[PlayStation Official Magazine _95] - (2014)

Issue 095 april 2014 £5.99 officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk

b a t arkhaM

m a n k n i g h t

Buckle up for the next generation of The Bat

ISSUE 95 / APRIL 2014

Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW, United Kingdom Tel +44 (0) 1225 442244 Fax: +44 (0) 1225 732275 Email opm@futurenet.com Twitter @OPM_UK Web officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk

Hello.

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EDITORIAL Editor Matthew Pellett @Pelloki Associate editor (online) Leon Hurley @leonHurley Managing art editor Milford Coppock @milfcoppock Deputy art editor Phil Haycraft Production editor Dom Reseigh-Lincoln @furianreseigh News editor David Meikleham @OPM_Dave Games editor Phil Iwaniuk @PhilIwaniuk CONTRIBUTORS Writers Louise Blain, Dan Dawkins, Emma Davies, Matthew Elliott, David Houghton, Michael Gapper, Andy Kelly, Jason Killingsworth, Louis Pattison, Rob Pearson, John Robertson, Matthew Sakuraoka-Gilman, Chris Scullion, Oliver Smith, Joel Snape, Ben Tarrant, Ben Wilson, Iain Wilson, Richard Wordsworth Designers Andy Ounsted ADVERTISING Advertising sales director Nick Weatherall Advertising sales manager Andrew Church Account sales manager Ricardo Sidoli MARKETING Trade marketing manager Colin Hornby Senior product manager Adam Jones Group marketing manager Sam Wight Senior marketing executive Tilly Mitchell Marketing executive Antonella Matia

Game of the month Dark Souls II fave batman villain Calculator

CIRCULATION International account manager Rebecca Hill Head of trade marketing James Whitaker PRINT & PRODUCTION Production manager Mark Constance Production co-ordinator Vivienne Turner LICENSING International licensing manager Regina Erak FUTURE PUBLISHING LIMITED Editorial director Jim Douglas Creative director Robin Abbott Managing director Nial Ferguson Deputy managing director Clair Porteous Head of games Lee Nutter Group senior editor Tim Clark @timothydclark Group art director Graham Dalzell SUBSCRIPTIONS Phone our UK hotline on 0844 848 2852 Phone our international hotline on +44 (0)1604 251045 Subscribe online at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk NEXT ISSUE ON SALE 14 April 2014 Printed in the UK by William Gibbons on behalf of Future.

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s an ’80s kid growing up in the ’90s, Batman sucked. I just missed out on Burton’s duo, so I suckled at George Clooney’s nipples. It was horrible. And the games back then? Worse. Nolan started my DC course-correction with Begins, but it was Rocksteady and its out-of-nowhere PS3 hit Arkham Asylum that made me reassess my DC opinions for good.

So when I say that Batman: Arkham Knight is Warner’s most important game yet, I don’t say so lightly. It’s because Batman – along with The Order: 1886 on page six – promises to set new benchmarks for PS4; ones you didn’t dare dream were possible.

Hi, by the way. If you’re a long-time reader you’ll notice I’m new to this page. Having spent two years watching the industry evolve in the dark world of multiformat, I can definitively say that PlayStation is the only place to be this generation.

But, hey, you knew that already, didn’t you?

Enjoy the issue!

this month’s Caped crusaders...

Chief executive Mark Wood Non-executive chairman Peter Allen Chief financial officer Graham Harding Tel +44 (0)207 042 4000 (London) Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 (Bath)

© Future Publishing Limited 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. The registered office of Future Publishing Limited is at Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. All information contained in this magazine is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this magazine. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage.

We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from well managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. Future Publishing and its paper suppliers have been independently certified in accordance with the rules of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).

Leon Hurley

Dave Meikleham

Phil Iwaniuk

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Followed the Bat-Signal to see the new Batman game, then stumped Rocksteady with questions about Schrödinger’s Catwoman.

news editor Making more returns than a bumped-off comic villain, Dave answered the ringing red phone this issue for a full-time comeback.

games EDITOR Spent his hours filling his pockets as Thief’s Garrett.

Valiantly tested his skills at home, but the TV wouldn’t quite slide down his shorts.

Game of the month The Last Of Us: Left Behind fave batman villain Joker

Game of the month Dark Souls II fave batman villain Tom Hardy’s Bane

Game of the month Thief fave batman villain Scarecrow

Dom ReseighLincoln

production editor Best party trick? Pulling an uncanny Jim Cornette face when ex-ed Ben had never heard of Botchamania.

Game of the month Strider fave batman villain The Court Of Owls

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highlights THE BIG 10

006 The order: 1886 Fresh gameplay from Ready At Dawn’s PS4 debut – is it really an Uncharted-beater?

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PREVIEW

032 evolve We get all David Attenborough on the murderous flora and fauna of Shear FEATURE

048 batman: arkham knight We blow the lid open on Bats’ return with 12 pages of interviews, exclusive info and screens so pretty you’ll take them out for dinner feature

062 PS4’s secret games What does next-gen have up its sleeve in 2014 and beyond? Expert analysis on the games that have to be in development for PlayStation 4 REVIEW

076 DARK SOULS II Dust off that PS3, you’re not done with it yet.

Our definitive verdict on the nails RPG REVIEW

080 THIEF Garrett attempts to steal our hearts all over again in rebooted PS4 form. Almost succeeds RETROSTATION

104 SPLINTER CELL: CHAOS THEORY Revisiting a clandestine classic from way back in the PS2 era. Play it again, Sam

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se c tions at a g l an c e

the big 10

previews

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Latest info, screens and playtests All the hottest news

features

reviews

network

retro STATION

To-the-point, detailed analysis

In-depth verdicts on every big new game

Max out your PS4, online and off

Classics revisited

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THE GAMES INDEX 107 assassin’s creed III 093 atelier escha & logy: alchemists of the dusk sky 093 backgammon blitz 048 batman: arkham knight 084 castlevania: lords of shadow 2 046 CHILD OF LIGHT 076 dark souls II 093 Dragon Ball Z: Battle for Z 093 DUSTFORCE 038 EA sports ufc 092 Earth defense force 2025 016 The elder scrolls online 047 tHE EVIL WITHIN 032 evolve 042 final fantasy xiv: a realm reborn 093 forest legends: the call of love 102 Gran turismo 6 098 the last of us 087 the lego movie videogame 046 LEGO THE HOBBIT 088 lightning returns: Final Fantasy XIII 114 Mass effect 2 090 master reboot 012 metal gear solid v: ground Zeroes 097 minecraft 044 Murdered: soul suspect 045 MXGP 006 The order: 1886 082 outlast 092 pac-man and the ghostly adventures 087 rayman legends 103 resogun 040 sniper elite 3 104 Splinter cell: chaos theory 087 surge deluxe 083 strider 097 terraria 080 thief 096 tomb raider: definitive edition 092 txk 047 tHE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT 047 tHE WITNESS 036 wolfenstein: The new order 086 the wolf among us e2 014 yaiba: ninja gaiden z

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with the power of ps4, ready at dawn has gone crazy with the fidelity.

Stories everyone’s talking about

The Big10

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Job #1: rid the world of ancient, murderous halfbreed mutants. Job #2: a spot of tidying up.

12 speed of snake

We finish Koj’s latest. Twice.

16 elder statesman

What does the TESO beta hold for PS4?

19 RISING FUN

PS4 launches in Sony’s homeland.

TheBig10 Stories everyone’s talking about

Can The Order: 1886 become PS4’s flagship IP?

Ready At Dawn’s new PS4 project tipped to be a potential Uncharted-beater You probably haven’t been Googling The Order: 1886 on a daily basis in search of new info, counting down days on the calendar as its nebulous ‘late 2014’ release date draws ever nearer, or saving up your pre-order pennies to secure it at the earliest possible opportunity.

That’s not a knock on Ready At Dawn’s PS4 prospect by any means, but more an indication that its E3 2013 reveal, like Tom Cruise chat show appearances and glory holes, yielded more questions than answers. Just what is it, gamers pondered, bleary-eyed in the haze of E3’s bluster. A shooter, but not a shooter. Set in the past, but not set in the past. Luckily a fresh peek of the game has cleared everything up – and it turns out you need to get very excited about it indeed.

You should be excited because you haven’t seen graphics like this before – at least, not running in

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real-time. Free from the shackles of last-gen, Ready At Dawn has gone stark-screaming-crazy with the levels of fidelity in just about everything you see, from armour glint and hair swish to cloud… cloudiness. Our first, enthralling look at The Order’s fictionalised version of Victorian London – in which the Industrial Revolution necked a bunch of growth hormones and accelerated beyond the realms of Nikola Tesla’s wildest acid trips – starts on the rooftops. We can see for miles, with church spires and historical landmarks poking out between terraced slums. Above the characteristically grey clouds, a double-zeppelin floats by. Order members Grayson and Lafayette – who look like they stumbled through the Doctor Who props cupboard on the way to the set of Les Mis – chat to someone back at their base via some glowing, wireless radios.

Brave new world Grayson pulls out a monocle to get a better look at the conjoined airship, the game switching to a fish-eye

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The Big10

Movie magic

It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly The Order does differently to other games that makes it look more filmic. The secret? Simulated lens dirt, chromatic aberration and other imperfections that form the presentation of real cinema.

Stories everyone’s talking about

first-person view. The lines between in-engine cutscene and gameplay blur via establishing shots that pan along the horizon and become a more traditional third-person camera – though unusually it retains filmic depth of field levels, too.

At this point, nothing’s happened.

Two men have stood on a ledge and looked at some balloons. But in this time the personality of the city, of the fictionalised history and of the two characters themselves, has been established beautifully, because every element feels different to other games. It’s exactly the tingle of excitement a new IP should deliver: the promise of a new world that’s worth exploring.

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Ru awakening For Ready At Dawn boss Ru Weerasuriya, building fantastical worlds that remain grounded in real-world history is a true passion.

The Order’s fiction – in which humankind has been plagued by mutated ‘half-breeds’ since the time of Arthurian legend, and an order of knights has kept that threat at bay for centuries – began purely as an exercise in storytelling, with no game attached to it. Only when development of a next-gen project powered by a new engine began did the two combine, he tells us: “At one point I told the team I had something I knew I could instil into the project.

The design then started feeding the gameplay, the gameplay then feeding the design. It was a perfect storm where everything started working.”

At this early stage, we’re inclined to agree. Seeing a strange and esoteric world brought to life so confidently, you start to wonder why devs don’t try the fictionalised history path more often. The answer lies in risk and mass appeal, says Weerasuriya: “A lot of developers are sometimes gun-shy about how far they can go with [narrative]. But you take risks. I still remember the moment in God Of War: Chains Of Olympus when Kratos has to push his daughter away – I was so adamant about that moment being in, and one thing I learned about it was that afterward the reaction was really polarised. So then we wondered, should we do it again?”

We’re not talking about an obtuse indie oddity here – there are still men with guns, after all. But in contrast to its fellow next-gen peers The Order is still a huge commercial risk. What if people aren’t interested in neo-Victorian London? What if

moustachioed knights carrying lightning guns doesn’t sell? There’s not much precedent within the industry to make your sales projections on. Still, Weerasuriya and Ready At Dawn take the risk: “Early on we told ourselves that this is what we believe in, we have to do this right. I hope people attach to it.”

there’s a rebellion brewing on the streets, and it’s not long before everything kicks off.

Rebel yell There’s more to the demo than cloud-watching, of course. A rebellion’s brewing on the streets, and it isn’t long before Grayson and Lafayette run into it, filling dingy alleyways with gunpowder smoke and showing off The Order’s slick cover-shooting and melee mechanics. It isn’t that Ready At Dawn’s reinvented these timehonoured staples – it’s that they’re placed in a beautiful environment you’d be just as happy counting the paving slabs in if it meant more time marvelling at the game engine.

Yes, it could yet be a disaster – we haven’t seen enough of the gameplay itself to make the call – but what a beautiful disaster it would make, and what a risk worth taking. There are shades of Naughty Dog-level polish and storytelling nous here even in this early build, so cross every digit in the hopes this gamble pays off.

For more info on the The Order: 1886 visit officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk.

A familiar cover shooter, in a totally unfamiliar universe. Well, a change is as good as a rest.

■ No half-breeds spotted in the game

yet – just these rebellious folk.

■ Melee combat such as this back alley

scuffle are as easy as ‘Q, T, E.’

No, it’s not a Dead Space-style health bar that glowing thing on his shoulder is a radio.

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■ Cutscenes, such as Grayson discovering this blaster on the right, give you freedom to fiddle with the camera as they play out. Mmmm, twirl it.

The full performance capture trend ignited by Beyond hits a new high in 1886. No Ellen, though.

Despite the change in screen quality, games such as Rayman still sing on the Slim.

The Big10

Stories everyone’s talking about

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PS Vita slims down for spring Sony’s redesigned handled is here, but is it worth your cash?

Whether you’re talking about sport, business or war, the smartest thing to do once you’ve gained the upper hand is to press that advantage. At an exclusive London press event last month, Fergal Gara, managing director of PlayStation UK, got up on stage to lay out the PlayStation division’s strategy for the rest of 2014. He touted the latest sales figures for the PlayStation 4 – over 4.2 million units sold at the time – which he described as a conservative estimate that ought to grow. And it has: over 5.3 million PS4s have now been sold, and Sony has an opportunity to convince these

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owners that they’re missing a crucial piece of the PlayStation ecosystem and create a knock-on effect to help PS Vita sale rise, too.

“The Vita got a whole new reason for being come last November [when PS4 launched] and users could use Remote Play between Vita and PS4,” Gara announced. “It gives yet another point of differentiation for the Vita system.

Our internal research shows that one of the reasons that we got the Vita sales we did this past Christmas was because of PS4. Indeed, we can see in the network data that PlayStation Vita is being used with PS4. We can see those connections and we can see the accounts that are using both systems together.”

The new vita is 20% slimmer and a good 15% lighter, too.

OPM talk “The Vita is easily the best portable gaming console on the market and Sony has been wise to create a deep kinship between the device and PS4 through Cross-Buy and Remote Play. The screen downgrade is a legit bummer, but there are so many other cheer-worthy tweaks, you’d be silly to let it blackball your handheld purchase.”

Jason Killingsworth Contributing writer

Sony’s refined PS Vita model (supermodel?) boasts a sleeker form factor than its predecessor.

It’s 15% lighter and 20% slimmer, a difference that feels dramatic when you pick it up – but the revisions go much deeper than simply shedding a few pounds in time for summer. In terms of cosmetic departure, the metal-grey bezels that wrapped around the face of the launch model and analogue sticks are gone, giving the PS Vita Slim a uniformly jet-black profile that disappears in your hands. Sony has given it 1GB of onboard memory, which will suffice for Remote Play or a few small indie games, but you’ll still need budget for an expensive memory card.

FATBOY VS SLIM The Slim’s secondary buttons no longer sit annoyingly flush with the surface of the device, which makes

App-y go lucky

The number of remakes available on app stores is still growing, ranging from shameful copies to the ‘hilarious’ parodies - such as Fall Out Bird, featuring the floating heads of pop-punkers Fall Out Boy.

The Big10 Stories everyone’s talking about

Tribute creator Sam set an original high score of 34 to entice new players.

Sack meets Flap in ace Vita homage LBP user recreates the avian app sensation Back in May 2013, a small bundle of feathers flapped its way onto mobile devices causing worldwide rage, high-score-induced happiness and innumerable smashed up phones.

This madness came to an abrupt end when creator Dong Nguyen pulled Flappy Bird from app stores last month, claiming the game had become too addictive and harmful. But while the original is lost to latecomers, the inept avian has taken flight once more, thanks to the quick-thinking LittleBigPlanet PS Vita user SIMSIM16.

Known to friends and family as Sam Hill, the LBP ninja has recreated the Vietnamese phenomenon with a staggering level of accuracy. “My sister introduced me to the game,” explains Sam. “I went on to look at the high scores to see ridiculous numbers at the top.” Rather than

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it easier to not just press them but also locate them via searching thumbs – taking away the need to divert your eyes from the screen.

The matte surface area on the rear of the device that aided grip has been given a grainier rubber texture, making it feel much stabler to hold.

The only real drawback is the quality of the display. The Slim’s LCD screen has noticeably less vibrancy and saturation in its colours than the launch model. Whites now have a slightly jaundiced tint. Gara claimed this was simply one of the trade-offs Sony’s engineers had to make to shave thickness and weight, while also boosting the device’s battery life to six hours. But overall, the package absolutely warrants the £180 price tag and ought to keep Sony on a roll.

Check out our PS Vita comparison shots at officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk

trying to outdo the trillions-topping über scores on the original, Sam instead took to his PS Vita.

“There were a couple of Flappy Bird levels, but they seemed pretty basic and not very true to the original,” he pointed out after looking at LBP PS Vita’s flap-tastic pretenders. “I wanted to make the game as accurate as possible, pixel perfect, even.”

Sam’s attention to detail shines through every pixel in his finished creation – in fact if it wasn’t for the PS Vita in your hands, you’d think you were really playing the original smartphone hit.

If you don’t fancy paying a well over a grand for an iPhone 3G with pre-installed Flappy Bird (oh eBay!), Sam’s splendid PS Vita version serves as a great homage. Just try to get at least one bit of natural light exposure in 36 hours, okay?

the level of detail shines through every pixel of sam’s lbp creation.

To try Sam’s remake, visit vita.lbp.me to download his feather-flinging tribute.

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ground zeroes is immaculate, hilarious and overblown in a way only Stories everyone’s talking about metal gear can be.

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The Big10

pleasure/pain

Speaking with Hideo Kojima after our hands-on, the Metal Gear guru was frank about his desire to get a title out on PS4, and that The Phantom Pain was simply too big to roll out yet.

■ Download the iDroid companion app and you can call in extraction choppers.

Stories everyone’s talking about

■ CQC feels even more lethal this time around, with a mixture of takedown styles.

New Metal Gear is up for a quickie Ground Zeroes beaten in under 17 minutes Two hours.

That’s how long it takes us to finish Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes in our very first hands-on. Then, after days stubbornly defending the amount of content in Snake’s PS4 prologue, we witness a Konami rep speed-run the entire thing in 17 minutes – on European Extreme difficulty, no less.

Imagine our shock then, as the credits finish rolling and we’re taken back to the main menu to see a sly, winking statistic in the bottom left of the screen: Game Completion – 8%.

Short though it may be, Kojima Productions has stuffed Ground Zeroes full of extras in an attempt to win over disappointed fans.

Complete the main mission and you unlock five ‘side-ops’. They all taking place inside the open-ended Camp Omega, and yet each one introduces brand new gameplay nuggets you need to master to fully get to grips with MGS V’s new

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Yes, Snake. You did keep us waiting. And then you went away again so quickly. Sob.

open-world tactics – and to consider yourself ready for The Phantom Pain.

Extraction Point Assassinate some dodgy cartel types. Extract a (very) special VIP. Obtain sensitive documents… Each mission involves sneaking into the base, getting the job done and getting out again. While the action feels fresh and diverse – you can really sense the difference between sneaking at night and during the day – it’s hard to shift the feeling Ground Zeroes is anything more than a glorified demo for big brother, The Phantom Pain. Which is frustrating when you’re shelling out £30 for the experience on PS4 (or £20 on PS3).

In better news, there’s no denying the quality of Ground Zeroes – it’s immaculate, hilarious and overblown in a way only Metal Gear can be, with plenty of fan-pleasing secrets tucked away for those who a) care to find them and b) are prepared to pay for the privilege. Still, £30?

Find out if Snake’s still got it with our full Ground Zeroes review next issue.

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The the bigBig shot 10

Stories everyone’s talking about eagle-eyed analysis

Yaiba lost an eye and an arm while fighting old fave Ryu. His replacement orb has X-ray vision powers.

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Your most powerful ability is Bloodlust, a rage mode that enables you to obliterate multiple foes.

Yaiba’s best blade plans Can the Ninja Gaiden spin-off cut it?

Praise the great ninja in the skies Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z’s star has his magic cyborg arm-‘odeath, because if he didn’t he’d be just another murderous slippers-wearer who specialises in nothing more than facepalmworthy sexist barbs. Aside from threatening to stick his stylish cel-shaded blade in wholly inappropriate places, Yaiba is also after sweet, sweet revenge on his sworn nemesis – former

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series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa.

While the dialogue is bluer than navy, the actual swordplay is much sharper than that of the disappointing Ninja Gaiden 3, as the reconstructed assassin battles an undead army using mecha-powered appendages in what’s billed as a, “stylised living comic book.” Due out later this month, there’s still hope Yaiba’s hack-and-slashing skills outshine his offensive potty gob.

Do you still have faith in the Ninja Gaiden series? Tweet us @OPM_UK.

The world’s overrun by zombies, and Yaiba needs the help of his handler Miss Monday to defeat ‘em.

number game we do the maths

Swordplay’s more fluid and supple than previous Ninja Gaidens and brings back the gore NG3 removed.

350 Cost in salvage of Napalm Arrows in Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition.

1.7m Combined hours PS4 gamers have spent using Twitch video-sharing.

£79.99

90 3mins The amount Sony’s swanky PS4 7.1 surround headset will set you back.

Percentage increase in PlayStation Plus subscriptions since PS4’s launch.

The length of Dark Souls II’s surprisingly talky opening cutscene.

172g Weight of Dark Souls II’s Japanese Collector’s Edition shield.

$264,500 Profits you earn per-week from buying GTA V’s Los Santos Golf Club.

2137 The year Alien: Isolation takes place in, 15 years after Ridley Scott’s movie.

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The Big10 Stories everyone’s talking about

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Is Elder Scrolls destined to fail?

Online beta raises questions ahead of this year’s PS4 release Skyrim with friends. That’s the dream, right?

All the emergent discovery, intricate quest lines and meme-feeding life of The Elder Scrolls wrapped up in a persistent, online community-pleasing package.

After several days spent stabbing, blocking and dialogue-choosing our way through the PC-only betas, we reckon there are some questions that need answering before that dream is realised on PS4.

The Elder Scrolls Online’s Tamriel is certainly worth gushing over – from a purely visual perspective it stands hills and mountain ranges

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above other MMO worlds. After a typically deep character customisation screen we rock up in the starter zone of Khenarthi’s Roost, just south of Khajiit country.

Though we’ve never ventured there in previous Elder Scrolls titles, there’s something instantly familiar about the world: the comforting shades of Cheydinhal architecture, and the instantly imitable accents of the milling NPCs. This is Tamriel. At least to look at and listen to.

Points of Interest pop up on your Skyrim-styled compass bar and there’s an initially familiar period of constant distraction. Soon we find ourselves forgetting quests in favour of good old fashioned

for all its character, the tamriel of TESO DOESN’T FEEL LIVED IN YET.

dev talk “Skyrim gave us the opportunity to get the MMO in front of a huge group of players who may not have otherwise wanted to play or had never played a multiplayer game before. We knew when we got into the project that it was an Elder Scrolls game.

Certain expectations come with that; it’s a huge franchise!”

Matt Firor

Game director, Zenimax Online Studios

exploration. Travelling off the beaten path usually grants MMO trendbucking missions that feel fleshed out. NPCs are fully voiced by a stellar cast (see Scroll Call for more details) and even when you are tasked with collecting ten books, murdering seven bandits or gathering 15 Daedra bits the quests are framed by narrative choices that often require you to stop and think before you start killing and looting everything in sight.

Beta max?

But here’s the first of our concerns.

For all its character, the Tamriel of The Elder Scrolls Online doesn’t feel lived in. Ironic considering its multiplayer remit, but hear us out.

The true brilliance of Skyrim or Oblivion isn’t found in its characters or its stories, but in its freedoms.

Not just in how you interact with the

Fans of Elder Scrolls’ first-person view may be happy to see it return, but it’s no good in a scrap.

scroll call

A deluge of vocal talent lends its tonsils to TESO, including Michael Gambon (Harry Potter), John Cleese (Monty Python) and Bill Nighy (Pirates Of The Caribbean).

The Big10 Stories everyone’s talking about

info patches update your brain

■ Big enemies telegraph their moves onto the ground, so always dodge roll.

world around you or which direction you head in, but how you read and react to it. Many locations in The Elder Scrolls Online feel barren of life. We find a ruined house with monkeys milling around it at one point. “What could be here?” we ask with our Skyrim hats firmly on. “A hairy corpse with a quest-inspiring diary, perhaps?” “A hidden basement of imprisoned simians that need freeing?” The answer? Monkeys.

Just monkeys, sitting there. They weren’t even funny monkeys. No jittering, no flea-flicking. Not even one at the back casually touching itself like they do at the zoo.

But let’s not lose sight of reality here: this is still the beta – and a closed beta at that. Once the servers are up and populated, it might be the community itself that imbues the world with the life it needs to thrive. But as it stands

there are far too many locations that exist simply for the sake of existing.

Is this a necessary concession when spreading the densely packed (though still huge) locations of Elder Scrolls past across the vastness of an MMO space? We hope not.

As for combat, well, let’s face it, throwing down has always been one of the weaker points of the Elder Scrolls games. Yet getting bladey in The Elder Scrolls Online is refreshingly tactile, with you unlocking and upgrading skills at a pleasing pace. Controls are also helpfully streamlined, with six (expanding to a total of 12 later on) skills available to you at once. Easily mappable to DualShock 4, then.

We find first-person mode obsolete, however, as keeping an eye on enemy attacks and our fellow party members with a third-person camera is more important than the intimate perspective the standard first-person view offers.

It’s early days yet but by trying to cater for both single-player fans and MMO gamers at large, has the new Elder Scrolls forgotten the dream that started it all? We pray to Akatosh it hasn’t.

God handheld Vita is about to get a whole lot angrier. The first God Of War Collection (featuring the first two PS2 games) is headed to Sony’s handled on 8 May. Sporting remastered graphics and trophy support, the port also allows you to switch between normal analogue controls or touchscreen inputs.

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A Solid ‘surprise’ Oh, Hideo. Are your foxy ways deserting you?

Some 13 years after its release on PS2, Kojima-san has ‘revealed’ a new Easter egg for MGS2. Speaking on Twitter, he said that the pans in the tanker’s kitchen play musical notes if shot. Sorry to burst the bubble, Koj, but we actually found that way back in 2001.

For more stories and screens of TESO, head to officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk.

uncharted love

■ Mounts are very expensive in TESO – so you won’t be nicking one Skyrim-style.

Nathan Drake needn’t search tombs for the best treasure – he should simply check out Twitter feed of Uncharted’s creative director Amy Hennig. This Feb she shared a number of Uncharted Valentine’s Day drawings, including a Spider-Man kiss by artist @pandamusk that had the team’s hearts skipping mutiple beats.

