Games Inbox: Resident Evil 4 remake, Super Mario All-Stars 2 hopes, and the genius of Celeste

Should Resident Evil 4 be left in peace? (pic: Capcom)

The Wednesday Inbox debates what to do about Fire Emblem and Pokémon’s graphics, as one reader admits to liking Fear Effect: Sedna.

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

Crossing the line
I don’t know if many other people are going to agree with this but I think Capcom should stop making Resident Evil remakes. Resident Evil 2 was great and that worked but when you try and do it with Residnet Evil 3, which features a lot of weird, complicated puzzles and nonsensical locations (what was that Clock Tower and park all about?) that really don’t work when you have realistic graphics.

It doesn’t matter now, because they’ve done it but I really, really hope they don’t remake Resident Evil 4. A remaster that plays exactly the same as it did originally is fine but remaking it they’ll make it so you can move and shoot and the game just wasn’t designed for that. The enemies, the weapons, everything about the design was perfectly honed as it was and just changing one bit is going to throw everything out of kilter.

If you don’t like not being able to walk and shoot then fine, don’t play Resident Evil 4. Go play Gears Of War or something else instead. Resident Evil 4 is one of the best games ever and should be preserved, not butchered and ruined. More importantly Capcom, and everyone obsessing over ‘improving’ old games should just get on and make new games.

You can make something similar to Resident Evil 4 easily, just don’t call it a remake. I’m always astounded for gaming’s lack of respect for its own history and for me remaking the best Resident Evil would be crossing the line.
Baker

Any excuse
I’m still feeling burned from those Silent Hill rumours turning out bad, even though they seemed legit, but I don’t remember so many different sources seeming to agree on something as the Super Mario All-Stars style remasters. I’ll get them any way they’re sold but if it is a giant compilation that’d be amazing. Especially if they give it some kind of 3D hub menu and maybe throw in the 2D games as well.

What does make me laugh though is this pretence of the 35th anniversary being important. Nintendo made a really big fuss for the 30th and the 25th, but I wouldn’t say 35 was a particularly prestigious birthday. Plus, if they’d just waited a year it would’ve been the 40th anniversary of Mario himself (the 35th is just Super Mario Bros.), which seems much more significant.

What am I saying is that this seems like obvious filler and anniversaries have nothing to do with it. I’m not say that as a bad thing, because I’m glad it’s happening, but it makes me think something has gone seriously wrong in Nintendo’s production line that they’ve had to pull out the big guns to make up for it. Maybe Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2 has been seriously delayed and perhaps some others as well?

Oh, well I’ll happily for settle for a Super Mario 64 remaster and all the rest instead!
Caulfield

Same old lessons
I’d say the thing most likely to annoy Resident Evil fans is that a new game wouldn’t be scary, and there could be a few reasons for that. Multiplayer does some the most obvious, Capcom seem to be obsessed with adding it to Resident Evil and I have no idea why. It’s never worked and it just gets people angry.

The only time it came close to being worthwhile was the co-op in Resident Evil 5 and yet that’s the one thing they’ve never really gone back to outside of Resident Evil 6 and the Resident Evil Revelations series. Clearly 6 was awful but I’d totally be happy with a new Revelations, although I guess the previous ones didn’t sell that well so that’s why they keep making these weird spin-offs instead.

A guess that they’re trying to do an open world game inspired by Monster Hunter sounds pretty believable to me. It could work, I suppose, but I don’t see why it has to have the Resident Evil name attached to it. I thought Capcom understand the series again with 7 and the remake of 2 but now I’m worrying they’re losing the plot again already. Resident Evil is scary, has cheesy dialogue, and silly puzzles. Anytime it stops being about that it never works. Do we really need to learn that lessen anew every five years?
Korbie

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

Smallest ever
Standby for a revelation but… this year is really weird. It was already weird before the coronavirus but now I just don’t know what’s going on with gaming at all. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is out next week (really, I can’t believe it!) but after that the next big game is The Last Of Us Part 2 on 29 May. That is a long gap, remember when everyone thought 2020 was going to be the biggest year for games ever?

There’s a few smaller games in between that, like Predator: Hunting Grounds and, um, The Wonderful 101: Remastered but it’s almost back to being as bad as it was at the start of the year.

Worse than that we have no idea when to expect news about new games, no idea if the next gen consoles are really coming out, and no idea when they’re going to properly be announced. We basically know nothing and have nothing in terms of new releases. Blaming it on the coronavirus is letting people off easy if you ask me, 2020 was a shambles before it even started.
Daltones

Too late
I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that turning over Panzer Dragoon to some no-name developer to make on the cheap didn’t turn out well. I feel the same way about Sega that I do about Konami, that they should just sell their games division to Nintendo or Sony or someone and let them do what they’re clearly unwilling to do.

