Archive for October 2019

Thursday, 31 October 2019

Games Inbox: Most wanted 3DS to Switch remaster, Need For Speed Heat release date, and Worbital

October 31, 2019 Leave a Reply
Metroid: Samus Returns key art
Metroid: Samus Returns – coming soon to Nintendo Switch?

The Friday Inbox laments the lack of new survival horror games on Halloween, as one reader suggests Xbox Infinite as a next gen console name.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk

 

Portable upgrade
I am all for Nintendo bringing 3DS games and franchises to the Switch. Apart from anything it helps to cement that the Switch is their home and portable console – there’s no need for two consoles anymore and the games can be better for either home or on the go, depending on how they’re made.

My guess as to what they’ll do is remaster the two Fire Emblem games and Luigi’s Mansion, which I’m all for, and hopefully also Metroid: Samus Returns. A new or remastered Rhythm Heaven would be mega too.

I don’t really see the point in Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land, or Animal Crossing though, as there are already equivalents of those – assuming Super Mario 3D World is coming at some point.

I think Masahiro Sakurai has said he doesn’t want a Kid Icarus: Uprising remaster but hopefully he’ll see sense as that’s a great game almost ruined by its controls.

I’m not sure what they’ll do about Zelda though as A Link Between Worlds is a prime candidate for a full remake, in the style of Link’s Awakening. I also doubt they’d port the classic remasters as they’d want to start them from scratch on the Switch I’d think.

Oh, and of course Advance Wars would be great, but does anyone really think that’s happening?
Wendigo

 

Ready for retirement
I am one of the few who welcome the rerelease of 3DS games for the Switch. I have been wanting to play Metroid: Samus Returns but can’t justify buying a 3DS to play it.

Also, does this really signal the final nail in the coffin of the 3DS? The console appeared to be on life support and now the Switch Lite is cementing its portable credentials.
Alek Kazam

GC: Why do you think people would be against it? And the 3DS is over eight years old, it deserves to rest in peace.

 

To infinity and beyond
We all know how rubbish Microsoft are at naming their consoles, so I have a suggestion to help them along and could be useful to market the next Xbox.

Halo Infinite could well be a launch title alongside a new Forza Motorsport game, this would take the main series to 8 I believe, 8 being a similar character to that of the infinity symbol. Also, with talk about cloud gaming and possible backwards compatibility, as Sony seems to be addressing, not to mention the inclusion of an ever growing Game Pass selection and proactive promotion of cross-platform gaming, I think a fitting moniker for the new machine would be Xbox Infinite.

Yes, it could mean a lazy approach to naming that game, but hey, Nintendo did it.

Of course where you could go from that is anyone’s guess. As was this.
Bad Edit

GC: It does seem a reasonable option. But, as you say, what do you call the one after? Although that question never seems to be one Microsoft has considered previously.

 

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk

 

Late bloomer
So I played a good few hours yesterday on Luigi’s Mansion 3, having got it delivered a day early, and it’s a total joy and did leave me with a cheesy grin on my face, just like you guys said it would in your review. I just found myself messing around with what I could and couldn’t suck up using the poltergust.

It left me wondering when exactly did Luigi become this cool? He’s the cowardly, taller, higher jumping, slippy-footed one that’s always lived in his brother’s shadow.

Even in 2013, when it was the year of Luigi, he wasn’t as cool as this. The animation of him in the latest iteration is fabulous, it had me chuckling aplenty. From being just a colour palette swap in early Mario games he’s suddenly a superstar in his own right in my eyes.
I never played the other Luigi’s Mansion games and it would be nice if they appeared on the Switch at some point so I could play catch up on the series.
Nick The Greek

 

Worms in space
Anyone tried Worbital?

Bought it on a whim after seeing ‘Worms in space with planets’ and couldn’t wait to try it with the kids. Got sat down with it and we couldn’t fathom out the controls in the few seconds attention span my middle one has. So gave up.

I’ve since played through it on single-player so I can see if it’s worth us getting to grips with and it’s been worth every penny. Very addictive and funnily enough exactly the game I didn’t know I needed to replace Worms. Give it a go, brilliant fun.
PugMartin

 

Problem solved
I just wanted to say thank you to Handsome Dan Wolfshead in their recent letter regarding the zoom option on a PlayStation 4, in order to help with the small text in The Outer Worlds. It’s helped so much.

The Outer Worlds in many ways is a fantastic game – I’m liking it a lot. But despite playing on a 55″ screen the text is still too small to read unless viewing really close up. This is an obvious problem with a text heavy role-playing game. I’m surprised it didn’t emerge as a problem during Q/A, given how well polished the rest of the game is.
Paul Williams

Just a quick shout out thank you to Handsome Dan Wolfshead, for his help and advice concerning my Outer Worlds small text problems.
Johnny five stars

 

Slow build-up
Just wondering if the new Need For Speed is out next week still? I don’t recall even a launch trailer and don’t think we’ve seen anything recently, this worries me.

I’ve played every entry this generation and enjoyed them all. I don’t pay much attention to the story at all and skip cut scenes when possible, but it definitely fills my arcade racer needs every year or so.
Ranny2011

GC: It’s out next Friday but there definitely has been a lack of marketing, which is ominous. We suspect EA aren’t going to be in a hurry to send out review copies either. Here’s the launch trailer though.

 

Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here

 

Darkest timeline
I think what happened to P.T. may be the dumbest story ever in video games. They threw away what could have been an all-time classic, not to mention on of the most acclaimed developers ever, just because some exec had a chip on their shoulder.

