Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i PLAY

Last month the first proper Evo since PlayStation took co-ownership went off without a hitch. With plenty of standout moments and exciting commentary, it was a blast to watch. But fighting game fans weren’t only enraptured by the head-to-heads, they got to hear some big announcements too. With most of the main-stage games getting a little old, the genre is on the verge of a revamp that could change it entirely. Street Fighter 6 is the biggest game on the horizon, and was shown off at Evo alongside the best-of-the-best dishing out beatdowns in Street Fighter V. Two characters were announced, the returning Juri displaying as chaotic and dangerous an energy as ever, and newcomer ninja Kimberly bouncing around in a wild and infectious fashion. When she walked onto the…

After its reveal via a pre-rendered teaser trailer at E3 2014 and almost a decade of silence since, you would be forgiven for thinking that this sequel was all but dead in the water. In a surprise rereveal at Gamescom, however, we finally got a glimpse of an all-new animated trailer and a slice of gory gameplay from this long-awaited zombie slaying adventure. Yager (creator of Spec Ops: The Line) was the original developer, but the series now seems to have landed in the capable hands of Deep Silver Dambuster Studios – publisher Deep Silver’s own developer. Although its previous major project, Homefront: The Revolution, was met with middling reviews, the energetic action and vibrant visuals of Dead Island 2 suggests it has all the makings of a solid sequel.…

Whether you’re travelling, moving between rooms, or just want to kick back, the option to go portable can be a blessing. Those of us who fell in love with PS Vita or have used remote play on our phones know it to be true. But what about the pad? Currently, officially licensed third-party PlayStation controllers are few and far between. But Sony has made an exception for Backbone, which has launched an officially licensed version of its celebrated extendable pad for iPhone, the Backbone One. With a white design and the face buttons you’d expect, the Backbone One’s design is inspired by the DualSense’s, to give it a matching look. The buttons even have that transparent appearance. At £99.99 it’s pricier than a DualSense controller, but for a high-end phone…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 2023 / PUB CAPCOM DEV CAPCOM / PLAYERS 1-10 “ROADBLOCK IS A VITAL PICK WHEN IT COMES TO PROTECTING DELICATE PAYLOADS.” The year is 2040 and the cities of Earth are under attack. The enemy? An endless stream of deadly dinosaurs pouring out of portals in the sky. Exoprimal may not be quite the tense successor to Dino Crisis that many people had been hoping for, but from our latest hands-on it’s clear there are still barrels of fun to be had in this upcoming Jurassic shooter. Dropped into an abandoned strip of a sprawling science-fiction city, it’s hard to overstate the sense of chaos that shapes many of your attempts to hold back the growing dinosaur horde. It’s easy to find yourself lost in…

FORMAT TBC / ETA TBC / PUB KRAFTON DEV UNKNOWN WORLDS ENTERTAINMENT / PLAYERS 1-2 We love miniatures but the thought of buying more fills us with the sort of panic we only ever feel during the end-game of a particularly fraught round of Tetris. Where are we going to put them? Besides that, where are all our paints and brushes from the last time we got sucked into this hobbyist hole? Oh, don’t tell us they’ve all dried out and we need to buy more!? So it’s not hard to see the appeal of a digital miniatures game – especially when you’ve got prolific fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson in charge of worldbuilding. Moonbreaker will feature more than 50 units at launch, each unlockable through play. Strategic, turn-based skirmishes take…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 ETA OUT NOW PUB HOYOVERSE DEV HOYOVERSE PLAYERS MULTI With tens of millions of active players, live musical concerts, and huge, eye-catching booths at gaming events, it’s almost strange to think that Genshin Impact’s imminent anniversary is only its second. The huge, live-service open-world RPG already feels like a constant. With plans for the future communicated well in advance, version 3.0’s Sumeru update has been expected for some time, but that doesn’t mean it’s been without surprises. Still on the search for their lost sibling after waking up in a strange world, players pick up the trail in Sumeru, under the rule of the Dendro Archon, who represents ‘wisdom’. This new environment might be the most fantastical yet. “Although Sumeru is a huge, connected landscape, it does…

