As a diminutive wooden train finally manages to burst free of its bꦇox, breaking open the cardboard flap holding it back, it's only natural to think of Toy Story, and the familiar notion of an old plaything coming to life when no one is around. But as polystyrene curls are sent scattering, we see instead a dormant creative spark being unleashed, the barrier of self-doubt forced aside. And the winding track before this tiny locomotive, stretching out into the distance? Well, that's the long, serpentine route this nascent idea must take to reach its ultimate destination.

Nod on

Perhaps that's reaching a little. But the more we see and play of Tren, the more it feels like a game that simultaneously reflects the studio's 'play, create, share' ethos; the remarkable piece of software that hosts it; ಌand, just as significantly, the artistic linchpin behind it. For John Beech, recently appointed the studio's creative director, this marks – for now – the culmination of a development journey that began in unusual fashion. Here at Media Molecule, however, his new role feels the most natural outcome of all. 

Beech, after all, first attracted the attention of his employer of 14 years as a member of its community. A builder by trade, he spent his free time doing construction of a very different kind, making LittleBigPlanet stages on his PlayStation 3. 💞One particular level, grandly named Future Warzone: Battle For Little Big Planet, first got him noticed. "I'd made this basic flying spaceship that comes in and lands," he recalls. This might not seem like anything out of the ordinary, but consider that tools for making flying objects simply did not exist. "I'd discovered a glitch where you could make pistons invisible, essentially," Beech g🐈rins. "Everyone was like, 'How did he make a spaceship fly?'" 

The trick was enough to grant him an audience with Media Molecule staff, who wanted to ask him the same question – plus a few more. "I had a borrowed suit because I've never had an interview in my life," he says. "I'd just been a builder up until that p♓oint. I arrived wearing a backpack with a PlayStation 3 in it." Studio director Siobhan Reddy remembers the day well. "I'll never forget it – it was a really hot day, we didn't have any air conditioning in our old studio, and we were all flustered because we were excited to meet John, because of everything that had happened." Within minutes, she says, they'd decided to hire him. 

When studio co-founder Mark Healey stepped d🦩own from his position as creative director, the choice of his replacement was an almost equally straightforward decision. "The work that John had been doing on Tren demonstrated skills of being able to set a strong creative vision, to rally a team behind that, and to develop it in a way that was very true to the best version of MM and very collaborative," Reddy explains. "That felt like what we needed, and I think Jo༒hn is a unifier: he's got a lot of the things that you need within that leadership role." The response within the studio – and wider community – seems to have rubber stamped the decision to appoint Beech. "There were quite a few big cheers," she adds. "And it's just a real joy to collaborate with him, because John's MO is to be a collaborator. And I think that's what the studio really needed, particularly when you've been going through some…" Perhaps mindful of the Sony PR manager hovering nearby, she pauses momentarily. "Changes." 

That's an understatement. We get the distinct impression from the atmosphere at the studio that Beech's appointment has been a galvanising moment, after what has been a challenging transitional period for the Guildford studio. Having helped found MM in 2006, Alex Evans left in September 2020, with Karim Ettouney and Healey following him out of the door earlier this year (the fourth ♌and final co-founder, David Sꦉmith, remains as technical director). A week before Healey's departure, it was announced that Media Molecule would be ceasing live support for Dreams in September, bringing to an end three years of in-game events and updates.

With all that in mind, it feels as if there is a lot riding on a game that was never really intended to be a send-off for Dreams. In fact, development began shortly ℱafter work finished on Art's Dream, the two-hour musical showpiece that launched with Dreams to show what was possible to make with the tools it was offering to budding creators. The introduction of the Friday Jams was intended to do similar for Media Molecule's own staff, encouraging them to build new experiences⛄ for Dreams. Nothing if not ambitious, Beech began by asking himself a single question: "I just thought to myself, 'How can I make a triple-A-quality game on my own?'" 

Then his more practical instincts kicked in. "I really love sculpting realistic things in Dreams – that tactility really talks to me," Beech says. So, given his previous career – and indeed, as someone who shares his surname with a type of timber – what could be a more natural material to work with than wood? "I know exactly how it looks, what the grain looks like, and how it functions in a sort of me🥃chanical sense." As for narrative inspiration, Beech decided to look closer to home. His home, in fact. 

Recalling his father's fondness for trains – a love that continues to this day – he began to assemble a toy train set within a virtual attic. "It sounds weird [given the triple-A goal] but I was always trying to take the path of least resistance. I chose wooden trains because I could get away with slightly wobbly physics; I could get away with not sculpting hyper-realistic trains because these could still look realistic in their own environment. Everything was a really considered pragmatic solution to what I was trying to achieve." In♛ other words: th༺e pistons are invisible here, too. 

This hobbyist project became a labour of love. Beech was already in the process of renovating his house, while he and his wife were about to welcome their fir🤪st child into the world – both of which would factor into the game's story, as the attic develops over time.🅺 "You'll start seeing plasterboard going up, and bits of two-by-four. Eventually, you're in this fully decorated loft conversion," Beech says. But despite having so much going on in his personal life, he found time to beaver away at the game ("I was 3D printing Trens while my wife was going into labour," he laughs) before showing the results to his colleagues. 

"I'm an oversharer at the best of times," he says. "It was maybe six months in, and Siobhan and my predecessor, Mark [Healey], saw it and they were just like, 'This is really awesꦓome, John. We want you to do something with this'. And so the leisuretime diversion soon became a nine-to-five concern, and as the concept began to gain momentum, more and more staff jumped aboard. 

The best part of three years later, the final result wears the weight of its role as a swan song lightly. "I had 🐻in my mind the kind of people who play with trains," Beech begins. "And it's like the adult who plays it really realistically, where they operate a full-on train service. And then there are the kids, who just want to zoom off the track and do stunts and jumps." Both types of player, it's fair to say, are well served here. For the grownups, there are longer, more considered puzzle-focused courses that simply demand you figure out how to get to the end. But for those who just want to see trains go fast, there are obstacle courses with corkscrews and loop-the-loops that require injections of boost to successfully negotiate. Although you sense the inevitable crashes brought🧸 out on by taking a corner at high speed, ploughing into a hazard, or failing to land a flip after accelerating up a steep ramp might be even more entertaining to those players than the successful runs. 

Most of the stages in Tren offer a captivating mix of the two, with sections that require more careful control and others that demand you go full steam ahead. Picking up carriages all but forces you to slow down, as do sections where you must pause while sliding rails into position. You must time your advances between other trains (or indeed Trens) as they patrol looping sections of track. You'll switch rails on the fly, pick up loose cargo (brown objects with a soft sheen that resemble nothing so much as an emptied-out pouch of Revels), trigger pressure plates that cause parts of the course to raise and flip and slide into new positions, and tentatively navigate tilting sections. Magnetic tracks allow you to pull off gravity-defying ma🍎noeuvres, while you'll need sufficient momentum to decouple wagons so they can slide into position beneath barriers.🔯 

Playful end-of-stage flourishes abound: in one stage you're encouraged to launch the Tren through a basketball hoop, topple a card pyramid or land back inside a cardboard box. And to add extra impetus to return, there's a grading 💦system based on how quickly you complete a stage – though in some cases going full pelt is a bad idea, since seconds will be shorn off your finish time for each carriage that is still intact when you cross the line. It's not just the lovingly rendered games and figurines scattered about each stage that remind us of classic toys: the stages themselves owe as much to Screwball Scramble and Scalextric as to old-fashioned train sets. 

But as much as Tren's narrative centres on the idea of childhood favourites being passed down from generation to generation, it natural𒉰ly owes a debt to more contemporary forms of play, too. If the lighthearted tone initially recalls𓄧 Joe Danger, when the challenge begins to ramp up it feels almost like Media Molecule's Trials – the game's exacting later tests requiring similarly fine control of forward and reverse momentum. Indeed, each chapter features an 'expert spur'; rather than advancing the story, you can stick around to tackle a string of harder stages. And there's a survival mode which tasks you with keeping your train running down a track composed of procedurally generated chunks while enemy locomotives give chase. 

Tren is satisfyingly varied, then: this might be Beech's vision, but it's quite clearly a collaborative effort, one that speaks to the tastes and tenets of the team that built it. "One of the things I love about Tren – actually, the only other game we've worked on like this was LBP – is that you can tell which designer made the l🐓evels," Reddy says. "You can be like, 'Yeah, that's a Steve level; that's a Maggie level'. And I love that because you get to know people and that stuff really comes through." 

It is surprisingly substantial, too. From beginning to end, it should last most players around six hours – three times the size of Art's Dream. Additionally, completists who want to earn all three 'grade pips' on every level can expect their hour count to nudge double figures. We ask Beech whether Tren reached that size partly out of necessity, knowing that – with the studio having somewhat reluctantly called time on live𓄧 support for Dreams – this would effectively be an opportunity to say goodbye. "Not so much, no," he says. "Tren was probably as scoped and as bi♓g as it was going to be long before that happened – it just happened to coincide with being the last thing. But what I had in my mind was always where it ended up, you know? And MM and Sony were good enough to give me the opportunity to get it to where I thought it was a complete game." 

However, that decision gave the Tren team the opportunity to properly commemorate Dreams. With levels themed around LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway, it already doubled as something of a potted history of the studio. But now Media Molecule had the chance to give something extra to its community, "it felt only right to respect the past to move forward," Beech says. "As it🌱 became clear that Tren was going to be our last big release in Dreams, I made sure to include as many Easter eggs to the community as possible. So there's one area near the end of the game where you can go up on this shelf in the bedroom, and there are Impys [the annual awards given out by the studio to the best community creations] and a VHS fr🎃om the 2018 E3 live performance." 

The gifts to the Dreams community don't end there. After all, this wouldn't be much of a Media Molecule game if you could only play it. Beech assembled Tren much as you would build a traditional train set, putting it together piece by piece. "I just started build𒊎ing the kit in its final form and started making levels with it straight away," he explains. "It was like, 'Oh, I need a ramp, I need a corner', and each time I would just add to the kit." As such, by the time development on the game had finished, he and his team had amassed over 550 elements – by orders of magnitude the biggest kit in Dreams to date. And every one of these pieces will be available to players to build their own levels, to keep Tren running long after it has run out of officially supplied track. 

In the DNA

Indeed, similar could be said about Dreams itself. Tren might be Media Molecule's last Dreams release, but it's by no means game over. The studio's in-house curation team is continuing to surface the pick of the community creations via its Impsider blog, while this year's move to a more stable server, alongside a sweeping overhaul to its animation tools, are encouraging signs for its user base – several of whom have already set up community events of their own. An update to usage terms will now let creators take some of their original creations – music, animation, films and art, with restrictions – beyond this walled garden for their own personal use, and perhaps even monetary gai☂n. 

That latter point feels particularly pertinent. The studio's final message to fans talks openly of the disappointment it feels at having to leave Dreams behind sooner than it ever expected – its failure to "define a sustainable path" speaking to the way MM never quite managed to square the circle of balancing the needs of a commercial product with its desire to create the modern equivalent of an artists' collective. Yet if there's a sense that Dreams might not have fully reached the final form we looked forward to when we handed over just the 23rd ever Edge 10 in E344's revie𝔉w, it's impossible to argue against the positive influence of this software. It has already led to young designer William Butkevicius (better known to the Dreams community by the username Eupholace, and his multi-Impy-winning 3D platformer, Trip's Voyage) being recruited by Ori developer Moon Studios. Others who have cut their teeth on these tools will surely follow.

With Tren mere weeks from release when we visit the studio, we find its creative director in a naturally reflective mood. How does Beech feel about Dreams now? "I'm incredibly proud of what we achieved with it," he says. "With my story of coming from the LittleBigPlanet community, it seemed so obvious for us to take that route. It's always been about empowering other people." Had he had the access to tools such as those featured in Dreams or LittleBigPlanet much sooner, he says, his career path might have been very different. "You know, I was just a builder," he says. "I've got no qualifications. I left school without any GCSEs. And it was just because I was doing stuff that was relevant that allowed me to move forward. So the more we can do that, the more tools we can put in people's hands – it doesn't matter whether it's Dreams or LittleBigPlanet or Minecraft, or any other gameཧ – I will always support that." And get more John Beeches into games? "I don't know about that," he laughs. "That sounds like a terrible idea." 

That aspiration to fulfil the ambitions of a new generation of budding creators is poignantlꦍy expressed in Tren's finale – which, without giving the game away, represents a metaphorical passing of the torch to the Dreams community, just as a parent might hand down a beloved childhood toy to their offspring. Media Molecule's journey may have diverged from its expected route, but for many of Tren's players, the track is still stretching out in front of them. This is not the end of their dream, but the beginning. 

This feature first appeared in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Edge Magazine, which . 

First revealed back in 2020, we've gotten to see more footage of Forspoken in action and even got the chance to try out some of the combat for ourselves in a hands-on preview. With a closer look at combat and traversal, we've seen how Forspoken ♏will allow you to move around the landscapes using magical parkour and fight against enemies wit🦋h a host of different spells and moves.

Below, you'll find everything we know so far abou⛎t Forspoken, from it's expected🎐 release date to story details and more. 

Forspoken release date

Forspoken is now officially releasing on January 24, 2023. The move to 2023 marks the 澳洲幸运5开奖号𒉰码历史查询:second time Forspoken h꧑as been delayed after it was initially pushed back from its original May launch date to October 2022.  Luminous Productions confirmed the new release date on , citing that the reason for the second delay is a result of a "strategic decision" after discussions with its key partners. The studio did however confirm all of the "game elements" are now 🍬complete, and it's now in its final polishing phase. 

In terms of platforms, Sony has the exclusive on the console front, so it won’t be coming to either Xbox One or the Nintendo Switch. A  that highlighted Forspoken among other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PS5 games includes this in the fine print: "In development for PS5. Also available on P൩C. Not available on othe🐽r consoles until at least 24 months after release date."

Forspoken PlayStation Showcase trailer

We got an extended look at Forspoken during PlayStation's September 2021 showcase, and there's a lot to take in. We learn more about Frey Holland (and her adorable cat), and how she ended up in Athia (through a por🥀tal). We see how her power derives from a set of gold cuffs that can spe🐻ak to her, and that these cuffs offer her some incredible magical moves that help her make easy work of foes. 

We also know that Frey will end up 🌼face-to-face with a big baddie known as Tanta Sila,🌊 played by Star Wars Battlefront 2's Janina Gavankar. 

Forspoken gameplay details

What we've seen so far of Forspoken showcases how Frey will be🅺 a particularly athletic hero. The main character has a skill known as magic parkour, which allows her to run fast, leap great distances, and use the environment to swing across gaps and climb vertical inclines. 

The latest look at the upcoming adventure offered insight into how magic is aꦗt the center 💫of everything in Forspoken, from combat to exploration. Frey is outfitted with a variety of magical spells and combat styles that you can use and adapt depending on your𒁏 preferred style of play. From long distance powers to close range spells, there's all manner of magical attacks to experiment with. 

With RPG elements such as crafting and upgrades, you can im♈prove a variety of Frey's skills. Gear can also be equipped such as necklaces and c🌱apes to improve stats. In order to bring together realism with fantasy, Frey can use shards to paint patterns on her nails to make spellcasting more powerful. 

In our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:hands-on preview with Forspoken, we got the chance to try out some of the the layered spells in Fr💧ey's arsenal. 

Forspoken story details

Forspoken is a game about a young woman named𝓰 Frey fro🍌m New York City who is about to turn 21 years old. Before long, she finds herself transported to the world of Athia, "where fantasies and nightmares are suddenly very real".

"As the first video game I’ve worked on, it’s remarkable 🉐to see the incredible world and story of Forspoken come together, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy," said Balinska what she's seen of Forspoken s💦o far. 

"Frey as a character is real, she’s raw, she’s a girl who lost her way - both figuratively and literally - and is a character I immediately connected with, as I feel many people around the world will too when they set off on this ✨adventure."

In this magical and dangerous world, Frey must learn to harness newfound magical powers in order to defeat monsters and the Tantas, who hold dominion over the land. Her magic derives from her "Cuff" a magical bracelet that can speak to her (and is voiced by Jonathan Cake). 🍌Frey must defeat the Tantas with the help of Cuff in order to have a chance of returning back to New York City - and her cat. 

The team writing the story is being led by Gary Whitta, who has written for, among other games, Prey. Forspoken's writing team comes from across “the worlds of film, tv, games, and fantasy literature”, he said on . So far, we know that Amy Hennig, Todd Sta🦩shwick, and Alison Rhymer are among theౠ talent involved. 

Forspoken is said to have super fast loading times 

According to💛 Luminous Productions technical director Tepp🎶ei Ono, Forspoken's load times are said to be💖 very fast on the PS5. It's so fast, in fact, that ▨it will supposedly take barely one second to load on Sony's latest hardware. 

To help you find the best mouse pad for your setup, we're rounding up all our favorites right here. These mats will all pair well with the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best gaming mouse as they allow for a smoother glide and pinpoint precision so you can be sure that your inputs are detected as required. They're a good fit for wireless rodents too - if you sport a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:wireless gaming mouse then be sure to keep an eye out f𓃲or USB ports available on the mou🤡se pad itself.

The Quick List

The best mouse pad for gaming overall

SteelSeries released three new QCK mouse pads this year, with the Balance model sitting in between the super slick Speed and grainier Control versions. That means it's going to suit the majority of players looking to maintain their glide in-game while still providing a clean stop for greater precision. With its super grippy underside, excellent comfort, and incredibly smooth surface, the QCK Performance Speed feels fant🍸astic in both fast and slower titles. However, if you're a content creator editing video (or even just photography), or if you play a slower sniper playstyle, I'd seriously recommend considering the Control version as well.

The best budget mouse pad for gaming

The medium model of the Razer Gigantus V2 regularly comes in at well under $10 / £10 and can net you a soft microweave tracking surface with a wad of rubber underneath to keep things stable. It's cheaper, but this still has Razer's premium build quality through and through, and if you're a fan of the brand those bright green accents are going to s🔯hine particularly bright. Unfortunately, there's no RGB functionality built in here (you'll need the Firefly further down for that), but if you're after a simple no-fuss mouse pad for speedy gaming this is a fantastic bargain buy.

The best RGB mouse pad for gaming

This new and improved version of the Razer Firefly sits in the perfect Goldil✅ocks zone of "not too big, not too small, not too over the top". Clocking in with a thickness of 4mm and 19 RGB lighting zones around the edge, it feels every bit as premium as the $49.99 / £49.⛄99 price tag would suggest.

Sure, it doesn't have the cloth surface you may be used to, but don't be put off by that matte plastic - it features a micro-texture♛ calibrated to enhance the performance of optical sensors. We found that, when testing, it translates to smooth, responsive movement regardless of whether you're playing a twitch-shooter or working on spreadsheets. In fact, we've been using the Firefly V2 for well over two years without it ever letting us down.

Happily, the RGB isn't so in-your-face that it'll distract you during a gaming session either. Limited to the mat's edge and a Razer logo in the top right-hand corner, it can be synced up with your other Razer gear via Synapse for consistentꦺ effects across your setup.

The best large mouse pad for gaming

The Corsair MM700 RGB Extended offers everything you could ask for from a full-length mouse pad for gaming. If you're after something to comfortably stretch across your main central setup, this is an excellent option. With full iCue RGB lighting around🦩 the rim, a handy (though a little stiff) USB passthrough port, and excellent surface grip there's plen﷽ty to celebrate here.

The top material is soft and spongey with just the right level of minute texture to feel secure while also provided excellent tracking accuracy.♑ It also manages to stay nice and cool despite the 18-inch gaming laptop we had firing away nearby, so no irritation to the palms.

Yes, it does pick up dust and marks fairly easily but a damp cloth and lint roller are enough to get it back to its original colors every now and then. It's not the cheapest mouse pad for gaming on the market, but it's certainly eye-catching and provides an excellent landing spot🌌 for both your mouse and keyboard.

The best hard mouse pad for gaming

The Logitech G440 is one of the market's favorite hard mouse pad for gaming - and for good reason. This is a solid piece of kit, especially if you're rocking a pointer with a Hero sensor. From its low-friction polyethylene top to its slightly grainy surface texture, this pad has been developed for pinpoint precision from the ground up. It's a little thicker than others on this list, and the harder corners may prove uncomfortable if you don't position correctly, but if you're after a hard mouse pad for gaming with a nifty glide, this G440 is the best inﷺ the business.

How we test mouse pads for gaming

When we test mouse pads for gaming, we replace our regular desk pad wi✤th it and then use it for a range of needs, includin♓g both gaming and working from home.

When gaming we ensure to play a range of games to ensure that we get the best perspective regarding the mouse. This 😼means FPS games, MOBA games, RTS games, a𝐆nd everything else at our disposable.

We use all the features on offer, including passthrough, RGB, and charging if ava🔴ilable. This allows us to fully understand how they work and if they do as stated on the box.

You can read more about our commitment to providing honest recommendations through extensive testing in our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Hardware Policy.

If you're thinking about upgrading your set up then take a look at our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best gaming PCs and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best gaming laptops. You can also have a look at our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best gaming keyboards if you want something new to match your desk mat.

'Ghost Stories' has been one long rumination on that classic 'to kill or not to kill?' ethical quandary that has woven itself throughout superhero history. Tynion IV approaches revenge with a rational and responsible mind, his characters grudgingly choosing to drop their disputes as their world views are challenged through♒ fresh experience. Ultimately, this means that grudges are settled through debate rather than action, although Alvaro Martinez👍 and Carlo Pagulayan solidly choreograph what little action there is. Martinez takes point on Ghost-Maker's smooth and precise swordsmanship, whilst Pagulayan captures the wild and untrained swings of Clownhunter.

Extremism has been another clear interest of Tynion IV's Batman run so far – it lies at the heart of the characters of Punchline, Clownhunter, and Ghost-Maker. Harley Quinn acts as the rare voice of reason here, attempting to defuse the hate-filled Clownhunter. While the cu📖rrent threat has been quelled, the anger remains. There's an undercurrent of frustration to the entire issue, as problems aren't resolved but merely quelled. Luckily, his new characters are rigorously built and their personalities ever-shifting. You can't help but wonder where Clownhunter's head is at after this issue, and it's that kind of hook that Tynion IV uses, again and again, to absorb you in his Gotham City.

With Ghost-Maker, there's a sense of friendly camaraderie that is often missing from supporting characters' dynamics with Batman. Ghost-Maker is Bruce's equal, re-entering his life at a time when Batman is at his weakest both socially and financially. Tynion IV wraps things up with a shonen manga-esque team-up befitting of two old friends. 𝓡Despite the amicable resolution, the underlying tension of their disagreement remains. It's just a matter of time…

The twice-monthly schedule has been hell on the main Batman🍷 title's artistic consistency, and this issue is no different. There are two art teams here, both with a distinct style. Alvaro Martinez takes the lead for the second half of this issue, his brooding artwork with tightly hatched lines fitting perfectly to the tone of Batman's climactic sword fight with Ghost-Maker. Carlo Pagulayan renders an appropriately unhinged Clownhunter, although his Harley Quinn struggles to communicate the wide range of emotions demanded by Tynion IV's script. The whole package is colored by David Baron, who unifies both teams with a consistent approach to coloring. Muted greens and🗹 light blues are the order of the day here, accented by the bright pink in Harley and Clown Hunter's hair. Letterer Clayton Cowles illustrates Clownhunter's alienation with an inspired font choice. Double-spaced and lacking capitalization, Clownhunter's dialogue has a hint of the terminally online about it.

Batman #105 is not a brutal triple threat between the Bat and his two newest enemies, but instead a clash of ideas between three uncomfortable allies. This low-key conclusion makes for an appealing palette cleanse🍸r after the epic start of Tynion IV's run, delivering solid character development for the key players yet still maintaining tension. Post-Future State, it remains to be seen just how well this new and very reluctant member of the Bat-Family will fit in…

Get up to speed on all of the Dark Knight's upcoming stories with our constantly-updated list of new Batman comics, graphic novels, and collections.

But that all ended on January 29, 2020💟 with Justice League #39.

No, no.... Snyder isn't leaving DC. He's st🤡ill working on the heavily-discus🥀sed "spiritual" sequel to Dark Nights: Metal with his long-time friend/collaborator Greg Capullo, and possibly more. But his time as a regular writer for DC writing an ongoing title (or two, or three) is over for now.

But this isn't a reqiuem - instead, we spoke with Snyder about what he's built at DC over the past 10 years, the relationships he's formed, and what he's looking forward to in the future. While in the past he has primarily found himself at DC, in 2020 Snyder plans to branch out with more creato🐬r-owned work than ever, beginning wi♐th the recently-launched Undiscovered Country.

Newsarama: Scott, with the end of your Justice League run in January it'll be your last DC ongoing - for now, at least. But it comes 10 years to the month since your first o🏅ngoing for DC, American Vampire, debuted. What do you 🅠think about that?

Scott Snyder: It’s been a crazy decade.

It’s been my dream to work in comics since I was a little kid, so 10 years ago I was positive that I would only get a chance for a minute then get kicked out or something. I didn’t think I would ha🌸ve a sustainable career because I didn’t have a lot of confidence. I just knew I had stories I wanted to tell, but had no id🍃ea how to stay in the industry, either at Marvel or DC or any of it, so I treated each project like it would be my last. Whether that was American Vampire or "Black Mirror," but you know, it all worked out, but that idea has always been my compass.

I’m teaching a class now that’s about what’s important for you to pick up today, whether it’s comedy, political, memoir... as long as it’s your favorite thing to write, what would it be? I try really hard to follow that plan, even if I was at DC or my indie work for the last 10 yeaꦡrs. I’m still trying to wrap my head around being at DC for 10 years and I hope that’s what people see in the work.

I tried as hard as I can to make every story pretty personal. So walking away from Justice League or each book I was on, you could tell something was going on in my life at the time. I hope you can read them and think that “He is talking about something that he’s worried abou🎃t." I don’t know. That’s a terrible answer but yeah, I still can’t get that it’s been 10 years, but I hope people see that I tried to make some personal books.

Nrama: You've said you have more DC work planned such as a "spiritual" sequel t🔯o Dark Nights: Metal and something "big" with Jorge Jimenez, but this feels like a new chapter for you. How do you feel about the work you hav♏e at DC 2020 and beyond versus what came before?

Snyder: Well, it’s more modular. I’ve been on an ongoing one way or the other at DC and now I have sort ofܫ special projects coming up, but the book with Jorge, if people like it, I would love for it to become an ongoing.

For me, it’s been so long on the grind with monthly, and biweekly, it’s been good to🐓 be able to take a step back. I needed a breather before doing someth🌳ing like Batman: Last Knight on Earth. I’m working on a ton of indie work though.

Nrama: As you mentioned, you're also ramping up your creator-owned work finally. 💦You've got Undiscovered Country, and at Comic-Con International: San Diego you spoke about several other creator-owned projects. And just a bit ago I saw you wri⛦ting part of Spawn #300. What's the landscape looking like for you outside of DC?

Snyder: I’ve wanted badly to do more creator-owned workﷺ since Wytches and A.D.: After Death, but my demands at DC have been exciting, but also all-encompassing.

I mean, I have a writing job there. I’m writing Justice League but also a contract where I bring new writers in 🌟as well as helping organize events like Metal. It's just been really wonderful to have been so invested in DC, but that said it’s also been difficult for me to work on more than one creator-owned at a time.

So this year and the start of 2020 I have this sort of new arrangement that allows for more flexibility so I can do more indie work while still being very invested at what I do at DC. I starte🍸d on a bunch of books without having any idea where to place them. I have one with Francesco Francavilla that we’re going to announce soon, did one with Charles Soule, and some with a few artists I can’t talk about yet. So I have about four to five books that I’ve been working on the side and what I do is I take about a week to write the whole outline of the first arc and show them to the artist and develop from there. So all those books are being created and worked on right now.

It’s really all a matter of bringing them int🅷o the light in 2020 and I’m really thrilled to be bringing back American Vampire. I’ve been meaning to do it forever, but I had other work, Rafael Albuquerque had other work but also DC asked us if we wanted to bring it back in a more celebratory reintroduction for the tenth anniversary, which is 2020. So we’re doing a big arc starting in January that I think will come out in one giant volume instead of floppi𓃲es and it’s sort of the big culmination of what we’ve been building, all the different threads, everybody comes back. After that, we’re bringing the series up to the present, but we’ve been planning this for a long time.

Nrama: This is coming off the back of several changes inside DC, as "Rebirth" seems to be closed out, and some of your main editors like Marie Jarvins and ꦏMark Doyle have moved on to other roles within the company.♕ Not digging for dirt here, but how do you see DC now?

Snyder: Well I mean I’m very focused on the stuff in front of me꧒ and I’m very aware of the plans they have for 2020 and 2021, and I’m supportive with everything they’re pitching, but I have so much to do in between the pro𝓰ject with Greg Capullo, the project with Jorge, and American Vampire that I’ve slowly living in the now.

What I like about DC is that they’re a company that is always willing to take risks that reinvigorate the fanbase while still remaining true to their core characters. I think that’s it’s also the time where those big ideas move the meter because there’s this need to bring in new fans and excited the older ones. There’s ways to do both and people get🌊 caught in this binary a lot of the times when we talk about bringing in new fans at the expense of, you know, older fans.

My hope is that, if I have any voice, I’m sort of dealing with my own books so what they’re planning so far off and it’s not in my wheelhouse right now but you kn🐼ow what I always encourage and what I hope in the people I know over there 🍰like Marie, Mark, Dan [DiDio], and Bob [Harras] over there are trying to do are trying to find ways to make sure the older fans feel like everything they’ve read matters, but also inviting new fans with storylines and characters that feel relevant.

My mantra is, and I will say this about my project with Greg, and everything I’ve done on Justice League is that my goal when I was doing Metal has bee🅷n to try and look at all of this as a completist and say there are ways of telling excited new stories whi෴le still attaching them and making them a part of what you’ve read, honored, and supported.

My goal is that “everything matters.” That’s posted on my computer. Everythin﷽g matters. I don’t want you to feel that after everything you read in Justice League is irrelevant. People know when it’s fake. When people say that something wasn’t part of the plan. They can see it. When that happens and it’s inorganic, fans know, so this story that st💧arted in 2017, regardless of what happens now, everything I’ve written is personal.

Even Undiscovered Country has similar themes about the dangers of falling prey to the things that I thꦍink are the bigger and darker aspects of our own nature.

Nrama: The DC Writer's Workshop initiative seems no more, but teaching is a passion for you - with some talented students going on tꦺo be major players in comic books. I know y🅰ou just built your writing studio, but do you still want to teach in some form or fashion in the future?

Snyder: Oh 100%. My hope is to bring it back, too. It’s my fault we couldn’t do it as we got pregnant and had a baby [laughs] so between that and the responsibilities of DC with Metal and everything else, I felt like I wouldn’t have been able to do it j💛ustice.

The other thing I want to make sure for next time is that there are landing spots for a lot of students. It’s important for me to do the class and then within a year, there’s work𝓡 waiting for them in some capacity. I want to make sure there are new books being created with these 💜new voices.

I’m still proud of a lot of the graduates from that class and my students like James Tynion IV, Matthew Rosenberg, Marguerite Bennett, Michael Moౠreci, Vita Ayala, Christopher Sebela...I’m glad to see they’re all working in comics in a bigger way and I don’t take credit for that at allꩲ.

But to have been even a small part of the trajectory of their careers, it’s bee⭕n a pleaಞsure.

Nrama: Newsarama has covered you since day one, talking to you ab🐽out your Iron Man Noir project onto American Vampire and then everything🧸 else, and you've had quite a unique trajectory - and success story. What would you owe that to?

Snyder: [Pauses] Man, I don’t know, that’s a tough question. I mean, firstly thank you to Newsarama. You guys were the first to cover me on American Vampire and al🌞so very supportive and honest with whatever I’m working on and I’ve always appreciated that. You’re a great pillar in the comics community and I’m very grateful.

I don’t know though. I hope I am where I am because I’ve had the creative options and opportunities that I stiꦰll have now because I’ve tried really hard to be honest, Lan, in the work. Sometimes I know I’ve written things that may have fallen down depending on what anybody thinks, but I’ve never written anything I’m not proud of. That’s the one thing I can say with a lot of pride.

I hope people look at the work and see that I triedꦿ my best. I’m very, very, very grateful for the fan base as they’ve kept me in business for this long. I promise for 2020, I’m going to make my best stuff.

Nrama: And what would you say to your fans at this point as really begin digging into your 2🔯020 wri𒀰ting work?

Snyder: I would just say that I love you guys and can’t thank you enough. I have fans come up to me and tell me how they were in high school who started reading American Vampire and now they’re adults with kids and so the fact that 🍰I've been able to grow up as a writer and they’ve grown with me, it means the world to me. They’ve watched me go from green and frightened to somebody who is more confident. You’ve watched me form a family with my friendships with Greg, James, Sean Murphy, and they’re now a part of that family.

It means a lot to me to have the best fans in the world. It sounds corny, but I mean it. I don’t see myself as e�♏�mployed by DC, I’m employed by you guys.

Dreams off﷽ers plenty of features for players to unleash their inner architect and fans from ar♔ound the world have been busy building some brilliantly unique creations – in fact, there are so many great Dreams levels that knowing which ones to check out can be rather difficult. Fortunately, we’ve waded through this sea of content and hauled out 10 of the very best Dreams levels.

All the featured courses in our guide can be played by searching for the level name in D🉐reams.