Now we’re in a word where big, or even medium, budget horror games don’t exist and the only exception is Resident Evil, which is pretty mild really when it comes to anything other than simple shlock (although I admit I loved the gore in Resident Evil).

Alien Isolation was a flop, we’ll never see another The Evil Within, and I dread to think who’d make another Silent Hill even if Konami wanted to do it, which they don’t seem to. Heck, we haven’t even had a Project Zero in years.

It’s Halloween as I write this and there isn’t even an indie horror game out today that I’m aware of. It’s a sad state of affairs and, weirdly, the only way out might be via EA. If they can make a new or remastered Dead Space a hit then maybe there’s still hope and others will take notice.

The alternative is too horrible to contemplate…
Boosh

 

Inbox also-rans
So some rumour says Diablo 4 is going to be grim and gritty and suddenly that Blizzard boycott is looking like yesterday’s news? Any time there’s talk of a games boycott you can guarantee it’ll be a success, It’s like clockwork. Can’t criticise what you don’t play!
Shami

Is it not a bit surprising that EA doesn’t have more game as a service games? All they’ve got is Anthem and that was apparently BioWare’s idea. EA knows where the money is, so after Ubisoft’s recent failures maybe that particular gravy train has already run its course?
Ancel

 

This week’s Hot Topic
It’s Halloween this week so the subject for this weekend’s Inbox is a simple one: what’s the most scared you’ve ever been when playing a video game?

It doesn’t have to have been while playing a horror game, it could just be an unexpectedly scary moment in a normal game or maybe even something that the developer didn’t seem to intend to be frightening. Do you enjoy scary video games and do you think they’re more or less effective than movies and TV?

Please remember that normal house rules apply for the Halloween Hot Topic: nobody’s allowed to mention the dogs jumping through the window bit in Resident Evil 1.

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk

 

The small print
New Inbox updates appear twice daily, every weekday morning and afternoon. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word 4Player viewer features at any time, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

MORE: Games Inbox: Dead Space 4 and EA remasters, Ghost Recon Breakpoint for free, and Battlefield V Pacific

MORE: Games Inbox: Battlefield dead franchise, Star Wars Jedi: The Fallen Order apathy, and The Outer Worlds 2

MORE: Games Inbox: GTA: Vice City anniversary, Luigi’s Mansion 1 vs. Luigi’s Mansion 2, and The Outer Worlds DLC



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Diablo 4 will have ‘dark, gritty and gross’ atmosphere similar to Diablo 2 claims leak

October 31, 2019 Leave a Reply
Diablo artwork
Diablo 4 already seems to have fan on its side

Information on character classes, mounts, a possible open world, and even the main villain have leaked for the upcoming Diablo 4.

It now seems almost certain that Diablo 4 (and probably Overwatch 2) will be unveiled at BlizzCon this weekend, with the first specific details leaking out via a reliable source on Reddit.

The main point is that the atmosphere will be heavily influenced by Diablo 2, which is rumoured to be getting a remaster that will also be announced at BlizzCon.

The leaker describes the tone as ‘dark, gritty and gross’ with ‘no more rainbow shiny bulls***’. The latter is a reference to early screenshots of Diablo 3 which fans were outraged to find included colours other than grey and, in one case, dared to feature a rainbow.

This deeply offended some Diablo fans, who immediately went on the rampage demanding changes and even photoshopping the screenshots to make them look the way they wanted.

‘Locations are toned down, infrequently laid with corpses, wasteland, greyish deserts, clut [sic] caves surrounded by flesh, rotten crypts, marshes and bogs, plagued cities you name it’, writes Redditor Practicalbrush12.

The main villain of the game will be Lilith, whose presence was already leaked by an artbook. And while it’s not clear if the game will have a proper open world environment apparently it’s big enough that you’ll need horses and other mounts.

As now expected, the game will have four-player co-op and, maybe, PvP at launch. Three classes have also been leaked so far: the druid, mage, and barbarian.

The druid can use lighting and wind powers, as well as transform into animals such as a bear and werewolf. The mage uses fire, ice, and lighting powers; while the barbarian uses only melee weapons.

Practicalbrush12 not only has an impressive history of reliable leaks, about a wide range of games, but he’s also backed up by well-known industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, who appears to corroborate his information.

Of course, it’s only a few days ago that fans were up in arms about Blizzard’s handling of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, with threats of boycotts and vows never to buy any of their games again.

Already that tone seems to be softening though and if Blizzard does play into nostalgia for Diablo 2 then Blizzard may well find themselves back in fans’ good books sooner rather than later.

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MORE: Blizzard gives back Blitzchung prize money, reduces ban to six months

MORE: Diablo 4 confirmed again in official art book, BlizzCon 2019 reveal expected

MORE: Overwatch 2 four-player co-op playable this weekend at BlizzCon 2019 claims leak



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The 13th Doll: A Fan Game of The 7th Guest

October 31, 2019 Leave a Reply
The 13th Doll: A Fan Game of The 7th Guest
The 13th Doll: A Fan Game of the 7th Guest is an officially licensed game featuring over 20 unique puzzles in 35 environments, and full motion video sequence footage of live actors to tell the story. The project is in development now and is being created solely by fans of the original game!

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Nintendo planning to bring more 3DS franchises to Switch Lite

October 31, 2019 Leave a Reply
Switch Lite console
Switch Lite – the true successor to the 3DS

3DS games like Kid Icarus and Zelda: A Link Between Worlds could be heading to Switch, based on new comments from Nintendo’s president.

Yesterday, Sony were rightly celebrating the success of the PlayStation 4, as it became the second best-selling home console ever, but the Switch has been no slouch ether.

