Indice dei contenuti per No. 190 in GamesTM

1 MOTION CONTROLLED Nintendo hasn’t abandoned its Super Mario Galaxy  design entirely; in fact, you’ll find that Odyssey has also been largely designed to work best with motion controls. With a joy-con in each hand, you’ll find that you have tight and precise control over Mario’s actions and movements – flicking Cappy intuitively with a flick of the wrist. While Odyssey does support the use of a Pro Controller, Nintendo has designed the game expressly with motion control in mind. 2 CAPPY-ENHANCED Traditional power-ups are largely non-existent in Odyssey, thanks in part to Mario’s cap now coming with new powers. Cappy can be thrown and held in place to swat at enemies or activate objects, swung around to quash hordes of Goombas, or can even be used to possess other…

FORMAT: PS4, XBOX ONE, PC, SWITCH | PUBLISHER: WARNER BROS. | DEVELOPER: TT GAMES | RELEASE:14 NOVEMBER 2017 | PLAYERS:1-TBC AAs TT Games heads towards another massive sequel in its plethora of ongoing series, it knows that it needs to step things up a little.We’ve always enjoyed the LEGO releases, but over time we have, perhaps, started taking them for granted. We want something new and fresh and thankfully so does TT Games. To do that, it’s creating a new world where it can smash together heroes and villains from Marvel’s many timelines and universes so we can see icons of page and screen together in blocky form. So, LEGO Marvel will now bring us Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man, as well as the 2099 and Noir versions into one place…

“With Tacoma, what’s been so exciting for me is that sometimes I pigeonhole myself into being the ‘personal games person’ – and yes, that is definitely something I’m into and something I want to do more of all of the time – but ultimately game design is the craft that I want to improve on,” says Freeman, reflecting on her time with The Fullbright Company thus far as a level designer.“With Tacoma it gave me the freedom to stop thinking about my personal work, to see different perspectives of how games are made and to learn from that.” Freeman’s work is heavily inspired by Gone Home. It was, in fact, a chance encounter with studio co-founders Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonja, as she looked for feedback for Cibele, that took…

Hopefully we can all agree,2017 has been a pretty strong year of games already. Releases like The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Resident Evil VII, Persona 5 and many more have got us off to a great start, and the back half of the year is looking very good indeed. It could be one of the greatest years in this industry’s young history, but it’s brought up a classic debate among the games™ team: what exactly was the best year in gaming? Here we’ve selected what we believe to be the standout years, thanks to the quality of games, influence, innovation and originality, and we’ve invited some experts to join us in explaining what makes these years great. But we’d love to know what you…

“I was only eight years old in 1981, but I was well versed in arcade games, which my dad used to babysit me while he played gigs in local pubs. While I was utterly mesmerised by the likes of Donkey Kong and Galaga, it wouldn't be until I was older that I realised just how significant that period of videogames was. Many genres were still forming in those early days, and most of the real advancements were being made in arcades, where a combination of cash and creativity proved to be a devastingly dynamic combination. The likes of Walter Day have often descirbed 1981 as the Golden Age of videogaming, and it's hard to disagree. Even now the likes of Donkey Kong, Frogger, Defender and Scramble are as playable…

“Road Rash, Lemmings and Neverwinter Nights served as an early appetiser for what was one of the most pivotal years in gaming. Street Fighter II launched itself into arcades and gave the fighting genre the wakeup slap it needed to get started. Sonic roared in on Sega’s consoles in a bid to wrestle the mascot crown from Mario. But Nintendo answered with the SNES, and a trinity of must-have classics in the US: Mario World, F-Zero and A Link To The Past. Monkey Island II rounds off a phenomenal 365 days. 1991’s games got me into gaming, and I’d say it’s a perfect introductory list.” DREW SLEEP PRODUCTION EDITOR, RETRO GAMER / PC GAMER It’s almost hard to know where to begin with this year, the new releases and sequels,…

“I was in my mid-teens in 1996 and playing Tomb Raider, Quake and Diablo, I could sense that this was gaming on a different level than I was used to. Growing up playing NES, SNES and Mega Drive games and now going on these epic and sometimes scary adventures was like moving from Space Jam to watching From Dusk Till Dawn. And in the meantime I was eating up every bit of info I could on the N64, nosed pressed up against the glass of localised release dates. Something incredible was happening in the medium I loved so much, and in some ways, it was the obsession that this generated in me that set me on the path to where I am today.” JONATHAN GORDON EDITOR, GAMES™ Trying to…

