PC/Mac | Sean Cleaver

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments – Review

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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The legend of Sherlock Holmes is arguably much bigger than the character of Sherlock Holmes, although myth would be more of a pertinent description given that he is fictional. In recent times the harsh and terse nature of his personality has come through with the popular TV adaptation by the BBC and Steven Moffat. Even though that itself has become more clouded due to the absolutely gorgeous hunk of enthralling talented man that is Benedict Cumberbatch… What I’m a man, I can say it, right ladies?

But Crimes and Punishments, the new adventure by Focus Interactive and Frogwares does something that takes a literary starting point, grabs a lot of the old school TV characterisations, mixes them with the modern day artistic interpretations of Holmes’s mind and puts them in to an interactive detective story that will drive your moral compass around the bend. That’s one of the slightly out there things of this game, the inspiration from a literary source that isn’t even a Conan Doyle story, despite the game taking it’s characters, setting and tone from his books.

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The title of the game comes from Dostoevsky’s similarly titled epic novel following Rodion Raskolnikov who balances his decision to raise himself out of poverty by murdering a pawnbroker and robbing her. Therefore giving him money to live and perform good deeds whilst getting rid of a fairly odious person in process. It’s this ethos that has allowed Frogwares to create a Holmes character that, whilst you are playing through him, is not the central protagonist of the game. And that is something that could and should make you a little bit uncomfortable.

Because the issue here isn’t that the game allows you to solve mysteries. It allows you to deduct and conclude on a selection of many possibilities. Whilst there is a right and wrong answer (which you can spoil if you want to) the game presents you with the strange juxtaposition, strange for a game of its ilk anyway, of having multiple different outcomes that you decide upon. The clues are presented to you and you deductions allow you to not only decide who is guilty of whichever case you are on, but also how you handle their potential incarceration; with the full weight of the law or with a lenient more liberal approach to the situation they find themselves in. What that also means is that you can be wrong but still complete the case.

The clues are very easily presented to you. They aren’t too hard to find and if you get frustrated it is very easy to just back off slightly and take stock. Most of the complex issues in the game are logic puzzles which are easily solved with a bit of time and patience, some of them involving chemistry, metallurgy and other things in Holmes own desktop laboratory. Some of the puzzles require some research in Holmes’s extensive archive and others are ones that need his expert view or the use of his imagination. The way you explore the scenes of the crimes and the people you interview very much lends itself to the more modern interpretation of Holmes, which, in the interactive form of a game, is entirely justified. Including the deduction screens allowing you to form the cerebral paths of choices with the clues you have discovered. The case book is easily navigated and isn’t a burden to the game experience either, although could be a little more encompassing and possibly even allow for a hint or two if you are getting a bit stuck.

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From a character point of view, you spend your time in the ego of Holmes. He is, for want of a better term, a bit of a prick. He has the smugness of intelligence and an overly authoritative air, but at no times does he become insufferable. And as soon as you finish the first case, you realise that he is merely the vehicle for you to make those hard moral decisions. As a character himself he does use the crime scenes and Scotland Yard as his own personal playground. He feels he is above a lot of the general day to day process of the police and the slightly dim-witted Inspector Lestrade and a fawning Dr Watson, who would have been great as a character to give hints if you so desired. He is complete with his vices, at one point coming down from what appeared to be a very heavy opium trip, which allows you to see how he is operating way beyond a merely human capacity. His eyes, his perspiration and his slightly ragged appearance at times allow you to see that he is flawed, despite his genius.

The characters around Sherlock, despite the two fairly tepid interpretations of Lestrade and Watson, are quite alive and enjoyable to talk to and discover. And by discover I mean completely judge them. The look of the characters of course allows your immediate reaction to their mindset, personalities and history, a bit like LA Noire. But their speech and utter Victorian stoic tones make extrapolating what they say more challenging in your deductions. Victorian London and its areas are very nicely recreated in the game. Everything from the Verulanium ruins in St Albans, Kew Gardens and the offices of Scotland Yard. Even the many stations in the railway case are very atmospheric and lovingly created. But they all also have that quiet and slightly antiquated air that you’d assume from a Victorian setting. Yet the stories that occur in them are full of intrigue and adventure and exploration. Especially the case where you explore the Roman baths.

From that point of view, and of course I will not spoil a single thing in these cases, they are very well designed, breeding intrigue, and have multiple characters that could all be guilty. The dialogue is well acted enough without being too hammy or not engaging enough. The addition of Toby, Holmes dog, is a nice touch too with his GTA V-esque smell tracing ability, along with some little parts of the Holmes universe that doesn’t serve a story purpose but exists for the atmosphere. The characters aren’t as well animated as LA Noire but are good enough for the type of game this is. In fact to call this is simple point and click detective game set in a 3D environment would be disingenuous as the moral aspect of the game and the lack of progression importance on what is right and wrong clearly defines it as it own.

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The only criticisms of the game that I have is that at times, and that maybe because of the nature of trying to explore absolutely everything on my part, is that the game can be a bit slow. As the puzzles become more trickier and the areas of exploration larger and more diverse you do end up taking more time to complete a case and, whilst the different endings do give you quite the replay value, it also puts you off a little because of the time you would need to sink in to it. Once you discover the run button with the right trigger/R2 it is a bit of a godsend because getting around at a walking pace is incredibly laborious. The soundtrack is nice, haunting and quite unobtrusive, but it is only really at the title screen that its noticeable and it would have been nice to have a little more in the game. The puzzles whilst challenging and as the game progresses become more challenging, also don’t seem to change much out of their three main types. Lock picking, chemical tests and the occasional logic puzzle. Some cases excel at it more than others which leaves the gameplay a little stale at times.

