PC/Mac

Are too many games broken on release? Discuss!

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Broken games aren’t anything new, although it does seem that we have had a glut of them in recent months. Assassin’s Creed Unity looks set to join the post-development woe befalling Halo’s Master Chief Collection and DriveClub. But has it always been this way for games to be released with problems?

In a word, yes. Sadly the game medium and the ease publishing downloadable updates to consoles have seen game publishers rigidly stick to their release dates in order to fill their quarterly reports, at the expense of bad press and consumer dissatisfaction. It feels all too apparent in recent times though. Here are a few reminders of the last 12-18 months of game release failures. [divider]

SimCity

brokengame1 Those who recall the long wait for a £60 pound persistent online game only to find that they were only persistently trying to connect to EA’s servers will lament this well. It was made even worse for Mac users who had to not only wait an age for their release but for the problems to be solved as well. Was the game broken? Well there were parts of it that were, and certainly still are. A new engine and new AI was being patched quite a lot in the end to stop itself from doing silly things but for the most part (apart from the always online design flaw and small development areas) the game was fine. But the release of the game turned into a complete farce for EA.

Given that the game was “always online” and there was no offline mode, it was the lack of servers that surprisingly foiled EA’s release. The back end infrastructure they had in place couldn’t handle the amount of people who were wanting to play, nor the data it was supposed to store, leading to a long process of issues, apologies and modifications. EA had to give away a free game, Maxis had a tail between their legs and had to release certain things for free that would have made good DLC and they had to implement an offline mode after the mod community showed how easy it was to implement. Never one to be bested by such setbacks, EA did exactly the same thing six months later…

 

Battlefield 4

brokengame2 The release of Battlefield 4 actually started a lawsuit against people who appeared to be raising the game’s praise to shareholders erroneously in order to generate satisfactory financial reports. But us gamers don’t care about all that suit nonsense, we care that once again, EA’s servers were not up to the task of online play. Bugs galore as people could run around with no health and kill you, the promise of big destructible landscapes and buildings were hard to find, lots of graphical glitches and all this was only an issue if you could even connect to a server in the first place to play the game.

Personally, I found Battlefield 4 quite uninspiring as a single player game although I enjoyed the online play as by the time I’d got to it, the multitude of patches and fixes had been implemented and the multiplayer game was playable. But around its launch, very public and very damning issues beset it. Exactly who is to blame here is tricky as there seems to be quite the administrative level fallout over this, but EA once again were at the centre of the storm and directly addressing it calling the situation “unacceptable”. Two bad online releases in a year is obviously the button pusher in the EA head offices. Speaking of fallout…

 

Fallout: New Vegas

brokengame3Ok, so this game goes further than the 18 months but still, it’s worth putting in here. This game was bugged from release. I know this, which is why it’s on my gaming rack still in its cellophane wrapping. As gamers, we tend to forgive Bethesda’s mistakes in game development because of all the things they get right in their games, but this game makes my little reminisce due to it being the most bugged of them all. Fallout 3 was not without its issues and PS3 Skyrim players will recall the game breaking memory issues and save deletions.

Fallout New Vegas also had the same issues and was prone to a multitude of crashes, textures not loading properly, framerate issues, characters running away, item and character clipping, characters heads doing strange things, incorrect gender character noises, to name but a few. There’s a big old list of all the bugs on the wikia page for the game and you could summise that this is why we’re waiting a long time for another Fallout game, or a proper Elder Scrolls successor. The engine definitely needs a lot of work to be up to the scrutiny of a new generation of consoles and maybe that’s why Bethesda are being quiet about it. But that hasn’t stopped them, oh no…

 

The Evil Within

brokengame4 Bethesda’s most recent release is a fine game. It looks excellent and has only the minimal of bugs, like the headless character bug pictured. It’s a survival horror treat that is worth the time and the day one patch. If you don’t have the day one patch however, the game is a completely different story. Digital Foundry did some snooping after a couple of reports of bad frame rates, but that was just the start of the horror. The out-of-the-box version of the game is a mess. The resolution of the game is a heavily upscaled resolution that is nowhere near the 1080p or 900p it’s supposed to be for the PS4 and Xbox One respectively and is stretched to fill the screen. It also suffers from massive framerate drops, the likes of which you’ve probably only seen on a heavily overworked Minecraft server.

The patch completely changes this to a playable game. But what gets me is that the developers had time to fix this for the release edition until the game’s release was brought forward a week (presumably to cash in before Alien Isolation came out). The patch, given how much it fixes, is a monumental effort by developer Tango Gameworks. It’s definitely worth checking out the videos that Digital Foundry put up as it really does highlight the issues the retail version of the game has. To release a game in that condition is simply just not cricket…

 

Ashes Cricket 2013

brokengame5 Yes these links are getting worse. But no worse than the only game in this piece that was actually removed from sale. It even made national news due to its failure. Ashes Cricket 2013 is probably the reason that you won’t see a cricket game for quite a long while. 505 apologised and issued refunds, Steam pulled the game from sale and the console versions didn’t even appear. Why? Because the AI was awful, the character models were missing key things (such as an animation for catching the ball) and the players ambled around in such a manner that Tecmo Bowl looked superior in playability.

Everything about this game was poor although the development was just as sketcky, moving to the Unity engine and then back again, being delayed twice and only released to try and cash in with its titular sporting series in Australia back in November 2013. All in all the story of this game is quite tragic really and just a cacophony of errors that will probably see Cricket languish in video game development hell, much like Rugby has for the most part in the past decade.

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The thing is that all games release with bugs and as console gamers, we probably feel a bit precious about it given that we expect for our £50-60 outlay a satisfactory and, above all else, a ready product. And releasing games into a retail environment (that includes all the digital stores too) that are effectively broken or heavily bugged, just to make the demands of agreed times and publisher’s quarterly estimates, is quite abhorrent. That maybe a slightly cynical viewpoint though as PC gamers of all ages will know that games can be and are regularly patched to combat these problems. They always have been and they always will be. But the fact that we’ve had quite a few big name problems within the space of a week is quite damming.

brokengame6 Of course Microsoft have always had this date due to the nature of its anniversary package for Halo and the game in all honesty is intended to be a much needed unit shifter for the Xbox One. In fairness to them, the single player element of the game is fine there are just a lot of teething issues for quite a vast and probably the largest options of a multiplayer experience to date. Assassin’s Creed Unity is suffering from a number of graphical glitches in character models as well as world clipping issues. The game has already irked some due to its drop from 1080p to 900p in what is perceived to be cross platform parity. But the game has quite the demanding and technically difficult task of simultaneously processing 10,000 AI controller non-playable characters so that the experience of the crowd is more real and genuine. It’s no small matter given the processing power needed for that and what the consoles can achieve at present with how new the technology is for developers. DriveClub’s issues just seem to be poor choices that have been made at a management level to the game’s infrastructure and, if we’re honest, just a complete shambles from pre-launch to now, which is a shame for Evolution Studios.

While these bugs are certainly taking away from the game experience, and do invalidate our confidence in a publisher to develop a complete package for our hard earned electronic wealth numbers, do they constitute such a breach of trust between the consumer (us) and the developer/publisher (them) that we should be up in arms, or should we just back off a bit? After all this is all new ground for everyone, right?

Please feel free to leave comments, post on Facebook or tweet @TheGameJar and let’s talk about this.

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Call of Duty Advanced Warfare – Review

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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It’s a little strange heading in to Call of Duty Advanced Warfare because I haven’t played a Call of Duty game in four years, my last being Black Ops. The series has come a long way in this, its first truly Next Gen outing. It hasn’t held back on its punches either by drafting big names like Kevin Spacey of American Beauty and House of Cards fame and Troy Baker of all video game voice fame (The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite).

It’s weird because in a way, Call of Duty is almost a multiplayer game before it is a single player shooter. Sledgehammer Games have come on board along with Raven Software. If you don’t know, Raven have as much good pedigree as Sledgehammer, who created Dead Space and co-developed Modern Warfare 3. Raven have a wealth of awesome titles in their history including Hexen, Soldier of Fortune, Star Wars Jedi Knight 2/3 and Star Trek Voyager – Elite Force. The last game being not only an excellent shooter but quite possibly the best Star Trek game ever made. Just so you know who you’re dealing with.

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The comparisons between this game and Titanfall have been raging since its announcement and of course there are some. Respawn, who created Titanfall and were formerly Call of Duty developers, set themselves very squarely in a futuristic Mech-based vein and Advanced Warfare does at least one of these things and maybe riffs off others. In fairness to the game, that kind of thing is nothing that Halo 4 didn’t do before either of them, and the movement perks of the Exo Skeleton suit aren’t anything that isn’t in Destiny’s multiplayer. So as far as that goes, it’s one of those industry coincidences that happens from time to time. Like every game due for release in 2015 seems to have a monster called a “Kraken”… Trust me, you’ll notice that next year.

PC gamers might want to skip this paragraph. When it comes to the performance of Call of Duty, this game doesn’t disappoint, unlike Ghosts did before it. Everything is at 1080p on PS4 and an upscaled 1080p on the Xbox One. Don’t get grumpy yet. The game downscales as and when the quality is needed on the Xbox One (dynamic scaling) so the game holds a constant 60fps for the most part. The PS4 version does suffer occasionally with frame rate drops although to be honest these are not really that noticeable and are few and far between. So in theory, despite the resolution drops, this could be the first game on the Xbox One that outperforms the PS4. The game holds 60fps mostly though on both consoles, especially in the multiplayer, which is exactly what Call of Duty is known for and what the community has requested. So, job done in that sense, box ticked. The game is absolutely excellent though visually, as you’ll hear later with the work done on the actors. But there’s still something that makes everything feel a little blocky, a little sharp-edged maybe? It’s hard to describe and for the most part it excels in the graphical scrutiny but the city levels and the multiplayer at times feels a bit too angular compared to the complexion and work that is in other areas of the game.

