The Game Jar

Driveclub – Review

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Driveclub poses a question that is probably quite a pertinent one for this new generation of console gaming. It doesn’t mean to pose it, not in the slightest. And it possibly deserves a little more credit than what the question suggests but the question is there.

Is it enough for a game, especially in the racing genre, to be graphically excellent and for that to be its most redeeming quality?

I put this review off for over a month now for the obvious reason of the games technical issues, missing modes and multiplayer problems, and that ample time could be given for them to be fixed. Ample time has been given and… They haven’t been fixed. Believe me this review is neither bashing the efforts of Sony and Evolution Studios, nor is it not giving the benefit of the doubt that these were avoidable issues. The truth is that I have been unable to play any multiplayer content at all. Every time I try to join a lobby I get an error message, the challenges option is still unavailable and it took me two weeks to even start a club. It’s been an incredibly poor show from all concerned given the PS4’s lack of racing game content right now. The spinning wheel of loading in the games menu screens has been the majority of my multiplayer and social experience with Driveclub.

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But let us talk about the game itself for a moment. As a single player experience it is an arcade racing game with real world inspired environments based around the globe for you to race in. It goes in a complete 180 degree spin from the current crop of open world (and has to be said, excellent) options but also isn’t entirely in the vein of the track based options like Forza 5/Gran Tourismo. Instead of money, you earn experience both for you and your club (if you’re part of one) over a single player tour campaign, which consists of a mix of lap races and hill climb-like distance races, each with occasional modifiers of car, environment and challenges for you to succeed in. Your difficulty increases as you go up the rank levels and unlock the more powerful cars for you to race in ever more restricted and competitive spaces. As like most racers, a plethora of licensed supercars and sporty street hatchbacks are available for you to toy with which just unlock, so no need to mull over what to buy.

With this comes the inevitable customisation options although this being an arcade racer loses all of the simulation and performance upgrade aspects and instead focuses on the paint and decal jobs. You can design different colour schemes and a badge for your club, which you can apply to all your cars, and the different designs get unlocked with the experience you gain. You’ll also earn accolade badges, which you can adorn your car with to show your expertise off to the world… Ah, yeah the slight multiplayer problem there.

Actually there are a few issues generally I have with the game in this regard. The cars you are racing against are entirely frustrating. They have a tendency to be violent which can entirely ruin your championship if you’re half way through one. Their desire to trade paint with you at nearly 150MPH in a field of almost priceless super cars beggars belief at times. The game is based on a points=XP system which tasks you to race and drift in cars that are designed to stick to the road and navigate a tight course, avoiding clanging off of visible and invisible barriers after missing braking points. Which means if you do end up getting a little bit too much on to the dirt or end smashing up the back the incredibly lethargic AI car in front of you, you will be punished, even with them hitting you in the back or the side and you getting a points-based penalty because of it. In fact it’s quite reminiscent of the overly harsh punishments that the early Codemasters F1 games had. The problem is that it takes you out of the fun experience of racing that the game needs to keep it interesting and not frustrating.

There’s a nice mix of completely Eurocentric racing cars but ultimately it’s totally dependant on your racing style as to what you’ll enjoy. I found myself using the Bentley Continental GT Speed and the overpowered BMW M5 2011 almost exclusively as they were the most balanced cars and I’m not a huge fan of drifting in games with other cars on the track. The tracks environments are nice, challenging and the atmosphere and views around them look outstanding but they do suffer from being quite tight in places for a ten car grid, making a few of the point challenges like top 3 finish, lap times and top speed hard to get without repeated attempts and sometimes, a bit of luck. Normally this would be good. All racing games should benefit from you having multiple goes and enjoying the challenge of besting a situation but the game suffers from being atmospherically lacklustre.

