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61 Articles

It’s my sad duty to let you know that what you’re holding in your hands is the final edition of games™. After 16 years, 206 issues, and countless reviews, interviews, features and retrospectives we must unfortunately say goodbye. I can understand if that’s something of a disappointment to you, especially if you’ve been a long and loyal reader of this magazine over those years. Your support, feedback and commitment to us have been incredible, and all of us on the team will be forever grateful for it. Endings are inherently a sad thing, but I always try to swing around to the good part if I can, and when something ends it not only opens up opportunities for new things, but offers us an amazing opportunity to reflect on things…

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE UNTITLED GOOSE GAME?

“WE WANTED TO MAKE OUR LITTLE MARIO 64 WHERE YOU’RE JUST A CHARACTER WHO RUNS AROUND” FORMAT: SWITCH, PC | PUBLISHER: PANIC DEVELOPER: HOUSE HOUSE | RELEASE: TBC 2019 PLAYERS: 1 It’s amazing what can happen when a small group of passionate people get together and put their collective minds and talents together to achieve something. The story of House House, a small developer based in Melbourne, Australia, is a great example of how that spirit can grow into something that captures the imagination of the gaming world, in this instance with its second release, Untitled Goose Game. “We were people who kept ending up in a conversation when a larger event was going on,” explains House House’s Nico Disseldorp. “There would be 20 people, but by the end of…

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE UNTITLED GOOSE GAME?

FINDING THE FUNNY

Untitled Goose Game is an inherently funny game to play with the moments of comedy often arising out of simple interactions between the goose and the objects or people around it. But what sort of comedy influences did House House draw from? “I think we tend to look at older cartoons,” says Nico Disseldorp. “Things that don’t have too much dialogue work better with our game. I think that’s part of what makes the comedy work, is the fact that we don’t need to do anything as complicated as human dialogue.” The farce of misdirection and calamity that then ensues all plays out like a classic silent film. “With a human and a goose it’s really believable that this is kind of a silent interaction that’s mainly conveyed with prolonged…

EASTWARDIS AN ADVENTURE GAME YOU’LL FALL IN LOVE WITH

FORMAT: PC | PUBLISHER: CHUCKLEFISH | DEVELOPER: PIXPIL | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 It’s easy to fall in love with Eastward . It takes just seconds for it to burrow deep into the subconscious, returning to the fore of your mind whenever you need a little boost to get through a difficult day. Its evocative style and upbeat chiptune soundtrack work to ensure that this creative endeavour – a partnership between developer Pixpil and Stardew Valley publisher, Chucklefish – is instilled as one of the most anticipated indie games of 2019, an experience that looks as alluring as it does utterly charming thanks to its artistic direction. But there’s more to this whimsical game than mere nostalgia for EarthBound and The Legend Of Zelda alone.…

EASTWARDIS AN ADVENTURE GAME YOU’LL FALL IN LOVE WITH

HITMAN 2 BRINGS SOME COMPETITION TO THE MIX

FORMAT: PS4, XBOX ONE, PC | PUBLISHER: WARNER BROS | DEVELOPER: IO INTERACTIVE | RELEASE: 13 NOV | PLAYERS: 1-2 1 HITMAN’S FIRST MULTIPLAYER This is the first time in the series’ history that a one-on-one multiplayer experience has been available to players. That’s pretty extraordinary if you ask us. After all of these years of online experimentation and some good examples of stealth-based multiplayer, Hitman is finally making the leap, but it’s doing so in a really interesting and innovative way, which makes the wait seem worth it. 2 SHARED KILLS Ghost Mode sees you up against another Agent 47. You must score five points, which are earned through target kills that go unspotted and lost for killing non-targets. The targets apply to you both, and if your opponent…

HITMAN 2 BRINGS SOME COMPETITION TO THE MIX

JUST CAUSE 4 IS THE BEST THE SERIES HAS EVER BEEN

FORMAT: PS4, XBOX ONE, PC | PUBLISHER: ROCKSTAR GAMES DEVELOPER: ROCKSTAR STUDIOS | RELEASE: Q2 2018 | PLAYERS: 1-TBC SURVIVAL INSTINCTS ■ Avalanche has set out to build its biggest and most expressive creative sandbox ever. For Rico to survive such a dangerous and destructive locale, the studio decided to reconfigure some of the character’s core tools. The grapple has been overhauled and can be fully customised, with the increase in tethers and functionality bringing a newfound depth to the system – perfect for combos with airlifters and boosters – making it a wonderfully powerful and creative tool. Solis, meanwhile, is the deadliest country Just Cause has ever thrown us into, and that means we’ll need a few new tricks up our sleeve to survive the South American hotspot. Fortunately,…

JUST CAUSE 4 IS THE BEST THE SERIES HAS EVER BEEN

ENTER YOUR MIND PALACEIN TWIN MIRROR

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: BANDAI NAMCO | DEVELOPER: DONTNOD ENTERTAINMENT | RELEASE: 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 We recently had the opportunity to sample but a taste of Twin Mirror, a slice of introductory gameplay cut from the first episode of the game, Lost On Arrival. It’s weird; pretty bloody weird. Then again, at this point we wouldn’t really expect anything less from Dontnod. We quickly hit the beats of the trailer. We are introduced to Sam, a man with a sad story that has led him down a sad path: to a downtrodden part of small-town America. Then he wakes up with a cracking hangover, and all hell breaks loose; his shirt is covered in blood, he can’t remember a thing, and there’s a spritely manifestation of…

