Worlds Adrift, the sandbox MMO from Bossa Studios, is firing people into the sky to celebrate the launch of the game into Early Access.
Well, ‘firing’ is a bit of a strong term. They’ll be hoisting people up 150ft into the air on a specially made skyship, all to play a bit of Worlds Adrift. Here’s a video where the Bossa team talk a little about about the real life skyship they’ve put together:
I don’t know about you, but that sounds absolutely terrifying. But I’m a person who struggles with standing on a chair, so maybe being hoisted into the sky isn’t the best idea for me. But fear not, we’ll have eyes on the ground (or an eye in the sky) in the form of Kayley, who’ll be attending the event on our behalf to brave the skies all for you. Our hero.
If you want to keep up with our sky adventures, check out our Instagram during the afternoon of the 17th of May. But if you miss it, hop along to our Youtube channel as we’ll be putting up some highlights there.
If you want a little look at what the skyship might look like, Bossa have released some concept art showing off the plan for the ship:
The clouds being under the ship don’t exactly fill me with confidence. Just as well I’m not going near it!
The Launch Event will be happening in London above the Chelsea College of Arts, and you’ll be able to watch it all on the Bossa Studios Twitch if you can’t make it down, between 12pm and 6pm BST on May the 17th:
Worlds Adrift is moving into Early Access on the 17th of May, and you can buy it from us for a launch discount of 10% right here. You can also watch the launch trailer for the sky-bound MMO here:
Green Man Gaming is 8 years old, and that means one thing (other than sales), it means looking back at the last eight years and remembering the absolute best of gaming since 2010.
So let us use the magic of memories to travel back in time to the distant days of 2010, and look at the 8 best games, one from each year.
2010: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
StarCraft II hit back onto the scene in 2010 with the first in the new StarCraft trilogy, Wings of Liberty explored the Terran side of events in the Koprulu Sector, years after the Zerg had invaded and Sarah Kerrigan had gone a bit wrong. StarCraft II shows just how much the team at Blizzard have learned about game design in the years inbetween StarCrafts, as it’s a finely crafted single player where each level is basically a minigame in itself, and the multiplayer is fast, frenetic, and as tactical as ever. It’s a masterpiece of RTS design; Blizzard is never better than when they’re RTSing.
Batman: Arkham Asylum surprised everyone by being an amazing game, something rare for comic games (anyone remember Superman 64 or Spider-Man 2 on PC?). Arkham City is that even rarer thing, a sequel that improves on almost everything whilst also increasing the scope. Set in a section of Gotham which has been given over to be a giant open-air prison, it’s a game that directly puts you in the boots of Batman, and makes you feel more Batmanny than anything else. Swooping over the city, brooding on a gargoyle, beating up some thugs, investigating a murder, it’s all there and it’s all Batman to the max. It’s an astounding achievement, and a game that holds up perfectly even now, seven years on.
2012: Mass Effect 3
Let’s ignore the ending, because frankly it has some issues. The rest of the game though is an absolute riot, being at the same time a roaring rampage of revenge against those damnable reapers, and also being heavy on some of the most emotional and wonderful moments seen in videogames. Anyone who’s a fan of Thane, Garrus, Legion, Tali, Grunt, or Mordin, will have perfect endings to all their stories. Even if those endings are utterly heart-wrenching and terribly sad at times. Whilst there’s some annoyances to be had with some story moments, the game as a whole is a great sendoff to one of the best scifi series of all time. Mass Effect 3 even has great multiplayer, and no-one expected that.
We all knew Naughty Dog had it in them to mix action and adventure, but could they mix action, stealth, and emotions? Turns out in The Last of Us, they more than ‘can’, they absolutely excel in it. From the explosive and heartbreaking intro to the controversial end, The Last of Us never lets up on taking your feelings and playing with them. Set over the course of a year, Joel begins his journey resenting Ellie, accepting Ellie, and eventually protecting and loving Ellie, and it’s bittersweet and sad and beautiful throughout. The Last of Us is that rare thing, a cinematic game that does cinema better, and we’re blessed to have got to play it.
2014: Bayonetta 2
Platinum know how to do many things, but the thing they’re absolutely best at is third person action combo games. Bayonetta was the game that never stopped escalating, and Bayonetta 2 is that but…more. With a lot of wit, a lot of humour, and some brilliantly controlled precision combo action, Bayonetta 2 is one of the best action games ever made. It’s just such a shame that it only ever came to the Wii U, but we hold out hope that one day it’ll be slapped onto PC and we can stuck into beating the crap out of some…everything.
2015: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Honestly there’s nothing much more you can say about The Witcher 3 that hasn’t been already said, everyone’s talking about it still, even three years later. After two excellent but troubled games, CD Projekt Red finally hit it out of the park with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. With a stunning open world and quests that always subvert your expectations, there’s so much to The Witcher 3 that it feels like the game that never stops giving. From the bustling city of Novigrad to the Skellige archipelago, it’s just a beautiful and wonderful place to spend your time in. Before you kill a load of monsters and then have a drink in the local tavern, of course.
Probably the most affectionate send-off a character has ever had, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is a long goodbye to one of the last decade’s best characters; Nathan Drake. It’s not only a great action game filled with engaging combat, puzzles that actually require some thought, and the best set pieces since, well, Uncharted 3, it’s also a deconstruction of what it means to be a rogueish adventurer and what that means once the adventure stops. With a huge and great cast of voices and a plot that takes Drake on a journey to find out who he really wants to be, it’s again, something to make you have a little cry when the credits roll.
2017: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
After the Wii U, people were happy to call time for Nintendo. ‘They’ll never top their former success’ people said, ‘it’s all over for Nintendo’, but then the Switch came out and the games are astounding, and there’s none more astounding than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Taking a cue from open world RPG design, it’s a true sandbox with huge breadth of possibilities in it. Everything is meticulously modelled from the terrain to the weather to the interactions of enemies, meaning it’s left up to the player to experiment and see what they can make work. The game is constantly surprising in what it lets you do and what interactions work, giving you true freedom in a way that few games attempt, let along accomplish.
OK so the year’s only five months old, but a strong contender for the game of 2018 is God of War. Again, it’s a game that far exceeded expectations. Seeing some of it at E3 the common consensus that it was going to be little more than The Last of Us: Greece. It’s blown everyone out of the water with how its combat is impactful and feels utterly brutal, the interactions with the world and how the combat fits into that, and the story itself being poignant and showing another side to Kratos. A side we didn’t expect. It’s hit the world with incredible reviews, and is looking like an absolute classic. Also you get to beat up a load of Norse Gods, which frankly is about time.
So those are what we think are the best games of the last eight years, let us know in the comments below if you agree or disagree with these picks. Also join in the party over on our 8th Birthday Sale and celebrate with us.
Jurassic World Evolution is fast approaching and as the next game by rollercoaster and space wizards Frontier it aims to do for dinosaurs what Frontier did for rides. If you know anything about Frontier, you know that they do rollercoaster and theme park games very well, so it seems almost too good a fit to give them the holy grail of videogames: dinosaurs. Here’s what you need to know about the game before it comes out:
This information will be updated as more details are released.
Release Date
Jurassic World Evolution is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on June 12.
System Requirements
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 7 (SP1+)/8.1/10 64bit
Processor: Intel i5-2300/AMD FX-4300
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: nVidia GTX 650 (2GB) /AMD Radeon 7850 (2GB)
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 8 GB available space
Additional Notes: Minimum specifications may change during development.
Recommended Specifications have not been released at this time.
Build your Park
Jurassic World Evolution is a park building simulator where your goal is to build and maintain a successful Jurassic World park. Set across several islands, you’ll be building a huge park to entice, enrapture, entertain, and hopefully not engorge your dinosaurs on park visitors. The game features scenery alteration tools so it’s possible to make your park the way you want it. Previous islands can even be revisited and rebuilt, so it’s possible to change and evolve your park across the islands as you discover new dinosaurs, build new buildings, and further your dino-research.
More information about the game itself can be seen in the Develop Diaries released by Frontier, the first of which can be seen here:
Build a Dino
Building your park isn’t where the simulation ends, you have to create dinosaurs too. Much like the original Jurassic Park you don’t have the full DNA strands to be able to resurrect these titans, so you’re forced to splice in DNA from current creatures, like frogs or lions to fill the gaps. This has effects on the dinosaurs which you create, meaning some may be more docile, be more aggressive, or find ways to breed uncontrollably. You will also need to gather the initial DNA by exploring real world dig sites around the world to discover pre-historic amber for your laboratories.
Dinosaurs confirmed so far are:
Tyrannosaurus rex
Velociraptor antirrhopus / mongoliensis
Triceratops horridus
Stegosaurus stenops
Ankylosaurus magniventrus
Brachiosaurus altithorax
Camarasaurus supremus
Apatosaurus ajax
Dilophosaurus wetherilli
Ceratosaurus nasicornis
Deinonychus antirrhopus
Parasaurolophus walkeri
Edmontosaurus regalis
Chasmosaurus russeli
Gallimimus bullatus
You may also be pressured to create dinosaurs for military and security purposes, which leads us on to:
Missions
Three departments offer you missions throughout the game, Security, Science, and Entertainment. They are optional, but each department offers rewards that makes them enticing. They also change the way you play, for example the Security department may demand more violent dinosaurs, whereas the Science department may ask you to spend time and money on developing serums and vaccines.
Jeff Goldblum
Yes, Jeff Goldblum is back as Dr. Ian Malcolm, and he has a few wry things to say on the nature of tempting fate as you bioengineer your way to your own Jurassic World.
