Home//Edge/September 2019/In This Issue
Edge|September 2019Step inside the party, disrupt the whole sceneE3 is all about expectations. The predictions, rumours and leaks start weeks, if not months ahead of time these days. Long before we head off for the airport, let alone sit down at our first press conference, we have a broad picture of what to expect from the show. Publishers and platform holders speak often about meeting their players’ expectations; their PR folks, always mindful of a potential crisis, talk about managing them. The natural downside of that is everyone has pretty much made their minds up about something before it has even happened, which threatens to rather take the buzz out of the most exciting videogame event on the calendar. E3 wasn’t quite as enthralling this year as we’d hoped; we found an industry largely content to shut up…2 min
Edge|September 2019Those who show upEvery year, on Internet forums and social media, in website articles and comment sections, and even in the bars and restaurants around the Los Angeles Convention Center, people debate who has ‘won’ E3. It’s always been a facile question – the real winners are the ones who get to spend a week in the sunshine playing games and drinking free co*cktails, obviously – and the very notion of one company beating another plays into the often troubling tribalistic relationship that videogame lovers have with the companies that make their favourite games and systems. But it’s always been instructive in a broader sense: only by weighing up the relative merits of various publishers’ and platform holders’ endeavours can we form a broader picture of where the industry is, and where it…9 min
Edge|September 2019BABE IN THE WOODSAn active imagination is part of being young. Misfortune’s is particularly vivid: in dark choice-based comedy adventure Little Misfortune, she’s headed into the forest on a quest to “beat the game” and win eternal happiness for her mother. Indeed, its art style is Natalia Martinsson’s own explorable version of her childhood passions. “I wanted to feel inside of those children’s books I loved so much when I was a little girl,” she says. Misfortune’s bobble head and big eyes play up her cuteness, while her grey-masked mother has more realistic proportions: “Differences in the textures and pen marks give a deeper feeling to an item or character.”Killmonday Games is contrasting a sweet, childish perspective with a scary world of grown-ups – but your disembodied friend Mr Voice may be more…1 min
Edge|September 2019SoundbytesGetty/Saul Loeb “The videogame industry made $43 billion in revenue last year. The workers responsible for that profit deserve to collectively bargain as part of a union.” It seems US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is a secret Edge reader. We can’t find any tweets from him about new handheld Playdate, weirdly “[Lootboxes] are what we look at as ‘surprise mechanics’ … they’re quite ethical and fun and enjoyable to people.” EA’s vice president of legal and government affairs, Kerry Hopkins, gives a parliamentary committee a masterclass in spin “I wish Sony was here. E3 is not as good when they’re not here.” We agree entirely, Xbox boss Phil Spencer, but are you really supposed to say that sort of thing out loud? Getty/Theo Wargo “Team-killing is for assholes, and talking…1 min
Edge|September 2019My Favourite Game Sam VogelSam Vogel is a DJ and producer from California who has secured a reputation for high-energy variety sets that light up festivals across the globe. His breakout single Feel The Volume launched via Diplo’s label Mad Decent in 2014, and since then he’s collaborated with Skrillex, Marshmello and DJ Snake, released a studio album and founded his own record label, Bite This. Here, he talks about portable MMOs, Basshunter’s gaming links, and roadside breakdowns.What’s your earliest memory of games?When my little brother was born – he’s like, three, almost four years younger than me – for whatever reason, I don’t know why, but my parents decided that they would get me a Nintendo 64. And they prefaced it like my little brother who had just been born had brought a…4 min
Edge|September 2019THIS MONTH ON EDGESTREAMING Antstream Arcade bit.ly/antstream Now in early access, Antstream Arcade lets you play over 400 officially licensed classic titles on a range of devices (Mac, PC, Xbox One, Android, Nvidia Shield and Amazon Fire Stick, with other platforms coming soon) with features such as challenges and leaderboards, for a fee of £7.99 a month. This is the ’Netflix for games’ model we assumed Stadia was going for (we now know you’ll have to buy games individually, on top of paying to stream). There are knots to unpick for the team of industry vets: it’s keen to compensate devs fairly, but tracking down retro game creators can prove tricky in 2019; sometimes, licensees are unaware they even own the rights. Still, we’re glad to see someone making bold, quantifiable strides into…3 min
Edge|September 2019DialogueHow deep is your love? When your big rival pulls out of a race before you even get to the start line, it’s hard to know how you can possibly measure victory, even if you finish first. That is exactly what Sony did to Microsoft this E3 – the Japanese giant’s decision to skip E3 for a year attempting to undermine the impact of the Xbox Briefing by stealth. What Sony seemingly didn’t realise, however, was how its no-show would essentially present Xbox One as the default home for all the big releases this year, whether they were multiplatform or not. Watching PlayStation’s social media accounts on both sides of the Atlantic spend hours after Microsoft’s E3 bonanza frantically clarifying that title after title revealed on the Xbox stage would…8 min
Edge|September 2019Hold To ResetAnother E3 is finished and already merging in my mind with all the previous iterations like some kind of interactive monster. This one felt particularly long, since video interviews have now been replaced almost entirely by streaming shows. The positive side of this is long chats where I felt we could get more into the meat of what we’re trying to achieve, instead of answering superficial questions. The bad part is finishing at 10pm every night after a day on the show floor. Not that I’m complaining! Quite the opposite. It has been incredibly satisfying to get the game to the point where we can pass a controller to rooms filled with journalists and watch them play it.So what did six days of relentless presentations get us? While writing down…4 min
