Table of contents for No. 205 in GamesTM

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: CD PROJEKT RED | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: TBC | PLAYERS: 1 THE SENSATIONAL ■ Night City in its current form is without question one of the most incredible constructions we have ever seen in a videogame. The scope of it is, to be frank, baffling; no matter where you look, it’s there sprawling off into the distance. Given the recent news that the game world extends outside of the city limits and off into the surrounding wastelands is dizzying. And then there’s the scale of it… the scale is unprecedented. That is to say, that regardless of whether you’re on foot or behind the wheel of a vehicle, every one of its elements looks perfectly proportioned to the player. We’ve seen some…

FOUNDED: 2008 (AS NORDIC GAMES PUBLISHING) | KEY GAMES: THE BOOK OF UNWRITTEN TALES, DEADFALL ADVENTURES, THIS IS THE POLICE 1 TIMESPLITTERS THQ Nordic, in mid-August, grabbed the rights to this classic shooter franchise, a series famously started by Free Radical Design, a studio created by former Rare developers who had worked on GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. The last game in the series was TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. Funnily enough, the current incarnation of Free Radical Design, now named Dambuster Studios, was acquired by THQ Nordic in February 2018 when the publisher took over Koch Media and Deep Silver. So, all the pieces have clearly come together for the old team to renew the franchise 13 years later. 2 SECOND SIGHT In the deal that saw THQ Nordic grab up…

FORMAT: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: EA | DEVELOPER: DICE | RELEASE: 20 NOV 2018 | PLAYERS: 64 It’s difficult to not be a little taken aback by what DICE is presenting to the world this time around, with respect to visual fidelity, scope of action and immersion. When the studio first unleashed Battlefield 1942, the industry quickly became mesmerised by DICE’s vision of all-out multiplayer warfare, one that was set against the backdrop of World War II. We never imagined that it could get any better. Oh, how naive we were. It’s games like Battlefield V that force you to take pause, to take the time to really consider just how far the industry has come in 16 years. Truth be told, it’s a little breathtaking. The scope…

“YOU HAVE TO LAY WASTE TO THE DEMONIC LEGIONS OF THE UNDERWORLD AND LOOK GOOD WHILE YOU’RE DOING IT” FORMAT: PS4, PC, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: CAPCOM | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 Looking back at it now, it’s no surprise that Devil May Cry 4 didn’t deliver in the way some of us expected it to. This is a series that wants you to lay waste to the demonic legions of the underworld and look good while you’re doing it. You can’t have a game so laser-focused on slaying in style with a protagonist that’s so effectively un-chic. It just can’t be done; our suspension of disbelief will only stretch so far. Capcom knows this. It might not publicly admit it,…

“It felt like this entire universe had opened up to me ” MIKAEL KASURINEN, GAME DIRECTOR, REMEDY “I think my favourite game of all time is Star Control 2 . That game was mind blowing for me, back when I played it for the first time. It felt like this entire universe had opened up to me, where I could go wherever I wanted to and do whatever I wanted to do. There was progression to it as well, where I could build my own ship; the combat deceptively simple, but it was actually very complicated. To me it was a perfect combination of action, adventure and exploration… oh, and the storytelling! You could have dialogue with all of the different space races and I…

BioWare is keenly aware that you won’t want to be wasting time levelling up four separate Javelin suits just to keep pace with your friends. While both your Pilot and Javelins are both individually upgradable and customisable, only one of these has a level tied to progression that you need to feed XP into to improve. Your Pilot has its own level that will improve over the course of the game and, as you level up, you will receive points to upgrade elements of general suit usage such as the ability to fly for longer periods of time without overheating or to improve your mobility in combat. You’ll be able to freely switch between the suits as you please – before embarking on a mission from Fort Tarsis or your…

So many great science-fiction stories work best when their heads are not in the stars. When they look beyond the spectacle of worlds colliding, taking time to zero in on the human condition (or close alien approximation), they reflect back to us something personal. We so often find ourselves propelled to worlds unknown, but it’s the stories that drag us back to the ground, that make these adventures in other times and worlds so relatable and, hopefully, irresistible. An easy point of comparison for Sable would be Star Wars, but not in the way that you might necessarily expect. Consider for a second our introduction to Rey on Jaku, at the 11th minute mark of The Force Awakens; do we find the character so immediately intriguing because we know that…