Jurassic World Evolution is currently scheduled for a June 12 release, and we’ll be updating this article with all the dinosaur information we can get right up to release.
The Robinsons are back and they’re just as lost as ever. Netflix has rebooted Lost in Space for the second time, throwing out the silver spandex and the shuffling robot for explosions, aliens, and slick drama.
The original Lost in Space was made at a time before humanity let slip the bonds of gravity and touched the face of God. The 60s were characterised by many political turmoils, but over it all hung the space race between America and Russia. It’s no surprise then that the original Lost in Space, before all the campy fun began, started off with a political bang. Much like Star Trek was, Lost in Space was a product of its time so it’s unsurprising that the Russo-phobia of the day made its way in via Doctor Smith, who in the original worked for a ‘rival nation’ and who sabotaged the Jupiter One as it made its way into space.
The new Lost in Space doesn’t have that context for itself, it’s a show about being well, Lost in Space, but that’s about it. It manages neither the depth of having a political context, nor the frivolity and fun of the original.
Spoilers below this point, so please if you haven’t watched the programme, close this page now.
Lost in Space 2018 suffers deeply from Netflix syndrome which you’ll be very familiar with if you’ve watched any of the recent Marvel shows. There’s nothing in the way of a compelling antagonist and the whole thing, despite being a truncated ten episodes, outstays its welcome by at least a couple of hours.
Doctor Smith in the reboot has moved from diabolical yet cowardly villain (with an eventual heart of gold) to a conflicted career criminal who pounces upon any weakness like a circling vulture. Played ably by Parker Posey this character is just too unbalanced to be a credible threat to the crew, and only by the family Robinson being incredibly dim does she wreak any particular antagonism.
The Robinson family is remarkable for being entire unlikeable and whose attitude to being on an alien planet is only matched by the crew of the Prometheus. Throughout the series the only peril that really occurs comes from their own actions or inactions, always at the wrong time. It’s almost a farce, laugh along as the Robinsons drive too fast down a hill into a tar pit, clutch your sides as they blast into space for…no reason, chuckle as they destroy everyone’s fuel to save The Worst Characters’ life.
Really the only danger in space is being anywhere near the family Robinson, if you see them coming, space-run for your life.
Overall the peril that they and the other colonists (another revision from the original series) face tends to be very low-grade, it’s only near the end of the series does actually leaving the planet become a priority; the rest of the series proceeds with the pace of treacle trickling down a spoon.
The robot’s had another reinvention, coming in the form of an alien many-legged creature which reforms itself into a much more humanoid looking android. This robot also suffers in the reboot, being utterly controlled by Will Robinson at the start, to being rebooted into an evil version by Dr Smith later on. Neither version is particularly compelling, looking more like the 90s live-action Guyver rather than an invention from an alien mind.
The aliens tie into the meta-story, because (as always seems to be the way now) the story you get in Lost in Space isn’t the one on the surface. There’s a government conspiracy! Aliens who are evil, but actually wronged! Stolen technology! And none of it really matters, it’s just window dressing on ten hours of watching idiots make idiot decisions on planet idiot.
With many colonists being stranded on this planet rather than just the family, multiple flashbacks to characters’ pasts that don’t illuminate anything of value, and an overarching plot that aims for mystery where there is none, Lost in Space feels much more like Lost at its worst, first half of season 3 Lost. If you know Lost, you’ll know that’s some bad Lost right there.
Lost in Space is something to be endured rather than enjoyed, with the only glimmer of light being in the last few seconds where it almost dares to morph into a more interesting tv programme, only to be truncated by end credits. It feels like a missed opportunity as the Lost in Space idea is something compelling, but one that here has no life and no energy to it. Lost in Space is a turgid mess, and although pretty and well acted, misses its potential considerably.
Lost in Space is available to watch on Netflix, right now.
Dungeons and Dragons has been going for years and years, and so has the need for newer and more deadlier monsters. But, despite players memorising monster stats and no longer feeling that awe or disgust at the sight of the latest Gygaxian monstrosity, there are staples of the setting that have never gotten old. In fact they’ve been improved, built upon and entire lore written about in books like Volo’s Guide to Monsters. The world of monsters has never been more interesting.
Given that, here’s the 7 best monsters according to me, and why you should throw them at your players.
Goblins
Ohh the goblins, or Gerblins if you prefer. These guys have been a staple of the player character level 1-4 zones for decades. More powerful and organised than Kobolds, and with more variation in their ranks, no player gets sick of gerblins. And if they do, stick in a goblin shaman, a few armoured Hobgoblins and even a Bugbear to lead them, i.e. knock their heads together.
Gerblins love to hide in caves, abandoned temples, and launch raids against civilisation and their peoples travelling along roads, making them perfect for a first enemy. They can shoot shortbows and carry shields, scimitars or spears. This gives them melee 1d8 damage, optional ranged attacks of 1d8 damage, and an AC of 15. They’re no pushovers and may score some kills on an adventuring party, especially if they roll a critical hit, followed by you the DM apologising profusely.
Gnolls
Gnolls are just fascinating creatures. They come in warbands that ravage the land, so they can be introduced at any time during your campaign. They leave utter carnage behind them, and their victims are feasted upon by hyenas, before becoming so swollen that more Gnolls burst out of them. Each warband has a weird tick and shamanistic culture, which can add to the creepy, grim nature of these beasts. Drums, chattering teeth or just blood-curdling laughter spreads the fear of the Gnoll before you see them.
There are several types of Gnolls too. Starting at the lowly zombie gnolls, and going up to the more elite beserking types, they’ve also got magic casters and of course Giant Hyenas and other predatory creatures that follow in a warband’s wake. A Gnoll warband would be a great enemy to throw at a party around level 5 and above.
Swarm of Rats
They may not be the most scary, threatening or awe-inspiring. They may not be what the players want to test their prowess against in a game called Dungeons and Dragons, but trust me, the swarm is deadly.
Using their pack instincts ability, these rats get advantage to hit when near another one. Start surrounding the party and you can get 6 rats getting re-rolls, with a good chance to hit and a decent amount of damage. A couple of bites could fell a weaker character like a wizard, so it’ll make the party panic and realise they have to protect their weaker members and positioning is actually a thing.
Owlbear
This guy is one of my favourites. Why? Look at him! It’s a bear with an owl’s head!
If you want to laugh, cringe and feel sick all at the same time, check out the original monsters manual with all the early ‘combine 2 or more animals/things together to create monsters’ monsters from the 70s and mind of Gary Gygax. Not as majestic or epic as the griffin or the sphinx, but Gary gave it a go. And the Owlbear I think stands with those ancient, emblematic creatures.
Mechanically it’s a fairly straightforward beast, with 2 attacks at 2d8 and 1d10 damage, and not really that much HP. But damn it’s cool, and coming across one in the forest or having one wander into the party’s camp because they didn’t set watch is a good way to teach players the dangers and strangeness of the wilderness. Imagine that scene in The Revenant except the bear has a beak. Nightmare fuel.
Black Pudding
The Black Pudding belongs to the Ooze family. Sentient oozes are bizarre creatures that love to hide in awkward spots in nice dark dungeons, follow adventurers and then absorb them into their jelly-like bodies. Just wait for one of your players to try hitting it with a sword, and watch it split into two oozes! It slowly, relentlessly follows the party and some even do poison damage, or acid damage. If it doesn’t absorb your fighter’s sword on a roll of 5 or less, it’s slowly destroying your paladin’s shield until it’s useless. It even dissolves armour! Fighting an ooze is a ticking clock before the whole party is naked, and finally absorbed into the gelatinous flesh forever. It’s also a Roomba for dungeons!
Beholder
Now we’re getting to the really deadly stuff. Beholders are floating balls with one massive eye and a even more massive maw of gnashing teeth. They also have 10 eye stalks that mean they literally have eyes in the back of their heads, but they can also fire 10 different magical rays at their foes. They can stun, freeze, paralyse, fear, and do damage all at once to varying members of the party as it sees fit. And you don’t have to nerf your own strategy like you would if you were playing stupider races, a Beholder will know who to shoot at and when – they’re immensely clever. Time to let loose like a magical fleshy disco ball of pain.
Dragons
And of course, it wouldn’t be DnD without the second D. Most of the time, dragons are so powerful that they prove to be the most deadly social encounters the players will face, let alone combat encounters. Dragons come in 2 forms: metallic and chromatic. Metallic dragons like bronze, copper, silver, and gold are actually good guys who want to improve the world. The chromatic dragons like red, blue, green, are all nasty bastards who want to twist and destroy.
To give you an idea of what a dragon encounter is like, take the 5th edition starter adventure’s encounter with a Young Green Dragon. This is not even a fully grown dragon, and a party of 5 adventurers at level 4-5 would struggle to take it down. If you encounter it at an even lower level or with less party members, you’re dead. This young dragon won’t open fire though straightaway, green dragons love to manipulate and create slaves made up of lesser races, especially elves. If your players need to learn that they can’t take on every creature they meet, or that actually there are beings that can run rings around them socially, let them meet a dragon.
If you like your games epic, the chances are that you’re properly pumped about the imminent release of Conan Exiles. Funcom’s open-world survival game, set in the universe of the much-loved Conan the Barbarian, as defined by the books of Robert E Howard and once portrayed on celluloid by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is poised to exit its Early Access period (which has lasted more than a year) and seek fame and fortune in the real world. If ever a game promises to be epic, Conan Exiles is it.
Story-wise, Conan Exiles’ watchword is definitely epic – it kicks off with your character nailed to a cross, exiled to a harsh world which takes in deserts, icy regions and every form of environment in between. Luckily, Conan himself is at hand to cut you down and rescue you, but from then on, you’re on your own, and it’s up to you to find a way to first survive and then prosper in an unforgiving and harsh world.
