Table of contents for No. 174 in GamesTM

It’s our ability to make decisions that truly makes us human. Whether you loathe or love Activision’s decision to bundle Modern Warfare Remastered in with the upcoming Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare, you, ultimately, have the decision to choose whether to purchase it or let it pass you by. The publisher has elected to make the full HD remaster of Call Of Duty 4 available to players who are willing to put down money for Infinite Warfare’s Legacy(£79.99), Legacy Pro(£109.99), and Digital Deluxe(£79.99) editions. The news has made the shouty minority furious, the internet aggressively asserting that the remaster should either be sold separately or canned entirely, paving way for the unaltered 2007 release to be made available through backwards compatibility services. But don’t let nostalgia force you to pull…

“The proprietary Luminous Studio engine doesn’t seem capable of handling the highly ambitious project” CONCEPT • After a messy development period, Final Fantasy XVis finally in sight under the guidance of director Hajime Tabata, famed for his work on the Crisis Core and Type-0 spin-offs INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PS4 Origin: Japan Publisher: Square Enix Developer: In-house Release: 30 September 2016 Players: 1 Developer Profile Game director Hajime Tabata has paid his dues over the years with various Final Fantasyspin-offs and handheld expansions. Now is his opportunity to stamp his own influence on the main series and he seems to be making a raft of changes as a result. Developer History Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII 2004 [Multi] The 3rd Birthday 2010 [Multi] Final Fantasy Type-0 2011 [PSP] Final…

1 MANUAL SAMUEL Format: PC, Xbox One, PS4 Publisher: Curve Digital Developer: Perfectly ParaNormal ETA: Summer 2016 Given the option by a sadistic Grim Reaper type, would you rather live for 24 hours or spend an eternity in hell? Ah, wait, before you answer, there’s a caveat (isn’t there always); if you decide to take the 24 hours, you’ll need to control your every action. And when we say every action, we mean it – this includes having to move limbs independently of one another and control your own breathing. It can make even the smallest tasks, such a getting dressed or going to the bathroom, an unfortunate and hilarious mishap waiting to happen. And that’s Manual Samuel for you; described by its creators as “Monkey Island meets QWOP,” it’s…

NINTENDO IS EAGER to avoid the numerous missteps it has made with the Wii U and, in a very different way, the 3DS. Speaking during the 75th Nintendo AGM, the late Satoru Iwata spoke extensively about the problem launches of its recent hardware and how it plans on avoiding making them again. “For Wii U in particular, in cannot be said that it had a successful launch. As for Nintendo 3DS, in Japan there was a temporary slowdown but we managed to make a recovery by offering a number of initiatives collectively. On the other hand, Wii U had not been able to recover at this point in time,” he says, adding, “with regard to the launch of Nintendo 3DS and Wii U not necessarily having progressed well and not…

“We were conscious of trying not to simply make it Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2.0,” Szczepkowski recalls. “The creative angle of the game has changed – story, art direction, setting, and characters – so it was important for us to build upon the strong foundation, but also to let it stand on its own.” Having defined the synth soundscapes behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution, composer Michael McCann set about expanding on his previous work. As with Zur and Graves’ work on Fallout 4 and Far Cry Primal respectively, musical interactions in Mankind Divided are dictated by the game’s systems, responding to in-game actions rather than predetermined cues. “We took the elements that worked well in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and tried to expand on them,” Szczepkowski adds. “We’ve created a…

STAR FOX ZERO IS A NOSTALGIC THROWBACK TO THE INNOCENCE OF THE N64 AGE DETAILS FORMAT: Wii U ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: Platinum Games PRICE: £44.99 RELEASE: Out Now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: No You know what? We’re going to have some fun here before we get into the nasty business of picking through the smouldering wreckage of this Arwing crash-site; the charred remains of Fox McCloud a testament to Nintendo’s inability to properly utilise its own hardware, let alone take command of a franchise that’s had more misadventures than recorded successes in its 23 years of galactic service. Here we go: the games that have made fantastic use of the Wii U’s second screen capabilities, we want you to count them. Okay, your time is up. Now please,…

DETAILS FORMAT: PC ORIGIN: UK PUBLISHER: Chucklefish Games DEVELOPER: ConcernedApe PRICE: £10.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 MINIMUM SPEC: 2GHz, 2GB RAM, 500MB HDD space, 256MB VRAM ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Stardew Valley is a game about jobs – cool jobs you’ll probably never have in real life. In fact, its entire premise is about escaping the monotony ofthe dreaded desk job anddisappearing far away, to a decrepit farm left to you in your grandfather’s inheritance. From there, it’s up to you as owner to cultivate the land, forage, fish, mine for ore, and get to know the locals. It can feel a little aimless at first, but the leisurely pace quickly puts you at ease and you fall into a rhythm with whatever you enjoy doing. The tutorials are deliberately…

