Inhaltsverzeichnis für March 2017 in Edge

Of all the mountains scaled by people working in the videogame industry, the toughest one to crack is introducing a new console platform. When you pull the process apart and lay out all of the separate pieces, in fact, it’s a wonder that there are three major players still at it today. Proposed specs and functionality come first. Clearly this new console has to do something people haven’t seen before. Then comes translating those concepts into a plan for silicon that can be produced affordably at scale. We need to engineer a casing to put it in, of course. And we can’t very well launch a new console with old controllers, so we’ll need to either adapt an existing design or, much more problematically, come up with something altogether new.…

Minecraft’s eight-year history is studded with extraordinary moments. First, in initial dev videos, it stole attention as an infinite procedurally generated world of blocks. Later, players shared their experiences of it as a game about crafting a shelter to survive a night of zombies. Then, as it started to take off in popularity, players began to explore it as a solo and collaborative construction tool, a game about building things. When in 2010 videos began to pop up showing vast projects, such as a full-scale USS Enterprise and a fully functional CPU, it became clear that Minecraft was more than just a plaything or a game. It was becoming a creative medium in itself. Since then, a generation of 3D artists has grown and developed an industry making things, places…

Game Space Invaders Frenzy Manufacturer Raw Thrills For the Taito-licensed Space Invaders Frenzy, Raw Thrills has partnered its towering eightfoot World’s Largest Pac-Man screen with an unlikely set of components: the control panel, guns and chairs from its Jurassic Park Arcade lightgun game. This fundamental change to the classic Space Invaders setup means you also no longer move your laser base back and forth beneath the encroaching alien forces; instead you have two bases at opposite sides of the screen from which lasers converge on whichever section of the screen you point your sights. This infuses the game with a dash of Missile Command – underscored by the bouncing meteors that come into play. While your bases are static, there’s still a row of destructible shields across the bottom of…

Nomad A few years ago, I went to both California and New York for the first time. When I arrived I felt a remarkable sense of familiarity, despite being in places that should have felt totally alien. It wasn’t just the recognition of famous landmarks – I’d been to Paris and Milan the same year, and didn’t get the same feeling at all. I realised that the reason I felt as though I’d been there before was because I had been to those places. I’d explored the concrete playground of Liberty City in GTAIV and the hazy landscape of the West coast in Red Dead Redemption from the comfort of my living room. I might not have noticed it at the time of playing them, but these games had managed…

The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind, though undeniably picturesque in its own brown-and-grey kind of way, stands out as a dullard among the lineup of exuberantly colourful games in this month’s Hype. Eye-popping colours are often at the centre of a new game from Nintendo, a trend Arms (p34) isn’t about to reject. With a rich, cartoony aesthetic, Nintendo’s over-the-top fighting game pits bold Pixar-esque characters against each other in punchups that are set against arenas painted in gentler pastels. Yooka-Laylee (p46) and Shiness (p50) each gun for nostalgia with their appearances. Playtonic’s platformer builds on the distinctive, chunky and often polarising look of classic Rare N64 games such as Banjo-Kazooie, using an over-saturated palette in idyllic locations that serve as a backdrop to a cast of amusingly ungainly characters. Shiness,…

Developer Enigami Publisher Focus Home Interactive Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin France Release 2017 While Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom surpassed its Kickstarter goal in May 2014, work on the game actually began 20 years ago. Enigami’s action RPG is based on character and world sketches that creative director Samir Rebib drew two decades ago, when he was just seven years old. The resulting aesthetic is a little more recent, however, recalling PS2-era RPGs such as Dragon Quest VIII and Dark Cloud, and even bringing to mind Core Design’s flawed but big-hearted Herdy Gerdy. It’s all rather beautiful, until you clap eyes on the unexpectedly Furry-esque lead character design. The visual parallels are unintentional, we’re told, and Rebib is reluctant to abandon the designs that mean so much to him.…

Eiji Aonuma is one of the most important people at Nintendo. As a senior member of creative staff, he’s been involved in the design of Switch since the concept was in its infancy. And as producer of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, he’s helmed development on a game that is both the star of Switch’s launch lineup and Wii U’s software swansong. Here, he reflects on Switch’s development, on the reception to its unveiling, and on why it always seems to fall to him to make a game for two generations of hardware. How does making Breath Of The Wild for Switch and Wii U compare to your experience of making Twilight Princess across GameCube and Wii? With Twilight Princess, the hardware was very similar, so there weren’t many problems. This…

