Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i PLAY

PlayStation 5 has only been out in the wild for six months and already leaked documents suggest Sony is lining up a console redesign for as early as next year. But it’s not what you think it is. As we dig into the details we’d temper expectations of Sony dropping the iconic vented look just yet. The ‘redesign’ being mooted is more akin to a forced refresh of the console’s internal gubbins than a wholesale reboot of what is, after all, a best-selling console. As Covid-19 rips through the world and cryptocurrencies dominate headlines and speculators’ wallets, there’s a shortage of semiconductors causing havoc with manufacturers of all kinds, and it could impact Sony. The reworked PS5 could actually have more power, courtesy of a new custom AMD silicon. Online…

Since Prison Boss VR’s release in 2018, VR-focussed studio Trebuchet has seen significant growth. Starting out with three founding members, the studio has expanded to 20 developers in total, and its latest project will boast a vision to match when it goes into full bloom later this year. While Prison Boss VR was designed with a confined playing space in mind, Trebuchet’s latest sets its sights further afield. Inspired by the 1987 short film The Man Who Planted Trees (itself an adaptation of the book of the same name), this VR title tasks you with reforesting a desolate world. You need the trees as much as they need you, and if you venture too far away from them you’ll end up becoming food for the worms. Avoiding enemies or certain…

SCUF IMPACT SCUF £134.99 SCUFGAMING.COM To play older games and PSVR you’ll need a good PS4 pad. With removable rear paddles ideal for fighters and racing sims, along with additional extra button and electro-magnetic remapping options, and a removable faceplate and digital hair triggers that can be adjusted for comfort, there’s not much of the Scuf Impact that can’t be swapped out, fiddled around with, or customised. NACON ESPORTS REVOLUTION UNLIMITED PRO V3 NACON £139.99 NACONGAMING.COM Though you can’t swap out everything like you can with the Scuf Impact, Nacon’s pro pad offers plenty of custom features. We love the way that you can adjust the stick amplitude to get your preferred tightness and response. Better yet, you can map and save various button configurations, ensuring you have the perfect…

1 Mik Bromley Game: Spirit Of The North “Spirit Of The North is a really relaxing indie title that helps to give me some fresh inspiration, plus, who doesn’t love a red fox?” says Mik Bromley. His choice of bird’s-eye view was methodical. The fox is isolated by the water, “Leaving the viewer to wonder about what surrounds it and how far he has to swim,” says Mik. 2 Andrew Robson Game: Ghost Of Tsushima “Ghost is such a gorgeous game, the colours just stand out at every moment,” says Andrew Robson as he tells us how the shot happened. “This shot was taken at the end of a mission where I just went into photo mode and there was the shot. I adjusted the brightness/ contrast just…

FORMAT PS4 / ETA JUL / PUB ANNAPURNA INTERACTIVE / DEV VARIABLE STATE / PLAYERS 1 There’s something magical about London’s underground train network. The fleeting mystery of the closed stations, a strange automated voice occasionally calling out to an Inspector Sands, the digital display’s delection for the word ‘delayed’ – it feels like a double-edged sort of magic. And magic sequesters itself within the mundane in Variable State’s latest, a narrative-heavy adventure game with a trio of protagonists: put-upon foster father John Smith, international woman of mystery Meena Hughes, and Donna Adeleke, a teenage girl looking for a little distraction from everyday mundanity. Their stories are interlinked, and at first this blending is subtle, with one protagonist occasionally popping up in the background of another’s scene, for instance. The…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 25 JUN / PUB BANDAI NAMCO / DEV BANDAI NAMCO / PLAYERS 1 Yuito Sumeragi has never had what you would call a ‘normal day.’ The youngest son of a legendary family, he has psychic powers. As a child he was saved by a mysterious woman, and he joins a psychic military operation, the Other Suppression Force, in an attempt to track her down. Among the rag-tag bunch of new recruits is a girl who looks suspiciously like the person who saved him all those years ago. And so, during our six-hour hands-on, an assortment of anime archetypes fight against a new threat that has descended from the skies to feast on human brains. Producer Keita Iizuka concedes these monsters, or Others, are similar to…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 6 JUL PUB BINARY HAZE INTERACTIVE DEV LIVE WIRE, ADGLOBE / PLAYERS 1 A little rain never hurt anyone – unless they’re unlucky enough to be caught out in Land’s End. There, any living thing that’s come into contact with the dangerous downpour has become an undead monstrosity known as a Blighted. In this 2D action game, a young girl named Lily seems to be one of few survivors. Turning to cursed knights for protection, she has to take the Blighted head-on to unravel the mystery of the Rain Of Death and the kingdom it’s all but washed away. With melancholy art and music by the group Mili (anime fans will recognise their work from Ghost In The Shell: SAC_2045), this one looks special.…

