EdgeJanuary 2020的目錄

They say great things come in small packages, and there’s been a fair bit of that in the Edge offices this month (stop laughing at the back). In Knowledge this issue we introduce Analogue Pocket, a tiny handheld console capable of running games for a suite of beloved retro portables. We also recently took delivery of our Google Stadia Founder’s Edition, and the apparent future of interactive entertainment has never come in so small a box. And we catch up, too, with Lego’s modest new internal game-development team, and uncover its plans to build something big out of little virtual bricks. In Hype, as is increasingly the case these days, games made by small teams (one by a husband and wife; another by two childhood friends) comfortably beat the big…

Lego is not just for kids. While many of the Lego videogames have been aimed primarily at a younger audience, their overall quality and sharp sense of humour means that they attract older players, too. Perhaps childhood nostalgia draws us back to the famous brick. But there’s also an undeniably meditative quality to the act of snapping plastic together, of following detailed instructions to the letter and producing something intricate and beautiful, that appeals to those of us looking for a way to escape the large-scale stresses of adult life. Light Brick Studios is a new internal Lego studio dedicated to creating titles that explore different facets of the classic toy. Its first release, Builder’s Journey, is set to hit Apple’s new subscription service in the very near future –…

The idea of a ‘culture war’ sounds peculiarly modern, familiar to most of us from the battles between Republicans and Democrats in the US over issues such as abortion rights or gay marriage, and becoming a more global affair of late with the rise of the so-called ‘alt-right’ and so-called ‘identity politics’. Yet the phrase appears in English as early as 1879, in a history of Germany and Prussia in Napoleon’s time. There, it is said that a ‘culture war’ (from the German kulturkampf) arose in 1819, when university professors became the object of suspicion and censorship. Indeed, though we have not always had the term for it, culture war has been a part of civilised society from the very beginning. In both its senses: first, that political debates focus…

Developer/publisher Kaizen Game Works Format PC Origin UK Release 2020 Most mystery stories, for all the questions they throw at the reader, viewer or player, are founded on certainty. The detective character is a knife, cutting through a tangle of disinformation to reveal the truth. Once they do, it is absolute – mystery solved, no further questions, your honour. But this is very much not the case in Paradise Killer, a murder-mystery game where everything is uncertain. The dizzyingly strange world of alien gods and demons your detective moves through. The kind of game you’re playing, as it flits between 2D visual novel and Unreal Engine-powered firstperson exploration game. And most of all, the nature of its whodunnit – because Paradise Killer promises that there is no single correct answer…

Jeffrey Kaplan started his Blizzard career in 2002 as a quest designer on MMORPG World Of Warcraft; nowadays, he’s vice president of Blizzard Entertainment, and lead designer on the Overwatch series. Here, the public face of the biggest hero shooter on the planet – known as Papa Jeff to his many fans – explains the need for a sequel, ponders what an Overwatch endgame might look like, and prepares to reclaim the storytelling torch from the game’s playerbase. What’s your definition of a sequel, and how does Overwatch 2 fit it? A sequel is a brand-new game, with new gameplay and features as well as an evolution of the game world. Overwatch 2 is clearly a sequel by my definition. We’ve more than doubled the team size from the original…

Format iOS, PS4, Switch Developer Simogo Publisher Annapurna Interactive Origin Sweden Release 2019 Parallel Universes is the 13th, and one of the most conceptually ingenious, of Sayonara Wild Hearts’ 23 tracks. Here, the player character rides a motorbike down a course flanked by a pair of masked twins: the Stereo Lovers. With each snap of their fingers – on Switch, this is accompanied by a small but perceptible buzz of HD Rumble you can feel in your palms – the course shifts between two realities. Click. You steer left to gather a trail of score-boosting hearts. Click. You swerve right to avoid a wall that suddenly appears in front of you. Though from start to finish it lasts no more than 90 seconds, it’s so beautifully executed and thematically fitting…

The fuss around Pokémon Sword & Shield (p106) has been remarkable, and thoroughly depressing given the nature of the games its community purports to adore. Yes, it’s disappointing to see the mainline series’ first home-console appearance be the first to not include the entire Pokédex. But there are more than 1,000 of the critters now, and at some point something had to give. We’re not sure it needed a global hate campaign, but welcome to videogames in 2019. We see similar in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare (p110). As the title suggests, it sees Infinity Ward seek a return to first principles, with a slower, more tactical pace and less gimmicky action than recent CODs have displayed. To players of a certain vintage, who found themselves less able to keep…

Developer/publisher Frontier Developments Format PC Release Out now Planet Zoo is capable of moments of great peace. Those times when you lose yourself in the busywork of building and planting and tweaking, letting the gentle soundtrack guide you into a sort of trance. When you lock the camera into a close-up on your favourite resident – in our case, an incredibly chill red panda – and just watch them do their thing for a while. Or, best of all, when you zoom out into the clouds for that everywhere-the-light-touches view, hit the triple-speed button, and soak in the satisfaction of a machine beautifully designed – before, inevitably, spotting that one thing that could do with improvement and getting sucked right back into that meditative loop of build, plant, tweak, emerging…