ENTER YOUR MIND PALACEIN TWIN MIRROR

BECOME THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE WITH OBSERVATION

FORMAT: PS4, PC | PUBLISHER: DEVOLVER DIGITAL | DEVELOPER: NO CODE | RELEASE: Q2 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 It’s good to see that the little flurry of space station and abandoned astronaut games from a year or so ago hasn’t dampened the attraction of the setting for others, because Observation is looking like a fascinating new twist on the classic thriller format. Where Adr1ft and Tacoma placed you in the shoes of an astronaut trying to either uncover a mystery or survive a recent disaster, Observation might be best described as the game where you play as the space station itself. “HOW YOU REACT AND THE SPEED AT WHICH YOU WORK WILL BE NOTICED BY DR FISHER IN THE GAME” It’s a fun concept, and that’s…

BECOME THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE WITH OBSERVATION

A QUESTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

One of the reasons that Observation has caught our attention is how it is placing us in the role of the AI of the ship in what feels like a pretty direct nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey and other tales of space exploration where a ship AI becomes self-aware. We are self aware, so by extension so is S.A.M. the moment we begin playing, but does the crew of Observation know that? Will Dr Fisher be comfortable with you exhibiting human-like reactions and curiosities? Will she grow to distrust you much as Dr David Bowman grows to distrust HAL 9000 in the Stanley Kubrick film? And could the game actually go even deeper than that, as Kubrick did, and explore a bigger philosophical question through this perspective? There are…

A QUESTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY WANTS TO TELL A DIFFERENT TYPE OF HORROR STORY

FORMAT: PS4, PC, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: BANDAI NAMCO GAMES | DEVELOPER: SUPERMASSIVE GAMES | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 Did you know that it has only been three years since the release of Until Dawn ? It feels like it hit a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? We can’t be certain as to why that’s the case, although if we were to hazard a guess it might be because Until Dawn threatened to redefine how stories could be told across interactive spaces – lessons precious few developers have embraced in the intervening years. Instead, we’ve been forced to wait patiently for Supermassive Games to pick up where it left off and begin iterating upon the ideas presented in its experimental horror game. That patience hasn’t paid…

THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY WANTS TO TELL A DIFFERENT TYPE OF HORROR STORY

WHAT COMES NEXT?

Man Of Medan is the first game to arrive as part of The Dark Pictures Anthology – what comes next is yet to be revealed. This standalone title is effectively a ghost story, one that’s reliant on carefully building an overwhelming sense of unease and dread through claustrophobic corridors and some smart audio cues. Supermassive’s CEO Pete Samuels is keen to note that the studio has an array of plans for future releases, spanning the entire horror genre. “At Supermassive, we have a passion to deliver powerful cinematic stories and we’re following on from titles like Until Dawn and The Inpatient by telling new horror stories that we expect the fans will want to play. Each game in the series will feature a brand new story, setting and characters. The…

TEAM SONIC RACING HAS THE GOODS

“WHETHER PLAYING SOLO, SPLIT-SCREEN OR ONLINE, YOU’LL BE IN A TEAM OF THREE RACERS, SO TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK” FORMAT: PS4, XBOX ONE, PC | PUBLISHER: SEGA | DEVELOPER: SUMO DIGITAL | RELEASE: Q1 2019 | PLAYERS: 1-4 (UP TO 12 ONLINE) TEAM TACTICS ■ You have your usual power-ups, but team abilities let you pass items to teammates anytime, while the leading racer can help their lagging teammates by leaving a yellow trail behind that acts like a slipstream. These abilities help build up a gauge that when full will let you unleash a Team Ultimate boost. Crucially, these all have clear UI and audio cues, which means online play will be easy to coordinate with each other, even without voice chat. MODES ■ While online racing is…

TEAM SONIC RACING HAS THE GOODS

DIRT RALLY 2.0 WANTS TO BE THE MOST AUTHENTIC RACING GAME EVER MADE

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: CODEMASTERS | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: 26 FEBRUARY 2019 | PLAYERS: TBC 1 IT’SALLABOUT AUTHENTICITY Codemasters found success with Dirt Rally three years ago, and is now eagerly pursuing a sequel, inching ever closer to creating the most authentic off-road racing game ever. Dirt Rally 2.0 is essentially a huge expansion on everything the original did so well, with the team working to tweak the miniature of the core driving experience and introduce a wide array of new content. 2 RALLYCROSS RETURNS Dirt Rally 2.0 is the official licensee of the FIA World Rallycross Championship, and you should expect the content to reflect that. Codemasters has promised it will launch in 2019 with the first rounds of the World RX Championship, with the…

DIRT RALLY 2.0 WANTS TO BE THE MOST AUTHENTIC RACING GAME EVER MADE

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DARKSIDERS III

FORMAT: PS4, XBOX ONE, PC | PUBLISHER: THQ NORDIC | DEVELOPER: GUNFIRE GAMES | RELEASE: 27 NOVEMBER 2018 | PLAYERS: 1 1 A NEW BEGINNING While Darksiders III is indeed a sequel, you needn’t have played the two games that preceded it to understand what’s going on. In fact, much of the action takes place parallel to the events of the previous games, giving you the chance to see war-torn Earth from the perspective of the Rider of the Black Horse, Fury. 2 EARTH IN CRISIS Fury – sister to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse – is charged by the Charred Council to hunt down and destroy the Seven Deadly Sins, a group of demons threatening the stability of the Earth. To do so, she will pair up with the…

