Table of contents for Xmas 2021 in Edge

For a good while, ‘NFT’ has been just another entry in a long list of threeletter initialisms that was easy to ignore. Like so many technological fads before it, the thinking went, it would surely simply fizzle out. But with millions of dollars of investment in the space, an explosion of players in blockchainpowered games, and now the highprofile involvement of Will Wright, it’s clear that it’s not going away. And that’s despite Valve going so far as to amend Steam’s publishing rules to outright ban any applications that trade in cryptocurrencies or NFTs. The question today is becoming inevitable: what legitimacy, if any, do these technologies have within videogames? For the uninitiated, NFT stands for non-fungible token – meaning one that is unique and not interchangeable with a similar…

Kepler Interactive is making some big promises. Coming from the people who brought us the Kowloon Nights fund, and backed to the tune of $120m by Chinese tech firm NetEase, it’s claiming to have constructed a new model for independent game development: a major publisher co-owned and run by (currently) seven developers – A44, Alpha Channel, Awaceb, Ebb Software, Shapefarm, Sloclap and Timberline Studio. At a time when self-publishing is on the rise, alongside a surge in indie developerpublishers, it feels that the model’s benefits need some unpicking. It turns out that we needn’t have looked any further than Kepler’s reveal trailer. Not so much its contents – though it’s a stylish intro to its studios’ games – but rather how it was made. “It was really like a symphony…

Even if you’d managed to miss the buzz around Doom mod Thatcher’s Techbase, within five minutes of play it’s clear why it has struck a chord. Following a brief pre-title and playable credits sequence comes a text introduction that cheekily references The Rise Of Skywalker, likening the surprise return of the former Conservative leader to the equally unwelcome reappearance of Emperor Palpatine. To defeat this deadly threat, it says, “you have no choice but to head to the tenth circle of Hell”. There’s a brief pause for a paragraph break that really sells the cathartic punchline: “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” “It’s funny,” the mod’s creator, Jim Purvis, says. “That was literally ten seconds – me and Richie, the guy who made the trailer, were like,…

While I can trot out any number of more obscure interactive fiction titles or pieces of cinema and literature that have gotten me to the place I currently inhabit as a game director and writer, it’s fair to say that Metroid has been the thing that has inspired me the most. It’s Samus who points to the future and crystallises for me why videogames are the medium worthy of my labour. Staring at a map screen. Looking at the negative space carved out by the rooms I have discovered and trying to imagine which chunks of darkness hide secret areas. Looking for a telltale gap or a dead end that might be worth investigating. Sometimes it is just a dead end. Sometimes it’s a cubby-hole with an extra missile. Then…

Developer/publisher Thunderful (Image & Form) Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Sweden Release December As he guides us into another alien cavern stained with black goo, oozing like sentient tar, we find ourselves wondering about the state of game director Ulf Hartelius’s living room. “This game is perfect for anyone who doesn’t enjoy cleaning, but enjoys having cleaned,” he says, sucking up a phlegmy deposit with player-character Rani’s wrist-mounted hoover. “Which is me. I don’t like the act of cleaning, but I love just after it’s been done.” He pulls one last gobbet loose. “And that’s kind of what you get in this game. Because the cleaning itself is done in hyper-speed – it takes a couple of seconds and you’re instantly rewarded.” He’s not wrong. With all that…

Most sequels contain a number of throwbacks to prior events, and despite introducing a whole new cast, Oxenfree II is no different. However, the references to Oxenfree aren’t limited to a few Easter eggs. Instead, Night School sneaked Parentage into the PC version of Oxenfree, adding new frequencies with messages that suggest someone is listening in and trying to subtly influence events. This not only means the cult has been following the supernatural occurrences on and around Edwards Island for quite some time, but that players may have unwittingly aided them in their goal of messing with time all along. This connection could either be an inventive marketing strategy or a way to offer a wholly different point of view of past events, including that mysterious phrase “Is leave possible?”…

Developer Cloisters Interactive Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin US/Taiwan Release December Shelley Chen is prepared for some people not to like A Memoir Blue. Imagining the response from some quarters to this lyrical tale about a woman recalling key moments from her childhood, she pulls a face and puts on a voice that sounds like a child having a tantrum. “‘This is not a game and I hate it’,” she growls, before laughing. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Because I never intended to make like a gamey game. I treat it like an interactive story, like a book, or a movie.” And if people do say they hate it? “I’ll say thank you,” she says, her voice dropping to an apologetic…