Crimes and Punishments presents a strange case for review because it is a successful game that you could argue doesn’t really have much depth out of its 3D adventure setting. Yet the success and point of this game is to challenge your perception of right and wrong and the moral choices you make. What kind of person are you to decide the fate of these suspects? A harsh master exacting the law to its fullest degree, a pacifist that sees the deeper side of the emotional torment in the cases or a flake who doesn’t want to get their hands dirty at all? In that way it is completely successful but does it make a game? Well we play The Sims in order to have this kind of perverse control of perceived life and this game in that way is no different. In fact it’s almost more perverse given that we discover a lot more and have a more intelligently formed decision about the characters and situations in the game. Which means that in this way, the game completely gets it right. It is pleasant to look at and enjoyable to play but is it open enough in its game play to be an amazing game? I’m not sure, I can’t decide. What I can decide though is that this game certainly sets a great standard for games of the detective genre and the shifting of moral choices directly in to your hands is the right amount of unsettling to keep me playing the game.

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[tab title=”Summary”]
Crimes and Punishments in one way fulfils its remit of being a high definition 3rd person investigation game which could be classed as middling. But the mind games it plays with its deductions and moral choice dynamic lifts it above that in to an unsettling yet enjoyable experience.

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[tab title=”Good Points”]

– Moral Choice system works well
– Good stories and characters
– Visually great recreation of Holmes’ world

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[tab title=”Bad Points”]

– Can be a bit slow
– Support characters a bit tepid
– Puzzles don’t change too much

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[tab title=”Why an 8?”]

Because whilst the game had the potential to be a lot lower score, it is a very good experience, visually well presented and the stories are enjoyable to play. Even if you spend hours debating the moral choices you make in deciding who’s guilty.

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

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Escape Dead Island interview with Anthony Cardahi

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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Escape Dead Island is coming soon and Sean managed to grab some words at EGX with Anthony Cardahi, a creative producer at Deep Silver, and talk about the game.

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Escape Dead Island. Very very different. It’s a very different choice of game for the Dead Island franchise. How did you come about that process?

So it’s a mixture of several elements that blended in together. One of them was that part of us wanted to deliver a game experience that was kind of related to those early trailers that had such a nice reception from audiences. And the other side that was just a desire to give a bit more background information as to what the Dead Island universe was about. That really convey the idea that there was a bigger picture that we aren’t just putting out zombie games without a link between them. Dead Island has its lore and we wanted to find a format that would be appropriate for delivering this information. It came also from some personal taste in terms of games and movies that just all blended in and gave birth to what Escape is now.

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Did cel shading feel like the natural choice?

Yeah, on several sides it was a logical art style to go for. Just going with a more narrative and story driven kind of game, that we wanted to be able to marry to the player in an impactful way, we knew we wanted those comic cutscenes that are useful to the story. So it made sense for the game itself to be in a comic style approach so you get a more wholesome feel to it and more expressiveness. Later on we realised that it was a lucky pick because it allows us to differentiate from the main Dead Island franchise, give no confusion to the players and make it look and feel like a spin off of the main series.

I suppose it also helps with the implied psychosis that your main protagonist has during the game?

Definitely. The madness that Cliff will be gonig through as he progresses through the story just begged for a visual style that would allow us to bend reality and all the crazy things that we have in the game. It helps to convey all the various faucets of this and make it much more visual and direct in to the players face.

Following the preview, the game reminded me a lot of the Keanu Reeves movie A Scanner Darkly which was a Phillip K Dick story, which was partially animated. Where did you guys draw your inspirations from?

Everyone who’s worked on the project from Deep Silver and Fat Shark. Being a Swedish developer means they have a very fine artistic side to them, so lots of different influences came from everyone. We had some strong influences from Groundhog Day, Memento and Lost. Inspirations more for tonal idea and atmosphereic impressions we wanted to make during the game. And these mixed up with the fact that we all really enjoy comics and are very knowledgeable about them. So it’s cool that we can mix these things with the key ingredients of what makes up a Dead Island game. Even after 10 seconds, you still know it’s a Dead Island game, which is really unique. So blending all this togehter gave us this result, which I don’t think anyone could have seen at the conception stage. It’s a nice process to watch unfold.

It is very different, so how do you think the fans of the franchise will receive this expansion of the artistic nature of the game compared to the previous entries to it?

I’m guessing it will depend on what type of player the fan is and what drew him/her in to the Dead Island games first. For those who have any kind of curiosity about what our world is and what the events transpiring there are, they will probably be intrigued with us giving information that relates to bothe the past games and the upcoming ones and create a kind of bridge. Also I’m guessing a lot of people might just come due to sheer curiosity with the fact its a different take but it still has the the whole “paradise turning really bloody” vibe that the main series has. So the art style might make people more curious and we have those key elements like the emphasis on melee combat, survival approach, the zombies. If you like Dead Island as you play the immune superhero, you might like the new approach to be on the other side as a regular guy and be a lot more careful and defensive.

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Where did Cliff come from because he’s a beautifully flawed character?

