Inhaltsverzeichnis für July 2017 in Edge

Most games start as a blank canvas. It’s something the founders of Sledgehammer Games have grown accustomed to, whether it was in the making of Advanced Warfare, its first game at the Call Of Duty helm, or the creation of Dead Space, when the duo were at Visceral Games. What game shall we make? In which year is it set? Who are the good guys and baddies? Weeks turn into months as you decide what guns should look like, what to call them, how they fire, and design funky reload animations for them. Slowly but surely, a picture begins to form. Yet by winding back the clock to World War II, Sledgehammer found itself presented with a canvas that was already filled to bursting with battles, characters, stories and weaponry.…

Between Satoru Iwata’s sudden passing in July 2015 and Tatsumi Kimishima’s appointment as Nintendo’s fifth president two months later, Shigeru Miyamoto was the obvious choice to temporarily steer the ship. But alongside him was a man who, at the end of June, will bring down the curtain on a 45-year tenure at the company. Genyo Takeda may not be as famous as creatives such as Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka or Eiji Aonuma, but he’s been equally crucial in shaping the direction of modern Nintendo Takeda was recruited by Gunpei Yokoi in 1972 and inducted into Nintendo’s R&D2 department, where he worked on a lightgun shooting-range game called Laser Clay Shooting System. The (possibly apocryphal) story goes that Takeda saved the day when the first machine’s unveiling to the public went wrong.…

While accepted wisdom might have it that the western arcade scene is as good as dead, new locations are popping up surprisingly often in the US – and some a little closer to Edge’s home. Tamba Arcade recently opened its doors in Jersey; Vertigo did likewise in London’s Whitechapel. Things are on the up, if only a little – which perhaps explains why Bandai Namco’s recent return to the western arcade scene is a cautious one. Maximum Tune 5, which is now available in the US and Canada, debuted in Japanese arcades more than two years ago. And it’s been pared back somewhat for its western release, shorn of half its name, locked – at least at launch – to an older version of a game that has already been…

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a year’s subscription to PlayStation Plus, courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment Wake-up jab Much has been said about the lack of wellexecuted female characters in videogames. It’s recognised that while there is progress – the Tomb Raider reboot, Mirror’s Edge, Horizon: Zero Dawn, etc – we still have a long way to go. What’s not so well recognised is that very often a developer’s approach to female characters is internally inconsistent. It’s not just that many games lack wellexecuted female characters, but that even well-executed female characters can get lost in a stream of more or less discriminatory design decisions. If we divide a game into four parts – narrative, gameplay, audio…

While you’d think something with as broad an appeal as Star Wars should land in any context, Star Wars Battlefront, like Jar Jar Binks, is evidence to the contrary. The absence of a singleplayer campaign irked many, while still more took issue with what they saw as a lack of content in multiplayer. In response, EA has pooled the talents of Criterion, DICE and Motive to build a sequel (p34) that attempts to offer something for everybody. A substantial and robust multiplayer component, a fully operational singleplayer campaign and a more flexible toybox should go some way to winning back those who were disappointed by DICE’s first attempt. Capcom’s Marvel Vs Capcom series, meanwhile, has long faced a similar problem – albeit for distinctly different reasons. The assemblage of Marvel…

Developer/publisher Capcom Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin Japan, US Release September 19 Well, we needn’t have worried about complexity. When Marvel Vs Capcom: Infinite was announced, we’ll admit to being concerned at what the change to a two-on-two structure would do to one of the most varied and flexible fighting games on the market. In Marvel Vs Capcom 3, you chose three characters, then an assist – a special move that could be performed by an off-screen teammate – for each of them, from a choice of three. In a game with a huge roster, there were millions of potential team combos. Yet in Infinite, motivated by a desire to make a spectacular, but often impenetrable, game more accessible, Capcom has reduced team sizes, and done away with assists.…

Developer/ publisher Larian Studios Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin Belgium Release 2017 Divinity: Original Sin 2 defies being pigeon-holed. It’s a cooperative, storydriven adventure where you can craft your own origin and watch as the world reacts to it. Get into a fight and it becomes a tactical, turn-based RPG where abilities and magic can be combined with the environment. It’s elaborate, and systemic, and you can play as a giant lizard who talks to animals. And now it’s a platform for creating digital tabletop adventures with you as the Game Master in a new mode exclusive, for the time being at least, to the PC version of the game. “Game Master mode is a tool to control the game and pretty much every aspect of what you’re doing,”…