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The campaign, in one regard, plays out like any Call of Duty game has since Modern Warfare – Massive set pieces in recognizable places with different types of military based gaming from tanks to boats, ground assaults, drone attacks and airplane dogfighting. In fact the story begins in an almost lawsuit-inducing similar way to Halo 3: ODST. Without spoiling anything, the story is as trite as an action military based plotline can be, and the series has still found a way –despite being set 50 years in the future – to bomb/assault Baghdad and jab at the North Korean’s with repelling an invasion of the South. Could have chosen anywhere in the world but no, still obsessed with modern Mesopotamia and introverted communist nations, aren’t we… I digress.

The thing is, regardless of whether or not you think the series is insensitive to any particular world view (regardless of the infamous “No Russian” mission), it has never pretended to be anything but fictitious entertainment in a terribly militaristic sense with a slight, possibly unintentional commentary on the state of the world at hand. Much like both versions of Red Dawn, except much better. Modern Warfare 2 had it with the grainy helicopter camera perspective of shooting white human outlines fleeing in a field in shots reminiscent of recent friendly fire footage. This game has it in its sense of accountability and bureaucratic freedom of private security and military forces, which if you’ve ever looked in to are a dangerous and scary proposition to the geopolitical conflicts at large. And, guess what, you’re part of one.

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No spoilers here, you should experience the game for yourself with its trips to Camp David, New Baghdad, Seoul and Greece, as well as the much-advertised San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge shootout. But in the other regard, the game comes in to its own with the care and attention taken in animating and voicing the two main characters. Troy Baker stars as Jack Mitchell, a Marine who’s prematurely ended career gets given a new lease of life under Kevin Spacey’s Jonathon Irons, and his corporation Atlas who develop military tech and are the worlds largest private security/military firm. The rest of the voice acting is as you’d expect in Call of Duty with Gideon Emery doing his best Jason Statham impression. But the two main names give some excellent performances, backed up by some incredible CGI animation of themselves both in cutscene and in-game sequences. Spacey’s performance is by no means the intense yet disturbingly compelling level that Frank Underwood is but as far as video games go this is a pretty big performance from a two-time Oscar and BAFTA winner and certainly some excellent casting. Both Baker and Spacey add a good bit of depth to a game which doesn’t really push the boat out in terms of narrative, but that’s not something you really care about in a Call of Duty game. You’re happy enough to just sit and be entertained, regardless of vaccum packed bodybags, terrorist threats and coordinated global destabilization that seem to be the go-to military plotlines in our post-24 gaming narratives.

The weapons for the most part seem well balanced, although at times the pistol, the Atlas 45, is completely gutless and other weapons, including a Minigun, seem to take an absolute age to kill people despite aiming for headshots. Possibly this is the trade off of futuristic armour, etc, that you can plough a guy with bullets from 6 feet away and still take 10 seconds to kill him. Despite being Advanced Warfare, nothing is too advanced to be outrageously fictional or space-age and everything – except a particular sniper rifle, EMP’s and interchangeable option grenades – aren’t that much out of the realms of your standard gun+bullet=shooting fare. It’s easy enough to get a grounding, get your preferred weapons and have at it. The little extra modifiers such as the bullet time-esque overdrive are cool to a point, and I do love using the Sonic noise option with the Exo suit and creating a mass of easy targets. But for the most part they only become usable in certain missions where they are designed to be used, like cloaking technology in a stealth mission. So your game style doesn’t really change or benefit from them. Which is a shame because, as you head to the end of the game, it would have been nice to actually benefit from these features rather than just use them like level-based perks. The biggest thing about the exo skeleton suit, the jumping and boost options are again only usable in certain missions so you don’t really get the full effect that you might have been hoping for in the single player campaign. But it has to be said that when you stealth kill some people with your grappling hook, especially when you rip a pilot out of mech suit and smash him face first into the ground, it is quite satisfying, despite the lack of times that you can do so.

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That’s where the multiplayer comes in to play. Super smooth gameplay, well designed maps, interesting gun gameplay and a fairly balanced leveling system which is easy to get up to an intermediate level. The game modes are well tested over years of Call of Duty multiplayer and their experience shows.   The exo skeleton in this mode is where it seems designed for. It allows you to jump farther, boost yourself around with relative ease and it feels perfectly balanced to the pace of the game. Most people I speak to say that Modern Warfare 2 was the height of the franchise’s multiplayer action and if that’s the case then this is just as good if not better. The Uplink mode, which is basically like Basketball or Halo’s Oddball/Headhunter game types, works incredibly well, especially with the elevated goal making use of the exo skeleton. This is certainly ticking all the boxes that the competitive gaming scene have asked for but it feels accessible enough that you can just jump in and have fun, not worrying about being smoked out by people who are already level 30+. At least that’s what it’s like at the moment. If you get used to playing then you’ll do well and for once, it seems like the games are balanced enough that it rewards someone who has a good game rather than people who camp and get cheap kills. At no point yet have I started screaming, “HACKS!” or “CHEATS!” or “Aren’t you aware there’s other games you could play or possibly read a book?” And at no point has my families gender or lifestyle been questioned or insulted in a triad of voice breaking abuse, so I’m happy.

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In all seriousness though, the multiplayer is a joy to play, and it’s not often I say that about a Call of Duty game. There isn’t the ridiculous kill perks that constantly wipe out the map every 40 seconds, or anything that really puts you out into a constant sprawl of death. Of course there are several times where you’ll have bad luck or a run of poor form but the game doesn’t make you feel put out or that you’re spefically at fault. It sounds weird but it’s enjoyable enough that you may have a bad game and you don’t immediately rage quit. It’s like the game sort of hugs you a little and says “never mind, give it another go.” The fact that matchmaking is rather quick and the performance in game is super smooth, definitely aids that decision to soldier on and get back to your fragging. Certainly, there are no launch server issues here. This means that even with a few hours play you can make some serious progress in your multiplayer gaming experience. There are several custom loadout options as you go through and unlock all the weapons and armour extras. There is a bit of avatar customization but it isn’t really that in depth, as in depth as you’d like anyway, but it’s a nice little touch in personalizing your online experience with different armour and hats (again something that has already been done quite well in the Halo games). All of the modes are there like capture the flag, deathmatch (both team and free-for-all), big team games, domination, objective destruction and a few modified playlists (like limited HUD and ranked play), with Zombies reportedly to return in DLC. Given that, as I remarked earlier, Call of Duty is almost a multiplayer game before it is a single player it is quite the improvement from previous years and a job well done.

The big question with this game and with the multiplayer specifically is whether the exo skeleton and the futuristic basis for the game really changes the Call of Duty franchise for the better. In one way, no because it is ultimately a plot point in the campaign that could have been any kind of technology and the multiplayer dynamics behind Call of duty Advanced Warfare are very good anyway, so much so that all it kind of provides is a jumping boost and opens a lot more of the maps up along with different combat tactics. In the other way it does because it really brings the franchise up to date with its competitors (Titanfall, Halo 4, Destiny) and has the benefit of seeing what they’ve done for the past three years and how to implement these new gaming styles in to their already well established and tested formula. In truth Call of Duty Advanced Warfare is the start of a new generation for the franchise that appears to have trimmed its last generation fat and stepped forward into a promising future. It doesn’t change too much but gives an entertaining package that you can rely on.

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Call of Duty Advanced Warfare benefits from a big overhaul in its multiplayer but to credit that purely on the exo skeleton would be unjust. The game feels generally a lot more balanced and whilst the suit is the selling point, it’s merely a vehicle for the rest of the fun the game has. The storyline is traditional Call of Duty fare despite the big name cast of Kevin Spacey and Troy Baker giving it some volume. This is a return to form for the franchise and feels like a well balanced and rewarding game and multiplayer, but it doesn’t jump out of anything that we kind of rely on with Call of Duty or push itself to really WOW us. A good, but comfortable effort.

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[tab title=”Good Points”]

– Great visuals and performance

– Multiplayer mode is a vast improvement

– Exo Skeleton doesn’t make the game but certainly frees it up

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[tab title=”Bad Points”]

– It isn’t a huge reach from Call of Duty’s past

– Campaign story doesn’t push the boat out narratively

– Use of Exo skeleton in Campaign too restrained

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[tab title=”Why a 7.5?”]

This game is good. It is a return to form for the series and the exo skeleton does enough to revitalise some of the gameplay, but mostly revitalising the interest and the effort put in to the multiplayer mode as a whole. But, whilst visually stunning and with some good big name performances, it kind of sits comfortably on the Call of Duty mantle without pushing itself out to be the stand out game or completely wowing us. Definitely enjoyable and worth the 7.5 score but just misses on something higher due its lack of drive to really elevate the franchise up to the next level.

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This review is based on the PS4 version of the game

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[author]

Shadow Warrior – Review

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Shadow Warrior is of a different time and a different age. Yet it comes to us with the sheen and veneer of a new game. But it’s not just the license that makes this game ancient. Released last year on PC and given the next-generation port treatment, the now barely acceptable racial tropes of the mid 90s 3D Realms shooter/slasher got a modernization and is all the better for it.

