PlayStation Magazine - August 2014 UK

ISSUE 099 AUGUST 2014

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ISSUE 99 / AUGUST 2014 Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW, United Kingdom Tel +44 (0) 1225 442244 Fax: +44 (0) 1225 732275 Email [emailprotected] Twitter @OPM_UK Web officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk

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EDITORIAL Editor Matthew Pellett @Pelloki Managing art editor Milford Coppock @milfcoppock Art editor Phil Haycraft Production editor Dom Reseigh-Lincoln @furianreseigh News editor David Meikleham Games editor Phil Iwaniuk @PhilIwaniuk CONTRIBUTORS Writers Louise Blain, Nathan Brown, Matthew Elliott, Joel Gregory, Mike Harris, Leon Hurley, David Houghton, Andy Kelly, Daniella Lucas, Ben Maxwell, Louis Pattison, Justin Towell, Ben Wilson, Iain Wilson Art editor Rob Speed Designer Andy Ounsted ADVERTISING Advertising sales director Nick Weatherall Advertising sales manager Andrew Church Account sales manager Jo Fraser MARKETING Trade marketing manager Colin Hornby Senior product manager Adam Jones Group marketing manager Sam Wight Senior marketing executive Tilly Mitchell Marketing executive Antonella Matia CIRCULATION International account manager Rebecca Hill Head of trade marketing James Whitaker PRINT & PRODUCTION Production manager Mark Constance Production co-ordinator Vivienne Turner

GAME OF THE MONTH Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End FAVOURITE NEW REVEAL Grim Fandango

LICENSING International licensing manager Regina Erak FUTURE PUBLISHING LIMITED Editorial director Jim Douglas Creative director Robin Abbott Managing director Nial Ferguson Deputy managing director Clair Porteous Head of games Lee Nutter Group senior editor Dan Dawkins @DanDawkins Group art director Graham Dalzell SUBSCRIPTIONS Phone our UK hotline on 0844 848 2852 Phone our international hotline on +44 (0)1604 251045 Subscribe online at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk NEXT ISSUE ON SALE 1 AUGUST 2014 Printed in the UK by William Gibbons on behalf of Future. Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT. Tel: 0207 429 4000

ittleBigPlanet 3, Dark Souls’ spiritual follow-up Bloodborne, Grim Fandango, Rainbow Six: Siege, Battlefield Hardline, Rise Of The Tomb Raider, WWE 2K15, FIFA 15, PES 2015, Criterion’s so-new-it’snameless racing project, Mortal Kombat X… These are just some of the brand new games we’ve squeezed into this issue, many of which we’ve played before anyone else. Welcome to our annual Hot 50 issue in what’s the busiest OPM in recent memory. If this is your first ever Hot 50, let me explain how this all works: it’s the month where we count down the very best games on the horizon. But here’s a twist: never before have we featured and tested quite so many brand new reveals. And that’s not even counting our first hands-on encounters with the likes of Far Cry 4, Batman: Arkham Knight and Assassin’s Creed Unity, and the small matter of the glorious in-engine debut of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The future of PlayStation has never looked brighter, so sit back and enjoy our gaze forward to some guaranteed future classics.

“WELCOME TO THE BUSIEST OPM IN RECENT MEMORY. NEVER BEFORE HAVE WE TESTED SO Matthew Pellett EDITOR MANY BRAND [emailprotected] m @Pelloki NEW REVEALS.” THIS MONTH’S GAMING EXPLORERS…

Phil Iwaniuk

GAMES EDITOR Took his PS4 across the world for a two-week holiday in Australia, then camped on BF4 for some ‘Great Barrier Griefing’. GAME OF THE MONTH No Man’s Sky FAVOURITE NEW REVEAL Rainbow Six: Siege

David Meikleham

NEWS EDITOR Despite loving MGS more than his own (fictional) children, Meiks picked Far Cry 4 as his game of E3 2014. Elephants > Snakes. GAME OF THE MONTH Far Cry 4 FAVOURITE NEW REVEAL Bloodborne

Phil Haycraft

ART EDITOR Official Phil Magazine’s final issue bows out on a high thanks to the hottest Hot 50 we’ve ever created. No, seriously – wear gloves. GAME OF THE MONTH The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt FAVOURITE NEW REVEAL Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Dom ReseighLincoln

PRODUCTION EDITOR OPM’s LittleBig family man is obsessed with Mortal Kombat X. We had to ban his Hot 50 ‘Toasty’ puns. GAME OF THE MONTH Valiant Hearts: TGW FAVOURITE NEW REVEAL Mortal Kombat X

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August 2014

The big 10

006 E3 REPORT Looking back at the biggest games show on Earth as PS4 steals the whole shebang… again. pREVIEW

030 MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR By Gandalf’s supreme hobo beard! A LOTR game that isn’t rubbish? Be cautiously excited. preview

036 METRO REDUX Two doomsday shooters get wrapped up into one extra shiny 1080p package for PS4. featurE

044 THE HOT 50 Counting down the toastiest half century in gaming, as we delve into the very best, most exciting titles headed to a PlayStation near you. review

087 MURDERED: SOUL SUSPECT Can the ‘solve your own homicide’ sim deduce the mystery of how not to make a pap game? review

092 WATCH DOGS Is 2014’s most anticipated game so far really worth the wait? Read our official verdict. retrostation

106 TEKKEN 3 Peering back into PlayStation’s past to re-examine Namco’s classic PS1 fighter.

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THE BIG 10

PREVIEWS

Latest info, screens and playtests All the hottest news 006

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FEATURES

REVIEWS

NETWORK

To-the-point, detailed analysis

In-depth verdicts on every big new game

Max out your PS4, online and off

Classics revisited

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RETRO STATION

THE Games index 052 ABZU 051 ALIEN: ISOLATION 016 AMPLITUDE 068 ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY 072 BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT 064 BATTLEFIELD HARDLINE 067 BLOODBORNE 059 CALL OF DUTY: ADVANCED WARFARE 054 THE CREW 076 DESTINY 061 THE DIVISION 053 DRIVECLUB 084 EA SPORTS UFC 047 THE ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE 046 EVOLVE 073 FAR CRY 4 056 FIFA 15 010 GRAND THEFT AUTO V 088 GRID AUTOSPORT 059 GRIM FANDANGO 095 GUACAMELEE! SUPER TURBO CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION!!! 012 THE LAST GUARDIAN 032 LEGO BATMAN 3: BG 033 LOADING HUMAN 038 LOADOUT 060 LITTLEBIGPLANET 3 054 MASS EFFECT 4 073 METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN 036 METRO REDUX 031 MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR 037 MINECRAFT 055 MIRROR’S EDGE 2 094 MOTOGP 14 087 MURDERED: SOUL SUSPECT 074 NO MAN’S SKY 059 THE ORDER: 1886 014 PGA TOUR 034 PLANTS VS ZOMBIES: GARDEN WARFARE 058 RAINBOW SIX: SIEGE 066 RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER 019 SINGSTAR: ULTIMATE PARTY 086 SNIPER ELITE 3 105 SOUTH PARK: TSOT 054 STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT 099 ULTRA STREET FIGHTER 4 078 UNCHARTED 4: A THIEF’S END 090 VALIANT HEARTS: TGW 092 WATCH DOGS 059 THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT 054 WWE 2K15

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SONY WAS THERE TO MATCH MICROSOFT BLOW FOR BLOW IN A SPECTACULAR E3 PRESS CONFERENCE CRESCENDO.

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12 WANDER-ED OFF

Team Ico no-shows at E3 2014.

16 AMPED UP

PS2 classic Amplitude gets Kickstarted.

18 TORTURE TOP-UP

Dark Souls II gets a new DLC trilogy.

TheBig10 STORIES EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

PS4 grabs greatness as it steals E3… again

All the PlayStation highs, lows and stumbling execs from the LA convention The greatest show on Earth? Not half. Quite how such a heavily corporate gathering stuffed to the upsettingly moist gills with overpacked, sleep-deprived journos can make us so happy is a mystery on par with deciphering what Ken Kutaragi was thinking when he greenlit PlayStation 3’s banana pad. In squarely focusing on games, rather than slides to appease shareholders or getting distracted by peripheral of the month fads, Sony delivered an Electronic Entertainment Expo performance that showcased just why PS4’s future is so bright. Now, can we please get some soothing cream for our singed corneas? Going into its first LA mega-expo since PS4 enjoyed its recordbreaking release party last Nov, the pressure was definitely on. That’s what happens when you establish a considerable market lead over your

You tell ‘em, PlayStation. Though there’s nothing to dampen PS4 excitement quite like LA humidity.

biggest competitor: you’re asked to build on that momentum and keep the gap growing. Make no mistake, Microsoft and Nintendo both had strong showings this year – the former all but ignoring its derided Kinect sensor in favour of games, games and more games. Thankfully, Sony was not only there to match their reveals blow-for-blow, but in a spectacular press conference crescendo, it floored all comers with a devastating flurry of killer titles. HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? Ending its presentation with the triple threat of that GTA V PS4 announcement, a thrilling in-engine demo of Arkham Knight (mercy me, what a Batmobile!) and our first proper look at Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, was beautifully judged. But we’re not here just to focus on the games – we do that in some style with our Hot 50 feature starting on p44. No, instead it’s important to focus on just why this was one of the most pleasingly put together E3s from the core gamer’s perspective in years.

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The Big10

WHITE KNIGHT

As anyone who’s stayed up until 3:37am in a blurry-eyed haze of sadness waiting for The Last Guardian (find out the latest on Team Ico’s enigmatic griffin adventure on p12) while some suit prattles on about PSP market synergy can attest, having your time wasted at E3 sucks. That’s why it was so refreshing to see most of the big publishers treat the time of the hundreds in attendance and millions watching at home with the utmost respect.

What E3 missteps there were revolved around developers (usually unwittingly) courting controversy. Though Assassin’s Creed Unity dealt out one of the show’s most impressive hands, the main reason gamers were talking about Arno at the end of the week was to decry Ubisoft Montreal for not including playable female characters in the four-player co-op. In the height of the furore, game director Alex Amancio said: “I understand the issue, I understand the cause, and it is a noble one, but I don’t think it’s relevant in the case of Unity.” As we said, ‘misstep’.

STORIES EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

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SIEGE THE DAY Ubisoft enjoyed a particularly strong event, with special focus and effort put into showing real-time demos of their upcoming megaton hitters. The biggest complaint you could have at this year’s E3 was an over-reliance on CG trailers – we’re looking at you, Ms Croft. But the French publisher bucked the trend, confidently releasing lengthy gameplay sequences from Far Cry 4 (sweet lord the Himalayas look amazing), Assassin’s Creed Unity (those crowds!) and newly rebooted Rainbow Six: Siege (now that’s how you do deformable drywalls) – all of which we’ve played this issue. EA could’ve learned a lot from this strategy. Despite announcing triple-A properties such as Mirror’s Edge 2 and Star Wars Battlefront at last year’s show, the publisher

was surprisingly guarded on what it was willing to share with the public. Vague behind-the-scenes reels at DICE and Bioware were the order of the day. Even though both studios are clearly effusive about their projects, neither Faith nor those TIE Fighters seem to have progressed as much as you might have hoped in the last 12 months. Still, at least EA kept the focus on games you actually care about. Ooh, what’s that coming over the hill? Why, it’s a hideous fish alien thingie: welcome back Mass Effect. Early concept footage of a Krogen standing in the midst of a scarred battleground were indeed exciting, if overly brief. Yet even more spine-tingling was the reveal that the Edmonton branch of Bioware is working on a new IP, and one studio describes as being built from, “clean sheet design – the most fundamental principles you can have.” It also hinted at telling, “contemporary stories,” in a universe, “as big and imaginative as what we’ve done before.” Colour us 50 shades of obscenely excited.

THE EDMONTON BRANCH OF BIOWARE IS WORKING ON A NEW IP. COLOUR US OBSCENELY EXCITED.

Want. Want. Want. Revealed at Sony’s conference, the new Glacier White PS4 comes bundled with Destiny and hits stores 9 September alongside the game’s release date. Pricing details are yet to be revealed but… *drool*

DESTINY AWAITS But let’s not end on frowny-faced territory, because above all, this was an E3 to celebrate and revel in great upcoming games. Not only do Sony’s first party efforts continue to impress (how adorable is LBP3?), but there’s also a real effort to strengthen relationships with third parties – just look at PS4’s exclusive Destiny Alpha. “We’re absolutely delighted,” said PlayStation’s UK managing director Fergal Gara, when we ask him about E3. “We really feel like we’ve got our mojo back as a business.” To which we can only proffer… yeah, baby, yeah! Go to officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk to read our E3 coverage as it happened.

Evolve is looking good (as you’ll find out on p46). We may or may not have tried to nick the 30ft monster.

Q All the colours of the rainbow… except

most of them. Still, white PS4, though.

Q Editor Matt is still wearing his Sony

wristband. It’s starting to pong a bit.

The Powers TV reveal seemed to last a lifetime – but Uncharted made the wait well worth it.

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Q Both AC Unity and LittleBigPlanet 3 showed off some impressive footage, even if certain XDev developers struggled to play their own game on stage…

A life-size Batmobile? Oh hell yeah. How could you not be moved by this and Arkham’s ace demo?

“Sniping hapless citizens, officer? No, I was just testing the new draw distances.”

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GTA V sets its sights on PS4

Rockstar confirms a new-gen version is heading your way How about that? All those incantations we intoned, all those evenings we spent cross-legged in circles, humming the right cosmic frequency… and at last GTA V gets a confirmed PS4 release. We’re not saying all the voodoo we practiced caused this to happen – only that we’ll never know if it did or not. We digress. The PS4 version of Rockstar’s record-breaking open-world heist-fest (and top spot occupant in OPM’s hallowed PS3 Hall Of Fame) stretches out the draw distances farther across the hills and highrises of Los Santos than ever before. Textures are now upscaled across

the board, traffic density reaches levels that’d send Boris Johnson into anaphylactic shock and the resolution’s cranked up, too. Is it 1080p? You’ll have to wait and see to get angry/elated about that one, but the high-res trailer Rockstar released into the wilds certainly indicates that it’ll be in that ballpark. How long do you have to wait? Months rather than years, thankfully – it’s penned in for an autumn release date. Before the last leaves fall from the highest oaks, prepare to shatter the kneecaps of Los Santos denizens by the dozen – and that includes chasing that one civilian for so long that everyone else in the room gets a bit creeped out and exits. But with better graphics!

SO HOW LONG DO WE HAVE TO WAIT? FOR ONCE, NOT LONG.

exec talk “GTA V takes full advantage of the power of PS4, and features a host of enhancements and new details for players to discover. Plus, the current community of PS3 players and Xbox 360 players will have the ability to transfer their progress and characters to the PlayStation 4.” Andrew House President and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment

This might come as faintly bittersweet news if you’ve devoted significant hours and funds into GTA Online on PS3, but fear not – Rockstar has you covered. All the downloadable content from last-gen is right there at your fingertips from day one on PS4, and you can import your character and progress from last-gen versions of the game. Yep, even Xbox 360 to PS4. Hey, it takes character to admit you were wrong, and we’re not gonna give you a hard time for switching sides. Welcome. There are improvements and additions beyond making ‘dem grafix’ more impressive, mind. New wildlife varieties find their way into the open-world, along with new weather effects and an updated damage model. Sniping a cassowary in a thunderstorm from the passenger window of a crumpled 18-wheeler? Dare to dream, people. There are

PLUS POINT

Despite not being able to utilise all the touch inputs of the PS Vita, the fact that PS TV plays most of its games means you can take advantage of those free PS Plus titles even if you don’t own one.

The Big10

STORIES EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

PlayStation TV will set you back £84.99 and comes bundled with a DualShock 3 in the UK.

The future of telly is in your hands PlayStation TV set to arrive in the UK this autumn At ease, kids. You can remove those green contacts now. The artist, or small white box in this case, formerly known as PlayStation Vita TV in Japan is finally making its way to our shores after a quick paint job. Falling squarely into microconsole territory with a £84.99 UK price tag, PlayStation TV runs the same software and chipset as the Vita, so plugging in via HDMI will enable you to play compatible games with either a DualShock 3 or a DualShock 4. Measuring a palm-sized 6.5cm by 10cm, the box also acts as a Remote Play device – so no more picking up the comparatively Godzilla-sized PS4 and moving it through to another room for some alone time. PlayStation TV is closely tied to PlayStation Now, and the tiny set-top box is set to take advantage of

further, unspecified, “new details to discover,” according to Rockstar – the discovery of which will put the spice back into GTA V’s urban sprawl no matter how thoroughly you played it the first time around. We don’t like to sound the fanboy trumpet too often here at OPM, but it has to be said that GTA V’s new-gen announcement coming from the Sony conference at E3 2014 was a big deal. We’re not deluded enough to believe Rockstar will hop into bed with Sony for platform exclusives, but it was nonetheless a gesture that demonstrated Houser and co are aware where the momentum lies this generation. It was one of the show’s happiest developments. Now all we need is PS4 Red Dead… Will GTA V on PS4 be 1080p and 60fps? Tweet your predictions to @OPM_UK.

Sony’s game-streaming service when the PS4 beta launches 31 July in the US. “It will give you the ability to play hundreds of PS3 titles made available through PlayStation Now and will play most Vita titles, plus PS1 and PSP Classics,” explains SCEA CEO Shawn Layden. “That’s nearly 1,000 games that PlayStation TV owners will have access to at launch.” A US bundle has already been announced at $139, packing in a DualShock 3, 8GB memory card, HDMI lead and code for The Lego Movie Videogame, so expect a similar bundle here at hopefully around the same price point. Even as a Remote Play and streaming device, this is a unique bit of kit. But with the ready-made PS Store library, this could be the gaming box to rule them all. Just no one mention the PSX, alright?

THE SET-TOP BOX RUNS THE SAME SOFTWARE AND CHIPSET AS YOUR PS VITA.

For more details on PlayStation TV, head over to blog.eu.playstation.com.

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SONY CONTINUES TO CATEGORICALLY DENY THAT TEAM ICO’S DELAYED TITLE HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

ABOUT A BOY

The Big10

The relationship between boy and beast was initially inspired by Wander and Agro from Shadow Of The Colossus. Though lord only knows what state The Last Guardian is in right now.

Q This shot is almost identical to the first chain image released in 2008.

STORIES EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

Q C’mon, just look at how sad his eyes are. Please let us give him a good home, Sony.

Where is The Last Guardian? Trico’s future further in doubt after missing E3 Somewhere, deep within the cheeriest regions of a glorious parallel universe, you’re currently sat playing Team Ico’s enchanting monster platform/ puzzler. Parallel You tells us it’s amazing, by the way. Annnnd back to soul-crushing reality. Yes, The Last Guardian has missed yet another E3, and despite reassurances from top PlayStation brass, we’re starting to wonder whether Trico and his little chum will ever see the light of day. It’s been over six years since the initial, oh-so-enigmatic screen of that chain leaked from the bowels of Sony HQ, and yet TLG feels further away than ever. The only tiny spec of light amidst all the cat-eagle-dog darkness is the fact Sony categorically denies it’s been cancelled, despite recent erroneous reports from some media outlets. Speaking to Eurogamer at E3, Shuhei Yoshida seemed to suggest

no further information would be revealed on TLG until Sony was ready to show something really concrete again. “Lots of people tweeted me they were heartbroken by that news,” said SCE’s Worldwide Studios president on the game’s no-show. “People are going through this rollercoaster of emotions, and it’s our fault for not releasing the game yet. We owe a lot to those people, but we really don’t want to release piecemeal information until we can say this is The Last Guardian – so we ask you to wait.” LONG BALL That’s all very well and good. The problem is, we’ve been waiting for five years. Ever since that first trailer leaked, Sony’s griffin beastie has owned our hearts. But the only comfort we can offer is the game is surely now a PS4 title (rather than PS3). Lets just hope the game resurfaces at TGS an… oh, Parallel You has just platinumed it. Vent your TLG woe with us at facebook. com/officialplaystationmagazine.

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the big shot

eagle-eyed analysis Agoraphobics beware: draw distances are looking pretty sick, as you’d expect from Frostbite 3.

You see a harrowing naval disaster, PGA Tour sees a trick shot. Bounce the ball off the hull for a birdie.

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“Hey, you sunk my battleship!” PGA Tour drops Tiger for Titanic If you were to throw one criticism at golf, and therefore golf videogames, it’d be that it’s all a bit bloody tranquil. In a medium that generally treats us to one exploding head per ten paces, the Pringle-clad procession of drives, chips and putts in your average golf game can quickly subside into tedium if you’re not a devotee. Enter PGA Tour, the result of genetic splicing between the Tiger Woods series,

the Frostbite 3 engine and, in the case of this particular fantasy course, Battlefield 4’s Paracel Storm map. In addition to the straight-laced official courses, PGA Tour aims to drive boredom well down the fairway with dramatic, shortcut-laden fictional play areas such as this. It’s an easier sell than the usual, “the ball moves even more realistically this year,” that’s for damn sure. This one’s out spring 2015 on PS4. Is a birdie in the hand worth two in the bush? Tweet us @OPM_UK.

number game we do the maths

$7m Sum Journey dev That Game Company has recently raised in venture capital.

The clubhouse is just through there. Just past the barbed wire and oppressive guard towers.

707 Billed lbs of wrasslin’ faction The Shield in WWE 2K14. Why, Seth? Why?

Combined hours that have been spent playing PS4 since the console’s launch.

Life’s a beach, and then you die. Or at least spend five furious shots clearing the damn sand trap.

40 Number of PS4 trophies you can nab by hacking Chicago in Watch Dogs.

45,010 PS4s sold in Europe during a single week in late May. Sony must be thrilled.

Despite the massive play area, there’s no loading – the game streams environments on the fly.

95% Amount of PS4 owners who have connected to PSN. Huzzah for the nets!

3120hp The max upgradable health total in Dark Souls II. Come at me, Drangleic!

220m Number of times the Share button has been pressed. We’re all so giving.

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If the new Amplitude on PS4 is as kind to our irises as this concept art, we’ll be utterly chuffed.

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Amplitude gets kicked into life

Harmonix makes sweet music with crowdfunded success story As long shots go, the final days of Amplitude’s Kickstarter campaign are up there with Istanbul at half-time, Rocky flooring Apollo Creed or Shenmue 3 getting a release before PlayStation 16 hits shelves. With just three days to go, Harmonix’s quest to resurrect its beloved PS2 rhythm-actioner on PS4 had raised only half of the $750,000 target required to make the HD reboot a reality. In short, things were grim. Eiffel 65 grim. Not that you’d ever know speaking to Ryan Lesser. Creative lead of the project to resurrect the Harmonix

great, Lesser remained confident right until the end that the team’s dream of bringing the trippy racer/ music sim screaming back into existence would come to pass. “I’ve seen some crazy funding curves on Kickstarter before,” Lesser tells us during an exclusive chat. “So I thought anything was possible.” Turns out, he’s right… especially when you have the power of 140 characters or fewer fuelling your nostalgic, pitch-perfect campaign. “We had one of our weekly all-company meetings around that time and I gave a pep talk to the company,” Lesser explains. “I asked everyone to work hard at spreading the word on social media and other

AMPLITUDE WENT ON TO NET $844,127 FROM 14,112 BACKERS IN TOTAL.

dev talk “To us, Amplitude is an improvement on Frequency. However, the Freq tunnel was better in that the player can go from the last lane to the first with a single press of the D-pad. In the new Amplitude, I am adding that functionality to the track. It will have the same speed and feel as typical lane switching. It will be the best of both worlds.” Ryan Lesser Creative lead, Harmonix

outlets. People did an amazing job and it paid off in the end.” The word-spreading clearly worked a treat, as Amplitude went on to net $844,127 from 14,112 generous backers with 22 hours remaining on its 18-day pledge. Well done, you deep-pocketed saviours. AMPED UP It’s a good job, too, because it’s clear Ryan and his team have never quite got over their great PS2 love… even though they made Amplitude some 11 years ago. “Personally, I haven’t been this excited to make a videogame since maybe Rock Band. I love our games, but this one really has its hooks in me.” And who can blame him? Focusing on the now iconic Beat Blaster ship, which negotiated note-driven paths strewn with objects, it captured the hearts and ears of many PS2 players.

PAY THE PRICE

Insomniac CEO Ted Price donated $7.5k and will now have a song called Crazy Ride, produced to celebrate his studio’s 20th anniversary, feature in the new Amplitude.

STORIES EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

info patches update your brain

Q The Beat Blaster designs show a ship that looks like a prowling metallic beast.

we can treat the game as a sort of sci-fi ’concept album’.” Part of that album will now be made up from some of the industry’s brightest composing talents, as a number of game musicians became attached to the project the closer it came to conquering its Kickstarter total. “C418 (Minecraft), Danny Baranowski (Super Meat Boy), Kasson Crooker (Amplitude), Anamanaguchi (Scott Pilgrim), Freezepop (Amplitude) and Jim Guthrie (Sword & Sworcery) all signed up, so now we are flush with awesome music creators.”

One of the key areas where the sequel to Frequency stood out was in its thoroughly eclectic choice of licensed music. Spanning Bowie to Blink-182, the retro gem’s fondly remembered soundtrack is actually one area where the PS4 update looks to sharply contrast with what’s come before. Lesser describes the original’s tracklist as, “a giant mish-mash,” so it’s perhaps not surprising the HD remake is going another way with its tunes. “It was our goal to make this as affordable as possible,” he continues. “So we killed two birds with one stone and nixed licensed music.” Don’t fret, though, because Lesser says this actually gives the team more creative authorship. “We now have the ability to craft the entire experience to be thematically tight from the art over to the audio. We’re currently designing the narrative so

LIGHT FANTASTIC As for what PS4 brings to the ear-arousing shindig, well, we’ll let Lesser elaborate. “The graphical polish will be a real focus. We want to push the ‘trippiness’ a bunch and make the game swim around the player.” It sounds like he may even have plans for the lightbar: “I hope to use the cool new features of the DualShock 4 to enhance the musical and arcade feel of the game.” Pad light shows or not, it’s thrilling to know Amplitude’s comeback tour is finally signed-off and PS4-bound.

NAUGHTY DOG’S NEW TRICK Uncharted 4 has been keeping you waiting recently, but that’s not all PS4’s premier dev has on its plate. In a recent interview, Neil Druckmann (who’s now been drafted onto Nate’s latest game) admitted the studio has a new Uncharted-sized project on the go, but that, “it’s got a long runway in front of it.” 017

FETCH QUEST Surprise! InFamous: Second Son is getting a nippy slice of DLC named First Light, which hits PSN in August. Available as a standalone product (meaning you don’t need to own the full game to play), the DLC focuses on speedster Fetch and her ace sprinting powers as she takes on the DUP.

Find out why Ted Price donated to the Kickstarter at insomniacgames.com.

PSP GO… WAIT, PSP GONE

Q This white and red tinged art has a touch of Mirror’s Edge about it.

After a decade of portable profits, more redesigns than we can count and over 80m units sold, Sony’s first handheld darling is being discontinued in Japan, with reports the US and UK will soon follow. PSP was released in late 2004 and spawned all-time greats such as LocoRoco and MGS Peace Walker.

Dark Souls II’s ice place to die Drangleic gets new DLC trilogy

Hurt me more. More, I say! Unless you’re the sort of cheaty dastard who can beat the wonderfully punishing dungeon scrapper in under 21 minutes (damn you, mega wall glitches that let you bypass 95% of the game), chances are you’re still playing From Software’s fantasy sequel. For those who have conquered Drangleic, though, your nihilistic noggin will be delighted to learn Dark Souls II is getting three new DLC adventures. Now leave the rest of us in peace as we attempt our 137th go at beating the Ancient Drago… oh, he’s eaten us again. The downloadable Lost Crowns trilogy centres around your Undead’s pursuit of three regal pieces of skull bling that used to belong to Drangleic’s King Vendrick. Crown Of The Sunken King kicks off the deathly proceedings, launching 23 July on PS3. The DLC is

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contained within an entirely new area, one where, “stepped pyramids span a vast underground cavern,” according to the press release. The trailer also suggests those sodding poison statues are back… and this time they can move. NEW CONTENDER Next up is Crown Of The Old Iron King, out 27 August, where moody ruins look set to dominate. The three-part episodic DLC finishes up with Crown Of The Ivory King on 24 September. Best pack your sturdiest, halberdresistant parka, too, as things appear to get dang chilly with a fresh snow-covered mountain range. Dark Souls has a strong track record with DLC – the original’s Artorias Of The Abyss was both excellent and generously sized. Expect more death and delight. Okay, just death. Now, can anyone help us with that dragon?

THE TRILOGY CENTRES AROUND YOUR UNDEAD’S QUEST TO FIND SKULL BLING.

Share your most painful Dark Souls memories with us by tweeting @OPM_UK.

the rumour machine

There’s a chance Skylanders Trap Team could feature a Crash toy. Please be true.

our sources understand…

Sony has registered two new PlayStation models with the Indonesian Communications Ministry, with speculation a revised PS4 and PS3 Super Slim could be in the works.

All three DLC episodes are included in Dark Souls II’s season pass, on sale on PSN for £19.99.

Early reports suggest WWE 2K15 could have NXT stars on the roster.

Rainbow Six: Siege is likely to have a beta according to the game’s producer. Read more on p58.

SCEE’s Jim Ryan says FC4’s ‘co-op with a mate who doesn’t own the game’ feature could appear in more PS4 games.

DONG SONG

PS4 enhancements include the ability to create light shows mid-song by waving the pad around. Better hope Chris Martin isn’t precious about being defaced by hand-drawn wangs.

PlayStation voices the month in mouthing off

“Congrats to my writer pal Gary Whitta on the Star Wars movie gig – can we geek out together now?” her now? EA’s Amy Hennigg is clearlyy one with th the Force. The PS4 version also supports most mics from the PS3 era.

SingStar phones it in for tenth birthday “Call me maybe?” Ultimate Party supports mobiles What kind of birthday gift do you give the karaoke game that has everything? No, not a Bonnie Tyler wig. Too retro. The correct answer is functionality that enables you to synch smartphones with the game. Because who wouldn’t look infinitely cooler wailing Total Eclipse Of The Heart into their Sony Xperia? Yeah, don’t answer that one.

Q To use the app, you’ll need to be on the same Wi-Fi connection as your PS4/PS3.

This tech wizardry forms part of SingStar: Ultimate Party, a new game headed to PS3 and – yes! – PS4. To tie in with its release, Sony is to unleash an iOS and Android app which links with your machine using a four-digit code – meaning you can put those mics away for good should you wish. While the disc release is the series’ first since SingStar: Back To The 80s in 2011, its tracklisting is still under wraps. Tracks will cost £1.15 and will be Cross-Buy where possible. Controversially, the scoring system has also shifted – the top points limit switching from 10,000 to a ludicrous three million. We’re sceptical about this change, but given the happiness the series has given us countless times over the past decade, we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for now. It is its birthday, after all. SingStar: Ultimate Party releases before Xmas. More info at singstar.com.

“Actually, he’s the new Troy Baker and shouldn’t be compared to anyone else.” Nolan North sets the record straight on his voiceover chum.

“I wouldn’t have killed Liquid.” Hideo Kojima admits he should have ave kept Snake’s nake’s cloned oned bro ro alive due ue to Mr Mullet’s ullet’s ensuing nsuing fame. me.

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instant opinion

Driveclub might be 30fps, but it has a few tricks up its sleeve to make it feel more like it’s hitting 60.

strong vs wrong ZONING IN

Killzone Shadow Fall’s four-player co-op DLC pack Intercept really impressed at E3. It’s out now, and will also be getting a standalone release later in the year.

SHOW OFF Kudos to the biggest games show on Earth for dialing down the press conference gaffes. There were few Mr Caffeine or Trettonmeets-Chewbacca moments this year.

CLICKER BAIT 020

Get ready for an instant PS4 classic – The Last Of Us Remastered hits shops 1 August. Mmmm, delicious 1080p Clickers.

CAN’T HACK IT Despite the delay, Watch Dogs doesn’t quite live up to its initial new-gen promise. Get our full verdict on p92. Sorry, Mr Pearce.

