The Complete Guide to Xbox One 1858708354, 9781858708355

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C I V D A L A I T N E ESS ee THE Score

XBOX MAGAZ INE

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO

ONE Rie

MUST-READ =HANDS-ON VERDICT

' INSIDE!

DISCOVER THE ULTIMATE & WAY TO ENJOY TV

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EXPAND GAMES TO

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YOUR PHONE FOR FREE NEW GAMES THAT

GAM ES

PREVIEWED!

RYSE > Brutal combat and | jaw-dropping visuals!

LEARN AS YOU PLAY

FORZA 5 > It’s the world’s most realistic racing game!

DEAD RISING 3 Fight and survive in the ultimate zombie game!

TITANFALL > Spectacular shooting from the creators of Call of Duty!

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO

ESSENTIAL

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ON EVERY

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XBOX ONE

FEATURE

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THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO

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Contact information 2 Balcombe Street, London, NW1 6NW Tel: 020 7042 4000 www.oxm.co.uk

Editorial Team Edit Editor:Jon Hicks Art editor: John Strike Production: Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Jenny Meade

Contributors Writing: Corey Cohen, Francesca Reyes, Dave Rudden, Jon Hicks, Jon Blyth, Matt Lees, Aoife Wilson, Dan Griliopoulos. Nick Cowen, Mike Channel, Richard Meade , Edwin Evans-Thirlwell Design: Richard Hood, Matt Orton

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Production Production Manager: Mark Constance Production Co-ordinator: Marie Quilter Senior Editorial Group Senior Editor, Games: Tim Clark Group Art Director, Games: Graham Dalzell Management Head of Games: Lee Nutter Deputy MD, Technology, Film & Games: Clair Porteous MD, Technology, Film & Games: Nial Ferguson

Welcome... WA

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Console gaming has changed. When the Xbox 360 launched, it was a box under your TV that played discs. Eight years on, it's the front end for a vast collection of digital titles and increasingly ingenious online modes, and shares your attention with a phone that does

many similar things. It still, of course, plays discs. Microsoft has designed its successor to do all those things from the outset, but better. This isn’t just a shinier box with crisper graphics - it's acomplete rethink of what a videogame console should offer. By tying the hardware's considerable horsepower to Xbox Live's thousands of servers, Microsoft has enabled the creation of games that are smarter, bigger and more responsive to players, with over 60 new titles confirmed for the platform at the time of writing. All that’s backed by a redesigned controller anda dramatically improved Kinect sensor, which can actually see your heart

beat. Over the pages that follow, we'll take you through all this in exhaustive detail - the games, the features, and how they'll change how you play. Enjoy the ride.

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Everything you need to know about Xbox One from the best writers in the industry Meet Xbox One 006 Say hello to the future of console gaming. Get the full rundown, with contributions from the team at

Xbox HQ in Redmond. Q&A

016

All the big questions “aoe the name, the launch and the features coming this autumn, answered by

our experts.. 020 Only on Xbox One he spectacular lineup of exclusive games coming to Xbox One this year and beyond. 048 Interview: Phil Spencer The boss of Microsoft’s internal studios on picking the lineup and what's coming next.

57 Things You Must Know About Xbox One Every important

detail broken down

054 into usseful,

easily-remembered chunks. 064 The Witcher 3 is e showcas E3 t's Microsof of) star the Find out why most exciting RPG on XOX One. the SE oe Watch Dogs your mobile phone tr Take control of Chi this smart super-connected action game. 082 Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag Ubisoft’s beloved action franchise go¢ s all piratical ——————————— SS

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for its Xbox One debut. 096 Destiny offering game, next its reveals Halo of The creator sci-fi shooting on a massive scale 106 Rainbow Six: Patriots Has this long-delayed reboot still got what it takes to top the Xbox Live charts? 122 Thief if you Because Garratt, to You've got to hand it don’t, he'll just take it anyway

132

Not Anite confirmed for Xbox One yet, but we fancy

Powerstar Golf Brightly-coloured bogies

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| Zoo Tycoon Battlefield 4 140 | (Cuddle animals using Kinect. Project Spark DICE’s astonishing tech makes this feel like the first | Make your own Xbox games, on your XDox. proper next-generation shooter Black Tusk |

its chances of arriving soon.

