#390, December 2023 Edge

Citation preview

A few million words later, the spirit of 1993 lives on Here’s a tip: when you want to summarise 30 years’ worth of work, don’t put it all on one page. Yes, the collection of nearly 400 Edge covers looks pretty fetching spread out across the poster you’ll find tucked within these pages, but equally it doesn’t feel as though one piece of (admittedly expensive) paper should be able to contain the magazine’s story to date. Looking beyond the covers, we can at least consider that, at a very rough estimate, we’ve published something like 21 million words since the first edition of Edge was distributed in 1993. Now, not all of them were worth etching into stone tablets, and we will surely never tire of counterpoints to the review scores handed out to literally thousands of games throughout the magazine’s history, but we can at least claim to have stuck to our mission. Our fascination with videogames has never waned, even during the Mad Dog McCree days. We still cannot get enough of their unique powers. And, like you, we want to get even closer to them, which is what we set out to do within these pages every issue. For this anniversary edition we’ve gathered a selection of games and people that have been important throughout Edge’s history. On p98 we talk to key members of the Halo team to discover how they created one of the most pivotal launch games in console history. On p28 we welcome the return of Toshihiro Nagoshi for a column in which he discusses finding success against a backdrop of failure. And on p145 we revisit 1993’s Doom, a game renowned for Edge’s rhapsodic review. subs, please check Elsewhere we find room for a visit to Llamasoft, a return to the mighty Street Fighter II Turbo, and a discussion with industry leaders about the shape of videogaming’s future. Then there is the countdown of the 100 greatest games of Edge’s lifetime – the result of the biggest poll we’ve ever conducted. For a breather, flip your anniversary poster and take a moment to locate the references to every Edge 10 in Octavi Navarro’s sumptuous pixel art. We’ll see you for a few thousand more words next month. 3

games Hype 32 Eve: Vanguard

112 Starfield

36 Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

116 Cocoon

40 Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name

120 Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

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PS5

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42 Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 PC, PS5, Xbox Series

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44 Persona 5: Tactica

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124 Lies Of P

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126 The Crew: Motorfest

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128 Mortal Kombat 1 PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series

46 Hyenas

130 Chants Of Sennaar

48 Hype roundup

132 Gunbrella

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series

PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One PC, Switch

133 Sea Of Stars

PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series

135 Mediterranea Inferno Explore the iPad edition of Edge for additional content

Follow these links throughout the magazine for more content online

PC

136 Eternights PC, PS4, PS5

139 Finity iOS

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sections #390

104

88

D EC EMB ER 2023

Knowledge

Dispatches

8 Number crunching

22 Dialogue

14 Gold standard

26 Trigger Happy

Steven Poole outlines why Polytopia is ineffective battlefield preparation

Still the ultimate beat-’em-up? We return to Capcom’s Street Fighter II Turbo for a long-overdue rematch

16 Village people

28 Starting At Zero

145 The Long Game

18 Soundbytes

Features

Behind the scenes of this year’s 100 Greatest Games polling The Making Of Karateka: a new high bar for game documentaries Spilling the (Yorkshire) tea on Thank Goodness You’re Here Game commentary in snack-sized mouthfuls, featuring Swen Vincke

20 This Month On Edge

The things that caught our eye during the production of E390

Edge readers share their opinions; one wins an exclusive T-shirt

Toshihiro Nagoshi returns for an anniversary-related career summary

52 The 100 Greatest Games Of Edge’s Lifetime

104 Studio Profile

Jeff Minter and Ivan Zorzin on how sticking to their guns has reinforced Llamasoft’s endurance

140 Time Extend

Doom’s creatures might not have been too chatty, but Id’s classic FPS still has a lot to say for itself

98

Voted for by developers, staff and readers, a countdown of the finest videogames from the past 30 years

88 The Shape Of Things To Come

112

What will videogames be like in ten years? And how about 30? Industry leaders provide forecasts

98 The Making Of…

Bungie alumni look back at how Halo: Combat Evolved made the grade for 2001’s Xbox launch

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EDITORIAL Tony Mott surely not a day over 29 Chris Schilling deputy editor Alex Spencer features editor Miriam McDonald operations editor Warren Brown group art director Milford Coppock managing art editor Ryan Robbins designer CONTRIBUTORS

Jon Bailes, Nathan Brown, Paul Drury, Malindy Hetfeld, Phil Iwaniuk, Andy McGregor, Toshihiro Nagoshi, Niall O’Donoghue, Lewis Packwood, Emmanuel Pajon, Jeremy Peel, Steven Poole, Oscar Taylor-Kent, Alan Wen

SPECIAL THANKS

Everyone who has read and supported Edge over the past 30 years

ADVERTISING

Clare Dove UK group commercial director Kevin Stoddart account director (+44 (0)1225 687455 [email protected])

CONTACT US

+44 (0)1225 442244 [email protected]

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Web www.magazinesdirect.com Email [email protected] (new subscribers), [email protected] (renewals/queries) Telephone +44 (0)330 333 1113

CIRCULATION

Matthew de Lima circulation manager +44 (0)330 390 3791

PRODUCTION

Mark Constance group head of production Stephen Catherall head of production Jo Crosby senior ad production manager Jason Hudson digital editions manager Nola Cokely production manager

MANAGEMENT

Matt Pierce MD, games and entertainment Tony Mott editorial director, games Dan Dawkins content director, games video and events Warren Brown group art director, games and tech Rodney Dive global head of design Printed in the UK by William Gibbons & Sons on behalf of Future. Distributed by Marketforce, 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU. All contents © 2023 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication 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. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. “Not perfect, but at least it’s not wildly offensive.” The print media experience in a nutshell. We wouldn’t change it for the world. If you submit material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/or have the necessary rights/permissions to supply the material and you automatically grant Future and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/all issues and/or editions of publications, in any format published worldwide and on associated websites, social media channels and associated products. Any material you submit is sent at your own risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions.

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KNOWLEDGE 100 GREATEST

Number crunching Behind the scenes – and inside the results – of our 30th anniversary greatest games poll

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hould you want to cause anguish in the videogame industry, you need only ask a bunch of its representatives for a definitive list of their favourite games. This is just one of the things we discovered as we compiled this issue’s anniversary countdown. Alongside the current Edge administration and some of our most trusted contributors, past and present, we asked for picks from a group of leading names in the world of game development and publishing. Their nominations appear throughout this issue, starting on p10 with a selection of cases made for what should occupy the highest spot. They join a generous helping of Edge reader testimonies in the countdown itself. Thank you to everyone who took the time and effort to take part. In the region of 100 industry representatives accepted our invitation, their selections contributing to a total of 876 nominated games. One thing that all camps – editorial, reader and developer/publisher – had in common: frequent reports that they were handing over their lists in part to have rid of the decision. But many other trends emerged. There was a clear consensus on the greatest years for videogames, as you’ll see on the facing page. These were spread evenly across the magazine’s lifetime, as videogames new and old found their place on the list. The two oldest games come from our very first year, 1993, one of which had to be grandfathered in on the basis that it was reviewed in issue one, the other having an equally notable place in Edge history. The newest game on the list, meanwhile, is just a few months old, while the most

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CONSOLE WARS In our analysis of the most popular formats, we only took into consideration the earliest release of each game – one of a few factors that gives PC the lead, especially with more recent and smaller titles, where console versions often come after a short delay. Sony’s machines aren’t far behind, though, leading both in total games (48, as seen in the chart on the facing page) and exclusives (20). While Nintendo is far behind in the overall numbers, its ratio is much closer, with 19 of its 22 games being exclusive to its own hardware.

similar fate; we’ll let you discover which recent to attract significant support is for yourself. As for choosing between Baldur’s Gate 3, which narrowly missed Guitar Hero and Rock Band, well, let’s out on a spot in the final 100, surely in say they didn’t exactly help each other. part because it was released late in Which brings us to scores. Given the 2023, during our voting window. above, it shouldn’t be spoiling too much In terms of games that didn’t make to reveal that among the Edge 10s not it, you’ll notice the absence of some to make the list were Rock Band 3 and storied series from the list. In part this is a the latest member of this exclusive club. result of long-running series splitting the However, of the 26, 18 are represented vote; how do you pin down the greatest – one of them twice. We haven’t counted Civilization, for instance? Do you reward that towards the chart on the right, as it that first spark of innovation, the most seemed unfair to apportion a share of the polished entry, or just a personal score to The Orange Box’s components, favourite? Everyone and indeed there’s a had their own answer couple of other titles that to such questions. Perhaps dodged our critical eye. Fire Emblem and In terms of which issue Dragon Quest were two unsurprisingly, of Edge featured the largest victims of this effect, while games with a share of these games in its another Japanese series of review section, the honour similar vintage saw just a direct line to their goes to E105 (from 2001), single representative make host hardware with three titles appearing: the cut. But most of all it an 8, a 9 and a 10. impacted series that fare the best Meanwhile, the lone 6 receive regular, iterative in the countdown was instalments – in particular, reviewed just seven issues later, in E112 those in the sports, racing and music (2002). That game displaced a later, genres. While there was a clear higher-scoring instalment of the same preference for the glory days of Pro series – a perfect example of the role Evolution Soccer (and its predecessor, precedence and influence played in ISS) over FIFA, for example, no single how these games were chosen. incarnation received more than a single Perhaps unsurprisingly, games with nomination, and the handful of NHL a direct line to their host hardware fare devotees who voted will be likewise best in the countdown (see ‘Console disappointed. The Tony Hawk’s Pro wars’). But while many of the games will Skater games attracted more significant be familiar – we have, after all, been support, but split evenly between 1, 2 championing them for 30 years – there and 3; while Burnout 3 and Paradise are also surprises, some of which we’ve both vied for places but ultimately pushed teased here, many we’ve left to discover each other off the road. More than one for yourselves, starting on p52. other Edge-favourite racing series met a

FORMAT 50

46 45 28 22 03

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Of the Edge 10s not to make the list, three came from series that are represented elsewhere. Another, meanwhile, fell victim to the multipleinstalment effect

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JAPAN US UK CANADA DENMARK AUSTRALIA SWEDEN POLAND ESTONIA FRANCE

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While earlier peaks tend to align with console launches, the most sustained purple patch of releases to make the list arrived during the latter years of the PS4/Xbox One generation. That was followed by a sharp fall, however – 2021 is the only year without a single release on the list.

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43 42 07 04 02 02 01 01 01 01

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KNOWLEDGE 100 GREATEST

Doom (1993) “I wouldn’t be working in games without Doom. It’s the motherlode, doing so many things so brilliantly, all at once, that it’s difficult to summarise them. But let’s try anyway. It’s dark, bloody, fast, exciting, scary, funny, with an amazing blend of run-and-gun arcade gameplay, with proper atmosphere and tension. It’s just so full of wonderful stuff. The first time you chained a barrel explosion and gibbed a roomful of imps and felt like a god. The first time you heard that fucking awful hiss of a Cacodemon and broke out into a sweat. The bunny head on a stick. Genius. Just absolute bloody genius.” Dan Pinchbeck (Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture)

Earthbound (1994)

Fallout (1997)

“Startlingly ahead of its time. Weird as fuck. An RPG that lets you order a pizza, and makes you wait for it, for a time depending on how far you are from the nearest town. It makes you call your mom so you don’t get ‘homesick’ status. Earthbound embraces silly moments in an otherwise difficult, punishing RPG. Is it ‘elegant design’ or even ‘fun’ to ride escalators three floors up a shopping mall? Nah, but we enjoy it anyway. Earthbound inspired its direct descendant Undertale, and its influence on my work is beyond words.” Teddy Dief (Hyper Light Drifter, We Are OFK)

“It incorporated three key concepts that moved the medium forward. Fallout had companions: people in your party who were not just another facet of the player – they had lives, opinions, things they were good at, and things they weren’t. It really opened up the ‘role’ part of RPGs; while you could go into any situation guns blazing, you could also talk your way through pretty much the entire game. And finally, true reactivity. The game ‘remembered’ many of your choices and actions, and then reflected those back in dialogue and the reactions of the NPCs to you. If I had to pick the first game where I really felt part of the world and not just a visitor, it would be Fallout.”

System Shock (1994) “The first to transcend the screen and make me truly understand how gripping a videogame could be. Its seamlessness was groundbreaking, as was the ability to express my own solutions and sometimes even wind up in my own predicaments. By demonstrating the power of the immersive sim, System Shock changed teenage Randy’s life forever by leading directly to the start of my career at Looking Glass.” Randy Smith (Thief, Jett: The Far Shore)

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996) “I played Daggerfall for months, thinking the game was only some dungeon crawler. The very first ‘tutorial’ dungeon was so vast, I didn’t even know there was an exit from it until eventually I stumbled across it, and I emerged from the dark, eerie corridors into a vast snowy plain. I can’t even describe the kind of ‘wow’ moment it was to me. I suddenly realised that this huge dungeon was only a single pixel from the map; my love for open worlds and freedom in videogames sparked at this exact moment.” Sébastien Benard (Dead Cells)

Princess Maker 3: Fairy Tales Come True (1997) “This series – many titles in which are still only available fan-translated and bootlegged for English-speaking audiences – gave me a lifelong love of social simulation games and procedurally driven outcomes as a catalyst for story and roleplay. Narrative and mechanics inextricable from each other, all wrapped up in an unashamedly ‘girly’ conceit. Don’t let the ribbons and frills allow you to discount Princess Maker’s crunchiness and cleverly evolving design.” Meghna Jayanth (Horizon Zero Dawn, 80 Day, Sable)

10

Feargus Urquhart (Baldur’s Gate, Outer Worlds)

The Last Express (1997) “A staggering achievement of humanity within the confines of a simulation, and the best writing in a game, ever. Set on the eve of the First World War, a train full of Europeans of different stripes rub shoulders and rub up against each other in the background, as your story proceeds around and within their interactions. Everything is realtime in a way that’s never been seriously attempted since; there’s an entire violin concert in one carriage you can go and listen to, observing the other characters as they listen (but, of course, you should take the chance to break into their compartments instead). People often talk about the Citizen Kane of videogames – this was it, and if you didn’t notice, that’s on you.” Jon Ingold (80 Days, Overboard!)

Myth II: Soulblighter (1998)

Warcraft III (2002)

“Soulblighter is from that awkward early 3D era – it was gorgeous in its day, with lush, hand-painted landscapes, but unfortunately, the way the visuals have dated is tragic. It eschewed building mechanics and large armies to instead focus on intimate tactics, where you controlled a more limited number of units in a more narrative context. Its physical simulation was legendary for the time, allowing a dropped sword to be sent arcing through the air in response to an explosion, killing an unsuspecting dwarf on the other side of the map. Taking part in the game’s enthusiastic modding community first kickstarted my interest in game development.” Joseph Humfrey (80 Days, Heaven’s Vault)

“Warcraft III had a bigger impact on the videogame industry than any other game in the last 30 years. Azeroth is so iconic that it laid the foundation for the earthshattering World Of Warcraft (my number-two pick). But as good as the core game is, its biggest legacy is the included level editor. It didn’t require you to be an artist or programmer, but enabled aspiring game designers. And now entire genres, such as MOBAs and tower defence, can trace their origins to Warcraft III custom maps. I got my start in the industry working on this game, and to this day it remains one of my favourites of all time.”

Heart Of Darkness (1998) “Eric Chahi’s follow-up to the masterful Another World, six years in development, graced the cover of Edge 20. The game’s ludic storytelling – seamlessly blurring the lines between gameplay and narrative – would greatly influence the works of Fumito Ueda, Playdead’s Inside and the Oddworld series. Its 2D gameplay lacked the ‘next-gen’ flash of PS1’s realtime 3D, but it stands as one of the most innovative and brilliantly crafted games of all time.” Jörg Tittel (The Last Worker, C-Smash VRS)

Ben Brode (Hearthstone, Marvel Snap)

Street Fighter III: Third Strike (1999) “I have a long history with the Street Fighter series, and fighting games in general, but Third Strike is the one that first pushed me to understand the depths of competitive play. To me, it exemplifies the kind of game that gives more the more you learn – I sunk countless hours into my Dreamcast to improve my Makoto to the point where I could go toe-to-toe with my friend’s ridiculously unforgiving Akuma. To this day, I’ll still dig up some coins if I spot it in an arcade.” Tim Dawson (Unpacking)

Luigi’s Mansion (2001) “Contains all the things I love about adventure games: their distinct characters, detailed stories and their jokes. But avoids all the things I don’t like about adventure games: obscure, too-cute-by-half puzzles. No thank you. Instead, Luigi’s Mansion has got a couple of nice mechanics founded upon a flashlight and a vacuum cleaner. Which, beyond being the bedrock of some good puzzle design, are two things that I believe every self-respecting adult should own.” Sean Vanaman (The Walking Dead, Firewatch)

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KNOWLEDGE 100 GREATEST

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (2004) “As a teenager who loved gaming, I had never seen anything like this in my life. The atmosphere; the cast of shocking characters; gameplay blending with narrative so well it felt like a consistent whole; quests I remember to this day; and plot twists that made me stop playing while I thought about what the hell just happened. I couldn’t believe someone was able to come up with something this perfect – while playing a broken version shipped in 2004, with blocking bugs in quests and locations with no collisions on the floor. A flawed masterpiece that showed me how incredible something can feel with just good game design.” Paweł Sasko (The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077)

Hotline Miami (2012)

Killer7 (2005) “Before indies ruled the world, Suda51 led the pack with a gorgeous, messy, personal, political game that speaks with every bit of the medium available to it. A chunky blend of everything from Kafka to Lynch, Killer7 still feels like a rich exploration of what games might be, as both haunted computer machines and heartfelt artist manifestos.” Gareth Damian Martin (Citizen Sleeper)

Psychonauts (2005) “Psychonauts was the game that cemented my love of the quirky, humorous and weird. It’s become such a classic that we forget how innovative levels like Waterloo World once were, with transitions from large to small to even smaller. From its hilarious premise and zingy dialogue to its funky visuals, every part of the game is funny and full of heart. Even the little vignettes for sorting emotional baggage are a delight. There’s a little bit of Psychonauts in every game I’ve made, especially Control.” Anna Megill (Control, Fable, Guild Wars 2)

Portal (2007) “Portal is damn near perfect. It oh so gently introduces you to mind-blowing mechanics, it has style and incredible storytelling, and the only possible point against it is that many of its elements, which were fresh at the time, have been copied so often that they’ve since become cliché. It’s a perfect game for people who don’t play games and for core gamers, which is an incredibly rare achievement.” Nate Austin (Wildermyth, League Of Legends)

Portal 2 (2011) “While most players probably liked the compact nature and novelty of the first Portal, this was a truly special sequel that played on expectations from the previous game, expanded it with new ideas and took a small, confined experience into a full-blown universe. Hilarious dialogue, smart puzzles, an amazing co-op mode, and a campaign of perfect length – this is an unbelievable package. The kind of game you wish you could forget to experience it fresh again. Being a puzzle game, knowing the answers makes the impossibility of that even more painful.” John Johanas (Hi-Fi Rush, The Evil Within 2)

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“On top of basically redefining the ‘indie game’, this title is a beautiful work of art that presents the most astute and piercing expression of life and death in action games. The moment we, as players, dive beyond the shimmering gleam of the title screen and straight into the world of Hotline Miami, we are able to become the ‘Jackets’ that could exist anywhere.”

Goichi Suda (Killer7, No More Heroes)

Don’t Starve (2013) “It was late 2013, and I was in London for Sony’s PS4 launch event. There were a bunch of games on display, Killzone: Shadowfall being one. But while walking around, my eye caught something that looked quite different. It was this Tim Burtonesque world where the main character was walking around picking flowers and trying to catch bunnies. Ten years later, I have spent over 2,000 hours in Don’t Starve, and I’ll probably play it for another decade. The best games, like best friends, are the ones you keep coming back to.” Jan-Bart Van Beek (Killzone, Horizon Zero Dawn)

XCOM 2 (2016)

Baba Is You (2019)

“Nothing has ever got its claws into me quite like XCOM 2. Being frozen in abject horror at whether or not to take a 67 per cent chance shot, knowing full well that if it misses, some beefed-up squishy alien prick is going to decimate my entire squad, is one of the most heart-pounding and memorable experiences I’ve ever had from a videogame. It’s cool and deeply unpleasant, and full of such scream-at-the-monitor highs that it absolutely has to take my personal top spot.” Dan Marshall (Lair Of The Clockwork God, The Swindle)

“Baba Is You is beautifully crafted in a way that only a good puzzle game can be: deep systems, surprising interactions, and that perfect eureka moment when you’re in the shower and realise the solution to the puzzle you’ve been stuck on.”

Gorogoa (2017)

Alan Hazelden (A Monster’s Expedition Through Puzzling Exhibitions)

“A magician once told me that the key to a magic trick is to present something apparently very simple into which you’ve put so much work that the audience could never conceive of the effort, and magic is the only explanation. This is Gorogoa, a game that returned me to my childlike wonder at the painted puzzle books of Kit Williams, but brought to life through the game’s mechanics and animation. If the game itself didn’t already incorporate several frames of its own, my instinct would be to frame Gorogoa and hang it on a wall.” Sam Barlow (Her Story, Immortality)

Resident Evil 7 (2017) “The arc of a Resident Evil game is fairly predictable at this point. You unravel the puzzle box of an environment, bit by anxious bit, growing in power until what was once terrifying becomes mundane. Then you shoot a big guy with a rocket launcher or something. Resident Evil 7 confronts this story directly, constantly twisting itself into new configurations. It’s not a perfect game – and it’s not trying to be. It’s trying to make intentional choices, over and over again, to become the best, most surprising version of itself.” Xalavier Nelson Jr (Hypnospace Outlaw, Reigns: Beyond)

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (2019) “One of the most impossible things to get right in designing a narrative game is creating a nonlinear story that is exciting and surprising, no matter what order you tackle it in. But 13 Sentinels achieves this, making a story told from 13 perspectives into an exciting game of your friends’ anecdotes, discussing how they found out about X, or how they knew Y before you. It’s also an incredible tactics game I could play for ages, with a visual shorthand that both captures the scope of battles and the intimate nature of fighting in a giant robot.” Lena Raine (Minecraft, Celeste, Chicory)

Psychonauts 2 (2021) “Psychonauts 2 built on everything that was good about the original and made it even better. All the levels have unbelievably creative designs, visually stunning in a way that look like no other game, and each one is a joy to play through. Traversing the world feels great, collecting stuff is the right mix of challenging and satisfying, and the boss fights are bonkers. The characters are interesting and nuanced, and their mental struggles are handled with empathy and care. I just love everything about this game.” Wren Brier (Unpacking)

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KNOWLEDGE KARATEKA

Gold standard The Making Of Karateka sets a new high watermark for commemorating classic games

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ordan Mechner wasn’t even 21 when It feels as much a labour of love as his debut game launched on Apple II the game itself. Indeed, The Making Of in December 1984. By February 1985, Karateka had been a passion project at his Kurosawa-inspired martial-arts Digital Eclipse for several years before adventure Karateka had entered the Chris Kohler joined as editorial director. Billboard computer-game top 20 – “Mike Mika, our studio president, and eventually reaching the top spot in May – also Tom Russo, vice president of business while Mechner was still an undergraduate development at Digital Eclipse, are just at Yale. Its rise to the peak, he noted in huge die-hard Karateka fans,” Kohler tells his diary, had coincided with Crazy For us. “When they revived the Digital Eclipse You usurping We Are The World on brand in 2015, they [approached] Billboard’s music charts. “Me and Jordan and pitched it. Essentially, it was, Madonna,” the entry read. “Yow.” ‘We want to bring back Karateka’.” This is just one of the The pitch, he says, revealing details in Digital was akin to a Criterion “You’re emotionally Collection for games: Eclipse’s ‘interactive documentary’ The Making not just to present players involved in the Of Karateka. It’s the first with a ROM of a game, story and you’re entry in the company’s but to place it in its Gold Master Series: a historical context, with right there with string of self-published supplemental materials Jordan, who keeps to outline the story of its projects designed to commemorate influential development. Fortunately, getting rejected” videogames and their Mechner had meticulously creators. In addition to documented that process. Mechner’s notes, letters and design When Kohler arrived at Digital Eclipse, documents, it features multiple playable he was taken aback by the amount of versions of the game, including early archival material on hand. But while he prototypes, as well as for Deathbounce, wanted to use it all, he understood that the game Mechner originally pitched to at the core of every good documentary publisher Broderbund as a teenager. is a strong narrative throughline, and Alongside these are testimonials from considered how to “hone in” on the story the likes of Ultima Online designer Raph of Karateka. “It was like: what is the act Koster and Mortal Kombat co-creator one, act two, act three of this story? Just John Tobias, and footage of Mechner really trying to think about it in that way.” discussing the game with his father, who Then a big work-for-hire job fell into composed the game’s score as well as Digital Eclipse’s lap: Atari was gearing serving as one of two models for its up to celebrate its 50th anniversary. That pioneering use of rotoscoped animation. naturally had a fixed deadline, and so it There’s more besides, in what is as was, as Kohler recalls, “all hands on comprehensive a telling of the creation of deck” to develop what was to become a videogame as you’re ever likely to see. Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration.

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BELONGING IN A MUSEUM It’s striking how gamelike The Making Of Karateka feels: you are free to ignore the timeline chronology to skip to the parts that most interest you, while a chime sounds when you’ve viewed a timeline node, a familiar type of interactive reward. “You have to have that control in your hands,” Kohler nods. “Like a museum wouldn’t put you on a moving walkway and have you stuck there. If something catches your eye, nobody’s stopping you from just walking right up to it. What we have to do, like a museum, is make sure you get some takeaway, whether you rush through or read the label on every [exhibit].”

The attention to detail extends to the inclusion of a rendered version of the original 5.25” floppy disk, nestled in its slipcase

Fortunately, he says, Atari was looking for a unique way to mark the milestone. “We had all of this work that we’d been doing, reimagining Karateka as this interactive documentary with video and audio and scans, and even just historical trivia text, and then integrating the playable games all into that. With Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, we were able to develop those ideas to their fullest, and could go back to Karateka with all that under our belts.” The acclaim for that release gave Digital Eclipse confidence in the timeline structure it had developed – which had, Kohler admits, been a source of consternation internally. “We’re like, ‘Does it have enough to keep [players] engaged and involved? Because Karateka doesn’t even come up until the end of timeline three’,” he laughs. The payoff, however, is all the more powerful. “If we’ve done our jobs right, you’re emotionally involved in the story and you’re right there with poor Jordan, who keeps getting rejected.” As such, when you play the emulated Apple II release version of Karateka for the first time, you have a deeper understanding of the intent behind its design choices, as well as insight into the broader context of the era. “You’re going to have more fun playing it than if you just say, ‘Here’s an old game – play it’,” Kohler says. “It will never feel the same. And it’d be a disservice because Karateka was a landmark game. It advanced the craft of videogames by a couple of years in one big leap.” Perhaps the best compliment you can pay The Making Of Karateka is that, almost 40 years later, it lets you feel the impact of that leap. n

Digital Eclipse’s Karateka update is more responsive and features smoother animation; Deathbounce has had an even more substantial upgrade

ALTERNATE HISTORY

Disproving the commonly accepted version of events

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE A sample from Jordan Mechner’s forthcoming autobiographical graphic novel, Replay; vintage sketches for a mooted Karateka II; details of the 1985 Commodore 64 conversion; Thomas Blackshear II’s movie-poster-like cover artwork

Documenting this game, Kohler says, felt like telling a piece of lost history. “I’m sure it’s a frustration for you in the UK to read videogame history where it’s like: ‘First there was Atari and then there was a crash, and then in 1985 Nintendo rode in on a white horse and saved videogames’.” While that may have been true for the console industry Stateside, it ignores the rest of the world, and the thriving US computer-game scene of which Karateka was part – and the influence of those games. As Kohler puts it, “If you’re a fan of The Last Of Us, and you ask Neil Druckmann what inspired him, and ask that guy what inspired him, you can trace it back to Karateka.”

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KNOWLEDGE NORTHERNERS

VILLAGE PEOPLE The most region-specific game of all time? It’s a lovely day in the village, and you are a tiny, wellintentioned salesman. OK, we couldn’t resist: this is, after all, another Panic-published game that opens with an allotment, an overalled gardener, and a hose. In truth, however, Thank Goodness You’re Here has a personality that is all of its own. The game is the work of Coal Supper, a two-man studio consisting of friends who’ve known each other since their schooldays in Barnsley, Yorkshire. The duo’s mission? To capture the things that made them laugh

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back then: Vic and Bob, Chicken Run, silly voices, none-too-subtle innuendos, and hyperlocal references. Before our demo, Coal Supper’s James Carbutt offers to turn on the game’s subtitles. “It’s very…” We’ll defer to our (US-made) transcription app, which offers “Yaksha”, proving his point. Thankfully, the software doesn’t try to transcribe the squeaks of mirth the game produces. It’s rare for a game to make us laugh; it’s been a while since one managed it so immediately. Thank goodness it’s here – or will be next year, on PC, PS5 and Switch.

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KNOWLEDGE TALK/ARCADE

Soundbytes Game commentary in snack-sized mouthfuls

“I’m hoping gaming will be the first industry where we disrupt ourselves. Where it doesn’t take a Google or an Amazon to completely flip the table.” Why should we allow a non-native company to come in and ruin the game industry, former Sony Interactive Studios boss Shawn Layden asks, when surely we don’t need any help in order to achieve that?

“So many junior devs I encounter now have a foundation of pseudo knowledge from YouTubers that have never shipped a game.” Ustwo’s Hayden Scott-Baron won’t be liking and subscribing

“The approval thresholds were too low when we shipped. That’s why they were so horny in the beginning. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.” Larian’s Swen Vincke on Baldur’s Gate 3’s NPCs. Which is a good reminder to review our own approval thresholds, really

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”I’ve never been so embarrassed to use a piece of software and I have an Adobe CC licence, for God’s sake.” Game Maker’s Toolkit’s Mark Brown captures an entire industry’s views on Unity

ARCADE WATCH

Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene

Game Bike Dash Delivery Manufacturer Bandai Namco Do we have Atari’s ancient Paperboy to blame for laying the foundation for so many games that have turned work into play? With Bike Dash Delivery, Namco Bandai is at least hewing closer to the 1985 classic than more contemporary releases such as Lawn Mowing Simulator, even as it explores an entirely modern theme by plonking you onto the saddle of a bicycle from which you make fast-food deliveries. Crucially, the game requires actual legwork as you pump the cabinet’s pedals to accelerate, with physical brake levers also plumbed into the action. The game has only just gone on test in Japan, and may not make it to the west, although its Crazy Taxi vibes, along with jumps and the promise of rooftop detours around its city, surely give it the potential to travel well.

KNOWLEDGE THIS MONTH

WEB GAME

DREAM

This Place Is Cursed bit.ly/frightandmagic Videogame spells are seldom more than glorified weapons. A conjurer’s arm is often just a surrogate gun, firing ethereal bullets whose otherworldly glow is the only thing that distinguishes them from regular rounds. This absorbing puzzleled adventure, however, strives to put the magic back into spellcasting. Trapped in a woodland cabin, a young woman must gather arcane knowledge from scattered scrolls and rules, assembling clues in a forbidden grimoire to unlock powerful and transformative spells. Here, sorcery is made to feel like a ritual act, involving sequential stick movements and button presses to pull off. As you light candles to reveal secret rooms, gesture to travel to umbral realms and flourish to dispel ghosts, whispered voices and crackling static ensure that the title rings unsettlingly true.

VIDEO

4 Halfling Barbarians bit.ly/baldursgreat One does not simply walk into Baldur’s Gate 3’s goblin camp. But one can blow it to kingdom come. For the climax of a video documenting the travails of four topless Halflings, YouTuber Okoii amasses a large collection of barrels, spacing them neatly apart throughout rooms and connecting corridors before retreating to a safe distance and lobbing a Potion Of Explosions at them. The devastating chain reaction – set to the finale of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – tanks the game’s framerate, as dozens of NPCs are burned to a crisp, sent flying through the air, or both. Marvellous.

Mr Platformer bit.ly/scarycavanagh Terry Cavanagh’s latest looks like your average Atari 2600era run-and-jump, and initially plays like one, too. Its blocky environments offer scant resistance on your way to the bell at the end of the stage, with only the odd coin and star to tempt you toward riskier areas. But there’s structural intrigue, as you choose your next stop on the 4x4 grid of levels, en route from bottom left to top right. Then you notice the difficulty steadily ramping up – and, when you lose all your lives, a message telling you how many stages remain. Hazards and enemies that don’t quite seem to play by established platformer rules leave you feeling uneasy. The black curtain pulled across the stage backdrop as you finish starts to feel strange. And now the sky and sea appear to be intertwined? This place, it transpires, is cursed, too.

THIS MONTH ON EDGE Some of the other things on our minds when we weren’t doing everything else BOOK

Curious Video Game Machines bit.ly/curiousvgm History, it’s said, is written by the victors. But if you only talk about the triumphs, you’re not getting the full picture. This forthcoming tome from Edge contributor Lewis Packwood – we’ll forgive the title’s shameful style-guide breach – spotlights the hardware that is seldom discussed. These machines range from Korean car company Daewoo’s consoles that never travelled beyond their homeland via Casio’s sticker-printing Loopy to the Enterprise 64, a high-end mid’80s computer whose troubled development put paid to its chances when it belatedly launched. With interviews from the creators involved – and die-hard collectors who own these machines – it’s proof that failures can make for fascinating stories, too. Preorders are open at the above link ahead of its November 30 launch.

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continue quit That’s the spirit Apparently it takes 6m to Tango, as Ghostwire: Tokyo passes major player milestone

Shame Ricci Unity backtracks on disastrous Runtime Fee plan after its CEO offloads thousands of shares

Balt adjuster Armored Core VI: Fires Of Rubicon patch blunts early boss-fight difficulty spike

Lesser Mortal Visual comparisons do costly Switch port of NetherRealm’s reboot no favours at all

Staryu night Van Gogh Museum reveals Pokémon-themed paintings to attract younger visitors

Canada strife Ubisoft Montreal mandates office return for staff, reneging on ‘100% remote’ promises

Extra space Starfield fever leads to No Man’s Sky’s most successful month for several years

Tragic magic Ascendant Studios lays off almost half its staff after Immortals Of Aveum flops

Slipped the Net

Issue 389

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to [email protected]. Our letter of the month wins an exclusive Edge T-shirt

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In a recent article in Cahiers Du Cinéma, David Lynch says “it’s all in the damn history books” regarding the death of cinema. He cites subscription services as the primary cause, although other factors are at play. E386’s ‘Net Gains’ feature gave me a similar sentiment regarding videogames. For Netflix to move into subscription games as a service leaves me with a bittersweet feeling; I can only see it as detrimental to the preservation and ownership of games. Firstly, on a cheerful note, disregarding most of the corporate spiel, VP Leanne Loombe seems to have a clear vision of how Netflix can succeed in the game market, with developers getting exposure they wouldn’t otherwise receive and being able to focus solely on creativity. The fact we got an upgrade to Into The Breach solely because of Netflix is to be lauded, and the idea that distribution, marketing and other platform hurdles are looked after by Netflix, allowing developers to make the best possible game they can, also sounds great. The suggestion that the gaming answer to Squid Game is what’s needed is where I begin to see where they think the streaming wheels are falling off. Although I don’t have numbers, I’d compare the success of Squid Game to Pokémon Go at the height of its popularity back in 2016: a game that, while maintaining a loyal following, has never hit the lofty heights of its heyday. However, this may be a symptom of the natural lifecycle of live-service games. I was surprised to learn that Netflix Games has been in operation for 18 months; it was the first I’d heard of it while reading Edge, which suggests to me they need to look at more effective methods of getting games into the hands of new or non-gamers. If it’s not on the home page, why would they seek it out? It’s an apparent oversight, and gives

me the impression that the inherent goodwill behind getting games into the hands of the average Netflix subscriber is performative at best; instead, they see a vast gaming audience they would like to bring to Netflix in the name of capital gains. The success of Xbox Game Pass has likely shown there is a path to this kind of service, but we mustn’t forget what this platform was born from. After the runaway success of the Xbox 360, Microsoft attempted to capitalise on the fanbase they’d built with a new console that had no game sharing and an always-online connection – a perfect example of the company seeking to take advantage of their dominance. Thankfully, they were called out and had to backtrack, causing damage only partially repaired by Game Pass. However, they’re threatening that again with their attitude toward the recent Activision Blizzard acquisition. Another concern, albeit not new, is how ownership of these games and accounts works. Is physical ownership going to die? I suspect that if this had happened 20 years ago, mods wouldn’t exist as they do today – they’d be locked behind a cloud platform where the developer’s restrictions prevent total modification and customisation that can sometimes become bigger than the game that birthed them (see Half-Life and Counter-Strike). What happens when the service shuts down? Will I be reimbursed the thousands of pounds I paid for games on Steam the same way Google refunded me after the shutdown of Stadia? There are far too many unknowns, leaving me a little uneasy. I want new and exciting opportunities to succeed, I always do. I just have reservations. Call me old-fashioned, and the future may prove me wrong, but there’s only room for one Big Red N I want as a games platform. Wait – what do you mean they’re making movies, too? Nathan Brady-Eastham

“The fact we got an upgrade to Into The Breach solely because of Netflix is to be lauded”

DISPATCHES DIALOGUE

Not great ones, either. We’d rather that Big N stick to games for the time being.

Ignorance is remiss Recently, a friend pointed out to me how inaccessible some of my favourite events were for wheelchair users. Since then I’ve been paying attention to their pointers and it has struck me how totally ignorant most organisers are, just like I was. I expected there to be a videogame that could work as an educational tool. After all, they’re great at representing movement and perspectives. All I could find is the earnest Wheelchair Simulator, which is like a 3D Frogger, the obstacles being busy highways and falling debris. But what about a game that points out more common issues? Some examples: how hard it is to roll over gravel, how annoying high tables/vendors/mirrors are, the likelihood of tipping backwards, little steps everyone takes for granted, the danger of glass shards, having no room to turn, hoping the elevator works, etc. I keep thinking of a party I went to that was organised by folks who cared about accessibility and made it work. There were about a dozen wheelchair users. At most similar parties, there are usually zero. This has made me realise how my favourite places to visit are simply not welcome to some people. I don’t have the resources or expertise to make a videogame as a fun educational tool. But the least I can do is write how valuable one could be. Robert August de Meijer

Tipping point As a millennial who grew up with physical media but now exists in this heyday of cheap access to more than you could consume in a lifetime, I bounce back and forth on the benefits of both. Some days I marvel at the touching distance of so many audio and visual opportunities, and sometimes I lean towards Hayao Miyazaki’s assertion that children should only be able to see one film a year.

But it was watching Double Fine’s PsychOdyssey documentary that brought home both the human talent, endurance and sacrifice that goes into videogames. And that, for all that goes on behind closed doors, my role in this is only as a consumer. It’s this conflict about which I seek input from the esteemed readers of Edge. I believe all artists should be fairly paid for their work. I am also a sucker for a bargain. Aside from Half-Life: Alyx, I haven’t paid full price for a game since the days of physical media. When life provides space for a new purchase, I will peruse my Steam wishlist. With constant sales, why would I ever pay full price? So I generally interact with media at least a year after its release. And it’s here I find some of the best pieces of entertainment or art I’ll ever experience. But I have no memory of what I paid, other than ‘not enough’. If I could change the industry, it would be to introduce some kind of developer tip jar, certainly for smaller indie devs. Steam: take my played-hours stat and show what I’ve paid per hour of entertainment. Game Pass: let us directly thank developers we’re too cheap to buy from. We may never return to the scarcity of the days of physical media driven by higher costs, but we can rediscover the connection to individual games, and perhaps save ourselves from the digital malaise of too much choice, not enough feeling. Dean Freeman We recall Days Gone writer John Garvin suggesting that “if you love a game, buy it at fucking full price”, but how you know you love it at the point of purchase isn’t clear. Perhaps, then, a tip jar is the ideal solution.