Yeah it was really fun trying to reach the point where we had our protagonist. We didn’t want him to be a cliche of heroic guy shows up saves the world kind of thing. Working on him and the way to bring about the regular dude venerability of the character ended up inspiring him. He’s a flawed guy, you’ve probably seen him in a lot of college comedies, or you might know someone like that like “you know he’s a cool guy but sometimes he acts like a douche.” Which is referred to quite a number of times in the game. This kind of dual dimension and his prescence there I think also helps to explain all what he’s going to go through. He’s showing up on this island wanting to be the new Vice, [thinking] “I’m going to film this documentary that’ll prove to the world what’s happening here, I’ve got to unveil the truth.” He’s really enthusiastic but ultimately disconeccted from reality, never achieving anything in his life, in his fathers shadow and wanting to prove himself. Daddy issues to some extent which is a driver, but also a component of what Cliff’s going to be going through during his adventure, or misadventure.

So why haven’t you gone to next gen with this game?

Well the majority of our audience is on the past generation consoles, plus Dead Island 2 being the flagship title for next generation, we thought we’d stick to that. But we’re keeping our fingers crossed and hope it does well.

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Escape Dead Island will be available on 21st November for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. You can see our preview from GamesCom here!

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Lords of the Fallen – Hands on Preview

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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The last time we saw Lords of the Fallen was back in April. At that time, we got to see a big demonstration of a level by executive producer, Tomaz Gop, and had a few words with him. This time, he gave us the game for an hour and personally guided us through our play through! Which was nice, seeing the developer enjoying you playing and noticing how you play. So I apologise if I inadvertently nerfed anything. Given my last impressions, there were a few things that were worrying me, but with time spent playing the game these fears have definitely been addressed. Although the news broke just after I played that the Xbox One version will run at a lower resolution than the PS4 version, there is time to find some extra memory to ramp it up which I’m sure Microsoft will insist on.

The joys of having a game that shares similarities with other RPG titles like Dark Souls and The Witcher (the latter especially given Gop’s previous involvent with the series) does help you pick up and play the game, even though he admits the controls can be very tricky without the use of a tutorial. Whilst you get the basic idea very quickly there are a lot of nuances to the controls and your approach to the game that are best picked up in action. However the choice you make before you even start playing also dictates the style of game you play along with the controls you’ll be using.

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It’s not terribly over the top, you’ll have three classes to choose from. But the options after that and how you unlock things and progress later on in the game are all dictated by this choice. In this way the accumulation of spells, disciplines, armour class choices and the like owe a lot more to table top RPG gaming like Dungeons & Dragons. The way you can bank your experience is very useful. You aren’t set against just having enough XP for a level up. You can pick and choose how much you want to use towards each upgrade and slowly build it up without having to blow it all on one point upgrade at a time. It’s quite a nice system so that you can feel your progression and feel that you’re using your XP in the best way for you. The art style both, in game and in menus, is given a full on fantasy role playing vibe. Much like Magic the Gathering in the way a card system is used to help the character profile screens. You can still be over encumbered and things your character can’t use are still available, like boss drops. It all adds to how you handle the role playing element which doesn’t punish your smashing bad guys element of the game too much to be completely infuriating. Instead it compliments it well and visa versa. Which as a fan of fantasy but a hater of complex inventory/XP systems I very much approve of.

I started as a guy with medium armour which meant I was dead within a few shots but could move with enough agility to avoid most of the damage and time my attacks. There’s a lot of dodging but also the option for stealth which, especially when you get a few blind enemies around you, allows you to pick and choose your battles. The levels are very dynamic as well. It isn’t just enemy after enemy after enemy followed by boss. There’s lots of hidden places you can explore and extras you can get if you keep your eyes open. Hidden passages and the like can be found along with scrolls that open up a audio note style story nuggets, like Bioshock. Which is nice and it doesn’t move you out of the game. One thing with the controls though, especially given that they can be tricky to start, is how unobtrusive everything is to the in game screen. Everything is a nice size to allow you to see the world and spot all those nooks and crannies. If you change your weapon or magic for example, you’ll have a small notification of what it has changed to.

The thing is with this game is that you can play it how you want to. I’m not a stealthy guy. I’m a very smash and move kind of guy or I’ll pick people off from afar. Unless I know a lot about the world, I won’t care too much about the sheer volume of consumables and objects that can encumber you. In fact the size of Skyrim and everything you can get is one of the things I occasionally dislike about that game. But Lords of the Fallen has this very fluid, very easy to pick up feel about it which, once you acclimatise yourself to it, rewards you greatly. Its screens and options for objects, items and upgradable parts aren’t too overwhelming enough to detract you from playing the game.

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Additions to your weapons this way feel smooth and you really adapt them to how you play with them. When I switched to my second character with his dual daggers, but lighter more death inviting armour, it was a style I was not accustomed to and I found it harder. But with my starter character, I would have progressed him and made him better for my style of play. Lords allows you to do that very easily. The magic options are also very cool if you go down that route. There was a gauntlet which gave me a poison grenade launcher and a magic missile. It’s fun and adds more tactical elements to how you attract and damage enemies. My favourite magic has to be one that mimics your every move for a short time, including attacks, effectively doubling your attack for that time. It’s all very cool.

There are several little things that make me like this game a bit more than the onslaught that Dark Souls brings. Firstly, the lockable camera allows you to keep your focus in battle on a specific target and is easily switched. That’s a great help for the amount of times you duck and roll and keeps you in the fight rather than bouncing off the environment and getting one-hit-smashed to oblivion. You’ll find special challenges throughout the map that are dimensional portals. When you die the ghost of you remains, like Dark Souls. Except, this can be an advantage as your ghost gives you a health buff while you’re in the vicinity of it. I used it, once I died to a boss, as a health regeneration point and kept it there so I could fight the boss around this buff. You won’t get the XP straight away but it’s a nice tactical approach that can aid you. Strike combos make you feel like you’re achieving some awesome damage, much like a Dynasty Warriors game would. The influences from other games are very noticeable but that isn’t to the detriment of Lords, in fact it accentuates its positives.