SIMPLY DEAD Despite strong pre-E3 rumours, we’ve still heard nothing about a PS4 Red Dead. C’mon, Rockstar: we’re beyond desperate for a new cowboy fix.

Why 30fps isn’t a big deal on PS4 Driveclub dev challenges you to spot the difference If we had a pound for every time we heard a demand that 1080p and 60fps should be the new standard since PS4 launched, we’d easily have enough for a four-pack of Cornettos and a copy of Horse & Hound (OPM’s recipe for the perfect weekend). Well guess what, elitist, framecounting thirty-o-phobes? Driveclub game director Paul Rustchynsky has a new slant on the rapidly escalating debate. In short: 30 frames on PS4 doesn’t feel like 30 frames on PS3. “Bluetooth on PlayStation 3 didn’t have the same

IN SHORT: 30 FRAMES ON PS4 DOESN’T FEEL LIKE 30FPS ON PS3.

POWERS OFF We’re all for Sony developing bespoke TV shows to broadcast on PSN, but did it really have to bore the ears off us with a ten-minute Powers presentation at E3? OPM very sleepy.

latency as it does on PS4, so there are areas which have improved massively between the generations,” he confidently informs us. “One of the things we worked on really early on with Sony was PS4’s DualShock 4. We tried to make sure latency was one of the key things they addressed to make sure that whatever [frame rate] we went with, latency was as minimal as possible.” In Driveclub’s case, there’s more than controller latency at work to smooth the experience. He goes on: “We developed our engine to have – I think it’s 400 Hz – something similar to that in terms of updates for our physics engine. We’ve made sure we interpret that incredibly quickly.” Rustchynsky’s words are backed up during our own hands-on with Driveclub, which doesn’t fluctuate when the screen fills with cars or particle effects, and gives us confidence to fling our weight around into corners. On the flipside, 60fps would feel even silkier with lower latency…

Q Regardless of the number of frames, Driveclub still looks incredible on PS4.

Is 60fps really that important on PS4? Tweet us your thoughts to @OPM_UK.

HE GOT GAME

With so many games competing to steal Sony’s E3 conference, this is one of the hardest debates we’ve ever had to write. Hit p44 to bathe in all the killer PS4 games from LA’s big show.

The Big10

STORIES EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

just one more question… 10 the team debate this month’s burning issue What game stole the show for PlayStation at this year’s E3?

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MATTHEW PELLETT EDITOR

PHIL IWANIUK GAMES EDITOR

DAVE MEIKLEHAM NEWS EDITOR

DOM RESEIGH-LINCOLN PRODUCTION EDITOR

RAINBOW SIX: SIEGE BREACHED E3’S WALLS LOUDER THAN ANY OTHER GAME AT THE SHOW.

WHILE THE TRIPLE-A GAMES ITERATE ON IDEAS YOU LIKE, NO MAN’S SKY IS BAKING A UNIVERSE.

FAR CRY 4. BECAUSE ELEPHANTS AND THEIR DYNAMITELINED TUSKS.

PIRACY IS DEAD. LONG LIVE ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY’S REVOLUTION!

Ubisoft has perfected the E3 formula. Two years ago it finished off its conference with the Watch Dogs reveal. Last year, it was The Division. And for E3 2014, Rainbow Six: Siege breached many a Most Wanted list and cleared the other games out of the way. To steal the show at E3 you need to either make a shock announcement, or capitalise on hype going into the event with a knock-out demo. Siege did both: people knew a surprise was coming from Ubi, but not what it was, and the game previously known as Patriots never left the lips of the journos on the ground as a result. Q

Go and watch the trailer again. You see those clouds? That’s not a skybox texture; that’s real liquid vapour, procedurally generated by the planet’s atmosphere. For me, that mad scientist approach to game design is so much more exciting than Unity’s graphics engine or Far Cry 4’s fresh and exciting reskin. It’s a complete journey into the unknown, created by a four-man team working from a studio that was underwater last Christmas. It’s a universe sim with an art style a Williamsburg hipster’s Instagram would go mad for. This isn’t even a debate – nothing conjured more wonder at E3. Q

For Dumbo did rise above the gathering masses and proclaim: "THE ELEPHANTS SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH!" That was magnificent. Honestly, how could you top a Himalayan bull elephant literally blowing up a jeep with the power of its face horns? Yes, I’m a smidge too obsessed with the big-eared climax of Far Cry 4 – did you see what Babar did with his trunk to that dude? But there's no denying the real-time footage Ubisoft revealed was spectacular. Mini choppers! Drop-in/ drop-out co-op! Eagles that snatch up goats! Emergent, gorgeous, and with an incredible new environment, this is the shooter to beat on PS4. Q

Rocksteady’s farewell to the Dark Knight nearly stole my heart this year, but it was the sight of Unity’s sprawling 18th century Paris that had me almost whooping with excitement. (Which wouldn’t have turned out well seeing as I was holding a four-week-old child at the time.) The lifeless crowds of earlier entries in the series have been banished in the wake of thousands of active AIs, each with a unique character that adapts to your actions. And four-player co-op missions make so much more sense than the PvP multiplayer, opening up awe-inspiring scope for meticulous planning and, err, execution. Q

REPLIES

F facebook.com/OfficialPlayStationMagazine T @OPM_UK W officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk E [emailprotected]

#98 Homefront The

Revolution, a new COD and Wolfenstein TNO

day of release and I’ve already finished the story. Something made me wonder, though – what is it with modern games and endings based in lighthouses? It’s happened with Watch Dogs, Bioshock Infinite and Dishonored. All three have been wildly successful. Publishers: lighthouses = money!

CAN I GET A RT? Tweet gold (and one troll) from this month’s @OPM_UK timeline

@ultrabrilliant Aiden Pearce is supposed to be 38. Too old to be cutting about in a baseball cap. @BenjiWilson Watch Dogs is here. Baby definitely wants to watch this rather than an ep of Peppa Pig, right?

Charlie Moose Barrell via Facebook

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sidelined by the need for realistic-looking worlds. Jamie Webb via email

We agree Jamie – solid, innovative gameplay and an immersive story should always come before a shiny this or a detailed that, but a game running at a smooth 60fps still gets us all weak at the knees.

Get lifted

Like most of us, I bought Watch Dogs on the

I’m one of those people who have been on the fence about getting Watch Dogs. I’ve been eagerly awaiting your review, as you’re my ‘go-to guy’ for reviews. I was a little disappointed to hear that it was delayed, but after reading your reason why I was very impressed. There is a lot of rushing nowadays when it comes to reviewing triple-A games, and to see a huge reviewer (you know you are) take a firm stance on giving an indepth and honest review really restored some faith. Alex Ashcroft via Facebook

Oh stop it, you’ll make us blush. As editor Matt said in his post back in May, we’d rather wait and give a game as big and broad as Watch Dogs the kind of time it deserves. Check out our verdict on p92 and have a year’s OPM subscription for your troubles.

@schillingc I turned on my PS4 and it instantly ejected the disc for Knack. It knows.

Suck it up

I am super-pumped over Watch Dogs on PS4. The graphics are superb and gameplay brilliant, with unique, fun online features too. And to all the people that are complaining that the driving isn’t like GTA V –

GAMEPLAY SHOULD NEVER, EVER BE SIDELINED BY THE NEED FOR REALISTIC-LOOKING WORLDS OR EFFECTS.

Star letter Keep the faith

@creedfangirl187 I’m going to make an indie game that’s like Dear Esther, but with New Jack as the narrator.

well I hate to break it you, but this isn’t a Rockstar game. If you want GTA V go play it. If every game was a GTA entry, gaming would get boring real quick. So suck it up and enjoy the awesomeness of this wondrous new IP. Nick Muller via Facebook

That’s the thing with GTA V – it set the bar for a thriving, dynamic open-world, but we’re pleased to see that Ubisoft Montreal has the gumption to try and be a little bit different.

troll of the month

Play game

It really bugs me that people see ‘1080p, 60fps’ as such a big issue at the moment. There was never this kind of heated debate about the basic graphics of consoles gone by. They’re remembered for having great games. It seems this generation of consoles is only being judged by how realistic they can look. It’s the content within a game that makes it enjoyable and replayable, not the way that spectacular explosion looks on-screen, or how many particles are floating by. That kind of realism is just an added bonus for me. Gameplay should never, ever be

Good spot. Which gives us an idea: a 99p indieRPG set on Portland Bill and soundtracked by the Lighthouse Family’s ‘Lifted’. Preorder now by mailing worstconceptsince [emailprotected].

@raywillmott I’m making a note here: E3 was a huge success. It’s really hard to overstate my satisfaction. @David_H_Esq Just had some fearsome USF IV rounds. Why do other multiplayer games even bother?

@charltonbrooker Pretty sure the European election results are a deleted cutscene from the new Wolfenstein game..

@tamoorh I like it when Souls games go AAHHH AH AAAHHHHH AHHH, AHHH AHHH AHHHHH AH AHHHHH. @MckKirk Bought Lego Marvel on PS4 for my boy, because I’m a Superdad. @Shiny_Demon Thought the hamster was laughing. He’s just crunching lettuce. I’m pretty disappointed.

best comments from officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk

“I absolutely love this game. It feels just like an old school first person shooter. Go stealth or go all-out Rambo style. Love it.“

“Delaying games is this season’s microtransaction.”

Davedoubledecks has much love for Wolfenstein: The New Order. r.

Don’t keep Jn_pvfc91 waiting.

READERS’ MOST WANTED Which games are bleeping loudest on your radar?

The Division

Despite being one of four big names in your top five to drop to 2015, the upcoming Tom Clancy RPG is gripping to the number one spot ahead of Nathan Drake. And with the Snowdrop engine making those E3 gameplay videos look good enough to eat, we fully understand why.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Your final entry in this month’s Most Wanted is another casualty of the delay hammer, but with a Sony show demo showcasing a rainsoaked Gotham and a transforming Batmobile, Rocksteady’s final swing at the Bat-verse looks to be its most ambitious yet.

FORMAT PS4 ETA 2015

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Departures? Setbacks? Pfft. Not to be outdone by a triple-A stacked Sony E3 show, ND closed proceedings with a PS4-captured trailer that’s got you (and the world) very excited for what could be Nate’s final journey.

FORMAT PS4 ETA 2015

VOTE NOW!

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Tell us the five games you can’t wait to play at [emailprotected].

FORMAT PS4 ETA 2015

The Order: 1886

A push back into 2015 hasn’t been enough to dampen your hankerin’ for Ready At Dawn’s neo-Victorian shooter. So with its moustache freshly waxed, The Order: 1886 blasts its way back into your top five list for the first time in six issues.

Destiny

It may have dropped two places in your top five, but Destiny is still riding high in your charts thanks in part to E3’s surprise Alpha and the upcoming Beta access exclusive to PlayStation owners. Not long to wait, now…

FORMAT PS4/PS3 ETA 9 SEP

EXIT POLL

Our Facebook fans answer a final question

FORMAT PS4 ETA 20 FEB

What’s was your favourite moment from Sony’s E3 show?

20% Can’t wait

to unleash elephant hell in Far Cry 4.

11% Are ready to hit Los Santos all over again in GTA V on PS4.

25%

Swoon at the sight of a brand new trailer for Uncharted 4.

14% Are losing their minds at that Batman: AK gameplay demo. 17% Look to new horizons at the thought of No Man’s Sky’s new sci-fi universe. 13% Have glassy eyes for the return of Sackboy and co in LBP 3.

NEXT MONTH

Give us an earful with your thoughts on this year’s Hot 50, the coming of PlayStation TV and the return of Nathan Drake.

OPINION

David Watkins

EVERY TIME I LOG INTO A GAME WITH A SURREAL FANTASY AVATAR, I’M LOGGING OFF FROM MY REAL SELF IN THE PROCESS. Are character customisation screens bad for our health?

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m I the only one filled with dread when presented with a character customisation screen? In The Elder Scrolls Online, Zenimax Online promises us sliders for every bump and curve of the human(oid) body. (It might even be possible to create an attractive orc). But having such an avatar is a double-edged sword. It might feel good to nip and tuck our online avatars into more appealing versions of ourselves, but is it always good for our gaming experience and our mental health? I get the feeling I am always trying to embellish my characters with the qualities I don’t have in life. I give my character the huge biceps and toned stomach I can’t get at the gym and then top it off with a full head of hair. My shadow self (the fictional persona the world wants me to be) is at odds with my authentic self (the one I was born to be). It’s all very Jungian, but so is the nature of the digital dream world. Sure it’s all fantasy – a chance to cast off the shackles of reality’s physical imperfection – but it can’t be doing much for my selfesteem; always wanting to play a character with more sex appeal, charm and strength than I can really bring to the table in reality. It’s indirect self-oppression, so subtle that I didn’t notice how ingrained it had become, until one day

WRITER BIO David Watkins is a games writer who, since The Lawnmower Man, has wanted to recreate himself in digital realities. For over two decades he has waited for a virtual reality Elder Scrolls game. Strangely, as he himself ages, all his avatars remain around 25.

I force myself to create a character a bit more ‘like me’. Receding hairline, slight paunch, etc. Now I’m not just playing a game – I’m in the game.

ALTERED EGO Having an avatar I can more closely identify with affects my choices in the virtual world. If I play a character totally against self-identification, does that give me free range to act out a twisted morality? If I really played as myself in GTA V, I would be waiting at stop signs rather than mowing down innocent people. Reality is often boring, and games need to be fun. In striving for authenticity,

I can all too often refine the character adoption process into a fun-less venture. So when it comes to player customisation, going totally surreal is often easier than recreating life. In Saints Row IV’s Steelport I was having a whale of a time running around as a gangster with a pink wig and a miniskirt. It didn’t bother me that I’d copped out on the tailored experience with a few pre-set defaults. Besides, surreal character creation screens in games such as the Saints Row series give us little chance to create a lifelike player-character. I can slide to any point on a triangular body shape scale (thin, fat and muscular in each corner) and yet none of the positions resemble bodies that I recognise. I had no choice but to go un-real which, though it made the gaming experience more fun, somewhat disconnected me from it. Every time I log into a surreal fantasy avatar, I am logging off from myself. Immersion is difficult when you’re too aware of the experience of actually playing the game. When I can’t recognise myself on-screen, I become ‘the player’, wearing a costume for a performance of someone else’s play. So these days I try to have a balance between the two. Surreal, wacky super heroes and believable avatars both have places in my gaming consciousness. The sheer range of games with character options provide a wealth of opportunity to enjoy digital worlds as both the person I’d love to be and the person I truly am. If I play characters who are virtually like me, then my virtual reality playgrounds feel more real, more dangerous, and more consequential.

OPINION

Phil Iwaniuk

Matthew Elliott

PS3’S LEGACY ISN’T POLYGONS, FRAME RATES AND LIGHTMAPS, IT’S SMARTER GAME DESIGN.

’HARD’ IS GETTING JUST ONE SHOT AT A DECISION AND THEN LIVING WITH THE CONSEQUENCES.

Okay, and bows. But how do you want the PS4 era to go down in the history books?

Decisions, decisions – why there’s nothing tougher than making stern choices

ith old Grandpa PS3 now sitting in a swing chair on the back porch of its retirement home, it’s a fitting time to take a look at how the previous console generation furthered the medium we know and love. It’s easier as you go further back. When you think of PS1, you think of demo discs, trance soundtracks and fog. But its icons – Lara Croft, Cloud Strife, Solid Snake et al – all did something to revolutionise the genre landscapes of the time. Lara turned platformers into something more sophisticated and immersive, Mr Strife cut the rubbish out of JRPGs, and Snake (Snaaaaaake!) set the rules for the stealth genre. Now, let’s look at PS3’s icons. Nathan Drake, John Marston, Commander Shepard, Sackboy and the like. They earned their place by doing what Lara & co did: breaking new ground within their own camps. And yet it’s hard to single out a game design idea that sums up the last generation. Intuitive level design that guides you from point-topoint using light sources? The introduction of RPG elements into other genres? Mapping

shoot/accelerate to the triggers? That bizarre period when every protagonist seemed to be carrying a bow?

PRETTY POLY I’ll bet no one’s shouting, “better graphics,” at me right now. Because you know as well as I what little impact great-looking games such as Resi 6 and Crysis 2 had on the landscape. We enjoyed the gradual fidelity increase, but it was a sideshow to the headline act fronted by new design ideas. So hang on – when you announce, “I didn’t pay £350 for this,” when a PS4 indie arrives in your Instant Game Collection, is visual heft really all you care about? Would you be happier if a shooter from the 2007 blueprint was released in Unreal Engine 4? The system-sweaters will come, as slowly and scarcely as they ever did, but if you ignore the likes of Resogun and Towerfall Ascension in the meantime you’re sending out a message that only graphics matter. And I know you don’t really believe that – it’s just too easy to take good design for granted. Don’t let PS4 be remembered for 1080p, but for new horizons.

ard isn’t Ornstein and Smough. Hard is deciding who lives and dies between characters you’ve spent the last ten hours learning to love. It isn’t a DragonForce solo in Guitar Hero III, or COD 4’s Mile High Club on Veteran, or anything that takes practice. Hard is getting one shot at a decision and living with the disastrous consequences. This is precisely why David Cage suggested you should play Heavy Rain only once. Anything you can get right by trying over and over again will eventually become easy. This doesn’t mean I think Dark Souls is a doddle – just that modern games are clever enough to challenge both discernment and dexterity.

MUMMY MORRIGAN Often, the thing that games can take away from you is time. In Dragon Age: Origins, I ‘invested’ over 50 hours in my romance with Morrigan. She was feisty and unfettered, I was a bearded berserkertramp with a terminal love of justice. I thought I could turn her despite her evil ways so I was understandably miffed at her unmotherly suggestion

that we impregnate our unborn child with the soul of an archdemon. My choice: betray everything my character stood for or watch my tenderly-erected love-yurt collapse and go limp. Basically, the purpose of everything I’d done rested on one incredible, crushing decision. Telltale’s games are perhaps the best at bowel-troubling choices: it isn’t just the past that’s taken away from you, but the future. Unlike the binary red/blue, good/bad coin flipping of Mass Effect, the ultimate outcome is cleverly veiled, leaving you to stumble forward, blindly unaware of the damage you’ve done. ‘Toad will remember that,’ it whispers in your ear. Remember what? Too late. As games get more complex, so too will the decisions they ask us to make. When The Witcher 3 arrives next year you can expect even the most benevolent choice to have potentially negative repercussions; reminiscent of that persistently troubling game we know as ‘real life’. And, as anyone who’s played real life will know, practice does not make perfect. ‘Your girlfriend will remember that’. Too late.

WRITER BIO

Games ed Phil Iwaniuk sheds a tear each time an HD remake is announced, and invites you to play FIFA 08 in the cold light of 2014 if you don’t think game design has progressed beyond visuals all that much since PS3’s inception.

Contributing writer Matthew Elliott is an expert at poor decisions. He let Kaiden die in Mass Effect because Ashley reminded him of a pretty ex-girlfriend, and squandered a law degree to move into the lucrative field of games journalism.

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CROWDS

LOOK AWAY!

SPOILER ALERT

Crowds

Try not to get lost in the rabble with PlayStation’s most bustling bystanders 1

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ASSASSIN’S CREED

Gaming’s seminal peoplepushing sim was born in late 2007, as a moody Crusadesera hitman shuffled through crowds of holy men and super needy beggars. Yes, you’d seen groups of virtual pedestrians before, but here they were a living, tactical netting to hide yourself in. Praise Altaïr’s agitated, pointy elbows, gentle reader. 2

FIFA 14

Now this is more like it, EA Canada. After a decade suffering through stiff cardboard crowds on PS2 and PS3, the studio finally treated you to some honestto-goodness 3D people in the stands for the footie juggernaut’s new-gen debut. That’s it miffed United fans, gesticulate wildly with those polygonal arms. That’ll wipe away the memory of Moyesy. 3 HITMAN: ABSOLUTION

As a hired life-snuffer, 47 loves the anonymity provided by large groups. Previously, the savage slaphead blended in with rows of suspiciously positioned triplets – hello, Blood Money’s cloned Mardi Gras patrons. But thanks to the Glacier 2 engine, Absolution has

convincing gatherings, with dozens of individuals found on a Chicago train platform. 4

RESIDENT EVIL 4

Crowd control, that’s the real name of Capcom’s genre-redefining entry. While the number of Ganados doesn’t match the other entries here, the skill required to deal with a huge mob of brainwashed, pitchfork-wielding Spaniards and a dude with a burlap sack and chainsaw earns Resi 4 its rightful place. 5

KANE & LYNCH

The dead men in waiting are clearly fans of Michael Mann. How else can you explain their game’s Tokyo nightclub level being a damn near carbon copy of Collateral’s cracking central set-piece, where Tiny Tom rucks in a trendy Korea Town hotspot? 6

DEAD RISING 2

What happens in Fortune City really should stay there. C’mon, do you want folk knowing you spent your entire time wading through hundreds of zombs, impaling the occasional undead citizen with a swordfish while running about in a mankini that would make even Borat blush? Still, those decaying crowds are quite the feat.

HEAVY RAIN

JAAASSOO… oh, you’ve been cruelly splatted by an automobile. Cheers, incredibly unhelpful crowd. You’ve really done Ethan Mars’ shopping centre search for his lost son a massive favour with your endless ambling. Why couldn’t the wee tyke have wandered away in some deserted woods instead? 8

WATCH DOGS

It’s not the pickpockets you’ve got to fret about in Ubisoft’s Windy City – it’s that ruddy rapscallion in the trench coat who’s secretly hacking your phone and replacing all the photos on your dating site profile with embarrassing baby pictures. The swine. Watch Dogs’ crowds are things to be abused and played with. Naughty Aiden. 9 DEF JAM: FIGHT FOR NY

We’ve heard about spectator sports, but this is pushing it. Literally. Not only do the assembled fight fans get overly rowdy during the rapper smackdowns, they only go and get physically involved, too. Throw your enemy towards the crowd and one of them will grab him for an assisted beating.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS State Of Emergency

Rockstar’s infamous rioting sim gave us the best angry-humanto-square-metre ratio until our local Primark store opened up.

Rocky

Hey, Adrian! Why am I fighting on the crowded streets of Philly instead of a boxing ring? Oh, because Rocky V, you say? Ace.

Any Dynasty Warriors

Hack down as many fields of cabbage as you possibly can. And by fields of cabbage, we mean fields of people.

Did we miss your favourite crowd? Got a brilliant In The Mood For idea? Show and tell at twitter.com/opm_uk.

6 027

D I G I TA L EDITION

ON IPAD & IPHONE

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34 PLANTS VS ZOMBIES: GW

Soil baron PopCap turns its strategy series into PlayStation’s newest shooter? Leaf it out!

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PREVIEW

With a handy split Wraith personality, our boy Talion’s a multi-talented murderer, with instant access to a sword, dagger and bow at any given time. Nasty. SOM does have a main storyline, but we’re more interested in the violent soap operas you can create.

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“WE HAD OUR ORC KILL HIS BOSS MIDSPEECH, SETTING OFF A MASSACRE.”

Above Even the biggest of brutes can be brought under your sway. Once weak enough, your Wraith side works its spooky ways for much violent fun.

PREVIEW

FORMAT PS4/PS3 / ETA 7 OCT / PUB WARNER W BROS / DEV MONOLITH

MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR A careless orc costs lives

Somehow, stealth games got big. The spawn of ultra-tough, glacially slow creep-’em-ups such as Thief and Hitman injected a little more action, a burst of daylight, and suddenly a genre built around silent killers featured hooded historical superstars and in-vogue crimefighters. When Warner Bros comes along and slaps the Tolkien license on a game that consciously riffs on both Assassin’s Creed and the Arkham series, you know the stealth genre’s come out into the open for good. And yet during our first hands-on with Shadow Of Mordor, those aren’t the comparisons we’re interested in. While the core of the game has Wraith-possessed main man Talion scampering up Mordor’s rocky faces like Ezio and seamlessly dispatching entire FACTRICK 1. GO-BETWEEN squads of orcs in Batman-y fashion, it’s Shadow Of Mordor is set in what surrounds it – the stuff that informs the 60-year period between where you’re climbing or who you’re The Hobbit and the events of decapitating – that intrigues us. Fittingly, The Lord Of The Rings. this stealth game has smuggled an extra 2. BEAR MINIMUM genre in with it: the old-school RPG. Possessing one vicious That comes mainly out of the Nemesis Caragor to ride is cool, but we preferred assembling an System – a gussied-up options screen entire pack of them. that displays the occupying Uruk-hai 3. DIE PRECIOUS army’s command structure, including Gollum will appear in the slave driving squad captains, all the way game at some point – we’re up to stronghold-ensconced warchiefs. hoping for the year’s weirdest fight scene. Every one of these grey-skinned bastards has a name, a title and, most importantly, a list of personality traits. They could be afraid of the nocturnal ghouls that roam the wild, they might prefer to use poisoned weapons, or – in our favourite bit of understatement – they might, “hate being damaged by explosions.” Each is a sort of colourful stat – come across Uruk-hai in the wild (accompanied by tiny cutscenes in which they reveal a little more of their personality) and learning what they’re vulnerable to can be the difference between victory and meeting the sharp end of an orc blade. In our hands-on, getting to know the army is a critical part of the mission, too. Our body-sharing Wraith enables us to dominate and control any

weakened enemy. Our objective is to either possess the five local warchiefs – a tough task given their slavering battalions and battle-hardened bodyguards – or replace them with our own chosen group of thralls, which is, frankly, a lot more fun. We possess a local captain early on and, using the Nemesis System, point out a warchief bodyguard he should kill. This leads to a duel (we help out a bit), then an initiation (no help needed here, as we find out our man has a particular fondness for killing the furless tigerbear Caragor he’s tasked with battling) and, finally, we have him betray his new boss mid-speech, setting off a giant skirmish that we interrupt by having a recently possessed troll burst in to ‘help’ proceedings.

POWER RANGER This is an action-stealth game that’s far more interested in the story you create than the destruction you unleash. Choose to keep your targets alive and they’ll get scars, both physical (lost limbs are replaced by metal claws) and emotional (some might develop a fear of seeing you, or become enraged at your presence). And, we’re assured, the Nemesis system is flexible enough for even your earliest target to become a true arch-nemesis, given that orcs who kill you are promoted and made stronger. Shadow Of Mordor might draw on the stealth genre to get you around its world, but far more interesting is how it’s drawing on the likes of Dungeons & Dragons or Total War to make the world you’re creeping your way around feel like more than just an obstacle course, but a unique land filled with ugly, familiar faces and user-created storylines personal to you alone.

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PREVIEW

“THE BATWING DETACHES AND INITIATES A SHOOT’EM-UP SECTION, RESOGUN-STYLE.”

The story will send you across the galaxy, visiting Lantern Worlds to collect the legendary Power Rings.

FORMAT PS4/PS3/PS VITA / ETA AUTUMN / PUB WARNER BROS / DEV TRAVELLER’S TALES

LEGO BATMAN 3: BEYOND GOTHAM

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a minifig There have been so many Lego games that they almost defy comparison by this point. There’s even a strong argument to be made for labelling them as a genre rather than a series – which only makes it stranger to say that Traveller’s Tales’ newlyannounced third entry in their DC splinter series owes a serious debt not to Lego Batmans 1 and 2, but none-more-hardcore shooter, Resogun. In our short time with an early build of the game, we’re initially shown the Lego action we’ve come to know and palm off on younger siblings – Batman and Robin puzzle-tag-teaming their way across an architecturally-suspect Batcave in order to find enough blocks to build a rocket. After blast off, though, things take a turn for the weird.

WATCH BLOCKS Following a lengthy cutscene showing a consortium of villains taking over the Watchtower – the Justice League’s spaceborne base – the Caped Crusader detaches the Batwing from his recently-made ship and initiates a multi-wave shoot-’em-up section set along a perfect, orbit-like circle around the station, complete with a My-First-Bullet-Hell aesthetic.

We’re told the shooter section is by no means a flash in the pan (orbiting alien planets is mentioned), but that’s not the only way Beyond Gotham takes its play, well, beyond. For instance, where previous Lego games have settled for ‘find switch, open door’ puzzles, the newest instalment turns the process into part-hacking, part-platforming, asking you to step into Tron-like VR worlds to solve mazes and find codes. Batman’s multi-purpose suits have been made instantly accessible, with fellow heroes (and villains – the story involves a galaxy-wide fight against Brainiac) being given the same privilege, and open-world Gotham’s been ditched in favour of a number of as-yet-unrevealed hub areas. Things really have changed in Bruce’s third outing, and so dismissing Beyond Gotham as an also-ran entry in the incrementally-improving mass of Lego titles (admit it, you’re tempted) would be plain, ahem, batty.

Above It’s always a wink and a smile with Cyborg. Unfortunately, the wink triggers his eye-lasers. Flirt at your peril, readers.

PREVIEW

Every object is interactive. You can pick up a record, remove its sleeve, place it on the turntable and play it.

“TO OPEN A BOX, WE PICK UP THE KEY AND PUSH IT INTO THE LOCK. TO REALLY DO THIS RATHER THAN PUSH A BUTTON IS INCREDIBLE.”

The dev has compared the story to classic TV series Quantum Leap.

Above Part of the game is set in a scientific research base at the North Pole.

FORMAT PS4/MORPHEUS / ETA TBC 2015 PUB UNTOLD GAMES / DEV UNTOLD GAMES

LOADING HUMAN

The next generation of adventure games? There’s a surreal moment in Loading Human where we look in a mirror and see our own reflection. Games have been doing this for years, but the difference here is that we’re in VR, and our avatar is copying our hand movements. It really sells the idea that we’re inhabiting another body, and it takes a while for our brains to get used to it. The game sees you travelling through a person’s memories, and is designed specifically with Project Morpheus and PlayStation Move in mind. Move controls your arms, and when you look down you see your own body. It’s basically a human simulator. The version we played was very rough – an early demo released before a recent shift to Unreal Engine 4 – but we can already see the potential. It has a lot in common with old school pointand-click adventure games, with detailed, interactive environments and characters to talk to. You can pick up and examine objects – or drop them and smash them if you’re clumsy. And there’s a remarkable physicality to it: to open a locked box, we pick up the key and push it into the lock. To actually do this, rather than just press a button, is strangely powerful. Untold Games describes the story of your journey through the memories of another man as, “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind meets Monkey Island” – although we don’t think there’ll be any undead pirates in it. But the best VR games are always the ones designed especially for the hardware, so this should be one of Morpheus’ killer apps.

Above The game was funded on Kickstarter, raising well over its $30,000 goal.

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“A WELL-PLACED HEADSHOT CAN SEND AN UNDEAD SKULL FLYING OFF.”

Balanced combat with each plant or zombie type means jumping between the two sides is easy and rewarding.

FORMAT PS4/PS3 / ETA 22 AUG / PUB EA / DEV POPCAP

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PLANTS VS ZOMBIES: GARDEN WARFARE Are you ready for Full Petal Jacket? Let’s be honest. This really shouldn’t work. We’ve all played Plants Vs Zombies on every device imaginable and possibly already bought the T-shirt, yet somehow here we are with a third-person, online-only shooter that not only manages to feel fresh (as a daisy…) but is also ridiculously addictive. Previously over on the dark side, Garden Warfare has been on other consoles since February which, if nothing else, probably means they’ve ironed out any bugs for us. Utilising the Frostbite 3 engine, Garden FACTRICK Warfare offers up three chlorophyll-packed 1. POT ADDICT multiplayer modes: Garden Ops, Gardens The saucepan-wearing Crazy Dave is actually based And Graveyards and Team Vanquish. on a former employee of Garden Ops is a ten-wave, four-player developer PopCap. co-op affair where you fend off hordes of 2 . Z O M B O S S B AT T L E zombs from Dave’s garden as one of the Bosses can be found in the Garden Ops mode where an four plant classes, while Gardens And evil slot machine chooses Graveyards enables you to get in on the what nasties you face. undead action with a 12 vs 12 objective3 . D E AT H P E T A L based setup. Team Vanquish is a more It looks like Dave has made traditional and utterly chaotic deathmatch up the difficulty levels: Easy, mode where the first to 50 kills is the Medium, Hard and, “CRRRRRAAAZY!” winner. Combat is surprisingly satisfying, with headshots sending undead skulls rolling and Peashooters shrivelling under artillery fire from the heavily-armed All-Star zombies. Plus, levelling up to gain new abilities is also a speedy affair so you won’t be grinding for XP to gain the

Chomper’s Goop attack to slow enemies down, or the Zombie Foot Soldier’s Rocket Jump.