Conan Exiles is also epic in its sheer scope. It takes place in a vast and varied environment, replete with dungeons. It involves combat, farming, castle and city-building, sieges, dungeoneering, establishing a religion (and taking on other religions), enslaving bandits to learn new skills, boss-battles and full-on wars. It lets you take on other players in PvP, or forge alliances with them to prosper in PvE gameplay. Or you can choose to play out your own story in splendid isolation on your very own server.
Emerging triumphantly from Early Access
It’s fair to say that there aren’t many games which spend over a year in Early Access – but we’ll all be thankful that with Conan Exiles, developer Funcom chose to take such an unconventional approach. That’s because, during that period which stretched back to January 2017 on Steam and August 2017 on Xbox One, Conan Exiles has been altered and improved beyond all recognition. So let’s examine what, precisely, you can expect from the game as it prepares to ship on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Combat system
Since Conan Exiles entered its Early Access period, Funcom has pretty much ripped out the combat system and started again from scratch (dedicating vast resources to the process). The result is deeply satisfying: each weapon (running from daggers up to hammers and greatswords) has its own attacks and animations, and those attacks include the likes of lunges, sweeps, cleaves, slashes and dashes. Plus there are light and heavy attacks that can be chained, to culminate in spectacular finishing moves. Combat-wise, Conan Exiles stands comparison with the highest-budget action-RPGs.
A huge game-world
In Conan Exiles, your journey begins in an inhospitable desert called the Exiled Lands. When the game entered Early Access, that was the only environment it boasted, but it was soon augmented by a wintry land entitled the Frozen North. Conan Exiles’ emergence from Early Access will add two new areas beyond The Frozen North: The Volcano and The Swamp.
The volcano is the first area you’re likely to encounter, as it sits quite conspicuously above the Frozen North, with rivers of lava running down its slopes. Inside the volcano, you will find ruins and the Well of Skelos, from which an ominous light emanates. There, you can use a forge to create obsidian weapons. The volcano’s dungeon is particularly challenging, having been balanced for max-level characters.
To the east lies the swamp, replete with deep jungles, miasmic marshes and a sunny coastline which may look idyllic but is populated by pirates. The swamp offers a whole new set of monsters along with a raft of places to explore, including the Pagoda of Boundless Lusts and Jamilia’s Liberty, a beached ship which has become the home of the Black Hand pirates.
Elsewhere in the swamp, you’ll find the Forgotten City of Xel-ha – the ruins of an ancient Lemurian city – and the Palace of the Witch Queen dungeon. It’s even possible to build an entire city in the swamp’s giant trees, and the whole area has been designed for level 20 to 40 characters.
Beware the Purge
Another new feature Funcom has added to Conan Exiles, which greatly increases the scope of its gameplay, is the Purge. Once you start establishing an empire by building settlements and cities, the Purge will begin to kick in periodically. When the Purge occurs, you will find yourself under attack from the likes of frost giants, locusts, the undead, relic hunters, gorillas or countless other types of enemies: the type of Purge you get depends on where you have built your settlement.
Only the southernmost areas of The Exiled Lands – that is, the first areas you explore – are immune from the ravages of the Purge, so at least your first faltering attempts to create defensible settlements won’t have to contend with that. But the longer you play, the more you build and the more enemies you kill, the quicker your Purge meter will fill up. Luckily, you get plenty of warning of an incoming Purge, and successfully defending against a Purge can yield all manner of legendary weaponry and loot.
The Purge also offers an illustration of how configurable Conan Exiles is: if you’re playing in single-player or on a private server, you can turn the Purge off, or can define the intensity of Purges by tweaking settings like strength, duration and the number of waves.
Perks, gear and warpaint
During the Early Access period, Funcom also revamped Conan Exiles’ attributes system, so that for every ten increases in each attribute, you get a perk that unlocks a special ability. For example, getting 50 points in the Agility attribute unlocks a double-jump, and amassing 40 points in Strength means your heavy attacks will do 25 per cent more damage.
Armour also plays into the attribute system – collecting exotic armour sets from the various cultures will increase your attributes and help you earn your perks quicker. And Funcom has introduced the concept of warpaint, which also adds to whatever attribute you have selected: you can only wear one warpaint at a time, but warpaint provides a handy means of getting that most-wanted perk more quickly.
Gear-wise, Funcom has added a huge amount to Conan Exiles during its Early Access period. Legendary weapons with unique bonuses abound, and the best way to get hold of those is via the game’s world boss system, which lets you take on massive bosses and reap the rewards in loot.
Healing and farming
Cementing its reputation as a no-compromise game, Funcom has tweaked Conan Exiles so that when you play it, you no longer heal over time, so eating food and drinking potions is very important. Funcom introduced farming to the game during Early Access, in order to make resource-gathering easier.
Other new additions for launch
Conan Exiles’ launch will see a new religion added to the game, centred on Derketo, who is the goddess of both fertility and death. Derketo’s giant avatar is definitely a sight to behold: she’s half beautiful woman and half rotting corpse. Funcom also added a fast-travel system to the game, in acknowledgement of the huge expansion of the map. For a general overview of what Funcom added for launch, you might want to peruse this blogpost.
The server situation
Because of Conan Exiles’ sheer ambition – offering support for PvE and PvP, as well as the chance for players to create their own custom servers – its server situation is pretty complex. Luckily, Funcom has chosen to explain it in this blogpost.
The key pieces of server-related information are that the full launch servers will go live on 12.00pm UK time on May 8. There will be 225 servers at launch, across several regions. And three types of servers will be available to players, namely:
PvP servers: on those, building damage will be limited to prime-time, which is 5pm to 11pm local time depending on where the server is based.
PvE: Only creatures and NPCs can harm you if you’re playing on a PvE server: thralls won’t attack players, and players can’t attack thralls.
PvE Conflict: on a PvE Conflict server, you will only be able to damage other players during the 5pm to 11pm prime-time period, and building damage will be permanently turned off. Initially, PvE Conflict servers will only be available on PC, and Funcom says it will monitor their popularity before deciding whether to roll them out for PS4 and Xbox One.
Hopefully, that should help you to prepare for immersing yourself in the irresistible world of Conan Exiles. May your exile prove to be an epic and long-lasting adventure.
Recently, Steam changed all users’ default privacy settings to private. We think improved privacy standards are a good thing but this means that some features on your Green Man Gaming account will no longer work unless you change your settings.
If you would like to continue receiving all the great benefits of linked Steam and Green Man Gaming accounts, you must change your Steam profile’s privacy settings to public. Of course, if you haven’t linked your Steam account with Green Man Gaming already, you’ll need to do that too. All the links below.
Confession time: I haven’t actually completed a cRPG, let alone any on this list. However! Each cRPG carries with it a specific atmosphere and reputation within the gaming world. Names like Baldur’s Gate carry huge weight and represent the grandfather of the RPG genre, whereas games like Tyranny and the upcoming Disco Elysium mark a specific jolt into new mechanics that turn the cRPG formula on it’s head.
If you want to know which one is right for you, read on.
PoE has been largely credited for instigating this new enthusiasm for the world of cRPGs. Kickstarted way back in 2012, ‘Project Eternity’ harnessed one of the strongest natural forces known to man, nerd nostalgia, to fuel its development and eventual release. It took the text-based dialogue and story-telling, the painted scenery and levels, and the party-based adventuring of cRPGs of old and brought in into the 21st century.
Anyone who’d played Dragon Age would be perfectly happy here, albeit maybe underwhelmed by the endless text from those spirits you could find (which turned out to be backer rewards and completely unimportant to the main story – who knew?). This was a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, almost painfully so. The cRPG genre wouldn’t see anything more than a replication of the past until….
Tyranny
In 2016 Tyranny burst into our lives with its amazing contrasting colours and even more amazing contrasting factions in it’s world. Instead of starting you as a level 1 fighter or rogue killing giant rats for Copper Pieces in the local tavern basement (every time), Tyranny gives you the role of mouthpiece to the most powerful being in the land. The big bad army has already swept across the world, and it’s two armies are too busy bickering to finish off the last resistance. Your job is to get them to fall in line, otherwise you’ll destroy them both. How’s that for a new way to start an RPG?
Tyranny is more streamlined than PoE, and introduces more dualistic features like having a fear or respect rating for each companion. It doesn’t matter if they like or hate you, they’ll get more powerful in different ways. You’re still ‘The Chosen One’, but for once you’re not a farm-boy.
Fallout is obviously a massive IP right now, and there aren’t many gamers who don’t know of it, or haven’t played one of the newer games like Fallout 3, 4 or New Vegas. However I wonder if they’ve ever gone back to the origins of the series and tried Fallout 1? Here’s our own Alex Mchugh on why you should play it:
“This is it, the one that started it all (sit down, Wasteland). Described by one PC gaming magazine as ‘Doncaster on a night out’, Fallout laid down THE formula for post-apocalyptic role playing games, and we haven’t looked back as a species since. It’s sterner in tone to any of the later entries, but it does find time for some fun. It introduces much of what became staples of the Fallout series, the Vaults, Dogmeat, The Brotherhood of Steel, Mutants, Deathclaws.
It’s got a sense of sadness to it, when you visit locations like The Glow or see The Boneyard, you get the real sense that this was a world, and it’s no longer anywhere worth living.
Featuring the creepiest antagonist in anything, ever, and the most bittersweet ending known to videogames, Fallout’s ace, and you should play it.”