FORMAT PS4 / ETA 25 JUN / PUB GRAFFITI GAMES DEV ROBI STUDIOS / PLAYERS 1 This 3D action platformer boasts bags of charm and challenge. The kingdom of Penumbra has fallen into desolation. A now long-forgotten place, it’s up to you to jump through various hoops to unravel its secrets. With your twin blades, you won’t just be cutting down baddies – a well-placed slash can also give you just that extra bit of momentum to conquer a fiendishly difficult platforming challenge. As you explore, you find plenty of collectibles, survivors, and enemies.…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA TBC / PUB TECHLAND / DEV TECHLAND STUDIO / PLAYERS 1-4 With the zombie, or rather Infected, horde on your heels nowhere is safe, but  conversely everywhere is a route to freedom. Like in its 2016 precursor, the act of escaping the bloodthirsty masses in Dying Light 2 – Stay Human is a creative process as much as a stressful one; the inclusion of parkour movement ensures every crumbling ledge, sleek pylon, and ramshackle rooftop is a way out. Circling PlayStation for three years, development has not been easy for Techland when it’s come to following up Dying Light, its breakout hit on PS4. Planning to go bigger, packing in even more RPG features, a massive map twice the size of the original and double…

WHAT YOU DO IN: RE VILLAGE ALSO ON PLAYSTATION 4 As visually complex as the PS5 edition, the PS4 version lacks ray tracing (with extra smoke effects), the smoother framerate, and fast SSD loading. That said, it’s no slouch, and in terms of pushing the hardware it’s comparable. A PS4 must-play that manages to better Resi VII. FRIENDS & ENEMIES ANGIE Tackling this killer doll is child’s play once you understand the task at hand. Find the doll! MOREAU A warped scientist, anyone familiar with HG Wells will have an idea what he’s hiding. CHRIS REDFIELD He’s escaped the gym to turn Ethan Winters’ idyllic life upside down. Hero or villain? HOW TO… MASTER MERCENARIES The key to succeeding in The Mercenaries is to stay…

INFO  FORMAT PS4 PRICE £14.99 ETA Out now PUB Merge Games, Maple Whispering DEV Blackstaff Games PLAYERS 1 Toy Story taught us that toys want to be played with. Similarly, Buildings Have Feelings Too! asserts that buildings need inhabitants to be truly happy. You play a cute little warehouse with a pep in its step and a balcony reminiscent of a little moustache,1 out to rejuvenate the city. In each neighbourhood, there’s a row of buildings with needs and requests to fulfil. Residential buildings, for example, will never feel good next to a factory, but a pub might. You need to consider each building’s position and walk it to a new spot in the row if need be.2 BHFT isn’t a city builder. It’s a puzzle, one in which you swap…

WHAT YOU DO IN: BIOMUTANT HOW TO… SURVIVE Special suits hidden in the world enable you to survive in some areas. Zones corrupted by fire, radiation, cold, and other hazards can only be explored while wearing the correct gear. It’s a shame there’s no loadout option as you must pause to assign the outfit parts. It gets repetitive fast. FRIENDS & ENEMIES AUTOMATON You can upgrade your grasshopper pal to fire lasers and enable you to glide. PICHU JURA This world is filled with weird mini-bosses, like this romper-suited beast. ANKATI Align with one of the six tribes, including these socialist-like kitty-creatures LOVING/ HATING CREATURE DESIGN Wattam and Wabbits had a sexy time and out popped a world of vinyl wackiness come to life. Every…

You suffer from a strange, hereditary illness, and so your husband set out on an expedition to find a cure. Now he’s missing, and after a mysterious package comes your way, it’s up to you, Norah, to retread his steps across an eerie island and find him. Set in the 1930s, Call Of The Sea echoes pulp adventures of the period, particularly the works of HP Lovecraft. In fact, Norah’s quest to find out what happened to her husband is one of the best gaming adaptations of the Lovecraftian mythos we’ve seen. This is largely down to the fact that there’s no combat at all, simply head-scratching puzzles as you explore deeper into the island, your sense of unease growing ever stronger as the gorgeous beaches give way to strange…

Think you’ve seen old-school? Structurally and narratively, this platformer has been transported whole from 1994; Asha must save four elemental spirits, while discovering the origin of the kidnapping evil. But what makes it truly old-school is that it features no auto-save system. It becomes a bit of a bugbear when you’ve been playing for a while, only to get squashed by a bad boss hitbox or the awkward platforming and end up back at the start of the level again. Needless to say, you swiftly learn to save manually, and often. Even then, you may save just before the boss room, perhaps with only a couple of hearts left, die, and then load your save only to have to try to overcome that boss with those same limited hearts. This…

After a quick stroll through the neon sleaze and grit of Kamurocho, we’re smashing a bicycle over a group of thugs looking for trouble. It sure feels good to be home. Sure, we massively enjoyed RGG Studio changing the genre and setting for the newer Yakuza: Like A Dragon, but returning to spin-off Judgment on PS5 reminds us that some familiar staples can be comforting, especially when they’re delivered a whole lot more smoothly. Judgment’s remaster doesn’t give you any graphics options, though the visuals have been improved and the action boosted to 60fps – the latter is great since you’re fighting in real-time. Given that Like A Dragon’s 4K mode makes no significant difference and is detrimental to framerate, this feels like a wise choice, while everything still looks…

We’re all pretty well acquainted with masks now. Whichever one you tend to use, chances are it probably doesn’t transport you to a magical land when you put it on. Perhaps the ones you make here can do that because they’re made of wood. Anyway, the blend of craftsmanship and exploration is an intriguing one and, sadly, one that doesn’t work all that well. “You’re doing little more than searching for bits of the environment you can pick up.” It becomes obvious very quickly that PSVR wasn’t Maskmaker’s lead development format. The button mapping is slightly awkward, and if you don’t have perhaps 15 feet between you and the camera, you will occasionally struggle to get the game to follow your movements. We had to swap between sitting and standing…

