Table of contents for January 2022 in Edge

“Like an alien race coming to terraform the Earth and turn us into meat batteries, first, they came for our friends and families, then our schools, then our town halls and libraries and marketplaces, and then our politicians.” A lot has been said about Facebook’s plans for an allencompassing metaverse, but not much stands up to this from Internet culture writer Ryan Broderick. “They saved and studied billions of our faces and experimented on our children and our parents and figured out exactly how deeply they could worm their way into how we interact with each other. Now that they’ve reached the limitations of both our current technology and our laws, they decided it was time for an upgrade.” Because of the many controversies on its track record, we cannot…

Agostino Simonetta spent close to seven years in charge of developer partnerships at ID@Xbox. That’s as long as Microsoft’s indie initiative has been up and running. So why leave? “I wasn’t running away from Xbox. I loved my job at Xbox,” he says. But after a career that has spanned Sony, THQ and Sega, he wanted a role that would let him apply all he’s learned, and take him closer to his roots, “in a small indie studio, working in the basement of an Italian villa by the seaside”. Now based in Woking, there might not much Mediterrenean sunshine to be found, but he does appreciate the chance to be back outside of the “corporate environment”.…

Shortly after soft-launching in other territories, Niantic’s newest location-based AR mobile game arrived in the UK on November 2. On the same day, the company announced that it would be shutting down another location-based AR mobile game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, by the end of January. That ruthless swing of the axe would appear to be an ominous sign for what, with the best will in the world, is a significantly lesser-known series – even with the backing of Nintendo. Then again, while the threat of underperformance-related closure might loom over the Pikmin like a hungry Bulborb, you sense that expectations for Bloom will be a little more modest. At the very least, it’s unlikely anyone at Niantic will be quite so bullish about its prospects as the employee who…

“I think that in the context of games we create and the live services that we offer, collectible digital content is going to play a meaningful part in our future.” That klaxon you can hear screaming as the red lights start flashing was set off by EA CEO Andrew Wilson’s response to a query involving opportunities around NFTs “These results suggest that violent games may agitate children, but this agitation does not translate into violence against other people.” New research by Dr Agne Suziedelyte will be a tonic for parents everywhere “I focused on my desire to explore new ideas and unknown frontiers… this is reflected in my return to Ubisoft to work on AC.” In order to look forward, Assassin’s Creed vet Darby McDevitt is looking back “The guys…

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 If you say the word Stuck with my PS4 for now, I have been heartily enjoying Hades and its wonderful narrative system – which is largely thanks to the Odyssean scale of its writing as much as the technical marvels that keep it humming. But ultimately, even though each time I’ve spoken to an NPC it feels special and relevant to my playthrough, it’s held together by what I imagine is a massive spreadsheet keeping track of every variable imaginable and matching this unique fingerprint to lines of pre-written dialogue. It got me thinking about whether the sheer computing power in next-gen consoles could be…

To give a game the best possible start, developers and publishers must consider how to put their best foot forward long before its actual release. Communication has never been more crucial: at the concept stage, creators can no longer simply consider how to explain their game to players via tutorials and such like; the messaging surrounding it is equally important, if not more so. It says much that a lot of self-styled ‘indie’ games – and we continue to think carefully about how we use that term – now have publishers attached. Even if they’re not blessed with the resources of an EA or a Ubisoft, there are more people involved in telling you what a game is than ever before. (We recognise our own role in that process, of…

One conspicuous omission is the ability to climb. There’s plenty of verticality here, with magic whirlwinds to launch you and your trusty steed out of canyons, but you can’t clamber over a chest-high wall, let alone haul yourself up a ruined temple. It’s a necessary limitation, preventing you from leapfrogging meticulous setpieces or taking the direct route to a collectible – From has always delighted in positioning something valuable just out of reach. Given Elden Ring’s other debts to the likes of Breath Of The Wild, is its exclusion a matter of obstinacy, or a fascinating microcosm of the new game’s efforts to forge a path between opposing design philosophies?…

