We've finally hit December which can only mean one thing - the holidays are coming! This can be a stressful time especially if you're struggling to buy the gaming fans in your life the perfect gift but may I offer you a Roblox gift card in this trying time? Gift cards may seem a bit impersonal, but nothing pleases me more than sneaking in a Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Network, or even a Roblox gift card into a loved one's Christmas Card and they always go down a treat.

Gift cards don't get deals too often but thanks to Cyber Monday you can now get 15% off Roblox ones right in time for the holiday season. If, like me, you want to sneak some Robux into a family member's card or stocking, you can now grab a $50 gift card for just $42.50 at Amazon, saving you $7.50 in the process, and the deals continue for the $75 and $100 cards too.

Don't expect to receive a small plastic card in the post if you pick up some of these discounted gift cards. Unlike the best Cyber Monday gaming deals, there's no physical element to be found here. Once purchased you'll receive a pin code in your inbox, which can be redeemed on the Roblox website. If you still want to personalize this on Christmas day, I recommend writing the redeemable code in a card, or even adding it to their account in secret on the big day.

How to redeem Amazon Robox gift cards

If you pick up any of these gift cards, you'll need to redeem them before you can go on a Roblox spending spree. Luckily the process is pretty simple, and I'm here to tell you how. (Feel free to share this valuable knowledge if you're gifting any of these gift cards to a loved one. I promise I won't take any credit so you can take all the glory for yourself.)

• Receive your Robox gift card PIN code
• Visit the Roblox website at Roblox.com/redeem
• Enter your pin on the website
• Click 'Redeem' to add Robux to your account

Check out our best Cyber Monday deals hub, where we've gathered all the best discounts on console bundles, brand-new games, controllers, and accessories, but be fast, as these deals won't be around for much longer.

Leeds will be looking for a win this afternoon when they take on Bournemouth at Elland Road. The Whites are currently ranking one place behind the Cherries on the Premier League table but will be hoping to turn things around with this six-pointer. The match kicks off at 3pm, read on for a full break down of how to watch a Leeds vs Bournemouth live stream and get the Premier League game from anywhere.

Despite returning to training this week, Leeds' winger Luis Sinisterra will not be playing this afternoon. Manager Jesse Marsch says the Colombian player's foot injury is worse than expected and that he will likely not play again until after the World Cup break. Meanwhile, Bournemouth will be missing goal keeper Neto and captain Lloyd Kelly. 

While Leeds will be looking to climb the table this weekend, Bournemouth need to avoid what would be their fourth defeat in a row. The winner could end up as high as 11th despite the sides ranking at 15th and 14th respectively going into the game.

Bournemouth midfielder Lewis Cook says his team need to sharpen up in time for the match at Elland Road. The Cherries have struggled this season, racking up three defeats in a row. The latest was against Tottenham Hotspurs last Saturday, where Bournemouth lost 3-2 having led 2-0.

To add to their recent defeats, the Dorset side will also be down two key players for today's game. Brazilian goalkeeper Neto, who was signed this summer, is set to be out until 2023 with a hamstring injury. He's been replaced by Mark Travers, who has conceded 20 goals this season. Another player who will not be at Elland Road is defender Lloyd Kelly, who has been out since September.

Leeds manager Jesse Marsch will have some thinking to do regarding his attacking line-up. Luis returned to training this week, but it is unlikely that he will be included in the line-up at 3pm. Also, should he include striker Patrick Bamford who popped up to assist the winner at Anfield last Saturday?

Will Leeds carry on their winning energy this afternoon? Or will Bournemouth be able to turn things around? Don't miss the action today. Read our guide on how to watch a Leeds vs Bournemouth live stream, including what TV channels and services you'll need.

Watch a Leeds vs Bournemouth live stream online from anywhere

How to use a VPN

There are three simple steps to follow:

1: Get a VPN installed. There are plenty of options, but we'd point you in the direction of ExpressVPN. There's even an offer on right now where you can get an additional three months FREE on a 12-month package and save 49%. Better still, ExpressVPN is also compatible with pretty much every device you can think of too.

2: Connect to an appropriate server. Select a server located back in your home country and you'll be in and away. And if there's any sniff of an issue, Express's handy 24/7 live chat customer support can come to your rescue.

3: Head over to the service you want. Here you can shop as normal and once you set your location, visit the service you're interested in and sign up as normal or log in, and start watching. And if you don't get along with it, you can always cancel without issue within 30 days and get a full refund. Easy!

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Grid Legends is a brilliant racer, partly because it's determined to strike a balance that many similar games have no interest in chasing. This isn't a hyper-realistic driving game that practically demands a driving licence to make it past the title screen, nor is it a cartoonish caricature that laughs in the face of physics. It's a game that tries to make itself fun for as many people as possible… and succeeds.  

As any casual racing fan who's tried playing (to take the most extreme example) a rally game knows, driving aids do not automatically make a game approachable – which makes what Grid Legends has achieved here all the more impressive. Make no mistake, you can give yourself an unforgivingly realistic racing experience if you want, complete with the ability to total your car. Spend a few  seconds in the menu, however, and you can adjust elements of Grid Legends to create a driving model that's simple without being insulting. AI difficulty, individual aids, the visible racing line, and more can be tweaked to your liking until you have your perfect platter for play.

Racing games aren't traditionally known for their storytelling, and I'd wager that nobody expects or wants that to change. Regardless, Codemasters went all out here. Grid Legends has a lavishly produced story mode, which uses a VFX technique employed in The Mandalorian, and boasts Ncuti Gatwa of Sex Education fame among its cast. 

You play a rookie driver, only ever known as "Driver 22", who's recently joined the struggling Seneca Racing team. As fun as the blend between live action scenes and actual play can be throughout the campaign, there is an enormous disconnect between the scripted action and your accomplishments.  Even if you win several races in a row, the story will continue as though you're barely scraping through. Not that it's a particularly compelling story anyway; despite some good direction, the acting is rather hit and miss, with one actor in particular practically begging for a moustache to twiddle to complete his comic-book villain act.

The wheel deal

Nonetheless, the story mode should be your first port of call in Grid Legends  – and you can skip all the FMV scenes if you want to. It's an excellent tour of what the game has to offer, with a wide variety of vehicles, tracks, and events to sample. Roaring around the track in a formula car is a speed-focussed rush, while trucks prove unstable over ramps and around corners in the best way possible, usually just failing to tip over. Racing Minis through London in the rain, meanwhile, is sure to bring a smile to even the most stiff of British upper lips. All very different cars with very different handling, but they all feel right.

The Nemesis system from 2019's Grid makes a return, and has quite an impact on offline races. If you smash into an opponent too hard, they become your Nemesis, and will gleefully ram you back whenever they get a chance. That's the idea, at least; occasionally, I'd acquire a Nemesis because they hit me, or seemingly simply because I overtook them or drafted them for too long. Mostly though, it's clear why an opponent has become my Nemesis and, yes, multiple racers can have it in for you at once. 