But at the same time I get it too. Panzer Dragoon was never a hit, but Streets Of Rage was, they’ve just left it too long without doing anything with it. Same goes for Golden Axe, After Burner, OutRun, and all the rest. Even Phantasy Star has been stuck in a niche with the online games. Sega should have sorted this out two decades ago and now I don’t think there’s anyway back for them.

The next Sonic game will be terrible, as they always are, and then any benefit they could’ve got from the movie will be squandered, especially as they’re late with it already. It really is amazing what’s happened to Sega since the Dreamcast days, and I don’t use that word in the positive sense.
Creed

Hard decision
In response to the Inbox letter from Jez yesterday, the issue is that a game’s difficulty can often be intrinsically linked to the gameplay.

Arguably the most famous example of this is the Soulsborne games. The knowledge that one mistake can you get killed and having to learn from those mistakes is what makes exploring those worlds so exhilarating. The mechanic of having to collect your souls after dying also wouldn’t work if you didn’t ever actually die!

Another recent example of gameplay and difficulty being linked is Celeste. Minor spoilers here, but the difficulty is designed to mimic the characters struggle with mental illness, if you just breezed through the entire game the impact would be lost. (Celeste does actually offer a clever solution to the problem of difficulty which is discussed in this excellent video.)

There are thousands of games available, and a quick Google search will tell if a game is difficult or not without actually spoiling anything, so I don’t see any real issue with developers wanting to make hard games…
drlowdon

Against the grain
I am glad to announce I have finally finished…. Fear Effect: Sedna.

I re-read your review of Fear Effect: Sedna and still decided to try it (when on sale). And… I wouldn’t disagree with the criticisms of the game. Is it tactical? Is it action? I also found the controls a bit clunky and oversensitive at times. Yet I enjoyed it enough.

And this got me thinking. What other poorly reviewed games have others enjoyed?
Obakasama

GC: We’ve tried to run this as a Hot Topic a couple of times before, but people are always too reticent to admit they played a badly reviewed game. Good for you though.

Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here

First try
I imagine the teams who made Fire Emblem and Pokémon have mostly only really made games for handheld machines and I don’t think it’s as straightforward as throwing in more resource to substantially boost production values.

I think it takes a different skill set to deliver that. The options would probably be: give the entire Pokémon or Fire Emblem projects to a new team, who has never made one of those games before; or bring a lot of new resource with different skill sets on board to collaborate with the existing team (potentially pulling that resource away from projects those new people are more experienced at); or let the existing teams gradually learn to migrate from handheld-only tech to modern home consoles.

The first two options might be unnecessarily risky, especially if the third option is the cheapest, allows for instalments to be released more regularly, ensures the traditional gameplay isn’t mangled too much, and guarantees to sell a lot anyway (to start with).

I’m not saying it’s necessary for the games to exist the way they do (they could easily have not released them at all until everyone involved was up to speed with non-handheld tech) but I also don’t think it’s as simplistic as ‘throw more money at these games and they’ll suddenly be the Breath Of The Wild of their respective series in one fell swoop.’ Even if it would only take one or two experienced people just to improve the scenery or decrease the ‘jaginess’ that might add a few months to the development time and the sales of those game’s demonstrate it was probably the correct decision to release them in the state they did, at least in the short term.

When you look at the games where Nintendo did bring in more experienced resources to get their tech up to speed (Breath Of The Wild and Xenoblade Chronicles, for example) it still took six years of no Zelda, and that’s considering the core Zelda team still had plenty of home console development experience.

I appreciate Pokémon and Fire Emblem are among Nintendo’s biggest series and they absolutely warrant proper production values but clearly some franchises fit the ‘once in a generation’ business model for Nintendo, while some don’t.

I think in time it’ll get to the stage that the scenery on these games is up to standards of other Switch games but the way I see it, delivering that first time following their last 3DS games would’ve required no new releases for a while and, although I personally see that as preferable, I don’t think that’s a compromise Nintendo would’ve been prepared to make. So, I agree there’s not necessarily an excuse but I do see something of an explanation.
Panda

GC: You make a lot of good points, although the primary technical developer on Three Houses was Koei Tecmo, who make almost nothing but home console games (rather badly most of the time, unless you happen to be a Dynasty Warriors fan). It’s true Game Freak have little experience with 3D games, but Nintendo are extremely well placed to offer help given how big the company is and how experienced its various studios are. What worries us most though, is that because both games were successful Nintendo may now see no need to increase the production values, or even become convinced that people prefer it that way.