Developer Tripod Studio, Smilegate Publisher Amazon Game Studios Format PC Origin Korea Release 2022 Your archetypal adventurer hasn’t had the best of starts to their epic quest. Dreaming of fame and fortune, they boarded a ragtag ship of pirates and mercenaries bound for a forgotten land. Yet after spending half an hour exploring the place, all they’ve discovered are deadly traps, ferocious monsters and now a slew of corpses belonging to former comrades. This is the setup for Smilegate’s new MMORPG – at least until an angel recruits our would-be plunderer for a quest to find the titular Ark, and their course shifts towards a typical Chosen One narrative. You are, it seems, the only one who can find this relic, and prevent demonic hordes from thawing out of their…

Choi pays tribute to Among Us (“It is a great game that is very well made,” he says) while noting that Dubium’s character-centric approach “is a natural differentiator”. Each character has a different gadget: Jessica’s camera can see through walls, while Ryan’s scanner analyses devices, telling him who last used them and when. Sobok has a mask that makes him resistant to toxic gas, Sergei can inject himself with a substance to boost his survivability and movement, and Jack can disable the ship’s camera system to hide from the traitor or mask his misdeeds. A permanent progression affords access to the other gadgets, allowing you to mix and match.…

Developer/publisher Parity Games Format PC, PS5 Origin Iceland Release 2022 This isn’t the first time this year we’ve started a game by picking up a powerful magical artefact normally wielded by a now-absent mentor. But this 17th-century Icelandic adventure, created by a team of former CCP alumni, is as far from Chicory as it’s possible to get – aside, that is, from its protagonist’s insistence that they’re only temporarily deputising. Something, the portentous introductory text tells us, is stirring here, and “this time it’s not just the weather.” Before we get to the something, let’s start with where here is, since that’s what stands out most about Island Of Winds. Dreitill, a starkly beautiful fjord set beneath glowering skies, is where stern-faced Brynhildur calls home. She lives what seems a…

Although there’s a reason why a diver is poking around in underwater caverns, Spiral Circus intends to keep Silt’s storytelling opaque. “We want to world-build,” Clarke says, “and then leave enough connective tissue in there that the players can figure out the underlying logic of the world themselves.” The approach mirrors that of one of their favourite shows, Twin Peaks. Their hope is to present the player with a series of uncanny incidents, then let them work out what it means. “I’m intrigued to see what people think about the one thing that we’re purposely not explaining through any of the marketing,” Mead says. “A huge part of the game is Goliaths – big sea monsters, essentially – and I’m intrigued to see what people think about them.”…

One of the combat mechanics we’re especially prone to forgetting in the moment is also one of Sifu’s most useful: focus attacks. These are powered by a blue gauge at the bottom of the screen, which fills up with each hit you land. Once unleashed, time slows to a treacly halt, as you pick a part of the body to target with a powerful, unblockable attack. This is another concept lifted from Pak Mei. (As Colussi explains the importance of “striking a part of the body that will stop you from attacking,” we can’t help but note that he’s eyeing up our pressure points.) Whether you choose to go for the eyes or knock out your victim’s legs from under them, it’ll buy you valuable moments to prepare for the…

Microsoft may yet go down in history as the last competitor ever to join the console race. Since November 2001, we haven’t seen any mainstream newcomers make a play for the space beneath our televisions – at least, not any that have stuck. It’s easy to gesture at the old Microsoft money hose as the reason, of course, but it’s worth noting that any major tech players with big resources at their disposal have chosen not to follow in Microsoft’s footsteps, choosing instead to come at gaming from different angles: Apple through mobile, Google and Amazon with streaming services, Facebook in VR. Perhaps the real reason, then, is simply that launching a new console from scratch is bloody hard work. The politicking and subterfuge that led to Xbox’s development have…

Double Fine has worked with Xbox since its founding, but Schafer has been open regarding his initial hesitation about the studio being acquired. He was eventually won over by promises of ‘limited integration’ – something it seems Microsoft has started offering almost as standard. “One of the things we’re really trying to do with some of the newer acquisitions is just completely leave them alone,” Ross says. “They’re better funded, they have all the infrastructure that they want, but really we leave them alone. Whereas some of what I would call the franchises – Minecraft, Gears, Turn10 with Forza – we’re more involved in the day-to-day, going to meetings, looking at the portfolio, things like that. Whereas some of the newer studios we’re like, ‘Just go create stuff!’”…