The Nemesis status remains for the whole race, and even carries over to the next if it's some sort of championship. I found myself trying to avoid creating Nemeses whenever I could help it, because a revenge smash at the wrong moment can, and sometimes does, cost me a hard-earned place or two in the pack. The aim seems to be to recreate the feeling of online rivalries and, while it doesn't quite get there, it does add a welcome flavour of danger to each race.

Career mode is more traditionally structured, with new cars and events slowly unlocked as you progress. It's also where XP, in-game cash, and levelling up comes into play. XP is earned during every single race event you compete in, on-screen messages telling you how much you've earned for overtakes, drafting, keeping to the ideal racing line, etc. This feeds into your Driver level, which dictates what upgrades are available to you.

Steer it up

Upgrades in Career mode are split between Mechanic and Teammate types, and can be bought to, say, reduce the cost of new cars, or improve your teammate's performance. You can even, in a grimly amusing demonstration of capitalistic game design, pay to reduce his share of the race winnings. Am… am I the baddie?

Individual car upgrades meanwhile are unlocked according to miles driven, which can feel a little unfair when you've only unlocked two events for that vehicle so far. Of course, you can contribute to those miles by using the car outside of the career, but you need to have unlocked and/or bought it in order to do so. 

There are over 100 cars in Grid Legends, and it's going to take many, many hours to get your eager little hands on all of them for your garage (and many more to fully upgrade them). However, a superb compromise has been struck in order to ensure that you can drive any car you like straight away. If you want to use a car that you don't own in a race, you can do so free of charge; but in exchange for a huge dent in your race winnings, and the understanding that none of the miles driven will count towards unlocking that car's upgrades.

This instant access to the full roster of cars ensures that the race creator meets its full potential. It works much as you'd expect, in that you can choose the track, event type, weather, time of day, and so on, and can be raced either online or offline. You can choose which class of car competes or build out a Multi Class exhibition, which lets you set up-to five different types of car against one another. Trucks against GT cars? Maybe with some pimped-out racers in there? Why not! Grid Legends will automatically apply a head start to any significantly outclassed cars, but you can disable that if you're feeling like a villain…

Gottle of gear

What I found particularly interesting was that my confidence, and dare I say my skill, evolved the longer I played – and Grid Legends was more than happy to join me on the journey. Not only does each class handle uniquely, the 130+ tracks offer a variety of demands. Some have long stretches to build up speed, others require you to master regular tight corners, and so on. Being asked to regularly adapt to different vehicles and different routes, I think, teaches as well as entertains.

While there are a few bumps in the road – boost gates in electric car races feel unnecessary and rather silly (thankfully optional in race creator), and the AI is sometimes bafflingly slow to recover from major crashes – they're easy to forgive. There's not a single bad track in the mix of real and fictional routes, and – on PS5 as I've played it, at least – the all-important frame rate is consistently smooth. Throw in cars that are as pleasing to drive as they are varied, and you've got a nice little runner. 

Grid Legends was reviewed on PS5 with code provided by the publisher.

This November 2021, the video-game industry turns 50 years old. To celebrate this landmark moment in gaming history, the Golden Joystick Awards - the world’s longest-running public-voted gaming awards show - has asked you to vote for your Ultimate Game of All Time. The winners will be revealed in our special show on Nov 23, on Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and more streaming platforms.

By its very nature, attempting to choose one game that stands above the 1.1 million titles released in the last 50 years is riddled with complications, to put it mildly. We doubt everyone will agree with our shortlist of 20 titles, let alone what the world votes as the winner.

We’ve endeavoured to make the shortlist selection process as rigorous and scientific as possible, given the hugely subjective nature of choosing a  ‘best’ game. We outline this process below, plus explain the judging criteria in more detail. It won’t necessarily make everyone agree with the shortlist… but it will at least explain the rationale.

• Click to set a reminder to watch the Golden Joystick Awards on Nov 23

Why are we celebrating 50 Years of Games?

The world’s first commercially available video game: Computer Space, released in November 1971. As the first coin-operated arcade machine, it represented the first time a videogame was ever played in exchange for money: the birth of videogames as a commercial industry.

On November 23, 2021, the Golden Joystick Awards will celebrate this momentous milestone in gaming by uniting our iconic brands and experts with the gaming industry’s most beloved creators in a special show that will honour our industry's 50th anniversary. The show will culminate by announcing the winner of the Ultimate Game of All Time, as voted for by the public.

How did you decide the voting shortlist for Ultimate Game of all Time?

The process began by narrowing the 1.1 million or so games released since 1971 into a manageable long list of around 150 games which are universally recognised as being among the best games of all time. The Golden Joystick Awards has been awarding games for 39 of these years (since it launched in 1983), and could draw on its own pool of previous winners and noted nominees. These previous winners of our coveted Ultimate Game of the Year awards were combined with top 100 lists from Edge magazine, the respected industry bible launched in 1993, and Retro Gamer, the world’s leading Retro Games magazine. Duplicate entries were eliminated to create a long list from the following sources. 

• Golden Joystick Awards - previous Ultimate Game of the Year winners
• Edge magazine: The 100 Greatest Videogames
• Retro Gamer: Top 100 Games of All Time

This long list was then shared with our judging panel - as outlined below - who were asked to come up with their personal list of top 20 games ranked in order of preference.

How did you assemble a judging panel for the Ultimate Game of all Time?

The Golden Joystick Awards assembled a judging panel of industry experts and luminaries, including Katsuhiro Harada (Tekken series, general manager), Debbie Bestwick MBE (Team17), Gary Penn (DMA Design, Grand Theft Auto), Keith Stuart, Keza MacDonald (The Guardian), Shahid Ahmad (former lead of Sony’s Strategic Content Division) and journalists from gaming brands including Edge magazine, Retro Gamer, GamesRadar and more Future titles.

Each judge’s top 20 shortlist was tabulated, accounting for their personal rank of each game, to produce a final shortlist of 20 games.

What was the judging criteria for Ultimate Game of all Time?

Judges were asked to consider a number of key factors when assessing their list of the top 20 games of all time:

• Critical Reception - how was the game reviewed upon release, and / or later re-evaluated by critics?   
• Legacy and Influence - what role did the game play in influencing the industry to follow. For example, launching a new genre, spawning a series of copycats, or changing the way we think about games. Full stop.
• Commercial Success - Did the game sell? How many people have played and enjoyed it? This isn’t a critical factor when it comes to assessing a game’s true value, but neither can it be completely overlooked. 
• Social Impact - How did the title change the conversation around video-games? What was its cultural impact? How did it affect people in the real world?
• Subjective Interpretation - We asked experts across various parts of the industry for their diverse, and personal, view on why some games deserve to be elevated above others. Sure, you know why a certain game is acclaimed, but why do you love it? What aspect of the game deserves to be uniquely celebrated?