Inbox also-rans
Uh-oh, just realised it’s April Fool’s Day this week. Guess it’s time for not to believe a word I read on the Internet anymore again!
Bronco

GC: We hate April Fool’s Day with a passion you can only dream of. So many people, being so unfunny…

I totally believe that Activision would be behind these Call Of Duty leaks. Think about it, the only think that didn’t get leaked (even though it was obvious) was the PS4 exclusivity, which is the one negative people wouldn’t be happy about. Not a coincidence, I think.
Ashar

This week’s Hot Topic
The question for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Onibee, who asks what do you think, and hope, Nintendo’s next games will be for the Switch?

It’s now six months since they had a general topic Nintendo Direct and there are currently no major new Switch games scheduled for the whole year, so what do you think is going on? Although the coronavirus is exacerbating the situation Nintendo’s secrecy started last year, so why do you think that is?

What new games do you expect to see come out next and what surprises are you hoping for once they are finally announced? What do you think the secrecy is in aid of and what do you think Nintendo should do in order to try and counter the release of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X?

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

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature 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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Ghost Recon Breakpoint: Deep State review – broken no more

Ghost Recon Breakpoint: Deep State – Sam Fisher is back! (pic: Ubisoft)

Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell guest stars in a revamped Breakpoint that does much to improve on the badly flawed launch version.

The disappointment felt by players when Ghost Recon Breakpoint launched echoed around the Internet. Legions of bugs, a lack of computer-controlled teammates, wooden voice-acting, and shoehorning in The Division’s gear score system created an unloved ginger stepchild of a game. Ubisoft was far from deaf to those complaints, and as well as working feverishly on new content also attempted to assuage the community’s more rabid anger with bug fixes, updates, and most recently the immersive Ghost Experience, a change designed to bring the game closer to the standard of past instalments.

Coinciding with that update is the release of Deep State, the first piece of season pass content starring Splinter Cell’s Sam Fisher – who is also apparently stuck on the fictional island of Auroa after it was blockaded by drone swarms. He’s pursuing an all-new baddie, The Strategist, and naturally could do with some help from Nomad, your user-customisable hero or heroine.

The biggest change to the game is undoubtedly the addition of Ghost Experience, which changes a great many things, the most noticeable of which is the total removal of the HUD. By default, there’s no mini-map and no beacons, leaving you to navigate by asking directions, interrogating baddies, and comparing photographs you gather as intelligence, with information on your map. It makes missions take a lot longer, but at a stroke removes the patronising markers that are the scourge of open world games.

The other massive change is the total removal of gear score. At launch, Breakpoint borrowed The Division’s upgrade system, with each gun and garment you found adding to a score that affected which enemies you could take on which missions and were suitable for your character’s level. Without gear score it’s back to being a military simulation, with clothes now purely cosmetic and guns doing damage based on their stats, along with a three-tiered upgrade system that permanently enhances them.

It’s a welcome change and means that supply crates that once contained guns and garments now give you money and the weapons parts you need to perform upgrades. It also means that you won’t continually be chopping and changing equipment every time you get a gun with a slightly higher number next to it. As in past instalments, once you find a loadout that works for your play style you’re at liberty to stick with it. You can also change weapons to suit the mission or environment you’ll be working in, something that simply wasn’t an option without Ghost Experience.

You’ll also find the bivouac system has changed. Originally you could open any bivouac site and call in new helicopters, armoured cars, or motorbikes. You could also buy, sell, and dismantle weapons at whichever site you happened to be. Now you can only buy guns or request vehicles when you return to Erewhon, the inside-a-mountain base of the Auroan resistance. It adds a much greater sense of isolation, as does the removal of other players from Erewhon. Rather than looking like a military convention, it now lends a far more convincing lone wolf feel to your predicament.

Even reloading your gun has been overhauled. Previously, in line with almost every first person shooter before it, when you reloaded, the bullets remaining in your magazine would magically transfer back to your ammunition supply. Now if you reload with 40 rounds still in the magazine, those bullets are discarded forever. It adds a new dimension to combat, but it does prove surprisingly tough to unpick decades of muscle memory that desperately want you to reload the second you’ve fired a gun.

The net effect is a game that’s tougher and more realistic. Those playing since launch will long ago have found themselves with high enough gear scores that there were very few threats left that had any meaning. With all that stripped away, the island of Auroa is a far more dangerous place, where you’ll be fighting for survival first and foremost. Each encounter can now be deadly, and mis-managing a firefight either by reloading at the wrong time or letting yourself get spotted when you were trying to be stealthy can swiftly spiral into being killed in action.

It’s refreshing and far more in keeping with the game’s premise of being on your own facing off against a mighty mercenary army. It also perfectly complements Deep State, with the eight or so hours of story mission joined by two new character classes.