Strange Brigade is a co-op shooter about a secret British organisation that is fighting the curse of an ancient Egyptian witch. It’s not going to set the world on fire, but it does the core fundamentals well enough to make for a fun co-op shooter. It’s just a shame about everything else that the game has to offer. Let’s start with the positives though. Shooting, while very simple, feels solid. As a shooter, Strange Brigade handles well. It has an arsenal of chunky, satisfying weapons and even manages to make movement, dodging and melee attacks satisfying alongside them. This is matched by decent enemy variety, with all sorts of nasties requiring you to locate different weak spots, plus choose which foe to prioritise and how to herd as…

THERE’S A FINE LINE BETWEEN WELCOME DIFFICULTY AND GENUINE UNFAIRNESS, AND PHANTOM DOCTRINE TRIPS OVER IT MORE THAN A FEW TIMES Relearn what you know about turn-based strategy combat if you’re going to give Phantom Doctrine a go – if you enter thinking this is XCOM 2, that you can hole up and take down wave upon wave of bad buggers and emerge the victorious hero, you’re going to end up with a lot of compromised spies in your Cabal, or a bunch of corpses in the street instead of busy hands working in the forgery lab. While Phantom Doctrine espouses stealthy approaches in its missions, entering each encounter with agents unrecognised or in disguise, able to disconnect security cameras and laser-fence alarms, combat is an…

Bad North pulls the remarkable trick of snatching ideas from many different genres and concocting them into something unique, rather than derivative, in the process. As a real-time tactics rogue-like, it brings in classic elements from each of these genres, along with bite-sized fixes of action that feel purpose-built for mobile gaming, plus the kind of head-down, keep-going momentum that we would expect more from an endless runner. It does all this with a simple, effective art style to boot. The sum total, however, while impressive, isn’t flawless. The styling of the game is gorgeous and oddly brutal despite its simplicity, but that can also make discerning unit types and details in topography challenging in a split second. The difficulty level is tough as nails on Hard, which…

IT SEEMED LIKE everyone wanted to get into videogames during the early Eighties, and Richard Wilcox was no different. After publishing Blue Thunder under the less-than-snappy moniker of Richard Wilcox Software he rebranded the company, teamed up with his brother Steve (who handled sales and marketing) and gave his company a far cooler name – Elite Systems. While it initially focused on original titles like Kokotoni Wilf and Roller Coaster, the brothers soon realised the power of arcade and movie and TV licences and changed their strategy accordingly. The end result was that Elite did extremely well throughout the Eighties and Nineties, only coming undone slightly – as many companies from the time did – with the introduction of 3D gaming and the shift to consoles. In fact it still…

“SEKIRO IS PRIMARILY DESIGNED AROUND SWORDPLAY, TWO-HANDED COMBAT WITH A KATANA TO BE EXACT” FORMAT: PS4, XBOX ONE, PC | PUBLISHER: ACTIVISION | DEVELOPER: FROMSOFTWARE RELEASE: 22 MARCH 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES ■ This is a brand new IP from the creators of Dark Souls – an action game that looks to explore the legend of the ninja. PREPARE TO DIE ■ The focus is on one-versus-one combat scenarios, using reflexes and precision to get in a position of power over some truly monstrous enemies. MOBILITY IS KEY ■ You’ll need to leverage all of the movement and mobility options given to you. This is far faster than the experience presented in the SoulsBourne games. A FRESH START ■ Sekiro represents the future of FromSoftware, with both…

FORMAT: PC | PUBLISHER: UBISOFT DEVELOPER: UBISOFT BLUE BYTE | RELEASE: Q3 2019 | PLAYERS: TBC What is it about city-building simulations that we find so enticing? Those games that allow us to take on the role of the omnipotent planner, looking on from above as thankless citizens put themselves to work in an effort to advance civilisation under our watchful gaze. It probably has a lot to do with control, of course, and the empowerment we can feel from being able to dictate a community’s behaviour. Control is undoubtedly the reason that we gravitate to games such as The Settlers, the legacy RTS returning just in time to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Honestly, we were a little surprised to find Ubisoft bringing this one back into the fold, but…

“IT SEEMS STRANGE, BUT THEN WE CAN’T HELP BUT FEEL AS IF IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE.” FORMAT: PS4, PC, XBOX ONE | PUBLISHER: CAPCOM | DEVELOPER: IN-HOUSE | RELEASE: 25 JANUARY 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 It has been two months since the incident at the Spencer Mansion. Chris Redfield – Point Man for the infamous S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team – is missing in action, prompting his sister Claire to make the long trip down to Raccoon City in search of a few answers. Unfortunately for her, all she finds is a situation that begets more questions; locked in a deadly struggle to survive the outbreak of a deadly virus, forced into an uneasy alliance with rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy as the pair look for a way out of the…