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DARKSIDERS III

LITTLEBIGPLANET 2

“I have triplets… it’s really hard to find a four-player multiplayer game ” TIM WILLITS, STUDIO DIRECTOR, ID SOFTWARE “In my family, we are all LittleBigPlanet fans. I don’t know if you know this, but I have triplets… it’s really hard to find a four-player multiplayer game. They are 14 now, and we started playing when they were all about seven. For me to be able to get three seven year olds to jump from one moving platform to another moving platform at the same time… I should have gotten a trophy for that! It was always a lot of fun. My wife would come and watch us play, the game had fun music, everybody had their own Sackboy or Sackgirl and, you know……

LITTLEBIGPLANET 2

EMBRACE THE RAGE

“If you make a good game, if it’s fun and if you offer good value for money, then people will play it,” Tim Willits begins to explain as we ruminate on the widely held perception that single-player games are being suffocated out of existence by the multiplayer behemoths of the world. “You know, I’ve been in this industry long enough that I know how this stuff goes… I’m not going to stress about it.” id Software’s long-running studio head isn’t going to stress about such a consideration because he couldn’t be in a better position to rebuke it. He is, after all, overseeing a studio that’s driving the quality of single-player shooters up across the industry, not to mention the beginning of what is being labelled an “unprecedented partnership in…

EMBRACE THE RAGE

THE ILLUSION OF INTELLIGENCE

Something that impressed us immensely as we played Rage 2 was the way in which the AI would shout out instructions to each other and attempt flanking positions to try to draw us out of position. It forced us to be on the move and adapt our tactics throughout the course of an encounter, switching up weapons and abilities on the fly. We asked the team to tell us more about how that all came together. “I think you wanna create the illusion of intelligence,” says senior game designer Loke Wallmo, laughing. “That’s really important. id Software is really good at that; if you played Doom [2016] you really feel like some enemies are smarter than others, and I think there’s real sophistication there.” Certainly, the legacy of id is…

WHAT IS AN AVALANCHE MOMENT?

One of our favourite moments from the original reveal trailer of Rage 2 was when we caught a glimpse of a massive monster truck being driven through a mass of enemy AI seemingly involved in a pitch battle of their own. It was an incredible moment, largely for the number of characters involved and how engaged they appeared to be in battle. As it turns out, that was something of a random moment recorded by one of the team that happened to capture the very essence of what Avalanche is bringing to the table. “That’s what we call an Avalanche moment, where things just happen to cross paths in a weird way,” says senior game designer Loke Wallmo. “Somebody was there capturing it. We have the guy that did the…

WHAT IS AN AVALANCHE MOMENT?

THE COLOUR OF ANARCHY

That bright pink and yellow advertising campaign around Rage 2 isn’t a piece of misdirection on the part of Avalanche and id. It’s a genuine reflection of a new, more vibrant and colourful backdrop for Rage 2 and the opportunities that new technology have opened up for the team. “A lot of that actually came from, first, the desire to push it far from Rage,” reveals id studio director Tim Willits. “And then looking at what the Apex technology could do for us with the jungles and the forests and the swamps and the overgrown cities. And that brought to us light and colour with the vegetation. That led us to have more colourful characters, and people have evolved and let us have more colourful buildings and skies. And now…

THE COLOUR OF ANARCHY

WHEELS OF STEEL

The original Rage offered a selection of off-road monsters and supedup beasts when it came to vehicle selection, but Avalanche is aiming for something a little more focused, especially since combat from your car is going to be much more intense and involved this time around, which means things like handling have needed a rethink. “It is different in the sense that the gameplay is focusing on more guns on the vehicles, more explosions and gadgets and more over-the-top stuff like that,” says senior game designer Loke Wallmo. “So it does create a different starting point for where you want to go with the vehicles. But we’re not really focusing on the vehicles that much.” Presumably to help establish some consistency of experience and allow you to customise how your…

WHEELS OF STEEL

HERE COMES THE SUN

One day, we will look back upon the last decade and come to realise that the greatest trick developers ever pulled was in convincing players that they had any agency over the virtual worlds that they inhabit. Our fascination with even the most rudimentary inclusion of choice and consequence metrics makes complete sense; we feel empowered when we feel as if we are in control, be it over the direction of a branching narrative or the characters that populate them. But, the truth is, many of the choices that we make in so many videogames are binary. Pick between a thinly veiled Option A and Option B to immediately receive a reward or response. Basic morality systems leave us to deliberate over the concept of right versus wrong in an…

HERE COMES THE SUN

FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT

In Dying Light, Techland succeeded where so many others have failed. The studio was able to properly integrate fast and fluid first-person movement systems into its world, giving you the tools and abilities to navigate Harran and avoid enemies with ease. The studio is doubling down on this aspect of the game, offering twice the number of parkour abilities. “You can see the city differently as a parkour player,” Dying Light 2’s producer Kornel Jaskula tells us. “You can choose any path that you want and we’ve also added more depth to the parkour itself; while the moves are easy to learn, if you master them you’ll be able to zip through the city with ease.” Alongside the improved mobility, Techland is also introducing new parkour attacks and puzzles based…

FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

While we have largely focused on the choices and consequences that will come to define Dying Light 2 as an experience, we did want to take a second to pause on the game’s balance between human and infected antagonists. Zombies are of course returning, though they seem to have less of a presence in the new city space than they did in Harran. This is largely done to reflect some changes made to the day/night cycle. It’s as Kornel Jaskula tells us, “We changed our philosophy a little bit. It’s not only about the infected in this game, it’s also about humans; the daytime is for humans, but the night for the infected.” When the sun is shining, you will be dealing with quests across the city and squabbling with…

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

ULTIMATE WILL LIVE UP TO ITS NAME

1 EVERYONE IS HERE! When series director - and Smash overlord - Masahiro Sakurai tells you that ‘Everyone is here!’ he’s definitely not being cavalier with the hyperbole. If the character has appeared in any other version of the game, you can bet your life they’re going to appear in the latest instalment in the series. It’s not called Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for nothing. As of writing, there are 74 characters confirmed thus far, drawing from series favourites right through to the most obscure fighters to ever air dash for glory. Solid Snake will be making his return alongside Wolf from Starfox, while the Inklings from the Splatoon series and Simon and Richter Belmont of Castlevania fame prepare to lob paint and crack whips. There’s also a huge selection…

ULTIMATE WILL LIVE UP TO ITS NAME

We are locked in a room with Patrick Mills, arguing about the bathroom facilities installed around Night City. In 30 minutes an alarm will sound, interrupting us; the windows of the room will polarise, flooding it with artificial light; the door will swing open and we will be ushered out into the world, left to contemplate all that we had seen and heard on one of the industry’s most anticipated upcoming releases. And here we are, arguing lavatory semantics with one of CD Projekt Red’s quest designers. But let’s back up for a minute. It’s important for you to understand how we got here before we can take you any further. We had just spent the better part of an hour utterly entranced, watching with baited breath as the future…

A CONSTANT CHALLENGE

Patrick Mills has been working at CD Projekt Red for over six years, starting his career at the studio on Cyberpunk 2077 before later moving on to working on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as the studio pushed all resources into finishing the game. Mills has first-hand experience on how difficult it can be to implement quests into a game such as The Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk 2077, particularly in an environment where the shape of it is always shifting. “How long to implement? Wow… the entire one of the project! It’s rare that you finish a quest, put it aside and then you don’t have to work on it anymore,” Mills tells us, the exhaustion creeping into his voice at the mere thought of it. “You’re constantly adding things…

A CONSTANT CHALLENGE

THIS IS (NOT) A GOLF GAME

“WHEN WE START ON A PROJECT WE STRIVE TO MAKE PEOPLE WHO PLAY IT FEEL LIKE ‘WHY DIDN’T I COME UP WITH THAT?’” There’s a growing band of indie game makers who are looking to break free of the constraints of genre convention, free of the pressures of hardware optimisation and, most importantly, free of the shackles of any kind of natural law of logic. These are developers who want to create something silly. Something absurd. Something strange. And at the forefront of that push right now is Triband from Denmark with What The Golf? scheduled for release in 2019. “Our goal from the beginning was always to make something that was out there and to push the barrier in what computers games could do,” Triband co-founder and COO Rune…

THIS IS (NOT) A GOLF GAME

One level we were very taken by with What The Golf? was a series of stages inspired by Superhot, the time-bending shooter with its minimalist red, white and black style and extended bullet-time feel. What The Golf? recreates that exact mechanic, bullets flying and everything, while also having you move a golfball around a stage. We wondered if this was born out of a close relationship between Triband and Superhot Team. “They’re not close friends, but we know them. We’ve had a few beers with them and they’re really nice. Basically when we did it we showed it to them and said ‘Hey, we’ve done this. Would you be okay with us putting it in the game?’. And they were just over the moon, super excited. They said, ‘If we…

WORLD CUP OF WEIRD

RIBBIT KING 2003 On the surface of things this is a golf game, except you’re hitting a catapult with a mallet to fire a frog around a level to interact with as many objects as possible and put up the biggest score. But other than that, clearly golf. GOOFBALL GOALS 2014 We like to think of this one as the QWOP of football games, as two sides of players who are animated a lot like they have their shoelaces tied together attempt to knock a ball into the opposition goal. Beyond that, the rules of the game do not apply. SPORTSFRIENDS 2013 A fantastic multiplayer experience, especially when you can get four players on the go at once and preferably locally, this PS4 and PC title has all of the…

WORLD CUP OF WEIRD

WHY I LOVE... DEVIL DAGGERS

“ It’s just incredibly intense. It becomes like a dance ” JAKE STRASSER, HOUSE HOUSE “Let me sell you on Devil Daggers . It’s a game made by a tiny team in Melbourne. You’re basically in first person and you’re an entity with two hands on screen and you have right and left click and you’re on a big disk, which just extends into blackness and you can fall off, because it’s pretty small. A bunch of flying skulls appear and start chasing you and you use your magical hands to shoot daggers at them. With one hand you can do a stream of single daggers and with the other you have a big shotgun blast. You’re just trying to survive as long as…