Unlike the last attempt for a 3D Realms reboot, the ill received Duke Nukem Forever, Devolver Digital and Flying Wild Hog games have struck a fairly good chord, one that ultimately suits Devolver quite well given their back catalogue. The efforts that have been made to separate this game from the more unsavoury parts of its past are excellent, but somehow its past has still dictated how the game works in some areas and sadly spoils at times an incredible effort.

The story of this game wouldn’t be out of place in the plays of Sophocles and Euripides. It’s a Greek tragedy in so much that whilst the playing end revolves around you, the mortal in flesh but immortal in ego Lo Wang, and your demon compatriot Hoji, the story behind it – the Shadow Realm’s immortals specifically –  has all the hallmarks of a family encountering tragedy through lust and power with a resolution that can only be revenge. It’s story telling is so ancient that it cannot help but be entertaining and gripping as it goes on. Not that it’s anywhere near original or that the parts of the story that unfold while you are playing are anywhere near as entertaining. But the back story and the animations that accompany them are excellently produced and let on enough of the truth behind Hoji’s words and the memories that the Whisperers are tied to. It does this at the right times and drop feeds you enough to make sure you get the right amount of emotional connection at the correct point in the story. It’s very cleverly done.

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The voice acting isn’t too shabby either, especially with the potential of Kung-Fu lampooning that is at every turn. Where Wolfenstein: The New Order (which came out after Shadow Warrior’s original release) didn’t shy from its roots and managed to provide occasionally humorous turns in its dialogue and sound bytes, Shadow Warrior does the same, although it cannot escape its puerile past at times. Wang’s ego is so astonishingly adolescent at points that it kind of gets old quite quickly. Thankfully the game realizes this and tones him down as it goes on. But you can still find the mid 90s humour you’re looking for in the fortune cookies scattered around the levels, if you’re that way inclined. My personal favourite being the “404: Fortune not found”, but there are some of them which keep reverting the game back to its roots and sadly, its out-of-date humour. The sound design is also slightly weak at times, occasionally dropping out dialogue and having too many weapons and explosion noises going on at once to make sense of the cacophony you’re presented with. The music is great but after several hours playing the same three tracks it gets a bit old (although kudos on the death bunny heavy metal music). At one point I was going up a bamboo scaffolding with heavy cloth underfoot and I was getting the sound of walking on metal.

For everything this game does excellently, there’s a hangover to the original game that keeps it firmly locked in the past. The game looks beautiful. At times the scenery is stunning. We said in the preview that the bright colours and high resolution make for an excellent experience and they certainly do. This is definitely a visual treat at times, especially as you head towards the lighting and the scenery in the end of the game, although incredibly graphic in battle. This has been at the cost of performance though as the more enemies approach and the more effects/explosions/gore happens, the bigger the frame rate drop is. In fact at times it feels incredibly last generation due to the lag you get in the game from the loss of frames and as the difficulty goes up, so does your frustration. It’s the only thing that really makes you realise you’re playing a port of the game rather than something designed for the next generation console. The enemies themselves are quite well designed and have some interesting dynamics to them but the game again holds too close to its roots in its design. As the game goes on, instead of upping the difficulty or the challenge, the game makes progression more difficult by throwing more and more enemies at you at once, in more and more extremes. The levels themselves and the game becomes slightly too long because the enemy gameplay becomes a bit repetitive due to this and the sense that you are trapped in an endless cycle of the same corridors and doors can lead to very aggravating déjà vu. I’ve been to Japan and I’m pretty sure that everywhere I went wasn’t decked out in the Ikea-esque black painted wood cabinets that seem to be everywhere in Shadow Warrior, whether you’re at the docks, underground, in a oil tanker or traversing through a cemetery. Another hangover from the older styles of level design maybe?

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I did sometimes wonder whether this was just laziness on the part of the games development as the guns in the game and the leveling system is excellent. You unlock more guns as you go and the money you find on the way will help you upgrade them into quite the potent and enjoyable arsenal, much like Wolfenstein does. The ammo is readily found and the many options that you can use to take on a battle does give you some more freedom than most shooters would in how tackle a situation. The level design in that regard is very good as it gives you, for the most part, spaces to hide, things to blow up, and many secrets to be found that will aid your upgrading of skills. There are two skill upgrades, one that requires a Ki crystal which most levels have one or two, and karma which upgrades your usable skills like healing, special katana moves and protection buffs. This is all accessed via the controller and yet again the game handles this transition to console very well. The controls are for the most part intuitive and where you’d expect them to be with easy weapon selection and easy combos in order to access the more magic based skills like healing. Annoying though, this is at the cost of the more traditional “L2 aim R2 shoot” button layout, and as your upgrades demand more of the controller, using the skill combos becomes harder. Which is another pain when your faced with an enormous amount of enemies in a frame rate dropping space and the controller thinks that you’re wanting to dual wield Uzi’s instead of healing.

For every thing the game does right there’s something that, compared to Wolfenstein’s success, holds it firmly in the past. Whether or not it’s the level designs, black Ikea-esque cabinets and the throw-all-the-enemies-at-you style of difficulty increments or occasionally borderline racist humour, the game suffers from it. Which is a shame because the ease of the gunplay the nice graphics (despite the frame rates at times) and story behind the game is actually very enjoyable and if we’re honest, is what perks this game up. Along with its lower retail price it’s probably a good game to fall on if your looking for something nostalgic and with a change of pace to the heavy hitters that are coming out this Christmas. It has no multiplayer but does include a survival mode and a New Game+ option that will allow you to unlock everything and get all the secrets. If that’s enough for you then fair enough. I was pleased enough with the story that I enjoyed the game, despite its faults, and for a quick pick up and play shooter with big game style graphics, this is a pretty good option.

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Shadow Warrior does its best to bring a tired, old and slightly politically incorrect game out of retirement without falling to the errors of former sister title Duke Nukem Forever. But the hangovers from 3D Realms inspired level design and the “throw everything at you” difficulty make the game a bit too long and repetitive, although the story does rescue it. Definitely fun to play though with excellent visuals, great guns and ease of upgrades and use.

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[tab title=Good Points”]

– Visually great and engaging environment

– Quite a cool Greek Tragedy storyline

– Guns are awesome and easy to use/upgrade

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[tab title=”Bad Points”]

– Suffers from frame rate drops in busier levels

– Gets a bit too long and repetitive in levels

– Humour still a bit politically incorrect at times

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Actually, I’ve agonised about this. I went from a 7, to a 6, to a 6.5 and back to a 7. Because even though the game has its faults, I’m still drawn back to the enjoyable story and fun, easy gameplay that made me want to give it the 7 score in the first place. There are issues, yes and it’s a game you’ll probably only play through once but it’s fun, it’s something you can switch your brain off from and play and just be entertained. Which is something that’s quite hard to pull off successfully.

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This review was based on the PS4 version of the game.

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[author]

The Game Jar’s Scariest Gaming Moments

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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We don’t get scared. None of us do… Ok, well we might actually get a bit scared, especially when it comes to video games. So, given that it is Halloween, we’ve asked out writers to give us a moment of their gaming life when they experienced their scariest moment in video games. There’s no red rings of death or end level crashes here. No, we’re talking about the atmospheric, jumping, heart in mouth moments that only the immersive nature of video games can provide you. So here are our team of delicate souls that we call writers who have spilled their honest guts about how they’ve had to check their undergarments thanks to the scariness of video games. Feel free to tell us your scariest moments and memories too on Twitter and Facebook.

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Paul

When Sean first asked me to write about my scariest moment in video games. One thought sprung to mind – Duke Nukem Forever. However after taking my medication to help resolve the mental state recalling such a monstrous memory. Sean explained that it was meant to be a horror game – and then threatened to unleash the devils horde upon me for not complying. (*cracks whip*- Ed)

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With such encouragement I have been able to think of another scary moment. One that did indeed occur from a horror game and for the right reasons. I’m not normally one for horror games. I confess I’m not that big into horror what so ever, but there was one stand out moment for me though. One that made me jump from my chair and cry into my pillow at night.

The game in question was Dead Space. The moment was when I first heard the necromorph scurrying above my head in the ventilation system. The game was full of atmosphere, with its dark art style, clever shading and shadow work made you flinch at the slightest sound. I could hear the thing above me… I knew it was hunting me.

I felt the panic reaching out from the bottom of my stomach. I tensed, awaiting the inevitable fight that was to occur.
I was so captivated by the sounds of these alien monsters scurrying above me, I forgot to look around. When I did I fricking jumped! There was one of the monsters heading straight for me. I cut it down and then I heard a massive clang behind me. It was there right behind me. I nearly screamed with fright. Dead Space I salute you. You have been one of the few games that has scared the hell out of me and made me enjoy it!

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Tim

I, like many of you, have suffered through many a jump scare or an eerie moment. The sound of chainsaws and angry Spanish. The sudden appearance of Alma on the top of a ladder. James Sunderland sticking his hand into a toilet.

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But my scariest moment is a bit more of an existential dread: the first time I saw my dad playing Doom. Now, readers of this site surely know how deep and all-encompassing my love for Doom and its associated series is. It wasn’t always like that, dear reader.

My dad’s work always required him to have pretty good computers at home, and like any PC owner worth his salt he was always looking for the newest and most system-demanding games to test their mettle on. In 1992 (when I was, oh, five or six) there was no better game to test a PC with than Doom. He called some of his friends over and even let me stay up a little late to watch him play it, which I gladly did.