Developer/publisher Capcom Format PC, PSVR, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now Like one of the unfortunates infected by the T-virus, Capcom’s long-running series has undergone a profound mutation for its latest iteration. The contaminate in Resident Evil VII: Biohazard’s system isn’t a lab-engineered mutagen, but rather the surprising influence of Konami’s Silent Hill series, and a not inconsiderable dose of some of the ideas Red Barrels introduced in its debut horror effort Outlast (a game that’s itself heavily indebted to Capcom’s early work). In fact, Biohazard immediately invites direct comparison with Outlast by starting in a familiar manner. The game opens as protagonist Ethan Winters comes to the end of a long drive through desolate countryside and pulls up just outside the grounds of a dilapidated old building. After…

Developer Good-Feel Publisher Nintendo Format 3DS Release Out now Nintendo might insist Switch isn’t a replacement for 3DS, but at first glance Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World seems like the sort of game that would only be released on hardware in its twilight. Then again, in a few months Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D will be four years old. Consider Super Mario Maker, too – not just a way to squeeze more from existing assets, but an opportunity to reach a wider audience than it ever could on a languishing home console. This sits somewhere between those two: it’s a little more than a compromised port, though its extra features are unlikely to make Wii U owners feel like they’re missing out. The inevitable visual downgrade has a less debilitating…

Nolan North is an award-winning screen and voice actor with a vast list of videogames on his CV, including, famously, the Uncharted series. That role landed him a part in Star Trek Into Darkness, directed by JJ Abrams, a fan of Naughty Dog’s work. North’s most recent role, however, is that of a producer for Con Man, the iOS game based on Alan Tudyk’s comedy series. Do you remember the first time you heard a human voice in a game? It’s funny because people usually ask me, “Did you always want to do voices for videogames?” And I say, “Of course I didn’t, because there never were voices in videogames.” I don’t remember the first human voice I heard in games. But I do remember one of the early games…

So here it is, finally. Great artists say that a work is never finished, only abandoned, and you might think that is clearly true of The Last Guardian. But what an experience it is, dealing with something that has a mind of its own and never quite does what you want it to. And I’m just talking about the camera. It hardly matters, though, because spending time with Trico makes it clear that this is a stunning landmark in the artform. I’m surprised by people who call the beast a “bird-dog”, because for anyone who grew up with cats, the feline personality is overpowering. Any cat owner will sometimes wonder whether the cat really likes her or just sees her as a convenient supplier of food. A cat will sometimes…

Developer Playtonic Games Publisher Team17 Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin UK Release April Playtonic Games admits it was hurt by the decision to cancel the Wii U version of Yooka-Laylee. Since it owes such a debt to the 3D platformers built by its makers when Rare was in its N64 prime, the pain is particularly sharp: the studio’s muchanticipated, part-crowdfunded debut feels like it truly belongs on a Nintendo platform. “Unforeseen technical issues” is the official line; it’s easy to assume commercial factors had a part to play, but after spending some time with the latest PC build, we’re confident that less capable hardware would surely have meant technical compromises. Those who backed the project for its Wii U incarnation will be offered the game on another platform: by…

Game Nex Machina Developer/publisher Housemarque Format PS4 Release 2017 Resogun’s popularity caught Housemarque on the hop. The team had run a brief press tour in the US, but the game – a side-scrolling shooter in which you must juggle hundreds of enemies with the need to rescue humans from their alien oppressors – had received little publicity prior to its release alongside the PlayStation 4 launch. “We came downstairs the first morning the Metacritic scores were out, and realised Resogun was on top of that list,” head of publishing Mikael Haveri tells us. “That’s when it hit us that, OK, a Defender clone can still be a relevant game.” The game’s success led to a nomination for the 2014 DICE awards, which, fortuitously, happened to be the same year Defender…