The Engineer class comes with two drones, one that supplies extra ammunition and another that attacks enemies for you; while the stealth orientated Echelon class has a taser gun and sonar vision that lets you see enemies through walls. They’re both useful in their own ways, but at time of writing a bug with the game’s upgrade system means you can’t always unlock those new powers, even once you’ve ranked each one up fully.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint: Deep State -almost the game it should’ve been (pic: Ubisoft)

Speaking of bugs, Breakpoint still has them. Trucks may no longer launch themselves into the air and explode, provoking an unfair alert when you so much as approach an enemy base, but dialogue still stutters, torch beams shine through walls and floors, your character still slams into invisible walls when scrambling down hills, and there are numerous animation glitches as you traverse the world. It’s better than it was, but still some way from the standard you’d expect from a finished game.

And there are also still no computer-controlled teammates, the very cornerstone of the Ghost Recon franchise. Previously squad tactics and simultaneous enemy takedowns were at the heart of your approach to objectives. Now solo players really are all on their own, and while Ubisoft continues to promise that teammates will be added in a future update, their absence remains keenly felt.

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Still, this is a much better game than it was a launch, and early players who quit in horror at the state of it can now safely come back in the knowledge that things have improved considerably. There is clearly self-awareness on Ubisoft’s part too, with an early Deep State mission leading Nomad to comment that, ‘it’s like Bolivia, but it sucks more’, a reference to Ghost Recon Wildlands, which most players now regard as the series’ high watermark.

Thanks to the Internet backlash it’s also now budget priced, making it a good deal these days. The voice-acting and script are still risible, but the gunplay is first rate, the new-found rawness and danger making unscripted encounters nerve jangling and exciting again. It’s made the game fun, and with such a large volume of content both included and available to season pass holders, there’s a lot to like in Breakpoint 2.0.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint: Deep State review summary

In Short: A noticeable improvement over the rushed and broken launch, thanks to a tougher, more immersive Ghost Experience and an enjoyable story chapter starring Splinter Cell’s Sam Fisher.

Pros: Renewed sense of danger and much more rewarding combat and exploration. Ghost Experience fixes a lot of previous problems and Sam Fisher’s story works well.

Cons: The script and acting are still bafflingly poor, and there’s still no computer-controlled teammates. Still some bugs.

Score: 7/10

Formats: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC, and Stadia
Price: £59.99*
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft Paris
Release Date: updated 24th March 2020
Age Rating: 18

*The base game can generally be had for around £20 at the moment; it’s currently just £15.99 on the PlayStation Store, for example.

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Treachery in Beatdown City

A mixture of classic beat 'em ups and RPGs in a modern New York setting.

from New Video Game Releases at Giant Bomb https://ift.tt/2pAxw5U

Treachery in Beatdown City

A mixture of classic beat 'em ups and RPGs in a modern New York setting.

from New Video Game Releases at Giant Bomb https://ift.tt/2pAxw5U

Giant Bombcast 628: Respect the Headcrab

The games continue to pile up, with more on Animal Crossing, Doom Eternal, Ori, Resident Evil 3, the Control DLC, and One Step From Eden. Plus: the Modern Warfare 2 surprise remaster, a Dragon's Lair movie, and... Super Mario All-Stars 2?

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Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered out now as PS4 exclusive

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered – unsurprisingly, the rumours were true (pic: Activision)

Just as predicted, the remaster of Modern Warfare 2 launched today, but Xbox One and PC owners will have to wait an extra month.

There have been so many leaks of the Modern Warfare 2 remaster lately that many have begun to suspect that Activision has been orchestrating them all, as some sort of underhand, grassroots marketing campaign.

And yet in the end there was one surprise left, although it was the one thing even ordinary fans could’ve predicted: it’s a PlayStation 4 timed exclusive.

Most things Call Of Duty-related have been timed exclusives this generation – pretty much everything but the main games themselves – and Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered is no exception, as it won’t be released on Xbox One and PC until 30 April.

Play alongside Soap, Shepherd, Ghost and other familiar faces as you fight back against Vladimir Makarov, the Inner Circle, and other unforeseen foes.

Download Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered and play now on PS4. Pre-purchase for other platforms today to play on April 30. pic.twitter.com/i4GAKjmJgp

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) March 31, 2020

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered release date

Everything else is just as expected, including the fact that the remaster includes only the single-player campaign, not the multiplayer or the Spec Ops co-op mode.

Recent rumours have suggested that multiplayer may be added later, but for the moment Activision hasn’t mentioned anything about it.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered costs £19.99 in the UK, which seems a bit much for a mode that doesn’t last much longer than six hours, but there you go.

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Rumours suggest that work on Modern Warfare 3, which is now clearly inevitable, has already been completed, but it’s unclear when it might be released.

One good guess is that it will be launched at around this time next year, as part of the online updates for whatever this year’s new Call Of Duty is (rumours suggest it’s probably Black Ops 5).