Game Listing Meet the most

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What little we know of Microsoft's secret project.

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Every detail available on the most-wanted Xbox One games Forza Motorsport 5

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Dead Rising 3 Fight the zombie hordes with DIY. Ryse: Son of Rome

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The Crew 074 The spiritual successor to Test Drive Unlimited. Trials Fusion 081 The quirk 032 / Highly addictive motorcycle trickery. Titanfall | Call of Duty: Ghosts 090 Awesome mech battles from the CoD creators. | Activision’s juggernaut endure on next-gen? 034 Sunset Overdrive 094 | The Evil Within Candy-coloured carnage in an open world The creator of Resident Evil goes back to horror. 035 | Minecraft: Xbox One Edition | Need for Speed: Rivals 095 The PG hit turned Xbox hit will be an Xbox One hit. EA's new racer looks surprisingly slick, 035 | Crimson Dragon | 102 | Cyberpunk 2077 Fly dragons, have fights. 035 |i The other RPG project from CD Projekt RED Kinect Sports Rivals 104 | Dying Light A Kinect exclusive from the experts at Rare. | 036 | More zombie hunting with a nocturnal twist. Quantum Break | 118 | Batman: Arkham Origins Time-bending action game meets TV show. | e that’s not yet confirmed for Xbox One, | Plants Vs Zombies: | arrive SOON eI jough. 037 | Garden Warfare Don your sandals and get ready for war.

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FIFA 14

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The world’s favourite football game returns Below Metal Gear Solid V: indie game? | What lies within this mysterious The Phantom ban 038 LocoCycle | You're a sassy motorcycle from the future. Honestly. | Kojima’s legendary series goes open-world aoe Marvel SuperPeres 040 Halo

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ClN= Oe THEM ALL Eight years afterit revealed Xbox 360, Witelgexsve)a mmmare\sumn ilarcll\ammel alexe)’>1a-1e munis replacement: Xbox One. It’s eight times more powerful, K=),4elevalsianarcuiny,

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elcome to a new way of thinking

The hardware

about videogames. In following the Xbox 360, Microsoft hasn't just done a straight upgrade to

and “even alittle plain" "Understated, “elegant”, are how we'd describe the looks of the Xbox One. On the outside, the rectangular box

the increasingly geriatric silicon.

Kinect has had a comparably dramatic

| — about the size of an Xbox 360 (except it's

It's thought through how the narrower and taller) — looks a bit more like an games industry is changing, and —_entertainment device than a game console,

will continue to change, and built

withasleek black exterior that's amix of glossy

something that, inthe words of — andblack finishes. Two flat, touch-sensitive out-going division head Don switches on the front turn it on and off and Mattrick, will last the next ten operate the disc drive, while the almost years, imperceptible controller-sync button |s subtly

That means it's not just about coming up with higher-definition shooters (although those are represented) or improving the pad design (although it has) or rolling out lots of exclusive games (although itwill be), It’s about thinking about how you play games, how you communicate, and how you socialise, inan age when theinternetisbecoming ubiquitous, kids play Angry Birds before they can welk, and people use TV and Twitter simultaneously. Between Microsoft's 21 May reveal and our behind-closed-doors interviews with key members of the team, we've seen more of the new console, the new games and the new Xbox Live than anyone else, Some details are still being nailed down, and willbe released later in the year, but thisisthe most detailed writeup anywhere.