Edge|September 20192020@E3FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKEDeveloper/publisher Square Enix Format PS4 Release March 3When you rework one of the most influential games of all time, there’s a range of expectations, all of which are so far through the roof they’re practically in orbit. To hold the attention of a contemporary audience, Final Fantasy VII needs more than a facelift. Equally, when you’re revisiting the source of a generation’s love of videogames, you have to tread carefully. And yet, here we are: breathless, mid-clash, suspended between the past and the present.Indeed, it’s a particular kind of suspension – Cloud’s Buster sword slicing through the air in super-slow-motion as sparks graze his perfectly rendered cheek – that is key. Final Fantasy VII Remake’s combat system comprises two separate modes. The first is action mode: we…30 min
Edge|September 2019awakeningGame Star Wars Jedi: Fallen OrderDeveloper Respawn EntertainmentPublisher Electronic ArtsFormat PC, PS4, Xbox OneRelease November 15There is nothing so satisfying in games as a perfectly timed parry. Anticipation, reaction, execution; defence turned into attack, momentum reversed in an instant. It is everything we love about action games distilled into a single button press: high risk and high reward, a move that makes you feel like a god when it comes off and might just kill you if you get it wrong. It’s a surprising foundation for a Star Wars game, but there’s a lot that’s unexpected about Jedi: Fallen Order. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Respawn Entertainment’s first foray into the action-adventure genre would be a straightforward linear romp, and that its hack-and-slash combat would be an expression of…19 min
Edge|September 2019TBA@E3THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD 2 Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch Release TBA That surely won’t be its title. But either way, the next mainline Zelda will be a sequel to a game that remains Switch’s finest hour. There were enough clues in the accompanying snippets of what looks awfully like the game’s opening cinematic that the closing 15-word caption (‘The sequel to The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is now in development’) was hardly needed. Nevertheless, in an already packed Direct, it comes as no great shock that this was the moment that provoked the most excitement. Telling, too, that Nintendo deemed it worthy of its final surprise – breaking its habit of waiting to show off games until they’re reasonably close to release.…21 min
See Also
Search Anime - MyAnimeList.netEdge|September 2019awakeningGameStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Developer Respawn Entertainment Publisher Electronic Arts Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Release November 15 There is nothing so satisfying in games as a perfectly timed parry. Anticipation, reaction, execution; defence turned into attack, momentum reversed in an instant. It is everything we love about action games distilled into a single button press: high risk and high reward, a move that makes you feel like a god when it comes off and might just kill you if you get it wrong. It’s a surprising foundation for a Star Wars game, but there’s a lot that’s unexpected about Jedi: Fallen Order. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Respawn Entertainment’s first foray into the action-adventure genre would be a straightforward linear romp, and that its hack-and-slash combat would…19 min
Edge|September 2019Post ScriptYou can tell that My Friend Pedro was mostly made by one person. For a start, the credits are very brief: above a handful of musicians, publishing and PR staff, and those responsible for testing and porting the game, there’s just one name next to a lot of jobs. Victor Ågren handled the design, art, code, story and sound design of My Friend Pedro. We can’t imagine he’s slept much over the past four-and-a-half years.But as a result, the game has remained resolutely Ågren’s creation from start to finish. It all began with his 2014 Newgrounds game of the same name: in the 2019 version, the homebrew spirit of the thing is preserved and, at times, elevated – even the 2019 Pedro’s final boss fight retains the essential absurdity of…3 min
Edge|September 2019BEAMDOGWhen Beamdog began updating classic RPG Baldur’s Gate for PC and iOS, studio co-founder Cameron Tofer found himself on familiar ground. He had, after all, been one of the first employees through BioWare’s doors after it was founded in 1995, working as a programmer on its debut game, Shattered Steel, and becoming part of the development team on the much-loved RPG soon after. But more than a decade on, as he began looking through the original code, he came across something that left him aghast. “I was like, ‘The f*ck were they thinking?’” Tofer tells us. He scrolled a little further, only to discover it was his name on the code. “I just thought, ‘Oh boy,’” he laughs. Released in 2012, the Enhanced Edition of Baldur’s Gate was the third…9 min
Edge|September 2019Super Mario Maker 2Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch Release Out now Compromise, Super Mario Maker 2 teaches us, can sometimes be a good thing. Fairness is the hallmark of good level design – as obvious as it sounds, it’s important to recognise that players are human, and that giving them a chance to recover from their mistakes is a worthwhile concession to make. Likewise, there’s value in sometimes pulling back from your grand vision: creation goes hand-in-hand with curation, and stuffing all your ideas in one level will rarely make it better. Whether this explains Nintendo’s approach here is a trickier question to answer. Because if you’ve played the Wii U original, you’ll be acutely aware that bringing Super Mario Maker to Switch has resulted in a few trade-offs. Some of these are…9 min