Ellika Henrikson Sweden’s Image & Form makes games with a watchmaker’s precision, so it’s perhaps no surprise that CEO Brjann Sigurgeirsson can pinpoint the most crucial date in the studio’s history: October 2, 2009. It was on that day that Sigurgeirsson made a decision after receiving an email from his publisher, telling him that the studio’s services were no longer required. Having delivered nearly 50 edutainment titles in eight years, with a team of eight people, Sigurgeirsson had a choice to make: sell up, or stay in the game. He laughs at the memory. “I remember thinking, ‘Am I going to fire everyone and just live off the bank account for years to come, or is this the point where we actually try to do something ourselves?’ It was a…

PSVR has so far proven to be a highly capable VR setup, but while we’ve enjoyed much of what it has to offer – even if most of our time is now spent replaying Rez Infinite’s Area X – we’ve been hankering for something a bit more substantial to get stuck into. And with Resident Evil VII, Capcom has provided PSVR’s first truly sizeable offering. As such, it’s something of a test case for VR’s suitability when it comes to providing traditional console experiences (and, hopefully, a way to increase our threshold for time spent in VR before needing to consume an entire bowl of fruit and have a lie down outdoors). Capcom has been broadly successful in building a game that caters for both VR and 2D displays, but…

Developer SIE Japan Studio, Project Siren Publisher SIE Format PS4 Release Out now Well, this is all thoroughly inconvenient – unless, like Gravity Rush 2’s Kat, you can bend the law of gravity to your will. This game’s world is something of a playground for those who thumb their nose at Newtonian physics: it’s spread across scores of floating islands placed high in the sky and sat hundreds of metres apart. But for everyone else? It’s a life lived high up in the clouds on tiny patches of land, connected only by slow, rickety airbuses, and with a conspicuous absence of safety measures. Still, this is Kat’s world, and perhaps it wouldn’t be fair to fault Keiichiro Toyama and his team for showing little consideration for reality in a game…

Developer Pewter Games Publisher Curve Digital Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now This beguiling, short-form, magical-realist adventure from Dublin-based Pewter Games opens with an immediately identifiable scene, as bumbling, jobseeking father Aidan attempts to get dressed without waking his daughter Lily. It’s a strong start, serving as an effective introduction to the game’s gentle point-andclick puzzles, as well as its rich vein of physical comedy and the warmth of its storytelling. The Little Acre’s lightweight challenge might mean it’s better suited to a younger audience, but any parent will experience a pang of recognition at having to surreptitiously retrieve an item of clothing from beneath their slumbering offspring. Granted, we’ve never had to rely on a dog’s halitosis to successfully pull off such a delicate operation, but…

“I’ll fund any idea that I think is dope… My current obsession is 3D-printing all the Five Nights At Freddy’s characters for my daughter.” We’re not sure we follow, T-Pain – but could you just run us off a Trico while you’re at it? “We’ll recreate humans. You’ll be able to see anyone, doing their natural motions, wherever they are. Do anything but touch them. We’re going to have teleportation with this technology.” Epic’s Tim Sweeney inches a step closer to the Holodeck “We really neglected our community during the development of Banner Saga 2, because we were focusing on our work. We all agree that was a mistake.” Perhaps, Stoic founder John Watson, a PR agency that agreed to preview requests might also have helped Gage Skidmore “The game…

WEBSITE GOP Arcade bit.ly/goparcade GOP Arcade attempts to skewer American politics with this collection of browser microgames themed on Donald Trump’s campaign, victory and inauguration. Some are forgettable – Trump’s Pussy Grabber, for example, is just Whack A Mole with cats and a disturbing soundtrack. But others are more successful: The Voter Suppression Trail takes a wry look at the obstacles to voting faced by minority groups; Thoughts & Prayers challenges you to stop mass shootings using only the titular tools; while Bomb The Right Place satirises America’s foreign policy, military interventions and ego. None of this will lead to political reform, of course, and Trump’s still – please hold us – the president of the USA, but at least we can all have a little fun as the clock…

Driving home for Christmas after E302 had been put to bed, a colleague and I were discussing what our Christmas game was going to be. Quickly, we realised we didn’t actually have one: that, unlike the lion’s share of the game-playing population, we weren’t looking at Christmas as a time where we could finally sit down and play some games. Instead, it was a time where we could finally sit down and not play anything. The final months of the year are a busy time for reviews, obviously, but on top of that it’s awards season, so you need to also find time for everything else that might possibly be up for contention. When you’re trying to condense 12 months of videogames into a dozen pages on a tight deadline,…

