost, and think there will be enough players still to support the cost of porting. There may not be enough to recoup on an exclusive title, but the other platforms can subsidise the cost. What I really hope, is to finish another game after Shakedown while there’s still enough life left on the Vita to cover the cost of porting that too!”

There’s every chance that the recent release of Nintendo’s Switch will eventually seal the system’s fate, particularly if it becomes a big success in Japan, and staunch Vita supporters, including NIS America and Limited Run already have their eyes on Nintendo’s hybrid console to see how it fares there.

For now though, Sony’s PS Vita is very much alive and kicking so why not give it a try? In doing so you’ll discover one of the most diverse and interesting libraries of any current console.

i think triple-A tent pole gAmes Are criticAl to A plAtform’s mAinstreAm success, And the system’s decline coincided with the decline of those releAses

Special thanks to Greg Tucker for the use of Ar Nosurge Plus and Atelier Escha and Logy Plus.

did you expect limited run games to become so popular? not at all. i knew we’d have some modicum of success but i thought we’d cap out at an audience of 2,000 in a few years. Those expectations were shattered when we put out Breach & Clear and it sold out in two hours. we never saw that coming!

How do you go about choosing games? it’s a split between developers coming to us and us going to them. My cofounder, douglas bogart, and i play a ton of games so we have an ongoing list of games we’d like to publish because we really enjoyed them ourselves. some of these games may not be the highest rated games in the world, but they’re games we liked so we know others will feel the same.

What are you doing to combat the scalpers that stop fans from buying your games? douglas [bogart] watches orders as they roll in on sales day and cancels any and all orders that break our set limits. once a sale has been completed, before shipping starts, he meticulously combs the shipping manifest for duplicate addresses and banned customers. we go through a pretty crazy process to make sure that people play along with our set rules. are there any big games you’ve been unable to secure?

Yes, there are three that are sore spots for me. out of respect for the developers, i can’t name specific titles. Two of them were from the same developer and they pretty much just said that they had no intention to return to the games to do further distribution. The other is one we’ve been trying to secure since we started. at one point we were even on the verge of finally signing a deal! unfortunately, the decision to work with us doesn’t lie with the developer.

Would you consider reprinting any of your earlier runs which have sold out? we don’t actually have any legal right to. our contracts are structured in a way such that all rights revert back to the developers upon our version selling out. after the rights are back with the developer, the decision to reprint independently is on them. You won’t see reprints coming from us, but you can take solace in knowing that we don’t lock anything up in a vault.

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Through The looking glass

Is Prey ‘BIoshock In sPace’ or somethIng else entIrely? ontact with Talos I has been lost. Set securely in lunar orbit, a menace – the likes of which we have never before encountered – is threatening to break free and change humanity’s course forever.

Talos I was always designed to contain, but this, it seems, is simply too much for the ageing Russian space station to bear. What is the true cost of curiosity? Humanity is about to find out. A vicious and unexplainable alien is running rampant, rebelling after years of experimentation at the hands of various corporations and government agencies. There are some things we were never meant to meddle in; extracting technological secrets from vastly powerful, mutating non-terrestrial lifeforms is one of them – though that knowledge is of little comfort now.

Alone you must fight for answers and freedom, for survival. The station’s crew is MIA; presumed dead, or worse – prey to a powerful alien threat. Destiny has led you into the chaos, but how far you are willing to go to ensure the survival of the human race is up to you and you alone. The real question is this: how much of yourself are you willing to lose in the process?

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Arkane Studios is working hard to master a lost art. The immersive sim largely died with the closures of Looking Glass, Ion Storm and Irrational Games. Studios that pioneered a unique design philosophy in the likes of Deus Ex, Thief, Ultima Underworld, System Shock and its sequel; each broke from the traditional first-person template to make a daring push toward immersive, player-reactive videogames. Dependable, interlacing systems would allow immersion and player agency to remain undisturbed, while intuitive NPC design and objective tracking would ensure that every action was met with a suitable reaction. With Prey, Arkane Studios is making a deliberate play for an unoccupied space in the market; leaning on the lessons learned in the past three decades to better create an immersive sim for the modern generation.

Some studios would take issue with being so aggressively associated with other IP, but Arkane takes such comparison with pride. “I don’t think I could possibly deny that assertion,” admits Seth Shain, lead systems designer at Arkane, as we ask if Prey is a love letter to the immersive sims of days gone by.

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“It’s true that we love those games. they are the games that inspire us. We’re very aware of what we’re building,” he says, adding, “We carry this tradition of immersive sims in our studio’s Dna and we’re not forgetting where we came from and what inspired us.”

If arkane’s previous effort, Dishonored, was leaning on the legacy of Thief, then Prey is unquestionably tapping into the mastery of System Shock 2. at a surface level, arkane has the essentials locked down: Prey has a vast space station to explore and an ineffective wrench as its first useable weapon, a protagonist with a dark past and an array of enemies to face that are simply out of this world. set aboard talos I, Prey takes place across a sprawling orbital research facility turned hunting ground for a host of shadowy alien monstrosities, dubbed the typhon. It’s here where you will become intimately familiar with morgan yu, a woman (or man, should you be so inclined) looking to undo her past indiscretions made while heading up the transtar corporation’s neuroscience research program. as a concept, it is unquestionably familiar, but the execution is anything but. arkane has approached Prey with a nonpareil attention to detail, although the first thing that grabs us – when given the opportunity to get our hands-on a near final build – is the quality of the bathroom installations aboard talos I, the finest you are likely to find this side of 2052. n The Gloo Cannon is found early on in

Prey but it is one of your most essential tools, used for both navigating the world and neutralising the speedy alien threats. It’s a multipurpose item that feels great to use.

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shain laughs as we bring this up in our chat after the fact because, for him, immersion can live or die by a good shower. no, really. Do you recall Jc Denton being reamed out by his boss for innocuously stepping into a women’s bathroom? It’s a small, easily avoidable element of Deus Ex that ultimately solidifies the game’s principle design philosophy: that nothing in the world should remind you that you are playing a game. shain recalls that encounter easily, rejoicing in the memory of stumbling upon it with his friends back in 2000, but, he tells us, this is exactly the type of feature that arkane is so intent on archiving and reviving. “Back then, bathrooms were a big deal in games. the quality of representation was very low, so if the game even had a bathroom it was like ‘oh my god’, it was this nod to reality! ‘It’s like the real world, it has real bathrooms!’ It would encourage you to explore every inch of every level. “that’s actually really important to us,” he considers. “We could have just locked the bathroom door in your apartment and said you can’t get in there, but then it would have been weird; ‘why can’t I get in my own bathroom?’

Players start asking those questions,” says shain, noting that opening the doors is only half the battle, it’s what you can do once inside that truly counts. “once we let players in the bathroom they are expecting everything to work, and then if they don’t work they are like

If the game even had a bathroom, it was this nod to reality! It would encourage you to explore every inch of every level

n Prey is heavily influenced by the immersive sims that have come before it, sharing DNA with the likes of System Shock 2 and BioShock, although it has expanded on the lessons learned and suitably expanded the scope of play.

‘well, why doesn’t anything work?’ We know that sets the tone for the rest of the game. that if we shut the player down in the first five minutes of trying things then for the rest of the game they will be like, ‘well I know the shower in my bathroom didn’t work so why would anything else work?' and then they are just going to stop trying. those first couple of minutes are very crafted in order to set the tone for the rest of the game and to continue to invite the player to experiment and try things.” like the immersive sims before it, experimentation is at the heart of the experience. In Prey, arkane wants you to play in its sandbox and push the boundaries of everything; you are to embody chaos within talos I, utilising everything at your disposal in an effort to break it apart. But to allow for such an unbridled amount of choice and experimentation, arkane had to lean on two principles: masterful mechanical design which, in turn, meets generic, general systems design. and, we promise, it’s a lot more interesting than it sounds.

For a game as ambitious – as inherently open and driven by player intuition and engagement – as Prey is, there’s actually a relatively simple design philosophy and process behind its core competencies. every utility in the game is built to aid yu in her continued survival

against the typhon, as impossible as that might seem at times. you will often find that you feel woefully underpowered and unequipped to deal with the surmounting terrors – survival is earned through inventive use of the tools you come across, upgrading your powers and manipulating the environment to your every whim. this can be as simple as utilising a shotgun to blast holes in encroaching enemies, or as weird as, well, transforming yourself into a thermos to avoid altercations altogether.

In essence, Prey is designed to be played your way – no two playthroughs should ever be the same. When you hit an obstacle, there is always more than one way to overcome it. the answer to problems is never made explicitly clear, and this is done in an effort to push the player into making instinctual, creative decisions to move forward. While Dishonored was designed in the same vein, it was also a stealth game focused around the fantasy of assassinations and shadow stalking; Prey leans closer to an action-rPg by design, and so the opportunity to meticulously plan out the fastest, most efficient method of silently murdering everything in your path isn’t as apparent or obvious. arkane would rather you jump into combat or exploration and really push the boundaries of its systems, because

you might just be surprised by the results.

If you ask a question of the game, arkane wants each one of its individual, interlocking systems to say ‘yes’ to you, reacting in a fashion that will keep you guessing and surprised at every turn.

“We design our features to be generically interactive, if that makes sense,” explains shain. It doesn’t, but he elaborates. “We try to generalise as much as possible so that when we [place] an object in the world, that object will have properties and can then have any number of inputs and expected outputs.”

In practice, it’s as obvious as coming across a ceramic vase in the world, hitting it with a bat, and expecting it to break. the fun comes into play when you begin to take all of these obvious, and quite generic, reactions and mix them in with strange otherworldly objects to get unexpected results. how would, say, the ceramic vase react when hit with a fiery thermal blast? What if you became the vase and used it to roll through a security window to bypass a monotonous crawl for key cards and door codes? It’s these kinds of questions that lead to Prey’s best moments. one of the powers earned early on is mimic, which lets yu take the form of any item she can target. While the trailers have used this power to showcase your ability to turn into a coffee cup, in theory you could quite as easily transform into an operator drone or turret. another power is lift, an ability

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n The shotgun is one of the best weapons to come across in Prey.

It feels powerful and heavy; it feels like it has been ripped right out of an id Software release.

that localises propulsion to throw items and enemies around your immediate area. By accident, arkane discovered the turret and lift power could be used in tandem to great effect.

“We never explicitly programmed this, but a level designer just tried it, [and] it was like, what a glorious moment that the player found.

What a creative solution. “there were a bunch of mimics up on a second floor and a turret below them on the ground. the level designer put a lift power down right on top of the turret, which pushed it up to the second floor where it could see the mimics and started shooting them,” laughs shain. “all lift knows is ‘I lift things’. all the turret knows is ‘I shoot aliens when I see them’.

We never programmed those two things to interact explicitly. It was just generically the lift wants to lift things and the turret wants to shoot things and that just works out,” he says, noting that it’s also possible for you to become the turret in that instance, exchanging your limited Psi energy resource for a momentary burst of unlimited ammunition. “that’s the philosophy we have for how we design our systems, to try to enable things to work out that way – we keep things as generic as possible so that they just interact generically with each other.”

But that is the point of the immersive sim. even if the game

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world and premise is otherworldly, your sense of its reality should never be broken. this is supported by the open-world, but ultimately enclosed, environment of talos I – a sprawling space designed for zero-gravity excursions and traversal. a dynamic quest system reacts in real-time to your capacity to bypass entire sections of the game, while an array of other (more human) tools and abilities can be located and put into action to further warp the normalised progression routes. there’s a gloo cannon that shoots a cooling glue agent, perfectly useable for disabling enemies but better used to create instantaneous cover or solid blocks yu can then use to climb into new areas of the game map. there’s an item recycler that takes any physics objects in the area and converts them into resources that are later used for crafting – a Fabricator can then be used to essentially re-create any item in the game, so long as you have found the necessary blueprint. Upgrade points can be poured into an array of standard abilities, such as hacking, stealth and strength (and yes, you can shift boxes around to your heart’s content), while chipsets can be located and used to upgrade your transtar suit and enemy-scanning Psychoscope. this, following Dishonored, was a huge focus for the studio.

“We definitely wanted to support players using any combination of builds that they could think of. there is no

wrong build in the game,” says shain. “We think about the chipsets as small mutators on the gameplay. It’s a way for the player to continually reconfigure and retool their player build, either to the players’ whim or to match the obstacles that they can encounter,” he continues. “there is an analogue you can draw between chipsets and [Dishonored’s] Bone charms. I think for those of us that worked on Dishonored 1, we kinda felt that maybe the Bone charms didn’t make enough of a difference – maybe, like, some of the effects weren’t felt enough. so this time around we wanted to make sure that when you equip a chipset you notice the difference. and so we tried to make sure that they were all changing the game in a way, even if it is minor. that was a key thing; you should feel the difference that a chipset makes.” all of this comes together to make Prey feel quite unlike anything the studio has crafted before. It has the same core competencies that arkane is known for: dynamic aI systems and sublime mechanical control, as seen in Dishonored 2, mixed with deep and powerful rPg systems not seen since 2002’s Arx Fatalis. ammo may be scarce in the opening hours, but the weapons feel empowering; the shotgun in particular has already found a place in our heart, feeling like an ode to id software’s masterful weapon design – a welcomed alternative to the Psi powers, should you be so inclined. the biggest challenge for arkane at this point is ensuring players don’t simply get lost in its labyrinth. so many of the problems you encounter can be solved creatively, bypassed

Other survIvOrs

hoW yoUr InteractIons WIth FelloW Passengers WIll shaPe Prey

Talos I is largely abandoned, but there are signs of life scattered throughout its halls. Ultimately, it’s up to you how you approach other humans in the game; some will be hostile, others will be quest givers and some may in fact be mind controlled. You can ignore or choose to assist as many or as few of these characters as you like.

