Table of contents for No. 203 in GamesTM

FORMAT: PC, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: MICROSOFT STUDIOS | DEVELOPER: PLAYGROUND GAMES | RELEASE: 2 OCTOBER 2018 | PLAYERS: 1-TBC Microsoft has crafted an ingenious strategy with Forza, its flagship racing franchise. Each year the focus changes from hardcore racing simulation in the core series to a more broad and free type of racing in Horizon. Where the core game sports legendary tracks and cars built for pure racing, Horizon cares more about the open road and the locales that contain them. Forza Horizon 4 is bringing that philosophy home to Britain, including some interesting new ways to experience the thrill of the race. The top addition to Forza Horizon 4 is the dynamic season system, where all four seasons will rotate in and change the way each race is…

“CONTROL IS TAKING THE SUPERNATURAL POWERS INTRODUCED IN QUANTUM BREAK AND IS BLENDING IT WITH THE STYLISH COMBAT OF MAX PAYNE” FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: 505 GAMES DEVELOPER: REMEDY ENTERTAINMENT | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 It’s a new game from Remedy Entertainment. It’s weird, okay. It’s super weird. Not that we’ve necessarily come to expect anything less from the studio that has delivered Max Payne, Alan Wake and Quantum Break to us over the last two decades, but Control honestly caught us a little off-guard. The game is based around the idea of investigating the headquarters of a federal agency responsible for monitoring the unexplained. The world is subversive and steeped in the unnatural, presenting level and scenario design from an ever-shifting perspective. Control is…

“THERE’S A LOT TO TAKE IN WITH THIS NEW ORI GAME, WHICH IS PARTICULARLY IMPRESSIVE CONSIDERING HOW SHORT THE DEMO FELT AS WE BREEZED THROUGH IT” FORMAT: XBOX ONE, PC | PUBLISHER: MICROSOFT STUDIOS DEVELOPER: MOON STUDIOS | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 A NEWLY POWERFUL HERO ■ Ori retains his diminutive stature, but within that small frame is a powerhouse. His new combat moves give him plenty of options against enemies, while his slick and fluid movement through the world is simply breathtaking. If the challenge of the first game returns in WIll Of The Wisps, Ori will need every special power he can get his hands on if he’s going to make it through unscathed. A LUSH WORLD BRIMMING WITH LIFE ■ Ori And The Blind Forest’s…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, SWITCH, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: UBISOFT | DEVELOPER: UBISOFT REDLYNX | RELEASE: FEB 2019 | PLAYERS: 1-8 One of Ubisoft’s surprise hits of this year’s E3 line-up, Trials Rising brings all of the insanity of previous Trials games back to the forefront in a big way. Massive courses set in exotic locations are loaded with obstacles, with ample opportunity to maim the poor sap behind the wheel. Multiplayer races both online and off will give players plenty of ways to play, meaning countless hours of insane and silly BMX action. Ubisoft is positioning Trials Rising to be a return trip to the core gameplay of Trials, what made the franchise the fan favourite it is today, and at first glance it’s succeeded. Gimmicks…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: CAPCOM | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 Reflecting on the past often has a habit of eliciting a mixed emotional response. The familiar pang of nostalgia drives recollection, leaving you at the mercy of something so utterly impossible to control that it can be difficult to know where you stand with formative memories of the past. The good times come flooding back with the bad, gradually at first, as if a gentle wave were lapping a shore, then more frantically, a hazardous retreat into what has already been written. Nostalgia is often indistinct and untameable. And yet so often do we find ourselves at its mercy. Is it this that has helped enshrine the return of Resident Evil 2…

“Listen, I get it. I know that 99.9 per cent of people are only buying this game because they want to swing around as Spider-Man – and trust me, you’re going to be doing a ton of that in this game – but I think that when you look back at the great comic book stories, when you look at the best Marvel movies, what they all do so well is that they tell a human story. You get to experience the person behind the mask as much as the person wearing it,” considers creative director Bryan Intihar, speaking exclusively to games™. “To really capture a true Spider-Man experience I feel like you couldn’t just play as Spider-Man.” Few videogame studios have understood the core of this character better than…

