EdgeOctober 2019的目錄

Developer Nintendo EPD, Grezzo Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Origin Japan Release September 20 Remaking a 25-year-old Game Boy game would, on first impression, appear to an odd way to follow Breath Of The Wild; after such a groundbreaking reinvention of the Zelda formula, it seems like a step back in more ways than one. But then shifting to a more traditionalist approach has hardly done Mario any harm in recent years. Besides, Eiji Aonuma has been thinking about returning to Link’s oddest outing for a good few years now. Indeed, when we interviewed him about Breath Of The Wild back in E296, Aonuma alluded to making a game about “living as a thief”. Now, anyone who’s played Link’s Awakening will remember what happens if you steal from the shop (and…

Developer/publisher Gwen Frey Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One Origin US Release 2019 Kine is a bright, upbeat puzzle game about a would-be jazz trio, in which a La La Land-style love story sits alongside deep-cut references to animation terms and gags about Euclidean space. It is, needless to say, unlike pretty much anything else you’ll play this year – which has already caused creator Gwen Frey a few headaches. “I definitely understand how difficult it is to do your job now,” she says. “People say, ‘Describe Kine.’ And I’m like, ‘Can I just show you a GIF? You’ll get it in 30 seconds’.” Or a trailer, even; seek out Kine’s debut teaser for a triumph of short-form storytelling. Otherwise, she says Stephen Lavelle’s Stephen’s Sausage Roll has proved a…

DOOM ETERNAL Developer Id Software Publisher Bethesda Softworks Format PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One Origin US Release November 22 No online game is eternal, but Id’s hoping its new asymmetric multiplayer variant, Battlemode, will engage its playerbase for longer than 2016’s vanilla deathmatches. This snappy best-of-five mode pits a single Doom Slayer against two demons. Slayers have access to portals that zap them to the other side of the map for hasty retreats or table-turning flanking strategies. To make their job more difficult, they’ll need to defeat both demons within a 20-second span, otherwise the first will respawn with their health halved. Meanwhile, Bethesda is promising free post-launch updates, with extra maps and more playable demons. SAVIOR Developer/publisher Starsoft Entertainment Format PC Origin US Release TBA Formerly named Into…

Format PC, Switch Developer/publisher Subset Games Origin US Release 2018 Hold up Into The Breach alongside its peers – the likes of XCOM, Phoenix Point or Mutant Year Zero – and what stands out is the game’s simplicity. Its tactical battles play out on an eight-by-eight square grid, adding up to a campaign that can be won or lost in the time it takes to complete a single mission of XCOM. At first glance, it might not seem like the kind of game that would take over four years to make. But Into The Breach’s simplicity was hard-won – not least because, for most of the development process, its scope was much wider. In 2014, the two-man team of Justin Ma and Matthew Davis, collectively known as Subset Games, were…

The secret of a good Roguelike, or any run-based game, is that reaching game over – taking a killing blow, losing your final unit or plunging the world into darkness – can actually be a highlight. It’s a chance to reflect on what you did wrong and hash out plans that will surely guarantee victory next time. The tragedy of Nowhere Prophet, a card game essentially locked into ‘ironman’ mode, is that it makes losing no fun at all. Which is a shame, because there’s a lot to like here. You lead a caravan of survivors across Soma, a postapocalyptic wasteland. Yes, another one – but where Nowhere Prophet differs is that, alongside all the usual Mad Maxisms, it draws inspiration from the Indian subcontinent. The dusty landscapes are splattered…

You’d think a retro-styled action-adventure would be an ideal fit for The Duffer Brothers’ nostalgiafuelled Netflix hit. Alas, the show’s Amblin-esque blend of coming-of-age drama, sci-fi and schlocky horror is in scant evidence in this frankly tedious adaptation. It’s faithful to its source in a superficial sense, following the plot of the third series so closely that for those who’ve seen it, the whole thing functions as an incredibly long-winded recap. And for those who haven’t, it’s little more than an extended spoiler, not least in the sense that anyone with the patience to reach the end is sure to wonder what all the fuss was about. Given it’s set in 1985, it doesn’t work as an authentic throwback either. A true homage to the time would not look like…

Developer Respawn Entertainment Publisher Electronic Arts Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Release 2019 Not even the bravest industry soothsayers came forward to proclaim Apex Legends heir to the battle-royale throne before it arrived in February. This is a genre full of unlikely success stories and puzzling flops, and making predictions isn’t easy. So when Respawn’s free-to-play game brought over 50 million players to Kings Canyon in its first month, the studio was suddenly faced with all the challenges an enormous and unanticipated userbase brings: server instability, cheaters and the question of how to keep players around in the long term. These are challenges the studio has risen to confidently, calling upon the received wisdom of other stratospheric multiplayer hits such as Call Of Duty and Fortnite by rolling out free…