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Zombie Army Trilogy Nintendo Switch review – you did Nazi this coming

Zombie Army Trilogy – zombies, zombies everywhere and not a brain to think (pic: Rebellion)

Rebellion’s zombie shooter trilogy comes to Switch, with four-player co-op and three games’ worth of undead carnage.

The recent Nintendo Direct Mini may have been a dull one in terms of those hoping for news on new Nintendo-made games, but it was fascinating in that it almost entirely relied on third party games – something a Nintendo console has not been able to do for decades. If not for its lack of horsepower it seems certain that every major multiformat game would be released on Switch as a matter of course, and even then we still get seemingly impossible ports like The Witcher 3 and the upcoming Doom Eternal.

As a result, a game like Zombie Army Trilogy – an 18-rated multiplayer shooter about undead Nazis – appearing on Switch no longer seems surprising. This isn’t the recent Zombie Army 4 though, but basically everything except it. The Zombie Army franchise stretches all the way back to 2013, when it started life as a low budget, PC-only spin-off to the Sniper Elite series. It quickly grew in popularity though and now it’s well-established on consoles as well.

You can pretty much guess exactly what you’re getting with a game called Zombie Army Trilogy, although unlike the first two games, Zombie Army 3 was never released separately and was created just for the compilation. As well as the three main games you also get a simple Horde survival mode and all the DLC, so there’s a lot of content here. The only problem is a lot of it is very old.

The Zombie Army games are designed to be simple and instantly accessible, almost arcade style pick-up ‘n’ play games. That sometimes seems a little at odds with the surprisingly slow pace of battles, which still rely more on sniper rifles than is the norm for a zombie game, but it’s all entertaining enough when playing with up to three friends. You can play on your own if you want, but that gets rather bleak and thankfully there are not just online options but also new wireless co-op ones as well.

Given even the newest game in this compilation is five years old the Switch doesn’t have any trouble running any of them, in what is a technically competent port. The lighting in Zombie Army 3 still isn’t quite as good as on the other consoles, and the jaggies caused by the lack of anti-aliasing is very obvious at times, but the frame rate is a solid 30fps in all the games and that lessens the other issues considerably.

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What might have been a problem though is the controls, which, while fine using a Pro Controller, are rather too fiddly using the Joy-Con’s analogue stick. However, the game does have optional motion controls and these work very well, especially as they’re only an aid to normal controls and not a complete replacement.

As a port Zombie Army Trilogy is perfectly acceptable, the problem is the games already felt outdated five years ago and the more recent fourth game is far superior to all of them. There is the fact that there’s few games like this on the Switch, and the wireless co-op is certainly appealing, but the almost complete lack of nuance or variety to the gameplay feels as brain dead as the average zombie.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL FULL REVIEW OF ZOMBIE ARMY TRILOGY

Zombie Army Trilogy Nintendo Switch review summary

In Short: A competent port but given the age of the original games, and the improvements made in Zombie Army 4, this is one zombie game that should have been left for dead.

Pros: Four-player local co-op is fun if you can find enough friends that are interested. Plenty of content and welcome motion control options.

Cons: One-note, highly repetitive gameplay gets old long before the last game is finished. Some graphical compromises from the original.

Score: 5/10

Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £29.99
Publisher: Rebellion
Developer: Rebellion
Release Date: 31st March 2020
Age Rating: 18

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How to catch a stringfish in Animal Crossing: New Horizons before it disappears today

You’ve still got time to get one! (pic: Nintendo Life)

Today is your last chance to catch a stringfish and sturgeon in Animal Crossing, so be quick if you want to complete your Critterpedia.

It’s 1st April tomorrow, which means two things: a black hole of comedy that the Internet will barely escape from, as April Fool’s Day swings round again, and the changing of the seasons in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Animal Crossing works in real-time, which means if it’s night-time in real-life it’s night-time in the game, and if it’s 1 April in the real world… well, you get the idea.

What you might not realise, if you haven’t played one of the games before, is the insects and fish in the game change according to the time of the year and there’s usually a switchover at the beginning of certain months where new ones become available and others disappear until next year.

Well, 1st April is the first switchover and that means you’ve only got a few hours left to try and catch a stringfish, if you haven’t got one already.

Also known as the Sakhalin taimen or Japanese huchen, the fish is also very rare in real-life and only appears in the game from 4pm onwards at the clifftop source of rivers.

No matter what your island looks like you’ll have one of these, so as long as you have a ladder climb up there and hope you get lucky.

The only way to increase that luck is to make fish bait, which you can do by finding clams along the beach (you’ll spot them by the little spurt of water they make) and crafting fish bait out of it.