1. An actual playable Fallout game

Level name:

Fans of Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic Fallout series will be able to explore post-nuclear Boston, while fighting off the game’s iconic sentry bots and mirelurks. Fortunately, there are a number of classic Fallout weapons that you can defend yourself with, so be prepared to crush your foes with your mighty hammer and deadly submachine gun. To make t♎hings even better, players have access to the game’s Pip-Boy which can be used to check your current status, switch weapons, take stimpaks, and select quests. Even the classic Fallout theme plays during the title 💖screen, while the Pip-Boy’s crackling sound effect flickers into life as you cycle through each menu. The attention to detail is truly astonishing and we can’t wait to see what content is added in the future. 

2. A musical wonder influenced by Journey

Level name:

If you’re a fan of Thatgamecompany’s Jouꦑrney and Flower, then you’ll definitely want to check out this level. Creator Gauffreman and fellow musician Piano Novel teamed up in order to make this stunningly beautiful level. Thessing Constellation sees players take on the role of a masked musician (Piano Novel) who must travel across the vast un༺inhabited land in order to restore energy to the mysterious constellations scattered about the level. To do this, you’ll need to track down each constellation and use Piano Novel’s keyboard to revive each celestial pattern. The Missing Constellation is a truly beautiful experience and one you need to witness for yourself, so we won’t say anymore!

3. Stardew Valley in 3d!

Level name:

has faithfully recreated Stardew Valley’s Pelican Town in Dreams, giving this sleepy setting a 3D facelift. Everything from Stardrop Saloon, Jojamart, and the town’s various houses have been lovingly remade. Walking a🌌round ConcernedApe’s beloved farming simulator in 3D is a little surreal at first, but this new perspective allows you to gain a unique look into Stardew Valley’s idyllic town like never before. While you can’t venture into any of the buildings, we still think this level is worth a wander around. 

4. Oh God, another chance to play PT

Level name:  

Fans of Kojima’s cancelled first-person psychological horror game, P.T. can finally relive the brilliantly terrifying demo once again. While Konami officially removed P.T. from the PlayStation Store back in 2015, that hasn’t stopped lewisc729 from recreating the entire demo in Dreams. Everything from the dimly lit looping hallways, radio report on the grisly familicide, swinging light, unstable apparition of Lisa, and the grotesque sink fetus all make an appearance. While this version may not look as visually impressive as the one showcased on the Fox Engine, it does a great job♎ recreating the disturbing atmos♉phere of the original. Who needs sleep anyway?

5. A Seinfeld horror game (yes, really)

Level name: Sinfeld Chronicles

This exceedingly clever, and awfully bizarre Dreams creation sees you take on the role of Jerry Seinfeld's nephew. As you explore the impressively-accurate interior of Jerry's famous apartment and the outer New York neighborhood, you uncover all sorts of easter eggs to the classic 90s sitco꧅m. Some references, like the pestering red glow of the chicken restaurant sign beaming into Kramer's apartment, are used to effectively create an atmosphere of dread. It's like the PT/Seinfeld hybrid we never could've seen coming.

5. An adorable Toad's Treasure Tracker wannabe

Level name:

Pip Gemwalker is a colourful puzzle game that requires you to find the gems hidden ൩in each level – much like the gameplay seen in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. During your playthrough, you’ll be tasked with jumping over ledges, avoiding deadly pools of lava, throwing tree stumps at switches, and even using a trusty companion to obtain each level’s hidden gems. There are currently only seven levels available to play, but creator Ma🥂nChickenTurtle has set the foundation for what could be a fantastic puzzle series in Dreams. 

6. This incredible, must play action platformer 

Level name:

The Pilgrim isn’t just an impressive feat in level design, it also perfectly demonstrates just how robust Dreams’ game creation system is. Narvikgutten and Majoneskongen’s The Pilgrim blends both 3D action platforming, c🤡lassic side-scrolling, and top-down shootingꦆ in order to create a wholly unique experience. One minute you’ll be clambering up a sombre spiralling tower, trying your best not to fall into the abyss below, while the next moment you’ll be blasting waves of flesh-eating bugs to heavy rock music. There’s a little something for everyone in this fantastical medley. 

7. This relaxing explore-em-up

Level name:

The Watergardens is a light puzzle adventure that focuses on immersing players with 𒐪its tranquil scenery and relaxing ambient sounds. Throughout the game, you’ll be tasked with operating levers to release platforms, utilising expanding cubes to reach inaccessible areas, and collecting cones that impact previously visited areas. Hopping between each island in search of the next puzzle is an absolute delight and even if you don’t like Dreams’ puzzle-solving courses, you can still appreciate the sheer amount of creativity that has gone into making this incredible game. We can’t wait to see what creator HalfUp dreams up next. 

8. THE Dreams sci-fi shooter

Level name:

If hunting deadly aliens to a sci-fi synthwave track sounds like fun, then you’ll want to add rothniel’s Prometheus FPS demo to your playlist. The prem🦂ise of this game is simple. Kill all the aliens in order to reach the portal at the end of the level. Of course, this is a lot easier said than done. Throughout your journey, alien lifeforms will constantly try to ambush and overwhelm you, so you’ll need to keep your cool if you wish to make it off this inhospitable planet alive. Fortunately, our space ranger is prepared for such a case and you can effortlessly switch between pistol, s꧑ubmachine gun and shotgun when blasting your way through the alien infested environment. Prometheus FPS demo won’t be for everyone, but if you’re up for some FPS action and want to scratch that sci-fi itch, then this game will do exactly that.

9. F-Zero meets Wipeout in Dreams

Level name:

Dreams creator Syntronic pays homage to F-Zero and Wipeout in his futuristic racing game, FARR League: Testing Track 3.0. FARR League not only has plenty of awesome crafts to choose from, it also manages to capture the scintillating speed and high-octane action of the anti-gravity racing games it seeks to emulate. However, the most impressive thing about this game is the addition of AI opponents. These computer-controlled racers certainly gave us a run for our money and made taking first place all the more satisfyingꦆ. Don’t be put off by the baron looking track as it’s currently only there for testing purposes, but we’ll likely see plenty of improvements in the near future. 

10. An impressive time (controlling platformer)

Level:

Splatty’s Adventure is one of the most impressive games you can play right now in Dreams. Everything from the character’s attack animations, movement and abilities are just so crisp wheﷺn compared to other in-game platformers currently available. Splatty can effortlessly run along walls, dash between platforms, attack enemies with his paintbrush, and even slow down and rewind time. Every level requires use of Splatty’s abilities in order to reach the end goal – an area that is often overlooked in a lot of user-generated games. There’s a lot of great stuff in here and we suggest playing this game if you want to see just how ambitious you can get in Dreams. 

Each i🐽ssue the team scour the world for the hottest PlayStation news. We visit the biggest video game studios to bring you our informed opinion on the best games coming to PS4, PS5, and PS VR.

"The team on Official PlayStation Magazine is as passionate about games as our readers," says Official PlayStation Magazine editor Ian Dean. "We spend every hour in the day playing, talking, and arguing about PlayStation games. Whether its Persona 5 or Call Of Duty, or uncovering the latest hot indie to break out, we want to play EVERY game we can. And we do so to ensure every issue of Official PlayStation Magazine leaves ourꦇ readers informed and entertained." 

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In some ways, Youngblood feels just like a spinoff. MachineGames and co-developer Arkane Studios, which you probably know as the maker of Dishonored, definitely took some risks on experimental ideas. Youngblood uses an RPG-style skill tr✅ee and leveling system, and while you can play the whole thing solo, the game's built for co-op. At the same time, it feels like a full-fat Wolfenstein sequel. It's a direct ജcontinuation of the story of New Colossus, its mix of stealth and shooting is every bit as satisfying, and thanks partly to the world-building muscles of Arkane, it feels like a big game that you could sink a lot of time into. After playing it for myself, I'm eager to do just that. I want to see its secrets, I want to level up my super suit, and most importantly, I want to learn more about its teenage protagonists.

All teenagers scare the living sh*t out of me 

"For 20💃 years we've done these super strong male heros, so it's really refreshing to do this," MachineGames' executive producer Jerk Gustafsson says of Jess and Soph. "But we also want them to have attitude. These are tough girls, and they grew up during this second revolution and during wartime, and they were brought up by parents who prepared them for whatever horrors will come. The story in its essence is about growing, that transition from adolescence to adulthood. They are these insecure young girls in the first scene a🍒nd then they do the first kill and become super cocky murder machines. There's also some reasoning behind that, because they have been prepared for this. They just have to cross that threshold and then they realize they can actually do this."

I immediately loved Jess and Soph, and not just because of the trial-by-Nazi scene. They're haughty🐓, cocky, endearingly awkward spitfires. They share in-jokes and nicknames. They're terrible liars. They're fantastic shots. As Gustafsson says, they're tough girls, but they're also quintessential teenagers, which is a big part of what makes them so compelling. They're two-parts brash to🍃 one-part brave. All of the decisions I've seen them make are absurdly reckless and borderline stupid, but they're so earnest I can't help but root for them. 

Jess and Soph are also joined by new faces like Abby, the baby who Grace was nursing in New Colossus. She's grown up too, and thanks to Seth's tutelage, she's become quite the engineer. Her blunt, inquisitive personality is a good pairing for Jess and Soph, and Gustafsson⛦ says Abby will pla༺y a major role in Youngblood as the campaign's narrator and the base's tech hand. 

An all-new, Arkane world  

Speaking of the campaign: MachineGames says things are even less linear this time around, not that lin꧂earity is a bad thing. Wolfenstein: The New Colossus let players tackle some side missions in whatever order they wanted and eve🐟ry mission allowed for multiple paths and approaches, but by leveraging the Dishonored-honed minds of Arkane, Youngblood's become much more open-ended. 

"Ou🤪r goal is to make sure there is enough to do all the time," Gustafsson says. "The thing is, when you get to the hub for the first time, there'll be a selection of miss🐽ions you can do. Some of them will be lower than you, some will be a bit higher. But there's nothing that prevents you taking on the harder ones to start with. But of course, the goal for us is that if you do the missions you have available, you don't have to do all of them, but you will be able to have a steady curve up through the campaign without worrying about grinding."

This ties back into Youngbl🐲ood's XP system. Here's the rub: you level up and earn skill points by killing Nazis, and you unlock new skills in specific trees by spending those points. You can also collect coins to spend on weapon modding, whi🍸ch has been greatly expanded with new attachments for returning weapons like the still-ridiculous shotgun. 

This felt undeniably weird to me at first, but by the end of my demo,🍷 I was on board with the Mind, Power, and Muscle skill trees. Customization starts with Jess and Soph's signature abilities: Crush, which lets you hit things (for example: Nazis) really hard, and Cloak, which makes you temporarily invisible. You can use either signature ability and access any skill tree no matter which sister you choose. Anything that makes me better at stealth-hatchet-killing Nazis🐭 is OK by me, and many abilities unlock new paths and secrets within levels. The XP system encourages you to take down every last enemy rather than sprint past them, and the coin economy motivates you to explore every nook of the distinctly Arkane world – not that I need any excuse. The first level in Youngblood took me straight back to Dishonored, and I'm not complaining. 

"Arkane are really, really strong in that area, and I think what we have done together – when we've planned out the levels and all that – automatically we've integrated more of the level design philosophy they have, and it works really well," Gustafsson tells me. "Later in the game you'll see when we get to those bigger districts where you have a lot of different routes, it will make even more sense, and it works really well for a co-op game. There will be abilities and tools and weapons in꧟ the game that are progression-based as well. The start of the game is pretty linear, but once you reach the hub, it opens up. I'm really glad we had the opportunity to work with Arkane." 

Two super suits are better than one  

Youngblood's RPG elements play well with Wolfenstein's stealth-or-slaughter approach, as they let each type of player further specialize in their preferred method of attack. This is also a great fit for co-op. I played Youngblood with my friend Chris Livingston from GamesRadar's sister site , and within minutes we were naturally reconing areas together, with one of us tꦜaking the stealth route and the other barreling in guns blazing when things inevitably got noisy. Resources like coins and ammo are instanced between players, thankfully, so ther🙈e's no harm in splitting off and hoovering everything up.

Again, you can play Youngblood on your own with an AI sister as your partner, but you'll miss out on some great co-op features. Jess and Soph can use hand signals to give each other boosts, for instance. I went with a classic thumbs-up and Chris used the rocker horns, which gave us health and armor boosts respectively. There are co-op crates and doors which require both players to open, and these often lead to invaluable goods like coins and extra lives. Yes, Youngblood's taken a very old-school approach to its life system. You and your partner share a life pool, so if one of you go✃es down, you both pay for it. Coupled with the downed-but-revivable state, this makes for some intense and hilarious "oh hell, get over here" moments. I may or may not have died to the same flamethrower-equipped Nazi twice in a matter of seconds. Sorry, Chris. 

Helpfully, co-op is smartly tuned to ensure nobody gets left behind. Not only is each player's loot instanced, so are their difficulty levels. You can play on easy while your friend plays on hard, which is great not only because it makes Youngblood more accessible, but because it offsets the game's host-driven level system. To some extent, enemies scale up with you as you level up, and the level of a session's enemies is determined by the host's level. Thanks 🌠to the local difficulty system, if you want to play with a friend but they've flown past you in XP, you can let them host while you play on easy, or you can host and they can play on hard. It's not a perfect system, but it should make the average co-op session more fun for everyone. 

I didn't get to see as much of Youngblood as I would have liked, which is kind of encouraging in a way. I wanted to see more, not because I wasn't sure if I like it, but because I definitely do and I had questions to ask. It's more Wolfenstein right down to its Nazi-killing bone marrow, which is fun and all, but it's Youngblood newness that most excites me. Can co-op, tough teenage girls, ✨RPG elements, and a Dishonored-flavored world carry the torch of one of the finest modern first-person shooters? Yeah, I think so. 

Wolfenstein: Youngblood will be ou🌱t on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch on July 26. 

Now that PlayStation VR is with us, it’s interesting to note that the opposite seems to be the case. If it’s games you’re looking for there’s a healthy 🙈selection to choose 🍸from, but if you fancy something different, things are still looking a little barren.

Don’t get me wrong: what’s there is great. Watching 360-degree videos on YouTube is fun, and the free short story Allumette is still easily one of my favour✃ite PS VR experiences to date, acting out an entire beꦅautifully animated play right in front of your eyes.

But with the headset’s first anniversary approaching, there could be so much more on there. Other VR systems have a special Netflix app that lets you watch films on a big TV in a virtual log cabin, or an app that sits you in a proper cinema while you watch your saved video files: I’d kill to 💃have that on PS4 too rather than just the big floating screen you get when you view non-VR content.

How about a painting app where you use the PlayStat🍨ion Move co🍸ntrollers to paint things in front of your eyes? Or a tourism app that lets you wander around foreign landmarks without having to leave your house? Google Earth VR is available on both major PC virtual reality headsets, so what’s the hold-up on PS4?

Obviously, since PS4 is a games console first and foremost it makes sense that the focus for PS VR’s first year has been on making a lot of great games. But I still find myself digging out my 🌠trusty Gear VR every now and then to walk around inside a Van Gogh painting or visit a neon sign museum in Las Vegas, and these are things I really wish I was doing on Sony’s headset instead. The core technology is there. Get on it, developers!

This article originally appeared in Official PlayStation Magazine. For more great PlayStation coverage, you can . And if you're looking at getting on board with PlayStation VR, we have all the best PlayStation VR deals you need. 

Update: Sadly, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:EA has closed Visceral, the main developer behind this project. EA apparently plans to reuse some of the unreleased game's assets in a future Star Wars project, so it isn't totally gone, but it is 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:effectively canceled. For posterity's sake, here's what♔ we knew about 💎the game before it got the ax.

Fast Facts

• Untitled Visceral Star Wars Game: Canceled
• Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC

Update: March 27 - Portal designer Kim Swift joins up, timeframe revealed

Portal designer Kim Swift has joined the alread🀅y-stellar lineup of developers working on the as-yet unnamed Star Wars project. She joins J🍌ade Raymond of new EA studio Motive, working alongside Amy Hennig's Visceral team on a brand new Star Wars game. Added together, that's some serious development pedigree. Be excited.

We also know that the game will be set between Revenge of the Sith 🔯and A New Hope. Why is this significant? Because it opens up loads of Han Solo-focussed possibilities, some of which we'll discuss below. Short version: if you want Uncharted, in the Star Wars universe, starring a rogue so loveable he makes Nathan Drake look like Albert Wesker, you need to start paying attention🍬 to this game. 

***Original article continues below***

We've known about developer Visceral Games' upcoming Star Wars 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:project for over three years now. Save for a tantalizing 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:concept trailer shown at E3 2016, this collaboration from the minds behind Assassin's Creed, Dead Space and Unch෴arted is still as mysterious as the sudden appearance and disappearanceﷺ of midichlorians from the Star Wars Sage.

We know that it's a third-person action game, and that it will be very like creative lead Amy Hennig's famous Uncharted games - Nolan North, seems suspiciously well informed, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:said so himself. We also know from the concept trailer that the main character will be visiting the Mos Eisley cantina from a New Hope and that the game appears to take pla𝓡ce during the reign of Palpatine's Empire and not contemporaneously with The Force Awakens.

Visceral Star Wars trailer is brief but full of information

The Visceral Star Wars game won't be out for well over a year but that didn't stop EA from showing early gameplay footage at E3 2016. While just a few seconds, we do see some vintage Star Wars iconography, including Star Destroyers, Imperial livery, the Rebel Alliance insignia, all on what appears to be Tattooine. For such a remote planet, one that's apparently so remote that it can be entirely controlled by 𒅌a mob boss ♈who's little more than a blob with eyes, Tattooine sure does see a lot of action.

The Visceral Star Wars release date is 2018

We've still got a while to wait - the Visceral Star Wars game won't be with us until 2018. Although that's a pretty significant date: the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Han Solo movie is set for release in May 2018 too, so it's reasonable to expect some alignment. Combine that with the obvious Uncharted link, and the pre-New Hope timeframe, and it ꦿall points to a particular, loveable space rogue. Because Nathan Drake is basically a history-thieving Han Solo already, right?

The Visceral Star Wars game may be an open-world

Open-world gameplay in the Star Wars universe carries huge potential. It could mean that we have free rein on a single planet, like what the cancelled Star Wars 1313 was going to feature, or we could be talking about an entire galaxy t🔜o explore. We'd much prefer the latter. This is Star Wars after all, and it doesn't get any more Star Wars than space flight and escaping Star Destroyers with♚ a jump to lightspeed. 

The rumor that the game takes place in a ope🧔n-world environment comes from  seeking applicants with a passion for the Star Wars franchise to work on a open-world game. Because we&♕apos;re extrapolating gameplay features from job postings, you should take the purported open-world setting with a grain of salt but given EA's propensity for making single-player games in open worlds a la Mirror's Edge Catalyst, it's not unlikely.  

Visceral Star Wars is not Star Wars 1313

When Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, its video game studio Lucasarts died in the process. The house behind Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and classic adventure games like Grim Fandango had been all but shuttered by the time it closed anyway, working on one last big game in an effort to stay a going concern: 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Star Wars 1313. Demoed at E3 2012 and targeted for PS4 and Xbox One before 🧔those systems had been officially named, Star Wars 1313 was a♌ third-person action game set on the city planet Coruscant and at one point starred Boba Fett. Lucasarts was shuttered and . When EA took over the Star Wars license, it announced it would only make original games even going so far as to, as detailed below, not make any film adaptations. So Visceral's game will not be Lucasarts' lost game.

The concept of Star Wars 1313 may live on, though. Kathleen Kennedy, the head of Lucasfilm, that the company loves the concept art and work done on Star Wars 1313 and that none of that product🍌ion work is ever thrown away. 

Visceral Star Wars may be a Han Solo game, but it may also star new characters from the comic

Rumors of the game being centered on Han Solo all come from . Images of♏ the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo action figures, and cryptic tweets mentioning scoundrels have hit the internet. On top of that, there have been photos of a pirate flag featuring a stormtrooper helmet and crossbones, as pictured above.

There's also the fact that DIsney and Lucasfilm are making Han Solo a pillar of its reborn Star Wars film franchise. 澳洲幸运5开奖ꦯ号码历史查询:The Han Solo movie is due out in 🐓2018, the same year as Visceral's game, and it's already been billed as an origin story wherein he meets Chewbacca for the first time. Given that the E3 footage shows the Mos Eisley cantina, a known hang out of Solo, the game may at least involve an ap🏅pearance of everyone's favorite smuggler.

It may also star one character Han Solo's run into in Marvel's new Star Wars comics, the hilarious and thoroughly evil Doctor Aphra. Like a young, female Indiana Jones obsessed with acquiring dangerous technological artifacts rather than preserving them, Aphra first a👍ppeared as a hired ally of Darth Vader. In the brief E3 footage of Visceral's game, a silhouette that looks startlingly like Aphra can be seen. Marvel, Disney, and Lucasfilm have also announced a new ongoing Doctor Aphra comic.

Visceral Star Wars likely won't be a game tie-in to the Han Solo anthology movie

That said it won't necessarily be directly tied to the Han Solo movie, EA has stated that the future Star Wars games would be totally separate tales from the stories being told in the movies, comics, and books. So, do🍷n't expect the game to run through the upcoming movie scene-by-scene. 

Visceral Star Wars is developed by Uncharted creator Amy Hennig, Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond, and Gotham's Todd Stashwick are leading the project

Visceral Star Wars has a strong pedigree. Amy Hennig is the former lead writer of the Uncharted series, so you can thank her for your love of characters like Nathan Drake a𒆙nd ⛦Sully. Jade Raymond played a crucial role as the Executive Producer on the Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell series. Finally, Todd Stashwick is better known as a television actor in Batman prequel series Gotham as well as 12 Monkeys. He's  since transitioned to gaming and will be lending his writing chops to Visceral's Star Wars game. All have been responsible for some impressive projects, and it'll be interesting to see what they can do with the Star Wars license. 

Related Visceral Star Wars news

All the secrets hidden in that 8-second clip of Visceral's Star War💫s game 

EA previews upcoming ꦅStar Wars games - including Battlefront 2, more Old Republic, and Visceral&𒀰apos;s adventure

Battlefront 2 due 2017 with "new movie"🎃 content, Uncharted's director's Staℱr Wars game in 2018

Star Wars is the perfect place to mix creativity with commercial safe🐻ty. And EA seems to know it

Visceral Star Wars gam🦋e in 🀅'earliest concepting phase'  

EA's next Star Wars game could get a reveal at E3, going by a letter from Jade 🉐Raymond

Han Solo movie: Lando Calrissian, the fight for the Falcon, and everyt𒁏hi𓄧ng you need to know 

It’s easy to want to race to the finish line and demand that killer app, the Grand Theft Auto of VR that will instantly unlock the potential of virtual worlds. Instead we should embrace the long game and enjoy the ride. We’re at a unique moment in history when something truly different is on the horizon. Think back – we’ve not seen something this game-changing s🐼ince the leap from 2D to 3D, from SNES to PlayStation. So let it brew a little longer.

So what could PS VR evolve into? Well, I’d cast an envious eye over at Oculus Rift and the recently released Touch controllers. What if PS VR had controllers of that calibre? Contrꦏollers so sensitive even a raised thumb is acknowledged in the virtual world, instantly connecting you with a brave new polygonal paradise.

Now imagine such controllers on your feet, and a smaller headset that can mix VR and AR seamlessly. This could be the future of VR and PS VR, full-body controllers with a level of touch and fidelity that will not only place us in a virtual space, but also enable us to interact on a level where worlds merge; where our senses and idea of what is ﷽tactile are f🅷ully tested. To do this in PS VR would be a boon for the technology.

In fact, just as Sony pioneered the DVD and Blu-ray formats, could it do the same for VR? Could PS VR become the new standard? Possibly, but we need to give it time to evolve. True VR will be more than games, more than experiences, more than mov൩ies, animation, and music – it’ll be all this combined.

A totally new entertainment format, and maybe it’ll be down to Sony’s nex𝐆t PlayStation to deliver on the promise. For now, I’m just happy to be on the ground floor of ꦆthe Next Big Thing with a ticket to ride.

This article originally appeared in Official PlayStation Magazine. For more great PlayStation coverage, you can .

It's just been confirmed that Netflix is making a show based on The Witcher. You can rꦇead the full details , while I sit here pretending that we had something to do with it. Hurra🌸h!

***Original article continues below***

The sad truth is that most live-action movies based on video games are awful. There’s the occasional, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:reassuringly mediocre outlier, but generally: they suck. The news that Netflix is definitely making a show based on 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Castlevania and probably one on 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Assassin’s Creed, then, should fꦛill us with unutterable dread. But there’s a reason to be hopeful.

While it’s apparently impossible to condense a 10-hour game into a two-hour movie, an episodic TV show might work. With this in mind, we asked you, the noble GamesRadar+ audience, which games you want to see made into TV shows. Let’s put aside twisted memories of of Mortal Kombat: Konquest or King Koopa's Kool Kartoons, 𝓀and instead look at the games𒐪 that could actually work as TV shows.

Confirmed: The Witcher

“I would like to see CD Projekt Red do a Witcher series on Netflix.”
Brittany Dawn Mayben

Hold up. There’s already been a TV show and movie based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels. Strictly speaking it translates as The Hexer, but that’s still our Geralt. Don’t go rushing to find it, though: it’s in Polish, for one thing, but the bigger problem is that it’s slightly rubbish.

Good news, though! As stated above, Netflix has confirmed it's making a new series based on the saga, with Andrzej Sapkowski acting as creative con💙sultant. , “I’m thrilled that Netflix will be doing an adaptation of my stories, staying true to the source material and the themes that I have spent over thirty years writing.” There are plenty of reaso⭕ns to be excited. A smart, bigger budget reimagining could fill the gap left after Game of Thrones ends. The Witcher 3 nails the feeling of a exploring wartorn landscape better than any other game, and Geralt’s growling moral ambiguity is fascinating. Keep an eye on this one.

Bioshock

“Bioshock perhaps? ❤”  
Ariana Wolfy Pérez

This one could be great. A Bioshock show could fill in the narrative gaps left by the games, which have you racing past all the interesting stuff as you murder strangers using magic hand-bees. Combat is the most boring bit of every Bioshock game, and a TV show could slow it all down and add context and humanity. Imagine seeing Rapture turn from subaqueous utopia to a leaking, splicer infested nightmare? Or seeing a Westword-style examination of ideology and racial tensions in Columbia? There’s an argument that the💟se things 🌼are best left to the imagination, but a TV show would offer the perfect opportunity to explore the more cerebral aspects of a world we only see in passing. 

Resident Evil

“Resident evil TV series.. Please..😓😓”
Ruwan Tharindu Perera 

This one could go one of two ways. It could be a hilarious, campy disaster, channeling the macho preposterousness of the first game; or they could take it dead seriously and recreate the threatening undertones of Resident Evil 7. The second option could work amazingly well, even if Netflix has a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:shaky history with horror shows (I’m looking at you, Hemlock Grove). How could it work? Cut loose from the wretched films, give us a bright new character in the same mould as Claire Redfield, and explore the conspiratorial themes that all the Resi games touch on. The U🦩mbrella Corporation is a brilliant antagonist, and TV show could do them justice.

Mass Effect

“A Mass Effect or a Dragon Age show would be awesome. Games like these have way too much story to fit in a 2 and a half hour movie.”
Scott Wharton 

We’ve got fantasy well covered in The Witcher, so let’s tackle Mass Effect instead. The exploration of Andromeda would work brilliantly, but it’s been done. . The looming threat of the Reapers could also work, with a ragged bunch of al🌠iens and humans on the run from unstoppable space squid. But I’d argue that the first contact stuff is the thing to explore: the first trip through a Mass Relay, the war that follows, and the slow, confusing realisation that yes, you ✤can have sex with Turians. In fact, we could forget the war stuff entirely and make it a romantic soap opera instead. Guiding Lightyears? Dallas Effect? Perhaps not. 

Halo

“I'd love to see a show made entirely from the same tech Blur uses in games like Halo 2 Anniversary. Make a whole movie or show like a game's cinematics.”
Jonathan Parker 

The story is the worst bit of the Halo games, but there is promise there. Ditch the Little Shop of Horrors nonsense of Gravemind, and focus instead on the overwhelming power of the Covenant being held back by some brave marines, a seven-foot super soldier and a naked AI ghost. It could be thrilling. Heck, even the convoluted political stuff from Halo 2 could work. In the game, the stuff with the Arbiter fails because you never want to play anyone other than Master Chief. Why would you? But with the added context of a TV show, the idea of badass alien doing a face turn is pretty exhilarating. Yes, forcing two sworn enemies to work together is the tropiest thing imaginable, but it’s popular because it works. Add 343 ൩Guilty Spark for some comedy relief, and you have a probably-hit.  

Overwatch

“Overwatch... Don't tell me you didn't love the cinematic shorts.”
Jason Brown 

You know what? We do love the cinematic shorts. Overwatch is brilliant as it is, but there’s something empty about seeing such bright, likeable characters relentlessly murdering each other. And 🃏seeing as my petition for an Overwatch point-and-click adventure only has two signatures - thanks mum! - the best way to explore those characters is with an animated TV show. The shorts we’ve seen do a great job of fleshing ou⛎t Overwatch’s wonderful cast, so a series should narrow the focus and pick a few characters. I suggest Winston, because if watching a clever gorilla do science is wrong, I’d rather not be right. 

Kane and Lynch

“Kane and Lynch”
Anthony Powell 

Oh God. Seriously? Okay then. A series starring gaming’s least-likable double act in gaming could probably work - you’d just need to wash your eyes after every episode. How about an unflinching, cinéma-vérité examination of the criminal underworld they inhabit? There’s a bit of family baggage to explore, and interesting characters (even if they’re deeply, unquestionably detestable). It could escalate each week, with Kane and Lynch leaving a trail of murder, suicide and chaos in Shanghai, culminating with a bare-assed, blood-soaked chase through a wet market. Just remember to pixilate the🔴 soft bits, yeah? Or maybe the entire show. 

Providing players with the tools they need to collect and assemble objects in intriguing, motivating ways is an art form - and some techniques work far better than others. The core principles of satisfying crafting aren't obvious, but they're necessary to making this pervasive activity into a worthwhile endeavor instead of a tedious chore. Here are the rules all crafting metagames should adhere to, so that worthle𒅌ss junk can be elevated to worthwhile content.

1) Your resources should be malleable 

Part of crafting's appeal is the sense that you're using up a fin👍ite resource. Otherwise, without some limitations to the quality and quantity of what you can create, crafting would obliterate game balance and u🀅ltimately feel like a cheat code. But it's equally unfulfilling to feel like your crafting materials are just useless junk taking up inventory space, without any way for you to put them towards something advantageous. That's when destruction becomes a means to creation: breaking down unwanted items for materials that make up those things that do appeal to you.

Consolidating your inventory in this way needs to be a tangible benefit, rather than a drop in the bucket of a needlessly stingy system. Prey takes all that seemingly useless junk you've been compulsively collecting around the Talos 1 - pouches of medical waste, petri dish samples, discarded banana peels - and lets you convert superfluous garbage into potentially life-saving greatness with the handy Recycler machine (which also gets points for spitting out delightful, gumball-like orbs to represent the essence of deconstructed items). Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls and Nioh let you break down just about any item into reagents for tweaking variab🃏les on your best gear, rather than forcing you to joylessly remake it all from scratch if you don't love the final product.

For an example of what not to do, look at games like Team Fortress 2 and Hearthstone, which taint the concept of flexible resources by siphoning o♔ut massive amounts of va♊lue from your items whenever you break them down. Grinding your items down to dust ought to feel like a step in the right direction, rather than a painful loss.

2) Gathering materials should reinforce a game's best features 

The chance to earn extra crafting materials can make the best parts of a game more enticing. in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, snagging an elusive ingredient for your next cooking recipe could involve scrambling up a mountain or sneaking past a large pack of Bokoblins, reinforcing the skills you'll need to succeed throughout your entire adventure. And the cheery, suitably brief jingle-jangle that accompanies the actual act of cooking is sure to go down in the Zelda pantheon of catchy little melodies that feel like rewards in and of themselves. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Fallout 4 is centered on exploration and combat, ꦍand its crafting system reinforces both. All the various knick-knacks littering the landscape are an incentive for you to explore a bit farther (and more thoroughly) than you might otherwise, and you're encouraged to engage in shootouts if only to collect the arms and armor of defeated enemies.

Several role-playing games follow a similar style. The grind in a JRPG doesn't feel so tedious when you're being showered with craftable trinkets after every fight. The endless countrysides of Witcher and Dragon Age: Inquisition don't feel quite so empty when you're constantly rolling up on herbs and flowers to pick. And when the things you're crafting allow you to e𝐆xplore new areas, chaᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚllenge stronger enemies, and receive even greater materials, the whole cycle creates a satisfying feedback loop that can keep you invested in a game for a long time.

3) Don't waste time with pointless extra steps 

The time it takes to craft items - whether in-game time or real-time - can split the difference between fun and migraine-inducing rage. Crafting is typically instantaneous: you gather some herbs, push a button, and out pops a shiny new potion. But consider Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, an excellent game save for its ൲tedious crafting. All items, from finished weapons to individual ingredients, must be made one at a time. High-level ingredients therefore need a ton of prep-time, and the poorly designed menus prevent you from finishing this busywork swiftly. Ultimately, this means items that should take seconds can eat up a fifteen minutes or more of your playtime.

Another easy way to confuse players - and in turn, prolong the time it takes for them to accomplish their crafting goals - is to obfuscate the creation process with needless extra steps. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a recent - and major - offender in this regard. You first need to scan objects in its universe to unlock Research plans from three separate trees, then gather materials needed for Development to actually get any of that new loot into your inventory. As if that weren't convoluted enough, the cluttered interface in the crafting menu - along with all the potential variables you can tweak (many of which can render the crafted weapon worthless) - turn the entire process of R&D into a massive headache that most players will gladly skip so they can purs💙ue something of genuine interest rather than a tedious timesink.