Those positives are that the game is very easy to play, the control mapping isn’t all over the place and uses held buttons rather than complex D-Pad selections. In fact you can select and deselect your favourite consumable options to make the D-pad essentially your healing potion button. The art is visually stunning and each area feels as atmospheric as Dark Souls and the enemies are just as nasty looking as those in Doom and other horror/fantasy games. The demonic mini-boss I faced reminded me of the devil from Dungeon Keeper which has always looked incredibly cool. The game is tricky and challenging but not in the constant death way of Dark Souls. You don’t get that sense of frustration that sometimes Souls gives you. The game gives you the right amount of options to be able to carve your own Harkyn and your own style of play. The bosses do different things during their battles and it makes fighting them more challenging than just noticing their attack and vunerability cycle. The extras are nice to find and don’t completely obscure you playing the game and keep you in the world more so than the Elder Scrolls games do.

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Back in April I was excited for Lords of the Fallen but a little bit worried it’d be too much like other games or slightly tepid or more focused on the visuals to create a game worth playing. Now I’ve played it, my opinion has completely changed. It’s a game I can’t wait to play, I can’t wait to see speed runs for and I can’t wait to talk about. The next generation hardware was always going to give us good benchmarks for future games. There’s lots of fantasy RPG’s coming out with Shadows of Mordor and Dragon Age. But I think Lords will keep a very good and dedicated audience happy and set a bench mark for other RPG’s to aspire to in the coming years.

Lords of the Fallen is due for release on 31st October for PC, Xbox One and PS4.

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Dragon Age Inquisition interview with Neil Thompson

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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Dragon Age Inquisition is the new offering from Bioware in the franchise that has very quickly become a fantasy icon in video gaming. Sean got to sit down at EGX with Bioware’s Director of art and animation, Neil Thompson, and have a few words about it.

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It’s a very interesting art style compared to other Dragon Age games, especially with the Frostbite 3 engine. How did that come about?

Well the interesting answer is the adoption of Frostbite. We did the previous two Dragon Age games on a Bioware engine called Eclipse and I think it’s safe to say it was starting to show its age. We wanted to take Dragon Age Inquisition on to the new hardware and new generation. What does that mean? Well a lush, diverse and complex experience and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t apply to us like everyone else. We’d already seen what Frostbite was capable of with Battlefield and we wanted a piece of that.

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How has that approached how you create the game? Before the previous Dragon Age’s single player experiences very much in the Bioware theme and the characters and now it’s multiplayer and more open.

Multiplayer is one aspect of the game but the single player and multiplayer are still two different things. The single player experience is still an immense priority for us. We wanted to extend that single player experience, larger worlds, and better combat. You don’t allow the paradigm of the hardware or the engine to dictate what we wanted to achieve with the franchise. We wanted push the pillars of Dragon Age with a more open world experience, a larger or more diverse world. That’s what we wanted to use for the game because we felt it would be a better experience for the player.

The advent of the new generation consoles has come along at the right time for you to embellish that as well?

We are on all five consoles with presents a challenge in itself. But the move to the next gen has made the older generation versions better because of it. We try to satisfy the needs of the players across all platforms. We don’t want the last generation console owners to get less of an experience than the other console owners.

The art style has changed, partly because of the Frostbite 3 engine and you’ve been able to put new features in to the game like the tactical view. Tell us a little bit about how that came about.

Well it’s the result, not really of Frostbite option, but between the team and the creative director that they wanted that RPG experience. Origins and many of our games have that dynamic and I think it really enhances the combat. You can play the game with the traditional third person way and its fine. But if the challenge becomes too much you can always pause and think about it more strategically and from a party perspective. Rather than just playing from the one view.

Where did the inspirations of that mode come from and for it to be as seamless as it is, because you can see comparisons to MOBA’s and Warcraft?

Well I think Bioware’s inspiration goes back further to Baldur’s Gate and those top down RPG’s.

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The game is the third in the franchise, so you’re fairly well established with Dragon Age and what you do. There’s a lot of other games as well coming around at the same time with competition like Lords of the Fallen, Shadows of Morder, Elder Scrolls Online. How will your game go in that kind of market as it is very different and unique compared to what is there?

It is and what I think is good and that is positive for the Fantasy space market is that it is possible to sustain multiple franchises. And it just encourages strength across the board. Fantasy has had something of a revival in recent years with Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and stuff which is fantastic, a positive environment for fantasy and the games that inhabit it. So I think it’s great for everyone.

You say fantasy is having a bit of a revival, I’d say role-playing as well is having a renaissance. Dungeon’s and Dragons is back again with new rules, simplified. There’s a lot more indie gaming that’s using the mechanics. How do you keep things accessible when there’s a lot of other options and different things about?

It is challenging. I think you can’t be stuck in the position where you’re trying to please everybody. You end up diluting the experience so what we’ve tried to do is allow you to play Dragon Age the way you want to play it. If you want to get more in depth and in to the tactical side of things then you can absolutely do that. But if you are a more casual player and if you want to go through the narrative without getting as deep in to the ability trees then you can. What we’d like to see, if you are a more casual player, is that you get introduced to it and you just dip your toe in the more complex systems and if they enjoy it then they do.