At first. This was clearly a BIG SCARY GAME FOR GROWN-UPS and I couldn’t deal with it. None of the monsters were cute! You used “real guns”! Everything bled! And the worst part was that it was in first-person, which terrified me in ways I couldn’t elaborate for years. In every other game I’d ever played up until that point, you could see the character. It wasn’t ME getting shot by robots, it was Mega Man, he just needed my help. Mario was the one going down pipes, not me.

Not so in Doom. All of that was happening to ME. Those monsters wanted ME dead. I pretended to not be scared until my mom told me to go to bed, and I didn’t sleep for days. I gradually forgave Doom, and it’s now my favorite game of all time. Partly in spite of how I was originally exposed to it.

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Andy

I should have known. The minute I walked in, the atmosphere became even more oppressive than it had been already.

Dark became darker. Unease became panic. Dead became undead.

I knew that those bodies – strewn all over the area and seemingly lifeless – would soon rise, but it was still a horrifying moment when it happened, exacerbated by the fact that the only weapon I had wasn’t really meant to be a weapon at all. Hell, I’d been using it to play basketball, no more than 30 minutes beforehand.

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Not only was I going to have to fight my way through, but I was going to have to do it through sheer improvisation. I quickly scanned the room for anything that could be used. All I found were circular saw blades and gas canisters. Far from ideal, but better than nothing.

I heard that first familiar moan and instinctively picked up a saw blade, blindly firing it. Got lucky. Took the head off first time, but that was only the beginning. Soon, several more surrounded me. I began picking up anything in close proximity. Blades, canisters, broken bits of wood. I gradually navigated my way through the area, and I could see my goal. A large elevator that would take me to safety.

So, of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy. Between me and that elevator lay several more of them. To be honest though, I was starting to feel a little confident. I strode forward with purpose.
And that’s when they came. Holy s**t, what the hell were they? Why were they moving so quickly? I ran as fast as I could to the elevator. In it was a single flammable barrel. I picked it up, swung round and fired in one fluid motion.

Only, one of them was right in front of me as I did. It wasn’t the only thing to die.

And that’s why we don’t go to Ravenholm…

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Alex

I’d like to preface this by admitting that I’m a coward. I don’t watch horror films, I rarely touch horror games. Please bear that in mind when I say that my scariest game moment came when playing TimeSplitters 2. Y’know, the cartoonish, silly, fast-paced PS2 classic which nobody else found even remotely scary? Yeah, that one. To a kid not well-versed in horror, even trope-filled horror spoofs can be terrifying.

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The first level was set in a Siberian dam, the mission deliberately giving off a James Bond kind of vibe. The opening cutscene hinted at the impending zombie menace, but I was brave, right? I could handle it. I settled in, sneaking around the base, offing masked guards and taking out security cameras with my silenced pistol. Twelve year old me was beginning to feel like a badass. And then it all went wrong. I take out all of the guards in an operating theatre, easy enough. The doors lock, the lights go out and all the guards get up and come after me. Except this time they want to eat my face. To finish the level, I have to head underground into zombie infested tunnels. Tame as this undoubtedly was to veterans of Resident Evil, Silent Hill and other, genuinely scary games, I was really, really uncomfortable. Something about the shambling gait, the stumble to avoid your panicked shotgun blast, the unexpectedly fast lunge towards you scared the hell out of me.

It didn’t help that at that time I had a propensity for getting lost in games and wandering around to try and find what mission trigger I had missed. Roaming around lost, with my fear of more zombies jumping out at me made me end up skipping that mission altogether, using a cheat code to get to the next level. Which, as it turns out, was even creepier and packed with more ghouls. I like to think that I’ve got tough since then. I can handle the first 5 minutes of Outlast, no sweat. Just don’t ask me to play any longer than that.

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Chris

I begin this tale of fear and heavy metal shame in a similar manner to some of the other writers here; I’m too cowardly for horror games. Because of this I avoid them, throw a little sci-fi in the mix and I might be forced to give it a look. Chances are, though, I’m going to avoid your game/film/tv series/slam poetry evening if it’s going to make me jump. Now pop on this Halloween themed hat I bought you, sit down listen to my tale. Don’t tell anyone, though, this is just us talking here, as friends.

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So there I was, 17 years old, I’ve got long hair and mostly wear t-shirts that let you know what metal band I like the most (it was generally Strapping Young Lad). I wear steel toe capped work boots that are black, because that’s more metal and bad ass than trainers. Obviously, due to how metal it was, I bought Doom 3 when it came out for the original Xbox. I also decided that playing it with my equally long haired, heavy as a really heavy thing, metal loving buddy was a good idea. What a dope.

I feared imps and cyborg pig things but little did I know it was the very things that wanted to help which would be my undoing. I don’t even think I thought anything when I moved towards the item box, what a little idiot I was. “BONK!” the game shouted. I exclaimed “OH!” in a manner only acceptable from Princess Peach. As it fell out of my mouth time slowed and shame jumped out of a wormhole to consume me. My friend laughed. “That’s enough of you!” I said and turned the Xbox off, attempting to own my shame. The laughter continued. I traded Doom 3 in and never let horror darken my door again.

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Sean

I’ve been reliably informed that my previous scary moment in gaming, that of the Face-Hugger from the original Alien Vs Predator game, isn’t the fright that it once was. So I’ve been having to wrack my brain for something more scary than the jumpy, hardly seen, alien insemination creature jumping out at you.

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So my first port of call was to look at Doom 3 where the tales of people, including myself, playing the game in the dark and having the trousers almost literally ripped off them was unavoidable. But my first scares actually came from a now well know game series called Alone in the Dark. I was around 8 or 9 at the time and the games that you had weren’t realistic… At all. So in a strange way I think you immersed yourself more in to the game, into the story and in to the atmosphere. As Edward Carnby drove up to that spooky mansion and the midi soundtrack increased with fear, you went on edge a little. As you entered and the door slammed shut behind you and your character looks around, that was it. I was already scared. By the time you get to the attic and the monsters start trying to get through the trapdoor, banging at the blocked entrance (if you blocked it), that’s it. You’ve gone to get the toilet roll.

I’m not that much of a scary game player in so much as I’m not easily scared. No masculinity propping here, I just think it’s down to these early experiences. I still jump when Slender comes at you, when the girl in the bathroom in P.T. appears, when a head crab comes out of nowhere in Half Life, a creeper hissing behind you, and even occasionally when people do quiet memes that end with the screaming girl from The Ring (what a game that could have made). But if it wasn’t for Infogrames and their moody trilogy of games that undoubtedly inspired Resident Evil, then I would be cowering in the corner as soon as a Dragar jumped out at me in a Skyrim dungeon.

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Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition – Review

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

 

The way I look at Sleeping Dogs and this Definitive Edition release is thus: If you were an adolescent man in the early 2000’s you undoubtedly have them in the back of your DVD collection. Or might have recently sent them off to a trade-in site. I’m referring to the Hong Kong Legends DVD releases that showed some of the early careers of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, before Chris Rock and Mel Gibson made them action names in Rush Hour and Lethal Weapon respectively. The thing is that these movies look cheap and, frankly, they are done on an extremely low budget with the stars risk taking, death defying (quite literally) stunts gripping us to the screen. That’s how I think of Sleeping Dogs; on the face of it, just another low budget action movie looking at the big guns and trying to emulate their limelight. But secretly, and in both cases it maybe one of the best kept secrets, they are actually incredibly good, enjoyable and have a great deal of passion in them.

Arguably the first non-Western set open world game on the market at the time in 2012, Sleeping Dogs quietly took up a respected position on the last gen consoles who were waiting for a delicious treat to fill their growing Grand Theft Auto holes, which it did. But to pigeon hole it as just that would be disingenuous to the game. That is certainly something that the Definitive Edition of the game has given light to. I never fully got in to Sleeping Dogs the first time around due to other concerns coming my way like education and that thing you do between getting educated and sleeping. So now was a great time for me to delve in to Hong Kong, without any real prior knowledge of the way the game worked except for maybe a couple of hours play.

For those of you who don’t know much about the background of the game you play as Wei Shen, a vagabond undercover police detective looking for a place to belong after the death of his sister due to drug addiction. You take part in an operation to infiltrate the Triads in your native Hong Kong under the supervision of another Hong Kong officer and a British superior. The game switches its dialect as freely as Hong Kong probably does from English to Cantonese and the island of Hong Kong with its high rises, its ports and unique autonomy from most places in design (get prepared to drive on the left) creates an environment that is second to none and full of character with places to explore and items to go and find. Even mini games galore and Karaoke! Put simply, in the first place, even before this new revamped edition of the game, Square Enix and United Front Games did a marvellous job.

The first things I instantly noticed jumping in to the former British colony were the things that have been lauded by everyone. The increase in draw distance helps just as much as the increased texture levels and lighting dynamics. The depiction of Hong Kong in the game is wonderfully claustrophobic and it creates a heightened sense of panic and unease with its density. The way the early part of the game gives you the busyness of the market and the reflection of neon helps the pace of the game no end. That’s not to say that the resolution upgrade isn’t completely without its flaws at times though. A few things haven’t had the same care and attention as others, which isn’t really that apparent or grating until you notice them. The cars don’t have the same kind of realistic curvature as those of a Rockstar game or Watch_Dogs. For the most part, the game has been upgraded in enough to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

But therein lies the problem. You can argue that, even with the graphical upgrade and even with the addition of the bonus content (which is actually a lot of fun and a welcome addition to the game), that there are some flaws in the game that could have been cured but haven’t. This of course means that there are flaws in the game and occasional glitches and issues. For example the radio stations are slow to change and the music doesn’t really play like a radio station but a temperamental old MP3 player. There are also a few sound glitches with the speech where the lines of dialogue seem to overlap other lines of dialogue. I had a sound bug at the final mission where a machine gun noise was constantly happening and I occasionally came across a few crashes. These kinds of glitches make the game a tiny bit frustrating when you actually realise this game could have been better than what it was before with a tiny bit more work. Although in the same vein, given that the game hasn’t changed, this is a positive. Much like the Anniversary editions of Halo, the core of the game has remained unchanged and that includes some of its much-celebrated gaming mechanics.