There’s a lot of heart in Unravel Two . There’s some real love and thought and compassion seeping out of it and that’s to be commended. It’s a game that ramps up rather nicely as the various meanings of being a character made of yarn and all of the vulnerabilities and strengths that comes to embody it are revealed and made apparent. It’s a game that should be a real tearjerker by its conclusion. But it didn’t quite hit us that hard. So, as we concluded the four or so hours of Unravel Two, we were left wondering what was missing? The game has made significant strides forward from its forebear with much improved platforming being the biggest change. The game feels tighter and more controlled than…

Stretch goals rarely extend beyond the realms of additional platforms and added modes, but Inti Creates had much loftier ambitions for its surplus funds, promising to conjure up a standalone 8-bit mini-game should the crowdfunding masses contribute enough coin towards their beautiful action-platformer Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night . That promise materialised as Bloodstained: Curse Of The Moon, a delightfully retro spin-off set in the same universe and featuring the main game’s cast as playable characters. Curse Of The Moon discards all modern bells and whistles in favour of an experience that looks and feels every bit like a bona fide NES-era Castlevania title. Able to switch between the game’s four characters at will, you are tasked with traversing a labyrinth of gloomy gothic settings, doing battle with…

TLOZ: BREATH OF THE WILD Completing the circle of influence given Fumito Ueda’s clear admiration for the Nintendo series in his own work, Breath Of The Wild’s Divine Beasts take the concept of bosses being levels to an even more literal conclusion, with each giant mechanical creature acting as its own dungeon. However, inverting the experience of Colossus somewhat, defeating the Beasts releases them of the dark force occupying them, turning them into allies. DARK SOULS Hidetaka Miyazaki’s series draws from a great number of influences, but there are a couple of core concepts that feel very familiar to Team Ico games. First is the scale of the bosses, which are often gigantic compared to your avatar. The battles against these monsters are epic, although not necessarily tinged with as…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: EA | DEVELOPER: BIOWARE | RELEASE: 22 FEB 2019 | PLAYERS: 1-4 We try to not make a habit of judging the progression of toolsets within the videogame industry against what a special effects team is capable of in the film industry, though in this instance we are willing to make a small exception. It’s been ten years; ten long years since Iron Man made its debut, introducing us to exoskeleton flight suits that moved with such fluidity and grace on screen that never once did we question their plausibility. That effect never quite made it to gaming, but we have to believe that developers and engineers were watching closely. Quietly experimenting with the mechanics and systems that would not only allow for…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: TECHLAND PUBLISHING | DEVELOPER: TECHLAND | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: TBC 1 HUMANITY LIVES TO DESTROY  Dying Light 2 pulls the action away from the idyllic vistas of Harran and into an apocalyptic vision of the Modern Dark Ages. Here, the undead aren’t the only threat you have to contend with – after years of strife, what remains of humanity is desperate to survive and rebuild itself, no matter the cost. In Dying Light 2 we’ll be forced to contend with a mutating zombie threat and warring factions seeking control over the future of humanity. 2 A BRAVE NEW WORLD  Techland is overhauling its acclaimed parkour movement systems and it wanted to create a landscape to better take advantage of that work.…