Northern hemisphere animals leaving Animal Crossing: New Horizons after March

• Emperor Butterfly (5pm to 8am)
• Bitterling (rivers – all day)
• Yellow Perch ( rivers – all day)
• Stringfish (river clifftop source – 4pm to 9am)
• Sturgeon (river mouth – all day)
• Sea Butterfly (sea – all day)
• Football Fish (sea – 4pm to 9am)

The stringfish makes a large shadow in the water, so if it’s only a small one you know that’s not it. However, it’s still best to catch the fish and get it out of the way, as a new one won’t appear until it’s gone (alternatively you can pole volt in front of it to scare it off).

If a new fish still doesn’t appear then move off-screen for a bit and then come back and eventually, hopefully, you’ll get lucky.

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This all only applies to the Northern hemisphere, but if that’s where your island is then there are a bunch of other critters that won’t be available after today, although most of them are fairly common.

The only one you might not have got so far is the sturgeon, which is also a rare fish. It can be found all day at the mouth of rivers, so it might be an idea alternating between that and the source until you get both.

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Next Resident Evil is ‘biggest departure the series has ever taken’ claims insider

Resident Evil – what is it that’s going to get fans so upset? (pic: Capcom)

A new Resident Evil game is supposedly due out next year and a leaker claims a lot of fans are likely to be very upset about it.

Although Resident Evil 3 is out this week, the rumourmill has long held that it will probably be the last remake for the foreseeable future, even if hopes remain high for Dino Crisis and/or Onimusha.

Capcom won’t want to let their foot off the Resident Evil accelerator for long though, especially as we’re overdue an announcement, or at least a hint, at Resident Evil 8.

Serial leaker AestheticGamer has previously claimed that there is a new Resident Evil game due out next year but has purposefully avoided referring to it as Resident Evil 8 (details of which were rumoured by a different leaker).

for about for about 3-3.5 years). It’s development is very similar to the original Resident Evil 3, not the remake, but I won’t expand on what I mean by that until later. The announcement for it will be really soon, and it’s by far the biggest departure the series has ever taken,

— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) March 30, 2020

(3/3) to the point I expect a lot of people will be pissed off about it when it gets revealed, but they should be open minded. Internal testing and the like show it’s high quality game, and I’m quite excited for it.

— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) March 30, 2020

The latest tweets claim that next year’s game has been in development since late 2016, so more than four years once it’s released – a good period of time to get something ambitious and unique done.

The development is described as being very similar to the original Resident Evil 3, which could mean a number of things given that game’s troubled history.

When Resident Evil 3 started out it was intended as only a standalone expansion of Resident Evil 2, but given development of Resident Evil 4 had still barely progressed, and Code: Veronica was a Dreamcast exclusive, the project was fast-tracked and turned into a full, numbered sequel – at the cost of losing several months of development.

What part of that is relevant to the new game is unclear, but it could be an indication that Resident Evil 8 is still a few years out – or merely an indication that the new game’s story is meant to take place at the same time as an existing entry, as was always the idea with Resident Evil 3.

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Either way, it’s claimed the reveal will be ‘really soon’ and that it’s ‘by far the biggest departure the series has ever taken, to the point I expect a lot of people will be p***ed off about it when it gets revealed’.

That could mean anything, but the one thing Resident Evil fans usually get most upset about is tacked-on multiplayer, so maybe the new game is some kind of online title – perhaps an open world one influenced by Monster Hunter?

If these rumours are true then apparently we’ll find out soon, presumably via some sort of online event.

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Super Mario All-Stars 2 is new 3D Super Mario remaster collection for Nintendo Switch

Is Super Mario All-Stars about to get a belated sequel? (pic: Nintendo)

Remasters of Super Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, and Mario Galaxy are apparently being bundled into a single Nintendo Switch compilation.

After months of waiting it’s not Nintendo that has broken the silence about what they’re up to, but a series of leaks, which seem to confirm the company is planning a new remaster compilation.

News began leaking out yesterday, from multiple sources, that Nintendo is planning to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. with remasters or remakes of a number of older 3D games, with Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy (presumably both of them) being mentioned by name.

The details were still a little vague, but now Venturebeat suggests that the games will be released in a single collection, currently referred to internally by Nintendo staff as Super Mario All-Stars 2.

The first Super Mario All-Stars was released for the SNES in 1993 and featured remakes of four NES games with graphics closer to the then contemporary Super Mario World.

The games included were Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (aka the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, which at that point had never been released in the West), Super Mario Bros. 2 (aka Super Mario USA), and Super Mario Bros. 3.

The new compilation for the Switch may not actually be called Super Mario All-Stars 2 but apparently it will be a spiritual sequel at the very least.

This certainly makes sense, since fans have been calling out for remakes of the earlier 3D games for years, and may also include other, older 2D Mario games (perhaps Super Mario All-Stars 1 itself).