This is where the game suffers. Whilst the environments are excellent and the cars highly detailed you never exactly feel, for most of the middle part of the game, that any car has its own identity except the incredibly slippery Ferrari California. In fact it’s this lack of driving dynamics that makes the single player element (the only one you can really play) get very dull. Nothing really feels like its own car and the driving becomes quite similar and predictable between vehicles very quickly, leading to you getting a bit bored of it. The driving element isn’t completely devoid of fun but there are some problems like the completely ineffectual drafting and the strict track limits on chicanes. The level of personalisation isn’t particularly inspiring either, feeling more like everything’s been lifted from an early 2000s copy of Max Power magazine rather than an actual racing community. It’s something that Forza has done very well with but Driveclub’s just feels a bit uninspiring in this regard. For something customisable, there’s a lack of customising actually available and the accolade badges are just plain ugly. Club badges are very customisable in looks but size, positioning and just general taste in these are completely lacking.

It doesn’t particularly play well to the pick-up-and-play aesthetic that arcade racers normally have as the tracks are so different that you’ll have to spend time on them to truly know them if they are lap-based races, especially if you need to get a hang of braking points and the like without spending a race looking at the mini-map. Although there are some nice rally-esque flags by each corner showing the severity of the turn. There are also some in race challenges that, thanks to the bugged online element, are completely impossible, an example being the opponent in an average speed challenge having achieved over 1,000MPH. Back to the earlier criticism of the online element being broken, it’s bugs like this that should have had ample time to be fixed by now and ultimately haven’t.

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One of the games biggest saving graces is its graphics. You can’t really do it so much in races with other cars, but driving with the in car view is truly beautiful with excellent detail. The vistas around the track are magnificent although given the speed of the cars you rarely pay much attention to them. It’s the lighting changes when the game is at its best. As the game reaches in to darkness and the lights of the cars come on, it is deep, dark and much like driving in the dark, excitingly terrifying. The only criticism I have of this is how difficult it makes racing against the AI. Because the tracks are in nature and completely out of a town environment, there is no street or flood lighting and in races it can make it too dark and especially hard to see other cars. But you forgive this and the aggressive racing the AI does in these close quarters because of how it looks, which is what ties us back in to the earlier question.

I interviewed a games developer for a racing sim who said that the capacity was there so that most games could quite easily be photo realistic in cars and tracks now, and that car manufacturers pretty much have to sign off on the cars looking their best. So in this regard, can we expect and should we expect the level of graphical detail and excellence that Driveclub provides? I think the answer is yes now, especially given the how good Forza Horizon 2 is (although if you look closely, you’ll see the shortcuts). Although a special mention has to be given to its lighting effects. But if we expect this then surely the other parts of the game have to come under greater scrutiny and if the game bases its main points under a social playing system then that system must be up to scrutiny. Whilst the single player game play is alright, which isn’t a very descriptive word I know but is the one that characterizes it most effectively, its multiplayer and online element is bugged, inconsistent and in some places non-existent. Given the benefit of the doubt of time, and the positives, this game has come up to be a shambles and even if it is updated and its problems solved in a few months time, the damage has already been done.

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Driveclub is a game based for a stage that it has failed to provide. At its core it’s a middling arcade racer with very little to offer but with graphical excellence to keep you on its road to see how its multiplayer social element comes up. Unfortunately it’s that element that is not only missing but is still causing bugs and issues in the game over a month after release, without nothing being said for the PS Plus version still unreleased. A nice car line up, excellent detail and a fantastic bit of lighting are the only positives in what has been a shambolic episode from Sony and Evolution Studios.

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[tab title=”Good Points”]

– Great car list with excellent in car views.

– Tracks provide excellent and varied racing and vistas.

– Lighting is wonderful, especially in the dark.

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– Online social and multiplayer still incredibly broken, giving bugs in main game.

– Customisation options are poor and not very customisable.

– Cars never feel unique and gets dull quick in single player.

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The graphics and lighting in this game are excellent but ultimately we should expect that now as a standard for licensed vehicles in racing games. The online fiasco, the bugs from it and the fact that the cars never really feel to have their own identity makes everything feel very similar and never too captivating, earn this game a 5.

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MX vs ATV Supercross – Review

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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If you read our preview of MX vs. ATV: Supercross back in July, you’ll know a bit of the history behind that franchise. But we’ll give you a little bit of a recap just in case. Nordic Games is one of the many people who snapped up some properties after the great collapse of THQ. One such thing they did was restart Rainbow Studios who have previously produced the other MX vs ATV games and got to work on producing something that the studio loved and did well.