Prompt action I have been following with interest the court case in the US (Thaler vs The Register of Copyrights) where the question of copyright ownership of works generated by AI has arisen. The outcome of the case is that the AI artwork was considered to have resulted from human interaction, and therefore copyright

rests with the person who defines the inputs to generate this. Questions arose asking what would happen if there were no prompts, but it appears the programming of the AI would itself count as human interaction here. This has an interesting analogy to Twitch streams and YouTube videos, where Nintendo and others have previously argued that copyright rests with them as programmers of a game, but the actual video is generated from inputs from the player. I have long loathed the term ‘content creator’ for those who rely on the work of others to provide a platform for them to generate their videos, but maybe I have been proven wrong. However, in this case there are two stages of human interaction – programming the game, and playing the game – so perhaps I shouldn’t be too overeager in the application of the analogy. Tim Miller

Pearl of wisdom Has it really been 30 years since I was first introduced to the dizzying wider world of electronic entertainment through my first multiformat mag? I’m referring to GamesMaster, I’m afraid – Edge would come much later, off the back of an ad campaign in the Official PlayStation mag and a shiny silver special issue on the incredible new hardware we were getting at the turn of the millennium. So although I obviously can’t say I’ve been with Edge since the very beginning, you’ve been broadening my horizons for a couple of decades and change, whether it was making me aware that Panzer Dragoon Saga was incredibly valuable or revealing that you can get cringe-inducing trading cards on work trips to the Tokyo Game Show. I’ve enjoyed this vicarious journey through the shifting landscape of videogames, and I look forward to seeing where it takes Edge next. Here’s to another 30 years. Alexander Whiteside Now you’ve got us thinking: how much would you get for Panzer Dragoon Saga in 2053? As we chew that over, a T-shirt is on its way. n

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DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE

STEVEN POOLE

Trigger Happy Shoot first, ask questions later

Illustration konsume.me

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ne of the more surprising things about the much-hyped recent biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is to learn just how often, in the midst of corporate crisis and other stresses, the shitposting overlord of Tesla Motors and SpaceX would simply stay up all night playing videogames. Teenage boys the world over now have an excellent retort to concerned parents. When Edge began publishing 30 years ago, Musk was known for epic binges of Civilization while an undergraduate at the University Of Pennsylvania. He had grown up playing early arcade games, and aged 13 coded his own simplistic vertical shooter, Blastar; later, he enjoyed office binges of Street Fighter II and Quake III Arena. But his persistent passion is strategy games. In 2021, Isaacson reports, Musk became especially “obsessed” with the cutely rectilinear turn-based strategy game The Battle Of Polytopia on his phone. “On a visit to Tesla’s Berlin factory,” Isaacson relates, “he got so wrapped up in Polytopia that he delayed meetings with the local managers.” Later that year – the same year Musk became the world’s richest man – he locked himself in his room to play Polytopia at his wife’s birthday party, where his former wife Grimes was DJing. Obviously we’ve all been in that situation, but Isaacson argues that his subject’s particular devotion to such games tells us something about his character. Musk famously thinks chess is a boring, simple game (a common view, oddly, among high-IQ people who never became very good at chess), while computer strategy games are supposedly much more interesting and relevant to life and business. As Musk’s brother Kimbal tells Isaacson, he developed a list of “Polytopia Life Lessons”. One of them is “Empathy is not an asset”, which explains a lot about his tweeting; another is that you must “Optimise every turn”. “Like in Polytopia, you only get a set number of turns in life,” Musk tells Isaacson. “If we let a few of them slide, we will never get to Mars.”

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Twitter itself is a game, or a metagame: the oncebullied schoolboy could now “own the playground” In which case, reasonable observers have asked, why waste so many turns buying – and endlessly fiddling with – Twitter? In fact, according to Isaacson, this decision can be blamed on videogames too: in April 2022 Musk stayed up till 5:30am playing Elden Ring, and then publicly tweeted his decision to make an offer for the company. “An expensive display of his impulsiveness,” Isaacson writes. But then Twitter itself is a game, or a metagame: the once-bullied schoolboy could now, as Isaacson says, “own the playground”. One might wish, of course, that our billionaire overlords would learn their life

lessons from a different electronic canon: say, Ico, Professor Layton, and Untitled Goose Game. Especially if they become powerful enough to make life-and-death decisions. The most alarming part of Isaacson’s book discusses Musk’s peculiar involvement, via his ownership of the Starlink satellite-Internet service, in the war in Ukraine. Last year, Ukrainian forces were planning to attack Russian warships in Sevastopol, occupied Crimea, with submarine drones. But Musk either turned off Starlink over Crimea (what it says in Isaacson’s book) or refused to enable it for that mission (what he says now) because he personally judged that this would be an impermissible “escalation” in the war and risk nuclear conflict with Vladimir Putin. One can reasonably argue that it’s the geopolitical system itself that is at fault here for allowing a single unelected plutocrat the power to decide exactly how Ukrainians are allowed to defend their country on the other side of the world. It’s merely a symptom of the cultural apotheosis of the tech industry over the past three decades. (Bill Gates was not consulted about the war in Bosnia.) But it’s also a lesson about the illusion of mastery that videogames can instil in susceptible players. It seems as though Elon Musk really thought that, because he played a lot of Polytopia, he was an appropriate person to make battlefield decisions on behalf of an entire nation under siege. It is the danger of any kind of simulation, of course, that it gives the user confidence that they will be expert at the real thing. This can be true for some highly restricted sims, such as those used to train commercial pilots, or even – as with Jann Mardenborough in the movie Gran Turismo – driving games from the 1990s. Musk tells Isaacson at one point that his devotion to Polytopia shows that he is “built for war”. But Polytopia is not war, and war is not a videogame that should be in the hands of anyone who thinks it is. Steven Poole is a writer, composer and author whose books include Trigger Happy 2.0, Unspeak, and Rethink

DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE

TOSHIHIRO NAGOSHI

Starting At Zero Reflections on the past and hopes for the future

Illustration konsume.me

C

ongratulations to the team at Edge for reaching the 30th anniversary of the magazine’s publication! I also started my journey in the videogame industry at around the same time – 34 years ago, in fact, when I joined Sega’s coin-op division. What most people don’t know is that it was not my first career choice. It was a time without the Internet, so naturally it was somewhat unusual for students to aim for the videogame industry right after graduation. There were lots of questions. What is a gaming company like? What kind of people work there? What kind of work do they do? There was little information available. I studied film in college but couldn’t find a job in that field, so, with no information, I plunged into the videogame industry simply because it seemed interesting. Once I started, it was a lot of fun. Actually, no, that is a lie – it was in fact quite the opposite. Every day was incredibly challenging. During work hours, I was scolded all the time. I was a complete newbie surrounded by seniors who could touch-type effortlessly. To say I panicked would be an understatement. I couldn’t get anything done. I joined as a designer, but I couldn’t even handle drawing tasks. Instead, I spent my workdays running errands for my seniors. Almost every day, I would stay overnight at the company to review what I had failed to understand at work. That was my daily routine. Did I ever think of quitting? Of course I did. My regret for entering an industry where I didn’t belong and my shame for contributing nothing were indescribable. The first time I saw a pixel-art character I had drawn displayed on the screen, though, I was deeply moved. I felt a strong sense of emotional support that I’ve never forgotten. But I’m not trying to tell a beautiful tale composed of memories here. This is about my life as a game creator starting from the status of “utterly useless staff member”. Several years later, I arrived at a turning point. This was at the stage of videogame

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My regret for entering an industry where I didn’t belong and my shame for contributing nothing were indescribable technology development when the focus transitioned to 3D graphics. Camera work and lighting became significantly more important, but not very many people working in the game industry had that kind of knowledge at the time. My film studies finally paid off. It felt like the first time I was genuinely useful – although I suppose it might be more accurate to say that the industry’s progress created a role for me. Throughout my career to date, I’ve been blessed with opportunities to create various types of games – racing, action, puzzle, shooting, action adventure, and so on. I can’t

even easily recall the number of genres and titles I’ve worked on. Has it been a smooth journey? Absolutely not. To be honest, it’s been rough. For example, Daytona USA became a surprise hit during my early days at Sega, but its test cabinets were kicked around by dissatisfied users. Right up until the very last second before the game’s release, people told me that it would never succeed. But look how it turned out. For every game I’ve worked on, I’ve tried my best to give users what I thought they wanted – even though I must admit that some games were misses. Over the past 30 years, both the way games are made and the game industry itself have changed dramatically. 3D graphics technology significantly improved user immersion, online gaming became popular with the advent of the Internet, and smartphones introduced new gameplay and business models. Throughout these paradigm shifts, creators have continued to make games while enduring various struggles. At the end of the day, though, a creator’s concern should come down to just one question: “What will make the game fun for the players?” That’s all that matters. Painstakingly accumulating answers to this question is what has built gaming to where it stands today. Technology will continue to advance, and devices will keep evolving. But all of this is in service of the player, and we must never forget it. As long as creators keep this faith and continue seeking the best answers, I believe that the future of gaming will remain bright. I want to be a part of that future. As I sign off from my guest appearance for this special edition, I want to express my gratitude to my seniors and bosses who tolerated me when I was an utterly useless person at work, and to the people out there who continue to hold expectations for me. Without you, I wouldn’t be here today. I will keep doing my best to continue delivering excitement to players around the world. Toshihiro Nagoshi founded Nagoshi Studio with NetEase in 2021. The company’s debut project is yet to be announced

#390

THE GAMES IN OUR SIGHTS THIS MONTH 32 Eve: Vanguard PC

36 Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth PS5

42 Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

48 Princess Peach: Showtime!

44 Persona 5: Tactica

48 Splatoon 3: Side Order

PC, PS5, Xbox Series

PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series

40 Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man 46 Hyenas Who Erased His Name PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series

48 Stray Children Switch

Switch

Switch

48 Unicorn Overlord

PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series

48 Hades II PC

Explore the iPad edition of Edge for extra Hype content

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Many happy returns When you’ve been around for 30 years, you see plenty of comebacks. Which is why, in hindsight, you should never say never. In E389’s Time Extend, we declared that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was ‘a hilariously dark joke that Nintendo will never tell again’. Mere days later… well, you know the rest. Or maybe we managed to reverse manifest it. In which case, perhaps it’s time we revisited Half-Life 2 and explained why Valve is absolutely, definitely, 100 per cent done with Gordon Freeman. This issue’s Hype selection is all about surprise revivals. The existence of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is no great shock, of course, though when Square Enix announced it was remaking its seminal PS1 RPG, few expected it would become a fully fledged trilogy. We certainly didn’t anticipate this middle chapter offering quite so much more than its immediate predecessor, expanding your party and offering more tactical options in combat. Not forgetting, of course, rideable, customisable Chocobos The Phantom Thieves are back, too, still looking sharp and stylish seven years from their debut, albeit with a chibi makeover in strategic spin-off Persona 5: Tactica. Meanwhile, five years since he MOST strode off into the sunset in Yakuza 6: The Song Of Life, WANTED Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown Kazuma Kiryu has evidently decided a quiet retirement is PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Talking of revivals, this Dread-like is not for him: he may have a string of spy gadgets in tow shaping up very nicely indeed. There’s real finesse and zip to the prince’s moves, and a new moniker, but as disguises go, that pair of whether he’s leading opponents a merry dance with his parkour techniques or Clark Kent glasses doesn’t fool us. dicing them up with his scimitar. Finally, we witness the return not of a game but an Another Code: Recollection Switch idea. Eve Online has been around for two thirds of And on the subject of surprises, who saw this coming? Cing’s touching DS adventure and its unsung Wii sequel Edge’s lifetime – a remarkable accomplishment for an have been resurrected with an appealing new art style and voiced dialogue. We’re MMORPG. Eve: Vanguard sees CCP revisit a concept it intrigued to find out how it replicates the original’s most ingenious puzzle, mind. last explored in 2013’s Dust 514, tethering a boots-onHelldivers 2 the-ground extraction shooter to the ongoing action way PC, PS5 Setting aside the awkwardly staged party up above. Our hands-on suggests it’s ready to deliver on chat of its State Of Play promo reel, with its invitation to “strategise”, Arrowhead’s the older game’s potential – though the studio insists Dust co-op blaster seems to have successfully transitioned to its new, more traditional viewpoint. Bile Titans, beware. was a success. In other words, don’t call it a comeback.

H Y P

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EVE: VA N G U A R D CCP dusts off an interplanetary shooter concept with links to the stars Developer/publisher Format Origin Release

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Creative director Bergur Finnbogason and game director Snorri Árnason

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hat do you do when you’ve built a universe that is too large to be contained in a single game? For the publishers of most series, the answer is simple: a sequel. Not for CCP, however, which has been sustaining its debut game, the interstellar MMORPG sandbox Eve Online, for two decades now. Instead, the Icelandic studio wants to create games nested within its larger, persistent universe like matryoshkas, zooming in from the intergalactic sagas to tell stories on a much, much tighter scale. And so we find ourselves down on a planet’s surface, approaching the carcass of a ship, of the kind that would be controlled by a single player in Eve Online. And, indeed, could be – lead product manager Scott Davis says that eventually this entire map “could be the result of a specific inter-player battle in the wider game”. From our perspective, though, this ship is the dominant feature of the entire landscape, the flames belching out of its side a rare source of light and colour in the barren volcanic setting. Our squad of three is here to pick it clean, and dispatch any other scavengers – NPC or player-controlled – who might have had the same idea. This has long been a dream of the studio, CCP game director Snorri Árnason explains: “the ultimate science fiction”, able to hop between layers of conflict with the ease of a

CCP Games (London) PC UK TBA

Star Wars wipe transition. “There are concepts lying around from 1998, of ‘you’ll see all the humans individually’,” adds creative director Bergur Finnbogason. They’re both longtime CCP employees, and remember all too well the studio’s first attempt at realising this dream.

2013’s Dust 514, on which Árnason was a senior producer, was a free-to-play shooter that allowed Eve pilots up in orbit to drop bombardments onto the battlefield in realtime. It had its flaws, among them the misfortune of arriving late in the PS3 lifecycle; three years later, it was gone. Yet CCP maintains that the game was a success, not least in introducing players to this universe: Davis, a fresh recruit to the company, tells us that this was his gateway, while another member of the London studio met his wife through Dust. It’s perhaps understandable that CCP has never quite let go of this concept. “There have been internal prototypes going on for some time,” Árnason explains – such as Project Legion and Nova, Dust successors which got far enough into development to be announced at Eve Fanfests in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Árnason describes these efforts as “bumps in the dark”, adding that Vanguard “is the longestrunning, and the strongest team by far”. So committed is CCP that it has built a studio around the idea in the UK’s capital.

Your character is a clone. In case of death, you can spend resources to grow a backup and blast your immortal consciousness into their waiting head – albeit without any of the spoils gathered by your original body

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“They’ve had time to cook,” Árnason says, “which was something we felt we needed last time.” No kidding: CCP London opened its doors in 2016, and has been working on some version of this concept ever since. Now, though, it is finally ready to share it with the world. Vanguard will be announced at this year’s Fanfest, alongside Eve Conquest, a mobile strategy game by CCP Shanghai, the offshoot that originally made Dust. We visit the London studio for the game’s first – and only – hands-on session. Our squadmates are both CCP employees, as are the enemy players who occasionally appear over the horizon and let off a few shots before we dash for cover. Between this natural cowardice and the presence of our more capable sherpas, we don’t get much of a taste for combat. But this experience seems in keeping with the game’s approach to gunfights, which happen at a distance, far off enough that we can’t tell

We’re here to grab the chips from the skulls of clone bodies and escape with the proceeds NPC from human player – you’ll be relying on your weapon’s AR sights to pick out targets among the ash and smoke, painting their tiny forms in red. And besides, we’re told, conflict is more or less optional anyway.

What we experience is, more or less, an

Lead game designer Gavin Skinner and lead product manager Scott Davis

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extraction shooter in the Tarkov mould. We’re here to grab the chips from the skulls of clone bodies, dumped out of their artificial wombs when the ship crashed, and escape with the proceeds. But this will be just one of many ways to play, lead game designer Gavin Skinner explains: “We don’t have game modes, we have activities, and those might be different for different squads.” The game never defines a win or lose state, Davis adds – that’s for the players to decide themselves. “So you might be just doing some mining or harvesting; someone else might be on an assassination mission,” Skinner continues. “And you’ll brush past each other, but there’s no need for you to get into conflict and shoot each other.” Unless, that is, you decide that

there is a need. “Maybe you’ve got some stuff that I want to take from you.” Beyond the short 15-minute deployments of our demo, the vision is to support sessions of just about any length the player chooses, the map’s state persistent as squads drop in and out. The team describe a map’s lifecycle in phases. “The first phase is kind of like Warcraft III, where you’re killing mobs and upgrading your hero,” Árnason explains. “Then it moves into more of a Rust-type phase, where you’re building infrastructure, mining equipment, whatever. And then, now that’s all there for the taking, you go into, basically, a Battlefield Conquest mode.” Along the way, alliances with other players might form – or break. “You might be working together in the early phases to bring infrastructure down,” Davis says. “But once you’ve helped me identify all of the resources and bring the infrastructure down, I might want it all for myself. Or we could agree that we really have to defend our position together.” Just as you’re not limited to working alongside the squad with whom you deployed, nor are you bound to honouring that union. Our second excursion comes with a bounty-hunt contract, inviting us to rack up ten kills before extracting. By the time our ride turns up, though, we’ve only found nine. A CCP rep, hovering over our shoulder like a cartoon devil, points out that there are two bodies in front of us, their backs conveniently turned – and there’s a melee button we haven’t even pressed yet. We resist as long as possible, but with the timer counting down, we cave in – to temptation, and their skulls. Despite the smaller scope, this is the kind of story Eve Online is famous for generating: of shaky alliances, plotting and betrayal. Left alone beneath the stars, waiting for our rescue pod to take off, we look up and see streaks of light in the sky. They tell of space battles beyond our ken, but to which our efforts on the ground are apparently contributing. Of all the objectives CCP has set itself, Vanguard seems to be succeeding in at least one respect: sparking curiosity about this most famously intimidating and unapproachable of games. For a brief moment, we feel the pull of Eve Online, the same tractor beam that has held devoted players in its grip for 20 years.

Link to the past While they’re far from the only Eve spin-offs (as well as the forthcoming Conquest and a longthreatened ‘Web 3.0’ game, which CCP confirms is still in the works, there have been three VR games, including dogfighter Eve: Valkyrie), both Dust 514 and Vanguard share the distinction of being directly connected to the goings-on in the wider universe. Dust’s second-to-second link was too complex, Árnason admits, so Vanguard is moving to an “escrow” approach, where the necessary information, such as the outcome of a battle, is held for the other game to pick from. As such, action on the ground can have galaxy-spanning consequences. “You might need to blow up a satellite communication tower to open up a huge advantage for your spaceship friends,” he says. “Then, in the aftermath, our website will be reporting live from these border disputes and skirmishes.”

TOP Note the yellow stock of the assault rifle: as you switch between kinetic and energy ammo, depending on your target’s vulnerabilities, the whole gun changes colour to match. ABOVE To extract from a planet, you must craft and deploy a Signal Beacon. While you await pickup, its bright light makes you a target

TOP Maps will be handcrafted rather than procedurally generated, but CCP is aiming for enough variations to suit every combination of biome. ABOVE Some specifics are different but the game, built in Unreal Engine 5, captures the same atmosphere depicted in this concept art. LEFT The planet shown in our demo has echoes of CCP’s home turf. It’s no surprise to learn that the art team took a photogrammetry trip to Iceland to capture the region’s desolate beauty

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FINAL FANTASY VII: REBIRTH This second instalment brings the whole party together Developer/publisher Format Origin Release

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s Square Enix demonstrated with Final Fantasy VII: Remake, revisiting a previously published work can be about a lot more than providing a faithful, refurbished retelling. It can also be a reimagining, a restructuring, or a revisioning. What, then, to make of the suggestion of a Rebirth? For those who reached the conclusion of its predecessor, the title of this second instalment in what is now confirmed to be a trilogy implies a brand-new start. Though it could just as well mean a literal reset for ex-SOLDIER member Cloud Strife and his band of eco-warriors as they leave behind the dystopian metropolis of Midgar to save the rest of the planet from the fascist Shinra Corporation and megalomaniac Sephiroth. Our hands-on, which begins with our party on the outskirts of the towering military installation of Junon, doesn’t start immediately after the end of Remake – assuming it sticks to the original script, there’s a brief stop at the village of Kalm and a sojourn into the Mythril Caves. But it still takes place early enough that we’re conscious that everyone is at a conspicuously lower level than most players would have been at the end of Midgar’s highway, in a game where it was possible to max out at 50. If it’s disappointing that your progress, including Materia or Summons, may not carry over to Rebirth, there are practical

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Square Enix PS5 Japan Q1 2024

reasons for that. Though a continuation of FFVII’s story, this is not an MMORPG expansion, and with a four-year gap between releases, even we’d admit to feeling rusty if we were expected to face high-level challenges from the off. And Square Enix is clearly conscious that for some players – even if they represent a minority – this might even be their starting point. More importantly, Rebirth significantly expands upon Remake’s hybrid of realtime action and command-based party combat, almost as if it were a direct response to Final Fantasy XVI’s singular but divisive character action. Many of Remake’s mechanics have been retained, such as switching to Cloud’s Punisher mode, which remains a deliciously optimal offensive and countering stance. His suite of abilities, executed via charged-up bars of the ATB gauge, has also expanded: as well as a variety of different ways to wallop enemies with his outsized sword, he has some unusual new skills, including being able to transmute weakened enemies into items. Unlike Remake, where the events of the story dictated your trio, here you can choose between five party members: Cloud, his close childhood friend Tifa, healer (and last descendant of the Ancients) Aerith, Avalanche leader Barret, and talking beast Red XIII. While we’re given three preset parties to

Square Enix is both playing to and subverting the nostalgia of FFVII’s fanbase. For anyone who hasn’t played the original nor its prequel Crisis Core, we won’t spend time here talking about the prominence of the figure on the right

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pick from, the final game allows players to adjust party composition outside battle, while during combat you can switch which character you’re controlling with the tap of a directional button – or pull the trigger to give someone else a command as the action slows to a crawl.

Having graduated from non-playable guest character to full party member, Red XIII is the first of these we try out. Taps of Square correspond to brisk claw slashes, while holding then releasing it gives him a Linkstyle spin attack. Regular attacks amount to little more than scratches on any foe that isn’t basic field fodder, but nonetheless help to fill both the ATB gauges that allow him access to more powerful spells or abilities and a separate bar, used for activating Vengeance mode. The latter gives the red wolf a significant buff, indicated by the intensity of the flame at the end of his tail.

Battles have greater depth than before, largely thanks to the new Synergy mechanic Even if you’re content to stick with the classic love-triangle composition of Cloud, Tifa and Aerith, battles have greater depth than before. This is largely thanks to Rebirth’s new Synergy mechanic, which enables party members to pair up to take on foes with attacks that don’t expend that ATB gauge. It’s a little unwieldy at first, not least since it requires holding R1, the same input for guarding. Doing so brings up synergy attack commands, activated via the face button designated to each of your partners – such as having Aerith enhance Cloud’s sword for an energy slash. It’s possible to switch between partners while in synergy, which offers up alternative options. For instance, Cloud’s synergy attack with Tifa differs from the one where she’s in direct control. Tifa, of course, has another synergy attack she can unleash with Aerith, and vice versa; as such, strategies can change on the fly depending on both who you partner with and who you’re controlling. Even sticking to what we already know, we have the opportunity to make use of Synergy

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Abilities, which are as showstopping as each party member’s Limit Breaks. These are reliant on another meter beneath the ATB gauge (oriented vertically rather than horizontally), which adds an extra bar when your party member performs an ATB action – and since Synergy Abilities require two bars for each partner, it encourages you to regularly use up your ATB. Still acclimatising to this system, we unwittingly overbank, and upon switching to Tifa with the intention of unleashing her Limit Break, we discover we have sufficient resources for her to perform not one but two Synergy Abilities, with Cloud and Aerith respectively. The combined damage of three consecutive cinematic supers steamrolls the sea-monster boss that concludes our demo. While these new systems make Rebirth feel like a proper sequel rather than an iterative followup (and at an RRP of £70, you would hope as much), we’re a bit disappointed by its setting. Despite having been instructed to play on Graphics Mode, the locations we visit recall the underwhelming environments that made up much of Midgar – from a field area predominantly composed of rock to the beige caverns through which we ascend Mount Nibel in a flashback to a mission featuring a younger Cloud. Yet the sight of another impoverished village does at least illustrate the effect of Shinra’s activities on the world. We also get a taste of other new features and technology available to our party. These include a transmuter accessible from the menu, which crafts items from resources accumulated during battles and exploration. We’re unsure about the introduction of an AI assistant named MAI, a somewhat contrived stand-in for Remake’s Shinra intern Chadley, which gives you different battle assignments in the open field areas under the guise of accruing research intel. Much more welcome is the ability to summon and ride chocobos to get around these larger field maps: they can be used to sniff out and dig for useful items, while you can customise their appearance at ‘Chocoboutiques’. The brassy rendition of the chocobo theme that sounds out here speaks to a game that, unlike the most recent mainline entry, isn’t shy about embracing the series’ past. In other words, this is one Rebirth that understands some traditions still matter.

One-winged angle Where Remake reintroduced us to one of videogames’ most memorable villains surprisingly early compared to the original game, Rebirth has another way to surprise players with what they know of Sephiroth – by letting you play as him during a flashback to that fateful Nibelheim mission. In both the PlayStation game and prequel Crisis Core, you were merely witness to his immense power; this time you come to understand why he’s known as the greatest living SOLDIER First Class, by getting to unleash his devastating attacks for yourself. Which isn’t to say that Cloud is left out – the pair also make a good team with their own synergy attacks. It certainly presents a novel spin on that age-old maxim to know your enemy.

TOP Remake introduced a number of new minigames, though it’s good to see past concepts, such as the Gold Saucer’s 3D Battler, return. RIGHT Creative director Tetsuya Nomura has confirmed that Rebirth will conclude at the Forgotten Capital, a significant location for Aerith, which will undoubtedly have players who have played FFVII in unbearable suspense

TOP Cloud’s already clashed with Sephiroth, in the previous instalment; Square Enix will have its work cut out to ensure these confrontations don’t lose their significance before the trilogy’s conclusion. ABOVE While you can roam open fields with chocobos and even take part in races, it appears they’ve been upstaged by a Segway. MAIN Junon captures Shinra’s modus operandi, displaying an alluring corporate sheen through the pomp of its military parade, led by new president Rufus, while villagers dwell beneath the military facility in poverty

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Developer/ publisher Sega (RGG Studio) Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Japan Release November 8

LIKE A DRAGON GAIDEN: THE MAN WHO ERASED HIS NAME Kazuma Kiryu’s new mission, should he choose to accept it

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erhaps, like his death at the end of Yakuza 6, Kazuma Kiryu’s retirement was just a ruse. Maybe disappointing sales figures for a Like A Dragon in Japan, the first series entry under a new protagonist, along with more players discovering Kiryu’s adventures overseas, encouraged Sega to bring him back. We may never know. Either way, the quiet life is not for Kiryu: in this grandiosely titled spin-off, he’s trying his hand at being a spy. Set between Yakuza: Like A Dragon and the forthcoming Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (he’s due to appear in the latter), Kiryu’s new adventure sees him working for the Daidoji Faction. The Daidoji provided a pivotal plot point in Yakuza 6, and appears to be the reason Kiryu returns to that game’s primary setting, Onomichi. Not that Gaiden’s story is the focus in our hands-on time with a demo build, which focuses on two of the series’ most enduring pillars: fighting thugs and playing minigames.

In addition to Onomichi and Sotenbori in Osaka, Kiryu visits a place called The Castle, which is where we join him. A giant adult amusement park built inside a ship, the Castle is named after the life-sized replica of Osaka Castle it contains. Here Kiryu, having adopted the nom de guerre Joryu, demonstrates an agile new fighting style called Agent: a sharp contrast to his standard Brawler style, now simply called Yakuza. More significantly, Agent affords him the use of a string of gadgets that would make 007 envious. A set of Spider-Man-style webshooters that can restrain several opponents while letting Joryu fling them dramatically across the room are early favourites, but he can also skate around on rocket-propelled shoes for a spot of crowd control, throw cigarette-shaped bombs, and call in a squadron of attack drones. If deploying these gadgets is no more involved than holding a button, finding the time and room to do so can be difficult: in

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what seems like an effort to justify the use of these powerful tools, a typical encounter features more thugs than usual. Joryu can still use Heat actions, such as kicking a downed enemy across the screen or mashing them into a wall; switch to Yakuza style, and you still get to bash enemies over the head with bicycles or lift them bodily. But these wonderful new toys are the highlight: it’s hard not to delight at the sight of Joryu, in full Clark Kent getup, skating through a group of enemies. The series’ blend of whimsy and martial arts means these additions feel fresh, and no more outlandish than Like A Dragon’s fantastical flourishes.

He can also skate around on rocket-propelled shoes, and throw cigarette-shaped bombs At the Castle Coliseum, you fight 100 bad guys against the clock, switching between Joryu and a range of series regulars, including the wrestlers from Yakuza 6, Goro Majima, and Susumu Gondawara, the yakuza with a proclivity for roleplaying as a baby. Each brings their own Heat actions, temporarily turning the game into a tag-team brawler. Then, just as we’re about to head to the casino, we dress Joryu up in a full-body latex suit at the nearest boutique – well, who would dare to complain about him flouting the dress code? Though we don’t get to partake in familiar activities such as karaoke and Pocket Circuit races, we’re assured these series staples are present and correct, as is an assortment of Master System games. We round off our night at the cabaret club, which features live-action hostesses. Spend enough of your winnings on alcohol and say the right things, and your favourite may visit you outside the club. Fans can rest easy – the life of a super spy isn’t so different from that of a yakuza, after all.

Cabaret culture While we’re twitchy about playing through the cabaret club segments without curtains drawn and the room otherwise vacated, these clubs fulfil an important role in Japanese luxury nightlife. Not unlike the geisha of old, cabaret club hostesses help their customers enjoy themselves with the help of good conversation and ways to show off their wealth. In examining hostesses’ work, documentaries such as The Great Happiness Space and YouTube channel Asian Boss paint a picture of fiercely independent women who aren’t being paid to be gawked at, but to entertain, and to provide wish fulfilment that isn’t sexual in nature. The hostesses in Gaiden are all hostesses in real life, chosen via a contest – the grand winner of which, VTuber Kson, is set to make an appearance in Infinite Wealth.

TOP Using the Agent fighting style, Joryu has a neat array of gadgets at his disposal, but he can also dish out quicker than ever before. ABOVE LEFT The more heavyset Yakuza fighting style plays like the previous games’ Brawler style and allows Joryu to pick up items and people alike. ABOVE The sky’s the limit when it comes to picking out an outfit for Joryu at the Castle boutique – here he’s sporting the preferred style of the man who provides his voice, actor Takaya Kuroda. LEFT The Castle is a place for the rich and famous; as such, it offers gambling pursuits such as blackjack and poker

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Developer Saber Interactive Publisher Focus Entertainment Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series Origin US Release 2024

WA R H A M M E R 4 0 , 0 0 0 : S PA C E M A R I N E 2 Horde mentality

C The Tyranid hivemind provides a helpful narrative fig leaf for their rather straightforward AI behaviour – you wouldn’t expect any strategies more complex than ‘run at target’

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ould there be a more archetypal videogame image than that of a space marine standing firm as alien bodies crash against their armour, a lone bulwark holding back the swarm? It might equally describe Gears Of War or StarCraft or any number of titles holding the actual Aliens licence; even Space Invaders, when you strip away the specifics of the presentation. Because what really matters here isn’t the thematic dressing: the horde could equally be composed of giant ants or velociraptors or zombies or, arguably, the dirt that awaits a good powerwashing. Stripped back to its essential elements, it is simply an enemy that poses

no real threat individually, and possesses no apparent cunning, but does have on its side the simple superpower of quantity. Space Marine 2 might be the purest realisation of this concept we’ve ever seen. This sequel switches out the original game’s Ork foes (that other cornerstone of disposable, guilt-free cannon fodder) for Tyranids, and repurposes Saber Interactive’s Swarm Engine to throw them at the battlefield in breathtaking numbers, chittering and climbing over one another in the manner of Focus stablemate A Plague Tale’s swarming rats. Then, having made an awful mess of the place, the game hands you a boltgun and a chainsword – the

Your Space Marine comes complete with an ultimate ability powered up through kills. Righteous Fury buffs attack and defence, while Battle Cry sends out an AOE blast for quick clearance

As an adaptation of the 40K setting, this might be the most lavish we’ve yet seen, giving last year’s Darktide a serious run for its money

40K equivalent of a mop and bucket – and politely asks you to clean up. Bullets prove an inefficient janitorial tool: even rank-and-file Hormagaunts can absorb a few shots, which, when they number in the hundreds, is a recipe for tedium. Grenades are handy, sending bodies wheeling into the air by the dozen, but strictly limited in number. The answer, then, is to get up close. Catch one of

The game hands you a boltgun and a chainsword and politely asks you to clean up

We cannot overstate the care that’s been put into Space Marine 2’s execution animations – a rather base pleasure, perhaps, but a relief given how often you’ll be rending Tyranids asunder

these Tyranids in the whirring teeth of your blade and they’ll go down almost instantly; parry an incoming attack and you might grab hold of its tail with a gauntleted fist, swinging to slam its face into the ground. As you wade into these crowds, blocking isn’t a concern, or even possible: your power armour absorbs most hits, nibbling away at a bar that can be refilled with a gory execution move. (Doom 2016 is the obvious comparison here, but Space Marine’s deployment of this mechanic predates its popularisation by that game.) Even if they do manage to chew through your armour and get at the health bar beneath,

there’s still the chance of a revival by one of your teammates, AI-driven or otherwise. It’s a pure, uncomplicated power fantasy. Or, depending on how you view it, an undemanding chore. In the hour we spend with the game, the act of mopping up basic Tyranids does start to wear a little. We’re rather relieved, then, when a towering special unit steps out from the brood and challenges us to a real fight – one where flashing attacks must be dodged or parried depending on their colour. It’s proof that Saber hasn’t completely ignored the evolution of action games since the original Space Marine, which arrived less than a fortnight before Dark Souls. Clearly, though, it clearly has its eye on another FromSoftware combat system here. These hulking creatures aren’t exactly Lady Butterfly – before the hour is up, we’re fending off multiple simultaneously – but they prove that running a foe through with your chainsword is more satisfying when there’s a bit of resistance first. Once they’re dispatched, dealing with the remaining broodlings feels like popping bubble wrap. (No wonder our mind wanders to questions of archetypes and the nature of cleaning up as we play.) It’s all part and parcel, perhaps, of this throwback to an era in which action games weren’t expected to challenge anything beyond our reflexes, at least in the western mainstream. But it also leaves room for Space Marine 2’s biggest addition to the series: threeplayer co-op. While we’ve only had the opportunity to play solo so far, it’s easy to imagine how the presence of friends might help fill the mental gap. One final benefit of an archetype that’s faceless and personality-free by definition is that there’s unlikely to be any squabbling over who gets to play the hero character. The game isn’t called Captain Titus 2, after all.

Warp gate Playing Space Marine 2 is like being transported back to the 360 era – in both good and bad ways. It’s certainly positive to see games stepping into that long-vacant gap between mega-budget productions and indies, and there’s an undeniable novelty in the meeting of unreconstructed videogame values – gratuitous kill animations and scenery that exists only to be blown apart – and modern tech. It’s harder to get enthused about how close it hews to some of that period’s more outmoded design ideas. Our demo consists almost entirely of walking through combat arenas to reach the next button (perhaps disguised as a heavy statue to be lifted aside, or an alien flower that must be punched to death) which, once activated, opens up the next arena, and so on.

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Developer P-Studio Publisher Sega, Atlus Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Japan Release November 17

PERSONA 5: TACTICA Anime meets XCOM in this stylish spin-off

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even years on, Persona 5 is the gift that keeps on giving. Following 2020’s Persona 5: Royal, the extended version of the already sprawling main game, came Strikers, a sequel of sorts featuring Warriorsstyle combat. If that represented a series first, Tactica is more of a stroll down memory lane for Atlus: according to series producer Kazuhisa Wada, the Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor games have inspired P-Studio to give the tactics genre another go. Atlus’s desire to return to this particular well once more is reason enough to be sceptical. Though while it appears to be a little on the easy side – there probably won’t be any need for XCOM-style save scumming here – many of our initial concerns dissipate over the course of our hands-on with the game. It opens on the eve of the Phantom Thieves’ graduation ceremony; they are spending a pleasant afternoon together when they are suddenly transported to an alternate universe ruled by the iron-fisted Lady Marie, who has an army of minions sporting bicorne hats for heads. Still, every

P-Studio has once again found clever ways to translate Persona to a new genre tyrant has to fall, and so our heroes band together with newcomer Erina and a rebel faction to take down this pink-skinned, French-Revolutionary-garbed despot.

Tactica is a classic case of a game that’s more intuitive to play than to explain. Selecting a team of three Phantom Thieves from your roster, you make your way across grid-based arenas packed with enemies and, fortunately, cover positions. You need to maintain a balance of offence and defence – while behind cover, you’re safe from attack, but you can only use your gun to target the nearest enemy. To deal serious damage, you

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have to move your character within close enough range to call upon your Persona, or, if you’re willing to give up on cover entirely, use a melee attack. These slam your opponents out of cover, leaving them vulnerable and confused. In this state, you can “get ’em”, the prompt letting you know you can land critical hits and perform follow-up attacks as in the main game. Should you manage to surround an opponent with all three team members, you can use a skill called Triple Threat – essentially a variant on Persona’s familiar All-Out attacks. The calculations you make as you weigh up the pros and cons of giving up your cover position are what makes Persona 5: Tactica so intriguing. Finding yourself out of cover may not be as devastating as it often is in this genre (as far as we can tell based on the first few missions), but the volume and variety of enemies and the unusual stage layouts keep you on your toes: here is a developer that fully understands the value of positioning in a tactics game. More importantly, P-Studio has once again found clever ways to translate Persona’s mechanical conceits and stylistic flourishes to a new genre. The soundtrack, with new songs by Persona 5 vocalist Lyn, is immediately appealing, while the chibi character style works effectively, and takes away none of the stylishness of a Persona attack, ensuring that you still come away from battles feeling like a suave anime hero. Which brings us to Joker himself. The returning protagonist has several different Personas at his disposal, which should factor into your tactical decisions more as the game progresses. His first Persona, gentleman thief Arséne, is capable of hitting multiple enemies at once. It’s effective enough to have us wondering whether he really needs any further assistance – but then more Personas mean more opportunities to exploit enemies’ diverse weaknesses, broadening your strategic options. Hopefully the mission and enemy design in the full game is similarly diverse, but what we’ve seen so far suggests that Wada and co made the right choice.

Survivor’s recourse The two handheld games that chiefly inspired Tactica, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 for Nintendo DS (and, later, 3DS), were themselves somewhat of a surprise. At the time, Atlus had just acquired Career Soft, developer of the Langrisser and Growlanser series of tactics games; its development team, who weren’t immediately integrated into the larger group working on the mainline SMT series, were instead tasked with making a beginner-friendly strategy game that would appeal to SMT fans, many of whom were newcomers to the genre. It seems there is a similar intention behind Tactica – though we can’t help hoping that this means part of P-Studio is currently working on a sixth mainline Persona.