This is in addition, so the rumours claim, to Super Mario 3D World Deluxe and a new Paper Mario game.

Venturebeat claims that the new Paper Mario will be ‘a return to that franchise’s roots’, after several disappointing sequels and a move away from the style of the first two games, which were relatively traditional Japanese role-playing games.

Apparently, the new game is looking to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door as its primary influence, hopefully in terms of not just the mechanics but the surprisingly wry script.

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With so many respected sources reporting variations of the same rumour there seems little doubt that it’s true, with the big question now being when Nintendo will reveal the plans.

Apparently, it had planned a big 35th anniversary event at E3, before it was cancelled, but whether these leaks will advance Nintendo’s plans, for what will now presumably be an online-only reveal, is unclear.

The actual anniversary of Super Mario Bros., in Japan at least, is 13 September. That’s a Sunday this year, so the release date is unlikely to be that, but there seems a good chance it’ll be sometime close.

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The Complex PS4 review – choose your own movie adventure

The Complex – the leads prepare to go out for the weekly shop (pic: Wales Interactive)

The latest attempt to redeem interactive movies involves a bio-weapon attack on London, by one of the writers of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Interactive movies are a much maligned genre. From the early days of Night Trap’s schlocky 15-rated horror on Mega-CD, to Quantum Break’s peculiar mixture of third person action game and TV series, it’s an art form that has never quite found its feet. Ironically, the closest it’s come to greatness wasn’t in a game but on Black Mirror’s entertaining Bandersnatch episode, where you helped guide the fate of a 1980s video game designer.

The Complex is the latest interactive film from Wales Interactive, a developer and publisher with some form in FMV games. It put out 2016’s take on the post-apocalypse, The Bunker, which was followed by Late Shift, a crime thriller that had high production values but ended up being a little unsatisfying as both a game and a film. In terms of subject matter, this sits somewhere between the two, in that it takes place mostly in a secure underground lab and is a story about people committing felonies in the name of business.

Opening in the aftermath of a chemical attack, your first choices as Amy Tenent, ace biologist and hotshot doctor, are about how to approach bedside manner with two dying patients, only one of whom you can save. Without any particular emotional attachment either to Dr Amy or her spluttering charges, those decisions, taken against a rapidly dwindling timer, don’t feel especially tense, but do manage to set the scene for a game where your choices matter, even if it’s not always easy to care too much about the outcomes.

Cutting to five years later, Dr Amy is now working for Kensington Corp, a biotech business that’s attempting to combine stem cells with nanotechnology to provide lightweight, automatic healing for a forthcoming British mission to Mars. Her investors are restless, however, because Kensington has been publicly associated with the fictional dictatorship of Kindar, a country with links to the company’s enigmatic founder, Nathalie Kensington.

Nathalie, as we later discover, has indeed done very bad things, and those misdeeds are coming back to haunt her, with a group of Kindarian dissidents laying siege to the inventively named Security Lab Alpha, Kensington Corp’s top secret subterranean laboratory. Inside, Dr Amy and her ex-lover Rees try and figure out how to escape, as well as unpicking what happened in Kindar, and how much Nathalie Kensington really knew.

Although there are plenty of branches in the narrative, your decisions don’t exactly come thick and fast, with minutes elapsing between interact-able moments. That means that for the majority of the time you’re watching The Complex like a film, which is where its problems start to creep in. While solidly acted and with workmanlike special effects, this definitely feels more straight-to-DVD than movie-grade in its production values.

Each choice you make does have ramifications though, and the first way that exhibits itself is in Amy’s relationship with other characters. You can pause at any time and find out how much each of them likes her, expressed as a percentage. Behave with compassion and the numbers go up; treat people callously and with regard only for recovering the MacGuffin, sorry, the nano-cells, and you can expect the percentage to get very low indeed. Those scores govern how willing other characters are to help Amy when the going gets tough, which it does quite a lot.

The Complex – that’s not something you want to see on the tube (pic: Wales Interactive)

You’ll also be making plenty of life and death choices, and depending on the narrative path you take, you can end up with absolutely everyone in the morgue by the time the credits roll. You can also get Amy killed in the opening minutes, albeit that there’s absolutely no way to see that coming based on the innocuous-seeming decision that leads you there. There is a degree of replay value though, as you try and work out how to find each of the nine possible endings, and unlock all 196 scenes.

On subsequent playthroughs you can skip parts you’ve already watched, letting you jaunt through it at relatively high speed once you’ve completed the plot a few times, skipping directly to decisions without having to sit through the same dialogue over and over again. It’s a mildly engaging process that at least extends the entertainment beyond the story’s run time of a little over an hour on your first visit, and considerably less than that as you repeat it.