DETAILS FORMAT: Oculus Rift ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Oculus DEVELOPER: Playful Corp PRICE: Free with Oculus Rift RELEASE: Out now MINIMUM SPEC: Oculus Rift / HTC Vive, Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD 290, 8GB Ram, Windows 7, 2 x USB 3 ports, HDMI 1.3 video output PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Ever since Sega decided it needed a rival to Mario, cute human-animal hybrids have been the standard platformer protagonists, especially when launching a new device. Think Knack for the PS4, Sonic for the Genesis, Banjo, Spyro and the rest. And now Lucky, Oculus Rift’s bipedal fox. Like the vulpine protagonist himself, Lucky’s world is a totally familiar one. Bouncy mushrooms, achingly-slow enemies and endless collectibles. It’s bright, clean and quite obviously a game world. It’s a perfect example of taking…

CODEMASTERS HAS BECOME one of the most established names in the UK games industry and has been running for a staggering 30 years. Famed in recent times for its racing games, it’s been responsible for a number of notable driving franchises, including TOCO, Colin McRae and the GRID series and has never been afraid to dabble in other genres too with various degrees of success. The Codemasters story actually begins in the early Eighties with Richard and David Darling. Fascinated with computers from an early age, they fell in love with coding and were soon making games, first for Mirrorsoft and Jetsoft and then for budget Kings Mastertronic. Rather than spend their money on whatever teenagers were interested in in the early Eighties, the brothers instead decided to create their…

• Towards the end of the Nineties, thanks to sophisticated technology and a few visionary developers, open-world games started to bloom. By 2001, the revolution was well underway. Fifteen years later, sandbox games remain incredibly popular. Here’s how it happened… 1997 1997 kicked off with Final Fantasy VII, the first instalment of Square’s longstanding RPG franchise to go fully 3D. The first ever Fallout then arrived in September, quickly followed by the original Grand Theft Auto. 1998 Baldur’s Gate, Thief: The Dark Project and Fallout 2 all released in 1998, giving players vast environments to explore and multiple ways to achieve their goals. Even platformers caught the open-world bug: levels in Spyro The Dragon and Banjo-Kazooie were accessed via a sandbox “overworld.” 1999 Grand Theft Auto 2 continue to push…

“What’s worse is that in 2015 Microsoft introduced the perfect platform to showcase Legends ” We’re all partly to blame for the unceremonious end to the Fable franchise. Microsoft is certainly to blame for the way in which it chose to promote Fable Legends in the first place, a mistake dating back to 2013; Lionhead is to blame for the way it forcibly kept Xbox One owners out of the loop, shackling beta players with a non-disclosure agreement to restrict conversation. Uninformed members of the press then covered the game poorly, mislabelling it as a MOBA and writing off Lionhead’s new ‘Games as a Service’ studio mantra before it was given a chance to succeed; the franchise fans that screamed oh-so loudly into the void certainly didn’t help, aggressively lashing…

“It’s incredible to me how Quake laid down the rules for full 3D first-person shooters for years to come ” SEAN MURRAY, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, HELLO GAMES “I would always say that two of my favourite games are Super Mario 64 andQuake, but given the 20th anniversary, I’ll say Quake this time. I love it because it made me want to get into games. Seeing it, I had played lots of games, but now I had to make games. It’s incredible to me how Quake laid down the rules for full 3D first-person shooters for years to come. Multiplayer, deathmatch, online and all that kind of thing. It just got it all right first time. And for five years afterwards most of the other games were not as good,…

CONCEPT • Venture into a near-infinite universe of planets with procedurally-generated systems, landscapes, animals, plants and aliens and more INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, PC Origin: UK Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Developer: Hello Games Release: 21 June 2016 Players: Massively Multiplayer Developer Profile Hello Games burst onto the scene with the indie hit Joe Danger and continued to support its stunt-bike hero with sequels and expansions across multiple platforms before starting work on this massive new undertaking. Developer History Joe Danger 2010 [Multi] Joe Danger 2: The Movie 2012 [Multi] High Point Successfully launching the original Joe Danger as a four-person team back in 2010 was a great start, but No Man’s Skyis far and away this studio’s biggest achievement to date. As the launch approaches, it only looks more impressive.…