FORMAT: ANDROID, IOS, PC, PS4, SWITCH, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: EPIC GAMES | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: EARLY ACCESS | PLAYERS: 1-100 The battle royale has proven itself to be one of the strongest vehicles for emergent storytelling that this industry has ever seen. Even in its relative infancy, the genre found immediate success in letting players forge and share their own stories in the face of shifting combat parameters; feats of heroism and tales laced with tragedy cast out across a canvas that gladly resets itself between rounds. It’s these emergent moments that have helped keep the likes of Fortnite: Battle Royale and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds within the sphere of public interest for so long. But developer Epic Games knew that the battle royale bubble could burst at any time;…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: BANDAI NAMCO DEVELOPER: DONTNOD ENTERTAINMENT | RELEASE: 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 “What happened last night?” Many a good adventure has used those four simple words as a catalyst, though none quite as bleak as this we’d wager. Dontnod Entertainment is back, this time with a supernatural thriller as we touchdown in the town of Basswood, USA. Fans of Twin Peaks and Alan Wake will immediately gravitate to the small-town vibe being cultivated here; mysterious goings on have a tendency to rear their head in places hidden away from the attention of the wider world, and it’s exactly that we will be exploring here in Twin Mirror. Dontnod is renowned for its storytelling prowess, and this time it’ll be lending its talents to what…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: UBISOFT | DEVELOPER: UBISOFT SINGAPORE | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: TBC It’s taken a little while, but we’re finally beginning to see the appeal of Skull & Bones . Ubisoft has been teasing its naval-combat game for a little while now, and it has always looked like something of an undercard for the publisher – a gamble in an otherwise safe line-up of titles scheduled for 2018 and beyond. But the more we see of it in action the more we find ourselves sold on the concept and execution. Skull & Bones might have risen out of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, but there is so much more to this title than meets the eye. Much like For Honor,…

It didn’t take us long to lose track of time. It felt as if we had been playing Two Point Hospital, in a preview but near-final state ahead of launch, for about an hour or so, but when we were nudged to join technical director and co-founder Ben Hymers and art director Mark Smart for our interview, we looked at the clock to see that three hours had passed. Three hours! This is what good sim design should do to you. It should suck you into its reality and focus your attention to such a degree that everything else slips away. It can be, at times, the ultimate in immersive game playing, and the newly formed team of Two Point Studios couldn’t be better versed in its intricacies and challenges…

“There is no one right answer as to what the correct tone or aesthetic of the Bard’s Tale games are” Exactly three decades have past since the last true Bard’s Tale game was released. In 1988 the internet hadn’t yet truly made its way into homes, we still listened to tapes and PDAs were the hot gadget rather than whatever model of iPhone we’re up to. Margaret Thatcher was still prime minister, Ronald Reagan was the US president and the Soviet Union was still hanging on. Yugoslavia was still a country, Czechoslovakia was one nation and East and West Germany had yet to be reunited. No one knew of Dolly the sheep, the euro currency didn’t exist, there was no International Space Station and 9/11 was just a day in…

Allods Team and Mail.ru are walking into one of the most hotly contested warzones between gamers and game-makers around today. The crux of the contention is on how free-to-play gaming can best be managed, leveraged and experienced so that game-makers and publishers can make the money needed to keep moving forward, while also allowing players an experience that doesn’t feel like they’re being squeezed for cash. It’s about innovative ways of delivering games to players in a crowded marketplace where our money doesn’t stretch far enough to allow us access to everything. It’s about gamers who want to feel like their skills in the game mean that they can be competitive even if they don’t spend a penny. It’s about fairness. It’s about consumer rights. It’s about entitlement. It’s about…

“ It’s a crazy, weird bit of technology, but also just a fun experience to play ” BEN HYMERS, TECHNICAL DIRECTOR AND CO-FOUNDER, TWO POINT STUDIOS “I’m going to say Four Swords because I had some of the best times with friends playing all of the way through Four Swords . On the Gamecube or the Game Boy Advance, some of the best multiplayer times, everyone sneaking off into little caves, stealing gems. It was an incredible game. It’s so different. It’s a crazy, weird bit of technology, but also just a fun experience to play. I played it with a group of friends who I play a ton of multiplayer games with, and that’s the one that sticks in…

THE GAME IS STRIKING FROM THE MOMENT ITS TITLE SCREEN BLINKS INTO LIFE, PRESENTED IN A MESMERISING VISUAL STYLE Music has a powerful hold on human memory. A single passage from an assumed-forgotten song can put you back in a previous chapter of your life, in vivid detail. And that connection’s true enough in video games. Catch a melody from JRPG all-timers like Persona 4 and Secret Of Mana (the original, naturally), and you’re transported back to their worlds, consumed once more by ageless interactive fantasy. Octopath Traveler, the new Switch-exclusive JRPG from Secret Of Mana makers Square Enix, doesn’t have a soundtrack quite as magical as those impressive precedents. Nor do the individual motivations of its cast of playable characters – eight, in case that title wasn’t obvious –…