Since it was released more than three years after the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (thanks to the failure of the Wii U) comparing total sales should be meaningless, but the Switch is expected to overtake Microsoft’s console this year.

The Xbox One is currently thought to be on around 45 million sales worldwide, but the latest Nintendo financial results have updated the Switch total to 41.67 million.

Adding to that total will be the newly launched Switch Lite model, which according to Nintendo sold over 1.95 million consoles in just 10 days.

Software sales also seem more than healthy, with last month’s Zelda: Link’s Awakening already amassing a total of 3.13 million, Super Mario Maker 2 on 3.93 million, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses at 2.29 million.

But perhaps the most interesting detail, as reported by Wall Street Journal journalist Takashi Mochizuki, is that Nintendo boss Shuntaro Furukawa is interested in bring more 3DS franchises to the Switch.

This is apparently inspired by the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield and a desire to emphasis the appeal of the Switch Lite as a portable console.

No specific titles were mentioned but it’s not hard to draw up a list of possibilities, although it’s unclear whether he’s talking about remakes or new entries in traditionally portable-only franchises.

Most of the latter, including the recent Fire Emblem and Luigi’s Mansion, have already made the jump but we don’t think anyone’s going to complain about having more from both franchises on the Switch.

Also possible are updates of portable games such as Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Super Mario 3D Land, the various WarioWare games, the Mario & Luigi series (although that may be difficult now the developer has gone bust), and Fire Emblem sister series Advance Wars.

What exactly Nintendo has in mind isn’t clear, and it’s probably best not to try and second guess them, but with the Wii U running out of games to port to the Switch the 3DS library could be next.

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MORE: Cyberpunk 2077 ‘probably not’ coming to Nintendo Switch says CD Projekt

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MORE: Nintendo Switch Lite review – switching to a portable console



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Afterparty review – Hell of a party

October 31, 2019 Leave a Reply
Afterparty screenshot
Afterparty (PS4) – Hell is not quite what you’d expect

The creators of Oxenfree return with a new game that has some of the best dialogue of the year, but is Afterparty really worth attending?

Video game depictions of Hell usually tend to be disappointingly traditional, most offering little more than the cliched fire and brimstone. Or if it’s based on older myths, like God Of War, all you tend to get is musty-looking caves and some disgruntled lost souls. There’s a lot of the latter in Afterparty, the new game from the makers of Oxenfree, but what they’re usually complaining about is the quality of drinks at a post-torture night club.

Afterparty portrays the underworld as a place of eternal damnation, but where both demons and humans get time off between torture sessions in order to kick back and, if they’re lucky, relax. It’s a darkly cynical take on the whole concept of divine punishment but one that works primarily because of the excellent dialogue of developer Night School Studio.

Although it’s hard to pigeonhole exactly, Afterparty’s similarity to classic era LucasArts adventures like Monkey Island is in more than just the visuals, as you meet the game’s cast of oddball characters and try to talk – and drink – your way out of trouble. There’s not really much in the way of puzzles or other distractions but with storytelling this good that almost doesn’t matter.

The set-up in Afterparty involves two young friends, named Milo and Lola, who are freshly arrived in Hell and, understandably, not looking forward to an eternity of torment. They discover an unlikely loophole in Hell’s rules though, which state that if you can outdrink Satan you can return to the living world. Getting permission to even try is difficult enough though, as the pair try to network their way around the underworld and take their shot at drinking the Prince of Lies under the table.

Afterparty uses a similar dialogue system to Oxenfree, where characters frequently talk over each other and multiple dialogue options are available for you to interrupt at any time. That might sound confusing on paper but in action it feels far more realistic than any other video game dialogue system. Rather than just waiting tedious long minutes for a character to finish their lines, this feels like you’re really talking to someone and makes the whole process seem much more interactive.

It’d improve any game but it works particularly well here because the dialogue and voice-acting are so good. Afterparty has some issues, which we’ll get to in a moment, but it’s one of the best-written and acted games of the year. And compared to some of the worst, like Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the gulf in quality is – inappropriately for Afterparty – very sobering.

Obviously, nobody in Hell is there because they’re a nice person, so most of the dialogue is a never-ending stream of snaky comments and put downs. But while the references to modern devilry such as social media and unrestricted capitalism can be a little heavy-handed the breakdown of Milo and Lola’s characters is handled very cleverly. They have their own personal demon assigned to torment them and that involves not just physical torture but bringing up more personal details about their families and insecurities.

Afterparty screenshot
Afterparty (PS4) – just don’t ask what the ingredients are

What’s impressive about Afterparty is that with a different plot and visuals it could easily have been a serious story. Especially as the plot itself is underplayed to such a degree that the game often lacks a sense of drive and urgency. Most of the characters you meet aren’t evil, they’re just not particularly good, and one of the game’s key points is that simply stopping yourself from being the worst you can be is not any kind of moral achievement.

The one shame about the dialogue system though is that none of your choices have that much effect on the story. To be fair, Afterparty never promotes itself as a Life Is Strange style branching narrative (although some of Night School Studio’s team did used to work at Telltale Games) but it does seem a bit of a missed opportunity.

What’s also a shame is that one of the game’s most unique features is that imbibing different drinks gives you new dialogue options, but that side of things seems very underdeveloped. Drinks are generally used so you can be funnier or more intimidating, or to give you specific abilities like doing impressions or a bit of Dutch courage, but it feels like it should be a bigger part of the game than it really is.

Afterparty feels like it’s on the cusp of greatness but never quite sticks the landing. It’s rather short, at around five hours, which is fine in terms of value for money but with no proper puzzles, or anything else to do outside a few lame mini-games, it all feels a little undercooked. There’s also quite a few bugs and glitches, which doesn’t help matters.