The real issue with The Complex, though, is that it’s impossible to care about any of its characters. Rees is likeably goofy, but the others are either clichés or poorly cast. Amy is suspiciously young to have a PhD (or a medical degree) and experience in multiple war zones around the world, Nathalie Kensington is Scottish and therefore rarely seen without a tumbler of whisky in hand, and Parker Caplani, Svengali-esque architect and mastermind of Security Lab Alpha doesn’t look much over 30 himself.

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Without characters that ring true, you’re left with the slightly fatuous plot, which for all its twists never manages to generate any tension. It’s a pity, because it’s a pleasure to play a game set in Britain when almost everything else uses America as its backdrop, even though most of The Complex takes place in a generic windowless basement.

For all its good intentions, The Complex proves to be a somewhat hollow experience, with neither the humour nor sympathetic characters of Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch. It’s also shorter, and has fewer decisions, and with Bandersnatch included in your Netflix subscription versus actually having to buy this, it’s hard to recommend something offering such fleeting entertainment value.

The Complex review summary

In Short: An interactive movie that tries to tell a relevant tale of near-future Britain but is marred by characters that lack credibility and a story free from dramatic tension.

Pros: Nine endings and 196 scenes to unlock. British setting is a pleasant change, and no visible interruptions or edits when you make decisions.

Cons: Cliché-riddled plot, unsympathetic characters, and some questionable casting choices. Sub-one hour run time for most playthroughs.

Score: 5/10

Formats: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC
Price: £9.99
Publisher: Wales Interactive
Developer: Wales Interactive
Release Date: 31st March 2020
Age Rating: 16

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Tiger King cast recreated in The Sims 4 – and they’re all still crazy

Create your own Tiger King sequel (pic: Facebook)

Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, and all the rest are now available to torment in The Sims 4, after a fan recreated the Netflix show in the game.

The first thing most people do when customising The Sims is add in their favourite, or least favourite, celebrity to pamper or torment.

And given how big Tiger King is at the moment, and how bizarre its cast of characters are, it’s no wonder that that’s been the subject for modder Kari Nicole Mckendrick’s latest creations.

Not only have you got arch-rivals Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, but also Joe’s husbands John Finlay and Travis Maldonado, with more apparently to come.

Ladies and gentlemen….hold onto your murder contracts.I present to you: The Tiger King!Edit: I went ahead and added these to the gallery but I plan to do the rest later too! Origin ID: Karid3th

Geplaatst door Kari Nicole Mckendrick op Vrijdag 27 maart 2020

Not to take anything away from the creations but they were probably easier to make in The Sims 4 than you think, as it already features lots of animals – although in this case that’s not a real (virtual) tiger but a dog painted to look like one.

The Sims 4 already has all manner of tasteful, and not so tasteful, outfits but Joe’s baseball hat and tattoos all had to be created by hand. She even got John Finlay’s crooked teeth right.

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Joe’s three-way marriage has apparently been difficult to set-up in The Sims but the beauty of the game is you could always try and get Joe and Carole to live peacefully together in the same house.

And if you don’t know why that’s so unlikely you really need to watch the Netflix show, just be prepared for things to take a wild turn…

This is just like the show, except with less attempted murder (pic: Facebook)

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Steam takes step to reduce online bandwidth during coronavirus crisis

Will you be choosing to auto-throttle? (Pic: Valve)

Following Sony’s lead for PlayStation, Valve has taken steps to reduce the strain on their services while everyone is in lockdown.

Although their actions are not quite as extreme as the likes of Netflix and YouTube, Valve has changed the way Steam works to try and reduce the amount of bandwidth being used by everyone during the coronavirus pandemic.

‘We know a lot of you (like us here at Valve) are stuck at home right now trying to work or attend school remotely. Or maybe you’re just playing a bunch of great games on Steam’, reads Valve’s latest blog.

‘Whatever the case may be, we know that with so many people at home trying to get things done at the same time, it can put a stress on your home’s internet bandwidth.’

The mandatory changes are fairly mild, with Steam now only automatically updating games that have been played in the last three days.

Steam will also schedule updates for games that haven’t been played recently for off-peak times, which it already did, but it will now try and break that up over several days.

Valve is leaving the existing throttling and scheduling options up to individual users, suggesting that people choose to ‘self-throttle’ their own connection to Steam and turn off automatic updates for certain games.

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Whether enough people are going to choose to limit their own connection for the greater good remains to be seen, but it’s possible Valve could make these options mandatory if the situation gets worse.

Although Sony has purposefully slowed download speeds during the crisis, Microsoft has yet to do the same for Xbox Live – which it’s already used as an example of how much more robust its online data centres are than everybody else’s.

PSN is already throttled down (pic: Sony)

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