It can often feel as if Blizzard is living in a world of its own. That can often be misinterpreted as a defiant show of arrogance, but as far as we’re concerned the studio has earned itself a little leeway. World Of Warcraft is entering its twelfth year of dedicated, time-slaying service, and it shows no signs of letting up. Even as subscriber numbers continue to dwindle – though 5.6 million players are still estimated to be rallying for the Alliance and Horde armies of Azeroth – it still swaggers about the MMO scene as its competition continues to barely keep their heads above water. And yet there might be some sense to that swagger; World Of Warcraft: Legion looks as absorbing as it does dangerous for anybody still foolish…

THERE ARE SOME games that attract players in their tens of millions and, upon release, have people queuing outside a starkly-lit supermarket at some ungodly morning hour. Third-person shooters can have this effect; football games, too. But strategy games tend to split opinion and have one set of gamers flocking in droves and another dropping their keyboard and dashing in the opposite direction as fast as that guy in Canabalt. Wargaming – best known for World Of Tanks – is hoping to change some minds. It is taking an old game – the 1993 turn-based sci-fi strategy title Master Of Orion – and it is updating it to better suit 21st Century tastes. In doing so, Wargaming wants to open up the 4X genre to many more gamers. “We have…

UNCHARTED 4 IS DRIVEN BY CHARACTER RATHER THAN PLOT AND THAT MEANS EVERYTHING FEEDS BACK INTO THE DEEPER DRAKE TALE DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 ORIGIN: USA PUBLISHER: Sony Computer Entertainment DEVELOPER: Naughty Dog PRICE: £49.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 (2-10 Online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes Naughty Dog is simply better at this than anyone else. When it comes to marrying narrative and gameplay, creating an interactive adventure where you can be both participant and audience, agent of events in the game and spectator of the drama, this developer is ahead of all others. It gets the balance right again and again, and Uncharted 4 is one of its best examples of that. We’ll say right out of the gate that this isn’t quite on Uncharted 2’s level in terms of action…

DETAILS FORMAT: 3DS ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Nintendo DEVELOPER: Level-5 PRICE: £34.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-2 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A It’s impossible to talk about Yo-Kai Watch without addressing the Snorlax in the room. Much as Nintendo would go to great pains to stress that its latest Japanese export can co-exist with the Pokémon series, it’s clear that for Yo-Kai to enjoy the same success in the west as it has in Japan it’s going to have to draw attention away from fans of Pikachu and chums. Based on what’s on offer here, that may be something of an uphill battle. Players take on the role of a child who encounters Whisper, a Yo-Kai (ghost), who gives them a special watch. The watch lets you see and interact with other Yo-Kai,…

DETAILS FORMAT: Xbox One OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PC ORIGIN: France PUBLISHER: Ubisoft DEVELOPER: Nadeo PRICE: £29.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-4 (1-32 Online) ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes More racers should start with your car being dropped by a helicopter onto the track. It’s a simple, visceral thrill that really sets the light and silly yet competitively intense tone of TrackMania Turbo. And this is a game with plenty of thrilling moments to it, it’s just a shame that it can be interspersed with so much tedium. The TrackMania series has been pushing arcade racing speed and insanity for over a decade, creating a hybrid of twitch control driving and nearrollercoaster levels of track design to make an experience unlike anything else. TrackMania Turbo continues that legacy and at its best, it…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 ORIGIN: US PUBLISHER: Sony DEVELOPER: Insomniac Games PRICE: £29.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A It’s rare to find a videogame so singularly intentioned as Ratchet & Clank. From its visuals to its audio, its platforming to its shooting, its levels to its cutscenes, this is a game focused on delivering one thing: enjoyment. Too often, fun and escapism are conflated with idiocy. “Dumb fun” and “mindless escapism” are phrases too often used to describe videogames’ unique form of light entertainment, but Ratchet & Clank is surprisingly smart. The environments are full of life and colour, but still lean and easy to navigate. The missions have depth and require skill, but never drag on. And the writing is razor sharp and everyone is solidly characterised.…

THE ORIGINAL ’CAPCOM Five’ was a launch collection of the most exciting games of the GameCube era, even if one of them didn’t actually make it to the system. Resident Evil 4, P.N.03, Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe, and the cancelled Dead Phoenix represented a commitment from Capcom to back Nintendo’s console in a big way. Many of these games would prove to be hugely influential, with Viewtiful Joe pushing combo-driven combat, Resi 4 revolutionising horror and third-person shooters, and Killer 7 opening up the door to grown-up, surrealist experiences (Deadly Premonition feels like it has some roots here). But perhaps just as important were the games that the producers and directors behind the Capcom Five would go on to make. Shinji Mikami, Hideki Kamiya, Atsushi Inaba, Hiroyuki Kobayashi and Goichi…