Night School Studio are clearly a highly talented studio, but it definitely feels like their potential is being constrained by indie budgets. We’d love to see a big publisher pick them up for their next project, as whatever other faults it might have Afterparty has some heavenly dialogue and voice-acting.

Afterparty review summary

In Short: Some of the best dialogue of the year and an interestingly original portrayal of Hell overcome a slightly undercooked take on classic graphic adventures.

Pros: Great dialogue and equally good voice-acting, that’s both very funny and capable of making some serious points. Naturalistic dialogue system works very well. Nice art style.

Cons: The plot is underplayed too much and none of your dialogue choices seem to make much difference. Drinking to alter your personality is underused and the whole game is rather short. Some bugs.

Score: 7/10

Formats: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, and PC
Price: £15.99
Publisher: Night School Studio
Developer: Night School Studio
Release Date: 29th October 2019
Age Rating: 18

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MORE: Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD review – balls to the wall action

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MORE: Luigi’s Mansion 3 review – supernatural beauty



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Resident Evil: Escape For Halloween game is really difficult and a bit naff

October 31, 2019 Leave a Reply
Resident Evil: Escape For Halloween screenshot key art
Resident Evil on your browser

It may not be that scary, or very good, but at least there is technically a new Resident Evil game out this Halloween.

The only brand-new Halloween related video game out today is Luigi’s Mansion 3 but if you look for them there are plenty of other spooky video game experiences out there.

Lots of live service games have Halloween updates, if you happen to find microtransactions scary, plus there’s also a fan recreation of the infamous P.T. demo and this… a multiple choice adventure game for Resident Evil.

Escape For Halloween is intended to drum up interest in upcoming co-op game Project Resistance, which is probably a good idea because to be honest we’d completely forgotten about it until now.

Resident Evil: Escape For Halloween screenshot
Resident Evil: Escape For Halloween – not quite as good as Resident Evil 2

The premise of the game seems to mirror that of Project Resistance itself, as you’re kidnapped by Umbrella Corp., while on the way to a Halloween party, and have to find a way out.

Although it’s pretty short the outcomes of your decisions seem to be randomised between goes, so there’s no correct way of playing it, just pick the choice that makes sense to you and hope for the best.

If you manage to get to the end then you’re given the option to send out a special tweet which Capcom themselves will then retweet.

Unless, presumably, if it says, ‘Escape for Halloween is rubbish and I wish they’d done some Resident Evil 2 DLC instead’.

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MORE: New Resident Evil game Project Resistance is a new 4v1 survival horror

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P.T. fan remakes entire demo for PC as free download

October 31, 2019 Leave a Reply
P.T. recreation screenshot
P.T. lives on Halloween!

Just in time for Halloween, a fan has recreated the infamous P.T. demo exactly as it first appeared on the PlayStation 4.

At this time of year, the Internet is groaning under the weight of scariest video game lists, but toping them all should be Silent Hills… the only problem being that it was never made and only got as far as its demo.

Called P.T. (playable teaser), the demo was released for the PlayStation 4 in the summer of 2014 and even on its own is one of the scariest video game experiences ever made.

The problem is it’s no longer available, as once Hideo Kojima left Konami the company petulantly removed it from the PlayStation Store and pretended it never existed.

Since then there have been a number of indie tributes to the game and fan recreations, but this new one by Artur Łączkowski seems to be the most accurate so far.

He claims it’s a 1:1 recreation of the original, so if you missed out the first time and have a gaming PC now you can experience it all on the scariest day of the year.

You better get in there quick though, as Konami are almost certain to shut it down as soon as they hear about it.

Silent Hills was to have been made in conjunction with movie director Guillermo del Toro, with The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus as the protagonist – although the latter is only evident in P.T. right at the end, when it reveals the connection to Silent Hill.

As it happens, both star in the new Hideo Kojima game Death Stranding, due out next week, even though that game is not a horror title and has no gameplay connection with P.T.

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MORE: Death Stranding launch trailer is 7 minutes long and full of spoilers

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Shinobi

October 31, 2019 Leave a Reply
Shinobi
A 1987 Arcade game. The player takes control of Joe Musashi, a master ninja whose mission is to rescue all of the hostages. SEGA's ninja game predates Ninja Gaiden for the NES and includes challenging platforming, first-person mini-games, and scaleable difficulty.

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Wednesday, 30 October 2019

Games Inbox: Dead Space 4 and EA remasters, Ghost Recon Breakpoint for free, and Battlefield V Pacific

October 30, 2019 Leave a Reply
Games Inbox: Dead Space 4 and EA remasters, Ghost Recon Breakpoint for free, and Battlefield V Pacific
Mirror's Edge Catalyst key art
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst – not a successful revival

The Thursday Inbox thinks the PS5 is going to have a tougher time than the PS4, as readers discover a Super Monkey Ball coin-op in the UK.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk

 

The fan phase
So EA are in their ‘courting the fans’ phase are they? Oh well, might as well ride that out for a couple of years until they go back to being straight up evil again. The annoying thing is I would actually be interested in remasters of quite a few of their games. I agree Dead Space is the most likely, especially given the stuff about pleasing fans, although I don’t know that anyone is exactly desperate for the third one to come back.

Mass Effect trilogy would be great but that sounds like an awful lot of work to make a version that looked significantly better, so I’m not sure that’s really going to be all the worthwhile. If it’s a way to have your decisions carry on to Mass Effect 4 I’m all for it though.

