Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i PLAY

Uh, should we kick off this news piece with a spoiler warning? Or simply ask the question ‘If you haven’t played either of the Last Of Us games or watched the first series of the television adaptation, then why are you reading this?’ Joking aside, the second series of the show starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey is currently in production ahead of an air date set for sometime in 2025. HBO ordered a second series less than two weeks after the first season’s 2023 debut, with that initial run of nine episodes going on to win eight Emmy awards plus three Golden Globes. Talk about a tough act to follow. The second series is set to build on the first series’ success, welcoming newcomers Kaitlyn Dever as Abby and…

Finally emerging into the light, and coming to PS5 on 15 November, Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place during the late Sengoku, or ‘warring states’, period in Japan’s history. In it, dual protagonists explore the historical provinces of Iga, Omi, and beyond in what is known today as the Kansai region. Joining the lengthy series’ list of fascinating characters are stealthy shinobi Naoe and Black samurai Yasuke. Yasuke is definitely a compelling headliner as, for the first time in the series, he’s a protagonist who is also an actual historical figure. We know very little about the Yasuke of history beyond the almost two years he spent as a retainer under the extremely influential feudal lord Oda Nobunaga, but we look forward to seeing how Shadows attempts to fill in those…

FORMAT TBC / ETA EARLY 2025 / PUB SNK / DEV SNK / PLAYERS 1-2 Twenty-six years is a long time to wait for a new instalment of a fighting game. To be fair it’s been less than a decade for team PlayStation, given that Garou: Mark Of The Wolves got its belated international release on PS4 and Vita in 2016, but that’s still a long time. As 2D sprites are replaced by 3D models here, it makes us ask: just what is a Fatal Fury game today? The short answer might be ‘a little like Street Fighter 6’. Both offer a choice between traditional Arcade and simplified Smart controls and have visuals that pop with colour. COTW has a more cel-shaded, anime-inspired look than SF6, but every punish and…

“APPROACHABLE TO NEWCOMERS AND HAS A LOT OF DEPTH FOR SEASONED FIGHTING GAME PLAYERS.” FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2025 / PUB RIOT GAMES DEV RIOT GAMES / PLAYERS 1-4 Although it’s better known on PC, where the rigorous multitasking and twitch reflexes required by MOBAs and FPSs feel at home on keyboard and mouse, that hasn’t stopped developer Riot Games from attempting to bring its best-known series League Of Legends to new audiences, be that via smaller spinoffs like 2021’s Ruined King or the excellent Netflix animated series Arcane. 2XKO is set to be its boldest attempt yet The studio as a whole may be new to the fighting game ring – and facing a tough battle as it’s going up against heavyweights like Street Fighter, Tekken, and Mortal Kombat,…

FORMAT PS5 / ETA OUT NOW / PUB HALF MERMAID PRODUCTIONS DEV HALF MERMAID PRODUCTIONS / PLAYERS 1 Before saying anything about film or game making, before even asking Immortality’s director Sam Barlow how he actually feels about the term ‘interactive movie,’ there’s one question we find more pressing: what’s a Half Mermaid anyway? Barlow jokes, “Wow, that’s our 45 minutes gone,” before offering what he calls a “comprehensive short answer.” Barlow self-published 2015’s Her Story on PC, but for his next game, Telling Lies (which debuted on PC in 2019 before coming to PS4 in 2020), he was told he needed to create a business entity to contain things – a production company, essentially. Tasked with creating a list of fairly unique names on a tight deadline, Barlow borrowed…

Should someone ask me about my own relationship to religious faith, I usually answer, “Me and the big cheese upstairs don’t talk.” God does not speak to put-upon nun Indika either – instead, something devilish bends her ear, and it’s up to you whether she listens to it. From surface-level story elements and imagery to all the old chestnuts about organised religion you’ve heard a million times before, Christianity permeates games, but few titles spar directly with its influence. Indika, on the other hand, explores faith through its own mechanics. The titular nun makes an unorthodox pilgrimage through an offbeat vision of 19th-century Russia. Snow-capped landscapes are torn apart by conflict and shoved back together again by steam-powered industrial structures that loom over this odyssey’s cast, and it’s no accident…