With art & design, you’ve probably seen enough concept sketches to keep DeviantArt running for years to come. What kind of artistic inspiration do you take, how do you get that world created?

We try to go as broad as possible. We’re keen to have a broad palette for our artists, not just from the genre of games but from film, TV, architecture, fine art, contemporary art, sculpture, writing. You name it people are passionate about it and it provides the spark of creativity then it’s a wonderful thing. So we look very broadly with our inspirations.

There’s a lot of things that come from the games characters, how much of the classic Bioware character driven style is still in the game, given all the changes?

It’s still incredibly core to the experience. You start with the narrative perspective, get the story outline, introduce the characters. Their personalities are explored and evolve right from the concept artist even before the 3D side of things. It is still absolutely part of it. Dragon Age Inquisition is a game about a vast and threatening diverse world and the people in that all have needs and desires and that’s key to the experience.

I suppose it might be a new thing for a Dragon Age game where you’re going in to an online world where the key is community. Destiny has shown already how many people, even on consoles, will form groups, discuss the game, play the game, etc. How do you see Dragon Age being received by the community like that, as the genre leans very heavily towards that kind of community?

I think Dragon Age and Bioware itself already has a very vibrant community. There’s no shortage of passion for the franchise. I hope Dragon Age will get people more involved and more emotionally interested in these characters and drive further conversation and further collaboration between fans and Bioware.

So what’s been your favourite thing so far in developing the game and what have we got to look forward to?

It’s hard to say, there’ve been so many things. It’s been a challenging development. Anything like this is difficult to achieve. I look at the final game now and I see how the design and the art has gelled in to the experience and I feel very satisfied and I and the rest of the team are very proud of it. We’re always working on new ideas and Dragon Age has always got more stories to tell. So there’s a lot more to come.

How about getting the Xbox One version up to spec with the PS4?

Game development is challenging, it’s always difficult. I think the key is trying to give the same level of satisfaction and experience across all the platforms so we hope to achieve that.

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Dragon Age Inquisition is due out on November 21st on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC.

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Dead Island 2 Interview with Isaac Ashdown

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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Sean has been at EGX all this week. Here’s one of the many interviews he got, talking to Isaac Ashdown who’s a Gameplay Programmer at Yager for Dead Island 2!

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It must be really exciting to work on seeing how the well the community received the Dead Island games along with some of the critics.

Yeah, it’s certainly a great opportunity for myself, I was a big fan, and for Yager as well. It’s a really great game to be able to take to the next step by making the sequel.

Do you feel, because this is a different development team to the first Dead Island games, you need to do something slightly different, or get a good enough spin on it yourself to establish yourself in the franchise?

We certainly aren’t letting ourselves be held back by anything in particular, taking it in the direction we want to make our own, and the next gen consoles give us a lot of opportunities to pull out the stops. We’ve got the seamless 8 player connectable co-op where you drop in and drop out of. We hope that will help bring the game to a more emergent level of gameplay.

I’ve played the build of the game, so lets talk about killing things!

Ok!

There’s a lot of death and we had a lot of competitions between the people who played for the highest death count. How much fun is it to programme that complete melee of destruction of zombies and that humorous tone of everything else about it?

It’s a lot of fun. I’ve worked pretty extensively on the melee systems and the weapon systems in general. So our goals there are really take it in a direction that maintains the visceral nature of the first game, because melee combat was a lot of fun. We’ve expanded on it in a lot of ways, for a number of reasons. Because we’ve got an 8 player co-op, the number of zombies you’re fighting at any one time is a lot more than before. If you’re with a group of your buddies we’ve tried to keep the combat fun even with the amount so it’s been a lot of fun to do.

I got from playing the preview that there’s a very devil may care attitude about the story and everything in the game. There’s the bit with the Peter Fonda “we want to get loaded” speech on the radio. Obviously that’s very different to the original game so how do you see this fun element keeping people in and keeping the co-op going?

The story tone is a little different to the first game. It’s set in California and you’re one of the heroes that’s decided to stay in the state, even though its kind of been compounded by the government. And there’s also all the other guys there who are there for the same reasons but aren’t necessarily new like you are. But they’ve seen it as a new opportunity to build a life for themselves in a way that it wasn’t possible before in modern day life. So that kind of set up is what we’re going for with the whole combat tone as well. So you’re there to have a good time, basically, and embrace the lighter side of the apocalypse.

So the first game has given a lot of stylistic and artistic impressions to the franchise, but what are Yager’s inspirations for their take on the franchise?

It’s certainly a lot of fun to make such a colourful game. Taking this kind of paradise gone to hell and putting in a real world location like California, it’s a place I’ve been to a few times and have family there, so it’s fun to see a place I’m familiar with that’s been turned in to this zombie playground and still is recogniseable as a real place.

You’ve taken quite a lot of inspiration from the real life California and Los Angeles and how that city operates.

As Europeans, it’s not a place that we can really have a kind of claim to, it’s something that’s such an iconic location in popular culture and Hollywood has done a good job of presenting itself to the outside world. So it’s good as an outsider to be able to run with it, like a fantasy California. Like if the world of Hollywood was presented in this fantasy way, populated by these people who may be anarchistic or want to party, but not taking themselves too serious because… It’s LA.

We’ll see this in Spring 2015, so how’s the development all going?

The demo here we shipped for GamesCom a few months ago has come a long way. We’ve started playtests with the whole world with seamless 8 player. It’s fun to get in to the office, jump in the game and have other people also jump on your server. You’ll be playing and doing your own thing and then your buddy in the next room will jump in and you’ll team up, so it’s been great.