The Big10

Ken Levine’s Irrational decision Stories everyone’s talking about

Bioshock creator closes his studio From the Big Daddy to Booker, Ken Levine has taken us through an amazing journey over the years starring submerged and spoiled utopias to captivating cities in the sky. After delivering two of the best story-driven shooters ever to grace the PlayStation 3, the mercurial designer is handing the Bioshock franchise back over to publisher 2K as he closes down the Massachusettesbased Irrational Games for good.

“While I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before,” Levine announced in a statement on Irrational’s website. “To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers.”

Though Bioshock Infinite is a 10/10 masterpiece, it

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endured a troubled production – barely skyhooking itself out of Development Hell. It’s perhaps understandable, then, that Levine now wishes to ditch the realm of triple-A games. independent thinking Over the last few years, narrativedriven indie games have really come into their own – just look at Journey on PS3.

Levine’s style of storytelling would seem to blend perfectly with this new type of title.

Sadly, a studio closure does equal quite a few P45s, but with so much talent soon to be out of a job, devs and publishers across the industry have been on hand to offer support. And while it’s undoubtedly sad to see such a great team close its doors, we’re still confident that whatever Levine pours his creative juices into next will be both brilliant and PS4-bound.

levine and co are looking to focus on a smaller, indieesque game.

While there’s no news on Levine’s next project, his new team will be working with publisher 2K.

We’ll review Irrational’s final slice of DLC, Burial At Sea: Episode Two, next issue.

the rumour machine

According to Sons Of Anarchy’s creator Kurt Sutter, a SAMCRO game is still in the works.

our sources understand…

Sources close to Sledgehammer Games suggest its upcoming COD entry will be, “a big jump over Ghosts graphically.” Will it have dogs, though?

Rumour has it Sony will announce its long awaited VR headset at GDC in March.

Far Cry 4 is trading tropical islands for the Himalayas (and monsters) if an industry insider has got it right.

Contrary to previous comments from Dark Souls II’s Takeshi Miyazoe, the game could be getting DLC.

eastern promise

Sony’s next-gen system is off to a good start in Japan, with 322,083 PS4s shifted within 48 hours of launch. In comparison, around 250,000 units were sold in the UK during its opening weekend.

ThePlayStation Big 10 voices

Stories everyone’s talking about

the month in mouthing off

“Holy. God. You guys ain’t see NUTHIN yet.” Troy Baker tests inFamous: Second Son – and gets very excited.

Excitement for Sony’s new console was high – despite the recent snow storm in Japan.

Land of the rising fun for PlayStation 4

“I have a baby now, so I can’t really go upstairs for five hours and shoot people.”

Fatherhood is ruining Nick Frost’s COD fun.

Sony’s next-gen baby finally launches in Japan While the West was treated to a meticulously punctual PlayStation 4 appearance, your friends over in Japan have been waiting three excruciating months for the console’s fashionably late arrival. Thankfully, that wait (and utterly Baltic midnight queuing) is over, as PS4 finally launched in Japan on 22 February.

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■ PlayStation 4 is the first Sony console to launch in the West before Japan.

Released at 39,980 yen on its own or 43,980 yen with a PlayStation Camera, Sony’s next-gen darling launched with an initial 27 titles for Japanese gamers to get stuck into.

That number also includes exclusive fare, such as Nobunaga’s Ambition: Creation, Yakuza Ishin and… eh, Dream C Club: Host Girls On Stage.

SCE president Andrew House attended the largest launch event in Tokyo, handing a console over to Japan’s first official PS4 owner.

Dedicated fan Ryo Watanabe was so enamoured with PlayStation that he braved a two day wait on the streets of the capital dressed as a guard from Metal Gear. “Personally, it wasn’t painful waiting. It was thrilling,” Watanabe told the Wall Street Journal. Although sadly, he won’t have time for Resogun anytime soon. “I’m looking for a job, so I can’t play that much right now.”

For more from the Japanese launch check out @PlayStation_jp on Twitter.

“Since I’m going to a very cold place, asked PUMA to produce GZ down jacket.”

Hideo Kojima bags some winter swag.

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instant opinion strong vs wrong

Century success

Sony has announced your deliciously pointy cornered new box is set to receive a glut of games this year, with over 100 titles coming to PlayStation 4 in 2014.

Resolution road

PS4 is still winning the format war, with Thief and MGS V: Ground Zeroes the latest titles running at much higher rez than on Xbox One.

sac’ boy

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Fans of 2008 hack-’n’-slasher Sacred 2: Fallen Angel rejoice: Sacred 3 hits PS3s with four-player co-op this summer.

Delsin Low

While we’re still pumped for the superpowered inFamous: Second Son, we’re less thrilled the box copy requires a 24GB install. An Italian glow-inthe-dark condom pre-order campaign, meanwhile, creates stiff competition for MGS’s Snake…

Pop out

Octodad: Dadliest Catch has been delayed until April. Awwww, we want our slimy cephalopod father figure right now!

The flick also features Michael Keaton as Monarch, a reclusive street race organiser.

New NFS movie isn’t a car crash Cinematic spin-off is a four-wheeled surprise There’s another game-related movie headed to cinemas soon. No, wait! Don’t start peeling your face off in unbridled terror quite yet. This latest virtually-inspired flick isn’t actually terrible. Need For Speed stars Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul as Tobey Marshall, a mechanic with a penchant for street racing… bitch.

And when one of his rivals (played by Dominic Cooper) frames him for the death of another racer, Tobey’s chucked in jail.

Upon his release, the artist formerly known as Jesse Pinkman decides to

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it’s a worthy alternative to the fast and the furious lot.

Attack the stock

Don’t have a shiny new PS4 yet? Well, prepare for some sad-faced news: Sony says there will be stock shortages in the UK until April.

get his revenge by entering a secret race he knows his foe will be taking part in. Trouble is, it’s in LA in a couple of days and he’s in New York.

What this lad needs is speed, and a whole blummin’ load of it.

The main ‘racing across the country’ plot is naturally inspired by NFS The Run, and there are plenty of scenes in which Tobey has to scarper from the fuzz while racing in the sort of style that graces Rivals’ most exhilarating pursuits. Look out for a chuckle-worthy scene starring a school bus, too (an in-joke for long time NFS fans, as earlier games featured a yellow kid-transporter as an unlockable).

Granted, we’re not exactly talking 12 Years A Slave here, but Need For Speed serves its purpose as a worthy alternative to the Fast And The Furious series. If all you’re expecting is 90 minutes of brainless fun and fancy cars, then this diesel-tinged flick won’t disappoint. And when you’re talking about movies based on games, ‘not too bad’ is, sadly, a huge success.

■ The role of Tobey was originally offered to John Carter’s Taylor Kitsch.

For more info and to see the trailer head to theneedforspeedmovie.com

The Big10

date night

Those watchful pooch pains will soon be over, with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stating Pearce will be sneaking out between April and June of this year – with a confirmed release date to follow.

Stories everyone’s talking about

pristinely

just one more question…

10 the team debate this month’s burning issue What chance does Watch Dogs have of living up to the hype?

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Phil Iwaniuk games Editor

Dom Reseigh-Lincoln Production Editor

Dave Meikleham News Editor

andy kelly Contributing writer

However the game plays, it will be undermined by Ubi’s greedy marketing.

Aiden’s adventure is what we all need: a fresh IP with new ideas and a twinkle in its eye.

I’m an old-fashioned kinda guy. I drink my Bovril on the rocks, I wear my slacks just below the nipple, and like to play one version of a game on a single, solitary device.

But even putting all that companion app nonsense aside, the idea of Watch Dogs releasing in six different versions is utterly absurd. Want every extra? It’ll cost you nearly 300 quid. How’s that hype looking now?

Ubisoft Montreal’s likely working on one of the most defining games of PlayStation 4’s early life, but it looks in far greater danger of falling victim to some overly aggressive marketeering than falling short of creativity. n

Ubisoft’s upcoming open-worlder is more than just a potential flagship franchise – it’s the chance to redefine what true freedom actually means in a video game. Sure, we’ve had plenty of sandboxes with characters who can fly anywhere, steal any car and topple buildings like dominoes, but we’ve had nothing like this – an interconnected web of secrets, lies and ordinary lives. Yes, it’s got lots of runny-gunny-leap-overthe-fence-like-a-whitehooded-assassin DNA in it, but Pearce feels like a conflicted vigilante, not a death-dealing superman with blades hidden up every orifice. n

Pearce will (peep) show-off PS4’s power, but his Chicago will have to feel truly alive to rank as a great.

I love the idea of a dynamic openworld that you can manipulate with your magical mobile phone.

If I have to hear about ‘systemic’ gameplay one more time, I’m going to rush out and question the first group of teenagers I see drinking without a permit (ie the Homer Simpson brand of vigilantism). Ubisoft Montreal love to wax oh so lyrical about its game’s free flowing mechanics. If they work, you’ll have a pioneering sandbox where missions unfold organically, manipulated by factors as nuanced as weather or traffic patterns. Yet with a rigid, po-faced tone, these elements will have to sing if Watch Dogs is to feel as teeming with opportunity as Ubi’s Far Cry 3. n

But can Watch Dogs really live up to the freedom offered by that promise? My concern is that rather than give me the freedom to use these tools in interesting, creative ways – such as in Deus Ex – it’ll all be carefully scripted. I want Watch Dogs to be a clever, freeform sandbox, but offering that and a big budget ‘triple-A’ open world is a big ask, even for a studio as colossal and talented as Ubisoft Montreal. I get the feeling Watch Dogs will feature a lot of impressive setpieces, but the game won’t have much depth beneath Aiden Pearce’s stylish trenchcoat. n

rePlies F facebook.com/OfficialPlayStationMagazine T @OPM_UK W officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk E opm@futurenet.com

and the hope-dashing, trope-rehashing Thief.

Oh brother

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I was playing my new PS4 the other day when my brother and his mates decided they wanted a go. He pushed me off my chair and told me not to complain because, “this is what big brothers do.” Well, later on I crept up behind his chair and whacked a massive pillow across his head – with a Yellow Pages directory in the centre for added impact. Dazed, he asked for a cold towel or a cool drink, which I hurriedly supplied – not forgetting to spray the towel with extra-strength capsicum and spike his drink with chili powder and ground pepper. I then clicked on

the stereo (The Best Of Willy Nelson!) with perfect timing to avert any neighbours’ suspicion.

Robert Roemer via email

There’s only one way to remedy your Gallagheraping squabbles – by playing the entirely of Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons together.

Payne to pleasure

Just finished Max Payne 3. I had already completed

GTA V, and you can see massive similarities as to where Rockstar wanted to go with the latter in terms of design, cinematics, etc – much the same way as Naughty Dog worked with the Uncharted series and The Last Of Us. I’ve been gaming since ‘82, and it’s great to watch the two best studios honing their skills. Others should learn from these two – and if they do, we’re in for special times on PS4.

While I enjoyed issue #93’s In The Mood For Artificial Intelligence, I feel the need to defend Eliza Cassan.

She wasn’t involved with the attack on Sarif Industries; Jensen was just made to believe that in order to lead him into a trap at Picus HQ. In fact, she divulges critical info to Jensen and generally helps him out.

She’s guilty of little more than being used as a tool.

Also, interestingly, while you refer to Megan Reed as Jensen’s wife, they aren’t married in-game. Their voice actors, on the other hand, are married in real life.

Mark Dorney via email

Top calibre sleuthing, Mr D – particularly the trivia about voice actors Elias Toufexis and Michelle Boback. We’ve given the writer in question a good flogging – here’s a sub to OPM for your hard work.

Tweet gold (and one troll) from this month’s @OPM_UK timeline

@brian_fleming Today we learned that the Italian special edition of Second Son includes glow in the dark condoms. @amy_hennig HUGE night for the Dogs at the AIAS awards! #TheLastofUs took home a staggering ten trophies! @SuperCooperStar Nothing frustrates me like a platformer. Rayman, you sure look beautiful on PS4, but I hate your face.

Lee Grant via email

100% agree. The potential for what top devs can achieve on next-gen is soil-yourpantaloons exciting. On which note: new jeans please, mother.

@Bearskopff In my mid-20s. Still like to imagine Sonic The Hedgehog running alongside my car/train.

Sigh and solo

I am in the unfortunate position of having no fixed internet and finding the solo campaigns on recent FPSes (looking at you COD) pretty unsatisfying.

There must be people like

Others should learn from naughty dog and rockstar – if they do, good times will roll on ps4.

Star letter Deus of wonder

can I get a RT?

me out there, so what FPS games would you recommend for their offline campaigns?

Alice Mossor via email

A question asking our advice rather than complaining about review scores/the February floods? We like you, Alice. Pile up your PS3 plate with Resistance 3 for a starter, get stuck into The Orange Box as your main course, then crash out with the brilliant Bulletstorm for dessert.

troll of the month

#94 We playtest Evolve,

@octodadgame Want to make sure PS4 launch is problem free.

Still shooting for March, but could be early April. @dominictarason Looks like whips are a weapon in Dark Souls II. Gimmick run with leather armor and miracles? @tomreadman HAHAHAHAHA! No, FIFA isn’t scripted. Of course it isn’t. HAHAHA!!!!!!!!

@lucyjamesgames If I’d known my body was going to be all ‘lol no sleep’ I’d have watched more RuPaul’s Drag Race. @yosp Back from US, booted up PS4, found all my updates installed. Always keep it in Standby mode. @karlstewart En route to Vegas. @britneyspears here I come!!!… did I really just type that?? Oh dear.

best comments from officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk

“‘£12 is a tough price to swallow.’

Too right it is for just two hours of game time. I’ll get it when it’s cheaper.”

“Did HR Giger get his royalties for that great, big monster?”

Dyniner is in no rush to pick up TLOU: Left Behind.

Myx23 has some Evolve déjà vu.

readers’ most wanted 1

Which games are bleeping loudest on your radar?

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inFamous: Second Son

For the first time since it was unveiled in November, Uncharted is dethroned by another first party exclusive – this one flashing more neon than a hen weekend in Vegas.

But is this the game to light up PS4 in 2014? Find out in next month’s review.

Uncharted 4

Format PS4 eTA 21 Mar

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Last month, we predicted Drake’s next adventure would sit pretty at numero uno for the rest of the year – and that’s the last time we’ll try to read your minds. This placing seems pretty low, but hey, we’re merely the messenger…

Format PS4 eTA Winter

vote now!

Watch Dogs

Despite further delays and cynicism over its chances of matching the hype, you lot are still mad for Aiden Pearce’s Chicagobased hack-a-thon.

Need we remind you of what happened with the first Assassin’s Creed?

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Tell us the five games you can’t wait to play at opm@futurenet.com.

Format PS4/PS3 eTA Spring

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Destiny

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Rumours persist that Kojima’s latest full-fat masterpiece may not sneak into your living rooms until Dec 2015 – but with the follow-up to Ground Zeroes yet again slithering into the top three, you clearly don’t think he’s taking the hiss.

Format PS4/PS3 eTA 2015

Format PS4/PS3 eTA 9 Sep

exit poll

Our Facebook fans answer a final question

Yeah, we know Titanfall looks very, very good. But we’re putting our cash on Bungie’s always-online shooter rival being even better, and clearly you guys feel the same. Halo with sexier weapons and bigger bangs? Totally, irreversibly in.

13% Ignore the

What’s the best game in Call Of Duty history?

cynics and have a soft spot for Modern Warfare 2.

20% Are all about the historical conflicts of World At War.

9% Heart Black Ops II’s leap from Cold War to 2025.

46%

Love the game that changed shooters forever: COD4.

7% Still can’t move on from classic COD2: Big Red One. 5% Put Ghosts, COD3 or the PC original on top.

next month

Tell us what you make of new Batman, and whether or not you’re keen for the ace Dark Souls II to murderize PS4.

Opinion

Matthew Pellett

gaming’s like food: you can’t deduce value on the time it takes to reach that final bite but the quality of the meal as a whole.

Still, Konami’s wrong to charge £30 for Ground Zeroes

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ho in their right mind would pay £30 for a game demo?

It’s a debate that’s been going around the office in the wake of our Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes playtest - and every time somebody poses the question I raise my hand.

Hell, I raised my hand when it was £40 instead of £30, before Konami chopped £10 off the price of Ground Zeroes’ physical PS4 edition to bring it in line with the digital price. You see, I, like many people, bought Zone Of The Enders on PS2 just for the MGS2 demo. That ZOE turned out to be an enjoyable game in its own right was a nice surprise, but it could have been Ride To Hell levels of sensory waterboarding for all I cared: the main event was the Tanker mission demo, which I ploughed more time into than most full games.

I spent hours experimenting with the world. I destroyed every light to stay in the shadows.

In the bar I targeted every bottle and marvelled as liquid dribbled out between shards of glass. I riddled magazines with bullet holes and scattered ice cube buckets so I could watch the ice melt at room temperature. I shot that central pane of glass over and over and over to watch it spiderweb and shatter in different, fascinating ways.

Writer bio New OPM editor Matthew previously worked on multiformat magazine GamesMaster – a magazine he once wrote to in 1999 to share some Metal Gear Solid demo tips (based on an old Official PlayStation Magazine cover disc) he found. They were never printed. Until now.

I kissed every poster in the lockers (and was of the age where I questioned whether Snake’s smooching sound was, in fact, something much darker). I blasted every steam pipe. I popped watermelons. Punctured bags of flour. Played songs on pans. Smoked to highlight laser trip wires. Wore goggles to highlight laser trip wires.

Used powder from fire extinguishers to highlight laser trip wires. Stood outside and looked up for minutes at a time to swoon at the rain splattering on the screen.

And I tortured guards: snapped necks, punched them over railings, shot

their walkie-talkies and then attacked them as they tried to radio for help. I knocked them out with sleeping darts and shook their bodies for items (zooming in to admire the writing on the dart poking out from their eyes).

All this in a meagre ‘30-min demo’.

I made them dance by aiming my gun at their groin, and used my wet footprints to lead them into ambushes.

I slumped more sleeping guards up against white walls and then grinned like a madman as I painted the corridor red with bullets than I’d care for any psychologist to know, and I always left bodies in amusing piles.

Filling the Hudson with enough corpses to make an island out of human remains, you say? Yep, that too.

reverse gear

I had put just as much time into the original Metal Gear Solid demo (discovering a secret rocket launcher in the back of a truck if you entered then exited the base via the vent) as well, and part of me wants to do it all again with MGS V prequel/demo (depending on your definition), Ground Zeroes.

Gaming’s like food: you can’t deduce value on the time it takes to clear your plate but the quality of the meal as a whole. Ground Zeroes’ ‘length’ doesn’t bother me – especially considering that 8% completion stat (see page 13).

Its content does, though. Here’s the thing: MGS1 and 2 broke new ground. I spent all that time poring over those demos because I’d never played anything like them before. Now? In 2014? Metal Gear isn’t a mystery. Open-world stealth isn’t a mystery. And a ‘demo’ for open-world stealth? For £30? Now I’m considering lowering my hand.

Opinion

Louise Blain

Dom Reseigh-Lincoln

This is the quiet before the six-year storm of big budget gaming releases.

Gaming on a budget?

A PS Plus sub and a PS3 will see you right for years.

Why the waiting game of 2014 is the best one to be playing

Sure, PS4 might be the future, but the past is just as bountiful

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opped into your local games store recently?

Managed to find something you really want on PS4? I’m guessing you’ve already got pretty much everything you want to play. Isn’t it amazing?

Now, before you think a combination of Don’t Starve’s wormholes and hiding under beds in Outlast has finally walked my sanity a little too far off a sync point, hear me out.

PS4 hasn’t just handed over gloriously defined visuals and a lovely UI, it’s also gifted us that oh-so-precious commodity: time. This is the quiet before the six-year Jaguar processor powered storm and, let’s face it, you’re never going to have it this good again. Our Activity Feeds are endless repetitions of Black Flag and FIFA; we’re finally getting the time to slow down and play our games for once. I’m still sailing the Caribbean with Edward and, chances are, so are you.

Games are getting the playtime they deserve and when I’m not vacuuming up the last of those pesky uncharted Animus fragments, I’m checking out my scarily expansive PS Plus library and

finally getting my teeth into last year’s DmC on PS3. This is the PlayStation equivalent of a Welcome Break without the stench of long-held urine.

Indie flavour

Another joy of the PS4’s compact library? Glorious underdogs such as Resogun and Don’t Starve taking the fore and letting us enjoy the sheer addictive force that comes with innovative gameplay. And, to paraphrase a certain cider advert, it’s not just time dedicated to you individually, we’re all doing it.

We’re sharing hints, talking strategy, irritating social networks with our tactics…

Twitter is akin to that 8-week Stand By Me summer holiday – y’know, without the death – that the year 2014 just doesn’t allow any more.

This very issue already holds reviews to take this brief haven of gaming away – Thief approached stealthily and I can already hear the electricity crackling as inFamous: Second Son draws ever closer. But although my excitement for the gen ahead far outweighs any nostalgia, I can’t let go of the feeling that, just for a little while, we’ve had something truly special.

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kay, let’s get this out of the way before any of you start muttering the word, “hypocrite,” under your collective breaths: yes, I do own a PS4 and yes I picked it up at launch – but I sold enough nice things to get that £350 together that the thought of all those empty shelves and lonely, unused plugholes still makes me a little teary. Alright, enough with the eye-rolling, you.

And while I’m incredibly fortunate to own more than one system, there are plenty of gamers who can’t afford to pick up a console until much later in its life cycle. Sure, there’s no denying that PlayStation 4 is the gaming platform of the future, but a PS3/PS Vita and a PS Plus subscription is an incredible way to experience some of gaming’s most exceptional moments. No, this isn’t a sales pitch – I genuinely love what Sony has done with the Instant Game Collection. I remember the early days when all you got were forgettable Minis and free trials – who wants a free trial? The last 12 months have seen DmC (incredible), Sleeping Dogs (pork bun madness), Dragon’s

Dogma: Dark Arisen (hardcore pawn) and Bioshock Infinite (yes, as in the 10/10 game that came out a mere year ago) all given away for free. Actual free. And that’s just PS3. If you happen to have a PS Vita lying around, you’ve got another portal to free gaming.

Free Dom

Even before I picked up a PS Vita in the summer of last year, I was already adding Vita titles to my download list. By the time I bought one (with COD: Black Ops Declassified of all things – I still wake up in cold sweats from that one) I had Wipeout 2048, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Street Fighter X Tekken and Gravity Rush (to name but a few) waiting for me. With the exception of the excellent Killzone: Mercenary, I haven’t had the need to go out and buy myself a PS Vita game in the last six months.

Sure, it’s always nice to pick up a brand new next-gen game at launch, inhaling that fresh ‘new game’ smell as you open the plastic case for the first time, but there’s no shame in plundering PS3’s meatiest offerings. You’d be doing yourself one hell of an injustice if you didn’t.

writer bio

writer bio

Ex-staff writer Louise Blain has been swigging rum, plundering ships and enjoying taking some time to return to the big games of last year. With its hidden islands and collectables, ACIV has been the perfect game to savour.

Prod ed Dom Reseigh-Lincoln has been tackling his pile of shame. He’s ticked off Wheelman (Vin, we need to talk), Splinter Cell Blacklist (Sam, high five) and Lego Batman 2 (Bruce, never stop punching people – even if they’re just toys).

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disguises

Disguises Popping on a moustache and glasses with PlayStation’s devious outfits 1 Octodad: Dadliest Catch

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The people of this PS4 indie title ain’t the most perceptive lot. Are you a self-conscious invertebrate who wants to raise a family without the judgemental eye of society bearing down on you? Then just slip into an off-the-rack navy suit.

Octodad somehow turns cheap office wear into stealth camo. Kudos.

THE Metal Gear series 2

Why lather your skin in camouflage when you can hide yourself in the ultimate fortress of solitude? Snake channels his inner six-year-old with the greatest disguise in all of games: a cardboard box. So the lesson is: next time you want to hide from someone, just stick a Cornflakes packet on your head.

Hitman: Absolution 3

For a seven-foot bald dude, Agent 47 sure loves his fashion. Whether it’s dressing up like a priest, or pretending to be a wrestler with a suplex no one’s getting off the canvas from, old slaphead is the master of disguises. Who said contract killing couldn’t be stylish?

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Ratchet & Clank

Unlike several other entries on these pages, Ratchet actually puts some thought (and incredibly advanced technology) into his schemes when he wants to blend in seamlessly. Enter the Holo-guise. This little gizmo can make its wearer appear to be everything from a mindless droid to Dr Nefarious himself.

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Team Fortress 2

You’ve got to admire the sheer half-assed gall of this shooter’s Spy class. These tricksy customers can mimic any type of character in the game. Not through ingenious espionage, oh no. Instead, they merely grab pieces of paper, draw crappy doodles on them, then stick them on their faces. Hey, if it works…

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PlayStation Home

In their darkest moments, certain PS3 gamers would pretend to be the opposite sex just for the lolz of it in Sony’s online space. As disguises go, dolling yourself up as an alluring virtual lass in the sausage factory of Home proved highly effective. After all, what fake women wouldn’t want to snag a werewolf? Come on, you know you’ve been tempted to give it a try.

7 Grand Theft Auto v

Though Michael and co may have learned loads about heists from watching Heat on endless repeat, they put a lot more imagination into their disguises than Neil McCauley’s sharp suit and shades. Take the stealthy route for the opening jewellery job and your crew will pose as a bunch of light-fingered exterminators.

8 Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Admittedly, this disguise owes more to months of diligent undercover work than physical appearance.

Infinity Ward’s shocking No Russian massacre sees your American operative disguise himself as an Eastern European terrorist as you gun down half an airport with the evil Makarov.

9 Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Not every hit can be as suave as donning a fetching old-time hoodie and shivving a corrupt politician with a concealed blade. The normally liquid nitrogen-cool Ezio must impersonate a minstrel in Revelations to off several Templar killers.

Embarrassingly, copious lute playing is involved.

Honourable mentions Dark Souls

From Software’s devilishly hard scrapper has a Disguise spell that allows you to impersonate demons. You’ll still die, though.

Final Fantasy VII

For some convoluted reason, Cloud decides it would be a good idea to disguise himself as a hooker. Stupid, sexy Cloud.

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Prototype

Where most disguises require a quick change, every case of concealed identity in Prototype involves murderous mimicry.

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

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Preview

D i g i ta l edition

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on ipad & iphone

Get Official PlayStation Magazine’s iPad edition on Newsstand now for just £3.99 officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk

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32 evolve

It’s man versus man-controlledmonster in this co-op shooter from the makers of Left 4 Dead.

contents evolve 32 | wolfenstein: The new order 36 | ea sports ufc 38 sniper elite 3 40 | final fantasy xiv: a realm reborn 43 murdered: soul suspect 44 | mxgp 45 | round-up 46

Preview

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Preview

“we glide in with our jetpack… straight into the jaws of a croc.”