If you’ve ever tried explaining the universe of Warhammer 40,000 and thought that was hard, try explaining the Numenera universe. In 40k you have about 38,000 years to fill in, with only 30,000AD and 40,000AD being that important. In Numenera, it’s ONE BILLION YEARS IN THE FUTURE. Many civilisations have risen to be all-powerful, and then turned to dust one after the other. In Numenera the world is built upon these layers of alien cultures and technologies that no-one understands, or will ever be able to again.
Torment takes the engine from Pillars of Eternity, but introduces strange tech and even stranger companions. It also introduces the option to talk your way out of situations and play a fairly combat-less game. This is the spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment in the same way PoE is to Baldur’s Gate. Play this to scratch that sci-fi itch.
Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition
We’ve talked a lot about Baldur’s Gate and the successors to Baldur’s Gate, and Baldur’s Gate’s mechanics and Baldur’s Gate’s perfect Sunday, so why don’t you just go ahead and play it? An enhanced edition was released so the game runs well on modern systems, and you can jump right in and see where it all began. That’s if you can navigate the UI.
Coming out sometime soon, Disco Elysium turns the cRPG on it’s head with brand new mechanics. Here’s our lovely Alex Mchugh once again on Disco Elysium (coming to think of it, he should’ve written this article):
“Disco Elysium (formerly No Truce with the Furies) is a semi-futuristic/fantasy alternate-world neo-noir RPG about ideas and about solving crimes. It’s a game where your character’s mind is as important as your character’s actions, it’s a game where your character’s perception of events is called into question throughout, and it’s a game that feels fresh and exciting in a way that RPGs haven’t for a while.
The way your character talks to people is up to you, your memory is one huge hole and how that plays out is your choice. Do you want to bluff your way through, rely on info from others to fill in the gaps, or are you going to be straight up and admit to everyone that there’s a gap where your past used to be?
This is definitely a game about conversation and exploration. One of the issues the developers have had with other RPGs is that they tend to be combat heavy, even the lauded Planescape: Torment has plenty of frankly-average combat padding out its hours. Disco Elysium instead aims to be a game about events, whilst people can die and you can be in danger, they’re tied to crescendos in the plot and in the narrative.”
The sequel to the spiritual successor is coming soon – this month in fact! After kicking off the new generation of cRPGs, PoE is returning to take centre stage. This time it introduces new classes, races, the ability to multi-class and ship combat! The ship is really your castle, and will be customizable, upgradable, and you’ll recruit your crew to add unique benefits and skills to your floating fortress. You’ll be able to import your PoE 1 character to bring along all your choices and effects on the world, or you’ll pick a background story choice yourself. Sounds they like took the best of Tyranny and ran with it, which can only be a very good thing.
Which cRPGs do you like the best? Any that you’d recommend? Respond down there in the comments.
Quantic Dreams has launched litigation against two French media outlets, following recent allegations that the Detroit: Become Human developer was a toxic workplace.
Avengers: Infinite War is nearly here, and although we’re all super excited to see dozens of superheroes we’ve followed for over a decade all come together in one big superhero stew, we know we’re going to witness one of them die. Remember that really strong beat in Avengers: Assemble when Coulson died (but didn’t really)? It’s going to be like that but multiplied by ten. And they won’t get their own spin-off show this time. Because these are actors who are paid tens of millions of dollars.
Here’s our thoughts on who is most likely to kick the bucket when the film comes out on the 26th!
Plot Armoured
Black Widow – One of the original Avengers, Black Widow normally plays the one who solves the problem by thinking through things rather than physically hitting stuff. Although she does that too. Whilst she regularly becomes in danger, there’s no real harm in her coming to any…harm.
Hulk/Bruce Banner – Besides the fact that there is no way to kill Hulk that’s been established yet in the MCU, even Bruce Banner appears indestructible after taking on Fenrir in Thor: Ragnorok. If he dies, it’d be a complete left fielder.
Dr Strange – Benedictine Cumbersome has only just started his career in the MCU, and as his role as Earth’s Protector. He’ll be instrumental in defeating Thanos, and they could hardly take away such an important person so quickly, with no real replacement.
Groot – No more Tiny Groot.
Drax – He’s mad, and always runs at danger, and for that reason, he won’t die.
Spiderman – Similar to Dr Strange, fans have waited for Spiderman to join the MCU for a long time, and he’s going to be pivotal in the 2nd generation of Avengers. He’s seen as a direct protege to Tony Stark, meaning he could be in line to take the slot of wise-cracking, tech-building, flying-around-in-a-suit human. He’ll also be the shining light of human morality and Lawful Goodness when Steve Rogers isn’t around.
Antman – I could cheat and say his sequel film is coming out this year so we know he will survive, but just like a few others here, he hasn’t really had a big enough arc yet in the MCU, and his tech and like-ability make him too much of a unique character to be cut out.
The Wasp – We haven’t even seen this character on screen properly yet, so if Marvel kill her off before that or just after, it would be a real eye-roll moment.
Iron Patriot – He already took the biggest hit that any Avenger has taken thus far in the series in Civil War. To finish him off for good would make us think Marvel had some real issue with Don Cheadle.
Black Panther – He’s a smash hit character, and vital to the next stage of the MCU. In a few film’s time maybe, but not now. Plus his suit is impenetrable. Just stay away from the orange plant thing, T’Challa.
Slim Chance
Thor – Thor’s another member of the original Avengers. He’s had 3 solo films already too, matching Ironman and Captain America. So why is he so low? Well Ragnarok proved that Thor’s storylines are fun, unique, and he’s only just become leader of Asgard and the people there. Thor went from a solid ‘meh’ character to a fan favourite, meaning the time to kill him off has passed.
Starlord – The leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy and half-god, if he goes then the Guardians become way less interesting. Peter Quill IS the Guardians, without him they’re just a group of misfits…without the talented Chris Pratt to bounce jokes off of.
Rocket – He’s not a major character but he is a major part of the Guardians. There’s a small chance they’d kill him off in some mad suicide attack, but still not a big enough character to make us care that much. Injured? Yes. Killed? No.
Hawkeye – Some people don’t even know if Hawkeye is in this film! Behind the scenes pictures have him in costume very similar to the character Ronin, a later variation of Clint Barton. Which makes sense that he’d finally decided to pick up some melee weapons.
Mantis – Introduced in Guardians Vol. 2, Mantis is technically not part of the Guardians but she is in the Infinite War trailers. Again, I can see Marvel killing off a female character for dramatic effect and to motivate the others to win. This may seem snide but female characters being killed off this way is a time-honoured tradition in films.
50/50
Vision – So this is where it gets interesting. Vision has the infinite stone in his damn head, and we know Thanos is after them. Vision is powerful enough to defeat someone like Ultron almost single-handedly, so my bet is that he’ll be taken out early on in the film to show how strong Thanos is. Killed though is another question, and whether or not he’ll truly ‘die’ or be transformed into something else.
Loki – Finally finally decided to fall in line and play for the right team at the end of Ragnarok, Loki may not be able to resist his nature and join Thanos. It seems way too predictable to once again be fighting Loki unless it’s a double cross, and he dies as he’s caught out by Thanos. It could really go either way. He’s a big enough name to cause a splash with his death, but he’s also the god of mischief, which means he tends to find a way to survive.
Scarlet Witch – She hasn’t been able to really show us what she’s capable of yet, and I mean REALLY capable of. In the comics, Scarlet Witch is responsible for turning millions of mutants into normal humans by uttering three words. So far in the MCU she’s flung some debris around and hypnotised some Avengers. Faced with Thanos she may really have to crack open some hot spells, especially if she gets to know Dr Strange. Still, all that awesome potential could be cut short tragically if she’s still too upset about her brother to live life without him.
Gamora – Thanos’ favourite adopted daughter who betrayed him, she’s not going to be in a good place if he comes a-knocking. Maybe he won’t be able to harm his daughter but he’ll want to turn her back any way possible, maybe with the power of the infinite stones. As the only female character in the Guardians, she has a habit of being the damsel in distress and love interest for Starlord, so I can see her capture by Thanos as a dramatic beat likely to happen. Death couldn’t be far behind.
Falcon – Here’s a character who’s likeable but not essential. He’s close to Captain America, but doesn’t really have any powers of his own. Despite Marvel making him pretty cool in Civil War, there isn’t a lot more they can do with the character since his main power is flying about. If Marvel chicken out of killing off one of the main Avengers, Falcon would be a next-best-thing.
Winter Soldier – Bucky Barnes has been earmarked as the one to take over as Captain America when Steve Rogers hangs up the shield…or dies. There’s even short clips in the previous films of Bucky using Cap’s shield in the middle of fights. Brief moments, but they could be echos of what’s to come. On that basis, Marvel could want to do the unexpected and kill him off, leaving the fate of the Captain America identity wide open. Cap has already dumped his shield after all, so who knows to whom it’ll go?
Nebula – Thanos’ not favourite adopted daughter, who’s also turned against him. If Gamora would be too much to ask for, Nebula turning good and being killed by Thanos would be a good way for Thanos to establish himself without removing any favourite characters. On the whole, she’s not a highly likeable character either, but an interesting one. I could also see her and Loki joined the Black Order to work/betray Thanos.
Definitely One Of These
Captain America – Steve Rogers is the exact character who would die heroically and dramatically, to hit everyone in the feels. Not only does every Avenger have a relationship with Cap, but the whole world admires and respects him too. And what better way for Thanos to put them all on the back foot? In the case of Cap being taken out, there’s a lot of room for the MCU to move in different ways. Does Bucky become Captain America? Who is the new de-facto leader? Where’s the damn shield? Personally this is my pick because please God don’t take….