It’s clear that Oculus and its technology is at the centre of Facebook’s vision for the metaverse. “When I send my parents a video of my kids,” Zuckerberg said at Connect, “they’re going to feel like they’re right in the moment with us, not peering through a little window.” The metaverse for Facebook is about embodiment, and that means body tracking, anchored by VR. That’s a big ask given the discomfort still associated with headsets. Clearly, Oculus expects to be able to eliminate the nausea that most new adopters suffer, and to dramatically reduce the size of its hardware. In the meantime, though, it appears that Facebook is willing to compromise – making its metaverse experiences available through screens too. Perhaps this bold new vision for the Internet will feel…

REVIEWS. PERSPECTIVES. INTERVIEWS. AND SOME NUMBERS Dungeon Encounters Switch Square Enix could hardly have made less noise about the new RPG from Hiroyuki Ito, creator of the Active Time Battle system and director of Final Fantasy VI, IX and XII; indeed, the game’s budget can’t have been much higher than its marketing spend. Yet this appears to be a masterclass in streamlined design. Ito’s spartan dungeoncrawler pares back the fluff, offering an absorbing and deeply tactical descent through a labyrinth represented by squares and numbers on weathered parchment – allowing your imagination to fill the gaps as your party steadily colours in those blank spaces. Next issue brings our annual catchup; expect our full verdict then. Mario Party Superstars Switch There’s a bit of streamlining going on in the new…

While Horizon has long offered a route creator, EventLab feels closer to in-house developer tools. Laying tracks and decorating them with props is easily handled in-world – you drive the course into the landscape, planting checkpoints as you go – before applying logic gates to shape the rules. In our hands, it results in a lap of a hotel accompanied by Viking horns at every checkpoint and increasingly angry onscreen messages from the resort’s guests: a [4] if ever we saw one. But the potential is clear: just by adding a score meter and tying points to oversized footballs and bowling pins it’s easy to see new party games taking shape. Seeing user-made events sitting alongside Playground’s own on the map is a neat reward for designers – and reason…

The presence of other players can sometimes be an annoyance when you’re just trying to take in the sights – to which end there’s a Zen Mode that gives you the run of the place, albeit without the ability to make any progress. But there’s value in people-watching: it can be quite instructive or even mildly educational, and certainly amusing when they stack a trick or collide headfirst with a rock. The multiplayer Mass Race events, meanwhile, are Riders Republic in messy microcosm. The way the announcement sends a sudden rush of players to the start line is thrilling; lining up alongside 63 other players equally so. But good luck making out what’s going on when all 64 of you are hurtling downhill together at the same time, and in…

While failure in Chuchel was often more entertaining than success, there aren’t too many ways to mess things up here – but then Happy Game is messed-up enough as it is. The boy can die in some scenes, but more often it’s a matter of figuring out how to make bad things happen in order to avoid worse. There are, however, a few bonus interactions that result in achievements: one pays tribute to a certain AC/DC song, while another invites you to indulge in a bit of leporicide. The best comes from repeatedly ignoring that opening instruction: the one time you’re told what to do. Following your instincts while playing results in what feels like a miniature horror story in itself, told through nothing more than a series of images…

One of the main story threads involves the player-character conquering their fear of the sea, in turn encouraging the residents to overcome theirs. On occasion that means tackling something too big to reel in. There’s a welcome puzzle element to these pseudo boss fights as you work out how to halt their rampage, but the solutions can feel fussy and exacting, requiring a stop-start approach as you manoeuvre your ship into position before rushing to the side with your net or rod.…

There’s a book to be written about Dark Souls’ infamous history of player innuendo via the environmental messaging system, with such innocent phrases as “try holding with both hands” rudely misapplied by Chosen Undead with scanty morals and an eye for context. Woe betide the NPC, statue or long-petrified zombie discovered in anything like a bent-over position. These messages generally feel like toilet graffiti, though “try but” is pretty solid advice for many boss fights. It recalls what we see in many multiplayer games, but it’s not just female characters or effigies who receive this treatment. We’ve seen some colourful sentiments directed at the noble figure of Siegward Of Catarina, who at one point gets trapped in a well without his armour. Hmm… Mmm……

Change is afoot in the world of videogame publishing. Where once the average player might have been able to name – and count on one hand – the companies that brought to market most of the big titles they purchased, today the picture is much more complicated. Selfpublishing is on the rise, of course, as is the indie dev-pub model. But we’re also becoming aware of ever more sleeping giants: companies that have, quietly, without many of us noticing, become forces to rival the biggest publishers and platform holders. Look at Devolver Digital, which, quite apart from having one of the year’s best runs of releases, from Death’s Door to Inscryption, has just become a publicly traded company, with an initial valuation of almost $1bn. Or at Embracer Group which,…