LIQUID GLOSS ~ deg The new system has been designed to roll with the

big home-entertainment dogs. The main finish is

described as “liquid black”,

and is a glossier version of

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Re ee Gok SED Sidesienst Thenisinconsole is exactly half-and-half liquid black and cooling grille, adesign that's repeated on the power brick

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(about the same size-as the 3605 model)and the

updated Xbox Live interface. It’s designed to be laid pa orcalyinatnianoad upriehtlikethexXhox 360

placed on the left side of the console. Roughly half of the exterior plating atop the consoleis bladed, to allow air flow and cooling for the circuitry and heatsink below. Peek inside the console (as Microsoft allowed us to do),and you'll see alarge fan directly atop that heatsink. The company’s taken great care to avoid the Xbox 360's overheating problems andits famed noise level. Trust us when we say the new system makes even less sound than an Xbox 360 Slimrunning aninstalled game; we actually listened to the Xbox Onein a soundproofed room, and its miniscule noise level is startling, nside, it's a significant upgrade to the Xbox 360."In the 360 we had 500 million transistors that did CPU and GPU compute, and in this generation we have five billion transistors,"Says

|

icrosoft is well aware of how popular the original is, but significant.As you'll see over the page, updated rumble tech and a smoother

design should keep people happy -there's also anew data port where the old headphone jack used to be, although Microsoft hasn't yet revealed what this will be used for. ;

Prime mover © Therevamped Kinect has received should dwarf those controller enhancements, though. While — we didn’tget to personally test the new = motion-control device (which will come bundled |with every new Xbox), Microsoft gave us a tech demo of some of its new features, and they seemimpressive. Oneof the most obvious new aspectsIs Kinect's abilitytoautomatically identify each personinahousehold as they walkin the room, and then instantly bring up their entertainment experience of choice (be ita TV show, amovie, a game and so on) on the TV screen, That function alone feels very next-gen and could go along way toward making gamers feel “connected” to their console - although some of

hardware boss Todd Holmdahl. There's 16 times — the improvements to the device's performance vas

as much RAM, too, although it's been carefully split between a dedicated game-exclusive section and a multipurpose app section - the |

- and the —makeover -more on that shortly much-loved controller has also been brought up to date. It's asubtle improvement, because

better to enable instant startup and instant neater

Switching between games and programs.

:

are arguably more key to its long-term appeal. As we saw in our demo, Kinect 2.0 has amuch wider field of view, making it much easier for the

device to read multiple players :simultaneously ; ;

—handy for a six-player game like Kinect Party,

XBOXONE WWW.Oxm.co.Uk

Xbox One

XBOX PRESIDENT »DON MATTRICK SEESTHE FUTURE

SPECS APPEAL HOW THE XBOX 360 AND XBOX ONE COMPARE cu: ti nthuses Price, suggesting that the game will react to real life events. “It's not just openworld. It’s living world. Something we could only do on Xbox One.” The video we've seen looks more like proof of concept than fully-functioning game demo, but when you've got a concept this bright and fresh, were easily convinced, Fuse? We've aa forgiven you, Insomniac, on

Endless carnage can be hell on a man’s fringe.

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Breathe it in deep — a new cartoon world.

www.oxm.co.uk

Xbox One

Publisher: Microsoft Studios * Developer: Rare Release; Nov « Players; TBC * Co-op: TBC

Putting the new Kinect in the hands of the masters

Like in Forza, you'll see cloud-powered foes.

"Your character will be Upleciase to the cloud so people can play against you in your absence ”

Publisher: Microsoft Studios e Developer: 4] Studios Release: TBC « Players: TBC * Co-op: TBC :

Bigger, busier, and essentially the same

_ Get ready toflambé your en mies. : Publisher: Microsoft Studios e Developer: Grounding/Land Ho! Release: TBC * Players: 1-3 ¢ Co-op: 2 -3 players

