GamesTM -julkaisun No. 206 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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…

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…

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:…

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…

■ “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…

“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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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,…

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…

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…

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,…

“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…

“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……

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…

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…

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…

“ 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…