Edgeの June 2017 の目次

It’s odd to think that, while the fighting game was at its peak in the 1990s, Nintendo had barely anything to do with it. We may think of Street Fighter II as being as much a SNES game as it was an arcade one, but the platform holder largely stood by and watched as an entire genre rose, dominated and then faded away. Nintendo has never been one for hitching itself to bandwagons, of course. But the fighting game is a genre to which the company – with its flair for character design and immaculate game balance – has always seemed perfectly suited. Yet when we think about fighting games, we do not readily think of the house of Mario. Nintendo may not have physically entered the fighting-game fray, but…

James Carter is one half of electronic duo Snakehips, which he formed with Oliver Lee after the pair met on a business trip to Hong Kong. Snakehips found early success after posting remixes on Soundcloud, and since then the duo’s profile has spiralled rapidly. When did you first get into games? I think I got the original Game Boy, and one of the Super Mario games with it – I can’t remember which one. I was pretty young at the time, and I remember that my parents only allowed me one hour each evening to play on it. I used to try and lock myself in the bathroom to get a little bit longer. It was worse because you couldn’t save on it, so I had to get as far…

The American philosopher Thomas Nagel posed a famous question in 1979: “What is it like to be a bat?” The question makes sense because we assume bats have some level of awareness, of conscious experience. And, Nagel writes, “The fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism.” The problem is that this something-it-is-likeness cannot be captured purely by objective scientific measurement. You could in principle map a bat’s entire brain and nervous system and understand down to the quantum level what is going on in the neurons, but you still wouldn’t know what it’s like to be that bat. That, Nagel says, is the nub of the whole mind-body problem in philosophy. I haven’t yet been…

Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch Origin Japan Release Summer Splatoon was the biggest triumph of a troubled era – or, perhaps, the right game on the wrong console. By embracing Wii U’s eccentricities it found an audience, particularly in Japan, where it enjoyed an attach rate of 45 per cent. Nevertheless, the commercial struggles of its host hardware prevented a brilliant game from becoming an even bigger hit. A sequel on Switch, in theory, offers an opportunity to correct that issue, but brings with it additional pressures. This is, by Nintendo standards, a quick-fire follow-up, only two years on from the original. And this time, the surprise factor is gone. How, then, does a series that encouraged us to ‘stay fresh’ continue to do just that? That burden falls on…

Developer/ publisher Exbleative Format PC Origin Australia Release TBA During a test run that doubles as a tutorial, an experimental manned space probe called Exo One is pulled into a wormhole and lost forever. You take the role of the pilot of this doomed craft in a twohour experience inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar. Deposited on the surface of an alien world, you roll, leap and glide towards a huge alien installation on the horizon that projects a beam of blue light skywards. The beam propels you into another wormhole and, through it, another alien world – and then another, and another. The game’s lone developer Jay Weston cites Journey as a key influence, and little wonder: Exo One builds a similarly evocative sense of travel out…

Hug the goat,” the crowd chants, the volume rising. It is January 15, in the ballroom of the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport hotel, and a speedrunner named TGH is trying to beat his own Undertale True Pacifist world record. There are only seconds to go, and it’s now obvious to everyone in the room – and the thousands watching this year’s instalment of week-long speedrun festival Awesome Games Done Quick via Twitch – that he isn’t going to top his previous performance. But it doesn’t matter. As if somehow planned, TGH embraces the hircine Asriel exactly as the clock ticks onto his existing record time and at the same moment that event donations tick over the recordbreaking $2.2 million mark. The chanting falls away, replaced by deafening applause and cheering.…

Nobody could be blamed for assuming that Dirt Rally was an aside. An initially scrappy, early-access effort, it abandoned Codemasters’ penchant for slick UIs and frictionless accessibility in favour of exposed scaffolding and a brutally unforgiving driving model. It couldn’t have been further from its forebears – even Dirt 3, which pulled focus on wet and windy European rally events over the brash Americanism that has increasingly defined the series, was made to feel lightweight. At the time, this unnumbered diversion into hardcore-sim territory seemed unlikely to be representative of a new direction for Dirt. But it turns out that Rally was actually a skunkworks project, not just an experiment; and while the recently announced Dirt 4 certainly embraces a more familiar level of accessibility, Rally’s DNA permeates the whole…