Format PS4 / ETA Autumn Pub 2k games / Dev turtle rock

EVOLVE

What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a – wait a sec… RUN! Evolve’s 4v1 claim is a bit of a lie.

On a technical level, yes, Evolve does pit four human players up against one human-controlledmonster in multiplayer battles to the death. There are indeed just five human participants in any one match. But to call it a 4v1 fight would be like saying the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ quest against arch-nemesis Shredder was a 4v1 struggle. What about the foot soldiers standing in Leonardo’s, Michelangelo’s, Donatello’s and Raphael’s paths, eh? There are always foot soldiers.

We meet the first of Evolve’s many foot soldiers less than a minute into our first round. We’re playing as Markov, the assault gunner. We zero in on the Goliath (the monster our team has to hunt and kill) when it disturbs a flock of birds across the map and their movement pings on our HUD to help us arrow in on our prey. So we sprint through the jungle and use our jetpack to gracefully glide over a rocky outcrop before dropping down into a shallow swamp… straight into the waiting jaws of a giant croc-like monster called a Tyrant. It drags us underwater, rolls around to squeeze the air out of our lungs and, because we’ve taken a different route to our teammates, kills us without much difficulty.

Our next death is even worse. Another careless sprint through the swamplands of Shear ends when, without warning, the thick petals of a carnivorous plant snap shut around us. Our lack of Weedol sees us sucked to death by the hungry venus humantrap

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Preview Left Medic Val heals from range with her med gun, but her best gear is the tranq gun for long-range monster tagging and slowing.

Right As the Goliath you can initially pick two offensive skills from a total of four.

The other skills are unlocked during the two levels of monster evolution.

When Goliath reaches the third stage of evolution the game timer kicks in for an epic showdown.

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Team talk

How Evolve rewards teamplay more than most games

1

Only one of the four classes deals significant damage.

Medic Val is solely responsible for healing the injured, while Hank projects shields onto others.

2

Most weapons are ineffective without support. Hank’s orbital barrage airstrike is almost guaranteed to miss unless trapper Griffin has harpooned the Goliath.

3

Didn’t revive your friend?

It’ll take two minutes for a dropship to bring a freshly spawned player: you’ll all fall like dominoes before that happens.

4

End-of-round rewards dish out upgrades not for inflicting damage, but for performing the team-focused duties most appropriate to your class.

Preview and we sheepishly have to explain to our team why we’ve died again before anyone’s even locked their eyes on our target.

rumble in the jungle

Above The Goliath travels faster when jumping, so chases often involve comedy bunny hops across each map.

“the mammoth bird is an ostrich with cthulhu tentacles spilling from its sharp beak.”

Indeed, remove the player-controlled monster from the equation and the 4-v-environment tussle proves to be thrilling on its own. Evolve’s maps are teeming with wildlife. These small creatures can be gunned down without difficulty (typically these are the creatures the main monster will kill and gobble down to help charge its evolution meter and grow stronger), but every map is also home to enemies known as elite beasts. They’re typically huge, typically strong and typically angry: the aforementioned Tyrant is a ‘croczilla’ waterdweller that drags anyone who strays too close to its favoured swamp into the water; the Crowbilled Sloth is a towering, vicious brute so powerful we initially mistook it for an evolved Goliath and so fast that naming it a sloth feels like a cruel joke for which we’re the punchline; and the Mammoth Bird is basically an ostrich with Cthulhu face tentacles spilling out from its sharp beak. There are many more elite beasts besides, all of them deadly and up for a scrap.

In round two we try to learn from our previous mistakes, but this proves to be a fruitless task. The Tyrant is nowhere to be seen, while in our third game it snatches a teammate from factrick an entirely different pool to the first one.

1 . r o c k s ol i d It transpires that the types of elite beasts Turtle Rock’s owners bid for that spawn, and the locations in which Evolve during the THQ they appear, are all randomly generated assets auction to ensure the project stayed alive. at the beginning of each game. So even if you know the geometries of an Evolve map 2 . j u n g le k i n g better than you know the layout of your The Goliath monster was heavily based on Hollywood’s own house, you’ll still jump out of your favourite oversized gorilla, skin when a killer freak rakes at your ankles King Kong. from under the sofa, or leaps into your 3 . eve r y o n e t u r t s face when you open the fridge door.

With Counter-Strikes and Brilliantly, it’s worth fighting these Left 4 Deads on its CV, Evolve is Turtle Rock’s first distractions to gain rewards. Kill a Tyrant game on PlayStation. and a two-minute health regen power-up is your prize. Slay a Crowbilled Sloth and a timed 2x damage perk beefs up the power of your guns and those of anyone else who picks up the bonus lozenge. There’s no narrative justification for this and there doesn’t need to be: it injects a compelling risk/reward situation into every hunt, and Evolve’s combat is better for its inclusion.

man vs food Above Individually, the humans aren’t that powerful – but their weapons are designed to work together for added effect.

Above Played right, Markov deals more damage than everyone else combined. Bit of a personality vacuum, though.

Whether you choose to slay these elite beasts or not, you’ll have to face the Goliath eventually. When it has evolved into its third and final evolutionary stage the endgame mission kicks in: on the map we tested, the Goliath could either kill all four humans simultaneously, or it could destroy a generator and swallow 12 panicking NPC scientists to win. On the flip-side, a human victory can come in two ways: execution of the Goliath, or by keeping the scientists alive for a set block of time (20 minutes in this case).

These endgame flashpoints are smart punctuation points to both frantic and placid rounds of hunting, ensuring that even the ‘dullest’ games (if, like us, you end up wrestling with plants you might not see the Goliath until the end) are wrapped up with memorable, explosive encounters. And it’s precisely this type of crescendo that’ll have you hitting restart the moment a round ends.

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Preview

Classic corridor-based sections appear in roughly the same quantity as open areas during the first few levels – and these nice-looking chaps greet you in both.

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“we battle a load of robot dogs and fight off a sadistic nazi doctor.”

Pre-ordering Wolfenstein grants you access to Doom’s (nee Doom 4) beta later this year.

Above Characters from previous games return in The New Order, including Caroline who was presumed dead in the last Wolfenstein.

Preview

Format PS4/PS3 / ETA 23 May / Pub Bethesda Softworks / Dev MachineGames

wolfenstein: the new order

Flying high on a West Wing and a prayer Bearing the name of a franchise that started life over 20 years ago doesn’t immediately instil confidence that Wolfenstein: The New Order is going to provide something genuinely new in what is an already over-populated first-person shooter genre. However, as with The Never Ending Story and organic food, names can be deceiving. The New Order might be trying to draw on those nostalgic heartstrings that still sing for the series’ early entries, but it’s plucking at them in very much its own way.

Having now played the first three levels, it’s clear this shooter is primarily concerned with being big, eccentric and charmingly exaggerated.

Within the opening couple of hours we battle mechanical attack dogs, navigate factrick 1. Going Solo through the legs of a giant robot and In a bid to attain quality over narrowly survive a scrape with a sadistic quantity, developer Nazi doctor who is the very embodiment MachineGames has decided of a dastardly comic-book villain. to not include multiplayer.

2. Time Zone

According to Bethesda, the game will last around 16 hours. The three levels we played were an hour each.

THE BIG SLEEP

Following a traumatic event that befalls protagonist William ‘Blazko’ Blazkowicz – sending him into a state of semi3. New Beginnings consciousness – 16 years pass in the blink MachineGames is a of a cutscene eye. When he fully awakes Swedan-based studio in 1960, he’s met with a world in which formed by a bunch of ex-Starbreeze employees. the Nazis have won the war and taken over.

This 1960 features flying machine gun drones, bipedal robots reminiscent of Robocop’s ED-209 and guns that wouldn’t look out of place in Killzone or Mass Effect. Your one-man mission is to reignite the resistance and destroy the Nazis – and nothing screams Wolfenstein like a realistic narrative full of rational and sensible characters.

There’s a great deal of variety in how you’re tasked with approaching and winning this war. In the first two levels alone we conquer the skies with a turret gun, scale a castle using a rope and hook, use stealth to disable guards at a checkpoint and search a garage for goggles to protect our eyes from blood splatter as we chainsaw a Nazi captive to death.

Levels are designed specifically to facilitate player choice, meaning there’s often more than one way to approach any given situation. When we enter an area harbouring an enemy commander, for example, an icon appears on-screen to tell us how aware of our presence he is. If we can put him out of service without being seen, nobody else can call in reinforcements – making our overall job much easier.

Once the commander’s down, it’s up to us whether we dispatch the rest of the enemies through stealth or an all-guns-blazing approach – safe in the knowledge that more bad guys aren’t going to appear. Alternatively, we can let the commander see us and have a whole area’s regiment come at us – and we’re tempted to sack off the stealth options because the shooting feels great.

SCOTT ‘STEINER

The futuristic weapons and enemies means you’re having the most fun when tackling foes head-on; working out which guns are best for a given situation and how you can use the environment to your advantage.

Dungeon-like corridors force you to play more slowly to avoid getting caught unawares, whereas more open areas allow you to choose between getting up high and using sniper rifles – which can be dual-wielded – or staying low in the thick of the action.

If later levels can introduce new ideas and challenges with the frequency of The New Order’s initial hours, it’s difficult to see how it could possibly fail to undo the damage done to the series with last-gen’s so-so instalment. What was once looking to be a stopgap until Doom has suddenly turned into a dark horse for 2014.

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Fighters tend to be mo-capped in their off-peak phase – so a bit of creative license is employed to chisel them up in the Octagon.

Preview This sort of caption which sits on the image doesn’t have the little coloured box at the start. 4 lines.

“A FEW FLAT BLOWS MIGHT NOT LEAVE A MARK, BUT A SINGLE HIT CAN BE BLOODY.” Format PS4 / ETA Spring / Pub EA / Dev EA Canada

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EA SPORTS ufc

Team Fight Night readies for its first scrap in the Octagon There’s a moment in David Fincher’s Fight Club when Ed Norton’s character Jack takes on handsome, soft-faced Jared Leto in a no-rules basement scuffle – and smashes Leto’s angular cheekbones into paste. Jack’s justification, delivered while his opponent’s twitching on the floor? “I felt like destroying something beautiful.”

This isn’t a comparison to the UFC, where there are dozens of rules and a referee in place to stop exactly this sort of thing from happening. It’s just how we felt playing EA Sports’ new take on the sport. The faces, you see, are astounding – lovingly 3D-scanned from every fighter f a c tr i c k via EA’s special capture tent, then polished 1 . s m art f i g h ter and tweaked until you can, no joke, see EA is promising ‘MMAI’, a system that’ll make fighters reflections in their retinas. They’re probably fight cautiously if they’re the best faces you’ll see in a sports game ahead on the scorecards. this year, and maybe the best faces in any 2 . w e i g h t w at c h sports game to date. But what we really The roster’s set to top 100 wanted to do, more than marvel at their fighters, spread across eight male weight classes high-resolution texturing and dynamic – and a few lady weights. lighting, was smash them. All of them.

3 . f e m m e f ata l e Mercifully, EA has this covered too.

This is the second UFC game Development’s being handled by the to feature female fighters, Fight Night team, and so realistic faceafter Xbox’s forgettable UFC: Tapout back in 2002. smashing is at a premium. The control system borrows heavily from THQ’s earlier instalments in the franchise – face buttons for striking, stick-twirls for grappling – but parrying’s been hugely simplified, and counter-striking’s rewarded with blows that feel heftier than a normal

jab or kick. Next-gen tech has a hand in the violence, too. As well as muscles that genuinely strain and skin that purples up when it’s hit, one of EA Sports’ big draws is ‘non-linear damage’. It calculates how every blow lands, so a few flat connections might do no visible damage, while a single, true strike can open up a nasty cut.

TAP OR SNAP

One area that’s been drastically changed is the submission system.

Twirling the stick like a lunatic is no more – instead, the defender flicks the right stick in different directions to attempt an escape, while the attacker has to match their movements and simultaneously watch for on-screen prompts to flick the left stick. It’s a tricky system to get the hang of, and obviously harder for the attacker – but it also feels fairer than anything we’ve seen in an MMA game so far.

Oh and there’s always the opportunity to leap off the cage with a Matrixstyle aerial roundhouse kick, too.

The final piece of the puzzle is what else will be in there. At the moment, EA isn’t talking career modes, online, training or ‘simulation’ modes – all well-handled by previous instalments.

Right now, it’s focused on those lovely faces. And how to destroy them.

Above EA Sports UFC will be running on the purdy new Ignite engine (the same one that’s powering Madden NFL 25 and FIFA 14 on PS4).

Preview Only the fighters who’ve performed off-the-cage aerial attacks in real life can do so in-game.

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Fighting Talk

Don’t know your natural born killers from your undercard fillers? Sound as if you do, with our 30-second guide

1

Is Jon Jones the greatest of all time? We’ll see – he doesn’t seem to like getting hit, but he’s fought through a lot of adversity to get where he is.

2

Alexander Gustafsson’s got the skill set to beat Jones.

Great reach, improved wrestling and solid leg kicks. He lost badly in their last fight, though.

3

Chael Sonnen’s one of the best fighters to have never won a title. He never really got his head right in the UFC, with so many losses by triangle choke.

4

You can’t really count Chuck Liddell’s last few performances against him – in his prime he was smashing every other fighter to metaphorical bits.

Left Higher profile fighters will have more elaborate intros, including signature moves – and music, where it isn’t too expensive.

Above Chan Sung Jung is in – and so is the Twister submission only he has managed to pull off inside the Octagon.

Preview Not the smartest way to check the surroundings for snipers, Hans. Prepare to be violated by lead.

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Format PS4/PS3 / ETA spring / Pub 505 Games / Dev Rebellion

SNIPER ELITE 3

Where it’s bullet time... all the time Who said the double-A game was dead?

Damn fools, that’s who. Rebellion’s Sniper threequel is proof that there’s still an area between multi-studio, multi-million projects and bedroom indie games.

The mid-size Oxford team’s ambition is humble: to do Sniper Elite again, but a bit better.

Better how? (Like a clown better?) Most significantly, by swapping out the well-travelled paths of crumbly French villages and impossibly grey Nazi strongholds for a new theatre of war – the African front.

Goodbye Medal Of Honor slate, hello orange palette.

Games have rarely ventured into this area of the global conflict, but the change of locale is significant for more than just a landscape switch-out. Levels are much bigger and more open, so there’s more opportunity for, y’know, sniping. Which in turn means you’ll spend more time enjoying the guilty pleasure of that x-ray killcam. It’s gorier than ever, adding layers of muscle and a full circulatory system.

Even vehicles get the killcam treatment now – shoot through an engine to see its components fall apart.

AI is another a point of pride for the dev, having taken fan feedback (the polite term for sweary message board death threats) to heart and vowed

“the x-ray cam is back – and with new organs to snipe it’s gorier than ever.”

to make enemies smarter than ever.

Based on what we’ve seen Sniper Elite 3’s bad guys are still not the sharpest fascists in the drawer, but handy radial detection bars give you a good idea what they’re about to do, enabling you to plan out your next move when entering one of those aforementioned open areas.

Scope and glory

We saw roughly 30 mins of gameplay, during which our eagle-eyed hero not only scoped foes from across the map, but was also rumbled by guards and had to lay mines to make his escape.

Action sequences are fallbacks, though: Rebellion hasn’t turned this into a runner-and-gunner.

Certainly, improvement over Sniper Elite V2 is within Rebellion’s sights.

Multiple routes through levels is a welcome addition to the series’ arsenal, but with environments stopping short of sandbox freedom we have to question if it’s next-gen enough.

Above Rebellion’s in-house Asura engine isn’t quite Miss Universe, but it could certainly get catalogue work in the right light.

Preview

Format PS4 / ETA 14 Apr / Pub Square Enix / Dev Square Enix

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Or more accurately, a release retextured

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At first glance, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s PS4 version is everything you’d expect from a next-gen re-release. It’s prettier, running at a smooth 1080p for super-realistic Chocobo plumage modelling. According to creative director Naoki Yoshida it also sounds better (though our ears struggle to identify much of a difference between the two versions). And there are servers that let you play online this time as well – instead of the smiles and happy thoughts that powered the PS3 version on launch.

So far, so exactly what you’d expect from what was already a very pretty pony being trotted out again on souped-up hardware. But unlike, say, COD: Ghosts, developer Square Enix isn’t pretending that PS4 FFXIV offers a whole eye-fizzingly new experience. Yoshida is very clear: FFXIV is a cross-platform product – there’s no eyebrow-arching ‘Definitive Edition’ to be factrick 1. People power had on the more recent hardware. As such, The current player-base is if you already own A Realm Reborn on PS3, huge: 1.8 million people play and you own a PS4, you can upgrade your FFXIV already, with 6.7 million characters created. game to the next-gen version gratis. No £10 ‘upgrade’ fee – it’s yours, with all your 2. final hours saved progress transferred across to the In the six months since the new console. Pitiless cynics that we might PS3 launch, those players have racked up 400 million otherwise be, in our books, that’s a very, hours in FFXIV. very good thing.

3 . s ta r t e r f o r t e n

Yoshida wants the game to run for at least ten years, with regular updates every three months.

Realm revisited

We’ve already reviewed the PS3 version, which we scored an eight back in issue #89, and from our time with the PS4 upgrade and the moments spent chatting with Yoshida it’s clear very little has changed in-game, save for the graphical upgrade and the more robust servers.

The world of Eorzea is still vast and varied with its mountains and forests and deserts – it’s also full of terrifying monsters and passive, helpless wildlife that stare on with big, sad eyes as you stove their faces in with an axe for meagre EXP. Which means, cosmetics aside, you have to look outside of the game proper for other reasons to give FFXIV a try if you weren’t convinced by the PS3 game.

Luckily, PS4 does have a couple of technical tricks up its sleve for just this situation. Firsly there’s

the official addition of keyboard and mouse support for the PS4 version – pushing the experience of playing A Realm Reborn straight into the domain of the PC MMORPG. When we alternate between a DualShock 4 and a gaming keyboard and mouse combo we find the latter to be the preferable option. There aren’t many games capable of prying our DualShock 4 out of our hands, of course, but as A Realm Reborn’s bursting with menus, commands and fiddly control complexities, it’s much more pleasant to play with enough inputs under the fingers to give every major function its own keybinding.

Remote fantasy

Also new for the upgrade is Remote Play support with PS Vita, which yields no serious causes for complaint – except when we somehow get our camera stuck in a strange POV mode that we struggle to get out of and have to restart the game. Okay, so it yields one cause for complaint, but the issue has been added to Yoshida’s fix-list and before we got it stuck we found the experience on the handheld was surprisingly fluid, even if the menus had to be viewed in painful, eye-watering squint-o-vision on the smaller screen.

If you’re already A Realm Reborn subscriber, clearly you’d be as mad as banana sandwiches to decline the free upgrade to the next-gen version.

But if you’ve yet to take your first steps in Eorzea and you’re tempted to saddle up atop a Chocobo and ride in seeking adventure, there’s now no need to hold out until the next-gen version launches to experience one of the best MMOs currently available on PlayStation: simply buy it on PS3 and accept the free upgrade in April.

This is the way all cross-generation experiences should work.

Preview

Chocobos return, obviously, and if you pre-order A Realm Reborn on PS4 you’ll unlock the special Fat Chocobo mount to waddle around Eorzea.

“THE HELPLESS WILDLIFE STARE AT YOU WITH SAD EYES AS YOU KILL THEM.” 043

Much of the wildlife can be handled solo, but larger enemies are much more fun when tackled as a team.

Above Character customisation is vast and complex, while choosing your loadout with the DualShock 4 works surprisingly well.

Preview

on the box

“you straddle the line between the spirit world and the living.”

judged only by their covers

THE LEGO MOVIE VIDEOGAME You’ll meet quite a few undead characters – it’s just a shame that good skin care died with them.

Format PS4/ps3 / ETA junE / Pub square enix / Dev airtight games

044

A local cover band is rerecording ‘80s smash YMCA – and it’s your job to direct the video! First up, casting: do you go with Mechanic Mike, Crap-Hair Carla, or It’s-Red-Not-GingerDammit-Flying-Dude?

Format PS4 ETA OUT NOW

murdered: soul suspect

Supernatural crime thriller haunts its way onto next-gen You’d think that being thrown from a top-storey window and filled with a gun-load of hot lead would make most cops reach for their gold watch and retire to the donut-filled precinct in the sky. Well, clearly no one told grisly copper Ronan O’Connor, who returns from the dead to hunt down the pesky perpetrator who threw him – and his choice of headwear – into an untimely demise.

Previously slated as a last-gen exclusive, Square Enix has announced the supernatural crime thriller will also be coming to PS4 in the summer. Splicing together the haunted, mist-laden atmosphere of Silent Hill with the crime solving sleuthery of LA Noire, Murdered: Soul Suspect is shaping up to be one of the most intriguing new IPs of 2014. Square Enix promises a tasty 1080p presentation with, “subsurface scattering and an increased particle count that will depict an even more immersive ghost world.” In other words, being an undead bobby has never looked so purdy.

csi: GHOST TOWN

Coming from Airtight Games, the studio that brought you Dark Void (don’t laugh) and Quantum Conundrum (don’t cry, we thought it was painfully hard too), Soul Suspect follows the Salem-based detective as he straddles the border between Dusk – the spirit world – and the realm of the living.

As O’Connor, you can possess NPCs to gain access to new evidence and search their memories for new leads. You can even take control of machines such as security cameras to follow the trail of your

hooded assailant. Best of all, without a body to hold you back you’re able to stroll straight through walls while investigating; the key exception being the external brickwork of buildings, as the people of Salem wisely blessed their homes to keep ghosties at bay.

Salem’s packed with spectres. As you uncover details surrounding your own painful end you realise your killer has far grander plans, and you’ll need to interrogate other deceased residents to solve your murder – and theirs.

From what we’ve seen of it so far, Murdered: Soul Suspect looks like it could nail that balance between atmospheric horror and an engaging murder mystery. If Airtight Games can take the gimmick of possession and spin it into a fun, full-length yarn then this slice of supernatural noir could go from paranormal potential to a real Casper contender.

FINAL FANTASY XIV: A REALM REBORN It’s 2398 and, as the world’s last lollipop man, you must guide kids to school over treacherous, sky-based roads. Instead of cash, you’re rewarded with evermore-absurd headgear.

Format PS4 ETA 14 APR

RAYMAN LEGENDS

Above Only those with a latent psychic ability will be able to communicate with O’Connor.

Karaoke game in which the player with the lowest score is relieved of their limbs and fed to their opponent while Hot Dog by Limb Bizkit plays in the background. Survive 100 bouts for a celeb faceoff with Adam Richman.

Format PS4 ETA Out now

Preview The game features 60 official riders, 60 bikes and 14 tracks from the dirt-caked world of MXGP.

Format PS3/PS Vita / ETA 28 Mar / Pub Milestone / Dev M’stone

MXGP

The Motocross fantasy just got more fantastic We have no idea how Motocross was invented, but it seems like the kind of sport a bunch of dudes brainstormed on a whiteboard, scribbling furiously with dry-erase markers, pausing only to crush an empty can of Carling against their foreheads or toss back a Jägerbomb. Dirt! Mud! Motorcycles!

Jumps! Even more dirt! What’s not to like?

The next instalment of MXGP promises to do an even more accurate job of simulating the experience of being a professional Motocross rider. Promises Milestone intends to keep by bringing in seven-time world champion Tony Cairoli during development, who tests the core physics model and gives feedback on the bike behaviour, its handling and weight.

A result of early feedback is that your left stick steers the bike itself, while your right stick controls your body’s angle. Now you feel like a cowboy atop a steed with its own brain, as opposed to controlling a singular lump of fused man-bike hybrid. If this thought scares you, though, you can increase the riding assists to fine-tune your difficulty preferences.

Or decrease them, if mechanical bulls are your thing.

The biggest new feature of this year’s MXGP is the addition of official courses spanning the globe:

“you can now kick up an ocean of mud across a set of real-life mxgp tracks.”

from Qatar, Brazil, mainland Europe and more, Milestone have scoured the world of Motocross for perfect tracks.

Meanwhile, a new Career mode built from scratch enables you to progress through the ranks from MX2 to MX1 while negotiating relationships with teams and sponsors. Sponsors will, of course, drop you if you’re not performing to their required standards.

There’s even fan-interaction through a fictional Twitter-style client. #trendy

Dirty deets

During our hands-on time with an unfinished build of the game, we raced several laps on Germany’s famous Lausitzring track. And while the lack of a next-gen version smarts, MXGP is no slouch when it comes to visual mud baths. You’ll still be tempted to use the free-cam options during replays to snap sweet shots of your rider skidding around corners while flecks of dirt hang motionless, Matrixstyle, in the air.

Above MXGP also sees the debut of a Monster Girl in a Motocross game. Yup, they motion captured a girl holding a placard. No, really.

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Preview

preview round-up

Blood-drenched dungeon excursions and colourful brickbased dragon hunting all get a say this month in a flurry of exciting new screens and oddly timed studio departures…

046

Lego The Hobbit

Format PS4/PS3/PS VITA ETA 11 apr / Pub WARNER BROS / Dev TT GAMES

A videogame is never late, nor is it early, it arrives precisely when it means to.

Well, except Lego The Hobbit, which has waited until two of Peter Jackson’s films have hit the silver screen before beginning its epic quest to slay Smaug.

This brick-building adventure focuses on the stories of the first two flicks, with the final one being covered in DLC. Prepare to dismantle your enemies and build brickbased Tolkien landmarks all the way to the Lonely Mountain with Bilbo and his stout companions, with each one offering a fellowship of different abilities.

Child Of Light Format PS4/PS3 ETA 30 APR / Pub UBISOFT Dev UBISOFT MONTREAL

Fresh from the success of their limbless hero Rayman, Ubisoft has continued to refine its UbiArt Framework engine to create even more delectable-looking worlds.

So say hello to Child Of Light, a quaint platformer that’s now blessed with a spring release date for both last- and next-gen platforms. This modern day coming-of-age tale features classic RPG turn-based combat, 216 unique and unlockable skills and more crafting combinations than you can shake a beautifully animated stick at. Inspired by the iconic look of Studio Ghibli’s films, this little adventure has its charm settings dialled to stun.

Daylight

Format PS4 / ETA APR Pub ATLUS Dev ZOMBIE STUDIOS

If scaring yourself silly is the basis of a good time then look no further than first-person survival horror Daylight.