“We want to allow players to engage the humans on the station, like they could in Dishonored, where they can think about these people as people and not just trivialised as the enemy,” says Shain. “You will come upon people in the game that are under a mind control and are hostile to you, but you can deal with them in a way that doesn’t kill them and you can actually rescue them. That’s something we try and support, so if players want to play that way then they can, they can play very empathetically towards these people that have lost their own agency – it’s up to the player if they want to help restore that.

“Then there are other humans around that might just be hostile and attack you, but it’s up to you if you want to kill them in self defence or neutralise them somehow,” he continues, noting that these decisions will ultimately affect the ending, as those humans will now no longer be around to do their particular job. Just as it is in real life, there are consequences to being a total asshole in Prey too.

We try to make sure stuff fits within the narrative context, so that it doesn’t just feel like another needless game rule | 35

IntrOducIng the TYphoN The alien ThreaT you will be facing in Prey will come in many differenT forms. here are jusT a few of The horrors you can exPecT To face while fighTing Through Talos i…

MIMIC

The first Typhon that you make contact with, the Mimics are small creatures capable of transforming themselves into various shapes, imitating objects. They ensure the first few hours of the game are riddled with jump scares, giving Prey an interesting association to The Thing.

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WeAver

If a Mimic gets ahold of a living human host, it will drain the Psi energy from it by shoving a tentacle down its throat.

This leaves the deformed human a husk, which a Weaver is later able to seize control of and transform into a Phantom.

phANToM

God damn these things are hard to take down.

Phantoms are the main body of the Typhon’s army, bipedal creatures that can move with great speed and utilise vastly powerful thermal attacks. Load up on shotgun ammo before you step up to one of these creatures.

polTerGeIST

If a Weaver is unsuccessful in creating a Phantom, it can instead turn the human husk into a Poltergeist. These creatures will lurk just out of sight, using shadows and cover to blindside you with attacks, hurl heavy objects at you or launch you into the air – leaving you helpless.

CYSToID

Attracted to movement and Psi-based activity, the Cystoid are hatched from nests – which often rest in areas of activity – and follow their prey until it can make solid contact. Cystoids explode upon impact, ensuring a desperate struggle for health packs or medical bots will quickly ensue.

NIGhTMAre

The Typhon are evolving.

They have recognised the threat Yu is against them and have engineered the Nightmare, a creature of untold horror that relentlessly hunts you throughout Talos I. The powerful beast will only get stronger, depending on your actions within the game.

TelepATh

You may come across a handful of human characters on the station, but if they aren’t already scared out of their minds, they may have actually had their mind stolen by the Telepath.

These creatures control a victim’s mind, forcing them to attack others – though it is possible to disable the link.

or ignored that keeping players on a critical path seems almost impossible. shain is eager to suggest that the studio has it all in hand, utilising a number of playful tricks to keep players in the path of the strongest resistance.

“In games like Zelda or Metroid, they have these hard gates and they’re very well telegraphed. you come up to these gates or obstacles and they very clearly require a particular tool and you know you can’t do this now and have to come back later – it’s very lock and key design. It’s almost the opposite of how we do things. We do things in a very general way. as I was saying, we build our systems generically to work generally with things.” this is why you’ll find doors locked with access codes and key cards on talos I. arkane knows its fans will try to hack them early on, that they will search online for the key code or even attempt to guess a thousand different combinations on a four-digit entry pad. It’s in situations like this where arkane trusts that the reality and narrative context it has constructed is strong enough to support gating of certain areas and sections, as rare as it may be. “there is one thing about the way in which we do that, that I think sets us apart from some other games. We try to make sure stuff fits within the narrative context, so that it doesn’t just feel like another needless game rule. I really like the Dark Souls games – though they aren’t the only games that do this right – but they have this design pattern, where you find a door and it doesn’t open from one side, so you go around to the other side, open it and now you’ve got this great shortcut,” shain explains, noting how the same principle exists with Prey’s airlocks, which act as fast travel points with a little zero-gravity flight mixed in for good measure.

“With the airlocks, the fictional cover is a little stronger. It’s supporting the idea that this is locked from the outside and there is no way to get around it, whereas in a Dark Souls game this is a gate and I could just reach my arms through the bars and unlock it from that

side,” he laughs, adding, “I think Dark Souls games have a different quality of immersion – for those games it is fine, but I think if we did something like that, because we have a different quality of immersion, our players would object. they would say, ‘this is stupid because I can see the lock right there’ or ‘I have powers that can mimic something and crawl through and open it from the other side, so why can’t I just reach it?’" shain is full of little anecdotes like this. they serve a particular purpose, revealing not only how much thought and care has gone into the game’s construction, but also revealing how open to exploitation it is. For lapsed fans of the immersive sim, it’s like the game you’ve spent many years waiting to play.

For everyone else, however, it might still just sound like BioShock in space. come on, admit it; if you’ve talked about the game with your friends, you’ve probably already made that comparison. It’s something arkane hears a lot, and it’s part of the reason it has spent so much time ensuring the core competencies are so unbreakable. “one of the things that tickles us the most is when gamers who haven’t played System Shock look at Prey and say ‘it looks like BioShock in space’. that just makes us all giggle because we all know. and then it’s funny to see other people correct them and point out the existence of System Shock,” laughs shain. “one of the things we remind ourselves of constantly is that there is an entire generation of players now who never got to experience System Shock or System Shock 2. they just weren’t around for that stuff and they may never go back and play them.” this is the pressure arkane has put on its own shoulders. shain is aware that an entire generation may now form an impression of the immersive sim from their work, only noticing the traditions and homages if they go back and play the older titles. that’s why there is a space station, a wrench, functioning toilets and all of the other telltale signs that make for a fantastic immersive sim experience.

One of the things that tickles us the most is when gamers who haven’t played system shock look at Prey and say ‘it looks like Bioshock in space' n The aliens you come

across throughout Talos I are terrifying and otherworldly, giving the game an ever-so-slight hint of survival horror to it.

Prey might not be System Shock 3 and it might not be the next BioShock, but it doesn’t have to be and nor should it necessarily strive to be; it’s something bigger, better. a brand new, innovative and iterative genre game designed to appease the old generation of gamers and blindside the new. “the scope of it, the audacity of it, the hubris of it,” that’s what shain believes people we be most taken aback by, he certainly is. “I think that we’ve made a game that is bigger than the team that we have and I think we are pulling it off. I’m thrilled with how this game has come out. the sheer audacity of what we have dared to build in this game, it’s a little bit mind boggling to me. the fact that we are able to stuff it all into this package called Prey is kind of amazing; it’s a testament to the team and the passion of the developers we have here. everybody shared in this vision and really wanted to see this thing through to the end.” you won’t have long to wait to experience it for yourself. Prey launches 5 may, 2016 on Pc, Ps4 and Xbox one.

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feature

ten of the best

TEN OF THE BEST

roguelikes

expect the unexpected in these ever-changing playstation classics

rogue legacy ■ despite being closest in title to the game from which this entire sub-genre takes its name, this actionplatformer is perhaps the loosest take on its mechanics. It still uses a form of permadeath of sorts, but each run can be used to add extra perks to the various classes for future runs. This still doesn’t make life all that much easier, mind, as your character choice is still extremely limited when starting over.

dark chronicle ■ a game years ahead of its time in terms of how it fused a variety of genres, this sequel to early PS2 RPG Dark Cloud offered world-building and standard RPG elements in addition to its randomly-generated dungeons.

If you fancy trying it out for yourself, it was one of the first PS2 Classics released on PS4, now with full Trophy support. That’s a serious time investment right there, though…

crypt of the necrodancer

the guided fate paradox

■ a fusion of turn-based dungeon exploration and rhythm-action mechanics has no right to work as well as it does. Ingeniously, each ‘turn’ occurs as you move to the beat, enemies doing the same and punishing you by

■ there’s every chance that you’ve never even heard of this late PS3 release, but it’s certainly worth a look if you’re a fan of the other games featured here. With Nippon Ichi’s crazy humour, colourful sprite-based visuals and sprawling dungeons to explore, The Guided Fate Paradox is to roguelikes what Disgaea is to strategy RPGs.

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getting one step ahead each time you miss a beat. The escalating (and incredible) soundtrack makes things gradually more stressful, placing a strict timer on your every move. An odd hybrid, then, but an excellent one.

spelunky ■ a lot like Rogue Legacy, Spelunky’s connection to the original Rogue is tenuous at best. however, as one of the leading modern games in the field of procedurally-generated dungeons, it’d be somewhat remiss to leave derek yu’s classic off the list. despite each stage being pieced together on the fly, a good working knowledge of the game’s systems can allow skilled players to overcome almost any combination of challenges to sight-read each unique scenario and emerge with treasures galore.

shiren the wanderer ■ one of the earliest Mystery Dungeon games from Chunsoft and still going strong today, both as Shiren (there was a Vita release not so long ago) and as Mystery Dungeon, now also available in Pokémon, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest flavours. All play very similarly – enter a dungeon and either escape with your loot to bank it, or fall victim to its denizens and lose it to the dark. Rules on what you keep vary from game to game, but it’s a cracking series.

the binding of isaac ■ the roguelike genre plays home to a lot of dark, grim games, but they don’t come much darker or grimmer than this tale of a naked baby escaping his murderous mother in a revolting basement. Abilities are often gross and/or crude, but the synergy between some of them can turn a decent loadout into a gamebreaking one in just a single pick-up. With tons to unlock (especially after Rebirth and Afterbirth added to the core game), it’ll last you forever.

enter the gungeon ■ regular readers will know that we’ll take any opportunity we can get to sing the praises of this amazing roguelike. With loads of weapons at your disposal at any given time, it’s up to you how you approach each situation – do you use your beastly guns to clear floors quickly and deal with troublesome rooms, or save them for dropping bosses as efficiently as possible? There are some great synergies between certain weapons and passives and though these combos aren’t often on The Binding Of Isaac’s level of absurd power, they’re just as much fun to play around with.

Zhp: unlosing ranger vs darkdevil evilman

hand of fate

■ winner of the ‘Strangest Title On This List’ award is

■ there’s a little bit of everything in this

this NIS oddity for PSP – a game which didn’t fail to live up to its ludicrous moniker with all kinds of insane in-game gear and powers to mess around with. It’s really quite similar to The Guided Fate Paradox structurally and stylistically, leading many to declare that game a spiritual successor to this cult title. While its systems might be confusing initially, you’ll soon grow accustomed to the gameplay loop and come to fear death, knowing just how much you’ll lose every time you pop your clogs. It’s playable on Vita, so give it a go!

superb and unique game – tabletop gaming influences, roguelike elements and even action combat a la Batman when things kick off.

The more you explore, the more event and item cards you acquire, which you then use to improve your deck and try to sway future runs in your favour. The Dealer is no fan of this, though, and continues to drop in his own devilish traps, curses and ambushes, too. The swine…

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review

MAss EffEct AndroMEdA

ps4

Mass Effect Andromeda Lost in translation

In many ways, Mass Effect Andromeda is truly impressive, a testament to the trials and tribulations that many developers face when tackling triple-A videogame design in the modern era. It’s an example of what can occur when ambition clashes with execution, or the lack thereof, as is the case in BioWare’s latest endeavour. While Andromeda has its rare moments of clarity, they are so often punctured by consistent problems surrounding narrative, characterisation, gameplay and technical stability, helping to create what is perhaps BioWare’s most uneven RPG to date.

As a studio, BioWare has established itself a legacy wholly focused on creating “rich stories, unforgettable characters and vast worlds to discover”, and while Andromeda contains 60 hours of stories, characters and worlds the adjectives should, in this instance, be changed to ‘sterile’, ‘lifeless’ and ‘bland’. Andromeda is a wasted opportunity, in turn making Mass Effect a shadow of its former self; too beholden to tired ideas and bloated design constructs, hangovers of the last generation, to truly find its own voice.

As you arrive in Andromeda, your purpose is made immediately clear: new worlds need to be discovered and colonised, first contact needs to be established with the native species of the galaxy, and conflict will arise from you being some 2.5 million light years away from home.

We are the aliens in this galaxy – explorers, not soldiers – as the exhaustive promotional campaign made perfectly clear, and the fate of humanity is cast in your inexperienced hands. It’s an ambitious idea, and a salivating one at that.

Sadly, it takes just an hour for the entire concept to fall apart.

First contact is upended by an uncomfortable obsession with first blood, as Andromeda immediately forces you into conflict with one of the three new races, the Kett (not to mention, later, hundreds of other disgruntled travellers from the Milky Way), in an effort to showcase its stripped back, fluid third-person combat. From there, it isn’t long

4 S P

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before you are cast off into a limited array of sparsely-populated areas to explore and renovate, rampaging across a new galaxy and looting anything that once claimed to hold a pulse. You’ll become distracted by banal fetch quests, wrestling against an archaic inventory management system and a UI that isn’t equipped to deal with the task at hand. Never mind the 20,000 humans under your care, because the Angara need you to locate and retrieve three data pads in an environment that you are apparently more equipped to navigate than the natives themselves.

Imagine, if you will, Captain James T Kirk, abandoning his mission to “explore strange new worlds” in an effort to fill out his pockets with an enviable amount of credit chips, resources and salvage. Forget, for a moment, the mission to seek out new life as he attempts to get Spock into bed through relentless flirting, and don’t worry about researching new alien technology, because Scotty needs you to locate popcorn so he can run a movie night on your ship. Issues with tone, mission structure and quest design constantly upend any sense of drama in a game world that should be fraught with a lingering sense of dread and urgency.

Mass Effect was always a series that was celebrated for its freedom of choice – and for making those choices matter in both the smaller character moments and the larger overarching narrative – but there is very little drama or consequence to be found in Andromeda. The scenarios you’ll often find yourself in are interesting enough, the banter between a familiar blend of Human, Krogan, Turian and Asari squadmates is as witty as ever, though the broader execution is almost universally poor. It’s exasperating, truth be told, to encounter such menial, laborious writing and narrative structuring in a BioWare production in 2017.