So the next gen tech much have really helped coming along when it did to give you more possibilities and scope?

For sure, the consoles themselves are much more powerful so you can do this open world and we’re using Microsoft’s cloud compute to run our servers so we can do a lot more than the traditional infrastructure of having a bunch of servers in a room somewhere in the world. Being able to spool up servers as you need them, being able to connect people with their friends, all that stuff makes the seamless 8 player co-op possible.

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Dead Island 2 will be released on PS4, Xbox One and PC in Spring 2015. You can check out Sean’s preview from GamesCom here!

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Preview – F1 2014

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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It’s time again for Codemasters to let us in for a little preview of their efforts with F1 2014, which in real life has been a new and exciting time for the sport. For those of you that haven’t seen the fallout of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg this year over the news and the papers, you might be forgiven for even noticing anything different about this years Formula One season. Of course you’d also have been living under a rock that was stuck beside a stalagmite that was in the back of a very deep dark cave that had yet to have been discovered somewhere in the depths of the Amazon jungle that native tribes fear to approach due it possibly containing a soul sucking monster that could only be appeased by the sounds of a V8 engine… I digress.

Engines are a good place to start given that the real world F1 has had drastic changes to it this year. In an effort to be more representative of the current consumer vehicle climate so that manufacturers will stay attached to it, F1 ditched the petrol guzzling V8 super noisy beasts that had been powering them for the past eight years in favour of a V6 Turbo Powered engine linked to a hybrid energy recover system, or ERS. Basically the engine draws power from a battery that charges up kinecticly throughout a lap, as well as petrol. You may remember this as KERS last year which was available as a power boost. Now it is integrated into the car, which lights up the rear tires like never before giving you a squirmy torque nightmare to handle, along with a software adjusted braking system and the return of the rear wing drag reduction system (DRS). The aerodynamic changes, along with some safety improvements, have led to a step nose which is a design to replace the straight noses of previous years. Apparently it’s to stop the cars taking off in a collision but it has created some fairly ugly phallic designs.

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Why am I furnishing you with all of this technical information? Because it will answer quite a lot of your questions about Codemasters newest addition to the franchise. Your first question is “Why isn’t this on next generation consoles?” This is because those rule changes alone have drastically changed the way the game plays, Handling is now a completely different beast and different cars with superior design stick to the road a little better than others. The sounds the engines make has totally changed as well, along with two brand new tracks and a complete change in the way these cars behave aerodynamically. There is no way a next gen version of the game would have been ready. Disappointing, yes. But with the next iteration coming early next year, we hope it will be an easily satiated itch.

Your next question “Is this just another yearly franchise update and why should I get this when I can wait for the next gen version?” It seems FIFA has come under criticism lately for not adding much year upon year, if this years reviews are anything to go by. You could argue that until the classic mode, F1 was in danger of the same. The changes in the sport though require two things: practical testing of making those game changes work, and a comfortable experienced engine in which to implement it. Yes this is a yearly update but a lot has changed in the sport to warrant it, especially if you haven’t brought the recent iterations of the franchise. In fact, I’d say the combo of F1 2013 and 2014 are very clear pictures of several generations of F1 including this newest.

So your final question is “What’s it like and have they succeeded in adapting to the changes in the sport?” Here’s my disclousre of what I played. I did a three lap race in the Mercedes around Australia, a five lap race around Italy in a Ferrari and a three lap race around the new Russia circuit with a Lotus. That way I had all three different engine manufacturers (Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault) and three very different handling perspectives. The car selection actually comes with a difficulty meter now so you can tell which ones are the more challenging.

With the first race, I immediately had to find new braking points. The new brake by wire system does shift your bias quite a lot and with the 8 speed gear box, everything is a bit confusing if you’re a seasoned F1 veteran and are playing with the racing line off. The low growl of the V6 turbos has replaced the echoing roar of previous years and almost sounds a little dull and lifeless compared to the previous years engine. At this moment, there isn’t the raspy kind of sound the real life counterparts have in the down shifts and braking, which is a bit sad because I like that noise but hopefully it will come. The handling is, in the Mercedes, surprisingly responsive. I wasn’t having to correct the car nearly as much as I thought I would be which, when you think about it, is pretty indicative to how the Mercedes have dominated the season in real life. The Ferrari on the other hand was much less stable around Monza, especially after slowing. The first chicane was tricky getting around without the luxury of being glued to the road like before. Hitting your apex will be incredibly rewarding, not just for nailing perfect lap, but also for getting the car hooked up well with enough speed and grip for the next turn or exit. I didn’t notice too much of a change in the engine noise between them but there was slight differences.

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The Lotus was a very realistic representation… Utterly shit. If you’ve been following F1 then you’ll know Lotus’s fall from prominence compared to the past few season’s competitive car has been quick and nasty. Changes of drivers haven’t helped, especially with one of them running up the bill for spare parts quicker than you run up the bill at your works Christmas party bar. It might not have helped that I was driving around the new Russia circuit in Sochi that I’ve only seen in a BBC feature. The track is surprisingly tight and has a lot of potential to create missed braking points and wall collisions. The tightness, especially with kerbs and sharp apexes really make the car quite unstable and the torque bites the car as soon as you hit the gas. It does not have the raw pace of the other two cars which is quite nice compared to the other slightly unrealistic representation of lower grid cars. It presents more of a challenge to you by upping the difficulty of the car, rather than having to rely on upping the difficulty of the AI and of the driver aids.