But when handled correctly, a delay in your crafting order can add excitement and anticipation to the process. Look at XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The most powerful items you can make - from drones to power armor - take days or weeks of in-game time to fabricate. Because XCOM is a tough game, chances are you'll suffer some setbacks during that time - such as your entire squad being killed by horrible aliens. The promise of new, better equipment is the carrot-on-a-stick you'll need to press on through those dark times towards greater victories. And because the risk and rewar♔d of these lengthy craft times is made clear, you always have a definitive understanding of what you're getting into with each new item. It's ok for crafting to be a multi-step process, and that little extra wait can sweeten the final payoff, but players should never feel like their time is being wasted or disrespected.

4) Leave some room for players to discover their own methods

Crafting recipes can go one of two ways: either they're explicitly spelled out, as in Prey and Fallout 4, or you're afforded some freedom to discover how to make things on your own. Both approaches have merit, but the latter has the potential to blossom into someone's primary motivation for playing a game. That's part of what makes Minecraft and Don't Starve so enduring: the ingeniously simpไle, intuitive crafting grid is fuel for the imagination, letting you experiment to your heart's content in the pursuit of logically laid-out reci⛄pes.

Sure, you can just look it all up online if you want to take the direct approach - but having that creative space to mess around in enriches the experience that much more. Or take the Atelier games, the JRPG series that revolves around alchemical crafting. Synthesizing items relies on fixed recipes, but there are dozens of variables to manipulate, including elemental infusions, and the order you mix the ingredients. When you finally stumble upon the ultimate method, it's like discovering the formula to curing cancer. Ok, maybe it's not that exhilarating, but you get the idea.

5) Creation should be a carefully considered choice

When the question of what to do with all your crafting materials is consistently obvious, boredom is the inevitable result. If one item is clearly a better choice over all the others, those inferior options may as well not exist, turning the act of crafting into a mundane routine of mind﷽lessly converting X into Y. Rather, your choice to craft should be the pursuit of a preferred specialty, or an expenditure of resources for one benefit that deprives you of another, equally viable opportunity.

The former is exemplified in MMOs like World of Warcraft and EVE Online, where no one player can hope to build everything they could ever want on their own. Your choice of crafting mastery becomes part of your reputation, distinguishing you from those who chose other paths with their own unique rewards. And in games like The Last of Us, your crafting resources all go towards items that could easily save your life, depending on the situation. You're constantly having to weigh the advantages and try to predict what you'll want most, like whether that Alcohol and Rag combo should provide the offense of a molotov cocktail or the defense of a restorative health kit. There&apo𓆏s;s no one 'right' answer, and that's what makes it interesting. 

6) Crafting should change how you play the game

When all's said and done, the fruits of your labor should change how you play the game. Without this sort of meaningful reward, the entire crafting process is rendered pointless. Persona is a great example of an en🦩tire franchise built on item crafting - only the "items" are spirits and demons. Everything you do in these games results in molding your Persona into a better weapon, whether by combining it with other Personas or utilizing skill cards to alter their abilities. Th💖rough careful refinement, you can fabricate the perfect pseudo-religious entity for your lineup.

Final Fantasy X is a more conventional example of crafting meaningful rewards. Here you're not forging new weapons, but modifying existing ones with new abilities. Being ♒able to infuse "Piercing" or "Zombietouch" into a sword can open up different tactics and strategies for you in battle, which in turn encourages you to explore the game's mechanics further. Games whose crafting only provides marginal improvements over base materials - "arrow" vs "arrow +1" - are missing a valuable opportunity to let you flex your strategic muscles and develop your own strategies.

7) Randomness should be used sparingly

Randomness is rarely handled well when it comes to crafting. The first Witcher game takes an interesting approach to randomness in its potion-making system. At first, brewi𝐆ng potions is a complex and seemingly unpredictable process. You can make multiple vials of the sameꦦ potion, only to discover that each one has a slightly different effect. Gradually, as you learn more about the ins-and-outs of the Witcher universe, you deduce that these discrepancies are due to which ingredients you use (among other things). Knowing this, you can mitigate this randomness to get exactly the type of potion you want, or lean into the uncertainty to discover new recipes.

Sadly, The Witcher is a rare exception here. I hate to dump on this game so much, but Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together once again demonstrates what NOT to do in your crafting system. Here, randomness is handled in the most ham-fisted way possible: everything you craft has a chance to fail. This means all the time and 🎉resources you poured into crafting this item so far are simply wasted. What's even better is that you can negate this risk by saving t🀅he game before each crafting attempt, and reloading if it fails, thus further exacerbating the process to comedic proportions. At least, it might be funny if it wasn't so infuriating.

The next game in the series, New Danganronpa V3, will bring back the Phoenix Wright-esque murder-mystery setting Danganronpa has become synonymous with, but will also focus on a brand new story and setting - one Spike Chunsoft says will be disconnected from the tale it began in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

Shifting mediums to tell a side story isn’t uncommon in the games industry. Developers of serieಌs such as Mass Effect, Uncharted, and Halo have used media like comics, novels, and films to show different sides of their respective universes. Even this year, Blizzard is using animated shorts and comics to expand upo🌱n Overwatch’s story almost exclusively, as the team-based shooter setup the game provides doesn’t support a lot of the tales that the company wants to tell. However, Spike Chunsoft’s decision to make the grand finale of Danganronpa’s story an anime is a bold move for the company, as it underlines a problem that video games often struggle with when it comes to unfolding their narrative compared to other mediums: gameplay can act as a restriction to narrative just as much as it can add to it.

For the uninitiated,🌞 the first Danganronpa game revolves around 15 high school students trapped in a school called Hope’s Peak Academy. This prestigious institution is for the best of the best, as everyone who attends is considered the “Ultimate” in their field. This means players will meet characters like the Ultimate Baseball Star, Ultimate Programmer, and the Ultimate Martial Artist. But as Makoto Naegi, the randomly-chosen Ultimate Lucky Student, players find their school life cut short as they and their classmates are locked within Hope’s Peak by an animatronic bear called Monokuma. This devious bear informs the group they will be forced to live within Hope’s Peak for the rest of their lives, cut off from the outside world. However, Monokuma gives these kids another option: kill one of your classmates and avoid being discovered by the survivors in a class trial, you’re free to go, leaving the rest of your classmates to be executed as you make your escape.

As Makoto, the player is forced to investigate se🥂veral murders of their peers, and this means the moment-to-moment gameplay of Danganronpa is one part visual novel, another part point-and-click adventure, and a final part rhythm and puzzle-based class trials where they must use evidence they’ve gathered to unmask the killer.

Danganronpa’s premise is deceptively simple, but while the actual setup of Monokuma’s killing game seems rather straightforward, the events that led to it are far more elaborate, and are laid before the plaꦬyer in 🐟the first game’s final hours.

✱Outside the walls of Hope’s Peak Academy, Danganronpa’s world has been laid to ruin by an anarchy-driven group called Ultimate Despair. These people, under the charismatic influence of the game’s mastermind, have spread an ideology rooted in destruction and social unrest. While the movement began within Hope’s Peak Academy, the school was repurposed into a shelter in order to🀅 protect the remaining students, only to become a prison and stage for the killing game and Danganronpa’s many mysteries.

The original murder-mystery setup that helped the first game be the success it was has become increasingly difficult to make possible in its setting without undermining the integrity of the story it’s trying to tell. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despܫair managed to recreate this scenario and make way for the gameplay that followed, but it had to stage its killing gamꦆe on an island inside a virtual reality simulation to do it. The reasons for such a twist are explained in the context of the Hope’s Peak story, but it still had to separate itself from the reality of Danganronpa’s world in order to remake the same set up, so much so that it’s even questionable whether Danganronpa 2 takes place in the original game’s timeline for a fair amount of its run.

As a video game, a third Danganronpa visual novel would come bearing a great deal of expectation to be this same kind of murder mystery with recognizable investigation and puzzle mechanics. Players may go into it expecting a very specific gameplay mold, but it’s hard to imagine a way for the series to recreate this expected gameplay loop and still make it possible within the confines of the world it has established. Danganronpa 2’s ability to fit this template faced this same challenge, and while it made for compelling mysteries, it proved that recreating the same concepts within the original game’s world was an 🃏elaborate undertaking for Spike Chunsoft.

An animated series doesn’t carry these expectations; it merely has to wrap up loose ends and bring about a conclusion to the story that isn’t married to a particular story structure for the sake of gameplay. Interactivity can serve as a storytelling device that allows video games to tell stories other mediums can’t, but it also means a writer may be beholden to level design or mechanics. Ultimately, if Danganronpa’s story has exhausted its potential to manufacture the set up players want, what better ෴way to conclude the story of Hope’s Peak Academy than with a medium that is under no obligation to entertain someone through interactivity?

This is why Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak Academy exists in the animated form it does. Not only does it effectively bring closure to the story of Makoto and Hope’s Peak Academy, now that it’s complete New Da🦩💛nganronpa V3 is free to pick up the murder mystery with no restraints, as it can now create its own mysteries no longer trapped within the confines of what happened in Hope’s Peak Academy.

The interactivity of video games has helped the medium tell great stories that would have likely been fundamentally different without it, but it can also corner a writer into writing to creat🌺e compelling gameplay rather than the story they may be looking to tell. By🐟 stepping out of the medium in its final act, Danganronpa found a way to severe its ties to the gameplay and story structure that helped it originally succeed, closing the doors of Hope’s Peak Academy in perhaps the most authentic and satisfying way possible.

Not every game on this list is truly great - some only limp past "good" in the technical sense, but there's more to gaming than being the most technologically advanced or smoothest playing. Some of the greatest innovation comes from  places in games that typically go overlooked. This is a chance to  honor the last generation of games that were lost in the shuffle, eternally bound to a backlog entry that will never move, the🅘 lost PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, PSP, and Nintendo DS games that didn't get their proper due the first time around.

Alice: Madness Returns

American McGees Alice put a dark and bloody spin on the classic Lewis Carroll fairy tale, and while it was met with great fanfare back then, nearly nine years had passed until we were able to once again venture into McGees horrific take on Wonderland. The wait turned out to be worth it, thankfully, as 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Madness Returns is a dark and twisted story that will be the cause of a lot of long, cold 💖showers at the end of it.

This time, Alice is of sounder mind, so she bounces back and forth between the real world and her Wonderland try♕ing to figure out how to fix things. The juxtaposition between real land and Wonderland is interesting, especially toward the end of the story when we learn who's behind all of the madness. However, the intriguing story is little positive buffer against repetitive gameplay and a sometimes too simple level design. If you can get past those imperfections, then Alice will be worthy of your time.

Crush

Few games are stranger than Crush, a 2007 puzzle platformer for the PSP. Were tasked with helping Danny cure insomnia by traveling th🦩rough his own mind, solving puzzles to collect his lost marbles and unlock memories. What appears to be another portable puzzler eventually reveals one o🌼f the most unique (at the time) features we've ever seen: the seamless ability to switch between 2D and 3D, crushing block in 3D views to make paths in 2D views. The results are impressive, but a steep learning curve keeps it from being ascendant.

If the learning curve can be conquered, the tale that Crush tells is a pretty interesting scenario. The journey through Danny's mind is one of anguish and anxiety; we see many key moments in his development that all serve as a cause for his illness. Eventually we even get to see his childhood, and thats when everything begins to make sense. It was never going to crush the competඣition, but Crush is a neat little puzzle game thats perfect for a long flight or car ride (as long as you're not driving, of course). If you don't have a PSP to check it out on, Crush was re-released on Nintendo 3DS with a completely new graphical style.

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Well before Alien: Isolation stormed PS4 and Xbox One, Creative Assembly proved it isn't just a house of strategy games with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Viking: Battle for Asgard. The bloody combat and vast open world support an interesting story of gods at war with one another, but many players were still too entrenched in Cyrodiil to even notice. Thats not to say Viking isn't without its issues, but its still worth trying out just to ꧂see how the house that Total War built can do in other genres.

Our problem with Viking is that its just too damn slow and empty for our tastes. Sure, the open world of the three islands is huge, but when theres nothing in those islands to explore, whats the point of exploration? Furthermore, our hero Skarin lumbers around with the agility of a pregnant cow, making traveling from mission to mission a chore. Its a shame really, because we do enjoy playing the missions when we fin💖ally get to them, but the in-between is a near-dealbreaker. If you have more patience than we do, we totally recommend Viking for its story and combat. Just have something to do while traveling ar𝐆ound the world.

Dead Head Fred

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Dead Head Fred embodies the weird heart in many PSP exclusives. Your hero, a decapitated detective in search of his 🅰stolen head, is merely one part of the game's off-the-wall creativity. Your arch rival is a crime boss. Your mentor is a mad scientist. You brawl hand-to-hand with zombies, usurping strange superpowers by screwing on their heads. In your spare time, you play pinball, learn the saxophone and raise mutant chickens. The reward for such refreshing inventiveness? Some of the sa💝ddest sales numbers for any game on any console.

Dark Sector

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Dark Sector feels a little like Gears of Resident Evil, but as everyone knows, giving your lead character a glaive goes a long way in elevating your game above its 🎉inspirations. Throwing that fr𒊎eaky disc blade in slow-motion, watching as it curves around poles and decapitates enemies, never grows old. 

Conan

Critics were rather unkind to the non-MMO Conan, with🌠 most reviews accusing it of being, well, stupid. What did you expect from a barbarian, guys? Enlightenment? This is an action-adventure about the original muscle-bound chunkhead. Conan delivered everything promised in the old pulp novels that spawned him: an avalanche of gore and an ocean of bare-chested men and women. Don't write off the combat as mindless, either. The formula doesn't stray far from superior titles like God of War and Devil May Cry, but Conan does sport incredibly tight controls and pleasurable fisticuffs.

Culdcept Saga

You're forgiven for thinking 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Culdcept Saga doesn't sound right for you. Fantasy-themed Monopoly where you protect your squares by summoning monsters to fight the enemy's monsters in collectible trading card battles? The only way this can get geekier is if you add in a dork in his bathrobe throwing marshmallows and squeakily shouting lightning bolt! So yes,🍰 you're forgiven - but you're also wrong. This game is fantastic. Give it an hour and Culdcept Saga will sink its insidious hooks in. Its only real problem is that CPU opponents will wipe the floor with you repeatedly until you learn to customize your deck, adding in the more powerful cards you win after each match. 

Hybrid

5th Cell, the studio behind Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life, is not the studio you'd expect to make a solid third-person shooter. Hybrid  is a ton of fun, though, taking standard cover-based shooting and literally turning it on its head. You can find cover on walls and ceilings while skirmishing with the opposing team. The only actions are being in cover, flying to the next cover, and shooting, but that basic formula c♎an grip you for hours. 

WWE All-Stars

Like Madden, NBA 2K, and other sports franchises, the annual WWE video game installments bring some new ideas to the ring, but more often than not the games end up being more of the same schtick. The video game equivalent of, say, John Cena. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:WWE All-Stars, a rare branch off from the core series, proves that shaking things up can absolutely work out thanks to its over-the-ꦬtop matches. The combatants in All-Stars are over-exaggerated walking muscles (more so than usual) and the in-ring action defies the rules of physics. The Big Show should NOT be able to jump 20 feet in the air before delivering a massive chokeslam, nor should Macho Man Randy Savage be able to touch the ceiling and perform flips in the air when dropping his ❀trademark elbow, but All-Stars makes both scenarios possible in the very best way.

Disney Guilty Party

If you've ever played Clue, you know the feeling that arises when you're about to figure out who the killer is and make your big reveal. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Disney Guilty Party is filled with moments like that, those light-bulb "A-ha!" feelings of pure gratification after figuring out an answer. These moments are scattered throughout a light-hearted, ca🐷rtoony whodunit adventure with a ton of characters to investigate. While there is a single-player mystery to solve, the big draw here is Party Mode, where up to four players can try and figure out the dastardly fiend behind the committed crimes. In any given playthrough, ꦫone of seventeen NPCs could be the one responsible, so our work is cut out for us from the get-go. Disney Guilty Party is Clue on steroids, and anyone who used to love the board game as a child should try and figure out the Guilty Party.

Blue Dragon

Does the name Hironobu Sakaguchi mean nothing? The man created Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy! He helped bring Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Xenogears and Parasite Eve to life. He is a videogaming legend. For some damn reason, that pedigree meant little for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Blue Dragon. Nobody played it and🌳 those that did disagree about its merits. If you're into the cutesy bobble-headed characters, though, you'll find a meaty old-school epic with lovable heroes, despicable villains, addictive leveling, memorable music and gorgeous Pixar-like v🌳isuals. Whats not to love?

Asura's Wrath

In 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Asura's Wrath, CyberConnect 2 made the Japanese equivalent of♍ Heavy Rain, an emotionally overwrought interactive movie that often took direct control of events away from the player in order to show them the most dramati💙cs sights possible. Unlike David Cage's games, though, Asura's Wrath leaned into video games' capacity to show you impossible things. A screaming anime man gets stabbed with a sword. Not unheard of. The sword here stretches from the moon to the surface of the earth. Now that's worth seeing.

Tony Hawk Proving Ground DS

By the ninth year of annual Tony Hawk's Pro Skater updates, the writing was on the wall. Gameplay was growing more and more indistinguishable, while the licensed pros were reduced to useless bit cameos in idiotic plots. The series was in desperate need of a breather. Heres the thing: the only thing that never sucked about Tony Hawk was the core gameplay. The only version of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Proving Ground that maintained that focus on play was also the worst selling DS🎃🌸 version. It was a little on the fugly side but it also trimmed the fat of its console siblings with zero analog Nail the Trick boredom.

Sid Meier's Civilization: Revolution

Fact: many gamers are turned off by the very notion of strategy. As such, many simply cast 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Civilization: Revolution as an exercise in boring spreadsheet management and moved on to the latest sci-fi or WWII shoote🏅r. In doing so, however, they missed what is probably the best and most accessible console implementation of turn-based strategy ever made. For an experience that was designed with keyboard and mouse in mind, Revolutions gamepad controls are still remarkably easy to learn. The bright colors and hypnotic music conjure a mesmerizing ambience in which the centuries drift by and your puny band of hunter-gatherers rise to military, economic or scientific dominance.

NBA Street Homecourt

The beauty of EAs Street franchise was that you didn't need to actually know anything about the sports you were playing. Rules were gleefully bended. Regulations were unapologetically broken. You could bounce balls off opponents heads, defy gravity by running up a wall or score multiple baskets within a single jump shot. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:NBA Street Homecourt, the last entry in the basketball series, opted for a slightly less show-off style, painting the sport with warm '70s nostalgia and casting the 𝐆celebrity players as younger, not-yet-famous versions of themselves. The moves and dunks were still ridiculously over-the-top, the🐓 multiplayer still endlessly entertaining and the art never looked better, but the lack of in-your-face xtremeness must have turned away a large part of the audience. Shame.

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise

Underneath its gorgeously bright visuals and kiddie-friendly, so-cute-I-want-to-choke-something exterior, the second Viva Pinata on 360 is a massive game. If you can manage to juggle all the various tasks keeping the pinatas getting along with one another, breeding baby pinatas, crafting new foods for them to eat in case it triggers a valuable mutation we don't need to tell you theres stupid depth here. It's like you start off playing Pokemon, but end up playing Civilization. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Trouble in Paradise had an extended co-op multiplayer mode, 28 new pinatas, new desert and snow environments, and the power to ꦏscan in new critters via the pinata vision camera.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Miles Edgeworth is admittedly not as personable as his longtime rival Phoenix Wright. He's stoic, matter-of-fact, and struggles to even crack a smile at times. Giving him his own game would then seem like a risk, but Capcom wisely decided to change up the format in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Ace Attorney Investig🌸ations: Miles Edgeworth , which put more of a focus on investigating crime scenes than battling in a courtroom, and ꦐthe result was▨ a fun new take on the series.

Condemned: Criminal Origins

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Condemned: Criminal Origins is tragically underplayed and we can't understand why. For a game that launched early in the generation, Condemned had everything you could want: horror (seriously, the game will scare the crap out of you), solid shooting, and an interesting story. If you're planning on going back and revisiting some games you may have missed from the seventh console generation, we suggest starting withꦫ Condemned: Criminal Origins. Then go play the sequel. That game makes you fight a psychotic bear. Seriously.

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon

The team behind the underrated the lovely, light Eternal Sonata (also on this list, how about) took a turn for the bruised and melancholic in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Fragile Dreams. This post-apocalyptic story follows Seto, a 15-yea𝐆r-old boy looking for other living humans after a catastrophe wipes out the entirety of humanity. Players help Seto traverse the wreckage, fight ghosts with limited-use weapons, and solve pu🐽zzles with his flashlight. It is one of the most haunting games in the Wii library.

Heavenly Sword

Third-person action, PlayStation exclusive. If we were to describe a game like that to you, we have little doubt that the words God of War or Infamous would be the first out of your mouths. Ninja Theory's 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Heavenly Sword should be a name synonymous with great PS exclusives, but its association with the PS3's troubled launch period has relegated it to B-tier status. The action is just as fierce, the story just as tragic, and the characters just as memorable as Kratos' many games, but it never connected with people in the same way. A lack of a proper sequel hurts (ahem) and developer Ninja Theory went on to make some very good games, includi🎃ng DmC: Devil Mayও Cry and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. The intensely mediocre Heavenly Sword animated movie failed to rekindle interest in making this a series, sadly.

Deadly Premonition

We don't like to throw the term cult hit around lightly, but 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Deadly Premonition earned that distinction more than any other game on this list. This quirky, Twin Peaks-style horror game looked and played like a broken PS2 game, yet anyone who tried it fell in love with the weirdness of it all. Swery65, th🗹e game's mastermind, now runs his own studio and Deadly Premonition has been re-released on multiple platforms to keep its cult growing even if it remains small. 

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

The Nintendo DS gained a reputation for being a terrific s꧙ystem for RPGs, as many a famous series saw some kind of portable release during the DS' lifespan. It took six long years for Nintendo to jump on the bandwagon, but in 2010 the Golden Sun rose again and fans jumped right back into the world of Psynergy and Alchemy. Set thirty years in the future, this sequel turned some people off by not directly continuing the story of the Game Boy Advance𒁏 games. The new characters and 3D presentation may have been questionable choices, but the story and play were still as charming and strategically thorny as ever.

Eternal Sonata

Heres an interesting idea for an RPG: set it within Polish composer Chopin's dreams as he lies on his deathbed. Here's another: infuse the adventure with musical elements, in battle and in exploration. Another: have the battle between actual physical light and darkness inspire the games combat system. Crazy, no? Well, we prefer the word inspired. Originality often goes unrewarded, however, and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Eternal Sonata sold in scant numbers on both Xbox 360 and PS3. Anyone looking for a gorgeous, liܫght role-playing game will be well served by checkin🃏g it out today.

Suikoden Tierkreis

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Suikoden Tierkreis hit DS in 2009, bringing most of what we loved about Konami's RPG series with it. 108 characters to unlock, an gorgeous musical score, and a massive world to traverse, Tierkreis is one of the deepest and most enjoyable RPGs on a system filled with them. It did bring changes to the Suikoden formula, though, 🦄with a wildly different art style and exploration structure. Sadly it also marked the end of the franchise.

Folklore

With Pokemoning and Monster Hunting still all the rage, we wonder why Folklore didn't kick up a little more dust. It may not have been the PS3-justifyinig RPG it was first billed as, but the lush art design and creature capturing play is one-of-a-kind. Your only weapons are your ♌enemies. You must murder over a hundred beasties, or Folks, and siphon their souls to harness their unique abilities. Coolest of all, the hyper-gimmicky SIXAXIS enabled you to jerk back on the controller to rip the mons꧃ters spirits from their still-beating carcasses in a way that was deliciously Ghostbusters-esque.

House of the Dead: Overkill

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The House of the Dead: Overkill, a brilliant, blood-soaked satire of zombie games and movies, debuted on the platform where people were least likely to be looking for violent comedies: the family-first Nintendo Wii. Even after a port to PS4 and Xbox 360, though, Overkill remains widely underplayed. That's criminal. Agent Washington's potty mouth, Varla Guns' impossibly sexy shotgun reload, an impeccably executed send-up of grindhouse horror and one of the most disgusting, funniest endings in gaming history; Overkill is a tr♒easure.

Jeanne d'Arc

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Jeanne d'Arc isn&apos💦;t sure what it wants to be. On the one hand, it's a fantasy-laden RPG with demons to slay and magic to wield. On the other, the game borrows legitimate historical facts about the real Joan of Arc, becoming a history lesson at certain points. There aren't many games that can tip-toe the line between historical accuracy and outlandish fantasy the way Jeanne d'Arc does, and in doing so Level-5 created a fun little game for the PSP. With Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics (the genre's titans) already on the system, it's understandable why some may have passed Jeanne d'Arc right by. The attention to detail and the grand fights warrant a second look.

Lost Winds

WiiWare never really took off - most people who bought the system bought it for fancy Nintendo games, and the s𓆏ystem's limited storage made downloadable indies a chore to purchase. The criminally unrecognized Lost Winds was the best of those indies. It took full advantage of the system's motion controls to create a an elegant puzzle platformer. With Nintendo consoles still supporting motion controls, it would be wonderful to see Lost Winds return on a Nintendo ma𓃲chine capable of HD output.

Kirby Canvas Curse

How is the best Kirby adventure on Nintendo's handheld also the worst selling? 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Canvas Curse had captivating music, sparkling visuals and addictive touch play; in fact it was one of the first games to really capture how powerful touch controls could be. Kirby🌼's ceaseless roller-coaster momentum born of tracing rainbows with your stylus is just delightful♌. Inferior (though still fun) follow-ups, Squeak Squad and Super Star Ultra found far more players on DS. At least it got a claymation sequel in Kirby and the Rainbow Curse on Wii U.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine

When we think of Warhammer games, we think of huge real-time strategy battles with hundreds of characters filling our screens at one time. We don't think of a third-person action shooter following the exploits of one particular Space Marine. Yet when THQ tried to mix up the formula with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Space Marine, it largely succeeded. It may not have felt like Warhammer, but it did feel good. Released into a veritable sea of third-person shooters, Space Marine didn't connect with action or strategy fans. If you missed it the first time around, it's available 💫cheap on Steam to this🌳 day.

Stuntman: Ignition

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Stuntman Ignition puts you in charge of every 180, ramp jump and expensive pyrotechnic that goes into the typical Hollywood blockbuster. And i🍒f you were turned off by the game's disappointing predecessor? Know that this sequel is a HUGE improvement. Production values have been heightened, gameplay variety has been expanded and the notorious difficulty has been rebalanced. Courses are now relatively forgiving, so you can complete challenges without adhering to a vicious line while some egomaniacal director barks orders at you. Stuntman: Ignition deserves better than the bargain bin status it was saddled with from the start.

Nier

How many games have you played with multiple endings that completely recontextualized the original playthrough's stor🥃y? How many games will literally erase your save file when you reach the true conclusion? How many games look like a bargain big cast off but have some of the most moving events in gaming history? How many games star a talking book who sounds like C-3PO is he were a snotty drunk? Nier's barren presentation and mediocre combat belied a soaring heart. While it was overlooked on PS3 and Xbox 360, its cult helped ♋earn it a sequel on PS4 and PC almost a decade later.

Little King's Story

While it seems like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Little King's Story is a cute, simplistic game, nothing could be further from the truth. There's a lot going on in this little kingdom, and virtually all of it falls on your shoulders. Through the king you must build up the kingdom, command the subjects to do your bidding,ꦺ and conquer other lands for  personal gain. All of this is done in a way that emulates games like Pikmin, and The Sims. The deep strategy was a poor fit for Story's cartoony presentation back when it came out on Wii, and while multiple re-releases on PC and PS Vita have tinkered with the art style to try and make it connect with a bigger audience, it's never found that momentum. For those that gave it a shot, though, they found an essential Wii experience.

The Club

While certainly not a tremendous game, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Club is a fun little bit of blood s♛port. The concept is simple: run through short levels as quickly as possible, killing waves of enemies in combos and thereby racking up as many points as possible. Its a neat concept, and a nice throwback to the sort of old arcade actio🅺n games that Sega itself specialized in way back in the day.

MadWorld

Nintendo fans complained about a lack of real games to play on the Wii. Yet when presented with a super stylish, hyper violent beat em-up throwback with high review scores, they ignored the damn thing. MadWorld never received the wild ador♋ation of Platinum Games' other early works like Bayonetta and Vanquish, nor does its motion-based gameplay reward the same sort of hardcore precision those games do꧂. But it's grotesque humor and distinctive black and white art have kept it feeling relevant years later. Seek this out rather than its terrible PS3/360 sequel Anarchy Reigns.

Mario Strikers Charged

To FIFA and PES players, Mario on the pitch probably sounded like sacrilege.   Nintendo fans knew, though: Charged was following up the already brilliant Strikers. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Mario Strikers Charged delivered; it's still an absolute hoot. Every charged power shot and character-specific special move is designed with satisfyingly tactical, risk-and-reward balance in mind, and motion-controlled goal-keeping means that skill can always beat super-ꦿpowered cheese. That's right𒆙. Even its motion controls feel great.

Splatterhouse

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Splatterhouseis not for the squeamish. It is for those player that think Evil Dead 2-style geysers of blood are absolutely hilarious. It is also for fans of things that are both𝔍 totally metal in spirit and actual metal since the soundtrack sports Lamb of God, Mastodon, and Five Finger Death Punch. The constant gore, puerile humor, and noise can be wearying - as can the drawn out boss fights with instant death on failure quick time events - but all in all Splatterhouse holds up. It's gaming's very own Troma movie.

Resonance of Fate

Tri-Ace is best known for Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile, but in 2010 they decided made one of the hardest, strangest turn-based JRPGs ever made: 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Resonance of Fate. Its hybrid of real-time and turn-based controls require hours of practice to master. As a result the long story and prolonged, sometimes repetitive fights can start to drag. Push through, though, and the strange mix of fantasy, gunplay acrobatics that make Equilibrium and John Wick look tame, and gorgeous character 🃏design overshadow its shortcomings.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King

In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, Square-Enix turned the RPG formula on its head by casting you not as an adventurer that sets out to save the kingdom, but the king that sends them out to 💙do it. It felt just right. You're able to upgrade your town, outfit your warriors, and send them into the unknown. 

Resistance 3

We remain confused by what happened with the Resistance franchise. The first two games sold a ton of copies, creating the first powerhouse PS3 exclusive franchise, but for whatever reason the third game never connected with people. Adding insult to injury, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Resistance 3 is the best of the series, a story-centric journey mixing the eccentric weapon juggling of the original with the narrative pacing of Half-Life. Even free of its🌳 predecessors, Resistance 3 is still absolutely worth playing. 

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:El Shaddai is an adaptation of a non-canonical book of the bible called the book of Enoch. The original is about Enoch, grandfather of Moses, ascending through multiple levels of heaven and dealing with nephilim, the offspring of angels breeding with men. The video game is sort of about the same thing! If Enoch were a fancy male model that can wield a neon battleth, the world looked like it was remodeled by Daft Punk, and conflicts with angels were settled with both combꦐat and Michael Jackson style dance offs. If all that sounds too weird to han🉐dle, it was for most people, but El Shaddai is a singular game worthy of anyone's time.

Sonic Generations

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Sonic Generations was not the series savior people thought it might be. A game that tapped into Sonic's entire history, mixing his vintage 2D highs with his more controversial 3D lows, could have been the magic elixir to win everyone's approval, whether or 🐽not they were among the Hedgehog faithful. The results were imperfect. The 2D sections of Sonic Generations are exactly what classic fans asked for. The 3D sections are, sadly, almost as troubled as they were all the way ♎back in Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast. The good far outweighs the bad in Generations, though, and it deserved a bigger audience than it got.

Retro Game Challenge

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Retro Game Challenge could have been a miserable attempt to trade on NES nostalgia. Rather than feel like a limp tie-in to a Japan-only comedy show, this DS collection create🌟d brand new games that actually captured the magic of the best games on Nintendo's console in the late '80s and early '90s. All those games are packaged in a loving conceit as well. You're a kid trapped i♉n the '80s and forced to overcome 8-bit challenges divvied out by the tyrannical head of the Retro Game Challenge TV show's host. Brilliant. It apparently sold in such catastrophically low numbers that XSEED couldn't even entertain the idea of localizing its superior sequel.

The World Ends With You

Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy remain the darlings of Square-Enix's Japanese line up, but this bizarre action RPG experiment is worthy of the same reverence. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The World Ends with You's story, unique dual-screen combat,🌠 and hip J-Pop soundtrack made a huge impact on everyone played it. Taking place in a strange purgatory where the underworld directly resembles the real life town of Shibuya in Japan, you must survive the Reapers Game where players (dead people in purgatory) must try to survive lest they be erased (removed from purgatory into what we assume is Hell). An excellent iOS port gave the gaꦏme a second shot, but the teased sequel at the end has never materialized. Heartbreaker.

Chromehounds

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Chromehounds is for serious mech fans. None of that silly Armored Core jump-jet stuff here - this is painstakingly careful, considered strategic combat between obsessively customized robotic war machines. Single matches of Chromehounds could take ages to play, and the drab, spare presentation did 💧nꩵothing to invite in new players let alone hold onto existing ones. For the community that gelled with the game's demands, though, Chromehounds was mana from heaven. Unfortunately its best feature, online matches, are no longer available.