Ayoung nurse stood on a chair in the waiting room of the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University, California, on an overcast Thursday morning in late October 2015. She was hanging Halloween decorations from the ceiling. Cotton spiderwebs framed two large windows overlooking an interior courtyard. Shiny black witch’s hats stood at attention on tiny, pastelcoloured tables. Pumpkin-shaped string lights looped around furniture corners and light fixtures. On the wall, below the permanent posters of Marvel superheroes and Star Wars characters, someone had stuck a life-size laughing skeleton. A four-year-old girl with wiry blonde hair sat patiently on the waiting room couch, a multicoloured surgical mask over her mouth. Jacob Lore, a recreation therapist, walked in holding a large folder and two iPads. The girl waved him over. “Hello,”…

There’s something wonderfully unlikely about Eve Valkyrie. The game with which CCP Newcastle has now established itself is a compact, fast-paced VR shooter, built by a small team. Yet it’s set within the universe of the biggest, slowest space game in existence. It’s a curious kind of offshoot in many respects, but Ryan Geddes, brand director of CCP’s VR portfolio, thinks otherwise. Virtual reality, he says, has been embedded within the company’s genes for quite some time. “A couple of the early founders of the company, including Hilmar [Veigar Pétursson, CEO], were part of a proto-VR movement in the late 1990s and early 2000s that was especially big in Iceland,” Geddes says. “Those guys tried to make it work along with everybody else who was into VR at the time,…

Rime has emerged from its prolonged, fraught development – the story of which we charted in E305 – every bit as special as early glimpses suggested it would be. Here, lead designer Kevin Sardà (right, top) and Tequila Works CEO and creative director Raúl Rubio discuss the relief of reaching the end of their journey, and the remarkable attention to detail lavished on Rime’s world. Spoilers follow. After everything you’ve been through, are you happy with the finished game? Kevin Sardà It’s a really personal project, and everybody has their own hopes and dreams for it. But Raúl is the person that is closest to it. Raúl Rubio I’m relieved we’ve finished it and I’m very happy for my team and what we have achieved together. Do you have any…

There has been much confusion, in the lead up to Get Even’s release, as to what it actually is. The Farm 51’s debut has been described variously as a firstperson shooter, a horror game, and – to use the studio’s own label – a psychological thriller. The finished game avoids firm categorisation, blending aspects from a number of genres as the studio picks and chooses the mechanics that best tell its dark story about loss, guilt and revenge. The result is a game that is particularly successful at evoking the gritty, disorienting atmosphere of the films that inspired it (a list that includes Kill List, Memento and Oldboy), even if it isn’t always as good at providing enjoyment. Throughout the game, amnesiac protagonist Cole Black is held in an asylum…

Just as the label ‘walking simulator’ has been adopted by the developers (and players) it was coined to disparage, Giant Sparrow’s second game shows an eagerness to avoid being pigeonholed as such. Yes, there’s some walking involved in this lean, yet rangy, narrative adventure. But, as the developer proves in a bravura early sequence, What Remains Of Edith Finch is equally happy to be a pouncing, swooping, rolling, swimming and slithering sim. If occasionally ungainly in execution, it’s dazzlingly conceived, and an exhilarating early sign of great things to come This might not be the game you’re expecting, then, but there’s no bait-and-switch here. It’s not a character study pretending to be a mystery thriller, nor a family drama masquerading as a horror. It’s admirably plain about its intentions from…

S tatik’s greatest trick, among many, is to make the DualShock the star of this darkly comic puzzle game. While Move controllers ape their more capable Vive and Touch cousins, PSVR’s unique ability to pop a traditional controller into the world with you thanks to the Dualshock 4’s light bar is an underrated aspect of Sony’s VR setup. Not that you’ll see a representation of it – or anything resembling your hands, for that matter. Instead, you’ll find yourself locked into a series of puzzle boxes that bristle with scientific components. Given no instructions on what to do, you’re left to press buttons at random to see which parts of your digital prison activate in response. One button might make an empty slide tray pop out of the top, while…

A close-up shot of a Walkman; a ’70s rock standard on the soundtrack; a tableau of the eponymous heroes clambering over one another to grab a shiny MacGuffin. Though it’s ostensibly based on the Guardians Of The Galaxy comics, the title screen immediately makes it clear that Telltale’s latest will hew closely to the aesthetics and tone of the 2014 movie and its imminent sequel. The choice of song is telling: ELO’s Livin’ Thing was set to feature in James Gunn’s perky comic-book adaptation, but the scene was left on the cutting-room floor. It’s an apt pick for a game that often feels as if it’s been assembled from alternative takes that weren’t quite good enough to make the final edit. Telltale evokes the source material in superficial ways: the…

Mark ‘MK’ Kinchen is an American DJ and producer who first rose to prominence in the ’90s with house hits Always and Love Changes – both featuring Alana Simon. Alongside his own music, Kinchen also produces and remixes tunes for other artists, and has worked with a number of huge names, including Will Smith, Lana Del Ray, Pet Shop Boys and even Celine Dion. But in between all of this work, he also has a console-collecting obsession to feed. When did you fall in love with games? The first system I had was a Magnavox Odyssey 2 – my grandfather got me one. Everyone knows that system sucked, but you didn’t have many options. My next system was an Intellivision. Then I kind of backtracked and got an Atari 2600.…