We know what bad guys look like – games have reinforced the stereotype for years. We recognise them even before the menacing music kicks in. It’s different in The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, though. The line between archetypal good and bad characters isn’t blurred as much as non-existent, and there’s no subtle camera angles or music cues to choreograph how we’re supposed to feel about them. But when the good guys do terrible things, and the bad guys are capable of kindness, how are we supposed to feel? And what can we do when the decisions we make – the ones made on reckless, feckless impulse – are the wrong ones? Dontnod’s Life Is Strange is a supernatural coming-of-age tale, and it’s to this universe that we return to…

In the continued chase for fidelity, something has been lost. As consoles have become more technically capable and gaming has become a far more serious affair, the idea that we might play just to have fun is fading and instead it seems we’re always requiring some imagined reason to press start. Racing games have suffered the most in that regard: the likes of Need For Speed flounder by adding more bombast while the other end of the spectrum forgoes any sense of enjoyment with po-faced Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo. That’s in part what makes Wreckfest so refreshing. This game doesn’t ignore the fact that the average racing game player is looking at opposing racers not as rivals to bypass but as tools for ricocheting their own car around a…

Having taken a look at Captain Toad once before on its Wii U release we ask that you forgive us if we take this opportunity to pontificate on how this game exemplifies Nintendo at its best as much as we talk about the quality of the game. We enjoyed it before and we enjoy it now. We won’t leave it there, but we’ll certainly take a detour for a moment and ask your patience in the meantime. Nintendo doesn’t always hit it out of the park and sometimes it doesn’t aim to. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is not a game intended to wow the hardcore fanbase or blow people away with its innovation. It is supposed to entertain for a few hours and offer bite-size nuggets of uplifting and engaging…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: UBISOFT | DEVELOPER: UBISOFT QUEBEC | RELEASE: 5 OCT 2018 | PLAYERS: 1 1 IT’S SET IN GREECE  Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is set in 431 BC, which, if you aren’t a history buff, means that we are landing squarely in ancient Greece territory. Now that’s long before the order of assassins was even established, which means that, yes, somewhat confusingly Odyssey will indeed be a prequel to last year’s Assassin’s Creed Origins. 2 CHOOSE YOUR ASSASSIN For the first time in Assassin’s Creed history, Ubisoft is giving us the opportunity to decide who we want to play through the entirety of the game as. You’ll be able to choose between Kassandra and Alexios; the system is similar to that of Mass Effect, giving…

What is Sable? Sable is best described by developer Shedworks as a “coming-of-age tale of discovery through exploration across a strikingly rendered open-world desert”. We say best described because every time we lay our eyes on it we fall into a temporary state of catatonic euphoria. I mean, it does look lovely… Doesn’t it just! Sable is going to have us exploring ancient architecture and ruined monuments sacrificed by the cosmos. Playing as Sable, we will discover her connection and place in this world, likely solving a few environmental puzzles for progress along the way too. What’s it inspired by? We think Journey would be an obvious touchstone here, not to mention Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus. From an art, colouring and shading perspective, the work of legendary French…

“ Combined altogether it was a very good story with quite intense combat on the highest difficulty level ” ALEXANDER SHIMOV, PROJECT MANAGER, ALLODS TEAM “You know, actually, Horizon Zero Dawn from 2017, I love. I really enjoyed both the narrative and the combat. And the graphics, of course. Combined altogether it was a very good story with quite intense combat on the highest difficulty level, especially in the add-on expansion. I liked what Guerrilla Games did. It was crazy. It had made all these Killzones and I was wondering whether it would be doing Killzone again, but it’s probably Horizon 2. We also looked into Killzone when we researched the controls for Warface , because Guerrilla Games is one…