Edge|September 2019Post ScriptTucked away behind an unassuming icon depicting a pigeon with Mario’s ‘M’ on his breast, you’ll find a series of tutorials that might be Super Mario Maker 2’s secret best feature. Yamamura’s Dojo features 45 lessons split equally into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced categories. These cover everything from the basics of inspiration, testing and using individual parts, to exploration of concepts such as pacing and direction that might be trickier for beginners to grasp. They may even teach seasoned designers a thing or two. It’s a tutorial that also breaks an unwritten rule, in that it doesn’t directly involve the player at all. Rather than have you place platforms and then patronisingly pat you on the back for following simple instructions, these lessons take the form of short clips, illustrated…4 min
Edge|September 2019Post ScriptYou can tell that My Friend Pedro was mostly made by one person. For a start, the credits are very brief: above a handful of musicians, publishing and PR staff, and those responsible for testing and porting the game, there’s just one name next to a lot of jobs. Victor Ågren handled the design, art, code, story and sound design of My Friend Pedro. We can’t imagine he’s slept much over the past four-and-a-half years. But as a result, the game has remained resolutely Ågren’s creation from start to finish. It all began with his 2014 Newgrounds game of the same name: in the 2019 version, the homebrew spirit of the thing is preserved and, at times, elevated – even the 2019 Pedro’s final boss fight retains the essential absurdity…3 min
Edge|September 2019The Sinking CityDeveloper Frogwares Publisher Bigben Interactive Format PC (tested), PS4, Switch, Xbox One Release Out now (Switch TBA) Unknowable gods who dwell in the deeps; strange dreams that bleed into reality; an accursed seaside New England town, the waves slowly eroding its sanity. There’s a whole lot of HP Lovecraft in The Sinking City, which gleefully mashes up elements from numerous short stories – the half-ape people of Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn And His Family bumping up against the Innsmouthers, whose ancestors are Deep Ones from beneath the ocean. But for each disparate element it pulls in, developer Frogwares is careful to get the details right. “Bulgy, stary eyes that never seem to shut, and their skin ain’t quite right. Rough and scabby, and the sides of their necks…6 min
Edge|September 2019198XDeveloper/publisher Hi-Bit Studios Format PC (tested), PS4, Switch, Xbox One Release Out now Our story begins in mesmerising style. A subway train crawls across a flickering switchboard cityscape. The train pulls into a station, a gaunt figure in jeans alights, and suddenly we are playing Streets Of Rage, or something close to it, crushing punks with our fists and feet. Half visual novel and half retro compilation, 198X tells the tale of a moody ’80s teen through five snazzy homages to classic arcade genres. Each component game models a moment of personal growth – such as a high school crush or a family row – using cherished vintage design elements and motifs. It’s an engrossing premise, a life refracted through the amber chambers of software. If only the Kid’s story…3 min
Edge|September 2019Papers, PleaseDeveloper/publisher 3909 LLC Format iOS, PC, Vita Release 2013 Almost six years after its release, playing Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please is still a unique, at times even revolutionary experience. Sure, its influence can be felt in a handful of political titles such as PanicBarn’s dystopian Brexit bouncer simulation Not Tonight, but for the most part, it’s been left unemulated. It’s not hard to see why. It’s an uncomfortable and oppressive game, its genre-blend of work simulation and puzzle game exactly tailored to its biting political satire. It’s not the kind of game that lends itself to spawning its own sub-genre. In light of the last couple of years’ political events, however, its subject matter is as relevant today as it was at the time of its release. Papers, Please, a…8 min
Edge|September 2019Step inside the party, disrupt the whole sceneE3 is all about expectations. The predictions, rumours and leaks start weeks, if not months ahead of time these days. Long before we head off for the airport, let alone sit down at our first press conference, we have a broad picture of what to expect from the show. Publishers and platform holders speak often about meeting their players’ expectations; their PR folks, always mindful of a potential crisis, talk about managing them.The natural downside of that is everyone has pretty much made their minds up about something before it has even happened, which threatens to rather take the buzz out of the most exciting videogame event on the calendar. E3 wasn’t quite as enthralling this year as we’d hoped; we found an industry largely content to shut up and…2 min
Edge|September 2019DRY AND DRY AGAINThis was the third year of E3 being open to the public, and also the third year of the E3 Coliseum, produced by The Game Awards’ Geoff Keighley. Held in the LA Live complex round the corner from the convention centre, it’s designed to bring fans closer to developers through on-stage interviews with the minds behind their favourite games, with a few curveballs along the way: Keighley interviewing Todd Howard and Elon Musk at the same time was as weird and awkward as you’d hope. It helps give E3 week more of a festival feel, the event spreading beyond the convention centre and taking fans with them. Fair enough – at least until you try to get a drink, and find half-hour queues at every watering hole in the vicinity.…1 min
Edge|September 2019BABE IN THE WOODSAn active imagination is part of being young. Misfortune’s is particularly vivid: in dark choice-based comedy adventure Little Misfortune, she’s headed into the forest on a quest to “beat the game” and win eternal happiness for her mother. Indeed, its art style is Natalia Martinsson’s own explorable version of her childhood passions. “I wanted to feel inside of those children’s books I loved so much when I was a little girl,” she says. Misfortune’s bobble head and big eyes play up her cuteness, while her grey-masked mother has more realistic proportions: “Differences in the textures and pen marks give a deeper feeling to an item or character.” Killmonday Games is contrasting a sweet, childish perspective with a scary world of grown-ups – but your disembodied friend Mr Voice may be…1 min