There are also a few things that could have improved in this regard too. Driving in this game very rarely holds much of a challenge other than learning how to perfectly control the hyperactive handbrake and I would have gladly taken a bit of a challenge in the types of cars and their handling. The camera can be annoying at times when in combat and occasionally countering the attacks isn’t as responsive as you’d like it to be. That is where my complaints end. There are many things that Sleeping Dogs DE does well and the combat system is one of them. The free flowing, combo-based melee martial arts combat is 99% of the time, fluid and exciting. It doesn’t have the quick to target striking of an Arkham game or Mordor but it doesn’t need it because it’s great as it is. The enjoyable variation of moves that are under your control give you the satisfaction of nailing exactly what you want to nail. The missions are fun and the parkour/free running element gives you that feel like you’re Jackie Chan, hanging on the back of a bus and flying through a gap that no human should possibly fit through or vaulting a fence they shouldn’t be able to leap over. Then you get the slightly hard to handle, never perfect, gun system. Guns are rare in Hong Kong supposedly and using them is even rarer in the game. Which is incredibly refreshing and when you do use them, the reward for getting the shot perfect is a lot better than just simply hitting a headshot every time. There’s recoil and occasionally wild shots, and it compliments the rest of the combat system well.

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There’s not much you can say about the design of the world that hasn’t already been said. Nor the story, which has been much celebrated for ignoring stereotypical tropes, Orientalism if you will allow a literary term. It’s a play detailing the lower end of the triad hierarchy and the rise to power of a man playing several ends of law-enforcing fiddle for his own ends and questioning his beliefs. It is enjoyable without being too over the top or over-egging the cliché’s that the genre is inevitably tied to. When you compare the story and the characterisations in the game to those of others in the genre, like Watch_Dogs, it gives itself a good outing even after two years. In fact, except that Watch_Dogs is graphically superior, Sleeping Dogs is in my opinion a better game. It has a more engaging story, vastly better voice acting and much more interesting environments to explore. Its clothing options are distinctly more varied and the characters, even though they aren’t perfectly synced and have occasional hangovers of the lesser textured versions, are far more enjoyable, believable and allowing of empathy.

The problem is when reviewing a game that has essentially already been reviewed is that you have to take the positives and the changes and critically assess them. So in that regard Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition is good. It isn’t great though, but it is definitely very good. If you’ve never played the game then now is the time to start. If you have then I’d certainly recommend it for the nostalgia kick and for the fact that it is an overall much better game than Watch_Dogs, the only other next gen open world option for each console at the time of writing. But where its improvements highlight its understated and underrated quality, it also sadly highlights where it fell a little and where it has aged. It means that once again, and maybe this couldn’t be helped due to release dates, that it appears in the shadows as a stopgap for those waiting for the next Grand Theft Auto. But as shadows go, this one is a silhouette above the rest.

Summary

This is a welcome return for Sleeping Dogs and its a release that will make you enjoy revisiting the world or dipping in for the first time, especially with everything thrown in. The graphical upgrades are great despite a few gameplay bugs not being ironed out which could have made it better. Worth the investment and maybe shows potential for a sequel.

Good Points

– Great work on texture and lighting upgrades

– Excellent game and story to begin with

– Combat system is pretty awesome

Bad Points

– Driving isn’t really that challenging

– Occasional bugs and glitches remain

– The game feels a bit old at times

Why an 8?

When you have a great game to begin with, and get the option to port it across to better technology, why not? Sleeping Dogs DE is still fun, enjoyable, and an excellently created world and story. It’s a welcome addition to the next gen shelves and heres hoping this breeds more from Wei Shen’s adventures.

 

This review is based on the PS4 version of the game.

 

Review – Styx – Master of Shadows

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

Styx, the Master of Shadows, is a goblin. To be precise he is the first goblin. In a fantasy world made up of elves and humans, Styx is there to rob them blind. Taken prisoner and forced to escape incarceration so he can steal the heart of a big underground tree – which the humans keep locked up and which the elves need the sap of to grow in – Styx travels through the world with stealth avoiding enemies and trying not to succumb to the overwhelming chances of death that surround him, whilst dealing with short term memory loss as to his supporting characters and what his plan was.

Sounds good? Maybe. But the game has done absolutely nothing to sell me in to that fiction, nor has it given me a gameplay system that I can enjoy in the meantime. I’m not particularly great at stealthy games and the lack of playing styles within the game definitely reflects that hole in my gaming ability. But I’m not taking out my frustration at the game due to my lack of skill. No, sadly, the game hasn’t reached something that I consider to be enjoyably challenging. It didn’t help that I was flummoxed for a few moments as the game told me to “Press Cross Button”, which I then realised was actually the X button. Lost in translation? Maybe, but there’s more to my conclusion than a simple case of incorrect terminology.

I’ll tackle the storyline first because the amnesiac trope doesn’t really get me going. In a game where you have started to lose your mind but can ably remember how to jump with confidence from beam to beam, pick locks, kill people and are able to use some fairly complex magic (I’m guessing it’s magic) to help your situations, it really holds no weight to give the character convenient memory loss. Of course it’s a cliche dynamic to help you get invested in Styx and explore this world but after a short time playing the game, this element of the story is completely unimportant to you as a player because everything else about it will begin to frustrate you. Its cutscenes suffer from poor animation and lip syncing, which you might forget or not notice as after the initial scenes, still drawings with voice overs for memory sequences and background plot information. These drawings are so colourful and vibrant compared to the games dull, dungeon inspired palette that they stick out quite badly. Not quite as bad as the lip syncing during the in game cutscene sequences though when they occur. The passiveness of the faces of every character, including Styx, and poor syncing make for a forgettable time where you should be enjoying/learning plot. Something about bootleg drugs them making Styx telepathic…  It doesn’t help that Styx appears to be American at times with a hint of Joe Pesci and everyone else is either a poor impression of the Oliver Twist style working class Britons or upper class governmental types. As much as I don’t mind a Dickensian cast this game doesn’t really benefit from it, especially as the dialogue either never changes or has very limited random bits of speech. It also doesn’t help that the game can’t decide if it’s humorous, dark or just fairly innocuous. So it adds occasional curse words to be edgy and a few one liners with the same amount of panache as a football pundit trying to drop a pun in to commentary.

It is a shame because, as a redeemable quality, the idea behind the worlds and dungeons is good and graphically, the game is pretty good as well with some nice lighting dynamics and interesting settings. Before they become too repetitive that is. Everything interconnecting to your hideout and the slight puzzle solving element gives a nice feel to the bigger picture and it had the potential to make you part of a situation and give you a grounding in the world. But the design is such that after the second or third trip through a level it becomes utterly repetitive, whether you’ve died a lot or are retracing yourself. The placement of health/amber potions and useful items are too few and far between and at times it seems that the one path (there are different options but it kind of ends up as a “all roads lead to Rome” style of design) you can take will eventually end up with you finding a fight. Which makes using cover, a key component in stealth games, fairly useless, although the cover itself isn’t particularly useful anyway, especially if you’ve been spotted. The great idea in the levels to go up as opposed to across everywhere gives you more of a stealth gymnastics vibe at times and as a gameplay mechanic it is very well utilised and enjoyable if you don’t fall to your doom repeatedly. You can see the inspiration of Assassins Creed in the scope of the art but it is sadly lacking in the end. Big scope is great but a fairly bland view with that scope is just showing where the idea hasn’t progressed fully to the finished product.

This world itself is utterly confusing because, despite it being a fantasy based game, it has no idea exactly what genre it is in. The mystical amber substance, which seems to be as close a combination between heroin and that drug from the movie Limitless as you can get, grants you certain abilities that, whilst presumably magical, probably owe more to complex genetic engineering. As a plot device it’s like a cross between a decent psychotropic Phillip K. Dick story and if the movie version of that story was butchered by Mel Gibson – possibly interesting but pointless in practice. The clone system (you can summon a clone of yourself), which is very useful as a scout party and getting in to nooks and crannies for mission progression, is hilariously implausible in the genre. The fact that when you are in the shadows and hidden, the game tells you this by giving a large portion of your body a luminous fluorescent orange glow is incredibly ridiculous for a stealth game. Although you can also make yourself invisible for an annoyingly short period of time. This lack of clear set universe parameters, especially as they are fairly unexplained in the outset, makes the game feel quite jagged and, much like Destiny, offers up some story that you instantly switch off from due to lack of setting to ground yourself in.

Problems in the gameplay start with the game being a “stealth or die” kind of game. We’ve had many great stealth game franchises over the years including Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid, Hitman, the aforementioned Assassins Creed, and you could even include the recent Thief game in that. But in those games, despite the stealth element being paramount, you are able to smash your way out of a situation if it becomes tricky or overrun, or even hide easily. Styx is quite similar in that way to Manhunt except that Styx’s combat is almost non-existent. It is there so you can sneak up on people and murder them to get to your objective. Trying to fight basically means quick death and further repeating of the level (Advice: Save Frequently). There are fighting elements but these are all completely obscured by the fact that any fight you haven’t initiated can take up to ten seconds of parrying the opponents attack before you can kill them, but the AI will come in their droves within five seconds to defend their mate and kill you. Hiding as well is pretty tricky due to there being a lack of places to hide when you really need them and the AI pretty quickly finding you in those situations too.