Developer Traveller’s Tales Publisher Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin UK Release Feb 24 Think of the ideal Lego game and it’s likely that none of the instalments in Traveller’s Tales long-running series of block-smashing 3D platformers fits the bill. Not to take away from their incredible success, but they’ve only barely scratched the surface of the creative medium on which they’re based. Then Minecraft came along and seemed to beat Lego at its own game. But on June 1, 2015, Lego Worlds was simultaneously announced and released on Steam Early Access. This open sandbox game, set in procedurally generated worlds, allowed free shaping of the land, placing prefab constructions such as houses, plus bespoke, brick-by-brick constructions. While this focus on building seemed to place it…

The first real moment of magic comes, inevitably, in Breath Of The Wild. Disappointed as we are by Nintendo’s decision to set Link’s Switch coming-out party in the same area of the game as E3 2016’s Wii U demo – this is our fourth playthrough of the new Zelda game’s opening section – that’s not really what we’re here for. After pottering around as Link, using the new Pro controller, for a few minutes, it is time: we slide the Switch from its dock and, instantly, the biggest Zelda game to date is running on a 6.2-inch screen in our palms. We have played bigscreen games on handheld displays before, of course, but the transition has never been so elegant, the results never so natural in the hands. A few…

The past is a dangerous thing in videogames. When Capcom says that one of its overarching goals with Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (p94) is to return to the sphincter-tightening brand of survival horror that defined the series in the first place, your thoughts might naturally turn to tank controls, to crude polygonal dogs bursting through windows, and to Jill Valentine, the master of unlocking. Of course, Capcom means that it’s returning to the spirit of the first game – and it has done so in style and splendour. But the negative connotation is unavoidable in a medium where we expect sequels to be in lock step with the onward march of technology, and for their timescales to do the same. Any whiff of the past merely invites suspicion. So it…

Developer Yakuza Studio Publisher Sega Format PS3, PS4 (tested) Release Out now Honestly, Kazuma Kiryu has never seemed the sort. Strong willed, kind hearted and deferential, this is a man who treats others as he would like to be treated himself – but, as we discover in a seedy downtown building, sometimes he really likes to treat himself. Here, in a series first, you can watch what the in-game text describes as ‘erotic videos’. As a CRT screen fades to black after a minute-long, live-action video of a bikini-clad model simpering on a bed while surrounded by balloon animals, we hear a relieved sigh from Kiryu, and the camera pans away from the TV, lingering on the box of tissues next to it. The Yakuza series has long had woman…

Developer Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team Publisher Adult Swim Format PC, Xbox One (tested) Release Out now Yes, OK, we get it: videogames. Barely a minute goes by in Rise & Shine without some kind of nod, wink, or top-of-the-lungs scream in reference to its host medium. You play a child, Rise, who is battling to save Gamearth from the invading Grunts, with the help of Shine, a talking, puzzle-solving pistol. Throughout there are references to the unseen ‘guide’ – that’s you – helping the duo along. Rise is aware that he respawns when he fails. The final level of the game is called RPG City. At one point the dog from Duck Hunt pops up to detonate a bridge you’re walking over. On and on it goes: some…

Developer/publisher Telltale Games Format 360, Android, iOS, PC (tested), PS3, PS4, Xbox One Release Out now Say what you will about Joel Schumacher, but he never managed to make Batman quite this boring. Telltale’s take on the Dark Knight is rarely outright bad, but in a way it does something much worse, consistently wasting its best ideas, and backing off any time it threatens to be more interesting. The result is a story that is by turns inert and frustrating, bland and contrived. Its twists, surprises, cliffhangers and big decisions rarely grow organically from the narrative; rather, they strain for shock value to kid you into believing this is good drama. And by the end, the whole thing has collapsed like a soggy soufflé. It’s all the more regrettable because…

One of my bosses of old once spent three weeks in Japan in an attempt to work out what they wanted from games developed in the west, and assigning blood types to every in-game character was pretty much the sum of everything he learned. I have no idea if this information was true, or was true once but isn’t now. I like the idea that for a brief period in the ’90s and 2000s all the Pacific Rim nations were obsessed by blood types, only for it to dwindle and be replaced by a fascination for something equally weird, like the shoe size of combatants in side-scrolling fighting games. Technically, blood-type information comes under the banner of backstory. Backstory has often been the bane of my life. For some reason…