LEFT It wouldn’t be a Persona without teens brandishing guns. With the similarities to XCOM here, it all feels slightly more appropriate. BELOW While you can look forward to stages with much better level design than this tutorial stage, no one has invented even a small worldbuilding excuse for all these random crates

ABOVE P5T keeps using Persona’s UI trademarks such as speedlines, large fonts and other comic-adjacent effects, making every action satisfying to execute. RIGHT Lady Maria leads her kingdom with an iron fist – it will be interesting to see if this new setting is a Persona 5-style Palace or something else entirely

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Developer Creative Assembly Publisher Sega Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin UK Release TBA

HYENAS A year on, is Sega’s shooter ready to break free from the pack?

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shered through the prefab airlock system of Hyenas’ Gamescom booth, we’re presented with a video of the game’s tutorial that whizzes by at unhelpful speed, failing to compete with the volume of the show floor so that we have to rely on the subtitles. Which are, of course, in German. This is not the ideal way to meet any game, let alone one that stacks together as many ideas as Hyenas. Yet we can’t help but assume an advantage over the dozen rival thieves crammed into this briefing pen: after all, we saw the game at Creative Assembly’s HQ ahead of the previous Gamescom. This, surely, is tantamount to a 12-month head start. Three minutes and one squad wipe later, watching the last surviving team rampage through vaults of ’80s-themed loot, we’re forced to reconsider our optimism. Might Creative Assembly, perhaps, be feeling something similar? When we saw the game last summer, it was badged with a tentative 2023 release date. You have to assume, then, that the studio wasn’t expecting to be here in Cologne once again, talking not about launch but the opening of Hyenas’ first beta. And certainly not in the shadow of an earnings call where Sega executives named it “a challenging title” still in search of the correct business model, with the developer “striving to improve its quality”.

These challenges can’t have come as

Christoph Will and Alex Hunnisett of the Horshambased Creative Assembly

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a complete surprise, though. Any multiplayer shooter nowadays enters an arena littered with contenders that got wiped out early, while the fortunate few reap the loot. Approaching E376’s cover story with that in mind, we came away convinced that Creative Assembly’s survival strategy was sound, at least in principle: a kind of anti-camouflage, loading Hyenas with so many ideas and so

much personality that it couldn’t be mistaken for any of its competitors. Not many games offer the opportunity to coat a foe in insulation foam then shoot a nearby switch to deactivate gravity, rendering them a helpless clay pigeon, to the strains of A-ha piped through some distant public-address system. Successfully orchestrating such ploys, though, will require serious investment from players. Associate game director

As the player population is whittled down, we glimpse the game’s strange, frantic magic Christoph Will acknowledges that “if you put it side by side with another game,” Hyenas has more to pick up than most. “You have to play ten to 15 sessions to get a good grasp, I think, of what some of the gadgets do,” he says, referring to the throwable devices you can find in each match, ranging from areascouring ‘Cat Bombs’ and EMP scramblers to foam grenades that throw up a wall of the aforementioned Gloo-like substance.

While most Hyenas are built on familiar hero-shooter archetypes, Commander Wright’s foam cannon is rather more unusual, able to throw up instant walls as cover and to block ingress and even create shortcuts

LEFT Murfs, the NPC guards who provide the game’s PvE element, aren’t the brightest AI foe we’ve ever faced – but they can be real trouble, especially if you allow them to call in reinforcements. BELOW While characters’ primary weapons and special ability are fixed, each Hyena offers a choice of sidearms to tweak their playstyle

Hy profile

With players able to approach from multiple angles, and with so many abilities at play, it can be difficult to track where attacks are coming from

Which is to say nothing of the structure of these heists, which play out like a more rigid take on Hunt: Showdown’s Bounty Hunt mode, with five squads trying to crack enough vaults to hit their extraction target then make it out alive, evading rival teams and NPC guards alike. Nor the cavernous ‘plundership’ maps, their shipping-container layouts linked together by open-air zero-g spaces and tunnelled through with vents. Nor, indeed, the hero characters that give the game its name, a selection of familiar archetypes who have diverged further over a year of alpha testing (see ‘Hy profile’). The question, then, is how to convince players to stick around for those 15 matches.

As live product director Alex Hunnisett says, “We want to make sure that we’re allowing players to come in and find the fun as quickly as possible.” It’s not clear whether Creative Assembly is any closer to the answers than it was this time last year, but we can’t deny that there’s enough in this game’s messy collision of ideas to draw us back for a second trip through the airlock. This attempt goes better, and as the ship’s player population is whittled down to half a dozen, we glimpse the game’s strange, frantic magic in action. It’s enough to have us hoping that, once the game launches in earnest, other players stick around long enough to find themselves bewitched.

Catching up with Will and Hunnisett, we’re keen to discover what has changed since our previous conversation. “It’s still the same game it was one year ago, in terms of the things that are unique and cool about it,” Will says. There have, however, been lots of tweaks. The lighting tech has been reworked to make environments easier to parse, while zero-g movement gives every player the abilities once reserved for ballerina Prima. The biggest evolution comes from feedback suggesting that characters lacked variety. A perk system now emphasises their differences and encourages a certain way of playing: Prima deals more damage at speed, while kills with Mozie’s special loads his basic assault rifle with explosive rounds.

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ROUNDUP

SPLATOON 3: SIDE ORDER STRAY CHILDREN

Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch Origin Japan Release Spring

Developer/publisher Onion Games Format Switch Origin Japan Release Winter (Japan), TBA (worldwide)

We seldom feature DLC here, but Octopath Expansion was Splatoon 2’s acme, and we think Nintendo may repeat the trick with this Roguelike mode. You battle through a pristine facility; on each floor you choose one of three challenges, a glimpse of the reward tempting you to raise the stakes.

UNICORN OVERLORD Developer Vanillaware Publisher Atlus Format PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Origin Japan Release March 8

A spiritual successor to Love-de-lic’s cult 1997 favourite Moon: Remix RPG Adventure – rereleased by Onion Games two years ago – Yoshiro Kimura’s typically surreal new roleplayer is a throwback in more ways than one. It centres on a boy who is sucked inside a TV set and emerges in a psychedelic land populated by other youngsters. Setting cartoon-style characters against grainily realistic (and seemingly prerendered) backdrops, it looks like a revived classic from the early PlayStation era. Alas, it also harks back to when we had to wait for western releases of Japanese games – though we’re assured a localised version isn’t far off.

PRINCESS PEACH: SHOWTIME! Developer TBA Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Origin Japan Release March 22 Even with its modestly dressed female characters, our spider sense says ‘Vanillaware’ from the opening seconds of the trailer for this tactical RPG – until a glimpse of a cheese-filled steak dish confirms it. Hilarious name aside, this is handsome stuff, and the involvement of Atlus further elevates our hopes.

HADES II Developer/publisher Supergiant Games Format PC Origin US Release Q2 2024 (Early Access)

It’s taken altogether too long, but in recent years Nintendo has at least been trying to reposition the Mushroom Kingdom’s most frequently kidnapped royal as more than a helpless damsel in pink dress. In this theatrical-themed production she belatedly takes centre stage, becoming a detective, a martial artist, a swordfighter and a pâtissière by turns. A welcome idea, if curiously similar in concept to Balan Wonderworld. We expect this to turn out a bit better.

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Given the enthusiastic response to the original, Supergiant’s sequel has much riding on it. The studio is keen to make a strong first impression – Hades II’s Early Access launch, it says, will feature “at least as much content from day one” as the first game offered. One of our most wanted releases of 2024.

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VIDEOGAME CULTURE, DEVELOPMENT, PEOPLE AND TECHNOLOGY

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104

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The 100 Greatest Games Of Edge’s Lifetime

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The Shape Of Things To Come

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The Making Of… Halo: Combat Evolved

104 Studio Profile: Llamasoft 140 Time Extend: Street Fighter II Turbo

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THE 100 GREATEST GAMES OF EDGE’S LIFETIME No arguments – for once – just lots of votes, resulting in a countdown of the finest accomplishments across 30 years of game history 52

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100 GREATEST GAMES

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THE EDGE TOP 100

100 KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO Developer Cardboard Computer Release 2013 Format PC Review E342 (9)

Cardboard Computer’s fabulist tale of the crowded-out, the put-upon and the otherwise forgotten is softly spoken but righteously angry – railing at a society that leaves so many feeling alone. But there is tenderness here, too, as its band of misfits find solace in one another. A landmark narrative adventure.

“ K R Z H A U N T S M E . I N N O VAT I V E I N T O N E , STRUCTURE AND REGIONAL VOICE, IT’S A DREAMY JOURNEY THROUGH THE U N D E R B E L LY O F T H E A M E R I C A N P S Y C H E . ” Anna Megill (Control, Fable, Guild Wars 2)

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WARIOWARE, INC: MEGA MICROGAMES Developer Nintendo R&D1 Release 2003 Format GBA Review E124 (7)

Most videogames present you with some form of challenge and invite you to respond to it. WarioWare reduces one of the medium’s tenets to its quintessence, barking an instruction and asking for an instant reaction. It mischievously defies your natural impulses, gleefully increasing its tempo and introducing unlikely twists to sustain its breakneck momentum. When you succeed, it’s triumphant. When you fail, it’s funny. It’s the anti-Mario’s finest hour. “Context is everything, and while Edge and its readers were bored to death of videogames, here comes Nintendo to show us again how delightful they can be. Its secret? Dissect the three core phases of play (understand/execute/hone) into the purest of fragments. Fill everything else with the love of games.” Robert August de Meijer

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STARCRAFT Developer Blizzard Entertainment Release 1998 Format PC Review E59 (7)

A decade ago, researchers discovered that realtime strategy games including StarCraft could improve players’ cognitive flexibility. But Blizzard’s RTS hasn’t been around for so long because it’s an effective brain-training tool. Renowned for its approachability, depth and exquisite balance, it has aged gracefully, as demonstrated by a visually improved remake that otherwise rejected further nips and tucks.

100 GREATEST: 100–93

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GOD OF WAR Developer Santa Monica Studio Release 2018 Format PS4 Review E319 (8)

Talk about sympathy for the devil. Santa Monica Studio – with assistance from an award-winning Christopher Judge – proved that a monster can be redeemed, reimagining one of the medium’s most violent protagonists as a taciturn, grieving dad. But this Kratos wasn’t entirely reinvented: this reboot equally embraced his raw power for its brutal combat.

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PERSONA 5 Developer P-Studio Release 2016 Format PS3, PS4 Review E305 (8)

Beyond the slick menus, the jazzy soundtrack and the joy of managing your social calendar in bustling Tokyo, Persona 5’s real triumph lies in its dungeons. These weaving spaces are densely designed, transforming what can often feel like busywork elsewhere in the genre into enticing places to explore, littered with treasure, secret routes, and a litany of demons to fight or befriend in order to craft a squad of infernal allies to assist in snappy combat.

“Staggeringly good world and level design.” Hanks01

93 YAKUZA 0 Developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio Release 2015 Format PS3, PS4 Review E303 (8)

95 OUTRUN 2006: COAST 2 COAST Developer Sumo Digital Release 2006 Format Various Review E161 (8) Were driving this blissful in real life, we’d spend a lot more time behind the wheel. The open road has never been as alluring as in Sega and Sumo’s exceptional sequel, which turned an all-time arcade great into a Ferraripowered fever dream. From beachside to fields to woodland, those hypnotic, impossible track transitions help generate a seamlessly edited highlights package from the best bits of other driving games. Only Ridge Racer comes close to its gorgeous, lazy drifts – and Namco’s game doesn’t have those timeless Sega-blue skies. “Substitutes the intensity of a Daytona or Sega Rally with the bliss of a sun-drenched escape, and fleshes out the (already satisfying) template introduced in OutRun 2.” Dan G

94

THE SIMS Developer Maxis Release 2000 Format PC Review E82 (7)

Will Wright and co applied a magnifying glass to the SimCity concept, and opened up a new, brilliantly mundane world to players. There had been life sims before, but none that sold a fraction as well. And that success was well-earned – The Sims laid such solid foundations for its successors that, to this day, it’s still really the only game in town.

Regarded as RGG Studio’s finest hour, this trip back in time to Kazuma Kiryu’s formative years found a thematic match for Yakuza’s gaudy excesses in the vulgar extravagance of Japan’s bubble economy. But Kiryu’s tale isn’t the half of it; this is the Goro Majima show, the original game’s eyepatched thug reinvented as a tragicomic antihero. His spectacular entrance here is one of the greatest character introductions in games. “Celebrates everything that made its five prior games great in telling a thrilling story full of gritty crime drama that’s tonally whiplashed with sidestories involving running cabaret clubs and building real-estate businesses.” Alexander Davies

“I’d never seen whole families consumed by one game before. The Sims is so deeply relatable. Everyone needs to sleep and bathe. Everyone needs to get a job, make friends and treat themselves to an extension. Who doesn’t want to make that dream a reality?” Tom Cooper

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100 GREATEST: 92–85

92

90

FEZ Developer Polytron Corporation Release 2012 Format 360 Review E241 (9)

PAPERS, PLEASE Developer 3909 LLC Release 2013 Format PC Review E258 (9)

Some found it hard to square Phil Fish’s oft-discussed dismissal of Japanese games with the debt Polytron’s pixel-art adventure owes to Nintendo in particular. His argument, as most sensible folk understood, was that few games since had captured the magic of the games from overseas he had enjoyed in his formative years. Developed with Renaud Bédard, Fez was Fish’s attempt to do just that. In that regard, it was already a triumph, but its mysteries seemed to extend much deeper than its inspirations. Eleven years on, its influence is keenly felt among a new generation of indie games.

Lucas Pope’s dystopian tale of a border checkpoint guard given an all-but-impossible job is a feelbad classic: the kind of game where you find your choices keep you awake at night. Can you really deny a desperate refugee entry to the country on a technicality? What if your family’s wellbeing is at risk? Yet as you struggle to weigh up the personal and moral stakes, there’s no denying the bureaucratic process is satisfying in itself, even as the game’s ‘glory to Arstotzka’ mantra sticks in your craw.

“Both old and new school, and the best of both worlds, this was Tunic ten years ahead of time crossed with the peak of all ’90s platform games combined. A magical, mindbending pixel soup.” Joe Stevens

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Yet more evidence that Valve is incapable of making anything that ends in ‘3’. In this case, it has a good reason. Or rather, a quarter of a million of them. Sixteen years on from launch, the game recently broke its own record for concurrent players, with over 250,000 Spies, Medics and Engineers logging on at once. Over time, TF2 has taken on unexpected shapes: free-to-play millinery emporium; test site for one of the most dedicated communities in videogames; a training ground for bots to practise. But underneath it all, nine silhouettes stand firm, their personalities established in animated shots that laid the blueprint for Overwatch and every hero shooter that followed.

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“Can a videogame teach you something about yourself? About human life? Yes, it can.” Bernardo González Paz “Do you uphold the rules, bend them, or outright flout them? Wonderfully evocative and thought-provoking.” Nicholas Robinson

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SYSTEM SHOCK

FALLOUT 3

Developer Looking Glass Studios Release 1994 Format PC Review n/a

Developer Bethesda Game Studios Release 2008 Format Various Review E196 (7)

There’s a problem aboard Citadel Station: its onboard AI wants to enslave humanity, so she’s not opening doors for you any more. In perhaps the first recognisable immersive sim, the solution might involve gunfights, stealth, hacking, demolitions or, most likely, a hastily improvised combination of each as you work through its labyrinthine floors in search of an off button for an all-time-great antagonist. “My goal was not to choose the best games from this period of Edge’s existence. My goal was to choose the games that haunt me, staying in my mind, and making me who I am. In a sense, I’m my genetics, culture, interests, experiences and memories, and the media I have loved – and which has shaped me. Like a replicant dying in the rain, memories fading, some of these are the games I hope no one forgets. As such, my number one pick from 1993 until now is System Shock.” Harvey Smith (Deus Ex, Dishonored)

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TEAM FORTRESS 2 Developer Valve Release 2007 Format Various Review E182 (10, as part of The Orange Box )

There’s a case for the introduction still being Bethesda’s finest. At the very least, it’s one of gaming’s greatest moments of delayed gratification: after a childhood spent underground, you finally leave Vault 101, the hatch opening to reveal a blinding white light that takes several seconds to dissipate. You’re left with a view of what remains of Earth, stepping out onto the Capital Wasteland with anticipation and trepidation. The adventure that follows might even convince you of the merits of an apocalyptic event – assuming you acquire a taste for irradiated water. “That moment when you step out of the vault and you are let loose into a world that begs for exploration… No building or forging needed, just the basic go-and-explore mentality. Enough said.” Hassan El Chebib

87 THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE WIND WAKER Developer Nintendo EAD Release 2003 Format GameCube Review E123 (9)

“THE SENSE OF FREEDOM ON THE OPEN S E A S F O R E S H A D O W E D T H E V I S I O N T H AT WA S R E A L I S E D O N S W I T C H Y E A R S L AT E R . T H E M O S T U N D E R R AT E D Z E L D A ? ” Simon Stirrup

Arguably the most incomplete Zelda, but one of the most fondly remembered. The youngest Link’s coming-of-age captures that bittersweet moment we must leave home and set sail for new horizons. It boasts several series peaks: the sad farewell to Grandma; the magical Great Sea theme; the greatest Ganondorf.

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HALF-LIFE: ALYX Developer Valve Release 2020 Format PCVR Review E344 (9)

The only VR exclusive on this entire list, demonstrating what’s possible when you throw a serious budget and a wealth of imagination at this underserved medium. Everything that’s ever been great about this series – tense gunfights, physics puzzles, format-breaking setpieces, the sheer terror of a headcrab coming at your face – is improved by VR. We may never see its like again, but that only makes Alyx more precious. “An unexpected Indian summer for the beloved HL series that inexplicably matches its predecessors. Twenty-plus years later, mind blown again. One of the greatest gaming experiences I’ve ever had.” Dean Freeman “I played this so intensely that during one firefight I attempted to duck my virtual body into cover, which led me to slamming my actual body into a wall. Nothing virtual about that.” Kyle Charrette

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THIEF: THE DARK PROJECT Developer Looking Glass Studios Release 1998 Format PC Review E67 (8)

During the late-’90s PC graphics boom, Looking Glass was off in the corner using advances in sound cards to build a steampunk medieval stealth game where footsteps rang out over hard surfaces. There are none of Kojima’s enemy vision cones here, just a gem on your HUD to show how visible you are in the current light, a nearby torch, and a water arrow. You know what to do.

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100 GREATEST: 84–78

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THE ELDER SCROLLS III: MORROWIND Developer Bethesda Game Studios Release 2002 Format PC Review E112 (6)

It’s been said more times than Skyrim has been re-released, but it bears repeating: Morrowind walked so that all modern openworld RPGs could run. The foundations it built are laudable enough; what’s even better is how confrontationally strange the fantasy itself is. Bedouin-like settlements of Dark Elves, volcanic ashlands, insectoid fauna: it’s a long way from Riverwood. “Cutlery is the abiding memory: stealing it, selling it, getting attacked for selling back to the person I’d stolen it from. And a huge open world which was immersive and rewarded exploration.” Ceri Ames

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UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THIEVES Developer Naughty Dog Release 2009 Format PS3 Review E208 (9)

Plenty would (and did) make a case for the fourth instalment, but Among Thieves was where Naughty Dog’s blockbuster formula came of age – proving that you can create a triple-A romp driven by set-pieces and characters. Its influence has extended to Hollywood, as anyone who recently caught Tom Cruise dangling from a train in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning will attest. “Games will forever be cursed to chase ‘cinematic’ – especially after Naughty Dog pulled it off in Uncharted 2.” Teddy Dief (Hyper Light Drifter, We Are OFK)

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82

METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER

Developer Konami Computer Entertainment Japan Release 2004 Format PS2 Review E145 (8)

Turning back the clock, MGS transitions to an entirely different style of spy thriller. The presentation is rip-roaring, classic Bond, but in the absence of the series’ overpowered radar, and with enemies more aware than ever, you must move with fresh care. As your mastery of the game’s layered stealth system grows, it finds increasingly playful ways to challenge it, its constant invention meaning you never grow frustrated. “An endlessly replayable, rollicking ride, packed with variety. Fantastic pacing, doling out tense jungle crawls alongside more confined building infiltrations and some of the most famous boss fights of all time. Always playful and bespoke, MGS3 is an all-timer.” Finn Brady

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STREET FIGHTER IV Developer Dimps, Capcom Release 2008 Format Various Review E193 (9)

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SUPER MARIO GALAXY 2 Developer Nintendo EAD Release 2010 Format Wii Review E215 (10)

Nintendo may be known as one of gaming’s greatest innovators, but this sequel makes the case for it being one of the great iterators too. A game possessing such a wealth of new ideas that it manages to break free of the gravity of its predecessor. “Like the duality of Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom, Galaxy 1 invented while Galaxy 2 fine-tuned and somehow improved on perfection.” Fergus Pearson

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By going back to basics, Capcom didn’t merely restore the Street Fighter series to prominence, it revived the entire genre around it, too. Fighting games had become a niche pursuit, with competitive scenes confined to a moribund arcade industry; then IV rebooted SFII’s timeless gameplay for a new generation in stunning style, and everything changed. Its final form, Ultra Street Fighter IV, is a fighting game of near-immaculate balance.

TOMB RAIDER Developer Core Design Release 1993 Format Saturn Review E40 (9) Core’s relationship with Sega in the early ’90s made this an unusual project to debut as a Saturn game, but these were more innocent times. Sales expectations weren’t minimal, but equally no one expected Lara Croft to become quite such a star. A complex, engrossing 3D world full of wonders provided the perfect jumping-off point.

“Almost single-handedly reviving the fighting game genre, Street Fighter IV brought new, lapsed and die-hard players together for another round.” Alexander Davies

“The birth of a genre. The 3D action puzzler with a female lead. Mind. Blown.” Kevin Alty

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FORTNITE Developer Epic Games Release 2017 Format PC Review n/a

The ultimate proof of what’s possible when you don’t give up – and, of course, how following a proven idea is so much safer than ploughing your own furrow. But Fortnite’s realignment as a free-toplay battle royale in the wake of PUBG is only the beginning of the story – it’s how Epic seized on the game’s popularity that mattered. More notable still is how it has managed Fortnite since, turning it into probably the most powerful brand in games – and certainly the one non-game companies most want to partner with. Crucially, at the centre is an expertly honed shooter, executed with real flair. “As a designer and player of competitive multiplayer games, I am here to tell you: Fortnite Battle Royale is the deepest and most interesting and inspirational competitive game since Counter-Strike – and maybe even since No-Limit Texas Hold ’em. Run-and-gun gameplay in Fortnite is solid, but where the (accidental?) genius really reveals itself is the way the builds work with those more traditional design elements. Building walls, floors, ramps and cones, and editing them into even more shapes, transforms the game from a long-range ‘peek and you’re dead’ experience into an elaborate and intimate dynamic threedimensional ballet of shooting and movement. Also, you can play as a banana.” Chris Hecker (Spore, SpyParty)

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100 GREATEST: 77–71

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IMMORTALITY Developer Half Mermaid Release 2022 Format Various Review E375 (10)

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Sam Barlow has often expressed his love for Samus’s frosted visor in Metroid Prime, a moment of coming face-to-face echoed in Her Story. Immortality takes that fascination with the screen as a reflective surface to its extreme, offering an infinity mirror of realities and symbols so dense that you can’t be quite sure which is the simulacrum and which the actual thing; nor that the screen itself is firm glass. You’ve never appreciated before how it forms a barrier between you and the fiction – which means there’s nothing to protect you from the hungry face looking out from far side of the screen, and directly into your eyes.

BAYONETTA Developer PlatinumGames Release 2009 Format Various Review E209 (10)

For those doubting Bayonetta’s influence, think how often you reach for ‘Witch Time’ to describe that moment where you dodge an attack at the last second, the action slowing so you can deliver a stinging riposte. Yet no one else does it with quite such poise and elan: that self-assured grace even now sets the gun-heeled Umbra Witch apart from her character-action contemporaries. “An incredible score-attack action game, with one of the most satisfying combat systems going, matched with some very funny (and somewhat contentious) setpieces.” Finn Brady

“At least two astonishingly epic games were released in 2022. One was made by a developer with hundreds of employees. Another was made by an independent studio with around one per cent as many full-time staff. I consider Half Mermaid’s accomplishment more impressive.” Benjamin Thompson “Proof, if proof is needed, that FMV games can work with the right framing. Sam Barlow got it right with Her Story, but this one goes a level above. The sense of discovery as you piece the mystery together and land on the important plot points in your own way is unrivalled.” Graham Burchell

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KATAMARI DAMACY Developer Namco Release 2004 Format PS2 Review E136 (8)

Keita Takahashi’s colourful satire on consumerism was so utterly misunderstood by his publisher that it became a franchise, to its creator’s evident dismay. It features one of the medium’s worst parents, a disapproving father. Yet Katamari is as uniquely joyous as it was in 2004, not least thanks to its soundtrack – which, as you read this, is surely rolling around your brain. “A rolling stone gathers no moss. But a rolling Katamari gathers everything, from people to planets. It’s a rare thrill starting the size of a matchstick and rolling bigger and bigger until whole countries become tethered to your ball of chaos.” Dom Ellis

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DEMON’S SOULS Developer FromSoftware Release 2009 Format PS3 Review E207 (9)

It is just one measure of the greatness of FromSoftware’s Souls series that its imitators find it so difficult to properly nail the games’ essence. Riffing on the formula is a world apart from turning out examples of other modern genres such as looter shooters or battle royales, and it’s why no pretenders can stand up to even the crumbly old grandfather of the family from the PS3 era, which left a deep impression on everyone who braved it.

“After decades of commercial apprehension, finally a mainstream title that respected its players. Demon’s Souls offered deeply hidden mysteries, not afraid that some players wouldn’t find them. But, of course, they did, and a new genre was discovered. Perhaps still the best because its defiance goes further than later releases.” Robert August de Meijer

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THE LAST GUARDIAN

Developer Japan Studio, GenDesign Release 2016 Format PS4 Review E302 (9)

Perhaps Ueda’s most startling accomplishment is to make us care about this curious cat/dog/bird hybrid as we would a family pet. In spite of the beast’s recalcitrance and violence, you wince as you pull arrows from its flanks, eager to soothe. Trico is a tour de force of animation, the story of your bond with it as emotionally rewarding (and eventually wrenching) as games get. “Starting a new save after the credits was too upsetting. The new Trico wasn’t my Trico. Sold the game and haven’t played it since. Beautiful.” Joe Stevens “One of the most misunderstood games of all time. A timeless masterpiece that makes you feel like an innocent child with endless imagination just slapping barefoot on rocks. And a game that has the courage to irritate the player by making its creature behave like an actual animal, not always doing the things you want.” Johannes Valkola “Probably the most emotionally involved I’ve been with any game.” Lee Tilton

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MARIO KART 64

RESIDENT EVIL

Developer Nintendo EAD Release 1997 Format N64 Review E42 (8)

Developer Capcom Release 1996 Format PS1 Review E33 (9)

Before the concept of the barcade bedded in, any pub with an N64 and a copy of Mario Kart was cause for celebration. In truth, though, a trip to even the best-stocked of today’s videogame-infused watering holes isn’t complete without a few laps of Rainbow Road, each player regressing to the time and place they first fell in love with it. “Not the one for kart purists, perhaps, but the version into which my university friends and I sank thousands of hours, huddled together in smoke-filled rooms. We knew every corner, exploit and cheap shortcut (banned, naturally, apart from on Rainbow Road).” Rayner Simpson

Games termed ‘cinematic’ are often no such thing: a truly cinematic game harnesses the visual language of the silver screen during play, not cutscenes. The static angles of the Spencer Mansion make you fearful of what might be lurking beyond the camera’s view – a trick creator Shinji Mikami borrowed from horror films. As you fearfully tiptoe toward each corner, you’re experiencing no less than the birth of a genre.

“This game is my OG favourite. Like a first kiss, I think the first game that really knocked your socks off is memorable. It was modern, moody, mysterious, and just felt like I was in a movie.” Siobhan Reddy (LittleBigPlanet, Dreams)

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SILENT HILL 2 Developer Konami Team Silent Release 2001 Format PS2 Review E103 (7)

Not only the ur-psychological horror game, but also a perfect example of designing towards tech limits. Foggy streets mean unseen danger always feels imminent; obscure enemy models give your mind room to fill in the horrifying details; even the clunky combat leaves you deliciously underpowered. Silent Hill 2 manages to make every decision feel intentional to this day. “I adore the unnerving, gritty, erotic feeling of Silent Hill 2. The sound design is surreal and the character interactions are incredibly memorable and intimate to me. The seemingly neverending staircase, seeing Pyramid Head for the first time, the foggy graveyard – it is all so inspiring. Angela’s “Will you love me? Take care of me? Heal all of my pain?” line enters my thoughts often.” Madison Karrh (Birth, Landlord Of The Woods)

“I AM STILL SHAKING.”

“In an era when ‘adult game’ meant ‘bare eight-polygon tits and swearing’, this mature, Gothic tragedy of a game let subtext do the heavy haunting. For all its quiet, elegiac moments, its storytelling drove you to the revelation about James with the relentlessness of the smashing steel in the soundtrack.” Colin Whiteside

Siobhan Reddy (LittleBigPlanet, Dreams)

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THE LAST OF US PART II Developer Naughty Dog Release 2020 Format PS4 Review E347 (9)

Naughty Dog’s none-more-brutal sequel connects with the bludgeoning force of, well, a golf club to the skull. Its set-pieces shred the nerves in two very different ways, oscillating between suspenseful stealth and desperate, panicked close-quarters struggles. But it wouldn’t work if it didn’t balance tension with tenderness: this is a fight for survival where you truly care about who lives and dies.

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BALDUR’S GATE II: SHADOWS OF AMN Developer BioWare Release 2000 Format PC Review E91 (8)

“Its focus on complex and realistic characters propels it to even further highs than its predecessor. It also innovated heavily in accessibility features in the triple-A space.” Hazel Harries “The first time it felt like those lifelike digital characters weren’t that but actual human beings with their secret hopes and dreams – it was like their spirit came out of the screen and could be touched.” Johannes Valkola

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Armed with a D&D rulebook, an ageing Infinity Engine and the best writing in RPGs, BioWare redefined what was possible in the confines of the isometric RPG. One moment you’re listening to lumbering barbarian Misc talk to his pet hamster, the next you’re floored by a questline set in an illusory circus tent. When words ruled over polygons, this game ruled over all.

100 GREATEST: 70–64

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CHRONO TRIGGER

STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC

Developer Square Release 1995 Format SNES Review E26 (7)

Developer BioWare Release 2003 Format Xbox Review E128 (9)

Sakaguchi. Horii. Toriyama. Mitsuda. An RPG dream team at the peak of their powers conjured a time-travelling SNES adventure which sees your party grow into one. In an era of genre-defining works, this stands shoulder-toshoulder with the best. Briskly paced and not too challenging, it’s also an ideal entry point. The only problem with Chrono Trigger being your first RPG is that so few of its peers can match up.

As Star Wars becomes increasingly wrapped up in a single cluster of established characters and events, the genius of BioWare’s approach becomes ever more apparent: simply wind back the clock a few millennia and find room to tell stories all your own. And what stories: HK-47, the widow and her missing droid, and of course that twist in the tale, so sharp we won’t spoil it two decades on.

“Why have one core theme for your JRPG romp when you’re a party of time travellers? Through its central premise, Chrono Trigger gets to be the fantasy RPG, the sci-fi RPG, and so much more, with thematic variety that shatters any danger of ennui creeping in.” Dan G

“KOTOR was the first game I took time off school to play (I faked being sick). I remember visiting my local game store every weekend to see if there were updates on the release date until it finally came out. This game opened my mind to what storytelling, character building and exploration could be in a videogame. It was so ahead of its time that I still believe certain aspects haven’t been beaten. I look back and I’m amazed at the scope BioWare managed to fit in, but with true love and care. An all-time classic.” Joel Eschler (BioShock Infinite, Horizon Zero Dawn)

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SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE Developer FromSoftware Release 2019 Format Various Review E332 (9)

Arguably From’s most challenging game, by virtue of its insistence upon a particular playstyle: you either learn the rhythms of its parry-heavy combat, or you die. In Genichiro Ashina it has one of From’s greatest bosses, a skill check as brutal as it is spectacular. “The best action game ever made? Bayonetta and Devil May Cry fans may object, but Sekiro’s parry system is pitch-perfect. By the time you’ve reached its final fight, you’ll understand that the game has been training you for that very moment over its 30-hour duration. Superb.” Kyle Charrette

HALO 3 Developer Bungie Release 2007 Format 360 Review E181 (10)

“Some games innovate, some games deliver quality, and the best do both and make it look effortless. Halo 3 landed a one-two punch of best-in-series campaign with a killer competitive multiplayer experience, and then true innovations with Forge, Theatre and File Share – years before such features would become commonplace. Later entries in the franchise have only served to highlight that while Halo 3 felt almost effortless at the time, it was actually lightning-in-a-bottle perfection, the likes of which we may never see again. It has aged like fine wine.” Mike Brown (Forza Horizon) “Such a great overall package: a brilliant campaign, some of the best multiplayer maps of any game, advanced media support (pics and videos), and Forge. The pinnacle of my favourite series.” Ian Ovenden “I’m not a huge firstperson shooter fan, but have put thousands of hours into Halo games. What started as a way to stay in touch with university friends continues (occasionally) 20 years later. This is the definitive, purest Halo to me, before the mechanics (and opponents) got too sophisticated for me to compete with.” Rayner Simpson

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100 GREATEST: 63–57

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SHENMUE

Developer Sega AM2 Release 1999 Format Dreamcast Review E92 (8)

Sure, it looks quaint now. But while Ryo Hazuki’s glacial search for his father’s killer may have sunk Sega’s Dreamcast, it stands as a pioneering landmark for videogames. The entire open-world genre owes Yu Suzuki’s 1999 adventure a debt of gratitude: countless sandboxes now feature NPCs with lives of their own, and mundane side activities that add nothing but character and flavour. It all began here. “When I got this on release day, the first few hours were tremendously underwhelming. What followed was the ultimate slow-burning tale of homoerotic vengeance.” Joe Stevens “After 20+ years, it’s not so much Ryo’s search for Lan Di or the copious punching of faces that sticks in the mind, but the detailed evocation of daily life in ’80s Japan, and the happy tedium of your forklift-truck-driving side hustle.” Simon Stirrup

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RED DEAD REDEMPTION Developer Rockstar San Diego Release 2010 Format Various Review E216 (9)

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X-COM: UFO DEFENSE Developer Mythos Release 1994 Format PC Review n/a

In the days before people talked in terms of gameplay loops, Julian Gollop devised one of the best: build up bases of soldiers and lab coats to protect Earth from alien invasion, then deploy them on turn-based missions. Back to base, back to the lab, then back out to battle. “The game that teaches you about loss. The soldier that you nurtured, who has been with you through thick and thin, is evaporated in an instant. And now you must live with it. Gallop’s design proved so enduring, despite the game’s byzantine controls, that Jake Solomon’s revival reinvigorated the genre.” Philip Gurevich

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Rockstar’s take on the Wild West was built on its open-world expertise, yet it was far from a simple reskin. That’s in large part thanks to the more grounded tale of John Marston’s attempt to right his past wrongs, a leap in ambition for the studio that paved the way for what was to follow – though it still finds room for GTAstyle prodding at the hypocrisy of a much older American dream. “Beautifully evocative sound and landscapes accompany a compelling narrative-driven exploration of the forced decline of romanticised attachment to the Wild West. The player’s character is overwhelmed by the passage of time, manifested in technological ‘progress’ and expanding government – a powerful allegory for the nostalgia many show today.” Nicholas Robinson

60 XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN Developer Firaxis Release 2012 Format PC Review E247 (9) The rare reboot that improves (narrowly, if the rankings are anything to go by) on the original. It’s powered by the same push and pull of strategy and tactical layers, always leading you to that next exhilarating push into the darkness. The streamlined design famously took multiple attempts to crack, and nearly didn’t happen at all – but instead it revived an entire genre. And what could be more XCOM than a long shot that unexpectedly comes good? “XCOM showed us that turn-based games can also be exhilarating cinematic experiences. XCOM 2 is better, but, you know.” Bernardo González Paz

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THE WITNESS Developer Thekla, Inc Release 2016 Format Various Review E290 (9)

59 “In terms of games that impacted me most, The Witness sits at the top. To me, The Witness is about trying to make sense of the world around you – a theme that I’d say no other medium is better suited to express than videogames. You look for patterns, take in some information, and form a mental model of the way things are and the way they work. Sometimes that understanding gets challenged, and maybe your perspective evolves. That’s life! We don’t have to be afraid of not knowing.” Corey Martin (Bonfire Peaks, Pipe Push Paradise)

ADVANCE WARS Developer Intelligent Systems Release 2001 Format GBA Review E104 (9) It’s not just the meticulous balance. It’s not just the cheerful, characterful COs. It’s not just the units, chunky and robust, like die-cast toys in pixel-art form. It’s not just the tactile interface, where every nudge of the cursor, every push of a button sounds and feels right. It’s all of those things combined. Has any development studio ever lived up to its name more convincingly?

“In 2016, it was unheard of for an independent game studio to spend more than seven years developing a game, but in retrospect it seems like such a development time was a necessity for The Witness. How else could a game as unique and as polished have come about?” Benjamin Thompson

“Perfection. A single game can last for hours, and the moment you realise the balance has swung your way to clinch victory from certain defeat is an experience that sticks with you forever.” Dave Gardiner

“The best puzzle game ever made, and a profound work of art.” Joe Stevens “How far can you go? The Witness asked such profound questions of life, but had the courage to answer them all – and let you ponder about it all for years to come.” Johannes Valkola

“A highly addictive game on a console genuinely small enough to take anywhere, and with controls close enough together to allow one free hand to flag down a bus without interrupting the game.” Peter Corrin “I thank this game for making strategy games approachable, otherwise I would never have known the genre’s delights. Its light-hearted tone and visuals make it endlessly palatable, even hours into a grinding stalemate. But don’t let that deceive you: the depth here makes this classic as exciting now as it was over 20 years ago.” Tom Cooper

“If this was a list of the best desert island discs, it would crack the top five. If this was a list of best islands, it would crack the top five. If this was a list of best deserts and discs, it would find a way to crack the top five.” Kyle Charrette

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HITMAN Developer IO Interactive Release 2016 Format Various Review E301 (9)

A bald man sits on a bench in the sun, shades on, fitted white polo, the image of the classy holidaymaker. He surveys the cobbled square with murderous intent. How exactly the kill plays out, though, will be different every time. Garotte? Poisoned spaghetti? Explosive golf ball? You’ll want a return ticket for this one, 47. “Few games have succeeded in creating playgrounds as well as those in Super Mario 64, but IO has made three of them on the trot. A true masterclass in level design, suspense, comedy and pacing, Hitman is a rollercoaster of joyful anxiety.” Alexander Davies “Level after level of clockwork precision genius. No matter how many moving parts you master, there are always more layers to discover. I’m glad the story is bobbins – if I’d cared more about the characters, it would have lost its daft charm.” Dean Freeman

“Hitman is a game that feels like what it is: the outcome of nearly two decades of design. It’s confidently concise, and endlessly expansive as a result. The great innovation here was taking secondary encouraged player behaviour – replaying levels to try different approaches – and making that core mechanically. It’s a game that validated the audience’s emergent interaction and folded it into the game itself. Truly the heights of what a franchise can achieve, as far as I’m concerned.” Mike Bithell (Volume, Thomas Was Alone)

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REZ Developer United Game Artists Release 2001 Format Dreamcast Review E105 (9)

Can synaesthesia really be captured in interactive form? Tetsuya Mizuguchi has all but dedicated his career in games to finding out, but nothing else he’s made has quite delivered such a potent sensory overload as Rez – until the cosmic pointillism of Infinite’s staggering Area X. The original’s throbbing style, though, captivates in two and three dimensions – still mesmerising players two decades on. “So unlike anything else that it is timeless and may as well be its own genre, destined to be replayed again and again.” Benjamin Thompson “Much more than a wireframe Panzer Dragoon, the music and artful interludes add up to more than the sum. Transformative.” Joe Stevens “A game that exists in its own time and place. Locked up and ready to emerge time and time again in its most current, perfect form.” Johannes Valkola

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CASTLEVANIA: SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT Developer Konami Release 1997 Format PS1 Review E51 (8)

Released into a videogame world obsessed with the wonders of three dimensions, the resolutely 2D Symphony Of The Night was a hard sell. But that just made its adherents even more fierce in advocating its ingenious overhaul of the tiring Castlevania formula, folding in RPG-style layers to create an action adventure of rare sophistication that would inspire a cavalcade of games unafraid to follow in its fashion-defying footsteps.