“The game isn’t about racism, but we’re definitely not shying away from it. It’s necessary for us to be authentic to the time and place”.HADEN BLACKMAN, CREATIVE DIRECTOR & STUDIO HEAD CONCEPT • This is no mere rags-to-riches Italian Mafia story, it’s a non-traditional take on the genre as you look to unite the various mobs found in Sixties southern America and take control of the streets for yourself INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PS4 Origin: USA Publisher: 2K Games Developer: Hangar 13 Release: 7 October 2016 Players: 1 Developer Profile Hangar 13 rose from the ashes of 2K Czech, the original developer of the Mafia franchise. When the studio shut its doors in 2014, resources and staff were routed to the new outfit in California headed up by ex-LucasArts…

“ It’s a way for us to dig into things that happen in our world, like mass surveillance”ERIK ODELDAHL, DESIGN DIRECTOR, DICE CONCEPT • No sooner is Faith released from prison than she’s back in the fold of her adopted family: the runners. Can she continue to fly under the radar of the corporate dictatorship? INFORMATION Details Format: PS4, Xbox One, PC Origin: Sweden Publisher: EA Developer: DICE Release: 9 June Players: 1 Developer Profile DICE has been one of the premier FPS developers for the last 14 years starting with Battlefield 1942. However it continues to innovate and experiment with the viewpoint as 2007’s Mirror’s Edge proved. Developer History Battlefield 2 Multi [2005] Mirror’s Edge Multi [2008] Battlefield: Bad Company Multi [2008] Battlefield 4 Multi [2013] High Point Last…

“Players will lead the fight for a new home in hostile territory” CONCEPT • After letting the dust settle for a few years after Mass Effect 3, BioWare is back with Andromeda; the game that’s going to kick off a new trilogy and bring the franchise into a new generation INFORMATION Details Format: Xbox One, PS4, PC Origin: Canada Publisher: EA Developer: BioWare Release: Q1 2017 Players: 1-TBC Developer Profile Bursting onto the scene with Baldur’s Gate (after its mech opener of Shattered Steel), BioWare has come to specialise in RPGmaking of the highest order. From Knights Of The Old Republicto Dragon Age: Inquisition, it has continued to pursue new levels of story-telling excellence. Developer History Baldur’s Game 1998 [PC] Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2003 [Xbox, PC]…

INFORMATION As the orcs flee their dying land of Draenor, the humans of Azeroth stand in fear of their approach and prepare for war. As the Dark Portal opens the gates between these two worlds, is war between these two peoples inevitable? DETAILS Release: 10 June Director: Duncan Jones Screenwriters: Charles Leavitt, Duncan Jones Cast: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell Distributor: Univeral Pictures Running Time: 123 mins There’s no surefire recipe for success in Hollywood. That seems to be doubly true when you consider the procession of awful videogame-based films we’ve had to endure over the years. Whether it’s a terrible casting decision, a mishap in the editing room or simply a mismatched director and script, videogame adaptations are rarely good for anything more than…

“EVERYONE KNOWS I HAVE THE POWER TO SAY ‘DO THIS FEATURE BECAUSE I SAID SO’, BUT YOU’D RATHER CONVINCE SOMEBODY IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO” Cliff Bleszinski is as close to a game development rockstar as this industry has ever known. Like many of the great pop stars there have been nicknames, personas, and a sense of a creative evolution that has inspired and driven the industry he contributes to. He was of course originally Clifford Michael Bleszinski, a native of North Andover, Massachusetts, creator of The Palace of Deceit: Dragon’s Plight when he was just 17 years old and later Jazz Jackrabbit. He would go on to became the face of Gears Of War, perhaps more so than its lead character Marcus Fenix. The man we sit with…

A lot of the development still left revolves around the game’s artificial intelligence. Work began on the AI relatively late in the game’s development. “We couldn’t start making improvements until we had most of the features in,” Keeling tells us. But one of the recent updates included improvements to behaviour in terms of diplomacy, colony management and expansion, with Wargaming pointing out that the AI was better at utilising ship upgrades including systems and weapons. That said, some issues emerged in Early Access 3, which the developers sought to quickly fix. “It has been our primary emphasis during Early Access,” Keeling continues. “We’re going to continue to build on it as we continue toward launch and we also expect that there will be player mods that will create new AI…