As a result, the shortlist represents a diverse selection of games spanning eras and genres that had the X-Factor, that little sprinkle of magic, that means that have stood the test of time. Some of the shortlisted titles aren’t even - technically - brilliant games, at least not from a design perspective, but transcended their limitations to burn bright in the memory.

Why didn’t you use another voting system and why are we only allowed to vote on 20 games?

Why 20 games? The same question could be applied to 25, 30… 50 games. There are so, so many brilliant games, that a shortlist will - by definition - almost certainly exclude some all-time classics and personal favourites. The point of capping the shortlist to 20 titles is to provoke the conversation about the difficulty of the task, and re-examine the factors that elevate a game from merely excellent, to something more timeless. A classic. Or a pivot point, that changed the shape of gaming history. Games can be art, but games are - at the risk of sounding glib - games… and this is a uniquely evolving interactive medium. What are the stepping stones that brought us to where we are today?

Perhaps a more transparent, and some might argue democratic, way to assess an Ultimate Game of All Time vote, would be a bracketing system, like a football knockout tournament where the public are invited to vote in a series of knockout rounds to decide a winner. This approach has its merits, but almost invariably becomes a popularity contest subject to recency bias (“This great game I played last week is almost certainly the best game ever!”), and a function of its voting audience e.g. if voters skew younger, older games tend to lose out.

Our approach attempts a hybrid system which curates a shortlist based on a diverse panel of experts and their unique perspectives with the democratic transparency of a public vote. Which is a lot of words to say: we’ve really, really thought about the best way to do this, but a lot of people are almost certainly going to be unhappy with the results.

Ultimate Game of All Time - Full Shortlist

• Minecraft 
• The Last of Us 
• Doom (1993)
• Tetris 
• Super Mario 64 
• Street Fighter II
• Space Invaders
• Portal
• Pokémon GO
• Super Mario Kart
• Grand Theft Auto V 
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Halo: Combat Evolved
• Dark Souls
• Metal Gear Solid
• Half-Life 2
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Pac-Man
• SimCity (1989)

Woah, wait, why is that game included? It’s not even the best in the series?

The judges repeatedly faced this challenge: how many titles from a particular franchise should we include? How do you assess which game from a particular series deserves elevation above all others? These decisions were long-debated - to a depth you might not believe - but by leaning into the judging criteria listed above. Quite often, a game was chosen that’s not even *technically* the best in its own series.

For example, how do you pick the ‘best’ Metal Gear Solid game? Well, it’s Metal Gear Solid 3… based on critical reception, and in terms of its design… but Metal Gear Solid on PSone invented the stealth genre, heralded a new era of cinematics, and broke the fourth wall, redefining our relationship with video-games. Metal Gear Solid 2 was the un-sequel, a defiant FU to fans expecting more Solid Snake, a work of political commentary 15 years ahead of its time. It’s not like MGSV was bad. Mechanically, it was the series’ pinnacle.

You can appreciate the difficulty. Ditto Pokemon (no one is making a case for Pokemon Go as a design masterpiece, but in terms of its cultural impact and personal significance to its community of players…). Don’t even get us started on Mario Kart (Surely SMK8 is best, but it was a sublimation of what came before). Super Mario is a 40 year-old icon whose games have spanned genres, if not defined genres.

Portal 2 is better than Portal. But how many games featured portal guns - or put puzzling front and centre in an FPS - before Valve’s breakout classic?

We could go on and on, but the judges faced down all these conversations to present their personal top 20 games that we have tabulated into the shortlist you see today.

Watch the Golden Joystick Awards on November 23 to see which game wins your vote for the Ultimate Game of All Time and Best Gaming Hardware of All Time

Not every video game sequel needs to always feel like a sequel. Making video games is in itself an iterative process, where ideas are tried, tested, and (sometimes not) found wanting, as a development team assesses what does and doesn’t work, and why. Therefore it’s not entirely out of the ordinary for a sequel to feel like an iteration of what came before, as the final result in a long-winded process of smoothing out rough edges and perfecting moments of brilliance.

That’s what Lost Judgment feels like. The sequel to Ryu Ga Gotoku’s 2019 spin-off of the action-brawler Yakuza series has the player once again stepping into the shoes of red light district lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. A few years after his dramatic showdown on a national level with the government, an Alzheimer's drug, and a serial killer with more dead bodies than Agent 47, Yagami and his cohorts are hot on the heels of another case. What starts out as a bullying scandal at a local secondary school quickly spirals into something more sinister, which will come as absolutely no surprise to anyone familiar with Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios’ past games.

Familiar territory

Lost Judgment feels like more of what came before. Yagami once again kicks faces in and snaps bones with the precision of a machine in a fast-paced and responsive combat system, which this time switches things up by adding in a new combat style focused around parrying attacks at the last second. Recognizing that its riff on Yakuza 6: The Song of Life’s robust real-time combat system worked superbly in 2019, there’s not a whole lot of change from Ryu Ga Gotoku to be found in Lost Judgment’s action-battle system, but the developer instead builds on what came before with more options layered atop the same foundations. That’s pretty emblematic of the whole game, really.

That being said, a lot of what Judgment did brilliantly back in 2019 - its fluid combat, sublime storytelling and characters, and nonsensical side stories - was in itself a product of over a decade of iteration on the Yakuza franchise. More of the same isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is taking what it’s learned from over a decade of the Yakuza series going from strength to strength around the world, and applying it to its latest releases like Lost Judgment. Perhaps it’s not fair to criticize Lost Judgment as being more of the same when what came before is so excellent.

Arguably the most overhauled aspect of Lost Judgment is actually the detective work itself. In his 2019 adventure, Yagami’s detective work was basically restricted to either gawking at crime scenes, pacing over the same scenery until one of several clues was located to advance the overall plot, or solving a problem with his fists Kazuma Kiryu-style, battering people until a resolution popped out of them and a plot point was neatly wrapped up in a bow.

Lost Judgment gives the detective a whole lot more to work with. Yagami now comes armed with devices like a directional microphone, which can be used to isolate and pick out certain noises from the bustling cityscapes of Yokohama and Kamurocho, and a tracker which picks out and leads our detective to devices like wiretaps. You can even comb through nearby chat logs and social media posts, pairing posts with specific story-specific keywords to try and pick up a clue for a case, and every aforementioned aspect combines to gently nudge Lost Judgment towards being a more satisfying detective mystery.

Side cases are back once again, and they help breathe life into the new area of Yokohama. Picking up after Ichiban’s adventures in the southwest Tokyo city in Like a Dragon, Yagami ventures into Yokohama to unravel the main case he’s been hired for, but quickly comes across all sorts of weird and wonderful characters in need of a helping hand. There’s the likes of a UFO sighting, a detective dog that sniffs out crime, and a mystery revolving around a science mannequin that comes to life at night and roams the hallways of the local high school. If you thought Yagami’s side cases were going to be anything within the realms of normality after tracking down a perverted trio composed of the Panty Professor, Ass Katchum, and Judge Creep n’ Peep in 2019, you’re very much mistaken.