…Iron Man – I have an Iron Man poster framed in my flat; my online name is and has always been Stark; and I have a whole folder of Robert Downey Jr GIFs. I know people find him annoying and he’s been in and out of the Avengers, huffing and puffing as he gets older and more sick of having to protect the world from the galaxy at large, but he’s my favourite character ever since I watched Iron Man all the way back in 2008 with my dad. In Avengers: Assemble he cracked all the best jokes and wasn’t scared of the superhuman hero and the Norse God. He’s best mates with Hulk and mentor to Peter Parker. Civil War annoyed me so much because Tony was beaten in the end by Steve and Bucky. And I know he’ll forgive them, again. For these reasons he is rivalling Cap in the Chance-To-Die O Meter, because I know it’ll get me in to watch Part 2 to see him avenged.
That’s our guesses, let us know what you think in the comments below. And if you want to do your own rankings, put 1 as Plot Armoured and 5 as Definitely One of These.
BattleTech is back, in the first new installment using the BattleTech licence since 1990’s BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge. We’ve had MechWarrior games, but the primary series has been sadly neglected until Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive resurrected the BattleTech series.
It’s a curiosity of video games that mech games are sadly quite under-represented. You’d think slipping into a giant robot suit and smashing the place up would be a no brainer, but they’re few and far between.
So here’s some of the absolute best mech games available on the PC, in case you want to do a bit more giant-sized destruction in a beautiful metallic body.
Note: I’m not going to include games with mech sections, because that’d be pretty much every early 2000s FPS.
BattleTech isn’t just a retread of the older games, nor does it try to use some of the more well known series, MechWarrior, for inspiration. Instead this is hard scifi in an XCOM-inspired world, where you play as a group of mercenaries looking to pay the bills by undertaking missions. Having dense tactical combat alongside a strategic layer may feel on the surface very familiar to the XCOM series, but BattleTech is a much deeper simulation with every system, every mech, every vehicle being meticulously modelled, and success will depend on you becoming familiar with those systems. If you liked XCOM but want something a bit meatier to get your teeth into, BattleTech might be what you’re looking for.
MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat
Forget the other MechWarriors, this is the one that stands head and laser cannons above the rest. Despite showing its age quite considerably, there’s still few games that put you in the driving seat of a mech so completely. It’s a game about striding purposefully across wartorn battlefields, feeling the ping of hit laserfire on your carapace, and slowly turning about to level your full complement of weaponry on the distant target that dares to provoke you. There’s few feelings of power, and of panic when it all goes wrong, than those that MechWarrior 2 gives you.
Zone of the Enders 2
This game isn’t technically out yet, it’ll be appearing on a PC near you in September of 2018, but we already know what to expect from it because Zone of the Enders 2 has been out on consoles for a long time, and it’s the opposite end of the spectrum from MechWarrior. Instead of meticulous simulation, this game is all about action, about fast paced combat, and about destruction. It’s an immense and explosive game that’s been sorely missing on the PC, we’ve got simulations, how about blowing some shit up? Zone of the Enders 2, that’ll fill that need.
Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
Imagine being a mech, standing many stories high. You smash up your opponents, shooting tanks and other mechs into flaming rubble. Then you hop out and run about in the buildings you so recently towered over. Combining a mech game with a traditional FPS, Shogo is a silly and wonderful exploration of scale, from being a giant to being a normal sized human, it really puts into perspective how big those damn mechs are. It’s an anime-inspired romp, and one that’s worth checking out if you can.
One Must Fall: 2097
Imagine if Rise of the Robots was good, and made a few years earlier. That’s One Must Fall, it’s a mech 2D fighting game with multiplayer, single battle mode, and a pretty decent campaign mode where you storm up the ranks to become the greatest mech fighting pilot on the planet. With upgradable mechs and other mechs you can simply purchase, alongside an accessible combat system, OMF is the best fighting game about mechs on the PC. Probably.
MissionForce: CyberStorm
Hex-based tactics fans, this one’s for you. CyberStorm and the sequel, CyberStorm 2: Corporate Wars, are a pair of isometric tactical games about controlling a squad of mechs, or HERCs, on a variety of different missions. It’s standard stuff really, but it’s solid and frankly it’s just nice to play on a hex instead of a square for once. Also notable for your pilots being bioengineered creations designed solely to pilot these towering mechs, one of which is a hyperintelligent ape.
Earthsiege 2
Set in the same universe as CyberStorm, you control a pilot of a HERC on missions which on the face of it, are similar to those found in MechWarrior. What’s truly special about Earthsiege 2 is the ability to customise your mech, and the (for the time) advanced graphics for the missions. It also features a branching narrative structure to the game, where failing a mission does not necessarily mean that you’ll lose the game, rather you’ll go to a mission you wouldn’t have experienced if you had succeeded. Something that we wouldn’t see come into standard or semi-standard use for at least another decade.
A mech game of a different flavour, this takes place in a steampunk world where you engage your enemies in brutal combat…via a puzzle game. A steampunk mech stands on each side of the screen and your moves, taken turn by turn on a central Bejeweled-a-like field, determine what your mech does, and vice versa. It also takes from roguelikes, in that there’s permadeath and some randomness to the way the game evolves and the main campaign can go. This makes it a compelling game, one that you might need a bit of time to master and to truly get to grips with, but one that rewards being able to counter whatever your AI foes send your way.
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
Cards on the table; I don’t really know if this is truly considered a mech game, but you’re in a mech suit so I’m including it. Basically this is an FPS from a time when FPS’s didn’t really exist as we know them today, you embarked on missions with a squad of similar be-suited mech people to destroy the control of the totalitarian Earth-based Hegemony. It was a huge step forward for the time, featuring FMV cutscenes, tactical orders you could issue to your squad, multi-camera control via drone and your squadmates, and even non-standard mission types, such as missions where the only goal was to spy on an enemy base and take photos for example. It’s recently been given a lick of paint and re-released by Nightdive studios, so there’s no excuse not to check it out.
Titanfall 2
It’s hard to overstate what a huge improvement Titanfall 2 is over the original. The original unfortunately bifurcated its playerbase with DLC and map packs, meaning it really struggled to keep online multiplayer numbers up. It did have some of the best movement in any FPS though, and Titanfall 2 is the rare sequel that kept everything good from the original and dispensed with everything that needed to be dropped. It also features probably the best single-player FPS campaign since Half-Life 2, with an incredibly varied set of skills and new ideas thrown at you throughout. Basically, it’s an amazing game, and none of you played it. For shame.
So there you have some mech games which are all well worth trying, even if some of them have aged a bit. Have we missed off your favourite? Hit us up in the comments.
Phoenix Point is the next game from Julian Gollop. Julian Gollop is a name that you might not have heard, especially if you’re younger, but his legacy is huge in the PC Gaming world. He is behind great games such as Chaos, Laser Squad, but most importantly: XCOM.
Hopefully you’ve heard of XCOM, or rather, X-Com as it originally was when Julian Gollop was designing and developing these landmark strategy games. Well he’s back with Phoenix Point and it looks like it’ll mix together the absolute best of old-school X-Com and new-school XCOM.
We got a chance to chat to Julian Gollop at Rezzed, held in London earlier this week. We sent X-Com Veteran Alex Mchugh who is old as time and has been playing X-Coms since they came out, and XCOM Youngster Oliver Paul who has only played the reboots, but absolutely loves them.
Here’s what these two different people had to say about it:
Golden Oldie – Alex Mchugh
What stuck out to me was that it feels like a return to some of the best ideas of the original X-Com series. The reboots are marvellous games, but for me they stripped out some of the complexity of the older titles, and I’m incredibly pleased to see Phoenix Point walk the tightrope between accessibility and depth.
Factions, similar to how they worked in X-Com Apocalypse are back, and you’ll be balancing these factions against each other, endorsing some and alienating others as you work to save the world from an alien threat, and from the threat of each other.
Action points are back too, meaning that your actions and movements throughout the game are more fluid and the possibility space that your squad operates in is much larger. You’re not going to be stuck doing two moves a turn, instead you can hunker down and fire off a few shots, or you can sprint like the wind, or mix it up however you choose. As long as you have the action points for it, you can do it.
With the theme of the aliens being a riff on aquatic mergings between alien and submarine life, at least at the start of the campaign, it feels in many ways an homage to X-Com Terror from the Deep, the absolute bastard-hard sequel to the original Enemy Unknown. Seeing these creatures, especially the crab ones, took me right back to the days of fleeing from awful Lobster Men back in the 90s. Except now they’ve been updated, they’re smarter, they’re tougher, and they have different evolutionary variations which means you might have to adapt your tactics suddenly at the start of a new battle.
Anyway, as an old, old man, it brings me great joy to see some of the ideas from great games I grew up with refined and used again today. I’m incredibly excited for Phoenix Point, plug it into my veins already.
Young Buck – Oliver Paul
So I’ve always heard that the new XCOM games were much more linear than the older ones. You get one base, normally just one squad that can go on one mission, on one planet, against one alien race. I’d heard stories about multiple squads doing things at different times, X-com bases stretching across the globe, and stuff going on IN SPAAACE and underwater too. Now with Pheonix Point, I feel like I’m finally going to get what every younger gamer wants: the chance to play an old gem, but with a usable UI and no CD-ROMs.
Something that Julian Gollop said got my attention in a big way. He said that the game was comparable to Stellaris. Stellaris?! The 4x game?! He talked about you just being one faction out of a handful, fighting over resources and against the alien menace encroaching across the land in a oppressive fog. Take the campaign map of a 4X game and the battles of XCOM and I’m sold. I like the idea that enemy factions change depending on what you do, so no two play-throughs are the same. Even with the XCOM expansions, I felt like it was just playing the campaign, and the same main missions, again. After day 3 everyone knows the best squad combo, the best build order for your base and the exploitable tactics. Opening up the game to more variables means not everyone plays the same game. And embarking on another play-through becomes like starting another game of Civ – something you do all the damn time.