Set in an abandoned hospital (aren’t they always?), you have to uncover the facility’s dark past in order to escape – armed with nothing but your trusty smartphone for company. Much like the haunting PS Plus freebie Outlast, Daylight uses diminished vision and a complete lack of weapons to enthral players in its procedurallygenerated and brutal world. Just pray your phone doesn’t run out of juice mid-scare.

Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends – Complete Edition

Format PS4/PS3/PS Vita ETA 4 APR / Pub TEMCO KOEI Dev OMEGA FORCE

It seems no release schedule is ever complete without a Dynasty Warriors title, so here’s this month’s box ticker – a reissue of last year’s instalment, only this time packed with tons of extra content. Besides featuring several new and skimpy (natch) costumes, Xtreme Legends also helps to prolong the hack and slash experience by raising the level cap to a chunky 150, as well as introducing an eye-wateringly difficult Ultimate mode.

Kingdom Under Fire II

Format PS4 ETA 2014 Pub BLUESIDE / Dev BLUESIDE

Much like that train you needed to catch this morning, the next entry in the KUF series has gone through multiple delays and platform alterations before it eventually arrives. Well, it looks like the dust has finally settled and the mythical title has made itself at home on PS4. The fantasy blend of action-adventure and real-time-strategy is expected to break its PlayStation virginity later this year (although yearly delays have plagued development), and South Korean dev Blueside promise the power to command entire armies in single-player and MMO-like multiplayer worlds.

Preview

The Evil Within

Format PS4/PS3 ETA 29 aug / Pub BETHESDA Dev TANGO GAMEWORKS

Horror master Shinji Mikami’s upcoming scare fest has been given an official August launch date, along with a hair-raising glimpse of its gruesome boxart. The Evil Within follows the terrifying trials of Sebastian Castellanos in a deranged world of hideous creatures, unimaginable terror and just a splash of fear. With the father of the survival-horror genre at the helm, prepare yourself to battle barbed wire-draped behemoths and bloodcovered mutants, while navigating intestinesplattered hallways and decrepit rooms galore.

Not one for the kids, this.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Format PS4 / ETA 2014 Pub BANDAI NAMCO / Dev CD PROJEKT RED

Although untimely, the departure of designer Maciej Szczsnik and producer Marek Ziemak hasn’t seemed to hinder the pace of Geralt Of Rivia’s third and final adventure.

New details on the adaptive economy and some of the environments have surfaced to ease our worry-filled minds, stoking the anticipation flames for this upcoming fantasy epic. Polish developer CD Projekt Red promises an organic gameworld, with NPCs building fires in cold conditions and running for cover when the dynamic weather unleashes mighty storms. This is all on top of more than 100 hours of quests and a map that’s a whopping 35 times larger than its predecessor. Watch your back, Skyrim.

Transformers: The Sly Trilogy Rise Of The Format PS VITA / ETA 16 apr Dark Spark Pub SONY / Dev sanzaru Format PS4/PS3 ETA 2014 / Pub ACTIVISION Dev EDGE OF REALITY

Autobot fans rejoice: another slice of transforming robot mayhem will be smashing its way onto PS4 and PS3 later this year.

Sadly, developer High Moon won’t be returning to helm this instalment – Grimlock’s reins have now been handed to Edge Of Reality, best known for that Hulk movie tie-in back in ‘08. The game sees the return of the fan favourite Escalation mode, as well as a cast of over 40 playable Transformers, each with their own Bay/Gen 1 renditions. XP progression is also shared across solo and online play in a tasty new open-world setting.

Following in the footsteps of fellow PS2 platforming icons Jak and Daxter, this little bundle collects three of the kleptomaniac raccoon’s most loved adventures – Sly Cooper And The Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 2: Band Of Thieves and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (all of which debuted on the PS2) – and optimizes them for lots of pocket-lining pilfering on the go. Now you’ll be able to plunder through the platforming worlds while on the move – masterfully blending stealth, combat and those oh-so-moreish collectibles to get your five-finger discount with Sly and his eclectic crew of anthropomorphic bandits.

Secret Ponchos

Format PS4 / ETA 2014 Pub SWITCHBLADE MONKEYS Dev SWITCHBLADE MONKEYS

THE WITNESS Format PS4 / ETA 2014 Pub NUMBER NONE Dev NUMBER NONE

Following the success of cult phenomenon Braid, Jonathan Blow has been hard at work creating an open-world island that’s allegedly home to over 30 hours of conundrums. The uninhabited island contains locked doors and simplelooking touchscreen logic puzzle locks – the keys to them, says Blow, being nothing more than. “knowledge.” Though these puzzles initially seem to be discrete conundrums, Blow teases that when you explore the full island you’ll begin to realise that everything is connected, with more of the complete picture revealing itself the deeper you roam.

Pavilion

Format PS4/PS VITA / ETA SPRING Pub SONY / Dev VISIONTRICK MEDIA

The rise of independent development has seen both the weird and wonderful find a home on PlayStation – and Pavilion, by two-man team Visiontrick, neatly slots into both of these categories.

Set in a surreal, hand-painted 2D world, this exploratory experience about subliminal control is as visually brilliant as it is charmingly odd, with you trying to solve environmental puzzles in a bid to transcend a surrealist’s questionable fantasy and uncover the reality within. Escher would have loved this one, we’re sure.

Due to debut exclusively on PS4, Secret Ponchos is an indie game with plenty of potential beneath its oversized sombrero. Set in the dusty Wild West, this top-down, twin-stick shooter stylizes itself as an aggressive cross-genre experience and it’s brimming with bad guys just begging for a bellyful of lead. You’ll gain notoriety through PVP stand-offs, so perfecting your draw is pivotal to your success as an infamous cowboy in this graphic novel-styled shooter.

Character reactions and the legacy you build are based on who you kill, so if you want to start filling your fists with dollars, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for this indie outlaw.

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FRIGHT KNIGHT Batman returns! Leon Hurley dons the cowl to discover how Rocksteady is ending its Arkham Trilogy on a new, next-gen high

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ver my career, I’ve seen a lot of games and formed a fairly thick skin to the all the graphical fireworks developers like to show off. I like to think myself immune to high poly counts and smokey post-processing effects. I’m saying this simply because my immediate thought when Batman: Arkham Knight starts up is, “are you kidding me?”

These screens aren’t brushed up bullshots. This is the game. At first sight I’m not even sure if I’m watching a CG opening or not until director Sefton Hill sprints forward and launches Batman into a glide over Gotham. In the interest of full disclosure, he’s playing with a DualShock 4 plugged into a PC (which crashes mid-way through our demo), but the sheer leap in visual fidelity from, say, Killzone Shadow Fall, is already incredible. Every inch of it looks like one of the pre-rendered trailers the series has used in the past, but this time it’s playable entity.

It’s actually a shame that the third-person camera has to be pulled

conveniently leaving it, once again, chock-full of bad people in masks.

“Yesterday there were 6.3 million people in Gotham City,” grumbles Commissioner Gordon, “Today? Not so many… The only people left on the streets are the sort that enjoy the chaos. Scum, criminals and worse.”

Spoiler territory

Hill explains the setup: “Batman: Arkham Knight takes place a year after the events of Arkham City. Joker’s dead and Batman is at the peak of his powers. Crime in the city of Gotham is at an all-time low.” [SPOILERS!] The Joker’s death at the end of Arkham City was a brave move on Rocksteady’s part, showing a studio confident enough to take big risks with a big character. “We felt that Joker, in a sense, was this random factor,” explains Hill. “This chaos, this disruptive figure that stopped the supervillains from coming together to take down Batman. But now that he’s gone they can finally focus and see, ‘right, our common enemy is Batman and we need to work together to take this guy down.’”

Batman: Arkham Knight takes place a year after Arkham City and follows a Batman at, “the peak of his powers.”

“my immediate thought when Batman: arkham knight starts up his, ‘are you kidding me?’” so far back to make the game playable.

During fights, when it pans in close to show a finishing move as Bats leathers some local goon, you can see the carbon-fiber weave in his shoulder pads under a layer of clear resin. Just the rain alone running over his cape – hundreds of little droplets zigzagging across the fabric – is an astonishing sight. While chatting to Rocksteady art director David Hego, even Batman’s dilating pupils are mentioned. It’s a level of detail that humbles the first wave of next-gen games, and something that spreads to the city itself: an almost overwhelming sprawl of buildings, lights and structures to behold.

“This is definitely the biggest Arkham game we’ve ever made,” explains Hill as he plays. He describes it as, “right in the heart of Gotham,” and it looks this time like you’ve got the entire city to play with. The threat of a full-scale, WMD-sized attack from Scarecrow has evacuated the city,

A bomb threat from Scarecrow has seen the citizens of Gotham evacuated.

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All of Gotham is available this time, with scale and detail only possible on next-gen hardware.

batman: arkham knight Batman’s got some extra powers to help him rough up villains including weapon steals and new Invisible Predator takedowns.

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The idea of a concerted effort from the criminal underworld to take down their enemy together is eerily reminiscent of the Warner Montrealdeveloped Arkham Origins. Rocksteady however is clear this is the end of “its” trilogy, diplomatically all but sidestepping the existence of the other studio’s instalment and refusing to say much on it. When asked about Origin’s extended crime scene investigation’s potential making a return, Hill simply describes them as, “nice,” before adding that’s, “probably all I can say on that.”

So far a basic reiteration of the last game then: Batman, city, bad guys, etc.

If I’m honest, there’s a tinge of disappointment. In the waiting room prior to the reveal there were whispers of Superman, or the Justice League from excited journos – an expectation that this might not be just another

The Joker may be dead, but Harley Quinn’s still causing some clown-related problems.

“a tap of a button calls the batmobile to your feet – you can even jump in mid-glide.” instalment of the same with a few extras. But what we’ve seen so far suggests just there is potential for more yet to be revealed. That Arkham Knight subtitle, for example, refers to a new character, not the Batman himself, and what his inclusion sets up is the game’s biggest mystery of all…

Arkham paradise

But first: the wheels. For the first time, Batman has a ride. Rocksteady says the Batmobile is its own custom design, but the influences are obvious: there’s a healthy dose of Nolan’s Tumbler for example, and what looks suspiciously like the jet nozzle from the ’60s TV show’s Lincoln Futura. After a meeting with Gordon to discuss the Scarecrow threat, Batman pings the car in to follow a lead on a military vehicle. On the ground, a tap of o calls the car to your feet. If you’re airborne, you can paint a target on the ground and land as the vehicle pulls up.

According to Hill it’s, “a pretty unstoppable force of nature,” which is

Who is the Arkham Knight?

That title isn’t a clever play on words, it’s a new character Rocksteady is curiously coy about the new character it’s created – one that apparently kills Batman during our demo.

He appears, knocks Bats to the ground, points a gun to our hero’s head and the screen turns black as a gunshot rings out. Of course Bruce Wayne can’t really be dead. Or can he? Rocksteady has shown it’s not afraid to make major plot statements (see Arkham City’s end) and Batman’s comic history is littered with replacement caped crusaders.

The Arkham Knight’s armoured cowl has the same ears, suggesting a link to The Bat in some way. Initially, we thought it could be a spin on the Red Hood, the alter ego of former Robin Jason Todd.

Rocksteady is known for taking liberties with character design, but that wouldn’t be a brand new character. Director Sefton Hill has also evaded questions about Azrael. In Arkham City, it’s the Michael Lane version – who was trained to replace Bats should he die – so has Rocksteady reworked this idea?

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Say hello to your new Batmobile

After three games, the Dark Knight finally gets some wheels Batman’s longtime aid Oracle appears in person, with Batman using her Clocktower base for help.

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clear as soon as he starts driving. The car smashes through just about anything – walls, concrete, pillars.

Large buildings seem to be the only thing it can’t outright destroy, although it does leave some pretty big holes. There’s a strong Burnout Paradise feel to the action as Hill careens around the streets, fighting off other cars and bringing a hostile military vehicle to a halt using immobilizing missiles. In one major change, Riddler Challenges are now races that see you boosting and breaking around a morphing track full of moving platforms. While I’m not sure the horsepower grunt of the

than just be a totally separate thing.”

One key part of that is getting the balance between, “the reason to glide and the reason to drive.” Hence the mobility enhancements to the ejection system helping you get around.

The other benefit is protection – the Batmobile’s all but indestructible, meaning it’s a safer option in the more dangerous parts of Gotham.

While the Batmobile’s an obvious upgrade, the Dark Knight’s also got a few new toys. There’s the Grapnel Boost Mark II, for example. Now as you launch Batman skywards, you can hammer q to gain even more height and speed as you glide. There are also

“the batmobile is all but indestructible, meaning it’s a far safer option at times.” action suits Enigma’s usually more cerebral test, the tracks look challenging and watching the Batmobile do a barrel roll up and over the top of a tunnel passage is the kind of experience that never gets old.

Another cool trick the car packs in is an ejection system that fires Batman into the air to glide over the city.

“We’ve done a lot of work on that relationship between Batman and the Batmobile,” states Hill. “We wanted to have them totally interlinked and really figure out how the Batmobile can expand what Batman can do, rather

The power of PS4 means Batman’s armour is incredibly detailed this time around.

changes to the Line Launcher, which can now be fired out with p at any time to create a perch between buildings. There’s also something called, “gadgets while gliding,” which Hill demonstrates as he swoops in to rescue an ambushed cop, triggering a slow-mo sequence that sees him target three criminals with batarangs – before landing a glide kick on a fourth.

The combat’s also had a slight overhaul. Bats now retains stolen weapons, unleashing extended and continued batterings with borrowed bats or pipes. You can also use a new counter throw by pushing the analogue stick towards the guy you’re deflecting to hurl him away, damaging anyone he hits in the process. There are also some changes to the Invisible Predator sections. Batman now automatically jumps into the nearest floor grate – even from distance – when you press i and q. A more important new feature, however, is the Fear Takedown. If you can get near

Watching the Batmobile in action is a lot like watching a version of Burnout Paradise with jet-propelled bulldozers.

The weight and feel of the car as it drifts around corners – which refuels your boost in the process – is spot on with Criterion’s racer. But as well as being fast, it’s also heavily armoured, smashing through obstacles and walls with ease.

It’s always available in the city and Rocksteady has taken great pains to make sure it feels like something that’s always been a part of Batman’s armoury, stating, “we’ve done a lot of work on that relationship between Batman and the Batmobile.” So things such as the ejection system firing you straight into a glide, or more subtle touches such as the reflection of its design in Bat’s own armour. And, like Bats, it’s also got its own gadgets – including a Taser system that zaps anyone who gets too close.

Whether you can upgrade its abilities is something Rocksteady, “isn’t talking about right now.”

The Batmobile is an extension of Bats in every way. Note the bat symbol tire treads and bumper.

The Riddler Challenges now task you with completing races full of platforms and traps.

These Riddler races take place in large underground area, which is accessible via special lifts around the city.

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batman: arkham knight single enemies, but now you can isolate up to three enemies at once.”

Knight time

The Scarecrow’s threat has left the streets in chaos as criminals run riot.

enough to three bad guys without being seen or detected, you can take a large group of enemies down at once in a takedown worthy of the Dark Knight legend. Hill describes this alteration as a, “really nice switch-up, because normally you’re isolating

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Batman can also call on Oracle – the wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon – in person this time. Chasing the military vehicle earlier netted a sample of Scarecrow’s fear toxin, which Bats takes to her in her Gotham Clocktower hideout. Using her surveillance skills, the two allies identify a radiation signature that should lead them to Scarecrow using an antenna at the Falconi shipping yard.

Now this is where things get interesting. The Caped Crusader arrives at the shipping yard and easily takes out Scarecrow’s men. Then, out of nowhere, a new challenger appears.

Wearing militaristic armour and a mask with Batman-like ears, he effortlessly knocks Bats to the ground, telling him that he’s, “not going anywhere.” He then raises a large pistol to Batman’s head and announces that, “this ends tonight,” before the screen snaps to black and a single gunshot rings out.

This, ladies and gentleman, is the Arkham Knight. Who or what he is Rocksteady is obviously keeping under wraps. Studio director Jamie Walker will only confirm that, “it’s the name of the game so obviously he’s an important character.” When asked if he ties in to the prophecy given by Azreal at the end of Arkham City, all Hill will say before laughing is: “That could, maybe be…” Most interestingly, Walker confirms that Arkham Knight is a completely, “brand new Rocksteady character that we’ve developed with DC – working with [chief creative

“the arkham knight puts a pistol to batman’s head and announces, ‘this ends tonight.’”

Rocksteady has attempted to merge the designs of Batman and his iconic vehicle of choice.

A history of the Dark Knight

Previously in the world of the Caped Crusader…

Batman: Arkham Asylum

The first instalment in Rocksteady’s trilogy was a surprise hit given the previous history of the Dark Knight’s games, EA’s Batman Begins being the last major console release in 2005. Arkham Asylum focused on a takeover of the famous madhouse by the Joker – Batman’s maniacal arch nemesis. While it took the name of the famous graphic novel, it was new story introducing the series’ tightly refined mechanics, such as the free-flow combat and gear-gated exploration – while setting up mind altering reality sections and the ‘all in one night’ story.

Batman: Arkham city

After the first game limited the action to the grounds of Arkham Asylum the fans wanted Gotham.

Making an open-world game is a big undertaking and Rocksteady sidestepped it by fencing off a section of the city and turning it into a high security prison. It’s a testament to how well designed the original mechanics were that very little changes needed to be made to the combat or traversal systems despite the scaling up of the world. It took a few risks too, introducing Catwoman as a playable character and definitively killing major characters in a captivating finale.

Batman: Arkham origins

The only Arkham game not created by Rocksteady, this Warner Montreal developed episode focused on a young Batman just starting out as a crime fighter. The prequel setting neatly enabled the studio to work around the death of the key players – something that should have felt like a cheap shot, but actually worked as a way of exploring first encounters. Rocksteady has avoided all but the slightest of acknowledgements of this interim entry, continually reinstating that Arkham Knight is the end of its own trilogy.

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Cutscenes all use ingame assets. Just look at that bristly goodness.

officer] Geoff Johns, and [fan favourite artist/publisher] Jim Lee.”

ghost of gotham

Hill also explains that Batman heavyweight writer Paul Dini isn’t on board this time. “Paul Dini co-wrote the previous games with myself and Paul Crocker. Myself and Paul Crocker and a couple of people wrote this game.” He also reiterates, “this is the conclusion of the Rocksteady Arkham 058

to a Grant Morrison series called The Three Ghosts Of Batman that involves an attempt to make replacement Batmen should anything ever happen to the original. The results – a gun toting version, one hopped up on Venom, and Lane – don’t go well. My theory? The Arkham Knight is part of a similar attempt to duplicate Batman.

Possibly not the only one and – if I was going out on a limb – they’re playable characters, too. That’s just a

“‘kevin conroy returns as bats; so does nolan north as penguin and troy baker as two-face.’” trilogy. So this was kind of how we envisaged this story coming to a close.”

So, it’s a new Batman game roughly the same as previous entries, albeit incredibly pretty. The gang’s all here minus Joker says Hill: “Kevin Conroy’s back as Batman, Nolan North’s back as Penguin, Troy Baker’s back as Two-Face and Wally Wingert back as Riddler.” There’s also Harley Quinn and, “a number of other supervillains, which we’ll kind of announce over the course of the game.”

But it’s the new guy who could really shake things up. If the Arkham Knight does tie in to Azrael, then that opens up all sorts of possibilities.

In Arkham City, it’s established that the Azrael stalking Batman is the Michael Lane incarnation. He’s linked

The Batmobile is built like a tank, but drives like a race car. It even turns on the spot.

guess though, and as Jamie Walker makes clear, “if you want to find out more, play the game.” But with a ‘winter’ release this year mooted, we’re confident some interim Bat-Signals will deliver more info soon.

Penguin joins a returning roster of villains that also includes Two-Face, Riddler and Harley Quinn.

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Ps4’s secret games

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PS4’s games From intergalactic space operas to treasurehunting system sellers, how will PlayStation’s best-loved franchises evolve on PS4? Our series experts go undercover to find out

ps4’s secret games

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Ps4’s secret games

Mass Effect 4 Writer: Phil Iwaniuk

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he most assured certainty about Mass Effect 4 is that it won’t be called that.

Resorting to nonsensical subtitles such as ‘Awakening’, ‘Origins’ or ‘We’ve Straight Up Lost Interest’ is mandatory behaviour after hitting number three in a videogame series. Bioware’s showing no signs of the latter, but nevertheless it doesn’t want the next ME game referred to as a straight sequel because that implies another Commander Shepard title. Not only is Shepard absent in the next instalment, but he doesn’t even exist in its universe. Never did, never will. The same goes for almost everything you know about the Mass Effect saga: “It’s going to be a totally new thing,” exec producer Casey Hudson announced at PAX East last year. “Something fresh; a new way for you to explore the whole universe.”

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If you’re thinking MMO, don’t bet on it – Star Wars: TOR dev Bioware’s Austin studio is advertising for new talent to work on, “several unannounced projects,” and while the next Mass Effect hasn’t taken to the E3 show floor yet, people know it’s a thing thanks to numerous tweets from Bioware staffers. More likely it’s a solo adventure in the Star Wars: KOTOR and ME 1-3 mould, this time with all-new characters and setting (it must be nice for the writers not to have to worry about series canon and angry forumites anymore).

The one element that’ll bind the new project to the Shepard trilogy is the eponymous mass effect relay system, which allows ultra-quick travel between galaxies. Despite the scope associated with such a setting, it’s already in a playable state, so expect it on PS4 this year. Hopefully Bioware doesn’t listen to the fans too much: stung by ME3’s ending backlash, it’s been asking for a lot of feedback on where to go next, but a space-hopping RPG designed by the loudest voices on the internet sounds as much fun as a new shooter starring Cthulhu, bacon and kittens.

writer bio Games editor Phil Iwaniuk reviewed Mass Effect 3 and can recite nearly every choice and consequence. Bad break-ups with Diana Allers and Jack left him gutted.

“this game will change every single thing you know about mass effect.”

ps4’s secret games

GTA V on PS4 feels like a dead cert. The question is, what form will it take?

Borderlands 3

GTA V

Writer: Matthew Pellett

Writer: Dan Dawkins

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earbox president Randy Pitchford has insisted its production hasn’t started, but is already teasing another soonto-be-announced Borderlands project and confirmed number three is wanted, but that the team, “don’t know what it is yet.”

2K Games wants it as well: Borderlands 2 is now the highest-selling game in 2K Games’ history. When it does arrive, expect it to be: “massive – bigger and better than Borderlands 2,” in Pitchford’s own words. Massive how?

Multi-world massive. When we interviewed Gearbox’s Steve Gibson about Borderlands 2 in 2012, he revealed the team considered a multi-planet setting before realising, “we need to get people feeling like they’d explored one planet before they start bouncing around to other places.” Borderlands 2 achieved that, no?

The SHIFT system will be expanded (“obviously you know we’re thinking about that stuff with our future games,” says studio co-founder Brian Martel), but the biggest clues to Borderlands 3’s content may lie in Borderlands 2’s DLC. Ever notice how General Knoxx’s rants during BL1’s expansion were the templates for Handsome Jack’s communications in the sequel? Gearbox used the original’s DLC to test ideas it had for BL2.

Indeed, lead writer Anthony Burch, “would love to,” make a full game using Tiny Tina’s Assault On Dragon Keep’s unpredictable storytelling template.

Before then, Borderlands 2 is heading to PS Vita this May, just one month after Borderlands 2’s final slice of DLC – Sir Hammerlock Vs The Son Of Crawmerax – hits the PS3 version. Telltale Games is also working on Tales From The Borderlands. And the other, unnumbered Borderlands project?

Keep your ears open for an ECHO recorder containing more news soon.

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xpect an enhanced version of GTA V on PS4 with new single-player DLC and an improved version of GTA Online, within three to six months. Why? 1) Money – Sony’s 5.3m PS4 user base is too lucrative to ignore, and Take-Two’s shareholders will demand it. 2) A PC version is a near-certainty (Red Dead’s the only recent Rockstar game not to appear on PC), and PS4’s re-jigged PC architecture allows an easy port. 3) GTA Online – As gamers migrate from PS3 to PS4, Rockstar’s online service – and its mooted microtransactions – will transition with the audience. Rockstar would never confirm a PS4 version until they’d maximised PS3 sales over the holiday period, but expect an announcement soon. A GTA V ‘ultimate edition’ at 1080p in 60fps, optimised for the DualShock 4 with new missions, would be too good to resist.

GTA IV arrived on PC nine months after the console versions, with a new Video Editor mode. In August 2012, I asked Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies if they were planning a GTA V editor: “A dream of ours is that when you finish the game, you press a button and it’s made a film of your game.”

Sounds complex? “No, it’s all doable,” Benzies replied. I don’t expect this wizardry for PS4, but 32-player GTA Online might be realistic.

Your PS3 progress should carry to PS4, since Rockstar stores data in the Social Club cloud.

I’d expect the PS4 version to come with eight to ten hours of new single-player content (like GTA IV’s The Ballad Of Gay Tony), but I’m unsure whether it’ll be a prequel or a quasi-sequel. It sounds far fetched, but GTA V contains enough hints about an alien invasion… and Red Dead’s zombie DLC sets a bizarre precedent.

writer bio

writer bio

Claptrap apologist Matt has completed almost every BL quest and expansion. He also found a framed feature of his in Gearbox’s pinball hall.

Former PSM3 editor Dan Dawkins is the host of CVG’s GTA V o’clock show and is one of the few journalists to ever visit Rockstar North.

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Red Dead 3 Writer: Dave Meikleham

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s Mr Marston duly proved back in 2010, ‘West is best’ when it comes to conjuring a captivating open-world.

More than any other sandbox that doesn’t involve the grand thievery of automobiles, the tale of a conflicted rancher trying to redeem himself during the dying throes of the outlaw captured the imagination like never before. After raking in obscene amounts of cash and critical acclaim, Take-Two will be begging Rockstar to revisit its cash cow(boy) on PS4.

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Back in 2012, the carbonite cool studio listed Red Dead as one of its “permanent” franchises. Around the same time it also posted a message during a Q&A stating: “We love Red Dead, too. We don’t always rush to make sequels, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t get to them eventually. Stay tuned for further announcements about the future of the Red Dead series.” Clearly, cowboys are still very much in the developer’s thoughts.

However, there is one potential stumbling Stetson:

where does the series have left to go? Red Dead Redemption was such an exhaustive collection of Western tropes and iconography, it’s hard to know where Rockstar can go next. Its San Diego wing comprehensively ticked off duelling pistols at dawn, stagecoach robberies in Monument Valley and strangely therapeutic cattle wrangling. Unlike GTA, Red Dead isn’t formless. Its central appeal is tied to a very distinct era and specific place. Seeing as Rockstar often loves to expand and innovate – note GTA V’s character-swapping – I wouldn’t be surprised if a major thematic shake-up wasn’t on the cards for a PS4 sequel.