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MARIO KART 8 Developer Nintendo EAD/EPD Release 2014 Format Wii U Review E267 (9)

Nine years on, it’s still selling: how many other racing games can claim such longevity? For all the spectacle it lends, Nintendo’s genius was not to render F-Zero irrelevant by introducing its anti-gravity mechanisms to Mario Kart, but to carefully retune and refine a multiplayer favourite into its ultimate form. Approachable and ceaselessly entertaining, this is the playful pinnacle of weaponised racing. “The culmination of decades of brilliant karting magic in a lovingly presented package. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best Mario game of all time. Not the best Mario Kart. The best Mario.” Matthew Williams

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CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE Developer Infinity Ward Release 2007 Format Various Review E183 (9)

With COD a fixture in the annual sales charts, it is easy to forget how it got there in the first place. COD4 reinvented both the offline and networked forms of the blockbuster shooter, the online mode’s progression loop of unlockables and perks rapidly becoming a genre-agnostic industry standard. But it was the feel of the thing that truly made it, particularly on a controller, its snappy, intuitive gunplay capturing the hearts of millions. “The headshots feel good, the levels go up, then a guitar riff. It’s precision dopamine.” Tom Cooper

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100 GREATEST: 56–49

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ICO Developer Japan Studio, Team Ico Release 2001 Format PS2 Review E104 (8)

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INSIDE Developer Playdead Release 2016 Format Xbox One Review E296 (9)

Playdead followed 2010’s Limbo with a bleak, pared-to-the-bone nightmare that is most threatening at its quietest. Death is a minor setback, yet to be avoided at all costs for the brutish way it is inflicted. When the tables are cathartically turned in Inside’s astonishing final act, it’s impossible not to cheer, even as you’re revulsed.

That whisper of rumble in your palms. That hint of resistance as you run ahead and experience the sensation of someone gently pulling you back. Ico’s connection with Yorda is one you feel every moment you’re together; when apart, her absence is more apparent still. Fumito Ueda’s indelible debut is built around the simplest of human interactions: pure and moving as two hands clasped together. “Ico evoked the sense of space and time of its environment absolutely perfectly, from the first cool rays of the morning sun on the grass to warm afternoons climbing yellowing stone, to slipping into the damp, chill air of a cave to escape a billowing, wet gale.” Colin Whiteside “Atmospheric and oh so different. Vulnerability emanates through the screen for every chain-climbing and block-pushing moment.” Kevin Alty

“An elegant, simple, straightforward and powerful puzzle platformer. Play this if you want to learn how to communicate with the player using visuals and audio only – no words.” Dana Nightingale (Dishonored, Deathloop)

QUAKE Developer Id Software Release 1996 Format PC Review E38 (9)

50 GRAND THEFT AUTO V Developer Rockstar North Release 2013 Format Various Review E259 (10) Study a map of San Andreas and you might be surprised how much is eaten up by the rural sprawl of the island’s north. Blaine County certainly has its charms, quite often as an environment for aerial adventuring, but it’s the metropolis tucked beneath that truly has our heart. From the carefully observed, sunbaked grime of the South LS neighbourhoods to the grandeur of the Vinewood hills, Los Santos remains the best realised city in videogames: a place so real that we still navigate the real Los Angeles by our memories of its digital counterpart. That Online is still one of the world’s most popular multiplayer games in 2023 says a lot about how well Rockstar’s creation works as a playground, filled as it is with things to tinker with, and primed with locations, challenges and modes in which to show them off to friends and strangers alike.

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“I am obviously biased, but I have Quake as my top game because it was insanely fun and because of its impact on the videogame industry. We all know Doom did many great things for gaming, but I believe Quake was more influential because it had so many firsts, and pioneered so much. It was the first true 3D action game. It spawned dedicated multiplayer servers around the world. It helped create esports and the idea of gaming clans. There were dedicated Quake server websites that morphed into news about all sorts of videogames. Quake mods exploded in popularity and helped other companies see the importance of user-generated content. And the soundtrack was written by a real rockstar, Trent Reznor. Quake did so many things that the aftershocks can be felt in videogames today.” Tim Willits (Doom, Quake) “Playing it online, I met people from all over the world, and made lifelong friends. I first met my wife in a #quake IRC, and again at a Quake tournament. Later, my career in game development was made possible by Quake allowing me to make my own game with my friends, years before the advent of the modern licensable game engine. And it had this kind of impact on many people: a few years ago, on one of Quake’s anniversaries, a mail thread went around Valve where we all discussed the ways that our careers had been impacted by Quake, and it was amazing to see just how many of us had been affected by it.” Robin Walker (Half-Life, Left 4 Dead)

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48 MASS EFFECT 2 Developer BioWare Release 2010 Format Various Review E212 (9) Without wishing to pre-empt this issue’s Play section, BioWare’s middle chapter cast a long shadow over the space operas that have followed in its wake; indeed, the complaints that greeted the third instalment had plenty to do with the emotional investment generated here. From its startling start to the nervewracking climactic ‘suicide mission’, it put Shepard – and us – through the wringer, leaving a mark that’s yet to fully fade. “As a fan of narrative gaming, this was absolute catnip. BioWare realised that you can throw in as many existential threats as you like, but it’s all for naught unless you care about the characters.” Graham Burchell “A wonderful blend of tactile action, flexible roleplaying, complex characters and captivating story. This was special, and in so many aspects has yet to be surpassed – or even matched.” Tom Cooper

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METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN Developer Kojima Productions Release 2015 Format Various Review E284 (9)

The final word in the old debate around Kojima as game auteur or frustrated filmmaker. MGSV contains many sparks of genius, none of them in its unfinished narrative. The Fulton-balloon recruitment method, the way vehicles skid out on horse droppings, having to earn the soundtrack a cassette at a time: all moments of discovery making the most of their medium.

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“It’s obvious at a glance that only the first third of the campaign is actually finished, but it’s a revelation in expanding and enriching an existing series’ gameplay.” Julian Hazeldine

“This game saved a single man living on his own for the whole of lockdown. I was thinking about the final twist for weeks on end.” Luke Ostler

“MGSV freed itself from tight corridors and air-tight pacing. Your each action fuels enormous deep simulation as your war machine churns under your direction to produce new and innovative gadgets and capabilities.” Philip Gurevich

“It feels like the progenitor of Breath Of The Wild in many ways. Also, it’s the only game I can recall that remembered and celebrated my birthday. That was nice – thanks for that, Kojima.” Kyle Charrette

100 GREATEST: 48–42

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POKÉMON RED/BLUE

INTO THE BREACH

Developer Game Freak Release 1996 Format Game Boy Review n/a

Developer Subset Games Release 2018 Format PC Review E318 (9)

Our biggest complaint about Pokémon is that the mainline series has barely strayed far from its roots. But that speaks to what Satoshi Tajiri and team achieved on their first attempt: a JRPG on-ramp that tapped into a fresh fantasy for young players, paired with a wealth of incredible creature designs to tickle the imagination. It was, ahem, super effective.

If XCOM’s achievement was to streamline an ancient design so that it felt perfectly modern, then Subset followed that path to its logical extreme, compressing gigantic tactical battles onto an eight-by-eight chessboard, across which mechs and kaiju can be pushed, thrown or otherwise arranged into neat laserbeamfriendly rows. Bonsai design at its very finest.

“The only game for which I ever used a guide all the way through, and I’ve never regretted it. The game world felt so real to me that it was no different to buying a Lonely Planet guide.” Luke Ostler

“For someone interested in turn-based strategy, but without the headspace or time to master the sprawling XCOM/Civ epics, this was a beautiful revelation, revealing complexity layer by layer but never becoming unmanageable.” Dean Freeman

“This is why I fell in love with games. Every single corner was brimming with wonder. So many creatures to meet, tame and grow. Kanto felt like a fully formed world, somehow crammed into that dull, green-tinted Game Boy screen.” Tom Cooper

“Captures the essential elements of the strategy genre, and presents them in such a simple and deterministic way that makes other games look like overcomplicated messes.” Gerard Sinfreu

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HOLLOW KNIGHT Developer Team Cherry Release 2015 Format PC Review E323 (9)

CIVILIZATION II Developer MicroProse Release 1996 Format PC Review E32 (9) Mid-’90s games needed economy of language and imagery to get their point across in order to overcome hardware limitations, and nobody did it better than Sid Meier’s Firaxis team, somehow coding all of human history and having it play out turn by turn on beige machines that overheated trying to run a word processor. A weekend-swallowing, prolific anecdote generator where building wonders and appeasing a warmongering Gandhi become your most pressing priorities. “Videogames are always abstractions. One can put them into elaborate systems and run wild. Sid Meier did so, but kept everything understandable by relating those systems to real life. While at it, he used the whole of history. What we got was a game for the ages.” Robert August de Meijer

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WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH Developer Giant Sparrow Release 2017 Format Various Review E307 (9)

This bittersweet narrative anthology is extraordinary by any criteria; for a story about a family seemingly marked for death, it’s astoundingly nimble and playful. Heartbreaking, of course, but these firstperson vignettes are also vivid, absurd and – particularly during that fish-factory fantasy – sublime. “Life-affirming, surprising, magical and imaginative. Magical realism at its best.” Siobhan Reddy (LittleBigPlanet, Dreams)

It’s the way he hums. In a game all about finding your way through the darkness – and occasionally falling deeper into it than you could ever have expected – the sound of Cornifer’s merry mapmaking is a beacon of hope as bright as any Dark Souls bonfire or Metroid Chozo statue. Establishing the missing link between those two games, Hollow Knight similarly demands you master your surroundings and gain respect for their contours before earning the right to chart them with the help of this not-so-silent cartographer. Hopefully it’s not too long before Team Cherry finds its own way through the darkness, and finally brings us the sequel we’ve been keenly awaiting since E354’s cover story. “It wasn’t innovative and it doesn’t need to be. It’s the best Metroidvania ever.” Bernardo González Paz

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SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY

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Developer Nintendo EPD Release 2017 Format Switch Review E312 (10)

Forget Sunshine – this captures that holiday vibe far more effectively, as Nintendo’s mascot becomes a gleeful tourist on a global tour. In a game with his most transformative power-up ever, perhaps Odyssey’s greatest achievement is Mario himself. Leaping, diving, rolling, somersaulting, he’s never seemed quite so light on his feet. A new pinnacle for 3D character control. “Undoubtedly the single most joyous piece of software made, a rhapsody of jumps, pad vibrations, ‘wahoo!’s and hatthrows. If you put your hat on the frog, you become the frog. We should all know the joy of putting the hat on the frog.” Colin Whiteside “Honestly could’ve put any of the 3D exploration Mario lineage here but I think this one has the most consistent invention and ‘Nintendo magic’ out of all of them. Keeps switching things up regularly.” Hanks01 “Ever since Mario 64 it’s hard to see how Nintendo will make a new game without just repeating themselves, and then they just go ahead and do it in the most natural way. Cappy opened up many new ways to explore levels and play the game without being a gimmick. Pure fun.” James Fry

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DISHONORED 2

STREET FIGHTER II TURBO

Developer Arkane Release 2016 Format Various Review E301 (9)

Developer Capcom Release 1993 Format SNES Review E1 (9)

The original gave us Dunwall, compressing London’s entire history and cutting it with Viktor Antonov’s sharp-angled designs. The sequel finds an equally enticing corner of the Empire in Karnaca, while improving on everything else: some all-timer set-piece levels, others that can be skipped by canny players, and, between Emily and Corvo, not one but two of the videogames’ finest power sets. “If these storytellers and environmental artists worked in movies, they’d be world-famous multi-Oscar-winning legends. Escalating gaming to a higher level through imagination, ambition and player freedom.” Dean Freeman “Dishonored 2 features some of the best level design in videogame history. The Clockwork Mansion is an absolute triumph.” Matthew Williams

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Has any game ever delivered as many hours of play from such an apparently limited set of constituent parts? (Perhaps only Tetris beats it – but then Tetris exists in its own special universe, really.) There was a bit of good fortune involved, too, notably Nintendo’s decision to build six buttons into the SNES controller, making it the perfect host for Capcom’s game, whose depth and finesse emerged layer by layer. “As a 12-year-old, the hype surrounding this arcade port on the Super NES was unprecedented, and I saved for a long time to stump up the £65 it cost on the day of release. It was totally justified. Beautifully presented and with real tactical depth, this was a spectacular twoplayer experience and the best fighting game ever produced.” Matt Chambers

“Competitive gaming started here, when a massive leap in the number of characters and buttons allowed for players to uniquely express themselves. The spectacular graphics and hard-hitting sounds attracted the masses; they left when later fighters added too much, and returned when fighters looked back at the original.” Robert August de Meijer

100 GREATEST: 41–35

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RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN Developer 3909 LLC Release 2018 Format PC Review E326 (9)

First, you hear it: a bloodcurdling scream, followed by a sickening, wet crunch. Then, suitably steeled for the prestige, you get to see the cause. After Papers, Please, we shouldn’t have doubted that developer Lucas Pope would conjure gripping drama from such unpromising beginnings: your goal, after all, is to file an insurance report. Logic puzzles have never been as disturbing in their construction, nor so consistently rewarding to solve. “The best detective game of all time ditches all the usual gaming conventions and mechanics and instead relies completely on pure, unfiltered intuition. Solving the fates felt like participating in a magic trick.” Johannes Valkola

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SLAY THE SPIRE Developer Mega Crit Release 2019 Format PC Review E330 (8)

One of our criteria for nominating games for inclusion here was innovation. Mega Crit’s Slay The Spire might not have been truly unprecedented, if you knew where to look, but it’s one of a few modern games on this list that essentially laid the blueprint for a new genre – and perfected it at the same time. Of the countless Roguelike card games that followed in its wake, none have come close to reaching its peak.

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HADES Developer Supergiant Release 2020 Format Various Review E350 (9)

Has any game been better suited to Early Access? That iterative process and feedback loop, each update incrementally improving the game and nudging it ever closer to the surface, echoed through Zagreus’s repeated attempts to escape the underworld. Pairing pacy, thrilling action with captivating writing, Supergiant’s genre-redefining Roguelike came closer to an Edge 10 than just about any other 9 in recent memory. “I do not like Roguelikes. Doing the same levels again and again while making the smallest amounts of improvement? Waste of time. Yet I was hours into this before I really clocked that’s what I was doing, so skilfully had they made each run seem like genuine progress.” Graham Burchell

“Unlike other media, games have a cyclical nature. Slay The Spire runs with this concept: new strategies, new cards, new encounters, and on and on it goes. When it feels like you’re still merely scratching the surface after 100plus hours, you know you have a game that understands its medium.” Robert August de Meijer “Can make you truly feel like an unstoppable god-like warrior in a way no other game can.” Dave Gardiner “The videogame equivalent of that scene in Interstellar when the space crew lands on a planet for 20 minutes only to discover that 20 years of Earth time has passed. That’s what playing this feels like.” Kyle Charrette

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METROID PRIME Developer Retro Studios Release 2002 Format GameCube Review E119 (9)

Retro Studios’ debut was as epochal in its way as Super Mario 64 – every bit as masterly a translation of a 2D game into 3D. It’s perhaps an even more potent distillation of the blend of awe and fear that define this series, capturing its hero’s humanity and vulnerability in the flashes of her wide-eyed reflection. Samus’s Morph Ball has never felt so elegant; her jump is still the best in a firstperson game. “Retro Studios understands that the Metroid experience is more than a set of Metroidvania mechanics

and criteria; Metroid is about the vibes, of steamed-up visors, hostile vegetation, and that sinking feeling as you debate whether to explore farther into the depths or run back to safety.” Fergus Pearson “Samus Aran lands on Tallon IV and brings a classic series fully into 3D. Metroid Prime alternates between tense, bold, terrifying and beautiful. Exploring icy wastelands and lava caves, blasting away space pirates, and solving multifaceted puzzles, it showed what the series could do in the 21st century.” Matthew Williams “The rain. The music.” Stephen Bell

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34 SPELUNKY Developer Mossmouth Release 2012 Format 360 Review E244 (9) When did a game last pack this much into 150MB? Out of that XBLA-mandated file size was born infinite worlds, endless just-one-more-try runs, and a cottage industry of indies who realised the creative efficiency of procedural generation. In his book on the game’s making, Derek Yu shares some of the underpinning algorithms that define the shape of these caves, jungles and temples: after endless hours charting them, they’re shockingly simple. The reason the game feels so much larger than its codebase is that it models a universe in miniature, with rules that remain consistent but collide in unexpected ways on almost every session. Death comes often, but never feels unfair, because – as you watch your spelunker’s corpse skid across the scenery – you can always trace the wonderfully compact equation that led to your failure. “An often-overlooked aspect of Spelunky is its bevy of secrets and the ways it gently nudges you to play archaeologist to unravel them. Uncovering the solution to the chain requires deduction and genuine curiosity – as long as you don’t resort to the Internet for the answers.” Kyle Charrette

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JOURNEY Developer Thatgamecompany Release 2012 Format PS3 Review E239 (8)

“Journey touched so many people’s hearts. The game is a metaphor of a person’s life; to walk on the mountain to reach the ultimate destination that comes to every living human being. Along the way, you meet with a stranger, journey together and depart ways. While playing the game, “On my first – of many – journeys through Journey, I had a deeply emotional experience with another player. I don’t know who they were, where they lived, how old they were – but as we made our way across the stunning landscapes, I felt personally connected with this player. I felt a real bond, expressed purely through coordinated movement and my own imagination. And when I lost them – I can’t remember exactly where – I was genuinely distraught. I spent a long time looking for them, before making my way towards the mountain… on my own. I’ll never forget that feeling, or

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people remembered someone close to them who had passed away. Some used the game to help to come to terms with the fact that they had lost someone who they dearly loved. Many people had tears in their eyes as they played – me included.” Shuhei Yoshida (Sony Interactive)

how Journey still makes me feel like games can tell stories that no other medium can replicate.” Ragnar Tørnquist (The Longest Journey, The Secret World)

“The word ‘journey’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Let’s start with the sand. Bloody hell, the sand! That’s enough, actually. The journey is yours.” Joe Stevens

“My favourite multiplayer gaming moment comes from Journey. In the final area of the game, another player showed me a noclip bug that, together with ten minutes of careful cooperation, allowed us to arduously ascend to the actual summit of the mountain. When we finally reached it, I wept.” Benjamin Thompson

“It’s such a simple message: we’re in this together. Many games have featured cooperative adventuring, but gamers will be gamers and demand the best out of others, souring the experience. Journey doesn’t let mechanics get in the way of what matters the most about playing together.” Robert August de Meijer

100 GREATEST: 34–29

DISCO ELYSIUM

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Developer ZA/UM Release 2019 Format PC Review E339 (9)

Nostalgia drove the isometric CRPG renaissance of the 2010s, but Disco Elysium isn’t about conjuring fuzzy familiarity. Far from a hero, you’re an alcoholic cop who can barely get his tie down from the ceiling fan without going into cardiac arrest. Rich worldbuilding via painterly backdrops and the crispest of prose delivers a modern classic.

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WORLD OF WARCRAFT Developer Blizzard Release 2004 Format PC Review E153 (9)

There were MMOs before WOW, just as there was food before ovens. What Blizzard did was take the varied jobs and autonomous society of Ultima Online and EverQuest’s spectacular raids, and smooth off the roughest edges. The result was a dangerously engaging experience that changed mainstream culture. Suddenly, everyone was invited to experience what it’s like to grind in low-level areas and what a guild’s chat sounds like mid-raid. Don’t resent it for paving the way for service games – just remember the good times.

“I love it for one simple reason: it taught me it’s OK to fail in games. It completely changed my outlook. Now I roll with the punches and deal with it. A fearless and inventive approach to story and gaming.” Dean Freeman “As a CRPG fan who tolerates combat to get back to the story, this was a revelation. Shape your character pretty much however you want via your words and actions as you solve the mystery presented, then watch as the world reacts in a way entirely tailored to the person you’ve chosen to be.” Graham Burchell

“Commercial enough for casual players, but built on hardcore foundations. Enough development time for countless attractions, but not enough to be completely finished. The effect was a world that kept you guessing whether you had discovered everything or not. That is adventure.” Robert August de Meijer

“A masterfully crafted RPG, its world familiar yet dreamlike, its protagonist refreshingly human and flawed. Revachol awaits…” Martin Seary

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HALF-LIFE Developer Valve Release 1998 Format PC Review E66 (9)

The resonance cascade accident in a New Mexico research laboratory that changed everything: Gordon Freeman’s reputation among the Black Mesa HSE team, humanity’s fate at the hands of an alien invasion, and the quality of shooters for evermore. Overnight, key cards and disconnected levels felt outdated, setting the stage for a world of more cinematic, immersive videogame stories.

“The sheer amount of scripting and the elaborate levels that made Half-Life such fun are reason for its inclusion alone, but shipping with its map editor made developers of anyone curious enough to try, myself included, as if James Cameron slipped a film studio into every copy of Avatar.” Colin Whiteside “An undisputed gamechanger with big ideas but full of mind-bending little moments. Almost perfectly paced with clever twists that push and pull at your confidence and skills. I still feel that Black Mesa was a place I’ve visited. I know it so well.” Dean Freeman “Never have I wanted to own a crowbar more.” Nick Croman

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TETRIS EFFECT Developer Enhance Games Release 2018 Format PS4 Review E327 (9)

A masterpiece that solves Tetris’s only weakness – a lack of structure – with stages that offer ebb and flow in their challenge. Play for long enough and you’ll sink into The Zone (here literalised as a mechanic), leaving the rest of your brain free to appreciate the sumptuous, quantised firework display at the game’s edges – and your heartstrings available for a good old twanging. We’re all together in this love; don’t you forget it.

“Plenty has been written about the ‘perfection’ of Tetris, and how it can’t be improved – how it’s a thing of singular purity, lessened by any addition or omission. I think Tetris has been improving, slowly refined as bad gimmicks refuse to stick and the rare golden tweak earns a place in the next iteration. Tetris Effect sits at the peak. Moreover, despite all the ink spilled about Tetris’s sublime beauty, I think Tetris Effect is the only entry that celebrates that beauty. It’s easy to find its whale song and togetherness cheesy, but if you give yourself over to it, and feel the joy of Tetris as earnestly as Effect invites you to, you can share the rare bliss of something that truly rejoices in itself.” Andrew Shouldice (Tunic)

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100 GREATEST: 28–23

SUPER METROID

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Developer Nintendo R&D1 Release 1994 Format SNES Review E9 (8)

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Metroid has always been an anomaly for Nintendo – the goth muttering darkly in the corner at the school disco. Super Metroid leans into that darkness: Zebes is a lonely, forbidding place, every murky zone throbbing with menace. If the series had seemed in a larval state before, here it felt fully developed, its melancholic climax cementing its status as one of the 16bit greats.

RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 Developer Rockstar Studios Release 2018 Format Various Review E326 (10) That Rockstar’s masterpiece has barely aged a day is testament to just how far ahead of the chasing pack it felt in 2018. At the core of every Rockstar open world is a story of American decline, but unlike its stablemates this retelling of the last days of the era is handled delicately, at times even lovingly, and notably without the kind of cynicism you might expect to encounter. Its world, painstakingly handcrafted, rich with systems and a pleasure to merely exist in, remains unmatched.

“An extraordinary mood piece. Claustrophobia and loneliness; isolation and trepidation. Never have such negative states of being proved so exhilarating.” Andrew Merrington “I can’t think of a title screen more iconic than that empty chamber, and that menacing, beautiful music. It only gets better from there.” Luke Ostler

“One of the first games I was desperate to not finish.” Max Boulton

“Way ahead of its time in understanding world design: a layer for the first trip, a layer for secret techniques, and additional layers for speedrunning.” Robert August de Meijer

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METAL GEAR SOLID Developer Konami Release 1998 Format PS1 Review E64 (9)

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THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM Developer Bethesda Game Studios Release 2011 Format Various Review E235 (9)

From the moment you escape your death sentence, Bethesda leaves you to follow your nose through this wintry fantasy kingdom. Invariably this means wandering towards your supposed destination and getting distracted by some sight or encounter, kicking off some mini-adventure that feels all your own. In this way, it established the blueprint for one of this year’s greatest blockbusters – and a tough yardstick for one of its most disappointing. “I got into game development because it is about spinning worlds out of whole cloth, with even the laws of physics not taken for granted, making us gods of our pocket realities. Skyrim’s world is the best of those.” Colin Whiteside

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What if a maze was constantly moving, constricting, evolving? That’s the joy of weaving through Shadow Moses’ enemy vision cones. In realtime 3D, the compound feels like a tangible, dangerous space, and rewarding to master on repeat playthroughs. The format is playfully leveraged at every turn, from Psycho Mantis’s taunts about your memory-card data to hiding intel on the back of the box. Thoughtfully staged cutscenes intermingle with stock video as political situations are given real weight, sitting alongside cyber-ninja flips. “The great grandfather of stealth gaming, which still holds up really well today. The narrative, which seeks to expose shady forces who are motivated to militarism, is matched by the gameplay, which punishes conflict and rewards its avoidance. A brilliant alliance of gameplay and narrative.” Nicholas Robinson

24 GOLDENEYE 007 Developer Rare Release 1997 Format N64 Review E48 (9) One of the great strengths of the best game to have ever emerged from Rare is that you don’t need to have any familiarity with its source material in order to get the full quota of entertainment out of it. Yes, the familiar echoes in the audio score help to set the scene, and the digitised visuals, as primitive as they feel today, sell the realism the game is so evidently shooting for, but the game’s value – and astonishing durability – is all in its design. An especially astonishing achievement when you consider the project’s origins as an on-rails shooter in the vein of Sega’s flimsy Virtua Cop. “I always think of GoldenEye as the game that demonstrated the viability of the FPS genre on consoles rather than quality examples being confined to PCs. Imagine if we’d only had Turok to show us what you could do without a mouse and keyboard.” Peter Corrin “Licensed games may be effectively dead in the water now, but GoldenEye showed that it wasn’t just possible to make a great game from an IP – it could define a genre. A real licence to thrill.” Matthew Williams “It’s when you start doing your own thing in games that you know something is magical about it. Shooting out all the lights to see what would happen, torturing guards by shooting them in the foot – none of which the game asks you to do; it’s just fun to do it.” James Fry “An addictive singleplayer campaign, which introduced us all to the art of speedrunning, and the first great multiplayer experience of my lifetime.” Kyle Charrette

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THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT Developer CD Projekt Red Release 2015 Format Various Review E281 (8)

If it were easy to adapt literary works into open-world RPGs, this list would be dominated by Tolkien. That it isn’t tells you what a storyteller CD Projekt is, turning pages into gripping boss fights, bloody banquets and crippling Gwent addictions. Twice previously it had transformed Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher novels into stellar linear experiences, but part three’s vast real estate elevates the nuanced questlines even higher. The world feels real, and thus your actions carry weight. “I’ve played a lot of open-world RPGs in my time, but few have characters and storylines that stuck with me years after completion. Some of the best storytelling (and DLC) I’ve ever enjoyed in a videogame.” Rayner Simpson “Stories that spellbind and disturb equally (tower of rats, anyone?), with

roleplaying that even requires you to prepare the oils and decoctions for your next witcher contract.” Martin Seary “A game that realised this style of open world so well that anything else is going to look bad in comparison. In a genre where time-sapping fetch quests proliferate, it invariably took

even the most basic of these in entirely unexpected directions.” Graham Burchell “A list of things Witcher 3 does better than any other game in the industry: voice acting, sidequests, novel-togame adaptation, DLC, illusion of choice, wedding receptions.” Fergus Pearson

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22 PORTAL 2 Developer Valve Release 2011 Format Various Review E228 (9)

Portal got away with its diminutive size by being tucked away in The Orange Box, but Valve really let loose for this standalone sequel. By offering yet more impossible physics to bend your mind around, naturally, but also expanding the premise and world, and introducing an all-star cast: Stephen Merchant, JK Simmons, The National on soundtrack duties, and your most beloved player two, thanks to the addition of a co-op mode that came with its own, completely bespoke set of puzzles. “A masterpiece in every game development discipline. Wheatley and GLaDOS are such a compelling pair of characters. The puzzles are carefully considered yet wildly original. As for the music – a fun anecdote: my first Internet claim to fame was an animated music video for Jonathan Coulton’s Want You Gone that blew up on YouTube. That song was the perfect way to end this shining jewel of a game.” Daniel Mullins (Pony Island, Inscryption) “A perfect story: funny, threatening, challenging, and taking what you thought you knew and carefully adding layer upon layer of intrigue on top. The beautiful design makes it timeless.” Dean Freeman “A more story-focused sequel delves deep into the lore of Aperture Science, with great vocal performances for added gravitas. Yet it remains focused on the most important elements of all: excellent puzzle design and the presence of one of videogames’ most iconic villains.” Matthew Williams

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BIOSHOCK Developer Irrational Games Release 2007 Format Various Review E180 (8)

A plane’s tail sinks into the sea, a lighthouse rises from the fog, a bathysphere descends, and… “Rapture”. The way Andrew Ryan savours the word is matched by the reveal of this would-be utopia beneath the waves. Better yet, this is just the first of many indelible memories left by this city, its strange inhabitants in their diving suits and party masks, and its remarkable bounty of intact audio recordings. “For some, it’s the atmosphere of Rapture. For others, the philosophical underpinnings. For me, it was the way you could amass those powers to really create mischief and havoc, and play off foes against one another.” Andrew Merrington “Probably the best example of the scene-setting opening ‘roller-coaster’

intro, and the ‘would you kindly…’ twist hit so hard that I still double-take when I see people using it in work emails.” Graham Burchell “Took immersion and plunged it to the fathoms of the abyssal deep, simulating a briny dystopia that only a madman could concoct. Irrational Games is not just a superfluous name, then? But that’s

not the question you should be asking yourself. Try: would you kindly…?” Martin Seary “Mechanically it was always a little wonky, but I’m not sure if videogames have had a moment quite like the descent into Rapture since. Arguably the peak of videogame writing and worldbuilding.” Kyle Charrette

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THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM Developer Nintendo EPD Release 2023 Format Switch Review E385 (10)

How do you build on one of the best open worlds ever made? Simple: let the players do it for you. An incredibly reductive way of describing the various design miracles Nintendo has pulled off here, of course, but Ultrahand is so immediately transformative in the bodge-job solutions it offers to any challenge that it’s hard to imagine where Zelda could go from here. The smart money, though, says that Kyoto will find an answer. “This game represents the very best of that unmatchable Nintendo magic. Nintendo took one of the best games of all time, Breath Of The Wild, and over the next six years crafted its rare direct sequel into arguably the very finest videogame experience to date. The mastery of the craft is second to none, the expanse exhilarating, the creativity boundless, the

polish unbelievable. In my experience, simply the greatest videogame of all time.” Jake Kazdal (Rez, Galak-Z) “It will never feel as revolutionary as its predecessor, but this feels like the final draft of Breath Of The Wild’s many systems and ideas. Where the series goes next (probably space) we may not know until 2030, and that makes me a little sad.” Kyle Charrette “Over 125 hours later and I’m still not finished exploring the vast expanses of Hyrule… again. Recency bias be damned, Tears Of The Kingdom builds on the excellent foundations of Breath Of The Wild to deliver a radiant, beautiful game that looks likely to be the swansong for the richest era of Nintendo’s history.” Matthew Williams

100 GREATEST: 22–17

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OUTER WILDS Developer Mobius Digital Release 2019 Format PC Review E334 (9)

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“There are games which feel they would work better as books, movies or guided tours. However, Outer Wilds delivers this pure game experience of exploration driven purely by the player’s curiosity, and progression consisting purely of the player’s knowledge. You interact and you discover and you build meaning. This is where games as a medium are at their best.” Andrejs Klavins (The Case Of The Golden Idol)

SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS Developer Japan Studio, Team Ico Release 2005 Format PS2 Review E157 (8) The guilt resurfaces years later, as we react with fury to a guard attacking Trico in The Last Guardian and recall when we had a similar role. Fumito Ueda’s highest-ranking adventure here offers the exhilaration of scaling and toppling enormous and powerful beasts. Then, at the moment of triumph, we’re suddenly confronted with the repercussions of our violence – Kow Otani’s unforgettable score urging us to lament their passing as they fall.

“A deeply moving experience that centres curiosity as the most powerful attribute in the player's arsenal. Play this if you want to understand how to make ‘What's over there?’ work as a player motivation.” Dana Nightingale (Dishonored, Deathloop) “I don't think my heart has ever beat as hard as it did on my final spaceflight in Outer Wilds. I could literally feel it pulsing in my chest as I passed certain creatures in Dark Bramble. To explain why would be a spoiler. If you know, you know.” Benjamin Thompson

“Haunting, grand, and soft-spoken. SOTC gave us unforgettable emotional storytelling with nearly no words, and a rare empathy for the enemy. Both elements that inspired us for Hyper Light Drifter.” Teddy Dief (Hyper Light Drifter, We Are OFK)

“The smallest solar system can contain the biggest meditations. A transcendental game about the joy of discovery.” Gerard Sinfreu “Will there ever be anything like Outer Wilds again? Given the ingenious clockwork complexity of it, probably not. I will never forget the feeling of mystery and discovery it invoked, all wrapped up in the astonishing gut punch of an ending.” Tom Cooper

“‘Why does my heart, feel so bad?’ sang Moby, after a Colossal late-night gaming session.” Joe Stevens

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GRAND THEFT AUTO III Developer Rockstar North Release 2001 Format PS2 Review E105 (8)

It’s right there from the moment those first piano notes landed on the title screen: this game was different from anything you’d seen before – in mood, in scope, and in ambition. There were existing GTAs on which to base this third outing, but extruding the original template into full 3D was an assignment of such proportions that no one expected the results to stack up this well – not even Rockstar itself. An iconic production. “The free-roaming world of Liberty City was the promise of 3D videogames written large in a way that the likes of Mario 64 weren’t. Learning its geography, its side streets and

‘Oh-this-is-next-to-this’ moments felt like a paradigm shift, and it asserted the UK as a development powerhouse.” Colin Whiteside “Go anywhere, do anything, in a fully realised 3D city. Even in 2023, most major game releases have GTAIII to thank.” Tom Cooper

“I could reel off the usual spiel about how the game made me sad to kill the Colossus, but no, I am here for the post-game Colossi time trials. Give me the gold, the cold-blooded, heartless, treacherous gold.” Fergus Pearson

“Grand Theft Auto III changed the entire industry. It was the first successful open-world 3D sandbox, and it reshaped the landscape of gaming like no other game before or since.” Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan, Red Dead Redemption 2)

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100 GREATEST: 16–12

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THE LAST OF US Developer Naughty Dog Release 2013 Format PS3 Review E255 (10)

16 DEUS EX Developer Ion Storm Release 2000 Format PC Review E88 (9) “Deus Ex transmuted the legacy of Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Thief into something new: a slick nearfuture sandbox that truly prioritised player agency. From the plot’s convoluted conspiracies to the intricate synth sequences of its soundtrack, the game earns its ‘immersive’ tag. Moody, thought-provoking, silly and chaotic – its emotional range and capacity to surprise is up there with the best.” Paul Kilduff-Taylor (Frozen Synapse) “Few games at the time gave the illusion that you were coming up with your own solutions to its world as well as Deus Ex. In a landscape where you’re more often playing the part of the action hero rather than inhabiting it, Deus Ex excelled.” Colin Whiteside “Scrappy, unbalanced and frustrating, but only in the ways that the real world is. The joke is true: every time you mention it, someone, somewhere will reinstall.” Julian Hazeldine “Twenty-three years on and this behemoth of design is still unsurpassed. A masterful blend of RPG and FPS elements, and abdication of authorship to the player, yet underneath lies a profound critique of real-world issues.” Philip Gurevich “The flagbearer for emergent play unparalleled until 17 years later with Breath Of The Wild. Even then, still unsurpassed in combining physical play (moving/ shooting) with intellectual (talking/hacking/sleuthing).” Robert August de Meijer

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Ten years on, its accomplishments are easy to understate, but it’s hard to think of a triple-A videogame since that has demonstrably raised the bar in so many respects: for dialogue, for worldbuilding, for performance. Its set-pieces retain their capacity to chill, its opening and particularly its ending fully warranting their standing among the medium’s finest. “Gaming’s second greatest road trip after Gordon Freeman’s? For me, Naughty Dog at its zenith. Bleak, brave, beautiful. Oh, and bloody violent.” Andrew Merrington

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“With its emotionally charged plot, complex characters and a post-apocalyptic world that is both beautiful and harrowing, it set new standards for narrative depth.” Anton Littau “I could gush about its unimpeachable gameplay, but it’s the narrative, laser-focused on a single relationship and tightly edited in a way that Part II’s obnoxiously over-stuffed misery feast wasn’t, that makes this a true classic.” Colin Whiteside “A perfectly delivered interactive journey.” Kevin Alty “A game of contrasts, but all shades of grey, as humanity faces its final fight. If only PlayStation Studios would bear creative fruit this ripe again.” Martin Seary

FINAL FANTASY VII Developer Square Release 1997 Format PS1 Review E51 (9)

The seismic decision to part ways with Nintendo after so many years was matched only by the transition from sprites to 3D. CD storage enabled canny integration of prerendered backgrounds to set the scene in gritty, industrial Midgar, kicking off a story that felt truly ahead of its time. Few games can boast of being as pivotal, for both a fanbase and the industry at large. “People remember it now for its incredible scale, unmatched production values, and hot leading boys, but I’ll always love it for how loaded with bullshit it is. There are nearly a dozen random minigames in FFVII, and most of them are completely superfluous. So many designers praise ‘core mechanics’ and a central vision, but I think FFVII celebrates that, at a modern triple-A scale, every game is a blend of visions. Someone wanted a snowboarding game in Final Fantasy, and they got it, and I’m glad as hell.” Teddy Dief (Hyper Light Drifter, We Are OFK)

“Final Fantasy VII was the most epic adventure I’d ever played and it changed my life – I doubt I’d be developing games if I’d never played this. What starts off as a group of ecoterrorists fighting an evil corporation grows into something so much more. FFVII has the best pacing, a fantastic soundtrack and loveable characters. And, despite the hate, I love the lowpoly figures – they’re so cute!” Lucy Blundell (Videoverse) “The first PAL release of the franchise, so it felt so new, especially on the PlayStation. Amazing graphics and

music, so much depth to the game, and loads of secrets to explore. Rarely do I replay RPGs but this one earned many.” James Fry “SquareSoft set the standard for RPGs in a 3D space. Its combination of 3D objects/character models and beautifully prerendered backgrounds, while dated today, set the foundation for the future of games.” Hazel Harries “As a Sega fanboy, buying a PlayStation was out of the question, until I saw the hype for FFVII. Best singleplayer game of its time. The first videogame to make me cry, it deserves a place in the top 100 for this alone.” Jack Rowan “Growing up, I believed games were all about saving princesses or running quickly to the right. FFVII changed all that with a grand story, engaging battle system and cutting-edge visuals and cinematic presentation. It set a gold standard for RPGs.” Matthew Williams