Unpacking a life

In many ways, Lost Judgment’s eclectic side cases are the perfect foil to its more somber main storyline. Lost Judgment’s localization director Scott Strichart warned players prior to launch that it dealt with “various traumas”, requesting that potential customers look after themselves and make sure they’re in the right headspace before delving into Yagami’s new case. Strichart was right to issue such a warning because Lost Judgment doesn’t back down from bullying and the fallout from such social isolation, casting an intense analytical gaze over not just the bullies themselves, but the individuals in our adult society who allow such bullying to proceed uninterrupted. 

After Judgment’s tale of studying those who have power in society using it to lord over those who don’t, Lost Judgment feels sincere in studying bullying throughout childhood, and how it casts an inescapable shadow over those who intimately know the victim. Ryu Ga Gotoku’s sequel feels genuinely critical of a society that allows children to be bullied and taken advantage of, and, like the original game, not pulling its punches when studying the perpetual nature of police violence and self-service, Lost Judgment isn’t afraid to tackle these tough topics. 

Lost Judgment proves a sequel can feel overtly iterative and still succeed. There are relatively few changes to be found from Yagami’s original outing outside of increased depth to an already-bombastic combat system, but that’s no bad thing when what came before was so enjoyable. Lost Judgment provides laughs aplenty with a brilliant array of side cases and characters, but it crucially tackles trauma and bullying with refreshing honesty and steely conviction when it needs to.

Reviewed on PS5 with a code provided by the publisher.

The Nintendo Switch Pro could be on the way later this year according to a new report.

As reported by Bloomberg sources claim that Nintendo's new hardware is expected to be revealed ahead of this year's E3 that takes place next month from June 12.

Production of the console is said to begin as soon as July and looks to be released "in September or October”. When it does launch, it will is said to be replacing the current Nintendo Switch console but the smaller Switch Lite will remain alongside it. The new model is reportedly set to retail for over $299.

It's also claimed that the reveal for the Switch Pro will take place before E3 2021 "to allow publishers to showcase their full range of Switch games".

Despite superconductor chip shortages, Bloomberg states that Nintendo's suppliers "are confident they can fulfill Nintendo’s orders" and "the parts Nintendo is using are subject to less competition than those in its rivals’ more powerful consoles."

While reports of a new Switch have been floating around for some time, it's quickly become commonly referred to as the Nintendo Switch Pro, although this isn't an official title just yet. Bloomberg notes that the console's commercial name is "known only to a handful of people within the Kyoto-based company."

Bloomberg has previously reported that we could see the new Nintendo Switch launching later this year, and will contain an Nvidia DLSS chip and be capable of upscaling to 4K. Earlier this month, an OLED manufacturer mentioned the Nintendo Switch Pro in its Q1 investors call, sparking yet another round of rumors about when we might officially see Nintendo's next console.

For more on what to expect from Nintendo this year, check out our guide to the upcoming Switch games 2021.

The latest For Honor patch adds 60fps on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

For Honor players have already enjoyed 4K resolution on PS5 and Xbox Series X, 1080p on Xbox Series S, and a handful of other graphical improvements from day one of the new consoles' launch. Those improvements include an increased level of detail, screen space reflection, and increased shadow resolution. But now, with For Honor patch 2.24.0, it's 60fps time. Considering For Honor is, at its core, a fighting game, doubling FPS is a big deal and will dramatically change gameplay. Expect buttery smooth framerates on next-gen consoles thanks to this latest patch - and if you still need to get your hands on a next-gen console, check out where to buy PS5 and where to buy Xbox Series X.

The patch also includes a new hero Gryphon, a well-known veteran has returned, and he's wielding a bardiche. Gryphon is a support/healer character with good melee range, with special abilities that include mixing up chain finishers and team-healing support feats.

For Honor patch 2.24.0 also improves the Revenge User Interface to display more information, and removes the old Revenge Gauge in the bottom left screen as there was a duplicate of that gauge around players' emblems. These changes are meant to allow players to make better decisions during group fights, according to the developer's notes. The Revenge Gauge was "the first step" and now For Honor displays more granular information like indicating whether or not an attack will feed revenge, so you can adjust your actions accordingly. 

For the complete For Honor 2.24.0 patch notes, head here. 

For a chance to win the gift-giving contest this year, head to our list of the best gifts for gamers. 

The battle for the right to mete out justice in Gotham comes to an uneasy resolution in Batman #105, as words prove mightier than the sword, and the post-'Joker War' landscape of Gotham City becomes just that little bit clearer. James Tynion IV and his rotating band of quality artists stick the landing of the 'Ghost Stories' arc thanks to its small scale and well-realized character work.

'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 current 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. Despite 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 cleanser 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.

Watch Dogs Legion has only been out for a few weeks and, already, the deals have started. Amazon have slashed the price on the British-based open-world game from Ubisoft, lowering the price down from its usual hefty $60 tag. It’s now under $50. 

Normally, that’s a bargain in and of itself given the price of games keeps going up and up. But wait, there’s more: this Watch Dogs Legion deal also comes bundled with an upgrade to your next-gen console of choice. So, you’re getting essentially a new PS5 or Xbox Series X game just in time for launch week – all for less than $50. It’s a perfect way to fill out your launch library without breaking the bank. Or hacking DedSec.

• Watch Dogs Legion on PS4 (+ FREE PS5 upgrade): $60 $49.94 at Amazon
• Watch Dogs Legion on Xbox One (+ FREE Xbox Series X upgrade): $60 $49.94 at Amazon

Watch Dogs Legion is one of the best next-gen games to scratch that open world itch. Touting a revolutionary "Play as Anyone" mechanic, you can help liberate London using anyone with grannies to grime rapper Stormzy. Of course, it’ll look even better on your new consoles too; expect better draw distance, crisper graphics, and faster load times.

It also pays to get the physical version too. As Ubisoft has explained, it’s the only way to upgrade to next-gen if you buy a PS4 or Xbox One version of the game, as you’ll technically be doing here through Amazon. The PS5 version is also available now for $60 should you want it, but you’re essentially paying $10 extra for a different label on the case at this point. Particularly if you're not worried about owning a specific generation's version, this is the cheapest way to get a next-gen game. If you're yet to bag a PS5 deal or Xbox Series X deal, then this is still the perfect way to get the next-gen ball rolling, too.

Watch Dogs Legion deal

There's so much more still to come. Start looking ahead to the best PS5 Black Friday deals and all the Xbox Series X Black Friday deals on offer if you want a headstart on saving money before the big day and completing your next-gen setup.

Also be sure to check out our round-up of the Black Friday TV deals currently available.

Premier League live stream football is back on our screens, and it's as if it never went away. For the first time ever, Liverpool are reigning Premier League champions, and their title rivals have spent the summer hoovering up some of the best talent on the continent in order to close the gap to Jurgen Klopp's side. Replacing the relegated Norwich, Bournemouth and Watford are West Brom, Fulham and, most notably, Leeds, the giants who fell into financial oblivion and out of the Premier League in 2004, and have built one of the most watchable sides around under Marcelo Bielsa. Read on to find out how to live stream all of the 2020/21 Premier League action from anywhere.