Shadows of the Damned

Suda 51 made a name for himself with his exercises in stylized sex and violence. Lollipop Chainsaw, No More Heroes and Killer 7 all found healthy cult followings.  澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Shadows of the Damned, his collaborations with horror game icon Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil 4 fame and Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka, didn't even form a cult of devoted fans. It 💞tanked back on PS3 and Xbox 360, ending Grasshopper M𝔉anufacture's reportedly troubled relationship with EA. Seek out the game now, though, and it stands tall, a funny, strange tour through hell that plays a hell of a lot better than Mikami's own The Evil Within that came out on PS4 just a few years later.

Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Henry Hatsworth looked like the sort of kid game schlock that glutted the Nintendo DS. You would never know th💧at one of the most teetꦬh shatteringly difficult platformer action games hid beneath its cartoon facade. The game cleverly combined the best of both action and puzzle games with the top screen devoted to Mario-like action and the bottom screen saved for Tetris-like brain teasers. The interplay between the two made for frenetic activity that was totally  unique to the hardware that hosted it. The final boss fight, if you can even reach it, is one of the hardest ever.

Lost Odyssey

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Lost Odyssey is the last Final Fantasy game ever made by Hironobu Sakaguchi in everything but name. It's a lush, strange, melancholic turn-based RPG with music by Nobuo Uematsu and flowing art direction. It is, in effect, everything Final Fantasy fans let down by F🌜inal Fantasy XIII said they actually wanted, but few people played it. Part of the problem was that despite its modern presentation, Lost Odyssey clung to seriously old-school ideals. Battles were as drawn out and frequent as Final Fantasy 1's were back on the NES. Working through its rough edges let you bask in its strange story of immortals and their weird lives. Lost Odyssey was made backwards compatible on Xbox One, but a remake would be even better.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Imagine waking up with no idea where you are, only to look over and see your dead corpse lying on the groun🥂d. Then you realize you're a disembodied wisp in the sky, no longer living, able to possess objects around you. That's how Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective begins, and what follows is a quest to figure out who killed you through some of the best puzzle gameplay we've ever experienced. Using Sissel (the dead guy), you'll manipulate the environment in each level to manipulate what happens; knock things down, create platforms, and more in a series of video game Rube Goldberg devices. The Nintendo DS was already fading as a platform when Ghost Trick came out, and while it received an okay iOS port, it's still never found the Ace Attorney-sized audience it deserves.

Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

People thought Zack & Wiki was going to be yet another dumbed down game on Wii. They were wrong. Forget the cutesy swashbuckling art style - 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Zack & Wiki is a hardco﷽re puzzler at the core. More akin to LucasArts' old point-and-click adventure classics, Wiki confronts you with dozens of brain bending riddles complimented by some of the smartest, subtlest mot⛎ion control implementation in the Wii library. 

• The 15 rarest and most valuable Nintendo Wii games of all time

Cleaning out the Virtual Console fridge

The promise of the Virtual Console remains exhilarating even now, a legal, digital disp🐓ensary for games both famous and obscure from a litany of gaming hardware. Want to download Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES, the arcade version of Golden Axe, and a copy of Pokemon creator Game Freak’s Pulseman for Genesis (which costs hundreds of dollars if you can find it) all at the same time? You can… provided you still have space for it. The Wii may have had Nintendo’s best digital game selection--Wii U and 3DS have never been able to match its sheer selection and breadth--but it didn’t have the storage to serve it with just 512MB of internal memory. By the time original WiiWare games like Lost Winds and Mega Man 9 started arriving, downloading a single game meant you’d have to go through and delete almost everything installed. Nintendo itself described this as .  Eventually a new version of the Wii firmware let you play games straight from an SD card, but for years, extra storage could only be used to store games that would have to be reinstalled to the Wii’s internal drive. 

Friend Code-based online community and multiplayer

In a post-Snapchat world, the Friend Code seems impossible. So terrified was Nintendo of going online--thus opening them up to the perception that they were exposing children to the dangers of the internet--that they instituted one of the most arcane networking solutions ever in an entertainment device. In order to play games online, you have to get a unique 12-digit code on your machine, send it to a friend, then write down theirs and enter it in your machine. That’s for every single game. A Mario Kart Wii code is distinct from a Super Smash Bros. Brawl code. That’s in addition to exchanging basic Friend Codes so you can send each other Miis and messages. The Friend Code system isn’t welcome but it’s at least forgivable with portables like Nintendo DS because you can enter a code on the spot in person. With a console connected to your TV? The easiest way to exchange codes back in 2006 was on a forum or by email… which means you’re already talking to people on the damn internet, Nintendo. Awful.

Recalibrating Wii Motion Plus

When Satoru Iwata first showed off the Wii remote in 2005, long before we even got a look at a running Wii game, its potential was intoxicating. Imagine swinging Link’s sword with your arm! How young we were; no one knew that not only would the Wiimote’s limited gyroscope not be able to mimic movements precisely early on, exact motion controls aren’t fun outside of very specific games. Eventually the Wii Motion Plus, an add-on that plugged into the bottom of old remotes, and a Wii Remote Plus with the tech integrated right in gave us the 1-to-1 control we dreamed of in games like Wii Sports Resort. Except not really because while you could throw a dog a frisbee with the same arm motion as a doofy college kid playing Ultimate, the controller’s gyroscope would need to be reset just a minute later. This meant unstrapping the damn thing, setting it down on a flat surface, waiting for it to figure out what’s up or down, then starting all over again until the next recalibration. This is why people groan at the idea of replaying Zelda: Skyward Sword. Fi nattering on about dowsing rods? Not a problem. Having to put down the controller every ten minutes so Link’s sword actually works? Annoying.

Controller condoms

Nintendo has a fairly good track record with durability. The Nintendo DS and 3DS hinges can crack, disc drives can fail, but by and large their machines are built to last. The build quality of the Wii remote was never the flaw in its design--user stupidity was. Within a week of the Wii’s release, people across the land were complaining to Nintendo that they’d broken either their remotes or their televisions because they were whipping t♋he damn thing around like a blood lust-crazed viking. A revised version of the controller’s wrist strap wasn’t enough to stem the tide. Eventually all Wii Remotes came in a ribbed sleeve that looked like a loner from the Family Planning section of CVS. It also didn’t help with the Wii remote’s naturally sweat-inducing plastic surface, instead making it worse. Thanks, Nintendo. I always wanted to be gripping a wet, rubber cylinder while trying to play Cooking Mama.

Flimsy doors for Gamecube controller and memory card ports

Later versions of the Wii sadly lost one of the console’s best features: complete backwards compatibility with the Gamecube. Every game, every controller, and even those lovely bongos for Donkey Konꦛga plugged right into the console. Unfortunately, using the ports for plugging in those controllers and memory cards meant fidgeting with the fragile panel doors hiding them to maintain the Wii’s slick design. The Wii itself could take a beating and keep running, much like the Gamecube before it, but those panels snapped off all too easily. A small price to pay for all those sweet Super Smash Bros. Melee and Soul Calibur 2 tournaments.

That blinking blue light

The Wii was designed to be more than a gaming device, aiming to be an all-encompassing lifestyle machine. It had a weather channel! Fitness games! A way to send messages to friends along with a cute little doll version of yourself in the form of Miis! And had it been released in the year 2000 rather than in 2006 right before smartphones took over the world rendering all of its comparatively cumbersome lifestyle features moot, maybe it would have actually served those ambitions. Instead, the Wii felt like an anachronism almost immediately, and an irritating one at that because of how it alerted you to lifestyle updates. If you received a message from a friend or the Wii’s firmware needed to be updated, a stark blue LED light surrounding the disc drive would start pulsing. It wasn’t subtle. Walk into your living room at night after you received a Wii notice, and the LED lit up a darkened room like a sad, quiet rave. Someone at Nintendo probably thought it was super cool. It wasn’t.

Waggle in games that are perfect without waggle

Donkey Kong Country Returns was one of the last great Wii exclusives, a distinguished platformer on a console already glutted w🐭ith high quality games about running and jumping. Metroid Prime creator Retro Studios took the moribund series and made it their own with a sprawling campaign rife with artful set pieces. It was also hard, but ultimately way harder than it had to be. Like so many Wii games before it, motion controls were needlessly tacked onto Donkey Kong Country Returns, forcing you to shake the controller to perform essential maneuvers to pull off precision jumps. Motion controls being directly opposed to precision, this made playing Returns a crapshoot. What’s more, there was no option to turn them off. It was hardly alone, though. Skyward Sword, Metroid Other M, and even Super Mario Galaxy are just a few of the games that suffered from an insistence on using the Wii Remote’s signature feature even though it detracted from the game itself. A 3DS port of Returns yanked the motion controls out and ended up the definitive version of the game.

Looks crappy on HDTV even with component cables

Nintendo wasn’t necessarily wrong to release a game console built for standard definition televisions in 2006. Microsoft and Sony were chasing the HD dream with Xbox 360 and PS3, but the market for HD televisions simply wasn’t there yet. TVs that only output in 720p were prohibitively expensive at the time so serving people with a cheap game console that looks just right on a 4:3 CRT with progressive scan was just fine. At first. As the years went by and more people adopted HD televisions, they made the painful discovery: even with component cables outputting Wii games at 480p, they looked pretty fugly on a modern flatscreens. The component cables helped of course. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess looked like it was made out crumbled Fruit Loops connecte🦩d to an HD set using the Wii’s included composite cables so even the mild upgrade was welcome. Anyone with Google knew, though, that it didn’t have to be this way. The unofficial Dolphin emulator, created in 2003 to play Gamecube games on PC, was running Wii games by 2008 and showed off just how wonderful games like Super Mario Galaxy looked in 720p and up. 

You could put discs in upside down and it would let you

Wii couldn’t lord graphical or audio tech over its competitors, but it certainly trounced them in terms of industrial design. Where the Xbox 360 and PS3 were hefty blocks that dominated an entertainment cente⛄r, Wii was a sleek brick that could slot in almost anywhere. It even included a stand so it could be propped up vertically, swallowing game discs with noꦆ need for an ejectable tray. The disc slot, meanwhile, couldn’t sense whether your game was facing the right way so it was all too easy to slide that copy of Kirby’s Epic Yarn in backwards without realizing. The moment of ensuing panic--is my Wii broken, is the game scratched, what’s happening, oh god--quickly vanished, but it was still irksome.

The perception that Wii doesn’t have any great games

The accusation against Wii from from day one was that Wii didn’t hꦡave any real games, that it was all cash-ins like Carnival Games. Admittedly, there were literally hundreds of trashy cash-ins on Wii, but anyone who thought there weren’t fascinating games to play wasn’t looking hard enough. By the time Wii U came out in 2012, Wii had become a home for some of the wildest adventures and experiments around. Elegiac fantasies like Fragile Dreams sat next to crazy party games like Boom Blox right alongside gory satires like Platinum’s Madworld. Developers who came to Wii could afford to invest in strange ideas because development was so much cheaper than on the HD consoles where creative costs were bankrupting studios left and right. The unfortunate reality for creators working on Wii, though, was that no one was buying. Those parents who came on board for Wii Fit and Just Dance didn’t think to keep buying games like Zack & Wiki, while enthusiasts had already turned up their noses. Like the Gamecube before it, only a small, devoted audience actually turned out for the variety of unusual experiences on the device. While the developers weren’t always compensated properly, the audience certainly was.

Jump forward six y🃏e༒ars and, not even Sony’s slick PR department can cast a halo around PS Vita. The handheld fell way short of sales expectations early on and never recovered, spending its years being roundly trounced by Nintendo’s DS and 3DS assault. It turned out that, however well packaged the hardware, the ability to play big-budget console sized games on a portable just didn’t have much pull. PlayStation aficionados aside, Vita had been designed to solve a problem very few gamers actually had.

With the recently unveiled 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Nintendo Switch, history seems to be repeating. Switch is an undeniably well designed, flexible piece of hardware that enables you to take console games out on the road with you; from playing them on the plane or at a party, right through to (quite bizarr🐬ely) taking on your mates at Mario Kart in the back of the van. 

Switch’s simple click on, click off approach appears to offer a level of simplicity that’ll make taking Zelda with you while walking the dog almost second nature. It screams class, it screams invention, it sc🌜reams...well, you know where I’m going with this. Switch does have one big p⛦roblem, however. Beyond the friends I have for whom picking up any fresh Nintendo hardware is mandatory, I can’t actually think of anyone who would want one. 

Chances are anyone reading Gamesradar right now will be exactly the kind of person Switch is designed to target. However, that’s no measure o💫f success. A large portion of folks who visit this site will have also forked out for a Wii U - a console that, as it stands, has barely sold more units than the console Sega’s celebrated but ultimately ill-fated Dreamcast. 

If Switch is to be the kind of success Nintendo needs, it 🍌has to reach the gamers (and, indeed, non-gamers) it drew in like a magnet with the original Wii. To do that, Switch❀ needs to offer something that not only appeals to you, but to your Mum, your Dad and your Gran as well. If anyone can tell me hand on heart that Switch ticks all those boxes, then I’ll concede. 

As things stand, however, Nintendo is caught up within its own hype. It’s created an admittedly inventive console that focuses on showcasing the comp🍌any’s ingenuity and technical prowess over and above meeting the needs of any gamers beyond its core base. This is worrying. As Nintendo itself found out decades ago with Virtual Boy, just because something is technically possible doesn’t mean it’s commercially viable.

It’ll be easy come launch to think strong early sales means Switch has cracked it: however good or bad the system, Nintendo can always count on a good 10-20 million people trudging down to the shops and handing over their money. Getting beyond that figure is the real challenge, and something Wii was able to achieve by breaking down barriers: Nintendo’s Wii-mote enabled people who had never played games before to not only try them, but love th🔯em. It was about as close to a revolution as we’re ever likely to see in the world of gamesܫ.

Nintendo’s problem ever since, however, has been finding a way to take that new blood to t🎉he next step. Despite sharing the Wii brand, Wii U actually had very little in common with Nintendo’s barnstorming console and, similarly, Switch makes no attempt to take on Wii’s legacy either. There’s no ‘Wii-mote’ moment here: while the ability to take console games outside of the house is impressive on a technical level, it’s not a barrier that has kept millions away from gaming for decades.

Even more fundamentally, I think even Nintendo’s core base will eventually come to realise that big, expansive console games aren’t the ideal bedfellow for portable play. This is something the mobile games industry has spent the last decade coming to terms with. Commentators believed the launch of iPad back in 2010 would herald an era of console-sized games on a powerful piece of portable hardware. As developers discovered, however, the nature of playing games on the go means that mobile games have to deliver a meaningful experience every 30 seconds or so, because sometimes 30 seconds is all the people playing them have. 

That doesn’t mean the game itself can’t be a big, expansive prospect, but it does mean  developers ha💖ve to get a bit more creative with how they deliver it. If Nintendo fans are saying now that they can’t wait to play Zelda on the bus, trying catching up with them in six months time when they’ve missed their stop several times over because they were so engrossed with play. There’s an art to making games that fit playing on the go, and there’s every evidence Nintendo knows how to do it, but more than likely at the expense of games designed to be played at home. One or other will lose ou📖t, that’s a certainty.

That’s the crux of the issu🏅e with Nintendo’s Switch. Every time someone has utilised the technology available at th💝e time to offer the ‘golden ticket’ of console games you can play on the go, consumers have rejected it. 

Now, if anyone has a chance of breaking that pattern, it’s Nintendo, but until someone can highlight the leagues of everyday consumers who vowed never to buy another console until they could play it while isolating themselves from friends and family at a roof party, the idea that Switch is the next chapter in Nintendo’s success story is ultimately a hollow one. Just what Nintendo does if and when Switch fails to make its mark is the real debating point. Could a successful launch of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Super Mario Run be a sig💙n of better things to come? As commentators having been suggesting for decades, going multiplatform could yet be the real ‘switch’ Nintendo needs.

But for those of you who don’t understand the Red Dead hype or simply missed out on the original, we’re here to catch you up. 🍌Sure, there are spoilers ahead, but knowing how the story unfurls won’t rob you of the experience. And we can promise, Red Dead Redemption is quite the cowboy experience.

Wait… isn’t this the third Red Dead game?

Glad you asked, partner. Yes, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the third game in the franchise. However, t🌠he original Red Dead Revolver (released in 2004 for Xbox and PlayStation 2) doesn’t connect narratively to 2010’s Red Dead Redemption. If you’ve got a hankering to revisit Red Dead Revolver, it is available with some visual enhancements on PlayStation 4.

I changed my mind and don’t want to be spoiled. Where can I play Red Dead Redemption for myself?

You’ll n𝓀eed to rustle up an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. You can purchase it digitally for🌞 both. If you happen to have an Xbox One instead, you’ll be happy to know that you can saddle up thanks to the backward compatibility feature.

When and where does Red Dead Redemption take place?

Most of the game takes place in 1911. While the geography isn’t a perfect mirror of the real world, Red Dead Redemption takes place along🥃 the Rio Grande in Texas and Mexico, the deserts of Arizona, and the prairies of New Mexico and Arizona. You’ll have freedom to travel, hunt, and take on side missions acro🎐ss the expansive world.

Who am I playing? I'm the spotless hero in a grimy world, right?

♍Players step into the dusty boots of John Marston, who, like most Rockstar protagonists, has a dubious past that cꦫan’t easily be defined as “good” or “evil.”

Marston’s history as a bandit gang member is what lands him꧙ in hot water with the Bureau of Investigation. But even as he rode with his mentor Dutch van der Linde, Marston learned a code of honor. The gang robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, making them merry men on horseback.

While part of the gang, Marston met his wif🌜e Abigail. He 🐈leaves and settles down with her on a ranch, in the futile hope of leaving his past behind. The bucolic fantasy comes to an end when federal agents come knocking to demand John’s help in bringing his former compatriots to justice. Marston has no choice, with the safety of his wife and son the collateral for completing the job.

Along the way, we learn more about John through his interactions w♔ith other characters. He is loyal to his wife, even in the face of temptation. His views on racial equality are progressive, especially for the era. He treats others (especially women) politely, though he is not to be trifled with. 

It’s crucial to remember throughout the game that despite all the side activities, the brief stories that bring us in and out of minor characters’ lives, and the countless dead bodies, Marston👍 doesn’t relish his deeds. He takes mome🍃ntary pleasure from tracking down and hog tying a wanted man or helping herd cattle, sure. But more than anything, he wants to be home with his wife and young son.

Sa🅰dly, when he does complete his mission and makes it home, the story isn’t quite over. Edgar Ross, one of♛ the federal agents who conscripts Marston by kidnapping his family, completes his betrayal. John goes down in a hail of bullets, taking a number of Ross’ men with him (but not the instigator himself). His sacrifice, bursting out of the barn with guns blazing after sending Abigail and son Jack out the back on horseback, ensures that Ross will leave them alone.

If that’s where everything were to end, the story wo🍎uld be neatly wrapped up, with Marston walking the path back to the light. However, Rockstar doesn’t often go gently and the epilogue brings another kind of resolution.

Three years later, Jack Mar𓂃ston has grown into the spitting image of his father. Like a ghost, he stalks Edgar Ross to exact his revenge. On the shores of a river, the two face off, and the young man turns the blue water red with Ross’ blood. 

So, why is the next game called Red Dead Redemption 2 instead of Red Dead R______?

We don’t know why Rockstar chose to make this a numbered sequel instead of finding another “R” word for the title. This hints that perhaps the stories are connected. Spec💫ulation suggests that Red Dead Redemption 2 could pick up with the rest of Jack Marston’s story. Alternatively, it could be a p🌞requel, with the seven-member posse a glimpse back at John’s time in Dutch van der Linde’s gang.

The 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:first teaser does💃n’t reveal too much, unfortunately. We have a long time to go before Red Dead Redemption 2ꦛ arrives in Fall 2017, and we’ll certainly learn more along the way.

Firstly, it gives you something to look back on, like an old photo album. Except that all of the pictures of your ice cream-eating nan are swapped for your initial steps into Fallout 4’s Diamond City, or your introduction to Solid Snake’s D-Dog. The memory-jogging stimulus𒁃 provided by pictures prevents any sensation that the hours you’ve invested haꦉve been wasted.

Secondly, they can become testaments to ⛄your gaming skill – they’re visual records of incredible achievements. Capture the moment y✤ou vanquish Bloodborne’s Father Gascoigne into the ether or finally gain that hard-fought FIFA 16 league promotion and you can relive the glory, handing those PNG files down to offspring if so inclined.

And let’s not forget the best reason of all to take screenshots. The art reason. I’ve a habit of ignoring puzzles in The Witness to wander around wide-eyed on the hunt for decent frames and angles, reluctantly turning to maze-solving when I need to unlock new areas. Scouting scenes, then lining up elements into well-balanced compositions is a gratifying puzzle in itself – it’s virtual tourism in the purest sense, as I demonstrated using 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Uncharted 4's awesome Photo Mode.

But how to take a picture worthy of wallpaper when most games slap a view-stealing gun in your hand or smother you in a HUD? Improvise. There’s no conventional way to lower Bioshock Infinite’s weapons – unless, that is, you switch out your firearm and take a picture in the millisecond before your next one pops up. And pausing and unpausing to briefly banish interfaces works a charm in games such as Battlefield 4 (there’s also a small window of ‘selective focus’ here that applies pr𒉰etty background blur).

Character blocking the way? In Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Life Is Strange𒉰, I get around this by moving my avatar up against the wall and rotating the camera until they d🐻isappear. Taking pictures in games teaches the art of problem-solving.

It boosts a game’s lifespan, too. Batman: Arkham Knight’s running time doubled as I snapped landscapes of Gotham’s moody architecture from all angles before delving into fight challenges to get more lively portrait shots of heroes in full flow. I still return to Journey occasionally to cast an 🍰eagle eye over its pristine environment, and this is an experience four hours long at most. Multiplayer games prove toughest. Taking stunning sweeps of Destiny’s planets while hostiles attack feels a little like being a space-based war journalist, but when you finally get that winning snap,ꦍ it somehow looks even sweeter.

Best about all this, though, is learning a transferable skill. Core rules of game photography translate into the real world. You’ll want a central subject, and this could be an environmental structure, character or, if you like, explosion. Without a subject, your eye doesn’t know where to look, ꦿso the result is often vague and ill-defined. You’ll want foreground and background features to add depth. If shooting a distant mountain, for instance, get a tree iﷺn front of it. And it sounds obvious, but you’ll want everything to be level, balanced and in focus. More important than these general guidelines is a question only you can answer: does the screenshot look good? If so, nothing else matters.

Ben Griffin photographs games and real life alike, and one time a screenshot gallery of his reached number FOUR on Reddit’s front page. He was very excited. Confirm he’s not lying by viewing his collection of game and real life shots here: .

This article originally appeared in Official PlayStation Magazine. For more great PlayStation coverage, you can .

Who are the Luteces? 

The Lutece twiꦅns are, in fact, the same person. "What separates us now buꦐt a single chromosome?" asks Rosalind in a Voxophone found in Emporia. She was a physicist, and developed the technology that allows Columbia to float. During her experiments she met a male version of herself from another universe, Robert, whom she refers to as her 'brother'. Together, they're incredibly powerful, and able to travel between universes freely.

Initially, the Luteces were working for Comstock. They devised the plan to take Booker's daughter through another reality, under the pretence that he was 'selling' her to wipe away his gambling debts. But realising that Comstock's prophecy - "The Seed of the Prophet shall sit the thro🐬ne and drown in flame the mountains of man" - would come true, they turned against him. Booker is pulled into their universe and given a mission: find Elizabeth and take her away from Columbia, thus preventing a future in which she accepts Comstock's philosophy and becomes a tyrant.

Who's the dead guy in the lighthouse? 

After Booker is dropped off by the Luteces, he finds a dead man tied to a chair. He has a pillowcase pulled over his head, and appears to have been executed. It's clearly the work of a professional, and not just a random murder. On the floor below, a note signed 'C' is pinned to a map charting Columbia's movements:🌄 'Be prepared. He's on his way. You must stop him.'

The note was left by Comstock. He knew Booker, the 'False Shepherd', was on his way to Columbia, and instructed the lighthouse keeper (or an assassin posing as one) to stop him reaching the rocket. But the Luteces got there first and killed him, because they didn't want him interfering with their plans. Why was he killed so violently, though? And left out on display with a sign saying 'Don't disappoint us' hung around his neck? To show Booker that his employers mean bu♉siness, and not bringing them Elizabeth would have similarly grueso🌄me consequences.

Why do we hear contemporary music in 1912 Columbia? 

As you travel through the city, you often hear anachronistic music. A barbershop quartet on a flying barge singing The Beach Boys' God Only Knows (1966);𒊎 an organ grinder version of Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (1984) on Battleship Bay🎐's boardwalk; an old woman singing Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son (1969) in Shantytown; a blues version of Soft Cell's Tainted Love (1981) in the Graveyard Shift bar.

The answer to this mystery can be found in Emporia, in a building called Magical Melodies. You find a body lying on the floor surrounded by instruments, clutching a Voxophone. On it, the voice of Jeremiah Fink reveals that the man, a composer he calls the 'Mozart 𒁃of Columbia', has been hearing the music through the tears and copying it. Another clue can be found much earlier on the quartet's barge, on which a sign behind them reads: "Hear the music of tomorrow... today!"

How did Elizabeth get her powers? 

On Monument Island you find a Voxophone recorded by Rosalind Lutece titled 'The source of her power'. "What makes the girl different?" she muses. "I suspect is has less to do with what she is, and rather more what she is not. A small part of her remains fromꩵ where she came. It would seem the universe does not like its peas mixed with its porridge."

This 'small part' is Anna DeWitt's pinky finger, which is severed when she's pulled through the collapsing tear from Booker's reality to Comstock's. By being physically present in two places at🍃 once, Elizabeth is able to travel between, and open doors to, other universes. At first the full extent of her powers are stifled by the Siphon (more on that later), but when it's destroyed at the end of the game she finds herself able to open infinite doors to infini🌠te universes. 

Where did the Vigors come from? 

In the first BioShock we learn that biologist Brigid Tenenbaum created Plasmids - which have simi💖lar properties to Vigors - by extracting DNA-rewriting miracle-juice ADAM from sea slugs. In BioShock Infinite the origin of the Vigors, manufactured by Fink, is never explicitly revealed. But there's a cl𓆏ue to where they could have come from in the Magical Melodies Voxophone.

"These holes in the thin air continue to pay dividends," says Fink. "I know not which musician you borrow your notes from, but if he has half the genius of the biologist I now observe, well..." That biologist, presumably, being Tenenbaum. He may have been observing her work in Rapture through a tear, stealing her secrets, and using them to 💫develop his Vigors. In fact, it's likely that all of Fink's success is the result of this kind of multidimensional industrial espionage. 

Who, or what, is Songbird? 

Fink also created Songbird, and a Voxophone fꦐound in Finkton suggests that the technology for it also came from Rapture: namely, the Big Daddies. "These holes have shown me yet another wonder," he says. "They illuminatཧe a merger of machine and man that is somehow the lesser, yet the greater, of both parties. The process seems to be irreversible. Perhaps, though, Comstock will have some need of this kind of thing to keep watch in that tower of his." 

But who is the man inside the machine? 

An unlikely, but interesting, theory is that it's actually a Booker DeWitt from another universe, captured by Comstock and transformed into Songbird to act as Elizabeth's guardian. The creature exists to protect and care for Elizabeth - like a father. This may explain why it so a♒ggressively pursues anyone who tries to take her away. Far-fetched? Maybe, but remember that this is a game where you can fire crows from your hands. 

What's the significance of the lighthouses? 

The lighthouses are a visual representation - or perhaps a physical manifestation, depending on how you choose to interpret it - of Elizabeth's ability to travel between infinite worlds, unlocked when the Siphon is destroyed. "They're doors," she explains to Booker in the ending. "Doors to everywhere. They're a million, million worl✃ds. All different, all similar. Constants and variables. There's always a lighthouse, there's always a man, the💧re's always a city. I can see them through the doors. Sometimes something's different, yet the same."

In BioShock Infinite's universe, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is considered reality: the idea that all possible alternative futures and histories exist. Elizabeth's powers allow her to traverse these worlds, and the lighthouses are gateways to them. This 'sea of doors' (the title of the final chapter) may be a physical space, or a metaphysical one: an illusionꦜ created by Elizabeth to help Booker understand her new powers. 

How did Booker become Comstock? 

Booker DeWitt fought with the US Army in the infamous Wounded Knee Massacre, which left him mentally scarred. He later became an agent for the Pinkertons, but was fired for using 'extreme methods', as well as an escalating gambling and alcohol addiction. In 1912, a desperate DeWitt is approached by Robert Lutece, who offers him a chance to 'wipe away the debt' - by handing over his daughter, Anna. This leads tﷺo the events of BioShock Infinite.

But in another reality, Booker's life took a radically different turn. After Wounded Knee he's baptised in an attempt to wash away ওhis sins, and takes the name Zachary Hale Comstock to distance himself from his troubled past. He meets Rosalind Lutece, builds Columbia, and beco𓄧mes obsessed with the concept of a racially pure 'New Eden'. Columbia secedes from the United States and disappears into the clouds, with Comstock as its tyrannical ruler. 

Who is Preacher Witting? 

When Booker first arrives in Columbia, he has to accept a baptism from an old preacher to proceed into the city. This is the same priest who baptises him ♛after Wounded Knee, leading to him becoming Comstock. Why doesn't he recognise him, though? If you look closely at Witting's eyes in both the ending flashback and the welcome centre sequences, they're cloudy. Witting is blind. So when he dunks Booker in the water he doesn't realise who it is. Or does he?

Comstock knew Booker would come to the city eventually - it was all part of his great 'prophecy', after all. So maybe Witting was in on it, and that's why he seems to try and drown him. "That idiot priest needs to know the difference between baptising a man and drowning him." grunts Booker as he wakes up in the Garden of New Eden. But he doesn't kill Booker outright, so🥃 his motivations for holding his head under the water are unclear. 

Why did Comstock want Booker's daughter? 

It's revealed in a Voxophone recorded by Rosalind Lutece ('On the entropy of genes') that continued exposure to tears has rendered Comꦚstock infertile. "He seems to have been made sterile by simple exposure to our contraption," she says. "A theory: just as sexual reproduction can de-emphasise the traits of each pꦏarent, so goes the effect of multiple realities on our own. Your traits dissipate, until they become unrecognizable, or cease to exist."

Comstock is unable to have a daughter of his own, so he plots to take Booker's with help from the Luteces. Comstock names her Elizabeth, ﷺthe 'Seed of the Prophet', and keeps her locked away i𒐪n the tower, protected by Songbird. He's dying from cancer - another side effect of exposure to the tears - and he wants her to be his heir. "The Lord is calling me home," he reveals in a Voxophone. "I feel His love in every tumour, because they are the train which takes me to his station. And I go with joy, knowing that Elizabeth will take my place." 

Why doesn't Slate recognise Comstock? 

Cornelius Slate fought with Booker at Wounded Knee, and he torments him in the Hall of Heroes, but why doesn't he realise that Comstock and him are the same person? The answer lies in yet another Rosalind Lutece Voxophone. "The prophet is dying," she says. "The metastasis has aged him so quickly. Why does this Comstock𝐆 decay, while a Comstock in another world remain fit? If genetics are destiny, what accounts for the difference? Perhaps exposure to the contraption?"

Comstock is only 38 years old at the height of his rule in Columbia, but this suggests that exposure to the tears has accelerated his aging, giving him the appearance of a much older man. This is why Slate doesn't make the connection between the two. Early footage of BioShock Infinite showed a younger, clean cut Comstock, but this was likely changed to make it more believable tha🍃t people wouldn't notice the similarity between the two. 

What does the 'AD' mark on Booker's hand mean? 

The game opens with a quote from Rosalind Lutece's book, Barriers to Trans-Dimensional Travel: "The mind of the subject will desperately struggle to create memories where none exist." When we start the game, Booker has already tried, and failed, to rescue Elizabeth multiple times. This is revealed by the Lutece twins' cryptic dialogue ("He DOESN'T row."), the coin toss, and the dead man in the lighthouse, w💫ho presumably scuppered an earlier attempt.

Traveling between dimensions, it seems, distorts your memory. The brand on Booker's hand was self-inflicted, and stands for Anna DeWitt: a reminder of his daughter and his mission. Comstock's 'prophecy' (actually gleaned through tears) says that the person who bears the mark is the False Shepherd. He knows Booker is coming to Columbia to rescue Elizabeth, and this is a way for him to be alerted of his presence. When the police officer spots it the city is put on high alert, and Comstock throws an army 🦋at Booker to stop him reaching her in the tower. 

What was the purpose of the Siphon? 

Created by Rosalind Lutece, the Siphon is the device that allows people to open tears. It's through this that Comstock looked to the future to create his so-called prophecy. The machine was sabotaged by Fink after Comstock discovered the Luteces plan to send Elizabeth ba✃ck to Booker's universe, to stop her becoming his successor. Its destruction resulted in random tears opening all over Columbia, and trapped the Luꦯteces between universes. This is the reason they're so powerful, and able to skip between realities effortlessly.

The Siphon also served another purpose: 🦄limiting Elizabeth's powers. This is why she couldn't just escape her tower by opening a tear. When she opens the tear to Paris when you first see her, she seems to be struggling, as if she's using all of her energy. A gameplay mechanic that was dropped from the final game saw Eli✤zabeth becoming increasingly exhausted as she used her powers. It's only when Songbird destroys the Siphon that her full potential is unlocked. 

What really happened to Lady Comstock? 

The official story in Columbia is that Lady Comstock was murdered by the leader of the Vox Populi, Daisy Fitzroy. The truth, however, is that Comstock had her killed after she threatened to reveal the truth about where Elizabeth came from - information given to her by Rosalind Lutece. "Lady Comstock seems to believe the child is a result of some errant act of carnality between my🌊self and her beloved Prophet," she explains in a Voxophone ('Child of Silence'). "I told the poor woman the truth: that the child was a product of our little contraption."