STEVEN POOLE They do elections better in France. Quite apart from the eminently sensible rule that no campaigning or publishing of opinion polls are allowed within 24 hours of the polls opening, French politicians also make better campaign videogames. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand anti-corporate lefty, surged from nowhere in a few months to be a real contender in the French presidential election. In the event he came a close fourth, but one of the things his campaign will likely be remembered for is what is probably the best example yet seen of a videogame as naked propaganda. Fiscal Kombat, as Mélenchon’s game is called, was developed by an anonymous collective of French gamers who call themselves Discord Les Insoumis. It’s a 16bit-styled side-scrolling brawler in the tradition of Streets Of…

Thank goodness, then, for this month’s Play section. Take Rime (p102), for example: Tequila Works’ enigmatic adventure features no combat, a modest number of puzzles and ambles along at a gentle pace. The studio’s contrarian approach is further underscored by its touching approach to collectables, and the fact that the rules and conditions shift throughout. Despite early comparisons to other games, Rime mostly feels unfamiliar, and is all the better for it. Get Even (p110) goes further. While The Farm 51 isn’t always successful in marrying its dramatic aspirations to memorable game design, Get Even’s refusal to conform to a genre, let alone the rules of the genres it mixes together, makes for an enjoyably disorienting experience. Giant Sparrow’s What Remains Of Edith Finch (p114) is similarly difficult to classify.…

Should there be any lingering doubt that Arkane is the inheritor of the immersive sim, Prey puts it to rest. This ambitious sci-fi shooter captures the spirit of System Shock in the same way the Dishonored series takes after Thief. It’s a modern expression of an aspirational school of FPS design: the sort that gives you a set of tools, an intimidating foe, a mystery to solve, and the freedom to solve it in your own way. As scientist Morgan Yu, you explore a translunar space station called Talos I in the aftermath of an attack by an extraterrestrial force, the Typhon. These shadowy creatures can, in their most basic form, mimic inanimate matter, an idea that encapsulates many of Prey’s best qualities. It’s an inventive and well-implemented sci-fi concept…

JAMES LEACH Illustration Box Kite Curve Also it’s a no to animals you can bond with, because Fable II pretty much covered that After a lot of diverse and hugely enjoyable game-making, I’ve just been given the chance to work on a new roleplaying game. And I have to say it’s like going home. I’ve spent more time working on this genre than any other, and I love them. And in their sword-clattering, chest-opening, chicken-eating, shop-keeper-chatting ways, they’ve been good to me. Making an RPG is a complex endeavour, though. I was briefly minded to compare it with playing one, but as an idea, that’s going to flounder before we even reach the mountains we’re inevitably going to cross. So let’s not. Instead, we should have a look at why…

Tetsuya Mizuguchi had a busy time of it in 2016. In its first full calendar year in business, his studio Enhance Games released Lumines: Puzzle & Music, a touchscreen-powered spin on his PSP puzzler. And in October, Enhance delivered the defining game of the PlayStation VR launch. Rez Infinite – and in particular Area X, an all-new level that abandoned Rez’s on-rails action in favour of free movement – was, like the original game, an instant classic After all that, you’d forgive Mizuguchi and team for putting their feet up a bit. But work has already begun on Enhance’s next project – inevitably, he’s giving little away about that – while the man himself has continued to travel extensively. Yet while last year Mizuguchi and Enhance toured Rez Infinite around…

“People used to ask, ‘Will a videogame ever make you cry?’ But I really think ‘Can a videogame make you laugh?’ is the harder question.” Quite right, Tim Schafer – Psychonauts’ Meat Circus reduced us to tears, though perhaps for the wrong reasons “We got out to China… I couldn’t get access. I was furious for four or five days. I lost my spot on the [raid] team, and all of a sudden that became more important than the snooke World champion snooker player Neil Robertson on how a WOW addiction briefly took priority over his career “Our mission is to ensure women can succeed and make choices in any environment and in any profession. Why would we not do it in esports?” Diane Lynch of all-female US school Stephens…

TV Loaded bit.ly/loadedc4 Created by Misfits and Fresh Meat writer Jon Brown (who we spoke to in E294), Loaded charts the lives of four friends after they sell their videogame studio to a large corporation. Idyl Hands’ co-founders, Josh, Leon, Watto and Ewan, each net a personal fortune of £14 million from the sale, and each sets about adjusting to the profound change of circumstances in their own shambolic ways It’s funny stuff, much of the humour arising from conscientious, put-upon Josh’s attempts to wrangle his considerably less responsible friends and business partners. The show also makes a good fist of representing modern development studios – we’re pretty sure we’ve visited Idyl Hands at some point – and while videogames aren’t really its focus, there’s an obvious reverence for them. VIDEO…