STALK ‘N’ LOAD Just like real life Panini addiction, it’s the sticker packs that are the key to success. Bought with coins that you earn with each kill – and now with actual money if you’re into that sort of thing – these give you extra character variations with upgraded weaponry, more plants for protection during Garden Ops and customisation options for your classes. PlayStation exclusive costume goodies include Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper and Fat Princess gear if you pre-order the game. Whether previous new-gen formatexclusive modes in the shape of splitscreen gameplay and a Boss mode stagger over to PS4 remains to be seen. Like Battlefield 4’s Commander mode, this can be played on a second screen so expect an app for your nearest tablet device for some local multiplayer fun as Dr Zomboss or Crazy Dave. Full of wit and humour, Garden Warfare manages to balance strong gameplay with a serving of quirky upgrades, so if the price point is right then sow far sow good.

Above As in the top down classic it takes extra firepower to rid a zombie of its bucket or cone defence before you can destroy it.

PREVIEW Is anyone else more concerned about where his right boot is? What if he stands on glass?

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The plants are coming…

Zombies are a walk in the park for these four classes

Not just keeping morale up with its ever-smiling face, the Sunflower also helpfully tops up health as a medic. With a Heal Beam ability, as well as its standard Sun Pulse – which sounds a lot like a machine gun to us – the Sunflower is an integral minion.

Sitting squarely in the sniper class, the Cactus has a long range Spike Shot attack as its primary weapon of choice. After a few bouts in the field it levels up and unlocks a Potato Mine ability for some SPUDOW! action and eventually a Garlic Drone for lethal air attacks.

The standard assault class, the Peashooter is the first into battle with his petit pois-launching abilities. An explosive Chili Bean Bomb is on hand to decimate unwitting brain munchers and a Hyper ability gets you out of danger when it’s time to reload.

With a satisfying melee attack, the Chomper is a biting machine with high health and the ability to gnaw through the defences of the undead. Sneak up on a zombie from behind and the Chomper will eat him whole – yum, dead flesh – but you need to wait a few seconds to digest.

Left Colourful maps include the Zomboss Estate, Port Scallywag and Sharkbite Shores. They’re peppered with PopCap references.

Above The Ice Cactus upgrade sends out chilling ice needles to stop enemies in their tracks. Saying, “Freeze!” is entirely optional.

PREVIEW

“THE FIRST GAME HAS BEEN TOTALLY REBUILT FOR THIS NEW COLLECTION.”

You will also be able to download the Redux versions of each game separately via PSN.

on the box

judged only by their covers

ENEMY FRONT

FORMAT PS4 / ETA SUMMER / PUB DEEP SILVER / DEV 4A GAMES

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Prepare to join the war… on poor eyecare. Trading bullet-spraying mayhem for tactical optometry, this medic tent simulator tasks you with performing eye tests and helping your soldier of choice pick the best specs for warfare. FORMAT PS3 ETA 10 JUN

METRO REDUX

Post-apocalyptic duo get the PS4 treatment Stalking the Russian subways in Metro: Last Light was one of the highlights of last year’s gaming crop, with its dark marriage of survival horror and good ol’ first-person shootery-ness. So we’re more than a little excited to learn that Deep Silver and 4A Games are not only bringing Last Light to PS4, but its haunted predecessor Metro 2033 as well. In fact, the new collection, dubbed Metro Redux, will be the first time Metro 2033 has appeared on a PlayStation console – and to mark the occasion, series developer 4A Games has given it one hell of an overhaul. The whole thing has been reconstructed using the latest version of the ex-Ukrainian studios’ bespoke 4A Engine, with completely remastered visuals such as advanced lighting; dynamic weather when you make your way to the irradiated topside; more detailed character models and improved smoke, fire and particle effects. Since both Metro games are brimming with thick and creepy atmospheres, these improvements will be have you quivering in no time.

REDUX TALES The changes to 2033 are more than just a case of tarting up its looks – the dev has even rebuilt the fundamental mechanics of the game to bring it closer to its superior sequel Last Light. Mutants and enemy soldiers now have improved AI, while temperamental stealth sections have been rebalanced to up the tension and offer the best possible shift in the action. And some of the new additions that made their debut in the 2013 sequel, such as silent takedowns, will blast their way into 2033, too.

Last Light hasn’t escaped the newgen face lift treatment, either, with some subtle nips and tucks to its core mechanics further fine-tuning what was already an impressive shooter. Faster access to your inventory and your watch aren’t exactly sexy features you’ll find listed on Redux’s box in giant letters, but in the heat of battle you’ll appreciate the refinements nonetheless. Mmmmm, watches. Then there are the new ‘Play Style’ modes that span both titles: playing on ‘Survival’ will up the horror with limited resources and slower reload times, while playing on ‘Spartan’ will give you access to powerful skills and more ammunition for all-out gunplay. Hugely improved visuals and silky smooth framerates await all newgen Metro travellers, along with all of the DLC across both games. Just remember to count those bullets.

SACRED 3

The cut-throat world of cosplay meets the tactics of an RTS game as you build a posse of like-minded costume crafters and take to the floor of the world’s biggest conventions. Bonus points for actual use of fire. FORMAT PS3 ETA 1 AUG

FAR CRY 4

Above 4A Games recently revealed that the Redux collection will run at 60fps on PS4.

Sleek Savile Row fashion meets the power of Zen in this PS Move-centric QTE-fest. Track down the best tailors money can buy then attempt to separate yourself from such trivial material possessions. FORMAT PS4/PS3 ETA 21 NOV

PREVIEW All DLC is transferable between the PS3 and PS Vita versions of the Swedish sensation…

“DID WE MENTION THE BIGGER WORLD SIZES AND IMPROVED DRAW DISTANCES ON PS4?”

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FORMAT PS4/PS VITA / ETA AUGUST PUB MOJANG / DEV 4J STUDIOS

MINECRAFT

This is ssssSSSSsssserious business

Above …but due to licensing issues, not all DLC will be transferable between PS3 and PS4.

King of vox

Why the PS4 version will be the console ‘craft of choice

Sharing everything will be so much easier, from landscape shots of your cliffside castle base to video-fied eight-player iron man hardcore parties.

The edges of the blocky No waiting around for map will be farther your PS4 version to away than ever – catch up via updates. ensuring that each world It’ll come laced with all the boasts enough room to let latest features introduced in that imagination breathe. the PS3 incarnation.

Worry not, sandbox survivalists and creative mode-minded world builders. Mojang’s celebrated canvas is not only coming to PS4, but when it does, all of our hard work in the PS3 version won’t be undone. In fact, we can drag our block-based creativity flailing into the new generation via world transfers. These are a one way deal, mind. It’s no biggie enlargening a diddy world, but shrinking down the huge PS4 ones to fit into a PS3 sandbox is a technical no-no. Did we mention the massively improved draw distances and vastly bigger world sizes manageable on PS4? Even more palatable is the news that owners of the PS3 version will be able to upgrade to the PS4 one via a smaller transfer fee, rather than forking out the full price. Publisher Mojang is waving $20 as a basic cost for the full version of the game and $5 as an upgrade fee, so expect prices in the UK of around £12 and £3 respectively. Those of a handheld persuasion will be sweatypalmed with anticipated joy at these next two words: Cross-Buy. That’s right, the PS Vita variant of Minecraft won’t cost a penny for those who have already forked out for the PS3 version, and it will boast all of the same features. You’ll even be able to transfer saves between machines, letting you build on the bus before surviving from your sofa.

PREVIEW

FORMAT A PS4 / ETA ET TBC / PUB EDGE OF REALITY / DEV EDGE OF REALITY

LOADOUT

Lock and… oh, you’ve exploded my spleen ‘Good. Clean. Fun.’ Hmmm, at least two of those words delivered at the end of Loadout’s trailer are giant, dirty fibs. While we’re hoping this free-to-play shooter – set in the wilds of intergalactic trailer parks – ticks off its ‘f-word’ pledge, there’s nothing remotely pure or good-natured about the gleefully gory online blaster. 038

Ren & Stimpy meets Team Fortress 2… uh, who then go on to meet Big Mutha Truckers (everyone remembers that PS2 curio’s gang of hillbillies, right?). That’s how we’d roughly sum up Edge Of Reality’s third-person slaughter circus. Imagine deathmatches informed by Looney Tunes violence and you’re pretty much there. Of course, in this R-rated tale, Bugs ends up with a gaping wound in his gut after being shot by Elmer Fudd and his rocket launcher.

FACTRICK

GUN CLUB

The game’s two big USPs centre around 1 . F R E E T O F L AY comically overboard Soldier Of Fortune brutality and a weapon system with, It’s a F2P multiplayer shooter starring colourful “billions,” of different loadout permutations, (read: inbred) characters and barbaric comedy gore. according to the developer. Having graduated from Count von Count’s Adding 2. LEG UP Up 101 after years of Sesame Street binging, Each gun-toter is we’re dubious about that numerical claim. surprisingly agile with a strong suite of double jumps Still, Loadout has reviewed pretty favourably and dodges. Missed me! on PC, with specific praise given to the 3. HIDE AND SNEAK breadth and depth of gun customisation. Certain classes give you the Better yet, the game comes to PS4 as a option to disguise yourself console exclusive, giving Edge Of Reality as a member of the opposition team. Sneaky. time to tailor the experience to the strengths of Sony’s new-gen hardware. Weapon crafting is exhaustive, allowing extensive tinkering of your firearm’s stock, trigger, scope and barrel. Such is the openness of the system, you’re entirely free to bolt a scope onto that semiautomatic grenade launcher, which also spews missiles painted with beastly shark chompers. The actual gun types themselves are less imaginative, spanning rifles, launchers, pulse and beam weapons. Although it feels a bit mean picking on the game when it lets you built an electric shotgun with optional laser-guidance. In a market clogged with overly serious shooters, it’s undeniably refreshing to see a title openly

embrace the silly as wholeheartedly as Loadout. Skin gets seared like burnt toast, holes are punched through chests to reveal still-beating organs, while entire limbs go bye-bye from the cartilage to which they’re attached. Character designs are as evocative as the grisly fates that befall them, ranging from thong-wearing bigboned lasses to muscle-bound afro owners who garb their crotch with the star-spangled banner. The only catch being, that F2P mantle requires you to buy skin packs with the PC version to really open up character creation – a business decision that will likely carry over to PS4. Let’s hope any such transactions aren’t cynically priced.

HAMMERED HOME Among the various deathmatches, it’s strange to note the current standout mode seems to be a spin on capture the flag. A vanilla afterthought in most shooters these days, Loadout makes its interpretation stand out… by means of a man-sized mallet. Instead of a useless pole with a piece of billowing cloth attached to it, Jackhammer mode charges you with ferrying the massive melee weapon to your base. Unlike any other CTF, the fact you can swat away opponents with one swing of your bone-crumpling hammer means you’re far from a walking bullseye. It all means there’s actually reason to turn our cynicism levels down a notch. The mantle of F2P will always hang heavy, but in this case, the majority of weapons and actions are accessible for nowt. If you want to pry open your purse strings to speed up the game’s unlock system, that’s up to you. But in the meantime, it looks like PS4 is getting a genuinely worthwhile, daftly deft shooter to stand out among the throngs of miserablist military death fests. Just promise you won’t teabag us with the thong, lady.

PREVIEW

Whether by jackhammer, plasma fire or grenade, death will become you… with hilariously brutal results. We’re talking Game Of Thrones levels, with added lulz.

“IMAGINE DEATHMATCHES INFORMED BY LOONEY TUNESSTYLE VIOLENCE.” 039

Equip some fire ammo and you can flame-grill yourself some tasty man steak. Mmmm.

Above We don’t know why you’re grinning, pal. Just look at your insanely thin thighs. Those things are just begging to be detached from your person.

PREVIEW

PREVIEW ROUND-UP

This month’s offering of gaming tidbits is so eclectic it’s bordering on the Blumenthal. We’ve got a newly tattooed sport sim, returning trick or treaters and even a cartoon web slinger. Go on kiddo, get stuck in…

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SAMURAI WARRIORS 4

FORMAT PS4/PS3/PS VITA ETA 24 OCT / PUB TECMO KOEI DEV OMEGA FORCE

Since it was first announced back in 2010, fans have been ‘clamouring’ for information on this eastern hack-’n’-slash. So sayeth the Tecmo Koei bods anyway, and why would they lie? In an info drop that’ll surely edge it ahead of HalfLife 3 in the anticipation stakes, it’s been revealed that 55 new and updated characters are on the way, alongside new battle modes, the ability to switch characters in real-time, and tweaks to morale and officer development. One for those who like their Dynasty Warriors served complicated, arriving on all Sony platforms real soon.

EARTHNIGHT FORMAT PS4/PS VITA ETA 2015 / PUB SONY DEV CLEAVERSOFT

One of many indie entries in this month’s round-up, EarthNight stands apart from the crowd by taking the tired endless runner concept and bringing it back to life with a set of gawjus hand-painted levels and a chiptune soundtrack from electro maestro Chipocrite. The heroes of the piece, Stanley and Sydney, must skydive to Earth from space to defeat dragons who have taken over the planet. Lead designer Rich Siegel says it can be completed in 30 mins, but it’ll take hundreds of runs to gather the skills needed to beat all the dragons. Let’s hope this indie hopeful doesn’t run itself into the ground.

DIABLO III: REAPER OF SOULS – ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION FORMAT PS4/PS3 / ETA 19 AUG PUB BLIZZARD / DEV BLIZZARD

Finding the usual cronies of Blizzard’s action-RPG a bit of a drag? Well, you’re in luck, intrepid dungeon crawler. A new deal with Sony will bring the fungal-faced Infected of The Last Of Us into the world of Diablo III and its Reaper Of Souls expansion. So expect Runners, Clickers, Stalkers and Bloaters to ruin many a loot run when the game arrives next month.

TETRIS ULTIMATE

FORMAT PS4/PS VITA ETA AUTUMN / PUB UBISOFT DEV BLUE PLANET SOFTWARE

What’s this? A near 30-year-old block-dropping puzzler making its debut on Sony’s new-gen gaming behemoth? We can hear those systems shifting already. Alright, alright, it may be an elder statesman of gaming, but with the original Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov on-board, six different game modes (Marathon, Endless, Ultra, Sprint, Battle and Power-Up Battle) and the ability to fit blocks into gaps with up to four others locally or online, Tetris Unlimited could well be the most stocked version of a game that wore many a thumb out back in the day on the humble Game Boy.

FENIX RAGE

FORMAT PS4 / ETA AUTUMN PUB GREEN LAVA STUDIOS DEV GREEN LAVA STUDIOS

Looking like a feisty cross between a krogan from Mass Effect and Sonic The Hedgehog, the hero from Green Lava Studios’ debut PlayStation title has taken more than a little inspiration from the speedy animations of that blue-tinged mascot of yesteryear. This 2D puzzler-cum-platformer has an air of the Super Meat Boy about it, with the three-man dev team from Costa Rica (who work in a rainforest no less) calling it, “stylish,” and, “aggravatingly addictive.” Apparently all these increasingly difficult levels are about finding a cookie – where’s that fuzzy Sesame Street monster when you need him?

PREVIEW

MADDEN NFL 15 FORMAT PS4/PS3 ETA WINTER / PUB EA DEV EA TIBURON

Like a jacked-up cave troll, Madden is back, bursting onto your PS4 and PS3 with a mad look in its eyes and a taste for gridiron glory. EA Tiburon has tweaked the tackle physics for offensive play, creating a ‘risk and reward’ system for those who know how to read a fruitful opening, but it’s on ‘D’ that the new Mads is making the biggest changes. Defensive dynamos now have a huge arsenal of improved shoves, tackles and blocks, as well as dynamic camera angles to help shut down any player dumb enough to waltz into the path of the ‘Legion Of Boom’. Oh, and there’s licensed tattoos, too.

NIGHT IN THE WOODS

FORMAT PS4 / ETA 2014 PUB INFINITE FALL / DEV INFINITE FALL

Having successfully funded its Kickstarter at the end of last year (hey, we’d call a $209,375 total from a $50,000 goal the literal definition of successful), developer Infinite Fall has announced the whimsical and rather intriguing adventure game Night In The Woods is heading to the good ship PS4. The tale takes place in the crumbling town of Possum Springs, where college drop out Mae returns to try and find her place in the world. Despite looking like a coffee-fueled Wes Anderson day dream (which is no bad thing in our humble opinion), Night In The Woods combines side-scrolling platforming and puzzles with a story of love, loss and letting go. Oh yeah, and they’re all talking animals…

COSTUME QUEST 2

MURASAKI BABY

What’s this? Double Fine’s releasing a sequel? An actual sequel? We know, we’re as surprised as you are (and just as annoyed that it isn’t Psychonauts 2), but news of another black-humoured RPG from Tim Schafer and co is still a sizeable reason to be cheerful. The turn-based, candy-collecting battle system that worked so well in the first game returns, along with a new (and bigger) setting (New Orleans, no less) that will offer more exploration, collectibles and new characters. This action-RPG could well give South Park: TSOT a run for its candy.

Directed by Massimo Guarini, who previously worked on Killer7, No More Heroes and Shadows Of The Damned, Murasaki Baby is a surreal side-scrolling puzzler with a Edward Gorey-esque art style and twisted feel that would have Tim Burton hot under the collar. Murasaki Baby is all about helping a little girl called Baby (natch) through a series of creepy levels, using the touchscreen and read touchpad to interact with the environment, swapping backgrounds to solve puzzles and guiding the upside-down-headed star by tugging at her balloon. Sounds… nice?

FORMAT PS4/PS3 ETA OCT / PUB DOUBLE FINE DEV DOUBLE FINE

FORMAT PS VITA / ETA SEP PUB SONY / DEV OVOSONICO

DISNEY INFINITY: 2.0 EDITION FORMAT PS4/PS3 / ETA 23 SEP PUB DISNEY INTERACTIVE DEV AVALANCE SOFTWARE

HOHOKUM

FORMAT PS4/PS3/PS VITA ETA 12 AUG / PUB SONY DEV HONEYSLUG/SONY SANTA MONICA

Things have been a little quiet on the Hohokum news front as of late, but that doesn’t mean the indie studio Honeyslug hasn’t been busy refining the surreal adventure game that looks as charming as it does bonkers. Thankfully, Sony announced a release date last month, with the game getting a 12 August arrival in the US and a release the following day in Europe. It’s also Cross-Buy, meaning you have a choice of three whole systems to enjoy the colourful whimsy Hohokum has to offer. If our hands-on at E3 is anything to go by (and it is!) you’re in for an unforgettable treat.

PROJECT CARS

FORMAT PS4/MORPHEUS / ETA NOVEMBER PUB SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS / DEV SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS

Momentum gathers for Slightly Mad’s hyper-realistic driving sim, which offered playable code at the E3 show floor and put out a tantalising new trailer full of fast cars and slow motion. The unique development approach, which is largely community-driven, means this is aiming to suit the racing hardcore primarily – the ones prepared to brave the early builds and give detailed feedback in order to shape the game they want to play. But we walked away disappointed from our demo pod because it’s currently no match for the PC version.

Greetings, true believers! While it was all well and cute to play as Buzz and Sulley in last year’s Disney Infinity, we all knew the House Of Mouse had a Marvel-shaped trump card sitting pretty under its sleeve with the 2.0 version. Alongside the usual Avengers lineup (yes that includes a cute looking Hulk – out first on PlayStation), Disney’s revealed that ol’ Web Head himself is swinging his way onto last and new-gen consoles with a Brian Michael Bendis-penned story based in Spidey’s Ultimate universe. New super friends include Nova, Nick Fury, Iron Fist and everyone’s favourite symbiote Venom. Let’s hope it’s better than The Amazing Spider-Man 2…

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OPINION AND INSIGHT

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News, previews and features you won’t find anywhere else, covering the biggest games on PlayStation.

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THE HOT 50

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THE H

THE HOT 50

OT 50 Counting down the best and brightest on PlayStation’s horizon – who will emerge victorious among 2014 and beyond’s hottest prospects? Don’t get your hopes up, Raven’s Cry…

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THE HOT 50

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Evolve

It’s going to be a long hunt Format PS4 ETA 21 Oct Pub 2K Games Dev Turtle Rock

urtle Rock has big ambitions for Evolve. In co-founder and design director Chris Ashton’s words it’s aiming for, “infinite replayability.” Something it’s going to achieve via a raft of characters, monsters, modes and environments. And it all kicks off with some brand new monster hunters. So, joining Markov, Griffin, Val and Hank in the role of Assault, Trapper, Medic and Support are Hyde, Maggie, Lazarus and Bucket. These are clever variations on each role, serving the same purpose with slightly different tools. One of the biggest changes is the medic role. Val is built out

to heal hurt players with a Team Fortress 2-style healing gun. New doc Lazarus on the other hand can revive dead players during a hunt. Both are definitely team healers, but with a completely unique feel depending on what you consider most important – some levels have wildlife that can eat players and Lazarus needs a body to work his magic on. The other variations are just as tactical. Markov and Hank swap between mines and gas grenades for example, making one great for ambushes, and the other better at flushing the monsters out of their hidey holes. Hank also has the most powerful weapon in the game, swapping out Markov’s lightning gun for a flamethrower.

DEV TALK “We want a big cast of characters. We want a variety of game modes, environment types and ways to play the game, so there’s a lot to dig into when you first pick up the game.” Chris Ashton, co-founder and design director, Turtle Rock

So far there are two ranks for each class, but a third’s on the way and Turtle Rock is promising to use player feedback to create more once the game’s released. And the same goes for modes and maps. Which brings us neatly on to the monster(s). After only having the tank-like brute Goliath to consider, Turtle Rock has been cagey about showing any more. That was until E3 where it debuted a Cthulhu-like beasty with long tentacles sprouting from its face, some nasty electrical attacks and one mean-looking expression. It’s the Kraken, and it also floats high above maps and attacks hunters with long-range sniper-like shots, making it a whole different kettle of, er, alien to Big Bad Goliath.

THE HOT 50

4 7

The Elder Scrolls Online

PES 2015

Doom

Format PS4/PS3 ETA Winter Pub Konami Dev PES Productions

Format PS4 ETA TBC Pub Bethesda Dev Id Software

Format PS4 ETA Winter Pub Bethesda Dev Zenimax Online Studios

“This is the year!” Every 12 months, you can bank on those four words being used for two very different things in the world of football: the claims of upcoming glory from Liverpool fans such as editor Matt, and the idea that PES will finally catch up with FIFA’s sprinting progress and give EA’s institution an even battle on the pitch. So what’s our verdict after a world-first playtest at this year’s E3? Simple: “This is the year!” New-gen PES plays a spectacular game of football. While we’re still unconvinced that the dotted trajectory guidelines when taking freekicks and corners is any use whatsoever, the first PS4 PES lives up to the ‘beautiful game’ tag thanks to the Fox Engine’s visual grunt. There’s no sign of the old stop-start motions, either, as last year’s improved animations and collisions are smoother than ever, and the speeds of both ball and players feel truly representative of footy and no longer a rough approximation to reality. The confusing menus of old have been subbed out for an early bath as well, making this one of E3’s very best surprises.

Famous for its ‘done when it’s done’ philosophy towards the next instalment of FPS royalty, Id’s kept us entirely in the dark about Doom (the ‘4’ went walkies, apparently) until now. Or, more specifically, 17 July, when the QuakeCon doors open and fans descend on Dallas, Texas from around the world. There, the latest Doom will get its first proper reveal after years of allegedly troubled development. Until then, we’ll have to make do with the teaser trailer that’s doing the rounds. Stripmine it all you like, you’ll find nothing more than close-ups of slug-like flesh, cyborg metal and an eventual glimpse of the Cyberdemon, one of the series’ most iconic and powerful enemies. He dampened your T-shirt in Doom 1 Shareware, and he’s back with a more traditional aesthetic than seen in Doom 3 to make a mockery of your Right Guard regime once again. The good news until QuakeCon is that if you took our advice and bought MachineGames’ Wolfenstein: The New Order, you’ll get access to the Doom closed beta when it begins on a thus-far undisclosed later date.

There are a couple of reasons you don’t see the next Elder Scrolls higher up this list, chief among them being the lukewarm review scores it’s received on PC, where it released back in April. Despite that minor raincloud looming overhead, TESO offers a few killer features we can’t ignore. Set 1,000 years before the events of Skyrim, it gives you basically all of Tamriel to explore – though currently on PC much of the game world’s locked away for future content (harrumph). Modders have been trying to connect the various regions within Tamriel for years, and here it is for you, your friends and hundreds of thousands of strangers to explore simultaneously. The game’s been in development for over seven years at this point, and aims to cater not just to crusty old MMO veterans but those attracted by the IP who want to play it like a solo adventure. We’re not totally sold on the idea that it can do both, but with the game slipping now until perhaps as late as 2015, Zenimax has even longer to get it right.

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4 6

Lara Croft And The Temple Of Osiris

Homefront The Revolution

Format PS4 ETA TBC Pub Square Enix Dev Crystal Dynamics

Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Deep Silver/Crytek Dev Crytek UK

Lara Croft And The Temple Of Osiris is the surprise sequel to the isometric, co-op PSN hit Lara Croft And The Guardian Of Light. This time around Lara’s buddying up with rival explorer Carter Bell and two gods in the form of Horus and Isis. The mix of twin-stick shooting and co-op puzzles remains intact, with various ball-rolling and grappling hook tasks leveraging each character’s unique skills. Isis’ bubble shield lets Lara follow safely behind, while the star of the show can again create tightropes with which her godly buddies can cross chasms. In doubling the player count from two to four, Crystal Dynamics has invested in dynamically changing levels. Environments shrink and grow depending on the numbers of players involved, with more enemies, wider traps and tough puzzles pushed into the game every time another player drops in – and those elements are removed when somebody drops out. Our hands-on session feels almost indistinguishable from Guardian Of Light’s gameplay, which is no bad thing at all.

We can smell your cynicism from here. Homefront was agonisingly ‘alright’, so why give number two the time of day? Worse yet, why give it a spot in the Hot 50? Because, once-bitten, twice-shy types, Homefront The Revolution shares only its name with Kaos Studios’ 2011 title. The jaded gamer in us all wonders why Crytek didn’t just call it something new entirely, but that’s by the by. What you’re actually being propositioned with here is an open-world shooter of the Far Cry 3 vein which is making a genuine attempt to play around with traditional FPS weaponry. You’re a guerrilla fighter, so you don’t have access to fancy-shmancy armouries full of automatic weapons and explosives like your enemy. Instead, you MacGyver deadly weapons from RC cars and craft home-made molotovs. KPA-infested America isn’t wholly uncharted territory – Half-Life 2 and various CODs have explored the occupied US already – but the unique toolset at your disposal will give The Revolution a fighting chance when it arrives next year.

THE HOT 50

44 Dragon Age: Inquisition Format PS4/PS3 ETA 10 Oct Pub EA Dev Bioware

Taking on the manner of a chided schoolchild whose homework dramatically improves after an after-school detention, Bioware’s keen to put every misstep made in Dragon Age II firmly behind it. Everything thus far mentioned about Inquisition makes us salivate a bit – the chance to be the genus of an almighty movement akin to the Rebellion in Star Wars, to explore the biggest world ever built in the fantasy series, to catch up with old acquaintances by the campfire and give them the glad eye… and, of course, being able to maim a dragon’s appendages and watch it limp about helplessly while you and your party throw down. The localised damage model in these boss encounters is a drop in the ocean of Inquisition’s new features, which also include a zoomed-out tactical view for the first time on consoles, more romances than ever in a Bioware game, total control over your party’s inventory and the ability to gather resources for your Inquisition in a similar fashion to the war asset system from Mass Effect 3.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

Let It Die

Lords Of The Fallen

Format PS3 ETA 17 Oct Pub 2K Games Dev 2K Australia/Gearbox Software

No, it’s not exactly the Borderlands project you’re hoping for – in other words, a full-blooded sequel on PS4 – but what 2K Australia’s title lacks in subtitle savvy and new-gen promise, it makes up for in butt-stomps, playable Claptraps and the frozen smithereens of your enemies dancing gently away from the moon’s surface and out into space. To clarify: combat is a bit different in The Pre-Sequel. Since it’s set on a moon, both gravity and oxygen play key roles in your minute-by-minute existence – the former allowing huge leaps and ground-stomp attacks, and the latter a third bar below health and armour to manage mid-fight. You can even spend a bit of oxygen on showy abilities too, such as setting enemies alight in what would otherwise be a cold vacuum. Geabox got increasingly playful with player classes in Borderlands 2 and its DLC, so expect 2K Down Under to continue the offbeat builds with The Pre-Sequel. Wilhelm with his massive cyborg fist is the most traditional of the four, while Athena’s damage absorption and Claptrap’s diminished size will give a new flavour for old hands.

Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub TBC Dev Grasshopper Manufacture/GungHo Online Entertainment

Oh, Suda51, what are you up to now? No seriously. The E3 trailer for his new gaming endeavour was one damnably eye-catching brutality spree make no mistake, but what about actual details? Well, the man himself is keeping the dirty deets close to his chest for now, but he has revealed that it’ll be a completely online experience with a free-to-play model. While the idea of monetisation might turn most stomachs inside-out, Suda promises the dreaded ‘m’ word won’t sully the game with a ‘pay-to-win’ setup, with microtransactions likely to be used for purchasing cosmetic items. In a recent interview with Polygon, Suda did open up about a unique feature that plays right into parent company GungoHo’s experience with online titles such as Ragnarok Online: player data. When you finally meet a grisly end in one of Let It Die’s gore-loving confrontations, your performance and lethal behaviour are pooled into a growing digital soup that feeds into the enemies you face along the way – so the better you do, the harder and more deadly your foes will become. Whatever the final game might be, this is still a PS4 exclusive from the man behind Killer Is Dead and Killer7, and it looks like another true-to-form, ultra-violent cheese dream.

Format PS4 ETA Autumn Pub CI Games Dev CI Games/Deck13 Interactive

It has a name and the surface-level appearance of an own-brand Dark Souls, but don’t write this one off. Executive producer Tomasz Gop has breakout RPG success The Witcher 2 under his belt, and though production values clearly aren’t up there with the CD Projekt Red title or From Software’s venerable series, Lords Of The Fallen has a clear purpose and a strong lure: it’s Dark Souls for people with a low frustration threshold. Combat is deep and complex, heavily dependent on managing your stamina bar and using buffs and potions to survive, and to beat more formidable bosses you need to access any reserves of patience you didn’t expend in DS II to memorise attack patterns. Unlike the game it admires so much though, you’re not just plonked in the wilderness with no direction in LOTF, or forced to retread old ground time and time again upon failure. In addition to its obvious depth, this is a surprisingly fetching fantasy world with high-quality animations and atmospheric lighting. There’s an outside chance this one might sneak-attack its way to greatness before 2014’s out.

THE HOT 50

Format PS4 ETA Feb 2015 Pub Warner Bros Dev Techland

40 Mortal Kombat X

Decapitation fun for everyone (over 18) Format PS4/PS3 ETA 2015 Pub Warner Bros Dev NetherRealm Studios

ollowing the success of 2011’s Mortal Kombat reboot, a sequel was perhaps inevitable. But how to move things forward, having finally swept clean 20 years of spiralling, convoluted storylines? If you’re NetherRealm Studios, the answer is simple: you start complicating things again. Mortal Kombat X touts a vast story mode (no doubt to follow the model set by the previous game’s excellent, character-switching narrative campaign). Picking up where the MK reboot left off, it will eventually move 25 years into the future, taking in aged classic heroes and a few of their new offspring along the way. As for who’s returning and who’s new, Scorpion and Sub-Zero are already confirmed – obviously – who continue their skull-crushing, limb-shattering rivalry. Newbies-wise, Johnny Cage and Sonia Blade’s

daughter, Cassie Cage, is set to bring a souped-up combination of her parents’ movesets. Most interestingly though, there’s a thundering great lummox called Torr, who fights with a little girl called Ferra atop his shoulders, frequently throwing her at opponents so that she can stab them right in the face. In terms of actual fighting, MKX is absorbing a few gooey strands of DNA from superhero stablemate Injustice: Gods Among Us, by way of location-specific stunts and hazards scattered throughout its condensed arenas. Favourites so far include Scorpion swinging around a tree branch to kick Sub-Zero in the head, before pulling up a root and clocking him soundly in the skull with it – all in disgusting, bone-splintering slowmotion. On a related note, the gleefully savage X-ray attacks are back, and if anything have been cranked up further in their brutality. Let’s just say that Cassie’s uppercut to the unmentionables will make all grown men weep actual tears.