Fitzroy was framed for the murder, demonising t🅰he Vox Populi, even though she once spoke fondly of Lady Comstock: "Days at Comstock House was simple," she explains ('A place in th♑e world'). "Hard work, sure - but simple. Lady Comstock even had a kind word now and then. Almost enough to make me think I had a place in their world."

What causes the nosebleeds? 

When a person's memories conflict as a result of shifting between realities, their nose bleeds.ও It comes back to what Rosalind Lutece wrote in her book: "[The mind will] struggle to create memories where none exist." Booker's nose bleeds when he comes into contact with Comstock because his brain is, subconsciously, trying to piece togethꦯer the memories of how he ended up there - even though no such memories exist.

It's a physical side effect of moving between universes. The brain, unable to link two realities, tries, and fails, to create new memories, causing the nosebleeds. This same conflict is what causes Chen Lin and the police officers you killed to act strangel🌄y when you jump through the tear Elizabeth opens in Finkton. "They're alive," she explains. "But they remember being dead." 

Why do we see an older Elizabeth attacking New York? 

This is the grim future that the Luteces are trying to prevent by hiring Booker to rescue Elizabeth. Without their intervention, she will grow up indoctrinated by Comstock's philosophy, and eventually become his successor when he succumbs to his illness. The end resu💜lt is Columbia attacking New York City in 1984 - the fulfillment of Comstock's 'prophecy' about the 'Seed of the Prophet... drowning in flame the mღountains of man.' Booker sees this reality for himself, where a much older Elizabeth, filled with regret, pleads with him to stop this from happening. 

Why attack New York? 

It's likely Comstock sees the famously multicultural city as the epitome of 'the Sodom below'; a den of sin that he wants to wipe from the Earth. "What is Columbia if not another ark for another time?" he says, implying that the attack on the United States is his v෴ision of a biblical 'rain', from which his city is the only refuge. Booker fails repeatedly to rescue Elizabeth, despite the Luteceꦿs' best efforts, but in the end Comstock's plan is foiled another way… 

Why doesn't the last Elizabeth disappear? 

All except one. As the camera pulls back and the Elizabeth copies vanish, one remains, then the screen abruptly cuts to black. No Columbia means no Elizabeth, but was one version of her able to survive? Destroying the Siphon unlocked an incredible power in her, and she became almost godlike. It could be that this version of her was able to transcend space and time, and thus ꦇwasn't affected by the destruction of Comstock's reality. That's a positive way to look at it.

Another wa✃y of looking at it is that she disappeared along with the rest of them, and the credits roll just beౠfore she does. If this is the case, all traces of the Elizabeth you got to know and grew to love throughout the game are destroyed. The sudden cut to the credits is obviously intended to make this ambiguous, leaving players to decide her fate for themselves. 

What does the scene after the credits mean? 

When the lengthy credits finish, we appear back in Booker's office in New York. "Anna?" he calls out, as a child's music box plays in the background - or perhaps in his head. Then we get the option to interact with her bedღroom door. Booker pushes it open, approaches her crib, and... that's it. This is another moment that you can in🅰terpret a number of ways.

One outcome is that, by eliminating the Columbia timeline, Booker never sold Anna to Comstock, and they're still together. But even if this is the case, the detritus on his desk - betting slips, empty bottles - suggests that this is another versioꦫn of the 'other' Booker. The one who returned from Wounded Knee a shell of a man. What happens next - whether Anna is in the crib or not - is left to your imagination. BioShock Infinite's ending is as happy, or as sad, as you want it to be. 

And so, our tour of pop culture podcasting comes to gaming. It’s a huge field, but there really is something for everyone. Whether you’re fascinated by the history of games, want to get Play of the Game JUST ONCE PLEASE GOD or have a hankering to throw some dice rather thanౠ a controller, then I have a podcast for you. Actually, I have seven. And here they are!

7. Cane and Rinse

Hugo-award nominated this year, and with damn good reason, Cane and Rinse is the of computer games. The shows share the same deep dive into context, history, and🌠 nuance but C&R’s focus is much narrower. The team, led by Leon Cox and including Tony Atkins, Jay Taylor, Joshua Garrity, and a legion of others, discuss a single game every episode, foldi💞ng in audience recollections and occasional, impressive industry guests.

The enthusiasm behind that combination of analysis and nostalgia makes the show shine. Their Crazy T🤡axi episode is the team at their best; all bringing personal experience to a larger topic ♏to help everyone understand and love it. It’s a simple formula, brilliantly executed and just part of the huge amount of content they put out.

6. Sound of Play

Given that I’m listening to the Overwatch soundtrack while writing this you can probably guess why a show about game soundtracks has made the list. Sound of Play (Cane and Rinse’s sister show), embrace⛦s the vast amount of beautiful game music out there and picks a few tracks to talk about in detail. 

It’s not academic or dry but rather uses the music to talk about the games and from that the emotional experiences o𓂃f people who’ve played them. The show shines a light on a vital part of every game and is sure to feature both old favourites and brand new hotness you’ve not heard yet. Check it out and get ready to expand your soundtrack collection.

5. Crate and Crowbar

C&C are a PC-only show b𝕴ut, Chris, Pip, and the last in a long line of men called Tom regularly cover industry-wide news, too. Most recently that’s included Health Sniper Ninja Grandma Ana, the new character on Overwatch. 

But their PC only stuff is tಞheir best, especially a recent piece about the curious ethics of social gaming on a press pass. This story is hilarious and awful, and involves one of the team accidentally becoming a criminal in Star Citizen by being too polite. It can be found on Episode 149, but if you’re a PC gamer you can jump in anywhe💫re. There’ll be something you love in every episode.

4. The Overview

Overwatch has exploded onto the scene and,🅰 even as a new player it’s easy to see why. There’s an intoxicating combination of sugar shock exuberance and Pixar quality design mixed with a remarkably canny, nuanced game.

I do still die. A lot. But I’m getting there.

That’s where The Overview comes in. Think of them as a news station/talk show for all your brightly coloured super speedy/occasional genius gorilla/badass Russian weightlifter needs. Host ChanMan and a shifting cast of co-hosts, cover developments in the game, the booming e-sports Overwatch community and chew over eac🔯h evolution as it hits. As a newbie, it’s sometimes a struggle to catch up but persevere, it’s worth it.

3. Guardian Radio

Go Team Space Barbie! I love Destiny but it sometimes feels a lot like a gorgeous sandbox filled with in🧔credibly powerful players and occasional scripted events, neither of which want anything to do with you. That can be depressing. And there is nothing sadder than a Sad Space Barbie. But help is at hand! 

Guardian Radio is basically local radio for Destiny, and it’s brilliant. As well as regular discussions of news and developments in the game they do a lot of community outreach. Player clans ar﷽e regularly spotlighted and recently they’ve begun walking groups of players through tougher sections of the game, as well as running in-game competitions. Destiny can be a lonely game, especially for lower level players, so if you’re looking for gro🌟up, listen to this.

2. Match 3

Writers Gita Jackson and Patrick Klepek, and teacher Sam Phillips, dig deep into the cultural context of computer games. Sounds heavy doesn’t it? Sometimes it is, and that’s a good thing. The Prince Tribute epi🏅sode (Episode 48) is a particular standout as is their open and honest ongoing discussion about depression.

However w💃hat make✨s the show work is how informal, fun and funny the hosts are. That positivity ties back into their discussions and gives everything they talk about an edge of (often NSFW) enthusiasm. Start with their Pokemon Go episode (Episode 58) and work out from there.

1. The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast

And finally, for something completely different. Board ga🐟mes and tabletop RPGs have been in the middle of a renaissance for a while now. There are so many board games out there, often on the high street now, that the question is no longer ‘Is there anything to play?’ but ‘Wh💜ere do I start?’ Here.

Hosts Jamie Keagy, Tony Topper, Brian Moore, Chris M꧋iller, and Steve Spang are long-term board game and RPG fans. They are tireless advocates for new, interesting games and throw themselves headlong at ones that could be fun. If they are, they’ll tell you. If they aren’t, they’ll tell you that too. The shows run LONG, but you won’t find a better guide to the world of tabletop gaming. Start with Episode 109, which discusses the Game of Thrones board game.

First of all, the closure of Disney Infinity is obviously a bad thing for those affected. Large teams of seriously talented developers now have uncertain futures due to Disney pulling out of the games development business. My very best wishes go out to all displaced as a result.  But away from the big issue of studio closures, is the end of Disney Infinity a bad thing? Speaking as somebody who’s blown plenty of cash on the franchise so far, the answer for gamers is no, and it’s not just because rumours of planned, pricey 12-inch Jack Skellington and Darth Vader models woul𒀰d have caused many an argument between me and my boss, Mrs Pellett.

The toys to life genre is one that demands investment from its audience, so splitting that pool of punters between Skylanders, Disney and Lego was always going to cause issues. With store shelves creaking under the weight of add💯-ons for them all, it was a clear case of “three’s a crowd.”  Losing one doesn’t just mean there’s less burden on gamers’ wallets; profits for the remaining two titles should rise, shoring up their futures as the one-on-one battle fosters healthy competition.

But the biggest reason why Infinity’s closure could benefit us fans involves the newest player in the genre: Lego Dimensions. We’ve had Lego Star Wars games. We’ve had Lego Marvel games. But while Disney Infinity was still in the picture, we were never going to see those brands appear in Lego Dimensions. Now? Our wishes will surely come true. It’s unlikely to stop there. In May, Lego launched a new blind pack range of Disney mini-figures: Mickey, Minnie, Peter Pan, Toy Story stars, The Little Mermaid characters and more. An incoming Lego/Disney partnership for Dimensions is obvious, teeing up years of dream add-ons in the process. Six years in, the future of toys to life is rosier than ever before.

 

Many years ago, before💝 handhelds, the only games you could take on holiday were made of paper. You probably already know every travel trailer, caravan, and winnebago comes pre-loaded with a selection of do✨gshit board games, musty from years of disuse, but I ignored these. I chose something different, and dangerous. I chose to choose my own adventure.

I could fill a bag with Fighting Fantasy books - no, Lone Wolf wasn't better - and swap wet seaside towns for frosted caverns, derelict space hulks, and dungeons full of deadly traps. It filled in the grey moments between trips to the gaming arcades, but it was also a gateway drug. By playing these books - or, more accurately, pretending to play them - I discovered Maelstrom by Alexander Scott. It's an RPG book I never engaged with properly, but it fascinated me. Unlike the rigid, linear Fighting Fantasy series, you could go anywhere and do anything. The things I really loved, though - and the things I still love in games toda🦋y - were the herbs.

You heard: herbs. Maelstrom featured a delicately illustrated guide with page after page of herbs and their medicinal uses. That magical glossary was a window into something tangible and enticing. A hero might be cursed by a cocktrice or poisoned by a basilisk, but a trained herbalist could fix them rubbing mugwort, lemon balm, or wolfsbane on their damaged bits. It made a distant fantasy world suddenly feel practical. Real enough to reach out and touch - like supermarket basil, 𝕴but cheaper, and for druids.

It was a fascination that laid dormant for years, until I discovered my first Elder Scrolls game. Morrowind was like playing Fighting Fantasy or Maelstrom but with a unwearied, dutiful GM making everything run smoothly behind the scenes. I'd never played a video game like it. The freedom was intimidating. But instead of rushing into the wild to fight daedra (or, more honestly, cliff racers), I just gathered herbs. Lots and lots of herbs. All the goddamn herbs.

I couldn't go 50 meters without stopping to stuff my pockets with comberry, kresh fiber, or wickwheat. I was dangerously addicted to seeking out rare plants, and the satisfying 'shmoop' of picking them. I never did anything with them - I just liked seeing my backpack full of buds, seeds and pompons. The mania followed me. Every time I start a new RPG, I tell myself I'll try something new - 'perhaps blacksmithing would be nice!', I lie - then I find myself knee-deep in vegetation: g🌄reen-fingered, red-faced, utterly ashamed. I'm shrubsessed. 

World of Warcraft? Herbalist. Lord of the Rings Online? Herbalist. Skyrim? Herbalist. The Witcher 3? Obviously, inescapably, herbalist. If Hitman let me collect bladderwrack, I'd do that instead of assassinating war criminals. I'm the only man alive who's looked at Uncharted and thought it needed more elderflower. Perhaps it's an infatuation t🔯hat won't pass until I actually have my own garden. Or perhaps I just need a herbal remedy. I'll check Maelstrom and get back to you.

No high-res drawn characters like DuckTales on Wii U, not super fancy old-fashioned hardware mimicry like Shovel Knight, and no hyper-stylized retro look l🎃ike Hyper Light Drifter. Natsume's actually recaptured the real chunky cartoon look that hasn't been seen in 20 years. People at E3 2016 were absolutely eating up its arcade-y action too. Every time I wandered by Natsume's booth in the farthest corner of the Los Angeles Convention Center, a line stretched out from the demo station liꦆke a sparking dynamite wick. 

Now it’s Boxing🌠 Day. As we lie comatose, gorged on fatty game news, sweating with our belt buckles undone, it’s time to look back at ten of the biggest surprises from this year’s show, and six things that weren’t surprising at all.  

The surprises

Resident Evil 7 looks smart, scary

Some of you made the link between Kitchen and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Resident Evil 7 before E3, but the specifics are what made this such a great surprise. The refined trailer felt happily removed from Resident Evil 6’s aimless commotion. It’s a new direction - exactly what Resi needs after years of identity crisis. Resi 7 embraces solitude. The zombies and giant sharks are gone, replaced by the ferocious modern horror of films such as Rec. The influence of P.T. is even clearer. Being able to grab the demo immediately felt like an amazing treat, giving us something to do during the tedious wait for release. Now will somebody please tell me what that goddamnꦅ mannequin finger i✅s for?

Spider-Man on PS4

This is exactly the sort of reveal that works well at E3. A familiar face, an unexpected reveal, and a game that requires no explanation. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:We don’t know much, apart from the fact this will be set in an original Spider-Man universe and won’t be an origin story, but the key beats are obvious from the trailer: quips, combat and swinging. Lots of swingin♏g. Rumours prior to E3 suggested it would be developed by Sucker Punch, but we now know it’s Insomniac. They’re a perfect fit. Sunset Overdrive is a sort-of superhero game, but suffers from having characters that feel like they were designed by a committee of men in comfortable slacks. Swap that with an immediately relatable chara🧸cter like Spider-Man, and this could be outrageously good.

Dad of War 

The God of War reveal was a classic Sony surprise: a low key intro, contrasting with the booming orchestral opening; the shadowy reveal of a PlayStation favourite; a lustrous beard. But the biggest shock in the God of War demo didn’t come from facial hair, fighting, or frisson. It was in🍃 one quiet moment t♕hat gave the rest of the demo context. Towards the end, Kratos reaches out to comfort a child who’s just completed a rite of passage. He can’t do it. He’s spent the demo ripping the horns off trolls, but actual human contact is beyond him. It’s brilliant. God of War can’t get any bigger, so going smaller is the🐼 smartest thing to do.

Steep is sort-of SSX Reborn

Perhaps the real shocker is that Ubisoft finished their show without guns, gas masks or Tom Clancy’s Tom Clancy. Instead, we got Steep, a spiritual successor to SSX 3, and a fantastic, unexpected treat. It’s an extreme sports game developed by Ubisoft Annecy, offering a crisp world full of cool tricks, unique runs and reasons to show off. My only question is this: how does anyone learn to use a wingsuit without dying? 

Robot-eyes John Carmack appearing from behind a hidden wall

It’s a little known fact that John Carmack can appear anywhere, at any time. As I type this, he could be inside my Mac, waiting to climb out and take me on a whimsical Gear VR tour of the latest 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Minecraft update. He’s the Candyman of computer-simulated reality. That’s what happened during Microsoft’s E3 conference, and it was weird and brilliant and completely unexpected. We we🀅re halfway through a Mojang update when Carmack appeared like a wizard, talked excitedly about Minecraft in VR, then evaporated into the ether from whence he came. A classic E3 moment.

Prey’s new direction

It’s a surprise that 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Prey still exists at all, after Prey 2 spent years in the vapourware latrine, but it’s great to see it back and in the safe hands of Dishonored developer Arkane. The new direction is intriguing. Nothing remains of the neo-noir bounty hunting promised in Prey 2. Instead, we’ve got something glossy and conspiratorial - think Groundhog Day, but with menacing shadows and ooꦬze. The lead character also looks like Dishonored’s Emily Kaldwin with a beard, but this is probably a conspiracy too far. 

Star Trek: Bridge Crew lets you have your own holodeck

This one sounds like bullshit info from your mate Brian in the pub. The guy who ‘knows someone at Ubi’, who got thrown out of the SAS for being too dangerous. “So they’ll get them Comic-Con types from Star Trek - not Picard or anyone big, but the ones all the nerds love - and lock ‘em in a dark room to play VR with Judge Dredd.” Off you fuck, Brian. But true enough, there’s a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Star Trek VR game that lets you pretend you’re on the bridge of a federation starship, and it looks incredible. 

Infinite Warfare, just generally

If you watched the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Infinite Warfare trailer live, you probably struggled to recognise it. That’s a surprise in itself. The most widely played and recognisable game on the planet, sneaking past us like three children in a raincoat, pretending to be a grown up game. Ignore the downward thumbs on YouTube - this looks like a bright, necessary departure. There’s a galaxy map, for Christ’s sake - a video game trope that recalls the progressive space-shagging of Mass Effect. It should feel out of place alongside the dunderish escalation of Call o✅f Duty, but it just doesn’t, and that’s a surprise in itself. 

Days Gone could be a great zombie game

It says plenty about Days Gone that it’s yet another game about the zombie apocalypse, but it still manages to make this list. It’s a fast, reactionary take on an over-used theme, and it works because there are so many zombies. At times it feels like they’re pouring into open spaces like undead breakfast cereal. Don’t be fooled by the Freebirdy, whimsical, wind-in-my-bandanna trailer - this is a vicious game. As well as spraying bullets, there are also some seriously nasty one-on-one encounters. Lead character Decon stabs eyes, chops heads and even minces a zombie’s face on a circular saw. The GamesRadar verdict so far: “It might be the end of the world again but it's not looked this good for ages.”

Literally four games featuring Crash Bandicoot

If you told me before E3 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:we’d see Crash Bandicoot, I’d have smiled and said, ‘yes, probably!’, then worried about you behind your back. If you’d told me we’d see him in four games - four games! - then I’d have called the authorities. That’s a madness only to be whispered in the company of your closest friends. Against all expectations, you’d have been right. The PS4 is getting remasters of Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped, and he’ll also be appearing in Skylanders: 𝓰Imaginators. It’s not as surprising as a ‘proper’ new Crash game, but💃 it’s close.

The non-surprises

Nobody knows what Project Scorpio is

Try to imagine Microsoft finishing E3 with a confusing message, years of crafted branding slipping through their fingers like a smashed crow. It’s not hard to imagine, because it happens almost every year. After an excellent conference in 2015, Microsoft has regressed, returning to the jumbled confusion that typifiඣed the reveal of Xbox One. Is Scorpio four times more powerful than everything else, or is it an upscaler? Is there any reason to buy an Xbox One S? Are pandas dangerous? Can someone dig up Don Mattrick and replace his batteries? It’s a ca🤡tastrophe.

Sony having a full orchestra

This one is a semi-surprise, constructed for social media types to excitedly pretend Brian Crecente was conducting the God of War theme (it was actually Bear McCreary). 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Of course Sony had an orchestra. Sony is the conference equivalent of a handsome friend who always manages to be better than you at everything, but you still can’t force yourself to hate because they’re lovely. Well congratulations, Sony - you’ve made all the other conferenꦕces feel shitty about themselves.

Disappointment

This entry is dedicated to ඣall the games you hoped would be at E3, but weren’t. You know the ones. The games we’ve been waiting for forever, that can never meet the expectations we’ve built for them. I’m talking about Beyond Good and Evil 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Half Life 3, Agent, Smarties Meltdown 2, Haven 2. But what’s Games Christmas without some numbing disappointment? Or Actual Christmas, for that matter. Pass the bottle of gin.

Naked Norman Reedus

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Naked Norman Reedus washing up on a beach then cradling an oil baby almost made it on the surprises list, then I remembered everything Hideo Kojim♊a has done, ever. Naked Reedus isn’t a surprise. In fact, it’s impossible to think ꧅of a Kojima surprise, because even the most ordinary, predictable thing would become surprising through its ordinariness. If I understood or cared what Schrödinger's cat was, I’d say it was like that, but with more sand in its asscrack.

Ubisoft having to mention Assassin’s Creed 

We almost got through an entire Ubisoft conference without a single mention of Assassin’s Creed. Then a man came on to talk about a film, and all sense of momentum and purpose was lost. I was praying for the terrifying giraffe to come back. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from gaming conferences, it’s that you never, ever spend more than two minutes talking about something that isn’t a game. I’m looking at you, Powers. 

There’s a SWAT team in Detroit: Become Human

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:David Cage’s new game has a SWAT team. David Cage couldn’t make a risotto withওout including a SWAT team. The man’s obsessed. He’s the Michael Bay of running around in Kevlar. He either🍎 needs to stop it altogether, or take it to parodic extremes. Cooking, romance, pachinko - it doesn’t matter, so long as it always ends with special forces rappelling through a window. Or maybe a SWAT game without combat. I don’t care anymore. 

Playing a game this dirty requires refreshmentဣ. That’s why I asked Suda and Let It Die composer Akira Yamaoka, the famed mu𝄹sician behind the immortal Silent Hill soundtracks, what drinks should be paired with their new title and some of their classics. 

Let It Die 

"Just a straight🍎 shot of tequila," Suda told me in an interview conducted with a translator at E3. He said this at the exact moment a green freak with a glowing fishbowl for a head bludgeoned me to death in Let It Die. "It’s got a nice punch. It’ll wake you up and send you to another world!" 

Tequila is also core to Suda’s philosophy in making Let It Die. "I don’t drink a lot of tequila and maybe a lot of players don’t drink ꧙a lot tequila but there are a lot of new challenges we wanted to take on at Grasshopper making something with online elements and all these new aspects that we’ve never gotten to try," he told me. "So that’s how we got to tequila. Something to try and making something new."

For Yam🐠aoka, though tequila’s too much. He needs something a little bit lighter. 

"Champagne," said the dapper guitarist, leaning back and crossing his legs. "Let It Die is an action packed game, it’s very hardcore. Tequila is too strong. I want something that’s more bubbly when I’m doing something hardcore. For Let It Die and any game music I make, I keep in mind that it’s a game. It’s interactive. ꦜThe sound has to work with the game itself rather than as music on its own. I focus how it works with the action, how all the sounds play off what you see." 

The Silver Case 

While working on Let It Die, Grasshopper Manufacture is also remaking the studio’s very first game, the aggressively surreal PlayStation 1 adventure game The Silver Case. The unusual game🔜 needs a subtle cocktail to match it.

"Gimlet," said Suda. "We always treasured it, being our first game. It’s in the flavor. The Silver Case and a gimlet aren’t so much sweet but there is a flavor. And I just like that drink. It’s complex. The gimlet style back when Grasshopper was independent making our first game, we wanted to make something very different. Something that you wouldn’t expect. Something different that people could e🐠njoy in an unorthodox way. That feeling hasn’t changed. To make something you can’t compare to any other type of game would be great." 

Killer 7

"Killer 7 is my most personal game. It’s a bloody mary," said Suda wistfully and eager to talk about the obsessed over Gamecube. Back when Killer 7 was made, Grasshopper’s motto "Punk’🌳s Not Dead" was emblazoned on their 𝕴logo. Today Grasshopper is part of GungHo Online Entertainment and no longer independent. It’s hard to stay punk if you’re part of a corporation. Suda’s bloody mary is something he still strives for.

"'Punk’s Not Dead' was part of my spirit," said Suda. "It goes into developing games, putting part of me into them. Up until now the games I had to make under publishers, there were deadlines and budgets; the more publishers demand these, it’s harder to make something that you really like. Sometimes I wanted to make something a certain way but the publisher said change it for these reasons, so it becomes even harder to make something and keep yourself in it. Does ‘Punk’s Not Dead’ still apply to Let It Die💟? I’m not sure myself. A lot of people are trying to get their ideals into the game. Once people play it, it’ll be better to decide then." 

Silent Hill 1 

Akira Yamaoka has his own canonized discography. The blend of ꦅrock and roll, drone, and trip hop in the first three Silent Hill games is utterly distinct, Yamaoka’s own personal style that’s imitated regularly but never recreated. He sees each of those three games having very different flavors.

"Silent Hill 1 is a mojito," said Yamaoka. The blend of disparate flavors, the sweetness of the rum and the acidity of the lime, are more than the sum of their parts. This is precisely how Yamaoka approaches making music in his games. "The most important thing with game music or mixing sounds for games. I don’t think of each piece as a sing🍷le piece of music or as a song. I think of them first as collections of sounds, something that mixes with the rest of what you see on screen. I don’t think of it as taking some rock and then trip hop. It’s the mix that creates the atmosphere." 

Silent Hill 2

"Silent Hill 2 is wine," said Yamaoka. Appropriate given the dank pit of despair that is Jame𝔍s Sunderland’s wo🔥rld in that game. "Silent hill 2 is a red wine. Very dry."

No kidding. 

Silent Hill 3

"Silent Hill 3 is beer," sai🥃d Yamaoka very simply.

Sounds about right. Douglas agrees. 

From the moment we again donned the headset and dove into the kaleidoscopic magic of PlayStation VR, at this year’s GDC event 𒉰in San Francisco, we knew it would set the games industry aflame. Unparalleled wonder unfolds – high-octane shootouts, mind-bending puzzle chambers, rhythm-violence beetle-riding – all with us at the heart of the experience.

But despite enjoying that instant immersion, we still have plenty of questions about the new tech. How in the name⛦ of Kratos will Sony manage to sell it at the low price of just £349? Can we expect PlayStation VR to branch out beyond games? And are we going to fling that fancy headset straight off our bonces when heading virtual footballs in The Headmaster?

Foꩲrtunately, we found our👍selves in a small room with a man able to answer all of those questions and more – the one and only Jim Ryan, European boss of Sony Computer Entertainment. In our exclusive interview, he reveals how the company learnt from the “mistakes” of the PS3 era; how vital it is to correctly market PS VR for the masses; oh, and we may just have pressed him on a certain lovable scamp called Crash...

OPM: First of all, congratulations on 36 million PS4s being sold – that’s quite the achievement. Did you ever imagine you’d be hitting that big a number so soon?

Jim Ryan: Um... (Laughs). That’s an interesting question to start! I think probably the honest answer is no. I think we were confident in the proposition that we had; we obviously made a number of – I shouldn’t hesitate to use the word “mist𒆙ake” – mistakes with PS3, and we were very single-minded and very determined to try and address each of those mistakes.

We engaged in a lot of soul-searching – I think we got most of the boxes that had a cross against them in the PS3 era ending up with a tick against them this time around. So we were confident, but I don’t think...ﷺ I doubt that anybody expected us to be this successful.

OPM: We’re obviously keen to talk about PlayStation VR. Since the big announcements at March’s GDC event in San Francisco, the reaction from our readers has been extremely encouraging, very positive. How have you been able to come in at such an amazing price, relative to what the competition is doing?

JR: I think the answer t🏅o that lies in Sony’s heritage. Obviously, and increasingly, Sony is an entertainment company. It is also a very proud consumer electronics business with a very long and illustrious career of making great consumer elec🎉tronics hardware.

Whether it’s designing in a🍸n elegant or effective manner; whether it’s sourcing componentry from all around the world in a cost-effective manner; or whether it’s putting the thing together, this is w💯hat Sony does.

This is a big part of Sony’s DNA. It’s sometimes easy toꦅ take this for granted in this wonderful, networked world that we live in these days, but it’s actually something that allows us to bring all that knowledge and expertise and heritage to bear. It has allowed us to put this thing together in a manner that enables us to sell it at £349 and still make money.

OPM: It’s great to see it’s not being rushed to market. October seems to give you a good amount of breathing space to make sure you’ve got the software support in place. Was that a big factor when deciding the release date?

JR: It was a combination of that and also♋ having what we considered to be the right amount of hardware to put into the market as well, so it was a combination of software support and the timelines onꦡ the hardware side of things.

OPM: Your job must be to convert as many PS4 owners to PS VR as possible. How do you do that, considering it’s such a transformative experience that only really comes across when you test it?

JR: Yeah, it’s a very good question, and essentially that’s the job of marketing. And it’s quite a challenge. We certainly have great knowledge about how to market traditional gaming consoles – we’ve done it for over 20 years now. I think we🌳’re quite good at it an𒆙d we know what to do.

But this is different. As you say, it’s really only when you try [PlayStation VR] that you actually understand. So the marketing mix of activities that we engage in to evangelise virtual reality will be very different from the marketing mix that we use when we took, for example, PS4 to market. There’s going to be a much greater emphasis on experiential, on trial, to try and achieve exactly what y🐠ou spoke of.

OPM: We were impressed by the scope of demos available at GDC. Is there a big chance to branch out and make PS4 more than just a predominantly gaming platform?

JR: I think your use of the verb “branch out” is absolutely correct because it is, after all, a PlayStation product, and PlayStation stands for gaming – that’s what we do, that’s what we’ꦅre about and that will be the principal area of focus at the beginning.

But I think, as you yourself experienced – looking at some of these other things – they’re interesting and they’re fun and some of this stuff is very releꦬvant and very appealing to gamers, so why wouldn’t you offer those sorts of experiences, and we will. But we’re pretty clear-minded that gaming will be the principal area of focus.

OPM: With the exception of multiplayer mini-games collection The Playroom VR, what’s your personal PlayStation VR highlight so far?

JR: [Football heading sim] The Headmaster.

OPM: For what reason?

JR: Because I’m good at it! (Laughs)

OPM: Fair enough! When we saw the pitch for that game, we were worried the headset might keep flying off?

JR: Yeah, well I was⛦ a bit 𒊎worried my head would fall off! But no – those balls were bulleting into the top right- hand corner of the goal every time. It was great!

OPM: Moving onto the wider spectrum of PlayStation, PS4 was very much a console designed to evolve. How has that gone so far? Where do you see the current PS4 in the grand scheme of things? Is there still a long way to go?

JR: Yeah, obviously when you have a connected device like PlayStation 4, the possibilities to significantly enhance the capabilities of the device through firmware upgrades are considerable – we’ve already seen that over the life of PS4 with features such as Share Play and a raft of other individually less significant, but cumulatively actually very meaningful, functi𝓰onal enhancements to the device. That will definitely continue – we have a roadmap. Much of tꦡhis stuff is still under wraps but we’re definitely, certainly not standing still with PS4. There’s more to come!

OPM: This might infringe on some of those things under wraps, but Early Access programmes are something we’ve seen quite a lot of on PC – is that an area that you think PlayStation can explore or wants to explore?

JR: I think it’s certainly something that we’re open to. It’s really a balance between offering a proper experience and making all sorts of things available. There’s a certain quality threshold that we have to be sure to meet🔯, or at the very least to position the thing properly. But we’re open to that.

OPM: We chuckled when Microsoft made its announcement about cross-platform play, as we thought, “Well, we’ve been doing that for a long time on PlayStation.” But the suggestion of possible cross-platform play with other consoles is interesting. From Sony’s point of view, is PlayStation open to that possibility?

JR: Well, you know, I couldn’t really work out what all the fuss was about in that Microsoft announcement because it’s something – as you say – we’💮ve been doing. We’ve done it with PC, we’ve done it with Xbox consoles. We’re completely open to any developer or publisher who wants to have the conversation; we always have been and we remain so.

OPM: Last year’s E3 was incredible. Looking ahead to the next E3 show, in June, how do you begin to piece together something mindful of what you did last year, while not staying in its shadow?

JR: Uh... (Laughs) You know, one of the great things about working in the entertainment business is that things evolve and new th🍰ings st🎐art to get worked on. As one game comes out, the development team starts work on the next thing, and it’s a kind of endless cycle.

You’re right, matching laꦕst year’s E3 will be quite some challenge, but I’m pretty relaxed and quite confident that we will rise to that challenge.

OPM: One last question. This one’s from one of our readers...

JR: They’re usually the most dangerous! (Laughs)

OPM: At last December’s PlayStation Experience, SCE America CEO Shawn Layden walked out on stage wearing a Crash Bandicoot T-shirt. Is Sony aware of how much fans want Crash Bandicoot? Is there anything that can be done to get him back on PlayStation?

JR: Um... we’re certainly aware of the considerable affection – even reverence – in whic♑h the mighty ♔Crash is held. But nothing to update at this stage in that area.

This article originally appeared in Official PlayStation Magazine. For more great PlayStation coverage, you can .

Prioritise 

The very first thing you need to get your head around is that you’re just not going to be able to do all of it right now. You have to figure out the bits that are most important to you in a game. Do you want to push on and see The Witcher 3’s story, or are you more int💝e🥀rested in hunting for monsters? Do you enjoy listening to lengthy tapes in Metal Gear, or would you rather just Fulton a complete zoo while listening to A-ha?

Pick the modes and type of gaming you enjoy most first and prioritise that. Face it, if you don’t have hundreds of hours free to pour into a single game, let alone four or five of them, you’re not going to 100% it, and that’s ok. Just focus on the things you most want to see.

Schedule it in

You schedule in work or school commitments dur🦹ing your day, heck most people even schedule in their social plans (drinks at the pub on Tuesday from 7pm, yeah?), so do the same for your gaming time. Not only is it a great way to make sure you get some concentrated gaming 𓄧in to get things done, it’s particularly useful if you live in a house with others. Let your friends or family know your plans so they know not to disturb you, or that you’re using the big TV that night so they can schedule around you.