Back in January 1999, Radiohead and producer Nigel Godrich walked into a Paris studio to begin recording a pair of albums that would set the band on a new, wildly different trajectory. Although both Kid A and Amnesiac have been widely reappraised since, this sudden shift from art-rock to electronica baffled legions of fans (and much of the music press) at the time. Now, this interactive exhibition has been built around a selection of songs from the 20th-anniversary rerelease of these albums. Yet Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is no hollow promotional exercise, but something far stranger and more interesting. Three years before those early sessions, Peter Gabriel released Eve, an earnestly odd CD-ROM adventure featuring bizarre dreamscapes soundtracked by his own music, which the player could collect and remix. We’ve…

Expeditions are effectively traditional Pikmin without the peril, as you send your diminutive charges out into the world to retrieve objects. You can start them from home, and even have several on the go at once, though they’re quicker to complete when you’re closer to the place in question – your Pikmin have less far to travel, after all. There’s a light element of micromanagement involved, with items having different weights and different Pikmin able to carry heavier loads: you won’t need so many Purple and Rock Pikmin for a job, though they walk more slowly than Reds and Yellows.…

Game VR Agent Manufacturer Sega The arcade has a rich heritage of asking us to stick our faces against apertures in order to get an enhanced view of the action, dating back to Midway’s Sea Wolf in 1976, casting you as a submarine commander. The concept lives on today in VR systems, and Sega’s latest lightgun shooter gives it a spin by attaching a headset to its gun controller, requiring you to hold it up to your face as you take down assailants. VR Agent feels like a spiritual successor to the Virtua Cop series, but it also brings to mind Konami’s Police 911 thanks to its vertically oriented screen. It doesn’t have the motion-sensing technology of Konami’s game – asking players to move their bodies too much while covering…

One of the core promises of media technology is that it will take you to a better place. This escapism can be purely aesthetic – the cinema will enable you to go travelling in the jungle; the smartphone will distract you at the bus stop – or more literal. Hence, in the second sense, the grand dream of a persistent cybercommunity that could replace the real world. The latest iteration is, of course, Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘vision’ of the metaverse, a term borrowed from Neal Stephenson’s seminal 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, where it describes the totality of all virtual realities and the Internet. And, Facebook having become a poisonous brand, the holding company for it plus WhatsApp and Instagram is now called Meta, since that is Greek for ‘with’ or…

Weird West PC, PS4, Xbox One It’s been a banner year for the recently floated Devolver Digital, and it’s set to kick off 2022 in fine style with WolfEye Studios’ immersive sim, a game that has monopolised the thoughts of at least one member of Team Edge since that dazzling hands-off demo a couple of months ago. Saints Row PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Volition’s reboot may have been pushed back to August, but then launching on the same day as Elden Ring and a week after Horizon Forbidden West would surely have been a mistake. And summer feels like the ideal time to visit sweltering Santo Ileso, a sun-kissed sandbox promising a lot more of the series’ anarchic mayhem. Mars After Midnight Playdate You don’t need us…

Lost Ark’s first dungeon has two bosses – a pair of towering stone behemoths seemingly hewn from the rock around them – placed near its midpoint and end. On paper, they’re a smartly timed change of pace from ploughing your way through hordes of minions, while providing a sense of climactic finality (not to mention some delicious loot once they’re defeated). Yet they’re ultimately little more than glorified foot soldiers, kitted out with a few strong AOE attacks to get you moving around a little more than when you’re cutting a swathe through the rankand-file. There might be more of a co-operative element to later bosses – we’d be a little surprised if there wasn’t – but here at least they’re nothing but incredibly buff roadblocks.…

Developer/publisher Red Hook Studios Format PC Origin Canada Release TBA The first Darkest Dungeon made heroes disposable commodities, shipped to your hamlet by the carriage-load like pigs to an abattoir. In the sequel, now playable in Early Access, they’re closer to companions – the difference being that the carriage is now the centre of the universe. The original game’s perspective has been wrenched on its side, transforming a world of scrolling pop-up-book sets into a road winding through sylvan ruins and fields of festering meat. The aim is still to defeat the evil lurking in the Darkest Dungeon, a double-horned peak on the horizon, but there’s no putting different squads through the mincer till one traumatised team finally has the XP to reach the summit. What was once a town-and-dungeon…