Given Hades offered a fresh spin on the Greek gods, you might assume Midautumn would mine the pantheon of Chinese mythology, though you certainly won’t have met pirate seller Tsechoi or Confucian scholar Wenye, the first two ancestral spirits we encounter. Uduwana has clarified that these are all original characters that don’t come from any pre-existing mythology, although they may borrow a few cultural tropes. “Ultimately, what we want to do is to allow ourselves to play these characters that feel embraced by Asian diasporic culture,” he explains. “We don’t want to be the game for people who want to know about Asian mythology. We want to be able to tell our own stories, and have the freedom to have our own characters.”…

Developer/ publisher Ichigoichie Format PC, consoles TBA Origin Japan, Sweden Release 2022 From tactical DJs to puzzle-led funk jams: Ichigoichie’s follow-up to 2019’s Hexagroove proves the studio knows a bit about fusion. “I’m into Casiopea and stuff like that, and my partner is a bit more into soul, like American Motown groups,” creative director David Ventura says. The game might be built upon similar musical foundations to its predecessor, but it takes a very different approach: rather than working the crowd on your own, you need to work together as a group. “Not everybody can be doing solos all the time,” Ventura adds, noting that collaboration is crucial when you’re sharing the stage with up to three other people. “You need to not step on their toes.” Backbeat takes that…

Eyes wide, ears perked and tail swaying gently, a small cat pads through the drizzly cobblestone streets of Midtown. And as his paws splash softly through scattered puddles reflecting the neon signs on the buildings that loom over him on both sides, we’re reminded that BlueTwelve’s co-founders know plenty about crafting beguiling worlds. Vivien Mermet-Guyenet – a level artist on ZombiU – and former Ubisoft Montréal environment and lighting artist Colas Koola are obviously accustomed to creating the kind of virtual spaces that are designed to be lingered in and gawped at. There are details to draw the eye at every turn, and an atmosphere so thick you can almost smell it. That adds up to a place that feels startlingly real, even as the city’s other inhabitants make clear…

A lot of development time has been invested in the camera, and it shows: bearing in mind Stray’s protagonist, we keep a watchful eye for any moments when the action is unclear. After a while we realise we’ve stopped looking: during our demo, at least, it doesn’t put a foot wrong. “There’s a whole range in people’s imagination of what the cat can actually do,” Martin-Raget says. “Some players are really downto-earth and don’t want to jump on anything, and some players imagine that they can jump on the leaves of a tree to try to reach something. So we’re trying to find a good balance of realistic behaviour and [making it] fun and easy to roam around.” Having the camera so close to the ground emphasises the scale of…

Life Is Strange: True Colors PS5 The Wavelengths prequel episode bridges the gap between Deck Nine’s Before The Storm and the latest Life Is Strange, focusing on Steph Gingrich’s role as Haven Springs’ resident DJ. Her role entails a series of mundane activities: updating the playlist (playable records include the likes of Foals and Hot Chip), using a d20 to offer ‘psychic’ advice, and reading on-air ads. It’s everything outside the job that makes it special: hilarious exchanges via a dating app, a moving reunion with an old Arcadia Bay friend as the pair reckon with the trauma of the first game’s events, and an ending that fully validates our decision to romance Steph in the main game. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania Switch Probably the best Super Monkey Ball…

You can argue that multiverses are part of Genshin’s lore. Your protagonist and their twin had been travelling between worlds before they were separated and stranded in Teyvat, which is why you’re often referred to as ‘Traveller’. Eccentric Electro archer Fischl – or the Prinzessin Der Verurteilung, to use her self-applied moniker – similarly claims to hail from another world. But there’s one character we can confirm has made the leap between universes: Horizon Zero Dawn’s Aloy (above). Whether MiHoYo is about to open the multiversal floodgates like Fortnite is debatable, though, chiefly because the Nora hunter is a freebie rather than an incentive to spend.…