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his fascinating new title from of this. It looks like a canned, pre-rendered Alan Wake creator Remedy event, but it’s all a living game system. You incorporates both live-action TV can actually freeze time at any point during - Starring a supernaturallythe collision and explore the world, gifted child - and amore traversing the ruined bridge structure conventional third-person action game. frozen in the act.of being ripped apart, with “Storytelling is in Remedy’s DNA,” says all the Al and interactivity you'd expect from Microsoft Studios’ Phil Spencer. "They anormal game level. “These huge set-pieces tell stories that are amazing.” So the actually turn into, not these passive CG studio got right on board with Microsoft's assets, but something that you actually get plans for TV, and cooked up something to play with,” enthuses Spencer. that’s part TV show and part game. Still more ambitious is how Quantum “Choices you make in the game can Break will handle the split between Release impact the show and the show will live-action and game. “Our goal isn't change based on choices people that we've fully cut 13, 14 episodes make in the game,” reveals of a television show that runs while Spencer. “The mechanic revolves we release the game, but that these two around time, and people who can paths intertwine. As a gamer I'll make stop time - yes, you can make a decisions that will impact how the TV show Blinx joke here - and the plays out and vice versa. We want to add technical capability of Xbox One really interactivity to the video as well, which starts to shine.” Namely, instead of having feeds how we progress the game,” Big talk, to turn the game off and switch into video and born of the interaction between playback for a cutscene, the Xbox One is Microsoft's games team and its new LA gutsy enough to “let you interact with entertainment studio. “Over the last ten those set-pieces directly, and play in them,” years we've seen how games change when

The scene in the trailer - in which the

a console is connected to the internet,” says

child triggers a glitchy memory of a tanker ploughing through a bridge - is an example

Spencer. “Now, television is going to become more interactive.” Tantalising stuff. NYAWAWVAC Cnn On]

Game

Plants Visi 40)9016)[s,s)

Garden Warfare Putting fun and puns back into zombie shooters, only on Xbox t was about time PopCap did something new with its brilliant “flower defence” game, Plants vs. Zombies. It’s been re-released and repackaged on every platform known to technology, and like excitable suckers, we've bought it again every

time. Maybe PopCap was just seaching for another pun as good as “flower defence”. Something like... Garden Warfare? We'll

admit to being disappointed it didn't go with

Petal of Honor. A third-person online-only shooter with wonderful Team Fortress 2 aesthetics and massive class-based squads, PVZ has the sun-spitting Sunflower acting as a healer and the spine-shooting Cactus being a crack sniper. The Peashooter revisits his role as an all-round soldier, and can set down roots and turn himself into a machine-gun turret. The Chomper, which wW twitter.com/oxmuk

both Xbox 360 and Xbox One in early 2014. would eat a whole zombie before fallingasleep inthe main game, has transformedintoamelee _ As for the original tower-defence version, that's getting a proper sequel on iOS brawler. The waves of zombies are broken — but we bet it'll show up on XBLA too, up with trap-laying tower defence and offer some sort of SmartGlass) elements, making this a great mix of style cross-over functionality with Horde mode and Orcs Must Diel. Garden Warfare. P\/Zhad a huge roster of plants, and loads of them seem to be in place in Garden Warfare, even if they're not all playable characters, The sweetcorn has been turned into a popcorn airstrike, and the bulbs of garlic that used to repel zombies can now be called in as support drones. It's all wonderfully stupid, and it's great to have a shooter that's as far away from the gritty standard and the usual brown landscapes as it's possible to be. A familyfriendly Horde mode? Kudos. Garden Warfare looks like a dumper-truck full Pity anyone who of co-operative fun, and somewhat to our tramples on their patch. surprise it's a timed Xbox exclusive - coming to

OX ONE PREVIEW

Publisher: Microsoft Studios * Developer: Capybara Games Release: TBC « Players: 1 Co-op: TBC

Going underground in style

Don't let this picturesque screen fool you.