How about a darkly post-modern take on the Western, a la No Country For Old Men? Just imagine Rockstar crafting a Dust Bowl-esque expanse, similar to Blaine County, and filling it with morally dubious lawman and ranchers in a modern setting. Setting Red Dead 3 in present day would allow it to bring that beloved radio satire into the mix, with station after station of the sort of country tunes served up

by GTA V’s Rebel Radio.

From Wild West to Willie Nelson; it’d be a hell of an evolution.

Regardless of whether you’ll be dealing with 1914 or 2014, you should expect another openworld masterpiece. When it comes to sandbox gaming, Rockstar has somewhat of a lock on 10/10 experiences. And let’s be honest, if you’re gagging for a belting PS4 Western, it’s unlikely to come from any other source.

“we could see a darker western, with a no country for old men vibe.”

writer bio Having completed Red Dead Redemption three times, John Marston is now Dave’s favourite games character. Dave’s also obsessed with Sergio Leone.

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PES 2015 Writer: Dan Dawkins

Whether it’s Akavir or beyond, the setting of TES VI will be key to your journey.

The Elder Scrolls VI Writer: Matthew Sakuraoka-Gilman

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orget the rumours: Bethesda Game Studios is working on PS4. Sony’s console is mentioned by name in multiple job postings for the developer.

With the recent announcement of Skyrim’s 20 million lifetime sales, Todd Howard and co would have to be tweaking on moon sugar to not bring a new single-player Elder Scrolls to hungry fans. By the time TES VI arrives we’ll already have spent a sizeable portion of our time exploring post-apocalypse Boston, if myriad Fallout 4 gossipings are to be believed. History dictates that the Elder Scrolls team (a separate entity to The Elder Scroll Online’s crew) alternates between Tamriel and the Wasteland. For its first outing on next-gen, it’s Fallout’s turn to bat.

As for where TES VI will be set, we’ve yet to visit Blackmarsh, Valenwood, Elsweyr or the Summerset Isles in Tamriel, but personally I think it’s about time we were whisked off to Akavir, far to the east. With The Elder Scrolls Online covering many of these previously unvisited Tamriel continents, what better time to introduce a whole new continent? Akavir would also offer up new races previously touched upon in lore, such as the ape-like Tang Mo and the Ka Po’ Tun, thought to be distantly related to the Khajiit.

PS4’s technical oomph could enable destructible environments, while post-Skyrim DLC elements such as home-building should be available from day one. We’re unlikely to see any form of co-op multiplayer, however.

“What we continue to come back to is: one, that it’s not necessary because clearly we’ve done okay without it,” explained Bethesda VP Pete Hines in a recent interview. “And two: is it adding anything that’s missing [from] the experience we’re trying to create?”

B

ack in January, the @officialPES account tweeted that you, “can expect to see PES 2015 on your PS4,” but wouldn’t confirm Xbox One or Wii U versions. “We don’t really have any information about it at the moment, but we’ll keep you informed.”

Strategically, a PS4 exclusive has merit. PES is comfortably outsold by FIFA on PS3 (20:1 in some territories), but the gap is larger on Xbox. Sony could offset Konami’s losses for skipping the potentially less significant Xbox One (with cash up-front and an advertising commitment or a pack-in bundle) with benefits for both parties. Konami gets to focus development on one platform and receive preferential promotion on the ‘winning’ console. Sony scores a nice exclusive for Japan, South America and Southern Europe, where PES outsells or keenly competes with FIFA. Either way, PES 2015 is critical for Konami’s maligned franchise. FIFA 14 is impressive but grounded in current generation realities. PES has the potential to make a seismic leap like FIFA did from PS2 to PS3. I visited Konami’s PES team in Jan 2012 to learn its vision for FoxEngine on PS3 and beyond. PES 2014 boasted improved visuals, but it’s clear the team weren’t able to implement its more radical gameplay ideas at the time.

On PS4, expect astonishing FoxEngine kit textures, lighting and shading. Unique Player ID animations and behaviour will be applied to hundreds of players, not 50 like on PS3.

PES 2015 is co-developed by the new PES London Studio, handling localisation issues (no more Japlish) and new game modes (likely a FUT rival, or something in the social/mobile space). Don’t expect a licensing breakthrough, but a sublimely animated, deep simulation, with a European TV-style presentation and some surprising game modes.

writer bio

writer bio

Survivor of a 24-hour Skyrim marathon, Matt has clocked up so much time in Tamriel he refers to himself in third-person, Khajiit style.

Once known for week-long post-deadline PES binges, Dan travelled to Japan last year to see Konami’s vision for the series’ future.

ps4’s secret games

While the ending of Uncharted 4 isn’t likely to be as hard-hitting as TLOU’s finale, Drake’s next adventure will still need to pack a significant emotional punch.

Uncharted 4 Writer: Dave Meikleham

A

ll the graphics. That’s what everyone is expecting, right? I think it’s safe to assume Nate’s next-gen outing will be easy on the irises. After all, Naughty Dog is not only a supreme spinner of digital yarns, but is also the most technically gifted group currently working on PlayStation.

Though the next Uncharted already has an alluring teaser trailer confirming its existence, the real question is just how far the masterful Santa Monica-based developer can push PS4.

introspective baton and run all the way to the finish line – probably in a flood of tears while nursing a bottle of Scotch. While Drake’s first PS4 adventure is unlikely to be as morally stark and biting as ND’s apocalyptic journey, it’s clear telling a joke-heavy plot centred around an archaeological MacGuffin won’t match the breakthroughs in storytelling achieved in TLOU. So expect a challenging narrative that poses far more uncomfortable questions.

Previous entries’ technical excellence have been firmly rooted in lavishing a tremendous amount of care on environments unified by a single element. Uncharted 3 took PS3 to new heights with its glorious depiction of dancing fire and unabating, harsh desert, while Among Thieves crystallised its incredible presentation in amazingly purdy snow effects. With South African coastal headlands like The Cape Of Good Hope spotted in the trailer, I’d bet Naughty Dog is about to take on the oceanic depths with serious gusto.

Regardless of the destination, you’re dealing with a near assured masterpiece. Naughty Dog will squeeze a level of visual quality out of PS4 that will set its title apart from anything else on the system, while also adding masterful pacing, a Hollywood-beating script and peerless set-piece spectacle. Forget the name or number that eventually gets tagged onto this Uncharted. All you need to know is you’re looking at the definition of a killer app.

“naughty dog will squeeze a level of visual quality that will set it apart.”

Guerrilla has already set a lofty entry point with the sumptuously sturdy Killzone: Shadow Fall – look at all that glistening glass and those vibrantly bleached cherry orchids on Vekta and tell me you can ever go back to 720p. Yet now the onus is on Sony’s premiere team to craft an experience that wouldn’t look out of place running on a high-end PC. Naughty Dog has already eked wryly funny, continually warm roles out of Nolan North and company, but now it’s time to marry that celebrated performance capture with more lasting emotion.

That hissing narrator from the trailer is likely to be Nate’s nemesis and his scornful tone suggests this Uncharted is going to be a considerably darker affair than the reasonably breezy Drake’s Deception. “I lost 15 years. Buried alive. Erased. You left me rotting in that hellhole and never looked back.” Expect the treasure hunter to evolve past his Saturday matinee, Indy-inspired roots and transform into an altogether more conflicted character.

In the wake of The Last Of Us, it’s clear the studio is yearning to tell more serious stories. I fully expect the fourth Uncharted to pick up that more mature,

writer bio Dave Meikleham has bagged platinum trophies in all three PS3 Uncharted games, and is already talking about booking a full month off work when 4 arrives.

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Ps4’s secret games

The Last Of Us 2 Writer: Dave Houghton

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aughty Dog’s post-apocalyptic beauty initially seems to deliver a very final end to a very complete story. But really, it does the opposite. While Joel’s actions during that ending put a full-stop on the end of his and Ellie’s journey, they cement a definite long-term status quo for TLOU’s universe, blowing open limitless story and gameplay possibilities elsewhere in that world. To a studio so narratively-led as ND, that has to be a deliciously tempting proposition.

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In fact, it definitely is. Consider the single-player DLC, Left Behind. It’s distinctly different to the original game, focusing on exploration, evasion, and hitherto unexplored elements of survivor politics during Ellie’s pre-Joel existence. Creative director Neil Druckman has said that developing any follow-up would be a case of asking, “Can we tell people a story that’s really worth telling, and that’s not repeating itself?” It strikes me that ND is already answering that question with a resounding, “Yes”.

Additionally, the seven-month gap between TLOU’s release and the arrival of Left Behind strikes me as suspicious in this era of day-one DLC and swift additions to big hits. It could be coincidental, but I find it highly intriguing that a significant narrative addition to TLOU’s fiction is landing just as the PS4 picks up steam. Re-establishing, in fact

expanding, a last-gen universe just as next-gen fever kicks off feels a lot like firing up a flare to ensure that no-one forgets the fungus zombies amid the growing frenzy for Uncharted 4.

We know Naughty Dog is discussing ideas. Druckman admitted in early February to brainstorming sequels and new IP, following comments in a Reddit AMA that, “no direction has been set yet for the next game.”

Something big is going on. It has to be.

Following two generations as a resolute ‘one game at a time’ studio, ND has expanded to the point that tandem development of TLOU and Uncharted 3 looked effortless. With no PS Vita plans and only Uncharted 4 confirmed, that’s a lot of staff needing a big PS4 project.

“releasing new dlc just as next-gen fever kicks off is very telling of nd.”

ps4’s secret games

Ubisoft has to work hard to live up to the freedom of ACIV’s naval heaven.

Assassin’s Creed V Writer: Louise Blain

T

he Assassin’s Creed V rumour mill has already churned out a source stating that Ubi isn’t just releasing one AC game this year, but two – one for PS4 and one for PS3. Edward’s rum-swigging adventure was beautiful on next-gen but it still a last-gen game at heart. (With added particle effects and oh-so-pretty waves.)

Ubi has never been afraid to take on a new dev challenge and by this November – a sure-fire release window – the next-gen numbers will warrant an exclusive title with a new assassin. But we all know it’s not a matter of when, but where.

Where in history will Ubi plug its Animus into next? Tantalisingly, Black Flag was packed with a huge array of potential red herrings hidden away in the PCs of your fellow Abstergo colleagues. A conversation between employees batted around Desmond’s lineage, listing the American Midwest (cowboys!), Feudal Japan (samurais!), and the French Revolution (um, cake?) all as potential settings for its new videogame. Yet there’s no restrictions now as the Abstergo collection of blood means assassins from any age are ripe for the picking.

Victorian London was mentioned and has always been a fan favourite with appearances on multiple Ubi surveys over the years (think of the next-gen fog!), but a big trope such as pirates or cowboys will ensure success on a PS4-only title.

Wherever it’s set, expect Creed to be bigger than ever when it comes to PS4 this year.

writer bio

writer bio

Game-narrative obsessive Dave reviewed The Last Of Us for OPM sister-site GamesRadar, and reckons TLOU is the absolute pinnacle of triple-A PS3 gaming.

Since collecting every feather in ACII, Louise Blain has built up a terrifyingly large amount of knowledge regarding the brotherhood.

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Ps4’s secret games

Could the irradiated future of Fallout 4 be heading to Boston?

If it does, it’ll have to work hard to match TLOU’s tragic and beautiful version.

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Fallout 4 Writer: Matthew Elliott

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hink of Fallout and you imagine endless wastelands, the parched remnants of humanity and a frothing cocktail of despair and hope. But the truth is that whatever entry you played on PS3, it will feel like a child’s irradiated sandbox compared with Bethesda’s plans for next-gen.

The additional pizzazz offered by PS4 will benefit the likes of Fallout 4 in a most dramatic way: at the very least you can expect deeper quests and an update to those shuffling NPCs. Whereas before you were forced to fill in some narrative gaps yourself, Fallout 4 could easily become the definitive post-apocalyptic RPG – especially if Bethesda is informed by the technical mistakes made in Skyrim.

There’s also the promise of a new setting.

Bethesda has reportedly been scoping out

locations in Boston, and already has strong ties to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – almost certainly the mysterious ‘Institute’ mentioned in Fallout 3’s Replicated Man quest. Here you can expect to see more of the Commonwealth – a “war-ravaged quagmire of violence and despair” – which is also the home of Railroad, a faction running in direct opposition to the Institute by liberating sentient androids. If true, there’s already vast potential for a humane story that taps into compelling sci-fi themes. Better yet, that Massachusetts setting opens up all sorts of Lovecraftian possibilities. We’re not expecting mighty Cthulhu himself to flap up, but Bethesda has never been afraid to expand the Fallout mythology beyond the original, retro-futuristic boundaries. Combine all these factors and you have the promise of a technically adept Fallout in a compelling and varied location.

writer bio Matt was the only choice to review Fallout: New Vegas for us: growing up in the East Midlands wasteland gave him first-hand post-apocalyptic experience.

FIFA 15

ps4’s secret games

Writer: Ben Wilson

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eath, taxes, Miley Cyrus trying to de-skin down to her skeleton in a pop video – some eventualities in this life simply can’t be avoided.

But unlike the above, this year’s mega-money football offering from Team EA should deliver all manner of joy when it’s released in September. (Other than when a major console launches, the game always comes out in September.)

While there’s zero doubt it’s in development, series boss David Rutter has been uncharacteristically tightlipped on this year’s game. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, with the series’ PS4 debut already placing it in PlayStation’s ‘sporting greats’ pantheon alongside MLB: The Show and NBA 2K. Even so, fans were critical of the decision to remove player-created tournaments for nextgen, and this is one area you can be sure the development team is revisiting.

There’s also scope for improvement in Career mode – while mostly excellent, there are some minor annoyances. For instance, if you’re locked in talks with a player during the final hour of transfer deadline day, the game simply annuls the deal – rather than giving you the opportunity to rush it through, Harry Redknapp style. Expect that to be fixed. New trophy-winning celebrations are also essential: I’ve won the League Cup, FA Cup and Euro League during three seasons as Everton boss and the cutscenes following each victory are identical. Much of FIFA 14’s greatness was down to attention to detail. Now EA needs to polish it all up to ensure another big title win.

If Codies focus on a purely next-gen racer, the new Grid could be mind-blowing.

Grid 3 Writer: Phil Iwaniuk

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odemasters advanced its beloved racing genre tremendously with the PS3’s first wave of Grid and Dirt games, which at the time of their release were box fresh. Forget flashbacks, team management and livery design – simply mapping accelerate and brake to i and p was a revelatory design choice that capitalised on the greater travel on the new DualShock 3’s shoulder buttons.

I’m dragging you down memory lane here to illustrate the fundamental differences between the PS3 debutants from Codies and their sequels – which didn’t quite flog a dead horse, but certainly left it a little sore. It’s a pattern we saw across many genres and dev studios – the first game of the gen takes risks to establish a successful formula that can be iterated on for the rest of the console cycle.

If that sounds gloomy, remember we’re at the exciting, inventive point in the cycle of PS4 right now. Grid’s just too established a franchise for Codies to jettison, and when the threequel does arrive – probably in late May to early June this year, judging by previous release dates for the series – it’ll be crammed with fresh ideas. I don’t want to second guess a design team with a thousandfold more imagination than this humble word-lackey, but I will say this: the existing complex AI behaviours, detailed damage model and trackside detail should have their ceilings raised massively by PS4’s capabilities.

More excitingly still, if it does land this summer it’s unlikely to straddle both PS3 and PS4. Both original Grid and Dirt games were PS3 thoroughbreds, so I hope Grid 3 will follow the established pattern and arrive only on PS4 to avoid becoming hamstrung by the crossgenerational development compromises that have held back some of the launch titles.

writer bio

writer bio

Ex-editor Ben is an office FIFA champion and has guided his beloved Crystal Palace to more wins than Tony Pulis could ever dream of.

Grid 2 and Dirt Showdown reviewer Phil has destroyed multiple steering wheels while testing racing games to the extreme.

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Next-gen is now

Fresh PS4 content every day at

officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk News / Analysis / Video / Previews / Reviews

OPM Scores

Gold award Gold Award

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

editor’s award Editor’s Award

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

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

9 Outstanding Unreservedly brilliant – this

should be in every collection.

8 Very good A truly excellent game, marred by just a few minor issues.

7 Good A great concept unfulfilled or

the familiar done well, but still well worth playing.

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

5 Average What you expect and little

more, this is for devotees only.

84 castlevania: lOs 2 Is this new blood to the series better than the immortal original, without Kojima on board? Don’t Count on it.

4 Below average Any bright ideas are drowning in a sea of bugs or mediocrity.

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

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

1 Horrific Own this and you’ll be swiftly,

justifiably, exiled from society.

contents Dark souls ii 76 | Thief 80 | Outlast 82 | Strider 83 | Castlevania: LOS 2 84 The wolf among us e2 86 | rayman legends 87 | lightning returns: fF XIII 88 master reboot 90 | txk 92 | earth defense force 2025 92 | dustforce 93

075

Prepare for a higher bodycount – think Commando multiplied by every Seagal flick ever.

review

076

“every considered thrust of your weapon carries the threat of consequence and failure.”

review

editor’s award Hell’s bitchin’

dark souls ii

@OPM_Dave

Tricksy, but terrific things to do in Drangleic when you’re undead

info Format PS3 ETA out now Pub Bandai Namco Dev From Software

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ike haggis fritters smothered in Marmite, Dark Souls II’s unrelenting difficulty isn’t for everyone. Those who are gluttons for punishment are in for a meal that challenges and nourishes like no other – albeit one that likes to hoof you in the unmentionables every chance it gets. Hold me, dear reader. This is going to be one bumpy, but thankfully brilliant, descent back into the depths of despair.

For starters, fighting beasties is still ruddy amazing. Beautifully poised and sharply tactical, every considered thrust of your axe, sword or spear carries more menace and consequence for failure than a million haphazardly fired COD rounds. Class-leading combat is just one part of the brutal cocktail, mind. It’s also backed up by the peerless thrill of constantly pushing forth into the unknown. Each corner turned or mist barrier broken offers the promise of progression set against an unceasing backdrop of tension.

Though every nerve-jangling duel bristles with the potential of sucking in souls to level up your Chosen Undead, it’s far more likely a moment of impatience or clumsiness will wipe out an hour’s worth of toil. The constant threat of smothering failure never leaves your side in a game that’s centred around leveraging your finite resources for greater rewards. This ever-evolving thrill of cat-and-mouse gambling is what makes Dark Souls II so horribly hard to put down.

Before you get your passport stamped for reentry to Hellsville, you best prepare for a change of destination in Drangleic. Though this openended kingdom is more compartmentalised and lacks the natural visual flow of Lordran, it’s still dotted with locales that are sure to burn in the memory long after you’ve sacked off your PS3 at a car boot sale for a tenner. Prepare to dodge the sweaty meat hooks of obese, nappy-wearing

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review

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Right Learning to parry and riposte is a damn useful technique to master in DS II.

Left If you go down to Shaded Woods today you’re sure for a big… oh, you’re dead.

Cyclopses in the clawing quagmire of Things Betwixt (surely the greatest name for an opening level ever). Don’t forget to watch your step as you gingerly ghost past spectral sentries in the Silent Hill-aping Shaded Woods. While Lost Bastille’s deadly prison cells make a sleepover in Folsom look like an overnight stay in the Fireworks, Candy And Puppy Dogs Store. In short, there’s more artistic imagination on show here than any game currently on PS4.

Yes, it’s a last-gen game, but a strikingly handsome one: less cartoony, far richer in detail and substantially more lived-in than its predecessor. Full analogue movement and velvety combat animations ensure the action now slithers from the screen with a fluid, balletic brutality.

It not only makes monster skirmishes appear less mechanical, but also ensures they’re more responsive to the touch – crucial when every millisecond of hesitation could see that ghoulish knight gut you with his 11-foot butcher’s knife.

In what’s sure to be a polarising move, From Software returns the series to the health system

“dark souls II actively escalates the difficulty to punish the careless.”

that made Demon’s Souls so unforgiving. Unlike the last game, every death you suffer gradually whittles down your life bar. Lose your Humanity and each time you perish, your health takes a tanking as you become more hollowed-out.

Bite it enough times in a row without using a rare Human Effigy (the only item in the game that fully restores you) and you quickly find yourself capped at half HP. That means you’ll need to make a major mindset shift if you’re used to experimenting relatively riskfree in Dark Souls. Meeting a boss on 60% health is a peeper-watering prospect.

Bonfire fright

This is the key area where the sequel is way more vicious and, arguably, less fair. The game actively escalates its difficulty to punish players who are struggling. There’s a real sense this is the purest expression of the unwavering

difficulty the Souls series has always clung onto so dearly.

Something backed up by lifereplenishing bonfires lying further afield from boss scraps – so simply getting to the dastards is a seriously daunting task when 23 respawning zombie swashbucklers stand between you and a four-armed, two-headed take on Long John Silver’s Siamese twin.

Yet perversely, Drangelic is simultaneously more giving than Lordran. For one, it treats you to more weapon and ring slots. The ability to saddle yourself with an extra Blacksmith’s Hammer may not be that useful, but carrying four pieces of jewellery in your dishevelled pockets (twice that of the previous adventure) certainly is. Uncover enough of Drangleic’s precious finger bling and you can rock up to boss skirmishes with a heady blend of powers that often make all the difference between that glorious on-screen flash

review the opm breakdown w h a t y o u d o i n … D a r k S o u l s II

14% Losing your souls as you mistime a single, but crucial block or parry.

40%

Dying… again and again and again… and again. Who’d have guessed that, eh?

15% Stockpiling

hard-fought souls to afford a shiny weapon upgrade.

10% Being beaten up by a room-sized boss, until you suss him.

Above Fighting respawning rats in the Grave Of Saints is a stern early challenge.

20% Seeing flesh peel off as you get more Hollow. You’re looking pretty ill there, buddy.

1%

’Accidentally’ killing a sultry Pyromancer merchant.

C’mon, this ain’t Fluffy Happy Rainbow Souls.

m u lt i p l ay e r DS II is a less lonely pursuit if you team up with fellow adventurers.

Certain rings now make it easier to pair up with other players, while a Cracked Red Eye Orb lets you invade their game for a PvP scrap.

Look out for a thorough Online Test next issue.

Right Spears are ace for those who favour a far more cautious combat style.

h o w t o … s t o p t h e HP r o t 1

2

3

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second opinion fragile soul

Daunting doesn’t even begin to describe your first footsteps in Dark Souls II if, like me, you’ve steered clear of the Eat, Sleep, Die, Repeat dance up until now. But guess what? You don’t need a PhD after all: it is possible to learn ‘Souls even as a latecomer, and no game’s better at making you feel like your weapon really bites into an enemy. Phil Iwaniuk trophy cabinet on

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Sinner’s

If there’s a disappointment, it’s that Dark Souls II can’t quite cook up opponents to rival the sheer scale of what’s come before. By and large, bosses are smaller and less grotesque.

There’s no hulking goliath to quite match the Demon Ruins’ Ceaseless Discharge lava brute.

And certainly nothing that competes with the ferocious beauty of the Moonlight Butterfly. Encounters are utterly gripping, demanding exhilarating levels of unbroken concentration. It’s just a shame they don’t equal the spectacles found in the first Dark Souls.

One element that persists just as thoroughly as before, though, is that beguiling sense of mystery which keeps you trudging forward. True to form, From gives only the merest hint of plot and leaves you to scramble the details

rk

No great boss

together with the sort of hazy recollection usually reserved for the morning after a night on the sauce. What few cutscenes exist are admittedly directed with more flair than anything the series has shown in the past. Yet existing on such a threadbare narrative simply makes it that much more stimulating as you journey into parts of the map where every crumbled nook or foreign statue tells its own tale.

Dark Souls II is fuelled by an unending desire for progression and improvement. And that’s what keeps you pushing ever forward: for those brief spells of empowerment, earned more honestly here than in any other game. Victory achieved.

is D a

of ‘Victory Achieved’ and padhurling anguish.

1 Want to drastically reduce how much your health bar tapers off when you die? You want to get your hands on the Ring Of Binding. 2 This extremely useful jewellery can be found outside The Blue Cathedral.

3 To get there, go to Heide’s Tower Of Flame and follow the left-hand path from the room with the three large knights. Go along the walkways until you reach a circular platform with a lever, then pull it to lower a nearby drawbridge where the ring lies in a chest.

This

Above Lost Bastille is imposing, while you constantly see other players’ ghosts.

verdict

Uncompromising in its challenge, this supremely balanced slasher destroys your fingers and delights your soul with its unrivalled sense of triumph through trial. Dave Meikleham

bronze

You’ll never come across a more naturally achievable trophy.

Simply bite it for the first time and it’s yours.

silver

Defeat the Last Sinner boss by constantly strafing. Summoning the nearby phantom will help, too.

gold

To max-out your devotion to a covenant you have to complete its side-quests, while also offering up Awe Stones.

review

Eye eye! What he gains in focus mode, poor Garrett loses in facial symmetry.

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Far crime

@PhilIwaniuk

thief

Brave but bare-bones reboot shows the strife of crime

O

ne half of you can take down the ticker tape. The other half can call off the firing squad. Against all odds, Eidos Montreal’s Thief reboot has managed to slink between nostalgia-flavoured excellence on one side and forumite-death-threatincurring disaster on the other, dodging both to arrive safely at, “yeah, quite good.”

If Thief’s final quality – following a prolonged and controversy-courting development – seems anticlimactic, the experience it offers is not.

Garrett now finds himself in a pretty hardcore stealth game, rich with optional pathways and, occasionally, glimmering with touches of the original games’ brooding atmosphere.

In case the rebooted name means nothing to you, Thief continues a series tradition of sneaking past NPCs and nabbing loot from rich people’s mansions – before a daft supernatural plot inevitably takes hold and your nefarious skills are tested in a different, less engaging way. There’s an open-world element now, too.

Between the more linear chapters you’re free to explore a central hub and complete sidemissions, then trade in your loot for equipment and upgrades. Interestingly, weaponised gear such as the broadhead arrow is prohibitively expensive, so when you’re rumbled by a guard you’re forced to pose the question: can I afford to kill this guy?

info Format PS4 ALSO ON PS3 ETA OUT NOW Pub Square Enix Dev Eidos Montreal

With a handful of bold design calls and some carefully crafted locales, Thief manages some moments of brilliance – botching a near-perfect pick-pocketing manoeuvre only to be rumbled by upsetting a nearby vase is a personal highlight; likewise diving into a cupboard just in time for a cook to peek inside the cupboard next to me – and asserts its own identity.