13 MINECRAFT Developer Mojang Release 2011 Format PC Review E236 (9)

“Minecraft is close to a perfect game. Clear in its promise, which is embedded in the name, clean in its execution, and natural in its growth from indie gem to monster hit, it now earns more money and reaches more players than most publishers. Whole new ideas – from community engagement to early access to games as a platform – have their roots in its success. I spent a lot of time studying players who like to build during my years on The Sims and Spore, and I marvel at Minecraft’s success. Where The Sims let you arrange assets, and Spore let you sculpt and share assets, Minecraft let you create worlds. And it did it with a bunch of great decisions. Its foundation of blocks was easy to explain to players, easy for a small team to add content, and easy for players to use to create quickly and comfortably. It is not a narrative game, and not a finite experience. Its strengths lie in the central pillars of games: interactivity and imagination. There is no reason it won’t still be being played and updated for many decades to come.” Alex Hutchinson (Spore, Far Cry 4) “Minecraft is fully a game. It has crafting and stats and progression (kind of), but it also rewrote what games can be. It’s a toy, it’s an experience, it’s the Metaverse (whatever the hell that is). I have spent more hours in those blocky worlds with my daughters than any other game I have ever played. And the joy and laughter that have come from my time there is far greater than what any game has ever evoked in me. I can go back to visit those worlds whenever I want, and I do as my daughters get older. I go back and look at all the ridiculous things we built over the years and it’s like I’m walking through my own happy memories. May those weird, wonderful worlds live for ever.” Jake Solomon (XCOM, Midnight Suns) “A platform for creativity, play, education, work and exploration. Its importance and influence, even at launch, cannot be understated.” Hazel Harries “A weird non-game in some ways, but it’s hosted hours of multiplayer with the kids competing to make the strangest structures. Our hill-sized Mario sculpture with its elongated xenomorph head containing a banquet hall deserves to be a real-life landmark, surely?” Simon Stirrup “A true phenomenon. A game with so much possibility that there are players who have no inclination whatsoever to play any other videogame, ever.” Tom Cooper

12

BLOODBORNE Developer FromSoftware Release 2015 Format PS4 Review E279 (10)

One of the pleasures of compiling this countdown has been watching FromSoftware’s catalogue scrap it out during the voting period. Were we to run the numbers again in ten years’ time, it feels certain that this moody masterpiece would still be among the upper echelons. Its front-foot combat, forcing you to get your hands (and everything else) bloody, sets it apart. But it’s the decaying majesty of Yharnam and its twisted, nightmarish inhabitants that haunt us still. “In February 2021, Lance McDonald released a 60fps mod for Bloodborne. That summer, I spent over US$300 for a PS4 Pro with old firmware, and an entire day jailbreaking it. The rush I felt fighting the Pthumerian Descendant in 60fps was worth every minute and cent.” Benjamin Thompson “The best implementation of the Demon’s Souls formula. That hair-raising dodge before the finishing blow. Those aggressive and towering enemies. That DLC that takes things

to the nth degree. It’s one of the very few games that have kept me on edge throughout. Such an experience.” Hassan El Chebib “Was it a dream, some sort of a strange hallucination, or was I really in that deep and murky place? You could fill any list with FromSoftware games, but if I had to choose just one, this would be it.” Johannes Valkola “And that’s how you build a world. The designers’ absolute dedication to their creation is evidenced by the abandoned content still being unearthed years later.” Julian Hazeldine “FromSoftware operating at its creatively unshackled peak under Miyazaki. Bloodborne is a Lovecraftian spiderweb you find yourself tangled in, from the moment that first bell tolls in Central Yharnam. Visceral, unforgettable and, in my opinion, unmatched.” Martin Seary

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100 GREATEST: 11–6

11

SUPER MARIO GALAXY Developer Nintendo EAD Release 2007 Format Wii Review E183 (10)

The sequel built upon everything Nintendo learned from this maiden celestial voyage, but couldn’t match its cosmic impact. Fittingly for a platformer that redefines gravity’s role, it’s very much a case of mutual attraction: in the deluge of ideas it offers, Galaxy seems to return the player’s love. Mario likewise has stars in his eyes, giddily awestruck as he takes off for his next mini-adventure. “Physics and geometry are boring in most platformers, because in most games gravity and geometry behave as we expect. Super Mario Galaxy was an intoxicating rejection of these norms. As it proved, platforming based on spherical geometry leads to ideas that are more interesting and more fun.” Benjamin Thompson “Each level was a game in itself – brilliant ideas introduced then abandoned the second they became rote. Wii Sports may be what most people remember the console for, but this is where the real fun was.” Graham Burchell “It took nearly two decades for Nintendo to reinvent Zelda and give us the next evolution of its franchise. It took Mario only one.” Kyle Charrette “If I recall correctly, this was the first game I read about in my first Edge magazine. After playing and agreeing a 10 felt about right, I wondered what else the magazine could offer an 11-year-old me. Fast-forward…” Max Boulton

10

DOOM Developer Id Software Release 1993 Format PC Review E7 (7)

Growing old gracefully isn’t an area where videogames tend to excel. Doom has the good fortune of having always seemed at least a little disgraceful, with its chainsaws, MIDI metal and pink scrotal demons exploding into showers of blood. In truth, though, the game is all grace, still moving with the tight pirouettes of a dancer – which is why it remains a joy, three decades on, to patrol E1M8, shredding bodies with the shotgun. “Doom gave us everything. For without Doom we have nothing. Once there was a time before Doom. And in that time there was only sadness. But then came Doom. And since then there has been MADNESS.” Dave Oshry (Dusk, Rise Of The Triad) “The shotgun is in pretty much the first room and it’s any sensible person’s weapon of choice for the entire game thereafter. Doom gets straight to the point, the stuff

9

ELDEN RING Developer FromSoftware Release 2022 Format Various Review E370 (10)

In which From offers its take on the dominant form of our age – the excessively broad open world – and masters it with the kind of apparent effortlessness of the type of player who can beat Malenia wearing oven gloves. More than any previous From game, though, Elden Ring welcomes the other kind of player – the kind that sees a boss fight and flees in the opposite direction – with open arms. Or at least open (possibly crawling) hands.

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“Probably the best game I’ve ever played. Certainly the best game I’ll never finish. Its generosity borders on the commercially irresponsible.” Andrew Merrington “I swore I would never play another Soulslike game again, given the stress and difficulty, and then Elden Ring messed things up. A brilliant, old world to explore – it really felt lived in, with a history. Different from Zelda but it felt equally rewarding to play on such a personal level.” James Fry

that makes it worth playing, and stays there until the end. I wish more games did.” Peter Corrin “The level editor is still making gems in 2023. Corridors, weapons and enemies are enough to make a compelling game. Doom was the first to add enough fidelity for endless creativity. It also runs on everything. In turn, we marvel not only at Id’s creation, but our own.” Robert August de Meijer

7

8

HALF-LIFE 2

PORTAL

Developer Valve Release 2004 Format PC Review E143 (10)

Developer Valve Release 2007 Format PC Review E182 (10, as part of The Orange Box )

Technically the second-highest FPS on our list – although it’s more a riveting piece of dystopian sci-fi that happens to have guns in it. Still, if it’s a captivating human drama first and foremost, when the action ramps up it keeps pace with any of its shooter peers: from headcrabs to manhacks, Highway-17 to Ravenholm, it knows how to quicken the pulse. Perhaps there’s a very simple reason we’ve not seen a third: Valve is struggling to top it.

Here was a new release from one of the world’s most accomplished studios that could be completed in two hours, ended with a song, and was full of quotable gags that have enjoyed a long life in the meme economy – but don’t hold that against it. It might be a stretch to say that Valve accidentally invented the modern indie game here, but it certainly established a prototype many would follow. “Portal is a masterpiece. It nails every aspect of game design and makes it look effortless. There’s only a single voiced character, unseen until the end, yet they’re arguably one of the most iconic videogame characters. While the story consists of just a few events, they’re impactful because the player’s an active participant: destroying the Companion Cube, escaping GLaDOS’s trap, and finding and defeating GLaDOS. The gameplay is a perfect blend of head-scratching, playful and thrilling, while remaining laser-focused on exploring the portal mechanic.” Matt Stark (Viewfinder)

“The sense of embarking on a journey through an oppressed land is so singular. Throw in the gravity gun and Ravenholm, and you have a true masterpiece.” Andrew Merrington “While the first game was the rough-around-theedges big bang in narrative FPS, this buffed it to a sheen. Everything was better than the original, and it contained its own quiet revolution. The gravity gun turned the environment from set dressing to potentially lethal ammo, while also doubling up as a puzzle-solving device.” Graham Burchell

“Something in firstperson with no direct combat? What even is this? And then the realisation that the initial series of curated challenges turned out to be just a tutorial for escaping. Valve almost did enough with this surprise game to make me forget it stills owe us Half-Life Episode 3.” Graham Burchell

“This game’s DNA is all over modern videogames. The narrative aspirations and characterisations inspired The Last Of Us, and the physics-based antics inform games from Gang Beasts to Tears Of The Kingdom.” Fergus Pearson

6

HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED Developer Bungie Release 2001 Format Xbox Review E105 (10)

That Bungie, freshly acquired by Microsoft, managed to deliver this game in time for the Xbox launch (as told on p98) is something of a miracle in itself – let alone that it managed to get so much right in the process. With the famously clunky ‘Duke’ hardware, it created the control scheme that remains the standard for console shooters to this day, and forged a perfectly interlocking selection of weapons and enemies to ensure you wanted to use it, over and over. “Ever since I lured the T-Rex into the natives’ camp on Speccy classic Where Time Stood Still, I’ve been fascinated by emergent gameplay. Halo gave me that and introduced me to the FPS on consoles for good measure. Surpassed by 3 and Reach, maybe, but still the true landmark.” Andrew Merrington “I can imagine a world where this landed on the PS2 and died an ignoble death, battered on the rocks of the DualShock 2’s awful analogue sticks like so many other FPSes. Instead, every subsequent console game, FPS or TPS, is built on an approximation of its control scheme.” Colin Whiteside

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4

5

RESIDENT EVIL 4 Developer Capcom Release 2005 Format GameCube Review E147 (9)

We described Capcom’s masterpiece as a once-in-a-lifetime achievement that could never really be repeated. Its publisher clearly disagreed – though, tellingly, no one voted for this year’s remake, a perfectly adequate if uninspiring new version that effectively proved us right. The praise it most often gets is for its pacing – what people really mean by that is that, whether it’s moving at a breathless lick or slowing down for a more suspenseful set-piece, it simply never gets boring. “A superb blend of horror and action, combined with some of the best level design and combat systems ever seen. Every single combat arena is a unique puzzle for you to solve in your own way, and the superb balancing keeps you constantly working out a strategy to handle the pressure without ever feeling unfair.” Phil Crabtree (Paradise Killer) “Everything an action game should be. It is inventive, impeccably paced, has pitch-perfect difficulty, and is completely self-aware. The lessons that this game has to teach have either been missed or forgotten by a great number of games that came after it. The deliberately paced, razor-sharp combat with enemies that flank and pressure you in nonlinear environments has never been matched. The village-square section is the finest combat arena that has ever been crafted. I think about this game every day.” Oli Clarke Smith (Paradise Killer) “The Citizen Kane of action games.” Andrew Merrington “No videogame before or since has grabbed on to the fine line between sublime and absurd like this, riding it like a wave from one impossible, ridiculous encounter to another – probably on a jet ski. Unapologetically schlocky, unapologetically videogamey, unapologetically outlandish, unapologetically perfect.” Colin Whiteside “It’s the videogame. So much creativity, imagination and joy, wrapped in a veneer of terror and unrelenting violence.” Julian Hazeldine “How they crammed so many ideas on just two GameCube discs, the world may never know.” Kyle Charrette

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THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME Developer Nintendo EAD Release 1998 Format N64 Review E66 (10)

Upon release, it simply felt enormous – impossible, even – and while the scope and scale of Ocarina Of Time has naturally been power-crept by technology in the 25 years since, few of the pretenders to its throne have inspired such awe as the first moment when you step out into Hyrule Field. True paradigm shifts are rare in games, but this certainly felt like one, powered by a constant sense (and, for some players in the case of the Water Temple, a hope) that things would never be the same again.

“I’m old enough to remember when Ocarina Of Time consistently nabbed top honours in ‘best games of all time’ lists like this one, and on some level it’s the reason I’m a game designer at all, so it’s ever so slightly possible I might be just a teensy bit biased here. And yet “No other game had done such a masterful job of creating an engaging and beautiful world and then binding it with an interactive musical element like playing the ocarina. A bloody brilliant concept, and masterfully executed.” Trent Oster (Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate) “During the Christmas of 1999, I was on the trail of two myths. One, a giant eel. The other, a sword of fire. Only one proved to be true. That was enough. Hyrule had me. When the credits rolled, I wept. Ocarina

I struggle to think of another game that set the standard for as many game conventions for so many years while simultaneously operating at such an insanely high level of craft. Also, the Water Temple absolutely slaps and I will not hear otherwise.” Alex Beachum (Outer Wilds)

Of Time is an invention of such immense influence and contribution to our artform that the innumerable mechanical and aesthetic conventions defined by Aonuma and team remain, ubiquitous, in almost every videogame today. Rarely do we experience artists venturing so far beyond the markers of their contemporaries and succeeding so gracefully in such flawless execution. It is a seminal, singular, generational achievement. A cultural landmark.” Trent Kusters (Armello, Jumplight Odyssey)

“Ocarina Of Time was the first game that made me feel as if I was really going out on a journey, for real, with the time passing by as I was exploring new places. Night and day also had their own dimension and meaning to exist. Only Breath Of The Wild and Elden Ring, many years later, made me feel the same powerful emotion.” Davide Soliani (Mario + Rabbids, Rayman) “My all-time favourite videogame. I grew up playing on the C64, Amiga 500 and then PC, but when I played OOT, it

100 GREATEST: 5–2

3 SUPER MARIO 64 Developer Nintendo EAD Release 1996 Format N64 Review E35 (10)

blew my mind and forever changed my gaming preferences. It made me dig back into the Nintendo catalogue of classics, only for me to realise that this magic had been going on for years.” Jeppe Carlsen (Limbo, Inside, Cocoon) “Perhaps the first game to show you the horizon and actually invite you to go there. At the same time, it fills the yards and inches with magical detail.” Andrew Merrington “Hyrule doesn’t look as big as it once did back in 1998, but even today, the story and time-hopping mechanic stands the test of time. Oh, and that Water Temple!” Dave Gardiner “The first game that ever made me cry – although its successors managed to repeat the trick with embarrassing regularity.” Luke Ostler “As trite as this choice is, it’s too good to ignore, as proven by setting a 20-year template only broken by Breath Of The Wild. The sense of scale is portrayed wonderfully, despite a modest overworld by today’s standards. The puzzles and dungeons remain just as devious as the day it was released.” Tom Cooper “I still hear the windmill song in my head.” Jack Rowan

As transformative as videogames get, and perhaps the most harmonious marriage of game and hardware. Play it now and it wears its seminal status lightly: it’s an unlikely groundbreaker in many respects, joyous and mischievous in equal measure. What’s most striking today is its sheer generosity: it regularly rewards the inquisitive player with secrets, hidden exits, bonus stars and much more besides. Here, perhaps more so than in any other Mario adventure, that superlative prefix is fully earned. “Nintendo nailed Mario’s transition into 3D on the first try and created the benchmark for how manoeuvring and traversing across a 3D space should control and feel. Mario’s movements are translated beautifully from his previous 2D outings, and the various stages and vistas are drenched in atmosphere and whimsy.” Hazel Harries “Playing this for the first time felt like early man encountering the monolith in the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A sense of wonder and enlightenment that videogames no longer needed to be fixed to a 2D plane. We were given new tools for interaction; the possibilities seemed endless.” Kyle Charrette “Set the benchmark for exploration of truly 3D worlds, and showed that you could do so at a jog rather than a sprint.” Richard Fowler “Nintendo had no right to take a 2D game into 3D and make it so perfect. It looked stunning and the music was wonderful. Above all that, it felt so good to play. An extraordinary achievement.” Scott Shelley

2

DARK SOULS Developer FromSoftware Release 2011 Format Various Review E234 (9)

Dark Souls didn’t just set FromSoftware on the path to stardom, or make an industry poster child of Hidetaka Miyazaki. Today it stands as one of the most influential games of Edge’s lifetime, its DNA traces found in games of all stripes, from the humble indie that apes its corkscrewing level design to the blockbuster series that moves its combat inputs from the face buttons to the triggers — and, of course, the bespoke subgenre of direct imitators it has spawned. An instant classic whose true value has only grown in the years since. “For me, Dark Souls heralded a return of big-budget games to the weird, mysterious and unvarnished fantasy that got me into the artform. I’m still inspired by the trust that the FromSoftware team placed in themselves and their players, allowing them to present their creation without waypoints, checklists or lengthy exposition. They knew their unique, interconnected world only

needed to exist for us to want to summon our courage to explore it.” Derek Yu (Spelunky, UFO 50) “The most influential game of the decade. Sekiro and Elden Ring may be better, but the hit that shook everything was dealt by Dark Souls.” Bernardo González Paz “Learning a musical instrument is an exercise in repeated failure in exchange for moments of blissful, elegant flow, and Dark Souls is a very peculiar instrument. However, enough can never be said about its world, the promise of a million dungeon-crawler covers made true, curling ever round and into itself.” Colin Whiteside “It proved that I could still get genuinely excited about games, and subsequently made me stay in the videogame industry by giving me a new goal to strive for: be part of making a game that would in turn similarly invigorate and inspire others.” Henrik Vi “A design that defied expectations and opened a floodgate of imitators and admirers. Its formula proved that difficult, challenging games with cryptic rules and story could have a sizeable audience. A dark, gothic game that broke the mould.” Philip Gurevich “Bloodborne is the better and more polished game, but Dark Souls is the more endearing of the two, its genius buried underneath all those strata of one of the least accommodating videogames ever made.” Kyle Charrette

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100 GREATEST: 1

1 THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD Developer Nintendo EPD Release 2017 Format Switch Review E304 (10)

After delivering a Zelda instalment that clasped the player’s hand too tightly, Nintendo knew that this time it would have to let go. And not just for our sake, but its own: there is a sense here of a design team being unshackled from the strictures of tradition, leaving behind those old routines in favour of something looser, freer, wilder. Which isn’t to say Breath Of The Wild abandons

what’s important – but, like those scattered puzzle shrines, it finds alternative solutions. That breath, then, feels like a collective exhale, an emptying of the lungs readying you to gasp in delight and wonder. It also speaks to an intangible quality: it isn’t something that can be held, or worn, or collected. But then that can happen in game development: where ideas coalesce,

“The title that has left me with the most overall joy, awe and inspiration of any game I’ve ever played. I want to give it bonus points for its recency and the impact it had on me even as a jaded adult, too. Every year it gets harder to do anything “Before 2017, it was hard to see how the Zelda series could truly change. And yet BOTW ended up changing all of us. It pushed reset on the industry, showing us that less is more… but also that more is more. It captured a magic that many ageing gamers thought lost, and welcomed a whole new generation keen to digest BOTW’s many micro-delights.” Tom Cooper

84

not always by design but a combination of ingenuity and accident, into something extraordinary. It’s appropriate, then, that all of those votes cast have resulted in Nintendo’s monumental adventure being crowned as the greatest game of the past 30 years – the ultimate synthesis of creativity and technology, indistinguishable from magic.

that actually feels ahead of the crowd or that legitimately pushes the medium forward. It’s hard to imagine right now that we’ll see anything land a leap as ambitious as Breath Of The Wild again.” Greg Lobanov (Wandersong, Chicory)

“A game that helped me through a tough time. Breaking up with the first partner I’d lived with was horrible. I got my Switch the week after she moved out. Exploring Hyrule (and doing little else) for the next couple of months helped me to process things. I’ll never forget it.” Rayner Simpson “Somehow Nintendo recaptured the magic of the early Legend Of Zelda

games as you walked out on to the Great Plateau and began to explore the world. So much to discover, and with very little hand-holding – like so many great Nintendo games, it makes you feel special discovering it all for yourself.” James Fry “The embodiment of everything that Nintendo does best.” Richard Fowler

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Thirty years ago, in the very first issue of Edge, a selection of luminaries gave their predictions of how videogames would evolve in the coming years. In 2013, another group of industry professionals looked into their crystal balls to see what the future of videogames held. In 2023, we’re looking back at those predictions to see how they have fared in the cold light of reality. In addition, we’ve gathered a group of analysts, technologists and industry leaders to ask how videogames might evolve over the next ten years. As an added bonus, since this is Edge’s 30th anniversary, we’re also asking them what the far future might hold, 30 years hence. Considering just how much videogames have changed since 1993, the future world of 2053 could be a very different place indeed.

By Lewis Packwood 89

or the first issue of Edge, launch editor Steve Jarratt conducted a hunt for forward-looking quotes about the future of videogames. Many of the quotations featured in the two-page article were gleaned from magazines and the nascent Internet, but Jarratt did manage to score something of a coup by sourcing the phone number for noted science-fiction author Arthur C Clarke, who duly gave his thoughts on the future of entertainment. Clarke predicted that the addictive nature of virtual reality could be a danger. “Of course, it could be a shortsighted view,” he added. “If we are plugged into the whole universe, why should we unplug ourselves?” Fortunately, we’re not quite at the stage where hopelessly addicted players have abandoned reality for a Ready Player One-style virtual world, but videogame addiction has been proposed as a disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. An unusual inclusion in the feature was former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, who in 1993 was working on the musical computer game XPLORA1: Peter Gabriel’s Secret World. He predicted that the CD-ROM would “absorb entertainment” and we’d see “enabling technology which allows the consumer to think of himself as the artist”. Certainly, there’s been a huge shift towards player-created worlds since, although the days of players being exclusively thought of as male are long behind us. Former vice president of Electronic Arts Mark Lewis predicted that games would become “connective” and “interactive”, and that one day you would be able to go to a movie theatre and “play the movie”, a prediction that was spot on, as discussed in our look at interactive films in E387. Meanwhile, Jez San, founder of Argonaut Software, imagined a future of “direct broadcast games” which would “constantly download new parts of the game into your machine while you’re playing”, which sounds a lot like the cloud-enabled gaming present. Nick Alexander, then managing director of Sega Europe, envisioned virtual-reality games that could be “controlled by your thoughts”, something that still seems a long way off even 30 years on. Finally, Star Wars creator George Lucas was more down to earth with his prediction of how the “information super highway” would be one of the “greatest developments of the 20th century”. The Internet certainly did change everything, although it’s something of a shame the term “information super highway” has been left in the past.

10 Years Ago Edge 229 arrived just as the hype wave was cresting for VR’s second coming, with Oculus Rift development kits arriving in the wild. Naturally, VR featured heavily in the minds of the experts who were asked to predict how games might evolve over ten years. Tiago Sousa, then principal graphics engineer at Crytek, was hopeful for VR’s future. “A really comfortable, almost weightless

90

Ridge Racer (1993)

Project Gotham Racing 2 (2003)

Forza Motorsport 5 (2013)

Forza Motorsport (2023) POWER DRIFT The racing genre may not be quite as exciting today as it seemed when Edge launched in 1993, but it remains a good barometer for the technology that powers game visuals. These four examples across 30 years illustrate the transition from 4:3 displays to widescreen, and from low-res textures to complex shader effects. With 2023’s edition of Forza getting even closer to photorealism, gains will only get harder to discern.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

and relatively cheap device has a good chance to become successful,” he said. “I can’t see myself playing with usual VR displays for too long, but if it would have the same weight as current 3D polarised glasses it would definitely become successful.” Looking back now, Sousa – who’s moved on to the position of rendering tech director at Id Software – thinks VR still hasn’t realised its full potential. “VR has certainly become more accessible in the past decade,” he says, “but to become mainstream, I still believe devices must keep striving toward a minimalistic design, almost weightless and relatively cheap – which none is.” Futurologist Ian Pearson imagined that by 2023 we’d be living in a screen-free future where general-purpose heads-up displays would be the norm, akin perhaps to the experimental Google Glass, which was reaching developers in 2013. But for the most part, AR visors still remain niche and experimental. “It certainly is nowhere near as widespread as I expected it would be ten years ago,” he tells us today. “By now, we should be all wearing AR headsets and active contact lenses all day long, with ultra-highresolution displays.” He blames corporate reticence, rather than a technological barrier, for the slow progress. “The objectives of people trying to make money from things with corporate strategies aren’t necessarily the same as those of us who are engineers.” However, he still believes the technology could be transformative: “Augmented reality is the coming together of the physical world and the virtual world: it’s a bigger convergence than the [merging of] computing and telecoms that gave us the Internet. It should be a huge thing.” David Perry, then head of Gaikai, was heralding the potentially disruptive nature of cloud-based game streaming in 2013, likening it to how MP3s won out over CDs

AI researcher and game designer Mike Cook

thanks to their sheer convenience, even if they couldn’t compete on audio quality. Sousa was less enthusiastic about the disruptive power of streaming, saying: “Until input lag is reduced significantly, I can only see cloud-based gaming as a way to quickly advertise a game, like, for example, to try out a demo with no time spent on downloads.” However, Sousa did like the idea that, if everything moved into the cloud, there might only be one unique platform to develop for, which would be “a dream from a developer perspective”. Ten years later, cloud gaming is still in its embryonic stages, and has, if anything, added more complications. “My pipe dream from a developer’s perspective was quite off course,” Sousa reflects today. “Instead of becoming a single platform and potentially unifying everything, it actually ended up kind of creating extra platforms to develop for in some cases, with additional drawbacks to consider, such as video encoding and lag.”

10 Years Ahead If virtual reality was the hot topic of the moment ten years ago, then the equivalent today is artificial intelligence. Almost every expert we consult has something to say about the extent to which AI will affect videogames in the decade to come. “In the next ten years, we’re going to see a lot of companies try to use AI in different ways, and I think there’s going to be some huge catastrophes,” says AI researcher and game designer Mike Cook. Nevertheless, he predicts that AI will become a “fact of life” for many different parts of game development, with AI functionality being integrated into a variety of tools. “But we probably won’t call any of it AI. We might not even think of it as AI any more.” Jade Raymond, president of Sony-owned Haven Studios, has been considering how AI could potentially speed up game

D I G I TA L D E L I V E R S One spot-on prediction from E229 was the rapid rise of digital delivery. “In ten years the vast majority of games will be available anywhere and everywhere on a wide variety of devices via high-speed wireless,” said Activision co-founder Alan Miller, then at GamesAnalytics. He added that by 2023 the worldwide annual revenue from games would be “in excess of $100 billion”. In fact, global game revenue reached around $183 billion in 2022. “Apple, Amazon, Steam are showing the future of how content will be consumed,” said Phil Harrison, then at London Venture Partners, warning that “console companies run the risk of becoming antiquated unless they change their business model”. Now nearly 90 per cent of games sold in the UK are digital.

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creation. “Triple-A games have gone from taking teams of 50 people two years to make to now sometimes taking teams of hundreds of people more than ten years to make,” she says. “At Haven, one way we are evolving to improve our production processes is through investing in R&D around generative AI and machine learning, in the belief these technologies will eventually help game developers reverse that trend, and unlock more creativity from developers and players alike.” Meanwhile, Joe Booth, principal group engineering manager in the Azure HPC/AI and Supercomputing division at Microsoft, thinks that triple-A studios will instead simply use AI to “max out their content”, continuing the trend of publishers investing more and more time and money into each release of mega franchises such as GTA and Zelda. “I think that just continues to scale, and they’ll suck up the optimisations and growth to create more content and more high-quality experiences,” he says. Whether AI makes games quicker to create or simply more enormous, it’s here to stay. Raph Koster, the creative director behind MMOs such as Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest II, agrees that companies cannot afford to do without it. “In 2018, I asked everybody I knew in the industry to secretly tell me their game development budget,” he says. “And I gathered all of the data together, inflation adjusted all of it, and put it on a graph.” His finding? That budgets are on an exponential curve, increasing by about ten times every ten years, which means that the biggest games could cost over a billion dollars to make in ten years’ time. Meanwhile, market pressure is keeping game prices much lower than they would have been if they had tracked inflation. These lower prices have been feasible because the videogame market has expanded rapidly over the decades, but now Koster thinks the market is reaching saturation point, with the only obvious routes for expansion being in developing countries with “limited tech and infrastructure”. Koster thinks that, aside from drastically increasing game prices, the only avenue left for game companies is to make efficiency savings in production, which means embracing AI. “Developers hate it, many players dislike it, there’s a general current against it, and the money is still going to drive absolutely everybody to do it, because otherwise the cost curves are not sustainable.”

But how will AI be used in games? Cook foresees continuing advances in procedural generation. “What we’ll see ten years from 92

Yves Jacquier, executive director at Ubisoft La Forge

Grand Theft Auto Online

Destiny 2 THE LONG GAME Jade Raymond expects that the games we’re playing in ten years’ time will be productions that are in development today. It’s a reasonable point, given that GTAV has been in continual production at Rockstar since 2010 and is still going strong. What such an extended lifespan means for the release of GTA6 is another matter. The broader picture for service games is complex. Will there ever be a need for an entirely new Destiny 3, for example?

now is a real understanding and control over that technology,” he says, noting that the output will be more easily refined and understood, enabling it to be used more widely. Conversely, he thinks imagegeneration AI will remain too unpredictable to be useful. “We’re seeing a real struggle to make those tools relevant,” he says. “And I personally don’t think we’re going to see those problems solved in the next ten years.” He adds that pushback from developers will also stymie their use. “If game developers just aren’t enjoying using these tools, and they don’t see any point in using them, it doesn’t matter how perfect they might be in a business argument.” Yves Jacquier, executive director at Ubisoft La Forge, envisages that AI will accelerate and facilitate asset creation in a similar way to how motion capture revolutionised animation, ultimately resulting in more realistic and diverse environments. “Does it mean that it removes the human from the loop? Definitely not!” he says. “AI raises the floor, not the bar. It will change the way we work. Motion capture does not make animations – animators do.” He also sees artificial intelligence making virtual worlds richer and more plausible, giving the example of how AI could “unlock the current limitations” of physics models. “Instead of calculating every aspect of the 3D world, AI can output predictions at each frame,” he says, which could be applied to considerations such as NPC navigation or smoke simulation. “AI-based rendering or level generation will also strongly benefit from AI developments,” he adds. Jacquier notes that AI could even be used for adaptive difficulty. “What makes a game difficult for me is likely not the same things that make it difficult for you,” he says. “Instead of implementing rules, AI [will]

predict what makes a gaming situation challenging or fun for an individual and adapt the content accordingly.” Beyond this, he envisages that AI will make game creation easier for people with little to no coding experience. “Thirty years ago, creating a website required technical knowledge and programming skills. Today, there are more than 1.8 billion websites; tools like Wix or WordPress have made website creation easier, and the low-code, no-code trend is exponentially spreading with the development of large language models.” As such, he predicts an increase in player-created game content, which also means that the industry will need to refine moderation technologies to guarantee safe and fun online spaces. “This is key as games are becoming more and more social experiences, which is likely to be the norm in ten years,” Jacquier says. It’s a sentiment echoed by Raymond: “I believe that games will continue to evolve their role as platforms for social interaction and engagement. We should see more blurring of the lines between social networks and live games.” Booth sees AI opening up the world of NPC dialogue, whereby the game developer would brief the AI-driven NPCs using natural language, much like how a film director would verbally brief actors on set, then the NPC would generate dialogue based on its direction. He gives the example of telling an NPC that its role is to give certain information to the player, but that it shouldn’t make it too easy for the player to extract that information, and that it should aim to provoke certain emotions at the same time. He sees it as a natural extension of a long-running trend: “In gaming, we’ve always wanted to empower the player with choice and reward them for their exploration or their creativity.” Cook is more pessimistic about the future of AI dialogue. “I don’t think we’re going to have games full of AI characters that

P H O T O R E A L I S S O PA S S É “Right now we look at Unreal Engine 5 and we go, ‘Wow, that’s amazing’,” says Raph Koster. But as technologies such as Nanite and Quixel Megascans become more widely used, he predicts the photoreal look will start “turning cheesy, because everybody will have it”. Right now, he says, a game video can go viral for looking like a movie, but he thinks the opposite may be true in the future. “Because when everybody’s game looks like a movie, how do you stand out?” Instead, he thinks we could see more developers push for stylised graphics as they buck the trend towards photoreal. This move to lower-fidelity styles would also offer benefits in production speed, a key advantage as the cost of creating games spirals higher.

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can talk to you about any topic you want,” he says. “I think a lot of [developers] will try, but I don’t think we’ll get there.” Koster is more ambivalent. On the one hand, he thinks AI will “suck at generating plots”. On the other, he sees AI being adequate for generating the many ‘barks’ that provide colour to videogames, such as shouts of greeting or warnings of grenades. The AI’s lines might not be as good as a human writer could come up with, but “it won’t matter because nobody expects those lines to be good anyway,” he says. “And, you know, I remember I literally had to write 275 ways to say ‘hello’ in Ultima Online for NPCs – if an AI could have spat those out, I would have done that in a heartbeat.” As development teams have become larger, Koster points out that we’ve started to see increasing levels of specialisation – the consequence being that someone who has spent years gaining expertise in character modelling might end up working at a big studio where they’re “assigned to do nothing but rocks for four years”, he says. “Make another rock, make another rock, make another rock.” AI has the potential to eliminate drudgery such as sculpting boulders or coming up with 50 ways to say hello – but at the cost of wiping out junior-level jobs. Positions higher up the ladder will be safer, Koster argues, but as a result, people looking to work at a major studio will find it much harder to break in. “It will become more and more and more elite,” he says.

Starfield

Across the wider

videogame industry, Raymond envisages more convergence due to the rising cost of development, but at the same time, she hopes to see increased attention to diversity and inclusion. “I would also love to see greater focus on sustainability in our development work environments, as well as the types of communities we build and the themes games touch upon,” she says. Meanwhile, Lisa Cosmas Hanson, president and CEO of analyst firm Niko Partners, predicts we’ll see greater integration of games into other forms of digital entertainment. “A movie and a game will hardly be distinguishable, and short videos will be part of games, games part of videos,” she says. Beyond that, she thinks esports will gain recognition and be part of the Olympics in ten years’ time, and that players will be categorised as athletes. “Game technology will be used far beyond the border of game development,” she adds, “and will be an important part of med tech, ed tech, science tech and even political science scenarios.” Booth thinks we might see the blockchain being used more widely. He acknowledges that it has gained a bad rap as a result of

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UE5 procedural environment tech ART AND ARTIFICE The thousands of lines of dialogue in a game such as Starfield were all constructed by paid writers, and the idea of game development talent being transplanted by AI for such purposes leaves a bitter taste. It’s in contrast to other areas, where tech advances such as SpeedTree have long been embraced for the purposes of creating large amounts of content at speed. As UE5 improves, will further efficiencies be greeted equally?

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

the cryptocurrency bubble and speculation around NFTs, but he points out that, at its core, “it’s a fundamentally good technology” that allows for decentralised databases, adding that users who buy a game on the blockchain would actually own it, rather than merely be purchasing a licence to play it from a digital storefront. “I think it will be the primary technology going forward for many, many forms of data, just because it’s much more efficient on many axes,” he says. In terms of game visuals in ten years’ time, Sousa summarises the future as being more of everything. “Higher geometric detail will become commonplace, with almost every surface being path-traced to a certain degree,” he says. “Visual effects will progressively grow in complexity, resembling those seen in Hollywood movies.” He expects that HDR presentation and high frame rates will become the standard, and games will strive for refresh rates of 120fps. “The oncecommon 30Hz will have been relegated to the past – hopefully.” Sousa also thinks that the world of VR will remain relatively niche, with its small market size discouraging the large investment needed to make it a mainstream concern. Then again, he sees potential in VR arcades offering experiences that users won’t be able to access at home. “I also think Apple’s incursion into this area, mixing [it] up with AR, looks promising,” he says. “I’m curious to see where it leads.” Koster similarly sees VR experiencing a steady rise rather than causing a revolution akin to the arrival of smartphones or a game genre such as the MMORPG. The debut of new platforms such as these is what resets the order, he says, allowing new companies to flourish and innovate, while shaking the hegemony of the old dinosaurs. But it’s been a while since the most recent revolution, and

Jade Raymond, president of Haven Studios

for a long time we’ve been in a mature market where games compete on polish, production values and core content. “During those expensive periods, innovation tends to go away, because the return on investment for innovation in game mechanics is terrible,” Koster says. “I’m hopeful that in the next ten years we’ll see a platform break of some sort that resets things.” Booth agrees that, with the current state of affairs, we’re unlikely to see much innovation from huge studios, but he’s also hopeful that powerful AI tools will give smaller studios a boost. “As you empower solo or small-team creators, we’ll see more innovative things coming from those studios,” he says. “The types of new games that we’re going to get from the smaller studios, I think that’s where we’re going to see things really change.” In the meantime, at the triple-A end of the market, Koster predicts that the trend for service games will continue as the market reaches saturation and the emphasis shifts from adding new customers to retaining existing ones. “And that bodes ill for narrative games of all stripes,” he says. “I prefer playing narrative games – despite what I make, my preference as a player is often to play narrative ones – but it doesn’t matter. I think they’re disadvantaged in a market like that.” In short, his ten-year prediction is for fewer narrative games and more multiplayer ones, along with more community engagement, more modding, and more emphasis on brands. “And that means more sequels.” In other words, we can expect to see more of the same. It’s a sentiment echoed by Raymond in her outlook for the next ten years. “History has shown that people tend to overestimate the speed of change,” she says. “There’s a high chance that many of the games we are playing ten years from now are games that are in development right now. For example, a large number of our team at Haven were part of the Rainbow Six Siege development

DON’T DO IT YOURSELF Mike Cook is sceptical about the possibility of games being fully designed by AI in ten years’ time. “There will be a couple of technical firsts, where they’re like, ‘Well, technically this game was designed by an AI’, and it’s kind of like Pac-Man again,” he says. “But it won’t be that the whole industry is taken over by that.” Aside from the technical barrier, he thinks that most people won’t really want to spend their precious leisure time coming up with elaborate prompts for generating games; instead, they’d rather have the games designed for them. Likewise, he thinks most developers won’t want to make games that way, and would instead prefer to put their own creative ideas out into the world. “So I just don’t think it makes sense – for most people – to have AI making games, even if it does turn out to be possible.”

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team, and they were working on that project in 2013. Siege is still one of the most popular games today, over ten years later.”