01 The exotically named John is your best choice for hitting people up close (with a whacking great hammer). He can lift portcullises and move faster when carrying the chest. Keep enemy Johns at a distance. 02 Robin (as in Hood, geddit?) is armed with a longbow, and has a complete inability to hold his own in melee combat. His special ability is an explosive arrow, which gives a brief warning before exploding. 03 The Sheriff is a friend to no player. He’s incredibly slow-moving, but also incredibly tough, and will take you out in one hit. Let him get too close while you’re distracted and you’re doomed.…

With solid netcode and a framerate that doesn’t miss a beat, this nails the fundamentals. It even impresses if you join a race in progress as spectator; it’s startlingly close to a TV broadcast. We never find more than five lobbies at once, but there’s always one with plenty of players (though none are ever full). Don’t feel intimidated. While only the best will trouble the top five positions, there’s a variety of skill on display, so you might surprise yourself. In a game this demanding, beating just one person is satisfying. Always check lobby settings though; hardcore options are on the table (but rarely used). INFO FORMAT PS5 (reviewed), PS4 PRICE £49.99 ETA Out now PUB Milestone Srl DEV Milestone Srl OFFLINE REVIEW #1, 8/10 PLAYERS 2-22 CROSSPLAY N/A…

01 Tetris Effect Tetris, yeah? It might be a great game, but it’s easy to understand why you’d brush this version off as ‘just more Tetris’ at a glance. Yet Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s trippy, transcendent take on the block-based puzzler is nothing short of a masterpiece. Sure, you can play it without PS VR, but in the virtual space it really becomes next level, transforming one of the tightest puzzle games ever made into an emotional ride. 02 Hitman 3 Every mission in the World Of Assassination trilogy can be played in PS VR via the latest entry in the series. That’s a lot of murderous action. It all plays brilliantly too, with the act of puzzling through hits as Agent 47 perfectly suited to virtual reality. One of PS VR’s…

Both Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami are names that could sell a game by themselves, let alone together. Yet, met with some development difficulties, Shadows Of The Damned didn’t perform as anticipated. Still, this oddball mix of gothic horror with zany juvenile humour (your sentient gun is named Johnson, and yes, that’s a manhood joke) made it unique, and strangely enjoyable, even if it wasn’t an instant classic. “[It] has a special place in my heart as it’s the game I keep forgetting, and then describing to people as ‘a game I once played where you’re running over a giant topless woman’ and they look at me like I’ve made it up, and am some kind of sicko,” says reader @SpectralHands. What better way is there to sum up the…

You’d be hard-pressed to browse the videogame music corners of the internet without seeing something Alex Moukala has a hand in, whether it’s his slap bass renditions of game music, a retooling of a famous piece into another game’s musical style, or even his lofi remixes. We had to find out more, so quizzed him on how he got started, what makes a soundtrack work, and just why he feels the call of the bass. PLAY: You have a real ear for different musical styles. What inspired you to start reimagining songs from games in the style of other games? Alex Moukala: Simple curiosity! I think what sparked the initial interest in rearranging tracks in me was the first Dissidia [Final Fantasy] soundtrack by Takeharu Ishimoto and Square Enix’s music…

This one’s been running through our dreams since it was revealed. The latest collaboration between PlayStation, Nike, and LA Clippers’ Paul George is a celebration of PlayStation 5 from tag-tip to toe. The new PG 5 PlayStation 5 colourway is out now. Sony and Nike have become dab hands at these shoe designs, with previous PG 2.5 x PlayStation a perfect way for your feet to show some love for the original console. This new trainer continues the tradition with references to both the new PS5 console and the DualSense, as well as PlayStation’s heritage pronounced in the design. Nike even drafted in PS5’s acclaimed hardware designer, Yujin Morisawa, to partner with the sports apparel’s own artists and Paul George to create something that feels like the new-gen console in…

PLAY IT AGAIN Just got your email about OPM going into retirement and PLAY taking over. I would like to say that this is the best news I have heard for a long time. I subscribed to Play back in the day and loved it and was very disappointed when it finished. Phil Hall While we’ve taken on a well-loved brand, we’re still going to deliver all the things our readers love… we hope you’ll love it too. DISC-O FEVER Love getting my magazine every month but what would make it even better, now that you’re changing things, is if you could start the demo discs back up. They were brilliant and I still play mine, yes even after all these years, I have them right back to PS1 and…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 2021 / PUB FRONTIER DEVELOPMENTS / DEV RATLOOP GAMES CANADA / PLAYERS 1-4 Videogames have done more than their fair share of flirting with the flow of time, whether that’s allowing us to live out our teenage dreams and rewinding until we strike upon the perfect thing to say in Life Is Strange or enabling us to plot a profitable night of killing in the upcoming Deathloop. Yup, games love to get a bit timey-wimey. Now Lemnis Gate is taking this thread and running with it all the way into a multiplayer arena. “TAKE TURNS TO REWRITE THE SAME 25 SECONDS.” In either 1v1 or 2v2 matches, you and your opponent take it in turns to rewrite the same 25 seconds and hopefully scribble your…