Playtonic’s founder Gavin Price quickly convinced several former colleagues to join his new studio, pitching them an opportunity to work on the kind of game they used to make during Rare’s heyday. Here, he discusses Yooka-Laylee’s delays and areas to improve on, while expanding on plans for continued support of the game – as well as what’s next for the studio. How did your plans change between the end of the Kickstarter campaign and Yooka-Laylee’s launch? With the Kickstarter stretch goals that we put out, we weren’t honestly anticipating to tick them all off, and when we did, we had to put some thought into that, and certain elements like the Tonic system and the co-op mode, for instance. We weren’t just thinking about them in terms of [this game].…

Developer Tarsier Studios Publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment Format PC (version tested), PS4, Xbox One Release Out now Y ou might want to give your TV a clean first. As Six, a young and frail girl in a bright-yellow raincoat, you awake groggily in a world enveloped in shadow. The flickering flame of her lighter is only enough to illuminate the area immediately around her, the dancing light frequently convincing you that something’s moving in the darkness. As you narrow your eyes, peering into the murk, you’ll swear you’ve made out a strange shape or two – only to discover what was vexing you was a speck of real-world dust. There’s a dearth of light, then, but this is a place defined by excess. The Maw is a grim undersea retreat…

Developer/publisher Red Barrels Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now Very early on in Outlast 2 we find ourselves screaming on the ground, penis severed, as we bleed out from our freshly inflicted injury. It’s a horrifying, grotesque moment, and a particularly sticky end for protagonist and cameraman Blake Langermann. But it’s also one of many we endure over the next few minutes as we attempt to deal with the tall, hooded, spiked-hammer-wielding female who emerges from the fog, on cue, every time we pass a trigger point in that section of the level. On our second attempt we edge forward to the line that sets the AI in motion, and are cut down by the fast-moving woman as we attempt to turn tail and run. The third…

Developer/publisher StellarVR Format PSVR Release Out now An unexpected, but pleasant, consequence of VR has been the reinvigoration of unfashionable genres. Developers committed to the format are exploring fresh ways to tackle old ideas, exploring the new possibilities of the tech while adapting to its limitations. Just as Until Dawn: Rush Of Blood exhumed the lightgun shooter, and Secret Sorcery’s Tethered revisited the god game, Korix rebuilds the RTS from its foundations with the help of an intuitive interface, clever controls and an admirably robust challenge. In conceptual terms, it’s nothing new. Each mission involves harvesting energy from a nearby crystal, constructing defences, assembling an offensive force and destroying your opponent’s base. Its battles take place on tiled stages, suspended in space against a backdrop of polygonal planets. Workers and…

Now I’ve been working on videogames since the early ’90s, and regularly collaborate with teams who’ve been doing so for longer than that. We’ve seen the industry grow from flickering, buzzing blobs to worlds so realistic and immersive that people forget to eat while they’re playing them. Or worse – they graze on junk food while playing them and poo unheedingly in their chairs. The advancements have been, it’s fair to say, extremely rapid, if occasionally smelly. Thirty years of serious game development does mean, however, that there are hordes of us wandering around conventions and expos, being referred to as ‘veterans’. It’s not a title I have ever felt comfortable with, but it’s hard to argue against it when many of those who use the word weren’t even born…

“I look at my friends, they have a lot more spare time. It’s a very intense business. It’s all-encompassing. It seems like I should relax for a little bit.” Wasteland creator Brian Fargo contemplates retirement. If it helps, old stick, we feel like that every four weeks “Every signal we send is of censorship, disapproval and discouragement. Videogames do not hurt anybody.” Senator David Leyonhjelm argues against the famously open-minded Australian censors’ Outlast 2 ban “They offered me a percentage of their profits. I said, ‘No, there will be no profit at all – give me all my money right now!’ It was stupid.” Andrzej Sapkowski, creator of Geralt of Rivia, wishes he’d seen the success of The Witcher series coming “I’ve become the troublesome elder that I hated when…