30 Years Ahead As you’d expect, the changes on the horizon for 30 years into the future look bigger. Jacquier expects that by 2053 we can expect “virtual worlds to be indistinguishable from reality”, and Sousa agrees that graphics will have essentially peaked. “We will inevitably encounter a plateau in terms of visual advancements,” he says. “It’s likely that everything will be beautifully path-traced, eliminating the need for rasterisation. In the realm of computer graphics, our focus will shift towards perfecting minute details and eradicating the last remaining artefacts.” With few mountains left to conquer, Sousa suggests designers might embark on elaborate endeavours, such as modelling and simulating individual bubbles, leaves or grains of sand. Still, he thinks that memory and performance will remain limiting factors, even if they’re drastically higher than what holds us back today. “Although these advancements will seem astonishing from today’s perspective, I believe it will become increasingly challenging to amaze players of that future era with technological feats,” he says. Raymond points out that, in 30 years’ time, the generation of players who grew up playing on the first waves of consoles and PCs will be grandparents. “I believe that this will open up the market for a new type of massmarket game tailored to the needs of retired gamers,” she says. “Multiplayer games that are designed to be experienced and played across generations could be a new trend. Immersive games built to learn and develop hobby skills like gardening could be another niche. Designing games to meet the needs of a mass market of retirees is kind of fun to imagine and not the target audience we currently focus on.” She sees AI and cloud computing making a greater impact, disrupting the game-development process and unlocking new types of play. But she’s most hopeful for a revolution in how we think about controls. “We’ve seen some progress in terms of motion sensing and touch,” she says, “but by and large games are still controlled through an unintuitive and complex combination of button presses.” She points out that, aside from cost, the main barrier to reaching new audiences is the way we think about and design controls. “I still look forward to an experience that is as intuitive, immersive and natural as the Holodeck,” she says, although she notes this could be more than 30 years away. Hanson predicts that the entire world will be a big game in three decades’ time. “Everything will be gamified, and life will

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Raph Koster, creative director, EverQuest II Apple Vision Pro

Neuralink tech proposal

LOOK, NO HANDS The concept of the next wave of computer interaction being entirely hands-free has attracted a lot of scepticism – but equally the iPhone touchscreen display was famously scoffed at by telecom industry market leaders ahead of its launch. The response to Apple’s next big bet, the gesture-based Vision Pro, will answer questions when it launches in 2024. The more experimental Neuralink is much farther away. Finding testers may be a bit of a challenge.

include levelling up or playing the next session, or taking a break,” she says. It’s a sentiment shared by Koster, who sees gamification creeping into every aspect of life through the proliferation of smart objects. “What happens when everything is a smart device? That’s going to change our world in radical ways,” he says, adding that the results could be both scary and fun. “Over the next 30 years, humanity will be making pretty fundamental decisions about whether or not to go extinct,” Koster continues. “I would not be surprised if many of those new ways of interacting with technology and the world around us [aren’t] repurposed towards trying to save the world. Could the Burning Man energy be directed via games into urban renewal? Into climatechange work? Into sustainability? Could planting trees end up being a game mechanic in a large, world-spanning MMO, because the seedlings you plant actually have sensors in them, and you can actually see your stats?” Up until now, gamification has often been directed towards exploitative uses, he says, but as crises continue to mount, it could end up helping to save the planet. He thinks this kind of collaborative reallife gameplay could evolve in interesting ways, citing a sci-fi idea that’s been “knocking around for at least a couple of decades now” about giving 10,000 people a quest to take a single brick to a certain location, the end result of which is a house. That’s the optimistic view, but he cautions that if this future world isn’t powered by clean energy, “we’re going to go into an energy crisis – and we may not be able to afford videogames as power drains any more”. Cook thinks that it will be commonplace for games to be designed by AI in the far future, even if the majority of games are still created by humans. He also sees gamecreation tools becoming more intuitive and

accessible. “People will be using videogames for things that we can’t really imagine right now,” he says. “They’ll be making videogames as birthday cards. They will be making them casually and throwing them away, without even thinking about it.” But his great wish is that in 2053 there will be a more widespread appreciation of the importance of game preservation. “What I’m hoping is that, 30 years from now, the generations that come after us will have proper access to the history of this field. And I think enough people are growing up in this era of data loss to finally appreciate it before it’s too late.” Advances on a general technological level should be dramatic. Booth suggests we might even have neural links that eliminate the need for screens. “We’re at the early stage of being able to hack into the brain,” he says, so in the space of 30 years we could start to see neural implants that will herald an age in which consumers can experience visions sent directly through their neural pathways, finally realising so many fantasies from cyberpunk fiction. But Ian Pearson has an even more sci-fi image of the future, where we could begin to start modifying DNA to produce humanmade proteins as early as the 2030s. “From that, you can make IT devices inside every single nucleus in your body, all 15–20 trillion of them,” he says. “You’ve basically got an API for biology. And by 2050, you will have AIs living in your body, kind of like SAM from Mass Effect.” Beyond that, he envisages quantum computing gaining ground, to the point where we could see one-millionqubit machines that are almost infinitely fast. “You could process every single thought that any human anywhere on the planet has ever had through the whole history of humanity in about a second,” he says. “So graphics cards, processors – they go out the window, really. You don’t need them any more when you’ve got that level of processing. And, in theory, we can do it.”

IMPROVISE COIN TO CONTINUE “Thirty years from now, we will be at that point where the early days of videogames are no longer in living memory,” Mike Cook says. “So I’d like to see more ambitious game ideas that take advantage of the concept of time or our history, games that maybe take 30 years to play, or that you play with generations of people – games that think on bigger and bigger scales. We started out in arcades and experiences that would take 30 seconds to play, and I think at some point we’ll be ready to do really wild and weird stuff.” He adds that there might be interesting ways to use videogames’ past in new ways, such as taking old releases and recombining them. “I’d be really interested if playing games was more like improv theatre, if it was a really a weird experience that doesn’t feel like games as we imagine them today.”

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T H E M A K I N G O F. . .

H A L O : C O M B AT E V O LV E D From RTS to thirdperson, Mac to console: the unlikely development of an Edge 10 By Alex Spencer Format Xbox Developer Bungie Publisher Microsoft Game Studios Origin US Release 2001

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teve Jobs is on stage, promising “one of the coolest [games] I’ve ever seen”. He introduces Bungie co-founder Jason Jones, and his new game. “We’re gonna see, for the first time, Halo.” Perhaps you’ve seen this 1999 Macworld demo. If so, you know that it looks (and sounds) an awful lot like the Halo that would launch nearly two and a half years later. There’s a soldier in green armour, and a jeep ride with a marine on the turret, all accompanied by the monkish chants of Martin O’Donnell’s score. OK, the character designs aren’t quite there yet, the planet they’re on is a little too bare – but there are two rather more important distinctions to note. One: the demo, as Jones announces before showing it off, “is being rendered in realtime, on a Macintosh”. Two: the whole thing plays out in thirdperson. By the time of its launch in November 2001, Halo would undergo a serious transformation. But even before it reached this San Francisco stage, the game had changed an awful lot from where it began, with Jones and art director Marcus Lehto tinkering while the rest of Bungie worked on Myth II, the sequel to the studio’s fantasy RTS. “We knew we wanted to create some sort of sci-fi, military adventure,” Lehto tells us. “It was based on Myth – it used the same engine. It was going to be open world. It was going to be more of a realtime strategy game where you were giving orders to your ground units, as well as vehicles, tanks and troop transport vehicles.” Steve Abeyta, who would go on to become Halo’s environment lead and animation director, remembers seeing this early prototype. “It wasn’t really my type of game. I’d played Myth, but I wasn’t crazy about Myth. But I was super-impressed with the visuals,” he says, citing the matte skybox, the lens flare, and the iridescence shaders on the insectoid carapace of the alien vehicles. His main memory, though, is of “these little characters driving around in these little jeeps”. That’s the formative memory for many people who worked on the game, including Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian. “Charlie [Gough] started doing the suspension physics on the jeep, which would become the Warthog,” he says. “I remember seeing this

The Scorpion tank may be an iconic part of Halo’s vehicular combat, but it was nearly cut from the game late in the day

tech demo of it going over 3D terrain. The camera was really close-up, and you’d have this reaction of, ‘Wow, that’s cool’. But then, when you put the camera way up high, you couldn’t really see it. It wasn’t as impressive. So, that’s when the camera started getting

“WE STARTED HAVING LOTS OF CONVERSATIONS, AND I’D SAY HALF OF THEM WERE BUYOUT OFFERS” closer, and closer – until eventually we experimented with just making it thirdperson, with direct character control.” In what Seropian refers to as the first of many “crucibles of iteration”, the project therefore pivoted to become an action game. The initial emphasis was on multiplayer, informed by the team’s fondness for Tribes and Quake III. “I distinctly remember the very first network games that we would play in the office,” Seropian says. “Just a very early test, when it moved to thirdperson – there were a couple of weapons, a very simple map…” And yet they kept playing – a moment that would be echoed many years, and a fair few transformations, later in development.

When Jobs introduced the game to the world in July 1999, he attracted the attention of other, hungry tech companies. “After that

demo, we started having lots of conversations,” Seropian says. “And I’d say half of them were buyout offers.” For Bungie, the timing couldn’t be better. “What I didn’t know at that time is how much we as a business needed money,” artist Shiek Wang says. The PC version of Myth II had shipped with a bug that could erase the contents of the player’s hard drive, leaving Bungie with a difficult choice. “We did a recall when, I think, many people would not have,” says Hamilton Chu, lead producer. “It was a decision made just on the ethics and not the economics of it.” This wiped out the small studio’s savings, Wang says, so it started seeking deals that “would allow us to survive as a company, and continue to make games”. The first was a publishing partnership with Take-Two, which invited Bungie to its New York offices to see the demo of Microsoft’s new console. We all know where that led – but at the time, it wasn’t the most logical leap for a developer that had been so dedicated to Mac games. “For the Mac gamer community, it’s like the worst betrayal possible, right?” Chu says, adding that the studio received death threats. “Which we kind of, I don’t know, laughed off. These days, you’d take it much more seriously.” However, Seropian says, the move away from Apple wasn’t for lack of trying. “Our first call after [the Microsoft offer] was back to Apple, to let them know we were entertaining this offer – and they wished us luck: ‘We love you guys, but games aren’t our focus’.” Things could easily have gone another way, he says. “As we’re signing the deal – literally, I’m on the top floor of the Bank Of America building in Seattle, looking at the closing documents, about to sign them – Phil Schiller from Apple calls me.” Seropian laughs. “I excused myself from the room and was talking to him in the hallway. ‘So, hey, I heard you’re doing a deal with Microsoft – did you sign it yet?’” His laugh becomes a full cackle. “I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me. Come on!’” By the time Bungie arrived in Redmond, Seattle, in late 2000, Halo had become a firstperson game. No one we speak to agrees on quite when that happened – Lehto remembers it as part of the transition to Xbox, Seropian has it right around the Macworld presentation – but they’re clearer on the

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thinking. “I remember talking to Jason about that connectivity it brought, that visceral feeling of being in firstperson and connected to the action in front of you,” Lehto says. Wang points to the “weird physics problem” created by thirdperson: “You’re shooting from your camera, but the projectile exits from the model.” He cracks an old joke: “We switched from thirdperson to firstperson because Jason couldn’t figure out the math.” Seropian remembers feeling “almost a resignation to it, like this was inevitable. We wanted to do something different, but fuck it – we’re gonna do what feels right.” Perhaps the reason this pivotal moment is so hazy is that the Microsoft acquisition brought a wealth of other challenges. There was the matter of relocating, from Bungie’s native Chicago, and combining that team with Bungie West, the team that had been making Oni for Take-Two in California. “We were planning on working on a new IP,” says Chris Butcher, a programmer who’d joined Bungie on the Oni team. This game, adds fellow Bungie West member and multiplayer lead programmer Michael Evans, was “tentatively called Monster Hunter”, a title also mentioned by Abeyta. “But it became apparent, after just a few weeks, that Halo was going to require all the staff,” Butcher says. He still has his daily records from that period, which clears up the timeline. “On February 12, 2001, I moved my workstation to the Halo room.” One of the reasons they were folded into the Halo team was that, with around eight months to go, what existed was just “the idea of a game”, as Evans puts it. “We had the core mechanics,” Lehto confirms, “and that was about it.” Butcher, tasked with writing the AI of the Covenant enemies, remembers inheriting “a few C++ header files” and some notes on how they should behave. “There were no levels, there was no scripting engine, there was no ability to place encounters or anything like that. But there was, like, 3D space where you could be a firstperson guy with a gun, and you could shoot at bipedal enemies. That was February 2001.”

It seems like an impossible task, so how was it achieved? “We made a lot of difficult decisions to make that happen,” Seropian says. “We cancelled projects, we combined three teams together, we compromised on scope… We shipped at least one level that we probably shouldn’t have.” He’s referring, presumably, to

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Q&A

Shiek Wang Halo artist and Bungie art director

Do you have any memories of the Macworld days? There was a meeting Jones had with Steve Jobs, where Steve was like, ”OK, what you got? Why should I want to show this during Macworld?” And when Jones showed him the game build, he said, “Well, we can do this already at Pixar.” “OK, but can you do it live?” And Jobs was like, “All right, you‘re in.”

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The designs in the demo look close to the final thing, given how much else changed. In my mind, that was sort of a rush job. If you look at the environment, it’s a total mess, this mishmash of ecology that doesn’t make sense. Were there any particularly painful cuts? There are some mid-tier combatants that never made it into the game because we didn’t have time, or because Jones just didn’t feel like they were needed. Marcus had a handheld Gatling gun. I remember him presenting it in a meeting. Jones sat there quietly. Everyone else is like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is awesome!’ But I think Jones already had in his mind the arsenal he wanted the player to have. And like a lot of combatants that got cut, it added an unnecessary thing to the lineup. We all thought Jones was crazy to do it, but history proved us wrong.

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When did you first understand that Halo was going to be a big deal? I knew we’d hit the big time when I went to use the bathroom [at E3 2001] and people at the urinals either side of me were, like, “Oh my god, did you see this Halo thing? That was wild!” And I was like, yeah, all right, I think we did a good job.

the looping underground corridors of The Library, a level for which work hadn’t even been started two months before launch. Abeyta remembers conversations on how it could possibly be made in time: “It’s going to either be really, really small, or it’s going to be really, really repetitive. And repetitive was chosen.” These decisions were being made against a backdrop of merciless cuts. The planned number of campaign levels shrank from around 25 to ten, including “a boat level”, according to Butcher. Proposed enemies and weapons were abandoned, with some of the latter reserved for Covenant enemies, “because we ran out of time to build the firstperson models”. Meanwhile,

1 Some of Marcus Lehto’s early concept work for the Elite enemies. 2 Designs by Lehto for a bipedal vehicle that would ultimately end up on the cutting-room floor. 3 “Halo could have been even bigger,” Seropian says. “There were movies under way.” This concept piece, by game artist Eddie Smith, was made for that purpose. 4 While Lehto defined the look of UNSC tech, Shiek Wang primarily took the Covenant side of things. 5 These Needler and Plasma Rifle designs are from the pen of weapons specialist Robert McLees. 6 Wang’s take on the Elite highlights the anime-infused sensibility he brought to the project

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the entirety of multiplayer – once the driving force of the game – found itself on the chopping block. “After the Microsoft acquisition, the focus changed to: what does it mean to be a console launch title? Well, we’re going to need a singleplayer campaign,” he says. “And that was the focus.” Evans remembers being shown a dependency chart by Chu, and being told “there’s no room” for multiplayer. Not everything went, though. “Four weeks before ship, [lead designer] John Howard decides we’re cutting the tank, because it’s not ready,” Butcher says. “And [designer] Paul Bertone was basically, like, ‘Fuck that. I’m not gonna listen to you, John – without the tank, this game sucks’. And so he went to the artists and the animators, like, ‘I know John told you guys that we cut the tank, but we’re actually going to do it’. And they all just worked really hard, and a week and a half later, we’re playing with the tank. And it works, and it’s really fun. And John was upset about that, but ultimately he was, ‘I guess if you guys crunched to make it work – I was trying to make your lives easier, but you clearly don’t want to listen to me’.” This speaks to another big factor in the impossibly short turnaround of Halo’s final months. “There were a lot of sleepless nights,” Wang remembers. “That nine months, if you count eight hours as a full day, then we probably stretched it out to more like 12 months, at least.” We hear something similar from every single person: “insane hours”, “horrible crunch”, “massive human cost”, “death march”. Yet, while they all acknowledge that it wasn’t healthy, and wouldn’t do it today, no one seems to regret it. When we ask why, there are a few common answers. That it was never mandated from above; that the team was young and mostly without other responsibilities; but most of all that they loved what they were making and the people they were making it with. “Especially since it all worked out – it’s all misty watercolour memories now,” Chu concludes. “But even then, you had this feeling of being in the trenches, with brilliant people, fighting the good fight.” This feeling was helped along by another of Seropian’s development crucibles. Evans and other members of the Oni team had been posted on multiplayer, bringing it back from the brink with the aid of mapmakers from all manner of disciplines. “I don’t know if it was every night, but it was a lot of nights,” Evans says. “There

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was a little test room that people would shuffle over to at some point, and then we’d play matches for… probably way too long, considering everything else we had to get done. Once we started doing that, it was pretty clear we’d made a good choice to keep it.” This milestone again came surprisingly late in development: September 2001, by Butcher’s estimation. “We had between two and five weeks – that was the time when 16-player system-link multiplayer was playable on Halo. So classic eight-versus-eight Blood Gulch – how many times did we play that? Maybe a total of 30 times. But during those last weeks, that’s when we were like, OK, this is pretty good.”

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And, reader, it was. A game the developers tell us was always considered just another in Xbox’s launch lineup, firmly behind Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee, became the console’s biggest hit. We ask if anyone has a theory as to why Halo caught the public imagination, and why we’re still talking about it. Seropian and Lehto both acknowledge there was an element of luck, with everything falling into place around it. Butcher mentions the effect of September 11 on the American psyche, and the desire for a simple good-versus-evil narrative, “where the good guys are gonna win”. And, more simply, the very same thing that had made it click in the studio: “The multiplayer makes it iconic. People build memories with their friends, spending hundreds or thousands of hours playing together.” As for how that success felt on the ground, most just tell us they were too tired to take it in, busy enjoying some well-earned time off – or in many cases slinking back into the office early just to keep playing around with it. “We were taking the Halo engine and making race cars and unicycles and stuff,” Abeyta says wistfully. “Because it was our job, but I think for everyone it was their favourite thing to do.” When release rolled around – after the usual weeks-long delay – a few team members, Chu and Evans among them, headed into Redmond for a local store’s Xbox midnight launch event. “I remember watching the first guy in line, and he bought two copies of Halo,” Chu laughs. “I was like, ‘We are at a 2x attach rate for this moment of time!’” That’s when Evans recalls having an inkling they had something special on their hands: “Games were smaller back then, but we all felt like rockstars, for this one moment.”

1 Wang remembers one early drawing of the Halo series’ infamous Grunt that “just looks like a sad turtle that no one wanted to shoot, because it’s so feeble-looking”. 2 In these sketches, dating from January 2000, Lehto began to significantly pin down the final look of Halo lead Master Chief. 3 A Lehto-authored concept design for an alternative Grizzly tank. 4 Design work detailing a Forerunner tank, a vehicle concept that dates back to Halo’s existence as a realtime strategy game. 5 A sketch and model of the unused Blind Wolf creature, at one point intended to be rideable by both players and non-player characters in certain sections

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STUDIO PROFILE

LL A M ASOFT A trip to the farm to meet with one of the hardiest names in videogames By Paul Drury

Founded 1982 Employees 2 Key staff Jeff Minter (head director), Ivan Zorzin (technical director) URL minotaurproject.co.uk Selected softography Gridrunner, Revenge Of The Mutant Camels, Sheep In Space, Llamatron, Tempest 2000, Space Giraffe, Polybius, Akka Arrh Current projects Soon-to-be-announced Atari coin-op remake

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ll studios have their own daily routine, a particular approach to the demands of game development, but not all have animal husbandry as an integral part of it. “Most days are pretty much the same,” explains Jeff Minter, who began Llamasoft in 1982 at the family home in Tadley, Hampshire, before relocating to Wales in 1987. “Get up, have a cup of tea, go out and give the sheep their morning biscuits and cuddles. They need cuddles every morning. Then back in here, I’m on my machine, Giles is on his, and we do our thing – which is essentially sitting down in front of a compiler and swearing. Since he’s been here, I’ve become very proficient in Italian swearing.” “Our development process relies on a lot of tea, tears, swear words, sheep, curry,” adds Ivan Zorzin, better known by his online forum nickname, Giles the billy goat, who stresses the importance of that final comma. The pair share their home-cum-development-studio, a remote farmhouse near Carmarthen, with Lucky, Brambles, Skippy and Panda, four rams saved “from the bad place”, a phrase both Minter and Zorzin only ever whisper, along with Maya the llama and Autumn the donkey. To mark Edge’s 30th anniversary, it felt like a good idea to focus on a studio that has been making games throughout the magazine’s lifespan to date – which immediately reduced our options considerably. What makes Llamasoft even more remarkable is not only that it has survived for over four decades when so many of its peers from the ’80s have either gone out of business or been consumed by larger entities, but that it has remained broadly unchanged, with Minter at the helm, making the kind of games he wants to play, paying little attention to the fads and fashions of the broader videogame industry. “In a way, I’ve been fortunate because the kind of things I do in terms of design are arcade games, and there are not a lot of those being made these days,” Minter says in scrutinising Llamasoft’s longevity. “That lets me carry on doing the stuff I like to do and hopefully am quite good at. We’ve never strayed from the path. Stubbornness helps, too. We’ve kept on doing what we want to do and somehow found a way to keep doing it.”

Sticking to their guns – and indeed blasting as a general concept – is invariably a key element of a Llamasoft release, and it may well be a key factor in the company’s long life, but what has changed over their 41 years is the ‘I’

Minter as head director, an apt title for the man whose psychedelic imaginings guide the studio’s output. Zorzin took the post of technical director. “It works out really well,” Minter says. “Giles does the engine stuff – it’s like he builds the horse and I get to ride it. The division of work means we are pretty efficient and we don’t tend to tread on each other’s toes.” It’s a statement true both figuratively and literally, as they have separate coding rooms, each full of devkits old and new, a multitude of screens, and a “spaghetti alley” of wires behind their respective desks. They work steadily through the day into the mid-evening and then convene for food, animal care and some light entertainment. “It used to be shitty telly time but

Jeff Minter, Ivan Zorzin and a sample of their flock at home in Wales, where Llamasoft has been operating since 1987

becoming a ‘we’. Zorzin first came into contact with Minter in 2002, through the unlikely catalyst of Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove, which has a llama as a central plot point. “It was a tough time in my life and I was feeling depressed,” says Zorzin, who was living in his home town of Monfalcone, Italy, at the time. “I really liked that movie so I did a random Google search for llamas and came across Jeff’s site. I sent him a short email… and heard nothing.” The Llamasoft story could have been quite different had Minter not thoroughly checked his

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inbox several weeks later, after returning from a holiday. He decided to reply and the pair began a correspondence, which developed into a friendship, then a relationship, and finally a working partnership, with Zorzin officially joining Llamasoft in 2004. “I’d never thought of taking anyone on, but then the possibility of doing my lightsynth for the Xbox 360 came along,” Minter explains. “That was far too big a job for me to do on my own. That was Giles’ first job, and he had to hit the ground running.” “Microsoft wanted a proof of concept in two weeks, and I’d never coded anything for a console in my life,” Zorzin recalls. “This was the first devkit.” He taps an old Apple Mac leaning against a sofa. “The console was still under development but I had a manual and, well, we got something out.” Working for Microsoft to produce Neon, the visualiser embedded in every Xbox 360, and then Space Giraffe (2007), the game Minter cites as his personal favourite, necessitated Llamasoft becoming a limited company, with

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now it’s Zelda time,” Minter grins. “Even though I’m the pilot in this particular playthrough [of Tears Of The Kingdom], Giles watches and keeps an eye out for stuff I’ve missed or helps out with a puzzle.” It could almost be a description of their working practice, too. Minter is clearly the lead designer, the visionary, but Zorzin is integral to the quest of making Llamasoft games the very best they can be. This dynamic, which has sustained Llamasoft through the second half of its life, has allowed the company to maintain its identity even when collaborating with such big names as Microsoft, Sony and Atari. To describe the pair as fiercely independent seems incongruous given their mild-mannered demeanours, but unlike so many studios, they have managed to keep the lights on without compromising their vision nor signing up for potboiler work. “I’ve always wanted Llamasoft games to only be things I was proud to put my name to,” Minter says. “I didn’t want people to think I was shovelling any old shit out. I mean,

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a lot of my early stuff was fairly shitty,” he laughs, “but I was trying my best to get better.”

Llamasoft’s enduring presence in the videogame industry can at least partly be attributed to this unwavering commitment to selfimprovement. Both Minter and Zorzin speak passionately about the challenges and rewards of getting to grips with each new hardware platform and are adherents to a mantra of ‘learn by doing’. “Many people from back in the day, their roles changed and they were managing a team of people not writing code,” Minter says, “and then game design became something done by committee – something you had to plan out before you start writing code. That’s not how I work at all. My analogy is that coding is like learning the guitar: when you get good, you don’t say, ‘Right, now I’ll get someone to play the guitar for me’. I need my hands in it, to feel it.” “We know there is a destination and we know there is a quality expectation,” Zorzin adds, “but how we get there is flexible.” Flexibility isn’t always possible in an industry driven by deadlines, with a dependency on large development teams and the need to fulfil financial targets to justify ballooning budgets, but Llamasoft’s small size and the fact that its staff live where they work helps to keep overheads low. “We pay ourselves peanuts but our main interest is to keep going,” Minter says. “Everyone wants to make money out of everything these days but sometimes you need to put money out of your head and go with your feeling. If I had to offer advice to an indie developer just starting out, it would be to make something you love. If you get up in the morning and you really want to make something exist, that should be impetus enough.” It is a philosophy that has been crucial in sustaining the studio through the inevitable ups and downs of 40 years in the business. Minter’s early years making games for home micros in the ’80s, particularly Commodore’s VIC-20 and C64, saw a distinctive Llamasoft ‘brand’ emerge, in terms of game style and visual identity – something partly due to the zealous nature of a company with which he would go on to have a long and fruitful partnership. “I was pushed by Atari’s litigious attitude,” he remembers. “I wanted to do a Centipede game on the VIC-20 but I didn’t want to fall foul of Atari [creator of the original coin-op]. Everyone was doing arcade conversions but I found a way to break loose of that, by adding stuff and changing things around. Gridrunner did well and that

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Lightsynth Psychedelia was released in 1984, laying early foundations for Neon, built into every Xbox 360 console

made me think, ‘Ah, people like it when I put my own stuff into these games…’” Attack Of The Mutant Camels (1983) followed, clearly based on Parker Brothers’ VCS game Return Of The Jedi but with AT-AT Walkers replaced by giant, lolloping ungulates. Then came Revenge Of The Mutant Camels and the Defender-inspired Sheep In Space the following year, each starring a growing menagerie of hairy beasts, and Batalyx (1985), which brought together half a dozen ‘subgames’, including a

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directly with those who buy and play his games, the Llamasoft stand being a stalwart of computer game shows back in the ’80s, staffed by the founder himself alongside various family members, and at retro-focused shows ever since, now with Zorzin in attendance to help demonstrate their latest work. Minter also embraced the ’scrolling message’ – a long string of text that would drift across the title screen of many of his early games – as a way of communicating with his audience, and recent Llamasoft releases, such as Polybius (2017) and Akka Arrh (2023), continue to feature text messages overlaying the abstract visuals, often including very English idioms such as “top hole” and “I say!” to congratulate players’ successful blasting. “Localisation is a nightmare,” Minter admits with a smile, “but I’ve always loved playing with words. Actually, we’re both learning new languages at the moment. Giles is studying Portuguese and I’m learning Welsh.” He then says something incomprehensible to our English ears. “That means ‘I’m fond of sheep’ in Welsh,” Minter winks.

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cutdown version of Psychedelia, Minter’s first foray into the world of the light synthesiser – a genre he would continue to explore and develop for the rest of his career. “It was a time for wild creativity and I loved it,” he beams. “We could bang stuff out and we’d get into the charts. People could see we were doing our own thing. One of the nicest things anyone has said about my body of work was when I did a lecture at a university in Singapore in 2017 – the guy introduced me and said, ‘You can look at any of their output and tell it’s a Llamasoft game’. We’ve made our own distinctive style.” There is a certain irony that a man so opposed to the increasing commercialisation of videogames in the latter half of the ’80s (sometimes writing in his company newsletter, The Nature Of The Beast, to bemoan the ‘breadheads’ who had infiltrated and corrupted the nascent industry) would achieve that hallowed goal of marketing suits everywhere: strong brand recognition and customer loyalty. Minter has always endeavoured to engage

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The loyalty of Llamasoft’s fanbase has proved a significant factor in the company surviving through lean periods. At the start of the ’90s, changes in the industry meant that Minter found it increasingly difficult to get his games distributed, so he took the unusual step of giving away Llamatron (1991), his Atari ST and Amiga homage to Robotron, for free via shareware, asking players to pay what they thought it was worth. They did so to the tune of £50,000, also sending messages of admiration and gratitude, which Minter says “warmed my heart”. It also encouraged him to revisit another classic coin-op with Tempest 2000 (1994) for Atari’s Jaguar, commonly cited as a highlight of his extensive back catalogue, as well as one of the best titles for the console. Its success led him to joining Atari as an employee between 1994 and 1996, the first time in his career he would work for another company. “I’m not sure it was the right decision,” he says now. “If it’d been anyone else, I don’t think I’d have gone, but I’d grown up with them and if I was going to work for anyone,

STUDIO PROFILE

2 1 When it comes to game names, Llamasoft’s back catalogue has the full range, from the purity of Sheep In Space to the pretty much unparalleled Metagalactic Llamas Battle At The Edge Of Time (1983). 2 Distributed as shareware among friends – and also via magazines such as one-time Edge stablemate ST Format – Llamatron gave Llamasoft a vital lift in the early ’90s. 3 Like nearly all Llamasoft games, 1984’s Revenge Of The Mutant Camels is all about blasting stuff to bits. 4 In 1982, the Llamasoft branding came with double exclamation marks in certain contexts, for a bit of additional impact

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1 Tempest 2000: famously almost a reason in itself for picking up an Atari Jaguar. 2 Xbox 360 release Space Giraffe (2007) is one of Minter’s most overlooked designs, but is among his personal favourites. 3 PSVita game TxK (2014) involved some friction with Atari but went on to pave the way for a relationship with the venerable US publisher that has shifted everything into a new gear. 4 Polybius (2017) shows Llamasoft at the height of its powers in the VR space. 5 Tempest 4000 (2018) could well be the studio’s final outing for the series. 6 Moose Life (2020) was a return to VR, where Llamasoft’s trademark pixel explosions are given more room to breathe. 7 Akka Arrh, which excavates the unreleased Atari coin-op of the same name, earned positive reviews on its release this year. More Atari-sourced action is in the works

it would be Atari. I’d done Tempest 2000 as an independent contractor, sat in my house in Wales, doing my thing. When I worked for them over there [in California], they felt they could lean on me more and push me in directions I didn’t want to go in. With Defender 2000 [released in 1995], they kept demanding things, like the screen scrolling upwards and everything bigger so they could show off the graphics, but it didn’t serve the game. You can’t have the ship the size of a bus because of the screen real estate. I did the best I could under the circumstances but it wasn’t what I would’ve done sat at home.”

Minter returned to Wales in 1997 and also to Tempest, working for VM Labs to produce Tempest 3000 (2000) for the short-lived Nuon, before beginning the ambitious GameCube project Unity, which featured on the cover of Edge in February 2003 but never the machine where it was intended to land. Yet these disappointments paled in comparison to the disheartening years in the early 2010s during which Llamasoft developed iOS games. “That was spirit crushing,” Minter says, the memory contorting his face into a grimace. “We made nine games on that platform and all of them got good reviews, users liked them… and every time they made about 50p. It felt like the skills I’d spent my whole life developing were worthless.

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Maya the llama is on hand at Llamasoft HQ should a real-life specimen ever be required for study during research phases

And then I started thinking I was worthless: ‘What the fuck do I do?’” Fortunately, the kind of resilience only developed through decades of triumphs and disasters meant that Llamasoft returned in 2014 with the superlative TxK for Sony’s PSVita. After some initial problems with Atari over the Tempest brand, the game signalled the start of a new relationship with the company, resulting in Tempest 4000 in 2018, released on multiple platforms. Though Minter now confesses to being “all Tempested out”, Zorzin hints that a VR version of Tempest 4000 would be “the icing on the cake”, and both are enthusiastic about the ongoing relationship with Atari. “We’re in the very nice position of Atari effectively saying, ‘Here’s the IP from all our old games: what do

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you want to do? And you can do it your way’. It’s the ideal situation. We can get commissioned to do just what we want.” This arrangement has already seen Llamasoft resurrect Akka Arrh, a previously unreleased coin-op title from Atari’s vaults, and the pair are currently focused on revamping another Atari arcade release dating from the ’80s. Llamasoft has always valued the past, often revisiting its own ‘greatest hits’ (Gridrunner appeared on PS4 as recently as 2018) as well as those made by Atari, Williams and other arcade pioneers. Yet ultimately the secret to this resilient indie studio’s longevity is its consistent focus on the future. The company has always been an early adopter of new technology, and while this approach has led to some dead ends and cancelled projects – we enjoy Minter regaling us with tales of the 1989 photoshoot for the doomed Konix Multisystem, and his regret that he’ll always be associated with sitting in “that seat, holding that fucking gun” – it has kept it looking forward as well as back. “If it’s strange and experimental and no one wants to code for it, bring it here,” Zorzin says with a mischievous grin. “Having stuff not come out is not bad luck, it’s the risk you take when you’re working on experimental, cutting-edge hardware.” “I’ve always liked working on new stuff,” Minter agrees. “That’s why, as soon as VR came out, I started working on it. Fully immersive VR may always be a niche thing, but as soon as the tech they’re developing for the Apple Vision Pro goes into a pair of specs, it’ll be like the smartphone revolution. Everyone will have one. And, as long as I’m not dead, Llamasoft will be making games for it.” n MOO-VING PICTURES

Heart Of Neon, a movielength documentary by Paul Docherty that is currently in the editing suite, aims to give an intimate insight into Llamasoft, from its origins to its modern-day iteration. “We are quite reclusive, so it’s going to be weird seeing us on the big screen,” Minter says. “Watching a whole film about us will be odd.” Alongside many interviews, the film features a few snippets of vintage Llamasoft trade-show action (left).

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REVIEWS. PERSPECTIVES. INTERVIEWS. AND SOME NUMBERS STILL PLAYING Super Hexagon iOS Terry Cavanagh’s new game, Mr Platformer (see p20), is encouragement enough to reinstall this twitch classic – a game we’re troubled to discover celebrated its tenth anniversary last year. We’re equally alarmed when it transpires we’ve not actually finished Hexagonest and Hyper Hexagoner modes on the mobile version, which we’re eventually able to put right, though Hyper Hexagonest remains beyond our waning reflexes. Its brilliance is easy to forget: like a top-down take on Hole In The Wall played on a waltzer operated by a maniac, it deviously wrongfoots you with its shifting patterns, demanding intense concentration as you try to pilot your tiny triangular craft through gaps between barriers that spin toward you at increasing speed. That Chipzel-penned soundtrack, too, remains one of the all-time greats. Thunder Ray PC Seeking something short and undemanding as print deadline approaches, we opt for this gory, futuristic take on Punch-Out!!, named after its fearsome pugilist, when it makes a surprise appearance on our Epic Game Store account. Having marvelled at the smooth and characterful animation during the tutorial, we’re equal parts amused and perturbed to find ourselves sending our opponents to the canvas with a single punch. Less than six minutes in, we’ve cleared five of the nine bouts on the default difficulty, with several fights lasting no more than a few seconds. Assuming we’ve encountered a bug, we shut down and restart, only to reach the credits within a further four minutes, the timer on the climactic encounter barely reaching three seconds. Clearly this isn’t the intended experience, but the joy of punching a series colossal enemies into fleshy soup with little effort helps energise us for the final push.

Explore the iPad edition of Edge for extra Play content

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Nour: Play With Your Food PC TJ Hughes’ long-in-development culinary plaything is the first indie game in a while to make our PC sound like a jet engine, its convincingly rendered foodstuffs evidently putting a strain on the creaking rig. Headphones donned to drown out the noise, we enjoy the process of making nonsensical dishes for a while, but Nour’s playfully weird feel is undermined by a fiddly, unintuitive interface. It’s charmingly silly in bursts, but ultimately feels a little insubstantial.

REVIEWED THIS ISSUE 112 Starfield

PC, Xbox Series

116 Cocoon

PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series

120 Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty PC, PS5, Xbox Series

124 Lies Of P

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series

126 The Crew: Motorfest

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series

128 Mortal Kombat 1 PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series

130 Chants Of Sennaar PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

132 Gunbrella PC, Switch

133 Sea Of Stars

PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series

135 Mediterranea Inferno PC

136 Eternights PC, PS4, PS5

139 Finity iOS

Wide open space Though we’d normally use this page to talk about several games reviewed in this month’s Play section, there is really only one that warrants further discussion here – not least because it is so massive that 2,500 or so words doesn’t quite cover it. We’re talking, of course, about Starfield, Bethesda’s latest sandbox – or should that be starbox? – RPG, in which Todd Howard and crew have built an open universe that feels curiously closed-off. The problem with space as a setting is that it is defined by vacancy. And throughout Starfield you can sense Bethesda struggling to figure out quite what to do with all that room. You end up navigating it via menus: pick a star system to hop to, and watch a cutaway showing your ship grav-jumping as your destination loads in. This undermines one of the foundational pillars of its own genre: that sense of existing in another place, of feeling present within another world. There is a gnawing feeling that the developer has built an entire universe simply because it could – enabled and empowered by today’s console technology – rather than because it should. It is an end rather than a means, one that speaks as much to what we’ve lost as what we’ve gained over 30 years of videogames. True, it’s a fine example of the good, too: there is no denying that getting to interact with characters that look and sound like human beings marks a significant advance since 1993. When you’re planetside, it does what Bethesda games do best, selling you the enveloping illusion of a convincingly realised world. Its physics engine, meanwhile, is genuinely mind-boggling, although there’s something quietly damning about the ways in which players are testing its limits – for instance, by amassing vast quantities of starchy tubers. Fun? Undoubtedly. But compared with the pleasures we ordinarily get from open-world games, it’s all small potatoes. 111

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ene Roddenberry’s final frontier was videogames’ first. Since 1962 and Steve Russell’s Spacewar!, the medium has been unable to resist gazing up at the firmament, regularly situating itself amid the stars. At times when playing Bethesda’s longgestating RPG, it’s hard not to marvel at how far we’ve come in 61 years. From a single-screen shootout set within a planet’s Hill’s sphere to an entire explorable universe in which you can define your own place – whether it’s as a buccaneer or a botanist, a hunter of bounty, beasts or bugs (of which there are rather fewer than you’d expect from this particular developer). The pitch is alluring; the potential enormous. But, as is customary for a Bethesda RPG, it begins in more humble surroundings. Working for a mining corporation named Argos – happily, you’re able to locate resources rather quicker than its present-day namesake – you spend your first moments lasering rocks for ore until you come into contact with a mysterious artefact that gives you a consciousness-expanding vision. Your experience sees you brought under the wing of Constellation, a group of explorers keen to investigate the secrets of the universe, their goals immediately aligned with the player’s own. By which time you might already feel a mild pang of concern – the traditional Bethesda step-into-the-light moment sees you emerge from those murky caves onto a beige planet, set against a sky painted in, well, a marginally different shade of beige. Next to your emergence from Cyrodiil’s sewers or the moment you exit Vault 101 and the sun-blasted Capital Wasteland comes into view, it’s an underwhelming start. Having been generously gifted a craft, you’re soon welcomed to your first spaceport and the lodge that will become your home, as you set out on a hunt for more mystical MacGuffins. Yet Atlantic City is the dreariest urban space we’ve encountered in some time – such that you wonder if it’s actually designed to encourage you to escape it at the first possible chance.