“PS5 HARDWARE ALLOWS FOR LARGER AND MORE IMMERSIVE WORLDS THAN EVER BEFORE.” FORMAT PS5 / ETA 11 JUN / PUB PLAYSTATION STUDIOS / DEV INSOMNIAC GAMES / PLAYERS 1 After their last official outing in Into The Nexus on PS3, PlayStation’s buddy duo Ratchet and Clank are back in a brand-new adventure, and Insomniac Games is out to prove that this is an adventure only PS5 can deliver. It won’t just be these two besties along for the ride, however. Rift Apart takes places across multiple dimensions, thanks to the Dimensionator device unwittingly causing rifts in the omniverse, so it only makes sense that there’s help from an alternate playable hero. After months of teasing, we now know that hero is Rivet, a female lombax who’s part of the resistance…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 2021 PUB APOGEE ENTERTAINMENT DEV ORANGEPIXEL / PLAYERS 1 A not-so-lonely explorer crash-lands on an alien planet and has to outlast hunger, hostile alien lifeforms, and cosmic storms. They’re accompanied by their very own Personal Disaster Bot, which is helpful almost as often as it offers pithy witticisms. You won’t be left to rub two sticks together – you can scavenge and craft some high-tech gear like mining machines and teleporters. This is a procedurally generated alien planet, after all, and beyond weird stones and plants, there’s plenty of ancient alien tech to plunder. Who knows – maybe you’ll find something that can fix your ship. The setup’s not exactly innovative, but the crafting and survival aspects could elevate it above the usual fare in…

FORMAT PS4 / ETA TBC PUB RESONATOR / DEV RESONATOR PLAYERS 1 Awakening on a lonely planet (yes, another one of those), your first task is to find out what happened to your missing co-pilot. Your second is to survive, though your natty combat-ready spacesuit at least tilts the odds of managing that in your favour. Using a combination of your own arsenal and each biome’s peculiar quirks, you’ll be able to bring the pain to any beastie looking to have a nibble on you. You can swim, jetpack, climb, skate, and even pilot a range of vehicles as you delve deeper into the alien, metroidvania heart of hand-crafted levels in search of your comrade. Our favourite means of traversal has got to be the combat mech – because of…

You can be certain that there are no pacifists living on Black Reef. Home to artists, scientists, party animals, and murderers, it’s not a place beholden to any line of thinking that’s not operating at 100 miles an hour. The centre of a man-made time loop, death is cheap for everybody – including the assassin Julianna Blake, who’s gunning for you at every turn. Game director Dinga Bakaba reveals, “When you see the trailer, Colt and Julianna’s relationship seems to be the main thing, but interestingly it didn’t start with that – it started with the time loop and this kind of 1960s world before there was this rivalry.” When you play as protagonist Colt, you can choose either to have Julianna as just another AI-controlled character or to allow…

INFO FORMAT PS4 PRICE £44.99 ETA Out now PUB Sega DEV Atlus PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 60 hours ACCESSIBILITY Merciful difficulty (much easier than the original game); big text by default As if finding out your teacher is a prominent figure in a cult isn’t bad enough, the world literally ends, and you’re transformed into a neon-tattooed demi-fiend. Talk about bad days. This isn’t a JRPG about saving the world, but about surviving in it as one of the few humans who weren’t instantly obliterated when Tokyo wrapped in on itself, Inception-style. In a Persona game, you team up with your remaining friends for a heartwarming adventure about growing up. But main series Shin Megami Tensei (from which Persona is a spin-off) is much more cynical. You catch up with other…

INFO  FORMAT PS4 PRICE £24.49 ETA Out now PUB Numbskull Games DEV Bitmap Bureau PLAYERS 1-2 Gauntlet meets Golden Axe’ is such a no-brainer pitch, it’s a wonder nobody thought of mashing those two arcade classics together before now. Three distinct playable heroes? Check.1 The ability to upgrade your skills while sat around a campfire? You bet. The only element Henk Nieborg’s Battle Axe really lacks is that feeling of being unable to press on after being bled of your last coin. With such deceitful enemy placement and sparse health drops like this, however, we’re grateful. Harsh difficulty aside, Battle Axe certainly makes an impression as a not-so-subtle homage to the 16-bit actioners of old. The fantasy art style is bright and pixel perfect, Manami Matsumae’s2 chiptune soundtrack appropriately heroic,…

INFO FORMAT PS5 (reviewed), PS4 PRICE £24.99 ETA Out now PUB Ubisoft DEV Ubisoft Montreal PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 7+ hours ACCESSIBILITY Colourblind modes; QTE options; full button remapping; resizeable text/ icons; menu narration; customisable subtitles and closed captions; separate combat/stealth/exploration difficulty modes After Viking-ing across England to build alliances, Eivor has earned a break. That means travelling to Ireland to help your cousin Bárid, the King Of Dublin, forge a new alliance (by forging more alliances for Ireland’s newly appointed High King). It’s more, but doesn’t touch Valhalla’s best moments. Served with a new map, you can venture across the mostly green (sometimes boggy) vistas of Dublin, Ulster, Meath, and Connacht. Functionally, they all act as one narrative region. You can choose when to jump in from the main game,…

“It’s wonderful to finally be playing another fully-loaded PS5 game.” INFO Format PS5 Price £69.99 ETA Out now PUB PlayStation Studios Dev Housemarque Players 1 Length 20+ hours Accessibility Aim assist; press/hold action toggles; customisable subtitles (size, colour, and background); colourblind modes (whole game filter, UI tone options, collectible colour options); togglable motion blur Crash-landing on Atropos in a very brief introduction, you’re quickly thrown out into the alien elements. The dense forest surrounding the crash site is dark and brooding, and heavy rain pelts down. Feeling the patter of the raindrops via the DualSense, and the sound of it all around thanks to PS5’s Tempest 3D AudioTech, it’s wonderful to finally be playing another fully-loaded PS5 game. Housemarque made its name developing arcadey shooters. This bigger-budget third-person roguelike take…