Beyond that I’d also be interested in Mirror’s Edge and SSX. Maybe Bad Company as well, as to be honest my memory is a little hazy on those games. Although to be honest they seem more like the sort of thing that would be fine just with backwards compatibility.

That’s the problem for any remaster nowadays. Plus, I don’t think any of these attempts at revamps have ever worked for EA. SSX and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst both went nowhere and I’m not sure I’d be confident that Dead Space 4 would do any better.
Scorpy

 

Free ride
Just wanted to share my experience of Ghost Recon Breakpoint. I had this bought for me as a birthday present, so no outlay by myself or a need to justify my purchase. I played through the entirety of the campaign, focusing on just the main missions and did so in around 18 hours.

Yes, I loaded up the game a few times to have no gun in my hand and, yes, I had to reload a checkpoint three times to trigger an interaction with another character, nothing game-breaking though. The draw distance and pop-up is poor but none of this stopped me from enjoying the minute-to-minute gameplay, I had great fun.

I didn’t spend a penny on microtransactions and in fact didn’t even spend a lot of skill points as I felt I didn’t need anything on offer to succeed.
Ranny2011

 

Middling violence
In response to the reader who said they go out of their way to knock out opponents in games, it gave me an idea.

In Deus Ex, you can knock people out using tranquillisers or by choking them into unconsciousness. The thing is, at least in real life, choking someone out is extremely dangerous, likely to result in severe brain damage.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if that were to be somehow integrated into the game? That knocking people out without the use of (presumably carefully measured) drugs would be the immoral option, or at least the middle of the road option?
Joseph Dowland

GC: Video games always use Hollywood logic when it comes to violence. Punching people in the face also isn’t a very good idea if you don’t want to break your hand.

 

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk

 

Alive and kicking
In response to ‘Is Battlefield a dead franchise?’ I certainly hope not. I recently picked up Battlefield V and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I like the way different maps and modes require different weapons and tactics and it’s not all run and gun gameplay.

The new Pacific content looks excellent and the previews I have seen seem extremely positive about it. If we have to wait to 2021 for a new one so be it, hopefully they will launch with more content and l think if they had launched with the Pacific maps the game would have done a lot better.
bob1972 (PSN ID)

 

Map warfare
Is anyone else getting frustrated about playing the same four or five maps in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer mode? No matter if you stick in the same lobby or try different ones, it’s always Piccadilly, Hackney Yard, Gun Runner, Azhir Cave, or St. Petrograd.

It also doesn’t help that we’ve lost the ability to vote for the next map!
D1NE5H_K (gamertag)

 

A good day
Came home on Wednesday to find both Luigi’s Mansion 3 and The Outer Worlds on my doorstep (thanks ShopTo). First things first, put The Outer Worlds into the Xbox to install and download the 17 GB update and then I’ll put Luigi’s Mansion in for a ‘quick’ half hour while I wait… WHO AM I KIDDING?!

It’s gonna be a loooong night with Weegi!
big boy bent

 

Monkey club
In reply to your review of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD I can confirm that the Arcade Club in Bury has an original Japanese version of the Monkey Ball arcade machine. I’d highly recommend anyone interested giving the Arcade Club a visit with Monkey Ball a personal highlight.

It was fantastic reliving all those levels I haven’t played since the GameCube days. The original, for me, had the best levels, as it was concise and challenging without having to add many gimmicks.
Paul Oldfield

GC, if you’ve never seen the Super Monkey Ball arcade in the flesh, the Arcade Club in Bury has one, if I remember rightly.
breaksharp (gamertag/PSN ID)

GC: Isn’t it supposed to have a banana for a joystick? Or did we dream that?

 

Ghostly visage
Well, after the recent Luigi’s Mansion debate I had to add my tuppence. The game still looks amazing today, as it did in 2002, especially in progressive mode. The gameplay in my opinion is far superior to the second game, with its shoe-horned traditional snow, sand, etc. levels.

And as for being too short, Nintendo got the length spot on. Any longer and I find myself getting bored. Looking at you Luigi’s Mansion 2.
Anon

GC: What we will agree with you on is that the game always had amazing graphics. The 3DS port doesn’t do it justice.

 

Magnifying glass
The other day Johnny five stars voiced his concerns about the teeny writing in The Outer Worlds. As he has it on PlayStation 4 I think I can help.

If you go to the PlayStation 4 settings and then accessibility you should see the top option says zoom. Enable that and you will be able to zoom in and out at your leisure by pressing the PS button and square together at the same time.

I cannot stand microscopic writing in games these days, so finding this feature helped me somewhat. But it doesn’t justify in-game text so small that binoculars are needed to read it.
Handsome Dan Wolfshead

 

Classic camera
I have to respectfully disagree with your score of 3/10 on the MediEvil remake. The backgrounds are gorgeously done, the music is superb and, yes, the camera angles could be better. But as a huge fan of the original title, I wouldn’t change much else.

It is a classic, I own the PS1 copy. Would you take the original Mario and change camera angles? Don’t mess with a good thing!
Anon

GC: Fair enough, but in our opinion the original is not a particularly good thing.

 

Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here

 

Flawless victory
Incredible to see how well the PlayStation 4 has done this gen but then, as you say, it’s gone virtually unopposed. Things might have been different if the Switch had launched at the same time, instead of the Wii U, but it didn’t and so it’s not been able to have any real affect on Sony’s demolition of the competition.

The big danger for them though is that they now get overconfident. Microsoft might have given up on this gen almost immediately but almost everything Phil Spencer has done has been in preparation for the next gen, not necessarily to help this one.