But what you’re really wondering is this: how does this leather-clad pretender compare to his three chief adversaries – Corvo Attano, Adam Jensen and his own, younger self? The Dishonored parity is startling, and welldocumented. I’d love to know how the two came to exist

in parallel, but I digress. The TL;DR version: Thief’s levels aren’t quite as intricate, and its toolset isn’t anywhere near as interesting. But Corvo is an assassin, after all, and Garrett’s a tea-leaf who’s wholly averse to shedding blood.

And what about Mr Jensen, figurehead of Eidos Montreal’s other significant output, Deus Ex: Human Revolution? Well, the two find themselves in similarly clandestine worlds where a secret passageway is never too far away – but where Jensen had the option to bring out the big guns, Garrett has only the shadows to skulk back to. The game’s commitment to stealth is brave but misguided, because there’s a crucial ingredient missing from Thief’s

“with a handful of bold designs calls, thief does have some brilliant bits.”

review Right This is the ‘things haven’t gone well’ icon, displayed when guards realise where you are.

the opm breakdown w h at y o u d o i n… T h i e f

9% Inching in and out of the shadows just to see your DualShock 4’s light bar change colour.

6% Actually using one of those broadhead arrows you paid a fortune for. And missing.

22% Rifling through drawers and making off with the contents.

Below The City streets feel oddly empty, and NPCs often ignore you.

5% Zoning out to wistfully recall your afterschool Thief: The Dark Project sessions in ‘98.

31%

Listening to improbably expositional chats between City guards.

27%

Extinguishing candles, one by one. Because screw all those waxy, illuminating bastards.

s tat pa c k

5.6K 5 75 25 Number of Years since Thief signatures on a was first petition to get announced by Garrett’s original Eidos Montreal, voice actor back revealed as the in the role. awful Thi4f.

The cost, in gold Ornate golden coins, of a single, ashtrays you find unrecoverable just lying around broadhead arrow on every street that you worked of the City. And hard to pilfer. then nick.

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friends & enemies

081

Above left Waking up in a cart full of bodies – wow, must’ve been a big night.

Erin is your feisty (read: The closest Garrett irritating) protégé – likes has to a BFF is boorish a good rooftop race. ladies man Basso.

Back in Black

This is a true stealth game: you can neither afford nor survive a face-to-face battle more than once per chapter. Shady business, indeed.

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Gl

verdict

Neither the disaster some anticipated nor a reinvigorated reboot akin to Deus Ex: HR. Thief is worth it for the setting and hardcore stealth, but it’s marred by some poor AI and passive gameplay. Phil Iwaniuk

City Slacker

At times, Garrett’s hometown can be captivating. However the many instances of burglarising empty houses is an immersion breaker.

hea lth

Previously your arsenal could be used to create pathways that bypassed huge chunks of a level, letting you feel like you were getting one over on the game. Some vintage items return here, but they’re next to redundant. You simply don’t feel the master of your surroundings like you ought to. Most homes you burglarise are empty, or occupied by people so determined to stay asleep you can literally jump up and down beside their bed.

Perhaps fearful of stifling the game with too many modern systems, Eidos Montreal’s gone so far the other way that the vast majority of your time is spent rifling through drawers or swooping past guards with q.

That sensation’s worsened

by Thief’s AI, which is neatly communicated via alert meters above people’s heads but often

l o v i n g / h at i n g

Of

Stark Project

reveals itself to be outright moronic. At one point I flummox a jeweller, whose shop I’m busy ransacking, simply by blocking his progress up some stairs. After a few minutes, he stops and declares, “He’s vanished!” From this moment on, I can’t shake the feeling I’m robbing a cardboard cut-out movie set.

Let these shortcomings slide and there’s still pleasure to be had skulking around the City and being swept up in moments of both scripted and spontaneous excellence, but Thief’s stripped-back gameplay and dumb AI leave it in the shadows where it’ll be neither reviled nor remembered.

H ail

formula. You don’t have an interesting toolset.

Baron’s crony Mr Thief-Taker General doesn’t like you. Shock.

bronze

Perform a mashup of Wild West movies and William Tell by shooting a glass bottle in mid-air with an arrow.

silver

Kill or knock out five enemies using the environment and this sneaky silver’s yours for the taking.

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gold

To swipe this shiny gold pot into your swag bag, you need to complete a total of 25 optional thieving objectives.

review When we told him we were ready for his close-up, we didn’t mean this close.

Nervous [rec]

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@leonHurley

OUTLAST Who needs a good night’s sleep anyway?

T info Format PS4 (Download only) ETA Out now Pub Red Barrels Dev Red Barrels

his is going to feel like a gift from the gods to scare fans. A horrible, horrible gift: a six to seven hour take on Slender meets Fatal Frame crossed with that bit in Bioshock when you turn around and there’s a man behind you. Because there’s always a man behind you in this kind of game.

This is an experience with sights resolutely set on chills over thrills. Rather than focus on big monsters, action or huge ‘boo!’ moments, Outlast expertly uses the gaps between the scares to let you torture yourself stupid with half-seen shapes or definitely (probably) heard noises.

That’s not to say it’s lacking action or jumps.

Oh, there are jumps. Unpleasant things that fall in front of your face and unpleasant things that want to remove your face. During one playthrough, tension reached a point where Phil and I jumped out of our skins when a) seeing our in-game shadow, b) someone coughed unexpectedly outside the room, and c) we mistook our own hand for a monster.

It’s the first-person view that does it. The game never breaks character while you play as investigative journalist Miles Upshur. He

“the grainy green view of the camera forces you to seek out your hunters.”

doesn’t speak, and you never leave his in-head view – all the cutscenes are acted out from his POV. It’s an intimate relationship between you and your character: your hand on the door as you peek into corridors or the sound of your own breathing syncing with his.

Wince, repeat

The cleverest touch is the use of your video camera. Much of the game is pitch black, leaving you to use a night vision mode as you paw through shadows like the attic scene in [Rec].

Mechanically, it amps up the terror much like Fatal Frame’s Camera Obscura – pushing you to face, confront and seek out the very things terrifying you. The grainy green view forces you to stare intently into shadows and zoom into corners to locate threats trying to hunt you down – because you can’t cheat death unless you know where it’s coming from. There’s no combat here, so all you can do is search, watch and evade.

Palm-soaking as it is, the stealth/evasion/escape gameplay

can be a little one-note over time. Most objectives amount to ‘getting the thing to make the door work while a particular character tracks you down’. In the opening few hours it’s terrifying: listening to your own fraught breathing as you scan dark rooms for moving shapes, but, after a few hours, things settle into a groove.

Fortunately, just as it looks like the core mechanics are going to lose their potency, a few last minute switch-ups radically freshen the formula.

So while the overuse of its core ‘run away and hide gameplay’ lessens Outlast’s impact over time, near-flawless visual and aural execution makes for a terrifying opening few hours, a truly unpleasant finale and an engaging exercise in fear throughout. verdict

Somewhat limited by its own mechanics, this is still a masterclass in first-person horror, and hopefully the start of a BPM-bursting renaissance for the genre. Leon Hurley

review The excellent Beacon Run mode offers yet another layer of awesome replayability.

Stridin’ dirty

@furianresigh

Strider

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I can be your Hiryu, baby

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info Format PS4 (download only) ALSO ON ps3 ETA OUT NOW Pub Capcom Dev Double Helix/ Capcom Osaka

ou’d think bringing an 8-bit icon back into the gaming fold would be risky.

Balancing some vigorous nods to the past while injecting a fresh dose of DNA could have easily ended in a halfway house no one really wanted to occupy. Well, clearly nobody told Double Helix that, because Strider takes all the elements that made its predecessors so memorable and makes this new effort look, well… effortless.

There’s a hokey neo-Soviet story that casually orbits Strider’s neon-tinged action, but even the game accepts that it’s only here to tick a box and lets the gameplay do the talking. Returning ninja badass Hiryu exists for one reason, and one reason only: slashing fools to ribbons with his beloved tonfa, Cypher. Double Helix has focused on the important things with Strider. He moves through the side-scrolling levels with a nimble sprint, acrobatically clinging to walls and ceilings with the lightest of touches. Even at the beginning, before all the liberating freedom that the later upgrades give you, Hiryu is a lightningquick killing machine who cuts through the poor

“THE VERTICALITY IT GIVES YOU TURNS EVERY FIGHT INTO AN ACROBATIC DEATH DANCE.”

guards of Kazakh City like a Katana through hot lard.

Ninja style

Don’t let the side-scrolling presentation fool you – with the ability to attach to any surface, freedom and exploration is the name of the game. Strider’s on-screen map and distance counter combo makes sure you always know where to go, but it’s the ability to explore every nook and cranny that lifts the game to platforming excellence. Along with finding health and energy bar upgrades (which enable Hiryu to pull off screenclearing special moves), the freedom of movement in the vertical axis turns every fight into an acrobatic dance of death, with Hiryu leaping across walls before swooping back to the ground in a blur of deadly strikes.

Strider gives you a simple palette of attacks, then builds on them through a series of colourful set-pieces and over-the-top bosses. Upgrades

unlock new ways to explore (the power to deflect gunfire and a mid-air dash are highlights), but some of the bosses that stand before them feel a touch imbalanced.

Big bads, such as bounty hunter Solo, offer a rewarding shift in the action, but borderline unavoidable attacks that drain your health also eat into your patience – even when used as part of a tutoring process. This isn’t the case for every boss encounter, but it’s a frustrating inconsistency that, along with very occasional difficulty spikes, slightly blemishes Strider’s return.

But with your arsenal of skills growing at a speedy rate, these moments won’t prevent the slash-a-thon from swallowing up obscene hours of your life. verdict

Capcom revives one of its most hallowed franchises and conjures up a genuinely rewarding side-scrolling slash‘em-up. If only all reboots were like this. Dom Reseigh-Lincoln

review

Who wants a free bet on the two, stunted, potato men? No one?

No one at all? Oh.

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Second coming

castlevania: lords of shadow 2

@rob_pearson86

How do you kill Dracula? With stupid fat robots, apparently

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laying the first hour of Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2 is like speed running through the three emotions you feel throughout the rest of the game: amazement, frustration and disappointment. A searing opening introduces you to Gabriel Belmont’s brilliant new arsenal – the Void Sword, Chaos Claws and Shadow Whip – and then asks, “can you stick them into that golden angel bloke, and this golem the size of a small mountain range?” With pleasure, Lords Of Shadow 2. It’s a perfect tutorial – grandiose, mildly challenging and an instant reminder of why we loved the first game so damned much.

Then comes ten minutes of stuffy exposition followed by a scene shift to the modern day, the opening’s yawning gothic sprawl yanked away in favour of telephone pylons, potholes and pavement. Anyone who played to the end of the 2010 original will know this makes perfect narrative sense, but sadly it also makes for duff gameplay. The Belmont of the modern age starts out as a shrivelled, limping husk – this is essentially developer Mercury Steam’s way of doing the classic ‘take all your powers away’

trick that always plagues action sequels such as CLOS2.

Heavy metal info Format PS3 ETA Out now Pub Konami Dev Mercury Steam

And so, after a trio of false starts and a very unpleasant first-person sequence (you’ll know it when you see it), CLOS2 begins in earnest.

It feels like a game of compromise. Success can be a tough act to follow, and you can almost hear the suited execs at Konami howling ill-advised opinions at the dev team: “The kids like stealth, I said. Have you put in the robots yet?”

Unfortunately, they listened.

The present day portion of the game is suffocated by horrible

stretches of grey interiors patrolled by hulking androids.

But – and this is the real kicker – you can’t fight them.

Instead Gabriel is forced to turn into a rat, just like Dracula doesn’t, and scurry his way past as if he hasn’t just taken down a mythical colossus by ripping its heart out with his bare hands. That, or you can chuck a swarm of bats as a distraction and tiptoe past, high-level weaponry dangling from your vampiric hip.

It’s stealth gameplay that’s both achingly poor and completely out of place, a flaw made all the more obvious by the gleaming quality of

“belmont may be slower than kratos, but his own moveset is more nuanced.”

review Right Belmont’s trusty Shadow Whip is key to stringing lengthy combos together.

the opm breakdown w h at y o u d o i n… L o r d s O f S h a d o w 2

20% Playing a present day bit, groaning loudly and setting your brain to autopilot.

Below Stubborn armour in your way? Smash it to bits with the Chaos Claws.

6% Transforming into a common sewer rat, while lamenting over Belmont’s dignity.

38%

Making beautiful combos with your whip that’d make Indy envious.

15% Agonising

over which upgrade to buy next for old Mr Belmont.

9% Whizzing through arbitrary platform sections that wouldn’t make Indy envious.

12% Carving open a gnarly, screen-sized boss. (And wondering why you can’t do that to everyone.)

s tat pa c k

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The number of Main weapons Hours spent as a Times you’ll gawp Castlevania for Belmont: the snivelling rodent. at the lighting You’re Dracula games that have Shadow Whip, effects on the for crying out appeared on the Void Sword moon. One of loud. Surely a PlayStation in the and the deadly PS3’s prettiest vampire bat? last 17 years.

Chaos Claws. games by far.

the first five hours…

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Above left This little chap is one of the smaller bosses in the game.

everything else the game has to offer. Because when Mercury Steam gets back to doing what it does best – letting you whip enormous monsters into pulpy puddles – CLOS2 throws up wow moments that outdo anything else in the genre.

Comfort zone

At the heart of everything good is a meticulous combat system that refines, expands, and ultimately improves on that found in the original CLOS. The aforementioned Void Sword and Chaos Claws replace light and dark magic respectively – the former an icy blade that replenishes your health with every hit, the latter a set of fiery gauntlets that make short work of armoured opponents. You need to absorb magic orbs to power them; the ingenious twist being that enemies only drop these after you’ve smacked them about while simultaneously avoiding any damage.

It’s a system that coaxes you into a practised, intelligent fighting style, rewarding the use of intricate and varied combos by feeding you the power to perform even better moves.

Belmont may be slower than both Dante and Kratos, but his moveset is more nuanced and satisfying to pull off. This is, for my money, the best combat system on PS3.

What Mercury Steam has managed to wring out of PS3 for CLOS2 is incredible. It’s just the inconsistencies – naff stealth and a badly paced story – that costs the game a higher score and prevents this sequel from scaling to the epic heights of its predecessor.

1 This golden nasty welcomes you to the game with an almighty scrap inside the first 20 mins. 2 Belmont’s road to recovery starts when he regains the ice-cool Void Sword. 3 There’s plenty of castle for you to explore – this chandelier hall in particular is an early treat. 4 The first proper boss battle, after regaining the Chaos Claws, is suitably epic.

5 Now that you’ve recovered your gear it’s time to re-dead the undead. is it better than?

no

no

yes

While much has been improved in this vampiric sequel, the original had more standout moments.

CLOS2 has the superior battle system, but Ninja Theory’s reboot is still a slicker affair.

Gabriel Belmont’s offensive repertoire outdoes Kratos’, plus CLOS2 looks a lot prettier. No, really.

compel-o-gr aph Epic intro Huge boss fight Ice sword, get!

verdict

Unevenly brilliant and infuriating, CLOS2 combines incredible, tight combat and some spectacular visual treats with ropey stealth and a clunky narrative.

Thankfully, the good outweighs the bad. Rob Pearson

Zobek prattles on

Modern day 0

TIME

21 hours

review Fists are the new conversation in Fabletown, and Bigby’s quite a talker.

@PhilIwaniuk

brawl st

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wolf among us E2: smoke and mirrors Bigby still huffs and puffs through his leary tale

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info Format PS3 (download only) ETA Out now Pub Telltale games Dev Telltale games

rom the smallest acorn grows the mightiest oak. That’s all well and good, but what happens when said acorn was pretty mighty in the first place, thankyouverymuch? Such was the case in episode one of Bigby & co’s fantastical noir adventure, a two-hour starter course that satisfied in ways few full-length titles do. How do you top that, Telltale?

You don’t. Smoke and Mirrors doesn’t offer the same giddy explorative ride through Fables comic lore, or introduce quite as many interesting characters. But that’s what pilots are for, right?

Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect episode two to bristle with the same excitement you felt when you found an actual pig asleep on your sofa or enjoyed an ultraviolent meet-cute with an enchanting courtesan above a toad’s apartment.

Those are one time thrills.

But this second episode does just about manage to stay within the ball park of its predecessor’s quality. Replacing the kick of the

“Telltale’s writers aren’t sandbagging the plot just so it can be drawn out.”

new is a gathering sense of momentum in Bigby’s murder investigation. I’d lather up with animal blood and present myself to a pack of slavering hounds before spoiling the twists and turns for you, but suffice to say stakes are raised, teeth lost and hearts won. Crucially, you never feel that Telltale’s writers are sandbagging to stretch the plot out over the rest of the season.

fang service

And good old lovable, fearsome Bigby is as much fun as ever to inhabit. Further props must be dispensed to Telltale for giving him such a wide range of reactions – without having him wind up with apparent split personality disorder. His intentions are always obvious and logical, whichever button you press.

Some of those button presses are going to lead to very unpleasant things – the fairytale-tinged lore can’t

cute-ify the blunt force traumas and forays into the macabre that crop up pretty frequently. This still isn’t a ‘play with the kids’ game.

In truth, the difference in quality between Wolf’s first two eps is slimmer than a Kale Enthusiast Monthly cover girl.

The bigger issue is that both regularly freeze up between scenes for seconds at a time, ripping you out of the moment.

But as long as characters as dastardly and hilarious as northern ne’er-do-well Georgie Porgie and the Tweedledee twins are introduced along the way, there’s no reason to stop wolfing down each ep with the hunger they fully deserve. The Walking what now? verdict

As if you need a better reason to keep playing than the first episode’s excellence – rest assured the cast, cues and fracas are still bringing down the house. Phil Iwaniuk

review info

Format PS Vita (download only) ETA Out now Pub Futurlab Dev Futurlab

info

Format PS4 also on PS3/PS VITA eTA out now Pub Ubisoft Dev ubisoft montpellier

surge deluxe

rayman legends

Neon puzzler pumps up the pressure

Ray of light will leave you beaming

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ike so many good puzzle games, the concept here is simple: match blocks of the same colour in sets of two or more.

No fancy-pants graphical whizzbangery or pseudo-Shakespearean pontificating – just you and the blocks.1 Rather than being a brick-switching Bejeweled clone #427, you’re connecting said blocks using the touchscreen in a Tron-esque dot-to-dot.

Connecting the cubes clears them, and you need to get rid of each one before the timer at the bottom inches down to zero.

So far, so standard. There are also pressure gauges at the sides of the screen – if they blow, you’ve blown it. You can keep them cool by clearing a row, and then tapping the vents on either side of it to let off steam for a finite period of time. And then, obviously, it’s all about scores. The more blocks you chain together in one fell swoop, the more points you rack up.2 There are even a couple of multiplier variants, some tricksy cubes and a handful of starred ones that are extra valuable. The vents also correspond to the shades of colour on-screen: an open vent boosts your score if you can nix the related blocks within the allotted time.

The mental meat, however, is in Puzzle mode. Complementing the frenetic fingerprodding of Arcade mode, it offers up 15 levels that task you with clearing set arrangements of blocks. Leave one behind?

Unacceptable. Too slow? Too bad. Don’t meet the required score? You’ve failed.

At just £3.99, this is a neat and deceptively inventive puzzler for your PS Vita. You may occasionally curse your clumsy sausage fingers, but the dots definitely join up in Surge Deluxe, making for appealing blocks of bite-sized puzzling. Emma Davies

FOOTNOTES 1 There might not be a story, but nobody’s stopping you making up your own. 2 Be careful – accidentally brushing a brick with a different colour will sabotage the whole thing.

info

Format PS4 also on PS3/PS Vita ETA OUT NOW Pub WARNER BROS Dev TT GAMES

the lego movie videogame Same bricks, different day

ow do I love thee, floaty-armed platformer maestro and Man Of The Rays? Let me count the ways. On PS3 (ask your granddad), Legends was just that: a side-scroller of near mythical excellence that bedazzled with 1080p beauty, struck pitch perfect levels of momentum in Ray’s movement and, through impossibly clever design,1 made you feel the master of its light-speed cause-and-effect sequences.

(Even though you were just tumbling through the pretty colours and hoping for the best.)

Then there were the music levels, in which you ran, jumped and gathered Lums in blissful sync with a kazoo rendition of Black Betty. So how many’s that, four? There’s a sonnet in here yet.

Those savants at Ubisoft Montpellier have made a rod for their own backs with this PS4 port though, because the visual ceiling can’t be raised higher than it was last-gen.

It’s still running at a gorgeous 1080p and it’s still a treat for the peepers… but you’re used to that kind of thing now. So what’s new with this latest rendition of Rayman? Brace yourself, readers: an Edward Kenway skin (no, really) and some touchpad functionality.

You can now scratch those scratchcards via your pad,2 take pictures mid-level and share them with guess which button?

Absolutely not worth the double-dip for existing Legends owners, then. But that’s okay, because this game isn’t carrying a flashy subtitle that makes any such claim – it’s just a chance to play the best platformer in years on your new, glitzy platform of choice. And that’s how I’m justifying this lofty score. It just doesn’t sit right with me to pin a lower number on a game I love like a brother. Phil Iwaniuk

he Lego videogame adaptations have a time-honoured pedigree, doing many popular franchises justice in the form of beloved plastic bricks. This time around the series steps away from Hobbits and Stormtroopers to act as a tie-in for its widely adored movie counterpart. Star of the piece is Emmet, a basic builder on a path of self-discovery as he tries to defeat the tyrannous Lord Business. If you’re a veteran of TT Games’ brick-‘em-ups, the blissfully simple controls and on-screen hints will be instantly familiar.

The sad thing is, despite being linked to a film that celebrates the power of imagination, this deviates little from the successful formula of its predecessors.

The levels,1 although vibrant, quickly slip into a disheartening rut that’s only salvaged by the occasional mini-game or Batman one-liner. Underneath that familiar mound of bricks and mini-kits, new mechanics such as Master Building2 attempt to break the mould with mixed success. The camera’s also seen some improvements – it’s now more accommodating to the stud-spraying chaos on-screen, so you no longer need to worry about misplacing your character of choice.

For a next-gen journey, the fidelity stacks up well and, thanks to a new animation style that replicates the stop-motion charm of the film, The Lego Movie Videogame does at least look like it’s doing something new with those lovely Danish toys, even if there aren’t as many ground-breaking ideas as we’d like given the license potential.

Still, despite the familiarity of its mechanics, it’s definitely way more fun than stepping on one of the damn bricks. Ben Tarrant

FOOTNOTES 1 Levels are truly varied – no generic ice/fire/jungle zones to be found here. 2 The accompanying scratchy sound that emanates from your DualShock 4’s speaker is an unspeakable joy.

FOOTNOTES 1 There are 15 in total, delivering scores of hours of gameplay if you want to gather up those damn collectibles. 2 This enables you to build powerful new machines and vehicles in a jiffy.

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review

Beast slaying fact #94: a cyclops’ weak point is the wang. Ouch.

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Weather warning

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

@MGElliott

Confused finale has you fighting time more often than monsters

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s you dive into this closing chapter of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, you realise time is most certainly not on your side. The world is ending and you have a mere 13 days to save enough souls to repopulate a new planet – or, if you screw things up, significantly less. It’s a task that leads you down some familiar paths – healing Chocobos, tending to mythical trees, crossing blades with former allies – but you’ll need one mascara-lined eye on the clock the entire time.

The idea behind imposing such a strict constraint is to encourage repeated playthroughs. There’s a typically bonkers narrative thread to be followed, with time for completing side-quests kept deliberately short. However, instead of feeling like you can mop up the trivial stuff on a second run, the reality is more akin to having unset jelly slipping messily through your fingers.

Everything you do in Lightning Returns has to be prioritised. It certainly instills a sense of urgency, but it also feels uncomfortably like real-life.

In a game about gods and chaos and seven-foot swords, worrying about whether the shops are still open is preposterous. Worse yet, in the face of looming Armageddon, chirpy side-quests you

accumulate feel like a waste of precious seconds. “Sorry, the avatar of the Almighty can’t save your soul right now – she’s buying spice for a cat.” info Format PS3 ETA out now Pub Square Enix Dev Square Enix

clock stopper

That constant, gnawing sense of probable doom also has an effect on the feel of the world. NPCs scuttle around like mindless robots, giving the whole thing the numbing inevitability of an MMO two days before the servers shut down. The glorious opening cutscene promises the sort of layered detail JRPG fans have been craving since the days of Final Fantasy VII’s distant,

pre-rendered backgrounds.

Get up close, though, and the tired, boxy side-streets feel unfinished and uninspired.

Thankfully, the variety and size of locations such as Luxerion and Yusnaan occasionally help break up the emptiness.

You can ‘complete’ locations in any order – hard as that might turn out to be. There’s no traditional leveling here; instead you complete quests to yield minor stat boosts. Most curiously, fighting monsters has zero effect on your level.

Rather, killing them rewards you with saleable tat and Eradia – the precious life force you spend on in-game powers, or

“lightning’s new schema outfits may be flashy and fun, but they feel very ff.”

review Right Timing your defence is the difference between a cosy forearm and a fiery death.

the opm breakdown w h at y o u d o i n… l i g h t n i n g r e t u r n s

11% Watching cutscenes, as you have zero hope of understanding what’s happening without them.

23% Waiting around, as the city gates only open at certain times.

6% Ignoring Hope’s mewling requests for you to return to the Ark. Can it, Estheim.

Below Time might be in short supply, but thankfully the clock stops during cutscenes, convos and battles.

16% Sprinting everywhere.

Good job Lightning has a change of clothes (or 80).

15% Choosing outfits. “Does one wear a pretty velvet three-piece with glasses or a villainous moustache? ”

29%

Fighting Monsters.

How many Niblets have to die? All of them, apparently.

s e c o n d o p i n i o n Va l h a l l a v e t e r a n

Quitting on the XIII trilogy now might feel a bit like ducking out of the cinema just before the thrilling dénouement, but the time commitment Lightning’s finale requires just isn’t justified by a solid enough adventure. The platforming adds nothing of merit to the package and the convoluted time-based mechanic only ends up making you feel constantly harried. Not a disastrous effort, but Lightning ends with a whimper, instead of a bang. Phil Iwaniuk

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Above left Lightning struggles through that ‘I’m not saving your life’ convo.

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1 Staggering each enemy is different. First, you need to work out what their stagger conditions are through combat or by purchasing monster notes. 2 Watch the enemy’s Stagger Wave – a coloured indicator that turns red as you exploit their vulnerabilities. Persistence is the key, whether it’s using the right magic or perfectly timing your guards.

3 Bam! The monster is now staggered – essentially the same as being temporarily knocked out. Any damage you do is now increased.