WHY I LOVE... DEVIL DAGGERS

Three of the numbers in a ten-point scale are of greater importance than the others: five, seven and, of course, ten. Some publications would fool you into believing that a 7/10 game is average, but that just doesn’t make sense to us. games™ reviews videogames on their entertainment value, and so any title that simply performs to an adequate standard will receive a 5/10. Simple. The elusive ten is reserved for games of incredible, irrefutable quality, but please be aware that a score of ten in no way professes to mean perfection. Perfection is an unattainable goal, and on a ten-point scale nothing should be unattainable. Again, simple. Our reviews are not a checklist of technical features with points knocked off for flaws, neither are they a PR-pressured fluff-fest. We’d…

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

ODYSSEY’S MAIN STORY IS JUST ONE PILLAR IN A COLOSSEUM OF CONTENT; THERE’S SO MUCH TO DO OUTSIDE OF THAT MAIN CAMPAIGN Let’s get it out of the way: yes, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey looks a lot like Assassin’s Creed Origins . Yes, it plays like it, too. Yes, the music stings, inventory scene, and maps are all pretty similar, too. But for every similarity, we can indignantly counter it with a difference, too. So yes, Odyssey looks like Origins, but the latest game has branching dialogue trees when Origins didn’t. Yeah, mechanically they’re pretty similar, but Odyssey lets you play – and remain – a female assassin (unlike giving us just a measly taster of it when we played briefly as Aya in…

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

During your adventure, you’ll uncover a secret cult. Made up of 40-plus members, your job is to decipher who they are by locating the clues secreted around the country, and piece them together to reveal their identities. Once that’s known, you can track them down and take them out. Be warned though, it’s not easy. Increasing in rank the closer their position is to the inner sanctum, the tougher adversaries they’ll be. But defeating them will offer some intriguing lore plus highly collectable, exotic gear. They’ll also give you additional Artifact Fragments that are crucial to levelling up your beloved spear. Just don’t expect it to be a quick and dirty job, though… you’ll likely complete the game before you’ll complete this task.…

In each territory, your map will indicate which of the warring factions has “control” of that particular zone. Both sides will chiefly leave you alone if they see you out and about (providing you don’t flagrantly rob the poor townsfolk in front of their eyes, of course), but neither are super keen on you wandering into their restricted areas. To weaken a faction’s hold, you must steal/burn their war supplies, dispatch of their troops, and help yourself to their treasures. Do this, and you’ll find the Nation Power gauge will slowly decrease until the leader is deemed vulnerable. Find ’em, kill ’em, and the region will be liberated… right up until someone invades and you have to do it all over again. Sigh.…

TIMELINE HIGHLIGHTS

6 MINS • Talk about chucking you in at the deep end. Odyssey kicks off in a huge Conquest Battle that instantly has you squaring up against dozens of enemy troops. ARGH HELP! 60 MINUTES • We can’t stop taking screenshots. Seriously. Every single frame of this game is insufferably gorgeous. We don’t think we have enough storage on our console for all these caps… 6 HOURS • NOW you’re showing us the credit title? NOW?! We’re six hours in, Odyssey. Just how big is this thing if we’re only NOW getting to see the opening cinematic?!…

TIMELINE HIGHLIGHTS

Forza Horizon 4

One of the great triumphs of the Forza Horizon series – and FH4 is as great an example of it as any of the previous entries – is how it manages to make every type of car, every degree of horsepower, every variation in handling, feel thrilling. The slow trundle up the car class or short-lived novelty of an iconic but underpowered vehicle doesn’t happen in Forza Horizon 4. In this game every car has something to offer. From the most ridiculous hyper car to the little P50 single-seater with three wheels, everything is a joy with which to explore the tarmac. THE DRIVATAR SYSTEM STILL DELIVERS SOME OF THE MOST COMPETITIVE, AGGRESSIVE AND ENGAGING AI COMPETITION IN A RACING GAME This really comes down to…

Forza Horizon 4

TIPPING THE HAT

Replacing the Bucket List challenges from the previous game are a collection of story missions that involve doing stunts for a second unit director, entering drift competitions and teaming up with a livestreamer who wants to recreate classic racing game moments for the Horizon Festival. The latter is a series of challenges that honour the history of arcade racers, and it is really rather surprising. Videogames tend to exist in their own bubble realities, never acknowledging anything that sits outside of their respective stable. If Forza Horizon 4 had included some nods to older Forza games, Gears Of War or Halo (which it actually does with one challenge), that would be been easy to comprehend. However, Playground calls out and honours Outrun ,…

A football game’s exhibition mode is usually its most basic and unassuming, reserved for those late nights while mildly intoxicated with friends or, if you’re dedicated, as a place to practise new tactical approaches without fear of ruining your online win percentage. Thanks to a complete rethink as to what an exhibition match might look like, however, FIFA 19 has managed to turn tradition on its head and make its generic Kick Off mode its most interesting on offer. Alongside games featuring normal rules, you can play a number of variations of the sort that certainly wouldn’t make it past FIFA’s professional regulations. Survival, for example, sees you lose a randomly selected player each time you score, adding a risk-reward element to every attempt at goal. No Rules removes all…