Between Project xCloud and trying to make sure they have the most powerful console I think they’re going to be a much bigger threat from next year. Sony’s greatest advantage though, other than good word of mouth form this gen, is its first party games. They’re still light years ahead of Microsoft who, for me, are still not making the right noises about their line-up.

Xbox has got to find a way to win over Europe and Japan or they’re never going to make it. But I haven’t heard anything from them that makes me think they’re going to do that.
Zebra

 

Inbox also-rans
SOMA and Costume Quest are free on PC on Epic Games Store from today for the next week. I’ve played Costume Quest on the PlayStation 3 it’s a very good trick or treat role-playing game by Double Fine.
Andrew J.
Currently Playing: A Golf Story (Switch)

GC: It’s okay, but SOMA is even better – and sorely underrated.

Is it just me or is the phrase NPC (non-player character) kind of redundant? In the context it’s used is there ever any confusion that you might be talking about another player’s avatar? Why not just use the word ‘character’ on its own?
Tinor

GC: We wonder this ourselves. We find the term entirely unnecessary.

 

This week’s Hot Topic
It’s Halloween this week so the subject for this weekend’s Inbox is a simple one: what’s the most scared you’ve ever been when playing a video game?

It doesn’t have to have been while playing a horror game, it could just be an unexpectedly scary moment in a normal game or maybe even something that the developer didn’t seem to intend to be frightening. Do you enjoy scary video games and do you think they’re more or less effective than movies and TV?

Please remember that normal house rules apply for the Halloween Hot Topic: nobody’s allowed to mention the dogs jumping through the window bit in Resident Evil 1.

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk

 

The small print
New Inbox updates appear twice daily, every weekday morning and afternoon. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word 4Player viewer features at any time, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.



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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Review

October 30, 2019 Leave a Reply
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Review

Qualitatively, the Call of Duty franchise has been on a bit of a roll lately. WWII felt like that first attempt at hitting the panic button with its back-to-basics approach. Black Ops 4 seemed like a different type of panic might have plagued its development, but the franchise's first foray into the battle royale genre was pretty good and the competitive multiplayer made good on the whole operators/abilities angle Treyarch started trying back in Black Ops 3. So where does that leave Call of Duty: Modern Warfare? Is it... back-to-back-to-basics, perhaps? Yes and no.

Sure, yeah, it's a game that attempts to recapture the magic of that first really massive Call of Duty game by taking its name and a few of its characters and integrating them into an all-new campaign. If you were looking for some kind of analogy here, it kind of reminds me of that Star Trek reboot. It's going to occasionally reference events that came from Modern Warfare's past, but it's a different universe and, assuming they continue down the line to make a sequel, it'll maybe even retell some of the stories from those old games. The campaign is pretty solid, gameplay-wise, with plenty of the standard move-and-shoot gameplay that you’d expect along with a handful of fun little diversions and tools to play around with. Yes, you’ll rain down shots from above on helpless enemies below, but you’ll also use RC planes strapped to C4 to knock down helicopters. The game even manages to make its obligatory sniper mission feel pretty fun while still forcing you to account for wind and distance when lining up your shots.

No Caption Provided

Modern Warfare takes an action movie approach to its story, which occasionally comes off as reckless when paired with the game’s often-grim subject matter. Also, the game’s length (probably around six-to-eight hours for most players, though you could certainly shoot through it faster than that) means that every facet of the story feels abbreviated. Two characters develop something of a personal attachment to each other, but before any of that goes anywhere, the game ends. The game does still find time for some flashbacks, though, which have you doing “fun” things like playing as a small girl who survives a Russian invasion and subsequent gas attack and grows up in captivity only to be featured in a waterboarding minigame. The game doesn’t necessarily play things up for shock value, but at the same time it doesn’t really linger on any of its heavier moments to give them much weight. As such, I found it hard to get too worked up one way or the other. It’s a fun video game, but its hook of “how bad will the good guys have to become in order to catch the actual bad guys” doesn’t especially hold up to critical scrutiny.

The competitive multiplayer feels bigger and better than its predecessors, though this is mostly achieved via a bunch of smart tweaks that don’t initially sound like a big deal. You can now mount to corners and low walls, giving you a way to keep most of your body behind a wall and peek out, letting you enter rooms a little more tactically. The modes have been given a bit of an overhaul, with Headquarters returning to the fold. Most of the game’s modes are now placed into a centralized hopper that you can filter down if you, for example, don’t ever way to play Search & Destroy but are fine with any Team Deathmatch, Cyber War, or Domination match that might be available. This is pretty similar to Titanfall 2’s mode selection interface, which also worked well. Some modes also get broken out of that main quick play list, so you can easily line up a Ground War match. Ground War has even more of a Battlefield-esque feel this time out, with 64-player matches on larger maps that hold five control points. You can parachute off of high buildings here, there are a few vehicles, and all of the killstreaks that players keep calling in make things feel ridiculously chaotic. It’s a weird, fun experience, seeing Call of Duty at this larger scale. Realism mode is also cool as it sort of splits the difference between regular matches and the traditional hardcore match. Realism more or less eliminates the HUD, forcing you to focus more on what’s in front of you and only giving you tactical information when your team has a UAV up in the air. There are also night versions of some multiplayer maps, which is a fun twist, but I haven’t seen these pop up in the game’s public matchmaking yet.