When did you first start collecting Kirby games? I missed Kirby the first time around. I never had a NES or SNES growing up and when you’re a kid you don’t always have a huge amount of games. I discovered Kirby’s Adventure and then went back to play the Game Boy games. I soon realised that there wasn’t really such a thing as a bad Kirby game and it went from there. What is it that you like about the character? You don’t mess with Kirby. He may be loveable and cute but he can take on any enemy – anyone who’s played Smash Bros will know that. What separates Kirby games from other platformers? Kirby games are easy to pick up and fairly easy to play – that’s how…

JOHN CORD Voiced by Nickolas Grace and born to a ruthless, domineering British Army officer, In Cold Blood’s protagonist John Cord was a MI6 agent loyal to his boss Alpha. While this inevitably invited unwanted comparisons to James Bond – Charles Cecil insisted Ian Fleming’s character was not an inspiration – it also meant Cord had a particular set of skills. Adept at survival and able to dispatch enemies with a single blow, he was a sharp shooter and a good puzzle solver (all with your help, of course). For all of that, though, he lacked the dry wit and sarcasm of Broken Sword’s George Stobbart or Beneath A Steel Sky’s Joey, making him markedly more forgettable. GREGOR KOSTOV With a strong voice not unlike that of Brian Blessed, bear-like…

PHARAH Pharah is more or less untouchable to Doomfist. While she’s in the air, none of Doomfist’s kit helps him. It’s best to stay inside where you can, or she’ll make mincemeat of the newest character. RANGE While Doomfist can close gaps, the time he spends doing so is time he isn’t outputting damage. A Hanzo, McCree, Soldier 76 or Widowmaker who hit their shots will take out Doomfist before he’s even close. ROADHOG Despite recently taking heavy nerfs, Doomfist is good news for Roadhog. Doomfist is most exposed when he’s out of position. While ’Hog can’t kill him with his hook/shot combo any more, his teammates will take advantaged of a hooked ’Fist.…

“WHEN DEVELOPMENT STARTED THREE AND A HALF YEARS AGO, WE SET OUT WITH THE INTENTION OF CHALLENGING OURSELVES. What we wanted to do was not only create an authentic Assassin’s Creed game, but reinvent that core AC experience. We know that elements like combat, stealth and navigation are details that constantly need to be improved upon – made better and made to be part of a more cohesive experience,” admits game director Ashraf Ismail, speaking with games™ in a surprisingly frank interview long after the dust had settled on E32017.“And now we’ve opened the door to change whatever we wanted.” But it’s difficult to escape the feeling that we’ve heard all of this before. From the moment of Origins’ spectacular reveal it’s been impressed upon us how the fundamentals of…

01 THE FOCUS HAS SHIFTED Destiny is finally coming out of its protracted three-year beta – or, at least, that’s how it’s beginning to feel. Launching 6 September, Destiny 2 is pitched as a new beginning, with Bungie taking aim at its loudest critics by placing a renewed focus on the core tenants of the shooter’s design: narrative, exploration, cooperation and competition. Properly addressing long-standing criticisms and laying a solid foundation for future expansion has necessitated a shift to the state of play. Things are about to change and you aren’t going to agree with every one of the decisions. Many of these are in service of supporting the overhauled PvP; so much of the Destiny experience is rooted around replaying the same maps and missions over, and so Bungie…

“1985 was the year that saved the videogame industry. Following the crash of ’83, the long-term viability of gaming was being questioned, with analysts beginning to fear that all hope of stabilising the market had been lost. It’s funny, not once did they consider that a moustachioed plumber rocking a sweet red cap could ever save the day. Super Mario Bros. is, without question, one of the most important and influential videogames ever created. It helped push players out of the arcades and into their living rooms with a NES in hand and, perhaps more importantly, it gave us the only true example of level design perfection: in World 1-1 we trust.” JOSH WEST FEATURES EDITOR, GAMES™ At a time when the videogame industry looked in danger of collapse, the…

