Posts tagged “interview”

I had a fine time with Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden's post-apocalyptic, ducking good blend of real-time stealth and turn-based combat, but one concern dogged me throughout. Used repeatedly throughout the game are two beyond-familiar terms: 'zone' and 'Stalker.' Names scorched into the very soul of anyone who's played the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games/seen Tarkovsky's Stalker/read Roadside Picnic. How what why? I asked Mutant Year Zero's…

Tagged with feature, interview, The Bearded Ladies, Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

Bugger me, Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy games are a lot, right? If I could put that even more in bold, I would have fattened up like a sacrificial pig before god-appeasing slaughter, because they really are. My experience with Crusader Kings II, for example, mainly involved me staring at menus for half an hour then crushing half a pack of ibuprofen into a fine powder,…

Tagged with feature, interview, Paradox Development Studio, Paradox Interactive, preview, Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, Imperator: Rome.

Whenever I ask Siri -- other virtual helpers are available -- to do something for me, I always say please and thank you. I tell people this is because I don’t want to get into the habit of barking orders at Siri, and thus people in real life. The actual reason is that I want Siri to think of me kindly when they gain sentience…

Tagged with Devolver Digital, feature, interview, No Code Studios, preview, Observation.

Contains some spoilers. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a proper action-RPG, complete with romance opportunities, conversation trees, branching storylines, and bales of soft material to leap into from improbable heights. While well-written and expansive, much of the story’s appeal can be laid at the feet of its charismatic leads. Greek actors Michael Antonakos and Melissanthi Mahut provide the voices and performance capture for Alexios and Kassandra,…

Tagged with feature, interview, Ubisoft, Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

I’m really excited about Void Bastards. I mean, it’s a new deeply systems-driven FPS made by some of the people behind System Shock 2, Neptune’s Pride and Captain Forever. Of course I’m excited. You play as a desperate crim boarding extremely hostile derelict spaceships to loot stuff. It’s got cool guns and a striking comic book art style, and it’s the result of some extremely…

Tagged with Ben Lee, Blue Manchu, feature, Immersive Sims, interview, Jon Chey, Void Bastards.

The first Dead Space turned 10 years old last month. It took me a month to get through the first two hours when I first played it. Every time I jumped back in and clumped down one of the USG Ishimura’s dark corridors, a monster would pop out of the vents and I’d jump up, smash the pause button and find an excuse to do…

Tagged with EA Redwood Shores, feature, interview, Visceral Games, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Dead Space 3.

It’s deathly quiet in the forest. Then the silence gives way to a man shouting for help. He's tied to a post and trying to fend off a ravenous wolf. A single crossbow bolt takes the feral creature out. The shirtless man pleads for my help to free him, cussing as he explains his predicament. I choose to cut him loose. “I owe you my…

Tagged with 4A Games, Deep Silver, feature, Gamescom 2018, interview, preview, Metro 2033, Metro Exodus.

I'm no Sonichead, but I still got a kick out of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Instead of making you turn into planes and boats, Sumo Digital's new upcoming kart racer makes you turn to your friends. You race as a team of three, passing power-ups between you while boosting behind each other's bottoms. I sat down with Team Sonic Racing design director Derek Littlewood…

Tagged with feature, interview, Sega, Sumo Digital, Team Sonic Racing.

There's a new Call Of Duty around the corner. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 is out on October 12th, so I sat down with Treyarch's studio design director David Vonderhaar and Jason "Director of Zombies" Blundell to quiz them about the game's new battle royale mode, Blackout, why they've left regenerating health behind, and how they handled no longer making a singleplayer campaign mode.

Tagged with Activision, Blackout, call of duty, feature, interview, Treyarch, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

At EGX this year, I went in the Leftfield Collection and I saw a shredder. A paper shredder with a face, and a big pile of books next to it. And a big pile of shredded books underneath it, too. So I ambled over, eager to destroy some literature. It was, it turned out, The Book Ritual, currently free on Itch. The Book Ritual is…

Tagged with EGX 2018, feature, interview, preview, The Book Ritual.