Developer/publisher William Chyr Studio Format iOS, PC (tested) Release Out now The infinite monkey theorem holds that, given an infinite amount of time, a monkey seated at a typewriter will eventually recreate the works of Shakespeare. In Manifold Garden, we are the monkey. William Chyr Studio’s physics-led puzzle game, seven years in the making, wields the concept of infinity with unparalleled grace. The same cannot be said of us: our initial attempts at wrapping our heads around its impossible architecture are clumsy, and slow. But Manifold Garden is a space composed of endless patience, where second chances come around, and around, and around. Early on, the game gets one of its own from us. It has to be the most underwhelming opener we’ve seen in a while: we’re trapped in…

With Pocket, Analogue, maker of high-end retro consoles, has finished its mission. This handheld, which is due for release next year for $199, will play Game Boy and Game Boy Advance game cartridges, and Neo Geo Pocket Color, Game Gear and other systems with an adaptor. “I’m just struck every day, thinking, ‘This is it, this is the end of this whole category, just the most elegant, total conclusion to portable gaming’,” founder Christopher Taber claims. They’re brash words. But he’s talking about a project Analogue kicked off in 2014 with the release of the NES-based Analogue Nt and carried through to the Super Nt and Mega Sg, which are easily the best way to play Super Nintendo, Master System and Mega Drive games on modern TVs. With Pocket, then,…

This is usually the point they kick me out of the office. The game is done and apart from final lingering bugs and tiny polish issues, I am banned from entering any new requests or badgering any team member to change anything in the game. We need to close, ship the data to the printers and get the game onto shelves for its January 28 release date. In a normal job, this is the perfect time to take the vacation you have put off for the last nine months, but in the world of videogames one deadline usually just makes way for the next one, which right now means thinking about post-launch content. As a one-team studio this means anything from any initial patches, to downloadable editions, to free items…

Developer Loeding Publisher TBA Format PC Origin Norway Release TBA The opening sequence of this narrative adventure from Norwegian micro-studio Loeding is one of the most distinctive intros we’ve encountered in a long time. It all happens in a child’s mind: 12-year-old Oskar dreams of a world presented in a 2D ASCII aesthetic, with code built from letters and symbols. These form a top-down maze, within which we collect strings of code, allowing Oskar to establish something referred to as ‘true connection’. What follows involves a startling transition that’s almost like an accelerated history of videogames, taking us from the medium’s most rudimentary building blocks to its cutting edge in a matter of moments. As we complete a simple puzzle, nudging a block onto a pressure plate to keep a…

Winter has arrived in Warsaw, a city that needs no further encouragement to look surly. But our welcome to 11 Bit Studios couldn’t be warmer: over beer and pierogi, Pawe? Miechowski speaks fondly of his country, and of the studio he’s been a part of since before it was even called 11 Bit. Metropolis Software was one of the very first game-development studios in Poland: “There were like, ten studios in the country, and compared to the west there was no real knowhow of how to make games – just passion, and love,” he tells us. The studio was co-founded by Adrian Chmielarz and Miechowski’s brother, Gzregorz: its first game was Tajemnica Statuetki, or The Mystery Of The Statuette, which was released in 1991, two years after communism collapsed. It…

Developer Respawn Entertainment Publisher Electronic Arts Format PC, PS4, Xbox One (tested) Release Out now So then, Star Wars: Prepare To Die Edition? Or – apologies in advance – Darth Souls? Not quite. Sure, the FromSoft DNA runs deep in Fallen Order’s veins. It’s there in the meditation spots, the brief save havens where you can rest, unlock new skills and restore your stock of healing items, respawning local enemies in the process. It’s there in the level design, where complex corkscrews of maps become a little simpler to navigate using shortcuts. And it’s in the combat, where enemies hit hard, patience and persistence win the day and receiving a fatal blow means dropping your recent winnings. But it’s not FromSoftware’s 2011 classic that most comes to mind as we…

Developer Infinity Ward Publisher Activision Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now Like the 2007 game of the same name, 2019’s Modern Warfare depicts modern military conflict in uncomfortable, sometimes excruciating detail. And as we’ve become accustomed to from the series, it’s also several distinct modes and experiences under one banner, varying wildly in atmosphere and objectives. And as well-crafted and enjoyable as many of its component parts are, it’s a game that demands – almost goads – close scrutiny of its tonal choices. However, 2019 is not 2007. In the present day, popular opinion’s finger twitches precariously on a hair trigger, so featuring such close analogues to real acts of terror and placing emphasis on civilian casualties and infanticide was always going to carry risks. But 12…

Perhaps in hindsight, the clue was in the title. In games, ‘Founder’s Edition’ can be a loaded phrase; it’s often the label given to a bundle of cosmetics and currencies given to those who pony up for an early-access game. It’s a way to sweeten the pill of being one of the first through the door, on the ground floor, of a building that’s still under construction. So it proves with Stadia’s Founders Edition, which notionally provides you with everything you need to get up and running on Google’s much-vaunted cloud-streaming game platform. Our pack contains a Chromecast Ultra, the latest version of Google’s slender home streamer; a Stadia controller; and, most vitally of all, the access code that unlocks the service for us. The original pitch for Stadia positioned…