FORMAT: TBC | PUBLISHER: DOTEMU | DEVELOPER: GUARD CRUSH GAMES, LIZARDCUBE | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: TBC Streets Of Rage is back and it’s ready to transport you to a time when gaming was a simpler affair. It’s you and a buddy, roaming the mean streets of Wood Oak City looking to achieve something that the police couldn’t – teaching an upstart crime syndicate a lesson in the only language that they can comprehend: street violence. Streets Of Rage 4 isn’t looking to change the core foundations of the long-dormant series; developers LizardCube and Guard Crush are simply aiming to restore them for a modern audience. The game is still a collection of side-scrolling bouts, offering the same rhythmic flow to melee combat that so many of…

“For me, Anthem really represents that next evolutionary step.” So says BioWare game director Jon Warner as we sit down after an exhilarating hands-on session. As far as the Canadian studio is concerned, this is how it steps forward into its future, but Anthem could well be more than that. The way in which it is merging narrative design and online mechanics could in fact light the path for the next evolution of multiplayer gaming. We’ve been enthused by Anthem from the moment it was revealed at E3 2017, but our extended hands-on experience with the game has made us confident that while it might be compared to the likes of Destiny or The Division, Anthem is entirely its own animal. Evolution can be messy, however. Progress, advancement and innovation…

“ I THINK AN INTERESTING UNIVERSE IS AS IMPORTANT AS A GOOD GAMEPLAY LOOP” Pawel Miechowski, 11 Bit Studios ONE OF THE THINGS WE LOVE ABOUT SURVIVAL GAMES IS THAT THEY TAP INTO THE CORE APPEAL OF PLAYING A VIDEOGAME IN THE FIRST PLACE; TESTING YOURSELF AGAINST THE SYSTEMS THAT A DEVELOPER HAS CREATED TO CHALLENGE YOU. Today that test is against thirst, hunger and fatigue, random encounters with enemy AI or the threat of other human opponents in a sparse open world setting, when previously the test would have been being able to leap from one block to another as fast as possible while avoiding a pursuing ghost. The value is ultimately the same even if the technology now is far more evolved and immersive in…

Ahead of seeing Control in action for the very first time, we were told by Mikael Kasurinen to expect the unexpected, that what we were about to witness would represent “the ultimate Remedy experience”. It’s common for developers to trudge out lines such as this when promoting such widely anticipated projects, but we would eventually understand this to be true. Though it wouldn’t be in a way that we could ever have anticipated. As the demo whirs into action you can feel it wash over you in an instant. A force beckoning you to look beyond that which you believe you can see, daring you to take a glance in a world of perspectives. Control posits that should you look beyond the frayed edges of your own reality, you might…

This is the second time that Remedy has teamed up with Courtney Hope, having previously cast her as Beth Wilder in its Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break. It’s become part of that game’s legend that it went through about as many shifts and alterations as The Oldest House, with one of the biggest being a significant reduction in the role of Wilder (and, by extension, Hope) in the final release. We asked game director Mikael Kasurinen whether that was in any way a factor in the creation of Hope’s new role as Jesse Faden. “No, not really,” he insists. “Of course, we love Courtney Hope and Quantum Break, and we wanted her to have a bigger role in it, a more dedicated gameplay moment in it as well. Her story…

NOT ONCE ARE YOU PULLED OUT OF CHARACTER BY BEING ASKED TO DO SOMETHING THAT FEELS ATYPICAL FOR THE HUMAN-SPIDER HYBRID The beauty of Spider-Man rests as much in what it doesn’t do as what it does. It does embrace the idea of being Spider-Man; it doesn’t do anything else. Every action, mission, side-quest and collectable feels governed by the question: “What would Spider-Man do?” By constantly returning to this point of reference, the resultant design is focused, well-honed and, crucially, makes you feel like Spidey more readily than any comic book game before it. What Insomniac Games has proven here is that placing intelligent limitations on game design allows creators to drill wholly into what is important, heightening the experience through a small number of…

In the vast majority of interactive adventures, the world revolves around you. Your virtual counterpart routinely has a plethora of virtual personalities wholly invested in their plight and eagerly hanging on their every word. This customary facet is surprisingly absent in Planet Alpha. Here, you are a tiny spec, a largely unnoticed presence on a vast alien planet. You witness key events, but you are the mere spectator of a story set on a much grander scale than your own personal struggle for survival. It’s refreshingly divergent and just one of the ways that Planet Alpha offers a unique sci-fi platforming adventure. Another, and more obvious, deviance from the norm comes courtesy of the game’s striking art style. The stunning visuals and vibrant colour palette bring this world, and the…