WEBSITE Gamesman catalogue archive bit.ly/gamesmen catalogues If, like us, you spent a good portion of your childhood pawing through the Argos catalogue and back pages of magazines coveting the outrageously expensive consoles and games, The Gamesmen’s archive should offer a pleasant shot of nostalgia. While the catalogues don’t reach back as far as the Australian retailer’s founding in 1982, it still takes in 26 years of seasonal bulletins. You can flick through each one and relive a time when the Master System was still being marketed more aggressively than the newly released Mega Drive, the prospect of whacking a 512kb RAM expansion card in your Amiga 500 felt revelatory, and adding a Soundblaster card to your 486 DX2 rig was something to get really fired up about. VIDEO Asteroids with…

My YouTube recommendations are an absolute mess. Being a parent certainly doesn’t help – in and amongst the ripped jungle 12-inches and archived livestreams of Street Fighter tournaments are Peppa Pig marathons, Raa Raa The Noisy Lion compilations and all the rest of it. But even if I were still childless, I suspect that Recommended tab would still be in a right old state. Part of the problem, it appears, is the algorithm’s habit for mistaking one’s morbid curiosity about some YouTube phenomenon as their desire to never again watch anything else. A while back someone on Twitter linked to one of those videos of an irritatingly welloff young man opening 50 quid’s worth of FIFA Ultimate Team packs. I lasted about two minutes, but for the next fortnight my…

Developer/ publisher Noel Berry, Matt Thorson Format PC, PS4, Switch Origin Canada Release 2017 The old woman’s laughter follows you as you begin your ascent. It echoes from her lodge, halfway across one screen, stretching into the next before fading into the crisp night air. You’ve already come close to being crushed by a giant falling block of ice; she warns you that if you had trouble dealing with that, you may not be prepared for what’s to come. You soon realise she isn’t kidding. As you jog to your right, the thin stone bridge begins to crumble underfoot, so you break into a sprint, leaping over a gap, only for the stone you land on to fall away as you touch down. Time stands still as a crow suddenly…

Developer Swordfish Studios Publisher THQ Format 360, PS3 Origin UK Release 2009 The brand was popular, the fanbase was established and the leading stars were all well known: Covert-One, a new television series adapted from books by Robert Ludlum, surely couldn’t fail. For Swordfish, the Birmingham indie studio contracted to build Covert-One’s tie-in videogame, a seemingly guaranteed success like this was rare. Founded in 2002, Swordfish had collaborated with three different publishers in its first three years, and its games – particularly Cold Winter, a firstperson shooter launched in 2005 – had been well received. But searching for a new idea and a new employer each time a project concluded was a draining routine. The prospect of working on something like Covert-One, particularly when Ludlum’s Jason Bourne was still thriving…

STILL PLAYING Destiny PS4 The Age Of Triumph, Destiny’s final update, seems on first inspection to offer more than enough content to keep us on the hook until the arrival of Destiny 2. But the challenges in its Record Book will need dozens of hours of grinding through content we already know too well. Updates to old raids are intriguing, but most of our regular group went their separate ways months ago. The lure of the peerless Vault Of Glass raid, now updated with its old loot at contemporary power levels, means that we’re back, yes – but not, we suspect, for too long. Parappa The Rapper Remastered PS4 We stroll through Chop Chop Master Onion, of course. A driving lesson is no problem for these experienced hands, either, and…

Developer BioWare Publisher EA Format PC (tested), PS4, Xbox One Release Out now E very Mass Effect game is the product of experimentation and compromise. The central proposition of these games – a space opera that you control – has held steady. Yet BioWare has never settled on the type of game that should be built around that ambition. Is it an RPG? A linear thirdperson shooter? An open-world game? With each new entry, these parameters have shifted. Andromeda represents another attempt to answer those questions – and again BioWare has some, but not all, of the answers. The latest entry uproots the series and transplants it to a new galaxy, 600 years after Shepard’s campaign to defeat the Reapers. You play as Ryder, a young explorer who’s thrust into…