It doesn’t help that the Paragon/Renegade system, which awarded points for playing nice or nastily with others, has been replaced by a rather flat system. As a dramatic device for letting you feel agency over pivotal moments in the story and conversations, the original system

details Publisher ea DeveloPer BioWare PsN Price £49.99 Players 1-4

When it wants to be, Mass Effect Andromeda can be a real stunner. Some of the environments look gorgeous, a mad spectacle as you begin to explore these sprawling alien worlds, figuring out their particular ecosystems and cycles.

Games of this size typically have issues with facial animations and lipsyncing, although Andromeda takes this to new heights (or should that be lows?) as the game struggles to get through a single conversation without at least one distraction cropping up.

“an example ofWhat can occur When amBition clashes With execution” multiplayer tested Mass Effect Andromeda, much like its predecessor, features a cooperative multiplayer component that is far better than it has any right to be. It’s essentially geared around four players teaming up to battle against waves of enemies for survival and resources that can be brought back into the main game. It’s surprisingly engaging, with the third-person combat coming into its own when much of the customisation has been ripped from your hands. While tied to the main campaign, via the APEX Strike Terminal aboard the Tempest, it isn’t as intrusive as similar system found in Mass Effect 3 – which is to say, it can be ignored without having a detrimental effect on overall mission completion or potential end state scenarios. A small victory.

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review

MAss EffEct AndroMEdA

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If you can get over the 20-hour hump, much like in Dragon Age: Inquisition, then you’ll find a game much improved, although still disappointing. BioWare has front-loaded many of Andromeda’s most boring missions and ideas.

a Galaxy far, far aWay Despite being swept off to a new galaxy, you will spend most of your time surrounded by familiar faces. The Salarians, Krogans, Turians and Asari have all come along for the ride and constantly remind you of two things: firstly, some of Mass Effect’s most interesting species have been left behind and, secondly, Andromeda doesn’t do a good enough job of establishing a new line of races to engage with. While Jaal, a squadmate of Angaran heritage, will eventually join your mission, it doesn’t feel as if the game does a good enough job of refreshing the series, so many of the main stories and engagements feel beholden to old conflicts and infightings from a galaxy away.

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just worked. Andromeda’s equivalent doesn’t have the same payoff, with the four tones you are able to choose between in dialogue always seemingly resulting in similar outcomes. You never feel as if your character is growing or establishing themselves in the world, a crying shame considering the improvements made to both the character customisation and the voice acting of the lead roles.

The narrative does have its moments, however. While it’s a far cry from the loyalty missions or Suicide Mission of Mass Effect 2, Andromeda does offer plenty of opportunities to get to know and love your companions. Once you’ve trudged through the first 20 hours of the game, the main missions begin to pick up the pace and interest, while a loyalty mission with fellow human squadmate Liam offers a little brevity and fun in a game so sorely lacking any.

Some of the best writing comes in the form of diary entries found in terminals aboard your ship, the Tempest, which can be a breath of fresh air against the inconsistent application of your universal translator, banal comm chatter while out exploring and the soul-crushing interruptions of your AI companion SAM. That is all to say that Andromeda lacks any real internal logic, or at least it fails to adhere to the one it attempts to establish for itself early on. NPCs so routinely fail to respond to shifting parameters in the world, repeating the same tired dialogue time and time again even after you’ve resolved whatever petty squabble may have been troubling them. Little of what you do seems to have any lasting consequence, threads are left to dangle because of developer oversight or bugs stopping quests dead in their tracks. Characters you encounter seem to forget that you are explorers from another galaxy, ignoring basic struggles in an effort to build tension in a story lacking any real drive.

Much of this feels like a direct result of the influence of Dragon Age: Inquisition. While the 2014 production was able to settle into a comfortable rhythm of state-building across sprawling playgrounds, Andromeda seems to lack cohesive direction. Each hub world you are able to drop down onto is so large that it requires a vehicle to traverse, and a handful can

be a genuine delight to explore, but so much of the experience can feel thankless. There’s a ton of content in Andromeda, but so much of it feels like filler, a checklist of objectives that have little impact on anything outside of the 100 per cent completion tracker. It’s also upsetting to see so many of the areas populated by lifeless NPCs, holding the same spot, spouting the same dialogue, for over 60 hours – honestly, at times it doesn’t feel as if BioWare has come all that far from 2002’s Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic in this regard.

What has advanced, however, is combat.

Despite framing the game around you being explorers, not soldiers, Andromeda quickly ensures that you are capable enough to rack up a body count that would make even Commander Shepard wince. Considering the sheer amount of problems surrounding the rest of the game, its design and pacing, it’s clear BioWare put a sizeable amount of time and resources into combat. The momentto-moment gameplay is fast and fluid, a refinement of stripped down core proficiencies seen in Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer. That said, it’s also repetitive and shallow, a good idea let down by a handful of notable oversights and confusing design decisions.

Andromeda wants you to be agile, switching between proficiencies in Combat, Tech and Biotics at will, darting between predefined Profiles to better match any threat in battle.

The problems here begin with your loadout.

You can only change your gear when you’re at a Loadout Station, meaning you’re stuck with whatever gear you brought out into the field until you can find another one, even if you have a more suitable weapon sat in your inventory. The problems then extend to the Profiles themselves. Flipping between each requires rifling through a litany of menus.

This is also the case for abilities; you can only equip three abilities at any one time, changing them again requires diving into menus, making the removal of the power wheel feel like a baffling decision. Couple all of this with limited squad control, making it impossible to reliably perform combos or manage tactical proficiency in engagements, and suddenly you

are having to lean on the lacklustre AI to assist you – which it will rarely do convincingly.

Micromanaging combat is slow and cumbersome, actively discouraging the use of many new gameplay systems that BioWare clearly wants you to pay attention to. The frustrations don’t end there, however. Planet scanning makes a return, and it’s still a giant life-devouring waste of time. Navigating the galaxy map is a nightmare, taking between 10-30 seconds to move from point of interest to point of interest. And then there are the technical problems – and they are far worse than the infamous facial animations.

While Inquisition worked fine on Frostbite, Mass Effect has struggled with the shift. The game has, in particular, a number of issues that heavily impact playability. Even after the day one patch, Andromeda’s frame-rate can fall to half-speed in combat, crawling as you attempt to navigate cover, fight bulletsponge enemies and account for the fact that your companions have glitched through the environment. Texture pop-in, characters disappearing, enemies appearing in midair, dialogue clips that don’t play and game crashes are all to be expected throughout your time with Andromeda. Also expect to find bugs that corrupt data and make life in the new galaxy miserable. It’s ridiculous that the game has made it to shelves in this state; BioWare games have never been perfect, a few bugs are to be expected in games with this wide of a scope, but this is something else entirely. Good thing the patches are already coming.

Andromeda is far removed from what made the Mass Effect games great to begin with that it feels like a shadow of its former self, an IP struggling to match the bar set by its contemporaries, created by a studio struggling to beat the spectre of expectation and hype.

Andromeda has its moments, as rare as they might be, but the overall package feels a long way away from where it needs to be.

verdict a new low for the Mass effect series

5/10 | 43

review

Yooka-LaYLee

ps4

Yooka-Laylee History is doomed to repeat itself For better or worse, YookaLaylee is essentially a remake of Banjo-Kazooie.

If you played a ton of Banjo back in the day then you may have already made up your mind about whether or not you’re going to play this, but for the uninitiated, Yooka represents years of Kickstarter-backed development by industry legends that has culminated in a bright, colourful and mostly fun 3D platform game, albeit one with some problems. It’s difficult to ignore many of these issues, but it’s equally difficult to ignore the nostalgia factor that permeates every second of Yooka-Laylee. As an homage to a well loved and well respected N64 platformer, it’s pretty perfect, but standing on its own two feet it creaks and groans in the way that you’d expect a 20-year-old format to.

If it is nostalgia you’re looking for, then Yooka-Laylee has it all. Everything about the game has been crafted to directly emulate Banjo-Kazooie, from the titular duo themselves, resplendent in their irreverence, to the overarching themes that course throughout the game, the bright and colourful art direction and the gameplay itself. As expected in a 3D platformer, most of your time is spent traversing the various stages with jumps, more jumps and double jumps,

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details Publisher team17 DeveloPer Playtonic Games PsN Price £34.99 Players 1-4

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but a few extra moves augment this as the game goes on. It’s a familiar setup, but the way that puzzles are structured in order to utilise different skills that are paid for with collectible Quills keeps things feeling reasonably fresh into the late game. However, there’s no getting away from the fact that each stage is tied to one core concept that, naturally, starts to lose its charm after eight or so hours: collecting.

Platformers have always come with their fair share of collectible items, but YookaLaylee has taken this to new, dizzying levels.

Every Tome world contains 200 Quills, 25 Pagies, five Ghost Writers, a butterfly health container, a power bar upgrade, a molecule pickup that lets you transform and a token for Rextro’s arcade, too. It might sound silly, even ungrateful to raise this as a potential negative, but the amount of collectible items is so astonishing that it actually distracts you from fully enjoying the individual worlds that Playtonic has lovingly built and spirals into cold repetition at times. A fair few of the Pagies that you’re tasked with collecting are hidden behind puzzles that can be quite obscure or difficult to find, only for said puzzles to be startlingly easy once you’ve managed to initiate them. It can be frustrating, and many of the puzzles and activities are replicated throughout each Grand Tome, with only a marginal difficulty increase

as you progress through the game.

Of course, adhering so rigidly to a template that’s so, so old now means that you’ll inevitably wander down a path that’s impossible to avoid – that being a path riddled with the very same design flaws that 3D platformers always used to suffer from. The most jarring of these in the modern era is a floaty and often wildly imprecise third-person camera, the likes of which we haven’t had to deal with since the N64 days. Sure, there aren’t any C buttons to clumsily navigate in 2017, but at times the camera in Yooka-Laylee causes you to forget that you’ve got a modern and responsive analog stick under your thumb. It’ll swing wildly one second and drag the next, and its auto-correct setting means that any moment of precision platforming can result in a nasty fall if you happen to be near any walls or obstacles that will knock your perspective out of whack.

There are other notable pitfalls as well – swimming and flying handling, for example, is essentially the same as Banjo-Kazooie’s was all those years ago; that is, slightly unresponsive and quite fiddly – but this is a game that’s genuinely hard to stay mad at for long. For anyone with fond memories of the Rare games of yore, you’ll find a lot to love here, even if the gameplay feels dated and occasionally frustrating, and although the

“each staGe is tied to one core concePt that, naturally, starts to lose its charm after eiGht or so hours: collectinG” world design isn’t as good as those that these fine men and women have created in the past, there’s still an intangible charm attached to every aspect of the design and visuals that often makes you forget about a proportion of Yooka-Laylee’s less desirable characteristics.

Persevere past the first two or three Tome worlds and wait until you get to the casino level – that’s when all of the disparate mechanics you’ve learned start to combine nicely, and the puzzles are much improved from there on out.

Reviewing games can feel fairly binary most of the time. Most of them are often either objectively good or objectively bad, and then something like Yooka-Laylee comes along and causes problems because, even after hours of playing, it’s bloody difficult to quantify whether or not it actually holds up. Ultimately, this is a

3D platformer from 2001 that has inexplicably appeared in another timeline and ended up here, in 2017, when the best platformers around are 2D and technical, not 3D and a bit clunky. It has all the charm that you can expect from what is ostensibly Rare, all the collectibles you can reasonably ask a fairly patient human to collect and all the carefree, whimsical characteristics that any modern indie game would proudly wear on its chest.

However, Yooka-Laylee has been noticeably transposed into a different era and, at times, suffers for it.

verdict competent and charming, if a little disappointing

6/10 | 45

review

Drawn To DeaTh

ps4

Drawn To Death

Not the version of The Notebook you were expecting Sony’s latest attempt to strike Rocket League-esque gold with another digitalonly darling might just be the most David Jaffe thing David Jaffe has ever made. Forget the ultraviolent deity slaughter of God Of War and the vehicular mayhem of Twisted Metal – Drawn To Death’s juvenile humour is the veteran developer distilled into its impurest form. Special moves that make opponents swell until they explode in a shower of gore? Check. More offensive humour than Limmy’s Twitter feed? Check. A busty shark with a Japanese accent? Err… check…

So we’re all agreed Drawn To Death’s onlinefocused third-person antics certainly make for bags of foul-mouthed personality, but does it make for a decent online shooter? Not even close, in fact in places it’s downright imbalanced and in serious need of a patch or two, but you can be sure there’s nothing on PSN quite like it.

That teenager’s angst/sexual fetish-filled notebook art style didn’t really pop in screenshots prior to release, but in motion its biro-sketched

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details Publisher sony DeveloPer the Bartlet Jones supernatural detective agency/ sie san diego PsN Price Free (Ps Plus) Players 1-4

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action really… ahem… leaps off the page. But while that high school textbook doodle aesthetic lends DTD a unique charm, it doesn’t take long to grate as you shoot and leap (in a very floaty, Infamous-esque way that’s far too slow) around its roster of fantastical locations.

That’s not to say there aren’t some wellthought-out arenas to choose from – especially those that rely verticality with multiple floors, jump pads and teleporters (conjuring, albeit briefly, the speedy days of Unreal Tournament and the like) or sprinkle in deadly environmental elements such as giant tentacles that swat you to death – but that mostly unfilled art style eventually drains each locale of any real sense of memorable identity.

So let’s talk about that frustrating imbalance – there’s just so much of it as of launch. For instance, some characters possess certain special abilities that are painfully overpowered compared to most others (such as the teddyheaded Alan, whose ability to turn invisible and regenerative health make him a popular powerhouse in any lobby). Jaffe and co have

attempted to make each character a strong counter for another (the airborne Cyborgula can see Alan when he’s invisible, etc.), but it’s just the tip of the lopsided iceberg.