INFO FORMAT PS5 (reviewed), PS4 PRICE £34.99 ETA Out now PUB THQ Nordic DEV Black Forest Games PLAYERS 1-2 (main game single-player only) LENGTH 8-10 hrs ACCESSIBILITY Tutorials, lock-on, vibration and subtitles on/off; change difficulty during play There’s one thing actors and videogame fans can agree on: it’s more fun to play the bad guy. However, there’s always an exception to prove the rule, and here it is. The problem isn’t that the plot is more about saving the world this time around. The problem (well, one of them) is that it often makes you feel like a villain for the wrong reasons. Does that mean that there’s no fun to be had here? Not at all! The sequel has moved on from the 1950s to the 1960s, but little…

INFO FORMAT PS5, (revieweed) PS4 PRICE £24.99 ETA Out now PUB Take-Two Interactive DEV Roll7 PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 4-6 hrs ACCESSIBILITY Invertable Y and X axes; trigger effect, vibration, screen shake, and screen flash on/off; subtitles; adjustable subtitle size and contrast; invincibility; infinite ammo; adjustable game speed; customisable controls; no challenge requirements for level unlocks; easy slug shots Jumpsuits and big hair aren’t nearly as common in the 21st century as 1970s science-fiction movies would have had us believe, but the appeal – of the good ones, at least – doesn’t lie in prescience. Rather, they tended to be visually striking, melding the prosaic and the futuristic, topped off with an atmosphere suffused with tension. In many ways, therefore, this is an interactive 1970s movie. This is clearly intentional. The…

INFO FORMAT PS5 (reviewed), PS4 PRICE £44.99 ETA Out now PUB Reef Entertainment DEV Wanin International PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 15 hrs ACCESSIBILITY Subtitles Action games come in a lot of different speeds and flavours, and while Dusk Diver 2 might look like a fast-paced and spicy one, it frequently slows down to a crawl and asks you simply to hammer the attack button. There’s nothing wrong with a little button-mashing between friends, but when fighting is most of what you do, it really needs to be more engaging. You take control of Yumo, a college student with a part-time job at a shop, who uses her spare time to hop into dimensional rifts and beat up Chaos Beasts. You know, the standard college life, we’ve all been there. Her body…

INFO FORMAT PS5 (reviewed), PS4 PRICE £19.99 ETA Out now PUB Devolver DEV Massive Monster PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 15-20 hrs ACCESSIBILITY Text scaling; alternate control schemes; difficulty settings You’re a literal sacrificial lamb, this story beginning where most others would end: at the moment of your death. Led to the slaughter by four fanantical bishops, your only shot at salvation lies with The One Who Waits, an imprisoned god capable of bringing you back from the dead. “Start a cult in my name,” he commands in return for resurrection. You have little choice but to accept. It’s part roguelike and part management sim, and you spend the bulk of your first few hours as a newly revived cult leader venturing into gloomy forest dungeons arranged in floors. Snappy hack-’n’-slash combat…

INFO FORMAT PS5 (reviewed), PS4 PRICE Free ETA Out now PUB Epic Games DEV Iron Galaxy OFFLINE REVIEW N/A PLAYERS 40 CROSSPLAY PC, Xbox CROSS-GEN Yes Originally slated for release back in February, this wrestling battle royale was delayed owing to the feedback it received during the first public playtest. As it’s published by Fortnite creator Epic expectations were high, and while we did enjoy some of our time smacking down in the beta it was clear that there was still a long way to go. Now, several months later, Rumbleverse has finally re-entered the ring after more time in training. Despite a fair few noticeable changes, especially in regards to the parkour system, which feels faster and more fluid than before, the unfortunate combination of poor matchmaking and persistent…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / PUB FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE / DEV ASOBO STUDIO / RELEASED 2019 Hoping to find refuge at a nearby chateau, a pair of noble children on the run from the French Inquisition stumble upon a shocking scene. A newly silent battlefield spreads before them, littered with French and English dead. Along with their new ally Lucas, Amicia and Hugo have no choice but to tread over the bodies to advance. A Plague Tale: Innocence is full of striking views, many of which are as disgusting as they are impressive. Nothing sums that up better than this chapter, The Ravens’ Spoils, which takes place on ground piled with corpses. As often happens in the game, you realise something bad is on the cards when the children comment on…

It’s really good playing with the DualSense. I’m happy that people will soon play and give us feedback about it! When you think about the creative possibilities raised by the latest and more powerful technology, you probably think of something that’s both large in scale and pleasing to the eye. In other words, even larger groups of disgusting, plague-carrying, flesh-eating rats was probably not among the things you pictured – though it does fit the bill. But once A Plague Tale: Requiem, followup to surprise hit A Plague Tale: Innocence, is released on 18 October on PS5, you’ll never be too far from hordes of the rodents, which now swarm in bands of 300,000 rather than the 3,000 managed on PS4 (which we found impressive enough). The rats aren’t the…