Parity Games has apparently banned a certain c-word during development. No, not that one – we’re talking about combat. Certain beasts may seem hostile, but you’re encouraged to approach encounters non-violently. The same goes the mythical creatures you confront at the end of each area. These climactic sequences are more puzzle-led, with some involving straightforward fetch quests: the legendary horse, Nyku, for example, has lost its hooves, and you must return them to lift the curse. Careful explorers, meanwhile, will be rewarded with Easter eggs, including animated sequences that tell stories from Icelandic folklore, and superior ingredients to bolster spells. To negotiate the more challenging terrain where the best secrets lie, Brynhildur can harness the wind, effectively allowing her to double-jump to higher ground.…

As a master of kung fu, what does Colussi make of martial arts’ representation in videogames – other than the ones made by Sloclap? He’s fond of Virtua Fighter 4 – in particular Lei-Fei, the Shaolin monk who moves between stances – and, surprisingly, Def Jam: Fight For NY. But one title looms large in our conversation: “Street Fighter II. I love this game!” Colussi’s always been a little bothered, though, by the idea that heavy attacks need charging up. “No one would strike like this. You don’t need to take time to strike heavily.” He questioned the notion early in his relationship with Sloclap, which seems indicative of his larger role – a topic expert who can approach games with an outsider’s eye. “I just ask simple questions… Why…

November also marks the 20th anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved’s release. At what point did Bungie realise it had a runaway hit (and an Edge 10) on its hands? “This may sound ridiculous at this point, 20 years later, but we didn’t feel like the spotlight was on us at all,” Staten says. “There was an Oddworld game [Munch’s Oddysee] coming out, and people believed that was really going to be the key title.” And when that spotlight did turn Bungie’s way? “One of my early memories of those days was when Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer came to visit Bungie. They came to see, like, ‘What was this thing that just happened on our giant spreadsheet?’ And they were very nice and generous with their time and asked really…

With an increasing emphasis on the likes of xCloud and Game Pass rather than the traditional battleground, it seems like Xbox is playing its own game these days. Has it grown out of the console wars? “I spend zero energy on ‘How do I make other gaming platforms smaller so that Xbox gets bigger?’” Spencer says. “I’m more interested in the growing pie of gaming than I am our slice of the pie eating into someone else’s. And it’s why we focus on things like cross-play and cross-saves. I think about these scenarios of why you and I maybe can’t play a game together – and it shouldn’t be because of the console you bought versus the console I bought. That doesn’t help the industry grow, when we put artificial…

You might associate the term metaverse with Fortnite, and the brand mash-ups that see Avengers meet with Rick and Morty at Ariana Grande shows. Omdia’s Dom Tait helpfully classifies these as demonstrations of might. “‘Look at our scale; look at what we can do for you as a brand or artist,’” he says. “It’s almost like the Chinese Army on patrol: ‘See how amazing and massive we are.’” It might be a mistake to look at these displays and expect a successful metaverse environment to share the same vibe, but such mash-ups prove that corps can be persuaded to let worlds collide, and they don’t dictate the tone of those worlds, or the ones you might choose to inhabit. “Just because Roblox is one of the most developed doesn’t mean…

Harry Krueger Game director Was Returnal always going to be a PS5 exclusive? Over five years ago, when Returnal was originally conceived, we started coming up with some ideas for the next project, and as is often the case when looking at new concepts, we started off fairly platformagnostic. There wasn’t any information on what the next-generation platforms would be at the time, so we just worked with the information we had. Of course, after we started working on Returnal, the PS5 appeared on the horizon. It seemed like an exciting opportunity for us to really take full advantage of its potential. And then both Housemarque and Sony agreed that it would be the best decision to focus exclusively on the PS5 to harness its full power. At what point…