Skateboarding games are great for letting you pull off amazing feats of stylish gravity-defying trickery that’d leave you covered in gravel rash if you attempted them in real life. Skate City is a new spin on the genre that ticks this box but is also a welcome advocate for the pastime’s calmer side. The minimalist art style and picturesque backdrops here help you become one with the board, resulting in a startlingly tranquil experience that can reward patience as well as skill. When not rolling away from the stresses of life in the Endless Skate mode, you’re travelling the world trying to complete challenges and reach the highest score by landing flips, grinds, and ollies flawlessly. Performing stylish tricks is as simple as flicking the left or right analogue stick…

Careers don’t come much cooler than ‘interplanetary scuba diver’, and in this case that’s literal. Swimming through an endless sea in search of alien wildlife, uncovering the story behind the crash of a submerged space vessel… these core elements of surprise and discovery are as enticing in Subnautica’s second outing as they were in its first. But we’re revisiting planet 4645B for business, not pleasure, and it isn’t long before sub-zero temperatures start to pose a suite of testing survival challenges. Initially developed as a paid expansion to 2014’s underwater adventure, Below Zero has since graduated to the status of standalone sequel. This change in direction has meant it often feels caught between the two worlds, with there being a lot of carry-over from the original game. The HUD, for…

Three rounds of crowdfunding later, one of the shoot-’em-up world’s best-loved series has a brand-new entry. Just as well; those skittish aliens won’t shoot themselves. If you’re not familiar with previous games and you just want to shoot stuff in an unforgiving environment, this will do the job. Ultimately, however, it’s a bit of intergalactic fan service, for better and for worse. After a brief first-person intro, things are reassuringly familiar. Moving from left to right in shiny modern 2.5D graphics, it’s your job to shoot… well, everything. As is R-Type tradition, you will be joined by the Force. Nothing to do with midichlorians, this is your indestructible little buddy which enters the scene when you pick up a power-up. Your control over it is fairly limited, but essential to…

Launching with some technical issues that saw us bumped from parties, loot hoards deleted, and found us loitering endlessly on the title screen as the servers buckled under the unprecedented demand, weeks later Outriders feels fixed. Just about. Like a noughties rom-com Outriders can still occasionally fail to launch but such events are now thankfully rare. It means we can jump in and focus on the loot shooter’s post-campaign Expeditions, which are surprisingly rewarding. Pun intended. After successfully launching the escape pods from the Flores at the end of your Outrider’s campaign, your goal now is simple: to team up with others to venture back across Enoch’s varied landscape, in new maps, to find and loot pods for resources. The 14-base Expeditions revolve across the map so there’s always a…

The core gameplay becomes familiar to any FPS fan within seconds; it’s a point-capture game set during WW2 with strong Battlefield vibes. While arguably overfamiliar, with little variety in weapons, it already enjoys a huge community. It’s easy to see why. The twist is that you have a number of AI squads, and upon death you respawn as a squadmate. (There’s also a single-soldier mode for a more traditional experience.) Strengthening loadouts and unlocking features means lots of grinding or spending cash, yet the satisfaction of scoring kills with the clunky historical weapons makes up for this. INFO FORMAT PS5 PRICE Free (plus microtransactions and packs) ETA Out now PUB Gaijin Entertainment DEV Darkflow Software OFFLINE REVIEW N/A PLAYERS 50 max CROSSPLAY PC, Xbox (can be switched off)…

IMMORTALS FENYX RISING – LOST GODS This third piece of DLC wraps up the story of the gods of Olympos. With the perspective switched to top-down, it feels like a different game as new grey-haired hero Ash must explore the Pyrite Islands to track down missing deities and restore balance to a world under threat. PLANET COASTER – GHOSTBUSTERS Got a haunted theme park? You know who to call. Dan ‘Peter Venkman’ Aykroyd and William ‘Walter Peck’ Atherton reprise their roles for a new narrative campaign alongside fresh rides, scenery set-pieces, and, of course, doing some actual ghost busting. ZOMBIE ARMY 4 – TERMINAL ERROR This seventh DLC mission kicks off a fresh three-part Dead War Campaign called Return To Hell (sounds nice, eh?). Here, you’re tracking down a transmission…

01 Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Nathan Drake’s swan song is a daring evolution. It combines series-defining set-pieces, quietly devastating storytelling beats, and sprawling levels that make you feel like a real-life explorer. This franchise finale retains its signature charm, with the wisecracks firing as fast as the bullets, while the new characters each justify their inclusion. With an astonishing attention to detail, it’s Naughty Dog’s best yet. 02 Red Dead Redemption 2 There are a lot of open-world games, but none that make you feel like you’re a part of a world in quite the same way as Arthur Morgan’s wild west adventure. Tremendously physical, an epic story, and some of the most satisfying headshots you’ll ever find. 03 Grand Theft Auto V Laughing in the face of other…