On the battle side of things, you could almost mistake it for new XCOM, it’s incredibly similar. I don’t think myself or any other XCOM fans will have trouble adjusting to Phoenix Point, and there’s plenty of new mechanics to explore that don’t feel very new-XCOM at all. It feels more nitty-gritty because you can free aim, you can target specific parts of enemies and there are mid-game objectives like securing watch towers to help clear out a base. It feels like a military game rather than a team of sort-of super heroes like in XCOM. Recurring bosses will come back, genetically altered to be stronger based on how you took it down last time. Even the alien race will adapt to your favourite strategies. A team of 3 snipers may not stay effective for ever. These big boss units will actually feel like they deserve the name, having lots of health for different body parts, unlike in XCOM where a few rockets can take out anything.
Overall I’m looking forward to trying out Phoenix Point, probably more-so than an XCOM 3. It looks and feels different and gives you more tools to change the outcome of the game. Not to mention that because it’s more 4X, there are other ways to win, it deals with the issue of XCOMs negative feedback loop. At least, here’s hoping.
Earth Day 2018 falls on Sunday 22 April, and given recent revelations concerning widespread plastic pollution and accelerating climate change, it will surely be given more public attention – and trigger more environmental activism around the world – than ever before. So, if you’re concerned about what is happening to the environment (and who isn’t, beyond American right-wingers with big business interests?), can you square those concerns with being a gamer? Do videogames pull their weight when it comes to saving the planet?
The answer, superficially at least, would appear to be “No” – first and foremost, games are a form of popular entertainment, and most see their role as offering an escape from the everyday troubles and cares of the real world. However, there are games which at least manage to signal a concern for the state of the environment, in ways which encompass an entire spectrum of subtlety.
You could, for example, argue that pretty much any game set in a post-apocalyptic universe is effectively displaying concern for the current state of the Earth – although in many such cases, those concerns tend more towards the geopolitical than the environmental. But there are some which demonstrate an unequivocally environmentally aware vibe, and we thought it would be appropriate to bring them to your attention in the run-up to Earth Day.
Fate of the World: Tipping Point
This 2011 game developed by Red Redemption for PC and Mac is one of the very few efforts to build its gameplay around environmental concerns – indeed, it aims very overtly to provide a decent education about green issues facing the Earth. Essentially a turn-based, Civilization-style sim-game, it puts you in charge of a fictional global organisation with responsibility for social, technological and environmental policies (if only such a body existed in real life).
It lets you take environmental decisions and see how they pan out, both in terms of reducing global warming and trying to avoid social unrest. As such, it does a fine job of examining the issues that real-world governments face when attempting to get to grips with climate change.
Flower
This gorgeous-looking 2009 effort for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, developed by Thatgamecompany, is all about giving gamers a visceral connection to the environment. It’s pretty experimental, lacking any form of narrative and with gameplay that is minimal and defies convention. But it’s also incredibly Zen-like, and does a fine job of stirring both a surprising amount of emotion and generating deep thought into how we treat the environment.
In Flower, you control the wind using the Dual-Shock controller’s motion-sensing, blowing a petal around and thereby causing various effects in the game-world, such as bringing previously barren fields into bloom and activating windmills. Flower may be quite abstract, but it leaves one in no doubt about its desire to get us all thinking about the natural world.
Flow
Flower is actually the spiritual successor to Flow, also made by Thatgamecompany, and released in 2007 as a launch PSN title for the PlayStation 3. It’s less overt about providing an environmental call-to-arms than Flower, but shares a similar calming ambience that mimics natural-world processes.
Flow puts you in control of a plankton-like organism, swimming around in a sort of primordial soup. As you eat other creatures, your creature evolves into more complex forms, and eventually, you have to deal with predators.
You might imagine that a game which involves slaughtering giant monsters with huge weapons is unlikely to possess much by way of green credentials. However, Monster Hunter World is shot through with an undeniably environmentally-aware ambience.
That’s because it isn’t just about hunting monsters. One of its key gameplay mechanics involves collecting flora, fauna and natural resources in each area of its game-world, for which you are royally rewarded, and pretty much everything you collect has some use — as ammunition, a crafting component or food.
With all sorts of rewards and perks available for researching specified types of flora, fauna and resources, Monster Hunter World gently but insistently encourages you to form a deep affinity with its environments. And what amazing environments they are, taking in rainforests, deserts and the like, all of whose superbly constructed ecosystems operate in a highly visible manner. The nature in Monster Hunter World may derive from the imaginative realms of fantasy, but anyone who plays the game will feel utterly immersed in it.
This 2016 offshoot of the much-loved open-world first-person action-adventure franchise was something of an aberration, but proved surprisingly compelling. It took Far Cry’s trademark free-roaming action way beyond its comfort zone, to a prehistoric world.
Although it isn’t a game which has an overtly environmentally friendly message, you can’t help thinking deeply about the modern world, with its growing cities and urbanisation, when you play it. Because it depicts a time when even the most rudimentary buildings had barely been invented, it puts you right in the thick of nature, at a time when mankind still struggled to dominate nature – indeed, that’s what the vast majority of the gameplay is about (along with a healthy dose centred on mankind’s tribal nature, which also proves to be thought-provoking).
There’s nothing rose-tinted about Far Cry Primal – it’s in no way some sort of nostalgia-fest hymning a time when humans were at one with the environment. But its utterly plausible depiction of a pre-urban world offers vast amounts of food for thought for those who are concerned with what we are now doing to the environment.
This lovable 2003 action-adventure effort from Ubisoft’s resident genius Michel Ancel alludes to various themes, and concern for the environment is definitely one of those. It may even have inspired Monster Hunter World’s environmental investigation element.
That’s because protagonist Jade, painfully penniless at the beginning of the game, soon lands a job documenting the wildlife of Beyond Good & Evil’s game-world with her camera, and is rewarded for doing so with money, which is something you’ll need in order to complete the game.
Again, that mechanic puts you at one with the game’s environments – there are genuine thrills to be had every time you encounter a species you haven’t come across previously. Ancel is now hard at work on Beyond Good & Evil 2, and it will be interesting to see if he chooses to develop the original game’s element of environmental awareness in that.
Last year’s feted PlayStation 4 exclusive is another game which doesn’t ram an overtly green message down your throat, yet provokes deep thought about the environment, in a similar manner to Far Cry Primal. As with Far Cry Primal, that’s mainly due to its premise: protagonist Aloy occupies a post-apocalyptic world which has largely returned to a natural state, apart from the presence of predatory, often dinosaur-like robots.
The game’s juxtaposition of unspoiled environments and dangerous yet useful technology (which provides a source of weapons and ammo for Aloy) functions as a great what-if scenario, providing a snapshot of what might happen if global warming caused our civilisation to collapse. And as such, it provides a cautionary tale which will strike a chord among those who care about arresting environmental destruction.
Recently the EGX Rezzed event took place in the Tobacco Docks venue in London. Members of the Green Man Gaming team attended, and during their time there they took some time to play Cultist Simulator, a game which will be fully released on the 31st of May, 2018.
Soon after our social media manager Alex McHugh went missing, and this letter arrived at the Green Man Gaming offices. We are letting you see the contents of the letter for the first time. Those faint of heart, please close this page now.
Dear Green People,
By the time you read this I will have moved to a place beyond your ken, to a place unknowable by mortals, a place where the fractal nature of reality has been rent asunder.
I have gone to the eldritch technological palace known as ‘Cultist Simulator’.
It began simply, I sat at the mechanical thinking-box and looked about at the blue field ahead of me. Time itself trickled down and spat out a new item, a glyph on card that floated in front of me. I read the words emblazoned upon it and feel them shudder through my brain cavity and I delight in the rich new opportunities which unveil before me.
Each card shuddered and shook and new opportunities seeped out onto the board and into my mind. Alas through my inattention my avatar on this immaterial plane lost their job, their hateful job, and gained employment on the lowest rung in an office. Never mind, thought I, it would leave my mind free to contemplate the divine which I had begun to dream of, whispers touching my thoughts each night. The scrabble for funds to cover my investigations would never end but I would use my time carefully to prod deeper into the hidden corners of the universe.
A gift left to me from a mysterious benefactor exploded new opportunities in front of me. I began to dream of sickness, an old friend stepped back into my life and I used her ruthlessly as a sounding board for these new ideas which populated my swollen mind.
I began to spin out of control, a single clock counting down became two, then three, then ten, the rush to read the cards which guided my path causing me to forget that time itself was under my control. I could pause the progress of time, and take a moment to read, to absorb, to learn.
In the depths of my darkest dreams I discovered a nugget of truth. I could start a cult, I could become the leader of a new way of thought, a new way of living. I began my preparations, if we were to break open reality and revel in the dark dance of unholy truth, we would need funds, a place to meet, and bodies.
Alas, my health took a turn for the worse. All I could do was dream forever of the sickness which slowly took over me, my funds and ability to work slipping from my grasp and the truth I had so quickly glimpsed slid away like a distant memory.
In the end, my avatar succumbed to the dark poisons which had overrun their body, and life slipped away.
The story does not end there, my Green Friends, I live on and I can think only of the cultist, of the truth, and of how to succeed where that meat shell failed.
I will return, glorious and effulgent with knowledge, I just have to play again. To spin my life on the wheel that is Cultist Simulator, and to succeed where I have once failed.