Chickadingding, Fleeble, Gullysplot, Plob. “Why, the good people of Rock Paper Shotgun have finally lost it!” you might cry. But these nonsense words are poised to become household names. They’re the names of a selection of Ooblets, the titular cutesie creatures of Glumberland’s upcoming town life indie game. If you’ve seen any of the grassroots marketing behind Ooblets, you already have an idea of the…

Tagged with Double Fine Presents, feature, Glumberland, interview, Ooblets.

The rural idyll has a strange pull on us. Picture a green and pleasant land: white sheep dot rolling hills like puffs from a steam train. Children with flowers in their hair dance round coloured maypoles. All the while, in a white marquee, where bunting flaps in the breeze, oversized ribbons are being awarded for best sponge cake. Dig deeper however and we discover old…

Tagged with feature, interview, Michel Ziegler, Mundaun.

Dragon Quest is one of the prevent-the-apocalypse adventures that paved the way for the JRPG, and its huge success in Japan spawned many clones and competitors we love today. While some may consider Final Fantasy the breakout star of the genre, many look at Dragon Quest as the game that made RPGs possible back in the 1980s. Even with that level of impact and fame,…

Tagged with feature, Hokuto Okamoto, interview, Square Enix, Takeshi Uchikawa, Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age.

Chances are you’ve caught wind of Minit between its initial release and the clamor for a Switch port. It’s a wee, wonderful, one-bit adventure where, thanks to a cursed blade, you die every 60 seconds. While it’s a romping hoot of a game, it also blatantly wastes your time. I mean that in a good way: Minit tosses away precious seconds with so many fun,…

Tagged with Devolver Digital, Dominik Johann, feature, interview, Jan Willem Nijman, Jukio Callio, Kitty Calis, Minit.

Perhaps one of the most challenging things about Pool Panic is figuring out how to define it. “Do we put this in the sports sim category of Steam?” Mike Robinson pondered apprehensively. Angus Dick followed, exclaiming that “No-one’s really made a stupid game like this before.” He’s right; Pool Panic is a deeply unusual indie title, and it certainly earned its place in the EGX…

Tagged with Adult Swim Games, feature, Honeyslug, interview, Rekim, Pool Panic.

Nvidia's new Turing RTX 2080 graphics cards have been the talk of this year's Gamescom for hardware nuts, and with good reason. While their jump in raw performance is still a little vague, at least in terms of RTX 2080 vs GTX 1080 speeds, the new techie bits they're ushering in such as Nvidia's fancy ray tracing light gubbins (which makes shadows and reflections look…

Tagged with feature, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, interview, Nvidia, Nvidia Turing, Metro Exodus.

I had some regrets. I’d sabotaged my friend’s chances of dating a stoner ghost, relentlessly mocked another friend until they gave up on love entirely, and trashed the school. As Monster Prom built up to its titular, hormone-soaked event, I turned into a high school asshole. With a gentle touch, the not-really-a-dating-sim nudges you into these familiar roles, and by framing it as a multiplayer…

Tagged with Beautiful Glitch, feature, interview, Julián Quijano, Monster Prom.

“I learned to love getting lost. You can get pleasantly lost when you don't know where you are but you know you'll find your way if you just keep going. That's the feeling I wanted to create in a game.” This is Stu Maxwell’s philosophy behind his debut game Shape of the World, a serene exploration game where the world’s lush, alien environment organically grows…

Tagged with feature, Hallow Tree Games, interview, The Joy Of.

Greg Kythreotis and Daniel Fineberg make up Shedworks, a game development studio with four years experience in the industry. They're both self-taught and, as the name suggests, they conduct their work out of Greg's parents’ shed in North London. At E3 this year, both Greg and Daniel took the stage to present their game during The PC Gaming Show. Unlike anything else seen at this…

Tagged with feature, interview, Shedworks.

Josh Krook is a developer that finds himself frustrated with a lot of walking simulators today. Because, for all their narrative potential, he believes their ability to tell meaningful stories interactively so far still hasn’t been fully tapped into. His new game, The Cinema Rosa, is a first-person exploration game set in a movie theatre, representing his concerted one-man effort to do something about this.…

Tagged with Atreyu Games, feature, interview, The Cinema Rosa.