Mister Negative First Appearance: Free Comic Book Day May 2007 (Spider-Man) The Spider-Man universe’s very own Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Martin Li is a charitable businessman by day and a psychotic super-powered gang leader… well, also by day. His manifestation as his criminal alter ego isn’t a day-and-night thing. Vulture First Appearance: The Amazing Spider-Man #2 Another all-time classic villain, Adrian Toomes was most recently portrayed in Spider-Man: Homecoming, but has a more traditional look in this game. He’s an engineer who built a flight harness himself, falling into crime in his pursuit of revenge against a former partner. Rhino First Appearance: The Amazing Spider-Man #41 A former Russian enforcer, Aleksei Sytsevich has more than a thing or two in common with The Hulk in some regards, having been…

THIS IS A GAME IN WHICH ALL OF THE JAGGED EDGES HAVE BEEN SHAVED DOWN TO A SMOOTH SURFACE For all it tries and for all of its small victories, The Crew 2 ultimately loses its attempt to turn the United States into a vehicular playground. Certainly, it’s a valiant effort and an improvement on the original, but a lack of personality, a reliance on progress-through-repetition and frustratingly implemented artificial intelligence combine to hinder what might have otherwise been a grand road trip. Its problems are built around comfort. The degree to which developer Ivory Tower strives to make sure players feel comfortable in this digital recreation of the land of the free results in an experience that lacks any of the danger and spectacle that…

Every now and then a LEGO release comes along that revitalises the long-running franchise and takes the series is fresh and exciting directions. LEGO The Incredibles is not that game. Instead it’s the gaming equivalent of comfort food, as it offers snackable, familiar gameplay that you’ll enjoy while you’re consuming it, but you’ll get very little nourishment from. Of course you can argue that it’s sheer familiarity is one of the key things that has made the LEGO series so popular in the first place and there’s no denying that certain elements of TT Fusion’s latest game are enjoyable. The presentation for example is excellent, effortlessly capturing the stylish charm of the movies, while easily introducing familiar LEGO elements like building and blind bags. We’re also impressed with how…

IT DELIVERS SURPRISINGLY FEW NEW IDEAS, OFFERING LITTLE MORE THAN A WOULD-BE LEFT 4 DEAD EXPERIENCE Almost everything in this world is made better when there is a gaggle of good friends by your side. That’s true of so many things that you’ll encounter in life, regardless of whether you are running activities outdoors or teaming up to fight back an encroaching enemy threat online. In fact, this comes into a particularly sharp focus when considering the realms of online gaming, as even the most rote of multiplayer experiences can become transformed by the addition of a few friends to a game lobby – the lines of communication a muddled mess of in-jokes, bad tactical decisions and howls of laughter that echo long into the night. This is one of…

THE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES OF SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS WERE NUMEROUS AND REALLY QUITE SPECIFIC TO THE UNIQUE FEATURES THE EXPERIENCE FINALLY OFFERED Developer: Team Ico Publisher: Sony Released: 2005 System: PS2 WE TEND TO spend a lot of time reflecting on and praising the spectacle of Shadow Of The Colossus as well as its narrative, design and thematic choices, but perhaps we ought to consider the technical challenges and advancements it made too. When Fumito Ueda looked to follow up on Ico, he wasn’t interested in making a direct sequel or repeating what he had done before. He looked to push the PS2 harder and create something that, for all of its scale and fantasy, was rooted in realism and maintained the illusion as much as possible. The mechanics and…

65” Q7F 4K ULTRA HD PREMIUM HDR 1500 SMART QLED TV MANUFACTURER: SAMSUNG PRICE: £2,699 TV technology is fast-moving and often packed full of a lot of jargon that rather disguises the minor leaps in innovation that are really taking place. Thankfully Samsung’s most recent range of 4K TVs deliver real quality with some very smart features that are perfect for getting the best gaming experience for your bucks. So, what are these features? The big one is the Q in the QLED tag of quantum-dot technology. This tech allows for more controlled colour dispersal from the LED backlighting on the screen, which means there’s more controlled and intense colour on the screen than you might otherwise achieve from a typical LCD TV. For our purposes, that means exceptional HDR…