The Bandersnatch effect is in full flow. Like it or not – and many less well-known, far more experienced interactive fiction writers than Charlie Brooker are, understandably, a bit miffed – the choice based Black Mirror film has put a niche genre in front of millions of eyeballs with startling results. Suddenly, the world is sitting up and paying close attention to the role interactivity can play in previously traditional forms of media, and all the major players are after a piece of the pie, from Netflix to the BBC. All credit to Wales Interactive, then, which has spotted a chance to offer its considerable expertise in the genre to help guide a whole other industry through the wilds of gamified stories. WIST is its brand-new, internally developed interactive fiction…

Love is a team sport – but you don’t see many videogames in which romantic partners use their bond to take down enemies. Haven is the story of a couple that elopes to a deserted planet. Visually, it’s inspired by the bright colours and graphic shapes of Persona, Gravity Rush and Studio Ghibli, a marriage of eastern and western aesthetics. Tall grass sways as the characters glide over it. “While exploring, they have a lot of interactions in their moveset – holding hands, hugging, kissing,” creative director Emeric Thoa says. “And in combat, they team up like beach volleyball players, which helps you feel their bond.” The fights might look turn-based, but are actually realtime: you load orders by holding buttons, then release them to trigger actions in sync with…

COMIC Watch_Dogs #2: Second Chance bit.ly/watchdogscomic Watch Dogs is a weird old thing, requiring unexpectedly delicate handling. Playing into the hacker fantasy is key, in our opinion: add too much gritty realism and heartbreaking family drama, as Ubisoft did with the first game, and it all becomes a bit too maudlin to be fun. Simon Kansara’s comic book adaptation stars 17-year-old Brazilian hacker Sauda, who’s on a mission to sniff out and take down the drug lords terrorising her home country. It’s a thrilling premise, but its extended scenes of violence and people standing around saying not very much in dim rooms continue into this second part, which isn’t the sunny summer read we’d hoped for. Still, if you’re after something darker than Watch Dogs 2’s San Franciscan japes, this…

Developer Supermassive Games Publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Origin UK Release August 30 Not all horror stories involve stupid college students, marauding spirits and fountains of gore. Some horror stories are real. Okay, ‘horror’ might be too dramatic a word, but there’s no denying that Supermassive Games has had a rough old time of things lately. The success of choice-based schlock-horror drama Until Dawn thrust the studio firmly into the limelight back in 2015; its activity since then suggests it wasn’t entirely prepared for it. Moving to a multi-project model and continued prioritisation of high-fidelity visuals above all has proved quietly disastrous for Supermassive, with tightly squeezed teams and shorter development cycles producing some experimental but poor-quality work. It’s a relief, then, to see the developer…

Everyone needs a pat on the back now and again – an acknowledgement of one’s efforts. In Dragon Quest Builders 2, however, gratitude literally pours out of the people you’re helping in the form of small, collectable hearts. You then have the joy of running around to gather them up – or, perhaps, striking the town bell and watching them all zoom towards you in one go. If there’s a better visual indicator in videogames of the satisfaction of a job well done, we can’t name it. Indeed, almost everything in this sandbox is designed to please. The way its JRPG structure guides and encourages gentle creativity is a holdover from the first game: as much as this might look like Minecraft with a little Square Enix magic sprinkled on…

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and Fantasy Strike’s is woeful. It’s been designed to demystify a famously complex genre while retaining the essence of what makes fighting games so thrilling. The introductory tutorial, however, makes a complete hash of it. “Attack the sparring partners with A,” we’re told. So, naturally, we press the A button, and the tutorial fails to advance. A quick look at the onscreen key tells us that our A attack is actually on the Y button, B is X, C is A and J is B. To David Sirlin – the designer behind the remade, rebalanced version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and a sequel to chess – this all doubtless makes perfect sense. So too must the art…

Nintendo has never held much truck with convention, but it’s still surprising to witness a hardware announcement accompanied by a trailer illustrating what it can’t do. So it was with the debut of the Switch Lite, a more compact, lightweight revision dedicated to handheld play – and which, as demonstrated by Yoshiaki Koizumi, fits within the inside pocket of a suit jacket. It will come in at $100 cheaper than its older sibling, thanks to a host of cost cutting changes. There’s no dock or HDMI cable, since Switch Lite won’t connect to your TV. Controls are integrated, so no more Joy-Cons – which in turn means no IR Camera. You can say goodbye to HD Rumble, too, while the absence of a kickstand rules out tabletop mode. Here, in…

“The audience is absolutely ruthless, and we should never suspect for a second that they’re not. They don’t care how many people died making the product. At the end of the day, it’s about the quality of what’s on screen.” Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning weighs in on the crunch debate. For the record, seven people died in the production of this issue of Edge “I am now selling my bath water! This is what humanity has come to.” Self-styled ‘gamer girl’ Belle Delphine proves the old adage about fools and their money endures “It’s like having a movie in a cinema and half the people walk out. We have a serious problem with people not even finishing our games, and still people complain about replayability.” Josef Fares continues to be…

