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Feature: Who doesn't love grinding
Ark: Survival Evolved [official site] is currently the fifth most played game on Steam. It's not the first early access survival game to reach such heights, but so far it's one of the few to have maintained it. At this year's Gamescom 2015 I spoke to co-creative director Jesse Rapczak about what he feels Ark is doing different, their release and expansion plans, how you…
Feature: Beyond Vents
At Gamescom 2015, I had the opportunity to talk to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided gameplay director Patrick Fortier. We talked about feeling a sense of ownership over Deus Ex at last, expanding the language of its level design beyond vents, and the politics of a "mechanical apartheid." Before I asked him about the game's ceilings.
This Just Cause 3 [official site] video from IGN is titled "Just Cause 3's Challenge Mode Looks Insanely Fun." Insanely fun. You might like to watch the video because it has pretty explosions and scenery, but scroll down below the video and I'll explain why the challenge modes aren't insanely fun at all.
I played Kathy Rain at Gamescom and now that the first trailer is here, I'm eager to share my thoughts. If I hadn't known it wasn't a Wadjet Eye game, I would have thought it was a Wadjet Eye game. That's the greatest compliment I can give to a point and click adventure in this day and age, and Kathy Rain's grounded small town setting…
Feature: Beautiful Bedlam
Skyshine’s Bedlam Blends FTL, Mad Max, 2000 AD, Chess And XCOM
That's a headline packed with good things, isn't it? And here's another good thing – even if you don't like any of the games films and comics listed in that headline, there's still a possibility that Skyshine's Bedlam [official site] will have something for you. Maybe you liked The Banner Saga? Bedlam is built on the engine used in that game. Maybe you really like…
Feature: Another Captain Smith
This is an embarrassing admission: when I first played the original Mount & Blade I spent twenty minutes walking around trying to find other players and confused by the mostly empty villages I found instead. I had thought it was an MMO. This makes me the person in the world best equipped to write about its sequel, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord [official site], which…
Feature: The Rising Son
Mafia 3’s Move To Sixties New Orleans Is Risky But Potentially Rewarding
The Mafia 3 [official site] presentation at Gamescom felt very much like an attempt to hammer home several important changes to the series rather than an accurate representation of the minute-by-minute experience of playing. Given that this was the first public showing of the game, which probably won't see release until the second half of 2016, that's to be expected. The vertical slice shown had…
"It'll be over by Christmas," Hearts of Iron IV [official site] thinks to itself as the engineers at Paradox fiddle with its guts. "They'll send me home via Steam-tube, rather than back to the frontlines of testing and development." No such luck. The World War II grand strategy game is due to spend another Christmas in development. That's good news for us though because it…
Feature: With A Spot Of Scribblenauts
Someone could create an incredible game within Planetoid Pioneers [official site], it's just too early to tell whether that someone is its developers. My demo at Gamescom 2015 focuses mainly on the tools being used to make the game, and with good reason: they're impressive, expansive, and they'll ship with the game when it launches on Early Access this autumn.
Feature: Hands On
Dark Souls 3 [official site] is in the shadow of a giant. The giant probably has a wound for a face, not a single leg to stand on and spends his days dragging his torso around the ruins of a throne room. After one slightly uneven sequel, the Souls series has returned to the guidance of creator Hidetaka Miyazaki. Rather than replicating what worked so…
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Is The Star Wars Original Trilogy Of Game Ceilings
Deus Ex: Human Revolution had the best ceilings of any game ever made. I'm not kidding. I've had screenshots of that game's ceilings as desktop wallpapers and I know others who have done the same. Each one was a sculptural work designed to communicate the cyber renaissance setting. I spoke to gameplay director Patrick Fortier about this at Gamescom and unfortunately it sounds as if…
Feature: Right And Wrongs
I wouldn't count myself as a fan of many things, but the derision and disinterest inspired by the first Mirror's Edge makes me want to champion it. It was a game with terrible boss fights, flawed combat and a tedious story, but also one worth celebrating for the things it got right, such as its first-person movement and its beautiful, brilliant world. Those same things…
Feature: Follow The Blood Money
Improvisation, Experimentation And Dark Comedy: Hitman Is Coming Home
Absolution might be a fitting tag for what looks like a return to form and a casting off of the sins of the past, but since that subtitle's already taken, I'm hoping I'll be able to justify referring to this one as Hitman: Redemption [official site]. So far, the signs are good. I spent some time in the company of IO Interactive's studio head, Hannes…
Ubisoft have let loose a bit of Assassin's Creed Syndicate [official site] in a nice 10-minute playthrough video taking a look at the game's secondary protagonist Evie, twin to playable Dude Hero Jacob Frye and a sensibly dressed Master of Stealth in her own right, as she infiltrates the Tower of London. You can watch it all below.
I admire Euro Truck Simulator but, well, Europe's a bit mundane. Give me endless skies, wild lands, Places From The Movies, big trees. Give me American Truck Simulator [official site]. SCS's next trucking sim takes a whistlestop tour of the USA in a new trailer, and I dig it. Chills ran down my spine seeing a truck cross the Golden Gate Bridge out of that…
Feature: Happy days
Note: this feature was written late last week, before Gamescom kicked off. When I talk to fellow writers about the experience of Gamescom, they're more likely to use the verb 'survive' than 'enjoy'. While not considered as intimidating as E3, a show so large and unruly that Los Angeles is actually contained within its halls, Gamescom can be a difficult place to get work done…
Might & Magic Heroes VII [official site] is launching September 29th, so sayeth Ubisoft from on high. A second closed beta phase is scheduled to start August 26th in the interim period, running for about a week until September 2nd and letting players try out previously unavailable factions. These are the fan-voted factions, the Sylvan and Dungeon, the result of a voting session that began last…
Feature: They should have sent all of the poets
Paradox’s internal development studio, responsible for Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and Hearts of Iron, is deep into development on a space strategy game. We’ve already seen it, and picked the brains of CK II maestro and project lead Henrik Fåhraeus and EU IV designer Tomas Johansson about this giant leap for the studio. The project, which the company announced at their Gamescom fan gathering…
Paradox have some announcements to make at this year's Gamescom. They're going to make them at their conference, at 7.30pm BST (8.30pm CEST), and you can jolly well watch it all happen right here. Just underneath. There... yes, just there.
Swedish Yarn golem Yarny (surname: Not Sackboy) is the kind of protagonist I can get behind. The sort of sugar-sweet hero that could make even this heart of ice and rock soften and beat once more. You first caught a glimpse of him a couple months back during E3 when developer ColdWood Interactive first announced it was working on a quaint little puzzle-platformer named Unravel…
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