Lightning Returns: FF XIII

Final Fantasy XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII

verdict

Ambitious in some places, but downright lazy in others – Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is likely to divide fans without ever providing enough action to entice a brand new audience into the fold. Matt Elliott

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

seriesography

Final Fantasy Tactics

Combat – the most satisfying element of Lightning Returns – has evolved. During battles, Lightning now swaps between three Schema: a set of occasionally scandalous outfits, each with their own deep strengths and weaknesses.

The rapid-fire costume changes might sound like cabaret magic, but it’s essentially the same as having three party members. Not only is it flashy and fun, but it feels like Final Fantasy: an energetic, modern approximation of combat that was previously turnbased. However, discovering valid tactics requires a little experimentation – so there’s a nervous anticipation before fighting every new enemy.

Experimentation’s fine in principle, of course, but get it wrong and die and an hour of precious time is stripped away:

Former goodie turned Big Bad, Snow is Party Patron of Yusnaan.

h o w t o… s ta g g e r a n e n e m y

Final Fantasy XII

Beauty Schema

a punishment entirely at odds with frequently inescapable, sometimes unwinnable battles that are randomly thrust upon you. When you’re already choking on the sands of a relentlessly filling hourglass, such harsh sanctions make the most enjoyable aspect of the game feel needlessly frustrating.

This sadly encapsulates the main problem with Lightning Returns; it’s a game so desperate to refine each individual element that they’ve all become disparate. There’s buried content that should be explored but, despite Square Enix’s best intentions, it’s not worth setting aside the time to revisit this world.

Final Fantasy X

exchange at the end of each day for more time.

Noel’s now the prophetic Hope has the brain of Shadow Hunter, on a an adult, the regressed mission to kill Lightning. body of a 14-year-old.

Maybe Square simply set the bar too high with FFXII – seven years on, we’ve yet to see it beaten in or outside the series.

089

review You’re just going to have to trust me when I say it makes more sense in motion.

Rad Cymru

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@PhilIwaniuk

master reboot A dose of crazy from the land of Gavin & Stacey

N info Format PS3 (Download Only) ETA Out now Pub Wales Interactive Dev Wales Interactive

ot only is this one of the stranger games in the great PS3 library, this Welsh-and-proud indie is even more bizarre than most rarebit-fuelled dreams. And as someone whose proclivity for cheesy treats before bedtime has given me quite some insight into the darker side of the human psyche, I say that with some authority.

We’re talking about an experiential puzzler in which you stroll through half-forgotten memories in the Soul Cloud, a metaphysical backup service that keeps the dead alive in some post-HTML5 form. It’s a hallucinogenic soup of ideas from System Shock 2, Black Mirror and Vanilla Sky: at one point pseudo-YouTube comments pop up and obstruct your path as you flee an enormous, code-dripping teddy bear. It’s very 2014.

Essentially you’re trying to find order in the chaos of the Soul Cloud’s downed servers, solving puzzles to file away memories correctly.

Periodically, a malicious doll-like girl appears to stress-test your sphincter, while during calmer moments you stumble upon documents that go some way to explaining your surroundings.

There are puzzles you’ve mastered numerous

“periodically, a doll-like girl appears to stresstest your poor sphincter.”

times in many a game before it – moving bookcases, hidden keys, etc – but although it’s not mentally taxing, Master Reboot’s locations are often haunting and affecting.

boot-iful looks

Like Lady Gaga and the doughnut burger, Master Reboot possesses a kind of ugly beauty. Sometimes the atmospheric lights and lowpoly architecture’s positioned so harmonically that you actually stop dead and drink it in, such as when you approach a circus tent from misty woodlands, or later when you’re explore an unsettling doll’s house in shrunken form.

In other instances, however, you feel as though you’re inhabiting the first draft of a location, thrown together as a placeholder environment.

Sometimes you’re guided expertly from point to point by lighting cues and intuitive puzzles; other times you’re left to flounder, hacking away at r in the hopes of unlocking an unseen door. It’s here that the

bugs make themselves known – such as when you respawn near unavoidable danger.

And yet I’ve given it a good score. Having played most of it in one big chunk, it felt like awarding it a ;P out of ten would be just as appropriate as any number, but play by the rules I must. It’s playful, original and very rough around the edges. But if you want to know exactly how weird PS3 can get, you’re gonna have to brave some unintuitive design, wrong-side-of-minimalist visuals and a few bugs.

I’d advise you to take the plunge, however, because you’ll remember bits of Master Reboot long after you’ve forgotten Syndicate or Tron: Evolution. And, like me, you’ll also be dying to see what Wales Interactive does next. verdict

Master Reboot is Journey’s creepy mate – minimalist, experience-driven and a bit untidy, but worth a look for anyone who likes their puzzles served macabre. Phil Iwaniuk

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review info

Format PS3 ETA Out now Pub Bandai NAMCO Dev Bandai NAMCO

Pac-Man And The Ghostly Adventures

Format PS3 ETA Out Now Pub D3 Publisher Dev Sandlot

Earth Defense Force 2025 Run-and-gun can be alienating

info

Format PS Vita ETA Out Now Pub Llamasoft dev Llamasoft

TxK Arcade wonder raises the Tempest

B

kay, this is obviously a shameless tie-in to a cartoon you probably won’t watch,1 but Pac-Man And The Ghostly Adventures is actually a decent platformer – I know, I’m kind of shocked just writing that, too. It’s a robust little jaunt that balances traditional 3D platforming with a mixture of combo-focused combat and simple puzzles.

The classic Pac-Man rules have changed. You can now chomp pesky ghosts with a press of r or hit e to scare them blue. There’s a genuine challenge to be found in the game’s combat – not all your enemies can be gobbled up outright, so often you need to build up your scare meter first by munching more than five basic ghouls in a row. It’s hardly as nuanced or refined as Ratchet & Clank’s best bits, but it does have a purity to it that’s perfect for the little nippers.

The game worlds are broken into minilevels, and each one’s sprinkled with special Power Berries. These power-ups give Pac the power to spit fireballs, freeze enemies and so on. The chameleon power enables you to swing from pole to pole with an elasticated tongue, while the granite boost turns Pac into a wrecking ball. Most of these powers work just dandy,2 but targeting your enemies with projectiles can be frustrating.

It’s not a difficult game, but it’s good to see Bandai Namco has at least tried to create some semblance of strategy and challenge.

Surprisingly, Pac-Man And The Ghostly Adventures feels like a love letter to classic platformers rather than PacMans (Pac-Men? – Ed) of old, but the overbearing cartoon licence does its best to gobble up all the fun. Dom Reseigh-Lincoln

O

ere you to hand a game developer from the late ‘80s a world of 21st century technology and talent, it’s likely they’d make Earth Defense Force.

It’s a series about hundreds of guns, millions of giant bugs to fire them at and an entire planet’s worth of skyscrapers to demolish.

It’s easy to love because, like Contra 3 or Smash TV, it feels great and everything explodes. But those games had five and three levels respectively, while EDF 2025 repeats that same dizzying violence for 85.

There’s a limit to how much abuse one brain can take – turns out that limit is 85 levels.

The simplicity of EDF is what makes it a cult fave;1 it’s a game about nothing more than fighting overwhelming odds with even more overwhelming firepower, and a game where the usual shooter contrivances such as cover and a careful aim are largely irrelevant, because so long as you’re looking in the right direction, something is dying.

Maybe it’s a giant ant. Maybe it’s a big robot.

Maybe it’s a flying saucer or a Death Starlike mothership, but by the time you’re a few hours deep into the game, you have dozens of multi-lock missiles and cluster bombs and 200-round machine guns to choose from and that wonky aiming is soon forgotten.

EDF isn’t just about shooting either – it’s about grinding for new weapons to face even more enemies on even harder levels.2 The shooting just happens to be glorious, so you end up shooting until you realise you haven’t done anything that resembles ‘skill’ in around 50 levels – by which time you’ve gone loopy. Earth Defense Force 2025 is proof it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Michael Gapper

W

ack in ‘94, Jeff Minter shipped Tempest 2000 for Atari Jaguar and came as close as was possible to making the crummy old console worth buying. Unlike the Jag, there are a dozen good reasons to own a PS Vita already – and 20 years after Tempest 2000, Minter’s follow-up is now one of the best.

If you really want to delve into the history books, TxK, like Tempest 2000, is a remake of Dave Theurer’s 1980 arcade shooter1 – with the original’s black and white vectors replaced by all the colours in the world. Like Tempest, enemies appear at the end of the TxK’s webs and crawl their way towards your ship on the upper rim, while you return fire and hold off the advancing horde – which is where the similarities end. Minter has dragged Tempest into the 21st century – stopping to grab a handful of techno tracks from the mid-’90s on the way2 – and brought the systems behind it up to date.

Every enemy has a job. Some try to drag you down the web, some fill it with hazards to trap you when you exit the level, and others just narrow down how much of the rim you can use. Your priorities constantly shift, moving from nothing more complicated than survival, to experimenting with the enemies’ behaviours and developing strategies, to high-score chasing as the game becomes more familiar and you assimilate the all-out sensory assault.

And you will assimilate it, no matter how confusing TxK seems at first. When the pounding beats and explosions of vibrant colour that punch you square in the brain fade into the background, TxK arrests every second of your attention.

Michael Gapper

FOOTNOTES 1 The TV show was created by Marvel Studios exec and Iron Man producer Avi Arad. 2 You can create extra platforms by melting and freezing fountains with Pac’s fire and ice flavours.

FOOTNOTES 1 Like many ‘cult favourites’, EDF has never been especially well-made. 2 And in online co-op, which extends the life of those 85 levels and the handful of exclusive co-op missions.

FOOTNOTES 1 Theurer also created the brilliant Missile Command for Atari. 2 Actually, TxK’s soundtrack is all new work by fans of the original game’s tunes, but it’s still got a delicious ‘90s feel to it.

Cute caper suffers by association

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info

review info

Format PS Vita (download only) Also on PS3 ETA out now Pub hitbox team Dev hitbox team

Straight to the bargain bin @jPhillwaniuk

dirt devil

@Shiny_Demon

dustforce

There comes a point in a young man’s life when he realises he’s probably never going to get around to playing through that everaccumulating pile of shame.

It’s a sad day, but it also gives you new focus: your life is slipping away like sand between your fingers, the windows of opportunity to your hopes and dreams grow ever slimmer. Therefore, do you really have time to play Dragon Ball Z: Battle Of Z? You still haven’t written that novel, climbed Mount Snowdon or finished Arkham Asylum, fergodsakes. Console yourself with the knowledge that this one’s just like all the others, only a bit prettier. There – it’s like you’ve played it!

Diamond of a platformer in need of a polish

O

kay, so it might sound a bit like a cleaning product developed by a team of Alan Sugar’s mindless Apprentice candidates – “It’s, like, y’know, a force against dust” – but Dustforce is a slick artistic side-scroller fresh from a stint on PC. Tasked with ridding a whole city of filth and grime, you have a choice of janitors who are all blessed with ninja-esque freerunning skills and armed with an arsenal of mops, brooms and leaf blowers.

Presumably doped up to the eyeballs on antihistamines, your chosen character acrobatically hurtles through each stylish stage, ridding surfaces of layers of muck as they go. The joy here – where the ‘making cleaning fun’ bit comes in – is building up combos with each sweep of the brush. Double jumps, mid-air sweeps and a nifty dash mechanic all combine to make a kinetic platforming experience that has you running upside down along girders and dodging spikes, before leaping between buildings like a Marigoldwearing Spider-Man. Kim and Aggie eat your hearts out.

Unfortunately, until you’ve mastered the precise and sometimes unresponsive control scheme, you’ll regularly plummet into the abyss: Dustforce’s difficulty curve is

akin to using a toothbrush on three week-old dishes without soap or water.

Life of grime

Even the tutorial is worthy of its own ‘BANG, and the PS Vita’s gone’ tagline, tempting you to end your handheld’s life with one swift toss against the wall. Yet somehow Dustforce manages to keep you coming back for more sweeping.

Whether it’s the effortless autumn leaf removal as you slide down a forest slope with a flick of the analogue stick, or attacking dust-covered stone gargoyles until they thump satisfyingly down to the ground looking all shiny and new, there’s something maddeningly addictive here.

With ratings for each level helping you unlock new and more fiendish areas, this side-scroller is somewhat masochistic in its platforming demands. For some this might just be too similar to the chore itself, but the catchy music, artistic style and that ‘just one more go’ mentality means Dustforce is another capable Cross-Buy addition to PSN’s growing indie library. verdict

There’s a mega-compulsive core to playing Dustforce, but a desperate polish of the PS Vita controls is needed for this oddball platformer to truly shine like it should. Louise Blain

Two identical cups of coffee sit steaming at each end of an ornate wooden backgammon table.

Extravagant instrumental metal rocks your ears as you observe checkers move around a board.

You’re playing Backgammon Blitz, and probably wondering where it all went wrong. Not that it does a bad job of recreating the world’s least popular board game, but let’s be clear: you play backgammon when there’s absolutely nothing else to do, so by virtue of appearing on a games console that’s bursting with interesting titles, this poor game paints itself into a corner – then painstakingly watches that paint dry.

After what feels like five hours of expositional cutscenes, I’m not altogether convinced there’s actually any game in Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists Of The Dusk Sky. And even if its gameplay turns out to be Half-Life 3, it’s already lost me by the time it wheels out the third giggly, suspiciously young-looking girl in suspenders and a cat-tail. Atelier has its fans, and those fans will likely hunt me down and enter an overly simplistic combat sequence with me for saying this (burn!), but this game’s the embodiment of what all JRPGs get vilified for. More of a cosplay lookbook than an engaging, interactive experience.

Below Testing each individual cleaner’s skills is equally rewarding and frustrating.

abomination of the month How can a game called Forest Legends: The Call Of Love possibly be this bad? Well, combining creaky old point-andclick gaming with a fantastical story involving forbidden love between humans and catpeople is a good start. By the time you’ve used the heart pendant to open a safe containing an oil that lubes a spinning wheel, conventional logic is soon forgotten. Phil Iwaniuk

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this month online

dlc

movies

music

how to

trophies

on the store 98 The Last Of Us – Left Behind Like you need an excuse to revisit Naughty Dog’s epic. Join Ellie and her friend Riley in this emotional companion to the PS3 classic.

095

on your xmb 100 Gravity Even in space, people can still hear you hoovering up awards. Bullock shines bright in this captivating flick.

music

online tests

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition The First Lady of PlayStation gets a next-gen makeover, but can good looks save her online?

96

101 This month’s hottest tunes

how to…

102 Earn big in Gran Turismo 6

platinum club 103 Resogun

online tests what we’re playing now

multiplayer modes put through their paces by our team of experts

review

The Last Of Us Phil Iwaniuk discovers getting owned is the therapist’s couch of the end times

To my eternal shame, I never finished The Last Of Us when it released in June last year, and having been seduced by the Left Behind DLC’s peerless storytelling this month, I thought it about time to check back in with Ellie and Joel. The solo campaign’s intensity means play sessions longer than 45 minutes turn me into a weepy and jittery mess, so I hop online for some light relief. I don’t even care that you just kicked my head apart after reading that, because at least Ellie’s safe for a little longer.

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Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

It’s a pirate’s life for Matthew Pellett Edward’s wrecking my sleep patterns. I lie in bed, tossing and turning like I’m on the Jackdaw in choppy waters, knowing that chestfuls of reales are just an arm’s length away: I just need to send Kenway’s fleet on new trade routes with the companion app. A friend’s online, too, so my ships are docking even quicker. Should I set a 3AM alarm to maximize my income? My wife elbows me in the ribs to tell me a storm’s heading my way if I do.

Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron Dom Reseigh-Lincoln is in his robo-Prime

With the news on the latest ‘Formers game leaving me with Baydirected nightmares, I flee back to the open arms of a Hasbro happy place. I unashamedly love Fall Of Cybertron, and 18 months on I’m still playing the Horde-like Escalation mode and the oh-so-moreish multiplayer. The mixture of classes always feel nice and balanced, the gunfights play out with ferocious intensity and nothing matches the feeling of racking up a kill as you switch into a jet and zoom away with a swagger in your swoop.

info Format PS4 Pub Square Enix Dev Crystal Dynamics (single player), Eidos Montreal (Multiplayer), Nixxes Software BV (PS4 version) review Issue #94, 7/10

Tomb Raider: Definitive Ed If there’s treasure to be had, it’s buried deep

Y

ou know that bit when Lara tumbles into a pit of offal about halfway through the single-player campaign of 2013’s hard-hitting Tomb Raider reboot? Take a moment to envisage how gross an experience this would actually be. Imagine seeing the world through the indistinct steam of bowel-voiding heat haze, its textures muddied by layers of grime. Still with me? Then you have some small idea of what it’s like jumping into Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition’s unsurprisingly disappointing multiplayer.

Why am I not shocked at this revelation? Well, it was hardly great to begin with on PS3. Here, though, the otherwise identical smudgy environments are made all the more jarring and ugly to behold. When the rest of the game looks so good, it’s hard not to feel hard done by. TR’s multiplayer offering is no looker, then,

but that’s not the only thing that differentiates it from Lara’s winning main event.

You may not have noticed it – partly because it works so darned well – but Tomb Raider’s single-player boasts one of the most accomplished cover systems in gaming. Do you remember rolling into walls, clipping through level furniture or becoming attached to the wrong cover at the

most inopportune time?

Me neither. These smooth transitions between cowering and domination are what lend Tomb Raider its sense of controlled chaos and urgency. In multiplayer, I can barely go ten minutes without some dodgy collision detection.

To be fair, I find it funny when it happens to someone else – less so when it’s me.

If these visual and technical problems didn’t

It’s funny when the avatar of another player glitches out mid-match – less so when it’s you.

Download spiral

While the Definitive Edition’s online play represents a marked downgrade in quality, it does at least boast more quantity – with a slew of extra maps and costumes to ‘enjoy’.

W

Minecraft

Turns out dedication isn’t what you need info Format PS3 Pub Mojang Dev 4J Studios review Issue #94, 9/10

hether you prefer to fight, forage or forge in first-person, Minecraft is peerless. And on PS3, its online play is much less of a dark art than it remains, even now, on PC – a place where the Wiki page is as invaluable as a pickaxe. There are no dedicated servers on the PS3 version, so searching for a quick match will get you nowhere.

Instead, you need to get organized with your mates, with one of you hosting while the others join that particular game. If it sounds a bit of a hassle, it’s offset by four player split-screen, which couldn’t be easier to set up. And that makes it a powerful lure to the uninitiated who wander in while you’re playing and fancy digging a really, really big hole. Top-drawer multiplayer action, that. verdict

Difficulty in finding a random game quickly puts a cloud on the right-angle-filled horizon, but split-screen serves as a nice silver lining. Phil lwaniuk

rear their heads, then there’s still the sub-par customisation options. These rarely, if ever, bestow any sense of ownership onto the Survivor or Solarii avatar you pick to play as. Likewise, sink some man-hours into the four multiplayer modes and you find upgrading your avatar rarely feels like the momentous achievement it should, thanks to unexciting weapons and a near game-breakingly over-powered grenade launcher. Of said four modes, Team Deathmatch and Free For All are rank and file multiplayer fare, while Rescue and Cry For Help offer up a bit more originality to a bland mix.

Multiplayer in Tomb Raider is often the antithesis of its stellar solo campaign. Only the most dedicated will find cause to spend any time down this avenue, which makes the lack of significant additional singleplayer content even more disappointing. verdict

If it was superfluous before, now it’s just plain insulting. It’s easy to recommend the excellent solo campaign, but the online modes are still a fiasco. Matt Sakuraoka-Gilman

O Terraria

Sadly blocked off from playing with others info Format PS Vita Pub 505 Games Dev RE-LOGIC review Issue #94, 8/10

n face value, Terraria’s online play looks like a well-integrated side-dish to the main course of 2D building and adventuring; sadly, right now it’s more of a limp salad. There’s none of the fancypants ‘server’ hassle that comes with certain other brick-based offerings here: just check ‘Play online’ when you hop into your game, and you’re off (although I did find myself getting shunted back to the main menu every 15 minutes or so). Don’t want to lay that painstakingly constructed ice castle of dreams open to every horrid internet oik? Set it to ‘Invite-only’. You can choose others’ worlds to jump into, too. If you can find them, that is – scouring for a game yielded me nought but ‘searching’. Well, this is awkward. Was it something I said? verdict

A sparse online population makes sharing your Terraria experience with the big, wide world an unfortunately difficult proposition on PS Vita. Emma Davies

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on the store

empty your wallets now with the latest downloadable diversions expansion

dlc £1.69

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Asgard Pack

These new Danish brick folk certainly are…

Thorish. No? This pack includes characters from Mr Odinson’s recent flick The Dark World, including his Earthly missus. It’s okay to have a crush on Lego Natalie Portman, right?

£11.99

The Last Of Us: Left Behind 098

FREE

Friends are forever, but sadly this magnificent DLC is fleeting

M

ost would have been happy if The Last Of Us’ Left Behind DLC gave them nothing more than a few extra hours in that world.

A chance to enjoy new content, to relive and remember just how good it was.

That this prequel chapter packs in just as much emotion and as many groundbreaking moments as the full game is a fantastic surprise.

Ellie’s relationship with friend Riley takes centre stage, the two sharing jokes and reflecting on their hard lives as they explore an abandoned mall.

It’s incredible, considering the broader perception of videogames, what Naughty Dog has managed to achieve here. While there are sections of petrol bombing and stabbing, it’s all offset

against moments of bonding and tenderness that hugely affect the context of the violence, adding an emotional maturity few games, let alone downloadable expansions, can match.

Riley’s fate has been a clear and known fact since the opening hours of the original story, so it speaks volumes that this

DLC can help you forget that and still enjoy the touching moments of intimacy between the stars. Some isolated moments of filler are problematic given Left Behind’s sub-three-hour brevity, making the £12 price point tough to swallow, but the quality and impact of the story shouldn’t be overlooked.

the action is offset by moments of real warmth, adding an emotional maturity few can match.

£3.99

No one’s saying this esoteric first-person platformer enjoyed the launch fare of Ridge Racer, but it does star an android bunny named Robbit. So there.

£1.99

G-Police PS1 £2

The G-Police they live inside of my head. Hold on a sec, that’s not right.

Still, this Blade Runnerinfluenced whirlybird shooter has retained its retro style.

FIFA 14 can keep its photo-realistic Goodison Park, because if you love a bit of PES 2014, you can now dip your turf-encrusted wick into two gratis new grounds.

Come on, we bet you’ve always wanted to have a nice little virtual kickabout on Boca Juniors’ La Bombonera. £1.69

Killzone: Shadow Fall – Zebra Skins

ps1/ps2 games

Jumping Flash!PS1

PES 2014 – Stadium Pack

£4.79

Tomb Raider ChroniclesPS1

You can keep your fancy TressFX hair. All we need from a Lara prequel is some tricksy temple levels, a few freckles and nails platforming.

£3.99

Syphon Filter 3 PS1

Gabriel Logan and co get their sneak on yet again in one of PS1’s finest sleuthing adventures.

Now with 74% less chatty gibberish than Metal Gear Solid. Guaranteed.

£3.99

Cool BoardersPS1

One of the biggest PlayStation piste pioneers, these rad boarders may not be as frosty as SSX, but they still give good straight airs… and permafrost.

Remember what mother dearest used to say about zebra crossings?

Well forget about looking both ways – all you have to worry about with these stripey bot skins is getting your Sentry Turrets or Revival Drones rocking that Serengeti chic in multiplayer matchups.

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coming soon the Hunger 17 mar Games: Catching Fire Teens are forced into deadly combat. This features one of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final roles.

blu-rays

Escape Plan 17 mar Sly Stallone and Arnie try to flex their way out of an escape-proof futuristic prison in this meeting of veiny ‘80s action flick royalty.

Life On The Limit

17 mar

Saving Mr Banks

24 mar

Telling the story of F1’s journey from its insanely dangerous past to its present state – Fassbender is on narration duty, too.

Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks do their damndest to make you interested in Mary Poppins’ transition into a bawdy Disney musical.

Philomena

24 mar Steve Coogan returns to serious business to help Judi Dench, as the titular Philomena, find her long-lost son. Academyfriendly, touching drama.

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don jon

Gravity Houston has all the problems

D Director Alfonso Cuarón wrote the screenplay for the film with his son Jonás.

odging the debris of a decimated Russian satellite that orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, medical engineer Ryan Stone makes a startling confession during an untethered space walk: “I hate space.”

We’ve been sent up into space via the magic of the silver screen plenty, and we’ve seen our fair share of astronauts in peril while we’re up there. But Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, a rousing escapade above Earth’s atmosphere starring Sandra Bullock as Stone and George Clooney as the cocksure Kowalski, is different. Not only is it a remarkable technical accomplishment, it also makes you feel unnervingly present during all that celestial peril.

You could write the plot on a napkin: a routine repair job on the Hubble telescope goes wrong, leaving the two leads floundering without a lifeline.

There’s a slightly trite backstory to Stone that proves analogous to the movie’s tagline (“Don’t let go”) but this

ain’t a thinker. It’s about enjoying the Earth rotating in the distance, watching a toy martian floating helplessly into oblivion, hearing Stone’s irregular breaths and feeling her desperation.

The breathtaking long shots from director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki are what IMAX screens are made for, so something’s going to be lost in translation if you end up watching this on your decrepit 19-inch TV. And if you’re expecting a thesis on the triviality of humanity, you’ll be left hanging. This is about feeding your eyes pretty pictures, and being taken to the aftermath of a disaster almost too alien to comprehend.

24 mar Joseph GordonLevitt (who also wrote and directed) hooks up with Scarlett Johansson and doesn’t fall head over heels – now there’s a unique pitch.

Dom Hemingway

31 mar

Poetic, brutal drama starring Jude Law as the safe-cracking jailbird Hemingway looking to get his due after a long prison stint.

frozen

31 mar Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale – then smothered in kid-friendly 3D animation – Anna and Kristoff brave the snow to save their kingdom.

Carrie

31 mar Yep, the telekinetic ‘70s horror classic has been remade, for reasons apparent to no one. Chloë Grace Moretz plays the titular dysfunctional lead.

the family

31 mar Put on your best upsidedown smile for De Niro and his Cosa Nostra close ones, who’ve been relocated to Normandy, France, by the witness protection program.

music

Fat White Family Touch The Leather Format Track ETA 3 Mar Price £0.99

The film is based on a French graphic novel by Julie Maroh (Le Bleu Est Une Couleur Chaude).

Blue Is The Warmest Colour Festival favourite undressed to express

C

ertain elements of Abdellatif Kechiche’s enthralling romance make it the perfect flick for impressing a crush: it’s French, it’s beautifully shot and it’s a poetic meditation on the whirlwind of first love.