But you’ve also got to be aware of other people’s plans, don’t schedule a conflict. If you know your brother is having his boyfriend over to watch a movie on Friday night don’t double-book the TV; compromise and let him know that it’s yours on Saturday instead. Setting aside a night or two free from other distractions and responsibilities so you can unwind and indulge in your favourite hobby is a great way to find those preꦍcious hours you need to see ever🐽ything in your game of choice.

Stick to one game at a time

It might seem like a good idea to cover m🧸ore ground by taking on several games at once, but that just makes it harder to really get under the skin and appreciate any single one of them. It might help you get things done, but what’s the point if you then don’t have the time to enjoy what you’re playing?

Of course if you’ve got a long commute or a spare 30 minutes at lunch that’s an excellent time to get some handheld or mobile gaming in - you won’t be able to touch whatever big triple-A game you’ve got going at home so you might as well spend this time trying something small and new. Word of warning: I trie🌜d juggꦗling two huge RPGs with this method, one on 3DS and one on PS4, and it just didn’t work - I found myself unable to get into either properly. It’s far better to keep things light when you’re likely to be distracted during the day.

Break down your goals

Ever feel like a task ahead of you is too huge and daunting to even start? It’s ꧅as applicable to finishing a tough boss or raid as it is of cleaning your house. Having enough time to do it all might seem impossible, but when you start breaking it down into smaller chunks it suddenly becomes manageable. Cleaning the bathroom isn’t so bad if you only think about the sinks first - once that’s out of the way then the scuzz in the bath doesn’t seem like such a big job either.

Use a similar approach to your game time - need to complete The King’s Fall raid in Destiny but you’re nowhere near geared enough? Well, you’re going to need to focus on getting slightly better guns first before you’re able to get the best guns for the fights. Then focus on learning each phase of the raiꦚd one by one. Make a list if that helps you focus൲ on each part. Before you know it you’ll have reached the end in good time.

Spend a night not playing games

This might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes stopping what you’re doing and taking a break for a night will make your time go further. Ever had a bad night in Street Fighter where you just can’t seem to win? Maybe you’reꦐ tired and you’ve lost your mojo, or perhaps you’re overthinking all of your moves. Either way it’s time to put your controller down and do anything else but play a game for a night to give your brain a rest. You won’t be reaching the silver league tonight and playing while performing badly will only waste your time.

Yes, you won’t get any gaming done in those precious few h🧸ours you have, but it’ll also leave you feeling more refreshed for the next time you play. When you’re well rested you’ll find that you’re far more productive and able to get much more done in a few hours than you could by forcing yourself to grind away all week.

Let it go! 

If you can’t finish it, put it down. There’s no point in stressing yourself out to reach the end of something if you’re not having any fun doing it. Large games are all about taking in the world around you, so if you’re 50 hours into The Witcher 3 and you realise you’ve had enough that’s fine. You shouldn’t push yourself forward just for the sake of it. Put it away and pick up your next game inst🧸ead.

Yes, there’s probably hundreds of hours of potential game that you’re mꦯiss♍ing out on, but it’ll become a chore if you mindlessly continue onwards despite the fact you stopped enjoying it ages ago. Besides, 20-50 hours is far longer than you’d spend with an average game, and it’s plenty of time to have experienced your game world of choice.

For plenty of folks, 2016 truly starts on February 8th; that whole ball-drop nonsense on December 31st signified nothing more than a pretty light show. In , today marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year, which depends on the phases of the Moon rather than the Earth's rotation around the sun. But enough with the third grade science/anthropology lesson - we're here 🐲to talk about video games.

To pay our respects to the one and only natural satellite orbiting around our planet, we've rounded up some of the many ways games have interpreted the Moon. Earth's Moon, specifically; Majora's Mask and Kerbal Space Program will have to cheer from the sidelines on this one. Instead of passively gazing up that big celestial body in the sky, boot up one of these classics and really get to know the Moon.

Mass Effect

If you absolutely couldn't stomach the optiona🧸l Mako trips in the original Mass Effect, it's likely that you missed out on one of the series’ most enchanting environmental moments. Commander Shepard's war against the Reapers all takes place within our very own Milky Way Galaxy, and Earth still stands as the capital of humankind. To avoid getting our Moon confused with all the bazillion other moons one could visit in 2183, it was renamed Luna (after the Roman goddess of, well, take a guess). As you might expect, Luna is a big ol' expanse of barren rock - but it's worth visiting just to see the Earth looming brightly in the pitch black skybox. Don't admire the view for too long, though, or a trio of rocket turrets controlled by a rogue Virtual Intelligence might blast you to pieces.

Wolfenstein: The New Order

In Wolfenstein: The New Order's alternate history, the Third Reich won WW2 and somehow managed to establish a gigantic, Austin Powers-esque lunar base by the late 1950s. And if you're going to hide nuclear decryption keys, as the Nazis are so often wont to do, you might as well stash them off-planet. But nothing stops B. J. Blazkowicz from the chance to eviscerate Nazi scum with laser beams, so he dons an Aryan disguise, boards a rocket, and wreaks absolute havoc on and around Mondbasis Eins (that's Moonbase One, to you non-German speakers). Given the time period, the base itself has the same vibe as a '60s airport, while the segments where you traverse the Moon's canyon-covered, air-free surface on foot are appropriatelyꦿ silent (save for B. J.'s breathing).

Portal 2

Were it not for the Moon, Portal 2 would've just been a rehash of the original Portal. For all the scientific experiments that Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson performs on test subj⛄ects (and/or reluctant employees), he ended up slowly killing himself with Moon rock poisoning. A word to the wise, then: never buy $70 million worth of Moon rock, grind it up into dust to be used as the base of a portal-conducting gel, and accidentally breathe any of it into your precious, frail lungs. If you've finished Portal 2, then you know how a glimpse of an Apollo landing site on the Moon's surface, however brief, makes for an unforgettable first-person moment.

Moon

Not to be confused with the stellar Sam Rockwell movie of the same name, Moon built off the concept of Metroid Prime Hunters, plunking fast-paced first-person shooting into your a portable by pushing the Nintendo DS hardware to its limits. ✨It's as much about atmosphere and paranormal intrigue as shooting hostile droids, as you venture into a strange hatch to explore a hidden lunar station in the year 2058. Most of the action and suspense takes place within the neon-lit rooms of the moonbase itself, but you do get to cruise around the wide-open surface blasting 'bots in your trusty LOLA rover. If all that sounds appealing, I have some good news: the DS original was remade and greatly expanded in Moon: Chronicles for 3DS.

DuckTales

Duckburg is clearly an analogue for 20th century California, albeit populated by duck-people (including one exorbitantly wealthy Scotsman). So it stands to reason that S𝕴crooge McDuck's trip to the Moon follows the same path as Apollo 11. Only, those real-life astronauts didn't have a mission to seek out the Green Cheese of Longevity, or possess any Oxy-chew, the blue taffy that lets you breathe in a vacuum (much obliged for the explanation, Remastered). DuckTales on NES envisions the surface of the Moon as a gravelly gray, while Remastered opts for an out-of-the-ordinary purple. In either case, you’d better watch out for all the red squid-looking aliens and jet-packing robots, while being sure to enjoy the harmonious bliss that is the legendary .

Destiny

About 700 years from now, the surface of the Moon won't be much of a mystery. It's all about what's inside the Moon - namely, a hotbed of Hive aliens building an underground fortress of catacombs and chambers with ridiculously high ceilings. It's also the stomping ground of Crota, Son of Oryx, who acts as the catalyst (that is, his death at your hands) that sparks the events of The Taken King expansion. Destiny's interpretation of the Moon is much craggier than most, which gives Guardians ample opportunity to lau💛nch off cliffs for sweet jumps on their Sparrows. As a Hunter, you can even attempt the seemingly impossible: .

Asura's Wrath

The Moon facilitates what may well be the single most ridiculous fight in all of Asura’s Wrath, CyberConnect 2’a absurd Buddhis💖t-brawler-screaming-movie thing. As a game, it shouldn’t work - but it does precisely because of moments like when Asura, an angry demigod, fights mentor/demigod/paean to machismo Augus on the Moon. What starts as a barely intelligible conversation between the two in a hot tub drinking booze and spending time with masked women ends with the two of them punching each other repeatedly. They punch each other so hard that it look🐠s like they’re going to destroy the entire Montes Archemedes. Then Augus stabs Asura with a sword real hard. The sword is also real long. To demonstrate how long and hard he has been stabbed, the sword travels all the way from the Moon’s surface to what appears to be Tibet. That’s a nearly 239,000 mile-long stabbing.

Bloodborne

If the Souls series is obsessed with praising the sun, then Bloodborne stands in reverence of the moon. Spoilers ahead, but the entire game practically revolves around that big chunk of cheese in the night sky. The phases of the Moon - from a soft, comforting orange, to ♏bright and white, and finally an ominous, crimson Blood Moon against a purple sky - are what denote your progress through Bloodborne's single, nightmarish evening. Taking a leap of faith into the reflection of the Moon at Moonside Lake and crashing through to the other side for a sudden fight with Rom, the Vacuous Spider is easily among Bloodborne's best moments. And of course, you're always welcome to give a nice, warm hug to , the true final boss and a tentacled horror beyond reasoning. Also, in case you were wondering, for why Yharnam's Moon and Earth's Moon are, in fact, one and the same.

If you missed Prison Architect when it hit Early Access i🦂n 2013 then you missed one o♐f the most singular mashups of cute visuals and human suffering this side of Lemmings.

You'll get the chance to right that wrong this Spring when Prison Architect launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. I recently caught𝓰 up with Gareth Wright, design manager at Double Eleven, the developer handling this console adaptation. Wright talks me through all the changes coming in this new version, which you can see in the video above.

Prison Architect is a real-time management game in which you build and operate a prison. You decide everything from the layout to the daily schedules of your inmates to what those inmates are allowed to do. Gradually, conflicts arise between human di🥀gnity and the bottom line, such as whether you circumvent cell size limitations to squeeze a few extra pins into your block.

Spend enough time ✱with this game and you'll gain a little insight into our own prison system and the big business of rehabilitation. It's a topic most of us have little exposure to, but certainly makes for an engrossing - if sometimes horrifying - game.

My spoilerphobia regarding Fallout 4 is different. There is no singular ‘Snape killed Dumbledore’ bombshell to drop. Instead, potential cases are potent and innumerable like bee stings – one’s annoying, two are painful, and a whole lot make life not worth living. I don’t care what happens at the end of Fallout 4, such as finding out your long💎-lost dad is a robot or that the whole thing actually takes place inside a giant goldfish, because there isn’t really an end. The central questline in which you hunt for your missing son is one of 100 threads to pull on. If someone gives away that one, then plenty more wait in reserve.

It isn’t malicious intent or slips of the tongue that undermine parts of Fallout 4 so much as a steady drip-feed of good-natured anecdotes: a funny weapon someone found that I would have liked to discover myself, 🌟a quip by a companion, a fetching piece of dog armour. They’re the little details the game is made of, and knowing about them beforehand slightly narrows my otherwise wide eyes (annoyingly, I can’t tell you what’s been spoiled to me specifically for fear of becoming part of the problem).

This isn’t limited to Fallout 4. When Twitter blabbermouths revealed Metal Gear Solid V’s customisable chopper music, I felt a memorable moment had been snatched away – one that should have been ༒about me in𒊎 Mother Base suddenly realising I can storm the next mission blaring Kids in America. Kojima often tweets pictures of Snake’s unlockable outfits – I’d honestly rather he gave away the final scene. He’d be doing me a favour, since there’s a strong chance I’ll be too busy playing with cardboard boxes to see it myself.

Free-roam games are more susceptible to these smaller spoilers, because they’re driven by the anticipation of seeing what lies around the corner. Without mystery, exploration is meaningless. Going back slight🔯ly, enthusiasm for Dead Rising 2 waned each time I saw a ridiculous new weapon, because while Chuck’s motivation is saving his daughter, mine is rampaging through the zombie apocalypse in🦋 armoured wheelchairs and hamster balls.

More personal examples of minor game moments indecently exposed by people include a bit in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate where you SPOILERS! climb a very tall tower, a bit in Rise of the Tomb Raider when you SPOILERS! fight a bear, and a bit in Lego Dimensions where your characters SPOILERS! explore a Jetsons world, then SPOILERS! a Flintstones worl🎉d, then SPOILERS! the actual real world. Are they even spoilers? Iꦓ don’t know, but for each one a little part of me dies.

Sometim🐻es I ruin games for myself. I deleted Don’t Starve after reading a list of all its monsters and robbing the game of its capacity to surprise. Trailers are a problem. Call of Duty packs them with its best set-pieces, so my experience revolves around waiting for the cool bit I know is going to happen, happen.

So what’s my plan to address this subtle spoiler-creep? There isn’t one, really, besides proposing a universal🎃 ban on talking about games – and you can’t do that because I’d be out of a job. The alternative is self-restraint. While people do need to be a bit more sensitive about what they give away, you should also make a conscious choice of who you listen to, because one thing’s for certain: if I find something cool in Fallout 4 tonight, you better believe I’m going to tell people.

Nevertheless, that doesn't mean the doubters have been entirely silenced. Instead of questioning the feasibility of VR, critics have now moved on to the matter of whether what we currently understand as virtual reality is what will actually be delivered when it takes off. There’s also the issue of whether 2016 will indeed be the year when it all happens - spurred on by the commercial launch o൲f the first hardware - or if the true kicking off point might still be half a decade or so off in the future.

It'ꦐs a debate perhaps vocalised best by David Helgason, founder of Unity – the game engine that seems to power pretty much every game hitting the market at the moment. Speaking back in November on stage at the Slush conference in Helsinki, Helgason commented that, though Unity is fully behind VR – and indeed w🍌ill support every platform you can think of and more besides – he's in no way convinced that any of the games currently in development for VR headsets actually have the format nailed. “If you're doing VR right now,” said Helgason of the development community, “you're probably doing it wrong.”

“When we look at past technology switches, what developers initially create and what eventually works is almost a✱lways quite different,” offers Helgason when I ask him to shed a little more light on his view. “In order to be successful you need to lean all the way in, spend the time it takes to let yourself innovate on form and function, and be ready to try a number of things before it clicks. Regardless, I believe – as do a lot of the people I respect the most – that the opportunity is huge, so I think it’s warranted to really go for it… as long as you’re aware of the risks, such as which platforms are going to be successful and when, and what types of products will have success on them.”

For the developers that do “go for it”, as Helgason puts it, the big question that then arises is, if the typical VR game of today may ultimately turn out to have been only𓃲 a work in progress, what does a good, ‘proper’ VR game look like?

“I hones🐟tly don’t know yet,” says Helgason, candidly. “I’ve ♛seen a number of projects and game mechanics that excite me, but if any killer apps have been invented, I may not have seen them, or maybe I saw them and didn’t understand. I’m watching this space extremely closely, and every week I see new ideas come out.”

The prospect of being in that first wave of developers attempting to fill in VR's blanks then is quite a daunting o🐎ne, though the buzz that surrounds the tech is a long way off dissolving. For Mike Bithell, the man behind the celebrated Thomas Was Alone and recent hit Volume, a good VR game will be about more than simply transferring console games across to the virtual reality space, but rather making use of what he believes VR's killer feature will be: simply making the player feel like he or she is actu✤ally in the world they're playing in.

“It's a pioneering field, so for sure we're all going to make a bunch oౠf mistakes, explore some dead ends, and hopefully discover some paths we're not currently imagining,” says Bithell, who is currently working on his first VR projects, including a free PlayStation VR expansion pack for Volume called Coda. “For me, as a game developer, I'm excited about how the player inhabiting a VR space feels and plays. The sense of presence, of transportation, is completely different to any screen based gaming yet,” he continues. “When I close my eyes, I can remember locations from our game in the same way I remember rooms in my home.. It's a real place, I've been there. That's the aspect of VR as a platform that excites me.”

Of course, the flipside to pinning down just what works in VR is that you have to consider what doesn't. For the last few years, developers working on games designed to run on the Oculus🃏 Rift or Sony's VR tech have often spoken off the record about trying out established IP or games that have already been a hit on console or PC. The costs associated with developing a VR game from scratch make it especially tempting to simply port over big blockbuster Xbox or PlayStation games for a rela꧑tively low investment.

As Helgason's speech indicated, however, there's now a general acceptance amongst those in the know that, if you're aski𒈔ng players to fork out hundreds for a VR headset, they're not going to want to play the same games they've already completed during the last 12 months, or even new titles that ape those games' approach. For gamers investing in VR, they want games that make the best of the technology behind it and prove that they spent their money wisely.

“The platform certainly demands a great deal of invention and imagination♔, simply 'porting' a game over and ho🌞ping for the best won't work,” notes Bithell of his own experience to date. “We've had to work hard to make an existing game feel right in a VR environment. I think a lot of existing games or passive entertainment distinctions are going to struggle to hold up to VR.”

Indeed, one of the big challenges VR games are going to face early on has much in common with the transfer over from cartridge to CD-ROMs in the early 1990s. As any Sega Mega CD owner will tell you, far too many titles simply bedded FMV into traditional gameplay, and saw that as killer app enough. The novelty quickly wore off. Helgason believes that VR devs face a similar challenge, claiming that “a ton of people outside of the gaming community only know VR as a place to watch immersive videඣo. That’s what we have to change, since there’s so many other interesting things to use VR for.” Interesting things, for example, such as basing experiences in detailed real-world locations, enabling players to travel the globe and see some of the wonders of the world without ever leaving their living room.

Could taking on an adventu𓄧re in a fully functioning VR London, New York or Paris, for instance, deliver globe-trotting satisfaction without the need to actually travel? Will the next decade see millions genuinely feel like they've visited Mount Everest, the Gr⛄and Canyon or the Great Barrier Reef simply because they've taken on a title in their Oculus? Could such an approach actually help such save such wonders from being trampled over by tourists in the process?

“Do I think games will be set in overseas countries? Yes. Do I think gamification will be required to make virtual reality tourism interesting? God, I hope not,” offe🅰rs Bithell. “Humans dig adventure and new experiences without earning points and badges still, I think. If not, there are larger problems to solve before we put too much effort into this whole VR thing.”

The long and short🍸 of it is, though the folks powering the games industry may feel like the question of VR’s success has been answered, the process of doing so seems to have uncovered far more questions than any of us might have imagined. It's the games in this first wave of VR releases that are going to have to tackle such quandaries and, as anyone who picked up an iPhone shortly after the launch of the App Store will tell you, it takes some time before software fully gets to grips with new technology, even if the supposed advantages seem clear from the outside looking in.

It seems logical to suggest, however, that this focus on being able to deliver a sense of reality far more affecting than on any of the current breed of hardware will see real-world ‘experiential’ software ﷺfeature quite heavily in early releases, with bespoke games built from the ground up faring far better than goggled-up ports of f🌌irst-person games we're already familiar with on existing platforms.

If you're hoping to play the latest Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto on your Oculus later this year, you may well be disappointed. The games industry is coming to accept that the games that power VR need to be as new🐭 as the hardware itself. In fact the days when such traditional games had ownership of the ‘interactive entertainment’ label might well be over. “Every experience had in VR is interactive,” concludes Bithell, “so arguably on the game spectrum. I 🥂think we're going to have to invent a few new words.”

We threw a lot of shade around with our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Worst Box Art of 2015 lineup, so it's only fair that we give credit where credit's due to the best boxes of last year.💧 Thankfully, narrowing this list down was much easier than the mind-rending onslaught of horrors that is worst box art. It's interesting to compare these two groups and see how many of the worst boxes fail because they overburned their coves with nonsensical imagery, while many of the best boxes smartly place one striking design against a stark backdrop - which is the case with our first entry...

25. Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

This cover for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Unchaဣrted: The Nathan Drak❀e Collection elegantly captures the essence of Uncharted. The distressed look of the text, co꧟upled w🐼ith the map superimposed on Drake's silhouette, invokes the globetrotting spirit that's at the heart of this series. On his person we see Drake's ring, backpack, and gun - which pretty much sums up everything you need to know about gaming's Indiana Jones.

24. Splatoon

While most boxes in this year's lineup trade in muted elegance, Splatoon isn't afraid to be bright and fun. Neon colors explode across this cover, but there's a method to the madness. Along the ground we see a clear line separating♛ orange and blue, as well as two orange- and blue-haired kids duking it out with squirt guns, which tells you exactly how Splatoon is going to play.

23. Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

Speaking of "muted elegance," enter 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Dark Souls 2:🦋 Scholar of the First Sin, a game whose entire aesthetic can be defined by those two words. It may not by the most eye-catching cover, but the stoic, armored warrior - 🍌alone against a foggy backdrop - is the perfect primer for this game's style and tone. ꧑The intricate designs set against a decaying suit of armor establish the faded glory that permeates this series.

22. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a mean game, so it's only fitting the cover to thi⛄s standalone expansion is evocative of a grindhouse movie poster. The monochromatic color scheme sets it apart from other games on the shelf, apropos of Blazkowicz'﷽s world being all blood and rage. Unfortunately, its best element - that screaming Nazi - is so far back you can barely discern his terror-stricken expression.

21. Yoshi's Wooly World

Seeing little yarn Yoshi riding little yarn Poochy in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Yoshi's Wooly World taps into some deeply rooted cuteness instincts science has yet to fully explain. The feeling is almost primal, like when you see an adorable little kitten and you just want to hold it and squeeze it and gobble you up, yes I will, oh yes I will. Ahem, w🌠ell, sometimes such ancient impulses are difficult to control.

20. Xenoblade Chronicles X

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Xenoblade Chronicles X makes a lot of promises here. An overcast sky fills the frame while naturally drawing the eye towards the intricately designed robot in the center - star of both this box art and (let's be honest) t🃏he game itself. The alien landscape suggests an open world adventure with giant robots, while saying nothing of the 30 hours you'll need to spend before suiting up in your first mech.

19. Minecraft Story Mode

Even if you don't give a rat's behind about Minecraft, you can't deny the captivating sense of adventure conveyed in this art. The blendꦉ of golds and purples pulls you in, first to the otherworldly creature screeching in the background, then to the motley crew of heroes arrayed along the bottom. Their expressions give you an intuitive impression of what their personalities, save for the pig. Who knows what it's thinking.

18. Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.

I'd like to take a moment and applaud the creators of this box art for the copious amounts of steam they were able to work into the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. cover. It's piping out of the guns, the title - it's everywhere. This entire thing just screamsཧ steampunk, right down to the tiny little gears dܫenoting the S.T.E.A.M. acronym.

17. Dying Light

These days, zombies convey all the excitement and freshness of wet cardboard. But 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Dying Light stands apart with the unique artistry of this pa꧃rticular brain-eater, with the way he bleeds into the frame like a downpour of darkness on a sunny day. The hands reaching uಞp from the depths of the darkened city could be those of hungry undead or desperate survivors reaching out for a savior.

16. Super Mario Maker

How do you convince someone - at a glance - that 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Super Mario Maker will be fun? This cover answers this question shockingly well. The disembodied hand and grid backdrop suggest this is some sort of workshop, while the oversize Blooper and its pixelated buddies let the viewer know this is going to get silly. But the real stroke of geniuജs is making the l🃏ower half a solid color, thereby preventing the viewer from being overwhelmed by visual information.

15. Life is Strange

Your teenage years typically revolve around the self, as you figure out who you are and where you fit in. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Life is Strange considers these questions of identity, and its cover puts similar emphasis on the self: the s✅plash of color from the polaroid of the game's lead, Max, and the imagery of a lone figure standing atop the edge of a cliff. This photo is then framed by two contrasting scenes, both thematically appropriate: the tranquility of the lighthouse and forest surrounding Arcadia Bay, and the unpredictable chaos of storms and tornadoes looming on the opposite side.

14. Project CARS

No one would've batted an eye if 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Project CARS - or any racing game, for that matter - put some glamor shot of a luxury sports car or an action scene of speeding competitors on the cover. But no: Project CARS goes against the grain, eschewing sweet rides entirely for a more abstract, eye-catching composition. The rainbow lines emanaꦿting from this shadowy everydriver evoke the same artisty as the unmistakable box art. And the dash of deep red and bright orange across the cover somehow conveys a sense of speed through color alone.

13. Resident Evil: Revelations 2

Deep reds and purples give this cover a warm - if not unsettling - aesthetic to the cover of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Resident Evil: Revelations 2, with the emerald♕ green eye serving as the proverbial rug that really ties the room together. Danger is felt in the twisted barbed wire snaking along the bottom and rusted prison bars framing the scene. There's a nice bit of ambiguity in whether the eye is looking out from its cell, or🍷 in on the viewer.

12. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster

Here we have a stunning piece of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Final Fantasy X artwork, and the💖 designers were wise to let it breathe against an otherwise uncluttered canvas. Swirling blues and dancing pins of light along the periphery harken back to our leading couple's iconic scene together in the Macalania lake. Their placement suggests a dee✤per connection, while distinguishing them as protagonists of their own games.

11. Rise of the Tomb Raider

This minimalist cover design smartly sets Lara alone against the elements. Stone columns on either side naturally frame the image, subtly reinforcing this is a portal to another Lara Croft adventure. You'll also notice there are no enemies or other humans on the cover of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Rise of the Tomb Raider. This heightens the sense of danger while also downplaying 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:the whole manslaughter angle which draws this series such ire.

10. Tearaway Unfolded: Crafted Edition

You guys, the Tearaway logo is itself torn away from the backdrop. And, as if that wasn't enough excitement, the Unfolded subtitle is - wait for it - unfolded like a piece of paper. This may sound sarcastic, but I sincerely appreciate the visual humor in this logo. Of course the adorable paper hero and wonderful background framing her are the real stars here, but I have to give it up for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Tearaway Unfolded's logo.

9. Rainbow Six: Siege

A dude exploding through a wall sums up this game to a T. Other boxes wish they could spell out their game with such clarity. Right away, the white and black backdrop on the cover of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Rainbow Six: Siege ཧtell you this is going to be some sort of team-based experience, all those guns reveal it's a shooter, and the exploding wall is the promise of wrecking shit up. Add a title, and what more do you need to know?

8. Bloodborne

Here's an interesting inversion of typical box art conventions. Instead of placing the cityscape around our hero, it is placed within, implying the hero is some sort of portal through which we experience a noticeably bleak and hostile world. The fraying around the shoulders and red plumes of smoke appear almost like wings, giving the character an angelic (or demonic) appearance, further heightening the riddle of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Bloodborne's setting.

7. Star Wars Battlefront

There's some excellent David and Goliath imagery going on with the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Star Wars Battlefront cover. The absences of any logos or text along the top half of the image let you take in the size and grandeur of the AT-AT Walker, itself an iconic vehicle design that just screams Star Wars. At the bottom, our tiny, defiant rebel soldier stands ready with fist clenc꧂hed and blaster drawn. The ruined Snowspeeder hints at the battle thus far, and the incoming Stormtro🧸opers tells us there's still plenty more to come.

6. The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes

澳洲幸运5开奖号码🐭历史查询:The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes cover could survive on the strength of its artwork alone, but there are few subtle additions that really set it over the top. First, notice h꧒ow the colors in the background and logo are kept ever-so-slightly muted so as to make our heroes really pop. Second, the red Link's attire and use of magic sets him apart from the other two Links, setting up that this is going to cooperative adventure with different, distinct play styles.

5. Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition (JP)

Japan has outdone itself again with this stellar piece of Devil May Cry box art, itself a parade of DMC mainstays past and present. The power of symmetry on display here is unmatched, right down to the mirror 📖image of Vergil's sword and the smoke from Trish's gun. An overabundance of logos is the only thing holding this box bac💧k from perfection.

4. Batman: Arkham Knight

It's telling that 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Batman: Arkham Knight lends equal real estate to the Dark Knight and his iron steed. Both are centered up harmoniously with the logo, giving the entire box an aesthetically pleasing sense of verticality. The white light in the center serves a dual purpose by placing emphasis on Batman and symbolizing him as the last ray of hope in this dark n✃ight.

3. Until Dawn

What an ingenious way to present a teen slasher. Typically, horror movies - which 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Until Dawn both mimics and subverts - have posters focusing on a single freaky face or creepy image, leaving little to absorb beyond the initial shock. But Until Dawn's box art draws you in with its skull-emblazoned hourglass, which seems to be made from a mixture of glass and ice. Its dwindling sands evoking the downpour o🅺f snow on your remote cabin, the time-rippling consequences of your cho🔯ices within the game, and the ever-shortening life expectancy of its hapless visitors. And what's that glinting in the skull's eyes? Do you dare look any closer?

2. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D

The blinding, pale white of the moon, coupled with its half grimace, makes this one of the most instantly arresting images on the lineup. Its presence looms as large here as it does in the game. In the foreground we see Link, gripping a mask that'll be key to this adventure, and behind him is the Skull Kid, twisting in the moonlight. Between them we catch a glimpse of the incredible journey that's about the unfold, with a special spot reserved for the oh-so-creepy Happy Mask Salesman. Together, they make a beautiful summation of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:the series' most melancholy stories.

1. Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence

The purpose of box art is to sell the viewer on the game and the prospect of buying it. And even though I know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that I will never, ever take interest in a methodically paced larg💎e-scale tactics game set in feudal Japan, the Nobunaga's Ambition cover has my rapt attention whenever I spy it. Tﷺhe lavish gold bordering magnetizes the eyes, pulling you towards the overwhelming imagery at its center.

Everything you could ever want is here: a dashing, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:determined warlord with immaculate facial hair and a rifle hitched over his ornately armored shoulder. A beautiful woman in eloquent garb with an expression that could convey grace or guile. A hawk flying into a lightning bolt, which in turn is crashing between two battlefields on land and sea. After such a bounty, you can give your eyes a rest with the calm religious figures in the upper right, one of whom looks like a short-haired Jesus. True story: there were multiple occasions in 2015 when I saw this box, excitedly pic🍎ked it up to look at the back, and came crashing back down to earth when I realized that it plays nothing like this art looks. But with a game, franchise, and genre this niche, the captivating allure of its box's visual splendor is its most powerful asset.

Could this signal the start of a fresh wave of physical kits, all taking their inspiration from popular video games? Perhaps, though some titles' violent content will almost certainly preclude them from play (realistic violence is a big Lego no-no, though quite what those craz🌜y Danes imagine pirates and medieval knights got up to is way beyond me). Until then, we'll just have to content ourselves with the following - brilliant - custom-made Lego kits. Remember, if you want to see more - and you will want to see more - check out the creator links provided.

Spotted some uncredited work? Let us know in the comments below.

Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, Revolver Ocelot, Cyborg Ninja (Metal Gear Solid), Naked Snake (MGS3), Meryl & Raiden (MGS4), Punished Snake & Quiet (MGSV) by

Metal Gear Rex (Metal Gear Solid/ MGS4) by

Alpha-Nine (ODST), Master Chief, Sgt. Johnson & The Arbiter by

Noble Team (Halo: Reach) by

Cortana by

Covenant Grunt by

BR85 Service Rifle & Warthog by

Pelican Dropship by

Minifigures by

Fat Man & Pip-Boy by

Vertibird dropship by

SSV Normandy & Mako by

Minifigures by

Carnifex Handgun by

Street Fighter Minifigures by

Mortal Kombat Minifigures by

Minifigures by

Special Infected Tank (Left 4 Dead) by

Sentry Gun & Tomislav (Team Fortress 2), Crowbar & Gravity Gun (Half-Life 2) by

Combine Dropship (Half-Life 2) by

Nathan Drake by

Chloe, Sully, Elena, Charley, Lazarevic (Uncharted), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us) by

Clicker by

Crash Bandicoot by

Krimzon Guard Zoomer (Jak & Daxter) by

Altair by

Ezio by

Connor by Adam Sansale &

Aveline by

Edward & Adewale by

Shay (AC: Rogue), Evie & Jacob Frye (AC:Syndicate) by

Arno by

Phantom Wristblade by

Da Vinci's Flying Machine by

Yet, even with great success, theres always room for improvement. The loyal Halo community has been vocal in its suggestions to make Halo 5 even better, and with the welcome release of the Cartographers Gift update - which brings Forge mode, and a bunch of new REQ cards and multiplayer maps - its clear 343 Industries is heeding the calls of the fans. But where next? Ive collated some of the most requested additions and alterations the community has asked for, as well as a few from our own experiences online too. After all, theres no harm ෴in polishing a diamond.

Warzone is a revelation for the series. Built around distinct MOBA aspects whilst still feeling very Halo, its been a rousing success with💜 both die-hard fans and those new to the series. The linear capture/defend variation on the game type, Warzone Assault, has proved less popular, however.

Its a nice change-up to Warzones traditional mode but is heavily biased towards defenders. The Escape from A.R.C. maps garage is so big, its easy for a single defending player to block captures by hiding, whilst other teammates hold out thꦇe rest of the area. A simple solution lies in one of Halos stablemates, Gears of War, specifcally in the way Judgm🌊ents Overrun mode play. A round of attacking and defending for each team. Its that simple. The team that advances through the capture points quickest would be victorious, but if the game ends with both teams successfully defending the first point, then the best percentage of capture would prevail.

Ive noticed through my trials and tribulations in Assault that as the levels of players increase, the chance of securing a capture becomes more likely - after all, better REQs, a better chance for success. Yet, unl♋ike in similarly-focused games such as Team Fortress 2, another minor problem arises.

When blitzing through to jump on a point with little-to-no capture progress at the end of a round, the time it would take to control that point, often exceeds the time thats left making the last few, would-be crucial seconds of the round pointless🅠. A logical solution to this would be overtime. If a point is being captured or contested with zero seconds on the clock, the game extends the play-time until the bid is over. It works wonders in Team Fortress 2, making for some really tense endings, plus, it helps the balance between defending and attacking; its a no-brainer.