Are you in the ‘Think of the poor monsters’ camp when it comes to Capcom’s does-what-it-says-on-the-tin series? Then this may be just the spinoff for you. Quite a bit of the formula from the mainline series has carried over here, along with beasties that debuted in 2018’s World, but it’s all presented in a considerably more monster-friendly package. You play as a rider whose village exists alongside, and has a kinship with, monsters (or ‘monsties’, to give the eyeroll-inducing portmanteau the game insists on using). The rest of the world doesn’t see them in as kind a light, though. That outside opinion isn’t helped by a mass disappearance of Rathalos that coincides with sightings of dangerous ‘rage-rayed’ monsters with pink glowing eyes, reinforcing the hunters’ beliefs that a monster’s only…

Arrrrr you ready for the best pirate experience on PS5? Okay, that’s not saying much, but a win’s a win. You can sail a ship, follow maps to buried treasure, steal and sell loot, and get drunk on grog (not a good idea in battle); though you’ll be fighting the systems almost as often as undead pirates and other players. There’s a lot to see and do in Sea Of Thieves, but – partly by design, mostly by accident – an awful lot of it is hidden. Hidden in menus, hidden via lack of tutorials, and, just sometimes, intentionally hidden by the devs as thrilling surprises for players to stumble upon. At least you can slowly uncover a lot of this by being matched with more experienced players. “When you…

01 Red Dead Redemption 2 You won’t find another open world quite like this, the streets of Los Santos paling in comparison to this gorgeous, realistic western sprawl. Arthur Morgan’s wild west adventure is epic, emotional, and has enough teasing mysteries on every horizon for no two cowboys’ journeys to feel the same. With train robberies, tootin’ headshots, and racists to kill, there’s never a dull moment in Rockstar’s greatest. 02 Grand Theft Auto V Laughing in the face of other cross-gen ports, GTA V on PS4 is more than a mere HD remaster. Upped to a glorious 1080p, it weaves together everything that made the PS3 original great, with new music, more dynamic weather, and a game-changing FPS mode. 03 God Of War A departure in some ways but…

BOOM! Cannonballs soar over the ocean waves and slam into the opposing ship. Your crew members cheer upon impact, reloading so you can line up another shot. You could blast a few extra rounds into the enemy ship’s weak points to add insult to injury. Or you could fire a chain shot to slow it down. Or perhaps you’d prefer to change course and give it a good ramming? Wait a tick… Captain! They’re trying to ram us! Quickly now, spin the wheel, lower the sails, and get our lumbering vessel out of the way, ideally while elegantly curving to the side so we can line up our cannons and punish the other side’s frankly rude attempt at retaliation. Yes, these stormy seas are also trying to capsize us, and…

FORMAT PS3, PS2 / PUB CAPCOM / DEV CAPCOM / RELEASED 2001 Claire Redfield’s assault on an Umbrella base goes pear-shaped when she’s captured and shipped off to a prison island, and then (of course) it’s overrun by a zombie-creating virus. The only thing offering hope is Steve Burnside, one of the few survivors. While you’re unsure at first if you can trust Steve, he and Claire begin to help one another as their separate stories interweave. Given previous Resident Evils, and the fact you’re given a brief chance to go sub-machine-gun happy as you play as him, you could be forgiven for thinking he’ll be the B-side to Claire’s A-side story. Sadly, that’s not Steve’s fate (her brother, Chris, fills that gap). Steve might save Claire from a Bandersnatch,…

“Play Days is designed to allow the press to see the latest in videogames.” Third time’s the charm for SGF A peek behind the Summer Game Fest’s Play Days curtain – has E3 been usurped? Slap-bang in the middle of the endless urban sprawl that is downtown LA lies a small cluster of buildings and courtyards which for three days are retrofitted into a modern reincarnation of E3 (now defunct, but once the highlight of the videogaming year). Summer Game Fest is now in its fifth year of existence, and while 2024 is only the event’s third year there, an in-person element has joined the live-streamed showcase; Play Days already feels like a well-established event. A joint venture between Geoff Keighley and media production/merchandising firm Iam8bit’s, Play Days is designed…