• See also: Serie A live stream guide
• See also: Bundesliga live stream guide

The 2020/21 season kicked off on September 12 after the shortest preseason in history - so short, in fact, that both Manchester clubs' opening games had to be postponed in order to grant the sides 30 days off since the end of the last campaign. Still, it's nice to resume normal-ish service - but until fans are allowed to return it won't feel quite right.

The on-field action will be as absorbing as ever, not least because of the new and returning faces. Bielsa is understandably getting the most attention, but it's nice to see both Slaven Bilic and Scott Parker plying their trade in the top flight again.

And there's been an influx of superstars and rising stars, in James Rodriguez, Donny van de Beek, Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech, Kai Havertz, Thiago Silva, Ollie Watkins, Rodrigo and Ferran Torres, to get viewers off their seats, regardless of team loyalties.

Most intriguing of all, however, could be the midfield battle and relegation scrap. Most of the usual relegation candidates have brought some serious new talent on board, which could make things tough for the league's new boys - though they don't look like slouches either. The margin between Europa League hopes and relegation fears could be finer than ever, so read on to find out how to get a Premier League live stream from anywhere in the world.

This weekend's Premier League fixtures

Saturday, September 19

• Everton vs West Brom, 12.30pm BST - BT Sport
• Leeds vs Fulham, 3pm - BT Sport
• Man United vs Crystal Palace, 5.30pm - Sky Sports
• Arsenal vs West Ham, 8pm - Sky Sports

Sunday, September 20

• Southampton vs Tottenham, 12pm - BT Sport
• Newcastle vs Brighton, 2pm - Sky Sports
• Chelsea vs Liverpool, 4.30pm - Sky Sports
• Leicester vs Burnley, 7pm - BBC (FREE)

Remember if you're abroad right now and away from your normal local coverage, a VPN can let you tune in to Premier League football just as you would if you were at home.

Live stream the Premier League online in the UK

How to watch the EPL in the US

How to live stream Premier League soccer in Canada

How to live stream the Premier League in Australia

How to watch Premier League football from abroad

PS5 is here and Official PlayStation Magazine (OPM) takes a deep dive into the new console and the games that will make it shine. 

This 180-page special issue is your one-stop guide to everything next-gen. Inside this issue you can find new interviews with the devs behind the biggest games, new hands-on opinion, and the first screens and details of Sony's own PS5 hits-in-waiting, including Horizon Forbidden West, Spider-Man Miles Morales, and Gran Turismo 7.

Inside Official PlayStation Magazine issue 177, on sale Tuesday June 30th in all major UK newsagents or supermarkets, or earlier if you subscribe, you can find 180 pages of over 60 new games for PS5, PS4, and PS VR, as well as the ultimate 10-page review of The Last Of Us 2.  PS5 fans in the US can subscribe and save up to 47% on a print and digital OPM subscription.

All of this and the key people at Epic Games reveal more on Unreal Engine 5 and how this tech will be a game-changer for PS5. The promise of photo real graphics and a collaboration with Lucasfilm on Star Wars The Mandalorian point towards game experiences closer to film than we could ever imagine.

Read on to discover more about this 180-page special issue…

PS5 revealed

No speculation or rumours, in OPM issue 177 you can see the new PS5 console in detail, and discover the family of peripherals that will expand this next-gen hardware. 

Its design is so unique because Sony believes in fresh starts.  Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment says: "At PlayStation we believe in generational transitions and we put years of work into making them happen. We want you to enjoy the unique benefits of moving from one generation to the next.”

15 new next-gen games

Behind the returning franchises and triple-A new PS5 titles are some of next-gen's most interesting games. The team pick 15 new games we'll be playing only on PS5, including Square Enix's developed-for-PS5 Project: Athia, indie gem Kena: Bridge Of Spirits, and the mysteriously weird Death Stranding-in-space adventure from Capcom, Pragmata. Discover all 15 games in OPM issue 177.

53 of PlayStation's hottest games revealed

OPM's annual Hot 50 list expands to a Hot 53 because there's just TOO MANY GAMES. This issue read new interviews, game screens, and gameplay details for the most exciting new games for PS5, PS4, and PS VR, including Horizon Forbidden West, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Mafia: Definitive Edition, Hitman 3, Chorus, Demon's Souls, Resident Evil Village, and many more!

“The power of the PS5 also means that we will have an option for 120fps, which is very exciting for the racers who know that every frame counts,” teases Rob Karp, Dirt 5’s development director in just one of many exclusive PS5-focussed previews.

For a glimpse of what's in this massive 180-page special issue, keep going…

Horizon Forbidden West, and more…

Live in the US? You can save 44% on an Official PlayStation Magazine digital subscription - which is only $2.19 an issue while this amazing offer lasts!

For the past 10 years, writer Scott Snyder has been a staple of DC's comic books - with him writing an ongoing title - whether it be American Vampire, Batman, Superman: Unchained, Swamp Thing, Justice League, or something else - month-in and month-out every month since January 2010.

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

No, no.... Snyder isn't leaving DC. He's still working on the heavily-discussed "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 creator-owned work than ever, beginning with 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 ongoing 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 have 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 idea 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 years. 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 about." 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 to 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 have 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 of 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 something 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 writing 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 work 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 started 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 into 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 floppies 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 Mark 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 me 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 project 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 know 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 been to try and look at all of this as a completist and say there are ways of telling excited new stories while 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. Everything 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 started 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 think 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 to be major players in comic books. I know you 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 justice.

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 work 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 Moreci, 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 all.

But to have been even a small part of the trajectory of their careers, it’s been a pleasure.

Nrama: Newsarama has covered you since day one, talking to you about 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 also 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 still 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 tried 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 2020 writing 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 employed by DC, I’m employed by you guys.

These are strange days, and while it may feel like we're living through The Division as we take on social-distancing and self-isolation measures for safety, we can offer a little sense of normality in the pages of Official PlayStation Magazine. 

In times like these, the priority is to take care of your health, physical and mental, and to keep yourself safe while following the guidelines to help stop the spread of Covid-19, aka coronavirus.

If you're currently cooped up indoors and are in need of reading materials, we'd like to point you in the direction of MyFavouriteMagazines.co.uk. There's currently an offer running on digital subscriptions, where you can get Official PlayStation Magazine for only £5 for the first five issues.

So if you can't get to your local store to buy a magazine, you can still get it delivered instantly to your phone or tablet.

There are a host of other brilliant magazines available under the same offer, including Total Film, SFX, games mags like Retro Gamer, Edge and PC Gamer, music mags Metal Hammer and Classic Rock, and loads more.

So head to MyFavouriteMagazines.co.uk/march206 to take advantage of the offer. Terms and conditions apply, offer runs until April 30, 2020.