A hotly talked about topic in the Halo community, Boss takedowns are both frustrating and intently satisfying in equal measure. Grinding on a boss alone, whittling them down to a slither of health, to have a teammate - or worse, an enemy - steal that legendary kill and claim the glory and XP for themselves, is infuriating. But at the same time, it works both ways. Notice that a boss is close to destruction, throw yo🎐ur hard-earned REQ points at a power weapon, steal the kill for yourself, and youll feel very differently.

Some of the community believe that this type of play simply isnt fair, whilst others appluade its similarity to competitive counterparts such as League of Legends and DOTA 2, claiming that its all part of the strategy. My opinion? Im on﷽ the fence. Indeed, whilst it could be strategic to steal an enemys takedown from under their nose, there should be more of a concrete allocation of boss kills spoils among teammates. Sometimes XP sharing occurs but its not clear-cut, and some clarification from 343 Industries on thisꦰ would be well received by the community.

Have you ever spawned into a game after spending six REQ points on a Beam Rifle, only to be instantly killed from enemy Banshee fire? Sucks, right? When choosing to spawn with a power weapon there are 🤡several ways to avoid being caught in a crossfire - primarily by selecting safer, out-of-the-way spawn points - but it's often tough to judge how secure a vehicle spawn is when you want one.

Escape from A.R.C. is the culprit once again. If you have captured the garage and want to spawn a shiny Ghost Ultra or Mantis, its possible to get jacked, or destroyed, almost before you are able to make it on to the battlefield proper. A safety period for vehicle spawns needs to exist, making ꦕit at least possible to exit your base before your inevitable demise.

I love showing off as much as the next person. Screenshots of my post-game exploits litter my hard drives, and I love it. One thing I and many others miss though, is in-game medal breakdowns. Currently only accessible through Halo Waypoint, analysing the medals acquired throughout your previous game should be made available on the post-game screen. Its a decent way to ga🌌uge how well you are doing against your opponents for consistency, and also a great tool for gloating.

With boosts that reward you for landing in the top 50% for medal count, not showing how many medals you achieved in certain game modes makes no sense. This is another touch🐽-up that many peacocks, like myself, would be more than happy to see come to light. Let me bask in my own glory without having to open up a web browser.

Expanding on the post-game screen, there are some missing stats that should be included, and existing ones that can be omitted. In Warzone,🍸 for example, a stat showing damage to the c🌜ore would be extremely handy, as would one showing damage dealt to bosses.

In SWAT, theres a c༒olumn for Perfect Kills. It almost always shows zero. Theres really no need to have it there. Its wasted space that could be used for something more worthwgile, like number of multikills or longest streak. .

Back in the days of Halo 4, there were some really neat SWAT combinations, making for interesting, varied matchups. Halo 5 current💛ly has only two types of SWAT: Battle Rifles only (Standard), and the Magnum variation.

Whilst both are great, other variations would certainly keep things fresh. The fan favourite DMR seems to have been put to one ♐side in Halo 5 and is certainly missed. Offering more range than a Magnum, but with a similar rate of fire, it would certainly change things up a bit. Also, what happened to Covenant SWAT? The Carbine was brutally effective in getting rapid kills thanks to its mid-range and superior rate of fire. If it makes a return, expect s💙ome super-quick, high-energy rounds.

Once the campaign has been played through once or twice, and all the collectibles and Skulls have been discovered, many players shy away from revisiting Halo 5s story mode. The daily, weekly and monthly challenges found in earlier Halo iterations would counter this completely, bringing about an entirely new way ꦡto ❀enjoy the campaign.

In previous games they were a really interesting way of keeping both individual players and their online friends engaged with the game, well after its release. And now, with REQ pack customisation and micro-transactions teasing more engagement after launch, theres even more rea𓆏son for 343i to bring back these challenges in Halo 5.

Its pretty tricky to get a handle on some of the menus when loading up Halo 5 ♋or the first time. With the vast amount of different helmets and armour sets available to unlock through REQ packs, the Collection menu gets a little cluttered to say the least.

To help with this, stacking armor,𒊎 helmet and vehicle variations together would help address the mess and give a better way to notice the subtle differences in the variations unlocked. And besides, us show-offs want to show off. Let me see all my trinkets in one orderly place.

Everybody loves getting a satisfying up-close kill, and 343i has certainly catered to the sadistic, skull-piercing minds of its fans by including a whole host of different takedowns for ⛄players to choose from.

The problem is that the only way to see how your assassination will look once youve unlocked it is to go in-game and perform it. Sadly, some players just arent good enough to get that immediate pay-off. A preview of how those new assassinations work, on the Collection screen♔, would give pla🐲yers a visual goal to aim towards, and something to covet straight away once they get there, similar to the previewing of emotes in Star Wars: Battlefront.

We here at GamesRadar+ have used our collective wisdom to rank many things from best to not-so-best, including the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Metal Gear, Halo, and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Silent Hill series. Now we turn our attention to this classic holiday tune, considering entertainment, utility, and overall value to give you the definitive standings for the twelve days leading up to the actual day of Christmas, December 25th. Whether you're the gifter or the giftee 👍in this incredibly drawn-out scenario, these professional appraisals provide the perfect guide for how you're supposed to feel on each day.

"What the hell is this? Who t🔯he hell even are these people, and why are they in my home? What do you mean they 'live here now'!?" These exciting questions and more are sure to follow if you ever decide to give someone twelve grown-ass men whom you've instructed to "leap around." Who in their right mind would do this? This verse of rhyme might as well read "Ten white elephants a-ruining Christmas" because that's exactly what's a-happening here.

Will somebody please make those birds SHUT UP?! Bird calls are pleasant on a su♍nny morning, but being forced to listen to incessant chirping for eight days straight would drive anyone up the wall. And nothing puts the kibosh on happy holidays like seriously contemplating the murder of four feathered friends.

And you thought those godforsaken calling birds were bad. Here come eleven failed musicians eager to reenact Christmas carols once a year for some paltry additional income, all of whom look like they need to be doing something better with their lives (right after they grab a shower and clean the grimy, encrusted spit off their instruments). Within seconds, you'll politely ask them to stop. But oh no, your True Love paid th🍎em good money, and they're going to perform the entirety of this ear-piercing flute piece whether you want to hear it or not.

Turtles doves aren't all that different⛦ from pigeons, so if you've ever delighted at the thought of owning a pair of them, day two of this gift marathon is going to be a real winner. If, like most people, the idea of owning two pigeons does absolutelyౠ nothing for you, then you may just want to shove these out the window when your True Love isn't looking. Don't worry, they'll be fine.

Swans are traditionally objects of beauty, so it'd be quite lovely watching them serenely swimming around a pond that hasn't frozen over in the cold December air. Lovely for about five minutes... and then you start to wonder what comes next. Swans typically mate for life, and with an odd number like seven, that dooms one poor oddball to crushing loneliness. Way to go, True Love - you just turned a heartfelt gesture into one of the most awkward, depressi𓆉ng gifts imaginable.

Given the True Love's propensity for theatrics, this i💎s a surprisingly pragmatic gift. Three is a perfectly manageable amount of fowl to bequeath someone. They may not be actively "a-laying" like the upcoming geese, but I'm sure if you give the hens a little corn feed they'll come around. Alternatively, you could also butcher them and whip up some juicy chicken br🍌east for the whole family. There are plenty of useful options with this gift.

The perceived value of this gift relies on so many uncertain variables that it seems like far more trouble than it's worth. Are these ladies doing some erotic dancing, in the most twisted perversion of the Christmas spirit since Bad Santa? Do they dabble in ballet, which only the most refined viewer could appreciate? Or is this an interpretive dance bordering on the level of performance art? Whatever the case, the dance troupe's choreography better be on point, because no one wants to waste their time with amateurs - looking at you, pipers.

Okay, True Love, take a knee here, sport. You need to lay off the fowl, pheasants, and other assorted birds, okay? We have enough at this point. Granted, geese are beautiful creatures, ꦛand the fact that these ones are a-laying does mean we'll be having goose-egg omelets for the next couple of days, but this is getting excessive. How about a nice...🃏 oh, I don't know... sweater, or some new gloves, instead? Even a freaking Amazon gift card would be preferred at this point.

I can take or leave the whole milking thing - unless you're celebrating Christmas down on the farm - but it is nice to have some extra help around the house during the holidays. With all the friends and relatives coming in and out, you need some able bodies to make emergency grocery store trips, wrap presents, or squirrel away Uncle Jack's whisky bottle when he's not looking. Of course, you also have eight more people to take care of under your roof. Maybe you𓂃 can introduce them to those prancing Lords...

Okay, let's get real for a second: compared to a lot of the other gifts on this list, a simple partridge and a pear tree is a pretty sweet deal. Partridges are nice birds - they're sort of like smaller, more elegant chickens - and they're certainly easier to be around than those damn calling birds from earlier. Plus you get a pear tree - a whole pear tree. Drop that thing in your back yard and enjoy so🔯me delicious, organic pears later on. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

The True Love has pulled out some pretty stupid and ill-conceived gifts in the past, but this one almost makes up for them all. Twelve. Drummers. Drumming. Do you realize how amazing this would be to have at a holiday party? Remember ? Remember ? This is the perfect form of live entertainment for you and your guests - and all twelve of them are there to make you look awesome. Imagine walking out with the Christmas goꦬose/turkey/tofurky and hearing *CHA-KAKA-CHA-KAKA-CKA* as you strut ove𒅌r and set it down on the table. The very thought of these pro percussionists gets us pumped up.

JACKPOT! Don't even sweat the fact that this might be your True Love's bizarre way of proposing marriage, with a ring for each finger on your left hand. Just think of the resale value on these babies. You're only four away from the Nine Rings of Man forged in The Lord of the Rings, and they were a pretty big deal. The difference being, those rings cursed their wearers to an eternity of tormented service in undeath, whereas these will curse you with a fat stack of cash from the nearest pawn shop, instantly putting a spri🧸ng in your step. It'd be easier if your True Love had just cut you a check and called it a day, but this will do nicely. You're probably going to hate True Love when these twelve days are over, but after this cashout, you can't say they never did anything for you.

The store's selection pays tribute to , , , and among others, making for a good spread of both classic and modern series. Each piece ranges from $45-55 and is free of any standard snowflake or holly berry knitting p꧟atter♔ns!

Should you be worried about ordering the wrong size, there's a Size Chart tab to the r✨ight of the Description field on all of the product pages.

Images: Welovefine

This War of Mine, a survival strategy game released in 2014, paints a sobering picture of life in the shadow of war. Now developer 11 Bit Studios is adding children to this already harrowing circumstance in the upcoming expansion, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Little Ones. I caught up with senio💧r writer💞 Pawel Miechowski to discuss how the team balances such somber material with making a fun game.

The original This War of Mine is a game of impossible choices. You lead a band of broken and beaten survivors who all must do what they must in order to endure life in a city under siege. Adding children to this already harrowing backdrop could push this game well into heartbreak territory, but, as Mie🐲chowski explains, children are actually one of the few rays of 🅰sunshine in the survivor's lives.

Recently, GamesRadar+'s very own Justin Towell made the case - during an otherwise ringing endorsement of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Rise of the Tomb Raider, that the game features way too many of these optional, 🧔HUD-hogging distractions. You simply can’t move for them, to say nothing of the added jumble that appears in light of Lara's 'detective mode'-style Survival Instinct. More than mere abundance then. This is overkill, to the point of not just baiting, but tormenting our obsessive tendencies.

Suffice to say that many players agree. It seems that, yes, you can have an excess of these standard-level collectibles. I say 'standard-level', because it's important to differentiate between those rare treasure hunts that actually enthrall us, - i.e. the discovery of an important audio log that changes your perception of the story - and the vast majority that don’t. To be clear, I’m talking about the kind of items that operate as glorified filler, being neither fun nor entirely boring to collect, and relying more on compulsion than being compe🌳lling. In short, they represent the video gaming equivalents of snack foods. You can chow down all you like, but you'll never be truly satisfied.

Other gamers, meanwhile, take the view that additional content - even uninspired dreck like this - isn't really the issue. Instead the problem lies with the players' own inability to control their impulse to grab it all. After all, we spend our entire lives making similar value judgements about the use of time and resources, right down to the fundamentals of deciding how best to spend our days. Why then should it be any different in video games? Just because a collectible flashes up in front of us, that doesn't mean we necessarily have to grab it, no more so than we have to buy an item sold through incessant marketing.

Then again, isn't the whole point of video games to give us things to do, tasks that range from the entirely arbitrary to the seemingly significant? Whether it’s 'go here', 'stomp that' or 'shoot this many of these', most (though not all) of our favourite games are founded upon the same simple notion - complete one little objective after another and you build your way to a cumulative victory. In this way we've almost been conditioned to become compulsive, trained to tick a series of variably well-disguised boxes as our means of achieving anything important. To put it another way, if gaming is all about completing tasks, then collectibles must represent this in its most basic and sincere form. And 🎉if that's true, then how can we the players be expected to ignore one type of 'objective' altogether? Yet collectibles remain contentious. Ultimately they represent the line many gamers draw between satisfying, relevant actions and the arbitrary.

So, why exactly are developers choosing to include so many of these brain-addling bonuses? A cynic might say that it's all about artificially boosting their games’ length, tacking on chores to drive up the duration. While that's certainly true of some titles, it doesn't explain why other games, i.e. those with longer running times and a great deal of depth already on offer, also opt to include them. A developer might argue that if a game's basic mechanics are enjoyable, then anything that gives us with a reason to continue using them must surely be alright. Rather than paddi🐠ng out play time, they'd simply be 'prolonging the fun'.

And what about the 'professional vanity' reasons for scattering said collectibles? No narrative, no matter how exhaustive, could possibly give players reason to scour every carefully coded texture and precision-placed polygon. Collectibles prompt us to do just that, no doubt to the delight of any work-proud developer. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, of course - individual devs deserve f🎀ar more credit than it's really possible to give them - but I’d venture that the type of p📖layer to attempt total completion is already far too caught up in their tunnel vision to really enjoy the sightseeing.

Ultimately, both sides of the argument make strong and valid points. You could say then that it's all a matter of taste. Some gamers simply want to feel as though they've 'beaten' a title before moving on to another. Grindy, drawn-out 🌸sub-tasks effectively p🥀reclude them from doing that. Others, meanwhile, prefer to 'inhabit' a world over longer periods of time, and a long-term treasure hunt allows them to do just that. One player's helpful pop up is another's HUD-based headache.

That said, if the inclusion of🍎 collectibles comes down to the binary opinion-gulf between 'lacking content' and 'too much clutter', I'd personally side with the ‘less-is-more’ camp. Becaus🌳e has anyone really, actively missed this stuff when it hasn’t appeared? Surely no-one ever bemoaned a game's lack of padding. The fact that some players make the best of this excess shouldn't speak to its inherent value.

Hell, even if some players do demand collectibles, there’s a great modern solution that, if used right, can please everybody. It comes down to that division I mentioned earlier, between the meaningful and the arbitrary. With so many of today's games now featuring crafting systems, lootable in-game resources have become more prevalent than ever before, but theoretically they can also become more relevant. Perhaps it's high time that developers allowed these systems to fully🌳 replace, rather than merely add to, the practice of aimless old-school collectibles.

Look at 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Fallout 4. Objectively it’s a junk-hoovering simulator with no equal, but t🤪he constant purpose to the process - whether it be modifying guns and armour, or building homes and farms - makes it feel anything but. Far from a prescriptive check-list, Fallout 4’s collectibles are the fuel of creative, freeform player agency.

Of course, that’s not a good fit for every game, but where no such replacements ar👍e suitable, let's continue to include more meaningful items in their stead - important artefacts, lore-rich scraps and other worl💫d-building knick-knacks. In the end, video games may still boil down to well-disguised check-lists, but that doesn't mean they have to feel like it. Players shouldn’t have to ignore the impulse to gather. It’s a natural, human response to our environment, after all. We just need better stuff to collect.

Each version channels its respective hero's signature look; Jacob's triple-strap patch rests upon his hoodie's back shoulder for example, while Evie's delicate em♕broidered patterns flow down the back of her top's design.

Either garment is available for pre-order at $94.99 and is expected to be ready for your parkour-fueled stealth missions within early December. We suppose these c𓃲ould also prꦇotect you from frigid street-level conditions, if there's ever time in your crime-riddled schedule for a mundane trip to the store or something.

Images: Ubi Workshop

When Satoru Iwata walked out on stage at the Tokyo Game Show in 2005, it was impossible to measure the impact the little white brick in his hand would have. After months of teases, endless speculation about the codename Revolution, and worry for the future of Nintendo’s console business, here was a tantalizing glimpse at the future: the Wii remote. The console itself wouldn’t be playable in public for nearly a year to come, but already the possibilities of this tiny, smooth spin on the controller were invigorating. It worked like a mouse pointer! And an NES-style controller when you turn it on its side! It had a microphone! Most importantly, it detected a range of physical motions both big and small. Just think what you can do with that. Steer the wheel of your kart. Swing Link’s sword. As a concept free of an actual game that had to usꦉe it, the controller in Iwata’s hand represented staggering liberty.

Photo credit: AP

In practice, it didn’t work even remotely like that. Even later when Nintendo introducedಌ the accuracy-enhancing Wii Remote Plus add-on and a newer model remote that had that tech built right in, the Wii controller never offered the actual opportunities people thought it could. Motion-based input turned out to be an almost universally terrible idea when applied to traditional games. Shaking your arm back and forth to swing Link’s sword in Twilight Princess was exhausting, while swinging your arm in broad motions in Skyward Sword required frequent recalibration of the motion sensor. (Nothing says high adventure like having to pause the game, put down your controller, and wait a moment for the damn thing to reset its balance.)

When used in original games like Wii Sports, the effect was novel and delightful, albeit lacking serious depth. Shaking your arms rather than pressing buttons was super fun, but it made the precision that makes most video games so pleasurable impossible to nail. Was it awesome to bowl a strike in Wii Sports? Of course it was, but the strike came from lining your character up on screen with the directional buttons not the actual swing of your arm. Was it awesome having to shake the controller, trusting that it might work this time when trying to make tricky jumps i🔜n Donkey Kong Country? Absolutely not. It was awful and infuriating because it meant that achievement in the game was based more on chance than on clearly-defined boundaries. The motion control wouldn’t have even been necessary if the Wii remote had four face buttons like every other game controller made since 1991. In trying to offer what appeared to be a simpler input, Nintendo complicated game-making techniques that had been proven for nearly a generation.

But in many hands, the constraints of limited buttons and imprecise motion proved inspiring. Trying to fit old types of games into the ill-fitting Wii remote worked out terribly - Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4 might be the only examples of complex games that actually made the transition to the Wii 💮remote and ended up better - but by slightly altering those older game types around those limitations, certain designers ended up with wholly unique games that felt like magic.

At a base level, Climax’s Silent Hill: Shattered Memories isn’t so different than the five horror games sharing its name that came before. Take one emotional-wrecked dude, plop him into a town where his psychological traumas take physical form and chase him around, force you to solve some puzzles to try and get out. First, the Wii remote means you don’t have a second analog stick to manipulate the camera with. Rather than a hindrance, Shattered Memories’ limited field of view and perspective become taught, harrowing aspects of actually playing the game. Pointing the Wii remote around the screen contro🌄ls what you see, doubling as a flashlight for peering into dark corners (or accidentally alerting monsters to your location in certain circumstances). The limits of the remote actually end up enhancing something as simple as how you see the world of the game.

Obviously the needs of a horror game are specific. The fact that the Wii remote’s limitations are inherently uncomfortable definitely lend themselves more to a game where you’re supposed to feel totally helpless rather than empowered. But even game types whꦇere complexity and precision are typically prerequisites for quality thrived on Wii when they were designed with the right perspective. Grasshopper’s No More Heroes is a 3D action game where you slice up scads of bad guys trying to beat the crap out of you. Peers like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta need every shoulder and face button on a Dualshock or Xbox controller, but No More Heroes has you attacking with just one button on the face of the remote. Rather than feel limiting, the unfussy controls actually enhance the feeling of careless brutality ♑that drives the whole game’s satirical story. It makes sense that Travis Touchdown, the dorkus who just casually decides to become an assassin, only needs to kill thugs with one button; it’s a perfectly lazy thematic choice. No More Heroes pairs those easy button presses with pristinely considered motion controls. Build up a combination of hits, and you can wildly swing the remote to pull off a wrestling move. It couples the motion controls with physical catharsis, that moment when you flashily wrap up a perfect maneuver. The motion controls are used when you let go, not when you need to be precise.

The need to work around the margins of the Wii remote is a moot point ten years after Iwata firs🉐t held it up to the world. What was supposed to be a revolution was ultimately deemed an evolutionary dead end by the gaming public. With most games noꦇt made by Nintendo floundering on the Wii, the majority of developers and publishers didn’t bother continuing to experiment like Climax and Grasshopper did with Shattered Memories and No More Heroes. Microsoft and Sony both managed to sell quite a few Kinects and PS Move controllers respectively, but game makers abandoned those devices even faster. It didn’t matter that motion controllers kept evolving; players didn’t want to use them. But the important lesson lying at the end of the Wii remote’s first decade isn’t that the player is always right. What the best Wii games prove is that limitations are not always a bad thing. By having to work inside of a box, by straining at tight bonds, even old ideas can become new again.

It used to be that you had your toys and you had your video games, and that wa🗹s that. But now those worlds have combined, thanks to the stratospheric rise of what video game publishers refer to as the 'toy♔s-to-life' genre. It sounds like a bunch of marketing speak, but it basically means that you can buy actual toys and make them interact with compatible video games in a variety of ways. It's a neat gimmick, and everyone from Nintendo to Lego seems to be getting in on it.

But since the genre's humble beginnings a few years ago, things have gotten surprisingl𓂃y complicated. You'd think you could simply walk into a store and just grab whatever, but there are starter packs and add-ons for each set that all unlock different things, and not all games and sets are created equal. It can be intimidating for someone looking to get started or pick up the right toy for their kids, so I've broken out each of the different options into their own pages for easy reference. Keep these beginner's guides handy while you peruse your local or online store's many options.

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:What is Skylanders?

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:What is amiibo?

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:What is Disney Infinity?

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:What is Lego Dimensions?

We're mainly talking about movies here, though television, literature and even music have all been known to hit me for six. So, why not video games? Whaꦍt's so special about these virtual worlds that renders them incapable of tugging at my tear ducts?

Well, my initial impulse is to lay the blame on gaming's artificial actors - i.e. those characters who occupy the 'uncanny valley' between believable humanity and queasy facsimile. As anyone who's witnessed a wonky spot of CGI can tell you, the difference between getting people 'right' and 'almost right' can be absolutely massive. It just so happens that we as humans are pretty darn shrewd at separating flesh and blood beings from electronic fakes - something that's sure to ꩵcome in h𓆉andy when an army of buff, 30-something Schwarzeneggers eventually tries to gain entry to our subterranean hovels.

For my money, ജthis sense of unease might have everything to do with the way in which we’re wired𒉰 up to engage with others. In cold, evolutionary terms we’re all out to find the healthiest looking mates to roll around in the hay with. As such, tangible vitality is king. It’s why we’re spooked by dead bodies, or taken aback when we catch a shop mannequin in the corner of our eye. Their comparative lack of vitality triggers an instinctive sense of anxiety - just as it does when viewing the waxen, dull-eyed artifice of a video game creation. Simply put, the closer something comes to believable humanity without actually attaining it, the greater our discomfort becomes.

Deliberately stylized characters, meanwhile are able to simply sidestep this issue - offering a rather more fantastical package that doesn’t trou🐟ble our perceptions. Unfortunately, just as everything from voice acting to gameplay feedback has improved over time, so it is that many AAA games now regard photo-realism as the gold standard in graphics. Could it be that the general 'unrealness' of these AAA characters is enough to disengage our investment - perhaps even at the subconscious level? Jeebus knows I've witnessed some truly beautiful things in gaming, so why aren't I engaging with them as I would seeing such things on film? This 'uncanny' explanation certainly seems promising, but what about other potential pitfalls? What if, for example, the medium simply hasn't matured enough to inspire true emotional resonance?

Hey now, put away those pitchforks folks. That wasn't intended as a slight against gaming. Indeed, the medium has spent so darn long attempting to ape film that it only makes sense to judge it by similar standards. Indeed, a truly direct comparison actually gives us mitigating factors. You see we're now around 40 glorious years into theꦰ lifetime of gaming. A similar stretch in filmmaking terms would take us into the 1930s, an era that spawned a good number of classics, yet whose output still seems somewhat hokey by today's standards. Not that the filmmakers of the era knew that, of course - they were crafting the most cutting edge entertainment of the age, just as modern-day game makers are. Who's to say then, that the likes of Uncharted might not look similarly silly given another 80 years?

Last but not least there's the tricky issue of interactivity. From one perspective, actively involving ourselves in the lives of others ought to elicit even greater sympathy. But from another, this need to progress the plot manuꦇally - i.e. by pulling the virtual levers and 'beating' a game - may actually serve to stymie the sorts of feelings formed as more passive observers. It certainly doesn't help matters that most cutscenes are locked away behind a level's toughest moments, leading to instances of pure frustration that can supersede our more wistful emotions.

And that’s before factoring in the vital importance of our wacky, inefficient brains. Where a tough puzzle might tickle its critical thinking, a sterling symphony may fondle another region entirely. Alternating between the two isn’t like flipping a switch. Just ask yourself, would we have felt the death of The Green Mile's John Coffey quite so keenly had the movie prompted us to best a level of Ikaruga fi✃rst?

So, is interactivity to blame? Well, that all depends. There are definitely ways to smooth the transition. How well does the game mask its artifice? Do the NPCs start to feel like broken down automatons the moment they’re done talking? Moreover, could it be said that our sense of immersion relies entirely upon our willingness to ‘remain on the ride at all times’? With the obvious exception of that one telecom van trundling along in the background of Braveheart, fiဣlm actually does a rather good job of disguising its own unreality. Movies are, by💯-and-large an utterly linear art form, with most scenes meticulously crafted so as to maintain the suspension of disbelief. Shift the frame just slightly however, and you’ll see all manner of cameramen, key grips and starlets just farting about in the background. In essence, the malleability of video gaming allows us do just that.

What hope does immersion have when I’m able to simply pinch the camera off Spielberg’s shoulder and punt an E.T. puppet in the face? If our emotional connections really do depend upon the believability of the characters and environments around us, then surely these cardboard worlds will always be challenged in terms of resonance, in much the same way that visiting a movie set tour won’t make us feel the same way we did when we watched the movie? I really do hope that I’m wrong in this, and that in-game freedom doesn’t run contrary to a deepening sense of emotional immersion. We all want to feel things playing games. It’s a large pa🔯rt of the reason a lot of us play, after all. Sadly, it seems that right now, for me at least, those emotions are restricted to first-pumping euphoria and frothy-mouthed rage. Sometimes you just want a nice big sob. Is it too late to turn in my rugged man badge?

Of course, I’m talking primarily about AAA games in all of this. The likes of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Life is Strangeand 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Walking Dead have led to great deluges of cathartic sobs throughout the gaming community. But, being (relatively) passive, narrative-focused games, with stylised art, they by default dodge a lot of the problems I’ve discussed. If you know of any games outside of their ilk guaranteed to give my cheeks a good washing, please do let me know. What is it that works for you, and where do you stand on the issues raised? Will we start to see more expressive anౠd emotionally impactful games as the medium develops? Let's cert🍸ainly hope so.

A bad game with a bad final boss is nothing special. If playing a game feels like kicking a bunch of soccer balls up a mountain, why should the end feel any different? But a good game with a bad final boss, now that's something you hate to see. After all the fun and excitement, you dont want to end on🌊 a sour note. It casts a long shadow over the whole game, and will always stick out in your mind as the last thing you accomplished.

And yet, there are dozens - if not hundreds - of oth𓃲erwise great games that somehow manage to fall apart in the eleventh hour. Worse yet, many of these final fights are preceded by exhilarating enemy encounters that would've made fine endpoints. But a video game just isn't a video game if ಌyou don't fight some big monster at the very end, right? Here are some of the worst offenders; battles that should have been amazing, but weren't.

Reaper-Human Larva (Mass Effect 2)

The Pitch: "This is a true David-versus-Goliath matchup. It's Commander Shepard's first time going mano e mano with a Reaper. And not just any Reaper, a Reaper made out of liquified humans (some of which might even be his former crewmates). In the original Mass Effect you see a Reaper get taken down by the combined might of the galactic military. Now, you get to take one down yours⛦elf with the combined might of Shepard and her friends."

The Reality: It's a bargain-bin Terminator with a bad cough. What should have been the endcap on an excellent action set-piece ends up feeling wholly unnecessary due to its mediocrity. The classic one-two punch of squatting behind cover and shooting the weak spot is all it takes to put this baby to bed. Considering that everything leading up to the fight - the Collector battles, issuing life-or-death orders to teammates, dealing with the Illusive Man - has been amazing, Shepard and friends could have skipped t🌳his final bout.

The Joker (Batman: Arkham Asylum)

The Pitch: "We've seen the Joker scheme against Batman, send henchmen after Batman, and sometimes wail on Batman (and his loved ones) with a crowbar, but never have we seen him go toe-to-toe🌠 with the Dark Knight as equals. Forgot all the philosophical order-versus-chaos nonsense. Let's pump the Joker full of Titan and set this Hulked-out beast loose on the Bat."

The Reality: When he's not flailing around the arena like a three-year-old trying to hit a pinata, the Joker spends most of his fight showboating in the background as if this were a WWE pay-per-view event. Of course, this entire sequence is undercut by the fact that - at this point in the game - Batman has already faced Bane, Killer Croc, and several beefed-up mooks, so fighting another Big McLargeHuge🌼 isn't anything special.

Lambent Brumak (Gears of War 2)

The Pitch: "What's the most devastating weapon in Gears of War 2? That's right, the Hammer of Dawn. And the player gets to use it, what, like three or four times the entire game? That just doesn't seem right. For the final boss it's going to be all Hammer of Dawn all the time. Space lasers are going to be flying every which way as Marcus and Dom take down a giant mutated Godzilla monster who🐲se death will trigger a blast the size of a WMD."

The Reality: The problem with basing an entire boss fight around the Hammer of Dawn is that the Hammer isn't all that interesting a weapon to use. It's basically a big laser pointer for a satellite cannon to target. Using it is about as exciting as an adventure game puzzle: use Hammer on Bruma๊k for victory. It's really more of a spectacle than a boss fight, one that feels old before it even starts.

Nihilanth (Half-Life)

The Pitch: "In the dist♐ant reaches of time and space, Gordon Freeman stands alone against the Nihilanth, a bulbous and grotesque alien mastermind wielding strange and unusual magics. You are cut ꦦoff from everything you've known. There's nothing left for you out in the void, save for this final battle, followed by certain doom. It's a suicide mission, but someone has to do it.

The Reality: Fighting this overgrown space baby is such a drag. All the creepy ambiance in the world can't make up for the fact that all you have to do is slowly circle around it while shooting its big, bulbous head. Its attacks are slow-moving and easy to avoid, save for one that will teleport you down a giant space weꦐll if it hits. You then have to climb back out by doing some of that oh♚-so-enjoyable late-90s first-person platforming everyone remembers so fondly.

Rodrigo Borgia (Assassin's Creed 2)

The Pitch: "It's the Pope. The freaking Pope. The m⛎agic-staff-wieldin♔g, drunk-with-power supervillain Pope, and YOU get to fight him using the mystical Apple of Eden. This is an insane crossroads of Catholic iconography and supernatural mumbo-jumbo built to serve as the backdrop for one of the most outlandish holy rumbles ever to transpire. One must assume that, when the Assassin's Creed series was created, it was with the intent of presenting this matchup."

The Reality: The street-level combat of Assassin's Creed simply doesn't lend itself to the grandeur of fighting His Holiness. Ezio and his crew of magically-conjured assassins encircle their target and take turns swatting at him as if he were a fly on a horse. It's about as interesting as it sounds. 🐓In stage two, all weapons and assassin ghosts are swapped for a good old-fashioned punch fight as you pummel a basically defenseless man into submission. Again, not exactly the heroic finale it could have been.

Solidus Snake (Metal Gear Solid 2)

The Pitch: "Two samurai - one a child soldier raised in the jungles of Liberia and the other his mentor and former President of the United States - are going to clash swords atop Federal Hall in downtown Manhattan. This is after a giant floating fortress called Arsenal Gear crashes into the city. Both of these men are also wear🥀ing cybernetic combat suits, one of which fires missꦗiles out of its Doctor Octopus-style tentacles."

The Reality: What should have been cyberpunk samurai duel to the death ends up feeling like more of an awkward slap fight. Solidus' attack patterns are so rote and predictable that fighting him is like grinding through a dull Pokemon battle. Solidus used Dash💎 Attack. Missed. Raiden used Sword Swipe. Hit. Repeat this for a🦋 good 10 minutes or so and the fight blessedly ends.

Yami (Tatsunoko vs. Capcom)

The Pitch: "Everyone loves the final boss fight against Yami at the end of Okami. You start the fight without any of your powers and have to knock them out of Yami one by one over the course of this multifo𓄧rm battle royale. It's an immense encou🅘nter that highlights all the skills and abilities you've collected, reflecting your long journey up to this point. Now we're going to transplant that same boss character onto a fighting game, where it'll have all the same grandeur and excitement."