Here’s one thing we didn’t expect when we first sit down to test-drive Techland’s mash-up of its own Dead Island and EA’s Mirror’s Edge: Warner stablemate Batman has been a big influence. More specifically, Bats’ Grapnel tool. We know that Dying Light focuses heavily on free-running, but we soon discover the delights of the grapple hook, which lets us zip across chasms or up towers in a flash. After two borderline broken Dead Island games we had great reservations about Dying Light, and yet half-a-year before launch this is more polished by comparison. As you’d expect, hacking limbs off zombs with an electric axe is great fun, and doubly so when we realise they can’t grab us without any forearms. We discover Dying Light’s potential for AI mirth is broad (shooting explosive barrels near hostile bandits attracts hordes of the undead to distract and digest them), and that the skill-treebased parkour system, in which we’ll be unlocking perks such as wall-running and dodges the more we move, turns the vertical locales into joyous playpens.

049

Above Surely escaping an undead horde by diving AC-style into a cloth oth canopy will never get old?

Game Of Thrones Format TBC ETA Winter Pub Telltale Dev Telltale

Here be spoilers, so don’t say you weren’t warned. Okay? As has become customary, season four of Thrones served up punch-the-air euphoria (laters, Joffrey) mixed with smash-the-floorboards heartbreak (oh, Oberyn. Nooooo, Ygritte). So it’s naturally left us salivating like a bunch of famished direwolves for Telltale’s tantalising tie-in RPG. “Game Of Thrones will premiere later this year, after Tales From The Borderlands kicks off,” says Telltale’s Job Stauffer. “More news soon.” That leaves little room for fact and plenty for speculation. So who will you play as? A new mix of characters, presumably, much like Telltale’s Walking Dead series. That means interacting with peeps from the show, without affecting its lore. (Bang goes our plan of living happily ever after with a certain ginger wildling.) Settings-wise, Westeros is rife with gamesuitable backdrops, so expect Telltale to cram in all your faves – particularly with George RR Martin’s assistant Ty Corey Franck on board as an advisor.

THE HOT 50

37 Kingdom Hearts III Format PS4 ETA TBC Pub Square Enix Dev Square Enix

Heard the one about Mickey, Donald, Goofy and the rest of the Disney gang going into a bar? It ends with RPG fans getting tired of Final Fantasy’s string of 7/10 disappointments and pinning their hopes of Square’s House Of Mouse adventure series instead. Keyblade-wielding teen Sora returns as the game’s hero, teaming up with those better-known cartoon faves in the search for the Seven Guardians Of Light and the Key To Return Hearts. Further details are light, but all signs point to a simpler levelling system than in previous instalments in order to widen the game’s previously niche appeal. The notoriously secretive dev team skipped E3 and won’t be drawn into even suggesting a release date, let alone dropping further gameplay details. Nonetheless, producer Shinji Hashimoto insists, “you will be surprised.” We’re praying that means a cameo appearance from Disney’s grumpiest Scotsman, AKA Scrooge McDuck – but even if that wish goes unfulfilled, the chances are that this will prove to be yet another quacker of an RPG.

H1Z1

Untitled Criterion Game

Format PS4 ETA Autumn Pub Sony Dev SOE

You’re right, that is a crap Scrabble hand. But here’s the good news: no, wait, there isn’t any. Another zombie apocalypse is already getting its teeth into the general populace and you’re tasked with surviving while initially armed with only a flashlight. Oh, but here’s the twist: it’s an MMO, meaning you can team up with mates in order to fend off the undead hordes. Sadly, their verbiage-based board game skills aren’t going to be much use when it comes to fighting off those pesky zombs. And here, surviving means surviving. Hacking the virtual undead (who, by the way, look 4am-in-Croydon scary) to Dorito-shaped pieces is hella fun, but creaky-boned bunfights are only part of the deal. You also need to eat and drink in order to stay alive – introducing an element of strategy and doubt to the whole team-based deal. A deer has been ensnared by a trap set by your pal Phil, but he’s not around to tuck in, and you’re so very hungry… do you betray his trust and eat, or stay true and risk starvation? Those choices and consequences, minute by minute, hour by hour, make this very much one to watch. Also: sorry, Phil. *burp*

Format TBC ETA TBC Pub EA Dev Criterion

Talk about early access: Criterion hasn’t even given its new project a name before birthing it on the E3 2014 show floor. As such, we can only talk about the project in broad brushstrokes. We know it’s not a straight up car game like, ooh, everything else the studio’s ever done since Black in ’06, and it’s being made by a core team of just 15. In this world of hot-desking, impromptu play sessions and beanbag-sitting, this leaner Criterion’s busy creating an experience that involves ATVs, boats, helicopters, wingsuits, planes and parachutes. Goodness only knows how it’s all going to work, but apparently the whole venture’s inspired by the wealth of first-person camera footage on YouTube capturing extreme sports feats. As such it’s a resolutely first-person experience, which aims to turn passive chest-cam watching into an intense, fist-bumping, bloodpumping racer.

050

Hitman 6

Dead Island 2

Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Square Enix Dev IO Interactive

Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Deep Silver Dev Yager

The smartly-dressed slaphead may have missed this year’s big event in Los Angeles, but he’s still bubbling away at a frothing temp on our hype hob. You can thank the above piece of official concept art from 47’s debut new-gen foray for keeping the red-tied assassin firmly on our radar. Released by IO via the studio’s official blog, the early piece of concept art offers a tantalising peek into what could be an altogether grander adventure for the baldy badass. For those disappointed by the lack of proper sandboxes in the brilliant Hitman: Absolution (you’re wrong, by the way – play the Hope level again and tell us it’s not proper Hitman), prepare for an open-ended treat. Set in Central Europe, the sketch in question houses a building that’s bigger than any singular environment from the last game. Yup, you read that right – just imagine how big the rest of the contract killing sim is. And that’s just the interior of that museum/gallery – you will even be able to explore the surrounding streets as you plan your next killer payoff. Size does matter… and it’s primed with an impeccably tailored suit and a murderously-tuned piano wire. IO also promises a return to 47’s globe-trotting Agency days, so expect the PS4-bound Hitman to be the biggest, best-looking, and most brutal whack-‘em-up yet.

Dead Island never lived up to the hype of its affecting CG teaser trailer, largely because of its ropey execution, partly because of its tone. Follow-up Riptide was even worse, but we’ve got a sneaking suspicion that true sequel Dead Island 2 won’t suffer the same issues. More important than the action being transplanted from tropical island to LA beaches and San Francisco suburbia (the entirety of California is now a quarantine zone, hence its ‘Island’ status) is the development switch-up, with dependable Spec Ops: The Line dev Yager taking the reins. The early behind-closed-door footage we see at E3 is promising. Motorised blade weapons result in the sort of mass carnage only previously enjoyed in Dead Rising 2, and sledgehammer uppercuts launching zombies up and over rooftops if caught flush are guffawsome sights showcasing that Yager is playing for laughs. We like the ability to craft weapons such as flame-imbued pump-action mechanical crossbows anywhere in the world and not just at benches, and love the idea of Spec Ops’ ‘radioman’ being preserved in spirit for another great Yager soundtrack – voiced by Jack Black himself unless our ears deceive us. Gunplay looks poor so far, but this is a melee-first game and Yager knows how to do shooting, so we’re not too concerned at this early stage.

THE HOT 50 With no on-screen HUD, it’s up to you to use tools such as the Motion Tracker to progress.

Alien: Isolation Xenomorph gets a new lease of horrific life Format PS4/PS3 ETA 7 Oct Pub Sega Dev Creative Assembly

he trouble with a game that casts you as an underpowered protagonist facing off against an invulnerable hunter is that, well, it can be really, really hard. And our recent hands-on with Isolation – which takes place around two-thirds of the way in – evidences this point well. We’ve had to power up a pair of generators in order to activate the evacuation procedure on the Sevastopol station, and are now heading for the exit. However, the evac measures are accompanied by sirens and flashing lights – clearly those thoughtless space engineers didn’t have the foresight to realise that this racket would end up

putting a huge xenomorph into a state of hungry high alert. As such, every approach we take ends in a gruesome death. Crawling very slowly and hiding in lockers? Spiky tail through the stomach. Moving from cover to cover, ducking behind crates and upturned gurneys? Chomped by those powerful multi-jaws. Sprinting through and hoping to use the other humans around as bait? Dragged helplessly into the (eternal) darkness. What’s that? Ah yes, other humans. Because Isolation is not simply a tale of one woman’s wits against those of a hideous beast – there are a handful of other desperate survivors on the ship as well. Not only that, malevolent

synthetics are also prowling about, as we learn when one pops out of a chamber and throttles us to death. Unlike the alien, these can be dealt with using the game’s limited arsenal or, in another fresh revelation, its crafting system. Much like The Last Of Us, you can make various devices – think Molotovs, EMP mines and noisemakers – using miscellanea scattered around the ship, although this is done on-the-fly via a radial menu rather than at benches. Creative Assembly admits that there is balancing to be done, and if the alien’s AI can be pitched as well as the game’s atmosphere and aesthetic, this could finally be the game the franchise deserves. No, really this time…

DEV TALK “We feel we can bend the franchise without breaking it. We want to produce content that could’ve been made on the original set. Our remit is ‘Could this have been made on-set?’.” Jude Bond, lead artist, Creative Assembly

THE HOT 50

052

It might not be Red Dead Redemption 2, but we’ll happily kill some monsters cowboy-style.

EVE: Valkyrie

Abzu

Final Fantasy XV

Format PS4/Morpheus ETA TBC Pub CCP Games Dev CCP Games

Format PS4 ETA 2016 Pub 505 Games Dev Giant Squid

Format PS4 ETA TBC Pub Square Enix Dev Square Enix

Okay, we’ll hold our hands up at this point and admit that most of the heat this one’s garnering comes down to the simple, magnetic draw of seeing the universe through Morpheus. In fact, we’ve already had a brief taster of the VR space combat sim, and can confirm it’s like a Swedish massage for the eyes. Planets swell and fill your periphery. You’re absorbed into asteroid fields, where you dance around the galactic rubble as each piece whizzes past your head. You look down at the cockpit, checking your various dials, and notice the floor is glass. Oh god, the floor is glass. Nice touch, CCP. If we’re more enthused about the hardware than the concept, it’s only because we’re not really accustomed to space combat sims on PlayStation. It’s not traditionally a genre that particularly suits pad controls, but the ability to look around by doing just that takes the strain off the DualShock 4 and makes for a more intuitive drive. Valkyrie plugs into PC life-eater EVE Online too, apparently, which is a thought too terrifying for us to properly process. The complexity… oh the complexity of it all…

Putting aside all hype created by the fact that art director Matt Nava and composer Austin Wintory both worked on Journey, this graceful, demure indie is cause for excitement (and a respectable placing in this year’s Hot 50) all of its own accord. It’s a deep-sea exploration experience with a deeply stylised take on the beauty of marine life – whales drift past you at glacial pace, drawn in definite and exaggerated carved lines. Sharks – bloody hundreds of sharks – silhouette the night sea as you swim along it, only a headtorch and prayers for company. Vegetation sways alluringly as countless varieties of colourful fish hide themselves from predators within it. You get the drift: it’s beautiful, enigmatic and… we haven’t got a clue how it’ll play. Giant Squid hasn’t demonstrated any mechanics or systems as of yet, but unless it’s an underwater reskin of Ninja Gaiden Z we’re definitely in. And as a games mag, we’re contractually obliged to invite you to, “dive in,” mention that it’s the, “new cod,” and tell you not to be, “shellfish.” We apologise, but rules are rules.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the notion that the Final Fantasy name doesn’t mean what it used to – a notion backed up by the five announcement emails for Final Fantasy games we found in our inbox during E3 week – but maybe, just maybe, Noctis and his comically oversized weaponry can turn it all around. Judging by the production values alone of Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix is taking it very seriously. Though it didn’t make an appearance at this year’s E3 the reveal footage from last year still resonates – an intricate, ornate visual aesthetic, acrobatic traversal and equally balletic combat in which young rich kid Noctis finds himself caught up in war, mafia power struggles and the ubiquitous ‘something involving really powerful crystals’ FF narrative beat. The battle system takes its lead from Kingdom Hearts rather than the action-oriented Lightning Returns, with each character queueing up an action such as ‘Attack’, ‘Warp’, ‘Magic’, ‘Item’, etc. Ah, the familiar warmth of old traditions. Those hushed dreams you harbour of Final Fantasy VII with new-gen looks might not be too far off the mark.

THE HOT 50

Hunt: Horrors Of The Gilded Age

Tracking ghouls with three pals in a randomly generated Wild West Format PS4 ETA 25 Oct Pub Crytek Dev Crytek Austin

o-op shooter RPG Hunt: Horrors Of The Gilded Age hails from former Darksiders developer Crytek Austin and was one of E3’s most pleasant surprises. Rather than being a Left4Dead rip-off as we feared, it’s more like a co-op Resident Evil 4 with a half-realistic, half-cartoony art style that looks like it belongs to Crytek UK’s abandoned Timesplitters 4. Hunt is also free-to-play – but don’t let that put you off. The suggestion is that the entire game will be free, with optional payments for experience boosts and clothing (exact details aren’t firmed up yet). If so, what

they’re offering is pretty cool – levels are randomly generated, with a strong focus on boss fights and progression systems. The demo we were shown was pretty straightforward – hunt a witch in the scary and swampy Bayou, which is filled with wooden huts and Resi-esque villagers of various sizes. While this one boss goal is a constant, everything else is randomised: the order and positioning of enemies, the layout of the environment and so on. There are some events that will only occur once in every 1,000 playthroughs, we’re teased, so replay value could be massive. Co-op play is optional but some obstacles seem like they’d need a bit of co-ordination. When you

DEV TALK “It’s not an RPG in the Mass Effect sense, where there’s a story and choices, it’s an RPG in the progression and build-up sense, sort of like what you’d see in a game such as Diablo.” David L Adams, game director, Crytek Austin

respawn, you might wake up in a coffin or hanging upside down, and you’re stuck there until another player frees you. It looks easy to play but pretty furious – and a lot more levels set globally during this late 19th century setting are being lined up for a likely early-2015 launch on PS4, too. Having created Darksiders, the team prides itself on its monster designs, so expect variety to match the surroundings. “It really is about forming groups of monster hunters and hunting down and tracking these bosses,” says game director David L Adams. “It’s a boss fighting game. We planned on making a whole bunch of cool bosses, a whole bunch of cool mechanics.”

Rachet & Clank

The Evil Within

Driveclub

Format PS4 ETA Spring 2015 Pub Sony Dev Insomnia

Format PS4/PS3 ETA 24 Oct Pub Bethesda Dev Tango Gameworks

Format PS4 ETA 10 Oct Pub Sony Dev Evolution Studios

There was a time when Insomniac’s gun-happy Lombax and USB-sized robo buddy were deservedly treated like PlayStation royalty, but these days you’re more likely to see the pair trying to find a spike-free doorway to sleep in on Ratchet’s adoptive home planet of Veldin than wrestling away Nate Drake’s treasure-studded crown. Even so, fond memories of their platforming heyday replete with futuristic weaponry and discoing baddies means we never completely lost faith in PlayStation’s favourite odd couple. That loyalty should be rewarded early next year with this PS4 reimagining of their insta-classic debut adventure. Details are scarce, but we do know it’s something of a tie-in to the forthcoming R&C movie – so an identical narrative to that legendary first outing is unlikely. However, you can definitely look forward to countless hours of jumping, puzzling, shooting and LOLing, all in the most gorgeous interpretation of the Solana galaxy yet. Expect the Groovitron to make an appearance too, even though it didn’t appear in the series until PS3’s Tools Of Destruction.

If The Evil Within puts any feet wrong during our most recent and thoroughly impressive hands-on session, it’s those belonging to protagonist Sebastian. To be precise, his feet fall too quickly for our liking because the default movement speed is jogging, not walking, and some of the game’s potential scares are dashed as a result. So when we meet legendary game creator Shinji Mikami at E3, we have to ask why games don’t let us explore at a sedate pace any more. Turns out it’s because The Evil Within world’s quite large: “It’s simply [because] when you move from location A to location B, it takes more time if you walk. So in a bigger field, running is better than walking. [But] I agree that walking is more suitable for horror games, [so] in some kind of situations you can only walk, you can’t run,” he explains. We’ll bring you the full interview in our next issue.

It’s been a hell of a ride for the PS4-exclusive social racer. It wowed us at the PS4 announcement, then remained pretty mysterious all the way up to the new console’s release, whereupon it slipped all the way to October. And yet like a fantastically detailed phoenix, Driveclub rises from the ashes of that woe and secures itself slot in the Hot 50. The recently re-emerged racer renewed our excitement when we got hands-on and spoke to the team. “Obviously, we were very disappointed by the delay,” game director Paul Rustchynsky tells us. “We wanted to be there for the excitement of the PS4 launch, but we had some things that we wanted to improve, and we’ve done just that. We’ve now seamlessly integrated all our social elements together, improved the connectivity between the game and the app, and it’s also meant we’ve been able to spend so much more time on the cars and the tracks.”

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THE HOT 50

The Crew

WWE 2K15

Format PS4 ETA 11 Nov Pub Ubisoft Dev Ivory Tower/Ubisoft Reflections

Format PS4/PS3 ETA 31 Oct Pub 2K Games Dev Visual Concepts/Yuke’s

Star Wars Battlefront

Driveclub has the meticulously detailed flecks of paint, and Project CARS has a fearsomely realistic simulation model going for it – so where does that leave Ubisoft racer The Crew? Well, this curious collaboration between former Test Drive Unlimited devs (now going by Ivory Tower) and Driver: San Francisco’s Ubisoft Reflections is very much of the ‘size matters’ mindset. Its huge open-world map is based on the geography of the United States, and it takes a good 45 minutes to drive from one end of the country to the other. Some people are calling this a ‘CarPG’, and while those people are being rounded up against a wall and shot, let’s explain what they mean. In RPGs you level up your character – in The Crew, you upgrade your wheels. By which we mean car. Hardly an avant-garde concept, but it’s handled with more emphasis in this game than most, and you might find yourself buying fewer cars to instead bolster up a select few, which specialise in different event types. We’re still a bit worried it won’t shake off the gener-o-vibes before release, but there’s potential here worth shouting about.

I’m afraid I’ve got some Bad News: it’s still too early to see WWE 2K15 in action. But after a private one-on-one briefing in a secret meeting room at E3, we now know what the wrestling series will look like on PS4. NBA 2K14 dev Visual Concepts is leading the charge this year, working with series coders Yuke’s. Visually it’s a stunner: the team’s using the NBA 2K14 body-scanning technology to capture the look of the real WWE Superstars with levels of detail so precise it isn’t even compatible with the PS3 version, which itself is no visual slouch thanks to the implementation of new lighting tools developed by Visual Concepts. On PS4, facial details are a real highlight, as evidenced by in-engine footage of John Cena gurning at the camera with remarkable detail. We’re assured the flow of the game is markedly better in part because WWE donated a ring to the studio in which the team can mo-cap animations and moves, while on the presentation side Cole and King have recorded their new lines together as a pair for the first time in the series’ history – with 30-35 hours of new VO captured, per commentator.

Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub EA Dev DICE

Now that Disney owns everything the light touches in a galaxy far, far away, the Star Wars franchise is somehow even more of a behemoth than ever before. So no pressure whatsoever on Swedish developer DICE to bring it to the new generation of consoles. “We’ve all grown up with it and now we have the opportunity of a lifetime to make the Star Wars game that as fans we have always dreamt of playing,” announces design director Niklas Fegraeus in an EA teaser reel. “To stay as true to the films as possible, we went back to where it all began, visiting the Lucas archives to capture the actual models and props used in the movies.” The new shooter will utilise the Frostbite 3 engine and, showing off tantalising renders of a snowy Hoth and the lush forests of Endor, DICE is making sure we know it is focusing on bringing the joy of the original trilogy to life in eye-massaging levels of detail. All of this on PS4? A Jedi might not crave adventure and excitement, but we certainly do.

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Mass Effect 4

The Witness

Format PS4 ETA 2016 Pub EA Dev Bioware

Format PS4 ETA TBC Pub Thekla Inc Dev Thekla Inc

For once let’s start by not talking about the ending of Mass Effect 3, shall we? Oh, wait – even after this year’s E3 we’re still none the wiser regarding when and where the fourth in the iconic franchise will be set. However, developer Bioware has teased a, “whole new region of space,” with brand new locations, a cast of fresh characters and, “new people to fall in love with.” Awww – nice to see love isn’t dead. Ruling out returning companions rather than specific races, recent concept art for Mass Effect 4 teases humans and Krogans for our new Shep-less journey (*sob*) and Bioware is taking brave steps into the unknown rather than staying within sight of the Omega Relay (or at least what’s left of it). We already know this new-gen offering will be worth the wait – yup, that’s a far-off 2016 ETA glowering from atop this entry – but Bioware isn’t holding back when it comes to making the most of the new power offered up on the parallelepiped-shaped plate that is PlayStation 4. “Imagine what we can do now with new consoles and amazing software,” teases the E3 trailer mercilessly like someone holding a galactic jam donut just out of reach of our grubby mitts. “We think fans of the series are going to be surprised at just how far we are going.”

This one’s proof that the perceived quality of a game’s concept comes largely down to who’s pitching it. If Infinity Ward told you its next game was about exploring an abandoned island and solving puzzles, you’d ding the bell and get off at the next stop – or failing that, throw yourself from the nearest emergency exit. But this is Jonathan ‘Braid’ Blow’s next game, so you’re strapped in good and tight until the final destination. The good news is that the beautifully realised final stop is almost here: though Blow himself has yet to give us a firm ETA, he’s dropping frequent hints that a release for The Witness may well be imminent. Although after the team demolished and completely rebuilt the opening area in the week running up to E3 2014, they might have taken a brief breather to recover. The nature of The Witness’ gameplay, which thus far seems to consist solely of maze-like puzzles (there are 627 so far), appears too simple to last a whole game – but we’re going out on a limb here and reckon this one’s stacked to the clouds with undisclosed secrets and surprises. Combined with a clean, bright and breezy art style, the mystery of The Witness makes it a shoo-in for one of this year’s hottest gaming delights.

THE HOT 50 As soon as this CP-2 soldier runs into Faith, that hi-tech facemask is going smashy-smashy.

ou know how it goes: you wait years for a sequel to one of the most creative games in EA history, and… another little piece of your heart breaks with every trade show that passes minus a Bulletstorm 2 announcement. Ack. Still, Mirror’s Edge 2 is proof that the mega-publisher’s properties are rarely killed off forever – we’re finally getting a follow-up to Faith’s groundbreaking, speed-running, roof-leaping adventure, half a decade after that ace original. As you’d expect from a game that’s been in the oven for six years and counting, DICE is going to great lengths to ensure this origins story surpasses the first outing in every imaginable way.

Mirror’s Edge 2 Faith rewarded at long, long last Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub EA Dev DICE

Parkour artists from across the globe descended on its Stockholm HQ in order to help expand upon lead lady Faith’s gravity-defying moveset – “they can teach us a lot,” says producer Sara Jonsson – while every pixel of the famously fringed femme has been manicured and polished, right down to her prized single glove. “Mirror’s Edge is about mastering the environment, and Mirror’s Edge is about Faith,” continues Jonsson. “The silent tone of the game implies that everything we do needs to be elegant, minimalistic, and has to have a certain attitude.” To that end, the coolest moment from last year’s reveal trailer was our dexterous damsel using a flying leg scissors to down an enemy, before smashing

DEV TALK “We’re redefining the role of the runners to allow for more varied gameplay. We’ll expand upon who Faith is in this world, and why she’s doing what she’s doing. Mirror’s Edge 2 is Faith for a new generation.” Sara Jonsson, producer, DICE

his glass-made mask with a snappy fist to the face. The implication is that combat and free-running have now been seamlessly integrated – a big improvement on the first game, where the pair’s marriage was a constantly jarring one. In addition to improved fisticuffs, DICE is focused on delivering multiple routes through its stylised locales. “Everything is geared towards traversing and navigating this environment,” comments tech ical director Henrik Karlsson “We want the player to be able to experiment and find differe t paths.” If sassy virtual ladies with odd eye tattoos (something which will also be explained in ME2) are your thing, this won’t disappoint. Though it is our duty to politely suggest that you get out more.

THE HOT 50

he beautiful game (minus Jay Spearing, naturally) can put you through all the feels. The unabashed delirium of a late comeback winner. Shrieks of terror at seeing your keeper hare 40 yards off his line (“What are you doing Fabianski?!”). Or the rampant delight at seeing certain players – for argument’s sake, lets call our hypothetical star ‘Stephan Gercard’ – fall flat on his face after miscontrolling a four-yard pass. That’s EA Canada’s primary brief this year: it wants you to ‘feel the game’. Like having Sheikh Mansour’s piggy bank backing your transfer market forays, FIFA 15 is building

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FIFA 15 Footy gets fanatical as EA makes its most emotive kickabout Format PS4/PS3 ETA 23 Sep Pub EA Dev EA Canada

from a position of considerable strength. Last year’s new-gen debut was a fantastic start, adding considerable sheen to the presentation of an already class-leading sports spectacle. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that our first hands-on with this season’s latest entry on PS4 isn’t exactly a game-changer. At first glance, you’re once again dealing with a superb simulation of football erected on impeccable passing, well-judged physics and killer delivery in the final third. Look a little closer, though, and you actually find the latest FIFA has had something of a radical personality transplant.

CROWD PLEASER Emotion and intensity: that’s how FIFA 15 hopes to distinguish itself from its chart-conquering predecessors. “You want added value,” producer Sebastian Enrique admits. “And that added value in football is not just about the game; it’s also about the atmosphere, the passion.” On the virtual turf, that latter quality takes the form of teams and a crowd that fully understand the context and consequences of the ball-hoofing exploits before them like never before. “I’ve cried in stadiums,” admits Enrique. “It’s not just about watching Cristiano Ronaldo doing a nice trick. It’s about the people who go to the stadium.” And that’s where the game’s much more convincing attempts at creating emotion come into play. Your team is now governed by a mood system, a parameter which starts out at a neutral state, but can quickly tank to nervy, depressed levels if your keeper makes a mega gaffe. Equally, if you score a screamer to equalise in a crucial derby, your men become extra motivated and play that much harder. In past games, playing a friendly against Macclesfield Town carried the same sense of big match day nerves as an El Classico clash. That’s to say, there was zero differentiation between small meaningless matches and table-topping, league-deciding encounters. With the tweaks made to both the crowd and teams’ emotional states, EA at long last looks to accurately recreate that gut-churning sensation of a crunch match. As a result, you see players genuinely emote beyond just an overly strung out right stick

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Those alluring new-gen crowds are back, complete with clubbespoke celebrations.

dev talk “The responsiveness is the thing you feel right away when picking up the game. After that the passing makes matches feel more contextual. And you now have more passing opportunities on the pitch than before.” Sebastian Enrique, producer, EA Canada

celebration. Strikers look genuinely outraged if their wingers continually shank mishit crosses into them. Likewise, if one of their teammates thinks their poaching pal is getting overly rough treatment they rush over to his side to stick up for him after a bad tackle. Not only does this create a real visual sense of camaraderie, but it also affects tactics on the pitch. Say you’re playing in a North London derby for that much coveted fourth place ‘trophy’ and you find yourself trailing with 15 minutes to go. Well, pull one back in the final ten and your side gains a hefty injection of belief and confidence, with your AI teammates providing more willing support in the aftermath of a goal.

MIXER AND MATCH Of course, you can also manually manipulate their gameplan, too. New ‘In The Mixer’ and ‘Park The Bus’ tactics (activated at the extreme ends of the D-pad tactics spectrum) give you more nuance for hurried bombing forward/last ditch defending. Couple this with players who are now affected by the sense of occasion, and you’re left with a more convincing portrayal of the incredible theatre of modern football.

Having only played multiplayer matches in FIFA 15 to this point, it seems clear the full extent of these more personable presentation changes might be fully felt in Career mode, which EA Canada isn’t talking about yet. Still, there are plenty of new, slightly less headline-grabbing features the studio is happy to open up about. Deep breath… ‘Physically Based Rendering’ (which creates a far more realistic lighting setup); improved character models (players no longer look like they’re wearing shoulder pads); ‘Correct Contacts’ (teams now regularly use the momentum of the ball to steer passes); crowd-specific animations ’ and ‘Living (City fans Poznan); Pitches’. Eh? The last ’un is a biggie, with grounds looking more believable thanks to huge texture improvements, which includes players finally leaving stud marks in the turf. While the on-pitch action currently feels reassuringly familiar, FIFA 15 looks to be bold by being the first football game that might actually recreate the maddeningly-addictive, lifedominating emotion that goes into supporting your club. “Are we going to make you cry?” adds Enrique. “I hope not.”

Rainbow Six: Siege

The newest Clancy game breaches E3 – and almost steals the show 058

Format PS4 ETA TBC Pub Ubisoft Dev Ubisoft Montreal

he long-awaited Rainbow Six: Patriots is dead. Don’t bother sending flowers – it received a bullet to the cranium a full 18 months ago. But when Ubisoft executed its production, a new game rose from its ashes like a phoenix. It’s called Rainbow Six: Siege, and it had the honour of following in Watch Dogs’ and The Division’s footsteps by becoming this year’s final surprise reveal during Ubi’s E3 press conference. A ‘multiplayer-first’ first-person shooter, the team-based blaster is all about Rainbow Six versus domestic terrorists – and the wall dividing the two factions. In our three-round, five-on-five handson demo, this means the bad guys have a hostage secured in a three-storey suburban house, and the heroes must breach the walls of said abode, locate the kidnapped

girl and either eliminate all the bad guys or escape with the hostage within a set timeframe to win. Half of the action takes place in the 60 seconds before each round. During this time, the terrorists use their class-specific skills to barricade their stronghold: fortifying walls against explosive breaching kits, covering doors and windows with shutters to hinder team Rainbow’s infiltration efforts, and laying down barbed wire and mines to slow and outright kill the good guys. The game’s eponymous legends, meanwhile, can drive tiny drones into the house to try to learn where the hostage is being held captive, then position their drones to act as a handy network of cameras with which to keep tabs on terrorist movements during the round itself. Skirmishes are brutal. A single bullet can be deadly, and Siege operates under one-life-only elimination rules. In a great twist,

DEV TALK “The project started 18 months ago, and during that period we spent most of that time working exclusively on the multiplayer. The reasoning we have is simple: make sure the gameplay is strong, coherent and everything works together. And if it does that for the multiplayer, then we’ll be able to bring all of that to the single-player aspect as well. There will be single-player aspects and co-op aspects.” Jérôme Lasserre, team lead, Ubisoft Montreal

you can destroy almost any unfortified surface – be it wall, floor or ceiling – with breaching packs, meaning teams can carve unique paths through the world and get the leap on enemies hunkering down behind cover by taking away the ceiling above their heads or the floor beneath their feet. Our multiplayer experience doesn’t match the jaw-dropping reveal demo in terms of visual clout, but it certainly put to bed any concerns that the scripted footage Ubisoft Montreal used to unveil the game is in any way unrepresentative of the actual experience that Siege will offer at launch. The matches we take part in combine the very best of Counter-Strike, SWAT and classic Rainbow Six, and the simple asynchronous setup already feels like it has the potential to earn classic status by offering fresh and surprising experiences night after night after night.