Edge|September 2019ARCADE WATCHHardware Voxon Z3D Manufacturer Voxon Photonics How appropriate that, in a month where we put a Star Wars game on the cover, some hardware appears which could play a decent game of Dejarik, the chess-like game played on the Millennium Falcon during A New Hope. First unveiled at last year’s Tokyo Game Show but now available for purchase, Voxon Z3D is that rarest of things in 2019: an arcade cabinet the likes of which we’ve never seen before. The fourplayer co*cktail-style cabinet uses volumetric lighting to create, essentially, 3D holograms inside its central dome. The system projects individual slices of light at 4,000 frames per second onto a moving screen, and the naked eye parses the results as a single 3D image, without the need for any head-mounted peripherals. Four…1 min
Edge|September 2019THIS MONTH ON EDGESTREAMINGAntstream Arcadebit.ly/antstreamNow in early access, Antstream Arcade lets you play over 400 officially licensed classic titles on a range of devices (Mac, PC, Xbox One, Android, Nvidia Shield and Amazon Fire Stick, with other platforms coming soon) with features such as challenges and leaderboards, for a fee of £7.99 a month. This is the ’Netflix for games’ model we assumed Stadia was going for (we now know you’ll have to buy games individually, on top of paying to stream). There are knots to unpick for the team of industry vets: it’s keen to compensate devs fairly, but tracking down retro game creators can prove tricky in 2019; sometimes, licensees are unaware they even own the rights. Still, we’re glad to see someone making bold, quantifiable strides into a possible future…3 min
Edge|September 2019DialogueHow deep is your love?When your big rival pulls out of a race before you even get to the start line, it’s hard to know how you can possibly measure victory, even if you finish first. That is exactly what Sony did to Microsoft this E3 – the Japanese giant’s decision to skip E3 for a year attempting to undermine the impact of the Xbox Briefing by stealth. What Sony seemingly didn’t realise, however, was how its no-show would essentially present Xbox One as the default home for all the big releases this year, whether they were multiplatform or not.Watching PlayStation’s social media accounts on both sides of the Atlantic spend hours after Microsoft’s E3 bonanza frantically clarifying that title after title revealed on the Xbox stage would also be…8 min
Edge|September 2019Big Picture ModeLast month I rather rashly promised that while at E3 I’d keep an eye out for any little harbingers of a bigger change to come – the sort of thing you only spot if you’re in a certain place at a certain time, and looking in roughly the right direction. There are, I now realise, two problems with that. First, I’m not sure I saw any, really. Second, and this sort of explains the first, is that you can’t tell if something’s a portent of some kind of disruption until said disruption has actually, you know, happened, and that might not come to pass for years. The whole thing was a bust, really. I can only apologise.But! This was probably my favourite E3 so far, mostly because I’ve now been…4 min
Edge|September 20192019@E3THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENINGDeveloper Grezzo Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release September 20Fittingly, it feels like a half-remembered dream. Granted, a lack of sleep does tend to make your memory pretty fuzzy. But as we play through the opening of Grezzo’s remake of the Game Boy favourite, it all starts flooding back. Waking up in Marin’s house. The owl. The Octoroks. Pushing urchins with your shield. Grabbing your sword from the beach. The cave with the cracked floor. Trading the mushroom for magic powder to sprinkle on that pesky raccoon. Sure, the crane game in Mabe Village might now have realistic physics, but our unfortunately limited time with this E3 build is summed up by that Chain Chomp tethered outside. What was once a startling surprise – a Mario…43 min
Edge|September 2019TBA@E3THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD 2Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD) Format Switch Release TBAThat surely won’t be its title. But either way, the next mainline Zelda will be a sequel to a game that remains Switch’s finest hour. There were enough clues in the accompanying snippets of what looks awfully like the game’s opening cinematic that the closing 15-word caption (‘The sequel to The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is now in development’) was hardly needed. Nevertheless, in an already packed Direct, it comes as no great shock that this was the moment that provoked the most excitement. Telling, too, that Nintendo deemed it worthy of its final surprise – breaking its habit of waiting to show off games until they’re reasonably close to release. But then…21 min
Edge|September 2019BABA IS YOUFormat PC, SwitchDeveloper/publisher Hempuli OyOrigin FinlandRelease 2019As a game that encourages you to break or rewrite its rules, it’s fitting that the idea for Baba Is You should have come about under strictly controlled conditions. Arvi ‘Hempuli’ Teikari arrived at Nordic Game Jam in April 2017 intending to work on pre-existing projects. When the theme for the jam (“not there”) was announced, Teikari wasn’t particularly struck by it. But, partly inspired by his affinity for puzzle games such as Snakebird and Stephen’s Sausage Roll, he suddenly had an epiphany: what if the word ‘not’ could somehow be used to defy the laws of nature? What if a block of ice could somehow survive contact with a pool of lava?“The initial idea was kind of like this,” he says. “Things have…10 min
Edge|September 20192020@E3FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PS4 Release March 3 When you rework one of the most influential games of all time, there’s a range of expectations, all of which are so far through the roof they’re practically in orbit. To hold the attention of a contemporary audience, Final Fantasy VII needs more than a facelift. Equally, when you’re revisiting the source of a generation’s love of videogames, you have to tread carefully. And yet, here we are: breathless, mid-clash, suspended between the past and the present. Indeed, it’s a particular kind of suspension – Cloud’s Buster sword slicing through the air in super-slow-motion as sparks graze his perfectly rendered cheek – that is key. Final Fantasy VII Remake’s combat system comprises two separate modes. The first is…29 min