Miners hoard processing power because of the ‘proof of work’ model, which – because only the first to solve a problem gets the reward – incentivises them to compete with other miners for each transaction. It’s an incredibly inefficient process, by design, but there are other options, most notably ‘proof of stake’, which randomly offers validation opportunities to a limited number of validators at once, reducing some of the need for competition and thus the amount of processing power being expended on each transaction. Ethereum, one of the biggest blockchains (with, according to Digiconomist’s energy consumption index, an annual power consumption equivalent to the entire nation of Chile), was founded on proof of work, but is in the process of transitioning to proof of stake.…

Garavaryan doesn’t want to talk too much about Kepler’s funding – he knows eight-figure sums have a tendency to pull focus, in this case away from the studios themselves and Kepler’s structure. But we have to ask: it’s obvious what the benefit is for studios here, but what’s the pitch to investors? “If you look at the biggest successes of the past few years, whether it’s Among Us or Valheim or anything that’s really hit, they came from independent teams who were able to remain independent and keep control of creation.” Which is the aim here, naturally: giving the studios “the time, the space, the support” they need to make great games. “If we do that really well, and keep selecting great teams that complement the group well, then financial…

After Purvis released his debut trailer, he received a handful of messages from friends before putting his phone down for an hour. When he picked it up again, the Twitter app began to lag under the weight of notifications and DMs. “That was when I realised it had got quite popular,” he says. What really surprised him was the attention it attracted from overseas. Within a couple of hours of the trailer’s launch, he’d received a message from Brazil, offering to translate the game into Portuguese for free. With hindsight, he says, he should have seen it coming: “Thatcher has quite a significant legacy in South America today because of certain things the British government did in the ’80s and ’90s, so she’s still seen as a villainous figure there.”…

“Violence on screens has grown hugely over the last 30 years, especially with first party shooter games, and yet violent crime has fallen significantly in many countries.” Netflix’s Ted Sarandos redefines the meaning of ‘FPS’ in a memo to staff on the effects of entertainment we consume “We opened up markets… People had never played games before PlayStation in the Middle East.” Reflecting on his company’s achievements, Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Jim Ryan opts for just making stuff up “PlayStation undoubtedly had a massive impact on the region, but to say we never played games here before is remarkably stupid.” IGN Middle East senior editor Mufaddal Fakhruddin is happy to set Ryan straight “It’s just not that hard to treat people fairly and equally. I’ve learned that it’s not enough…

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a 12-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership Stay all day, if you want to One of the best things I did since COVID-19 hit was get my old university friends into Final Fantasy XIV. We figured it would be a good way to catch up whilst also gaming together when we got the chance to. We’re all over 30 now with a variety of obligations (them: buying houses, looking after babies; me: researching board games to buy) but more often than not we make Friday evening our gaming night. We’ll log on to FFXIV and Discord and start by dance-emoting in one of the main starting cities. We’ll talk about our weeks,…

Every videogame needs a hook – something to grab players and keep them wriggling on the line. Yet from a designer’s point of view, sometimes it makes sense to set them loose: leave that float dangling to lure them back, sure, but it’s only right and proper that they should be released, and given the chance to swim free. Of course, if you’re going to do that, you need to give them something else to nibble on. And this month’s Hype selection offers plenty of temptation to roam. The Gunk sees SteamWorld developer Image & Form wander off its usual path, to an alien world where your reward for vacuuming up the titular gloop is colourful bursts of extraterrestrial flora. And should you happen to tire of tidying, you can…

Rani might be your avatar, but it’s clear who the real star is here – it’s their name up in lights, after all. The gunk is a marvel, constantly bubbling away in a way that feels unsettlingly organic, and reacting fluidly to your actions. This is thanks, in part, to ‘ray marching’, an algorithm that works with signed distance functions to create complex, interlocking 3D shapes in realtime. “The tech itself isn’t new, but it’s seldom used in games, and extremely rarely used for effects that the player has control over,” Hartelius explains. A more common use case is creating believable clouds, he says – “but we really wanted to see: what can we do with this that has never been done before? And how could a game take shape…

Developer/publisher Square Enix (Creative Business Unit III) Format PC, PS4, PS5 Origin Japan Release November 19 MMORPGs aren’t designed to end – and if they do it’s not with a bang but a whimper, as player numbers dwindle before servers are unceremoniously shut down. Of course, Final Fantasy XIV, now at its most popular with over 24 million registered users, is far from over. Its latest expansion is comparable to Avengers: Endgame, which merely draws a line under one phase of the MCU before the next begins. Having settled aeon-spanning conflicts, liberated nations and gone to another world entirely, you have to wonder where this epic MMORPG can go from here. But as we wander the opulent, isolated city of Old Sharlyan and take a mount through the vibrant geography…