It’s been said that the best way to approach Starfield is to race through that central questline and hasten the endgame. This is terrible advice, the sort of unhelpful suggestion you might get from someone who has perhaps played the game long enough to have forgotten that the only way to make the repetitive and often dull core missions more palatable is to interleave them with some of the great many optional quests and side activities. Scattered along the critical path, these are available to pursue at your leisure, so long as you don’t mind your to-do list growing increasingly unmanageable. Asides range from a spot of corporate espionage to serving as intermediary between the occupants of a 200year-old colony ship and the inhabitants of the planet on which they were hoping to settle (the compromise in our case, a period of indentured servitude, is accepted with unlikely grace). There’s reassurance in the knowledge that

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Developer Bethesda Game Studios Publisher Bethesda Softworks Format PC, Xbox Series (tested) Release Out now

Jobs aren’t as hard to come by in three centuries’ time – at least if you’re happy to join the space police

jobs aren’t as hard to come by in three centuries’ time – at least if you’re happy to join the space police. Their relentless recruitment drive might tempt you to throw your lot in with the Crimson Fleet, though going undercover among this band of space pirates results in one of the more satisfying questlines. Indeed, the extended, multi-mission quest strands for the five main galactic factions are among the game’s best. The pick of these cater to a variety of approaches rather than forcing you to go in guns blazing. An expansive skill tree allows you to lean into genetic advantages, established when you set up your character’s background, or to broaden your palette. Having opted to major in social skills – which eventually let us intimidate lowerlevel opponents into submission or use diplomacy to encourage them to lower their weapons – we soon realise that a few points from levelling up would be better spent toughening up. Broadly speaking, since higher ability ranks are earned by repeating related activities (sprinting while carrying heavy loads to boost lung capacity, for instance), it pays to specialise. Then again, our persuasive techniques seem unrealistically potent from early on: called to test our powers of negotiation, we defuse a hostage situation within moments, then resolve a longrunning familial feud by passing a couple of skill checks. It’s symptomatic of a game that’s a little too eager to please, emblematised by a Hero Worshipped trait which grants you a sycophantic follower. This familiar fawning fan joins your crew, irritation at his gushing praise at every successful takeoff and docking procedure offset by the gifts he supplies. But then all your companions are cut from similar cloth. There’s none of Baldur’s Gate 3’s abrasiveness among the romanceable supports, who are all fundamentally decent people. One look at improbably well-groomed space cowboy Sam Coe and we’re convinced he’ll be left off our ship’s roster the first chance we get. Yet he comes as a package detail with daughter Cora, turning out to be a decent dad and a thoroughly nice fellow. We’re warned about the troubled past of the purportedly enigmatic Andreja, though she’s sympathetic, too, a victim of circumstance desperate to atone for past misdeeds. Though blandly written, these two at least are good company, largely thanks to the performances of Elias Toufexis and Cissy Jones. The latter’s embarrassed mutter when questioned about her relationship with the player is a heart-swelling highlight. Alas, our burgeoning romance falters soon after when we shoot her during a firefight with mercenaries, her cloaking skill combining poorly with that familiar Bethesda NPC habit of strolling in front of you just as your finger squeezes the trigger. Questionable friendly and hostile behaviour aside, gunfights are agreeably robust – even if the title of ‘best realtime combat in a Bethesda game’ is hardly a hotly contested one. From beam rifles to ballistic pistols to your mining laser, the majority feel good in the hands. That

ABOVE Neon’s Astral Lounge is the starting point for one of the game’s finest missions. If you’re feeling particularly flush, you can shell out for a luxury penthouse suite on the top floor – yours for just 235,000 credits

TOP The United Colonies Security & Safety department is a little over-eager in its policing: on two occasions we get in trouble for crimes we haven’t committed. MAIN It’s wise not to start chatting with companions in the vicinity of any indigenous species, since they can charge in to interrupt conversations without warning. RIGHT You’ll regularly return to Constellation’s lodge to drop off artefacts. You have a room of your own here, which gives you another space to leave behind anything that’s weighing you down

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helps given the broad range of ammo types can leave you with the wrong type of shell in the middle of a firefight (the quick-swap menu doesn’t tell you which guns are empty), regularly forcing you to switch. Weapons are supplemented by the extraterrestrial equivalent of Skyrim’s dragon shouts, allowing you to cast solar flares, launch yourself at enemies, and conjure gravity fields to lift them off their feet, floating like slow-motion clay pigeons. Earning these, however, means trekking between a series of nigh-indistinguishable temples to gather orbs of light – and only once you’ve retrieved their associated artefacts, secreted in abandoned mines and facilities or tucked deep within caves. Circuitousness is, alas, not their only shared feature. From the way they’re lit to their impressively lived-in feel, we find ourselves marvelling at the detail in these interior locations. But the aesthetic appeal wanes when you find yourself picking over a deserted depot that is identical to one you visited less than an hour before, right down to the computer logs. This is far from the only instance of déjà vu – we lose count of the number of times we touch down on an empty planet and within a matter of seconds hear the roar of another ship’s engines overhead as it comes in to land, one of a number of supposedly emergent events that begin to feel suspiciously scripted. More troubling is Starfield’s resemblance to its maker’s previous work, from its static conversations in which a single character addresses you face-on to the speed and frequency with which you become encumbered – the recurring reminder that cramming your pockets will leave you short of oxygen a fitting way to describe the way your limited inventory chokes the life out of scavenging. But then the game itself feels overladen by its myriad systems, several of which are poorly explained. Like an insistent waiter

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ABOVE It’s a good month for elaborate door-opening animations. In Starfield’s case, though, perhaps the amount of time we marvel over its portal engineering is a sign that something is a bit lacking elsewhere

URBAN LEGEND

It might seem contrary to the goal, but it’s only when you’re planetside that Starfield really comes to life, particularly in its biggest cities – even if many of these draw from familiar science-fiction touchstones. Akila City, home of the Freestar Collective, is a Wild Westinspired setting that would look right at home in Firefly, while Neon – a former fishing platform gentrified into a Vegas-style pleasure district – carries distinct echoes of Night City. And, once you’ve passed the initiation, it’s worth paying a visit to The Key, the space station home of the Crimson Fleet pirates. The Martian mining town of Cydonia and luxury hotel resort Paradiso are evocatively realised, too – each highlighting the stark difference between the game’s handcrafted and procedurally generated spaces.

saying, “Please, try the outposts”, you’re often encouraged to colonise planets, long before you have the resources to build a halfway adequate base. The same also applies to ship upgrades, whose process recalls Fallout 4’s but appears to assume you’ve played that game extensively, with scant explanation offered to newcomers.

That much-vaunted postgame delivers a few surprises, following a final mission that is as ingeniously conceived as it is irritatingly drawn-out. If you’ve seen any superhero films in recent years you’ll spot where the story is headed long before it gets there – the clues it drops aren’t nearly as cryptic as Starfield’s writers seem to think – but a striking development makes the idea of continuing beyond the credits more appealing than you would ever think from the lead-in. Even so, it’s hard not to imagine an alternate timeline where the studio’s ambitions stretched beyond shipping with “the fewest bugs [of] any Bethesda game”, as Todd Howard put it, a marketing line that says much about Bethesda’s priorities. In spite of these shortcomings, Starfield exerts a curious gravitational pull: there is a pleasant mindlessness to it that means it can easily become a black hole for your free time. But if it’s not a bad game, it’s an achingly unambitious one, failing in what should be one of the foundational aspects of any space exploration game (see Post Script). True, we’ve come a long way in six decades. But zoom in on the recent history of games – and that of its maker – and you’re forced to concede that we’ve not covered much distance after all. For Bethesda, this 6 isn’t so much a giant leap as barely a small step.

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Post Script A waste of space

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here is a moment near the start of Starfield that is perhaps more exhilarating than anything that follows. It comes when you first plonk yourself down in the pilot seat of your starter spacecraft, and look out of the cockpit window, a prompt inviting you to lift off. Your destination’s already been suggested to you, but you’re not forced to go there. And why would you, when an entire universe’s worth of potential alternatives awaits? We feel the hairs on the nape of our neck bristle as we lift off, our mind racing as we consider where to go and what to do next. In the event, we do opt to follow that blue waypoint diamond, at least initially, hoping that our first encounter with the intrepid explorers of Constellation might provide us with a few recommended start points for our interstellar journey – and so it proves. But already we’re beginning to wonder if space exploration in Starfield is all it’s cracked up to be. Take the process of getting from A to B – assuming that B is in a different star system from the one you’re currently in, and you haven’t visited it before. First, you tap the menu button, before pushing up-left on the analogue stick to select the star map, followed by the view button to pull up your current mission list. Pick one, and it brings up a drop-down menu showing which of the objectives on that questline you’ve ticked off, inviting you to hit the X button to set a course. (Your ship’s computer is clearly the most hyper-intelligent entity in the universe, capable of plotting a journey from the precise moment a potential destination has passed through the lips of the person suggesting that you head there.) The display zooms out from your current system, shifting across to the one in which your target lies, before zooming back in and asking you if you really want to set a course to this particular place. Confirm your choice with A and you’re taken back to the star map, this time holding X to make the jump to the system in question. You’ll wait a few seconds for your ship’s gravity drive to power up, prompting a cutscene where space-time folds and Inon Zur’s score swells as you cover several light years in a matter of moments. Once you’ve arrived at the system in question, you tap LB to bring up your scanner to highlight the appropriate landing spot on the planet’s surface (assuming you remembered to select this as your current mission, since otherwise your waypoint marker will default to the previous objective), and press X to land. There follows a thirdperson cutaway of your ship touching down, followed by a brisk load that leaves you back in firstperson, looking back out through your cockpit. At which point you have three options: hold X to exit ship, Y to take off, or B to get up and walk around your craft, if you’re ready, perhaps, to dismiss your

Mineral deposits beckon you to pull out your mining laser and cram yet more space junk into your pockets

current companion, having grown tired of their repetitive barks. In the former case, you instantaneously find yourself on the planet’s surface. The latter leads to another thirdperson cutaway as you ease yourself out of your seat, before returning to firstperson as you amble over to the ship’s exit hatch, precipitating a brief pause as the planet loads in. It’s a process that’s both unwieldy – less so when it’s a place you’ve visited previously, since your computer allows you to skip most of the preamble and go straight to the landing procedure – and disappointingly straightforward. There’s no reason to think about the fuel you expend during a jump, and only towards the endgame do you need to consider your ship’s grav-jump range – indeed, your final, elongated stride along the critical path seems to exist solely to belatedly nudge you towards ship modification.

In other words, travelling around this universe is at once too frictionless to convince you of the wonder and peril of space exploration in the way that Outer Wilds’ comparatively pocket-sized galaxy managed, and yet not seamless enough to sell the fantasy of exploring a truly open universe. “See that planet? You can go there, but it’s a bit of a faff and involves a lot of menus and cutscenes” is hardly the stuff of science-fiction or sandbox dreams. With take-off and docking also automated – unlike in, say, No Man’s Sky – it means your ship feels like little more than an extra step in a glorified fast-travel system. Beyond the perfunctory dogfights that occur close to a planet’s surface – and once you’ve experienced the first, ship combat doesn’t develop meaningfully beyond that – it has barely any function beyond providing a place for your companions to ride along and to free up a little room in your inventory. Which invariably refills during the largely uneventful treks between your ship and your destination, with little bar the odd indigenous creature to scan or shoot, while mineral deposits beckon you to pull out your mining laser and cram yet more space junk into your already overstuffed pockets. Ultimately, then, Bethesda’s “first new universe in 25 years” is uncomfortably similar to its old ones – less No Man’s Skyrim than Fallout 2001: A Space Odyssey (indeed, a late cameo from 2001 actor Keir Dullea comes over like a cynical attempt to give the story unwarranted heft). Yet it also falls short of that criterion: its much grander canvas only means that it spreads itself more thinly, its piecemeal structure failing to recapture the seamless appeal of the genre in which it has chosen to plant its flag. Starfield’s universe is not so much irresponsibly large, as game director Todd Howard suggested, but self-defeatingly so. n

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Cocoon

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or all the appeal of an open world – the freedom you feel when gazing across the horizon – sometimes there is nothing more exciting in a videogame than playing a small character standing in front of a giant door, wondering what’s behind it. Ideally, that moment of suspense should be drawn out for several seconds, preferably by an elaborate animation that nudges your anticipation still higher. Geometric Interactive’s puzzle adventure recognises this, and duly supplies your insectoid protagonist with a variety of barriers: some mechanical, some organic, all taking a good few moments to part or unfurl before you can head through. Crucially, though, it understands that such grandeur means little if what lies beyond doesn’t reward both your curiosity and the lengths to which you’ve gone to unlock it. On that front, Cocoon is a triumph. Gateways of a different kind, however, are its central hook. A little way in, you discover what looks like a seedling, from which you pluck an orange, marble-like orb. Soon after, a shallow circular crater, adorned with a conspicuous radial pattern, doesn’t so much invite as practically demand you place it at its centre. A puddle appears at your feet, and at the push of a button (the only one you use for the game’s duration) you dive into the orb, an exhilarating high-velocity plunge followed by a thumping touchdown. It’s essentially a more dynamic variant on those door-opening animations, a dizzying rush executed so beautifully that it’s one of very few elements of Cocoon that is repeated – and that bears repeating. All the same, each descent (and emergence, since it’s not a one-way trip) is so effortlessly swift, smooth and seamless that by the end of the game you’ve almost come to take it for granted. Each orb – orange, aquamarine, white or purple – has mechanical purpose while functioning as a compact, self-contained world: it’s as if a Zelda dungeon and the tool it would ordinarily yield were fused together and made portable. You’ll ferry them around on your back, perched between the bug’s wings, before placing them down to activate various mechanisms in the ‘outside’ world. Each has a unique property besides: one reveals hidden walkways, while another allows you to traverse vertically through pillars that liquify and solidify. The others bring protagonist and player closer in unexpected fashion, and convey a range of familiar videogame abilities, albeit delightfully recontextualised: gliding, dashing, teleporting and even shooting feel different here. During one section you become an unlikely guide; in one joyous moment, a puzzle’s solution briefly turns you into the LeBron James of the bug world. The Zelda comparison is not made lightly. These miniature universes are crafted with a Nintendo-like meticulousness – like Link’s most captivating labyrinths, the puzzles inside and beyond their bounds are made to gently tax rather than stump, and rarely recur. But since

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Developer Geometric Interactive Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now

It’s as if a Zelda dungeon and the tool it would ordinarily yield were fused together and made portable

NATURE OF THE BEAST

There’s an understated air of menace to Cocoon’s world, even if you face few genuine threats. The exceptions are the boss battles, in which the stakes are raised: should one grab you, you’ll be hurled out of the arena and forced to start again. All conform to the three-hit rule, adjusting their attack patterns each time they take damage, while they’re all architects of their own downfall – if their aggression doesn’t lead to them getting stuck in place, they’re responsible for surfacing the object you need to take them down. Though the one-button controls mean they’re relatively straightforward, they represent an enjoyable change of rhythm.

they are also items that can be picked up, that means you can bring one orb, and thus one world, into another – you need just be holding it when you make one of those vertiginous plummets. Of course, that means later on, assuming there are enough receptacles upon which to leave them, you can take more than one. At first, they’re a clever way to bypass hazards, but as you add to your collection, they combine in increasingly intricate ways.

Though it seldom feels like busywork, the tradeoff for the more ornate challenges is a touch more toing and froing than in the early game. But it pays off. Among the frequent satisfying epiphanies there is one scalptingling sequence in particular to rival Gorogoa’s bell-jar puzzle, a solution that is relatively straightforward in its execution but leaves you marvelling both at the headspinning logistics of its assembly and how effectively you’ve been taught that it somehow makes perfect sense. That all of this is achieved via a single stick and a single button – and without a single word written or spoken, since everything is communicated and intuited via contextual environmental cues – is borderline miraculous. Or it would be had director Jeppe Carlsen not achieved a similar feat with Playdead’s Inside. To highlight Cocoon’s thoughtful construction is to risk making it sound as hermetically sealed as the protective sheath from which it takes its name – as if admiring the precision of a spider’s web without considering the creature that made it. But while you spend the bulk of your time adventuring alone, the solitude heightening the sensation of vulnerability, this is a world that feels consistently alive – in its organic and mechanical features, and the various occupants that tend to combine the two. Though nothing is explained, everything fits, as if it has its own raison d’être. There are places and sights that defy easy description: one of the first puzzles involves you unzipping the environment by pulling what looks like an iridescent football attached to an elastic tendril, prompting a vast steel crustacean-like creature to reach up to a nearby clifftop, forming a sentient ramp to higher ground. As the closing act arrives, it’s hard not to wonder if Carlsen has another 11th-hour pivot in store. After a fashion, he does – but rather than a cathartic twist, it’s more a cunning reconfiguration. Here, Cocoon breaks its own carefully established rules in a way that doesn’t so much smack you in the face as lead to a realisation of its giddying implications, before you’re afforded the opportunity to harness some of that potential. Not all, however: there are possibilities left unexplored, albeit for reasons that seem ever more apparent the longer you consider them. It leaves you instead with a reward of a different kind, courtesy of a playful tribute to an unlikely cinematic inspiration – one last 9 delightful surprise beyond its final door.

ABOVE At times, it’s hard to tell whether certain discoveries are optional or part of the critical path. Cocoon is exceptionally good at suggesting a world that stretches well beyond the explorable area, and while there are plenty of natural boundaries, you don’t feel as if you’re being aggressively pushed in a single direction. LEFT Hatched from crystalline chrysalises, these tiny drones aren’t with you for long, but sum up this world – mechanical yet alive. BELOW As empowered as the orbs make you feel, you’re always aware that you’re technically unarmed; as such, anything larger than you (which turns out to be most things) adds to the feeling of vulnerability

ABOVE Control is never taken away from you for long, and the few brief non-interactive sequences are usually spectacular enough to compensate – even if they tend to leave you with just as many questions as answers

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Cocoon is put together so impeccably that it’s tempting to believe its slow door-opening animations aren’t for the purpose of masking background loading – they’re just there to look great

Post Script How Cocoon makes a persuasive case for design by subtraction

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uring the final hour of Cocoon, there’s a moment in which we notice something a little unusual. Not for this game – and it’s not the first time we spot it, either – but for videogames in general. It comes when we briefly find ourselves at a loss for what to do next. Retracing our steps, we happen across a moving platform we previously used to reach the mesa on which we’re currently standing. Though now we see it’s no longer a moving platform, but a stationary one. Given that the little bug we’re controlling only uses its wings to briefly hover into the air before descending into an orb, and isn’t even blessed with a perfunctory jump (spring pads are required to send it airborne), we know what that means. We can’t go back any farther, and our search should continue elsewhere. Geometric Interactive is far from the first developer to place obstacles behind the player to prevent them from backtracking too far, but this is far more common in 2D than 3D games, and very much a rarity in this type of puzzle-led adventure. Imagine Nintendo blocking off two-thirds of a Zelda dungeon once you’d reached the upper floors, or declining to let you mop up various side activities before tackling Ganon in either his beast or human guises. Not that there’s

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quite so much to discover when you move away from the critical path in Cocoon, but we’re surprised all the same. And pleasantly so, for this is an act of kindness on the part of the developer. In a game whose puzzles grow steadily more elaborate and complex, this gradual closing off of the possibility space is a considerate touch. When you can travel between five different worlds – the four orbs, and the ‘outside’ world in which you originally find them – at once, you might think the solution is less about the how but the where. And though that’s true on occasion, for the most part, while you might not yet have happened across the right solution to a given problem, you won’t often find yourself looking in the wrong place.

When we spoke to Carlsen for E386’s Hype, he said “the smallest thing I can add that gives the most value is kind of the way I think about [game design]”. Yet the approach he has taken with Cocoon seems to be defined at least as much by subtle subtraction as by minimal addition. The aim, it becomes ever more apparent as you progress, is to ensure that you are always engaged, rarely lost, and never bored. That partly explains why, in one of the rare recurring puzzles in which you’re required to

activate five glyphs in sequence (which in any case feel more ritual than routine), you rarely have to wander far before you’ve stumbled across the right order to put them in. In each case, their solution is built into the architecture of the world, embedded in walkways, rock formations and reflections. True, this isn’t hugely dissimilar to finding the code to open a safe on a sticky note or within a document on a nearby computer, but the way the answers are presented here feels a good deal more satisfying. In other words, it’s streamlined rather than simplistic. Each puzzle has been constructed to make you feel smart when you solve it rather than stupid before you do – and these thoughtful reductions in the explorable space are an effective way to instil a constant sense of forward momentum. Its constraints, then, don’t feel restrictive, but rather lend Cocoon a feeling of focus and purpose seldom seen outside the greats of the genre. Given Nintendo has said that future Zeldas are unlikely to return to the old formula – with Eiji Aonuma suggesting that the more open-ended format of Breath Of The Wild is set to be the template for future entries – perhaps Jeppe Carlsen and Geometric Interactive are the natural heirs to the classical puzzle adventure.

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Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

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early three years on, CD Projekt has patched a lot of holes in Cyberpunk 2077, but the twopronged addition of its 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty DLC suggests it still isn’t quite at one with itself. Indeed, while the free booster aims at increasing your ability to express yourself in its open world, conversely, the paid-for episode is compact, intimate and concerned with events behind closed doors. Yet because it’s a standalone product, with no requirement to fit around the full game’s lofty plein-air ambitions, Phantom Liberty gains genuine freedom. Piggybacking on the groundwork of fiction already in place, it focuses on delivering a pulsating plotline, and hits its mark. Billed as a spy thriller, Phantom Liberty yanks protagonist V into the orbit of the New USA government and the FIA (a sort of FBI-CIA mashup). An agent known as Songbird initiates contact remotely, apparently with the President aboard a jet that’s about to crash into Dogtown, a no-go enclave of Night City. Their plight triggers a retrieval mission reminiscent of Escape From New York, but the story soon pivots into techno-Bond and Mission: Impossible territory, as your goals expand in partnership with another agent, Solomon Reed (an instantly recognisable Idris Elba). In the process, Phantom Liberty becomes a markedly more glamorous venture than that of working with street fixers, or Johnny Silverhand, who sulks from the sidelines as V gets sucked deeper in. If Phantom Liberty is a blockbuster spy movie, though, it’s one in which the scenes between the action matter most. Sure, there are pounding set-pieces, not least an early tussle with an enormous Chimera spider robot, but more excitement bubbles up in high-stakes conversations. A scene in a basement, sharing intel with Reed and a third agent, Alex, plotting our next move over wireframe AR blueprints is already quietly thrilling. Then that next move is to infiltrate an exclusive party atop a high rise, where with ulterior motives we sidle into a game of roulette. From there, we attend a meeting in disguise as our mark’s expected guest, complete with their face, voice and personality. The main game’s exceptional portrayal of dialogue scenes pays off even more handsomely in such clandestine operations. The simple invitation to take a seat before talking, pulling the face of your interlocutor right up close, is so subtly revolutionary we hope other developers haven’t failed to take note. Likewise, in pausing to mark the pleasantries of a handshake or the offer of a drink, CD Projekt underlines their value in texturing its characters. That detail extends into body language, too. In a side quest, security officers Paco and Babs ask V to help them out of a bind they’ve got into. As Paco speaks, we note Babs’ leg shaking nervously. If these touches help us empathise with Dogtown’s denizens, that goes double for the game’s stars – Reed,

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Developer/publisher CD Projekt Format PC, PS5 (tested), Xbox Series Release Out now

Piggybacking on the fiction already in place, it focuses on delivering a pulsating plotline, and hits its mark

Alex, Songbird – making it all the more complicated when loyalties become divided. By now we know that every story and personality in a CD Projekt game has two sides, while for every decent offer there’s a counter offer. Yet even as we come to expect dilemmas, they land because they chime with our competing desires to see the good in people without being a sucker. They also chime with the capitalist nihilism that defines so much of cyberpunk. These are zero-sum outcomes – one side wins, another loses, fairness rarely features. The dilapidated Dogtown is a minor revelation in reinforcing such ideas, too. Visibly free of the corporate noise and spectacle of Night City’s centres, it feels less desperately edgy as an artistic creation, as if 2077 matures a little within its confines. Quietly expressive in its architectural contrasts, it cedes centre stage to personal stories, conjuring very cyberpunk musings about humanity and identity in the face of social ruin and invasive technology. And that’s a relief, since when the game does serve up more overt social critique, it continues to taste like cold GTA leftovers. That the new plot brings up questions of loyalty to your country feels especially anachronistic – as if cynic V would care.

As for how the (new and improved) systems meld

SYSTEM REBOOT

Your first task if you start 2.0 with an active character is to reassign all your perk points, since the ability trees in 2077 have undergone a considerable overhaul. One branch of the Intelligence attribute, for instance, leads to an ability called Overclock that lets you keep plying enemies with quick hacks, even when RAM is depleted, while another focuses on queueing hacks with increasing speed and efficacy. To make room, many basic stat buffs have been shunted off to a series of skill-progression bars that fill as you dispatch enemies in your preferred style. Phantom Liberty, meanwhile, enables additional Relic powers such as cloaking and a brutal leaping mantis blade attack. While you may never actually need any of this, it makes for a fantastic selection of build choices.

with Phantom Liberty, they do in the sense that they continue to provide a power fantasy, in tune with your role as a super-spy. Our netrunner build is in danger of giving us a god complex here, as we fry enemy synapses without lifting a finger and clear areas of guards via the comfort of a hacked camera feed. Such caution becomes superfluous, in fact, with a new perk that uses health items automatically. When one mission requires us to intimidate a target by going disguised as a Colombian assassin (Colombia lazily characterised as a land of cartels), we wonder why we couldn’t go as ourselves. Entertaining though the power trip is, however, it remains the antithesis of an RPG that asks you to fully consider your build and how best to deploy its traits. Once you’ve found your favoured groove, there’s little to nudge you out of a one-size-fits-all approach to the range of combat and stealth scenarios. Chiefly that’s because the game’s AI and logic haven’t kept pace with other upgrades. Enemies lack smarts, walking towards you in the line of fire, rarely using grenades to force you out of cover. Close combat is still basic. Violence stirred outdoors leads to chain reactions of erratic behaviour. Yet caught in the thick of Phantom Liberty’s spygame intrigue, it’s easy to see all that as the rest of the game’s problem. Few focused action-adventure games spin a yarn as well as CD Projekt does here, likely keeping you uncertain about your choices to the end. That the adventure is hosted within the richly detailed Night City can be treated as a mere fascinating 8 detail, if that’s how you want to play it.

RIGHT A few more battles against goliath opponents such as this Chimera would have been welcome, with many other core set-pieces opting for quantity of enemies over quality instead. MAIN Idris Elba’s performance as Reed is less bullish than many of his typical roles, playing a character with a weight on his ample shoulders, capable but broken

ABOVE Dogtown introduces us to a selection of new technology including an inhaled street drug known as Deep Dive, which enables users to ‘experience’ events narrated to them as though they were really there

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Night City’s external atmosphere now resembles a bustling metropolis – until its citizens collide with unpredictable results

Post Script Car trouble

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oading up our most recent manual save, V materialises standing on a dirt road in Dogtown. Before there’s time to gather our bearings, a speeding car ploughs into her, and she gets stuck on its bonnet, still standing, glaring down at the driver and his shotgun passenger. Seconds pass, with neither reacting to our presence, so we draw our pistol and headshot both. The car halts, jettisoning V off the hood. We dust ourself off, commandeer the vehicle, and drive back to our starting position. The passenger’s corpse hangs from the window by a single leg, flapping like a flag in the breeze. So it goes. Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.0 update has made notable improvements to its vehicle systems, adding new functionality and tweaked behavioural routines, but still often stumbles into absurdity. Partly, that’s down to suboptimal AI and technical quirks that make you ponder if the game still has the ghosts of 1.0 in its shell. Parking our vehicle in the road, for instance, causes traffic to back up behind it for minutes, until one brave driver attempts to swerve around and smashes into an oncoming truck, causing the rest to scatter like startled pigeons, reversing into barriers and pedestrians as they try to straighten out the mess. A new wanted rating system, meanwhile, pulls inept cops into our

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orbit who struggle to keep up with our moderate horsepower and have a habit of cancelling themselves mid-chase. Seconds after we’ve shot up a squad car, police radio announces the situation has been resolved. Even if such kinks can be ironed out, though (perhaps by 3.0), it may be a case of tinkering around the edges of a fundamental antagonism. GTA games are by name and nature built on car crime and cop pursuits. Their cities are made for racing, chasing and crashing. Many of their missions encourage vehicular mayhem that embraces unplanned eruptions of the ridiculous. Conversely, 2077’s soul is in the seedy intimacy of alleyways and bars, where the streets find a use for things. Night City’s highways spread from those locales like tendrils, adding texture and connective tissue ever more impressively with each update, but they remain the veins of this world, not its vital organs. Riding shotgun with Reed in Phantom Liberty, they give us an opportunity to really soak in the surroundings. However, the action belongs elsewhere. Equally, it’s difficult to imagine how CD Projekt Red could seamlessly integrate driving into its wondrous creation, as such activity in open-world games almost invariably lends itself to farce. More realistic vehicle impacts

might curb the comic excesses, but would see many chases terminate abruptly and fatally – especially given the way we drive. We have to be grateful that 2077’s cars bounce off barriers and other vehicles at anything short of head-on clashes, and that even the latter only dent the car rather than write it off. But the knock-on effect of such generosity is that it ill fits an RPG that largely steers clear of hedonistic, slapstick violence. CD Projekt Red may well understand its predicament, given that Phantom Liberty’s Dogtown – a debris-strewn ghetto with few roads of note – hardly places its updated traffic systems in the limelight. A fresh series of side jobs for fixer Muamar Reyes does more in this respect, as you steal cars then escape from pursuers, taking advantage of V’s new ability to shoot while driving. Yet the latter option feels more like a tick-box feature than a game-changer, because you have to take your eyes off the road or slow to a crawl to fire with precision. Ultimately, then, both developer and audience might simply have to accept the contradictions of 2077’s world. The open roads are crucial to bringing Night City to life, and cars the necessary means to see the sights, but it remains a Truman Show set, not a playground. Disrupt its flow and it often comes to a screeching halt.

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Lies Of P

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upposing you didn’t know better, you could almost mistake it for the real thing. Like a newly discovered, apparently unknown painting by an old master, Lies Of P is such a fine forgery it could convince scholars for a time, before they identified it as the work of a gifted student. The old master in this case, of course, is FromSoftware. This might slot comfortably among the works of its prolific 2010s period, most of all like a lost alternative to Bloodborne. Until, that is, you examine the brushwork up close. Indeed, the term ‘Soulslike’ is barely adequate to describe what Round8 has created here. All the basic units of From’s economies are present and correct – bonfires are contraptions known as Stargazers, souls convert into a substance called Ergo – but that’s not the half of it. Combat, from the heft of a weapon to the queued inputs, has that same discernible feel. Areas are implausibly bordered with debris – access to one alleyway is blocked by a dead horse. Potential ambushes force you to tread carefully. There’s relief in shortcuts and opportunities to bank your gains in levelling up, and catharsis in surmounting the insurmountable with blood, sweat and undying patience. Such plagiaristic imitation is initially disquieting, but Round8 sells it by taking to its task like a solemn duty, backed by a justifiable confidence. Take the sequence set in a factory, for example, featuring giant rolling balls and a swampy base patrolled by a giant robot. It’s an unapologetic raid of Sen’s Fortress, yet it moulds these old mechanisms around its own design ends, creating a structure that’s fascinating to explore in its own right. Lies Of P takes strength here from resisting pastiche or nostalgia, using these parts purely because they remain engaging to play with.

Still, the bizarre irony in its premise surely can’t be lost on its developer. Inspired by Pinocchio, the game places you in the shoes of Geppetto’s finest creation, facing throngs of once-servile puppets – more accurately, automata – now murdering their way around the city of Krat. What is Krat, then, but a simulacrum of Yharnam, exactly as Pinocchio is to a human child? As pitchfork-wielding robots lurch to attack in place of pitchfork-wielding townsfolk, it’s like entering a kind of Westworld, but one that was designed to emulate terrifying social collapse in the first place. The parts move exactly as you expect them to. This is Bloodborne repackaged as a pretend version of itself. It feels so right, but equally so uncanny. The game’s identity only becomes more curious when it reveals it has an imaginative side after all. Krat is a marvel even in its dilapidated state, swapping Bloodborne’s gothic misery for Belle Époque calamity. From an early view of its central hotel to a monorail ride to the old city, the architecture and engineering sing of

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Developer Round8 Studio Publisher Neowiz Games Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now

It’s such a fine forgery it could convince scholars for a time, before they identified it as the work of a gifted student

THE NOSE KNOWS

Neowiz treads some familiar thematic ground, but does so in an agreeably nuanced manner. A key question is whether the puppets have merely malfunctioned or gained some kind of awareness, especially given the implied tensions between their working-class roles and the wealthy humans who once took advantage of them. Meanwhile, other humans are mutating into mindless killers, effectively acting as puppets for sinister forces. As for P, uniquely among puppets he has the ability to lie, which you’re given the option to do at junctures in various sidestories. Such fibs are usually of the white variety, offering hope to dishevelled individuals, and in the process suggest that P is becoming more human, whatever that means.

a place that soared high before it was brought low. Later stops such as a shopping arcade and a Great Exhibition continue to impress, but always in relief against visits to the slums or a swamp (poison, of course), and the expertly animated puppets kitted out as station guards, police officers, maids, coal shovellers and clowns. There are sparks of ingenuity in the game’s systems too. Many of the weapons can be disassembled into handle and head components so you can mix and match to suit, with handles determining scaling and heads damage. Bloodborne’s regain feature is neatly reworked, with partial damage (accrued from blocking) recoverable if you counter quickly. The pros and cons of putting your guard up versus dodging become stickier as a result, and only more so with the potential for a damage-free parry if you block at the moment of impact. On that count, there’s also an air of Sekiro, since parries help push enemies towards a vulnerable state, at which point a successful charged strong attack leaves them helpless against a critical strike. Sekiro sustains a quiet influence elsewhere too, not least pulling the strings on the game’s bosses, many of which are both meticulously designed and utterly heinous in their demands. Concentration, extensive pattern learning, impeccable timing, smart weapon choice and a little luck are the ingredients for victory, but the recipe always takes time to blend, especially when you’re hit with a ‘surprise’ second form that has nothing to do with the first. Along the way, the stagger system often feels stingy, as you keep up the pressure to create an opening, then trust to fortune that you can land a charged attack before it closes again. It’s at such points where the slightly coarser brush strokes become most clearly visible. Lies Of P is comparable in size to Bloodborne, but far more linear, with optional mini-boss challenges scattered across the main path that diligent players will mop up as they go. As such, a brick wall is a brick wall, and that makes the absence of online functionality more keenly felt than in Sekiro, with no messages of advice let alone co-op partners to hail. Yes, you can summon an AI ‘spectre’ for the big bosses, but their total lack of defensive nous often sees them defeated swiftly, even once you have access to items that allow you to heal or buff your ally. For all its wondrous mimicry, Lies Of P can’t quite match the master’s ambition. A remarkable feat of craftsmanship and engineering it may be, but never quite a real boy. Yet in a post-Elden Ring world, it serves up a back-to-basics From game of a kind the company itself may never make again, triggering many of the same emotional responses as Dark Souls and Bloodborne did. Rather than being a forgery, it recognises that everything we love about those games is still worth reconstructing. In its desire to deliver exactly that and no more, 7 Lies Of P is nothing if not honest.

ABOVE Manufactured beings such as puppets and robots are only one aspect of Lies Of P’s enemy roster. Some of the game’s grotesque, acidspewing monsters wouldn’t look too out of place in Bloodborne itself

TOP Hotel Krat doubles as the game’s hub and save haven, where a handful of survivors gather. Functioning entirely in line with expectations, it’s where you level up, buy items and upgrade tools. MAIN Animal-masked individuals known as stalkers turn up throughout your journey. They effectively fill the role of Bloodborne’s hunters, although not all are immediately hostile. LEFT The Sekiro influence spreads to P’s left arm, which can be equipped with gadgets, from a grapple wire to a flamethrower. The correct choice can shift the balance against the rock-hard bosses

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The Crew: Motorfest

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hree games in, it still feels as if The Crew has yet to find a distinct identity of its own. With Motorfest, Ivory Tower attempts to resolve that by trying on several at once. Having given us two games set within a scaled-down version of America’s 48 contiguous states, it travels to one of the remaining two, situating itself on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu, where the first two Test Drive Unlimited games were set (there is, admittedly, some crossover between the development teams). Its brash festival vibe and whistle-stop opening that teases various event types obviously owes a debt to Forza Horizon. Its attempts to celebrate car culture and playlists themed around specific vehicle types are a nod toward Gran Turismo and its menu books; the first of these, a neon-glazed tribute to Japanese cars and drifting, naturally brings to mind Ridge Racer. An ostentatious loop at the festival hub area is pure Trackmania. And there is even a ‘demolition royale’, which takes place across a gradually shrinking play space and poses the question ‘Would Fortnite with cars be any good?’ (The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly: not really.) The change of scenery, at least, has done it good. You soon understand why Ivory Tower opted to revisit O’ahu, and not only because its topography provides a variety of surfaces upon which to race, from volcanic slopes to dirt tracks to lush vegetation to beaches, not forgetting the crystal-clear waters you can skim across in powerboats. It’s bright and beautiful, whether at ground level or viewed from above in the planes that often make for the quickest method of navigating the journeys between events (since it’s more miserly than its predecessors when it comes to fast-travel points). It’s not just an attractive setting, but one that feels crafted instead of algorithmically authored: no longer will you find restaurants offering such delights as ‘grilled coffee’. This time its procedural presence makes itself heard rather than seen via AI host Cara, a KITT-style guide to this all-you-can-eat buffet of automotive offerings. Less helpfully, she refers to you rather impersonally as “driver” (you’d think a chatbot would bother to learn your name) and peppers every journey with witless observations. Many of these suggest her dialogue as well as her voice has been AI-generated: there are countless examples of wonky grammar, and she regularly seems to confuse singular and plural. “What a win – the first of many, I’m sure,” she coos after our 23rd consecutive victory; in another race she states how impressed she is by our driving, just after our back end has smacked into a lamppost as we languish in fifth. When she exclaims “diabolical!” as we triumph in a loaned Lamborghini, we can only assume she’s referring to the script. Elsewhere, we wonder if Motormouth might have been a more appropriate title. Each playlist has its own host, who will talk incessantly at you as you drive. This only makes you pine for the GT Café, where if you didn’t

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Developer/publisher Ubisoft (Ivory Tower) Format PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series (tested) Release Out now

The scenery is sensational at any time of day or night, though plenty of events are set at dawn or dusk for good reason

20TH CENTURY JOY

The Vintage Garage playlist offers an unusual twist, letting you drive a series of appealing classic vehicles while disabling modern conveniences such as traction control and your GPS: you’ll have to make your way to events using marked photographs in the corner of the screen for guidance. It’s a charming touch; likewise the faded blue-green filter and Bill Haley number that accompanies a ’50s-themed ride in a Cadillac, or the palette of yellow and brown and funk soundtrack that greets your arrival in the ’70s. The retro spell is rather broken, however, when we see the message ‘Host migration failed’ and get kicked out of an event thanks to the game’s always-online requirement – a rather on-the-nose reminder of what we’ve lost.

want to hear an extensive discussion about carburettors, you could simply tap X to hurry through the text. Here, there is no escaping the blather – and after a while you notice that it feels less a celebration of car culture than of Motorfest itself. Between prattle about V8 engines sounding “like a chonky guitar riff”, it’s irritatingly selfcongratulatory, inviting you to marvel at every sight, sound, track layout and view, as if subliminally trying to convince you of their collective merit. And when your hosts aren’t doing that, they’re offering inane advice – warning you, for example, that the sharp final turn on a course might just require you to use the brakes. Even when we pick a playlist promising a relaxing drive to take in our surroundings, there is no respite. Our host barely pauses for breath, automatically snapping photographs as AI opponents inexplicably trade paint with our VW camper van; indeed, the only adjustment to the race format is that we simply have to finish rather than place in the top three, making our rivals’ aggression more baffling still. You’ll instinctively swerve as other cars hurtle toward you on the wrong side of the road – until you realise these are ghosts of other online players. Though these pass through you, you’ll encounter regular traffic besides, and you won’t always be able to detect the difference until you’re almost on top of them. This supposedly peaceful jaunt doesn’t exactly leave us in a calm, meditative state.