We all have routines and practices we settle into without really thinking about it, and that extends to videogames. With more and more distractions competing for our limited free time, it’s easy to get set in our ways, to spend those precious hours on something familiar rather than seeking out new experiences. That’s part of the beauty of Game Pass – even though having such a vast selection of games available can cause choice paralysis, or encourage us to prematurely abandon slow burners, there’s never been a better time to step outside the comfort zone. It’s thrilling, too, when games actively seek to push us there. Take Conway: Disappearance At Dahlia View, a detective game that’s at its most potent when it forces us into unsettlingly voyeuristic territory. Or Amanita’s…

Quill must often pick sides in arguments, and has the casting vote when the group is split. The outcome isn’t always as you’d expect: decide to sell Groot, and Rocket will repeatedly, and angrily, question your decision. Then again, that’s hardly the only time the two are at loggerheads. At two junctures Drax suggests throwing him over a chasm to extend a bridge: should you concur on the first attempt, he’ll kick up enough of a stink the second time that you’re forced to take the long way round. Other choices smartly subvert the format: when the group is engulfed by a mysterious fog, you’re invited to choose the enemies you think are about to emerge from it. And elsewhere, the key to defeating a familiar foe is simply to…

One of the reasons Age Of Empires II endures is its vibrant mod scene. From quality-of-life improvements to total conversions such as Sengoku, which recreates Japan’s famous Warring States period, modders have created some impressive stuff over the years. This makes the lack of mod support in Age Of Empires IV at launch disappointing – and a little mystifying. Custom maps in particular are a big part of the appeal of the series, and not being able to make or play them in the new game feels like a step back. Relic has since stated that mod support will be implemented sometime in spring 2022. Quite how far-reaching this will be remains to be seen, however. Age Of Empires IV, being a Microsoft-published game, has pride of place on the…

Exo One’s story is told through subtitled snatches of otherwise indecipherable radio comms, and dreamlike visual flashes. You see these between levels, but also (in an effective touch) when obscured by clouds or underwater: a brief glimpse of our solar system’s largest planet, a photograph of a group of astronauts, and so on. A picture emerges of a failed mission and hopes of rescue: though the plot is heavily backloaded, the game’s final cinematic is beautiful and rather touching.…

Through Robot Teddy, Thunderful Investment is bankrolling two funds. The first is focused on VR. “[Robot Teddy founder] Callum [Underwood] has a lot of experience in that space, having worked at Oculus,” Simonetta says. “I was a PSVR project lead in Europe for a period of time, evangelising PSVR to the development community. So there is the shared belief that VR can play an important part in our industry.” The second focuses on backing early prototypes. “Too often, for publishers, investors and platforms, it’s easier to invest in something that is farther along the line, and so developers struggle to get a prototype funded.” The idea, it seems, is to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing – though Simonetta stresses that, while publishing with Thunderful…

Having gained early access to the exhibition, we were surprised to learn it would be made available to download for free. Even if its abstractions arguably make it a relatively niche proposition, opening Kid A Mnesia up to a larger audience is a smart move from Epic’s point of view, representing another feather in its hat – and further temptation for PC owners to stray from Steam. From the band’s point of view, it’s a chance to reach a new generation of listeners, but with the only encouragement to spend a QR code at the exit – essentially the equivalent of a museum donation box – the whole thing feels more creatively than commercially motivated.…

AMC Games continues its quest to spotlight offbeat ideas with this narrative-focused strategy game about cultivating a crop of urban legends to spread fear across the world. Developer Fictiorama Studios has twinned that intriguing premise with a distinctive aesthetic – initially exploring styles that drew from German Expressionist art before settling on classic pulp comics, such as Eerie and Creepy. “Their covers had compositions and palettes that were easy to pick out from a crowded shelf, and the writers knew how to enthrall readers with dark scenes that lingered in the mind,” art director Rubén Calles tells us. “After a few rounds of iteration, we were able to blend our own sensibility with that style.” You won’t need to wait for the witching season to spread these terrifying tales: the…

BOOK The Far Shore bit.ly/thefarshore Subtitled ‘Indie Games, Superbrothers And The Making Of Jett’, Adam Hammond’s book covers eight years in the development of the ambitious science-fiction adventure. Hammond is clearly aiming for an audience outside the industry – in the opening chapter, he cheerfully reveals that he “knew absolutely nothing” about games beforehand – but that outsider’s perspective is valuable in what is anything but a standard ‘making of’. The literary and filmic aspirations of this “moonshot” are discussed at length, with co-creator Craig D Adams refreshingly honest about Jett’s shortcomings. While the closing chapters, in which the critical response is dissected, overlook our own editorial, we won’t hold it against Hammond – not least since he rightly recognises that there’s no gap in ‘videogames’. VIDEO Kamiya Chronicles bit.ly/kamiyachronicles…