A Memoir Blue was originally a thesis project for Chen’s Master’s degree at NYU. “In the beginning we were trying to do a kind of puzzle[-led] narrative game but I wanted to make something that had a unique feeling that didn’t lock into the idea of a puzzle game.” As the group brainstormed, they realised the others had almost completed their projects, which is why Chen introduced elements of her personal story to get things started. Annapurna subsequently signed the game after Cloisters Interactive produced a two-minute demo for Indiecade. “I always thought people would be like, ‘What the hell is this?’” Chen says. “But when I met other devs at Indiecade, they said there are more and more games like this now.”…

Developer Appnormals Team Publisher Chorus Worldwide Games Format PC Origin Spain Release 2022 You can almost picture a nervous creative, excitably babbling about their latest high-concept idea in front of a row of Netflix execs. “What if Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula were flatmates in the present day? One’s around during daylight hours, and the other only comes out at night. And get this: what if they never meet, but communicate with one another via Post-It notes?” With the streaming giant recently signing Oxenfree dev Night School Studios, and its keen recent interest in interactive storytelling, it’s not hard to imagine seeing Frank And Drake on the New & Popular tab. The story begins with Frank, who, beyond his height and broad shoulders, looks a far cry from Mary Shelley’s pitiful…

Each band member has a super move that can help them bypass an obstacle or remove one from the path of another character. “The drummer can break down a wall, and the keyboardist gets on his knees like Pete Townsend and slides across the stage, letting him warp through [NPCs],” Ventura explains. Various other tricks are unlocked over time to help you maximise your score, and Ichigoichie is hoping to be able to include a feature where you can export videos of your puzzle solutions to share. “We would also like to build an online community, with a leaderboard of best solutions, but that’s a bit outside the scope of what we’re probably going to do in 1.0 unless we get some kind of external support.”…

Speaking on behalf of BlueTwelve’s founders, Martin-Raget explains that Stray was only a few “visual scenes” when Annapurna Interactive came on board – though even at that early stage, the two had a strong idea of what the game was going to be. “The art direction was quite clear in their minds, and they had a few prototypes of the cat being able to jump on air-con [units].” The backpack and B-12 were also in place when it was still known as HK Project. Funding was confirmed in April 2017, while by the end of that year (two years after the idea had first been dreamed up) the team had grown to five. If anything, the scope of the game has narrowed since then, he says: “When Viv and Koola…

COMPUTER SPACEDeveloper/manufacturer Nutting Associates Format Coin-op Release 1971 PONGDeveloper/manufacturer Atari Format Coin-op Release 1972 TANKDeveloper/manufacturer Kee Games Format Coin-op Release 1974 BREAKOUTDeveloper/manufacturer Atari Format Coin-op Release 1976 ATARI VCSManufacturer Atari Release 1977 PIZZA TIME THEATERFounded 1977 SAC-IManufacturer Sente Format Coin-op Release 1984 Who would play you in the movie of your life? For Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, it’s not an academic question. “I’d like Adam Driver,” he says, clearly finding the whole notion amusing. “There’s been talk of making a film [of my life] for a long time, and it’s still flopping about. I saw a screenplay and it was pretty accurate… and it wasn’t all pink bunny rabbits. I’d like it to be made, but both movies about Steve Jobs were crap and that put the kibosh on films…

Jakub Stokalski Lead Designer, Frostpunk How do you view Frostpunk’s place within 11 Bit Studios’ future? From the very beginning, Frostpunk was regarded as an IP rather than a single game. We thought, ‘If this works out, we are building a world that we can set other things in.’ There’s even this [quote] from Patryk Grzeszczuk, our marketing director at the time, saying, “We might even make a Frostpunk RPG”. So everyone thinks we’re making a Frostpunk RPG now. And are you? Well, I mean, a Frostpunk RPG sounds cool, don’t get me wrong. But the cornerstone of the IP is dealing in large-scale social situations where the player has agency, and I definitely think we haven’t said the last word there, and what we did say was very focused…