Developer/publisher Sumo Digital Format PC, PS4 (tested), Switch, Xbox One Release Out now Think like a snake. That’s the one-line pitch for Sumo Digital’s first original property: a fleshedout version of an internal game-jam entry from designer Sebastian Liese, who conceived a rudimentary physics-based platformer around the unorthodox movements of a serpentine protagonist. It’s also the only instruction you really need in the finished game: at first you’ll wish Sumo offered you a little more guidance, but when you’re in trouble, it’s surprising how often following that simple mantra works a charm. That’s because, despite its colourful, kid-friendly looks, Snake Pass treats its subject with the kind of profound respect and attention to nuance you’d more commonly find in a simulation. But then it is a simulator, after a fashion.…

Developer Traveller’s Tales Publisher Warner Bros Format PC, PS4 (version tested), Xbox One Release Out now L ego Worlds is not another Lego game that merely features Lego. It isn’t a jaunt through a set of levels themed around a big licence. There’s no Harry Potter, Star Wars or Batman; its moment-to-moment appeal is not founded on smashing up scenery and discovering fan-favourite characters. Instead, Lego Worlds is a game about Lego itself. It’s about building and exploring, and open and freewheeling play, and is the first fresh step Traveller’s Tales has taken with the licence since 2005’s original Lego Star Wars. And while it arrives eight years after Minecraft, Lego’s enduring ubiquity lends it currency that makes it still count. As Minecraft is founded on its blocks, Lego Worlds…

What makes a great videogame city? It’s a question developers and players obsess over, and one that geographer, urban planner and game designer Konstantinos Dimopoulos has positioned himself to answer as a consultant ‘game urbanist’, an expert in the form and function of cities who wants to help virtual ones feel like real places. Think of the Shanghai in Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, which despite being the setting for a corridor shooter manages to conjure a sense of a rapidly growing metropolis, taking place in backstreets, building sites and informal markets. “If you think about it, they don’t show you much of it, but they imply tonnes,” says Dimopoulos, who is based in Athens and is currently working remotely on Frogwares’ forthcoming The Sinking City, a game set…

Game Splash! Manufacturer Bandai Namco, Raw Thrills A collaboration between Bandai Namco, Raw Thrills, Specular Interactive and Injoy Motion, Splash! is a new jet-ski-racing game that channels the spirits of Wave Race and Road Rash. The sit?down cabinet’s seats resemble the rear portion of a jet ski, complete with rhicles if you get alongside them. Riders can also perform stunts in the air. Visually, the sit-on jet skis are unexpectedly subdued, sporting a predominantly black-and-blue colour scheme that’s more car interior than arcade machine, but the screen housing’s mix of multicoloured neon strip lighting, yellow-and-blue marquees, and the typeface used for the logo evoke Splatoon’s noisier aesthetic. The game has five tracks to choose from, all of which are playable in reverse, and six characters. Courses are all pleasingly overwrought…

Kick off I’m sure many who have managed to complete Breath Of The Wild will have seen Corey Bunnell, the sole non-Japanese name to appear on Nintendo’s development end credits. Ten years ago he posted on an online forum sharing his dreams to go to Japan and work for Nintendo. It’s truly inspiring to see that after years of hard work he didn’t only achieve his dream but had a hand in making the greatest game of all time. And in 2017, we need all the inspiring stories we can get. So I’ll be doing a Corey myself. What with some seismic changes in my personal and work life that all came to a head at the end of last year, topped off with the double clusterfuck of Brexit and…

Palette cleanser Not so long ago, everything was brown. The 360 and PS3 era was not, by and large, the best for fans of a broad colour palette: whether you choose to blame the widespread use of Unreal Engine 3, the popularity of the FPS, or something else entirely, the fact remains that we spent much of the first decade of the new millennium pining for a little splash of colour. It says much for the industry’s current trajectory that, for the second time this year, we’re struck by a sudden chromatic explosion in the Hype section, faced with another selection of previews defined by bright, bold hues. Splatoon 2 (p30) has, like its predecessor, colour by the bucketload, since it’s a game about painting a multiplayer map with as…