“While Blizzard was pushing PC multiplayer forward with Diablo 2 and Battle.net, the real hero of 2001 was PlayStation 2. Gran Turismo 3, released less than a year after the console's launch, was a technical showcase (and entertaining racer) that hinted at what Sony's new console was capable of. For me, though,2001 was the year of Grand Theft Auto III. It took me by complete surprise: a huge 3D world that felt like a real, living city beyond anything I'd experienced in a game. I spent 100s of hours in that world, and fell in love with the console that made it possible.” PHIL SAVAGE EDITOR, PC GAMER With each passing year, the games industry has been able to move itself further forward in popular culture, breaking out of…

“Every format from the arcade to home computers had a great year in 1986. While many of the hit games of the year were traditional linear experiences, a clear trend towards exploration emerged. Nintendo introduced both Metroid and The Legend Of Zelda on the Famicom Disk System, two games that gave the player a world and very little direction. On home computers, Turbo Esprit provided cities that you could drive around freely, and even the arcade racer Out Run presented you with forks in the road. Players were gaining the freedom to shape their own experience for the first time, and thoroughly enjoying the results.” NICK THORPE SENIOR STAFF WRITER, RETRO GAMER Who had a better year? Was it the Famicom or the arcades? We’re hard pressed to give…

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…

Considering the challenge Nintendo created here in trying to translate the gameplay of a 3D Pikmin world into something that would work as a 2D puzzle platformer, Hey! Pikmin stands up pretty well.And if that reads like we’re throwing a lot of qualifiers at Arzest’s latest 3DS release then we can only acknowledge that while this isn’t necessarily the most inventive or challenging game you’ll ever play, it does manage to maintain the all-important cute spirit and sense of discovery that is core to the Pikmin experience, and that alone keeps it light, fun and playable throughout. Your control is limited to the left analogue and touch screen, no jumping but a limited jetpack capacity, which forces you to be vigilant and mindful of the abilities…

CREATED BY MASAHIRO Sakurai when he was just 19 years old, Kirby is one of Nintendo’s most popular characters. While many assumed that Kirby was a ghost due to the box art on the western release of Kirby’s Dream Land, Sakurai always intended his lovable hero to be pink (Miyamto’s first choice of yellow eventually became the second player default colour in the few multiplayer Kirby games that are available). With his games mainly developed by HAL Laboratory, Kirby has never really been a top-tier draw for Nintendo, but he’s arguably been consistent and he’s also appeared in some genuinely innovative games over the last 25 years and become a key member of the Super Smash Bros. series in the process. Here, we cover some of his best known, and…

KIRBY’S STAR STACKER , 1997, SUPER FAMICOM KIRBY SLIDE , 2003, GAME BOY ADVANCE E-READER KIRBY SUPER STAR ULTRA , 2008, NINTENDO DS 3D CLASSICS: KIRBY’S ADVENTURE , 2011, NINTENDO 3DS ESHOP KIRBY’S DREAM COLLECTION: SPECIAL EDITION , 2012, WII KIRBY FIGHTER’S DELUXE , 2014, NINTENDO 3DS ESHOP DEDEDE’S DRUM DASH DELUXE , 2014, NINTENDO 3DS ESHOP TEAM KIRBY CLASH DELUXE , 2017, NINTENDO 3DS ESHOP KIRBY’S BLOWOUT BLAST , 2017, NINTENDO 3DS ESHOP KIRBY , 2017, NINTENDO 3DS KIRBY FOR NINTENDO SWITCH , 2018, SWITCH…

ALTHOUGH IN COLD Blood marked Revolution’s intention to move away from the point-and-click genre, it didn’t stop Tony Warriner from trying to recreate the game as an old-style adventure last year. “I had a crack at reworking the game as a pure mouse-driven point-and-click game,” he explains. “I pretty much had it working, although it was going to be quite a lot of work to bring the underlying data into shape and working with a point-and-click user interface.” The project wasn’t pursued – a “real shame”, he says. “I guess at the back of my mind, a UI reboot of the original game would have made a follow-up more of a possibility after such a long time since the original game.”…

BLACK MESA RESEARCH FACILITY - T-SHIRT Listen here, Half-Life 3 is clearly never happening, but continue to tempt fate by taking this Black Mesa tee out into the world. Just an FYI, access to secret research facilities not guaranteed. gamerprint.co.uk MASS EFFECT PATHFINDER T-SHIRT Forge a better path through your world than BioWare could, picking up this shirt to become a honorary pathfinder. Warning: talking to people while wearing could make their faces tired. thinkgeek.com SPIRIT OF FIRE CREW T-SHIRT Pledge your allegiance to the UNSC’s Spirit Of Fire and wear your love of Halo Wars on your sleeve with this tee that shows your love of Halo is stronger than anybody else’s. forbiddenplanet.com…