The Reality: It didn't, not even a little bit. Yami may look the same and use some of the same attacks as it did in Okami, but in this new game it's simply a chore to fight. Consider Yami's size. Because it takes up about half the screen, you don't really fight against Yami so much as fight at it. Your assault barely fazes it as it just rolls from one attack to the next. But what's even worse is its hyper gaug🙈e-draining attack, which it uses constantly to ensure the fight lasts as long as possible by denying you your most powerful tools.

Look, not every Super Mario Maker creation is going to be a masterpiece. It's understandable that the fledgling architects of these 2D gauntlets would want to get a little experimental, pushing the limits of what some might call sensible design in the hopes of making something that stands out. But where most people would scrap a harebrained level after messing around with it, others choose to unleash it upon their fellow players by uploading it to the 'net. Maxwell and ꩵLucas plunged their arms deep into the Super Mario Maker barrel to scrape the absolute bottom, hoping to find a handful of levels that aren't fit for human consumption. Here are the results of their masochistic search. And who knows? Maybe, when they're in the deepest depths of torturing and/or boring the player, these levels will reveal that they've got some redeeming𒁃 value after all.

Here are the ID ♕codes for each level, if (for whatever reason) you'd like to try them yourself:

Seize the moment!: EBEA-0000-0026-444F
Water Mines: 6836-0000-0021-D8EC
Don't touch the P switch (HARD): CB3B-0000-003E-2607
Explore as Megaman: A37B-0000-0029-3B89
P!w run slowly: 1280-0000-0034-C538

And be sure to check out our other video highlighting 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:♌6 of the greatest Super Mario Maker levels.

The Tokyo Game Sho𓆉w convention center signage is surrounded on all sides by ads forﷺ Western games.

Fans of Gundam - Gundam 🌳heads - were all over this 1:1 scale Zaku II head, which displayed to promote Bandai Namcos upcoming t𒁏itle, Gundam Extreme VS Force.

An odd cross-promotional exhibit had special game-themed costumes for girl group 🙈AKB48 on display.

T♔he live Love Live! stage display was at full volume, and always full of eager participants, even on the professional-only days of Tokyo Game Show 🌄2015.

The massive K🍨onami Tokyo Game Show booth looks as if it is being Fultoned up and out of the convention center.

The multiplayer component ofಌ Metal Gear Solid V was available fo🍃r play at Tokyo Game Show, just ahead of its worldwide release.

ꦬBoss doesnt look like much of a leader in his chicken head suit, shown her🉐e in an early mockup of an upcoming figure.

Despite the flashy rigging and displays, YouTubes Tokyo Gaꦍme Show booth stayed relatively empty during the business days of the show.

TGS attendees were able to have t༒heir faces scanned to become a titan. A special display had attendees digitized mugs g🥀laring down on others.

Koei Tecmos cat mascot was a hit at TGS 2015, with attendeeﷺs lining up for a picture at the companys booth.

The dog-bird creature of upcoming PS4 release The Last Guardian st🧜ood guard at Sonys PlayStation booth. Special camera sensors let at𓃲tendees interact with the huge display. Jumping or waving at the creature would get its attention.

Sony focused much of its Tokyo Game Show efforts toward showing off its virtual reality platf🅠orm, PlayStation VR. Two floors of demos had attendees lining up to try on a headset.

On the first day of TGS, Atlus announced a delay for its highly anticipated role-playing game,🦄 P෴ersona 5. Outside of some signage and a single trailer screen, the game was missing from the event.

Segas large show booth contained upcoming titles from all of its branches, including its mo🃏bile arm, Sega Networks, and Atlus, whi🍃ch was acquired last year.

CyGames only had one game to promote at Tokyo Game Show, and it spent a lot of money doing so. The rear of the booth for Granblue Fant♑asy was surprisinꦯgly ornate, with detail work that seemed to be overkill for what was basically a backdrop to a stage show.

While other TGS booths featured mere booth att🌌endants, CyGames sprung for actors that stayed in character for the entire day.

While a multitouch base isnt 🐲necessary for chess, it sure makes the game 🧸look prettier.

Anthropomorphism of naval ships may sound silly, but the property this figure comes from - Kantai Collection - has become a powerhouse brand in Japan, with multiple games, books, television shows, an🅠d ꦍfilms now powering the franchise.

Grees booth for TGS 2015 was considerably smaller than in past years. But the mobile gaming company made up for its smaller size♍ with live music and ಌdancing.

Im still notꦑ clear on what the massive wooden chair in the middle🌳 of the Makuhari Messe convention center was for.

The winner of the most out-of-plac🥂e booth at Tokyo Game Show 2015 goes to

ไAn attendee tries out a virtual livestream experience at the Oculus booth at Tokyo Game Show 2015. A camera array on a stick gives viewers a 360-degree of the action.

Star Wars Battlefronts coop🥃erative mission demo drew long lines even on the 𝓀professional-only days of TGS.

Battlefronts multiplayer sessions kick𝓀ed off with an im♏pressive light and fog sequence. Doors would open to loud music, welcoming players to their stations.

I snapped a shot of the 🐈most typical Tokyo Game Show shot pos🐠sible: players crowding Capcoms booth to play the newest Monster Hunter game.

Instead of scantജily clad Japanese models, one booth went wi﷽th muscular male foreigners to promote its wares.

PlayStation VR was so popular that attendees were not able to chose which game they wanted to tr𒆙y out.

Post꧑ers like these were found around Segas TGS booth this year, promoting upcoming game Persona 5.

New PS4 controllers and faceplates 🌜welcomed visitors ♎to Sonys Tokyo Game Show 2015 booth.

New PS4 controllers and faceplates 💛welcomed visitors to Sonys Tokyo Game Show 2015 booth.

An a💙ttendee enjoys his VR session, fully unaware that he had an audience watching his play session.

Gravity Dazes upcoming PS4 releꦯase will feature a special b🐲ox and a Figma figurine.

Sony chose to have a trio of꧟ these ghouls hold up𒈔 signage for Bloodborne at its booth.

Gravity Dazes Kat flies high a♉bove the PlayStat🌊ion booth at Tokyo Game Show 2015.

Sonys new Vita model was 🗹shown with matching headphones at its booth.

Attendees playing Street Fighter V seemed to be in their own worlds, tapping away at fight sticks as the rest of th🙈e sh🐷ow went on around them.

The award for the most J𝔉apanese-s𝔍ounding role-playing game name goes to

The World of Warships experience at Tokyo Game 💜Show was quite immersive.

Attendees had no objections to Capcoms booth design for th💙e upcoming Ace Attorney game.

In your newly expanded role, you’re tasked with overseeing numerous studios – Rare, Lionhead, Twisted Pixel and Lift Games, to name but some. Can you tell us about your day-to-day interaction with these companies?

It’s great that I get to work with a lot of different types of teams making a bunch of different games – not just our internal dev teams, but also with our partnerships with other developers – games like ReCore, Quantum Break, Scalebound. A lot of what I just try and do is communicate the things that we’re trying with Xbox and Windows 10 to really bring gaming communities together, and allow gamers to have a choice of who they’re playing with, and also for them to play﷽ on whatever platform they like. That’s one of the things I’m most excited about. You should be able to connect with people regardless if they’re a PC gamer or a console gamer. So I think that’s one thing we’re super excited about, is just bringing those two communities of people together so that they can have fun playing games together, which is the whole point.

How have the studios approached the challenge of designing a game that’ll resonate with both PC and console players?

It’s not just technical issues; I think that𓂃 subconsciously there’s a feeling that someone who plays on PC rather than console wants something slightly different from th𒁃eir games. I think the stuff we really focus on is making sure that the interface, the way you play it, works as well regardless if you’re on a console or you’re on a PC. You know, one of the biggest things is that lots of times the controls of a console product don’t really transfer over to a PC, [or vice versa]. And so what we really focus on is making sure that the input and the way you control the experience works really intuitively and fluidly regardless of what platform you’re on. I think that goes a long way towards making the gameplay experience feel customised for each of those different audiences.

I think Microsoft has been clever in that it’s positioned the Xbox controller as the go-to PC controller. What kind of opportunities does it open for Xbox if PC developers are already designing for the same controller as Xbox?

I’m a big fan of our controller. I think it’s the best gaming cont🧔roller in the world, and so I think there’s just one really great thing for gamers – that you’re going to be able to have our super high-precision gaming controller working on not only your console but on PCs, and that just makes gaming more fun for everybody. As you know, the other day we announced our Elite controller, and that’s really giving people as much customisation for the controller as they could want. I think Phil [Spencer, he🍷ad of Xbox] said it great in the keynote [at E3]. It’s not just about what you play; it’s about how you play. And I think when we’re talking about the difference between controls, gamers want to feel like that the controller experience is able to be customised around the way that they like to play. That’s just a big thing we’re always doing at Xbox.

We played with the Elite controller at the Showcase event, and it seems geared towards high-end or professional players. Some of the features are things that maybe a lot of casual players wouldn’t pick up. Is this controller geared at tournament players, or do you think that we’re in an age now where even casual players have grown up with the Xbox-shaped controller and will start demanding more control over it?

That’s a thing to me. People love customisation, and the generations coming 🅰up expect the ability to customise things around the way ﷽they like to do things. I think that’s the part that everybody’s going to appreciate.

The idea that console players crave customisation is interesting in the wake of the news that the Xbox One version of Fallout 4 will support mods created on PC. Is this something that first-party studios are eager to get in on?

That’s a really fun part of gaming. The more that you can get your fans and community involved in helping to♚ shape and build a product, I think that’s a very positive thing – not only from a modding perspective, but also in thinking through ways that we can get fans integrated into the development process of our titles much earlier on. I think you saw stuff with what we announced with Game Preview, allowing fans to see early versions of games and to be able to provide feedback on them. Creatively, I’m interested in seeing if there’s ways that we can really change our development methodology to include fans at a much earlier stage, because more than any other industry I think gaming fans have really awesome ideas for what could go into games or how features should be devꦯeloped.

Xbox as a brand has clearly been listening to fans for quite a while, because the Xbox One has changed very dramatically over the past two years from what the console was originally imagined to be. What sort of direction is Xbox One heading in?

I think you can see that we listen, and that it has a huge influence on the big features that we deliver. for example, our announcement at E3 that Xbox One would support backward compatibility with Xbox 360 games. I mean, that was the most highly requested fan feature and something that people were asking us about at the launch of Xbox One. I didn’t even think it would be possible that we could enable that technically, and yet it was such a fan-requested feature among our community that we went and dedicated a big part of the super-talented people we have working on the tech on just going and figuring that problem out. I think that’s what you see in our platform – that’s what you see in the types of games that we build and, like I said, I think🐈 you’re going to see it in us integrating fans’ voices into our products at a much earlier stage, because I think it really does help make the experience better for gamers♎. It makes the games more fun, and a main driving force in deciding what we’re doing is just trying to provide that highest value possible for our fans.

Can we expect 100% backward compatibility? That’s no mean feat from a technological standpoint. Even the PlayStation 2 didn’t achieve it – and that had a PS1 chip built into it…

So, we’ll star🍸t with 100 titles this autumn, and we’ll be adding titles as time goes by. At some point we’re going to need to get – obviously – the permission of the owners of the content, the publishers and the developers. So 100% is always a hard thing to achieve in anything. There’s a possibility for some outliers, but we’re really going to work on getting the biggest catalogue of games on any platform onto Xbox One via not only our exclusive blockbuster titles that we’re delivering this fall, [but also] our indie games plus backward compatibility. Again, that’s just enormou🐲s value for gamers.

As I understand it, the backward compatibility is emulation-based – it’s not reading off the disc. That was a really sore point with the original Xbox to Xbox 360, as the emulation was really wonky. From what you know of it, what’s been learned since that time?

That’s why I really love working in the software industry, because I’m just such a big believer that anything is possi⛦ble through the power of software – whether it’s making something like backward compatibility work that we really did not think could work, whether it’s making amazing games that we saw in the keynote, or whether it’s making holograms appear in your room. That’s all software-based inღvention. That’s the power of software and why it’s fun to work in the industry. You could make anything happen if you just figure out the ways you can do it with software.

It seems to me that Microsoft is very keen to ensure its first-party studios have a purpose. So we’ve got 343 that handles Halo, The Coalition handling Gears of War. I’m going to start with Rare first, because that’s a studio that’s kind of in flux at the moment, in terms of what its role is going to be within Microsoft going forward. What sort of space do you see Rare occupying going forward?

First of all I wouldn’t say that rare is in flux in any way. I mean, I think it was a huge part of our keynote [at E3] - Maybe that’s the wrong word. I mean it’s coming out from very Kinect-heavy duties and maybe it’s going in a different direction now… You could see in the two Rare products that we talked about at E3 – Rare Replay and Sea of Thieves – that famous spirit✅ of Rare and the amazing kind of character that you associate with Rare games really came through in both. And I think, for one, Rare Replay really shows off the 30 years of what Rare has done that makes games awesome. The funny part is, when you talk to people about Rare Replay, everybody has a different game that is their favourite that they remember, and that has created an emotional and personal🍬 memory for them – and that’s the amazing thing about Rare games.

Can you talk to us about what sort of form Sea of Thieves takes?

I think with Sea of Thieves,🥀 what you’re really going to see as you find out more about the game is that it’s also about allowing people to create their own gaming memories. It’s about enabling people to create their own stories through limitless possibilities, and I think that’s what Rare has always done a great job of historically – it is great at creating these super emotional memories and attachments that peo🍃ple have to games. I think what you’re gonna see in Sea of Thieves as we go forward and start talking more about the game is how [the studio is] enabling that kind of player-generated emotional and memory-driven stories that can happen within a game to happen within Sea of Thieves. And I think that’s what Rare does well. That’s what we’re going to keep having them doing in the future. And Sea of Thieves is gonna be the best game that Rare has ever made.

Yikes. Talking of bold promises, up next up is Lionhead. That’s another studio that is currently undergoing something of a culture change, with the departure of long-time figurehead Peter Molyneux. What do you see as the future for Lionhead?

The f♏uture very clearly is Fable Legends. It’s a game that has very different gameplay to previous versions of Fable, but there are some things that are just inherently Fable about it. You know, the dynamic of good versus evil, being able to make choices about which way that you play, obviousl🎉y just the whole environment of Fable. The quirky humour, I think, really shines through in the title as well. So, you know, with Lionhead I don’t think it has anything to do with not understanding the future of [the studio] so much as just knowing that, ‘Hey, it’s making Fable Legends.’ we’re very focused on making Fable Legends the best game we can and then keeping it running as a service going forward. I think that’s just a bit different in the way that we think about games, that it’s not a, ‘Hey, we’re going to go ship this disc, we’re going to go make some DLC, and then we’re going to move onto the next game,’ as much as [it is] how the team can evolve and grow and build Fable Legends over time into a more service-based community of gamers. I think that’s just a really interesting switch for Lionhead.

If we look back at what Lionhead has worked on recently, it’s been stuff like The Journey, Fable Legends – stuff that takes the core Fable RPG series and expands it in different areas. Is Lionhead firmly ‘the Fable studio’ now or do you see that it’ll have the freedom to work in different universes and on different projects in the future?

I think Lionhead certainly has all the talent and capabilities to build stuff outside of the Fable universe. It’s just obviously Fable⛦ is an IP that Lionhead loves working with. The fans love Fable and so, you know, in the near future all we’re really talking about with Lionhead is Fable Legends🌞, but obviously it’s a very talented group of people that could be working on a lot of different products and do them well.

I just want to talk a little bit about HoloLens. Were you pleased with how the Minecraft demonstration went, having worked on it so closely?

Yeah, I mean, it’s so funny because there are very few times that you can do an E3 keynote and get an audible gasp out of several thous꧂and people all at once. And then you saw when the table started dissolving and then the Minecraft world came out, and you just heard, like, gasping come from the whole crowd. That’s amazing. You know, it gives you goosebumps; yo🐲u’re sitting there watching it. So how could you not enjoy that kind of reaction? Certainly. I think it’s hard at these shows – one, to have surprise announcements, and two, to keep the surprises as surprises without them leaking. It was just so amazing listening to the crowd response as we went through the HoloLens demos. You don’t get very many moments like that at E3.

HoloLens and Minecraft seem like they’re kind of made for each other in the way that they combine to capture the magic of a user-made creation popping out into the real world. I was just wondering, coming from a more core gaming background, what sort of uses you feel that the technology will have in the future when it becomes more commonplace and it starts integrating with more traditional consoles?

Again, I don’t know if it’s initially about integrating with consoles as much as providing holographic gaming experiences. I mean, we’re very early on in exploring the possibilities of what holograms can do in any kind of area – but early on with games, one thing we’ve identified is the ability to incorporate your real-world environment as part of the gameplay. So, you know, if you’re playing a game on a screen and you’re playing through level one at your house an🅺d I’m playing through level one at my house, we both get the same level one. The gaming environment is the same. But, because we’re able to incorporate your real-world environment into the game, it makes a very unique and personalised experience to you – the way the game plays is dictated by your physical environment and where you’re playing. It’s awesome, because even in my own house I can go play a game in my living room, and then I can go into my kitchen and get a very different gameplay experience. So the variety of gameplay and the uniqueness of that, based on your real-world – I think that’s one of the compelling cases for its use. Then the other thing is, I think core gamers love character-driven games. They love the characters in their games; they love narrative; they love stories. It’s amazing the level of emotional engagement and attachment that you can get through having characters come into your ༺own space, like, walk around your living room, sit down on your sofa, having a narrative play out in your own home. There’s something about the emotional immediacy of having the characters and the stories happening in your familiar home environment that really drives a high level of emotional intensity and attachment to the stories and to the characters.

I want to talk about the challenges that face the technology in terms of scalability, because not everyone has got the same sort of playing space. It’s a little bit like the challenges that Kinect was met with – American living rooms are a lot bigger than the ones that British people have. How much of a challenge is it to get something working that can work across multiple different surfaces, multiple different house types?

I think the challenge when you talk about Kinect and space is that you’re moving around a lot, right? So that doesn’t work so well in a small environment, and that’s clearly understood. But, you know, with Microsoft HoloLens it’s just completely different because the depth-sensing technology we have can really understand everything about your environment in a 3D way. It’s not about needing more or less space; it’s just about understanding the space and then figuring out ways to put the holograms in there. So if we talk about a holographic character walking around your living room, if you have a big living room we can have the character sit on your sofa, or the character can go walk across to the other end of the room and lean against your wall or sit in your chair over there. We’ll understan𓆉d all these surfaces, and the character can interact with them. But if you have a smaller space, then I can just have the character sit over here or, you know, just go to that part of the room, and because we have the understanding of what is going on in your space, you can have the character do very specific things that are really tailored to your environment, and I think that’s the awesome part. You know, not only just making it good for everybody no matter what kind of space they have, but then also, in your house you probably have rooms of different sizes so when you go play a game in one room or another you get a very different feel to it, and I just think that’s a really cool and unique part about holograms.

The British are very proud of their coding background. Working so closely with British studios, what do you think they bring that developers from other parts of the world can’t?

I wouldn’t speak to just British developers as an overall generalisation. I would just say, very specifically, with the teams that I work with at Rare, at Lionhead, and then our Lift London team as well, we have a high level of technical excellence across all of the different teams. Another thing that stands out is the amazing storytelling ability of those groups. You know, that they’re able to generate content that really connects with people emotionally? And it’s not just about the action or the pacing of the games. They’re really able to create characters, stories and environments that connect emotionally with people – and I think you can see that that’s part of what makes rare games special; it’s part of what makes Fable spec🥀ial; it’s great in the products that I see coming out of our Lift London team. They’re really able to drive that emotional connection between people and their content.

My final question is, Xbox One has overcome a lot of challenges. What are the key areas Xbox is looking to grow in over the next six months to a year?

You can see that what we’re focused on is just delivering high value for our gaming fans – and🦋 I think a big part of that is just listening to fan feedback, which we’ll always continue to do. I think it’s amazing, and this is just a job that you can see us doing in things evolving here at E3; the amount of big, blockbuster, exclusive titles that you can get this holiday on Xbox is just stunning. I mean, it’s really amazing – I think if you look at our competition there’s no way that people can really stack up with our exclusive content, and that’s an amazing part of what we’re doing at Xbox. And then stuff that I’m just💝 super-excited about is the variety of content. Backward compatibility obviously is huge value for people, and we’ve got our blockbusters, but then you also see titles that really have a different look and feel to them – like Gigantic, a very different-looking game but super fun; ReCore; our awesome ID@Xbox games such as Cuphead. I think our exclusive content, the variety of gameplay that we’re able to provide people on xbox, and then of course, the high value that comes with enabling things like backward compatibility and listening to our fans – I just think that’s where Xbox really shines.

The Shire doesn't have Orcs, or much in the way menace at all. What the Shire has is whimsy, comfort, and a wide selection of cheeses. It's the part of Middle-Earth I'd most enjoy living in, but it's not exactly Thrillsville. Yet it's a rare Lord Of The Rings game that disregards it entirely, because thematically the Shire is central. Frodo's adventure begins in this perfect rural idyll and ends in a wastelaཧnd of ash; the boring hometown he's excited to leave behind becomes a symbol of everything worth preserving.

Without nice places like the Shire you end up with Westeros, 🅺where everywhere is so uniformly awful that it's tempting to throw up your hands and side with #teamwhitewalker. But just because it's essential doesn't mean it's interesting, and designers have struggled with what players should actually do during the obligatory Shire sequences in their games.

Back in 1991 Interplay made The Lord Of The Rings Vol. 1, a top-down roleplaying game with impressive open-endedness ꦿfor its time. While you roughly followed Frodo and pals' trajectory through the first book, it also let you diverge from the path and choose different members for your Fellowship, as well as different adventures to have along the way. Rather than leaving the Shire as soon as you've handed over the key to Bag End, you can hang around and find a missing dog or save some Hobbit children from a giant spider. (Since that's never mentioned in the books we have to assume those kids die because canon Frodo is one of those "get out of the Hinterlands" players who don't mess with non-essential sidequests.)

The highlight of these sidequests is the discovery that Big Folk have come to Hobbiton and taken over the mill, replacing its workings with new-fangled machinery presa✨ging the industrial revolution that will end the Hobbits' bucolic way of life. So you break in under cover of darkness, sneak past the guards, and engage in a bit of sabotage, destroying the machines and taking back the means of production like tiny Hobbit Marxists. Viva la Shire!

There's a charming incongruousness to these quests, which try to maintain the atmosphere of the place while 🎀still giving players an excuse to have a fight or blow stuff up if that's what they're into. It's even more pronounced in The Lord Of The Rings Online because MMO designers feel obliged to fill every area with things to do so subscribers get their money's worth. Its version of the Shire has evenly-spaced wolves roaming its fields because that's how you make an MMO, but also has sidequeဣsts that make those in The Lord Of The Rings Vol. 1 seem perfectly normal.

In🦋 the Took household a Hobbit named Adelard convinces you to appease the ghost of an ancestor who keeps messing up the library by bringing him a plate of ribs and setting off fireworks, since that's a Hobbit's answer to "What is 🅘best in life?". When that doesn't work, you enter the library alone to deal with the ghost yourself - at which point it's revealed to be a squirrel that was hiding behind a shelf this whole time. The climax to a four-part questline is "you chase a squirrel out of a room."

Other sidequests have you delivering pies while avoiding hungry locals or helping Hobbits get a bag down from a tree. That one may sound easy, but first you have to defeat the swarm of bees whose hive the Hobbits hit while throwing rocks at said bag, and then you have to defeat every bear for a mile around Hobbiton, racing to attack once they smell the honey✱ - w𓆏aves and waves of hill-bears charging toward you because you tried to knock a bag off a branch.

Strangest of all is the꧙ Flying The Coop questline, in which you gain the ability to magically transform into a chicken (it's never explained how) and then travel the land seeking animal allies to help protect the region's fowls from predators. Suddenly those evenly-spaced wolves become a serious threat. Your only abilities as a chicken are "run" and "play dead" and death comes quickly. Later you can unlock Chicken Play as a mod🦋e of its own, leave the Shire and travel all Middle-Earth as a chicken. Yes, you can simply walk into Mordor, if you don't get eaten first.

You'd expect LEGO The Lord Of The Rings to have the goofiest depiction of the Shꩲire, and yet hunting through it for collectibles by going fishing or building a bridge feels entirely Hobbity. The only battle you have there is with some moles. There's𓆏 also a race in which you ride an adorable LEGO pig and, more than any of the other side activities games give you to do in the Shire, that feels entirely appropriate. I can imagine the pie-loving peaceniks of Hobbiton having a few ales, smoking some pipeweed, and waddling unsteadily to the top paddock for a pig race.

There's a cliche in roleplaying games that the starter village is a boring place you leave as quickly as possible to get to the cities✤ and dungeons where the game really starts. The Shire's importance to Tolkien fans, both through its narrative significance and our sentimental attachment to the place, inspires game developers to make it into something more than just Tutorial Town. In putting so much effort into making somewhere that feels homely and safe, a place that can't be burne♍d down to inspire your revenge quest, they make a Shire that's often silly but always memorable. And that's exactly how it should be.

This is corruption: the art of manipulating games so they self-destruct in the most unexpected - and entertaining - ways possible. Imagine your favorite video game as a Lego model. Corruption is like switching out every other brick with another, completely random, brick. Within that colorful mess enemies can be replaced, music can become distorted,𓂃 and entire levels can load out of sequence. The only constant is that your game will crash, a lot. It's wildly entertaining, but even more impressive is how these corruptions let our most-played, most beloved games surprise us all over again.

I stumbled upon game corruption through internet personality , who does tons of different videos and streams, but is perhaps best known for his corruption videos (like the one above). From Castlevania to Wind Waker, each video shows off different corruptions for a specific game while Vinesauce express his surprise at the results. Several of these videos are powered by the Vinesauce Corruptor, a program that basically runs a game's code through a virtual blender and lets you🍰 play the results. Most of the time the result is a dud, but when it works it can really surprise you with how bizarre and different a game can look and play. And that's no small feat.

How much else is there to learn about, say, Super Mario World in 2015? can tell you about every unused sprite hidden on the cartridge. Speed runners will show the most efficient way to play through the game. Various interviews and stories over the years document the game's development history and culture impact. So what's left to discover when every single piece of minutiae has been dissected and scrutinized? One solution: absolute madness. Cor🎃ruption programs - such as the one Vinesauce uses - breathe new life into old games by ruining them.

Their effects can create devilish new challenges within a game, or just give you a laugh as enemy bats haphazardly . They can also instill a greater appreciation for games themselves. While playing Mega Man X2, I don't normally think about specific enemy designs or refrains in the music. I'm just enjoying the overall experience of blowing stuff up. But when those individual pieces become corrupted, I recognize how the experience is lessened by their absence. It's a reminder that games don't just appear magically from the aeᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚther. They're meticulously crafted; every detail scrutinized and placed with intent.

Using the Vinesauce corruptor is like tuning a guitar, only instead of making something sound good you want it to sound as horrific as possible without completely falling apart. You tell the corruptor where in the game's code to start corruption, how often it should occur, what sort of corruption to use, and so on. It takes a bit of finesse to get running properly. For example, if you start a corruption too early in the game's code the game won't load at all and you'll be stuck with a black screen. But when you get it just right - and Mario𒀰 appears as a nightmare-fueled mismatch of pixels - you can't help but smile at the absurdity of it all.

Unfortunately, the sad truth about game corruption is that, while wildly entertaining, it's almost impossible to do now without emulation. But this wasn't always the case. In the 8- and 16-bit days, you could achieve a similar effect through (at serious risk to your hardware). Then the Game Genie arrived, offering a safer means of messing with a game's code. Jump ahead to today where games are edging ever closer to an all-digital future, and those old tricks are no longer viable. We have more options than ever for playing classic games on modern hardware, but we've lost the ability to play with the games themselves.

Watch Vinesauce's videos. Play around with the corruptor. See how other people are using this technology. You'll discover there's a lot of goofy fun to be had both playing games and playing with the pieces that make up your games. Grand Theft Auto 5, The Witcher 3, Batman: Arkham Knight, and so many other bend over backwards to give us hundreds of hoﷺurs of things to enjoy. But with a little bit of help, we can dream up lots of entertainment all on our own. Because it's just as much fun building with Lego as it is smashing it to bits.

Until now. I've rounded up some of the juiciest, most dead-ended plot lines from a variety of games. Not only were these detaౠils clearly stated in their respective storylines, but they were all later dropped without a trace - a💝lmost as if they never existed in the first place. I've also included some insights into how these lost tidbits could have manifested themselves in their respective games, had they not been so abruptly abandoned.

What was abandoned: Zero being Dr. Wily's final creation. This is strongly throughout the Mega Man X series (also , of all places) as a major part of Zero's mysterious backstory. But at X5's climax, thi🃏s 'major reveal' is still only vaguely referenced. We see the iconic Wily 'W' projected on the background should you fight against Zero, and Wily's silhouette appearing during Zero's ending. And that's ab𒅌out it. The big mystery of Zero's parentage doesn't amount to much of anything, and is largely ignored in subsequent games.

What could have changed: a creation-versus-creator storyline. Dr. Wily creating Zero goes hand-in-hand with another abandoned plot point: Dr. Wily is still "alive" in the MMX timeline. Wily's presence would force Zero to grapple between who he is and who he was meant to be. Plus, the entire MMX universe revolves around robots with free will being corrupted by sinister influences. Zero grappling with the machinations of his creator would ha💮ve been the perfect thematic fit.

What was abandoned: The dark energy subplot, which was introduced during Tali'Zorah's . Tali was collecting data on a star that was dying prematurely, before she and her team were ambushed by Geth. Based on that data, Tali theorized "dark energy" was behind th🐼e star's demise. Shepard then states "A lot of Quarians died here. What [that data] worth it?" I guess not, because by the third game dark energy and its impact are never discussed again.

What could have changed: According to Drew Karpyshyn, lead writer on the first two Mass Effect games, this concept of dark energy could have been behind t꧂he Reaper's motivations. In an interview with AM 60, reported by , Karpyshyn said, "The Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics would eventually evolve to where they were using biotics and dark energy, and that was an entropic effect that potentially was going to hasten the end of the universe. And being immortal beings, that is something they did not want tꦐo see."

What was abandoned: Corporal Adrian Shephard, protagonist of Half-Life side story Opposing Force. Like Gordon Freeman, Shephard also gets caught up in the Resonance Cascade catastrophe at Black Mesa, shoots a bunch of monsters, gets lost on an alien world, and is ultimately detained by the G-Man at the . But while Gordon later awakes at City-17 at the start of Half-Life 2, our poor Colonel is neither seen nor heard from again. He's still locked away in the G-Man's extradimensional storage locker somewhere,ꦓ eagerly awaiting Episode 3.

What could have changed: Shephard was ripe to become the perfect "bad guy" version of Gordon Freeman. In the Half-Life 2 episodes, we see G-Man having some trouble maintaining control over the scientist-turned-savior. If their connection was ever completely cut, who better to fall back on than Shephard? He went through the same trials as Freeman and was also hand-picked 𒁏by the G-Man. He also worked for one of the main antagonist groups in the original Half-Life; the man is prime villain material.

What was abandoned: The Deleter. Throughout Other M, Samus learns there's a traitor among Adam's team of Federation soldiers. That traitor - who Samus dubs "The Deleter" - is killing off soldiers one by one. A lot of time is spent thread: we see The Dele꧒ter shoot other soldiers, kick them into lava, and you even fight against someone who is almost certainly The Dওeleter in a giant mech suit. And then, this person just quietly fades away. By the end of the game, all of Adam's team is either dead or MIA, and Samus shows no concern over discovering The Deleter's identity. Basically, no one cares.

What could have changed: Well, for one thing, Samus and crew would seem a little more believable as human beings if they showed a bit more concern about confirming who in their group was trying murder them all. The Deleter's presence could have also shed a harsh light on the Federation - or some conspiratorial group within the Federation - seeing as how The Deleter went to such great (and murderous) lengths to try and cover up the BO💯TTLE SHIP's connection to the Federatio🦂n.

What was abandoned: The captured soul of Ares. If you had the wherewithal to actually complete God of War on the game's hardest difficulty setting - God Mode - you unlocked from Kratos himself. Kratos congratulations you on a job well done before revealing🌊 that he has located the soul of Ares in a secret chamber. Kratos isn't sure how it ended up there, ๊or what it could be used for, but figures it could help him put the hurt on Zeus in the next game. Only it doesn't, because the soul and this secret chamber are never mentioned again.

What could have changed: In the God of War games, Kratos draws strength from all sorts of mystical weapons and artifacts, so the soul of a dead god really wouldn't be that out-of-place in his arsenal. But perhaps it would have been a double-edged sword, with the fallen god Ares whispering in Kratos ear, driving his already already fragil🅺e mind deeper intoꦑ madness. Perhaps Ares' influence could have been the primary motivator for Kratos' angst at the opening of GOW2.

What was abandoned: Ethan Mars' periodic blackouts. For all of its creativity, Heavy Rain isn't exactly rock solid when it comes to storytelling. Ethan's blackouts are a prime example. Throughout the game,💯 it's implied these blackouts are no ꦇmere coincidence. Ethan finds a folded paper crane in his hand after one blackout, leading him to believe there's a connection between himself and the Origami Killer. Maybe he IS the Origami Killer. All this existential dread, however, just gets swept under the rug as the game enters its final act and Ethan simply stops blacking out.

What could have changed: Not much, according to the developers at least. In this , developer Quantic Dreams runs through some of Heavy Rain's deleted scenes. Among them are several relating to Ethan's blackouts. Apparently, Ethan was supposed 🃏to establish some sort of psychic link with the real Origami Killer. The blackouts were a result of this connection, and players would swim through a surreal dream sequence while Ethan was unconscious. They had nothing to do with Ethan being the killer.