Developer Deck13 Interactive Publisher Focus Home Interactive Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin Germany Release May 16 L ords Of The Fallen may have been heavily indebted to Demon’s Souls, but it built on From Software’s formula in a number of memorable ways. The best of these was the introduction of a multiplier that saw the potential XP you could reap from fallen foes increase the longer you resisted saving at a checkpoint. It was such a good idea, in fact, that we can’t help but feel disappointed by its absence from The Surge. That’s not to say the studio’s sci-fi twist on the Souls template doesn’t have plenty of new ideas, however. Here, XP becomes scrap metal – collected from fallen enemies as well as crates and dark corners…

Brenda Romero’s games have covered almost every genre and audience, from resolutely commercial to arthouse; fantasy to shlocky; thoughtful to cute. She’s lead and built studios, developed and run academic courses, and explored in a personal series of boardgames ways in which game design can express difficult human themes. There’s pretty much no area of game development she hasn’t had a hand in at some point or other. Here, on the eve of receiving the BAFTA Special Award for her contributions to the industry, she discusses her recent move to Galway, her experiences with Silicon Valley culture, why she designed a game about slavery for her daughter, and her fascination with chefs. How are you enjoying living in Ireland? Oh, jeez, well, we love it! We came to Ireland in…

Ian Flatt Production director What was it like for Swordfish abandoning Covert- One and moving on to Blood On The Sand? Given that show’s cast we thought, ‘We’re onto a winner here, it has no chance of failing.’ But it just didn’t hit at all. However, Swordfish had always worked that way. It came from a mentality we had starting out as a small indie, when we had to be lean to survive. Everyone was very flexible and prepared to reset and go at a new title from a new angle. How often would you hear from 50 Cent or the G-Unit while you were making the game? Originally we made a kind of proof of concept, particularly based around the setting, to show we could put the 50 Cent character in there…

Developer Playtonic Games Publisher Team17 Format PC, PS4 (tested), Switch, Xbox One Release Out now (Switch TBA) While Yooka-Laylee may do a fine job of pretending otherwise, it isn’t 1997 anymore. But that’s the point. It’s why more than 73,000 backers collectively committed over £2m in funding to it, their investment based on a specific promise to recapture the spirit of N64-era mascot platformers 20 years on. And who better than a cadre of ex-Rare staff to do it? But Playtonic also assured its supporters it would aim to modernise those creaky ideas a little; to eliminate some of the frustrations of the old games with two additional decades of collective design know-how. Almost inevitably, it has had more success with one of those goals than the other. At first…

Developer Cavalier Game Studios Publisher Tequila Works Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Release Out now Something is amiss at The Sexy Brutale, the casino mansion owned by an enigmatic Marquis. For one thing, none of the guests at this year’s masked ball seem to be having a particularly good time. But slightly worse than that, they are also being systematically bumped off by the frightfully brusque staff. It would be bad enough if just one shindig resulted in the death of your guests, but this particular series of events seems to be repeating endlessly, looping back to midday every time the clock strikes midnight. It falls to protagonist Lafcadio Boone, an elderly priest and recovering gambling addict, to try to figure out what is going on and break the macabre…

Developer David OReilly Publisher Double Fine Productions Format PC, PS4 (tested) Release Out now David OReilly’s interactive debut invited us to watch a Mountain; for its successor, he’s cast his net much wider. Everything’s hook is the ability to assume control of, well, everything, living or otherwise. You can commandeer a cow or hijack a street lamp, float around as a grain of sand, or observe an accelerated daynight cycle as a shifting landmass. It purports to be an interactive nature simulation, but that suggests a recognisable imitation, when this is altogether stranger. OReilly gives his players a little more to do, as well as be, this time. Inhabit, say, a cedar tree, and you can turn one into a group by holding a button when adjacent to others. Later…