There are other minor nuisances besides. The handling model still feels oddly heavy – and once caught in a skid it can be hard to get out, your car overcorrecting with the gentlest of stick nudges, weaving awkwardly as if you had one too many mai tais before taking the wheel. Rubberbanding is rife, albeit ameliorated somewhat by a lower default difficulty. Downtime is practically verboten: take time out from pursuing events in favour of a leisurely drive and you’ll hear bleeps alerting you to nearby loot or intrusive notifications of photo spots. You might inadvertently begin a micro-activity that invites you to reach a certain speed, escape an invisible pursuer for a given distance, or slalom between virtual flags. These short asides can take you down paths headed in the opposite direction to your intended destination, or even stall you from accessing the next event as you wait for the clock to tick down to zero. In spite of all this, we find ourselves warming to Motorfest, its enthusiasm and generosity wearing down our defences. The scenery is sensational at any time of day or night, though plenty of events are set at dawn or dusk for good reason. And between the blistering pace of its Lamborghini- and Porsche-themed events and the boisterous quad-bike races, Ivory Tower’s bet on versatility trumping derivativeness pays off. If The Crew’s ultimate fate is to be a kind of racing game 6 variety pack, the role seems to suit it.

ABOVE Air events are the weakest of the activities on offer, making planes most effective as utilities for getting to the other side of the island more quickly than by road. As expected, though, the views up here are beautiful MAIN You get a bonus at the end of a race for clean driving, but it takes a lot of first-place finishes to gain a level. You’ll also earn car parts of different rarities with which you can upgrade your vehicle, though these feel like an odd fit in a game that isn’t really much of a sim. ABOVE Off-road events are better played from a firstperson camera, which captures all the bumps and jolts so much more effectively. RIGHT You’re asked if you want to raise the difficulty setting after winning a few events, though it feels as if the sweet spot might like between Normal and Hard – the former makes most events a cakewalk, but the rubberbanding on the higher setting frustrates

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Mortal Kombat 1

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ecapitation via uppercut. Gravel-voiced ninjas reciting B-movie catchphrases. Johnny Cage striking his opponents where it really hurts. NetherRealm may be touting this as a new era for its long-running fighting series, but Mortal Kombat 1 is business as usual for the veteran studio, smoothing out the rough edges of its predecessor rather than tampering with the established formula. The result is a slick, satisfying fighting game that surpasses recent instalments, even as it fails to provide a suitable on-ramp for those seeking to discover its delights. Some of the most notable changes come from what isn’t here. The series’ trademark finishing moves return in all their cartoonish, grisly glory, as well as the Fatal Blow system, a devastating attack available once per fight to characters with less than a third of their health remaining. However, NetherRealm has jettisoned elements such as character variations and Krushing Blows. Other areas have been streamlined: defensive and offensive meters are now unified into a single bar, segments of which can be spent to amplify special moves or banked to disrupt an opponent’s combo. The most striking change, however, is the new Kameo system, enabling you to choose from a roster of sidekicks to fight alongside you. Tapping the right bumper allows them to briefly join the fight, deploying special moves limited by a cooldown meter. These moments fill the screen with combatants and pyrotechnics in the manner of the Marvel Vs Capcom series, adding spectacle and strategy to showdowns. Fighters with limited ranged options can opt to add Kano’s throwing knives and laser projectiles to their arsenal, while Frost can freeze opponents in place in the manner of Sub-Zero: the perfect setup to launch a flurry of blows. Some allies also bolster your defensive options: Scorpion can use his kunai to rapidly drag you backwards, which proves a useful escape mechanism. While the meta will doubtless become established soon enough, there’s something inherently pleasurable in experimenting with different fighter combos, redolent of the childlike glee of bashing action figures together. That sensation will only be heightened when characters such as Homelander and Peacemaker arrive via DLC. Your toolkit is further expanded thanks to a new focus on aerial combat, enabling you to string together formidable combos. For a series this old, these minor tweaks feel transformative, breathing fresh life into encounters while doubling down on NetherRealm’s trademark style. This is complemented by some of Mortal Kombat’s most visually striking arenas to date, ranging from a mountainside dojo framed by cherry blossom to a subterranean experimentation chamber. That flair for the dramatic bleeds into the campaign, which invokes multiverse theory to serve as both a reboot and a sequel. While the story supposedly follows

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Developer NetherRealm Studios Publisher Warner Bros Games Format PC, PS5 (tested), Switch, Xbox Series Release Out now

There is a certain pleasure in seeing a game revel so unabashedly in tropes from martial arts cinema

INSERT KOIN

Live-service elements are pervasive, with daily and weekly quests encouraging players to regularly log in, while a rotating selection of items can only be purchased by grinding seasonal ‘kredits’. Although such systems don’t sit well in a full-price release, there is some evidence that NetherRealm has learned lessons from its chequered history. The gear and Krypt systems from Mortal Kombat 11 are thankfully absent, for example, and though there are microtransactions for in-game currency, these items can only be used to acquire cosmetics. We recoil upon learning that further invasions will be added as post-launch updates, yet they will be available for free. We hold out little hope, however, that DLC characters will come without a price tag attached.

your troupe of Earthrealm fighters teaming up to stop maniacal sorcerer Shang Tsung, it merely serves as an excuse for its larger-than-life cast to duke it out at a moment’s notice. Yet there’s an awful lot of talking to accompany the punching. We soon find ourselves adrift in a sea of tragic backstories, delivered by voice actors dutifully struggling through reams of exposition. In spite of these excesses, there is a certain pleasure in seeing a game revel so unabashedly in tropes from martial arts cinema – exemplified by an early sequence in a tea shop that features the kind of physical comedy you’d associate with the films of Jackie Chan. These humorous touches go a long way, enlivening subplots such as the bromance between blind swordsman Kenshi and Hollywood has-been Johnny Cage.

While Towers are present and correct, the game’s singleplayer suite has been expanded via Invasions, which task you with completing a series of challenges as you navigate the nodes of an isometric map. A tiltshift effect reminiscent of Tunic brings these dioramas to life, each stuffed with environmental detail – we particularly enjoy exploring Johnny Cage’s mansion, a monument to self-idolatry that puts Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House to shame. Yet the process of navigating these dollhouses is tedious, with limited options to teleport resulting in extended periods of backtracking. Your roster gradually levels up, acquiring loot and items as you explore, but we soon tire of these tacked-on RPG elements as encounters start to repeat themselves. Modifiers are added to the mix in an attempt to enliven affairs, forcing you to dodge spinning blades or flaming projectiles during fights; even so, our interest wanes in the two areas available at launch (see ‘Insert koin’). Amid these overhauls to series formula, one familiar shortcoming remains unaddressed: the tutorial system is unfit for purpose. NetherRealm has made strides to expand upon the finer details of combat, via dynamic challenges that force you to, for instance, alternate between blocking a series of low and overhead attacks. Yet these trials are buried within an exhaustive library of tutorials, the majority of which will never be seen by most players. And on all but the highest difficulty levels, the skill gap between AI-controlled combatants and skilled humans remains chasmic, making online multiplayer a daunting proposition to all but those willing to spend hours studying YouTube videos. As a series well into its fourth decade, then, Mortal Kombat appears in surprisingly good shape. If its Fatalities have never felt so gruesomely satisfying, though, the greatest pleasures are still limited to those willing to play through the pain. But between the extra sparks of mechanical invention and visual humour, Mortal Kombat 1 offers perhaps NetherRealm’s 7 most persuasive argument yet to take the plunge.

LEFT In keeping with series tradition, X-ray moves and Fatalities are comically over the top. These lengthy animations soon wear out their welcome, though. MAIN Kano can turn into a fleshy projectile, hovering in mid-air until you release the right bumper to send him rocketing forwards. BOTTOM Characters trade quips before online matches, with bespoke taunts available for every possible combination of fighters in this expansive roster

ABOVE Kameo fighters help your main character deliver Fatal Blows and boast their own Fatalities, some of which make winking reference to the original arcade game by reducing your enemies to literal bags of bones

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Chants Of Sennaar

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astering a videogame is not unlike becoming proficient in a new language – particularly for those less versed in the abstruse vocabulary of the medium. As such, and given the rise of interactive language learning via the likes of Duolingo, it’s surprising more developers haven’t attempted to gamify the process. Rooted in Babelian myth, Rundisc’s puzzler invites you to unite five clans occupying the strata of a tower: as a nameless hooded figure, your ultimate goal is to become their interlocutor. First, however, you need to identify the glyphs that comprise their distinctive tongues, using contextual clues to propose hypotheses before confirming their definition in your illustrated journal. Combining the linguistic focus of Heaven’s Vault with the deductive puzzle solving of Return Of The Obra Dinn, perhaps the most generous compliment you could pay Chants Of Sennaar is that such an enticing description isn’t overselling it by much, if at all. It begins in misleadingly straightforward fashion. A sign next to a lever features two pairs of glyphs, with a single shared symbol. It hardly takes a genius to work out that the difference is between ‘open’ and ‘close’, while your situation makes clear that the common factor is ‘door’. As you climb the tower, artworks that function like bilingual airport signs give you an early foothold. Otherwise, you’re on your own: before long, you find yourself with a string of unfamiliar symbols to parse. At which point your only option is to explore, examine your environment, talk to everyone, and figure out the rest. Occasionally, your protagonist will scribble in their notebook, presenting opportunities to match glyphs with the images they’ve jotted down – though you won’t necessarily have all the information you need without first covering more ground. By and large, you need only identify three or four glyphs in one go, and should you be certain of all but one, you can brute-force the last – though doing so tends to mean you’ve missed a vital piece of the puzzle, one that might yet stall you.

The inquisitive player is rewarded: often the process of pinpointing a term is a matter of combining contextual clues, gathered by exploring. Signposts and wall art – frequently crumbling and incomplete – offer pictorial guidance, while an NPC’s location and the gestures they use while speaking can nudge you in the right direction. At times, you’ll detect commonalities among the glyphs: in one language, ‘help’ looks a little like a telephone and ‘greetings’ a smiling face. When we identify ‘music’ we instinctively know that a similar ideogram with what looks like an adjacent audio wave can be interpreted as ‘instrument’. And with the icons for ‘plant’ and ‘death’ showing up in other glyphs, surrounded on three sides, we pencil in ‘garden’ and ‘graveyard’ (‘cemetery’, technically, but there’s no less gratification when chimes confirm our selection). 130

Developer Rundisc Publisher Focus Entertainment Format PC, PS4, Switch (tested), Xbox One Release Out now

Feeling slightly adrift fits the learning process, initial confusion giving way to gratifying comprehension

SNEAKING MY LANGUAGE

Chants Of Sennaar’s linguistic puzzles are supplemented by more traditional challenges involving rotating statues, ringing bells and channelling light from flaming torches. Among the Warriors you’ll need to don a disguise, fulfilling orders and completing forced-stealth sections, which are mercifully brief, and make some kind of thematic sense after the fact. Some environments are designed to disorient you, but this is the rare game that gets away with introducing a sewer maze (a combination of two of our least favourite things in games), which is another inclusion that belatedly feels apropos. Only one element feels out of place, though this supernatural presence does at least lend tension to the game’s visually dynamic climax.

Occasionally, you sense yourself being misled, though it’s more often a matter of your interpretation being slightly off. Illustrations of more abstract concepts can be misunderstood: does a drawing mean ‘go’, ‘up’ or ‘path’? As a queuing NPC, clearly hangry, grumbles at us, we confuse ‘refectory closed’ with ‘want food’. But such are the perils and pitfalls of learning the lingo: returning to previous locations and persons, armed with fresh knowledge, makes it easier to fill in the gaps, even with incomplete sentences rendered in broken English until you become fluent. To complicate matters, there are syntactical changes to consider: on one floor plurals might be a prefix; on another they’re a suffix; elsewhere it’s a matter of placing two singular nouns in a row, ‘me me’ in one language equating to ‘we’ in another. One group even talks a little like Yoda. Baffled, you will be. But rarely for long. True, Chants Of Sennaar makes few concessions to the modern player, particularly in the intricacy of its levels: its use of static angles means individual screens stick in the memory, but that’s less true of how they connect. But just as you find yourself wishing for a cartographer in each area, you realise there’s no defined map for learning a language, and that feeling slightly adrift fits the learning process, initial confusion giving way to gratifying comprehension. This could all seem drily anthropological, but for the playfulness with which it’s constructed. Some lessons are taught through minigames – an ancient Flappy Bird clone gives you access to a theatrical production, the viewing of which affords you greater insight into the Bards’ artistic predilections. After wrapping your brain around the flowing curves of that tongue, it’s hard not to delight in the geometric designs of the Alchemists’ glyphs, some of which resemble laundry-care symbols. The glut of terms you accumulate might seem overwhelming, until you realise that several correspond to numbers, and you recall a place where you can identify several of those. This is one of the game’s cleverest tricks: here, the difficulty curve plateaus, reflecting your own self-assurance in your burgeoning multilinguality. By this stage, you’ll be nailing journal spreads first time. All of this pays off handsomely in an endgame that subtly transforms certain areas, letting you move more freely through the floors as your linguistic expertise turns you into the tower’s unofficial translator. It brings to mind Wittgenstein’s assertion that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”, your mastery of these languages a testament to how boundaries can be expanded through immersion in other cultures. As its climactic moments form ties between the secular and the religious, allowing peoples of science and faith to find common ground, its underlying message sounds out loud and clear. Its thesis – that a multiplicity of cultures leaves a society profoundly enriched – 9 has never seemed more urgent and vital.

RIGHT There’s a handful of what might loosely be termed action sequences, which serve as pacebreakers rather than pulse-raisers; they’re straightforward enough that even those who would ordinarily avoid action games should pass them first time. The stealth sequences offer a touch more resistance; it’s worth getting caught once just to see a shadowy pursuer leap toward the camera. BELOW The distinct palettes for each stratum, and unique camera positions in each room, add visual variety to the crisply appealing art. MAIN This monkey-powered puppet theatre first requires you to find sustenance for its simian operator

ABOVE Reach the Anchorites at the top floor and the game introduces another twist: here, you’ll combine two glyphs to form a new word. It’s so satisfying to identify these that it’s almost a pity they’re introduced so late

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Gunbrella

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ithin minutes of starting Doinksoft’s action platformer, you encounter a timid fruit seller. Concerned for the whereabouts of her sister, she passes you a photo, asking you to keep an eye out for her in the next town over. She’s right to be anxious, it turns out: soon you’re embroiled in a rescue mission, one that turns out to be anything but a straightforward kidnapping. Still, when you finally unlock the cell in which she’s been held – a chime and a text prompt letting you know your journal of quests has been updated – you naturally relax your guard. What follows makes it apparent that all bets are off: this story is unlikely to play out the way you expect. Don’t be fooled, then, by the eccentric combination of parasol and shotgun you wield, or the squat characters who occupy this world. Gunbrella is a tale of true grit, and we don’t mean the grain effect that lends filmic texture to the characterful pixel art, casting a pall as gloomy as some of the narrative pivots here. A short monochromatic flashback sets the tone for a classic Western revenge drama tinged with the supernatural – though the real monsters are not the outsized creatures you encounter. Indeed, it’s not long before you begin to question the violent motivations of your own man with The Tinkerer can upgrade your attack power and reload speed, but he has plenty more to say besides. It’s worth talking to every vendor – their conversations add colour and charm to an otherwise brutal, pitiless world

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Developer Doinksoft Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC, Switch (tested) Release Out now

BOOM TOWNS

Gunbrella’s map comprises a series of stops along a railway: you hop on the train to travel between stations, before getting off and exploring. It’s a smart way to make a series of large but self-contained levels feel like one contiguous world; likewise the decision to have characters travel between locations, inviting you to check in on them later. And one plot development works small wonders in selling that alwaysthrilling illusion of a world that endures with or without you.

no name. (His identity is belatedly revealed, though it’s less significant than the context in which it arrives.) For the most part, however, you’ll be happy to simply let rip. The gunbrella makes short, grisly work of your opponents, human or otherwise: brown and grey rooms have usually been extensively redecorated in a vibrant shade of red by the time you exit. Its short range and reload time are countered by its infinite ammo and traversal capabilities (floating or ziplining over an enemy and blasting them in the back never ceases to delight), and if you really must keep your distance, you can pick up or buy machine-gun bullets, grenades, flamethrower fuel or sticky explosives. It shields you against turrets, too, and can be opened as a bullet approaches to send it back to its origin. Combat perhaps doesn’t develop quite enough, however, something exemplified by a protracted bore of a factory sequence that limits evasive manoeuvres. And though the bosses are wonderfully unpleasant in their design, they’re rather less engaging to fight: a couple are straightforwardly cheesed. Yet the story picks up the slack, and though its goofier elements lead to one or two severe tonal lurches, it delivers a string of genuinely startling moments. By the final reckoning, we’re invested in how it all shakes out; perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that the titular weapon is 7 not, in fact, Gunbrella’s most powerful asset.

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Sea Of Stars

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fter platformers, Metroidvanias and Roguelikes, it appears to be time for JRPGs to undergo a renaissance, as developers look not only to honour genre favourites, but to elevate them. Following Mathias Linda’s admired Chained Echoes, Sea Of Stars is The Messenger developer Sabotage Studios’ latest attempt to tap into that rich seam of 16bit nostalgia. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t contain ideas of its own. Each enemy has their own turn clock: one opponent may take two turns to ready an attack, another just one, and since your party can’t absorb a great deal of damage, taking them out efficiently is paramount. Symbols corresponding to specific skills appear while enemies are preparing a major attack; land them all and you’ll interrupt their charge. Further complexity is added by the need to land regular blows to power melee attacks; additionally, there are Mario & Luigi-style timed button presses to boost damage dealt and minimise injury in return. This all serves to make battles more dynamic – though while different combinations of enemies force you to adjust your approach regularly, the playable cast is rather small and their skills are lacking in variety. The story, meanwhile, centres on Valere and Zale, children born on the winter and summer solstice The outstanding boss design in Sea Of Stars includes many towering monsters. This grotesque ape thing is the Dweller Of Torment, one of the Fleshmancer’s creations that only your heroes are able to destroy

Developer/publisher Sabotage Studio Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release Out now

DL SEA

As part of the initial Kickstarter campaign, Sabotage Studio announced an expansion for Sea Of Stars back in 2020. Titled Throes Of The Watchmaker, this will be an independent side story that links Sea Of Stars even more closely to Sabotage Studio’s previous game, The Messenger. Both share a universe – the Watchmaker, responsible for Sea Of Stars’ outstanding Wheels minigame, was hinted at all the way back in 2018 in a text adventure on Sabotage’s Discord server.

respectively, who have been chosen to train as Solstice Warriors. These heroes are uniquely capable of defeating Dwellers, beasts created by the Fleshmancer, an immortal alchemist. So far, so straightforward, yet after this familiar opening, Sabotage confidently subverts expectations, delivering a clutch of surprises. It’s all the more unfortunate, then, that the plot should be hampered by uneven pacing and perfunctory writing. Twists, welcome though they are, are set up somewhat hastily, while the bland characterisation fails to live up to some splendid worldbuilding. That exquisitely fashioned world – rendered in a style that evokes the 16bit era while pushing the level of detail beyond what would have been possible then – is a joy to explore, offering a mixture of puzzles and wayfinding that consistently engages without resorting to roadblocks. Beyond its more involving traversal mechanics, Sea Of Stars honours its heritage through a variety of vividly imagined JRPG staples, while taking the occasional modern liberty. Certainly, few JRPG towns we visited back in the day bustled with chatty NPCs quite like this – though it’s a pity that attention to detail doesn’t quite carry over into its more formulaic, at times rigid approach to characterisation and combat. A fine effort, then, but a new Chrono Trigger it is not – and directly inviting such a comparison only 7 highlights the areas in which it falls short.

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Mediterranea Inferno

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aving left us shaken with psychological folkhorror Saturnalia, Santa Ragione returns to again instil a deep sense of anxiety. This time, it’s a different flavour of horror, as writer/director/artist Lorenzo Redaelli (Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star) confronts the existential dread wrought by the past three years. Yes, it’s another game about the pandemic, but it has a very different energy, delivered with a frankness as scorching as the summer sun alluded to by its title, and an eddying fury that burns almost as hot. Daringly, it invites us to identify with a trio of characters who can seem unlikeable. Andrea, Mida and Claudio are (or rather, were) regarded as i ragazzi del sole, the life and soul of the Milanese party scene, until COVID hit. Two years later, the ‘sun guys’ reconnect, their lives having followed very different directions during Italy’s lockdowns. While each acknowledges their privilege, Redaelli’s script risks losing audience sympathy, inviting you to pity a trio of attractive, popular, wealthy young men. But with the pandemic’s intrusion denying them a chunk of their salad days, their moments of self-centredness feel relatable. Indeed, this is a theme that feeds into how their reunion plays out. Ahead of Italy’s Ferragosto

Redaelli’s colourful hand-drawn art is by turns lucid and illusory, occasionally tipping into nightmarish psychedelia. 3D animation, photographs and even live-action footage contribute towards its mesmerising visual collage

Developer Eyeguys, Lorenzo Redaelli Publisher Santa Ragione Format PC Release Out now

MADAMA BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Not long after their arrival at Claudio’s grandfather’s villa, their home for the holidays, the trio encounters Madama – “a bit of a genie, a bit of a pusher”. After one shared phantasmagoria, she invites them to reinvent themselves via individual Mirages, accessed by paying to peel the magical fruit she offers. Four are required to “ascend to Heaven”, but that means prioritising one character’s desires over the others. Fall short, and the vacation loops back to day one.

celebration, the three have their own ideas of how they’d like to spend the preceding days; your role is to decide whose plan to follow. Temptation is placed in their path in the form of surreal Mirages, dreamlike reveries upon which one of the three can spend some of their ‘summer coins’. In doing so, they potentially deny the others their own chances for release. Do you act in one character’s self-interest, or share the opportunities among the group? In any case, what follows is an intoxicating, hallucinatory daydream, juxtaposing (and sometimes combining) religious and sensuous imagery. Forbidden fruit is a recurring symbol, presented with a similarly juicy, homoerotic charge as Call Me By Your Name’s peach scene. Between scenes of soul-scouring introspection, this is an intensely libidinous story, unafraid of leaning into on-the-nose visual metaphor, from phallic missiles to premature spurts of suncream. But that fruit has a bitter aftertaste. This is at times a biliously angry game, its central trio furious at their lost youth and the societal failures that have left them cynical about their future. But as summer ends, its melancholic undertow surfaces; Redaelli’s script captures how a lost friendship can be as wounding as the death of a loved one. In reckoning so candidly with the conflicting emotions we’ve experienced over the past few years, Mediterranea Inferno achieves a 8 purgative potency few of its peers can match.

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Eternights

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hat does dating look like during the apocalypse? When a cataclysmic event sees humans transforming into murderous monsters, you might assume romance to be a low priority compared to learning survival skills and scavenging, but this doesn’t stop Eternights earnestly taking the ‘I know a spot’ meme at face value. For your silent protagonist, every interaction with his attractive companions is the opportunity to grow in confidence, expression, acceptance and courage, in turn making him more desirable. We’d wager, however, that having his arm replaced with one that can conjure a blade to cut down hordes already makes him quite the catch. As you make your way through a locked-down city, trying to avert the next cataclysm (a calendar counts down the days until deadline), your stats and abilities growing in conjunction with the bonds you’ve forged with party members, the Persona comparisons are hard to avoid. The main difference is the focus on realtime rather than turn-based combat. While spending time with companions unlocks skills for them to assist you, such as pop idol Yuna’s health regeneration, they mostly hang back, letting you do the legwork. Often this amounts to perfect-dodging incoming attacks before While you have to be sparing about using companion skills, since the gauge doesn’t replenish during a dungeon run, they can still aid you in Elemental Fist attacks, provided you pit the correct element against an enemy’s shield

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Developer/publisher Studio Sai Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested) Release Out now

TIMEWASTING

The deadlines you’re set for completing dungeons are often generous, leaving you plenty of days to kill, though the dearth of available activities (companion sidequests are only available during daylight hours) mean you’re not so much juggling a busy social calendar but straining to fill it. Aside from some asinine minigames, such as breathing and squatting exercises, your time is better spent on scavenging excursions, which can be over in seconds if you know where to look.

following with a five-hit combo, culminating in a highdamage strike. Though you can unlock other sword skills, this is the most efficient way to charge up a gauge which lets you perform an Elemental Fist attack, essential against enemies protected by barriers. These also trigger a barrage of QTEs, from timing-based prompts to button-mashing, which are at least visually arresting enough to compensate for the combat’s weightlessness. Eternights suffers most from a lack of character: for all it borrows from Persona, Studio Sai has evidently not taken lessons from Atlus’s artists for its drab menus and loading screens. Your companions, including highly strung track runner Min and eccentric science researcher Sia, are pleasant enough, with their penchant for exaggerated anime expressions, but your interactions with them are undercut by dialogue options that come across as more creepy than flirtatious. Their paper-thin character arcs, meanwhile, discourage you from spending time with them for anything more than their utility: you’ll see them merely as ways of boosting your offensive or defensive stats rather than as individuals. And the nondescript metropolis you inhabit – which, outside of its indistinct dungeons, limits you to a train carriage that serves as a base and a few scavenging locations revisited ad nauseam – is so lifeless you wonder whether it’s worth saving. As dating5 centred RPGs go, we know a spot, and it’s not here.

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Finity

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s the title suggests, this methodical matchthree puzzler its characterised by its limits; the end, indeed, comes alarmingly quickly if you approach Finity in the manner of most of its kind. Eschewing the usual dopamine-spiking cascades and fireworks, this exacting, austere variation makes every turn count: rather than swiping with abandon, you tentatively slide each row and column on this 4x4 wraparound grid, knowing that each time you do, the tiles you move get closer to sticking. Should the descending number on a tile reach zero, it can only be moved either vertically or horizontally, not both; one more step and it locks in place. Only by shifting other rows or columns to make a match can get things moving again. And that turn might – and usually does – lead to another impasse elsewhere. That the tutorial is hosted by a snake feels more telling as you progress. All the while, the matches you make fill a bar, eventually unlocking a level-up phase. Here, you must connect three special tiles, themselves an extra complicating factor. On the lowest rung of the ladder, this is enough to rank up; by the time you reach the third level of Silver tier, you need to do this nine times, each levelling-up phase merely boosting the numbers In addition to new power-ups and tile types, each rank you ascend grants you an additional skin. Finish a Tempo track and you’ll unlock its ‘Infinite’ variation, although that title is something of a misnomer

Developer/publisher Seabaa Format iOS Release Out now

LOCKS BLOCKING BEATS

If taking your time is crucial in Classic mode, that’s not an option in Tempo, which tasks you with making matches quickly to gain hearts as a music track is steadily layered in, à la Lumines. A line passing down across the field reduces the number of each tile, increasing in speed as the song progresses. Each completed heart, meanwhile, effectively serves as an extra life, used automatically to reset the grid when you’re out of moves.

on the persisting tiles. There are, at least, other ways to stem the tide: a line of four affords the remaining tiles of the same colour an extra turn (two or three if you’re lucky); one power-up does likewise for a single tile, while another switches type. As your options narrow, these come as blessed relief but cause anxiety, too: there’s a gnawing concern that you’re using it either too soon or in the wrong place. Then split and conjoined tiles arrive, such that a power-up granting you the ability to swap two tiles feels like you’re being handed a plaster to treat a gunshot wound. It’s not, in other words, a relaxing, casual play: the polarising early response suggests it has broken the will of those accustomed to the more colourful task of crushing candy. Meet Finity on its own terms, however, and there is much to admire. Masterful use of haptics and audio ensures that when your finger, so often an unstoppable force, meets an immovable object, you hear and feel it. To play is to experience the pleasure of successfully picking a lock, or cracking a safe, or perhaps even repairing a watch: there is a constant sense of tension and release, as you find ways to free those gummed-up gears, to oil that rusted sliding-bolt mechanism, to feel the click of that tumbler dropping into place. When you do, there is no need for celebratory pyrotechnics: the satisfaction felt in 8 thumbs and brain is congratulations enough.

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Street Fighter II Turbo Mashing Start for a rematch with one of Edge’s first loves By NathaN BrowN Developer/publisher Capcom Format Arcade, SNES Release 1992 (Arcade), 1993 (SNES)

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o you remember the first time? We imagine you do. Perhaps your first contact with Street Fighter II was in your local arcade – the special-move sound effects booming around the hall, finding you through the sweat and smoke, drawing you in like a coin-operated tractor beam. Maybe it was the US SNES conversion on the shelf of your favourite import shop, a gurning Blanka mid-Rolling Attack on a shocked Chun-Li. (You were probably shocked, too, when you saw the price tag.) Or perhaps you were taken in by the videogame magazines of the time that collectively lost their marbles over that immediately iconic cast, and the boundary-breaking, industryshaking gameplay they made possible. In the run-up to the release of SNES Street Fighter II, Capcom US didn’t take out a single print ad – there was no point. It was already on the cover of every magazine going. Edge’s first encounter with Street Fighter came, appropriately enough, in issue one, with the debut Testscreen section awarding 9 to the SNES release of Street Fighter II Turbo, and giving Capcom UK’s marketing department a dream pull-quote: “The ultimate beat-’em-up”. We’ll leave the excerpts there (once you get to our age, this sort of exercise can feel like reading your teenage diary), but the review presciently identifies the way that, across the decades, Street Fighter games have been refined gradually, in ways only the most passionately engaged players will even notice. Turbo’s changes were at once minor and utterly defining, designed not only in response to player feedback but also to market realities. For the first time on SNES, both players could pick the same world warrior; the four bosses, unplayable in the vanilla version of the game, were available on the character-select screen. (Both features were introduced in SFII: Champion Edition, the Mega Drive port of which was released in the UK just a week before SNES Turbo rendered it obsolete; the PC Engine version shares the page in E1 with SNES Turbo, scoring 8.) But the game’s signature addition, as implied by its title, is speed. There are four settings on offer, with another six

unlocked via a cheat-code input that to this day remains burned into the muscle memories of a generation of videogame fans. (We just checked and, yup, still got it.) The speed settings were initially conceived, curiously enough, as a sort of anti-counterfeit measure. As Street Fighter II’s popularity took hold in arcades around the world, Capcom could barely keep up with demand, and bootleggers stepped into the void. At first, they simply cloned the arcade board and sold it at a discounted rate, most commonly into markets where Capcom had no official presence. Before long, they began tinkering with the game code and selling these coin-operated ROM hacks to arcade operators the world over. The most famous SFII bootleg, most commonly known as Rainbow Edition or Blackbelt Edition, even popped up in one of Edge’s local arcades, a laser-tag spot with a front-of-house videogame selection; now a block of student flats, it sits next to today’s Edge HQ.

On first inspection,

Blackbelt Edition (as the Bath branch of Quasar had it) was simply daft. Special movies could be performed in the air, and projectiles tracked their opponents. Characters could zoom across the screen in an instant, attack, then instadash back to full screen. By pressing Start, you could even switch characters in realtime mid-match. But it struck a chord for more than its outlandish reimagining of Street Fighter II’s fundamentals; most versions ran 25 per cent faster than the vanilla game, and players loved it. In Matt Leone’s terrific oral history of Street Fighter II, James Goddard, a competitive SFII player who turned his love of the game into a job at Capcom, tells how his pitch of a speed increase was initially dismissed at the developer’s Japan HQ. The team, particularly the game’s planner, Akira Nishitani, were concerned that players wouldn’t have time to react to their opponent’s moves if the game ran faster, and the game would become less strategic as a result. Goddard was insistent, believing a faster version of SFII’s immaculate balance would resonate more with players than Blackbelt Edition’s high-speed brokenness. To settle the argument, Capcom held a location test, inviting Japanese players to try a version of Street Fighter II: Champion

TIME EXTEND

Edition that was running 15 per cent faster than usual. They loved it, and that was the end of the argument. Goddard got his way. The influence of the bootleggers can even be felt in the new special moves with which Turbo blesses almost the entire cast. (Only the movesets of Guile, who was more than strong enough in the vanilla game, and the newly playable bosses for whom overfamiliarity wasn’t a concern, were left untouched.) And there is certainly a touch of the ROM hack in some of the additions, at least at first glance. Chun-Li could now perform her Spinning Bird Kick in the air, likewise Ryu and Ken with their Hurricane Kick; Zangief’s Spinning Lariat had an alternate, faster mode; Honda and Blanka gained vertical equivalents of their Sumo Headbutt and Rolling Attack. Perhaps most outlandishly, Dhalsim gained a teleport.

Turbo, and Champion Edition before it, represented a huge change of trajectory for the company. It had made a competitive game that was so deep in its complexity that tiny changes could feel transformative – and which had amassed an audience that was so in tune with that complexity that the tweaks, taken together, could almost feel like a new game. Paying attention to what players are saying, collating their feedback and tweaking

THREE DECADES LATER, WITH STREET FIGHTER 6 ON SHELVES, IT IS STRIKING HOW MUCH OF TURBO’S SPIRIT ENDURES

Visual design was a huge focus for SFII: more than half of the original development team were artists by trade

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Yet these additions were not solely, or even primarily, designed to beat the hackers at their own game. Rather, they were intended to fill in the holes in the characters’ playstyles, mitigating their weaknesses, opening up strategic avenues and exit routes from the existing ones. Blanka and Honda had previously struggled to deal with jumpins and projectiles; their new moves offered a solution to both. Aerial Hurricanes helped Ryu and Ken escape the corner. Zangief’s Lariat had full-body invincibility, making him less vulnerable to sweeps; Dhalsim’s teleport created space for those rangy limbs; and Chun-Li’s fireball was a much-needed tool for creating and sustaining pressure. This was new territory for Capcom. Until now, when it had a hit game on its hands, it had thought in terms of sequels rather than updates. In this context we can say that

the game accordingly, while sprinkling in a little magic? This isn’t just good fightinggame design, it’s the backbone of today’s game industry, and while Capcom would hardly lay claim to having invented the balance patch, it was the first company to attempt it on such a large, public scale. It would take that idea and run with it.

Three decades later, with Street Fighter 6 newly on shelves, it is striking how much of Turbo’s spirit endures, and how little the core visual language of Street Fighter has changed. Two warriors face off, viewed from the side, beneath two big health bars either side of a ticking timer. The old faces are still around: all eight members of the core Turbo cast feature in SF6 at launch, and history suggests the absentee bosses will probably join the fray via DLC in the years to

One of Capcom Japan’s concerns with Turbo’s speed increase was that specialmove inputs would be too hard to pull off. Here, Ryu disproves the theory

HIT ’EM WHERE IT HERTZ SFII Turbo’s speed boost may have excited Japanese players at the first location test, and given Capcom a way to counter the global spread of Rainbow and Blackbelt Edition, but for players in certain parts of the world it served a far more fundamental purpose. Players in countries using the PAL TV standard – where displays were limited to a 50Hz refresh rate, a huge downgrade from the 60Hz NTSC standard of Japan and North America – had never played console SFII at the intended speed; Turbo let them put that right. Sure, black borders still squished the characters to ludicrous proportions, but consumers were rather more easily pleased back then.

A familiar sight for Arcade Mode players. A CPUcontrolled Guile doesn’t need to charge special moves, and can prove to be an impenetrable wall

While modern variants of the original cast largely play close to type, Dhalsim has been transformed, his keepaway gameplay bolstered with surprising combo potential

come. Even the old special-move inputs are the same; if you could throw a fireball in 1993, you can still throw one today. Sure, the games are more complex now, the skill ceiling raised ever higher over the years to meet the demands of one of the most passionate competitive scenes around, but if you played Street Fighter II Turbo then, you could load up the Grand Finals match from this year’s Evo SF6 tournament and still understand it. Few of the games featured in the first issue of Edge have endured the three decades since, but then few games enjoy the luxury of being built on such immaculate foundations. There has been an awful lot of Street Fighter in Edge’s lifetime; we have reviewed 24 games to bear its title, almost one per year on average. Throughout, the pattern has been largely the same as it was in 1993: one of gradual, gentle iteration, and the occasional step change along the way.

Coming from such a crowded stable, SFII Turbo has faded from public consciousness over the years. Only the most popular incarnation of each Street Fighter game has hung around. SFIII: Third Strike has effectively erased its predecessors, A New Generation and Double Impact, from memory; Ultra Street Fighter IV renders its forebears irrelevant. Street Fighter II is today most readily associated with Super SFII Turbo, the last of its line, a game whose extended roster and peerless balance – providing the secret unlockable character Akuma is banned, as he has always been at competition level – mean it is still played at tournaments today. But SFII Turbo was the beginning of the end, in a way, the inflection point at which Street Fighter stopped being a free-forall and began its life as a hardcore pursuit – where success meant learning two dozen matchups, drilling long combo strings to muscle memory, and undertaking a degreelevel study of frame data. Super Turbo had more characters, all with multiple movesets. Juggle combos, throw escapes and super moves were introduced. In this context, SFII Turbo has a fair claim to being the defining version of the game that changed it all; the global smash that transformed the arcade scene, settled the 16bit console war, and spawned a genre that, 30 years later, is still going strong. Sure, perhaps you had to be there to truly appreciate it, but like many of the hit games of Edge’s formative years, that was all part of the charm. “The ultimate beat-’em-up”? Indeed.

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A progress report on the games we just can’t quit

Doom Developer/publisher Id Software Format Just about everything, including calculators, potatoes, fridges, pregnancy tests… Release 1993

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n a big anniversary, it feels appropriate to look back at one of Edge’s most talked-about early reviews – our assessment of Doom: Evil Unleashed. In it, we praised the speed, vertical action and horror chops of this shareware shooter, but marked it down for its lack of variety and the inability to point the camera up and down, eventually awarding it 7. But what of that concluding line, so often repeated (and just as often misquoted) in the years since? “If only you could talk to these creatures,” it lamented, “then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances… Now, that would be interesting.” As it turned out, our writer wasn’t alone in yearning for a social dimension to the nascent FPS genre. Two years on, Strife brought speaking NPCs to the Doom engine. Half-Life introduced intelligent allies two years after that. By 2000, Deus Ex had us conducting complex relations with multiple factions at the end of a shotgun. Doom’s modding scene, meanwhile, has allowed Id’s 1993 original to incorporate countless new mechanics – including conversation. In 2018, JP LeBreton released Mr Friendly, which “repurposes any Doom level into an Animal Crossinglike nonviolent social space where each monster has a name and something to say”. You play as the titular

Guardian Demon, working to improve the lives of Hell’s minions in the aftermath of a space-marine rampage, making time for the odd fishing break. Elsewhere on Doomworld’s WAD database (which today counts nearly 20,000 maps, level packs and total conversions) you’ll find Sigil, an unofficial fifth episode by Doom co-creator John Romero; multiple offerings from Cyriak Harris, known for his music videos for the likes of Run The Jewels; and, perhaps most unexpected of all, a mod that has been involved in 2023’s game-of-theyear conversation, three decades on from this series’ debut. My House, Steve ‘Veddge’ Nelson’s meta-horror, comes with a backstory of a floppy disk belonging to a dead friend. Beyond that, we’ll say only that it is best experienced firsthand, without further commentary. Yet Doom survives, not only as a modding platform, nor the progenitor of more advanced firstperson adventures. With the distance of history, we are able to appreciate the paradoxical sophistication of this FPS that communicates in grunts and roars: its demanding resource management, layered level design and weapons best saved for certain targets. For the imp, a shotgun; for the pinkie, the chainsaw. This depth has fuelled Id Software’s reboots, and a wealth of boomer shooters. Doom, it transpires, always had plenty to say. n

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