Yours,
What Remains of Alex
We have not heard from Alex in the days following Rezzed, and any attempt to contact him has failed. We phoned him, and the only time the phone was picked up we heard a great wailing as if a thousand voices screamed into the headset, and then nothing. Since then the phone is disconnected, and GPS tracking puts him at a location Google Maps does not have adequate data for.
Cultist Simulator is coming out on the 31st of May, beware its seductive charm.
I played Wargroove at EGX Rezzed after following it for months and months. It was another one of those games that promised an Advance Wars spiritual successor, but I’ve been burned before. Into The Breach was looking like the best hope, but that became more of a puzzle game where you have only 3 units per level. The original creators of Advance Wars have moved onto fully supporting Fire Emblem, which again takes the turn-based strategy but gives you a group of heroes with perma-death to fight battles with, fun but no tanks or bobbing infantry being churned out of a factory.
Enter Wargroove by Chucklefish, the London-based developer that brought you Starbound. As I said I got to play a battle at Rezzed and, after being trounced by the AI, it’s safe to say it takes everything we liked from Advance Wars and put a great new spin on it. That spin was mostly tied up with the new commanders and forces. Instead of having 4 factions with different looking tanks, planes and commanders, Wargroove has 4 factions with commanders who fight on the battlefield themselves. Each faction varies based on the fantasy theme it brings to this pixelated, bobbing universe. There’s the nature-based faction where the commander summons a horse beneath them made of branches entwining together, and of course there’s a straight up human faction with your knights and archers.
The one I picked was an undead race full of skeletons. Remembering my Heroes of Might and Magic III days, summoning skeletons is the most fun and potentially broken mechanic. Happily the faction leader could forgo his turn to summon skeletons, which were the most basic unit. Unfortunately I was trying to be aggressive and got overwhelmed. As I was finishing up I was already thinking ahead to my next game: should I get to the mid-point and hold the line whilst summoning an unstoppable wave of skeletons? Should I save up for the more elite knights? Maybe there’s an inherent advantage of the faction I can use if I read up a bit more? There was a queue of sorts forming behind me so I had to leave it at that. But I’m convinced – it feels like Advance Wars and I want it.
The Wargroove wiki page has a section ready for Campaigns, so it looks like it will definitely contain story missions for at least one of the factions. The 3 commanders per faction – the ones that are released – look unique and retain that level of personality the C.O.s of Advance Wars had, and I’m hoping that the campaign will ingratiate players to one faction or the other. My friends and I all had our spirit animal C.O.s, and would ‘main’ them in our skirmishes and multiplayer games. Each commander even has their own theme – an integral part to their personality in Advance Wars. Grit’s slow, lazy guitar riffs fitted to his laid-back attitude and long-range specialisation, and Max had a punchy, strong beat to suit his rolling tanks.
My Gameboy Advance SP that I got when I was 13 has followed me around the world and back and still lives in my drawer, still ready at a moment’s notice. There’s only one game that sits in it though, and that’s Advance Wars 1. Now perhaps finally there’ll be a reason to retire it for good, or at the very least not be too sad if it finally dies. With Wargroove coming to PC, PS4 and Switch, there’s plenty of ways to play, mobile or otherwise, and I can’t wait.
I had a freelance artist friend who worked from home a lot, and he watched copious amounts of Let’s Plays whilst working. If I had a day off or came over in the evening, I’d bring my Playstation and I’d play whilst he worked and watched. A live Let’s Play, so to speak. There was one game however, that he could not just watch casually. One game that couldn’t be appreciated with cursory glances at the tv screen in-between drawing and sketching. This game was so noisy, so loud, so spectacular and grand, he just had to jump on the sofa, grab a beer and enjoy it in all it’s glory.
This was God of War, of course.
Kratos spends his first trilogy fighting the Greek pantheon of gods, as revenge for the actual god of war Ares making him kill his own wife and child. Unlike that other Greek hero Hercules, Kratos didn’t want to atone for this by doing some menial tasks for the gods. He just wanted revenge. Pure, emotional, blood-splattered revenge. The final game in that trilogy ends with Kratos killing Zeus (spoilers), and damning the world to darkness and nothingness. His revenge is complete at the cost of pretty much everything, his selfish revenge has brought everyone else down to his level, and is he happy now? Who knows.
The story goes as far as it needs to to justify the mad and awesome action in the game. Climbing up titans to stab them in the eyes, going down to Hades and essentially wiping out the Underworld, ripping off Helios’ head to use it as a lamp and even taking out Atlas so he drops the sky. The action is a mixture of hack and slash with various weapons like Hercules’ fists and Hades’ claws, and QTEs for the set-piece moments. This is the game series that made everyone think QTEs were awesome, until everyone else ruined them. It revelled in how over-the-top it was. My friend just couldn’t get enough of how crazy it was to be killing gods in this fashion, it was a throwback to the mad and bonkers 80s action movies of our childhoods.
Now though, Kratos has a beard. Not some pointy, edgy, early-2000s, combine-with-Oakley-sunglasses-and-a-black-shirt beard, but a full, old man beard. He walks and paces like a boxer instead of doing his normal hunched predatory run, his voice is calm and full of caution, and only seems to roar when fighting, rather than whenever he’s frustrated with another annoying puzzle section. All his stolen legendary weapons are replaced by his one axe, and he teaches his son patience, “You are hunting deer, not chasing it.” Yes this is the same Kratos. And yes I did say son.
As Hollywood knows all too well, child characters can eek out the humanity of a protagonist who has none; Terminator, Logan, Leon, all have a stoic, violent man being accompanied by a normal child who they end of caring for and even enjoying the ‘small things’ with and other clichés. Games have started to do it with The Last of Us, and it’s honestly a potent mechanic. Doubly-so when the character you’re playing has this absurd, violent history and is wandering the Earth reflecting on what he’s done. Kratos’ whole raison d’être has been revenge for his family that he killed, and now he’s got a second chance at doing the whole bereavement thing, this time with less apocalyptic rage.
So why is Midgard such an appropriate setting for this potential redemption? Well Kratos has felled one pantheon out of rage, and now he wants to be left well alone with his new family. If there’s any group of gods who have a reputation for messing with people, it’s the Norse gods. Odin goes to Midgard as an old cloaked man with one eye, Loki plays tricks and Thor strikes people down with lightning. The gods have to be impressed to let you into Valhalla, they want you to fight and spill blood – they would love younger Kratos. You can imagine that Kratos will want to be left the hell alone, his quest is to take his wife’s ashes to the top of the tallest mountain with his son, but Odin et al will surely not resist the urge to interfere. Not to mention creatures like the frost giants, ogres, Fenrir and Jörmungandr, the giant wolf and the world snake, both children of Loki.
Whereas the Greek mythos is well documented and expansive, with a large cast of titans, gods and demi-gods, Norse mythology is a more fluid thing. Most of it comes from stories (sagas), epic poems and what was left behind. There’s a mysticism there where we don’t really know what’s what, and the gods were mysterious in nature – a lot of the tales about them involved some form of deception, trickery and untrustworthy wanderers. It’s why Loki is such a prominent figure, an anti-hero and trickster, rather than a villain.
This is to say that, as we journey more deeper into Kratos’ psyche than ever before, as his more complex layers are revealed, it’s fitting that he probably won’t just be pinning someone’s godly nuts to the top of the parthenon with his Blades of Revenge. I can’t see new Kratos taking their crap, but he may even be above them now. He may match wits with Loki as much as he matches strength with Thor. He’s not going to want to endanger his son by going toe-to-toe with them all, so he’s going to be on the defensive for the first time.
Any gamer who grew up playing God of War and loving the violence and the high-octane set-pieces will be happy to know it seems to remain, but they will also be happy to know that, 10 years on, it’s doing more than that. The transition from Greece to Midgard for me at least visualises a turn in the series into the more multi-dimensional. Kratos’ long-term grief and remorse, his son, his desire to be left alone from the world lest he do more things he’ll regret, and now just wanting to complete his wife’s dying wish, make him way more interesting, and sticking a character like that in the realm of the Norse gods seems like the cruelest but most intriguing thing Santa Monica Studio could’ve done.
Role Playing Games have been having a bit of a renaissance on the PC in the last few years. We’ve seen games like Pillars of Eternity, Legend of Grimrock, the remastered Avernum series, and Wasteland 2 reinvigorate the traditional style of cRPG. We’ve seen new takes on the cRPG formula, like Torment: Tides of Numenera and the Divinity: Original Sin series. We’ve also seen action RPGs take over the world, with The Witcher 3, Final Fantasy XV, and Diablo III selling absolute tonnes.
These games are all brilliant, but it feels like the RPG genre has stalled a little, whilst we’re seeing absolutely wonderful games come out that are exciting and ambitious, it feels like it’s been a long time since we had something that really shook the genre up.
Maybe that time has come in the form of Disco Elysium.
Dance Steps
Disco Elysium (formerly No Truce with the Furies) is a semi-futuristic/fantasy alternate-world neo-noir RPG about ideas and about solving crimes. It’s a game where your character’s mind is as important as your character’s actions, it’s a game where your character’s perception of events is called into question throughout, and it’s a game that feels fresh and exciting in a way that RPGs haven’t for a while.
That’s a paragraph that needs unpacking, but first, watch the trailer:
Learning to Boogie
There’s a sadness that permeates Disco Elysium, from its first seconds it’s clear that this is a world where hope and something essential and vital has leeched out of the world. You’re a washed up cop, so far past the border of ‘borderline alcoholic’ you might as well be a citizen of Alcohol Country.
The game has you waking up, nude, still drunk from the night before, in a hotel with a smashed window. What did you do the night before? Who are you? Why are you here? Your memory isn’t what it used to be…in fact it isn’t anything.