Edge|September 2019Source engineNostalgia is a powerful marketing tool, especially in games – but it’s important to tread carefully when you’re digging up the past. Some things, after all, are better left in the ground. It’s a point proven ably this month by The Sinking City (p114). Frogwares’ open-world detective game draws heavily on the works of HP Lovecraft, an author whose impact on horror has been legendary, but who held certain views that, by modern standards, are similarly horrifying. Frogwares gets out in front of the problem to an extent, opening the game with a warning about the prejudices of Lovecraft’s era. Perhaps that doesn’t go far enough – this was Lovecraft’s problem, and it cannot be blamed solely on the world around him at the time. But going for it warts…3 min
Edge|September 2019Post ScriptTucked away behind an unassuming icon depicting a pigeon with Mario’s ‘M’ on his breast, you’ll find a series of tutorials that might be Super Mario Maker 2’s secret best feature. Yamamura’s Dojo features 45 lessons split equally into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced categories. These cover everything from the basics of inspiration, testing and using individual parts, to exploration of concepts such as pacing and direction that might be trickier for beginners to grasp. They may even teach seasoned designers a thing or two.It’s a tutorial that also breaks an unwritten rule, in that it doesn’t directly involve the player at all. Rather than have you place platforms and then patronisingly pat you on the back for following simple instructions, these lessons take the form of short clips, illustrated by…4 min
Edge|September 2019BABA IS YOUFormat PC, Switch Developer/publisher Hempuli Oy Origin Finland Release 2019 As a game that encourages you to break or rewrite its rules, it’s fitting that the idea for Baba Is You should have come about under strictly controlled conditions. Arvi ‘Hempuli’ Teikari arrived at Nordic Game Jam in April 2017 intending to work on pre-existing projects. When the theme for the jam (“not there”) was announced, Teikari wasn’t particularly struck by it. But, partly inspired by his affinity for puzzle games such as Snakebird and Stephen’s Sausage Roll, he suddenly had an epiphany: what if the word ‘not’ could somehow be used to defy the laws of nature? What if a block of ice could somehow survive contact with a pool of lava? “The initial idea was kind of like…10 min
Edge|September 2019The Sinking CityDeveloper FrogwaresPublisher Bigben InteractiveFormat PC (tested), PS4, Switch, Xbox OneRelease Out now (Switch TBA)Unknowable gods who dwell in the deeps; strange dreams that bleed into reality; an accursed seaside New England town, the waves slowly eroding its sanity. There’s a whole lot of HP Lovecraft in The Sinking City, which gleefully mashes up elements from numerous short stories – the half-ape people of Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn And His Family bumping up against the Innsmouthers, whose ancestors are Deep Ones from beneath the ocean. But for each disparate element it pulls in, developer Frogwares is careful to get the details right.“Bulgy, stary eyes that never seem to shut, and their skin ain’t quite right. Rough and scabby, and the sides of their necks are all shrivelled or creased…6 min
Edge|September 2019Samurai ShodownDeveloper/publisher SNKFormat PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox OneRelease Out nowSamurai Shodown is a game in which you think you’re doing okay, then look at your health bar and realise you’re about to die. In this wonderfully attractive and vividly animated game, even light attacks look like they hurt. And they do, to a point. But medium slashes hurt more, and heavies even more than that. Then there are dashing slashes, and counter-hits, and a variety of other ways to increase the damage output of a certain attack. You can spend 40 seconds chipping away at an opponent, playing the match perfectly, at least in conventional fighting-game terms. Two heavy hits later you find yourself fighting for survival.This is jarring at first, but it’s no bad thing. You’ll learn to recognise when…6 min
Edge|September 2019198XDeveloper/publisher Hi-Bit StudiosFormat PC (tested), PS4, Switch, Xbox OneRelease Out nowOur story begins in mesmerising style. A subway train crawls across a flickering switchboard cityscape. The train pulls into a station, a gaunt figure in jeans alights, and suddenly we are playing Streets Of Rage, or something close to it, crushing punks with our fists and feet. Half visual novel and half retro compilation, 198X tells the tale of a moody ’80s teen through five snazzy homages to classic arcade genres. Each component game models a moment of personal growth – such as a high school crush or a family row – using cherished vintage design elements and motifs. It’s an engrossing premise, a life refracted through the amber chambers of software. If only the Kid’s story were as worthwhile…3 min
Edge|September 2019My Friend PedroDeveloper DeadToast Entertainment Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC, Switch (tested) Release Out now Reality can be a downer. For instance: would you rather admit to your deeply ingrained emotional issues, and a weakness for bloodshed that leads to the slaughter of hundreds of security guards just doing their jobs? Or would you prefer to blame your problems on a talking banana, who gives you the power to control time and hypes up your every kill with exclamations of “lovely” and “snazzy”? No wonder My Friend Pedro’s masked protagonist spends so much time ignoring the real world: there are no high scores in therapy. The trouble is that you can only get away with doing so for so long before it all catches up with you. So it proves here. This…6 min
Edge|September 2019Destiny 2Developer/publisher Bungie Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Release 2017Bungie can’t lose at the moment. Six months on from its split with former publisher Activision, the Destiny maker has the rare ability of being able to blame all the things players don’t like about its game on its former partner, while pitching all the good stuff as the product of its new-found independence. In fairness, there’s much more of the latter around at the moment than the former. Indeed, as the clock runs down on Destiny 2’s second year, the series has never been in better shape.The groundwork was laid while Activision was still around, with last September’s Forsaken introducing a new approach to content releases in between the major autumn expansions. The Annual Pass has added new things to do…2 min