Unlocking items and options in multiplayer often feels like it changes for change’s sake from year to year, but Modern Warfare’s take on perks and attachments both feels new and better than what’s come before. Instead of a big, crazy pick 10 system, you can pick your three perks--these are things that might make you run faster, or perhaps become invisible to enemy radar—and level up as normal. But you’ll also select a field upgrade, which is a new ability that charges on a meter. These might be something as simple as throwing down an ammo box or you might opt for Dead Silence, which appears in this year’s game as an active ability rather than as a perk. This silences your footsteps, which seems more useful this year since enemy footsteps are weirdly loud… making them more tactically important in the process.

No Caption Provided

Gun attachments move to a sort of “pick 5” system, where guns have multiple attachment spots and you can put, say, a scope on there for one point, an extended magazine on there for more bullets, stocks, grips, and so on. Guns also have a perk slot on them, so a lot of gun-specific perks that would have previously existed in the traditional perk slots show up here, along with some new ones. So you could take one that increases your melee speed, or full metal jacket bullets that do extra damage to vehicles and killstreaks, and so on. Most attachments have trade-offs to them, like fitting a scope on a weapon might make aiming down sights take slightly longer, and so on, which makes gun customization feel like a more thoughtful process than it has in years past. Overall it feels like you have more control over how your particular version of a gun will handle, which is nice.

There's also a new two-on-two mode called gunfight. It's designed to be a quick, round-based experience that takes place on its own small maps. The premise is simple--eliminate the other team or, should a game go to overtime, try to capture a flag in the center of the map. Loadouts of guns and items are predetermined and rotate multiple times through a match, giving it some variety as you go. It's a neat idea that evokes both fighting games and the old, great Rocket Arena mod for Quake.

The third main mode in Modern Warfare is a co-op mode, and it’s bad. This was billed as something that would potentially resemble the Spec Ops mode found in the original Modern Warfare, but the main mode is just a mess. These are four-player operations set in large, wide-open levels. Objectives will pop up on your HUD and you’ll have to make your way over there and place some scramblers on a server rack or shoot some guys or whatever. Since people seem to be into quitting this mode mid-mission, most of the time I’d spawn into a mission already in progress, but I’d spawn way back at the beginning, requiring me to waste a ton of time just running over to where the action is. The action itself is awful, too. The maps are open, but enemies just keep magically appearing behind pillars when you turn around, and more or less popping out of thin air, just out of view of the camera. So you’re taking fire from all sides and the whole thing just feels phony. It’s also intensely buggy as of this writing, so at times we’ve fallen through the world, spawned into a broken map that refused to list any objectives or spawn any enemies, and so on. Even if it worked as intended, it doesn’t seem like it’d be much fun.

No Caption Provided

The co-op mode also offers a seemingly endless take on the campaign’s sniper mission, where four players fight off waves of enemies until they get bored and quit. The PS4 version also gets an exclusive survival mode where you shoot down waves of enemies on the multiplayer maps. This mode is actually functional, but not much fun, either. It’s a shame to see the Spec Ops name--which was a legendary mode back in the original Modern Warfare--get squandered so thoroughly here.

While Modern Warfare certainly has its issues, I’m having a really terrific time with it. The audiovisual aspects of the game have received significant upgrades. It’s a great-looking game with really strong sound design. That stuff helped make the campaign worth seeing, and it’s part of why I keep coming back to the competitive multiplayer, too. The meaningful tweaks to the leveling process matched up with some solid map design and great modes certainly don’t hurt, either. It’s a real shame that the co-op is pretty much dead on arrival, but the rest of the game is still absolutely worth looking at.



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Death Stranding launch trailer is 7 minutes long and full of spoilers

October 30, 2019 Leave a Reply
Death Stranding screenshot
Death Stranding – watch the trailer at your own risk

If you want to go into Hideo Kojima’s new game completely spoiler free you may want to skip the launch trailer for Death Stranding.

You’d expect something epic for Death Stranding’s launch trailer but apart from being over seven minutes long it’s also surprisingly spoiler-filled.

Or perhaps not surprising, given the final trailer for most modern movies seem to give everything away and everyone knows how much Hideo Kojima loves his movies.

Out of context, there’s no shocking revelations in the trailer but having beaten the game ourselves we were surprised to see just how much was from the very end of the game.

The trailer also spells out the plot in a more straightforward manner than we would’ve expected, given most of that stuff also comes only after 30 hours or so of gameplay.

It’s a nicely made trailer, but we thought we should warn anyone that goes on to play the game and suddenly starts recognising all these key moments.

Although when you start playing it you’ll also recognise one of the first scenes as being from the very first teaser trailer, so it may not be possible to be entirely spoiler free.

Death Stranding will be out on PlayStation 4 on 8 November, but the review embargo is this Friday, 1 November. A PC version has also been announced, but only for next year.

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PS4 is the second best-selling home console of all time

October 30, 2019 Leave a Reply
A picture of a PlayStation 4 and a PlayStation 4 Pro
The PlayStation 4 celebrates an easy victory over its rivals

Sony’s current gen console has passed the lifetime totals of the Wii and PS1 and is now second only to the PlayStation 2.

The PlayStation 4 has now shipped 102.8 million consoles worldwide, which might not sound a particularly auspicious number but it just noses it ahead of the Wii and the original PlayStation.

The Wii was the best-selling console of its generation with a total of 101.63 million, while the original PlayStation dominated its generation with a total of 102.49 million sales.

That means that the only home console the PlayStation 4 hasn’t outsold is the PlayStation 2, which managed a staggering 155.0 million.