As you might have noticed, the year 2020 heralds the arrival of a new generation of consoles. Currently, however, with both PS5 and Xbox Series X shrouded in relative secrecy, the focus is on the platforms themselves. No doubt there will be the traditional advances in fidelity we expect from a newly raised power ceiling. But this time will be different. Microsoft is launching a new console with no exclusives. Sony has turned its back on the biggest videogame show on the planet. The lesson here is that we must reexamine the meaning of the phrase ‘next-generation’. That applies not just to consoles, but to games as well.

Enter Hytale. In Edge 342, which goes on sale today, we lift the curtain a game whose voxel styling belies the fact that is a true generational leap for the blockgame. While its creators shy away from the comparison, it is perhaps best thought of as Minecraft for a new generation – but not in a traditional sense. 

Minecraft started life as just a game, but was turned into something else – a platform, a social space, a scene – by its community. Hytale is what happens when the leading lights of that very community make something that ticks all those boxes from the very start. If the stats are anything to go by – with 54 million views and counting, its announcement is one of the most-watched trailers in YouTube history – the crew at Hypixel Studios might just be onto something enormous.

Edge 343 is on sale now, available in all major UK newsagents and through digital stores worldwide. It looks like this:

Subscriber copies were delayed to adhere to an embargo, but will also begin arriving today. They feature this exclusive cover with bespoke foil treatment. 

 Here’s a glimpse at what else awaits inside. 

Collected Works: Naoki Yoshida

You likely know Naoki Yoshida as the man credited with rescuing Square Enix’s near-disastrous Final Fantasy XIV. What made him the person the publisher’s then-president turned to when the chips were down? A career spent as a fixer. In Collected Works this month, Yoshida walks us through the CV that led him to the biggest rescue job of all.

The Room VR: A Dark Matter 

Fireproof’s The Room series has been a tremendous success on iOS, with players in the millions revelling in the joys of getting up close and personal with the studio’s devious little puzzle boxes. Its first foray into virtual reality takes us closer and, erm, personal-er still. We visit the Guildford studio and give its latest a good rattle. 

Subscribe today

For more industry-beating access to the very best that the videogame industry has to offer, why not subscribe to Edge? You’ll save on the cover price and have your copy delivered to your door (or device) each month, complete with exclusive subscriber covers.

You can subscribe to the print edition, digital version, or save even more with the print/digital bundle – whatever you choose, you can rest easy in the knowledge you're getting the full story before anyone else. 

The new issue of Official PlayStation Magazine is out now and we make some startling discoveries about the remake of Resident Evil 3. Producer Peter Fabiano tells us all about what it takes to bring this classic survival horror to PS4, and confirms the multiple endings of the original game won't be in the remake.

Fans will also remember Resident Evil 3 broke the mould by offering choices that would affect immediate routes through the game at key moments throughout the story, leading to different endings. So will the remake return with a mix of endings? "No," confirms Fabiano to us this issue.

If you want to read more, you'll have to pick up the new issue of Official PlayStation Magazine #171 on sale now, in which we cover more of Resident Evil 3 in our massive eight-page cover feature.

Godfall

There was a surprise this issue as Gearbox revealed Godfall, PS5's first confirmed game. We saw it in action and the mix of Destiny and Dark Souls, piped through PS5's glossy ray-traced tech visuals and powered by SSD looks stunning. So good we just let the images do the talking!

• Save up to 51% when you subscribe to Official PlayStation Magazine.

The Best indies for 2020

Matt Nava sat and his team sat down with us this issue to share new details and images of The Pathless, his spiritual follow-up to ABZU that has us exploring a mysterious island with an eagle companion.

In our exclusive look at the game Nava reveals how the new bow and arrow combat works. Hold down R2 and The Hunter pulls back the bow string on the target. "The longer you hold it, the more that thing charges up until it’s 100%. And the amount that you charge it is the accuracy of the shot," says Nava. "But if you let go too early, then it’s going to be 25% accurate or you know 30% accurate and the arrow will fly off."

There's a risk/reward too, as you can pull off quick shots to get maximum accuracy early. "At exactly 50% we have a tiny window of 100% accuracy," says Nava. "You get a little extra boost when you do that type. So you can kind of wait for the more reliable shot, or you can go for these quicker ones, and just that simple mechanic makes it really fun to run, shoot these things, and keep your speed up because that change from making it so you focus on aiming to the timing mechanic allows you to keep your focus on moving the character."

• Are you a PS Plus subscriber? Then get our 3 issue for £1 offer here! 

Zombie Army 4

Out early February, Zombie Army 4: Dead War could be the best antidote to those new year blues. Having faced-off against a horde of the undead and a zombie tank we enjoyed our time with the game. Editor Ian Dean writes this issue: "Zombie Army 4 is playing by its own rules, and its brand of schlocky arcade horror never fails to raise a smile."

There's more previews to enjoy this issue as the team go hands-on with Nioh 2, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and Arc System Works latest fighter, Granblue Fantasy: Versus. Oscar Taylor-Kent writes this issue: "Granblue Fantasy: Versus isn’t just set in an interesting fantasy world, it’s adding extra dimensions to the fighting game genre."

• Try an issue for FREE when you subscribe on iOS devices and Google

Final Fantasy VII Remake

While we await the release of Final Fantasy VII Remake, the developers shared plenty of new details with us this issue. We know this is part of one of a larger series of games under the FFVII Remake umbrella, but the second one is already in the works…

"We’ve already begun working on the next one as well, but I’m confident that playing through this title will expand your expectations just like the world that extends beyond Midgar," shares Tetsuya Nomura, the game’s director and concept designer in OPM#171.

Pick up the magazine in stores now to discover what else the FFVII Remake team has to say.

Subscribe to Official PlayStation Magazine

For more unrivalled developer access to the hottest PS4 and PS VR games, why not subscribe to Official PlayStation Magazine? You'll save on the cover price and have your copy delivered to your door (or device) each month, complete with exclusive subscriber covers – such as this month's alternative Resident Evil 3 design featuring Nemesis.

You can subscribe to the print edition, digital version, or save even more with the print/digital bundle – whatever you choose, you can rest easy in the knowledge you're getting the full story before anyone else. 

If you want more from OPM, be sure to check out all of the subscription offers at MyFavouriteMagazines.

Official PlayStation Magazine is the UK's best-selling video games magazine. Every issue is your personal all-access invitation to the world of PS4, PS5, and PS VR gaming. The team have been writing about PlayStation since the 90s and have passionate and informed knowledge of the world's best-selling video games console. Each issue is a mix of honest reviews, informed previews, and exclusive access to the biggest new games coming to PlayStation. 

• Save up to 57% on a Official PlayStation Magazine print and digital subscription

Each issue 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 our readers informed and entertained." 

Here are some of the many reasons you'll want to take out an Official PlayStation Magazine subscription today.