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Which is why we are here now, tinkering around with the clutch cables on our Rainbow MX125 and tearing up a lot of dirt on the track. I’ve already made a pun before about this but when you think Supercross bikes in this country (UK) you do really think of a group of young men sat around their back gardens with oily clothes tinkering about before letting rip down your street in what sounds like a cross between a swarm of bees (bees?) and someone furiously trying to use a blender on unmelted chocolate. But in truth Supercross racing is the second most popular form of motorsport in the States, behind NASCAR apparently. Even bigger than IndyCar, Moto GP, Formula 1, etc. So whilst this may seem like a bit of a niche angle for us Brits, it may not be so much so over the water.

The easiest way to go about MX vs ATV Supercross is to look at it from the arcade angle. Now this game has been loving constructed by a studio who are a complete bunch of petrol heads, I know, I’ve met them. Their studio is next to a large expanse of desert which they regularly enjoy tearing around in so they know how the machines feel. Sadly of course you can’t really licence Honda and the likes who’s engines are used so a little bit of old school “name-everything-after-us” wording is in use throughout the game, making the two main constructers of vehicle either Nordic or Rainbow. But others are there. You’ll see Oakley sponsors, among other motocross sponsors which if you’re a fan you’ll recognise, as you tear around the well designed indoor dirt courses. And they are all really well laid out and a bit challenging lap upon lap. Even if you know them because they always evolve and the handling is so dependent on momentum, bumps and other course objects, that you’ll rarely take the same line twice. It evolves in a way that the course actually remembers the dirt imprints of every rider out there so you’ll get all the slides, mistakes and well ridden areas of the banked turns and jumps showing up on the track. This is one thing the game does excellent, the track deforming and changing over the course of a race.

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Sticking with the arcade angle, you jump straight in really without a tutorial. It’s up to you to get yourself up to speed. You can do this via the free ride mode which gives you a good handle on jumps and clutch control. The clutch control is effectively, in arcade terms, a power boost. You’ll have to get used to it but hitting the clutch ups the revs and launches you off which is great after you’ve slowed down from a corner or lost momentum after a jump. It’s a little tricky to get the hang of especially if you’re used to the pump-and-squirt type of throttle control most games have. But once you have got used to it, that’s where the challenge effectively ends. Pretty much everything that happens at this point, until you have to readjust yourself with the ATV’s, is in your direct control. If you muck up, it’s your fault. If you don’t win, it’s your fault. Basically, once you’ve mastered the clutch control the game becomes incredibly easy. A little bit too easy. The AI is fine, it isn’t entirely dumb, it doesn’t stick to the road like other racing games and it is in about as much control as you are when you bump, go off the track or someone lands on your prone head after you’ve come off. But the AI isn’t really much more than a collection of moving objects that are in your way, unless you turn it up to Pro (hardest setting) then you’ll be left in the dust. The ATV does make you readjust your riding at times and it is annoying how easy it is to lose control of it and effectively ruin your race but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy.

And that’s where the allure of the game sadly ends. Much like an arcade racer, you will have a good time unlocking the extras that you can customise your vehicle and rider with through the career modes different championships. Some which help the performance of said vehicle and some which are purely cosmetic both for bike and rider. But that runs out pretty quickly and whilst the tracks are fun, they all look fairly similar. You know that brown dirt track with boards around it and a few jumps in an arena, well that’s pretty much all of them. The tracks are set all across the United States but you wouldn’t know save for the cinematic in the menu screen that shows you some skyline of areas through the upper exposed parts of the arena which, if you’re on track, you wouldn’t otherwise see. The animations become very familiar as your rag doll like physics don’t really rag doll all that much. The jump and trick system is pretty basic but ultimately is entirely unimportant to the game and not really useful except for adding a bit more excitement in to your playing. There isn’t a lot more to the game except pick a bike, go and win, unlock some more. Ultimately that is exactly what this game says it is but you’d think maybe a few surprises might come your way.