No, not them, yet when Starbreeze partnered with 2K Games back in 2007 we eagerly gave this horror FPS permission to land. You could say, it was growing on us. Okay, enough of The Darkness (the band) references and more on The Darkness (the game). Want to shoot through New York’s wiseguys with some of the best metal hair since Nuno Bettencourt found his girlfriend’s straighteners, accompanied by heart-hungry tentacles voiced by Mike Patton? Then this was, and still is, your game. At launch it always felt like a curve-ball release. Based on a cult comic and developed by a small team fresh off a successful movie tie-in (The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay1 ), The Darkness was a gamble, the kind of punt few Triple-A publishers take…

The original Castlevania was released in 1986, making it older than some of us. But only some of us. *sigh* Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest was the first nonlinear entry – an early stage in the creation of the Metroidvania genre. Rondo Of Blood, the first fully-voiced entry, first appeared in English on PSP, via a 2007 Castlevania collection. 2009 saw a Castlevania lightgun arcade game. The original’s composers were credited as “James Banana.” The ‘Konami code’ can be used in five Castlevania games. PS4’s Anniversary Collection features the excellent 16-bit games. DEAD SET Don’t Hideo your feelings Hideo Kojima helped save Lords Of Shadow. MercurySteam had the Castlevania licence for the game, which was taken away when Konami execs in America didn’t like the prototype. Producer Dave Cox took it…

With Konami revealing it’ll miss this year’s E3 (which is now an online conference beginning on 12 June), some fans have been left fearful this year’s eFootball PES 2022 will be delayed. While we have no news on whether that’s the case, Seitaro Kimura, eFootball PES series producer at Konami Digital Entertainment, has spoken to us about the team’s ambition for the next instalment. It’s exciting news, and gives us confidence the game will release as usual this autumn. Importantly, this year’s game is a reset that’s aiming to push PlayStation 5. Fans were concerned this could be similar to the transition PES made from PS2 to PS3, which saw the Fox-Engine-powered soccer sim stumble before coming back strong on PS4. The next game will drop Fox Engine in favour…

Every venture into the Ridden-infested world of Back 4 Blood promises to be a shocking surprise. We’ve played the game, and the AI certainly keeps you on edge. But it’s the innovative card system, a roguelite feature, that ensures every playthrough is different. Developer Turtle Rock Studios has revealed the game’s card system works behind the scenes to make every confrontation with the zombie-like Ridden a dynamic surprise. You collect and use Corruption cards to modify the gameplay, AI, creature roster, weapons, buffs, and more – though if you don’t want to worry about fiddling with the setup there’s the option to play with default preset decks. “Improve knife attacks, stack weapon damage, or flood the map with a never-ending army of armoured Ridden.” SUIT YOU The adaptive AI, called…

Just an easy job. A quick trip to drop off some supplies in Alaska. Until a mysterious storm tears the plane apart, and Kai’s co-pilot, Donovan, is lost to the winds. As Kai, you’re stranded deep in the Northern wilds with only your (court-mandated) therapy bot for company. Your task? Discover what happened, find your co-pilot, and… survive. Releasing episodically in 2022, this narrative-driven game will be developed up front in order to be able to meet a monthly release schedule. Promising a thrilling tale with plenty of exciting twists and turns, it’ll keep first-time players guessing as to the true nature of just what in the frozen hell is going on. Offering “dark mysteries” and “vicious environments’’, it’s like a little bit of Firewatch mixed with something more sinister.…

“THERE ARE SOME EPIC COMBOS THAT PLAYERS CAN PULL OFF TOGETHER IN CO-OP.” One hero lays down covering fire with arrows, creating an opening for another to charge into a heavily armoured enemy, balance, and making it possible for everyone to come together to lay down the pain. We could just as easily be describing a combat encounter in tabletop D&D as we are a punch-up in Dark Alliance, and that’s very much by design. “We like to say that the heart of Dark Alliance gameplay is what happens after the [Dungeon Master] would say ‘roll for initiative’,” says Jeff Hattem, head of studio at Tuque Games. “That third-person camera puts the players right in the middle of these visceral combat encounters, and it allows us to bring these iconic…

02 months BLOOD BOWL 3 Boardgame adaptation: American football meets Warhammer to put the ‘fantasy’ in fantasy football. FORMAT PS5, PS4 ETA 31 AUG / PUB NACON 04 months STRAY Prowl the streets of a robot-world as a feline explorer in this beautiful PS5-only adventure. FORMAT PS5 / ETA OCT PUB ANNAPURNA INTERACTIVE 06 months PUZZLING PLACES A chill puzzler that tasks you with putting the pieces back together. Reconstruct famous places in VR. FORMAT PSVR / ETA Q4 PUB REALITIES.IO INC.…

“RETROSPECTIVE MODE REVISITS 19 PIVOTAL EVENTS, OFFERING PLAYABLE HISTORY.” FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 2 SEP / PUB NACON / DEV KT RACING / PLAYERS TBC This year it’s the big one! Celebrating 50 years of the FIA World Rally Championship, the officially licensed videogame series is pulling out all the stops for its tenth mainline installment. On top of paying homage to five decades of rallying, this latest entry offers a range of improvements to ensure it’s ready for a spin behind a Thrustmaster. For anyone not deep into the world of racing games, that last sentence probably sounds like we took an unexpectedly lewd turn. It probably doesn’t help that the press release itself makes the boast, “WRC 10 recreates ever more accurate and intense driving sensations.” Anyway,…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 14 JUN PUB INNERSLOTH LLC DEV INNERSLOTH LLC, PLAYEVERYWARE / PLAYERS 4-10 Effectively a playable version of John Carpenter’s The Thing set in space, it’s up to you to root out the murderous alien impostor among your crew. A group of four to ten players band together online and take care of a variety of regular maintenance tasks on the ship until the first body turns up. When you stumble upon the eviscerated corpse of a fellow crew member, you’re given the option to report it immediately and call a crew meeting. After sharing information and trying to figure out who had the opportunity to murder your chum, it’s then time to take a vote. A consensus decides who’ll be accused and get punted out…