Relee GVelseVelstelle generally fast pace andrewarding” ~

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Publisher: Microsoft Studios * Developer: Twisted Pixel Release: Winter » Players: 1 * Co-op: None

Loco? You said it,Twisted Pixel

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First look: Assassin's Creed 4 charts new waters

PREVIEWS. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag preview: Charting new

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon hands-on: Acceptable in the

waters

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NEW LOOK. MORE CONTE

BROWSING.

INTERVIEWS Ubisoft's First Lady: Jade Raymond on building Ubisoft

Toronto

Publisher: Microsoft Studios * Developer: 343 Industries Release: 2014 « Players: TBC * Co-op: TBC

Anda

Spielberg project in the pipeline?

Chief decides to give it all up and become a Jedi.

“Master Chief is wandering in the desert when the ground sives way"

Publisher: Microsoft Studios * Developer: Zoe Mode Release: November ¢ Players: TBC * Co-op: TBC

Taking a swing at next gen golfing

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He's quite clearly going to eat it, not pet it.

Publisher: Microsoft Studios « Developer: Frontier Developments Release: TBC « Players: 1-4 * Co-op: 2-4

It's arhino-eat-chimp world in there

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Publisher Microsoft Studios Developer Team Dakota

A digital canvas for little big imaginations do this with the controller, or Kinect voice commands. Once you've got your world, you can zoom in and start manicuring the _ landscape. This too can be done with \\ the controller - but you can also use a ) ) tablet or touchscreen using

f all the early Xbox One titles, Project Spark is the most unusual. Based on Microsoft's Kodu Games toolset for -

Xbox Live Indie Games, it takes the world-building versatility of Minecraft and throws in the

elegant world-sculpture of From

014. ene

Dust, creating asandbox youcanuse to make your own games. Building a world is a matter of selecting a terrain, a climate and a time of day. You can

SmartGlass to give a more fingery

flourish. You can raise hills, dig

— trenches and construct bridges with an easy flick of the digit. Houses and nonplayer characters can be dropped in, surfaces like grass or

ice can simply be painted on, and you can create more elaborate decoration by throwing down “biomes” such as an automatically-generated forest. At any time, you can hit Play to take control of your character and explore the world from whatever perspective you choose. “Programming” is a fairly simple business _of selecting something and specifying what it does. For the player character, you can specify if they use first or third person, for example. For something else - like a rock, or a goblin - you can give it a ready-made behaviour or build one out of a simple set of

“if” and “then” arguments. So tell a rock that “if” player is close, “then” follow it, and hey presto, you've got yourself a pet rock. Make sure you remember to name it. From these simple tools extremely elaborate games can be built - 2D black and white platformers, top-down shooters in the

vein of Geometry Wars and a slew of other

It'd be more disturbing human was on the spit.

unexpected styles, all of which can be played co-op. Given the wondrous creations that have been made using the far clunkier tools of Minecraft, Project Spark's output should rival the pick of Indie Games for demented creativity - particularly as the basic version will be a free-to-play ae download, supported by paid DLC. ONE

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Black Tusk

Black Tusk Microsoft's most mysterious exclusive shows a Sliver of flesh he most mysterious entry in Microsoft's exclusive lineup is sosecretitdoesn’'tevenhavea

fires a curious-looking gun, but instead of a bullet being fired, we're transported confusingly onto a circuit board. It's all quite

title. Black Tusk is the name of

exquisitely cryptic, and whether this means

the studio-amachore-brandof the substantially less mavericksounding Microsoft Vancouver. Renamed in November 2012, Black Tusk has been working silently ona new triple-A franchise ever since. The phrase currently being thrown about is “next big entertainment franchise”. Black Tusk is one of five new studios that Microsoft is investing in for Xbox Oneexclusive titles. Its brief is to create a triple-A blockbuster, a generation-defining icon - and in the build-up at €3, the game was set up to follow Halo into the hall of

gaming ultra-fame.