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There are some local multiplayer modes and an online multiplayer mode. The online is a bit of a double edged sword though as it runs very well and quite smooth, with no noticeable drop in performance or lag spikes. However my testing of this was based on me and one other person playing. It’s not going to be the most populated multiplayer game on a weekday afternoon due to its niche nature. If you can get a group of people who have the game and all conspire to be on at the same time, it might be worth it. But for the short term it isn’t. And you might have difficulty doing that as well. The game is last-generation only (except for PC release). Which means that not only is it on the older consoles, you’d have to be a pretty dedicated fan to invest in it and go back to the old console for it.

If you’re that much of a fan you’ve probably got your own bike so a game probably isn’t that appealing. But on a positive note, Nordic and Rainbow know this and so you’ll find it priced quite nicely as it should be at around £25. Don’t get me wrong this is an entertaining game, especially for me as a fan of motor racing. And it’s far easier to handle and get to grips with than something like the Moto GP licensed series. But it’s something made by passionate people for this particular style of the sport, for people who are also passionate for it. It may be lost on me but it doesn’t give me enough to keep my interest peaked. Having said that, there’s a lot of good things in this game that if more accessible, fun and next-generation titles come our way there’s some good groundwork put in which just needs opening up a bit more for a wider audience.

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MX vs ATV: Supercross is a game that is well executed in a “does what it says on the tin” kind of way. It has a wide range of tracks and unlockable customisation options and is probably the most accessible non-arcade motorbike game I’ve played. However its learning curve and challenge quickly evaporate and unless your a fan, it leaves the fun in its dust.

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[tab title=”Good Points”]

– Easy to pick up and play

– Good track evolution dynamics

– Gives you a good range of bikes and quad bikes to use and unlock for

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[tab title=”Bad Points”]

– A bit too niche for a wider audience

– Becomes too easy very quickly

– Not enough outside of the bikes/dirt tracks to keep it fun

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[tab title=”Why a 6?”]

This is a well intentioned game and the MX vs ATV franchise is obviously in good hands. But it hasn’t really stretched the boat out to give it a good game and get a wider audience interested. The things that are done well in this game, like the track design and evolution, are great. Along with the beginning control challenge. But whilst the developers have done that well, there isn’t really anything else that has happened to make it more fun or exciting in the long run.

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This review is based on the PS3 version of the game

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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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[tab title=”Why a 7?”]

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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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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WWE2K15 – Preview

Posted on by Sean Cleaver

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Like an RKO out of nowhere, it’s time again for the franchise that layeths the smack down on the fighting game genre. WWE2K15 is the latest venture into the WWE universe but things are a little different this year.

When you first heard that 2K had taken the WWE franchise, you probably got very excited given their heritage with the NBA series. Last year though, you might have been forgiven for thinking this was a bit of the same old THQ thing. History, in case you don’t know is that after the bankruptcy and demise of THQ a lot of licenses, including WWE, were left in limbo. 2K jumped in and straight away brought on board the stalwarts of the WWE games Yukes and Visual Concepts. The 2014 version picked up what THQ had already done so it wasn’t that different to what was already planned or in production.

This year however is the first time that 2K have been able to guide the game from the start and their focus has been something that is in tune with what WWE want. That is a sense of a superstar and the progression of a career. One of the biggest problems, for me personally as a more casual WWE fan over the years, is the concept of the WWE Universe and what that translates to as a game mode. In my opinion it didn’t really settle you down or give you the feeling of definite progression and felt too much of a sandbox idea to work in a sports game. Of course the 2K specialty is a career mode and WWE is perfectly poised to benefit from it.