FORMAT PS4 / ETA 2021 PUB PLAYTONIC FRIENDS DEV AWE INTERACTIVE / PLAYERS 1 What happens if you take roguelike rhythm game Crypt Of The NecroDancer, remake it in 3D, and replace its charming chiptune soundtrack with something a bit more rock ‘n’ roll? You get something hectic, that’s for sure! You’re playing as a mighty valkyrie, and BPM promises percussive pleasure as you blast through waves of Nidhogg’s underlings to the beat of a rocking soundtrack, all within randomly generated dungeons. Miss your cue and it could spell disaster (or at least a restart). Available on PC since last September, headlining on consoles was always part of the plan and we’ve just a little longer to wait before we can rock out with our Glock out for this one.…

“Clomping of heavy heels or the buzz of an insect swarm signal danger.” INFO Format PS5 (reviewed), PS4 Price £49.99 ETA Out now Pub Capcom Dev Capcom Players 1 Length 10 hours Accessibility Toggle adaptive triggers on/off; adjustable camera motion and speed; motion-sensitive camera mode; tweakable sound outputs and virtual surround sound; customisable HUD and colours The horror evoked by this direct sequel to Resident Evil VII: Biohazard can often give way to the spectacle of blasting holes in hairy wolfmen and escaping the jaws of a giant fleshy blood-baddie that resembles the yawning chasm on the cover of In The Court Of The Crimson King. That’s an old reference, yes, but like that famous album this game is a hodge-podge of ideas, and they all work. Capcom has its…

INFO  FORMAT PS4 PRICE £15.99 ETA Out now PUB Team Meat DEV Team Meat PLAYERS 1 Have you accidentally jumped on your DualShock several times in a row, until nothing works except q and 2? Then has Team Meat got the game for you! Meat Boy, now married to Bandage Girl (or maybe they’re living in a butcher’s house of sin), has to rescue little baby Nugget from Dr Fetus… by suffering through an endless runner where you do little more than tap and hold a single button. Honestly, they might as well have called it Flappy Meat.1 The truth is that, so far as endless runners with simplistic controls go, this is much better than a lot of the competition – though that’s not saying much. There are traditional…

Lassoing and yanking the fangs out of the jaws of a giant furry monster is a unique way to uncover a weak spot. Its toothy smile gone, you’re free to blast away at the creature’s gums. There are certainly moments in this open-world RPG that surprise. Set on an Earth-like planet centuries after an environmental disaster has wiped out its precursor civilisation, the emergent furry ‘people’ have formed into tribes. Each group has a unique outlook on life that fits into standard ideologies – communism, fascism, anarchism, ecolism, and more. The six factions are at war, and you’re tasked with uniting them against the four Worldeaters, massive monsters chewing the roots of the World Tree, causing a cataclysm. Biomutant’s setup is an excuse to scamper around a lively world performing…

INFO  FORMAT PSVR PRICE £15.99 ETA Out now PUB Incuvo DEV Bloober Team PLAYERS 1 Using mental illness as a scaffold to hang your frights from feels exploitative, moreso if the story pays lip service to the issues it raises and is there merely to arrange jump scares around. This is where Layers Of Fear VR hangs its paint-stained coat and as it does so you can’t shake the feeling you’re playing an old game. Now in PSVR, Layers Of Fear was originally released in 2016, and its use of schizophrenia and domestic abuse feels shallow. It shows the game’s age. Set in a dimly lit mansion, you play a Dorian Gray-like artist who begins to succumb to wild hallucinations. His paintings warp and run as reality and art bleed…

WHAT YOU DO IN: RETURNAL 19% Cursing when you’re rewarded with only boring consumables. 12% Getting spooked exploring Selene’s house. 6% Turning parasites into Obolites – the one trick that bankers hate. 27% Dodging masses of incoming projectiles by the skin of your teeth. 20% Holding down i and strafing to run and gun. 16% Grinning as you hit melee at just the right time to obliterate alien life. THE DUALSENSE DIFFERENCE L2 TRIGGER Hold the adaptive trigger halfway to aim normal fire, and click all the way down for the cooldownbased alt-fire. It’s tricky to get used to, but fun when it (ahem) clicks. HAPTIC FEEDBACK Beyond allowing you to feel individual raindrops, haptics add texture to many actions, from rumbling as you charge a gun to…

Roguelikes have a reputation for being impenetrable puzzle boxes that you need absurd dexterity and patience to enjoy. That’s changed a bit in recent years, but it feels like Brainwash Gang isn’t happy about it. Nongünz: Doppelgänger Edition doesn’t just refuse to hold your hand, it puts you in an arm lock and teases you for not being able to get through a field of spikes while laughing maniacally and speaking in tongues.1 This is a run-and-gun roguelike with a dramatic black-and-white aesthetic, great music, and some really interesting mechanics. The trouble is, to get to that core you need to figure out a lot of stuff on your own. There is a brief tutorial, but after that the game uses symbols to represent everything, and they don’t do enough…