Two entries in long-running series head up this month’s Play section, and once again we’re invited to consider the value of innovation versus the appeal of the familiar. The expectation is usually a bit of both. A series doesn’t become beloved without first offering something new – but if innovation attracts an audience, the anticipation for a sequel is partly fuelled by the promise of what you enjoyed about the earlier game (or games) all over again. Creators thus have a balance to strike: diverge too much from the original recipe, and you risk alienating those fans. Play it too safe, however, and you’ll leave them wanting. It’s fair to say one of the two games manages to fulfil its brief more thoroughly than the other. In some ways, Metroid…

Looking outside of the actual in-game experience, another potential use case for NFTs could be creating a resale market for digital editions. At a time when digital-only consoles are becoming increasingly common, it is at least an interesting notion. And at the forefront of this, unexpectedly, is Intellivision Amico. Though the console itself is still to be released, ‘boxed editions’ of its games have recently gone on sale for $/€80 per set of four. The boxes don’t actually contain any physical media but do come complete with an NFT, allowing buyers to transfer ownership of each downloadable game through the blockchain.…

Kepler’s founding studios cover a wide range of countries – but neither, notably, of those where the group is headquartered. “We felt like London was a good hub to build a team. There’s a lot of local expertise, there’s a really vibrant dev industry and we could easily find talent to join the group,” Garavaryan says. And it’s close to Europe – if only, these days, in the geographical sense. Singapore, meanwhile, gives Kepler a presence in Asia. “It’s just the easiest place to do business overall in the region. There’s also a burgeoning gaming industry here that has quite a few studios now.”…

Referencing the longrunning joke about Id’s classic FPS being able to run on almost every electronic device going, Purvis began to investigate which hardware might be able to support Thatcher’s Techbase. “Most modes can run on anything if they’re not too strenuous. I tried to keep the scope of it small enough – unfortunately, it [didn’t stretch to] pregnancy tests and fridges and stuff… but then I realised I had a homebrew 3DS at home.” So, yes, you can technically play the game on 3DS and Wii, and possibly other console hardware. Visit bit.ly/thatcherstechbase for instructions on how.…

The idea that play can have a profound effect on the psyche of the player, for good or ill, is very old. The philosopher Plato wrestled at the Isthmian Games (part of the ancient Olympic cycle), and suggested, radically for the time, that children’s games could be educational. Modern research suggests that playing videogames such as Tetris soon after a traumatic event might help to prevent the memories being laid down in such a way as to give rise to later PTSD, and there is a flowering of games, such as Depression Quest, explicitly presented as therapeutic devices. Many of us, of course, find therapeutic value in simply knocking off the day’s work in order to shoot large numbers of men in the face. (I very much regret that there…

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League PC, PS5, Xbox Series Warner’s DC FanDome event offered a glimpse at Rocksteady’s first game since 2015’s Arkham Knight, and it’s fair to say the tone is more James Gunn than David Ayer. No gameplay footage yet, alas, but the in-engine trailer of Task Force X in action taking on Batman, Superman et al is thrilling, funny and visually dazzling. Roll on next year. Metroid Prime 4 Switch With Dread completed, our attention inevitably turns to Retro’s long-gestating sequel, which could certainly learn a few things from MercurySteam’s effort – not least remembering to credit everyone who lends their talents to its production. Hollow Knight: Silksong PC, Switch And while we’re on the subject of Metroidvanias, it’s about time this resurfaced, isn’t it. Team…

Developer Night School Studios Publisher MWM Interactive Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch Origin US Release 2022 When we first meet Oxenfree II’s protagonist Riley Poverly, she’s attempting to jump between clifftops, asserting to her companion Jacob that she will be absolutely fine. As it turns out, Riley is very much not fine, and so, one hard landing later, we see her taking the long way around. As much fun as the scene is, it’s also a fine way to showcase Riley’s proactive, no-nonsense character – where the first game followed a bunch of teens fleeing for their lives, Oxenfree II’s 30-year-old heroine is ready to meet danger head-on. This time the threat comes from a shadowy religious cult called Parentage which is actively trying to lure ghosts to the island…