Best-selling video game console sales worldwide

1. PlayStation 2 – 155.0 million
2. Nintendo DS – 154.02 million
3. Game Boy – 118.69 million
4. PlayStation 4 – 102.8 million
5. PlayStation – 102.49 million
6. Wii – 101.63 million
7. PlayStation 3 – 87.4 million
8. Xbox 360 – 84 million
9. Game Boy Advance – 81.51 million
10. PlayStation Portable – approx. 80 million

As you can see from the chart above though, when you factor in portable consoles the PlayStation 4 is actually only the fourth best-selling console of all-time. Although of course it does have a year left as Sony’s primary console, so that won’t be its final total.

Microsoft has refused to release sales numbers for the Xbox One but they’re thought to stand at around 45 million. Despite launching over three years later, the Nintendo Switch is expected to pass the Xbox One this year, as the Switch was on 36.87 million as of June.

Given the release of the PlayStation 5 next Christmas it’s unlikely that the PlayStation 4 will nab the top spot, but there’s a good chance it could pass the Game Boy and take third place. Especially as the PlayStation 4 has already been named the fastest-selling console of all-time.

It’s already a huge achievement for Sony though who, in part thanks to early failures by Microsoft and Nintendo, have made victory look easy this generation.

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Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD review – balls to the wall action

October 30, 2019 Leave a Reply
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD screenshot
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (PS4) – from Wii to PS4

After years in the wilderness, Sega bring back gaming’s second most famous ape family with a remake of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz.

It really does feel like Sega is purposefully trying to troll their fans sometimes. In the last couple of years they have made real efforts to revive their enormous back catalogue of old school titles – with everything from Streets Of Rage 4 to a Panzer Dragoon remake – but even when they focus on a beloved franchise they so often seem to pick the least interesting, or downright strangest, way to bring them back. Which leads us neatly into this would-be revival of Super Monkey Ball.

Although it started off as an arcade game, which we have never seen in real-life, Super Monkey Ball is best remembered as a GameCube launch title. The first one was a clever spin on normal platform gameplay and made excellent use of the GameCube’s controller, which had little notches in the hole around the analogue sticks that made going in a straight line – a key skill in Monkey Ball – unusually precise.

The game was also popular for its wide range of multiplayer mini-games, many of which were throwaway nonsense but included a few gems such as Monkey Target and Monkey Bowling. It was all good fun but despite a blizzard of sequels it was only the first two that proved widely popular and the series never really amounted to much on any format other than the GameCube. So you’d imagine that this remaster was probably based on one of those two first games. But it’s not, it’s an update of a 2006 Wii game.

Super Monkey Ball is perhaps the most descriptive name for a game ever, since it involves monkeys trapped in balls and, at least originally, was super fun. The aim of the main single-player mode is simply to guide your spherically enclosed simian across a collection of mazes; most of which can be over in just seconds, whether you fall off into the abyss below or actually complete the stage.

The trick though is that you don’t control the ball directly, but instead the maze on which it is perched. That doesn’t make as much difference as you’d imagine in terms of the controls although it does mean the course underneath you is prone to shifting and moving in a pleasingly panic-inducing manner.

We would compare Monkey Ball to that fairground game where you have to move a metal bar around a bendy metal loop without touching it, but since we’ve no idea what that’s called we’re not sure how that helpful that is. Suffice it to say that it’s a fun little platformer that absolutely does deserve to be brought back, even if it’s never justified a large franchise with multiple sequels.

You can imagine how all this worked on the Wii, in terms of motion controls, but there’s no attempt to replicate that with the DualShock 4 or Switch controllers, meaning it controls much more like the original GameCube games. Banana Blitz did introduce a jump move though, as well having longer and generally more linear levels, some of which contain enemies – as well as the odd boss battle.

We still prefer the elegant simplicity of the first two games but the real problem with Banana Blitz is that because it was always designed to work with motion controls Sega has made some fairly sizeable changes to the stages, specifically to try and make the second half of the game harder. The original was always a bit too easy, compared to earlier entries in the series, but removing rails from a lot of the later platforms seems perverse when you know they used to be there and that even a tiny mistake can have you falling off and having to restart.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD screenshot
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (PS4) – Monkey Target is back!

The single-player was only ever half of the story though, as there were originally a staggering 50 different multiplayer party games in the Wii version. That’s been cut down rather drastically in the remaster to… just 10. That’s partly because some just weren’t very good but also that a lot of them used motion controls in various peculiar ways.

What’s left is not a particularly good selection though and while Monkey Target (where you catapult a ball into the air and try to land it on a target) and Dangerous Route (where you navigate along a very tight maze) are still fun they never stay that way for long.

To try and make the most of the miserly collection of mini-games there’s new Decathlon and Time Attack modes, plus online leaderboards, but none of it compensates for the fact that most of the games are extremely shallow and just not very interesting. The mini-games were a key part of the appeal for Monkey Ball and yet here they just feel like an afterthought.

Given that, and the slightly compromised single-player, it makes Banana Blitz more difficult to recommend than we would’ve liked, especially given it’s surprisingly expensive. Having not played any of the games in years we still enjoyed coming back to the series, but this is only a partially successfully revival and while Sega wouldn’t be bananas to try again we doubt this is going to raise the franchise’s profile enough to justify that.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD review summary

In Short: A welcome revival of a much-loved franchise, although Banana Blitz was never the best entry and Sega has had to accept too many compromises in porting it from the Wii.

Pros: The core Monkey Ball gameplay is still a lot of fun and even feels relatively fresh after all these years. Nice, bright graphics and a remaster that’s clearly been made with a fair amount of care.

Cons: The altered stages get frustratingly difficult towards the end. Poor selection of mini-games, with few of the usual favourites. Unwarrantedly expensive.

Score: 6/10

Formats: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC
Price: £34.99
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and New Entertainment R&D Dept.
Release Date: 29th October 2019
Age Rating: 3

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