WITH ITS LUSH VEGETATION AND INFINITIVE NOOKS AND CRANNIES, IT’S DIFFICULT NOT TO GET LOST IN CROFT’S SURROUNDINGS – BOTH FIGURATIVELY AND LITERALLY Lara Croft makes a mistake. It’s an almighty – cataclysmic, even – error of judgment, but perhaps one we’ve been expecting. After all, we’ve spent many years in Croft’s company, and we’ve seen firsthand how audacious she can be. For an archaeologist, she’s peculiarly cavalier about the people and places her adventures destroy along the way, and cares little for the centuries-old architecture that crumbles beneath her scrambling feet, or dissolves in a hail of bullets. Croft’s dogged recklessness continually endangers not just herself, but those around her, too. This is what’s so refreshing about Shadow Of The Tomb Raider (SOTTR). That error unleashes tangible, fatal consequences…

This might seem like a strange thing to say about a game that's set in a post-Brexit future, which constantly reminds you that it’s about Brexit while you’re playing it, but Not Tonight would be better if it wasn’t about Brexit. You play as a Brit who has had their citizenship revoked due to their European heritage and is being forced to work as a bouncer to earn enough cash to avoid being deported. Start working the doors and the debt this game owes to border control simulator Papers, Please, becomes immediately apparent. You begin by checking the IDs of punters to make sure they’re old enough to get in. As you work your way across the bars and clubs of south-west England, fake IDs, bribes,…

■ Get to the sixth level and you end up face-to-face with the fierce animal that is the sabor. Thrusting your spear forward, Tarzan hopes to inflict damage on his enemy as it roars and pounces, ready to take chunks out of our jungle hero, who requires a steady nerve and some nifty leaping out of the way. It’s a nice departure from the full-on platforming that makes up most of the game. ■ As well as proving great fun, collecting the tokens located around the jungle and trying to ensure that you have the lot will earn you a great reward: an extra life for every 100 you manage to collect. ■ The game switches from a young Tarzan to the grown-up version most people are familiar with. In…

1 INTUITIVE MOVEMENT One of the most appealing aspects of Just Cause has always been traversing through its expansive open-world spaces in spectacular fashion, and the latest instalment to the series takes this to another level. Control between the wingsuit, parachute and grappling hook has been refined; Avalanche has invested considerable time into ensuring that it’s more comfortable than ever to chain traversal combos together. 2 BEAUTIFUL WORLD Just Cause 4 is the first game in the series to make use of the studio’s proprietary Apex Engine. This has allowed the studio to really push its tech and toolsets, with Just Cause 4 looking like a game that has been purpose built to indulge all of your ridiculous, destructive impulses. Everything you see in the game – the trajectory of…

WHAT IS DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY? A collaboration between publisher Bandai Namco and Until Dawn developer Supermassive Games, it's a series of intense, standalone horror games in which your decisions and reactions will determine who will and won’t survive the various nightmarish situations that you’re thrown into. IS THIS A PS4 EXCLUSIVE? No. Unlike Until Dawn, Hidden Agenda or the litany of other games that Supermassive has made as Sony exclusives, the entirety of the Dark Pictures Anthology series will come to PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The first story, Man Of Medan, is due to launch early 2019. SO, HOW DOES IT PLAY? To be honest, it plays a hell of a lot like Until Dawn. The mechanical design is very familiar, with you charged with guiding a singular character…

FORMAT: PS4 | PUBLISHER: SEGA | DEVELOPER: RYU GA GOTOKU STUDIOS | RELEASE: TBC 2019 | PLAYERS: 1 The Yakuza team does what it does. It doesn’t seem to care very much about the vagaries of the industry at large or the trends that come and go with each passing breeze. It makes a unique brand of open world, narratively driven action games and Judge Eyes (alternately referred to as Project Judge in some materials) looks to be sticking pretty firmly to that formula while varying some of the structure. Where Yakuza has focused squarely on the criminal underground and the honour (or lack of) among thieves, Judge Eyes places you in the shoes of private investigator Takayuki Yagami who is hot on the heels of a Tokyo serial killer.…