There’s still a few weeks left before the chequered flag falls on F1 2014 and the last generation of Formula One racing games. In a way, it’s a shame that the rule changes happened for the game because last year’s effort, especially with the classic cars, was a great love letter to the sport, if not lacking more DLC opportunities due to licensing. The current £40 price tag will definitely be a sticking point for a lot of people, especially given the reception for GRID Autosport and its lower pricing. The only thing this game is missing visually is the red stripe of alcohol sponsorship on the Williams, but we shall see, puns aside, if the team at Codemasters can churn out a challenging racing game or an annual iteration. I’m hoping for the former.

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New Magicka 2 Trailer Karaoke Competition, More Exploding Cats

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

The lovely people at Paradox Interactive have just sent us over their new karaoke trailer for Magicka 2 and… Well I am in no way, shape or form going to describe it to you. You should just watch it below.

Suffice to say that my personal highlights, other than a tune that is completely stuck in my head and is making want to go and fish out my old Yamaha DX7, is the poor dog shedding a tear over the thoughts of many exploding cats and fire… Mans best friend is a sensitive creature. I wonder if the dog from Fable feared such feline combustion? I also cannot help but enjoy the faux VHS tracking effects and the inescapable reminder of how strange it is when karaoke videos are playing in Chinese restaurants.

The trailer is not only a bit of fun and has Vlad dancing around in his robe, but is also a competition. You budding Wizards with dreams of Lost In Translation style, karaoke booth entertainment (there’s a cross over that you never thought would be mentioned on a Friday afternoon), get the chance to upload your own Magicka karaoke music video.

That’s right, you can download an instrumental version of the song and create your own video, your own lyrics and upload them in order to win an awesome prize. As far as gaming launch competitions go, this is one of the most intriguing. Oh and if you do enter it, do not set fire to any cats. If you’re interesting in winning a yet to be announced prize (I’m hoping it’s a set of deluxe robes and staffs so I can go around the town pretending to set things on fire), you can enter at www.magicka2.com/singalong.

If you want to see more of Magicka 2, as there is some gameplay in the trailer, you can check out our hands-on preview from Gamescom. The game itself will be out in early 2015 for PC and PS4.

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Christopher Brookmyre’s Bedlam – Let’s Play

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

Yesterday, we previewed Christopher Brookmyre’s Bedlam, the early access Steam game by author Christopher Brookmyre and RedBedlam. Today we bring you something a little extra.

Sean has recorded a whole first level play through of Bedlam on his Mac… That’s right, Mac. So regardless of your computing choice, you can play! There are two levels in the early access and there will be more coming so keep checking back on it. It’s currently available on Steam for £12.99.

For those who don’t know what it is, Bedlam is a independently produced UK game involving several generations of first person shooter inspirations. It’s funny, great to play and… Well we won’t spoil the entire video for you. Suffice to say that the video does contain some colourful language from the story. So people, you have been warned, this video is not safe for work.

If you enjoy this, Sean will also record the second level too, which you’ll see a glimpse of at the end of the video.

So settle back and relax. It’s time to enjoy Bedlam.

P.S. Sean takes no responsibility in how bad he is at playing video games. Feel free to comment and tell him so.

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World of Warships – Preview

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

wow ft World of Warships is the latest offering from Wargaming, the mad geniuses behind the free to play successes World of Tanks and World of Warplanes. This time they’ve taken to the water and while we were at Gamescom, we managed to get hands on with the game and was guided through it by producer Mike Fedorov. The BigWorld engine has created some wonderful graphics. Aside from the ship detail, the world around it is just as good looking. The water, whilst not yet complete, looks amazingly fluid and responsive to everything around it. Apparently it’s going to get better and more transparent come beta release so that’s even better. The sky is just as good. Apparently members of the public were asked to tell the difference between real world skies and skies in game. Some people pointed out what they thought was the real sky. They were actually all in game, so if it can fool people then you know it looks good. The atmosphere that the engine provides is vital to World of Warships given the lack of land based battle. If you don’t feel immersed in the areas then you won’t get as in to the game and if you’ve played World of Tanks, you know that authenticity is one of the things they pride themselves on. That is no different with the warships either. This time you’ll have two nations to start, Japan and the USA, expanding to include the British, Soviet and French if not more in future. The game will run ships from the turn of the 20th century as far forward as they can. Meaning that you’ll have effectively 120 years worth of naval military history to play with. Although it’s not going to be a complete recollection of this, you won’t have whole lines of ships, but you’ll have enough ships of historical relevance to be completely lost in. wow 2 The ships fall in to four basic classes. The biggest ones being the airplane carrier and Battleship, both of which suffer from low manoeuvrability but have ridiculously big guns for flak and shelling everything in your path. The middle class is the cruiser. They are also armed with flak cannons but has a weaker defence. It also have more precise gunnery so you can sharpshoot any weak points of your enemy, if you so happen to know them. The final class, the one we played with, was the Destroyer. A small, snappy vessel with small guns but armed enough to do damage and with quick manoeuvrability. What’s so good about the detail in these? Everything. They look fantastic and each ship has around 500,000 polygons. Even a gun turret contains more polygons than a single tank did in World of Tanks. They also evolve, being historic and subject to changing design and accompaniment over the years. So if a ship had some new guns installed between World War One and World War Two then that will be reflected in the ship in game as well. The team of historical advisors, as with anyone with a passing interest in military history, are meticulous. The blueprints for the ships have been used along with archive material and pictures from all throughout history to get everything just right. There are even “paper ships”. These are ships that were never actually constructed but their blueprints were drawn up. Consider it history plus. Just like World of Tanks, World of Warships is very easy to control. A simple WASD format will speed the ship up or down whilst turning port or starboard. The mouse controls the direction of your fire as well as shooting. You will also have additional buttons to change your gun rounds from normal to armour piercing and when it comes to torpedoes, you have a secondary sight guide. The guiding of you shot is trickier than a lot of games like this. You will have to accommodate that not only are you moving at a rate of knots but so is your enemy. You effectively have to judge how far ahead your shot needs to be. This gets even trickier when you’re firing torpedoes as ships can alter course and you’ll miss. This is made even MORE tricker by the fact that you are moving and you need to pay attention to where you’re going at the same time, or else collide with some land or another ship. Thankfully there is a navigational map where you can plot your courses if you want to take that particular element out of the equation. As long as you don’t blow your allies up. Friendly fire is always on and might land you in a bit of trouble if you’re not careful. wow1 At the moment the game is in Alpha and the Beta is expected before the end of the year. As opposed to World of Tanks, Warships adds a bit more of a tactical dimension given the nature of the warfare arena you’re playing in. Everything from missing a jut of rock to working out where that sonar beep is coming from telling you of your impending doom. Finally you have to be very mindful of your allies and enemies given how the area is not as closed compared to World of Tanks. It will be a lot easier to make a mistake and blow up one of your friendly escorts. But that challenge is one I suspect regular players will rise to and champion, along with drawing other new players to it as well. Just before we played the game, I remarked that the last naval warfare game I had played was the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) game 688 Attack Sub. A game that whilst frustrating was also very tactically nuanced and reminded me a lot of Crimson Tide and The Hunt for Red October. Since then, I haven’t really found a naval game that really gripped me or that I found myself playing. Even the Battlefield naval missions didn’t really hit that level of challenge enough for me to be truly gripped. I get the feeling that World of Warships may well solve that missing whole in my gaming experience. [divider] [divider] [author]