hacking mini-games or a world filled with robots, we'd be reckless to speculate. Digging around in job listings suggests that the studio has four new IPs in development, and it’s currently recruiting for people to create “outstanding single-player experiences in a core AAA game’. It’s — signed up veterans of Crysis, Call of Duty, Splinter Celland even Need For Speed, ensuring the game has pedigree even if the rw studio doesn't. We await more news. rt |

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that’s far more affecting than the suburban

charge headlong into conflict with you.

sequence, yet lasts a fraction ofthe time. A woman is trapped in the back of acab and pleading for help, but before you have time to think she's silenced by gunfire, anda thick rivulet of blood runs down the door. There's nothing you can do to save her. It’s a shocking reminder of the lethality of the firefights-

Instead they'll intelligently use cover, ensure that all entrances and exits in an area are guarded and generally make your The average life of a terrorist life difficult. in previous Rainbow games was four seconds — it’s closer to 40 this time around. d

which applies to you as well. Headshots mean

Taking the lead

instant death and if you're hit at point-blank range with a shotgun, they'll be picking you up with a bucket and spade. t'snot| ike the enemies are going to give you an easy ride, Alhas clearly been a huge priority and even for our ve ry early first look, most of the systems seem o be in place. Eac henemy

Still, you've got your own team o tacticians to watch your back, in this case ‘Snake Oil’ and ‘Banshee’. They're far cannier than your standard A buddy, which makes them all the easier to boss around, If you were daunted bythe prospectof

tacticsinprevious gamesin the

[eaBeaimsed XBOXONE

78 XBOXONE FEATURE Rainbow Six amps up the horror of the human cost.

Gaiieed series, you'll be relieved to hear that there's asingle-button context-sensitive order system, which assumes that when youpointat something and click it, youwanttodothemost sensible thing. Click ona door and your team will Stack up against it, click against cover and they'll head for it, click on anenemy and they'llengage or suppress the foe, It takes all the tedious work out of being aheroic, fearless leader of men, leaving you to bask in the glory, ; é ;

Aims and objectives

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Naturally, if you're ahardened commando used to having full tactical control, there's the

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identify how heavily armed they are - crucial

Sometimes the wrong

outcome is unavoidable.

= when the terrorists look like regular American citizens and aren't necessarily waving their — guns around. The fiction is thatit’sa — miniaturised combination of X-Ray and the backscatter technology used by airport security to peek at people in the buff. We'd be amazed if —_that kind of compromise between safety and privacy isn'thandled in the storyline, but either way the red-hued overlay is going to be absolutely essential for plotting how you

approach a potential firefight. Dirty tricks

option to micromanage your motley crew. You Screw it up by alerting enemies to your can disengage their follow commands and set presence and you'll have to get more hands-on them up at specific places for more with the tactics, including what the developer sophisticated synchronised takedowns, There's calls ‘dirty breaching’. This is what you have to even abutton onthe D-pad dedicated = dowhenaroom full of bad guys has gone from to ‘go codes’ ensuring you can time ‘snoozing and scratching themselves’ to ‘alert your plays perfectly. Tactics in and looking to decorate the walls with your Patriots are as Simple or as deep as brains’ One way to increase your chances of youneed them toO be. coming out alive is to use the vision mode to spy

.

The other tactical

through cover and tag the most immediate

advantage you have Is an enhanced vision mode, similar to Batman's 1 Detective Vision, that \ allows you to see & = through walls and

threat so your team doesn't run blindly into a room and directly past an MP5-toting bad guy Stacked up in the doorway, Sadly, even if you get everything right, Ubisoft Montreal is adamant that you be faced with tragedy. As Rainbow clears the (aimee!