RANGER TYPE: BALANCED ■ A versatile, all-purpose Javelin designed to be adequate at fulfilling multiple combat roles. ULTIMATE MULTI-TARGET MISSILE BATTERY A powerful volley of micro-missiles that can target and obliterate dozens of enemies at a time with truly devastating concussive force. INFO Ranger is the first Javelin that each Anthem player will get their hands on and it will be used throughout the opening missions. This class inherits a variety of attributes from the other three Javelin models available at launch. It’s fast and precise, but doesn’t necessarily allow you to specialise in any one discipline. STORM TYPE: MAGE ■ This Javelin uses elemental force to deal out damage from afar, working best when weaving through the air keeping distance from direct encounters. ULTIMATE: TBC EA is yet to…

HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER: SPECIAL EDITION OTHER FORMATS PS4, Xbox One, PC KEY DIFFERENCES The Special Edition of Hyper Light Drifter features plenty of content that’s entirely exclusive to Nintendo Switch (at least for the time being, that is). The titular Drifter now has access to two additional weapons – the Crystal Shot and the Blade Caster – which offer a very different combat style to the game’s other tools, and a brand new outfit. You can also use the exclusive Tower Climb Challenge, which tasks you with defeating waves of enemies with increasing difficulty. BETTER ON SWITCH? It’s a shame the PS Vita port never saw the light of day, there’s a real magic to playing the intense pixel art action in handheld mode. Running at a silky smooth 60fps,…

AS YOU PLAY YOU’LL BEGIN TO DISCOVER WHERE YOU’RE GOING WRONG, AND THE NEXT ATTEMPT WILL RUN SO MUCH MORE EFFECTIVELY Make no bones about it, this is Theme Hospital 2.0. Within seconds of booting up the game you’ll find yourself back in 1997, the Bullfrog logo sketching itself into your mind and the chainsaw-wielding doctor’s balding visage flooding into your mind’s eye. Even the tone of Two Point Hospital’s intro and its characters harkens back to a time when tycoon games weren’t just feasible products, they were in demand. It pays such close homage to its inspiration that we should by all rights be criticising it. From the grid-based room construction to the quirky machines to cure equally quirky ailments, Two Point Hospital does nothing…

Finally, we have a sports game that puts equal emphasis on play, both with and without the ball. Where NBA 2K18 allowed you to take unfair advantage of certain attacking moves and shot types, NBA 2K19 blesses improved intelligence on its defenders and forces you to think more strategically about how you beat them. The result is a major gameplay and realism improvement, plus a return to form for a series that some feared had lost its way. Perhaps most impressive of all is how Visual Concepts has managed to balance its defence without limiting your attacking opportunities, meaning that scorelines remain as high as before and offensive aspirations aren’t wholly replaced by defensive ones. You do, though, need to embrace a new way of thinking about your attack –…

“It had a level of immersion that is, to my mind, still almost unmatched ” PATRICK MILLS, QUEST DESIGNER, CD PROJEKT RED “Man, we are getting in the Wayback Machine for this one. A game I absolutely love is Ultima VII . It was, in many ways, the first open-world game. You can go out and go absolutely anywhere and, if you know where you are going, you can beat the game in about 15 minutes. It also had a level of immersion that is, to my mind, still almost unmatched. I very rarely see many games that have that level of interactivity with the world and you can see a lot of its influence through The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt…

“IT WAS THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL OF THESE MECHANICS COMBINING TO CREATE A WHOLLY NEW GAMING EXPERIENCE THAT SHOWS THE TRUE INNOVATIVE SPIRIT OF THE GAME” Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo Publisher: Konami Released: 20 March 1997 System: PSone, Sega Saturn HINDSIGHT BEING WHAT it is, we can look back now at the launch of Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night and see beyond its initial poor sales figures and the fact that neither Konami or Sony seemed interested in supporting its PlayStation release with much advertising, and see how important and timely its arrival was for the future of gaming. While the industry at large (and most gamers with it) was intoxicated by the allure of 3D graphics and the new technical feats that could be achieved, the KCET…

SUPER MANIC A 2D platformer most popular in the 8- and 16-bit eras of gaming, but still holding a place in our hearts. The Super Manic game involves a series of linear, largely left-to-right stages, ending with a gate of some kind with an overall level score accumulated through the collection of gold items (rings, coins, whatever), dispatching of enemies and the speed with which the level is completed overall. A perfect vehicle for hardware manufacturer mascots, it also works well in 2.5D format. DUAKE The classic FPS formula, involving a single (probably male) hero tackling swarms of monsters/undead/space Nazis with guns large enough to make Olympic powerlifters wince. The Duake is the purist form of FPS, with everything funnelled towards the ‘down the barrel’ experience. The gun is centrally…