The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep

Sometimes RPGs, even ones with modest budgets, emerge fully formed, perfectly crafted and able to satisfy the interests of several different kinds of players. Then there’s The Bard’s Tale IV. It’s rougher than a badger’s arse, as we’re sure the game itself would agree. The Bard’s Tale series hasn’t had a proper entry since 1988’s Thief Of Fate and we think that’s key to explaining why this is a dungeon crawler in the most classic sense. Deceptively linear and in first person, this has you inching your way through elaborate mazes full of turn-based combat and puzzles. For modern players, this will evoke the likes of Grimrock, but despite being part of an old series, Barrows Deep feels a little less burdened by the past than some. The grid-based movement…

The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep

Frozen Synapse 2

Taking control of a security force tasked with eliminating a sentient AI, Frozen Synapse 2 sees you battle your way through isometric maps, while planning, testing and routinely reworking your combat strategy. After deploying your troops, you issue a series of intricate commands to each individual soldier, giving them orders to move into position, shoot at or ignore enemies, or duck for cover. These delightfully tactical turn-based encounters take place in increments of five seconds, meaning that acute attention to detail and meticulous execution is the order of the day. Fortunately, you’re granted the gift of foresight for concocting your segmented plan of attack: you can issue endless orders to your units and watch the resulting scenarios without having to commit until you’re satisfied with the…

Frozen Synapse 2

Super Mario Party

We couldn’t find a hip rooftop party in time for this review but were nonetheless determined to follow the spirit of those early Switch commercials, so set ours up in tabletop mode at the pub while passing around four single Joy-Cons. Super Mario Party finally gives the Switch its first delightful game for social gatherings since the short-lived 1-2 Switch. A ‘Super’ prefix instead of another number doesn’t mean a series overhaul. You’re still playing an interactive board game sprinkled with mini-games, as well as a few other experimental asides. With the Joy-Con you can ‘hit’ your dice block, which you can use either a normal die or one specific to each of the 20 playable characters, while you’re frequently encouraged to high-five each other for bonus coins, but…

Super Mario Party

Whilst Elijah Wood is no stranger to voicing various characters in videogames, Transference marks the first time he’s actually produced one. It’s an interesting change of direction for the popular actor and what he sees as the next logical step for his company, SpectreVision (previously known as The Woodshed). While Transference is perfectly playable without the use of VR, we implore you to ignore this option and fully embrace playing the game in virtual reality as the team originally intended. It offers a rich level of immersion, which is only accentuated by the game’s incredibly unsettling atmosphere and some very effective jump scares. For the most part you’re simply exploring a deserted flat, but clever lighting and masterful use of sound transform your relatively brief journey…

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Illusive Age

Where droves of contemporary RPGs have adopted real-time battles and systemic worlds, Dragon Quest XI digs its heels in and doubles down on the old-school, turn-based action. It feels like a game that has overshot its release date by a decade – and the developers including the DQVIII’s protagonist’s outfit in your inventory from the outset feels like a mission statement. Here’s an game for those who loved PS2-era JRPGs, and to some that might sound like a glowing recommendation, and it is… of sorts, however its stubborn nature to stick with what’s worked in the past betrays game design that’s out of date. IF THE GAME’S INFECTIOUS UPBEAT TONE DOESN’T GET THROUGH TO YOU, THEN ITS MONSTER DESIGNS AND THEIR PUN-PACKED NAMES WILL Take battles:…

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Illusive Age

Q. CAN I CHANGE THE PROTAGONIST’S APPEARANCE? Some gear sets change how you look, but the hero is stuck with that haircut for the entire game. Q. WHICH CAMERA STYLE SHOULD I USE FOR BATTLES? The default camera where you can freely move characters sucks and doesn’t affect how battles play out, change it to ‘Classic’ for much more cinematic fights. Q. DO I NEED TO PLAY DQ I-X? No, this has a few connections here and there to older Dragon Quest titles, but like Final Fantasy each entry is pretty much its own thing.…

The Japan-only 3DS version of Dragon Quest XI stands out in that it has a scaled-down 3D graphical style to fit the game on the limited hardware, but also that you can play it out like an old-school sprite-based entry to the series. It’s a novelty more than anything, but a neat flourish from the developers that pays tribute to the Nintendo consoles where the series cut its teeth and began the momentum that would eventually lead it to this most recent instalment. Initially, the game plays out with each of graphical styles occupying one of the dual screens, but after a while you can choose how the game plays out from save points.…

The Gardens Between

A beautiful but all-too-brief brainteaser from an Australian studio previously best known for games about (ideally not) crashing trains into each other, The Gardens Between features vivid visuals and a delicious ambient soundtrack, but it’s easily finished inside three hours. Which is to say: this is gorgeous, gently testing the grey matter with measured care, but it’d have benefitted from having a little more to it. Playing The Gardens Between requires just three controls – a pleasantly low barrier for entry. You move time forwards and backwards within each meticulously detailed stage with the left stick, while the Switch’s A button sees either of the game’s protagonists, neighbouring kids Frendt and Arina, interact with a small array of in-game elements in front of them. These vary…