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins an SN30 Pro+ controller, compatible with PC and Switch, courtesy of 8BitDo Post script So Kojima Productions demanded journalists complete its new game before a review could be placed, isn’t that somewhat abusive? Doesn’t this help the Metacritic score by demanding such dedication? Considering how seriously gamers take ‘ethics in journalism’, I thought there would be a huge backlash. Anyhow, while I understand that Death Stranding might not get a review, I must admit I am disappointed there likely won’t be a Post Script analysis (love them!). See, I believe the game is on to something great. Virtual worlds are giving players the chance to work on something larger than themselves. Nier:…

As we stand on the cusp of a new decade and a new generation in this rapidly changing industry, it’s easy to get carried away. While it’s a scary time for the world at large, it’s a fascinating time for games, and for the indie scene in particular, which begins the 2020s on fertile ground. Funding has never been so easy to come by, with platform holders and storekeepers willing to de-risk all manner of out-there ideas. Yet that does not mean that small teams are putting their feet up. On the contrary: they are pushing at the boundaries of what indie games mean harder than ever. Perhaps the clearest example of that this month comes from Snow (p36). It’s the work of a small Norwegian team with big ideas,…

Developer Flying Oak Games Publisher Dear Villagers Format PC, Xbox One Origin France Release TBA Roguelikes might have spent 30 years as a fairly niche concern but, here at the end of the 2010s, the subgenre is so thriving that even if you only count the action games, you’ll quickly drown in brilliant examples of the form – with most of them adding their own unique twist to the formula. Look at Noita and its destructible scenery, or Dead Cells’ splicing with Metroidvania DNA. With so much competition out there, a good gimmick seems like the price of entry for a new Roguelike game. But ScourgeBringer isn’t interested in any of that. “We don’t really want to focus on doing something really new or innovative,” developer and game designer Thomas…

Most people associate Halo 2 with the birth of Xbox Live, but Halo 2 did more than simply change the world of online multiplayer; it changed the world of videogame music too. The Halo 2 soundtrack is one of the most ambitious and successful videogame soundtracks that has ever been released, spanning two volumes of music that have shipped over 100,000 copies worldwide. The music in Halo 2 was written by some of its biggest fans – and we don’t just mean the series’ co-composers Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori. An A-list line-up of some of the world’s biggest bands, artists and producers, with a combined total of six Grammys and a billion albums sold between them, all wrote music for the game. The work of Nile Rodgers, Steve Vai,…

STILL PLAYING Ring Fit Adventure Switch We thought the iPad was humanity’s greatest proxy babysitter, but Switch’s fitness curio has it licked: this tires the little horrors out, as well as keeping them occupied. While notionally a singleplayer pursuit, there’s much fun to be had taking turns – but heavens, we need a little more recovery time. We’re normally happy to help our offspring when they’re stuck on a boss battle, but not when our knees are still killing us from yesterday’s session. Slay The Spire PC Yep, still, and we will be for a while – but hey, it’s stopped us writing about Destiny again. When we’re not playing Slay The Spire, we’re thinking about it; when we’re not thinking about it, we’re watching it, and specifically its biggest…

Back in January, reports emerged that Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts, wasn’t particularly happy with his company having the rights to make Star Wars videogames, and never had been. It’s easy enough to see that being the case. The deal was inked before he took his seat in the big chair, negotiated by former CEO John Riccitiello, who now holds the same role at Unity, and Frank Gibeau, ex-head of EA Labels and now CEO of Zynga. While it’s hard to see winning the videogame rights to one of the biggest names in entertainment as anything but a positive, Star Wars was never an ideal fit for a company whose business is built on annual iterations to big-name sports games, and a new Battlefield every other year. EA’s brief…

Developer Game Freak Publisher The Pokémon Company, Nintendo Format Switch Release Out now How fitting for a game set in a fictional version of Britain that the build-up to release has been dominated by endless debates about a controversial split; one which seems destined to rage on long past its due date. You could say it’s an admirable commitment to its setting by Game Freak, though here it’s more than 52 per cent of the national Pokédex that are leaving, and they didn’t have any choice in the matter. Indeed, of the original 151, only 48 remain in their original guises, rising to 54 if we include regional variants. Other popular monsters are also absent: the first mainline Pokémon games developed for a home console will not feature Garchomp, nor…

Developer/publisher Picomy Format iOS Release Out now Sega bright and Nintendo slick, this captivating fusion of arcade game and music sequencer from Dutch studio Picomy shouldn’t work as well as it does – it is, after all, composed almost exclusively of underwater levels. You play, improbably, as a headphone-jack-cum-fishing-plug, attached to a seemingly endless line that snakes smoothly through the water as you guide it with your thumb. We’re not ordinarily fans of virtual stick controls for this kind of game, but rarely do we feel the temptation to reach for our DualShock 4. For all the apparent hurdles Monomals has set for itself, it clears them with effortless grace. Your goal is to collect the eponymous creatures, which lie in wait at the end of each of the seven…