Rumours have been swirling for months regarding the development of a premium PlayStation controller. Other consoles have premium pads, and with the arrival of the pricy third-party Reflex line from Scuf it seemed almost inevitable that the announcement of an official high-end alternative to the DualSense was on the way. Now Sony has lifted the curtain on the DualSense Edge – an advanced alternative to the PlayStation pad packed with high-end features. You can remap or deactivate buttons on the fly, and tweak the adaptive triggers’ individual travel distance. Customisation is clearly the focus. You can remap or deactivate buttons on the fly thanks to a new dedicated function button and save your desired configuration to preset profiles. Adaptive triggers are included as on the DualSense, but you can now…

Despite how influential the original, fixed-camera survival horror games were, Alone In The Dark is a series that’s always struggled to stay as relevant as, say, Resident Evil (which has had its fair share of misses, don’t get us wrong). For this latest revival THQ Nordic and Pieces Interactive seem to be getting things right in the way that only an unwise detective returning to the supernatural scene of the crime can – by going back to where it all began. Forget the recent entries in the series; this sees us returning the creepy halls of Derceto Manor in a sort of pseudo-remake/reimagining of the original trilogy (released 1992-94). What made the original games work was how unsettling they were, and the new one looks like being every bit as…

FORMAT PS4 / ETA TBC / PUB NOVECT / DEV NOVECT / PLAYERS 1 Visual novels from new studios don’t often have a big impact, but The House In Fata Morgana did (it’s yet to be released on PlayStation in Europe, though was released on Vita in Japan, and Vita and PS4 in the US). It put Japanese indie developer Novect on the map, and is now regarded as a genre-defining work, one that played with European history and fantasy. So how does Novect follow that up? It doesn’t. Sitting down with Project Code Name M (a working title), it’s clear this game is a bold departure. The team at Novect are avoiding direct comparisons between the games by transplanting the action to modern-day Tokyo, in particular the Asakusa and…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA LATE 2022 / PUB AUROGON SHANGHAI / DEV AUROGON SHANGHAI / PLAYERS 1 Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say, but it’s a saying this metroidvania is taking literally – in our our time with the opening we experience gorgeous visuals and encroaching danger in equal measure. The genre’s so popular with indie developers it can be hard for new games to stand out; we’re testing Afterimage at BitSummit, Tokyo’s indie event, which is crammed with them. Yet Afterimage has a melancholy vibe that leaves us itching to explore further. “GORGEOUS VISUALS AND DANGER IN EQUAL MEASURE.” A product of China’s growing indie scene, Afterimage opens with the amnesiac Renee awakening in a forest in the world of Engardin. The anime-inspired 2D…

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2022 / PUB FUNCOM DEV FUNCOM / PLAYERS MULTI Fear might be the mind killer, but excitement can wreck your thought processes too. With blustering cloth physics, wonderfully rendered hair that blows in the harsh breeze of Arrakis, and a ruddy great sandworm, this announcement thrills at first – but only a CG trailer has been revealed so far. Described as an “open world survival MMO”, it has a similar vibe to Conan Exiles. Considering it’s being made by the same developer, that makes sense, so expect something similar yet evolved for the new gen.…

The all-encompassing nature of HoYoverse’s open-world RPG means things can feel a bit complicated whether you’re a newcomer or already on your travels across Teyvat. It can be easy to miss vital mechanics that’ll make your questing a lot easier… but miss no more! We’re here to help. 01 Focus on Adventure Rank Your Traveler and the rest of your party gain XP and level up, but you really want to focus on your Adventure Rank, awarded for most activities. You need it for story progression, but also to unlock key features and to increase your World Level for better rewards. 02 Do the daily commissions Once you hit Adventure Rank 12, four new quests appear each day. The rewards are slight, but add up quickly, and the quests can…

INFO FORMAT PS5 PRICE £24.99 ETA Out now PUB Team 17 DEV OverBorder Games PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 12-15 hrs ACCESSIBILITY N/A Another month, another soulslike. We thought that with time, games seeking to capture FromSoftware’s magic would begin to do more with their inspiration, applying the formula to novel premises. While a handful do manage to translate Dark Souls’ ideas into something new, Thymesia demonstrates the dearth of imagination that plagues the genre. Which is apt for a game all about a plague, as you play a hunter in search of memories while fighting monstrous citizens of a haunted world. Above all else, Thymesia wants to be Bloodborne. It’s apparent in everything from the premise and world to the protagonist (who resembles one of Bloodborne’s well-known NPCs) and even the…