WHAT YOU DO IN: SUBNAUTICA: BZ 10% Putting the time in to craft that perfect bit of gear. 8% Seeking underwater shelter from planet 4645B’s unpredictable storms. 11% Fending off Brute Sharks or wrestling a device from a Sea Monkey. 35% Exploring the ocean depths looking for that one pesky resource you need. 22% Coming back up for air because your current oxygen tank isn’t good enough. 14% Flicking through audio logs to find locations and piece together the story. THE DUALSENSE DIFFERENCE DUALSENSE SPEAKER Used to relay important status updates and replay audio logs. You can listen to these while still freely exploring. ADAPTIVE TRIGGERS These help give each instrument you use a slightly different feel. Firing the repair tool, for example, offers much greater resistance than…

Remember how the Terminator was a focussed hunter? Like a drunk who can smell a kebab at ten paces, it couldn’t be bargained with, it couldn’t be reasoned with, and it would not stop… ever. But what was true in the film is not true in the game: these T-800s hit invisible walls and give up the chase. While it’s commendable that Terminator Residence Enhanced tries to live up to the licence – set after Terminator 2: Judgment Day it has suitably chromatic adversaries, pew-pew laser guns, and hulking Hunter-Killers – it stumbles all the time trying to bring this movie-verse to life. T-800s stomp in ridged patterns, give up if you leave their ‘zone’, and soak up shots like wet sponges. You’ll feel a thrill when you first encounter…

While this multiplayer heist game has strong whiffs of Assassin’s Creed – creeping around in foliage, assassinating enemies by creeping up behind them, running along in a crouch that looks like it would be terrible for your back – it has an aroma all its own. Successfully pulling off a heist is fun; doing it while other players are out to stop you, even more so. “The glee with which we assassinate somebody who took us out is hard to beat.” Playing as part of a team with three other players, you conduct a heist against a map full of AI enemies. There are three stages to this: pick the sheriff’s pocket to nab a key, reach and open a vault containing a chest full of gold, and finally get…

Life’s hard in the post-nuclear world – harder if you can’t get your hands on the firepower to get by. This is the situation Colorado’s leader, the Patriarch, finds himself in when the deliveries from Steeltown mysteriously dry up. Once the place to get guns, gear, and cars, the factory complex has fallen silent. The Patriarch tasks the Rangers with getting to the bottom of it. Leader of Steeltown Abigail Markham has given The Patriarch little beyond excuses. When you rock up, you’re met by a series of surprises. First off, they won’t let you in through the front door, and not even throwing the Patriarch’s name around will persuade them. When you catch wind of Steeltown’s serious bandit problem, it seems little wonder why. But then there’s the workers’…

Respawn Entertainment’s hero battle royale is feeling fine as it goes into season nine. New mode Arenas is part of the update, introducing a fresh round-based 3v3 mode. Rather than make you jump into the fray with 20 to 30 other squads, Arenas strips away the noise and pitches two teams against one another in a selection of new maps. At the start of each round you’re awarded Arenas-specific currency to buy weapons for your team and tweak your loadout. These don’t carry over between rounds and pickups out in the field are minimal compared to other game modes, so if you want more cash to splash for the bigger guns, you’ll need to prove your worth in the round before. “Arenas strips away the noise and pitches two teams…

There’s nothing horrifying about this spooky bit of backwards compatibility. While we had mixed opinions on the game itself, this is a wonderful upgrade that makes it well worth dimming the lights for an evening of witchy scares. “With the smooth framerate and higher resolution it’s a really atmospheric creeper.” On PS4 Pro, the dynamic resolution averaged 1080p, but was set with a much higher max, so it comfortably pulls off 2160p here, meaning it’s a huge step up. The game also manages to hit a smooth 60fps. That was possible on PS4 Pro, but frequent issues saw it dropping back down to almost 35fps in some cases (we actually found it more stable on a base PS4). You also get HDR support. Granted, this was the case on Pro,…

The PS2 generation was an outstanding one for horror games, but this is a highlight. A striking aesthetic and tightened-up action meant Crimson Butterfly brought the attention of many to the Project Zero series, and this second entry remains the fan favourite. With a story following twins Mio and Mayu as they explore a creepy village and end up the targets of a ritual, it’s the perfect introduction for new players. Mayu becomes possessed; you play as Mio, armed only with a camera that handily exorcises spirits. Thanks to a larger core cast, the narrative is both clearer and more emotive than the previous game’s, with more dialogue. When you inevitably get lost, Crimson Butterfly’s also more forgiving than the first game, in which enemies would spawn quickly and chase…

FORMAT PS4 / PUB SONY / DEV FROMSOFTWARE / RELEASED 2015 Something rotten has taken root in Yharnam, branching further beyond in hearts and minds. You can see it in Byrgenwerth’s own Provost Willem. Once a scholar in pursuit of higher planes of thought, he now sits quietly by Moonside Lake, robbed of speech by a strange fungus-like growth sprouting from the back of his spine. The pearlescent body of water ahead is the domain of Rom the Vacuous Spider and her arachnid children. This is far from your first foray into advanced pest control and, as you spy a blood-stained figure gazing up at the sky, you know it won’t be the last. A red moon looms large overhead and as a baby’s cry echoes across the lake, your…