NATHAN BROWN There are a few things guaranteed to immediately endear me to a videogame. Take the parry, for instance, the purest expression of videogame risk versus reward: you either look like the world’s biggest badass, or simply get smacked in the face. I’m a fan, too, of double jumps, and of extravagant, Shoryuken-style uppercuts. But there are rubbish games with parries, some miserable ones with dragon punches, and some absolute stinkers with double jumps. My love for another little mechanic, however, has never served me wrong. I am talking about the humble taunt. Take Bayonetta, which I’ve been enjoying afresh in its sumptuous new incarnation on PC and uses the taunt in dizzying, gamechanging ways. It freezes the combo timer, enrages enemies, refills your magic bar and even, with…

L ike the name of its Madrid-based developer MercurySteam, this genrefusing 4v1 sci-fi shooter is tricky to pin down. Essentially, four players team up in missions while a rogue fifth interferes. It’s got the invasions of Dark Souls, the asymmetry of Evolve, and the class-based campaign of Battleborn. Ambiguity in an oversaturated market is precisely what made publishers wary. Developer/ publisher MercurySteam Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin Spain Release December “I invite you to try and convince a publisher they need a shooter,” says MercurySteam co-founder Enric Alvarez, on the decision to go independent after a fruitful relationship with Konami. “And even more, you can see our track record is not shooterbased. I mean we were coming from seven years working on Castlevania, a medieval hack-and-slash… How the hell…

This time, as the saying goes, it’s personal. It’s the end of our interview, and Glen Schofield, studio head at Sledgehammer Games, has asked us to wait while he gets something from his office. He re-emerges with a picture frame: inside are the medals his grandfather received for his service in World War II. There are medals for each of the theatres in which he served; there are Bronze and Silver Stars, and a Purple Heart. In the centre of the frame is a picture of one being pinned to his uniform by a commanding officer. It’s taken from a distance, and side-on – an unusual angle, Schofield says, but not for this CO, who insisted on being shot from his best side. This is Call Of Duty: World War II in…

Despite the frosty connotations of its name, Rime is a game that exudes warmth. While there are moments of darkness and despair along the way, and cruelty and loss to deal with too, Tequila Works’ long-awaited adventure strives to be joyful at every step. It’s there in the way you can playfully interact with the spectral fox that serves as your guide throughout, or how baby boar congregate and follow you around whenever you’re carrying fruit. It’s evident in Tequila Works’ diligent efforts to minimise the number of moments where control is taken from you, even during cutscenes. And, of course, it’s also provided generously by the simple pleasure of exploring the game’s beautiful, mysterious environments. It nearly didn’t turn out this way. Early on during development – a tumultuous…

Just as they did with Deck13’s previous game, Lords Of The Fallen, some people will sneer at The Surge for daring to poke around in the same corners as the hallowed Dark Souls series. But the studio clearly reveres FromSoftware’s work, and once you’ve accepted its motives – that these games are more exercises in worship than they are duplicitous clones – you can try to appreciate The Surge on its own merit. What you cannot do, though, is play it without drawing comparisons to the games that inspired it, because there is no escaping the familiarity in its structure and systems. Sometimes it’s a familiarity that feels comforting, but it can also be a nagging sensation that makes you stop and simply ponder what a sci-fi Dark Souls would…

One of the joys of 2016’s Doom reboot was discovering remnants of the original game lodged beneath its crust: hidden areas mocked up to resemble id Tech 1 maps, with splintered wall textures, 2D sprites and flattened lighting. Strafe prompts similar emotions, at a glance. An accomplished Unity shooter from film-industry veterans Thom Glunt and Stephen Raney, it’s flamboyantly modelled on the projectile-dodging and vertical design of Doom’s younger sibling Quake, and saturated with gleeful references to the ’90s at large. Practically every prop or effect is a piece of memorabilia. Certain exit doors grind apart to the peal of a dial-up modem. Crates pop open under fire to reveal N64 carts and floppy disks, buried in Styrofoam packing noodles. The weapons are boxy and brutish, encompassing chainguns, shotguns, rocket…

Might this be the most successful cultural exchange of recent times? The first Puyo game to reach the west in 13 years, Puyo Puyo Tetris brings together one of Russia’s finest exports with a puzzler that has largely been the preserve of the import connoisseur. It’s a happy marriage, too: though the fusion of two very different puzzle disciplines might at first seem awkward, the broad array of modes and options ensures that casual players and genre aficionados alike will find something to enjoy. While most of us are reasonably well versed in Tetris by now, plenty of players will need bringing up to speed on its Japanese counterpart. It’s a deceptively simple game where coloured blobs fall in pairs, and you’re tasked with matching four at once. But if…