16 COD: Advanced Warfare Format PS4/PS3 ETA 4 Nov Pub Activision Dev Sledgehammer Games

Ever since Captain Price took his combat grade ’tache home we’ve been waiting to truly connect with a COD game again. Black Ops II had some inventive, if muddled, ideas, while Ghosts was a fun, throwaway rollercoaster that was happy to rest on Infinity Ward’s well-worn, bombastic tropes. But now, thanks to the input of Sledgehammer Games and a legendary Hollywood scenerychewer, the planet’s biggest shooter is ready to reconnect. Kevin Spacey and supersoldier suits: that’s all you really need to know. The former is bringing his

quietly simmering brand of emotional integrity to Jonathan Irons, Advanced Warfare’s shady PMC leader antagonist, in a move Sledgehammer hopes can raise COD to the storytelling heights of Naughty Dog’s output. As for the Advanced Soldier suit, its invisibility cloaking, boost jumping, car lifting party tricks come courtesy of a thoroughly researched setting with a futurist slant. Set to deliver the series’ traditional, unbreaking 60fps with a renewed vim for narrative (plus severed arms!), Advanced Warfare wants to win the yearly Battlefield war by pairing COD’s world-conquering multiplayer with a re-energised campaign.

The Order: 1886

The Witcher 3: Grim Fandango Wild Hunt Format: PS4/PS Vita ETATBC Pub Double Fine Dev Double Fine

Format PS4 ETA 20 Feb 2015 Pub Sony Dev Ready at Dawn/Sony Santa Monica

Format PS4 ETA 24 Feb 2015 Pub Bandai Namco Dev CD Projekt Red

The delayed shooter had a mixed showing at this year’s E3. On one hand, it continues to be one of the most impressive-looking games we’ve ever seen (though Uncharted 4’s in-engine demo just pips it), and during our hands-on time it feels as if we’re playing a CG cutscene. But testing raises questions about the gunplay. The cover system’s solid and snappy and the thermite rifle, with which we splash our foes with jets of sticky inflammable spray (easy grandma) using i then ignite them with a flare shot by pressing u, is inspired. More familiar guns are unsatisfying to fire, however, and deflate the atmosphere so expertly crafted by the incredible looks. Praise be to the werewolf-like Lichen monster, then. Unveiled on Sony’s E3 stage, we see an extended, invite-only gameplay section in which Galahad, with torch in hand, has to stay on the move in an abandoned, pitch-black hospital to avoid having his neck ripped out by the nine-foot-tall freak. There are plenty of seamless transitions in and out of cinematics, but this combat-free survival horror-esque level shows The Order: 1886 is much more than just a tarted up cover-shooter.

This may or may not be the best game of 2015, but it’ll almost certainly be the one you spend the most time in if you have a soft spot for role-playing (Phil’s already stockpiling canned goods in anticipation). The ever-bullish CD Projekt Red is promising nothing less than the biggest open world in modern RPG history, and as our latest peek at Geralt’s new venture reveals, it’s anything but dead space for the sake of back-of-box boasts. Geralt tracks a Griffin through a woodland area called No Man’s Land, using his powers as a mutant to detect its trail before eventually engaging in a more stylised swordplay style than that of the Witcher 2, with a subtle slow-mo effect reminiscent of the knockouts in the Batman: Arkham series. Demonstrating the vibrancy of the game’s open-world, the White Wolf also bumps into friends and foes along the trail, stopping for chats and kills along the way. It’s maybe the most boastful game in this list, but if The Witcher 3 comes good on even half its claims we’re in for a GOTY contender in 2015.

While the hollering fuss made about the return of Grim Fandango might have been greeted with blank stares and confused mumbles by audience members under a *cough* certain age; to everyone else watching Sony’s E3 show, the news was akin to witnessing Jesus return to announce that Santa is real (“And he’s here tonight!”) and that neither Harold Ramis nor Rik Mayall is actually dead. Excuse the morbid metaphor, but it’s entirely apt. Tim Schafer’s Grim Fandango, you see, is a cadaverfilled classic of the adventure genre. Divisive upon release due to its shift away from traditional 2D design, its hilarious, unique, film-noir take on the Mexican Land Of The Dead (it’s very Schafer-y) has since seen it rightly lauded as one of the genre’s finest achievements. After languishing, uncared for in the LucasArts archives, nostalgia and demand for it have grown like Bruce Banner stuck in a hot summer’s day traffic jam. But now, perhaps driven by modern adventure games’ rapid resurgence by way of The Walking Dead, we’re not only getting it back, but we’re getting it in a super-remastered, sparkling HD edition. Rejoice.

LittleBigPlanet 3 PlayStation 4 goes sack to basics Format PS4/PS3 ETA Nov Pub Sony Dev Sumo Digital

eady the hessian, the needles and the thread because it’s time to craft Sackboy some friends. Meet dog OddSock, bird Swoop, and the rather Yeti-ish Toggle, who shrinks down into a stamp-sized version of himself with a press of o. These new heroes mean LBP3 plays significantly differently to its predecessors. OddSock wall-jumps to areas others can’t reach, Swoop carries characters over cliffs or grips and raises plinths for friends to dash beneath, and Toggle’s capable of squeezing through tiny gaps, activating stiff switches and, with careful use of both his body types, catapulting across chasms by weighing down and then releasing spring blocks. Indeed, one of the levels we test is designed specifically for Toggle, and not a single idea is repeated during its five minutes of fun. As for Sackboy himself, he now climbs cargo netting and wields a variety of new tools including the Pumpinator (essentially an air-jet gun strong enough to lift hinged platforms) in order to stay relevant. Not that we anticipate him being dethroned from iconic

DEV TALK “When we first thought about new characters it was a lot less ambitious than the final designs. But we didn’t want to do just slightly different versions of Sackboy.” Pete Smith, executive producer, Sony XDev

status by his new buddies, even though their costumes are stupidly cute: an early favourite is Toggle’s superhero guise, complete with tiny cape that becomes massive on mini-Toggle when he morphs. Trackpad Create menu functionality and PS4’s Share features go hand-in-hand with the LBP-verse, but not everything is new. The 8.7 million usercreated levels from the first two games are all compatible and available to download from day one, and less than 24 hours after the game’s E3 reveal Sony started seeing levels appearing that have been custom-built for the new additions to the LBP family.

The incredible shattering glass will look just as incredible in the boxed game, Ubi assures.

eat trick, Ubisoft Massive. While we’re all getting sick to the back teeth of the post-apocalypse, being in the eye of the storm while the world falls down is still untrodden ground. Maybe that’s part of our enduring enthusiasm for The Division – the chance to look at world-ending events from a new perspective. And in perhaps the most familiar videogame setting of all, the iconic New York City, we see the impressive Snowdrop engine transform America into an almost unrecognisable warzone before our very eyes. “Creating that stark contrast in the New York of The Division was really

The Division

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Introducing the mid-apocalypse survival genre Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Ubisoft Dev Ubisoft Massive/Ubisoft Red Storm/Ubisoft Reflections

important,” says game director Ryan Barnard, “because then you can be like ‘Oh, I wanna go see Times Square and see what’s happened there.’ That’s really interesting, I think.” You have that freedom. There’s intentionally very little gating in The Division’s game map, although if you wander into an area that you’re not equipped to deal with, death won’t dilly-dally on its way to you. Certain areas have such high contamination levels that things won’t end well if you rush headlong into them: “If you don’t have the equipment, you can still go in there, but the virus will kill you”, notes Barnard. “It’s the catalyst of the whole game, so we need it to be scary and deadly.”

DEV TALK “We’re looking at The Division as a franchise. We want to build upon this universe for years and years, hopefully. We have endgame activities to keep people playing in between additions.” Ryan Barnard, game director, Ubisoft Massive

But this is as much an RPG as a shooter, so upgrading your character and finding a way to enter those previously deadly areas is half the fun. It’s what open-worlds are for, essentially. And in the wake of Watch Dogs’ clear visual downgrade from E3 2012’s reveal demo to the finished article reviewed this issue, The Division’s dev Massive is keen to demonstrate total transparency on this thorny topic. Will the finished game look like the E3 2013 reveal demo, we ask? “Absolutely, yeah. If you look at this year’s demo, we think the graphical fidelity’s actually a little better [than last year’s] and completely within what we expect for the console.” Right, we’ve got it in writing now, Ubi.

THE HOT 50

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Battlefield Hardline Visceral cops a feel as the mega-shooter tackles police vs crims Format PS4/PS3 ETA 24 Oct Pub EA Dev Visceral Games/DICE

hat’s $9.9m of coke,” ponders the Mystic Meg-aspiring, narcotics cop. “What are you, drug Rain Man?” snaps his mystified partner in the midst of a bust. Zut alors! Did you just make us laugh, new Battlefield? And by ‘laugh’, we mean an honest-to-goodness chortle with, rather than at, your crime-fighting campaign. Don’t tell us after years of desperately pawing for a single-player voice of its own,

DICE has finally found a decent narrative to hang its shooting off? Actually, no: it hasn’t. Oh sure, the premise of a young Miami detective hunting down his corrupt partners is infinitely more interesting than whatever Battlefield 4’s plot was about – something about Omar a-comin’? But the reason you should be genuinely optimistic about Hardline’s offline component, which uses cop shows such as The Shield both as its inspiration and ubiquitous moral compass, is due to the presence of Visceral,

not DICE. Thanks to the involvement of the Dead Space developer, you could be looking at the first Battlefield single-player worth getting legitimately jazzed for since Bad Company 2.

HEAT RISING Not that the Stockholm studio has cowardly fled from the conflict entirely. DICE is currently concentrating on a heist-focused multiplayer component that seems heavily indebted to Payday. We’ll cover the vault-thieving

THE HOT 50 online escapades shortly, but in the meantime, it’s hard to blame the Swedes for handing off single-player duties to the team responsible for Dead Space. Aside from having a heaping plate consisting of Mirror’s Edge 2 and Star Wars Battlefront, the team’s offline efforts have always felt phoned-in next to the glorious, explodey antics of its 64-player skirmishes. Conversely, Visceral has a proven track record of delivering compelling campaigns (uh, let’s just forget Dante’s Inferno), something its TVinspired police story will hopefully continue. Hands in the air like you just don’t care if you recall 2008’s Alone In The Dark? Grand, because Battlefield Hardline’s story is structured in a similar fashion. Following the coketracking pursuits of detective Nick Mendoza, levels are built episodically like TV shows – expect to see a ‘Previously on Battlefield’ recap when you start a new stage.

This tellybox presentation is further strengthened by a cast comprised of actors from hit US shows such as Justified, The Americans and House Of Cards. Peek extra closely at the sevenminute internal EA video that was accidentally leaked before E3 and you’ll even spot Travis Willingham during a bust. Or, as he’s known in more inFamous circles, Reggie Rowe,

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THE HOT 50 Delsin’s brother. In a year when Sledgehammer has nabbed Kevin Spacey to add dramatic credence to Advanced Warfare, it’s interesting to see both megaton FPS hitters chasing thematic TV tropes for their single-player bits. As Mendoza goes after, “chatterbox coke dealers,” and, “deranged billionaires,” he has access to far more expansive, sprawling campaign maps than Battlefield has traditionally trusted you with. While an early glimpse at a claustrophobic shootout in an LA car dealership suggests more hemmed-in firefights still exist, Visceral wants you to replay these larger urban environments multiple times, and in multiple ways. As such, it’s, “rebuilt the AI from the ground up,” with an eye to creating a broader tactical canvas that encourages improvisation.

The ultimate shame for any Heat-esque aspiring robber: getting taken alive.

POLICE TECH

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Enter a hot fuzz gadget show. With stealth now a completely viable option in certain areas, Mendoza has access to a range of tools allowing him to scout his terrain and recon the bad guys – kind of like a drug-dipping Batman. Chief among these gizmos is your police scanner; a nifty piece of kit that lets you paint your enemies with a Detective mode-like glow. There’s also a suggestion Hardline may try to ape Sega’s Condemned, as the game contains crime scenes you can examine for fingerprints and other key evidence with the scanner. Hell, the gadget can even earn you extra moolah while in the field – you can use it to check for outstanding warrants on dealers, then use these payoffs to purchase new kit for your loadout. So far, so surprisingly rosey on the Norman No Mates mode front. But what of the real reason you came to this scenerypuncturing party? Well, clearly DICE isn’t afraid of shaking things up in the wake of Battlefield 4’s disastrous online launch, because the studio has gone in an entirely different direction with Hardline’s multiplayer. And that direction leads to one place: heists. Yes, it’s time to fetch your clown masks and duffel bags, folks. It’s obvious DICE has no qualms about going down the Payday-riffing route, with two of the game’s online modes focusing on cops and cash-grabbing robbers battling over money and hostages.

DEV TALK “Battlefield already exists; it doesn’t feel fair to just make the same game. And it felt like cops and criminals, relative to how popular it is and how we all played it as kids, just doesn’t show up often.” Ian Milham, creative director, Visceral

Heist sees a team of robbers going for that big score as they try to bust into a vault and make a clean getaway, while their law-enforcing opponents try to block off them off. Meanwhile, Rescue has a SWAT team attempting to save a group of hostages in the aftermath of a bank job gone wrong. In a significant coup for PS4, Sony nabbed the early Beta rights to Hardline at this year’s E3, with the game thrown into the PSN wilds on the day of its conference. Based on our hands-on with Heist and Blood Money (Battlefield’s spin on CTF where two teams vie for Richie Rich-sized pile of greens), we can at least say this Battlefield actually works… so far. Hooking up to the Beta was smooth, even if the map of downtown LA feels cramped for 32 player matches. Despite the overly hectic action and Payday theme, this still feels DICE-y. There are plenty of reasons to hope Hardline will rebuild the trust DICE shattered so disastrously with BF4’s woes. Providing adequate pre-launch prep work irons out EA’s server kinks, you could be left with a very different Battlefield… and one where you actually want to switch on single-player too.

Above We’re glad vehicles are still taking a starring role in Hardline’s multiplayer.

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“HARDLINE COULD HELP REBUILD THE TRUST SHATTERED BY BF4’S ISSUES.”

Above DICE will give us President masks for the final bank jobs, yeah? Not that we don’t love the S&M look. Bikes handle with a hugely nippy turning circle. Eat that, fuzz!

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9 Rise Of The Tomb Raider Once more into Uncharted territory Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Square Enix Dev Crystal Dynamics

he came, she saw, she… reinvented herself after the world got bored of her conquering. And on the heels of her triumphant, narrative-driven 2013 return, new Lara is going back to the future again in this sequel – in the sense that it features actual, er, tomb raiding. Gigantic, artefact-packed crypts were conspicuous by their absence last time round, but that’s no longer the case. Reveal footage shows Ms Croft stealthing her way into a giant cavernous space which will no doubt be overspilling with

trinkets – not to mention evildoers wanting to chop off more than her lustrous brown locks. Camilla Luddington is back in the mo-cap suit as the voice and body of the Raider herself, with Rhianna Pratchett once again on writing duties – thereby ensuring Croft is painted as a haunted soul and reluctant killer, as opposed to the ass-whupping action heroine of old. Indeed, she’s troubled by the events of her last adventure to the point of regularly seeing a shrink, presumably in order to finally banish the ghosts of all those island baddies fallen by arrows to the neck.

Evidently the psychotherapy ends up a massive failure, as the same footage that introduces Dr Happydays also shows her running from a giant bear and vaulting around in the cold. Our money’s on an even bigger bodycount this time around as Lara grapples with inner turmoils, but we’re hoping for a Lara vs nature outing similar to the spirit of 1996’s debut entry. It’s still hard to envision this pipping Uncharted, but then what game in the last decade has? Look beyond the Drake comparisons and this is shaping up to be another golden Lara adventure, both literally and figuratively.

THE HOT 50 What’s this? Actual bonafide tombs to raid? Oh Crofty, why have you made us wait so long?

8 Bloodborne

This former Beast’s got Soul(s) Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Sony Dev From Software

Developed by Souls’ creator Hidetaka Miyazaki, this PS4 exclusive is the ‘true’ Dark Souls II.

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“QUALITY ALWAYS TRUMPS QUANTITY, BUT THIS LOOKS SET TO DO BOTH.”

here’s equating imitation with flattery, and then there’s standing outside someone’s bedroom window waving while wearing their best dress and a wig made from clippings you got by bribing their hairdresser. Such is the relationship between Bloodborne (previously leaked as Project Beast) and the Demon’s/Dark Souls titles – although as both are by From Software, there’s no need to load up the outrage cannon. The games, though, share far more than just a studio: gameplay is hugely reminiscent, centring on third-person close-quarters combat, extreme difficulty, and a satisfying ‘whoosh’ sound as you suck up the essence of your fallen foes. Differences lies partly in the aesthetic – although the city of Yharnam, a grim 19th century gothic locale, shares more commonalities with Souls games

than some would have you believe – and partly in a tweak to how the fighting plays out. There are shields (although none have been shown yet), but the intention here is to make the player more active and offensive – something evidenced by the use of a shotgun. We’ve also seen an extendable hatchet that can be changed based on range of combat, and tall, cloaked enemies wielding torches, hammers and the like. What we know of our protagonist is limited: he’s come to Yharnam searching for a cure for the disease which plights the world of Bloodborne, and which has sent the citizens into their state of aggression. A notable (although perhaps not surprising, considering its name) difference to previous From games is the buckets of red stuff sloshing about. And if our man isn’t already infected by the time he gets to Yharnam, then given the disease’s transmission (again, clue’s in the name), he sure will be soon.

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Assassin’s Creed Unity We try to keep our head as we go hands-on with the new revolution

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Format PS4 ETA 28 Oct Pub Ubisoft Dev Ubisoft Montreal

ith Ubisoft no longer ‘shying away from being French’, (not our words but those of The Crew’s creative director Julian Gerighty) it was always inevitable that its history-hopscotching series would someday land two-footed in Paris during the events of the French Revolution, and sacré bleu does it look good enough to eat. With up to 5,000 characters on-screen at any one time to recreate the thronging streets of the bustling French capital, this

new-gen-only Creed is designed on a scale like no other. That scale is 1:1, to be exact. For the first time in its history, Assassin’s Creed attempts to construct a city and all the buildings within it with utter precision, meaning the iconic Notre-Dame is as awe-inspiringly huge in the virtual world as it is in real-life. Paris is even bigger than all of Black Flag’s landmasses pushed together, claims producer Lesley Phord-Toy. And when we pad around Notre-Dame’s interior and gawp at the height of the ceiling and the fact that when we

get up close to the stained glass windows and peer out we can actually see the individual leaves on the trees outside swaying in the breeze, we start to realise that nothing yet released on PS4 even begins to do our new(ish) machine’s capabilities justice.

HEY ARNO Our hands-on session begins with new assassin Arno, who carries a hidden blade/crossbow combo called the Phantom Blade, perched on the side of Notre-Dame, which he descends in half a dozen body-twisting leaps, wall-hops

THE HOT 50 and bar-swings thanks to the brand new parkour system. The leaked information was correct: Unity does feature ‘up’ and ‘down’ buttons for its parkour, and they’re fantastically implemented. It means all those moments when you ended up leaping and sticking to the wrong bit of scenery while free-running are at an end, because by pressing the ‘up’ or ‘down’ buttons (q for

up, e for down) we’re able to carefully guide Arno through the most detailed environments yet without so much as a misplaced hand or foot. After touching down and pushing through a busy crowd, we’ve a chance to really admire Paris up close. By ditching last-gen machines for Unity, Ubi’s able to piece together a more vibrant world than ever, and while its visual fidelity isn’t a match for that of The Order: 1886 or Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (partly down to the ridiculously sized city with load-free interiors and underground sections) the lighting effects elevate the scene to near-lifelike status. When we move through side-streets we’re hit with new

Animus features such as quest logs and mission briefs. Crowd gathering around a house? A subtle visual clue to lead us inside, where we discover a Murder Mystery mission named Ancestral Vengeance, in which we must gather clues to solve a killing. It’s the third of 11 such missions, we’re informed. Back outside and there’s time for a quick scuffle with three guards before moving on. Instant counter-kills have been dropped for parry and dodge moves, which must be followed up with manual attacks. And guards no longer politely wait their turns before lunging in, so we’re strongly advised to reconsider any combat situation involving more than three enemies at once. The

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“ARNO DESCENDS NOTREDAME CATHEDRAL WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A MISPLACED HAND, FOOT OR HOOD.”

series’ combat’s been through so many revisions through the years that this new scrap honestly doesn’t feel far removed from the old fighting systems, but without a large group of foes to test our skills against we can’t put the devs’ claims to the test first-hand. One new feature we do sample is the new stealth mechanic,

which Arno slips into as we press o. He takes cover behind desks as we silently slide across a busy room using furniture to hide us from hostile eyes: it’s basic Splinter Cell tactics, but a move that could greatly multiply the series’ relatively untapped potential for proper stealth assassination missions.

WHY, WHY, WHY, WHY?

Above No dubstep for this year’s CG trailer: it’s Lorde instead.

The biggest talking point during this year’s E3 showing involves the new four-player Brotherhood missions, which can also be tackled solo if the thought of a friend wrecking your perfect stealth assassination attempt by Leeroy Jenkinsing around Paris is too much to bear. Ubisoft didn’t find space for a single female character in this replacement to the competitive multiplayer modes of old, apparently because

of the strain it would put the game’s ten studios under to create the required animations, customisable costumes and gear, voice capture and the other work needed in order to create the female form – apparently clueless of the well known fact that they’re deadlier than the males. It’s a big backwards step for the publisher, and a decision that’s taken significant gloss off Unity’s impressive reveal. Another feature that hasn’t gone down well, albeit for pure aesthetic reasons this time, is called High-Ground Icons, and it occurs when we first climb up to the Parisian rooftops and take a breather. The moment we stop moving the screen fills with symbols pointing out where nearby missions and collectibles can be triggered. Paris may be packed with stuff, indeed, but

THE HOT 50 Like executing guards around corners? Creed’s got you, ahem, covered.

If you open up any shortcuts in co-op your friends will discover them, too.

Co-op occurs during set missions. If you want to tackle these solo, you’re more than welcome to.

DEV TALK ”We expect players to play about a third of their total game time in shared experience modes. Moreover, we have conceived these missions to be played and replayed in different ways. Players will explore their own environments and create their own opportunities.” Alexander Amancio, creative director, Ubisoft Montreal

Above As well as his Phantom Blade, Arno carries a multi-barrel pistol and a cutlass.

whatever happened to absorbing the sights and trading some of the gamification for actual tourism and enjoyment? Given the number of complaints we heard about this mode at neighbouring demo pods and post-game discussions, don’t be surprised if this feature can be toggled on or off when the final version is released. Unwelcome icons aren’t the only things for the chop. We’re an assassin, after all, and in this level set in 1793 we’re tasked with executing a man named Captain Xavier who’s overseeing a procession of executions by guillotine during the city’s Reign Of Terror. We spy him using an Eagle Vision skill of sorts, which is now one of many upgradeable skills. According to our developer co-pilot, Ubisoft’s taken the upgrade systems of the Jackdaw in Assassin’s Creed IV and applied

those philosophies to Arno himself this time around. When we try to approach Xavier in the street we discover he’s surrounded by armed guards and there’s no way through. So the best way to take him down involves climbing back up to the rooftops, making our way over to the nearest guillotine (taking a cruel moment’s rest to watch a civilian being fed into the device and decapitated in front of us to a chorus of cheers from the gathered crowd – sorry Pierre) before using the wooden top as a makeshift step to propel us forward and our blade down into Xavier’s neck to bring the demo to a familiarly murderous close. It’s a sharp punctuation point to end a brilliantly paced taster of PS4’s first dedicated Assassin’s Creed game, leaving us hungry for another taste of the revolution.

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ou haven’t truly appreciated the awesome power of PS4 until you see individual droplets of rain falling onto Batman’s cape as he glides across Gotham. We’re in Ace Chemicals during our first ever hands-on with Arkham Knight and we’re supposed to be stopping Scarecrow from covering the entire Eastern Seaboard with his fear gas toxin, but hot damn those water effects are gorgeous. While we sample the upgraded freeflow combat (which includes context-sensitive Environmental Takedowns such as smashing a goon’s face into a fuse box, and Fear Takedowns with which we’re able to combo three instant takedowns into one flowing move by highlighting new victims and hitting r during slow-mo sequences) the focus of our demo

The returning Scarecrow was gloriously revealed as a villain at Sony’s E3 conference last month.

Batman: Arkham Knight Wayne’s wheels shake up the Dark Knight formula Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Warner Bros Dev Rocksteady

is the Batmobile. Bats’ vehicle is a versatile piece of kit: we use it to stash rescued hostages in the back to return to Gordon (captured villains likewise), and we’ve already fallen in love with freeflow combat’s Batmobile Takedown, which sees us uppercut a goon and have the Batmobile’s AI target the airborne crim with a non-lethal insta-KO concussion round. The car also plays a part in puzzles – we control it remotely to rip down walls with its grapple hook to help us access new areas, destroy steam vents to clear paths, and even raise broken lifts by grabbing counterweights and dragging them out of shafts with some tyre-squealing reversing action. Sadly, the Batmobile’s also the subject of our single quibble with the game so far. At one point we encounter a group of robotic sentry vehicles and must transform into the

DEV TALK “[The Batmobile] needed to be integral to the experience rather than just ‘here’s a bolted-on driving section’. So integrating Batman’s navigation and offensive capabilities is really the key to that. You can use it in ways where Batman wouldn’t be able to progress if it was just him on his own.” Dax Ginn, brand marketing producer, Rocksteady

Batmobile’s Battle Mode to tackle them. Though Battle Mode itself isn’t disagreeable – unlocked axles mean we’re able to strafe and move in 360° of direction with utmost precision – combat primarily involves dodging incoming bullets by dashing to the side when targeting lasers turn red, then returning fire with weak or heavy cannon fire – or, if we’ve built up our combat meter fully, some useful homing missiles. Though far from awful, its crime is in lacking the teeth-shattering feel, impact and pace of Batman’s intense freeflow combat, making it the game’s weakest link and thus something we hope only appears in moderation. That Batman: Arkham Knight’s ‘weakest link’ is still a mode far more entertaining and enthralling than the majority of E3’s games’ main features speaks volumes for the quality of Rocksteady’s best mechanics.

THE HOT 50

Everybody’s Mother Base will be different. And full of sheep, presumably.

Far Cry 4

Sandbox shooter gets the big chill Format PS4/PS3 ETA 21 Nov Pub Ubisoft Dev Ubisoft Montreal

5 Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Snake goes back to Mother Basics Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Konami Dev Kojima Productions

other Base isn’t a new concept for Metal Gear. We’ve heard about Big Boss’ HQ for years now, but The Phantom Pain gives us a world-first for the series: a chance not only to visit it (Peace Walker’s menus don’t count), but to custom build it to our liking. When we tiptoe around The Phantom Pain’s desert (which is an astonishing 200 times larger than Ground Zeroes’ world, by the way), we’ll be able to spend cash to attach Fulton balloons to almost anything that isn’t tied down: sleeping guards, jeeps, anti-air turrets, shipping containers… even sheep. Provided the weather’s clear and the balloons aren’t blown off course, these objects will then find their way back to our great base in the sea.

Here we’ll get to spend money expanding the oil-rig-like structures, adding buildings, barracks and armies to custom-create the Diamond Dogs’ home. Then, in a spectacular twist, we’ll get to invade other people’s bases – and defend ours from unwelcome online attacks. Nobody touches our sheep without our permission, natch. Out in the desert it’s stealthing business as usual. Ground Zeroes gave us a taster of Big Boss’ open-world antics, but in the full game we’ll get many more tools and toys to play with, including the ability to call in airstrikes or chopper support whenever it’s needed provided you’ve got the cash to burn. The best gear of all remains the humble cardboard box: now we’ll get to burst out the top to spring surprises on foes.

’mon, how cool does Kyrat look? Partially based on parts of Nepal and Bhutan, Ubi’s fictional Himalayan region delivered arguably the strongest real-time showing of E3. Those seven minutes of captivating footage (captured on PS4) tick off drop-in/drop-out co-op, vehicles that now allow you to shoot from the passenger seat and those oh so alluring rideable elephants. From what we play on the show floor, Far Cry 4’s frosty location change is a huge boon for the traditionally tropical shooter series. Kyrat has been created with a wonderful eye for detail; whether that be distant mountain ranges that rival Everest’s majesty or Uncharted 2-style prayer flags billowing in a breeze while docile yaks munch on the surrounding hills.

Much more on Ubi’s E3 showstopper next month. Trust us: it deserves the hype it’s attracted.

During our hands-on, we experience three very distinct playstyles. The demo kicks off with us slowly stalking dudes with a silenced crossbow, before trampling even more dudes with our pet elephant (we’ve nicknamed him Stampy). We round off by hopping in a mini-chopper called a Buzzer and mowing down a fortress of evil-doers with new hero Ajay Ghale, who according to creative director Alex Hutchison, “gets caught up in a civil war.” Excitingly, PS4 has also nabbed an exclusive co-op feature, which allows players who don’t actually own the game to play with friends who do simply by downloading a (presumably hefty) PSN app. With a mad despot king, wingsuits and a huge frozen fun land, Far Cry 4 is now the sandbox shooter to beat in ’14.

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No Man’s Sky

To infinity and beyond comprehension Format PS4 ETA TBC Pub Hello Games Dev Hello Games

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hen Nathan Drake shows up to a party it’s a given that he’s going to steal the limelight, so when an indie game almost single-handedly wrestles the spotlight away from Uncharted 4 during Sony’s annual E3 media briefing the world is going to sit up and take notice. We’ve featured No Man’s Sky in OPM more than once before, but it’s only now that the true scale of the space exploration sim from Hello Games has been revealed, and for some people it’s hard to grasp just how a team of four is building what many believe to be E3’s most impressive title. The universe is infinite. Every player begins their No Man’s Sky

Destroy either the fighters or the freighters to earn cold, hard spacebucks.

DEV TALK “People almost can’t conceive of a game where you’re not shooting something. So you can shoot things in the game, but there’s other ways to play and there’s other ways that you could earn money.” Sean Murray, managing director, Hello Games

journey on a different planet, of which there are an infinite number, with a small lifepod capable of short-range travel. Your goals are yours to define but, while you could theoretically spend 40 hours exploring your starting point and uncovering new discoveries for cash, for many they involve quickly gathering currency to buy better weapons or suits at trading posts, and eventually more impressive spacecraft at the nearest space station that will be capable of deeper space travel. Upload coordinates of a discovery online for friends to discover? Get some cash. Destroy an enemy fighter jet? Have some more cash. Blow up a heavily armed freighter? Time to buy a bigger wallet. The closer you press towards the universe’s core, the more

dangerous it grows – and the richer the rewards become.

INTO THE VOID How does such a tiny team create a game so incomprehensibly vast? With relative ease, it seems. While a world of developers are showcasing their latest titles in sweaty show floor booths and private meeting rooms at E3’s Los Angeles Convention Center, we’re sitting in a quiet hotel room 15 minutes away to enjoy a closer

“EARN EXTRA CASH BY SHARING NEW DISCOVERIES WITH YOUR FRIENDS.” Sean admits to tweaking the game’s timers so that events (such as a squadron of fighter craft speeding overhead and flanking you into space) were more likely to happen. As for the opening planet with orange grass, towering, frilled dinosaurs, fluorescent caves and green skies? It wasn’t hand-created, either: Hello Games purposefully spent time searching its universe for a world impressive enough to act as a window into its game, and eventually discovered Oria V much like we’ll be doing with thousands of planets of our own when we play the game for ourselves.

look at the No Man’s Sky experience with no distractions or needless interruptions. To build this world, all the team needs to do is create one type of any object, creature or vehicle and let algorithms do the rest. Take a tree, for example. Creative director David Ream highlights a regular tree in the editing program in front of us, then hits a variation button. Almost instantly a box appears containing dozens of types of trees, all mathematical variants of that genesis object. Some are squat, some are skinny and tall, some are curved with purple and

pink leaves, and so on. If David wishes to highlight one of the oddest looking creations and calculate its variations, the results will only be weirder still. Using this principle the team’s able to make millions of dinosaurs, pilotable spacecraft (all with procedurally generated properties, too), cave systems, rock formations and, ultimately, planets with just a handful of objects and some repeated clicks of a button. And from these principle tools, No Man’s Sky’s cosmos is built. Procedurally, of course. The E3 stage demo that wowed the world wasn’t scripted, though

Above Dev Hello Games is constantly surprised by new environments.