Those aren’t the only problems. You cannot run from a fight really aside from dodging and rolling away, even on normal difficulty. You can dodge and parry, even kill, which is fine for a one on one battle. But if you’ve found that kind of battle then well done to you. Most battles involve two or more people being alerted and you being unable to defend yourself from the other two cronies stabbing you as the game locks you in to a singular battle. This becomes a far too common situation and problem as you play against the slicing idiots.

And they are idiots. The AI is awful. Both as an easily fooled obstacle to navigate past and as one who doesn’t see a lot or sees you from too far away and flash mobs you. They become pretty droll rather quickly and even when they introduce the weird blind bugs which I couldn’t seem to fight, they still don’t have a lot of challenge to them overall if there’s a long way around you can use. In fact, one thing with the gameplay that made it more fun for me, and much more enjoyable as a game, was to see how fast I could run through the level. As a redeeming feature, playing the game in the opposite way it has been designed isn’t a good one. But it did make for more fun progression and less of an environmental bore. You can get a lot of help from the Skill Tree but it’ll take you a good few hours to make any meaningful progression in to it and the fact that you can only upgrade yourself at your hideout (at the end of each level) will leave you probably 100 meters from the next upgrade for numerous deaths.

There are a few things that could have brought this up a few notches. There are 3 execution animations which happen randomly. I’d certainly prefer more of them and I’m sure I’ve got enough buttons on my PS4 controller to be able to choose them. The levels could have been a bit snappier and Styx himself is a pretty cool Goblin. I’d even have taken more than two weapons in the entire game and I’d certainly up the amount of potions and throwing knives that you can carry (two is by far not enough). Ultimately Styx just falls short of enjoyable. It’s a game you can certainly play if you really love stealth games but for what it looked like and what the introductory six minute cutscene teased, it is a bit of a damp squib of a game and if it is part of a bigger universe and plan then there’s a lot of ground to make up for Styx to become an interesting proposition.

Summary

Styx: Master of Shadows is a stealth game that is clunky in its mechanics, lacking in any story engagement and has a poor combat system. Which sadly eclipses the good work of the idea behind the world and occasionally interesting takes on level design, making it challenging in the unenjoyable way.

Good Points

– Nice graphics and lighting

– Can present a challenge at times

– Satisfying when you finally pull off a perfect level

Bad Points

– Awful dialogue/lip syncing

– Terrible combat system

– Repetitive settings and poor AI

Why a 5/10?

Styx tried to be an engaging character stuck in a strange position of item liberation whilst fighting human oppression of the elves in their uneasy alliance. But the game behind Styx just isn’t good enough to carry the good points of the game to fruition.

 

This review is based on the PS4 version of the game.

 

LEGO Batman 3 Beyond Gotham – Interview with Matt Ellison

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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On this day of DC Universe fun, we got a second interview in as many months with TT Games about LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. This time, Sean got some extended time to sit down with producer Matt Ellison from TT Games to talk about all the new things we’ve seen.

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We’ve just seen a lovely demo of the game, including London looking spectacularly small, Paris looking spectacularly small and Pisa looking very straight. What inspired you to go away from America and in to Europe with these levels?

It was always designed to be Europe actually. We do have Gotham as well so that’s American-ish. But it was an opportunity to show different things and different sights. It was really cool to be able to put London in there because we’re a UK developer and it was something we really wanted to do. Obviously Paris is very iconic and Piza with the leaning tower is very iconic and some of the other sites. It’s all things that are very cool that people recognise from a very young age.

As you say it allows you to have fun with those landscapes, like the Battersea Power Station having a load of toxic waste in it.

Yeah, stuff like that and the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, it’s very cool to be able to show these things that people recognise because it gives you a different attachment to it.

lb3p2 You’ve got a very extensive character and sub-character list. As there’s so many, how have you managed to nail down which ones you wanted to do?

There are a few different things that go in to how we come up with the list that we ended up with. The first thing is the story, so the story governs which characters are going to be front and centre. Then we have the LEGO side of things. LEGO make their playsets and we always try to include all of the playset characters in to the game so if someone sees it in the game they can buy the toys. Then there are the ones we wanted to include. Some of the most famous ones, some of the more obscure ones, some of the more colourful ones, quirky ones and then we talk to DC to find out what’s coming up, who’s big right now, who should we be including. And they send us all the reference for the character outfits so that we can make sure they’re accurate and representative of what they should be. On this game more than any other we’ve been listening to the public. Throughout the game development cycle, we’ve been asking what characters people wanted to see and a couple of those have been added fairly late to the roster, but there’s so many people asking for them, we’ve kind of snuck them in.

There are so many different suit and sub character options across all the characters, how do you limit yourselves to stopping getting an OP character.

Five of the characters have 8 suits; Joker, Lex, Batman Robin and Cyborg have those eight suits you can cycle in between. But they have all these different mechanics and visuals and the visual representation of what you have to do in the puzzles remains consistent. So there are different characters you’ll have access to who’ll be able to do different things and as you unlock them, you’ll notice which abilities you’ve got and what you’ll be able to work through. It’s traditional with the LEGO games so people should know what they need and when with the characters and we’ll give them as many abilities as we possibly can. But they are all accurate as to what powers they can do and what they should have.

It’s quite a good position for the DC Universe especially with 3 TV shows based off it and as you announced at the weekend, the Arrow DLC pack is coming too based on the TV show with Stephen Amell.

It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to include this kind of add on content, which is totally outside of the game. But there is a way in which we can do something on it, so we can have a level, we can have these characters and find a way to include them into this and be part of this experience. Arrow was announced at the weekend and there’s The Dark Knight/Man Of Steel and you don’t normally get those kinds of opportunities – no one has done a Nolan Batman game before. So that’s the first time that’ll be able to be seen and we’ve been very lucky that we’ve been able to get the chance to do it.

You’ve been lucky as well to use different things from different studios and franchises, including the soundtrack, from Danny Elfman to John Williams. It must be quite good to have that freedom?

The Danny Elfman music we’ve used on previous LEGO Batman’s as well and it’s sort of tied to our Batman now, it’s part of his identity. But, as you hear that, it’s great that we have the relationship with that and it’s good that people are starting to relate it to our Batman. The John Williams theme from Superman is a must from LEGO Batman 2, that was fantastic and we had to include that again. Being able to add that to Wonder Woman as well is quite cool and again it’s something that people remember, especially that older audience we have. The younger kids probably aren’t going to know that so it’ll be something that the parents will recognise and be able to educate them a little bit about the history behind it. lb3p6

There’s a lot of artistic freedom with the game because you’ve gone outside of the confines of Gotham. How do you approach the new world that’s not as obvious on the page of the comics? 

It is slightly different. We knew we wanted to make this game when we were doing LEGO Batman 2 so at the end of it we teased it by having Braniac say that he’s located the Green Lantern’s power ring. So we knew that we wanted to go in that direction. The Lantern worlds have so much stuff in them, the planets are so unique all with different vibes to them, lots of different enemies to encounter – visually they all look very different which works very well in a LEGO game having all these different colours and all the Lantern Rings, it was quite effective to replicate visually. So it’s just a great opportunity to be able to explore the wider reaches of it all. You’ve got the Watch town and the Hall of Justice as well so there’s lots of places for people to enjoy.

You’re all big fans of the DC Universe in the studio, what’s been your favourite parts?

I like the characterisation of some of the characters we have in this game. Solomon Grundy is probably my favourite addition of the new ones. The way he’s animated is just fantastic, walking around like he’s a zombie – he’s very funny. Just being able to include more of these characters I think is the best thing because we’ve got 3 times the characters we had in LEGO Batman 2, there’s just so many of them in there. Like Polka Dot Man, Condiment King, they seem so random but in a LEGO game they just add to the humour and add to the fun of it.

With the voice acting talent you’ve got Troy Baker back as Batman so you’ve got quite the talent behind the characters as well. 

LEGO Batman 2 was the first LEGO game to have voice acting in it, we brought Troy Baker back for this because he’s fantastic, it’s a bit of a no brainer. The voice acting is something we’re really pushing so we want to make it as good as it can possibly be. So there’s much more script, we’ve got Josh Keaton doing Green Lantern, Scott Porter doing Aqua Man and even Adam West doing voice overs for the game, it all adds to the authenticity of the game and adds to the weight behind it when you’ve got guys that really know what they’re doing.

Especially with Adam West it must be good for his amazing alliterative, totally tantalising dialogue that he’s got going on during this. And his era is replicated even down to the comic book “Kapow!” phrases and noises from the 60s Batman.

The 60s stuff is brilliant and is by far the most in depth bonus level we’ve ever done. That was really something we went all out on. Again it is just an amazing opportunity and was always on the wish list to try and do. So to suddenly have it happen is just fantastic for us because it’s the origins of Batman from the mainstream platforms. And it’s just fantastic having him voice it, having those “Kapow!’s”, having the Batusi dance… It all adds to it and people who know that Batman will love it and even those who don’t, it will still be bright and colourful and brilliant for them to enjoy.

lb3p5 The game is coming out in November, how much do you think you’ve left out from what you wanted to put in?