1 TRESPASSING Whatever Mario wants, he will take it. He doesn’t care that most of the city is out of bounds, and you’ll quickly find that he has a deep-rooted obsession with criminal trespassing in the third degree. A Class B Misdemeanour, he’d expect a small fine and a slap on the wrist. 2 POSSESSION Possession isn’t covered by US law, at least, not officially, but Mario’s new-found obsession with taking over a person’s consciousness against their will could technically be classified as abduction or unlawful restraint. Jail time, huge fines and public shaming, Mario will never return to the Mushroom Kingdom after this. 3 CRIMINAL MISCHIEF  While looking for Power Moons Mario has a tendency to let nothing get in his way. Need to get to a platform or…

FIRE EMBLEM: MYSTERY OF THE EMBLEM The third game in the Fire Emblem series, originally released in 1994, might have been a nice addition for the western SNES Mini, not least as one of the fastest selling in the series until the launch of Awakening in 2012. This one stings a little. THE LEGEND OF THE MYSTICAL NINJA Goemon has perhaps never been a massive star in the West so it makes some sense that this game wouldn’t be deemed essential for America and Europe, but we were rather fond of the little brawler back in the day so this one’s a shame to lose. PANEL DE PON Better known to those of us outside of Japan as Tetris Attack, the story of this release is oddly similar to…

What challenges have you faced bringing ancient Egypt to life? When we recreated ancient Egypt for Assassin’s Creed Origins, we had to make some artistic choices, not only to have a credible sense of immersion, but also to take the player on a beautiful and epic journey. The constraints of having somehow less documentation than what we had for previous titles was, for us, a fantastic opportunity to be more creative. We did our homework and strived to be as historically accurate as possible of course, but we also had more freedom to recreate and re-imagine how this country looked and felt in ancient times. We also wanted to do justice to the incredible diversity of ancient Egypt’s landscapes and biomes. In Assassin’s Creed Origins, you will embark on what…

“ CIBELE AND HOW DO YOU DO IT? HAVE CAUSED ME TO REFLECT ON THE RAMPANT SHAMING OF PEOPLE WHO MAKE GAMES THAT ARE ‘CONFESSIONAL’ OR WHO ARE SEEN TO BE ‘OVER SHARING’ WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT THINGS THAT ARE CONSIDERED PRIVATE, LIKE SEX,” SAID GAME CREATOR NINA FREEMAN, SPEAKING DURING A PANEL AT GDC IN 2015. It was a moment that, in many respects, thrust the young artist’s voice onto the global stage, as she delivered a message that was as empowering as it was important – as relevant today as it was in then. “This stigma against honesty makes it hard to share straightforward autobiographical games; it’s scary, being publicly shamed is not fun. However, I’m not going to stop making games about my own…

The RPG and loot elements owe a lot to Dark Souls, as does the environmental setup: shortcuts and bonfire-like altars you have to activate. The early game’s online PvP system also inspired the team when they were thinking about Absolver’s multiplayer. The staff at Sloclap basically worshipped God Hand, or so it seemed to us, and when we suggested that Absolver might be a spiritual successor to it, they didn’t want to commit to that – for fear of offending the original's makers. Journey’s voiceless online interaction has been massively inspirational to SloClap; the idea of not knowing who you’re playing with, not knowing what their intentions are… it’s a huge part of what makes Absolver such a unique prospect. The 3D fighting engine of Tekken has clearly left its…

“Thanks to growing up in Squaresoft’s Europeshaped blindspot,1997 would mark my first encounter with one of my favourite franchises – Final Fantasy. This was the year that the PlayStation really started showing what it was capable of, and few games better demonstrated this generational leap than FFVII. I remember being blown away by its crazy production values, especially at a time when sprite-based RPGs were still very much the norm. To say that I played it a lot would be an understatement, too – I still have the memory card with my 100% save (with maxed-out game clock), a relic from a true golden age for gaming.” LUKE ALBIGÉS EDITOR, PLAY We’ve often reflected that the cycle of great gaming years comes around the 10 year mark, and as…