Above To explore other worlds you need to buy a craft capable interstellar travel.

THE HOT 50 Bungie is offering you the Earth, Moon and the stars in its grand MMO. Quite literally.

DEV TALK “We’ve been ‘doing online’ for some time, but this is ambitious. Our first [Alpha] mission is to stress our servers. We need to make sure that right from day one, Destiny’s awesome.” Pete Parsons, chief operating officer, Bungie

Destiny

Bungie’s Guardians of the galaxy set for almighty shooter success Format PS4/PS3 ETA 9 Sep Pub Activision Dev Bungie

heers, Captain Diphtheria. Though we can’t actually remember your genuine PSN moniker, the ‘affectionate’ nickname we bestowed upon you is reward for sticking with our Hunter for 43 minutes as we struggled to bring down a Devil Walker. Yes: forty-three minutes. Destiny just doesn’t do small. Nor should it. As the most ambitious shooter currently locked in the crosshairs of PS4, Bungie’s Halo-meets-Borderlands ET opus oozes with an assured elegance and epicness that puts nearly any other new-gen title to shame. And this is us merely sampling the PS4exclusive, early access Alpha. Just imagine how incredible Destiny will be when it launches 9 September – you’re picking it up with that blindingly pretty Glacier White PS4, right?

Every part of Bungie’s scarred solar system is tethered together with a confidence and solidity born from helming the biggest console shooter in the world for ten years (that’d be the ‘H’ word). The Old Russia environments we explore during the Alpha feel sprawling, yet cleverly contained.

BROKEN SPARROW Your Sparrow begs to be called out at every available opportunity, which it turns out is a chuffing lot, considering you can even pilot the personal hoverbike indoors. Want to magic it out of the palm of your hand at any time? Just summon Ghost (your helpful robot guide), tap r, and have at it, Guardians. Hoverbikes always make everything better. Halo’s DNA is of course scrawled across this new galaxy. Guns just feel right. From the Trax Caluum II-A scout rifle to the Trajan-C

sniper, firing each weapon has a physical oomph which makes you feel like your DualShock 4 is an all powerful sci-fi death tool… uh, rather than a hunk of moulded black plastic with a glowy bit on it. Reload animations are also part of an underlying bullet dance, where each part of the strikingly athletic combat model (can anything beat a 15ft FPS double jump?) comes together. Sorry, Killzone: you’ve been outgunned effortlessly here. The thing is, Destiny’s guns aren’t even its USP. No, that’s handled by its persuasively seamless, persistent online community. In case you were in any doubt, this is a game of overt RPG trappings. If you’d like to go all PlayStation Home and hang out with other players while you indulge in an endlessly looping quasi-Running Man jig atop a table in the Tower’s briefing room, feel free. Visually, the game’s glistening hub city leans heavily on Mass Effect’s Citadel. Practically, it’s a

There’s nothing like a good wistful camera pan for moments like these at Destiny’s glorious Tower.

central gathering point to guzzle down bounty missions, blow XP pimping out that Galahad-B auto rifle or revelling in the dizzying amount of custom armour offered by the Tower’s cast of merchants.

SERVER AND PROTECT Reassuringly, at the most base of levels, Destiny just works. In an age of spluttering servers and constant crashes, that’s not something to be taken for granted. Even though there must be a tremendous amount of servertinkering operating invisibly behind the scenes, Bungie always makes encountering other players in the game’s bubble areas feel like a completely organic event, not unlike Journey’s party trick. Clearly we’re fans, then. Sure, balancing tweaks are needed – we’ll redirect you back to that 43-minute fight. But when such life-affirming combat and online ambition meet, 2014’s hottest is destined for all the success.

Every class of character has a unique Special for mega damage-dealing.

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Uncha A Thief’s End

THE HOT 50

rted4 After 49 opulent gems, one imperial diamond Format PS4 ETA 2015 Pub Sony Dev Naughty Dog

ime waits for no man. Not you as you lament the speed at which the seven years since Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune first wowed on PS3 have passed; and certainly not the series’ charismatic lead as he struts cockily, pistol-in-hand, towards the most anticipated game on PlayStation 4. With laughter lines around his eyes and weariness painted across those chiselled cheekbones, Sony’s wisecracking man-mascot has rarely looked in worse nick – and yet in terms of sheer detail and

believability, the lovable treasure hunter never looked better. Ahead of his new-gen debut next year, it’s the graphical improvements possible with PS4 that have enabled Naughty Dog to beat Nathan Drake around the head with Father Time’s unblockable stick of ageing. “He’s got a bit of grey feathering inside of his hair now, the crow’s feet around the eyes like I have,” says game director Bruce Straley. “[We can do] pain and grimacing,” elaborates creative director Neil Druckmann. “In the trailer, the colour of [Drake’s] skin changes

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as he raises his eyebrows and the blood flows away [from a cut on his forehead]. All those things let a character become much more grounded, much more believable.” Ah yes, the trailer. Despite being entirely devoid of gameplay specifics, Naughty Dog’s latest video wonder still has us desperate to play this more than anything else revealed before, during, or after E3. Why? An abundance of reasons. The tantalising and warm tones of Sully beckoning Nate to, “get back into the game,” knowing it’ll all end in the best kind of trouble. The haunting cello groans and woodwind screams in the background – harking back to the orchestral scores that brought an extra level of emotion to the three previous PS3 outings. And yes, the incredible, give-us-thisRIGHTBLOODYNOW visuals.

DRAKE AMORE It’s not just Nathan’s facial features that blow you away. The intricate details of a fly loitering near that aforementioned cut defy belief; who other than Pixar spends weeks of development time wireframing and animating a creature so tiny?! Then there’s the perfect water physics as Nate regains consciousness – after

what event, who knows? – on the bank of a raging river. And the rustling leaves and bustling vines into which he ventures alone and with a single ammo clip – before the camera pans across to show a graveyard littered with hanging skeletons (cheery!) – to bring the teaser to a close. Most amazing of all? None of this cinematic brilliance is faked. The entire thing is in-game. “Our Uncharted 4 trailer is an in-engine, real game level running on a real PS4,” says Naughty Dog graphics coder Corinne Yu. “Our trailer doesn’t look good enough to be pre-render CGI.” With those two minutes of freshwater-bathed majesty, PlayStation’s flagship studio drowned any concerns the outside world may have had regarding the departure of Uncharted queen bee, Amy Hennig. The series’ former writer and director buzzed away to Star Wars dev Visceral earlier this year, leaving Straley and Druckmann to lead development on Uncharted 4. Despite initial concerns, we should have known this would work out swimmingly for all parties given that this particular tag-team’s last project was only bloody The Last Of Us. Naturally, that outstanding adventure informs many elements

“MOST AMAZING OF ALL? THE WHOLE OF THE E3 TRAILER WAS CAPTURED IN-GAME.”

DEV TALK “It’s still going to have that epic pacing. We still want you on the edge of your seat, but at the same time we want to make sure that you feel emotionally invested.” Bruce Straley game director, Naughty Dog

of this one, with the terrific twosome looking to take the authentic world they built around Joel and Ellie and expand it to match Uncharted’s traditionally epic scale. “In The Last Of Us, we went to great lengths to try to create reality, but we were limited by the amount of overdraw the PS3 could handle,” says Straley. “Now the PS4 is allowing us to push so much more density.”

WICKED WHISPERS If the pair talk a lot about visuals, it’s because – and we may have mentioned this already – the game looks like a birthday party for your eyeballs at which the only other guest is Emily Rose. In a ‘suit’ befitting the occasion. But it’s also to offset the fact that the always-secretive studio doesn’t want to divulge its plans for two other colossal pillars of

When Nate walks into the jungle, we were all praying for it to turn into a gameplay demo.

That night-time setting is eerily reminiscent of the Amazonian locale from Uncharted: DF.

A glade filled with rather famished looking pirates suggests the lush setting hides a deadly history. 081

excellence on which Naughty Dog’s reputation has been built. Namely: story and gameplay. Druckmann promises exploration, traversal, and combat (well, duh) and Straley says, “We’re going deeper and richer with all the mechanics. It’s still going to be a rollercoaster ride.” But that’s your lot. Thank the golden gods, then, for Drake voice actor Nolan North, who hasn’t been quite so tightlipped regarding the game’s narrative – as well as the series’ potential future. Although maybe he should have, because his next bombshell is guaranteed blow your heart to smithereens. “Nothing’s confirmed, but I believe Uncharted 4 is the last one Naughty Dog wants to do,” he tells IGN. See? Ka-freakin’-boom. “If this is the last one, I hope somebody else doesn’t pick up the mantle because they’ve done it so well for so long. It’s one of those things where you just have to cross that bridge when you get to it. It’s bittersweet, but at a certain point you want to go out on top.” Oh, Nolan. Oh, noes.

MORTAL COMBAT Assuming this is Nate dog’s glorious finale, then, the obvious mental leap to make is that he’s going to be bumped off for good.

And given the ‘OMG!’ factor attached to surprise deaths in contemporary TV shows such as Game Of Thrones and True Blood – which won’t be lost on savvy old Naughty Dog – the odds on that occurring appear surprisingly short. But we’re going to say it’s almost too obvious, given the loaded game name. A Thief’s End? ND surely wants you to think it’s referring to his Drakeiness. Nah, we’re predicting that he does make it through to the end of the game – but that one of his mainstays isn’t so lucky. Sully came so close to death in Uncharted 3 that his demise seems far too predictable. Which leaves… Chloe or Elena. And if Naughty Dog really wanted to enrol at the George RR Martin school of total, earth-shattering shocks, there’s really only one candidate. Poor blondie. Still, that’s us speculating and – it’s not often you’ll read this in OPM – desperately hoping we’re wrong. So let’s finish the Hot 50 with some good news. Regardless of who, if anyone, dies in Nathan Drake’s latest, almost-certainlygreatest adventure, you can still take one inevitability to the bank: A Thief’s End will breathe new life not just into PlayStation 4, but videogaming as a whole.

Fingers crossed a few crow’s feet and grey hairs won’t slow Drakey down.

SEE GAMES DIFFERENTLY

ORIGINAL REPORTING

GAME CULTURE

HUMOUR

WWW.KOTAKU.CO.UK @Kotaku_UK

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OPM SCORES

GOLD AWARD GOLD AWARD

Awarded to a game that’s brilliantly executed on every level, combining significant innovation, near-flawless gameplay, great graphics and lasting appeal.

EDITOR’S AWARD EDITOR’S AWARD

Not at the very highest echelon, but this is a game that deserves recognition and special praise based on its ambition, innovation or other notable achievement.

10 INCREDIBLE The kind of phenomenal experience rarely seen in a console generation.

9 OUTSTANDING Unreservedly brilliant – this

should be in every collection.

8 VERY GOOD A truly excellent game, marred by just a few minor issues.

7 GOOD A great concept unfulfilled or

the familiar done well, but still well worth playing.

6 DECENT Fun in parts, flawed in others, but more right than wrong.

92 WATCH DOGS

Apparently, “new-gen doesn’t start until now.” Aiden Pearce, we want a word with you…

5 AVERAGE What you expect and little

more, this is for devotees only.

4 BELOW AVERAGE Any bright ideas are drowning in a sea of bugs or mediocrity.

3 POOR A seriously flawed game with little merit on any level.

2 AWFUL Disgraceful: the disc would be more beneficial as a coaster.

1 HORRIFIC Own this and you’ll be swiftly,

justifiably, exiled from society.

083

If shattered face bits aren’t your thing, just pretend they’re holding hands and waving.

084

@MGElliott

UNION STRIKE

EA SPORTS UFC

EA’s debut effort inside the Octagon is a solid first swing

his almost didn’t happen. EA Sports UFC could have been Randy Couture vs Fedor Emelianenko – a dream matchup that slipped through our gloved hands due to contract wrangles and confusion. The fact that it exists is a good thing. Better still, the muscular frame of EA Sports UFC owes more to THQ’s retired Undisputed series than it does to EA’s previous MMA effort – the latter a game with all the balance of a drunk on stilts, which favoured the comedic body popping of stick-flicking ground transitions. So let’s start with punching. An MMA game should primarily be about the sickening, wet thwock of padded fist on flesh. Thankfully, EA has improved on its previous effort. The tentative, scrappy first stages of a fight can feel weedy, but once you’re accustomed to the rhythm of dodging attacks, there’s a jaw-twisting riposte to it all. Despite the snazzy presentation, it isn’t completely satisfying – especially since there’s a tendency for everything to feel a bit wooden – but there’s a savage thrill to following up a parry with a shin-shuddering roundhouse. It also does an athletic job of recreating the juddering, immediate knockouts of UFC, without ever feeling too random. Much like UFC headhoncho Dana White and his former nemesis EA, flash frame KOs and methodical fighting

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games shouldn’t theoretically be friends. But just like White and EA, they’ve found a way to co-exist. Targeted body damage enables focus on a specific spot, clearly notifying you when you’re vulnerable: just like real life, if your entire head turns livid red after a barrage of fists, it’s time to back off sharpish. Swing at your opponent wildly and your punches will quickly lose their sting, while a reckless offence leaves you prone to those crushing counters. There’s always the coiled threat of early knockouts – especially against meatier hitters from the heavier weight divisions – but ending up flat on your back like a semi-deflated sex doll is usually understandable

(if nevertheless still upsetting). When you get knocked out in EA Sports UFC, you certainly know why it all went black.

TAPPED OUT Submissions feel less intuitive. Getting your opponent to tap involves a reactive mini-game of matching your opponent’s attempts to escape while watching for visual prompts which advance the stage of your hold. If you can imagine it, it’s even less immediate than our cumbersome description suggests. Nevertheless, it’s a sensible way of implementing a crucial element of MMA that’s fascinatingly complex, but often numbing to watch for all but the most technically attuned. Practice helps, but it still feels

“THERE’S ALWAYS THE COILED THREAT OF EARLY KNOCKOUTS AGAINST MEATIER HITTERS.”

REVIEW Right Jon Jones and Gustafsson go at it again this September. Expect similar crunching hits.

THE OPM BREAKDOWN W H AT Y O U D O I N… E A S P O R T S U F C

8% Admiring Ian

McCall’s incredible moustache, an emasculating sight for any male. 19% Doing the same heavy bag workout in Career mode on loop.

Below Postured punches can finish a fight even if you’re not in full mount.

17% Enjoying the warm glow of watching your opponent’s head turn a bright, painful red.

23%

Playing a rather nasty variant of Twister in your ground game.

16% Watching endless replays of hilariously brutal knockouts. Ouch.

17% Delivering sickening knees in the clinch, and feeling not the least bit bad about it.

M U LT I P L AY E R Playing online offers more options than off. As well as quick match options, you can compete for belts against other players. You can also set up online rivalries, which will let you compare stats and performances with your friends.

ES R

N JO

SE Y

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LEE JO N

FRIENDS & ENEMIES

Above left Meet Sir Dudley ‘The Gent’ Nelson; our ham-handed custom brawler.

even the custom fighters are realistic enough to impress. That leads us to the solid Career mode, which sees you take your fighter through the Ultimate Fighter TV show, enabling you to tinker with your attributes, compile fighty gameplans and purchase new moves for your repertoire. The customisation and progression add a compelling RPG feel, even when the training sessions become repetitive. Because of this, the interim stuff often feels like a pre-fight speed bump rather than essential preparation, but it’s the first step in what will hopefully evolve into a compelling, NBAstyle story mode in the future.

Pound-for-pound the best fighter in the world today.

The Women’s Bantamweight division is in, as is Rousey’s sick armbar.

L O V I N G / H AT I N G

VARIED VIOLENCE

BAD TEACHER

Every fight is different. Matchups can end in the first minute with cheek-shattering knockouts, or become tactical grindfests.

Iffy tutorials repeatedly cover the same stuff, and never explicitly tell you how to posture up – a key part of the ground-and-pound game.

SERIESOGRAPHY

UFC: Sudden Impact | 4

UFC: Throwdown | 6

UFC Undisputed 2009 | 9

UFC Undisputed 2010 | 9

UFC Personal Trainer | 6

UFC Undisputed 3 | 9

VERDICT

EA Sports UFC impresses with its massive roster of male and female fighters, tactical striking and gloriously detailed looks, but it sadly lacks the knockout power of the late THQ’s Undisputed series. Matt Elliott

EA Sports UFC | 7

jarringly ‘gamey’ in such a wonderfully rendered world of bulging veins and flattened noses. It’s also a fiddly thing to achieve with your sweaty thumbs on the DualShock 4’s delicate sticks. Because of this, locking in some joint-snapping jiu jitsu feels less pleasing than it should, but at least it isn’t just an inane sequence of button-bashing. This misstep in presentation certainly isn’t disastrous. For a game gushing with maimed eyebrows and wrong-waybendy bones, EA Sports UFC is an exceedingly handsome fighter. Most impressive are the little touches which become apparent in the replays. Bodies ripple in reaction to thunderous punches (because reassuringly, even MMA fighters have flab) and expressions change from ‘let’s get it on’ to ‘please stop bothering my soft bits’, as fights take a sharp turn down Pain Alley. Thanks to a mix of skin shaders and dark magic,

The father of MMA is disappointingly a paid-for extra.

The established Undisputed series is one hard-as-nails act to follow, but if it keeps this up things can only get better for EA Sports UFC.

085

REVIEW Groups of guards make it hard to stay out of sight. Shoot the nearby petrol can for multi-kills.

BALL BREAKER

086

@nathan_brown

SNIPER ELITE 3

Rebellion pops more Nazi nuts in gratuitous slow-mo

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o one likes snipers anymore. Blame Battlefield’s hill-campers, perhaps, or Call Of Duty’s quick-scopers, but these days the art of scoring a headshot from half a mile away is frowned upon. UK developer Rebellion, however, disagrees, and continues to fetishise the work of the lone wolf sniper enacting long-range justice from behind enemy lines. And fetishise really is the word for it. Most kills are met with a slow-mo cinematic that follows the bullet from your rifle to its target, the impact shown in Mortal Kombat-style X-ray vision. Skulls explode, rib cages rupture, internal organs spill out and testicles evaporate with a sickening pop. It’s a neat trick, but it gets real old real fast, providing validation for those who claim videogames desensitise players to violence. If you’ve seen one nut shot, you’ve seen them all. Thankfully, these gruesome cutaways can be skipped with a button press, and if you can look past the over-the-top violence there’s a surprisingly complex web of systems. Sniper Elite 3 is a stealth game at heart, and you’re given plenty of ways to stay out of sight. Throw

“SKULLS EXPLODE, RIB CAGES RUPTURE, INTERNAL ORGANS SPILL OUT AND TESTES POP.”

rocks at nearby scenery, Far Cry 3-style, to lure guards off their scripted patrol routes for a stealth takedown. Use ambient noise – rumbling generators, planes roaring overhead, claps of thunder – to disguise the crack of your rifle. Even being spotted becomes an advantage – quickly relocate after being made and pick off the enemy as they converge on your former position, leaving tripwires and land mines in your snipery wake.

JUST DESERTS You guide US sniper Karl Fairburne on a series of lengthy undercover missions across North Africa during World War 2, levelling up as you progress, adding new weapons and rifle parts to your loadout (which can be customised between missions). The setting means this is a colourful game, if not a handsome-looking one: expect more blue skies and green foliage than you’d find in the average shooter, though this is hardly going to justify a purchase on PS4.

It’s a well conceived, smartly designed game, but it’s been terribly made. The framerate hitches constantly in open areas. You’re hemmed in by invisible walls that prevent you clambering up a twofoot sand bank. The sound mix is all over the place, with enemies who are 200 yards away sounding like they’re right behind you. Shots sometimes miss inexplicably and missionbreaking bugs force you to reload earlier saves: at one point I’m unable to search a key corpse because a jeep full of Nazis parks on top of it. It’s a shame, because there are some fine ideas here, but they’ve been poorly executed – and the endless procession of splintered skulls and exploding testes simply isn’t enough to make up for it. VERDICT

There’s more to Sniper Elite 3 than meets the eye (or lungs, or heart or private parts), but some shoddy finishing touches ruin a shooter that’s genuinely full of potential. Nathan Brown

REVIEW PS2’s amusing Shadow Of Memories does the ‘solving my own murder’ premise much better.

@Pelloki

SALEM’S SCROT

MURDERED: SOUL SUSPECT

087

Inspectre Remorse investigates the Salem Glitch Trials

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he top three mysteries in this PS4 point-’n’-click about a ghost investigating a serial killer, in order of increasing importance, are as follows: 1) Why is it that Ronan O’Connor (that’s you), on the night of his own murder, needs to investigate other, recent murders from scratch in order to track down his own killer given that he’s a cop? How many murders must take place in the small town of Salem, or how many holidays must Ronan be taking, for all these killings (and there are lots) to be alien to him?

2) Why is nobody investigating the fact that every other person in Salem has the same face and the same clothes? Seriously, that’s properly freaky X-Files schizzle and it creeps me out – I have screenshots on my PS4 where three identical blokes are walking past each other in the street and nobody but me thinks it’s weird. 3) How has Airtight messed this one up so badly?

MURDERED MOST HORRID Let’s expand on that last one. As you might have deduced from question two, Murdered isn’t exactly a shining example of flawless game design. It’s haunted by problems not limited to character dialogue not loading in, active missions not checking off once completed (for my entire playthrough I was supposed to be escaping

an attic I’d successfully left inside the first hour) and environments reverting to default states with every reload. I especially enjoyed having to re-invert the camera each time I booted up the disc. It’s not exactly a complex game. There are some illjudged and twitchy action setpieces involving sneaking up on demons and QTE-ing them to a second grave – and there’s no question that Murdered would be a better game without them – but otherwise this is a slowpaced adventure that shouldn’t be home to such basic slip-ups. The crime-solving mechanics aren’t much better. For the most part you gather evidence and then answer questions about it. It’s often logical, but sometimes the questions are worded in such a way that the evidence choice becomes very subjective, and so the fundamentals of puzzle-solving fall apart like the crispy flesh of stake-burnt witches.

This being an adventure game, much rests on its plot. Happily it’s Murdered’s highest point. Though patchy in places, the main investigation and some disturbingly dark side-stories are worth playing on for, despite some bizarre cases of assumed knowledge in the script. (“You deserved this!” I dickishly bark to some innocent-looking ghost I’ve never met before because Ronan’s somehow pre-cogged the story’s direction.) But even then Murdered looks to spoil my fun: rendering mind-reading skills pointless by copying-andpasting characters throughout the game. This type of slapdash coding should be criminal. VERDICT

An interesting concept with halfdecent story beats, dragged to hell by shonky puzzles, odd dialogue jumps and bugs that are far more terrifying than the subject matter. Matthew Pellett

There’s a real sense of being in a race rather than just winding your way through traffic. 088

@IAmTheManta

VICTORY LAP

GRID AUTOSPORT

Codemasters takes its flagship racer back to basics

ran Turismo might be the Real Driving Simulator, but Codemasters’ Grid has always taken pole position when it comes to actual racing. Rather than a somewhat distant car collector who enjoys pitting his wits against giant, unthinking Scalextric vehicles, Grid casts you as a plucky, up-and-coming race driver looking to make his mark on the scene. And while Grid Autosport, the third game in the series, certainly doesn’t abandon that fiction, it does strip away distractions such as team management and building a fan base. The result is the most focused racing game of its generation. It’s apparent that Codies isn’t pulling any punches even from the first race. In Autosport, there’s no sailing past the 16-strong pack within the first couple of laps; every position gained is fought for as you look for unguarded, open tarmac. Try to use the other cars as creative braking opportunities and you almost always come off worse. And if there is any rubber banding, it certainly doesn’t feel like it – Autosport is refreshingly unpatronising.

MODEL BEHAVIOUR That’s not to say it isn’t accessible, though. Grid’s characterful blend of sim and arcade handling is still present, but Autosport swings

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more towards the satisfyingly weighty understeer end of the spectrum than its twitchier predecessor Grid 2. The upshot is a driving model in which cars feel more connected to the track, and where there’s always something to think about. What gear you’re in, how smoothly you steer, how fast you open the throttle and by how much all matter considerably more than in the majority of Autosport’s contemporaries, and it won’t take many badly-handled corners – opponents shrinking gallingly into the distance on the following straight – before this becomes obvious. But while you’re refining your driving technique, you also have to deal with opponent

AI that is, for the most part, exemplary. Drivers tussle for position and aggressively defend, and make plenty of mistakes too – the sight of a tumbling car up ahead rarely fails to spike your adrenaline as you use the split-second you have to plan evasive action. Of course, if it doesn’t work out – or even if you simply overcook a corner – you can tap the Flashback button, rewind a short portion of the race and take another shot at it. Flashbacks also help mitigate any frustration when the AI makes suicidal defensive manoeuvres in situations where a human driver would gracefully concede a position. This is only really a problem in Open Wheel and Endurance

“FLASHBACKS HELP MITIGATE ANY FRUSTRATION WHEN THE AI MAKES A SUICIDAL MOVE.”

REVIEW Right Street races continue to offer solace to lonely Midnight Club refugees.

THE OPM BREAKDOWN W H AT Y O U D O I N… G R I D A U T O S P O R T

25% Not caring that you’re not winning because you’re having so much fun. 3% Not having to wait for Codies’ usually fussy menus to load.

Below It may be locked to 30fps, but Grid Autosport still feels nippy.

10% Shaking your fist at the AI’s annoying habit of not checking its mirrors.

7% Wondering

why you always finish a race in last place.

45%

Marvelling at the complex grip model and mostly believable AI.

10% Pondering how you got away with touching wheels in an Open Wheel event without flipping your car into the air.

S TAT PA C K

100 5 6 12 Different views Number of The disciplines different tracks, available. These to choose from, including the both real and are: Open Wheel, return of the fictional, across Endurance, much-missed 22 locales from Tuner, Street in-car option. around the globe. and Touring.

Months have passed since the last entry in the Grid franchise, Grid 2, swerved onto PS3.

HOW TO… PULL OFF A DEFT DRIFT Keep your car in second gear as you approach the drifting zone and use a Scandinavian flick (steer away, then quickly back in) to get sideways, then feather the throttle to balance your angle all the way around. Now drink in the well-earned applause.

Above left There’s a huge range of cars to match the variety of events.

1 You spend the opening hour acclimatising to Autosport’s stiff competition. 2 You should have sampled every discipline Autosport has to offer by this point. 3 Time for your first Grid Championship, spanning ten events. 4 With second-tier events available, the game gets even tougher from here on in. 5 This will be about the time you go looking for a way to mute your manager, who says the same things over and over.

S TO P PE D C O

A RK

A ER

FR AID OF

TING

ESS EN

TROPHY CABINET

B R A N D A WA

VERDICT

This is a confident return to Grid’s roots in the TOCA franchise that places the emphasis back on racing over contrived storylines – and leaves its peers eating its dust in the process. Ben Maxwell

THE FIRST FIVE HOURS…

NO L O NG

finishing position. Succeed, and you get the XP, but missing the mark just means you get fewer (and less difficult) offers when you enter the next season. It’s a brilliant setup that shifts the focus away from podium finishes to the minute-tominute pleasure of racing. Codemasters has distilled the crucial elements and challenge from hardcore racing sims into a game that never veers into the genre’s drier territory, and remains accessible without ever being condescending. Autosport’s lean form hides a mountain of content and offers an unparalleled level of racing fidelity that, refreshingly, never forgets the passion of race day.

I’

events, however, which feature high-powered, fragile vehicles, and doesn’t grate so much in Touring and Street events. Tuner meets, meanwhile, tend to feature drifting and time trial events where traffic is spread out, meaning these already rare instances simply don’t occur. Even taking these slight blemishes into account, Autosport’s AI stands headand-shoulders above its peers. The five disciplines each have their own strand in Autosport’s new unfussy Career mode. You earn XP for the relevant discipline each time you take part in an event, and once you’ve earned a certain amount across all five, you unlock Grid Championship events that offer new types of race and much bigger rewards to compete for. The XP you receive is based on team and sponsor objectives. Every season you play through brings new offers from teams hoping to woo you, with each one demanding a minimum

BRONZE

SILVER

GOLD

Achieve every sponsor objective in a single race to add this straightforward bronze to your cabinet.

To nab this shiny racing pot (and some bragging rights), reach level ten in the Endurance discipline.

Reach a total online level of 250 across all five disciplines. Quite a commitment required for this gold trophy.

089

REVIEW

Chance Thomas’ haunting score adds another layer of reflective melancholy. HEART WRENCHER

090

@furianreseigh

VALIANT HEARTS: THE GREAT WAR

Poignant puzzler puts triple-As to shame

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arking the centenary of WW1 with a videogame might sound a little crass considering the medium’s track record for using history as an excuse to kill cartoonish fascists, but spend five mins in the sombre yet charming world of this sidescrolling adventure and you’ll never look at interactive warfare the same way again. Built with the sumptuous UbiArt Framework used to create the platforming joy of Rayman Legends, Ubisoft Montpellier has crafted a visually captivating 2D take on war-torn Europe. With a striking art style reminiscent of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comic series, Valiant Hearts follows the lives of four very different people - Emile, an aging French farmer; Karl, a Germanborn farmworker; Freddie, an African-American member of the Foreign Legion and Anna, a trainee vet from Belgium.