Nature is healing. There have been sightings of blockbusters such as Dune and Eternals in our cinemas, which can only mean one thing: the return of The Cinematic Experience! I have enjoyed the discussion around the question ‘What even is the cinematic experience?’ If only these blockbusters can deliver it, and it can only be experienced on a huge screen, can we perhaps demystify things and say that it’s nothing more or less than spectacle? (Sorry, Denis.) Everything that is truly magical about storytelling works on a smaller screen because our imagination scales. At the end of The Verdict, Paul Newman hesitates to pick up his ringing telephone. Doesn’t matter how big the screen is – the emotion of whether or not he will resume his relationship with Charlotte Rampling…

Developer FromSoftware Publisher Bandai Namco Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Japan Release February 25 FromSoftware’s latest dark fantasy epic begins with the shattering of the titular Elden Ring. Your task, as a ‘Tarnished’ wanderer in search of grace, is to wrest the pieces from the claws of various monstrous demigods and restore the realm to its former glory. So far, the game itself feels similarly fractured, separated into two glittering halves. On the one hand, this is an open world reminiscent of Breath Of The Wild, The Witcher and Shadow Of The Colossus, a game of uninhibited roaming and looting, with most of the conveniences you’d expect from the genre. On the other, it’s everything we know and fear from Dark Souls, a game that taught…

No adventure would be complete without a spot of fishing, so it’s only right and proper that Little Devil Inside will allow Billy to catch his dinner. The process is designed to be as straightforward as possible, Choi says: “It is a very simple cast-strike-reel action, with no complex combination of floats, bait, line strength. So why are we bothering with this? Because we love fishing!” There’s more to it than that, of course: the aim is to humanise Billy, making him more than just a swordwielding action hero, but allowing him to “make use of the environment to fulfil his needs,” as Choi puts it. Yet fish are not just a source of food. “A tackle shop owner may hint about a hidden angling spot, so you may wish…

Developer/publisher Mumo Studio Format PC Origin Korea Release Early 2022 (Early Access) That name sounds like a fictional mineral in a science-fiction B-movie – the kind of substance that turns out to be, as the kids say, a bit sus. Yes, there’s no escaping the fact that this social-deduction multiplayer game, set on a spaceship where a traitor plots against an unwitting foursome, is riding the coattails of Among Us to a certain degree. Yet it’s no bandwagon jumper: Dubium was conceived in 2018, just before Innersloth’s game was released, and at least two years before it suddenly became a phenomenon. Besides, another asymmetrical multiplayer game is more firmly embedded in its DNA. Mumo Studio initially wanted to make a game that captured the tension of Dead By Daylight, but…

You can steer your carriage manually – worth doing to smash obstacles that bestow random rewards – but it will also drive itself. The road forks regularly, as indicated by a map dotted with question marks, but always culminates in a Guardian boss just before the next inn. Some branches lead to field hospitals or stores, others to gaps in reality or three-tier monster lairs that house the choicest treasures, including vehicle accessories that let you carry more or scout map nodes. Additional concerns include random blockades and a ‘Loathing’ world state that amplifies the terrors ahead. Party members may have opinions on which route to take, incurring stress when ignored, while characters who despise each other will bicker continually inside the wagon – even, on occasion, coming to blows.…

Developer Spiral Circus Publisher Sold Out Software Format PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series Origin UK Release Early 2022 Tom Mead has always confronted his fears by illustrating them. “I’m really scared of people wearing animal suits, so the majority of my career [was drawing] that,” the artist, one half of developer Spiral Circus, tells us. “But after about ten years, I realised that I wanted to move on and do something different, and that’s when I started doing a series of watercolour paintings based on thalassophobia, the phobia of the deep sea.” And what beautifully menacing terrors Mead has conjured in Silt. Spiral Circus’s debut game casts you as a lone diver exploring a strikingly creepy, black-and-white ocean underworld, where horrible things with far too many teeth are hellbent on…