The way your character talks to people is up to you, your memory is one huge hole and how that plays out is your choice. Do you want to bluff your way through, rely on info from others to fill in the gaps, or are you going to be straight up and admit to everyone that there’s a gap where your past used to be?
Speaking to the developers, they took this as a deliberate choice. They hate the hour of exposition many RPGs lead with and they would much prefer that you explore this world at the same pace as the main character. It’s important to remember that despite appearances, this isn’t our world. The developers ZA/UM said at EGX Rezzed that the world is similar to ours, but is essentially different even down to the reactions of people. It’s not just an event that caused this world to split away from us in our past, it’s that thinking and our ideas are different in this world. What makes human ‘human’ is different here, so the world itself has grown apart from our own history.
Dancing with the Lights Off
This is definitely a game about conversation and exploration. One of the issues the developers have had with other RPGs is that they tend to be combat heavy, even the lauded Planescape: Torment has plenty of frankly-average combat padding out its hours. Disco Elysium instead aims to be a game about events, whilst people can die and you can be in danger, they’re tied to crescendos in the plot and in the narrative.
What instead takes the focus is your investigation in the world, you’re a cop with a partner, and it’s your job to look into a case. This starts off with a murder, as all good mysteries do, and spans out from there into a semi-open world RPG adventure.
Whilst your character is ‘somebody’ in the world, you’re not ‘the Dragonborn’ or ‘the promised one’, you’re just a cop. One people will have reactions to, they may know you already, they may judge you on your appearance, or they may judge you on your job. Developers ZA/UM spoke about this at Rezzed, saying it means they can avoid the issue where you can be fifty hours into a game, killed God, punched a Daemon into the moon, and still have people say to you ‘ho adventurer, say, kill five rats for me’.
This isn’t, however, the thing that’s revolutionary. That’s more in the mind.
Think it Over
You have an inventory in Disco Elysium where you can manage the items you pick up. It doesn’t end there though, you can also pick up ideas as you proceed through your case. For example, at the start of the game you are asked to investigate a corpse, swinging softly in the breeze from a nearby tree. As part of its narrative structure you can attempt actions or attempt to succeed at challenges through the dialogue options, and it’s possible to fail this particular challenge a few times simply because the body has been hanging there several days, and you’re quite hungover.
So even after using something to take the smell away, you might find yourself needing a new option. In comes an idea your partner gives you, to get your shit together. You see, in Disco Elysium you have a second inventory related to ideas and concepts that you come across. Slotting this idea about getting your shit together in there, you are given a small in-world timer which passes as you talk to people. After thirty in-game minutes, the idea ripens and bursts into…the shit singularity, meaning that you do indeed have your shit together.
Heading back to the tree, you can now keep your shit together and investigate the corpse, successfully taking the next step in your case.
Whilst this is an early game example, the developers talked about how this feature would expand from this. The idea is that you can mature other concepts in your mind, and these will determine how you act and react to people and situations in-game. If you slip in a racist idea you’ll be a lot more racist in your interactions and people will react appropriately. Similarly with fascist or communist ideologies.
Any Colour you Like
Your character isn’t just a meat suit you pilot about the world, he’s also possibly losing his mind. Not only is he left with a gap in his memories, he’s an unreliable narrator. Very soon after starting the game you’ll find objects, corpses, sleeping people, all talking to you, urging you on or asking things of you. Are they real, are you a shaman, or are you just losing your mind?
None of these questions are answered in the short area available to attendees of EGX Rezzed, but you get a feel that the world might not be all that you’re seeing, and there might be more below the surface if you just scratch away at it.
The developers did mention that this isn’t just a slightly futuristic world, there may be the supernatural lurking away in the corners, so maybe this is your way in. Maybe you are magic, and you’re tapping into the a world others can’t say. That said, it’s entirely plausible that these are the firings of an alcoholic’s last neurons as you slide slowly into death.
Disco Elysium is looking to be something utterly special, it’s an RPG that actually uses the R for once. You’re playing a role, and you define that role through your interactions with the world and yourself. The start of the game which was playable at Rezzed was astounding, and easily was something that an hour or more could be sunk into without noticing. It’s one to keep your eye on, and it’s coming later in 2018.
I wouldn’t be so gatekeeping as to suggest that only people who grew up in the 90s like me suffered the continuous disappointment of games that had been made from popular films. One of the worst games of all time is the infamous E.T. on the Atari 2600, the game that is blamed for the home video game system crash of the 80s. It was like the App Store back in those days where every game was only allowed 6 weeks of dev time, except they also had to physically make, transport and sell copies, and the sold them at $70 a piece. People stopped buying video games entirely because of movie cash-grabs like E.T. and Gremlins.
There’s also younger generations who perhaps grew up with a Wii or Gamecube who experienced some shockingly bad adaptations of their favourite movies – or more likely their parents assumed they would enjoy them more than, you know, Mario or GTA. And then there’s us 90s kids who got arguably the most successful movie tie-in: Goldeneye, and a slew of ‘quite average to good’ Disney games because as it turns out it’s not hard to make a decent 2D platforming game when you’ve got someone else’s already good visuals, characters and soundtrack to slap on it.
I mean how much of this was copy+paste?
During the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era, a video game was just another tick in the box for film production companies. Film? Check. Ads? Check. Toys? Check. Video game? Check. No-one really cared about the quality of the game itself, it was just another obligation for the studio and the actors. You’d get some quality stuff this way; like most of the Lord of the Rings games, as EA seemed to have wrestled enough creative control to make decent games. Harry Potter was there, films like Hulk and King Kong were surprisingly good too. But were they good because they were movies, or despite that?
LucasArts realised that their prequel games – Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles, The Phantom Menace, Episode III – definitely weren’t doing as well as ones that provided something extra; not just putting fans in the films in a clunky and forced way, but giving them a fresh experience that adds to the overall enjoyment of the Star Wars universe. Games like Republic Commando, Battlefront 1 and 2, Bounty Hunter, Rogue Squadron, Empires at War, Jedi Outcast and Academy, were and are still held in very high regard. Ask a Star Wars fan what they want most from the new Star Wars films and it’ll likely include a continuation of things created in their favourite games (Top tip: If you’re a fan of Republic Commando like me, check out one of the episodes of the animated series Clone Wars. It has a Commando in it and it’s so true to the game, it’s great).
Using this image so I get picked up by r/gaming hopefully.
So by the launch of the PS3 and Xbox 360, the majority of film tie-ins had died away and seen as not worth it for the film industry, thankfully because gamers got wise and real IPs started to rake in all the money. They couldn’t compete with GTA, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, games that were getting as cinematic as films themselves without needing to be restricted to mimicking a 2-hour storyline. So where did all the cash grabs go? How do we prey on the impulsive nature of young children, the growing sensitivity of parents to violent video games, and deal with the fact that turning films into games is actually really tough? You homogenise them into one family-friendly theme: LEGO!
Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman, Avengers, Harry Potter have all come back with a vengeance in LEGO form, and now Disney is returning to video games yet again with it’s The Incredibles LEGO game. This is not to say the games are bad, they definitely have a place in the ever-growing landscape of video game genres. They take something familiar and they put a spin on it that’s entertaining, new and easy to play. The wildly varying difficulty and fun of the movie tie-ins is gone, in favour of a consistent and possibly more average type of movie game. Like a Nepresso coffee capsule, it’s not the best but you know what you’re getting.
Mmm consistency.
And this looks to be the way the games industry will treat films now. In fact the tables seem to have turned; the film industry has looked at our Tomb Raiders, Warcrafts, Assassin Creeds and our…pixels (?) for film ideas and relying on games’ inherent popularity with people instead. Netflix are even getting involved and borrowing our beautiful Witcher, and Disney has stopped shovelling out 2D platformers and is now creating films like Wreck It Ralph AKA ‘Video Game Reference Film’. The games industry doesn’t need the handouts of Hollywood writers for games ideas, they’d rather go to the source and pitch their own plans for IPs. Games like the upcoming Spiderman on PS4 and the recent Batman Arkhamseries, Battlefront 2 (the new one) and the Shadow of Mordor games have very high standards that are being, or most likely will be, met. The onus is on them to make us play them rather than picking up the new God of War or Last of Us. Or just League of Legends again.
So where will this go next? Will VR usher in a new wave of movie tie-ins? Unlikely, but possible. AR has prompted some new Harry Potter games, and companies are still making mobile games about Transformers and the like. But AAA games these days have to be platforms for DLC and new content and a growing fanbase to have good enough return on investment. You know how you ruin your return on investment? You make a bad game because you’re trying to cash-in on a temporarily popular film franchise. The restraint devs have shown to avoid this in recent years is admirable, TellTale Games notwithstanding. The only way for them to go is the way of the new Spiderman and Avengers games, by creating brand new story and becoming part of the universe in their own right. To stand among books and films and tv shows as equally important and lucrative experiences.
Welcome to the new and improved Chart Expert Game!
Why change your beautiful Chart Expert Game?
Previously we asked you to guess the top 3 games sold over the week. This was easy when Destiny 2 and Call of Duty were going to be released, but every other time it was very difficult to guess what game did best in our sales, and other factors.
So what’s changed? Is it easier?
Yes! Now we will give you three games each week, and you have to put them in the order in which they’ll occur. For example:
On Monday, we say: Destiny 2, Call of Duty: WW2, Barbie’s High School Dreams.
Then by midday Tuesday you have to guess the order of how much each sold.
You say:
Barbie’s High School Dreams
Destiny 2
Call of Duty
On Friday we’ll release the correct order, and all those who guessed correctly will win a game key!