DOG OF WAR The real standout cast member, however, is Walt, the faithful canine that works the German trenches as a medic. Serving as ongoing singleplayer co-op partner (whom you can select via o), Walt can hold items, reach inaccessible areas and activate switches in puzzles that need an extra helping paw. He’s brimming with personality; growling at the sight of machine

gunners and lying coyly on his back when you give him a thoughtful pet amid the chaos. Rather than having reams of potentially cheesy dialogue, important information is instead conveyed via speech bubbles that show an image of what you need to progress, such as the face of missing child or a bottle of wine you need to bribe a surly sergeant with. Since the game is essentially a series of environmental puzzles, it allows the emotive European settings and the conundrums themselves drive the story. None of the tasks in Valiant Hearts is particularly difficult (with Ubisoft Montpellier ensuring anyone of any age can progress through each task via a series of timed hints), but there’s enough variety in their layout and scale to avoid any sense of boredom or repetition. These puzzle staples are broken up by a set of well-placed action set-pieces

that help lift your spirits after the many emotional blows the game throws at you. Anna’s taxi-riding sections, where you help her shift left and right as obstacles streak past, is one such memorable highlight. And it’s this balance of compelling storytelling and brutally honest depiction of historical events that makes Valiant Hearts such a unique experience. Everything from the horror of chlorine gas to the suicidal Chemin des Dames offensive are all shown in sobering clarity – and the fact that these scenes are used without bastardising them for the sake of a cheap shootout is perhaps Ubisoft Montpellier’s greatest achievement of all. VERDICT

Compelling and respectful in a way few games can match, Valiant Hearts shows Ubisoft doesn’t need an open-world to give you an unforgettable journey. Dom Reseigh-Lincoln

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ACE COMBAT INFINITY A money-grabbing plane Jane

INFO

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THE WOLF AMONG US EPISODE 4: IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

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DRAKENGARD 3 Shaking that crass

here are the beginnings of a lukewarm Ace Combat game, here. Thanks to Project Aces’ oafish implementation of free-to-play, though, your experience of it will be frustratingly staccato. Each sortie you fly uses up a unit of fuel (you’re given three to start with), and this applies to both single-player and multiplayer missions. You can earn more by completing various challenges (flying a certain number of sorties in a six-hour period, for example), but if you’re already grounded then the only other way to acquire more is to pay 79p or wait four hours for your next handout. In a game built around multiplayer, it’s baffling that the developer would undermine any gains made through Infinity being freely available by making it so difficult to play once you have it. At least there’s the option to buy a single-player pass outright, which enables you to progress through the five brief campaign missions (there are more to follow) unharried. It’s all the more galling given that Infinity’s intriguing take on competitive co-op – which sees two teams of four attempting to score the most kills against a common enemy – is genuinely fun. The same can’t be said for the campaign missions, which are adequate at best. Project Aces has dropped Assault Horizon’s divisive Dogfight mode,1 as well as its pacechanging alternative vehicles – and what’s left feels repetitive and underwhelming. This reductive design is intended as fan service,2 but instead strips away the layers of complexity that have gradually been built up over 17 entries in the franchise, and then shoots down what’s left with aggressive monetisation. Ben Maxwell

t now seems tradition for Telltale series to reach their peak at the mid-point, and while it was obvious that the intensity and drama with which the preceding entry crescendoed couldn’t be maintained, the drop-off here is disappointing. In fact, this short ep is as close as we’ve come to filler. It’s not overtly poor, just very little happens, and the credits seem to roll after a comparatively brief time. On the hunt for the Crooked Man, Bigby has to track down the missing piece of the magic mirror in order to locate his hideout and, more out of curiosity, uncover the fate of Ichabod Crane.1 Like in the previous instalment, you’re given a choice of how to proceed: to investigate the pawn shop, where Bloody Mary has been selling potential leads, or the butcher who’s been delivering packages for the nefarious pair. However the game does little to persuade you that this decision is a meaningful one, and you simply have to visit one of the locales no matter the order. Relationships with subsidiary characters play a prominent role here, and there are moral choices to be made – although for a change, all feel fairly painless.2 What needs to be made clear before the series ends is the ultimate effect of these, lest they’re to be seen as disposable padding. Speaking of the finale, things are poised nicely for a cracker. Because while this episode may be a let-down, relatively speaking, overall The Wolf Among Us has been anything but. Arguably the equal of the sensational The Walking Dead, let’s hope it gets the send-off it undoubtedly deserves. Joel Gregory

he1 game’s opening line may be about urination, but it’s a big ol’ number two that’s stinking up the combat of this Japanese hack-and-slasher. Taking on the role of ‘demon’ Intoner Zero as she murders her way through her excessive number of siblings with her hapless dragon pal Mikhail, it’s up to you to coat yourself in the innards of your unfortunate foes as much as possible in a bid to take their powers and make your dry-cleaner have a breakdown when they see the state of your favourite death-dealing costume. Mashing r will easily get you through most of the game, but these showy slashes never feel as though they ever really connect with any of the identical-looking soldiers you face. Not that there are many of them. Unlike the crowd-clearing madness of the Dynasty Warriors series – which swamps your screen with hundreds of bad guys – Drakengard only lets you loose at a fistful of formulaic knights at a time, since the game simply can’t handle more than a few objects at any one point before it starts to shudder and slow down under the strain. All this while you barrel down dull, grey corridors with no room for any real exploration. However, despite the shonky performance issues and woeful combat, there’s still something that compels you forward. Boss battles may not be particularly challenging, but at least they change up the gameplay in more inventive ways. And while Drakengard 3 is lewd, crude and incredibly rude,2 it knows it and revels in all of its overly crass and juvenile dialogue. This isn’t pretending to be a big or clever game by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s stupid, dumb fun all the same. Daniella Lucas

FOOTNOTES 1 This filmic feel split fans, but it’s impossible to deny that AH was a more exciting game for it. 2 There are plenty of references to earlier games, including planes, locations and more.

FOOTNOTES 1 Whether his thread gets tied up before the season ends is debatable, but this could be an angle for a sequel. 2 Sadly, your actions in past episodes seem to have little relevance here.

FOOTNOTES 1 Have we really spelled out TIT in giant letters? Trust Dani to take this page’s tone down a notch. 2 Seriously, there’s even talk of underage relations with your giant, avian reptile.

Magic mirror manoeuvres

091

He’s a bland leading man, but Aiden’s phone makes up for that with aplomb. 092

PHONE SHARK

@Pelloki

WATCH DOGS

A neat twist on sandbox formulae, if you can hack it

ost people use their phones for texting friends, spamming Facebook feeds with stupid grinning selfies and rage-Tweeting First Great Western when all the trains in the world seem to have driven into black holes, leaving commuters stranded and furious on rainy platforms. Aiden Pearce uses his phone to control an entire city and download the personal data of each and every citizen, then covers off the spiralling data costs by skimming cash out of the bank accounts of unfortunate passers-by. When it all works, Watch Dogs is essentially Grand Theft Auto IV (that’s IV, not V) with a one-button hacking tool. If you’re bombing down Chicago’s streets in a supercar with the fuzz in tow you can stab r to turn all the traffic lights green and cause other vehicles to plough into your pursuers, or overload subterranean steam pipe pressure gauges and blow the streets wide open, totalling nearby vehicles in the process. Or, when you’re infiltrating a heavily guarded compound, rather than putting yourself in harm’s way you can simply line-of-sight-jump your way through security camera feeds until you reach the server you need to tinker with. Somebody nearby calling for backup? Deploy the Jam Comms tool to disrupt their SOS. Armoured guards about to rumble your location?

INFO FORMAT PS4 ALSO ON PS3 ETA OUT NOW PUB UBISOFT DEV UBISOFT MONTREAL

Remote-activate the digital switch on their grenades and then stifle your chuckles as they succumb to a surprise ‘industrial accident’. High profile target hiding in a car dealership along with almost a dozen bodyguards? Cut the power to a full city block, sprint past everyone in the confusion, murder your victim and slip away undetected before the backup generator kicks in. Aiden’s phone is an empowering piece of kit, far more exciting than any weapon he or his peers could ever wield. It gives you meaningful choices to approach jobs in directions of your choosing, and its environment-altering apps are varied enough to cater for radically different playstyles.

Again, I’ll wheel out that line when it works. In these moments, Watch Dogs hands you the keys to its starring city and lets you wring out more entertainment from its systems than the majority of its competition. When it doesn’t work, however – when the smoke clears and the mirrors shatter – serious cracks in the mechanics start emerging.

PEARCE WALKER And there are cracks everywhere. Not counting the now-fixed server issues that hampered week-one online play, Watch Dogs is beset with issues. Some of them are amusing problems – hack a junction with just one car waiting at the lights and watch it plough

“WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS AND THE MIRRORS SHATTER, SERIOUS CRACKS EMERGE.”

REVIEW Right Vicious AI means car chases are fast, frantic and filled with memorable hacking hijinks.

THE OPM BREAKDOWN W H AT Y O U D O I N… WAT C H D O G S

6% Asking

yourself what you can actually spend your money on. 1% Using your hacking skills to stop the Chicago L for cheeky police escape routes.

Below The crazy digital trips are so deep, each has its own upgrade tree.

18% Not caring that you’re weak in combat when you have such great hacking getaway skills.

50%

Stopping crimes then stealing the cash of innocents who praise you.

10% Panicking when another player hacks into your game unexpectedly.

15% Jumping between security camera feeds on auto-pilot mode.

SECOND OPINION PEARCED OFF

You know what hacks me off? The fact GTA V is still the only sandbox that gets vehicle handling right. Aiden may manipulate the odd webcam, but 70% of Watch Dogs still revolves around driving, which is unrefined and floaty. Yes, the on-foot action is compelling, but Pearce doesn’t have the polish or personality to dethrone the king. Dave Meikleham COMPEL-O-GR APH

Dislike Aiden already.

Unlock better kit for AI mirth.

Getting hacked by other players. 093

What’s newgen about this?

Campaign limps to a close.

Above left We’ll give Aiden this: hacking enemy grenades never gets old. 0

into a nearby park as the driver panics at the earlier-thanexpected green – but there are fundamental problems with missions and progression that aren’t so easily laughed off. Key skill upgrades hidden behind dozens of bloated sidequests grate (I’m tempted to swear off alcohol for life thanks to the awful drinking games), but it’s the combination of the underwhelming campaign, plot and characters that disappoints the most. Watch Dogs’ core mission branch bounces between mildly interesting and plain boring, and never excels. Standout moments are almost all found in sidemissions or during emergent moments, buried between scores more forgettable missions involving chess or auto-pilot hacking tasks. Every corner of the city has been packed with content, whether it’s digital trips that transport you into mini-games based on Carmageddon or DayZ-style

zombie-robo survival sims, or crimes in progress you need to prevent – and you’ve got to dig deep to find the good stuff. It’s the anti-inFamous: Second Son. Whereas Sucker Punch’s sandbox was for the most part a beautiful, concentrated experience, Watch Dogs relies on unfiltered girth to entertain. Another victim of cross-gen releases, there’s nothing particularly ‘new-gen’ about the game, but there are plenty of good ideas and a lot of activities to keep you busy. The fundamentals for a truly special game are in place – but as was the case with Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, it now falls to the sequels to fully realise it.

TIME

30 hours

H O W T O… TA K E C O N T R O L O F C H I C A G O 1

1 The city is split up into different districts, all of them monitored by ctOS Control Centers. You’ll need to hack into these to then highlight nearby ctOS Control Towers – often hidden on rooftops. 2 To reach the masts you’ll need to complete small access-based puzzles akin to Far Cry 3’s Radio Tower climbs. Expect to hack hidden terminals to unlock doors aplenty… 3 Once in, activating the Towers unlocks new safehouses and highlights that district’s missions and collectible locations. IS IT BETTER THAN?

VERDICT

Comes up well short of its initial genre-reinventing promise, yet the malleable world and hacking toolbox on offer soften the blow of the weak missions by packing the city’s streets with emergent goodness. Matthew Pellett

Rockstar’s sandbox Stronger missions trumps Watch Dogs at and the lure of every turn: even seamless open-water visually, despite PS3’s combat forces Watch lesser hardware grunt. Dogs to walk the plank.

YES

Superpower hilarity can’t match Watch Dogs’ gadgets for unscripted, emergent sandbox amusement.

REVIEW INFO

094

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INFO

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MOTOGP 14

ENTWINED

Gently… gently… aaaand restart

Analogue sticks in your teeth

acing against other riders in MotoGP 14 almost feels like muddying the crystal clear water of the immaculate, distilled riding experience at its core. Clean, crisp and clinical, manoeuvring your bike is a joy and the jump in fidelity from PS3 to PS4 is immediately apparent in both look and feel. Manual gears, tuck-in and even separate brake buttons become second nature and it’s hugely rewarding as it all comes together. Few racers are as satisfying under braking, either. You have to be ultra careful not to lock a wheel if you’re using ‘Pro Physics’, but diving down the inside of Marc Marquez at a hairpin never gets old. On the other hand, while the bikes and riders look incredible (especially in the gorgeous, ultra-slow-motion replays), the tracks can look very CG-simmy and that sterility breaks the immersion.1 Championship mode is meaty and engrossing, with teams to unlock,2 full race weekends to experience and a bike upgrade system that enables you to prioritise development areas as you plot your career from Moto3 to MotoGP. The single lap needed to bank a development point is too simple, but at least it adds some immersion. The local split-screen option is exemplary, performing like single-player and, if you’re feeling particularly rebellious, you can take the official Safety Car (what? four wheels?) out on the track for a Time Trial blast. Weird. With history-bending classic scenarios such as the 1993 duel between riders Schwantz and Rainey, and a full recreation of last year’s championship, the licence is put to great use and the PS4 finally has a strong racing simulation debut to set the newgen pace. Justin Towell

ho needs to go through that whole preview cycle rigmarole when your game can appear on a global stage at the Sony E3 show and land on the PS Store within minutes? Entwined did just that, intriging us with striking visuals and gameplay that looks like Rez hooked up with Flower on a suitably trippy evening to spawn a new indie darling. Yet Pixelopus’ debut sadly doesn’t meet the heady heights of these floaty-light pseudo-parents. Entwined hands your left analogue stick to a bright orange fish and your right to a blue origami bird before sending you hurtling down an exceptionally pretty version of the Doctor Who intro.1 Initially, this is a beautifully soothing experience as you roll the characters around to gently building music and send them swooping through matching coloured panels to fill two bars at the top of the screen. If nothing else, these gauges will very quickly let you know which hand you write with as each jarring failure – complete with a horrible buzz of the DualShock 4 - depletes the bar. The difficulty cranks up quickly and expert analogue steering is required to fill both bars to the top and complete each stage, culminating in a strikingly attractive area where the two characters merge to become an elegant dragon. Yet for all its That Game Companyinspired clothing, Entwined feels oddly hollow, repeating its one trick – analogue swivelling – with frustrating insistence. Add in convoluted flying controls in what should be its most relaxing bits and an error message consistently appearing at vital moments2 and Entwined becomes a far more shallow experience than its looks would have you believe. Louise Blain

et’s saw the big can of worms open right from the off and throw the writhing invertebrates everywhere, shall we? At £19.99 for a digital download, Worms Battlegrounds is an expensive instalment that doesn’t warrant a purchase if you own any of the previous titles on PS3. And at £34.99 – that’s thirty-four pounds and ninety-nine pence – for the boxed copy,1 it’s a concrete donkey to the wallets of anyone unfortunate enough to buy the disc. It’s a big game, but a bloated one. There’s a single-player puzzle-adventure mode involving skirmishes in museum exhibits, all narrated by a Lara Croft pastiche called Tara Pinkle, but the slow-going is best summed up by that classic Worms quip: “boring!” On the flip side, the speedier time attack Worm Ops missions are limited diversions. As always, multiplayer’s where it’s at. There’s a scary number of modes and options for multi-person wormage, but there’s also a frightening amount of loading time and irritating menus: the game’s an expanded port of the PC’s Worms Clan Wars, and the ugly UI was clearly designed with a mouse in mind. Yes, you can create clans and enter them into online leaderboards, but it’s a constant fight against the menus to do so, and the urge to pull the pin on the DualShock 4’s Holy Hand Grenade PS button and jump into something else proves tough to resist. Persist and it’s perfectly possible to recreate the multiplayer joys of Worms Armageddon2 with the added bonus of worm voices shouting out from the DualShock 4 speaker. That those thrills are buried beneath so much frustration, however, is utter madness. Matthew Pellett

FOOTNOTES 1 This is made worse by the fact the trackside crowd is almost all 2D sprites. 2 Some teams are inexplicably locked behind a ‘you need to buy DLC to race for this team’ wall.

FOOTNOTES 1 These bright tunnels vary from mountains and caves to digital worlds full of light bulbs. 2 The game will stutter and pause should you miss a few too many of those coloured gates.

FOOTNOTES 1 We’ve always argued that digital titles should be cheaper than boxed ones, but this is silly. 2 Still our fave Worms, and on your shortlist for the 100 Greatest PS Games next issue.

WORMS BATTLEGROUNDS Soil and trouble

REVIEW INFO

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STRAIGHT TO THE BARGAIN BIN @PhilIwaniuk

LUCH-ADORE

@furianreseigh

GUACAMELEE! SUPER TURBO CHAMP ED!!!

DEFENSE TECHNICA is another game that’s so nearly better than the surroundings it finds itself in. Seeing it in the bargain bin is like seeing a lone tin of Heinz abandoned on the Tesco Value shelf. This is tower defence done properly, with notes of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation to its art style. But despite perfectly functional mechanics and likeable rag-tag visuals, it’s not quite slick or substantial enough to distinguish itself from the ranks of browser/mobile tower defence titles. I don’t want to come across all, “Unreal Engine 4 or GTFO,” but I need a better reason than this to plug my PS3 back in.

Mexican-flavoured romp turns up the heat

y this stage, playing Guacamelee is old sombrero to me. Having Frog Stomped and Rooster Uppercutted my way through it on PS3 and PS Vita, I wasn’t really planning on taking another trip into this masked brawler. And yet here I am, laying down lucha libre justice once again. Here’s the million peso question, though – is there enough new content here to coax you back if you’ve already played it, or catch your eye if you weren’t bearhugged by the combo-fest’s original concept? Well yes… and no. Developer Drinkbox has taken the same awesome tex-mex platformer we gave a nine in these very pages and added a new boss, extra areas and lots more – as well as rejigging the game’s flow to maintain balance. This version includes two new levels – the Canal Of Flowers and the Volcano – along with a new boss, El Trio. And while the extra big bad is just tacked-on content, the Canal section is a bonafide gem, mainly because it gives you a challenging area in which to test your new moves. The entire section is littered with invincible enemies that leap from the water below and sap your health – all while you’re suplexing skellys and

other assorted baddies. Luckily your improved dodge move (which always granted you a millisecond of invincibility) now damages foes, to help you cope with the extra intensity of the new enemy types.

MACHO LIBRE There’s also a new El Inferno mode – similar to Kratos’ Rage meter from God Of War – which gives masked hero Juan the power to deal extra damage. However, this new addition only serves to dilute the previously tight balance of Guacamelee. There’s certainly fun to be had chaining attacks to keep the El Inferno meter filled, but it ends up giving you an edge that feels unnecessary and out of place. Thankfully, this new mode isn’t mandatory, and beyond it the same cracking Metroidvania-style beat-’emup still resides – now with a longer story, reduced loading times and some sexy new lighting effects that make the already purdy-looking 2D animations pop off the screen with the power of PS4. VERDICT

Despite some unnecessarily tweaked features, Guac is still a spicy little brawlercum-platformer with prettier looks and some fun new bits of content. Dom Reseigh-Lincoln

Just because a game gets bunged in the recessionfriendly repository basket doesn’t automatically mean it’s bobbins. Case in point: I’m actually rather fond of RAGNAROK ODYSSEY ACE. A PS3 port of Vita’s online, Norse-obsessed scrapper, there’s little point in me trying to spin some highfalutin critical appraisal to explain said fondness. Instead, I’ll just tell you the vertically-focused combat reminds me of a chunky DmC and the warmly cheery music brings back fond memories of playing Final Fantasy IX. That, and it also lets me knock the scandalously revealing loin cloth off a 60ft, bright red King Kong pretender. Ah, such wonderfully simple pleasures.

Below Dimensionhopping in co-op is now locked to each player for easier switching.

Wait, what’s this? A turnbased RPG/procreation sim that allows me to date seven different women and then create an army of battle-primed children from the subsequent sweet monkey lovin’? Alright, I’m reaching back for the plug. In CONCEPTION II you play God’s Gift. Literally. That’s the dude’s name. After you embark on ‘Classmating’ – which involves wooing lady folk and something to do with… uh, ‘Star Wombs’ – you take your hastily-raised kids into surprisingly thoughtful battles. Viewed from a Persona-esque perspective, you end up fighting with your significant other and multiple sprogs in a circular grid system. Icky, but intriguing.

ABOMINATION OF THE MONTH Ugh. Has the anime genre ever heard of a cup size smaller than a GG? If XBLAZE CODE: EMBRYO’s creepy objectification isn’t enough, the ruddy thing isn’t even a game. This BlazBlue ‘visual novel’ merely requires you to press q 1,498 times to progress through an indecipherably twee plot about cults trying to off a kid. I’d rather have a Beano, if it’s all the same. Phil Iwaniuk

095

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Q PlayStation 4 Launch Special Q Killzone: Shadow Fall Q Call Of Duty: Ghosts Q Dragon Age: Inquisition

Q Dark Souls II Q Game Of The Year Q 2014 Preview Q The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Q Alien: Isolation Q Gran Turismo 6 Q Top 50 PlayStation Quotes Q Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor

Q Evolve Q inFamous: Second Son Q Top Ten Worst PS3 Games Q Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

#95 April 2014

#96 May 2014

#97 June 2014

#98 July 2014

Q Batman: Arkham Knight Q PS4’s Secret Games Q Dark Souls II Q Thief

Q Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Q Indie Games On PS4 Q inFamous: Second Son Q Project Morpheus

Q Destiny Q The Order: 1886 Q Breaking The Fourth Wall Q The Ultimate OPM Pub Quiz Book

Q Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare Q Homefront The Revolution Q The Complete Guide To Destiny Q Wolfenstein: The New Order

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on the store 100 FIFA 14 – Ultimate Team World Cup The real tourney’s almost done, but there’s one more way to celebrate this summer’s footy in gaming form.

097

on your xmb 103 Under The Skin Scarlett Johansson does Species in Scotland with weird, disturbing and confusing results.

music

online tests

Ultra Street Fighter 4

The time for talking is over: we fireball our way down ethernet cables for the ultimate online test.

103 This month’s hottest tunes

how to… 104 Stream your gaming online

platinum club 105 South Park: The Stick Of Truth

online tests what we’re playing now

MULTIPLAYER MODES PUT THROUGH THEIR PACES BY OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS

review

DESTINY

Matthew Pellett glimpses into the future of online gaming on PlayStation We got early access to Destiny’s surprise E3 Alpha, so I’ve taken the wise decision to replace those hours I’d normally waste on ‘sleep’ with repeated treks into Old Russia. Though I’ve been hands-on before I’m still amazed at the scale of Bungie’s world and its ability to create stunning vistas, and even in this Alpha state the surprise meetings with randomers feels magical: much like Journey’s pairings. And, like in Journey, the sadness when a helpful stranger leaves my world forever cuts deep…

PAYDAY 2 098

Things are getting heisty for would-be bank robber Dom Reseigh-Lincoln My crew of globally-placed pseudo-criminals has already robbed a couple of local jewellers, filling our duffel bags with crisp Benjamins. But we’ve got the taste for bigger fish; it’s time to hit a bank. After scoping out the joint for guard patrols and exit routes we channel our inner-Heat and go for it. And it’s all going so well before a civilian breaks free and tips off the fuzz. Cue bullets, tear gas and a street littered with blood-stained dollar bills.

THE LAST OF US Dave Meikleham tries to stay in for the long, flesh-searing haul in ND’s survival epic

Being the world’s 36th worst loser (I’ve counted), I try to keep my online powder dry. Sadly, I’m also obsessed with nabbing trophies, which has led to me slowly whittling away the truly gargantuan number of online matches you have to endure to unlock TLOU’s Hunter and Firefly pots. I say endure, because despite its mechanical excellence, the sheer number of curb stomps and fiery deaths in these team deathmatches make it quite the uncomfortable experience… especially when you have to finish 168 games to tick that trophy box.

INFO FORMAT PS4 PUB UBISOFT DEV UBISOFT MONTREAL REVIEW ISSUE #99, 7/10

Watch Dogs

Cooking up an online storm in the Windy City

here are a bunch of different competitive modes to pick from in Watch Dogs’ online component, but the best gametype by far is hide ‘n’ seek. Technically it’s called Online Hacking, but it’s really just hide ‘n’ seek. It works thusly: you apply for an online contract in the menus, wait for a couple of minutes to be matched up against another player and then rudely invade their game to remotely install backdoor access into their phone and make off with data, all while remaining undetected. Your victim is given a search radius and can interrupt your file thievery if he or she profiles your face before you grab the data, and then instigate a gun battle to wrap it up. Of course, this means that you too can find yourself invaded by others without warning. Occasionally it can be an unwelcome frustration – as happened with me once when I’d driven

across the map to start a mission, only to be pulled into an online game a few blocks away – but most of the time the diversions are nice breaks from the bland single-player quests. Cowering behind cars on the edge of the search radius and praying your victim doesn’t spot you is tense stuff, up there with Sam Fisher’s and Solid Snake’s best stealthing action – far

more thrilling than the game’s standard missions because you’re outsmarting another human being in the process. There are plenty of opportunities for cunning tactics on both sides of the job, too – if you’re wise enough to make full use of your various skills, that is. Other modes include Online Decryption (multiple players race across the city by any means necessary to

IT’S TENSE STUFF, UP THERE WITH SAM FISHER’S AND SOLID SNAKE’S BEST STEALTHING ACTION.

PURPLE HAZE

All online interaction messages are labelled purple, so you can tell in an instant whether a mission pop-up involves other players. Anti-social? Simply turn off intrusions in the menu.

U Ultra Street Fighter 4

Capcom gives PS3’s top fighter a fitting send-off INFO FORMAT PS3 PUB CAPCOM DEV CAPCOM REVIEW ISSUE #98, 9/10

yet everyone else sees you as a generic NPC. It’s odd, but works.

VERDICT

One of Watch Dogs’ biggest plusses. Some of the hacking interruptions can feel like borderline trolling, but there’s great fun to be had invading other players’ worlds. Matthew Pellett

VERDICT

Additional modes, extra features and new gameplay systems ensure this new iteration will keep you busy until the inevitable arrival of SF5. Nathan Brown

QYou play as Aiden,

recover a file); Online Race (eight-player car races, natch); ctOS Mobile Challenges (race through checkpoints while your opponent uses a tablet to unleash waves of police on you); and Online Tailing (stealthily follow your foe without being clocked). The waits for each are still upwards of two minutes, but given that the matchmaking takes place while you carry on mucking around in the single-player world, the waits don’t impact your enjoyment. It pays to play them all given that there are separate skills and trophies unlocked for completing them set numbers of times (the online mode has its own progression tree system), but it’s no accident that Online Hacking is the one mode I keep defaulting to. These one-on-one fights are Watch Dogs in its purest form, and the closest the game comes to living up to what was promised back at E3 2012.

SF4 is pure fan service, and Capcom has taken the same approach to online play, adding some long-requested features to the mix. Ranked matches, friendly Endless Battles and Tournament mode return, while a new Team Battle is a 3v3, winner-stays-on rumble. Online Training lets two players duke it out with infinite health, Super and Ultra meters. In single-player Training you can now turn on Fight Request, and practice combos while the game searches for Ranked opponents. The netcode’s as reliable as ever, and while matchmaking was a mess early on thanks to a leaderboard reset, the natural order of things has been restored. What was always the best online fighter around just got even better.

P MLB 14: The Show

Lag issues result in an untimely strikeout INFO FORMAT PS4 PUB SONY DEV SONY SAN DIEGO REVIEW ISSUE #98, 8/10

acking in Diamond Dynasty (the baseball version of FIFA’s Ultimate Team), Online Franchise and regular roster updates, MLB 14: The Show should be the virtual equivalent of the all-conquering (‘til this season anyway) Boston Red Sox. Instead it’s more the middleof-the-road Minnesota Twins, constantly serving up frustrations despite so much obvious promise. There’s only one issue, but it’s a massive one: lag. In a sport where twitch-reactions are vital to the flow of play, the delays that occasionally occur as a fastball approaches the plate are nothing short of gamebreaking. Those live rosters mean you should still stay connected at all times, but otherwise this is a dramatic swing and miss when played online. VERDICT

A brilliant game, undone by instances of lag at the most inopportune times. Still highly recommended as an offline batswing experience. Ben Wilson

099

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FIFA 14 Ultimate Team: World Cup 100

£3.99

Beware the hidden costs of Maracanã majesty

A has taken years to shake off the clichéd ‘money-grabbing scoundrels’ tag – but this tie-in to football’s biggest tourney may have undone much of the hard work. A strange conclusion to make about an ostensibly free piece of downloadable content that expands upon the finest football game going? Not once you get stuck into improving your merry band of soccer stars. It works similarly to standard Ultimate Team: turn a squad of also-rans into your dream team by collecting cards that look a lot like Panini stickers. But unlike the clubbased version, the internationals on offer here can’t be traded or sold to recoup in-game coins. That means the only way to track down Messi, or

Neymar or, er, Gary Cahill is to keep buying pack after pack and hope each materialises eventually. But packs are pricey – you need to play six or seven matches to afford just one – meaning the sole way to build a top-quality squad without kissing goodbye to your entire summer is by dropping actual moolah.

For those inclined to do so, fair enough. But this plays like an exercise in disciplining yourself not to spend like Harry Redknapp rather than a rewarding game mode. It’s great to see all the real World Cup teams shine on new-gen – but not when the trade off is having to throw lots of real cash at them.

THE ONLY WAY TO BUILD A TOP-QUALITY SQUAD WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SUMMER IS TO SPEND ACTUAL MOOLAH.

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Your favourite marsupial thingie is back… as a captive of his archnemesis. Yay! An ace slice of retro Naughty Dog.

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CASTLEVANIA: SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHTPS1 £2

Quite simply one of the greatest 2D sidescrollers ever created, and perhaps one of the top ten games on PS1.

Attention: stop scanning through that poor sod’s text messages. There’s a zombie invasion afoot. Undead DLC isn’t exactly original, but seeing Chicago’s civilians turned into cybernetic coffin-dodgers does give Pearce’s hack to the future fun some much-needed character. £1.29

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WATCH DOGS – CONSPIRACY

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FINAL FANTASY VIPS1 Before its sequel conquered the world or that annoying flower shop girl bought the farm, there was this captivating SNES classic, belatedly ported to PSOne.

£3.99

SPYRO: YEAR OF THE DRAGONPS1 £2

Insomniac’s last firebreathing outing is perhaps its finest, as the lizard is charged with nabbing eggs scattered across 37 various worlds.

£4.79

VAGRANT STORYPS1 One of PS1’s most eclectic RPGs stars a young chap known as a Risebreaker who indulges in puzzles, platforming bits and can even view the world in first-person.

Break out your best Tobey Maguire strut for this Spidey DLC that conjures up memories of one of the worst acting turns of the century via a nifty black suit. We reckon the Andrew Garfield version rocks those Venomaspiring threads way more confidently.

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A HARD DAY’S 21 JUL NIGHT – 50TH ANNIVERSARY Remember Beatlemania? You’ve probably got this on preorder. That or you were once swarmed by insects.

COMMUNITY SEASON 5

21 JUL

The community college reprobates enter their fifth season under threat from the, “ass-crack bandit.” Let’s just… leave that there.

THE ZERO THEOREM

21 JUL

More mind-altering post-Python fantasy from director Terry Gilliam in this tale of a hacker trying to decipher the meaning of life.

THE ANGRIEST 22 JUL MAN IN BROOKLYN Robin Williams plays the grump in question, trying to make amends before ragerelated illness snuffs him.

102

NOAH

The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes’ Hungary Games hit Fiennes form

O The film was shot entirely on location in Germany, mainly in the town of Görlitz.

ne imagines Mr Anderson goes to bed the night before filming a new motion picture with a fat checklist. Offbeat, disarming comedy spewed from the gob of at least one (preferably both) Wilson brother(s). Tick. Resplendent cinematography that makes you want to lick the screen. Tick. A cheeky Bill Murray cameo. Oh yes. Not that The Grand Budapest Hotel is by any means a by-the-numbers production. On the contrary, this is a far more imaginatively realised film than the likes of The Darjeeling Limited. Loosely based on the writings of Stefan Zweig, it uses the Austrian’s novels as a launchpad to spin a typically esoteric, often farcical tale of obsessive hotel etiquette and wartime prison busts. As ever with the Rushmore director, casting is superb. Centring around

Ralph Fiennes’ joyously particular concierge and his flustered pursuit of a priceless painting, a host of veteran thesps get brief windows to shine. Yet despite fun turns from Willem Dafoe and Harvey Keitel, its new face Tony Revolori’s loyal bus boy who steals the show. Unfailingly stoic, he captures Anderson’s brand of dryly delivered buffoonery so well, you’d think he’d been built in a factory. It’s just a pity there’s no real heart to proceedings. Though expertly maintained, this hotel does feel a tad hollow. Dave Meikleham

28 JUL A regular Noe saves all of creation from being (alright, the Lego parity ends there) washed away. Y’know, like that bit in The Bible, but this time with CG hippos.

TWIN PEAKS: THE ENTIRE MYSTERY

29 JUL

Ninety minutes of unseen footage rounds off two seasons and a movie prequel of the best TV show ever.

RIO 2

4 AUG Cheery CGanimated macaw melodrama in the Amazon rainforest, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Jamie Foxx. Peter Molydeux pitch, anyone? 4 AUG MUPPETS MOST WANTED It’s Ricky Gervais and Tina Fey’s turn to pull the strings on Kermit & co, with the gang embroiled in an international jewel heist.

THE DOUBLE

4 AUG Jesse Eisenberg’s second entry this month finds him, ironically enough, side-by-side with his own doppelganger, who’s much better with the ladies.

music

CEREBRAL BALLZY JADED AND FADED

FORMAT ALBUM ETA OUT NOW PRICE £5.99

An early version of the film’s script also had a male alien, with Brad Pitt cast in the role.