An eerie realism adds to the

tension on the bridge, ONE XBOXONE

www.oxm.co.uk

F

Rainbow Six: Patriots

SIX OF THE BEST THE HIGHLIGHTS OF RAINBOW SIX’'S EXTENSIVE HISTORY

19:

RAINBOMSI

This iconic tactical shooter was far more technical than any FPS around at the time. Success relied on careful planning before every single mission, and enemies were positively lethal.

yd=Te)4 The first Xbox game was slightly different from the PC version, cutting out the planning stage and relying instead on on-the-fly tactics. Your squad responded to. voice commands.

yd=Te)4 An Xbox exclusive, this ‘semi-sequel’ took advantage of the brilliance of Xbox Live and the previous game's popularity as a multiplayer shooter.

p.{=1e) 4 Abandoning the tactical element, Lockdown was much more like a standard first-person

shooter. The game featured a heartbeat sensor similar to Patriots’ new vision mode.

XBOX 360 The quintessential cover shooter was a revelation when it arrived on the Xbox 360. The setting seemed bizarre but the visually noisy environment made it a unique challenge.

XBOX 360

& Tom Ciancy’s N

Arriving just over a year after the first Vegas, the campaign was uninspiring, but featured full co-op and a persistent XP system that allowed you to unlock gear in single and multiplayer.

| "Even if you get everything right, youll be faced with

unavoidable tragedy”

wW

twitter.com/oxmuk

XBOXONE

78 XBOXONE FEATURE

Patriots is a much more global tale compared to Vegas. That must be good for you as head of level design?

Take on New York City bad. guys from all sides. How difficult is it to create interesting levels when all the enemies are based on Al systems rather than scripting?

And that Al is going to make for a much more formidable enemy too?

The game requires brain and brawn in equal measure.

How will you identify

(ies) Brooklyn Bridge andapproaches the civilian you played at the beginning of the mission, it transpires that while he was tasked with getting to Times Square, there’s onlySO seconds left on the timer of his Suicide vest. There's a dispute between the squad members as they weigh up whether to risk trying to remove the explosives inlightofthe threat to the integrity of the bridge. Youre team leader, though, so you decide - tap a button and you can shove the terrified victim off the bridge and watch him combust safely over the water. But it seems if you procrastinate for too long one of the other team members will Step in and do the dirty work for you, Neither option is ideal and that's the painful collateral damage you'll have to have to deal with,

who are the terrorists? XBOXONE

In.an era of frantic combat NY

shooters, Rainbow Six: Patriotsis attempting to add a more considered pace to counterbalance the more chaotic scenes. While this isn’t the first game to attempt to shock with the human side of the story, switching between characters perspectives during a mission gives amuch clearer picture of the consequences of a terrorist attack. What's most impressive, though, is how complete mechanics like the Al and shooting feel even years before release, The multiplayer will be a hugely important factor in Rainbow’s revival and while we've had a glimpse (See Competitive Advantage, page 110), it’s going to need to pull more out of its Sleeves to claim that Xbox Live top spot that Sears has in his sights. Can Rainbow Six: Patriots topple Call of Duty? It's a big ask, but either way that level of ambition can only

bea good thing. WWW.OXM.CO.UK

Only buy the best games inten

REVIEWS GUIDE — PREVIEW

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assassins like Deadshot and Deathstroke. There's

our demo was set among the taller towers of South Gotham, navigating the skyline with Batman's grappling hook and cape felt exactly it.did in Arkham City. So.did the fights, with a couple of inte esting excep tions, New enemy | types roam the streets now, including the Armored Enforcer,ahuge thug who canunleash §area-of-effect ground-poundattacks,andwho

down familiar villains - often for the first time — and which can be completed in any order, at any time, even after you've finished the game. While it's comfortingto see evidence that Origins’ gameplay willbe as intuitive as previous Arkhams, it’s something Holmes says about the Mad Hatter that convinces us he knows what he’s doing. "We loved Mad Hatter in Arkham

§—needs tobe stunned with Batman's cape before 2

iso Anarky, 4 wilsinwwhe wants toowerthrow the state to improve social conditions. The bastard. ee

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City,” says Holmes. “We loved his presence, and