Every character has way too much health in a given match, a factor that makes killing an opponent a slog at best, as well as turning most of DTD’s memorably-designed weapons (including a dragon-shaped rocket launcher and a burning corpse that can be lobbed onto enemies like an explosive ball-and-chain) about as dangerous as a leaky water pistol.

DTD is a teenage boy’s/45-year-old man’s inner-monologue in digital form. The game revels in its infantile humour, and it’s genuinely funny for the first few hours, but after a while that silly skin falls away to reveal an arena shooter that’s unlikely to laugh last until it addresses some serious problems.

verdict Fairly metal, certainly twisted, but in need of a tune-up

6/10

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Toukiden 2

ps4

Toukiden 2

Solo missions are unlocked with story progress, but the tougher online variants (in which you can still use AI allies) have a separate progression system.

Hunting season is semi-open As more and more developers embrace open world design, it feels like the term is becoming more and more despised.

Whether due to expectations of a Ubisoft-style cookie-cutter set of fetch quests, towers and collectibles, or fear or a daunting directionless experience, the term today has quite the opposite effect to that it did back in the wake of GTA3. But here’s the thing – an open world is not an inherently good or bad thing, nor is it something that can be easily quantified.

Despite what the marketing material may tell you, Toukiden 2 isn’t open world in the Elder Scrolls or Far Cry sense. It’s closer to something like Dark Souls, or a slightly more modular Dragon’s Dogma – a series of interconnected areas to explore, not unlike what you’d get if you laid out all the maps in a Monster Hunter game together, joined them all up and kicked down all the loading walls.

But it’s not like that really matters – it’s not an open world game. While playing through the story, you run from the village straight to one area, deal with an Oni and return to town.

When doing missions, you teleport straight to an arena with the Oni in question, kill them and warp back. The only time you’re out in the world without reason or direction is when you’re there

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details Publisher Koei tecmo DeveloPer Omega Force PsN Price £49.99 Players 1-4

through choice, either exploring or gathering supplies in order to improve your gear to tackle larger, more powerful Oni. When it comes to combat, Toukiden 2 builds on the original game expertly, with every one of the weapon classes feeling involved and empowering. Each has its own gimmick, ranging from the simple (club hits deal more damage when the tip connects, leading to a powered-up state if you land these consistently) to the more complex (rifles involve juggling ammo stock/types and debuff grenades while hitting crit spots) and while there isn’t a clear ‘use X weapon on Y Oni’ system, you’ll want to play around with all the different weapons just to see what crazy tricks they’re capable of.

The selection of Oni is greatly improved, even more so when you factor in the numerous reskins that slightly switch up elemental weaknesses and attack patterns. The original’s ‘life force’ system remains intact and still works well, the focus being on destroying body parts to create weaknesses for your team to exploit. As well as returning Destroyer attacks to instantly weaken a part, there’s now also the Oni Burial.

When its gauge fills, this Demon Hand attack can permanently remove certain body parts, often with game-changing consequences – rip a leg off and an Oni might squirm or scramble around differently for the rest of the fight, or

Equipping Mitama – the souls of fallen heroes – lets you activate various perks and buffs, and there are loads to collect and experiment with.

tear off a tail to see it stumble and lose balance when making certain attacks. It’s certainly satisfying, although having the Demon Hand in addition to everything else does give players a few too many panic buttons, making the game somewhat easy as a result.

Toukiden 2 is comfortably PS4’s best Monster Hunter stand-in, but its novel systems make it more than just another hunter in line to fill Capcom’s still-empty shoes – it’s a superb co-op action game in its own right.

verdict Mo oni, less problems

8/10 | 49

FEATURE

PLAYSTATION CLASSICS #35: CrASh BANdICOOT

As perhaps the most iconic PlayStation mascot finalises its modern facelift, we explore how Crash Bandicoot shaped 3D platforming, Sony’s PSone and even Naughty Dog

Format PlayStation

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release date 1996

publisher UniverSal interactive StUdioS

developer naUghty dog

those opening segments of the game became an iconic playstation moment.

What theY said… n Crash’s designers have decided to change the perspective from level to level, so sometimes you’re looking at Crash from behind, sometimes from the top, and sometimes from all around. While occasionally maddening, this adds an element to the game rarely seen in platformers.

IGN, 1996

For those who lived it, the launch of the PlayStation was an exciting time for the videogames industry. Not solely because of Sony’s new upstart console, but instead because the 16-bit generation that had preceded it had proven the value of gaming and now was the time for the industry to transition from toddler to teenager. This meant true 3D gaming, this meant mainstream acceptance but, more than anything, it meant an increased interest from all avenues. Hollywood, in particular, had become enthused by this new form of entertainment and with Sony getting involved, it was time to step up. This, as it happens, is how Crash Bandicoot came to be: from the interest of Universal and a happenstance meeting between a pair of developers who, back then, weren’t quite the big names they most certainly are today.

“Skip Paul [then vice president of production at Universal Studios] had the vision to get into the videogame business, and at that time all the studios were somewhat opening up divisions,” explains David Siller, one of the key producers on

“they lUcked oUt by being PUt in a PoSition next to UniverSal at ceS: thiS big more-moneythan-god PowerhoUSe”

the original Crash Bandicoot. “Well anyway, Skip gets Universal to agree to put up money to start up this division.” What this meant was a huge injection of cash for what would become Universal Interactive, giving the company the opportunity to invade the videogames market and, as Siller suggests, hope to one day create games – and even interactive movies – based on Universal’s existing franchises. This meant that Universal Interactive was eager to buy up small, independent developers that it intended to use to bring this future into fruition and the Hollywood studio really was throwing money at the challenge.

Naughty Dog, having yet to find a hit, had gone big on the 3DO, with Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin investing in a development kit for the console in the hopes of making it big. Their game, Way Of The Warrior, had been one of the key titles that 3DO wanted to display at CES, bringing the duo into the expo to show it off. As luck would have it Naughty Dog found itself running a booth right next to Universal and, over the course of the days that followed, ended up striking a deal with Mark Cerny and Rob Biniaz who was in charge of getting Universal Interactive off the ground.

“It was one of those things that they were in the right place at the right time for their future,” says Siller, and without that opportunity it’s unlikely Naughty Dog would ever have become the household name it is today. “Naughty Dog lucked out by being put in a position next to Universal at CES: this big more-moneythan-God, NCA-owned powerhouse next to just these two guys that were very, very talented and had a little bit of money and developed their own fighting game.”

The deal was for a set of three games, an atypical agreement that meant that Naughty Dog locked in so long as it could make a product that reached Universal’s lofty hopes.

“Universal really wasn’t saying there was a budget,” adds Siller, | 51

FEATURE

PLAYSTATION CLASSICS #35: CrASh BANdICOOT

“and that continued throughout the course of Naughty Dog’s existence at the company.” The design of the game, meanwhile, had been locked in from the start. It was all in a six-page design document written up by Jason Rubin, detailing the gameplay and story of the of what was then named Willie The Wombat. Key elements that are recognisable were all in there, the behindthe-character camera viewpoint, the marsupial character, the different level styles and cameras.

“I was told that I would be the producer of those guys on Universal’s side,” Siller explains, “and I met them and they told me, ‘Hey, we don’t want a producer,’ but they were nice enough at the time. But I started designing the game from day one, because that was my expertise. That’s how I got involved in the project, I was hired in and assigned to those guys and even though they didn’t want a producer they eventually learned the value of my participation. Even at some point I was asked if I wanted to join Naughty Dog which I didn’t.” While Andy Gavin began working on the technology to power the 3D platforming environments, Jason Rubin and David Siller worked with the six-page design document and begun fleshing it out into the title that was dominate the charts.

“I co-ordinated on the design with Naughty Dog and Cerny along the way, but they were all focused on getting all the tools and art programs and technology together and I focused on the gameplay. It consistently evolved,” says Siller of the way

the changing perspectives between levels gave an added dynamism that kept gameplay fresh.

“i met naUghty dog and they told me, ‘hey, we don’t want a ProdUcer’”

the design document changed over the game’s development, “there were new bibles written.” But while Siller initially designed elements of the game, as producer he was not implementing them – it was Naughty Dog’s project, after all, and Siller worked for Universal. “I mentored Naughty Dog design-wise, but they were initially allowed to try and create the gameplay and that was going to be a milestone that they were going to have to clear called the ’first-playable’.” This milestone was not achieved, however, the game itself was failing to offer much in the way of gameplay. “It had no gameplay,” states Siller. “Willie was running around and interacting very poorly with anything and everything.

There was just not a lot of gameplay. You couldn’t look at the game at that point and say, ‘Wow, this is a must-have game, this

Crash Course

the rise, fall and potential rise again of Crash bandicoot

Crash BandiCoot

Crash BandiCoot 2: Cortex strikes BaCk

Crash BandiCoot: warped

Crash team raCing

The original Crash Bandicoot set a standard for 3D platforming on PSone, and quickly led the charge for the genre on the-then-new console.

The sequel fixed many of the original’s issues but came with a considerably bigger budget and that meant a better quality product overall.

The third game in the PSone trilogy introduced a raft of new elements to the game, including race segments on Crash’s radical motorbike, emphasising 'cool'.

While Crash Team Racing was largely a Mario Kart clone, it introduced some elements that made it a standout and worthy release worth your time.

twinsanity

tag team raCing

Crash Boom Bang!

Crash of the titans

Long-standing series villain Neo Cortex was a focus for this game, having to reluctantly work with Crash (being actually tethered to his nemiesis) instead of against him.

52 |

Taking its cues from GameCube’s Mario Kart: Double Dash, this kart racer allowed players to combine two racers together mid-race.

The second Crash Bandicoot party game released for the franchise was even less popular, releasing on DS to very negative reviews.

The added power of the Xbox 360 did nothing to revitalise Crash’s now-ailing reputation, though the game itself was a solid release.

Crash Bash

At the height of Crash mania, this was a rather hapless cash-in on the increasinglypopular party genre in light of the release of Mario Party.

mind over mutant

At this point Crash was looking to take inspiration from other popular 3D platformers rather than leading the charge as it once had. Mind Over Mutant tried to do too much new.

has the potential to be that.’ It wasn’t. I don’t see how it could have been. The team did not have the expertise in design and planning this type of game.”

As a result of this, Mark Cerny brought Siller closer into the project, using his experience from working at Sunsoft to help Naughty Dog turn Willie The Wombat into a title that Universal would be proud to have. “So I took the ideas that I had and put them together and showed that the game could work and become a great game,” explains Siller. “I went into Andy Gavin’s office and helped him work on Crash. He once came to me and said: ‘We need to work on Crash’s jump, and his gravity,’ and we went and spent several hours together, and I had the controller in hand and we kept tweaking and tweaking Crash’s jumping up and his gravity and how he would rebound, he wouldn’t float. It was a collaborative effort the whole way.”

With a solid foundation now created and refined, Willie The Wombat succeeded its first-playable milestone and, with Universal’s hopes satiated, it went to seek a publisher for the game. Universal ran a trademark check to ensure Willie The Wombat was available, only to discover that the name had been used by Hudson for its Japan-only Sega Saturn RPG Willy Wombat. “That game was kind of an action RPG,” adds Siller, “it wasn’t very successful in Japan, didn’t get published beyond that. But it was an interesting-looking bipedal wombat, looked very similar to Crash Bandicoot in a way, but even more stylised with that Japanese anime look.” Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin had insisted on the name from the start, a carryover from the 16-bit era where catchy names for mascot platformers was the biggest aspect to many of the games released as they all sought to dethrone Super Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog. But this was a new generation, it was about to become the PlayStation era and Willie The Wombat’s rebellious attitude needed a name that could

wrath of Cortex

The first PS2 outing for Crash was also the first time he was no longer exclusive to PlayStation, with Vivendi looking to capitalise on series' fame.

nitro kart 3d

The first of a pair of mobile games released with Crash’s face on it, this one is yet another kart racing game in the vein of the original Crash Team Racing.

huge adventure

Crash’s first portable title was for the Game Boy Advance that was a fairly by-the-numbers 2D platformer. It was a fairly faithful adaptation of Crash gameplay.

mutant island

As you might expect from a game for the business-focused Blackberry mobile phone, very few gamers experienced people Crash Bandicoot on this particular platform.

stand out. Universal arranged a meeting with both Universal Interactive Studios and Naughty Dog so a replacement name could be found. “At that meeting, a lot of names were bandied about,” says Siller, “I believe a couple of guys at Naughty Dog had suggested ‘Crash’ and that it would be a bandicoot instead of a wombat. Everybody seemed to like that: ‘Crash Bandicoot, okay, that’s catchy’. From that point on it was resolved, Kelly said, ‘Okay, everyone raise your hands, Crash Bandicoot.’ That morning we went from Willie The Wombat to Crash Bandicoot. A bandicoot was also a marsupial, we just switched one for another.”

Now ready to shop the game around, Mark Cerny, Rob Biniaz and David Siller took the prototype to Sony to get concept

Crash BandiCoot 2 n-tranCed

This GBA sequel to Huge Adventure was released shortly after, targeting a younger audience with its easier-tohandle gameplay.

nitro kart 2

The last release for the orange marsupial before his remaster with his reputation at an all-time low, the game was at least quite popular and well received for the time.

nitro kart

Crash returned to his kart racing with this competent, yet uninspired, PS2 sequel, but failed to garner much in the way of praise or popularity.

the bosses of the game were all unique and had their own personalities. ripper roo remains a fan favourite.

ripto’s rampage

This was a crossover for GBA between Crash and equally popular PSone platforming hero Spyro, with the purple dragon having a parallel release.

n. sane trilogy

The fully reworked original PSone trilogy is finally getting a release after months and years of hype, speculation and fan demand with Vicarious Visions handling development.

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FEATURE

PLAYSTATION CLASSICS #35: BANdICOOT

a Crate Game how famous aspects of Crash bandicoot came to be...