Christopher Brookmyre’s Bedlam – Preview

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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I had heard about Christopher Brookmyre’s Bedlam before I went to Gamescom. I am a writer, I write and as such I end up following the printed prose form and its news. So to hear that a book and a game had been created by the Scottish author, I was naturally intrigued. I’d also been hankering for something for a while. I wanted a game that was like Quake. I’ve been missing the fast moving, gameplay driven first person shooters that used to occupy so much of my youth in the mid to late 90s. I know there’s Quake Live but I’m sure you can guess what I mean.

Meeting Christopher at Gamescom along with Nick Witcher from RedBedlam who has made the game put a whole new perspective in to which for me to wax lyrical over. Normally books about video games come in the form of tie-ins or licensed works, with the exception of Ready Player One. Bedlam however is very different. What’s clear about the game is how much the two entities, prose and code, are in tandem. Whilst not necessitating having to read the book before you play or visa versa. But you can of course do both.

The story behind it is that Nick, a fan of Brookmyre’s work, noticed something in his novel Pandemonium that hinted at Christopher’s history as an appreciator of video games that was the way his characters were organised in to clans, much like first person shooter gaming clans. Nick himself was quite the Counterstrike player so it was quite easy for him to spot. This led to Nick emailing Christopher to ask if he wanted to make a video game. Lots of communications later (and apparently a few ‘creative’ binges between Glasgow and Brighton) an idea was forged.

Christopher’s gaming love came from playing lots of games but this focus was on his first person appreciation of Quake, Quake 2, Unreal and the like. Those fast moving, gameplay driven first person shooters that used to occupy so much of his time in the mid to late 90s… You sense a theme here. The staff at RedBedlam grew up playing games like Doom and Wolfenstein. So you can see where this is heading.

So enough about the history? What about the game? Well it is currently on Steam Early Access with the first two levels available. The first of which you can see on our special preview video coming shortly. It plays like a Quake or an Unreal game. But that is only the first part of this game. The game itself, along with the book has become a homage to the first person shooter genre and especially its history. Whilst you’ll see the first level has the element of that futuristic space shooter it is a lot deeper than that. Plus it is very important to point that this isn’t a port or a clone so to completely create not only a game that can replicate the mid 90s FPS genre but others as well in the same engine and controls, it is incredibly impressive. You can tell the research that went in to playing the games they are inspired by to recapture that feeling was well spent.

There will be many ages of games seen from the first person perspective in Bedlam. Inspired by the likes of Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty and even Pac-Man, the game successfully makes you feel like you are in the games of a certain era. The has to go down to the incredible art direction of the game. The level design and the style of the detail both in the textures and in the weaponry (which is interchangeable between each era) are excellent and really evoke that nostalgia whilst making you enjoy what you are currently playing just as much as any of the games it takes inspiration from.

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Speaking of inspiration, we have to discuss the writing. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously and the dialogue, voiced by BBC comedy Burnistoun’s Kirsty Strain and Robert Florence (along with some extra from Christopher Brookmyre) takes its inspiration from Science Fiction comedy legends such a Doug Naylor and Rob Grant’s Red Dwarf and Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide stories. There is a very traditional and stoic British humour about it which not only adds to the aura of the game and the tropes of the time they were made, but also adds a great and entertaining story element.

To dismiss Bedlam as a clone of the 90s FPS genre would be a terrible disservice. There is a lot of love that has been put in to creating this game from people that love gaming of all ages and times. It isn’t just a jog down memory lane but a new and welcome addition to the history of the genre that has transported itself across mediums. I can’t wait until it’s finished.

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