The Gardens Between

WHY I THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD

“I must have spent over a hundred hours playing this game and I’m not even half way through!” PATRICK MILLS, QUEST DESIGNER, CD PROJEKT RED “I love Breath Of The Wild . I must have spent over a hundred hours playing this game and, right now, I’m not even half way through it! I’m a player that likes to loot everything. I need to see every corner of the world; I need to pick up every rock and I need to do every quest… I mean, I was playing The Witcher 3 for tons of hours for this very reason, just to solve every question mark on the map and I really loved that experience. Those types of games are my favourite ones,…

WHY I THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD

SCROLLING BEAT-’EM-UPS

THE SCROLLING BEAT-’EM-UP is often considered a long-dead genre, only occasionally revisited and celebrated by games like Wulverblade and Raging Justice. We’d argue of course that the genre is alive and well, but has simply transformed with the arrival of 3D gaming, morphing to include popular franchises like Dynasty Warriors, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. Sure they might add bigger stories and deeper combat mechanics, but they share many of the fundamentals of the beat-’emup genre and are certainly worth exploring if you’re a genre fan. Our focus here though are the classic 2D fighters that typically lit up arcades throughout the Eighties and Nineties and the recent success of the Capcom Beat ’Em Up Bundle proves there’s still plenty of love for them. With that in mind here are…

SCROLLING BEAT-’EM-UPS

THE MIKE LAMB INTERVIEW

How did Target: Renegade come about? Rather cleverly, Ocean had written the rights to make a sequel to Renegade into the original licensing contract. Renegade had been very well received and Ocean wanted to cash in. It got a copy of the arcade Double Dragon game and we all got to work. What planning was done? We had a couple of preliminary meetings to work out what the levels were going to be and what characters would be in them. The game itself wasn’t particularly original in design. We copied the two-player idea and weapons from Double Dragon. There wasn’t a whole a lot of back story – it was basically going through various landscapes beating the crap out of everybody. Jon Woods (Ocean’s MD) came…

THE MIKE LAMB INTERVIEW

MASTER OF DRAGONS

Tells us about Double Dragon’s origins. Kunio-Kun was firstly for the Japanese market only, but when we decided to export it, we had to spend a lot of time creating new characters and backgrounds, and for Technos Japan it was a very big waste of time and money. So after Renegade, when my boss, Kunio Taki, saw I was working on Kunio-Kun 2, he told me he wanted me to create a game that would be accepted worldwide. So the concept of the initial Kunio-Kun 2 became Double Dragon. The two-player co-operative gameplay was an idea from our marketing department. It’s fun to play together – to help each other to beat the game – and it also allowed game centres to potentially double their incomes.…

MASTER OF DRAGONS

BEHIND THE SCENES QUAKE

Released: 1996 Format: PC, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64 Publisher: id Software Key Staff: John Romero (director/desiner), American Mcgee (designer), Sandy Petersen (designer) John Carmack(programmer), Michael Abrash (programmer), Adrian Carmack (artist), Kevin Cloud (artist), Trent Reznor (composer) WHILE MANY GAMERS DIDN’T BECOME AWARE OF ID SOFTWARE UNTIL THE RELEASE OF THE FIRM’S GENRE-DEFINING FPS DOOM IN 1993, ID HAD ACTUALLY BEEN DEVELOPING FIRST-PERSON SHOOTERS FOR SEVERAL YEARS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF ITS BREAKTHROUGH TITLE. Further more, prior to id’s formation the company’s founders had spent close to a decade in games development honing their respective skills on an impressive number of releases. After conquering mainstream gaming with Doom, id next produced a well-received sequel in 1994 with Doom II and, buoyed by the follow-up’s success, the nine-man team moved on to…

BEHIND THE SCENES QUAKE

QUAKE’S NIN SOUNDTRACK

■ “We wanted to see if there were more opportunities for id to see its property made into movies or books or something. So we contacted ICM in Hollywood, which is like an agency that represents companies and connects people. We then found out that Nine Inch Nails was connected with ICM because they were addicted to Doom – they even had four-player death match on their tour bus! So ICM just said: ‘Why don’t we just introduce you guys?’ Even the idea that we were going to meet Trent Reznor was enough for us to go: ‘Why can’t we see if he’s interested in making music for Quake?’ So we talked to him, and yep, he was interested. We also told him that we needed some player screams for…

QUAKE’S NIN SOUNDTRACK

TAKING DEATHMATCHES ONLINE

“The problem was that it was two in the morning, and I wanted a death match. During the Doom days you called your friend on the telephone and said: ‘Get your modem on. It’s 2am, let’s death match!’ But later I found out about a very primitive program called DWANGO that connected DOS clients when they called into a server in Houston. So I worked with the DWANGO guys, and I programmed an entirely new client that you could start games with and talk to people in a lobby. And then when we designed Quake for multiplayer, we made it work on the Internet natively instead of calling a computer with your modem. That was obviously the future.”…

TAKING DEATHMATCHES ONLINE

RETRO INTERVIEW MATT HOUSEHOLDER

How and when did you become interested in playing videogames? The first videogame I recall playing was Pong in 1975. There was one in the corner of our laundromat in Kent, Ohio, and my wife and I tried it a couple of times. It cost a quarter per play and, being poverty-level students, we definitely preferred dry clothes to playing it. In fact, we’d bring along a Mastermind game set to play as our clothes washed and dried. Then, in 1979, quality coin-ops such as Asteroids and Space Invaders started appearing in arcades, bowling alleys, and convenience stores. I enjoyed them as well as Galaxian, Tail Gunner, Defender, Robotron: 2084, Xybots, Space Harrier and Xenophobe. When did you learn to code? That was at Kent State University in 1976 when…