“We were trying to make Crash both conventional and unique," Siller remembers. "I created a lot of ideas and we’d discuss them and we’d employ the ones that seemed to work, like the spin move. There were a lot of types of crates that would yield different items.

I was big into environmental animation, in other words having things moving in

the environment so that the character in addition to having his own functionality and techniques would have to run through and jump and land on moving environment things. You have to create an interactive functionality to the play field to make the game fun, so that the player gets so involved in the game that they’re enthralled.”

“mark cerny Said, ‘they don’t like yoU, they want me to be in charge ’” approval, a process that – back then – was a necessity if you were to get onto the PlayStation. The meeting was a complete success, with Sony’s executive vice president Bernie Stolar becoming immediately enraptured by the title and signed the product as a PlayStation exclusive there and then. “When we left we were as high as a kite,” recalls Siller, “we knew we had done an impressive thing. Whenever you want to get someone’s attention, you take them something that isn’t maybe complete or finished, but you take them something that knocks their socks off. You go and show what your idea is, and show them in real time why you have a hell of a product. Bernie Stolar saw that. Sony came in and obviously had to have Crash.” This was a significant moment for the orange marsupial. Siller explains that the character was set to be a Universal mascot, a character that it would use to build itself as the “modern Warner Bros.” to compete with the Looney Tunes characters. “We were thinking that where Warner Bros. has Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Tasmanian Devil – they have a list of characters – Universal really didn’t have that and we felt we were creating that for them. Crash, as well as other undiscussed game character plans that were being developed that never saw fruition.”

But Crash’s aesthetic was more than just an idea to take on Warner Bros, the character itself had been inspired by the Tasmanian Devil himself, from his appearance to his anarchic attitude. “Jason Rubin, in his document, had explained that he wanted this wombat character that would run upright, a bipedal character,” says Siller. “The big influence he had was that he wanted to model Crash after the Tasmanian Devil.” This was a focus for the design of the character, an element that Jason Rubin had decided upon from the start that was tougher to implement than it might first seem. “Well, the Tasmanian Devil had no real neck. The head kind of just sat on the shoulders, and Jason insisted upon on that. Charles Zembillas [art director on Crash Bandicoot] told me on a number of occasions that he had a big problem with that – it didn’t lead to good turn animations and so forth.” He continued to work on it, however, eventually forming the iconic character that is remembered so fondly. “Crash was this hybrid marsupial, Tasmanian Devil spiritual competitor type 54 |

character. He had no neck, he was a little more slender but he was Universal’s Taz.” It wasn’t only the visuals that this inspiration helped create, either. Where the Tasmanian Devil was well known for his whirlwind frenzy – an element that was also used in his own 16-bit videogame – Crash had also adopted a similar technique, but evolved to make for more rewarding gameplay. “Well Crash had a shorter, more controlled spin that didn’t cause him to go out of control,” says Siller, “and that was developed to be a timed sequence so that the closer you got to an enemy you could spin and knock them out, but if you did it too soon and you come out of the spin as you touch that enemy then you would be damaged or you would be defeated.” This, many will recall, was the death of many a marsupial, and added to the game’s challenge and appeal considerably.

Despite the excitement from Sony and the obvious quality of the product, there was no guarantee of Crash Bandicoot’s success. It was only towards the end of development that anyone really believed there could be something outstanding. “The Naughty Dog guys seemed to be nervous about everything,” admits Siller, suggesting that Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 was especially worrisome for the team. “They would go [into the games room] and play Mario 64, they were always concerned While the N.sane trilogy has rebuilt all three games from scratch, the original levels and their designs remain intact.

What theY said… n Crash’s light-hearted, wacky tone and brilliant eye candy will have players bounding over obstacles and crushing crates for days on end.

PlayStation platform fans should make like a bandit for this Bandicoot

GamePro, 1996

about other games. But I felt that our pick-up-and-play gameplay was going to prove to be popular. I wasn’t really worried about it, but there were others there that were.” Towards the end of the game’s development and following a lot of positive coverage in the magazines of the time, internal belief in Crash grew, but no one – Sony included – could not have predicted the booming success it would end up becoming. “The reason I wasn’t so sure that it was going to be special until it came out was because we thought there were going to be a lot of similar games. There were a lot of competent developers out there, we were coming out of nowhere, really. Where are the Konamis, the Namcos, the Crystal Dynamics? And they all did, they all came out with stuff, but nobody did as soon as we did – and for a long time – like we did. It took a while for the Crash Bandicoot influence to proliferate into the development community. And then Crash clones and Crash-influenced games were right and left. No, I don’t think we knew that it was going to be that big. At least I didn’t. Maybe Jason, Andy and Mark immediately knew that it was going to be substantial, and that’s why they clamoured to take all the credit.”

Not all was well internally at Naughty Dog, however, a hidden history behind Crash that has been shrouded since its release. Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin, claims Siller, were keen to weaken the impact that his design and input had on the game.

“Not only me,” says Siller, “but especially me, Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson pretty much got pooped on.” Zembillas and Pearson were key in the visual aesthetic of Crash Bandicoot, with the pair creating the unique characters while Pearson also created concepts for what the world would look like. “And I took those and it influenced me to design gameplay, the design kept going and evolving. And even Naughty Dog participated in that after I had shown and proven the way.” After increased tension for Siller, the straw that broke the back was when he spoke to Mutato Muzika – the company arranging the audio for the game – and agreed to include some of their music into Crash.

“Well apparently that information got back to Naughty Dog and Jason Rubin flew off the handle,” says Siller, “and called me into his office, closed the door and started yelling at me and telling me that I had no business telling Mutato Muzika that, saying

that Naughty Dog was in charge and that they were going to run the music. I tried to reassure him that I didn’t talk to the press and that I was only, in as far as Mutato Muzika, a soldier under command. I was doing what I was told to do. But apparently Mark Cerny didn’t back me up. At that time he said, ‘They don’t like you, they want me to be in charge now.’ It was the final month or two, and that’s what happened.”

Despite the feud that had formed, Crash Bandicoot released in November 1996, only a year after the release of the PSone and to great critical and commercial success. “As soon as the game came out Sony knew that it was a hit,” says Siller, the game’s unique approach to platform game design and the attitude of its characters helping to create a game that was immediately loved by many. The series built up such a devoted audience, in fact, that the rebirth of classic PSone-era Crash gameplay is one of the biggest request from PlayStation fans. As the modern recreation of those original Crash games is due for release, perhaps now is the right time for the world to have a bit more of the orange marsupial in their lives. “I think any time you can develop a game that allows the greatest number of people to come in and instantly be able to play it,” suggests Siller of how the game surged to popularity and remained so important, “without sophistication or complication, without difficulty and is fun, and it looks good and has robust colour then I think that game will become a big success. That’s the reason Crash became the staple that it is, because it had all those elements.”

Crash packed a great deal of variety into its levels and even though they were tackled in mostly the same way, they always felt different.

the cheeky eyebrow raising just before Crash jumped aboard a hog perfectly encapsulates the character’s style.

a GaminG evolution Crash bandicoot » Wrath of Cortex » Crash of the titans

the first PS2 crash game was going to switch to an open world design, but was scrapped when the rights changed owner.

as the franchise moved over to the PS3 generation, it moved rather far from its original pure platforming gameplay. | 55

PLUS

extended play dlC multiplayer trophies video

INTERVIEW

the need for speed

We attempt to catch up with speedrunner and GDQ organiser Vulajin, but it turns out he’s pretty fast…

What first made you want to get into speedrunning?

My first exposure to speedrunning was Awesome Games Done Quick 2013. Two runs in particular really sold it to me: Garrison running Super Metroid and Werster running Pokémon Fire Red. Super Metroid involves rapid, precise movements, and is challenging as hell, so I was amazed but immediately struck with the thought “I wish I could do this, but I could never actually play that well.”

Pokémon is the opposite - it’s slow-paced, methodical, and heavily rooted in intricate knowledge of numbers, game mechanics, and probabilities. I’m a professional programmer – numbers and planning are totally my thing, so this immediately appealed to me. After watching both runs, I knew this was a hobby I could get into.

Do you have a favourite glitch/skip/trick from any run you’ve seen or done?

There’s this trick in Ori And The Blind Forest called ‘iceless’ – which is a name we stole from a similar trick in Mega Man X. There’s a location where there’s an overhang you can

56 |

reach with a very precise jump and turnaround in midair, followed by what we call a ‘frame perfect’ wall jump. A frame is the smallest unit of time in a game, and for Ori, it’s 1/60th of a second – frame perfect means you have to do an input on one specific frame. As you might guess, it’s a pretty hard trick to do, but you can get pretty consistent at it with practice. Sadly, none of the current speedrun routes for Ori actually require this trick any more.

Roughly how long would you say you spend preparing for something like a marathon run?

It can vary a lot depending on the game. For my first GDQ run, I put over 300 hours of practice into Bastion hoping to put on as good of a show as possible. For my Fez run at AGDQ 2016, I only spent around 50 hours preparing for that run. (Steam stats are really handy for answering this sort of question!) I’ve found that I’m able to get marathonready faster with more overall speedrunning experience.

However, some games will still call for more attention than others.

How do you find time to work on event organisation and practice your own runs, as well as doing all that regular life stuff that tries to get in the way?

I naturally multitask a lot, which means I don’t burn out too quickly on any single thing. That said, it can be pretty rough at times. The first thing that tends to slip is practicing games other than the ones I’m running for events. The second thing that tends to slip is taking any time for any other personal pursuits. I used to play inline hockey a lot, but I’ve fallen off of that in the last few months and I’m really kicking myself for it.

Do you prefer running alone, on stream or at events/ marathons? What are the pros and cons of each?

It’s funny you ask that, because a lot of newer speedrunners these days don’t appreciate that speedrunning started as a primarily solo hobby, at home by yourself with just a controller and console. Streaming and speedrunning being linked together is a pretty recent invention. I absolutely love playing off stream every so

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Games Done Quick events are seven-day marathons where the best speedrunners show off their skills over all kinds of games. SGDQ is around the corner, so be sure to tune in and check it out!

often, just to make sure that the speedrunning itself is still fun to me, not just the streaming (it still is).

Playing on stream is generally pretty fun if you have viewers, because you get to share the successes/failures of your attempts with them or just talk about whatever.

That said, it can be pretty disheartening when you start out as a streamer and consistently have zero viewers. Playing at an event is a completely different beast. There’s a huge amount of pressure (for me, typically self-generated) to put on a good show, to not disappoint yourself, your friends, or your game’s community. But if you manage to let that go a little bit and just have fun with it, viewers will see that and you’ll be really successful regardless of how good your execution is. In the end, all three are really enjoyable in their own ways.

How do you go about deciding what game(s) to run, or to include in a GDQ lineup for that matter?

For myself, like most speedrunners, the most important thing is that I’ve played a game and loved it casually before

I’ll even consider speedrunning it. I also need to really enjoy looking at and listening to the game for potentially thousands of hours. These qualities are more important to me than things like how long the speedrun is, or what tricks are involved.

For a GDQ, the process of picking games is extremely complex. Our overall goals are to produce a schedule that will raise money for our charity partner; that will entertain viewers, both those who are and are not already aware of speedrunning; and that will represent a cross-section of what the speedrunning community has to offer. We try to pick a wide array of games to attract a diverse audience.

We also try to showcase games that people might not realize make for impressive watches when played fast.

Is there an sense of community between runners or is it something that exists on a per-game basis?

Both absolutely exist. I know that, in the general gaming community, the most well-known speedrunning personalities tend to be people who specialize in one

or maybe two games at most. But the vast majority of speedrunners run at least two games, if not more. So yeah, each game develops its own subcommunity, but the sharing of people and knowledge means that an overall speedrunning culture develops.

What advice would you offer to someone who wants to get into speedrunning?

You can speedrun. Everyone always watches something like a Super Metroid or a Half-Life 2 or a Dark Souls speedrun or whatever, and they say, “I am just not this good at games, I couldn’t do this.” Spoiler: “good at games” means you practiced. It means you played a lot of games, or a lot of a specific game, and developed the skills to play it well, consistently. Speedrunning is the process of practicing and getting better. You can do that. Pick up a game you love, a game that you could see yourself playing for thousands of hours, and play it, start to finish, as fast as you can think to do. Then do it again, but faster. And again. Congratulations, you’re a speedrunner. Welcome to the community.

| 57

PLUS

EXTENDED PLAY

EXTENDED PLAY

ADvENTurE

If you enjoyed games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Life Is Strange or Monkey Island, these should be the next few games on your playlist…

fullthrottle ■ this classic lucasarts point-and-click is the latest to get the remaster treatment on PS4, and the team has done as good a job as ever. The smooth new visuals actually suit the art style really well (we’ll still always prefer the original pixel art though, which is still there for those who want it) and as with Day Of The Tentacle and the first two Monkey Island games, the audio commentary is as good for laughs as the game’s actual jokes. Finally having this on PS4 has got us to thinking… what LucasArts adventure do we want next? It’s either Curse Of Monkey Island or Sam & Max Hit The Road, although the latter seems unlikely, sadly.

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ADvENTurE

PLUS

tales from the borderlands ■ it stands to reason that fans of one of Telltale’s episodic adventure game series would most likely enjoy the others too. But for our money, this is the best of the lot, with the possible exception of The Walking Dead’s first season. Despite being played for laughs, there are still plenty of big, plot-swinging decisions to be made, plus it doesn’t bleed its source material dry – you can still really enjoy the game if you’ve never played Borderlands, but you’ll obviously get more of a kick out of the cameos and references if you have. Honestly, it’s worth playing for the finger gun scene alone. You’ll see…

grim fandango remastered ■ another classic from the LucasArts vault, Grim Fandango is… well, let’s say it’s an acquired taste compared to most modern adventure games. Back during the genre’s peak popularity, developers got increasingly sneaky with puzzle design, both to avoid rehashing puzzles seen elsewhere and to give players more of a challenge.