INFO FORMAT PS5 (reviewed), PS4 PRICE £15.99 ETA Out now PUB Team OFK DEV Team OFK PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 6 hrs ACCESSIBILITY Basic subtitles; adjustable text message speed; controller vibration and dialogue choice timer on/off Adult fans of animation are spoilt for choice. Beyond Studio Ghibli classics or more recent favourites such as The Owl House, there’s a whole world of animation specifically for an audience cursed with an understanding of what taxes are. We Are OFK charts the trials and tribulations of four creatives (and their AR cat, Debug) trying to make their mark in LA. However, while it bills itself as a five-episode, interactive adult animation series (released on PlayStation as a bundle), it struggles to deliver on at least half of that premise. First, the reason why…

INFO FORMAT PS5, (reviewed) PS4 PRICE £15.99 ETA Out now PUB Thunderful Publishing DEV Chuhai Labs PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 4 hrs per run ACCESSIBILITY n/a Sisyphus, eternally pushing a boulder up a hill, had it easy in the afterlife. Struck down moments before the greatest golf win of your life, you need to contend with a smaller, more devious ball than Sisy did if you want to ascend from Golf Purgatory, using all your talents on the green to make it through 18 hellish holes and reclaim your life. These aren’t your everyday holes, though. As a ghoulish Scotsman explains (he helps set you on your way from his ethereal golf shop Eterni-Tee), these labyrinthine courses can force you to golf upwards, downwards, and around corners while dealing with obstacles…

INFO FORMAT PS4 PRICE £15.99 ETA Out now PUB Humble Games DEV Jacob Dzwinel PLAYERS 1 Fancy fighting your way through a train while dodging sniper shots because a drone told you to? Then your weirdly specific wish is about to be granted by Midnight Fight Express. You play as Babyface, an amnesiac brawler who’s been activated by an annoying talking drone called Droney, and you have to clean up the streets. The streets need cleaning because of crime or something. Look, it really doesn’t matter what the reason is; all the cheesy dialogue, the tropes, the hard-ass cops, and the gangsters you’ll be beating up are just props for violence. If you’re here for a life-changing story, then, friend, go and play Journey or something. If you’re at all…

Any arcade vet could tell you Sega Rally Championship was a big deal in the mid-’90s, vying with the likes of Ridge Racer for arcade-goers’ £1 coins, and later providing one of the few great reasons to buy a Sega Saturn. It’s a fantastic arcade-to-home translation that never made it onto PlayStation… well, not outside Japan. PlayStation owners had to wait a while, but importers had a ’00s must-buy thanks to a surprise arcade conversion. Sega Rally 2006 was intended to be an anniversary celebration of the landmark original, appearing as a Japan-only PS2 release. However, this forgettable racer came with a disc entitled Sega Rally 1995 that was probably supposed to show how far the series had come in ten years by featuring a reproduction of the Model 2…

This has been a sweltering summer, but it’s been a good excuse to get outside to touch some grass. In PLAY’s case, though, we’ve been hitting concrete and braving crowds, armed with only a face mask, hand gel, and enthusiasm, as we found ourselves once more in Cologne, Germany for Gamescom. Europe’s very own ‘heart of gaming’ was back and in-person. Even with the now-traditional Opening Night Live hosted by Geoff Keighley to kick things off, Gamescom has always had fewer big reveals than the likes of E3. That’s largely owing to it taking place later in the summer, although given the absence of E3 this year, with only the modest Play Days (also organised by Keighley) to fill the gap, you might have thought of this as an open…