Edge|September 2019Sea Of SolitudeDeveloper Jo-Mei Games Publisher Electronic Arts Format PC (tested), PS4, Xbox One Release Out now Sea Of Solitude mixes dream with autobiography to create a vivid, but deeply dissatisfying, tale of trauma and transcendence. It takes place on a shimmering tropical ocean, with protagonist Kay waking in a motorboat to find herself transformed into a beast. Not far below the water’s surface lies a city – a half-remembered, half-imagined labyrinth of pastel bricks, thickly moulded domes, wave-lapped conservatories and plazas. The city has no inhabitants, but it does harbour plenty of thoughts and memories, each as monstrous as Kay has become, with inky-black feathers and glaring crimson eyes. Some of these phantoms take the form of spiteful children, shoving you back from doorways as you explore those parts of the…6 min
Edge|September 2019Destiny 2Developer/publisher Bungie Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Release 2017 Bungie can’t lose at the moment. Six months on from its split with former publisher Activision, the Destiny maker has the rare ability of being able to blame all the things players don’t like about its game on its former partner, while pitching all the good stuff as the product of its new-found independence. In fairness, there’s much more of the latter around at the moment than the former. Indeed, as the clock runs down on Destiny 2’s second year, the series has never been in better shape. The groundwork was laid while Activision was still around, with last September’s Forsaken introducing a new approach to content releases in between the major autumn expansions. The Annual Pass has added new things…2 min
Edge|September 2019Those who show upEvery year, on Internet forums and social media, in website articles and comment sections, and even in the bars and restaurants around the Los Angeles Convention Center, people debate who has ‘won’ E3. It’s always been a facile question – the real winners are the ones who get to spend a week in the sunshine playing games and drinking free co*cktails, obviously – and the very notion of one company beating another plays into the often troubling tribalistic relationship that videogame lovers have with the companies that make their favourite games and systems. But it’s always been instructive in a broader sense: only by weighing up the relative merits of various publishers’ and platform holders’ endeavours can we form a broader picture of where the industry is, and where it…9 min
Edge|September 2019DRY AND DRY AGAINThis was the third year of E3 being open to the public, and also the third year of the E3 Coliseum, produced by The Game Awards’ Geoff Keighley. Held in the LA Live complex round the corner from the convention centre, it’s designed to bring fans closer to developers through on-stage interviews with the minds behind their favourite games, with a few curveballs along the way: Keighley interviewing Todd Howard and Elon Musk at the same time was as weird and awkward as you’d hope. It helps give E3 week more of a festival feel, the event spreading beyond the convention centre and taking fans with them. Fair enough – at least until you try to get a drink, and find half-hour queues at every watering hole in the vicinity.…1 min
Edge|September 2019Soundbytes“The videogame industry made $43 billion in revenue last year. The workers responsible for that profit deserve to collectively bargain as part of a union.”It seems US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is a secret Edge reader. We can’t find any tweets from him about new handheld Playdate, weirdly“[Lootboxes] are what we look at as ‘surprise mechanics’ … they’re quite ethical and fun and enjoyable to people.”EA’s vice president of legal and government affairs, Kerry Hopkins, gives a parliamentary committee a masterclass in spin“I wish Sony was here. E3 is not as good when they’re not here.”We agree entirely, Xbox boss Phil Spencer, but are you really supposed to say that sort of thing out loud?“Team-killing is for assholes, and talking sh*t to your own team members is some super asshole…1 min
Edge|September 2019ARCADE WATCHHardware Voxon Z3DManufacturer Voxon PhotonicsHow appropriate that, in a month where we put a Star Wars game on the cover, some hardware appears which could play a decent game of Dejarik, the chess-like game played on the Millennium Falcon during A New Hope. First unveiled at last year’s Tokyo Game Show but now available for purchase, Voxon Z3D is that rarest of things in 2019: an arcade cabinet the likes of which we’ve never seen before.The fourplayer co*cktail-style cabinet uses volumetric lighting to create, essentially, 3D holograms inside its central dome. The system projects individual slices of light at 4,000 frames per second onto a moving screen, and the naked eye parses the results as a single 3D image, without the need for any head-mounted peripherals.Four pieces of software come…1 min
Edge|September 2019My Favourite Game Sam VogelSam Vogel is a DJ and producer from California who has secured a reputation for high-energy variety sets that light up festivals across the globe. His breakout single Feel The Volume launched via Diplo’s label Mad Decent in 2014, and since then he’s collaborated with Skrillex, Marshmello and DJ Snake, released a studio album and founded his own record label, Bite This. Here, he talks about portable MMOs, Basshunter’s gaming links, and roadside breakdowns. What’s your earliest memory of games? When my little brother was born – he’s like, three, almost four years younger than me – for whatever reason, I don’t know why, but my parents decided that they would get me a Nintendo 64. And they prefaced it like my little brother who had just been born had…4 min
Edge|September 2019Trigger HappyAs it solves old problems, information technology always creates new ones. The rise in wide accessibility of nutritional science (or pseudoscience), for example, has fuelled the growth of ‘orthorexia,’ or an unhealthy obsession with eating as healthily as possible. Orthos is the Greek for right or correct: etymologically, ‘orthopaedics’ means ‘correct education’ and ‘orthography’ means ‘correct writing.’ The latest such construction is orthosomnia: an obsession with getting optimum sleep.Now, sleep being perhaps the greatest consolation there is for being alive on this planet, orthosomnia doesn’t seem particularly worrying. But thanks to newfangled sleep-tracking devices, some customers end up referring themselves to sleep clinics not because they feel unrested, but because their trackers are telling them that they are not getting enough. One doctor, Alanna Hare, told the Guardian that she…4 min