Developer Crystal Dynamics Publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS4, Stadia, Xbox One Origin US Release May 15 The optics of Marvel’s Avengers have so far crumbled under the weight of scrutiny, but behind the scenes things are looking quietly confident. Yes, the singleplayer demo does look overly choreographed, stuffed to the gills with quicktime events. But amid it all, there are brilliant flashes of the fastidious and creative individuals behind it all. After watching Thor’s hammer and Captain America’s shield bounce around rooms at their beck and call, we’re not entirely surprised to find ourselves shaking hands with Vince Napoli, the designer behind Kratos’ weighty, recallable Leviathan Axe. Next, we’re introduced to Shaun Escayg, previously creative director on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. These are people with a track record of…

Developer Wayforward Publisher Arc System Works Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One Origin US Release September 5 Well, we suppose it’s about time: it has taken 33 years and almost 20 games, but Kunio-kun has finally got himself into trouble he can’t escape from alone. The star of River City Ransom has been kidnapped, along with his brother in arms Riki Samejima; as you might have guessed from the title it’s up to their girlfriends, Kyoko and Misako, to find them, face down their captors, and unshackle their chains. River City Girls may subvert one of the oldest story setups in games, but mechanically it’s largely happy to conform to type. This isn’t so much a retro pastiche as it is the continuation of a lineage – though naturally a…

We’ve been on a few studio tours in our time, but we have never seen anything quite like this. Rebellion’s new digs are spread across multiple cavernous buildings, a former printing press spanning 220,000 square feet, sat on a 12.5 acre plot. A walking tour takes half an hour and, we’re assured, barely scratches the surface. When Rebellion CEO and co-founder Jason Kingsley visited it for the third time, he went off on his own, poking around. “I was like a child going to a new house,” he tells us, “charging around like a lunatic, looking for dens and stuff like that. It was filthy, but it was absolutely brilliant. It felt like I was urban exploring – except we own it.” Kingsley describes Rebellion, which he co-founded in Oxford…

Rain is falling on the morning of November 14 as the 8.15 to Rathaus Spandau pulls away from Falkensee Bahnhof. A vertical blade pulls across the sheer windscreen, neatly dividing the glass into wet and not-wet. Cobbles beneath the wheels rattle the frame of the bus until it reaches the main road, where the percussion becomes irregular, kicking in at intervals as the wheels dip in and out of potholes. These pockmarked streets are shared with the Trabants, the boxy sedans which had seemed so modern in the 1950s; now, in 1989, their missing turn signals make them an antiquated hazard. Nobody gets off at the last stop before the border checkpoint, a fresh breach in the Wall that opened up for traffic just yesterday. For decades, passing through could…

Bernadetta von Varley was a shrinking violet when we arrived at Garreg Mach Monastery. Painfully introverted, she’d rather shut herself in her dorm room than socialise with her classmates. But look at her now. We’re approaching the end of a hard-fought battle, and the enemy commander mockingly sneers at her as she nocks another arrow. Five seconds later, his breastplate pierced with laser precision, he falls from his horse and croaks his last. Our heart swells. Yes, we might have to do something about her apologising before every shot, but our star pupil has become our deadliest sniper. We honestly couldn’t be prouder. Transforming apparent no-hopers into one-hitkillers has always been one of the great pleasures of Fire Emblem. But in a series that’s held nature and nurture in balance,…

Only a tiny percentage of iOS games have a dedicated screenshot button. It’s hard to imagine any of them – even Monument Valley’s – being used as frequently as Sky’s. You might think it’s hard to inspire wonder on a screen you can hold in your hand, yet Thatgamecompany’s latest manages it. You’ll find yourself gazing at a distant tower, its minarets poking above glowing clouds; later you’ll ride a shimmering manta ray inside a planetarium blanketed in stars. By the end, you’ll probably have an email from Apple inviting you to increase your iCloud storage. Yet stills can’t capture a game that draws so much power from the way it moves and feels. A single onscreen button – part of a minimalist interface that’s almost invisible when you’re in…

Developer/publisher Atlus Format PS3, PS4 Release 2016 The city is a usually a cultural symbol of liberal values, a place where anything goes. In Persona 5, it’s a prison. When your character arrives in Tokyo at the start of the game, the first thing Persona 5 does is lock the city down, subjecting you to its systems of control and surveillance. There’s no escape, no matter where you go. You’re a prisoner of fate, of social hierarchy, even of your own mind. Except with Persona there’s always another hidden dimension. It doesn’t want to crush your spirit so much as fire it up until it explodes. Much of the Persona formula is well suited to representing confinement. For one, the quantity of dialogue and exposition means that for the first…