The Excalibur of date movies it is not though, thanks to the unbearably intimate and startlingly explicit bedroom scenes between wide-eyed school girl Adèle and Emma, the blue-haired art student who awakens Adèle’s sexuality.

Some walked away from summer festivals last year calling this a masterpiece – others found those sex scenes problematic, directed as they were by a heterosexual male. This is more about love than it is about homosexuality, and its progressive attitude towards the latter as an incidental detail is commendable, but it doesn’t magic away the awkwardness.

Did Kechiche get carried away? Or, to put it another way: would you feel so

inexorably tied to their young love without those scenes? Intimacy is the crux of the whole piece, and while both actresses are wonderfully engaging in the everyday flow of their lives – Adèle zoning out in class or Emma schmoozing with gallery owners – you wouldn’t feel such a part of their relationship if you weren’t forced to intrude on their privacy.

So is it a masterpiece?

Sadly not – too often you’re left ignorant of important narrative beats or how much time has passed. But it’s still a showcase for two of the bravest, most committed and magnetic acting performances of 2013.

You can tell from their pallid complexion, missing teeth and the bluesy, almost sensual rock of Touch The Leather that FWF aren’t your typical band of preened Brit School sorts. fatwhitefamily.bandcamp.com

Beck Morning Phase Format Album ETA 24 Feb Price £8.99

The funkiest slacker of the ‘90s has toned down the dance moves a bit now he’s entered middle age, but that’s no problem when he can turn out albums such as this: a serene collection of harmony-laden folk-rock, tinged with truly mournful beauty. beck.com

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Within Temptation Hydra Format Album ETA Out now Price £9.99

Holland’s Within Temptation pen a concept album about the mythological Greek beast – well of course they do – and recruit guests including US hip-hop star Xzibit and operatic metal diva Tarja Turunen. Bold and grandiose metal aplenty. within-temptation.com

MØ No Mythologies To Follow Format Album ETA 24 Feb Price £6.99

What is it about Scandinavia and boundary-hopping female pop singers? Hot on the heels of Robyn, Fever Ray, Icona Pop, et al comes Denmark’s Karen Marie Ørsted, and a debut album blending glacial big-hearted pop – and on Diplo collaboration ‘XXX 88’, tough, dancehall-tinged rhythms. facebook.com/momomoyouth

how to… doctor playstation

Our console medic fixes your game woes with actual science

Avoid spending big in GT6 Earn millions the easy way with our expert tips

1 2 3 STEp 1 Don’t buy anything early on

STEp 2 Make the most of the 1.02 patch

STEp 3 Hit the seasonal events hard

the problem

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The world’s most desirable cars don’t pay for themselves.

And with real-money transactions now possible in GT6, it’s tempting to shell out of your own pocket.

Tempting, but totally unnecessary. Here’s how to use thrift while you drift.

First things first: the fabled amaze-o-glitch that let you sell the Mercedes concept car for millions of credits over and over again has finally been patched out of the game. Yes, it’s a sad day for all of us who like to cheat ourselves out of a sense of progress. But no, that doesn’t mean you need to pour tons of real-world quids into your digital collection of vehicles. Firstly, without spending any money at all, you’ll win a set of cars early on with which you’ll nail all the early racing tiers: the 2011 Clio Sport RS for winning all stars in Novice class events; the 2012 KTM X-Bow Street for acing the National A licence and the Mercedes-Benz AMG Vision concept car just for being a great guy/gal. If you can’t work your way up to International A events with that lot, you’re probably driving the wrong way around the track.

the verdict

Sony and Polyphony are obviously mindful of those pesky microtransactions ruining the delicate GT experience, which is why the economy’s been rebalanced post-release – so make sure you use that patch.

Now you’ve got a respectable garage, it’s time to speed up your earning. The 1.02 patch that added the Red Bull challenge also restored the consecutive login bonus from Gran Turismo 5, meaning you accrue more virtual wealth by loading up GT6 day after day, leading to a total 200% bonus after five consecutive logins. Hold on, you did install that patch, didn’t you? Because it also increases event victory payouts by up to 170%. Let’s say you win a Super class event without the login bonus, and it earns you 100,000 credits. Not bad, but we’re not in Donald Trump territory yet. Win that same event with the patch installed and the login bonus maxed out, and it’ll earn you 340,000 credits. That’s over £2 of microtransaction money saved in one race, so make like Rick Ross and increase the cadence of your hustling to err’day.

Seasonal event prize money is the Bitcoin of Gran Turismo. Is it real currency? You can spend it, sure enough, but it seems too good to be true. The caveat here is that you’ll need a car in the high 600 performance point range to ease the big ticket races, but having followed steps one and two like a good little tycoon that shouldn’t be a problem by now. Some events can pay out prizes in the 500,000 credit range when your login bonus is working at 200% – this means you can earn a million every few minutes. Seasonal events are longer and more demanding than career races, but with financial incentives like that, who the hell cares? Even Mesut Özil himself would be motivated by that. Think of it as Polyphony’s way of saying, “Sorry we made you do another Sunday Cup in a god-forsaken Civic.”

next month Treat your ears to finelytuned gunfire and custom presets with the PS4 headset companion app.

Mr trophy

Things can get pretty crazy in Resogun, so don’t lose your head in the hunt for shiny pots.

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

Platinum x 53 Gold x 279 Silver x 1,162 Bronze x 4,654

Platinum Club

Mr Trophy saves the last humans for galactic golds in Resogun

E

vil alien forces are invading our space colonies, and there are shiny medals to be earned if we can save the poor survivors.

To kick things off you should pick a ship and play through the whole game in Arcade mode, starting on Rookie while you get the hang of how everything works. Bear in mind that each of the individual trophies for finishing the game with each of the three ships have to be completed in a single sitting, although you can use multiple continues if you lose all your lives during your pot-pilfering session.

During this playthrough you can pick up several humanrelated trophies, including Let Fly! by pressing p to fling a rescued individual into a waiting escape pod. Micromanagement sounds difficult as it involves saving two humans within one second, but it can easily be earned by picking up one survivor then continually shooting another to launch them up into the

rescue beam before immediately boosting through it. Don’t worry; they’re tough enough to take it!

With all five levels completed and Conqueror unlocked, you can now tackle some of the shipbased challenges. For Congratulations On Your Driver’s Licence! you’re required to reach any level’s boss using only boost,

your firepower, but if only one player makes it to the end of a level then their fallen ally is resurrected on the next stage with three new lives, and both will still get the trophy if the end is successfully reached.

The same co-op trick can be used to beat the game on Veteran for The True RESOGUN Starts Here…, but doing this won’t unlock Master difficulty. Therefore you’ll need to either make it through Veteran on your own or find a partner with Master difficulty already unlocked to invite you in, so you can clear a level full of enemies that shoot back at you once destroyed to bag Masterful Dodger Of Revenge Bullets And Stuff Alike.

Depending on your skill level, the harder difficulties on Resogun can feel like trying to spin a dozen plates at once while herding cats – but if you put in the time and keep at it then unlocking I Came, I Saw, I Blew Stuff Up is just a matter of patience and practice.

KEEP SHOOTING YOUR HUMAN CARGO TO JUGGLE THEM – DON’T WORRY, THESE SURVIVORS ARE TOUGH LITTLE BLIGHTERS. which can be achieved quite easily on the first level by using the Nemesis on Rookie and regularly tapping o to do short boosts through enemies to destroy them.

Likewise, killing 100 enemies during Overdrive to get O To The D can be simply obtained by using that attack on the third level boss when it’s in its grey cube form.

1CC is a much trickier prospect as you need to complete Arcade mode on Experienced without losing all of your lives.

However you can drastically tip the odds in your favour by attempting this with a co-op partner. Not only will this double

Next issue Mr Trophy returns to the island of Yamatai, plundering for PS4 pots in Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition.

join the club

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

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From the use of ragdoll physics to the addition of a combat knife, Chaos Theory is Splinter Cell at its best.

info pub Ubisoft Dev ubisoft montreal released 2005 get it now PSN, £7.99

need to know

1 2 3

The game is the third in the stealth’em-up series.

Revised stealth mechanics mean silence is a must.

It was banned in South Korea due to its war themes.

retrostation

Stealth care

me

■ Spies vs Mercs was a real hoot in Chaos Theory.

GA

like a primary school teacher, the game will punish you if you’re not quiet.

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international pot of doom and stop them in their pesky tracks.

Yet the brilliance of Chaos Theory didn’t come from its overarching narrative, but rather from the sense of achievement at silently navigating from one point to another. Mr Fisher acrobatically tip-toed, climbed, and dangled his way across levels, hung from pipes and perched split-legged in narrow corridors above enemies to stay undetected. And when the bloodlust was too great to suppress, he stabbed his way through as well – the previous games’ knockout moves relegated to a distant memory as Sam added a combat knife to his toolbelt.

Each level was massive, and those onehit knife kills made them even better.

And today it’s this level traversal that still brings the game to life – identifying

si

W

hether it’s slipping past that irritating colleague unseen, or negotiating your way around that potentially hell-spawned dog owned by the neighbours, there really is a little bit of spy in us all.

Let’s be honest, there’s some serious empowerment to be gained from sleuthing from point to point, ghosting past every soul in sight.

Strange and potentially law-infringing though it may sound, there are few who’d deny the appeal of skulking around the local community after dark, night vision goggles and all. Which is why video gaming’s resident spymaster, Sam Fisher, has enjoyed so many shadowy outings – with Chaos Theory being the very best of the sneaky crop.

Entry number three in PlayStation’s six-part Fisher family scrapbook saw Third Echelon’s top student tasked with the diffusion of Eastern tension.

As things heated up between China, Japan and South Korea, Sam had to find those stirring up this inflammatory

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Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

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Each month we celebrate the most important, innovative or just plain great games from PlayStation’s past. This time round we’re dusting off the night-vision goggles and receding into the shadows for some silky skulking with Ubisoft’s brand of stealth

and attempting different ways to slink past an enemy becomes an art form.

Do you perch high above a corridor and wait for him to saunter by? Or silently crouch in a dark recess or vent, away from searching eyes? Choices are numerous and always exciting.

Chaos Theory offers a purer breed of stealth than you’ll get from today’s stealth genre lineup. If it’s a rowdy shooting gallery of interchangeable goons you fancy, it’s probably best you look elsewhere. Any attempt to take on a few baddies toe-to-toe sees Sam minced into a fine purée long before he’s even had chance to consider that tackling three gun-toting guards was a less-than-excellent plan for survival.

This is a stealth game with no delusions.

Just like your least favourite primary school teacher, Chaos Theory will quickly inform you that you will be quiet, or you will be punished.

slinked in

At its core Chaos Theory represents the pinnacle of the original Splinter Cell trilogy, all while typifying what’s so darn fun about a stealth game that doesn’t include the safety net of action sequences should you get rumbled. It’s a true test of patience and reserve that doesn’t suffer fools glady.

The empowerment of lingering in the darkness, silently lurking as several unsuspecting goons pass you by – using your deadly prowess in the shadows to offset their clout in open warfare – still appeals. Ultimately Chaos Theory’s biggest success is the power it grants, and the thrill of knowing that once a level begins, you’re the real predator.

■ Extra stealth abilities were balanced with tough AI. ■ “Come on – try and melee me from over there!”

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T IME MA C HINE

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

1 There’s fun to be found here, but only the sort of stuff you’d pay two-pints worth of money for.

opm time machine

5 years ago Deity-themed OPM #30 saw us go handson with Kratos’ god-killing threequel, while giving you the secrets to gaming nirvana

2 Luckily the non-choppingstuff-to-bits half of the game is FAR better, with a proper old-school platforming feel to each level.

3 sadly, Corpses don’t magically disappear, meaning most battlefields resemble a chicken coop that’s just been introduced to a FERAL Fantastic Mr Fox.”

Above After a three-year wait, it was finally time to pull on our gnarliest war face and go toe-to-toe with Kratos’ third and bloodiest outing. With our Blades Of Athena freshly sharpened, OPM travelled to Sony Santa Monica in a world-exclusive preview of GOW III.

Below left From conquering the Master League in PES to dominating SFIV, we brought you all the tips.

Below right Ever wondered what Koj’s Blu-ray collection looks like? The man himself revealed all…

4 There’s a simple brilliance to smashing an enemy’s hapless body into the sky, stalling him in mid-air with a salvo of vicious gunfire, before punishing his ugly face with one hell of a savage downward hit.

1. Facebreaker, issue #23, 4/10 2. Darksiders, issue #41, 7/10 3. Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, issue #63, 7/10 4. DmC: Devil May Cry, issue #80, 8/10

Answers

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Far left We argued whether or not Lady Croft needed a decent makeover – it only took four more years for PlayStation’s First Lady to shake off her classic looks.

Left We were in the mood for some good old-fashioned double-crossing with these traitors.

retrostation

don’t make me play!

who?

assassin’s creed iii

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

info pub Ubisoft

Dev Ubisoft Montreal released 2012, PS3 get it now PSN, £15.99

what?

Assassin’s Creed III is an open-world murder sim set during the height of the American Revolutionary War. It introduces sailing and hunting to the series, as well as a hero with a name that’s really easy to remember – Ratonhnhaké:ton.

■ ACIII scores points for the easy free-running, authentic use of powder weapons and splendid cast

of British rotters. The heavy-handed use of history and irreverent humour are less impressive.

A

Matt Elliott loves manners, muskets and the Knights Templar. Despite this, he’s always thought AC to be a diluted, historywith-hoodies take on events. Will number three win him over?

ssassin’s Creed III and I don’t get off to a good start.

I want to be the jumpered, beardy old dad; instead I’m a satchel-wearing douchebag called Desmond. Danny Wallace’s character starts awkwardly regurgitating Lewis Carroll quotes – I despair and the only thing that hardens my resolve is the realisation that I’m playing the video game version of Quantum Leap. Oh boy.

It’s exactly the whooping, Pepsi Max-guzzling fart-echo of actual history I feared. Then something unexpected happens. I take control of a steely, upright Englishman. A fellow in a tricorn and a cape – a man who watches opera, scratches notes in his journal and never once dons a pristine, apocryphal hoody. I love it. I swagger around fighting sailors, making dark

it’s certainly no sharpe simulator, but by god does it come close. plans and probably knowing which wine to have with pudding. Infuriatingly, the occasional in-game email reminds me that I’m actually a man in slacks whose mates call him Des – but I can tolerate this: I’m still a brilliant, British git.

I feel like a Georgian Batman: running across rooftops, fighting armies and liberating enslaved natives. Occasionally the Animus seems rather buggy, but I forgive everything when I hear the correct plural of cannon and I see how long it takes to reload a musket. It’s no Sharpe simulator, but by God it’s close.

I’m not stupid, though. I know that a Metal Gear Solid 2-style switcheroo is coming. While I’m touched by the awkward cave fondling between Haytham and Ziio, I realise what it brings. And sure enough, when Connor arrives, I’m numbed by a moody hero who’s arrogant, shouty and probably knows nothing about wine. It’s at this point that I realise that however good Assassin’s Creed III is, in my heart I’ll always be a Templar.

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eL AL Hth OF top 0M E F5A

THE definitive guide to this-GEN’s greatest games

ps3 Hall of fame 1

2

Grand Theft Auto V

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

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

9

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

3 108

Red Dead Redemption

A near-perfect open-world fusion of engaging storytelling, truly compelling characters and a living environment ripe for experimentation.

No sandbox since has got us quite so invested, and the bold ending still resonates to this day.

10

Batman: Arkham City

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

Ico/SHADOW OF THE COloSSUS HD

The only double bill that lets you hold a princess’ hand before stabbing up a labradoodle-cute monster the size of a shopping centre. Both games share the capacity to make you cry like nothing else on PS3.

4

The last of us

11

Portal 2

5

Bioshock Infinite

12

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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

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

Only Valve could turn advanced physics, impossi-puzzles and a voice cast comprised of a disembodied AI and Stephen Merchant into such a unique and undeniable work of genius. Hands down the funniest first-person experience on console.

Had it worked from the off? Top ten, no doubt.

It’s testament to this impeccably detailed dragonblasting RPG that even after the issues, Skyrim is still one of PS3’s biggest and best open worlds.

6

Mass Effect 2

13

Heavy Rain

7

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots

14

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

15

While Bioware’s trilogy-ender sends Shepard out in fine style, it’s the middle slice of the delicious sci-fi sandwich that remains its best.

A brilliantly scripted action-RPG, the closing ‘suicide mission’ provides an incredible finale.

Best-in-class adventure-brawler that manages to refine every mechanic of the genre, all while layering on inventive puzzles and an epic narrative.

Plus the ending is jaw-drop fodder, make no mistake.

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

8

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

From controversial purveyor of interactive cinema, David Cage, comes this psychological thriller that plays like no other game on the system.

So many games promise real consequences to your actions, but none deliver like this masterpiece.

Dark Souls

Akin to nothing else you’ve ever played.

It may be as impenetrable as an Amish girl’s undercrackers, but persevere and there’s a brutal and beautiful challenge within that you will never, ever forget.

retrostation

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18

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Far Cry 3

The open-worlder that lets you duff up a komodo dragon with your fists is a brilliant example of thoughtful sandbox design. With a hugely addictive crafting system, Jason Brody’s island shooter is stuffed full of wonderful distractions.

The Orange Box

It’s not a great port. But it’s a not-great port of one of the all-time best games in Half-Life 2 (plus Episodes One and Two), magnificent puzzler Portal, and fearsomely well-designed class-based online shooter Team Fortress 2. Absurdly good value.

MENAGE-A-JEUX

Personal picks The games that we – and you – hold in the highest regard Te a m O P M

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Assassin’s Creed II

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

Leon Hurley isn’t ready to jump ship

I was one of those impatient people who couldn’t wait for PlayStation 4 and started Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag on PS3. And do you know what? I’ve still got no regrets. Sure, I missed out on some slightly prettier whales, but otherwise the core gameplay – the open world, the freedom, the stabbing – is as beautifully realised on PS3 as it is on next-gen.

LA Noire

If the delivery had matched the scale of its ambition we may well be talking about the greatest game ever made. And while it couldn’t quite manage that, what we’re left with here is a deep, bold and thoughtful experience.

R e a d e r

Portal 2

Adam Bowman opens a portal to friendship in Valve’s intelligent puzzler

Gran Turismo 5

Not only is Portal 2 an awesome, mind-bending puzzler with a darkly funny story and plenty of secrets to be found, it’s also a game that brought two people together. I teamed up with a lovely bloke called Ben Dolan to get that elusive platinum trophy, and we enjoyed the ride. And from this blossomed a friendship that’s still going strong today! Thanks, Portal 2.

Still the king of racers, even though it trundled up to the starting grid in neutral upon its tardy release. Polyphony’s patches have since made this an irresistible love letter to locomotion, with more Skylines than the view from the Shard.

21

Bulletstorm

22

Super Street Fighter IV

Uproarious shooter with an ingenious twist – a scoring system that rewards kills according to their goriness. As colourful as it is crass, there’s nothing on PS3 like it, and its lack of a sequel is one of this generation’s greatest tragedies.

Earns the distinction of PS3’s best fighter for adding an unbelievable amount of polish and tweakability to SFIV’s endlessly playable comeback kid. New characters arrive perfectly balanced and drenched in that wonderfully distinctive art style.

23

Dishonored

24

FIFA 14

25

Borderlands 2

A daring new IP that came from nowhere and at once resurrected a treasured bygone era of open-ended stealth gaming, turbocharging it with supernatural abilities. You’re empowered on the streets of Dunwall like nowhere else in the genre.

Portal 2 is an awesome, mind-bending puzzler with a darkly funny story.

Developer

Grand Theft Auto V

Rebellion’s Chris Payton is full of wonder and living for the city in Rockstar’s latest I started my career as an environment artist, and a lot of my heritage is in cars and open environments. Regardless of the clever dialogue, the action, and all the stuff that goes on in GTA V, the technical achievement of the city is what floors me. Even if you just stood there and didn’t move, watching the dynamic times of day, weather and fog… it’s absolutely remarkable.

Some changes are small (midfielders better at finding space), some are big (improved off-theball running), and some we’ve begged for years (new menus!). But what they add up to is the most realistic and immersive football game on console.

The best co-op experience on the system, and one of a precious few that manages to weave a worthwhile plot in among those multiplayer mechanics. It also looks gorgeous and features the most (bizarre) weapons in history.

■ Whether it’s pulling off the ultimate heist in GTA V’s solo story or

exploring Los Santos online, Rebellion’s Payton can’t get enough.

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HA LL OF FA ME

A MUST-OWN SELECTION OF DOWNLOADABLE CLASSICS

psN Hall of fame 1

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Journey

An object lesson in how less is more, this two-hour voyage crafts an incredible, immersive narrative and a genuine emotional connection using little more than near-silent figures, marvellous sand physics and floating pieces of cloth. A remarkable and unique experience, as well as a new high for PSN gaming.

the walking dead

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

braid

If you want to make the argument that games are art, this is the place to start. An achingly beautiful handdrawn style combines with brilliant but brutal time-bending puzzles.

9

Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons

Engrossing, varied and touching, this Nordic puzzler offers a unique mix of single-player co-op as you take control of one sibling on each analogue stick.

10

Lara croft and the guardian of light

Ignore the looks and know that this is one of Lara’s finest outings ever.

Great two-player action plus loads of treasure hunting. A co-op essential.

4

MLB 13: The Show

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pixeljunk shooter

5

resident evil 4 hd

12

Stick It To The Man!

6

Hotline Miami

13

limbo

7

stacking

14

Okami HD

8

flower

15

thomas was alone

The long wait is over: the best sports series around has landed in the UK with ace presentation, deep but approachable gameplay, and a life-sapping Franchise mode.

One of the best games on PS2 gets a hi-def makeover. Still the pinnacle of survival horror, you’ll get scared, shooty and decapitated by a chainsaw.

And that’s a triple win, quite frankly.

Part puzzler, part top-down murder-‘em-up that’s as brutal as almost anything else on PlayStation. It’s hard but never frustrating, with instant restarts and lightning-fast gameplay.

A Tim Schafer puzzler-cumadventure-cum-headtrip in which you solve mysteries by stacking Russian dolls with unique abilities. Intelligent, insane and totally immature.

More ‘experience’ than game, this collect-’em-up sees you steering a petal on the breeze by tilting your Sixaxis.

It’s a soothing mix of colour and music; a lovely deviation from frantic action.

It was expanded on by the sequel, but the inventiveness and satisfyingly simple twin-stick gameplay mechanics of the original mean that this is still the best PJ title around.

Brilliantly leftfield platform-puzzler with a calibre of laughs and head scratchers that’d make Schafer proud.

Guide Ray and his mind-reading phantom limb through a breezy, cartoonish dream.

This understated, monochromatic tale of a lone boy’s escape from a danger-filled forest is as gorgeous as it is frustrating. A glorious combination of eye-caressing art and gut-punching gore.

As beautiful as Nathan Drake standing in front of a Hawaiian sunset, this tale of a wolf goddess and her celestial paintbrush is still unique six years after its original release.

Platform-puzzler that manages to imbue a bunch of quadrilaterals with personality thanks to a witty script and clever gameplay mechanics. A shining example of making a lot out of a little.

HA LL OF FA ME

YOUr EVERY NEED FOR on-the-go GOODNESS

ps VITA Hall of fame 1

2

Persona 4: Golden

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

Virtue’s Last Reward

9

3

Gravity Rush

10

FIFA Football

4

LittleBigPlanet

11

Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack

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

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5

Use a gravity-defying cat to break the laws of physics and zoom across the skies of a floating steampunk city.

With stylish comic-book looks and a sassy heroine, this is a rush to remember.

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

Lumines: Electronic Symphony

12

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection

13

Uncharted: Golden Abyss

14

Tearaway

15

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

Super Stardust Delta

Blazblue: Continuum Shift Extend

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

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

8

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

HR policy frowns on heroin, but we can’t imagine this is any less moreish. An ace port of the PSN shooter, you’ll never stop scratching the high-score itch.

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

7

He of no limbs finds the perfect home on Vita’s OLED screen.

Beautiful visuals and flawless platforming make Rayman a handheld delight of quirky cartoon ridiculousness.

Simple but gloriously addictive. Make your ball of goo grow to vast proportions in this B-movie romp, taking in all the pop-culture zingers in the background.

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

6

Rayman Origins

Urban Trial Freestyle

Taking more than a little inspiration from its Xbox counterpart, this tricksand-tracks biker is absurdly addictive.

‘Restart’ will take quite the hammering.

NEW!

Olli Olli

Skating meets Hotline Miami: a nails test of reactions as you combo grinds and tricks to obtain impossibly high scores. It drives you mad, but in a good way. Probably.

next month

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O n S a l e 14 April Subscribe on page 60

INFAMOUS: SECOND SON

Our verdict on the biggest PlayStation 4 exclusive yet

Parting sh t

Look away!

Celebrating PlayStation’s finest moments

Spoiler alert

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No.11

Normandy no mates Letting pals perish in Mass Effect 2’s final mission Last Month God Of War III

Garrotte Kratos’ grandad in God Of War III’s decidedly awkward reunion.

Format PS3 / Pub Sony / Dev Bioware / Released 2011 / score 10/10

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uicide is painless… unless it involves slowly roasting in the fires of a malfunctioning spaceship, choking in a horribly cramped vent or being squashed by a 70-foot Skeletor wannabe. Each of these meet-your-maker missteps can befall Shepard’s crew if you make the wrong choices. Or if you’re too cheap to upgrade the Normandy’s hull. You just had to pimp out Shep’s fish tank, didn’t you?

Mass Effect 2’s fateful signoff involves a quest that has a worse survival rate than your average kamikaze flight if you’re

not properly prepared. Take on Bioware’s suicide mission without adequately caring for your vessel or its onboard crew and your commander will have a cripplingly lonely celebration party after vanquishing the evil Collectors.

Before you worry about laying a beatdown on a Human Reaper you have to earn the loyalty of your crew. This requires you to carefully manage Shepard’s relationships with all his key crew members.

From a benevolent beast to a genetically modified Aussie goddess, each has grievances which must be heard and satisfied

through side-quests if you’re to gain their true allegiance. Fail to do so, and they’ll prove to be much more receptive to embracing Collector bullets in that final quest.

A dose of middle-management is also necessary to conquer evil and outlast the near-unsurvivable mission. That means assigning the right man/robot/assassin for the job. Turns out, goldfishlooking warriors are rubbish biotic specialists and nerdy ETs are useless at providing cover fire.

In a game of constant choices, it’s fitting the finale should have such profound consequences. ■

Next Month Dark Souls

Think of Red Riding Hood as you take out Dark Souls’ tragically devoted lupine.

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