I don’t think there’s anything possibly left out. By far this game got bigger and bigger and bigger the more we got in to it. The original concept of what this game was and where we ended up is far bigger than what it was originally going to be. Because these opportunities present themselves as you’re going through it. You know you think “wouldn’t it be great to add this” and you just do it. It just builds and builds and builds and we’re so pleased we’ve got a massive game at the end of it.

I want to ask about Batcow, because that is very, very, very, very niche. So, why Batcow?

I believe the story goes: One of the designers said “We should put Batcow in the game.” And everyone said, “Who’s Batcow?” and then he showed a comic that had Batcow in and Batcow got put in to the game. I think it is almost that simple but it is a genuine thing that exists and it’s part of the humour that we have in LEGO games that we can do things that are obscure, chuck these things and widen the scope of the DC Universe in this game and it’s a very funny thing to be able to do. We’ve got lots of obscure characters in there but there are all the ones that people expect as well.

I’m guessing many other characters came about the same way.

Well, sometimes. We’ve got Manchester Black in this game because he has Manchester in his name and apparently comes from Manchester. So it varies and some of them DC said “these would be cool to include” and others people have been asking for them and we like to give people what they want. There are more than 150 characters in the DC Universe but the ones we’ve got we’re happy to have in this game.

Well if you used them all, you wouldn’t have a LEGO Batman 4.

[Laughs] Yeah, I dread to think where we can there.

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LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham will be available on November 14th for Xboxb 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PC and WiiU

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LEGO Batman 3 Beyond Gotham – Hands On Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

lb3pft We’ve been furnished with some excellent news with LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham over the weekend. The list of characters, over 150 in total, is very quickly taking shape and we have some awesome new levels being revealed to play with.

LEGO games are LEGO games. Part of the big idea behind them is that they all have consistent mechanics. They are family games for children and adults alike, best enjoyed together. As such they all have, whatever the franchise on top of it, puzzles and gameplay that is instantly recognisable and transferrable from previous LEGO games. This ease of play and similarity with other LEGO games is key to the design of them.

It also makes them rather hard to review and preview. Because we all know exactly what we are getting. There’s some awesome things in LEGO Batman 3 that allows us to go in to further detail but for the main part, this is a fully functioning, comically entertaining LEGO game. The story is that (spoiler for LEGO Batman 2) Brainiac has the Green Lantern’s ring and is going to embark on a dastardly scheme to gain control of the Earth. There our heroes of the Justice League and usual suspects Batman, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc will come in to save the day… Or at least prolong the saving. lb3p3

Different things occur which allow the characters to move a little bit out of their normal comfort zone thanks to the Lantern powers, especially from characters you wouldn’t normally expect. But in the scheme of things, the plot allows the game to move out beyond Gotham and out to other planets and  in to outer space. People who played the Star Wars games will easily recognise the flying/shooting mechanics and whilst the game is fun, it is never exactly challenging. But, see above… That’s the point.

You’ll also get some landscapes you’ve never seen before unless you’ve been in a LEGO shop recently. The game will take you to various European cities as well as Gotham, including our very own London. It’s interesting to note that all of the buildings like the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye and Buckingham Palace could all be built with actual LEGO and the games are all designed so that you could actually build the things in them. Quite neat I thought, and maybe that’s something I should have known. Why the Battersea Power Station is filled with toxic waste, I don’t know. Maybe TT Games know something we don’t.

Speaking of what you should know, the list of characters goes way out of the established norms for Super Hero games. The DC universe has been well and truly pillaged of almost everything and the deepest darkest vaults of characters have come to grace the obsessive collecting we must achieve when playing a LEGO game. Niche people from Batcow to Condiment King to the real life comic Conan O’ Brien, director and Comic Book author Kevin Smith, the Green Loonton, the Darkest Knight (all Green Lantern off shoots) and DC Publisher Jim Lee. DLC was announced at the weekend with Stephen Amell voicing his TV Character of Oliver Queen/The Green Arrow along with other characters from that series. More niche with Toyman, Trickster, Manchester Black… The list actually can go on for a long time and will require you to have more knowledge of the DC Universe than you ever thought possible. lb3p4

The best thing so far for me is the 1960s Batman mode. You probably don’t remember the TV series starring Adam West but you definitely know the theme tune (ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ber-BAT-MAAAAAN). You probably only know Adam West from Family Guy. But the art and design including the alliterative brilliance of voice acting from West, KAPOW! exclamations with brass instrument sounds and even building the Batmobile (everyone’s favourite Dinky car when they were little) put you in to an amusing trip of nostalgia and if you don’t know the series which arguably shot Batman in to the mainstream then you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Other touches exist around the game, like Troy Baker (don’t pretend you don’t know him by now) voicing the eponymous hero, the John Williams Superman music returns when Superman flies and that has even been stretched to Wonder Woman getting her theme played when she takes to the air.

All told, we’ll be able to review the game closer to the release date and comment on its great level design, its fun story and its excellent humour, most of which is already apparent. But it has all the hallmarks of a LEGO game. Which you have to say is something that TT Games have done very well. They have created constantly entertaining and fun games, whatever the veneer on top of their mechanics and LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham promises to be no exception to that trend.

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LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham will be available on November 14th for Xboxb 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PC and WiiU

[author]

The Rising Cost of Add-Ons and DLC

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Somewhere along the line, we lost faith as gamers that we were getting all that we paid for. Downloadable Content (DLC) has become a sticking point for many consumers who believe part of the game they paid for has been held back so the publisher/developer can milk some more heard earned coin from your digital pocket. This is regardless of the price, although this in itself has become more of a sticking point since the Next Generation consoles and game development costs have pushed the price of games up significantly in the past 24 months.

It also seems the higher costs appear to be based around publishers Activision and EA over most other publishers. How do I get that? Well I could have done some very deep research but the truth is that I didn’t have to. Here’s a list of Season Passes on the PS3 Playstation Store… Yes, there’s a dedicated section for them:

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  • Call of Duty Ghosts – £34.99
  • Alien Isolation – £24.99
  • Defiance – £24.99 (It is worth noting that Defiance is now a free-to-play game)
  • Sniper Elite 3 – £24.99
  • Destiny – £34.99
  • Battlefield 4 Premium – £39.99
  • GRID Autosport – £24.99
  • Assassins Creed 3 – £25.99
  • Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag – £15.99
  • Little Big Planet 2 DC Comics – £19.99
  • Borderlands 2 – £19.99

 

I’ve only selected some here. There are a lot that are free or that have dropped in price like The Last of Us. But it is easy to see why people are beginning to get angry when they are paying arguably the cost of a new game (based on internet retail prices) for DLC. This is a new area for retail where the availability of internet speed has basically made the retail space redundant for them to sell this extra content and they can price it as accordingly as they want.

Why do I mention the retail space? Because before DLC was the done thing, it was Add-Ons. In some cases they are still called that but the distinction for me in the current gaming industry vernacular would suggest that Add-Ons are physical copies of this extra content. This is something that has been in gaming for many, many years. Sonic and Knuckles was one of the first physical game add-ons although this was also a game in itself. Westwood had several different releases for the Command & Conquer series. Heroes of Might and Magic, Grand Theft Auto: London 1969, Half-Life… The list can go on and on.

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The biggest cash cow for this is undoubtedly the one that completely changed the market. It didn’t give the game much extra other than things to use in the game, and some extra spaces but that didn’t stop its rise to being one of the most profitable franchises in gaming history. The Sims had seven expansion packs which roughly retailed around $24.99/£19.99 from what I remember (I am looking for confirmation on prices and will update the article if they come). The Sims 2 had eight expansion packs and ten extra content packs. Although these all did add things to the games, if you had them all you would have spent well over $300 on getting them all. It’s hardly EA’s fault really. They had a product that people were willing to throw monumental amounts of money at and they said “fair enough”, and provided them with ways to do that. Regardless of your thoughts on EA, it was good business. And if the cost of their packages had an effect on the industry and kept prices stable then it would have been great. I suppose you could argue that historically, additional content for a game in the form of an expansion pack, or more common nowadays a season pass, has roughly been around half or 2/3 of the original game’s retail price.

That is possibly the problem though. There doesn’t seem to be any industry standard as to what a recommend retail price for add-ons or DLC should be. Partially because the content can vary so much as to what you get and partially because the publishers have to decide on the offset of profit versus development cost recovery. That’s sadly just business, any business. Regardless if us as gamers want to hear it, we should know that behind the art we love is a business that needs to survive under the insurmountable pressure of rising costs and international market difficulties. Don’t worry, I’m not looking for an argument or defending any one company here, but it needs to be said that there is a business behind us being provided with this entertainment.

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The problem with that business is that the regulation on it appears to be quite sketchy. PS Store, Wii Store, Xbox Live are all digital retail spaces. Physical retail stores (supermarkets, specialist retailers, etc) will also sell this content by code card. So there must be some portion of this that has to be compliant with fair pricing across the board. But the consumer does seem to get a bum deal out of all of this. When you buy Battlefield and Call of Duty (the latter arguably having the possibility to have the best selling game of the year, as it always does), you are paying around $44.99/£38.99 on average for the retail game and now with the next generation, that’s more like $64.99/£59.99. You expect to pay some money for some extra content but the amount of content that these games are providing, with mostly extra maps and gameplay modes (which the game must be ready to support at launch otherwise it’d be a major code rewrite), can cost a massive amount of money to the consumer in total. That’s not to say that you don’t get a lot of extra stuff though. In the case of Call of Duty Ghosts from Activision, the Onslaught, Devastation, Invasion and Nemesis packs (the Dynasty map is pictured), gives you 16 extra maps and some extra weapons along with episodic content for the Extinction series. In the case of Battlefield 4 from EA there are five extra packs, China Rising, Second Assault, Naval Strike, Dragon’s Teeth and Final Stand, making an additional 20 maps, three new game types and a load of extra weapons.