As a result, some of the adventures from the tail-end

of this golden age fall just on the wrong side of obtuse. Know this going in and there’s an amazing game to be found – you just might have to make a few leaps of logic to make it to the end. Then again, you can pull a guide up on your phone in five seconds if you’re really struggling, meaning there are no excuses for not seeing this undead detective story through to its conclusion.

MachInarIuM ■ we doubt that many readers will be all that familiar with the works of Amanita Design, but that’s a wrong that any point-and-click fan should be looking to right. The Czech team makes some of the most creative and stylish adventures in the business, from this dialogue-free robotic romp to the stunning and natural quirkiness of the Samarost games, although those haven’t made it to PlayStation so far. Still, they’re a perfect fit for a phone or tablet thanks to the touchscreen, so worth considering to keep your brain busy while you’re sat in a matchmaking queue.

SherLock hoLMeS: The DevIL’S DaughTer ■ it’s fair to say that Frogwares isn’t quite on the same level as the developers of the other games featured here, but the team sure seems to be doing well for itself all the same. The Ukranian studio now has eight Sherlock games under its belt and slowly but surely, the quality is improving. More recent games

have started to riff more on the BBC series than the books, at least in terms of style and approach – Frogwares hasn’t been so bold as to pull Holmes and Watson out of their original time just yet. Unlike in most point-and-click games, it’s actually possible to get puzzles wrong and fail entirely as a result.

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PLUS

Trophy Guide

playSTaTion pluS

Trophy guide

pS pluS Trophy Guide drawn to death Platform: PS4 Difficulty: 3/5 troPhiES: 28 1 7 7 13 ■ this multiplayer shooter feels like a good fit for Plus, especially since it has a loot crate system similar to that of Overwatch. Luckily, getting the Platinum won’t involve throwing any money at that side of things or relying on RNG, but it will still be a bit of a grind. The main thing is to not get too attached to any one character – you’ll need to pretty much max out two of them and get 50 kills with three, so diversifying who you use will help with this. Aside from those, you’ll also need to make progress in Ranked mode and solve all of the riddles, so it’s likely that most of the milestone Trophies (600 kills, 50 matches, 25 wins, etc.) will pop as you work on these tasks.

Check out the shooting gallery for a few secrets, too.

invizimals: The losT kingdom Platform: PS3 Difficulty: 1/5 troPhiES: 47 1 3 7 36 ■ being a game aimed at kids, it’ll come as no surprise that the Trophy list here is really quite straightforward. As usual, though, it’s heavy on the collectible mop-up – you’ll need to grab just about every pointless trinket you find on your travels if you want the Platinum. Aim to get most of these on your first playthrough, but don’t worry – there’s a level select option should you miss anything and hitting Select lets you see what you’re missing in each area, making it easy to round up anything you don’t find first time through. The only exception to this is ‘Perfect!’, which you get for nailing a QTE sequence. These aren’t available once completed, so make sure you ace one of them first time and the rest should fall into place with time.

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PLUS lovers in a dangerous spaceTime Platform: PS4 Difficulty: 3/5 1 7 6 15 troPhiES: 29 ■ the idea of running around with a partner and manning all the different stations on your quirky battleship might seem overwhelming, but we’ve got some good news. To make life easier, feel free to play on Casual difficulty (this doesn’t affect Trophies at all) and to make things simpler still, rope in a friend to do it in co-op mode. Unlike similar games, unlocked Trophies pop for both involved accounts with only a few exceptions, so the two of you can quite easily work on getting the Platinum together, which avoids having to rely on AI companions getting things right. Run through the game’s campaigns to begin with, after which you can use the level select to return to the very first level and mop up a lot of the more situational ones on the easiest stage. Don’t work on more than a couple of these at a time – it’s an easy level, but attempting too many different tasks at once will mean you’re more likely to mess one of them up in the confusion. When those are all done, run one full campaign with each of the three ships for ‘Token Of Affection’, then return to each of the boss levels to grab the Trophies for beating them in specific ways, if you didn’t get them on your first run.

curses ’n chaos Platform: ps4/viTa Difficulty: 4/5 0 0 0 21 troPhiES: 21 ■ don’t you just love it when a game without a Platinum only has Bronze Trophies? Yeah, us too. It’s not so bad when a game is great fun but… well, this sort of isn’t, really. Most of the Trophies are score-based, so you’ll want to abuse Luckboosting items that will raise your base multiplier level – these stack, which can make even the toughest score challenges surprisingly easy. Aside from these, the most difficult Trophies will probably be ‘Agent Of Chaos’ for hitting a chain of 200 on the Chaos stage and ‘Elite Fighter’, for which you’ll need to get through an entire level without taking a hit. Enjoy your handful of new Bronzes, you maniacs.

10 second ninja x Platform: ps4/viTa Difficulty: 3/5 1 troPhiES: 12 0 2 9 ■ the fast pace of this game makes it seem like the Trophies could be a nightmare, but it also means that failure only ever costs you a matter of seconds.

Marathon modes might sound daunting, for instance, but these ten-level runs are usually over within a minute once you get them down, so each time you miss out on a three-star run, you can just try again quickly and easily. The most difficult part of getting three stars in every level will probably come when you hit the legacy stages from the original release – unlike the new levels, some of these are insanely strict with their time requirements and acing them can get rather frustrating.

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Destiny 2

star wars battlefront ii

kingDom hearts iii

eyes up, guardians! The first gameplay from Bungie’s sequel is set to drop very soon, so keep an eye on the Studio’s Twitch channel.

we’re never going to turn down an opportunity to play out our favourite Star Wars battles, and this looks absolutely amazing.

keep telling yourself that KHIII will release this year by watching the old trailers on loop – it’s probably as close as you’ll get to the game in 2017.

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sHaring

PlaySTaTion 4 DirecTory

Every PS4 owner needs to know what games are worth owning.

Our PS4 directory is the ideal tool for building your library.

JOIN THE

COMMUNITY ■ PS4’S Community feature is a great way of finding like-minded players that share your interests. That’s why we’ve set up our own Play Community where you can join our game sessions, share your best screenshots, win free games and other prizes, and connect with other PlayStation fans. Come and join our ever-growing community of readers today!

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sEnd us Your BEsT scrEEns

The inDie 100

Every must-play indie game on PlayStation is right here – if you love indies, this will help you fill any gaps in your collection.

Like Dishonored 2, Prey is an amazing looking game where crazy things can happen when you combine your abilities. Be ready to hit the Share button!

DoWnloaD PLAY BacK iSSUeS

Missed an issue of play? Fear not!

They are all available to download for tablets and smartphones from greatdigitalmags.com

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Mastered the machines in The Surge and wearing their best bits as sweet new armour?

Take a snap and let us see!

Don’t forget to take screenshots every time you get something good in an Overwatch loot crate, either!

| 63

PLUS

you haven’t played… parappa the rapper? you haven’t played… ?

parappa the rapper

One of the first ever true rhythm-action games, this classic tale of a rapping dog is back on PS4. If you never played it on PSone, now’s your chance to check his funky flow…

I gOtta belIeve!

Three odd situations PaRappa finds himself in

The cookeRy show

When he needs to bake a cake, the obvious thing to do is to go on tv and bake one with a grumpy chicken.

The PaRT-Time job

paRappa miraculously makes enough money to buy a car after one day of selling bottle caps at a flea market.

■ the rhythm-action genre has come on a long way since PaRappa first took to the stage. But this classic game holds up today on the strength of its style and quirky charm, not so much its once-revolutionary call-and-repeat gameplay. You see, PaRappa is very much a product of its time in terms of content. With no competition, nobody really knew what a decent amount of songs or proper input timings were back in the day but today, some 20 years on, we’ve been spoiled by music games with track lists in triple figures and note charts matched expertly to isolated parts of classic songs – by comparison, PaRappa’s six-song adventure and unforgiving input timing make it seem like quite the peculiar proposition.

64 |

As frustrating as it can be to play today, though, PaRappa still feels inventive and rewarding in its mechanics when it does play nice. Button prompts are merely recommendations and more often, you’ll score more points by mixing up phrases than by following them to the letter.

After clearing a song once, this will allow you to hit the newly-unlocked Cool rating, which throws away structure altogether for one long freestyle session and the chance to obliterate previous high scores. The game spawned two follow-ups – improved pseudo-sequel Um Jammer Lammy and a straight-up numbered sequel on PS2. The latter is already on PS4 as a PS2 Classic, but if supporting this means we could get Lammy too, we’re all over it.

The dRiving TesT

our rhyme-spitting hero learns to drive under the tuition of a moose, and passes despite leaving the door open.

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PS4

skyrim

luke albigés skyrim

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I did enjoy Skyrim back in the day, but I don’t think I’d want to go back to it. The Witcher 3 has absolutely spoiled me, and I just feel like any other fantasy RPG would pale next to it.

8

andy salter skyrim

We’ve come to the conclusion that inviting Andy to choose this month’s category might have been a mistake.

Still, he seems happy enough with the outcome, so we suppose it’s not all bad news.

10

steve holmes skyrim

Unable to resist its charms, Steve was recently lost for ages to the remastered version. He emerged recently with a shiny new Platinum Trophy, before immediately deleting the game from his PS4.

9

drew sleep skyrim

Knowing how evil Drew is (he’s very evil), we asked him whether he joined the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim.

His insane cackling told us everything we needed to know, if not more. Shudder.

9

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game

issue score

Abzu Alekhine’s Gun Alien: Isolation Alienation Amplitude Arslan: The Warriors Of Legend Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India

273 270 249 270 266 268 257 266

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

237 264

Assassin’s Creed: Unity Axiom Verge

251 256

Batman: Arkham Knight Batman: The Telltale Series – Episode One

258 274

Battleborn Battlefield 1 Battlefield 4

271 276 238

Battlefield Hardline BioShock: The Collection Blazblue Central Fiction Blazblue Chronophantasma Extend

256 275 277 264

Bloodborne Bloodborne: The Old Hunters

256 265

Bound Bound By Flame Broforce

274 245 268

Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare Call Of Duty: Black Ops III

251 264

Call Of Duty: Ghosts Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare Child Of Light

238 276 244

CounterSpy DariusBurst: Chronicle Saviours Dark Souls III

248 266 269

Day Of The Tentacle Remastered Daylight Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition

269 245 242

7 3 9 8 8 5 7 7 8 4 6 9 9 4 6 7 8 7 7 8 9 9 9 7 6 6 8 8 7 5 7 5 8 9 8 2 7 7 9

Dead Or Alive 5: Last Round Destiny

254 249

Destiny: House Of Wolves Destiny: Rise Of Iron Destiny: The Dark Below

258 275 252

Destiny: The Taken King Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition

262 274 258

Diablo III: Reaper Of Souls Dirt Rally Dishonored 2 Disney Infinity 2.0

248 269 277 249

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition Don’t Starve Doom Dragon Age: Inquisition Dragon Ball Xenoverse Dragon Quest Builders

264 240 271 251 255 276

Dragon Quest Heroes Driveclub

263 250

Dying Light Dynasty Warriors 8 XLCE

254 243

EA Sports UFC EA Sports UFC 2 Enter The Gungeon Ether One

246 269 269 258

Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture Evolve

261 254

F1 2015 Fallout 4

260 264

Far Cry 4 Far Cry Primal Fez

251 268 243

8 7 8 8 8 8 6 8 9 8 8 10

FIFA 15 FIFA 16 FIFA 17

249 262 275

8 9 8

8 8 7 9 6 8 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 5 8 8 8 9

game

issue score

Final Fantasy Type-0 Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Final Fantasy XV

255 243 277

Firewatch Furi Game Of Thrones: Iron From Ice

267 272 253

Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Ghost Recon: Wildlands God Eater 2: Rage Burst God Of War III Remastered Grand Theft Auto V

252 280 275 260 251

Gravity Rush 2 Grim Fandango Remastered Guilty Gear Xrd -RevelatorGuilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-* Guitar Hero Live Hardware: Rivals Headlander Hitman Hohokum Homefront: The Revolution Horizon: Zero Dawn Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number I Am Setsuna inFamous: First Light inFamous: Second Son Invisible, Inc. Just Cause 3 JStars Victory VS+ Killing Floor 2 Killzone Shadow Fall Killzone Shadow Fall: Intercept King Of Fighters XIV King’s Quest: A Knight To Remember Knack Lara Croft And The Temple Of Osiris Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Lego Dimensions Lego Marvel’s Avengers Lego Marvel Super Heroes Lego Jurassic World Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lego The Hobbit Lego Worlds Let It Die

279 254 272 253 264 266 273 268 248 271 279 255 273 249 242 270 265 260 277 238 246 274 261 238 252 252 263 267 238 258 273 244 280 278

LittleBigPlanet 3 Lords Of The Fallen Lumo Madden ’16 Madden ’17 Mad Max Mafia 3

251 251 271 262 274 262 276

Mercenary Kings Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst Mortal Kombat X

244 242 261 250 272 257

7 7 8 9 4 8 8 8 9 8 6 9

Moto Racer 4 Murdered: Soul Suspect N++ Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 NBA 2K15 NBA 2K17 Need For Speed Need For Speed Rivals NHL 15 Nier Automata Nioh No Man’s Sky Not A Hero Nuclear Throne Octodad: Dadliest Catch Outlast Overcooked Overwatch Oxenfree

277 246 261 267 250 275 264 238 249 280 279 274 267 266 244 241 273 271 271

4 4 8 8 8 8 5 8 6 8 8 8 6 8 6 7 9 8 6

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2

275

6

8 9 9 6 8 8 9 5 6 8 10 8 8 9 9 8 5 6 9 8 6 9 9 8 5 8 9 7 6 6 8 8 7 8 6 5 6 7 6 8 7 6 6 6 7 9

game

issue score

Persona 5 PES 2015 PES 2016 PES 2017 Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 Prison Architect Project Cars Rainbow Six Siege Ratchet & Clank République Resident Evil HD Resident Evil 7 Resident Evil Revelations 2 Resogun Resogun Heroes Robinson: The Journey