“1998 marked the arrival of Half-Life, and oh boy can you tell. With its numerous groundbreaking features, just like the impact of Dark Souls, pre-Half-Life and post-Half-Life games are painfully obvious. Abandoning cutscenes in favour of scripted events that you witness no matter if you stop and stare or sprint past, the sensation of the world carrying on around you regardless was as novel as explosions and bullets leaving marks on the walls. You felt like you were really there, plus the chapters (used instead of levelling up) emphasised the story above all, building the sense that you were at the heart of the narrative. All hail Gordon Freeman – and his marvellous crowbar.” ZOE DELAHUNTY-LIGHT GAMESRADAR The late Nineties offered a rich vein of gaming excellence, with…

“2007 was the year of Super Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, Crackdown, BioShock, The Orange Box, Mass Effect, Stalker and Uncharted – every format ended up with at least one all-time classic. By the end of the year, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo had figured out what their new consoles were about, and it’s clear Microsoft was creatively miles ahead at the time. Meanwhile, Valve was still making new games rather than just a shop, bringing us Portal and the last glimpse of new Half-Life we’ll possibly ever see in Episode 2. This was the year HD gaming came into its own.” SAMUEL ROBERTS EDITOR IN CHIEF, PC GAMER In so many respects we’re still living in the glow of 2007’s game releases. From Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare…

SUPER SMASH BROS. Nintendo’s unconventional four-player brawler stars Kirby, Mario, Link and many other classic Nintendo characters. Later games would greatly expand on the mechanics by introducing insane amounts of playable characters and all sorts of delicious unlockables, but there remains a purity to the original game that still makes it extremely satisfying to play today. It helps that Kirby is also extremely powerful and easily holds his own against the likes of Donkey Kong and Samus. ULTIMATE NES REMIX Originally released as two separate games on Wii U, this 3DS game features all sorts of challenges based around classic NES games, including Super Mario Bros, Balloon Fight, Excitebike and Kirby’s Adventure. The challenges are typically timed and range from defeating an enemy in a certain amount of time, to…

WE STARTED TO LOOK AT PUTTING AN ADVENTURE WITHIN AN ACTION GAME Released: 2000 Format: PlayStation, Windows Publisher: SCEE, Ubisoft, DreamCatcher Games Key Staff: Charles Cecil (director), Steve Ince (producer), Tony Warriner (System Design), Jake Turner (Technical Programming), Barrington Pheloung (music) BY THE TIME IN COLD BLOOD HAD BEEN RELEASED, REVOLUTION SOFTWARE HAD CARVED OUT A SOLID REPUTATION AS A DEVELOPER OF SOME OF THE FINEST POINT-AND-CLICK ADVENTURE GAMES. It had released its debut, Lure Of The Temptress, in 1992 and it had followed it up with the dystopian sci-fi classic Beneath A Steel Sky two years later. More importantly, it had created not one but two Broken Sword adventures in 1996 and 1997, giving the genre a major shot in the arm as players flocked…

WE ALL FELT A PART OF SOMETHING KIND OF NEW AND DIFFERENT, WE WEREN’T JUST A GAMES COMPANY, WE WERE A LAB YOU STUDIED MUSIC but ended up moving into videogames. How did that happen? I graduated and moved to New York City with my fiancé and she was going to study at the Columbia University. I was going to look for music and teaching jobs. I got a few offers but they weren’t very good offers, and so I found an ad in the New York Times for a game design position for a company called West End Games, which was a wargame board game company. I had been playing wargames for several years before, and so I thought it might be an interesting way to make some money…

SUPER BREAKOUT (1978) The game that would ultimately see Breakout extend its success from arcade cabinets to home consoles, Super Breakout upgraded the original game with new modes of play as well as a default colour display. It plays virtually identically to the original release. BREAKOUT 2000(1996) Released for the Atari Jaguar, Breakout 2000 turned to pre-rendered 3D graphics, tilting the playing field down so that it appeared to be bouncing the ball away from the player along a floor. Gameplay modifiers, both good and bad, get dropped into play too. BREAKOUT (2000) Similar in terms of gameplay presentation to Breakout 2000, this PC and PlayStation version of the game made more use of its 3D graphics, stacking bricks on top of each other. It also introduced a story…