“THIS SEQUEL EXCEEDS THE SCOPE OF THE ORIGINAL TO AN ENORMOUS EXTENT.” FORMAT TBC / ETA TBC / PUB SUPERGIANT GAMES DEV SUPERGIANT GAMES / PLAYERS 1 Our first few encounters in Hades II are awkward and stumbling, protagonist Melinoë hacking clumsily at nearby ghouls. But as we start to move through the woods of Erebus, our muscle memory of the original game begins to flow back into our fingers. Soon Melinoë is weaving devastating attacks in between blistering dashes, carving up the legions that stand between her and her quarry. You won’t be surprised to learn that Hades II owes a lot to its predecessor. Zagreus’ rebellion against his father is a thing of the past, but nifty movement and a taste for fast-paced combat seem to be family…

Back in 1972, two stark shapes cleaved their way through black space, simultaneously hurling blasts back and forth. That was Pong. It changed gaming forever. Only five years later, in 1977, the film titled simply Star Wars would do the same for movies and pop culture. Impressive technology was just as much a part of Star Wars as its narrative – the film perfected special effects techniques. So too did games go from technical feat to technical feat. Many of the early Star Wars gaming successes, such as the 1983 arcade rail shooter in its iconic cockpit cab and the Atari shooters and 8-bit platformers, have yet to be ported to PlayStation (and that cab is now eye-wateringly expensive). The series has been embedded in videogaming throughout most of the…

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 30 AUG / PUB UBISOFT / DEV MASSIVE ENTERTAINMENT / PLAYERS 1 Over-saturation can make it easy to become jaded. Even the most ardent Marvel fans found their interest waning when four movies and three TV shows were being released every year to the point that Disney has pumped the brakes on the MCU, releasing only one film in 2024. As Disney’s other mega-property, it feels like Star Wars is teetering ever closer to a similar enforced hiatus. During the last five years, we’ve seen eight seasons of six separate live-action TV series set in a galaxy far, far away, along with seven seasons of animated shows and specials and the release of four Star Wars videogames with another four to five in development (depending on…

Ahhh PlayStation-1-era horror! Truly a golden age for 3D frights. We got our first visit to Silent Hill, several great Resident Evils… in fact, let’s go and play some Resident Evil Director’s Cut on PS Plus right now. *Plays it for ten minutes* Oh good God. What’s with these horrendous controls? Why can’t we skip the constant door-opening cutscenes? Why do the characters all look like Lego minifigs after botched plastic surgery? OG Resident Evil is a classic, undoubtedly, but to modern thumbs it’s about as easy to pick-up-and-play as a saxophone full of spiders. We’ve seen a wave of PS1-inspired horror recently, but maybe some nightmares belong in the past. Enter Crow Country, a love letter to classic horror games that’s been designed without the rose-tinted glasses. It’s about…

Despite time travel being central to this game’s plot and action, the adventure takes place entirely in one house. And that’s great. You want a game that does something different? This is your stop, off you get, remember to thank the bus driver on your way past. Six housemates died in a fire in 2015, but this wasn’t supposed to happen, so you go back in time to prevent the tragedy. The fire still has to happen (for some timey-wimey reason), so your job is to manipulate the thoughts and actions of the victims in the week leading up to the event in order to ensure they survive it. At a fundamental level, this means making sure they’re awake and/or not in an artificially deep sleep on the fateful night…