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The career mode starts with with you as a rough young potential who’s been brought in to the WWE’s training camp. You work your way up under the guidance of Bill DeMott in the Performance Centre and eventually get your way into the NXT ring as the path to career success unfurls before you. Rising through the ranks with the help of WWE superstars like William Regal, Vickie Guerrero and Triple H, much like you’d experience in the TV shows themselves, your journey will also unlock different options as you grow. Eventually facing the stars such as Daniel Bryan, Brock Lesnar and the like, this element of career progression takes you around the back offices and into some in-depth choices outside the ring, as well as fighting inside. This might seem familiar from the NBA career and that’s because it is. But it translates itself incredibly well to the WWE setting. How you perform unlocks the avenues for you to explore along with stat upgrades, the ability to train with other superstars and learn their moves, access different clothing and entrance options. You will work your way up and get decisions that also help your personality. You can mould yourself in to a face (good guy) or heel (bad guy) by respecting your way to the top or cheap-shotting people in their happy areas or with a slap. This evolves the story lines your character encounters with other superstars and eventually for your title runs, this plays a key component in who you face. This is the journey of you and who you create and, much like NBA, WWE’s personal touches and customisation really give you an immersive experience as a superstar.

Immersive is another word that’s probably synonymous with 2K’s treatment of NBA but has definitely leapt in to the squared circle. A fairly large overhaul of the game could have been overdue anyway but this particular update has certainly addressed a lot of issues. Firstly, and I don’t say this lightly, this game is not only the most lifelike and realistic looking wrestling game ever, but arguably that can extend to all sports fighting games. Whilst the crowd is slowly getting better in their animations, etc, the real look of the game stems from everything around it. The ring has been completely remapped and the sounds re-recorded, the animations for the wrestlers have grown (there’s over three times the amount), and the biggest thing is the wrestlers themselves. The scanning of the wrestlers faces and complete attention to their bodies, tattoos, mannerisms and expressions is unparalleled in the genre and one of the best things about what 2K has brought to the franchise. Even Paul Heyman has had his strut motion captured. This level of detail has taken quite the effort from 2K, given the schedule of the wrestlers so it’s something that is front and centre of the new game and deservedly so. Secondly, the commentary and the television presentation has been reworked. Michael Cole and Jerry “The King” Lawler have re-recorded the commentary to be more about the story and less about move calling like previous iterations. It’s no secret that the NBA has had the presentation of television and commentary pretty nailed in sports games and they’re trying to transpose that to WWE and from what we’ve played, that’s been successful so far.

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A few things you’ve probably already heard of, which I shall reiterate for you here, is that there are several pre-order bonuses, one of them incredibly historic in wrestling history. The inclusion of Steve Borden’s character, Sting, is a first for WWE at all. Formerly only a WCW wrestler who kept himself loyal to one company during the great turbulence of the Monday Night Wars and then later TNA, Sting is quite possibly the greatest wrestler never to hit a WWE ring. His inclusion in the game as both his 90s surfer dude persona and that mid 90s reinvention of him as a gothic outcast based on comic book character The Crow is a big deal. Hulk Hogan is available on certain deals with both his classic and Hollywood personas. The roster is pretty big so there will be more information to come in future announcements and John Cena, love him or loath him, is gracing the cover and curating the soundtrack… You know he had a rap album, right? He’s qualified… More so than Jim Johnston obviously… The 2K Showcase mode is back too, this time featuring on two classic battles in WWE history. Those being Cena Vs CM Punk and HHH Vs Shawn Michaels. So to answer the obvious question, yes CM Punk is back in this game, despite not being a WWE employee anymore.

WWE games have been pretty locked down for a while in getting it around 70% right. But somehow the fun of those early wrestling games we all played, whether you were of the SmackDown generation, the No Mercy Generation or even older with the Steel Cage Challenge generation, hasn’t been the thing that came across in the THQ attempts of recent years. Possibly that was due to the direction of the franchise rather than the game itself. But WWE2K15 looks, sounds and plays in a way that makes me want to delve deep in to my DVD collection and relive old memories. Most of the feedback and suggestion of how the franchise could improve appears to have been listened to and, despite the delay in the next generation release of the game, will be worth the wait albeit setting a high bar for 2K to trump on a yearly basis.

WWE2K15 is out on October 31st for Xbox 360 and PS3, with the Xbox One and PS4 versions to be released on November 21st.

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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 – 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]

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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Escape Dead Island interview with Anthony Cardahi

Posted on 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 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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