Newcomers will undoubtedly be enticed to FFXIV by Endwalker, and tempted to rush through what already exists. But while it will be possible to spend real money to acquire an item that lets you skip the story – thereby missing out on some of the finest tales ever told in a Final Fantasy game – Yoshida would naturally prefer them not to do this. “In other MMOs, you might find that as soon as a new expansion releases, no one is playing content from the older expansion, but for FFXIV, this isn’t the case,” he says, in reference to the Duty Roulettes that reward veterans who match with newcomers in older dungeons. “If anything, existing players would talk to those new players, and just reassure them that they don’t really…

Developer/ publisher Team Midautumn Format PC Origin US Release TBA Even before its v1.0 release, it was abundantly clear Hades was going to have a significant impact on the Roguelike genre – all the more so when it launched from early access to rapturous acclaim. Midautumn’s project lead, Sherveen Uduwana, was keenly aware of the need to get ahead of the game(s) with his own narrative-driven Roguelike. “I have to work on this now, because in one or two years, there’s going to be 30 other games on this concept,” he says. The influence of Supergiant’s game is clear here, from the way dungeon rooms offer two possible exits, with the potential reward indicated above, to how death takes you back to a hub where you meet new characters or…

The most effective use of rotoscoping comes when you’re in control. For the most part, the game uses familiar point-andclick inputs but occasionally you’ll push the arrow keys to make the protagonists walk along: Frank is more of a stomper, while Drake’s gait has a certain swagger. Diaz says it’s designed to “immerse the player a little bit more in the action”, and again there’s a practical element involved: “It helps to realise the amount of frames you need to draw.” It’s also been built with streamers in mind, he says. “It means you can stop and talk about the game and then fulfil the animation when you’re ready. That way you can be more of a participant in the dynamics and tempo of the narrative.”…

There’s almost nothing to obstruct your view of the city, with those tiny context-sensitive button prompts just about the only interface you see outside message popups from B-12. “It was definitely an intention from Viv and Koola to have a minimal UI and try to have that as much integrated in the game as possible,” Martin-Raget tells us. At the same time, BlueTwelve is keen for players not to get lost during the more linear, story-focused stages. “We use a lot of level art clues, some specific lighting and specific textures that help guide you around,” he says, though in the main they’ll be subtler than those flashing signs and flickering TV sets. Even when you’ve more room to roam and your objective is less urgent, you can call B-12,…

Getty Images: Michael Verdoux/EyeEm On a sunny, chilly Tuesday morning in Montreal, Patrice Désilets and Jean-François Boivin went for a walk. It was May 2014, and the pair were fresh from losing their project – 1666: Amsterdam, a casualty of THQ’s bankruptcy. Though both had made their names with Assassin’s Creed, they found themselves suddenly independent, unexpectedly building something new in the shadow of the triple-A monoliths they had helped create. “We were on the street, and met with some of our lawyers, then had lunch at a deli,” Boivin recalls. “The bill came up to $16.66.” Perhaps it was a sign that their ideas could live outside the big-budget studio system. If so, the gods make shrewd industry analysts. Désilets and Boivin’s company, Panache Digital Games, has since sold…

Founded 2003 Employees Ten Key staff Tero Alatalo (co-founder, CEO), Sampo Töyssy (vice CEO) URL www.10tons.com Selected softography Crimsonland, Neon Chrome, Tesla Vs Lovecraft, Undead Horde Current projects Dysmantle During the early era of casual games, making your name wasn’t easy for anyone. But in 2003, with that scene growing on PC and most new developers chasing a quick hit, a small team in Tampere, Finland found breakout success by going against the tide. 10tons founder and CEO Tero Alatalo and team decided to embrace a classic genre in danger of being deserted: the twin-stick shooter. “I’m not sure twin-stick top-down shooters were even a thing on PC back then,” Alatalo says. 10tons vice CEO Sampo Töyssy concurs: “3D games were all the rage then, so focusing on 2D and large amounts…

Developer MercurySteam, Nintendo EPD Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release Out now The Metroid games have never been ashamed of the influence of Alien. There’s the hat-tip of Ridley’s name, of course, while Yoshio Sakamoto has happily acknowledged the pop-cultural debt in interviews. But Metroid Dread might be the closest it has ever come to that inspiration, in the form of the game’s biggest addition to this 35-year-old series: the EMMI. As names go, it might not inspire quite the same fear as Xenomorph or Necronom. In pursuit, though, we find ourselves thinking of that line spoken by Ian Holm’s Ash in the original film: “The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.” They might not look much alike – in place of the dark chitin and…