Released in 2018, 2064: Read Only Memories was a cyberpunk visual novel with point-and-click elements in which you solved a kidnapping with the help of the world’s first sentient robot. While also set in a near-future California, Neurodiver doesn’t have anything to do with it other than a few returning characters and a cyberpunk-y premise. This time, we’re going to, ahem, read some actual memories using a… mind-reading kraken? Luna, code name ES88, is an Esper, able to read and change memories. With the help of the kraken-like neurodiver and former combat android GATE, she can enhance her abilities to repair memories. This makes for a curiously uneventful life, until one day she encounters Golden Butterfly, an entity hiding in and corrupting people’s memories. It’s not really Luna’s job to…

Six tribes vie for control of the Junkyard, an apparently post-apocalyptic place where the rain never stops. (No, it’s not the UK; there are no red postboxes.) In the middle of a firefight between the Vanguards and your own party, drawn from the Embryon tribe, a mysterious bulb blooms, infecting everyone with the overwhelming urge to ‘eat them all.’ While this turn-based RPG deploys familiar SMT trademarks like the Press Turn system, there are no Wild Cards here. Instead everyone, including silent protagonist Serph, can transform into hungry demons. Devouring defeated demons you grants ‘Atma’, which you can use to customise your party’s individual capabilities – though overindulging will give you one heck of a tummy ache. Ambushes can throw a spanner in the works too, catching you out with…

The original PlayStation enabled and encouraged developers to create fully 3D experiences, but a lot of them have aged like a fine milk. So it should come as no surprise that this one is… great actually? Huh. Proof that great game design is timeless, and shooting stuff from a helicopter is awesome. It must have been tempting to tell players to simply get to da chopper and blow up everything in sight, but G-Police is more nuanced than that. A surprisingly lengthy and well-produced intro (supported by cutscenes at various stages throughout the game) sets up a future when corporations have taken control,1 and police of the G persuasion are trying to keep order. Regular chatter during missions maintains the atmosphere and provides context for what you’re doing. Sure, you…

Things have been changing at PlayStation: studios have been closed, the executive suite shaken up, internal interview gaffes made, and goalposts shifted. It’s a tricky time to drum up excitement for a summer of gaming, though Sony’s most recent State Of Play made a good effort. It’s hard not to feel joy when Astro Bot runs onto screen. A full Astro Bot game developed by Team Asobi, which made the delightful PS5 pack-in Astro’s Playroom, is in the works. In a landscape of gritty dark fantasy games a colourful platformer is a breath of fresh air, even though Astro would fit right into Sony’s PS2 lineup. And yet the plethora of other Astro Bots besides our star, dressed up in classic PlayStation character outfits, does hammer home the absence of…

Simply making a start can be a challenge, but starting again is daunting on a completely different level. Final Fantasy XIV Online’s ten-year-long story arc concluded with Endwalker, but the adventure isn’t over. Upcoming expansion Dawntrail ushers in the first chapter in a fresh saga that sees the Scions Of The Seventh Dawn venturing to the new continent of Tural, where they end up on on opposing sides in a contest to determine the land’s next ruler. Team PLAY’s latest adventure begins in Berlin, amid the lush fronds of Biosphäre Potsdam, an indoor tropical botanical garden. Here we go hands-on with an in-development build of Dawntrail and ask producer and director Naoki Yoshida what it means to begin again. For starters, there’s a lot in a name. Yoshida explains, “Naturally,…

“COMBINING THE ART AND STYLE OF PERSONA AND THE GRIM TONE OF SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI.” FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 11 OCT / PUB SEGA DEV STUDIO ZERO / PLAYERS 1 Amid a summer games lineup drowning in futuristic shooters and gritty slashers, ReFantazio feels like a breath of fresh air. Not only because it’s got drop-dead gorgeous art that’s hard to peel your eyes from, but because it feels like an amalgamation of the Atlus of old with the modern sensibilities that result from Persona becoming a megahit. If you didn’t read our huge feature last issue [Back issues are available! – ed], Atlus came to prominence in the mid-’90s, its games standing out in a sea of 16-bit and PS1 high-fantasy RPGs thanks to Shin Megami Tensei’s mix…