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE – CLOUD STRIFE DRESS VER. SQUARE ENIX £159.99 STORE.EU.SQUARE-ENIX-GAMES.COM Static Arts returns with another premium figure, and it’s one no Cloud fan will want to miss. Sporting one of his iconic outfits from Wall Market, the statue’s dress is impressively detailed, including airy ruffles. At just under 28cm, he’s hefty, so get your pre-orders in before he’s whisked away late in 2023. YAKUZA – DRAGON OF DOJIMA YAKUZA £89.99 ZAVVI.COM Kazuma Kiryu, the Dragon Of Dojima himself, is ready to throw down anytime, anywhere. Even if that’s just on your mantelpiece or desk. Posed mid-combat, he’s cleaving a bicycle through the air as he often does, while knocking over traffic cones. Street tiles on the base place him in Kamurocho. He stands at 26.7cm and should…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 22 NOV / PUB TEAM 17 / DEV FIKA PRODUCTIONS / PLAYERS 1-2 Tarot readers have a surprisingly positive interpretation of the Fool. When this card crops up in a spread, the Fool can represent a willingness to give over to the process and trust it will all come out okay in the end. That’s probably not the sentiment you want steering your ship through choppy waters but a little bit of optimism goes a long way – that is, up until the sea monsters pull your fragile vessel under the waves. Ah well, we should probably give the deck one more shuffle… “THEY DON’T CALL IT THE AQUAPOCALYPSE FOR NOTHING.” In this roguelite, the titular buffoons – there are a number to choose from,…

“THE SETTING (AND CONTROLS) HARK BACK TO CLASSIC RESIDENT EVIL SURVIVAL HORROR.” FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 18 NOV / PUB BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT DEV SUPERMASSIVE GAMES / PLAYERS MULTI Many a myth surrounds HH Holmes, who’s regarded as America’s first serial killer and who committed his crimes in the late 19th century. One of the most infamous is that he built his own hotel, which the press later nicknamed the ‘Murder Castle’, to lure in victims. Surely a ripe setting for a horror game, then. For Supermassive Games’ fourth and final instalment (well, for ‘season one’ at least; more appears to be on the way) in The Dark Pictures Anthology, the Lonnit Entertainment TV crew that makes Architects Of Murder are invited to tour a hotel that, it’s claimed,…

INFO FORMAT PS5 (reviewed), PS4 PRICE £34.99 ETA Out now PUB EastAsiaSoft DEV Softstar PLAYERS 1 LENGTH 20-30 hrs ACCESSIBILITY Easy mode Surprised to notice a rise in online videos of gorgeous Chinese action RPGs inspired by China’s mythology and culture? Your amazement may be followed by wondering when all these will see the light of day. Fortunately, you needn’t dream as a successful one has been under our noses this whole time. A massive hit in its native Taiwan as well as China, this may be the seventh instalment in the Sword And Fairy series but the number’s been ditched for its first PlayStation release in Europe. (The sixth game was the first English-language release, out in the US only.) Nonetheless, you’re thrown headfirst into an epic fantasy encompassing…

INFO FORMAT PS4 PRICE £34.99 ETA Out now PUB Bandai Namco Entertainment DEV Hyde PLAYERS 1-4 LENGTH 30+ hours ACCESSIBILITY Text speed options; vibration options; expanded volume controls Let’s be clear: Digimon Survive is exactly what it says on the tin. But in the same way that buying the same type of soup from two different shops can leave you with one that’s rich and creamy and one that’s mostly just unsatisfying water, something being what it says on the tin is not alone enough to inspire confidence. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Digimon anime, Survive has more in common with early anime iterations of Digimon than some of the more recent games such as Digimon Story. As such, it steps away from what’s familiar in Digimon games, instead…

INFO PUB Electronic Arts DEV Stormfront Studios RELEASED ON PS2 RELEASE 2002 IF YOU LIKE THIS, TRY THIS… To scratch that high fantasy hack-and-slash itch without booting up original hardware, we recommend Warhammer: Chaosbane. Based on Peter Jackson’s defining film adaptations of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy epic rather than the books themselves due to a tricky rights situation, this hack-and-slash gives you nothing but the hits. After tearing through the Battle Of The Last Alliance as Isildur and lopping off Sauron’s fingie, you’re immediately beset by ringwraiths as Aragorn. After he growls that his fate is his own, the action rarely stops to pant for breath. It’s an enduring favourite for good reason, but reader @PolarbearTom22 says what we’re all thinking: “This hurts my age.” Cries of ‘How has it been…

INFO PUB Sony DEV Acquire, Japan Studio RELEASED 2010 Every worthwhile villain has their share of aliases. The wrong’un in this dungeon defence series is no exception – to the point the first PSP entry debuted in North America under the moniker Holy Invasion Of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This? but amid fears it’d throw up the bat signal, it was renamed What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord?1 But today we’re talking about the pattern-breaking third entry, which sports another completely different name – talk about a slippery suspect! As the God Of Destruction, you’re tasked with creating a fiendish lair for Badman. Your aim is to entice wayward heroes to their doom – and hopefully divert their attention away from the villain…