In every issue of Official PlayStation Magazine you'll find:

• From in-depth reviews to unflinching interviews, and reaction to the biggest stories in PlayStation, you can trust our writers to deliver the opinion you can trust.
• Exclusive studio access: We meet the teams behind the biggest games, including going hands on with Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare at Infinity Ward, playing The Last Of Us Part 2 at Naughty Dog, and scooping the first interview with Resident Evil 3's dev team.
• Regular features including The Big 10 (best month's news dissected), insightful columns such as Opinion (video gaming's best writers let rip), and Classic Game (we reveal how and why the best games of yesteryear were made). 
• Build your PlayStation games collection with our expert buyer's guide; every issue we suggest the 25 must-play games on PlayStation 4.
• Regular free gifts such as our Resident Evil 2 branded sweatbands, collectible art posters, and soundtrack CDs, including Days Gone.

Why subscribe to Official PlayStation Magazine?

• Save up to 57% on a print and digital subscription
• Never miss an issue - have the magazine delivered direct to your door
• Subscriber copies are sent out early, so you our content before anyone else
• Get our special edition Premium issues included in your yearly subscription
• Free gifts every issue at no extra cost to subscribers

Subscribe to Official PlayStation Magazine now!

You've read The Last of Us 2 preview impressions and been teased info, but for our cover game for issue 168, out now, we ask some tougher questions of The Last of Us 2's devs, and get an emotional response.

"This is the longest job I’ve ever had in my life,” says the game's co-writer Halley Gross. “Every day I’m working, I get the opportunity to work with designers, and animators, and sound guys and character artists, and we’re all working toward a vision about how do you make the most complex, nuanced character in a videogame? Everybody’s putting their particular smarts toward that, and you get to just watch these incredibly brilliant people and go, “How the fuck does your brain work?” 

“Wizards,” she says, shaking her head. “They’re wizards.”

• Save up to 51% when you subscribe to Official PlayStation Magazine.

The Last of Us Part 2

As well as getting up close and personal with Naughty Dog's key people we do, of course, go hands-on with The Last of Us 2 in issue #168. We go into detail on how the game plays, we explore how the new stealth gameplay works, detail the XP and upgrade systems, and discover why killing an enemy will an emotional scar.

PlayStation Now

The PS4 streaming service PlayStation Now has come on leaps and bounds since it launched. The news of a price drop and the inclusion of AAA games such as Uncharted 4 and GTA V are available to stream puts PS Now back on the map. This issue we dip into PS Now's games lineup and devise the 100 best games to play on PS Now. There are some long-forgotten classics in here, some cult hits, and fan favourites. The question is, have your favourites from PS2 to PS4 made the cut?

Halloween top 10

With Halloween around the corner we take a deep breath and shine a light in PS4's 10 scariest moments. Your favourites will be in here and some obvious contenders are uncovered, but have your favourite scares made our killer list.

We also speak to some of horror gamings key people about what makes the perfect frightener, and they're methods for madness. Philippe Morin, game designer at Outlast studio Red Barrels says in issue 168: "And, yes, we like to push the envelope. When someone on the team says ‘are we really going to do that?’, then we feel we’re on the right track.”

• Try an issue for FREE when you subscribe on iOS devices and Google

Death Stranding

Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding is almost here, and in anticipation we take a final walk around its mysterious mountains. If you're still struggling to grapple with just what Death Stranding is, then start here. We layout the flow of the gameplay, we explain the world and its quirks, and take some time to drool over those visuals. All this is in issue 168, out now.

Resident Evil goes multiplayer

Love Resident Evil? Then you'll want to pick up issue 168 as we dive into the series all-new asymmetrical multiplayer adventure. Leading the issue's Big 10, we explore how this spin-off plays – part escape room, part strategy sim, and all Resident Evil, Project Resistance could be the surprise of 2020. Or could it? Perhaps its actually a 2021 PS5 release...

Subscribe today

For more unrivalled developer access to the hottest PS4 and PS VR games, why not subscribe to Official PlayStation Magazine? You'll save on the cover price and have your copy delivered to your door (or device) each month, complete with exclusive subscriber covers – such as this month's alternative The Last Of Us Part II design.

You can subscribe to the print edition, digital version, or save even more with the print/digital bundle – whatever you choose, you can rest easy in the knowledge you're getting the full story before anyone else. 

If you want more from OPM, be sure to check out all of the subscription offers at MyFavouriteMagazines.

When Marvel artist Adi Granov shared his design for the suit in Iron Man VR we were excited, but when he revealed in Official PlayStation Magazine 166 he's created equally sleek designs for other characters crossing into the game we were giddy. However, it's his love of the Sony-Marvel team-up that impresses. Can Iron Man VR be the Spider-Man-sized hit virtual reality needs?

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Sharp shooter

Leading issue 166, on sale now, however, is our extended hands-on and interviews with Infinity Ward. We play every new multiplayer mode in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare and discover how the original team behind COD4: Modern Warfare are back on board to make this year's shooter the best the series has seen.

Animation director Mark Grigsby says in issue 166: "Honestly, Modern Warfare was probably the best time of my video game industry career. I’ve been in this industry for about 21 years now. But those were awesome times and then to come back and be a part of it, and then have the team so enamoured with it and be fans [of Modern Warfare], and then they’re putting their heart and soul into it as well. It was, it was a good feeling. It’s awesome.”

Tony Hawk at 20

"We were young and it was cool!" Says Mick West, co-founder of NeverSoft and co-creator of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, which celebrated 20 years in August. 

The dev reveals what it was really like to work on this iconic franchise, from a co-worker building a skate park in his back garden for the team to being PlayStation's first online game, and setting fire to the studio's iconic 'eye' logo. 

"I'm very proud of what we did. I can see the influence it's had on the broader game market and on skateboarding itself. It was good to be a small part of that," says West. 

• Try an issue for FREE when you subscribe on iOS devices and Google.

Oddworld has soul

At a time when we prepping for PlayStation 5 it's good to remember where we came from, and in issue 166 we sit down with iconic developer Lorne Lanning to discover where Oddworld can go next.

"Sometimes you must take a longer road to achieve your dreams," shares Lorne Lanning in issue 166 as he discusses taking the classic series from PS1 to PS4 and beyond.

Read the interview in this issue and discover why Oddworld Soulstorm is shaping into one of PS4's best new puzzle-platformers.

Subscribe today

For more unrivalled developer access to the hottest PS4 and PS VR games, why not subscribe to Official PlayStation Magazine? You'll save on the cover price and have your copy delivered to your door (or device) each month, complete with exclusive subscriber covers – such as this month's alternative Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare artwork.

You can subscribe to the print edition, digital version, or save even more with the print/digital bundle – whatever you choose, you can rest easy in the knowledge you're getting the full story before anyone else. 

If you want more from OPM, be sure to check out all of the subscription offers at MyFavouriteMagazines.