280 250 262 275 248 268 273 258 265 269 268 253 279 256 238 247 277

Rock Band 4 Rocket League Rogue Legacy Rory McIlroy PGA Tour Salt And Sanctuary

263 260 248 260 269

Sébastien Loeb Rally Evo Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Sheltered Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter

267 279 270 272

Shovel Knight Skylanders Imaginators Skylanders Superchargers Skylanders Swap Force Skylanders Trap Team Sniper Elite 4 SOMA Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness Star Wars Battlefront Steep Street Fighter V Strider Styx: Shards Of Darkness Super Time Force Ultra Switch Galaxy Ultra Tales From The Borderlands: Zer0 Sum Tales Of Berseria Tearaway Unfolded Teslagrad The Amazing Spider-Man 2 The Banner Saga 2 The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth The Crew The Evil Within The Last Guardian The Last Of Us Remastered

258 276 263 238 250 280 262 273 265 278 267 242 280 262 253 252 279 262 253 245 272 251 252 250 278 247

The Order: 1886 The Tomorrow Children The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter The Walking Dead Season 3 E1&2 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt The Witness Thief

254 275 260 278 257 267 241

This War Of Mine: The Little Ones Tiny Brains

267 240

Titan Souls Titanfall 2 Tom Clancy’s The Division

257 276 268

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 Torment: Tides Of Numenera

263 280

9 3 8

TrackMania Turbo Transformers: Devastation Transformers: Rise Of The Dark Spark Transistor

269 263 247 245

8 8 3 9

Trials Fusion Ultra Street Fighter IV Umbrella Corps Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

244 258 272 270

8 8 3 10

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection Unravel Until Dawn Valiant Hearts

263 267 261 247

8 7 8 6

9 9 9 8 7 8 8 6 8 8 7 8 9 7 9 9 6 7 8 9 5 8 5 8 9 6 9 7 7 7 7 8 8 6 6 6 9 6 6 9 8 7 7 7 7 2 8 9 5 8 6 10 8 4 8 5 10 10 7 7 6 7 7

THIS MONTH’S NEW ENTRIES The newest games, freshly squeezed among all your old favourites

Persona 5 Nier Automata Sniper Elite 4 Torment: Tides Of Numenera Warhammer 40K: Deathwatch Lego Worlds Styx: Shards Of Darkness Ghost Recon: Wildlands

PLUS

9 8 8 8 7 6 6 5

game

issue score

game

issue score

game

issue score

Virginia War Thunder Warhammer 40K: Deathwatch Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut

275 239 280 264

BioShock Infinite

230

9

Watch Dogs Watch Dogs 2 Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Wolfenstein: The New Order Wolfenstein: The Old Blood World Of Final Fantasy WWE 2K15 WWE 2K16 XCOM 2

245 278 249 245 258 276 252 264 275

BlackSite Bladestorm: The Hundred Years’ War BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger BlazBlue: Continuum Shift

163 160 190 198

4 5 8 9

Dead Space 3 Dead Space: Extraction Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut Deadpool Demon’s Souls

228 203 231 233 193

7 8 8 6 9

Destroy All Humans!: Path Of The Furon Deus Ex: Human Revolution Devil May Cry 4

178 209 163

2

9 9

Devil May Cry HD Collection Diablo III

217 235

8 9

6 7 9

279

151 211 193 185 223 250 168 188 233 171 185 203 235 211 162 185 151 173 160 186

5 6 8 8 9

yakuza 0

Blazing Angels BloodRayne: Betrayal Blur Borderlands Borderlands 2 Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel The Bourne Conspiracy Braid Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway Brütal Legend Bulletstorm The Bureau: XCOM Declassified Burnout Crash Burnout Paradise Buzz! Quiz World Call Of Duty 3 Call Of Duty: World At War Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

8 7 7 8 5 7 8 7 5 6 9 9

DiRT 3 DiRT Showdown Disgaea 3: Absence Of Justice Dishonored

206 219 175 224

8 7 8 9

Disney Infinity DJ Hero

235 186

8 9

DJ Hero 2 Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock Doom 3: BFG Edition DmC Devil May Cry

198 220 225 227

8 3 6 9

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Call Of Duty: Black Ops

212 199

8 9

Call Of Duty: Black Ops II Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger Call Of Juarez: The Cartel Captain America: Super Soldier Castle Crashers

226 181 232 208 208 200

8 8 8 3 7 9

Castlevania: Harmony Of Despair Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow

212 197

7 9

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2 Cars 2 The Cave Catherine Chronicles Of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena Civilization Revolution

241 208 230 215 178 168

8 6 7 6 8 9

Dragon Age: Origins Dragon Age II Dragon Ball: Raging Blast Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit Dragon’s Crown Dragon’s Dogma Driver: San Francisco Duke Nukem Forever Dungeon Siege III Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires Dynasty Warriors 8 EA Sports Active 2 EA Sports MMA Eat Lead echochrome echochrome II EDF: Insect Armageddon Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

186 203 186 168 235 218 209 207 206 208 181 230 234 200 198 178 169 202 208 152 212

8 6 4 6 8 8 7 3 8 5 4 4 7 8 8 3 8 8 6 9 9

Clash Of The Titans Clive Barker’s Jericho The Club Colin McRae: DiRT

193 159 163 158

6 6 8 9

Colin McRae: DiRT 2 Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Commander’s Challenge Command & Conquer Conan Condemned 2 Costume Quest Counter Strike: Global Offensive

184 178 185 175 160 165 199 223

8 6 6 4 7 7 7 9

Elefunk El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron Enchanted Arms Enslaved: Odyssey To The West Epic Mickey 2: The Power Of Two Eternal Sonata Everybody’s Golf: World Tour

170 208 152 197 226 176 165

4 7 6 8 5 8 9

EyePet F1 2012 Fairy Fencer F Fallout 3

185 223 250 173

8 7 4 10

Crash Time 4: The Syndicate Crysis 2 Crysis 3 Cubixx HD The Cursed Crusade Damnation Damage Inc: Pacific Squadron WWII Dante’s Inferno The Darkness

218 204 230 207 211 181 223 189 154

3 7 6 7 4 3 3 8 9

The Darkness II Dark Sector Dark Souls Dark Souls II

215 165 211 242

7 6 9 9

Fallout: New Vegas Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer Far Cry 2 Far Cry 3 Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Fat Princess FEAR FEAR 2: Project Origin FEAR 3 FIFA 13 FIFA 14

198 155 172 226 231 183 151 176 208 223 236

8 3 7 8 8 6 8 8 6 8 9

Darkstalkers Resurrection Dark Void Darksiders Darksiders II DC Universe Online Dead Or Alive 5 Dead Island Dead Island: Riptide Dead Rising 2 Dead Rising 2: Off The Record Dead Space Dead Space 2

230 188 188 221 202 223 210 231 197 211 172 201

8 8 8 8 8 7 7 6 8 6 9 9

The Fight Fight Night Champion Fight Night Round 4 Final Fantasy XIII Final Fantasy XIII-2 Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns Fist Of The North Star: Ken’s Rage Fist Of The North Star: Ken’s Rage 2 Flight Control HD Flock!

Folklore Front Mission Evolved Fuel Full Auto 2: Battlelines Fuse

199 203 181 190 214 240 198 230 198 179 158 198 180 151 232

4 8 8 8 8 8 5 5 8 7 6 5 4 6 7

PS3

8 8 7 8 8 7 6 8 8 7 4 5 9 9

007 Legends 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil 3D Dot Game Heroes 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand Ace Combat: Assault Horizon The Adventures Of Tintin Afro Samurai After Burner Climax

225 244 192 177 211 212 177 193

4 6 8 7 7 5 6 9

Agarest: Generations Of War Agarest: Generations Of War 2 Air Conflicts: Secret Wars Alice: Madness Returns Alien Breed: Impact Alien Breed 2: Assault Alien Breed 3: Descent Aliens: Colonial Marines Aliens Vs Predator Alone In The Dark Alpha Protocol Amy Ape Escape Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match Aqua Panic Arcana Heart 3 Armored Core 4 Armored Core V Army Of Two Army Of Two: The 40th Day Army Of Two: The Devil’s Cartel Assassin’s Creed Assassin’s Creed II

187 223 208 207 196 201 204 230 189 173 193 215 208 239 193 207 153 217 164 188 231 161 186

7 4 5 6 8 8 6 4 7 7 8 1 5 7 6 7 6 6 8 6 4 5 9

Assassin’s Creed III Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

225 199

7 9

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Asura’s Wrath Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist Of Dust Back To The Future: It’s About Time Batman: Arkham Asylum Batman: Arkham City

212 251 216 230 204 183 211

7 7 7 6 7 8 9

Batman: Arkham Origins Battle Fantasia Battlefield 1943

237 176 182

8 7 9

Battlefield: Bad Company Battlefield: Bad Company 2

168 190

8 9

Battlefield 3 Battleship Bayonetta* The Beatles: Rock Band

212 219 187 184

8 4 9 9

Beat Hazard Ultra Beat Sketcher Beyond Good & Evil HD Beyond: Two Souls Binary Domain Bionic Commando Bionic Commando Rearmed Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 BioShock

213 201 207 236 216 179 169 203 172

7 8 8 7 7 8 8 6 9

BioShock 2

189

8

ten years ago

best reviews (152) 1 God Of War II (94%)

2 TES IV: Oblivion (91%)

3 Burnout Dominator (88%)

4 Virtua Tennis 3 (88%)

5 Afterburner: Black Falcon (82%)

6 Blast Factor (72%)

7 MOH: Vanguard (71%)

8 TOCA Race Driver 3 (70%)

9 Enchanted Arms (69%)

10 300: March To Glory (59%)

*denotes import review

| 67

PLUS

play’s best games if you love…

OVERCOMING ADVERSITy PLAY: RAIN WORLD We’re no strangers to difficult games, but we’re happy to admit that this stunning indie title kicked our collective ass.

Mistakes are swiftly punished and there’s little guidance, but we must press on…

BANTER PLAY: UNCHARTED 4: A THIEF’S END Nobody throws quips around quite like Drake. Well, except for more or less everyone he spends any time around, but still, bouncing funnies off friends and enemies alike is what our boy Nate does best.

AMAZING SOUNDTRACKS PLAY: DOOM Seriously, when we first picked up the shotgun and the arrangement of the classic E1M1 chugging theme kicked in, we lost our shit. The rest of the OST is awesome, too.

SPENDING MORE MONEy ON TOyS THAN GAMES PLAY: SKYLANDERS There’s no shame in playing these kinds of games – they’re not just for kids. At least, that’s what we keep telling ourselves every time we sell an internal organ to buy some new figures.

EIGHTIES CARTOONS PLAY: TRANSFORMERS DEVASTATION For maximum effect, jump on Spotify and play through the game to the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack. It’s a glorious nostalgia overdose for any child of the Eighties.

68 |

game

issue score

game

issue score

Genji: Days Of The Blade Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 Ghost Recon Future Soldier GI Joe The Godfather The Godfather II God Of War III God Of War: Ascension

151 157 219 183 151 178 190 230

3 8 6

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

167 187 206

7 7 7

2

3 4 9 9

Lego Rock Band Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

187 160

8 7

188

9

God Of War Collection: Volume II Gotham City Imposters Gran Turismo 5 Gran Turismo 6 Grand Theft Auto IV Grand Theft Auto V

210 216 200 239 166 236

7 7 8 8 9 10

204 227 180 209 172

8 7

God Of War Collection*

Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars Lego The Lord Of The Rings Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust Limbo LittleBigPlanet

9 9

LittleBigPlanet 2

201

10

LittleBigPlanet: Karting

225

8

Lollipop Chainsaw London 2012 The Lord Of The Rings: Aragorn’s Quest

221 221 199

7 4 6

Greed Corp Grid 2 Grid Autosport GTI Club+ GTA: Episodes From Liberty City

191 232 246 174 191

7 7 6 7 9

The Lord Of The Rings: Conquest The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North

175 213

5 4

Lost Planet 2 Lost Planet 3 Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

192 236 163

8 5 6

Guardians Of Middle-earth Guitar Hero III

227 160

7 9

Madagascar 3 Madden NFL 12

224 209

3 8

Guitar Hero 5 Guitar Hero Greatest Hits Guitar Hero Metallica Guitar Hero: Van Halen Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock Guitar Hero World Tour

184 182 179 189 197 173

8 7 8 6 7 9

Madden NFL 13 Madden NFL Arcade Mafia II Magic: Duels Of The Planeswalkers Marvel Vs Capcom 2

223 188 196 202 182

8 5 8 8 9

Gundemonium Collection Gunstar Heroes Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix Haze Heavenly Sword Heavy Rain

197 181 182 155 167 157 189

8 8 6 3 6 7 9

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 Marvel Ultimate Alliance Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Max Payne 3 Mass Effect 2

202 151 185 219 201

8 6 6 7 10

Mass Effect 3

216

9

Heavy Weapon Heroes Over Europe Hitman: Absolution

187 184 225

7 4 9

Hitman HD Trilogy Homefront The House Of The Dead 4 The House Of The Dead: Overkill Hunted: The Demon’s Forge Hustle Kings Hyperdimension Neptunia I Am Alive Ico & Shadow Of The Colossus HD

230 203 218 212 207 190 202 217 210

7 6 8 7 5 8

Medal Of Honor Medal Of Honor Airborne Medal Of Honor: Warfighter Mega Man 9 Mega Man 10 Mercenaries 2: World In Flames Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

198 161 225 172 192 171 228

8 8 7 7 8 7 9

The Incredible Hulk inFamous

168 180

inFamous 2 Inferno Pool

207 181

Injustice: Gods Among Us Inversion

231 220

Iron Man Iron Man 2 The Jak And Daxter Trilogy Jak And Daxter: The Lost Frontier James Bond 007: Blood Stone James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle Journey

166 193 216 187 199 187 244 216

5 8 8 8 8 4 5 5 8 5 6 6 8 9

Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights Jurassic Park: The Game Just Cause 2 Kane & Lynch: Dead Men Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days Katamari Forever Kick-Ass The Game Killer Is Dead Killzone 2

159 194 190 160 196 184 194 235 176

7 6 8 7 7 8 6 7 9

Killzone 3 Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD ReMIX

202 236 252

Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning The King Of Fighters XII The King Of Fighters XIII Kung Fu Panda 2 LA Noire Lara Croft And The Guardian Of Light The Last Guy

215 182 213 207 206 198 171

9 9 9

Last Rebellion Legend Of Spyro: Dawn Of The Dragon Legendary Lego Batman Lego Batman 2 Lego Harry Potter: years 1-4 Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7

191 174 173 173 221 194 213

4 5 6 6 8 7 6

Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean

2

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is another world-class entry in gaming’s most fundamentally playable genre.