DETAILS FORMAT: PS4 OTHER FORMATS: Xbox One, PC ORIGIN: US PUBLISHER: Devolver Digital DEVELOPER: Dodge Roll PRICE: £10.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A Enter The Gungeon is the bastard spawn of a roguelike and an arcade shooter after a night of hard liquor and too many John Woo movies. And what a glorious mashup it is – after selecting from a number of gun-toting tropes (hello, Marine, Convict, Pilot and more) you’d be lulled into thinking this is going to be another tongue-in-cheek throwaway that’s more concerned with cultural references than actual gameplay, but from the off Enter The Gungeon throws you into its pixel art world in a hail of gunfire, death and glory. Make no mistake, Enter The Gungeon will punish you. It’ll kick you…

DETAILS FORMAT: 3DS ORIGIN: Japan PUBLISHER: Square Enix, Nintendo DEVELOPER: Silicon Studio PRICE: £39.99 RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1 ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A From an opening battle where your overpowered warriors are struck down in seconds to a strange encounter with a warrior maiden, Bravely Second does everything you’d expect from a classic JRPG. Except it definitely isn’t a classic JRPG; it’s knowing and it’s self-aware. It’s everything its predecessor was, but taken onestepfurther. While Final Fantasy isoff focusing on all these new ‘fantasies set in reality’ and whatnot, Bravely Default is filling the resulting void that this shift has created: if you yearn for the days of Final Fantasy through Final Fantasy VI, do yourself a favour and buy this game immediately. The battle system hasn’t changed too much since…

BECAUSE OF ALL THE DODGING, DOGFIGHTING AND BOOSTING, YOU’LL FEEL LIKE YOU’RE BEING FLUNG ALL OVER THE PLACE DETAILS FORMAT: Oculus Rift OTHER FORMATS: PS4, PSVR, PC, HTC Vive ORIGIN: Iceland PUBLISHER: CCP Games DEVELOPER: In-house PRICE: £59.99 (Or free with Oculus Rift) RELEASE: Out now PLAYERS: 1-16 MINIMUM SPEC: Oculus Rift / HTC Vive, Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD 290, 8GB Ram, Windows 7, 2 x USB 3 ports, HDMI 1.3 video output. ONLINE REVIEWED: Yes When you first start to play, you do just sit there and gawp. Clever engineering and VR magic tells your brain that you really are in the place you’re seeing. And with EVE: Valkyrie, that means you become almost, almost convinced that you’re actually the pilot of a space fighter craft. There you…

“I never anticipated a slow naval battle with big open waters being this engaging – I was wrong!” STEVE SUPERVILLE, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, EPIC GAMES “The game that I’m most recently hooked on that I just never expected to enjoy at all is World Of Warships. Right now, I’m playing two games every evening until two in the morning; I’m alternating between Paragon – that game we’re making – and World Of Warships. It has captured me in a way that… I don’t even know how to describe it! It has such a sense of anticipation and foreboding; when you know a battleship has just fired at you and you see a salvo gently drift through the air, wondering whether you will turn out of the way in time or whether…

THE WORLD SHIFTS AROUND JOE. IT’S ALMOST AS IF HE IS ZOOMING THROUGH AN ELEGANTLY BUILT SET Released: 26 June 2003 Publisher: Capcom Developer: In-house System: GameCube THERE ISN’T ANOTHER action game on the planet that evokes the same sentiment of stylish, unbridled joy as the original Viewtiful Joe. Even now, 13 years on from its original release, it’s still a masterclass in fluid action; Hideki Kamiya’s fast and furious love letter to cinema and a dying breed of game design. If you take yourself back to 2003, you’ll find Nintendo in a familiar situation: struggling to sell hardware and prove to perspective third-party studios that its latest console – the GameCube – was worthy of supporting. Capcom responded in force, pushing five console exclusives into the pipeline as a…

CHILLBLAST FUSION TRISTAR GAMING PC MANUFACTURER: CHILLBLAST PRICE: £1999.99 WE WOULD FORGIVE you for thinking that given the Tristar’s imposing and unique frame you might be paying mostly for the design of this prebuilt gaming PC from Chillblast, but after our tests with the hardware, that would be an incorrect assumption. This immensely powerful rig compares very favourably with the much more conservative models this team has to offer. The design is rather exceptional, though, and if you like your PC setup to make a statement as well as run top of the line games then this is far and away the most intimidating piece of kit Chillblast has to offer. The Chillblast Fusion Wolf offers similar specs and internals for about £400 less, but compared to its sedate black…