Edge|September 2019Trigger HappyAs it solves old problems, information technology always creates new ones. The rise in wide accessibility of nutritional science (or pseudoscience), for example, has fuelled the growth of ‘orthorexia,’ or an unhealthy obsession with eating as healthily as possible. Orthos is the Greek for right or correct: etymologically, ‘orthopaedics’ means ‘correct education’ and ‘orthography’ means ‘correct writing.’ The latest such construction is orthosomnia: an obsession with getting optimum sleep. Now, sleep being perhaps the greatest consolation there is for being alive on this planet, orthosomnia doesn’t seem particularly worrying. But thanks to newfangled sleep-tracking devices, some customers end up referring themselves to sleep clinics not because they feel unrested, but because their trackers are telling them that they are not getting enough. One doctor, Alanna Hare, told the Guardian that…3 min
Edge|September 2019Big Picture ModeLast month I rather rashly promised that while at E3 I’d keep an eye out for any little harbingers of a bigger change to come – the sort of thing you only spot if you’re in a certain place at a certain time, and looking in roughly the right direction. There are, I now realise, two problems with that. First, I’m not sure I saw any, really. Second, and this sort of explains the first, is that you can’t tell if something’s a portent of some kind of disruption until said disruption has actually, you know, happened, and that might not come to pass for years. The whole thing was a bust, really. I can only apologise. But! This was probably my favourite E3 so far, mostly because I’ve now…4 min
Edge|September 2019Hold To ResetAnother E3 is finished and already merging in my mind with all the previous iterations like some kind of interactive monster. This one felt particularly long, since video interviews have now been replaced almost entirely by streaming shows. The positive side of this is long chats where I felt we could get more into the meat of what we’re trying to achieve, instead of answering superficial questions. The bad part is finishing at 10pm every night after a day on the show floor. Not that I’m complaining! Quite the opposite. It has been incredibly satisfying to get the game to the point where we can pass a controller to rooms filled with journalists and watch them play it. So what did six days of relentless presentations get us? While writing…4 min
Edge|September 20192019@E3THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING Developer Grezzo Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release September 20 Fittingly, it feels like a half-remembered dream. Granted, a lack of sleep does tend to make your memory pretty fuzzy. But as we play through the opening of Grezzo’s remake of the Game Boy favourite, it all starts flooding back. Waking up in Marin’s house. The owl. The Octoroks. Pushing urchins with your shield. Grabbing your sword from the beach. The cave with the cracked floor. Trading the mushroom for magic powder to sprinkle on that pesky raccoon. Sure, the crane game in Mabe Village might now have realistic physics, but our unfortunately limited time with this E3 build is summed up by that Chain Chomp tethered outside. What was once a startling surprise –…42 min
Edge|September 2019BEAMDOGWhen Beamdog began updating classic RPG Baldur’s Gate for PC and iOS, studio co-founder Cameron Tofer found himself on familiar ground. He had, after all, been one of the first employees through BioWare’s doors after it was founded in 1995, working as a programmer on its debut game, Shattered Steel, and becoming part of the development team on the much-loved RPG soon after. But more than a decade on, as he began looking through the original code, he came across something that left him aghast. “I was like, ‘The f*ck were they thinking?’” Tofer tells us. He scrolled a little further, only to discover it was his name on the code. “I just thought, ‘Oh boy,’” he laughs.Released in 2012, the Enhanced Edition of Baldur’s Gate was the third such…9 min
Edge|September 2019Super Mario Maker 2Developer/publisher Nintendo (EPD)Format SwitchRelease Out nowCompromise, Super Mario Maker 2 teaches us, can sometimes be a good thing. Fairness is the hallmark of good level design – as obvious as it sounds, it’s important to recognise that players are human, and that giving them a chance to recover from their mistakes is a worthwhile concession to make. Likewise, there’s value in sometimes pulling back from your grand vision: creation goes hand-in-hand with curation, and stuffing all your ideas in one level will rarely make it better. Whether this explains Nintendo’s approach here is a trickier question to answer. Because if you’ve played the Wii U original, you’ll be acutely aware that bringing Super Mario Maker to Switch has resulted in a few trade-offs.Some of these are understandable. The original, after…9 min
Edge|September 2019My Friend PedroDeveloper DeadToast EntertainmentPublisher Devolver DigitalFormat PC, Switch (tested)Release Out nowReality can be a downer. For instance: would you rather admit to your deeply ingrained emotional issues, and a weakness for bloodshed that leads to the slaughter of hundreds of security guards just doing their jobs? Or would you prefer to blame your problems on a talking banana, who gives you the power to control time and hypes up your every kill with exclamations of “lovely” and “snazzy”? No wonder My Friend Pedro’s masked protagonist spends so much time ignoring the real world: there are no high scores in therapy.The trouble is that you can only get away with doing so for so long before it all catches up with you. So it proves here. This wickedly silly side-scrolling shooter has…6 min