Under The Skin Scarlett fever sweeps through Scotland

riter/director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) has spent a decade bringing Michael Faber’s novel to the screen. It’s not a particularly faithful adaptation, but the result is a film of such unwavering vision it’s difficult to imagine it was ever made with any kind of audience in mind. It’s near-wordless for starters, with a plot that’s steadfast in its refusal to spell anything out. Why is Johansson’s unnamed space invader picking up horny Scotsmen in a white van? Why did that guy just implode? Answers are nowhere to be found, which can make Under The Skin a frustratingly oblique experience. But at the same time it’s a beguiling and beautifully constructed piece of filmmaking. Johansson is quietly brilliant and perfectly cast as the voluptuous interstellar succubus luring Scottish menfolk to their doom. As the bodycount climbs, the sexual predator slowly starts to realise what it means to be human and her detached exterior starts to crack. It’s a testament to Johansson’s performance that by the

end it’s possible to care about a character we’ve seen commit such horrific acts. Scotland may seem like a mundane setting for a psychosexual horror film, but Glazer captures a haunting beauty in everything from shopping centres to the misty highlands. Coupled with Mica Levi’s astonishing, utterly alien soundtrack, the film has a hypnotic effect. Sexy, upsetting, confusing, compelling – Under The Skin is an astoundingly powerful example of visual storytelling, albeit one that makes absolutely no concessions to its viewers. With any luck it won’t be another ten years before Glazer is back on screens once again. Jordan Farley

When they emerged from the NY sewers a few years back, many thought these punk brats were just a fad. But there’s nothing novelty about this LP – 13 tracks of studded leather punk-pop. cerebralballzy.com

DAMON ALBARN MR TEMBO FORMAT SINGLE ETA OUT NOW PRICE £0.99

One of the highlights of his debut solo album, released back in April, Mr Tembo is a perky gospel number that finds Damon, his band The Heavy Seas, and Leytonstone City Mission Choir telling a heartfelt tale about a baby elephant. damonalbarnmusic.com

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KING 810 PROEM

FORMAT EP ETA OUT NOW PRICE £2.99

King 810 hail from ‘Murdertown’ – not its real name, obviously, but the name given to Flint, Michigan, one of the most dangerous cities in America. It’s a breeding ground that feeds directly into their music, a gruesome and serrated take on metal. king810.com

SEINABO SEY HARD TIME FORMAT SINGLE ETA OUT NOW PRICE £0.79

Annie, Robyn, Fever Ray – Scandinavia has fine form in turning out bright young electropop divas, but Stockholm’s Seinabo Sey isn’t riding anyone’s coat-tails. Her second single Hard Time combines raw, electrifying gospel blues with atmospheric electronics, courtesy of producer Magnus Lidehäll. seinabosey.com

how to… doctor playstation Our console medic fixes your tech woes with actual science

Start a PS4 Twitch stream Sick at Killzone? Show them all exactly how sick

1 2 3 STEp 1 REGISTER FOR FREE AT TWITCH.TV

STEp 2 PREP YOUR STREAM FOR BROADCAST

STEp 3 GO ON THE AIR. GET FAMOUS

the problem

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News of your legendary Helghastdisembowelling prowess isn’t travelling nearly far and wide enough. It’s time to use the modern equivalent of shouting from the rooftops – Twitch broadcasting. (No PewDiePie shrieks.)

Put down that months-old, Dettol-soaked copy of GQ and place it back on the waiting room table – the doctor will see you now. Keep your eyes off the prescription pad and hear this: the Share button is your ticket to internet fame. You’re probably taking screenshots in your sleep by now, and maybe you’ve uploaded a COD killstreak video onto Facebook, just to check everything worked. But what about that ‘Broadcast Gameplay’ button you’ve been maligning in the Share menu all this time? The one that enables you to turn an evening’s gaming into a live broadcast via Twitch or Ustream. We’re concentrating on the former for now, and your first step is to head over to Twitch.tv and sign up – nothing too personal, just the usual username, password, DOB, email, etc. Sorry, but CoolDude69 is already taken.

Now load up the game you want to start broadcasting and hit the Share button. With your Twitch account already in place, when you hit the Twitch option in the next menu you’ll be taken directly to the pre-stream options. If you have a PlayStation camera, you can tick a box to enable or disable a picture-inpicture of your ugly mug. If you’ve got a face for radio however, you can leave that one unticked and tick the box marked ‘Include microphone audio in broadcast’. The third tickbox lets you choose whether comments from your viewers are displayed on-screen during a stream – but bear in mind it reduces your game’s screen space, making things tricky if you’re rocking a tiny telly. The only thing left to do before broadcasting is name your channel: “CoolDude69’s Super Happy Gun Times” will do just fine.

It’s natural to get a bit of red light syndrome when you hit ‘Start Broadcasting’, but don’t worry – you won’t make as much of a hash of it as The One Show. When you’re in-game, the Twitch layer will let you know you’re still on air with a handy icon, how many people are watching right now and, additionally, how many comments you’ve garnered so far. If you do have comments enabled, they’ll appear just below your eyeline at the bottom of the screen. You can even read them and reply via the mic, if you want an insight into the day in the life of a webcam girl. If you want to modify your broadcast, it’s as easy as hitting the Share button and ticking/unticking the boxes mentioned earlier – though you’ll need to stop broadcasting to save videos. Now the tricky part: getting internet famous. Yeah, good luck with that one, slugger.

the verdict

next month

The simplicity, speed and reliability of in-game streaming is an overlooked boon of newgen console gaming. Short of voice activation, it couldn’t be easier to put your gaming out over Twitch, so go do it.

No matter how deep they might be hidden, our PS GP shows you how w to uncover the very best tricks onn classic consoles.

Mr trophy

Be careful not to miss trophies along the way, otherwise you’ll have to replay the entire game.

Iain Wilson’s PSN ID is Wilbossman, and his trophy cabinet is bigger than yours.

Platinum x 57 Gold x 305 Silver x 1,230 Bronze x 5,006

Platinum Club

Our champ gets down and dirty in South Park: The Stick Of Truth

arning the hallowed platinum award in The Stick Of Truth is fairly easy and loads of fun, but before skipping blithely through, do bear in mind from the start that there is plenty of missable silverware. I’d recommend you either check out the descriptions in advance or make a manual save after completing each quest to minimise repetition if any get overlooked along the way. There are three different types of collectibles to track down – friends, equipment and Chinpokomon – all of which include items only available during certain quests. Miss any of these and you’ll have to replay the entire game to complete your collection, so unless you plan on doing an extra run, it’s definitely worth keeping a guide to hand. On your first playthrough, don’t sell anything or you’ll invalidate For The Hoarder, and make sure your buddy isn’t knocked out at the end of any fights to work towards No Child Left Behind – keep a supply of revive potions and use them

as soon as possible if your partner gets downed. As you’d expect from the series, many of the trophies are, let’s say, scatological in nature. This is evidenced early on when you complete the toilet mini-game to poop, then pick up the resulting nugget and throw it at an enemy to unlock Made This For You.

[censored] [censored] zombie [censored] to rightly earn the badge for going Too Far. Maybe look for that one online… Before entering the last battle at the conclusion of day three, you should visit Tom’s Rhinoplasty to get the David Hasselhoff look, put on your girl makeover disguise and ensure you’ve been bitten by one of the animals in Canada to contract Dire AIDS. This will net you the Face Hoff, Two Girls, One Stick and Outpatient hidden trophies in one fell swoop once the boss is beaten. Unless you picked Jew as your character class first time out, you’ll need to choose that on a new playthrough, then quickly complete Priest Maxi’s side quest to find Jesus twice in the church and receive Are We Cool? You should have racked up most, if not all of the awards by this point, so replay any sections required to mop up loose ends and the Platinum Trophy will be yours – dude, sweet!

THINGS START GETTING TWISTED WHEN YOU HAVE TO WATCH YOUR PARENTS BUMP UGLIES FOR A FULL MINUTE. You also need to poop in your pants during a boss battle, plus two further fights, for Irritable Bowels and Pulling Mud respectively. To ‘achieve’ this, simply eat food items in combat until you max out your mana bar, then wait a couple of rounds for nature to run its course. Things start getting twisted at the end of day two, when you have to watch your parents bump uglies for a full minute to earn Perverted. However, the sickness stakes are raised to vomming heights during the later Unplanned Parenthood quest, when you must [censored] on the corpse of an

NEXT ISSUE Our man seeks justice and virtual silverware as he hacks his way through the Watch Dogs trophy list.

join the club Hey! What’s the hardest trophy you’ve snagged? Tell us at opm@ futurenet.com

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T RE

T OS

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INFO PUB NAMCO DEV NAMCO RELEASED 1998, PS1 GET IT NOW AMAZON, £5.70

NEED TO KNOW

1 2 3

PS1’s best selling fighter, shifting over 8.5m copies. Ranked 2nd on Metacritic’s best PlayStation games. Introduced 15 new characters to the series roster.

O TI

N Paul debuted the Something About Mary look in the same year that Cameron Diaz went on that fatefully sticky date.

retrostation

Gon home

GA ME

Built on Namco System 12 – the same platform that powered the mighty SoulCalibur and uh… UmJammer Lammy – Tekken 3 was immediately bigger, bolder and more brazen than its predecessors. A sledgehammer rather than a scalpel, Namco ported a dirty great smörgåsbord of a fighter from the fanatical arcade floors of Akihabara to your PS1’s disc tray. Next to their great contemporary Virtua Fighter, Jin Kazama and co knew they lacked the piano wire precision of Sega’s effort. However, finesse is overrated when you’ve got a mode that lets you play beach volleyball with a leopard-headed wrassler simply by pounding the inflatable sphere with a suplex. Not that Tekken 3 isn’t a supremely crafted combatant. Where previous games had been firmly rooted on 2D ground, this round of the King Of Iron Fist Tournament expanded its fisticuff horizons by focusing on the third axis. Fret not: we’re not talking phonedin, dragon-steering motion controls

MEMORY PAIN

A GOOD 16 YEARS ON AND TEKKEN 3 STILL EVOKES MEMORIES LIKE FEW OTHER TITLES.

QThe most health-sapping punch in all of games.

QGet perfected by Gon and you deserve misery.

here. Rather, the game opens up the boundaries of the fighting planes, enabling players to circle each other or swiftly dodge Paul Phoenix’s ultra cheap Deathfist with a double tap of 8 or 2. In evolutionary terms, this was as significant for Tekken as Leon instructing Resi’s cam to shift behind his shoulder for entry number four. A sense of progression was also tied with a knowing sense of absurdity – there’s no other PS1 fighter that so wilfully makes fun of itself. A quick look at the greatly expanded roster shows Namco’s propensity for levity, be it a giant panda shoeing a walking tree trunk in the wooden shins or a professor, so sauced up he can barely stand, battling a miffed ogre. This magnificently silly sensibility is furthered bolstered by Tekken Force, a side-scrolling mini-game that rekindled a love for a forgotten curio that had been lost since Streets Of Rage. And as much as we love Axel’s pixelated karate kick, he’s no match for Lei Wulong and his full suite of Jackie Chan chops.

Tekken 3 ddy. Friggin’. Gordo. How can one of PlayStation’s finest, most influential scrappers be home to such a despicably cheaty toerag? 12 years before 'q to Jason' was ever a thing, legions of PS1 fight fans were chugging at the goblet of 32-bit Capoeira success through shameful spamming of q and e. Doesn’t anyone have the merest smidgen of respect for an expertly timed 12-hit juggle combo anymore? Of course, that was Tekken 3’s greatest gift to PS1 – just as Final Fantasy VII re-energised the JPRG for western audiences a year before in 1997, Namco’s frisky fighter took the beat-‘em-up out of the arcade and ignited a passion for the genre not seen since Street Fighter II. This is a game that falls into a tiny cabal of genuine masterpieces that truly sum up what PlayStation stood for in the late ‘90s. WipEout. Metal Gear Solid. Resident Evil 2. Tekken 3. It’s in a group that popularised videogames like never before, stretching the boundaries of what the medium could mean in a way Sony couldn’t comprehend when it launched PS1 with Battle Arena Toshinden and Rapid Reload. Not bad for a game that padded its roster with a tiny manga velociraptor, eh?

Every month we celebrate the most important, innovative or just plain great games from PlayStation’s past. This time out we dust off our button bashing superskills as we enter the daddy of all King Of Iron Fist Tournaments…

A good 16 years on and Tekken 3 still has power to evoke memories like few other titles. Our own news ed Meiks ‘might’ have walked over to his PS1 and calmly popped it open before proceeding to snap his disc in two with all the glass-eyed lunacy of an axe murderer following 19 straight losses to Mr Phoenix – damn that Deathfist! Yet despite tiny dinosaurs, red mist tales and bouts of volleyball… actually, because of them, this undoubtedly remains the king of fighters.

QEddy Gordo could best anyone with two buttons.

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TI ME MA CH IN E

Name that game Guess the four games, and their scores, from these review quotes

OPM TIME MACHINE

5 YEARS AGO

OPM #34 unveiled a shooter supposedly on the Brink of greatness, while the team almost came to blows over a certain Sack

THERE’S A SATISFYING AND ABSORBING FREEDOM TO PLAY BY YOUR OWN RULES. WHICH IN MY CASE MEANS LEAVING EVERYONE GENTLY SNORING IN AIR DUCTS.

Above Each team member was tasked with creating their own LittleBigPlanet level. Tim, Rach and Leon spent hours on theirs, while Nath opted for a swiftlyconstructed tower of prize bubbles – earning a fully justified ‘D’ grade from Media Molecule.

Below left We predicted a huge future for Splash Damage shooter Brink. Mystic Meg stopped calling. Below right We did, however, call the Alien vs Predator debacle correctly. If only they’d listened…

IT’S LIKE ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, BUT WITH A HUNDRED DIFFERENT TYPES OF SCISSOR.

4 THE TRANSFER SYSTEM IS A LITTLE PLAIN, BUT DOES THE JOB JUST FINE. IT’S MORE THAN FUNCTIONAL. THE GARETH BARRY OF VIDEOGAME MODES, IF YOU WILL. 1. Deus Ex: HR, issue 61, 8/10 2. Innocent Life: AFHM, issue #6, 8/10 3. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, issue #27, 9/10 4. FIFA 11, issue #50, 10/10

ANSWERS

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YOU HAVE TO PUT IN THE HOURS IF YOU WANT YOUR CUCUMBERS TO BE ANYTHING TO SHOUT ABOUT. SEASONS AND THE WEATHER BECOME AN OBSESSION.

Far left Rock Band first came to handheld, but the lack of a miniature plastic axe did it few favours. Left Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain had us falling in love with both the game itself, and leading lady Madison. We’d still heart a sequel…

retrostation

DON’T MAKE ME PLAY!

WHO?

KNACK

Chris Schilling adores brawlers, platformers and lashings of colour – but something about Knack leaves him cold. Was he right to write it off, or did it manage to crack his cynical veneer?

Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every ry month we force one of our team am to play their most feared game me

INFO PUB SONY

DEV SCE JAPAN STUDIO RELEASED 2013, PS4 GET IT NOW AMAZON, £27.00

K WHAT?

Fulfilling the PS4’s quota of family-friendly fare at launch, Mark Cerny’s platformbrawler did a neat line in particle effects, but suggested the console’s system architect might be better at designing hardware than games.

QKnack’s a curiously disempowering experience, forcing you to shed relic pieces to power machines

or fit into small spaces. Even in giant form, he feels strangely brittle – a glass cannon of a hero.

nack isn’t quite the game I imagined it would be. Perhaps it was Mark Cerny’s involvement, but I had it pegged as an actionplatformer along the lines of Crash Bandicoot. And while it does owe a debt to that PlayStation classic, it’s more reminiscent of a very different PlayStation hero. Knack feels like a PG-certificate God Of War, with similar combat rhythms and a right-stick dodge – though it’s nowhere near as satisfying as Kratos’ evasive lunge. Indeed, comparing the two is doing Sony Santa Monica a grave disservice, because Knack’s scraps are nowhere near the same standard. Every encounter plays out in the same manner: dodge an incoming attack and either hit r or jump first and then hit it. You can’t even fall back on the,

AT FIRST, KNACK FEELS LIKE A PGCERTIFICATE VERSION OF GOD OF WAR. “but it’s for kids,” argument since the combo of one-hit kills and bafflingly harsh checkpoints makes it arduous for adults, nevermind children. And it takes so long for Knack to collect enough crystals to trigger his powerful specials that I’m reluctant to even use them. I already feel like the game’s dragging a bit by the time I reach Chapter Six, and I’m horrified to discover I have seven more to go. I’ve even begun skipping cutscenes, having long since tired of the dull characters and inane dialogue. I find a few collectibles, albeit only because they’re all ‘hidden’ behind walls so obviously breakable they might as well have been marked with neon arrows. The game tells me I can replay the story with a new form of Knack – a suggestion that seems optimistic, given that I’m already flagging and I’m less than halfway through my first run. Turns out I‘m right to be cautious: like the eponymous hero, Cerny’s adventure is just a jumble of disparate parts lacking any discernible character.

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HA LL OF FA ME

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO NEW-GEN’S GREATEST GAMES

PS4 HALL OF FAME 1

RESOGUN

Capturing everything that made the shoot-‘em-ups of yesteryear so utterly compelling and combining it with a sumptuous voxel-based visual presentation, Resogun should come with a health warning: you will lose weeks, months and years to its high-score topping addiction. Developer Housemarque did more than just marry intense gameplay with a supercompetitive leaderboard – it created the best PS4 experience to date.

FIFA 14

TOWERFALL ASCENSION

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EA Canada’s first punt at new-gen football isn’t just an outstanding recreation of the beautiful game we know and love – it also boasts a genuine step forward for the series, demonstrating an attention to detail that borders on surgical.

You haven’t lived until you’ve enjoyed a fourplayer free-for-all in this instant couchplay classic. The solo campaign is fine by itself, but almost nothing beats the arrow-grabbing, death-defying last-second kills of local multiplayer’s mayhem.

DON’T STARVE

Gather up resources and the unravelling threads of your own sanity in this merciless survival sim from Klei Entertainment. Don’t let the cute animation fool you – Don’t Starve will make you suffer. And you’ll love every moment of it.

10 NEW!

STRIDER

Hot off the heels of DuckTales: Remastered on PS3, Capcom strikes retro gold once again with this slice of frantic side-scrolling action. Cling to any surface and cut any enemy in half through levels teeming with power-ups and secret paths.

WOLFENSTEIN: THE NEW ORDER

Forget castles and slaughtering swastikawearers, this is an entirely different breed of shooter. Superbly paced, reflective and genuinely moving, Wolfey is a beautifully mournful FPS.

ASSASSIN’S CREED IV: BLACK FLAG

Ubisoft Montreal’s historically flirtatious murder sim trades the landlocked provinces of previous entries for an open ocean, a galley full of sea shanties and plenty of wrist-blade action.

RAYMAN LEGENDS

INFAMOUS: SECOND SON

NBA 2K14

METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES

As if this beautifully animated platformer wasn’t attractive enough, now it’s on PS4 and pulling our heartstrings all over again. Bursting with humour, colour and plenty of gibberish, this is the definitive version of a platforming heavyweight.

Visual Concepts grabs new-gen by the basketballs and delivers a gorgeous, richly detailed and fanatically accurate sports ecosystem. FIFA and every other sports sim could learn plenty from its MyCareer mode as well.

FLOWER

All the magic and wonder of ThatGameCompany’s ethereal PSN smash is preserved and polished as it makes its way to PlayStation 4. Unless you’re anthophobic you now have no excuse not to frolic amongst its petals.

FINAL FANTASY XIV: A REALM REBORN

It took three goes to finally make the FF MMO fans have always wanted, but A Realm Reborn is the one that finally nails it. Vast, complex and a marked step up in visuals, this is PS4’s premier online world.

Sucker Punch brings the open-world antics of the inFamous series to the home of grunge in search of superhuman nirvana. Filled with enough special powers to shake a beanie at, Second Son is a welcome addition to the PlayStation-exclusive family.

It may be short, but Snake’s latest outing is packed to the gills with stealth, secrets and multiple pathways. Wisely taking a few cues from the Splinter Cell series, it’s a fine teaser for The Phantom Pain.

14 NEW!

TRANSISTOR

Supergiant Games takes all the momentum from debut knockout Bastion on PC and uses it to deliver a wonderland of sights and sounds wearing an action-RPG’s clothing. Or, to put it another way: pretty songs and a talking sword.

OUTLAST

Otherwise known as the first-person horror your bowels love to hate. With nothing more than a video camera and a steady drip of adrenaline, will you choose to run and hide in the deadly asylum or attempt to shriek your assailants to death?

retrostation

17 NEW!

20 NEW!

CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS

Infinity Ward returns to the franchise it defined all those years ago and pulls off one of the most rewarding shooters on PlayStation. A Zombiesesque alien Extinction mode complements a robust set of solo and multiplayer offerings.

SPORTSFRIENDS

Without plenty of DualShock 4 pads, PS Move controllers and – more importantly – actual friends, this one’s a non-starter. If you can gather the required bodies and hardware, be prepared for the silliest, most physical party game collection ever.

Te a m O P M

SPEC OPS: THE LINE

Dave Meikleham gleefully loses his mind in the dunes of ruined Dubai Forget sun, sea and sangria: I want sand, shooting and subversion. Yager’s take on Heart Of Darkness is a terrifically left field spin on the modern military shooter. Gradually twisting its Nolan North-voiced lead from buzz-cut Drake wannabe to broken down veteran, Spec Ops is a brilliantly paced shooter. Oh and that white phosphorus bit? Fuhgeddaboudit!

TRIALS FUSION

Mirror’s Edge meets Mass Effect, is locked onto a 2D plane and invites bikers to come-andhave-a-go. Trials’ punishing leaderboard-centric assault courses take weeks to master, and its level creation suite is second only to LittleBigPlanet’s.

R e a d e r

BIOSHOCK INFINITE

Henry Walker has infinite praise for Irrational Games’ final gaming classic

THE SWAPPER

When entering Columbia, little did I know that the toss of a coin would introduce the story’s key theme: suppression certainly is a prison. Bioshock Infinite remains my favourite PlayStation 3 title. It’s smart, and features a battle interface that promises a fresh replay value every time. It’s a beautiful hymn that continues to play over and over in my head.

In a remote corner of space in which sentient rocks constantly undermine your sanity, simply make clones of yourself to overcome physically impossible puzzles. Deeply unsettling, it blazes its own trail with a perfectly poised level of challenge.

MLB 14: THE SHOW

Covering all three of Peter Jackson’s fantasy film prequels, this brick-building return to Tolkien’s Middle-earth adds a brand new crafting system to an already charming and collectable-filled platforming experience.

The mighty MLB’s new-gen debut subscribes to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality, which means it can’t be faulted for inevitably stunning presentation and depth – but doesn’t use PS4 as a springboard into innovative territory.

STRIKE SUIT ZERO: DIRECTOR’S CUT

A Director’s Cut treatment gives this previously PC-only space dogfighting sim a good polishing, and serves up a high-octane space shooter that’ll have you on the edge of your new-gen cockpit seat.

The games that we – and you – hold in the highest regard

Guerrilla’s future war touches down on PlayStation 4 and brings with it an atmospheric single-player campaign and a fully customisable multiplayer that’s bursting with replayability. War has never looked so good.

LEGO THE HOBBIT

Personal picks

KILLZONE SHADOW FALL

NEW!

MENAGE-A-JEUX

IT’S SMART, AND FEATURES A BATTLE INTERFACE THAT GIVES YOU FRESH REPLAY VALUE. Developer

RED DEAD REDEMPTION

Crytek UK associate producer Fasahat Salim rides a horse with no game Red Dead Redemption was the first open-world I experienced that I just felt so properly immersed in. It was the simple things that grabbed me, such as riding a horse through an open desert. You could literally just sit there and watch the game unfold around you. Sometimes I’d just put the controller down, go make a cup of tea then come back and soak in the American Frontier.

TOMB RAIDER: DEFINITIVE EDITION

No PlayStation console would be complete without Lara, and she makes her PS4 debut with style. This eye-meltingly pretty upgrade from the PS3 original comes packed with every bit of DLC, too.

BATTLEFIELD 4

Taking the colossal scale of its predecessor and flinging the switch to 11, DICE improves on its established multiplayer experience with huge maps, dynamic weather and a fleet of new vehicles and guns. But which jerk ordered the extra bugs?

QRockstar San Diego’s immersive vision of the dusty Old West is a

truly dynamic sandbox in the eyes of Crytek UK’s Salim.

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THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION OF LAST-GEN CLASSICS

PS3 HALL OF FAME 1

GRAND THEFT AUTO V

No game could live up to the pre-release hype that surrounded Rockstar’s latest open-world effort, and yet somehow expectations were surpassed by the phenomenal final product. The largest entry in the series is also one of the most ambitious games ever, but its fusion of thrilling missions, entertaining characters and scathing satire looks effortless. There can be no better way to bring a generation to a close.

UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THIEVES

CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE

Simply the finest COD ever made. From that nuke to Captain Price’s mesmerising ghillie suit stealth mission, few games can match Modern Warfare’s thrilling scripted spectacle.

The game that sparked a million mancrushes, with a perfectly pitched script, crunchy combat and set-pieces like no other. In three words: unprecedented. Unequalled. Uncharted.

RED DEAD REDEMPTION

BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY

THE LAST OF US

BRAID

JOURNEY

THE WALKING DEAD: SEASON ONE

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A near-perfect open-world fusion of engaging storytelling, truly compelling characters and a living environment ripe for experimentation. No sandbox since has got us quite so invested, and the bold ending still resonates to this day.

PS3’s premier developer proves a misbehaving pooch can learn new tricks in this extraordinary apocalyptic adventure. Blending intense horror, ferocious shooting and a wonderful script, this is one of the most emotive games in history.

This charming two-hour voyage crafts an incredible, immersive narrative and a genuine emotional connection using little more than nearsilent figures, marvellous sand physics and floating pieces of cloth. A remarkable and unique experience.

The most compelling bit of Bats action money can buy… that doesn’t involve Heath Ledger’s Joker. Thanks to an acutely detailed open-world chunk of Gotham, Rocksteady’s classic is simply the best superhero game ever made.

If you want to make the argument that games are art, then Jonathan Blow’s Braid is the place to start. An achingly beautiful hand-drawn style combines with brilliant but brutal time-bending puzzles to create something truly special.

With the first season of this episodic zombie franchise now drawn to a close, it stands among the best downloadable games ever with emotional ties and tangible consequences for your actions.

BIOSHOCK INFINITE

HEAVY RAIN

MASS EFFECT 2

DARK SOULS

METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS

ASSASSIN’S CREED II

Perhaps the best narrative team of the entire generation brings one of its finest series to a staggering climax. The original game would be well deserving of a place, but the mind-boggling revelations here run a whole lot deeper.

While Bioware’s trilogy-ender sends Shepard out in fine style, it’s the middle slice of the delicious sci-fi sandwich that remains its best. A brilliantly scripted action-RPG, the closing ‘suicide mission’ provides an incredible finale.

The most gleefully playful and imaginative stealth game ever. Whether you’re watching a monkey slurp soda or revisiting the site of the PS1 original, no game honours its past so poignantly.

From controversial purveyor of interactive cinema, David Cage, comes this psychological thriller that plays like no other game on the system. So many games promise real consequences to your actions, but none deliver like this masterpiece.

Akin to nothing else you’ve ever played. It may be as impenetrable as an Amish girl’s undercrackers, but persevere and there’s a brutal and beautiful challenge within that you will never, ever forget.

Undoubtedly the finest entry in one of PS3’s foremost franchises, this is the realisation of all the promises made in the original. An engaging lead character, open-ended hits and diverting sidemissions are what this series should be about.

HA LL OF FA ME

YOUR EVERY NEED FOR ON-THE-GO GOODNESS

PS VITA HALL OF FAME 1

PERSONA 4: GOLDEN

If ever a game could make you forget the existence of anything outside the Vita’s screen, it’s this thoughtful and unique JRPG epic. Essentially it gives you another stab at high school – this time with intrigue, mystery and superpowers instead of acne, nerves and an unpredictable vocal register.

FEZ

Gomez charms you instantly with his perspective-shifting puzzles and pin-sharp pixel-art, then blows your mind with a world of secret languages, hidden areas and beguiling background tunes.

VIRTUE’S LAST REWARD

Two examples of JRPG royalty, lovingly restored to their former glory for your portable pleasure. Their new touch controls are – gasp! – a welcome addition.

GRAVITY RUSH

Use a gravity-defying cat to break the laws of physics and zoom across the skies of a floating steampunk city. With stylish comic-book looks and a sassy heroine, this is a rush to remember.

METAL GEAR SOLID HD COLLECTION

Two of PlayStation’s finest adventures scale down beautifully, with enough cutscenes to fill a transatlantic flight. Even less excuse not to play, then.

This visual novel/puzzler just gets better over its 40 hours. The dialogue’s engaging, and however tough it gets, you’re never left rage-scouring for clues.

FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD REMASTER

UNCHARTED: GOLDEN ABYSS

Drake proves he’s just as adept at adventuring on the go. A prequel story that’s classic jungle action, and crammed full of typical Uncharted charm.

LITTLEBIGPLANET

TEARAWAY

LUMINES: ELECTRONIC SYMPHONY

RAYMAN ORIGINS

TXK

FIFA FOOTBALL

LUFTRAUSERS

BLAZBLUE: CONTINUUM SHIFT EXTEND

Sackboy’s back, smaller but just as loveable as ever. His platforming antics work perfectly on Vita, and the new control inputs complement the level creator brilliantly. Also: d’awwww.

Part block puzzler, part mobile disco, this is as certain to have you nodding along to ace choonage as it is to keep you returning for more reflex-testing action.

Arcade legend Jeff Minter updates a 20-year-old Atari Jaguar blaster and creates one of the platform’s best games in the process. TXK is an essential onslaught on the senses.

Ridiculous flying of the highest order from Dutch indie studio Vlambeer. High scores come not just from skill, but cunning combinations of plane parts, making for double the satisfaction.

More crafty platforming from Media Molecule, this time using the Vita’s controls to surprise and delight you in new ways for hours on end – all within its pretty-as-a-picture papercraft world.

He of no limbs finds the perfect home on Vita’s handheld screen. Beautiful visuals and flawless platforming make Rayman a handheld delight of quirky cartoon ridiculousness.

The sequel’s a shameful rip-off that only updates kits and rosters, so unless you find them both for the same price, this entry is still the best way to get a footy-on-the-move fix.

There’s almost too much content here – the wealth of game modes is a total nerdgasm for fans, and the characters are insanely diverse.

113

PARTING SH T

LOOK AWAY!

Celebrating PlayStation’s finest moments

SPOILER ALERT

No.15

Theatre of screams Ditching Cats for killing in Hitman: Blood Money

Last Month The Darkness

Cuddling up with Jackie and his girlfriend for a romantically murderous birthday.

FORMAT PS2 / PUB EIDOS / DEV IO INTERACTIVE / RELEASED 2006 / SCORE 9/10

ou just can't take 47 anywhere. Here you are, expecting a charming night at the Paris Opera, and suddenly there’s a sharply dressed slaphead sniping the tenor from the rafters… or shooting him while disguised as a co-actor… or swapping out the key scene’s WWII prop pistol for a real one and letting the corrupt singer’s fellow onstage thesps unwittingly do the dirty deed. So much for that civil showing of Mamma Mia. With Agent Baldy, the only thing that can be guaranteed is steaming hot, imaginatively

served death. And in Curtains Down, the third mission in what remains the definitive entry of the wetwork franchise, IO gives you the perfect delivery device for ingenious, carefully calculated homicide. Hitman: Blood Money sees 47 charged with taking out Alvaro D’Alvade and Richard Delahunt, who, even by this series’ unapologetically sordid standards, are a complete pair of rotters. Responsible for overseeing an underage prostitution ring, death (or a couple of decidedly unfortunate ‘accidents’ if you’re going for a Silent Assassin rank)

can’t meet these two fast enough. What follows is a densely packed, intricately detailed sandbox, governed by its own internal rules and just begging to be unpicked like a game of Cluedo in reverse. Regardless of whether you fiddle with a chandelier to rub out your targets or simply stroll up and Silverballer them in the face, the opera stage revels in giving you a murderous multiple choice. Absolution’s more cinematic leanings has its upside, sure, but go back to that French theatre and try telling us 47 has ever dished out more satisfying slaughter.

Next Month Booting up PlayStation

We look back at the logo that started a dynasty to celebrate OPM #100.

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PlayStation Magazine - August 2014 UK - PDFCOFFEE.COM (2025)