So much is available that the season passes seems to be the obvious way to get it all for a cheaper price. In the case of those two games (you can see the prices above on the Playstation Store list for the most recent releases) the season passes are nearly the price of another game. These are all for extra maps which you have no idea if you’d enjoy and in a way are forced to buy in order to continue your full enjoyment of the game. Why? Because someone WILL buy them and so will many others and if that stops your online enjoyment with everyone playing the new stuff you haven’t got then you either buy it or ditch the game. In the case of Xbox and Call of Duty, and Playstation with Destiny, these expansions are mostly exclusive to that console and the expansions are the selling point. Which when you think about it is a completely ridiculous concept when you just want to buy a game and could arguably be damaging to the industry. But again that is just business. Look at how television handles exclusivity of certain shows/licences to get subscribers to their packages or advertisers to their viewers, and how that’s damaged the public broadcasting sector.

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The price of those season passes you could argue is roughly in line with the price idea I made earlier and that the model is still fairly accurate; Half or 2/3’s of the original game’s retail price. But in the case of these games, like Destiny, we have no idea what we are getting for these season passes and if they quantify the amount of money we’re spending on them for the entertainment value we receive, regardless of work being put in. The two Destiny add-ons that are coming don’t appear to give us new planets or places to visit, but additional missions and story in the existing worlds. In fact we know so little about them that our cynicism is being unintentionally qualified. Watch_Dogs was another example of not knowing what the game will give us. We have a few extra modes for the in-game mini-games and now a new single player story add-on. But how much content is there that takes the developer more money than was already spent on the game at launch? How much money are these companies looking to make from the post-launch additional content? And how justified is it to market your game or your console’s exclusivity based on these maps/modes/skins/extras? Our cynicism is based around a game already having the additional content spaces ready and that the content we buy is merely assets for it, updates for it or just a patch that unlocks it. Before when this content was physically brought, we were kind of assured that there must be more than we had before otherwise what would be the point in having a new disk for it?

The rising cost of Add-Ons and DLC can partially be paired to the rising cost of games in general. But as the internet and journalism has begun to open the debate on this, and the gaming consumer becomes like any other consumer in a tricky economic climate, that being incredibly savvy and questioning, the conversation is only just beginning. Also with certain games being re-released with everything included some 12-18 months later for the same price as the original game, or with updated graphics for the new generation as well, this will add more focus on what makes good sense to a consumer. With the Christmas period around the corner and the publishers needs to release games on a yearly basis to maximise profit, we’ll see how this new generation handles the consumer when we feel that we are not getting enough for what we’re shelling out. I predict that some games will be guilty of doing less with their content in this regard and we can probably make predictions as to who will be more guilty than others. But in the next 12 months we’ll see how people will react to paying nearly 75% of the cost of the game for extra in that game, and I’m sure we’ll find out how much of that could have been included at launch.

[author]

Project Cars interview with Andy Tudor

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Project Cars is the new offering from Slightly Mad Studios. Sean got to sit down and chat with Creative Director Andy Tudor about the game at EGX.

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Project Cars is a very big, graphically awesome simulation. Simulation is the key word here I suppose compared to everything else that’s out there.

Yeah, I think the word simulation or simulator kind of gives people the impression that it’s hard, or difficult and challenging. But actually, all it means is simulating real life so it’s accurate, realistic. But compared to the competition there is out there, we said from day one planting our flag in the sand, we were going to be a competitor for Forza and Gran Tourismo. Compared to the other guys that are in that arcade space. So if you’re looking for that Forza/Gran Tourismo kind of game with a bunch of features that have never been in those games but have been on the PC sims, just not on console, the Project Cars is just that.

I’m a child of the Geoff Crammond years so I love the… I say simulation aspect but I probably mean the more technical tweaking aspects of it. And there’s a lot of things in Project Cars in driving that you won’t normally feel in other games because of those options. Just tell us a little bit of how you managed to recreate that experience so realistically especially on tracks like Brands Hatch.

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With Brands Hatch we used a laser scan. So we have the mathematical data of it, we know the elevation changes and all that stuff. Next the track team go out there and take gigabytes of data so we know visually what its like. The third thing is getting the guys out there to try it out themselves. So if you were watching a race at Brands Hatch on TV, you would see the cars flying around the track and they’d look perfectly smooth. Get in there, get in to a Formula Brands/Formula 4 kind of car, and go down the main pit straight, the engine the right behind you 6 inches away from your head, the car is screaming, the wing mirrors are vibrating so much and you’re making all these micro little movements. When you’re braking the car is trying to get away from you and you’re hearing the tinkle of gravel, tarmac and bits of rubber underneath the car… That kind of stuff you never see on TV or hear about it in a press briefing afterwards from the drivers, you don’t see it in the grandstand. You only get to experience that when you’re doing it yourself. That’s the key to it. The mathematical data is there, there visual data is there but the emotional bit is the thing that we bring to the table.

You’ve had a lot of input from racing drivers across different disciplines. How’s their involvement in the game helped?

It’s kind of come full circle. Usually when you hear about racing drivers giving their input in to games it’s usually at the end where there’s marketing pushes. But we’ve had those guys from day one so it’s a different angle. Ben Collins, the former Top Gear Stig, we hired because he doesn’t like racing games so he’d give us completely honest feedback. Nicholas Hamilton (brother of Formala One world champion Lewis Hamilton) has been playing sim racing games on PC for years. So he gives valuable insight on the expectations of that community, what the games get wrong and how Project Cars can do it right. Ollie Webb is a test driver for BAC Mono. He’s a European Le Mans driver so he’s driven 75% of the tracks in our game as well. So he can give us incredible insight on the car on a one to one basis and give us a direct comparison and he can say “oh I was just at Monza and they’ve changed the rumble strips.”. So much so [is the games realism from driver input] that real drivers are using it for training for the real thing. It was completely out of the blue that Rene Rast, a German GT driver, showed up on YouTube with a video of him driving Project Cars on the Le Mans track and was within one tenth of his real life lap time. He was using it because the game is so accurate that when he’d go to do the real thing, he’d have the sense of training you can’t get on a multi million pound Formula One simulator.

I noticed racing on Brands Hatch, something that most racing games don’t achieve is how thin the start finish straight is and how claustrophobic it feels.

Brands has got great elevation. Your eyes have a certain field of view. In games you have a different field of view. So you need to do things to make sure you get the same as you get in real life. [At Brands] You can’t see the peak of the hill from the cockpit. So it’s little things like that .

There’s been a lot of feedback from the manufacturers. Who have you had involved?

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We’re an independent developer but we’ve been doing games for 10 years so we have a relationship with a lot of manufacturers and a lot of track licencees as well. So there are certain cases, those guys are coming to us saying “We loved what you did in Shift 2 or GT-R and we’ve heard you’re doing something new, we’d love to have our cars in the game.” They’ve been absolutely great. The cars are 1:1 recreations, we get CAD data, the technical data, the lap-time information, plug it in to our engine. The guys make the cars from million of photo references from the manufacturers. We make sure the liveries are all painted effectively. We make sure the paint schemes are all perfect as well. We make sure all the interiors are done; every car has a full cockpit with functional dashboard as well. And then we have to give it back to the manufacturers so that they can approve it. So they have to be accurate. Graphics wise, we have got to the point where we can make everything photo real. The next generation consoles are quite capable of achieving photo realisim with glass and metal which makes up about 95% of a car. So they are a 1:1 recreation.

Racing games create massive communities, people who share their set-ups, form clubs and clans. There’s already quite a big community and interest around Project Cars. 

Absolutely and it’s always in our intention to not be hypocritical and support our community after launch. Which is why we have the Driver Network. Your profile is your licence and your stats, showing your what you need to improve. Your favorite cars and tracks, tracking your reputation online, how much you cause yellow flags, etc. The other big area is sharing. Steam has the screenshot gallery, you can stream by twitch, you’ve got the Xbox One Upload studio, you’ve got the share button on PS4, and YouTube. If you go to our Driver Network Flikr pages and YouTube playlist, we’re showcasing all the best bits from the community. Some people live on different time zones and even if you aren’t, the chances of you being online at the same time as a friend is a lot slimmer than before. With Project Cars you can do time trials against each other by downloading the ghost of a friend or anyone on the leader board. So you can see how people get those amazing time. And finally you have the Driver Network Community events. These are regularly scheduled events happening all the time, and everyone loves bragging rights.

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What has the feedback from players and the community been like so far?

Honestly if it was terrible, I’d tell you. But it’s been really good. There’s so much feedback from people who are playing and what they want. Graphically it looks great, gameplay is great. We’ve got a FAQ’s on our page but everyone wants to know about what cars are coming, what tracks, Oculus Rift support, wanting to set up their driver clubs and clans. So it’s been great but we are an independent studio and it’s taken a long time. Project Cars is ambitious but it’s worked. The PS4 version is already there and Xbox One version will be 1080p and 60fps at launch. We’ve always been honest about getting there and we have.

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Project Cars will be available on PC, Xbox One and PS4 on November 18th US and November 21st in the EU, with SteamOS and WiiU versions to follow in 2015.

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