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA TBC / PUB UNBOUND CREATIONS / DEV UNBOUND CREATIONS / PLAYERS 1 Chaotic animal sims should be a well-defined genre at this point. We’ve played as a disgruntled goose in Untitled Goose Game, a ravenous possum in Pizza Possum, and a raccoon out for revenge in Donut County. Well, you’ll be taking your reign of chaos to the skies in this upcoming animal adventure. You play as a curious crow wearing a snazzy yellow bandana, out to cause ultimate mayhem and maybe help some friends along the way. In the game’s opening level, our bird bud is let loose in a small town filled to the brim with opportunities for corvid-caused calamity. There are plenty of other animal pals to meet, offering a shopping list…

Green all over, but certainly not behind the ears, ’80s RPG series SaGa has returned with its strange ‘free scenario’ system intact. Yet while some of its defining oddities remain and function better than ever at ensuring your quest feels like your own, compromises in presentation and scope make this series entry more ‘emerald in the rough’ than ‘glittering jewel’. Early on, a helpful scarecrow with a painted-on face guides us through a desert world, which we decide to explore. We convince him to join us, and by the end of the game he’s a gun-toting, samurai-sword-wielding powerhouse who helps us destroy a god (it’s that kind of RPG). Lining up a shot to deliver the final hit in the tricky encounter, he cocks his head right before pulling the…

The greatest mystery surrounding the space station this remake of a classic game takes place on isn’t the origin of the malicious, super-advanced AI SHODAN. Nor is it why there are so few toilets for so many people. What we really want to know is how any work got done when people spent so much time recording ten-second messages on disposable audio recorders. These things are everywhere. Poking fun at audio logs isn’t new, we know, but it’s worth lingering on the overwhelming amount of in-game media, as it feeds directly into what you end up spending your time doing. Don’t be fooled by the “A first-person fight to the death in the depths of space!” tagline. There’s plenty of combat, yet that isn’t the focus. A significant amount of…

Aside from some questionably yonic imagery and the unfortunately-named ‘Legendary power of Gash’ that you’re trying to stave off, this is wholesome platforming. The Kaizō Chōjin Shubibinman series was released only in Japan on PC Engine in 1992, but now all three games have been ported to PS4 and PS5, with this third entry probably the most palatable to today’s players. Nonetheless, it does feel like an also-ran. It’s graphically assured, piling on the parallax scrolling and using co-ordinated sprites to create complex movement in its many boss battles. It feels like its original designers gave up trying to copy Mega Man, instead favouring swords over shooting, though the swordplay is of the most basic ‘push button to swipe with sword’ variety. Weirdly, the first level plays almost exactly like…

NEW 01 Umurangi Generation VR They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, this modern classic sees that aphorism and raises it with righteous, rebellious rage. Ostensibly an immersive photography game, you have a range of lenses, camera settings, and filters to play with but there’s a far bigger picture to be seen. Not only a master class in environmental storytelling, this is also testament to art as a powerful act of resistance. 02 Synapse This roguelite shooter offers satisfying, stylish action in a monochrome world punctuated by colourful violence. It puts power in the palm of your hand – and your eyes. Going one step beyond point and shoot, PSVR2’s eye-tracking tech allows you to glance and grab. 03 Horizon: Call Of The Mountain Manages to make…

The cast of Kingdom Hearts II (2005) included Christopher Lee. Patrick Stewart plays the Emperor in The Elder Scrolls IV (2006). John Goodman can be found in 2011’s Rage (Dan Hagar). Gary Oldman has acted in Spyro and Call Of Duty. BRUCIE BONUS Armageddon outta here Confusingly, singer-songwriter Poe not only contributed to Apocalypse’s soundtrack, she also acted in it. Apocalypse didn’t set the world on fire – shame; it would’ve been appropriate – but it was one of the first examples of an established actor appearing in a game. It did, however, use a new game engine that was reused for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Spider-Man. APOCALYPSE (1998, PS1) ALLOWED PLAYERS TO STEP INTO POLYGONAL BRUCE WILLIS’S SHOES. IT WAS RELEASED THE SAME YEAR AS ARMAGEDDON. AL TOGETHER…