RETRO INTERVIEW MATT HOUSEHOLDER

BOLT FROM THE BLUE

“During Winter Games’ final days of development, I felt the Biathlon needed more user interaction and challenge. It was just too easy to push the fire button – bang, bang, bang – and get three quick bullseyes in target-shooting. I asked Richard Ditton, Action Graphics’ designer/ programmer, to add realistic bolt-action simulation, where the player must eject each spent shell and load a new one for the next shot. He did it in minutes (high ’bang for the buck’), adding realism and challenge.”…

TONY HAWK’S PRO SKATER

Developer: Neversoft Publisher: Activision Released: 30 September 1999 System: PSone, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast JUST HOW MUCH did Neversoft’s take on the tricks and friendly competition of skateboarding go on to influence the concept of the wider sandbox playground experience in gaming? It’s hard to quantify, but we’re going to say quite a lot. It may have been driven by specific cultural and sporting traditions to create the game that it did with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but through it and the games that would follow, it helped to develop a benchmark for what it means to create a fun, anarchic and free-form space to just play in an open-world game. And all of this because it decided to stick skate parks at the end of race courses in an early…

TONY HAWK’S PRO SKATER

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TONY HAWK’S SERIES

TONY HAWK’S UNDERGROUND In many ways, Underground represented the incredible crossover power of the Tony Hawk’s series up to this point, tapping into the growing Jackass-style culture of extreme reality and pop-punk sensibility even more than its early releases had done. It was anarchic, ridiculous and still a lot of fun to play. TONY HAWK: RIDE Activision’s ill-fated attempts to break into the peripheral and motion-gaming booms of the age would ultimately send the Tony Hawk’s gaming brand down a dark path as it seemingly surrendered the simulation market to EA’s Skate and lost much of its core fanbase as a result. This skateboard peripheral-based game just wasn’t much fun. TONY HAWK’S PRO SKATER 5 One last attempt to put the series back on its original path of fun, accessible…

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TONY HAWK’S SERIES

THE EVOLUTION OF THE EXTREME SPORTS GAME

SKATE OR DIE! (1987) Released the same year as California Games, which touched on a number of classic action sports experiences, Skate Or Die! gave a much fuller take on the skating world with half-pipe, downhill and street challenges. It was also a great example of a game embracing that all-important skateboarding culture, with a gritty, graffiti-inspired art style that reflected the community’s aesthetic tastes. 1080° SNOWBOARDING (1998) A great example of how many action sports titles tried their hand at adapting to 3D graphics, 1080° is a classic downhill experience, which makes perfect sense for a snowboarding game. Challenges varied from racing another player/AI to the finish line or completing points challenges on half-pipe courses and pulling off tricks against the clock. Well-mapped button inputs kept things simple, but…

THE EVOLUTION OF THE EXTREME SPORTS GAME

MS. PAC-MAN PLUG & PLAY TV GAME MANUFACTURER: MSI ENTERTAINMENT PRICE: £19.99 In the age of the Classic Mini console rebirth, it might feel like the single game plug and play is a little behind the times and even more of a relic than the games it celebrates, but they have their place. As focused products often at considerably lower price points to the multi-game systems, they can be kinder to your pocket. They offer a chance to celebrate games that might otherwise be overlooked on headline-grabbing mini systems. And finally, they can be built to provide the optimum experience, particularly for arcade classics that might not be best represented by gamepads. So enters MSI’s latest plug and play, but alas, it doesn’t manage to tick enough of the previous…

GAMING CLOTHING

WINNER WINNER We’re delighted to see new Gametee shirts, and these battle royale offerings are as cool as ever. Once again it’s all original artwork from the Gametee team printed on quality shirts. www.gametee.co.uk PARTY BUS From PUBG to Fortnite, we take to the skies before plunging into battle, and this homage to the journey is a very nice design. It’s inspired by the layout of Shepard Fairey’s famous Obey Giant art, which we like too. www.gametee.co.uk MARIO KART FIX-IT TEAM We’re really enjoying the way that Nintendo tees are branching out a little from the basic box art and character designs of the past into something a little more creative, like this Mario Kart homage with the Mario Bros as mechanics. www.emp.co.uk…

GAMING CLOTHING

THEMED COLLECTION: WINTER WARMERS

YOSHI SCARF PRICE: £16.99 He’s been your protector and saviour more times than you can likely count, so let the wonderful Yoshi embrace you once more and keep you warm in the coldest of climbs with this lovely scarf rendition. www.emp.co.uk NINTENDO CONTROLLER SCARF PRICE: £19.99 We certainly noticed a trend towards Nintendo related imagery on scarves. Perhaps it’s because the only thing more warming than knitted wool is the glow of childhood nostalgia? That might have something to do with it. www.emp.co.uk SPACE INVADERS SCARF PRICE: $24.99 The iconography of Space Invaders is some of the most recognisable in the world of entertainment, and just so happens to work wonderfully in winter patterns. No surprise, then, that this scarf looks fantastic. www.thinkgeek.com BUTTONS BEANIE PRICE: £12.99 The subtle genius…

THEMED COLLECTION: WINTER WARMERS

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