Metal Gear Solid 4 Metal Gear Solid HD Collection

167 214

9 9

Metro: Last Light Michael Jackson: The Experience Microbot Midnight Club: Los Angeles Mindjack Minecraft

231 205 202 173 202 240

6 5 5 8 3 9

Mini Ninjas Mirror’s Edge MLB: The Show 14

184 173 245

8 7 9

ModNation Racers Monkey Island 2: Special Edition

192 195

8 9

Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe

205 173

8 6

MotoGP 13 Motorhead MotorStorm

233 173 151

7 6 9

MotorStorm: Apocalypse MotorStorm: Pacific Rift

203 172

7 9

Mud: FIM Motocross Championship MX Vs ATV Alive

217 206

5 4

MX Vs ATV Reflex Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Naruto Shippuden: UNS Generations

189 174 217

6 6 5

Naruto Shippuden: UNS 3 Naughty Bear

230 195

8 6

8 8 9

NBA 2K12 NBA 2K13 NBA Jam

211 224 200

8 8 6

7 7 8

NBA Street: Homecourt Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit

151 199

6 9

Need For Speed: Most Wanted Need For Speed ProStreet Need For Speed Shift

225 161 184

9

Need For Speed: The Run

213

Need For Speed Undercover NeverDead Nier Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch

173 215 192 227

2

6 9

2

game

issue score

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Ninja Gaiden 3 Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge Noby Noby Boy No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise Nucleus Okami HD

184 217 231 177 206 155 225

8 6 8 8 8 8 9

One Piece: Pirate Warriors Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Operation Flashpoint: Red River The Orange Box

224 185 205 161

6 7 7 9

Outland OutRun Online Arcade Overlord II Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

207 180 181 201

7 8 6 9

Pain Payday: The Heist Payday 2 Peggle Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

183 213 235 189 250

6 8 8 9 9

PES 2012 PixelJunk Eden PixelJunk Shooter PixelJunk Shooter 2

210 169 187 204

7 6 9 9

PixelJunk SideScroller PixelJunk Racers PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale PlayStation Move Heroes Poker Night 2 Portal 2

213 160 225 204 232 205

7 7 8 5 5 10

Prince Of Persia Prince Of Persia: Classic Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Prince Of Persia Trilogy Prison Break: The Conspiracy Prototype Prototype 2 Puddle The Punisher: No Mercy Puppeteer Pure Quantum Of Solace Quantum Theory

174 173 193 200 191 181 219 216 182 236 171 175 197

8 6 6 8 4 7 7 7 4 7 8 5

Race Driver: GRID Rag Doll Kung-Fu: Fists Of Plastic Rage Rainbow Six Vegas

167 179 211 155

8 8 6 9

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Rango Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One Ratchet & Clank: Q-Force Ratchet & Clank: Tools Of Destruction Ratchet & Clank Trilogy HD

164 203 186 211 227 160 221

8 5 8 6 5 7 9

Rayman Legends Rayman Origins Red Dead Redemption

235 212 193

8 8 9

Red Faction: Armageddon Red Faction: Guerrilla Remember Me Renegade Ops Resident Evil Chronicles HD Collection Resident Evil Code Veronica X Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Resident Evil: Revelations HD Resident Evil 4 HD

207 180 232 211 221 211 217 232 210

6 8 6 7 8 7 3 7 9

Resident Evil 5 Resident Evil 6 Resistance: Fall Of Man Resistance 2

177 223 151 173

8 8 8 9

2

Resistance 3

210

9

191 228 151 217 162 176 222 248

8 7 7 6 8 5 5

6

Resonance Of Fate Retro City Rampage Ridge Racer 7 Ridge Racer Unbounded Riff: Everyday Shooter Rise Of The Argonauts Risen 2: Dark Waters Risen 3: Titan Lords

7 3 6 8

Risk: Factions Rock Band Blitz Rock Band Rock Band 2

202 223 169 179

8 8 9 9

8 8

2

NHL 12

210

7

Rock Band 3

199

9

NHL 13 NiGHTS Into Dreams...

Ninja Gaiden Sigma

223 224 154

7 7 8

Rocksmith Rogue Warrior Rugby World Cup 2011

223 188 209

7 1 4

PLUS

game

issue score

Rune Factory Oceans RUSE The Saboteur Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Sacred 3 Saints Row 2 Saints Row: The Third Saints Row IV: Gat Out Of Hell SBK Generations Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse

220 197 187 180 247 172 211 253 220 194

5 8 6 7 6 7 8 6 5 9

SBK Generations The Secret Of Monkey Island SE

220 195

5 9

Section 8: Prejudice Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection Sega Rally

209 177 158

8 8 9

Sega Rally Online Arcade Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes Shadows Of The Damned Shank Shatter

208 198 207 197 183

7 7 8 8 9

Shellshock 2: Blood Trails Shift 2: Unleashed Silent Hill: Downpour Silent Hill HD Collection Silent Hill: Homecoming The Simpsons Game The Sims 3 The Sims 3: Pets SingStar Singularity Siren Blood Curse Skate Skate 2 Skate 3 Skullgirls Sleeping Dogs The Sly Collection Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time Sniper Elite V2 Sniper: Ghost Warrior Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 SOCOM: Special Forces Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed

177 204 217 217 174 160 199 212 159 195 170 159 175 192 218 222 200 230 218 206 230 205 199 225 190 227

3 6 8 7 6 8 8 7 8 8 6 8 8 8 8 8 8 6 5 4 5 6 8 4 7 9

Sonic Generations Sonic The Hedgehog Sonic Unleashed Sorcery SoulCalibur IV

212 151 175 219 169

7 5 4 7 9

SoulCalibur V South Park: The Stick of Truth Spec Ops: The Line Spider-Man 3 Spider-Man: Edge Of Time Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows Spin Jam Splatterhouse Splinter Cell Double Agent Split/Second: Velocity

214 242 220 155 212 197 173 174 200 153 192

8 8 7 3 3 6 5 3 5 7 9

Sports Champions Sports Champions 2 SSX Stacking Starhawk Star Ocean: The Last Hope International Star Trek Star Trek: D-A-C Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Star Wars: Pinball Start The Party!

Stormrise Stranglehold Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition Street Fighter IV

196 225 216 203 219 190 231 189 171 199 230 196 178 159 209 176

8 6 4 8 8 6 5 5 6 6 7 7 5 6 9 9

Street Fighter X Tekken Strength Of The Sword 3 Super Puzzle Fighter II HD Turbo Remix Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition

217 234 168 207

8 8 7 9

Stuntman: Ignition Super Stardust HD Superstars V8: Next Challenge Superstars V8 Racing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

157 155 190 181 176

8 7 5 6 7

game

issue score

Super Street Fighter IV

191

9

Syndicate Tales Of Graces f Tales Of Monkey Island

216 222 196

7 7 9

Tales Of Xillia Tales Of Xillia 2 Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online Tekken 6 Tekken Tag Tournament 2

234 249 161 184 223

7 7 8 9 9

Test Drive Ferrari Racing Legends Tetris Test Drive Unlimited 2 The Amazing Spider-Man The Last Of Us

221 202 203 221 233

6 8 6 6 10

The Testament Of Sherlock Holmes The Walking Dead

224 231

5 9

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct

231

2

Thor: God Of Thunder Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 Time Crisis 4 Time Crisis: Razing Storm TimeShift Tokyo Jungle Tom Clancy’s EndWar Tom Clancy’s HAWX Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2 Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Trilogy HD Tomb Raider

206 231 166 199 162 223 173 177 196 235 210 229

3 6 7 5 7 8 8 7 7 7 7 9

Tomb Raider Trilogy Tomb Raider: Underworld Tony Hawk’s Project 8 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground Tony Hawk: Ride Top Gun: Hard Lock Top Spin 3 Top Spin 4 Toy Story 3 Transformers: Dark Of The Moon Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron Transformers: War For Cybertron Trash Panic Trine Tron Evolution Tumble Turning Point: Fall Of Liberty Turok Twisted Metal UFC Undisputed 2009 UFC Undisputed 2010 UFC Undisputed 3 Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3

204 173 151 223 160 188 218 168 203 195 208 223 194 181 184 200 198 165 163 216 180 193 215 212

8 8 8 7 7 5 4 7 6 8 6 7 8 7 8 1 7 4 4 6 9

Ultra Street Fighter IV Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

game

issue score

WWE 13 XCOM: Enemy Unknown

225 224

5 9

Thinking, planning, failing and dying is back in fashion: XCOM is a phenomenal reimagining of a classic title and an instant classic in its own right.

X-Men Destiny

211

3

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

179

7

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

242

3

yakuza: Dead Souls

216

6

Yakuza 3

191

8

yakuza 4

203

8

Yakuza 5*

264

Zen Pinball 2

224

9 9

Zone Of The Enders HD Collection

226

8

VITA

wHat we’re playing…

Watch out! Games! what

(have they been playing?)

horizon: Zero dawn why (was it chosen?)

A-Men

217

7

Army Corps Of Hell

217

6

Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation

225

7

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice Of Arland

221

3

Everybody’s Golf

215

8

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend

216

8

Broken Age

257

5

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Declassified

227

2

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

242

8

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

249

9

Dead Nation

201

8

Destiny Of Spirits

244

7

Dokuro

230

Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable

230

8

Escape Plan

216

8

FIFA Football flOw

216 151

8 9

Flower

176

8

Gravity Crash Gravity Rush

187 219

8 9 9

7

Hotline Miami

233

Hustle Kings Joe Danger

216 194

8 9

Killzone: Mercenary

236

9

LittleBigPlanet

223

9

Little Deviants

215

6

Lumines Electric Symphony

216

8

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection

221

7

ModNation Racers: Road Trip

215

5

219

8

Mortal Kombat MotorStorm RC

217

8

Muramasa Rebirth

234

8

New Little King’s Story

224

7

246 161 185 212

8 8 8 9

Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus

217

7

8 10 9

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus

230

6

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD

214

8

Orgarhythm

230

5

Unearthed: Trail Of Ibn Battuta: Episode 1 The Unfinished Swan Unreal Tournament III Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom Valkyria Chronicles Vanquish

233 225 162 151 173 197

1 7 8 5 8 9

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Persona 4 Golden

225 228

8 9

PixelJunk Monsters

163

9

Puddle

222

8

Rayman Origins

216

8

Reality Fighters

215

5

Viking: Battle For Asgard Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown Virtua Tennis 3

165 220 150

7 9 9

Resistance: Burning Skies

219

5

Ridge Racer

216

4

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken

212

8

Virtua Tennis 4 The Walking Dead: All That Remains The Walking Dead: 400 Days Wanted: Weapons Of Fate Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Warhawk Warriors: Legends Of Troy Warriors Orochi 3 Watchmen: The End Is Nigh Way Of The Samurai 3

205 240 234 179 210 157 202 217 183 190

7 8 8 6 5 8 1 5 5

Silent Hill: Book Of Memories

225

3

Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God 240

7

Soul Sacrifice

232

9

Sound Shapes

223

8

Superbeat Xonic

265

7

Superfrog HD

234

4

Wet Wheelman Where The Wild Things Are White Knight Chronicles White Knight Chronicles II WipEout HD Wolfenstein Worms 2: Armageddon Worms Ultimate Mayhem WRC 3 FIA World Rally Championship WWE All Stars

184 178 188 190 207 172 183 198 217 225 204

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz

224

7

Sumioni: Demon Arts

230

4

Super Stardust Delta

216

8

2

Tearaway

239

8

4 7 5 5 4 8 7 8 8 7 8

Terraria

232

8

Touch My Katamari

216

8

Toukiden: The Age Of Demons

241

8

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3

216

8

Uncharted: Fight For Fortune

227

Uncharted: Golden Abyss

215

8

Unit 13

216

6

Velocity Ultra

233

8

Virtua Tennis 4: World Tour Edition

215

8

Virtue’s Last Reward

227

8

WipEout 2048

215

9

8

I finally have time to go back to it luke albigés THIS YEAR HAS been pretty damn silly for incredible games, but i simply haven’t had time to finish most of the ones i’ve started.

As the new release deluge starts to die down and we approach the slightly calmer summer period, though, i’ve finally been able to find time to go back and finish up this incredible game. returning to it wasn’t as easy as i had hoped – endgame dinobots and my rusty skills turned out to be a pretty horrible combination – but i’m getting back into the swing of it, mopping up all the quests i missed before as that delicious Platinum draws ever closer. Once this is checked off, maybe i’ll finally have time to start Nier Automata, a game i’m so excited to play that i refused to let myself even start it until i could fully commit. And that time is nearly here at last…

what

(have they been playing?)

persona 5 why (was it chosen?)

My word, it just doesn’t stop… drew sleep I’M STARTING TO wonder whether Persona 5 even has an ending. it just keeps going and, having been burned by repeatedly thinking The Witcher 3 was about to finish recently, i’m not about to make the same mistake again. Then again, it’s not really a bad thing, i guess – it’s not like i even want the game to end yet. But when it does, there’s a New Game+ run with my name on it.

*denotes import review

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next month in uncharted: the lost legacy