Why did you decide on a painterly art style for Sifu? Actually, at the very beginning – the very, very early stages – I remember we even had a discussion about should the art style be more realist. But we ended up choosing to build on our expertise from Absolver, continuing with the stylised approach. Stylisation means that you are controlling the level of detail of your image. And by choosing not to put too much detail, you can – and we at least try to – put the emphasis on what matters most. Which, in Absolver, was the idea of the fight as a dance. And having worked on that game as a lead artist, what did you carry over to this project? We built a lot on Absolver’s…

Can Spencer pick a favourite game from these 20 years? “Voodoo Vince was the first game I finished with my two daughters, with my youngest sitting next to me with a controller that wasn’t even plugged in but she was sure if something was happening on screen, and my older one on my lap, and we would pass the controller back and forth. And that’s what gaming is about to me – those memories with friends or family. My best gaming moments aren’t always because of the visual fidelity on screen or the artistry that went into creating the game. It’s that plus the mix of what joy and community in gaming means, coming together. So that moment of finishing Voodoo Vince will be one of those things I think…

The videogame industry is at an obvious advantage when it comes to building 3D online worlds and audiences to fill them. But it also has a set of expectations working against it. When players occupy a server together, it’s usually for competition or combat – not the more benevolent and granular forms of play the metaverse appears to hinge on. This, surely, is what the concerts are all about – they’re a useful shorthand to remind the world that it’s fun to get together, dress ostentatiously, and experience something communally. “For the metaverse, there has to be a reason to be there besides killing orcs,” Core co-founder Jordan Maynard says. “For me, that Deadmau5 concert, and the experience of being there with other people, was it.”…

Swimming for the surface in Subnautica is a moment of pure tension. As your oxygen runs out, the screen darkens around you and eventually goes black; however, if you’ve timed it just right, you can cheat death and break the surface, gulping down fresh air as your senses rush back to you. Looking back over the 20-year history of the game’s developer, the parallels are striking. Unknown Worlds has come close to drowning, financially speaking, on multiple occasions – but it’s managed to resurface time and time again, in the process solidifying its reputation as a crafter of immersive, player-driven experiences. Unknown Worlds CEO Charlie Cleveland was working at Empire Earth developer Stainless Steel Studios in Boston when he witnessed the birth of the Half-Life modding movement, led by CounterStrike,…

Developer Playground Games Publisher Xbox Game Studios Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series (tested) Release Out now Can you suffer whiplash sitting on a couch? Set a crash test dummy in front of Forza Horizon 5 and you’ll find out. One second you’re sinking into a sun-lounger position, drinking in HDR rays and the almost overwhelming fidelity of the Mexican landscape; moments later you’re jerked into that forward hunch of intense concentration as you scream a Lamborghini Sesto along a liquorice lace of coastal tarmac. Factor in neck-craning as you drift the rim of a volcanic basin and your vertebrae get a more vicious workout than your analogue stick. Forza’s open-world spin-off has always bounced us between the meditative zen of exploration and shrieking daredevil danger, but rarely have those…

“Insubordinate,” narrates Chiké Okonkwo’s Arthur Kingsley. “Churlish.” He’s describing the conduct of Australian comrade Lucas Riggs – but the word choice comes straight from Key and Peele’s most famous sketch, Substitute Teacher. It’s an unfavourable comparison: for a shooter that puts so much focus on its script, there’s never quite enough zip or verve to Vanguard’s dialogue. We get the sense that Riggs and his fellow Rats Of Tobruk are meant to bring the banter, but despite some spirited smirking from actor Nikolai Nikolaeff, the material just isn’t there on the page. Meanwhile, we’re told that the pilot Wade Jackson has a way with a tall tale – yet his story is delivered straight by Kingsley, a disappointingly reliable narrator. Perhaps it’s simply that we’re already familiar with Okonkwo’s voice…

One of the biggest incentives to explore is collecting the little red Miman. There are 200 in total, and each time you find five, the skeletal shopkeeper at Cadaver’s Hollow will reward you with items. More importantly, each Miman also nets you Glory, a currency that can be used at the World Of Shadows to enhance the abilities of both the Nahobino and your demon allies. These range from increasing your demon stock or the skills you can learn to ways to speed up the Magatsuhi gauge, the number of available enhancements also boosted by destroying the Abscesses on the map. While it’s possible to find a demon that will reveal all the Miman locations in your area for a price, you can also gain Glory from scattered glowing spots.…