Edge|September 2019Cadence Of HyruleDeveloper Brace Yourself GamesPublisher NintendoFormat SwitchRelease Out nowOboe, maracas, glockenspiel and bass guitar: Cadence Of Hyrule’s unusual selection of musical instruments says a lot about the kind of game it is. And no, we don’t mean it’s the equivalent of an insufferable covers band performing twee versions of Zelda standards – which, in fairness, it could so easily have been. Rather, it understands how a series that’s always marched to its own beat could still benefit from a fresh sound and a change of tempo.Delightfully (and rather damningly for Nintendo) it’s also the first Zelda game where you can play as the princess from start to finish. Well, almost – a short prologue casts you as Cadence, whose working-class-hero credentials are established by her weapon of choice: a shovel. Finding…6 min
Edge|September 2019Sea Of SolitudeDeveloper Jo-Mei GamesPublisher Electronic ArtsFormat PC (tested), PS4, Xbox OneRelease Out nowSea Of Solitude mixes dream with autobiography to create a vivid, but deeply dissatisfying, tale of trauma and transcendence. It takes place on a shimmering tropical ocean, with protagonist Kay waking in a motorboat to find herself transformed into a beast. Not far below the water’s surface lies a city – a half-remembered, half-imagined labyrinth of pastel bricks, thickly moulded domes, wave-lapped conservatories and plazas. The city has no inhabitants, but it does harbour plenty of thoughts and memories, each as monstrous as Kay has become, with inky-black feathers and glaring crimson eyes.Some of these phantoms take the form of spiteful children, shoving you back from doorways as you explore those parts of the city that are above water.…6 min
Edge|September 2019Source engineNostalgia is a powerful marketing tool, especially in games – but it’s important to tread carefully when you’re digging up the past. Some things, after all, are better left in the ground. It’s a point proven ably this month by The Sinking City (p114). Frogwares’ open-world detective game draws heavily on the works of HP Lovecraft, an author whose impact on horror has been legendary, but who held certain views that, by modern standards, are similarly horrifying. Frogwares gets out in front of the problem to an extent, opening the game with a warning about the prejudices of Lovecraft’s era. Perhaps that doesn’t go far enough – this was Lovecraft’s problem, and it cannot be blamed solely on the world around him at the time. But going for it warts…3 min
Edge|September 2019Muse DashDeveloper XD Network IncPublisher PeroPeroGamesFormat Android, iOS, PC, Switch (tested)Release Out nowThere are some things about Muse Dash that we understand perfectly: the loading screen, for instance. Rather than, say, a shot of our heroines’ faces, we’re repeatedly confronted with a close crop of their groins and legs. Lest we assume that this bright, two-button DJMax-a-like is all about rhythm heaven, this is a reminder that a large portion of its intended audience is simply here for the waifu factor.Which, you know, fine, if that’s your thing. But it’s sad to see Muse Dash so blatantly place itself in an adult category (the attention lavished on its character select screen’s pendulous animations is astonishing) while also doing so much for the younger crowd. A rhythm game dressed up as a…3 min
Edge|September 2019Papers, PleaseDeveloper/publisher 3909 LLC Format iOS, PC, Vita Release 2013Almost six years after its release, playing Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please is still a unique, at times even revolutionary experience. Sure, its influence can be felt in a handful of political titles such as PanicBarn’s dystopian Brexit bouncer simulation Not Tonight, but for the most part, it’s been left unemulated. It’s not hard to see why. It’s an uncomfortable and oppressive game, its genre-blend of work simulation and puzzle game exactly tailored to its biting political satire. It’s not the kind of game that lends itself to spawning its own sub-genre. In light of the last couple of years’ political events, however, its subject matter is as relevant today as it was at the time of its release.Papers, Please, a self-titled “dystopian…8 min
Edge|September 2019Cadence Of HyruleDeveloper Brace Yourself Games Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release Out now Oboe, maracas, glockenspiel and bass guitar: Cadence Of Hyrule’s unusual selection of musical instruments says a lot about the kind of game it is. And no, we don’t mean it’s the equivalent of an insufferable covers band performing twee versions of Zelda standards – which, in fairness, it could so easily have been. Rather, it understands how a series that’s always marched to its own beat could still benefit from a fresh sound and a change of tempo. Delightfully (and rather damningly for Nintendo) it’s also the first Zelda game where you can play as the princess from start to finish. Well, almost – a short prologue casts you as Cadence, whose working-class-hero credentials are established by her weapon…6 min
Edge|September 2019Samurai ShodownDeveloper/publisher SNK Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now Samurai Shodown is a game in which you think you’re doing okay, then look at your health bar and realise you’re about to die. In this wonderfully attractive and vividly animated game, even light attacks look like they hurt. And they do, to a point. But medium slashes hurt more, and heavies even more than that. Then there are dashing slashes, and counter-hits, and a variety of other ways to increase the damage output of a certain attack. You can spend 40 seconds chipping away at an opponent, playing the match perfectly, at least in conventional fighting-game terms. Two heavy hits later you find yourself fighting for survival. This is jarring at first, but it’s no bad thing. You’ll…6 min
Edge|September 2019Muse DashDeveloper XD Network Inc Publisher PeroPeroGames Format Android, iOS, PC, Switch (tested) Release Out now There are some things about Muse Dash that we understand perfectly: the loading screen, for instance. Rather than, say, a shot of our heroines’ faces, we’re repeatedly confronted with a close crop of their groins and legs. Lest we assume that this bright, two-button DJMax-a-like is all about rhythm heaven, this is a reminder that a large portion of its intended audience is simply here for the waifu factor. Which, you know, fine, if that’s your thing. But it’s sad to see Muse Dash so blatantly place itself in an adult category (the attention lavished on its character select screen’s pendulous animations is astonishing) while also doing so much for the younger crowd. A rhythm…3 min