One of the first scenes in Wolfenstein: Youngblood perfectly sums up the game's tone. Twin protagonists Jess and Soph learn that their father, BJ Blazkowicz, has gone missing in Nazi-controlled Paris, so they steal some super suits and strike out on their own to find him. The thing is, for all the lessons they received from their parents, Jess and Soph have never actually fought the Nazis. They're trained killers, but not practiced ones. I won't spoil the specifics, but their first real Nazi kill is about as messy as it gets, and it makes for a gruesome, wild, gut-bustingly funny scene that's every bit as memorable as the climax to Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. Which is spot-on, because based on my E3 2019 demo of the game, Youngblood as a whole fits that exact description to a tee. 

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 tree 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 continuation 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 and 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 play 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 linearity is a bad thing. Wolfenstein: The New Colossus let players tackle some side missions in whatever order they wanted and every mission allowed for multiple paths and approaches, but by leveraging the Dishonored-honed minds of Arkane, Youngblood's become much more open-ended. 

"Our 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 missions 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 Youngblood'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, which 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 PC Gamer, and within minutes we were naturally reconing areas together, with one of us taking 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 there'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 goes 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 out on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch on July 26. 

A new study published by the Royal Society that examined more than 1000 teenagers living in the UK and their carers has concluded that, despite prevalent concerns among parents, policy-makers, and people who are presumably terrified by anything more modern than a radio the size of a closet, there is no evidence of a connection between violent video game-play and aggressive behavior in the real world. 

We're all gamers now

The report begins by noting that nearly all "young people" in the developed world play video games, and that "views concerning the effects of gaming on young people vary widely as a function of demographics and personal experiences with games." Some people, in other words, believe that gaming has social and cognitive benefits, while others think that violent games are a causative factor in violent behavior.

"In general, most organizations' initial guidance was framed by the precautionary principle - an approach to mitigating societal harm that puts protections in place when there is a plausible risk. Policy-makers guided by this mindset have discretion to take measures in cases where scientific knowledge about something new is lacking," the report states.

"In line with this principle, some organizations like the American Psychological Association err on the side of caution and warn to limit youngsters’ time spent playing video games. Such steps are far from universal as other organizations conducting their reviews of the science, such as the Australian and Swedish government reports, and the APA's own Media Psychology and Technology Division, have concluded there is no actionable evidence that aggressive behavior results from youth gaming."

The report also notes that, as our understanding of the impact of media on behavior has grown, some agencies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have "softened" their position on video games, and that in 2011 the Supreme Court of the United States "judged that there is insufficient evidence that games cause harm to uphold laws restricting the sale of violent games to minors."

Calling shenanigans 

The study calls into question some previous research that has postulated a relationship between violent games and aggressive behavior, stating that the "main theoretical framework" supporting them is the General Aggression Model [GAM], which in some cases has found a "consistent, though modest" connection. The authors believe that much of that research is flawed or incomplete, however, because it fails to take into account other relevant indicated factors: Aggressive people are more easily drawn to violent video games, for example, and aggressive responses may not be the result of the games themselves but because "they frustrate the basic psychological need for competence," which is academic-ese for "you're mad because you suck."

The mechanics of the research are filled with technical lingo, like "there is reason to think that outstanding methodological challenges might be inflating this metanalytic estimate," or "r = 0.01 (95% CI = −0.08 to 0.10), did not overlap with, and was clearly inferior to, r = 0.21 (95% CI = 0.20–0.22)" if you're really into that sort of thing. More clarity can be found in the Discussion section of the report, which states that "the results derived from our hypothesis testing did not support the position that violent gaming relates to aggressive behavior."

Does not apply to trolls

There are caveats, of course, including that the study relied on self-reported data, and that its "general inferences" drawn from the population as a whole might overlook specific demographics that could be more or less influenced by gaming. The authors also acknowledge that despite the growing body of evidence (including their own) that fails to find a connection between violent games and aggressive behavior, large swaths of "parents, pundits, and policy-makers" will remain unconvinced.

"We argue that this study speaks to the key question of whether adolescents’ violent video game play has a measurable effect on real-world aggressive behavior. On the basis of our evidence, the answer is no," the report states.

"This is not to say that some mechanics and situations in gaming do not foment angry feelings or reactions in players such as feelings of incompetence, trash talking, or competition. These topics provide promising avenues for inquiry and have direct implications for literature focused on antisocial behaviors such as bullying, trolling, and griefing. Instead, we argue that mere exposure to, and enactment of, putatively violent virtual acts in gaming contexts in aggregate is unlikely, on its own, to bear positively on perceivable differences in adolescents' aggression in real-world settings."

While its frustrating we're still having this conversation in 2019, every scientific study is another step towards a time when you won't have to explain to your dentist, that yes you play games, and no they don't make people crazy. In your face Dr. Maguire. In your perfectly veneered face. 

Now that we've tackled that thorny subject, why not check out our pick of the best upcoming Switch games for 2019 and beyond?  

The physical loot box phenomenon has exploded in the past few years, and it's rapidly reaching a fever pitch. Right now, you can get crates of random goodies delivered to your home every month ranging from collectibles and geeky accessories to clothes, wine, and food. Walmart recently jumped on the bandwagon and started offering gaming and geek culture focused boxes a la carte from a couple of different companies, and some of them are surprisingly excellent. 

The cool thing about getting a box from a retailer like Walmart rather than buying into a monthly subscription is that you get to just grab the boxes you want, and you're aware of its contents before you buy (though some of the boxes still have some random elements). There's no long term commitment, and you can grab boxes from different categories and across different genres all from one source. Walmart seems to be doing a decent job of curating which boxes are available on the site. Check their site for the full listing, but I've gone through and chosen the best of the lot and broken them out below.

Taking some of the randomness and all of the monthly commitment out of the loot box formula makes the whole proposition much more attractive, and these offers from Loot Crate and CultureFly are some of the better boxes I've seen. They're stuffed with goodies you'll love, and even if there are some additional items that you're not so fond of, pretty much everything in these boxes makes for a great gift.

Also, don't hesitate to dig into some other great deals over at our cheap Xbox One deals page, or if you need a controller stop by our Xbox One controller cheap roundup.  

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. 

Before PlayStation VR launched, I got a little impatient and bought a Samsung Gear VR. Because it was designed to be powered by a mobile phone – albeit a powerful one – and didn’t come with a controller as standard, it tended to offer ‘experiences’ and other interesting apps instead of loads of games. Most of these were fantastic despite the Gear VR’s limitations.

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 favourite PS VR experiences to date, acting out an entire beautifully 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 PlayStation Move controllers 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 subscribe here. And if you're looking at getting on board with PlayStation VR, we have all the best PlayStation VR deals you need. 

Update: Sadly, 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 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 already-stellar lineup of developers working on the as-yet unnamed Star Wars project. She joins Jade 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 project for over three years now. Save for a tantalizing concept trailer shown at E3 2016, this collaboration from the minds behind Assassin's Creed, Dead Space and Uncharted is still as mysterious as the sudden appearance and disappearance 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, 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 place 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 a 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 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 to 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 open-world environment comes from  EA job postings all the way back in 2013 seeking applicants with a passion for the Star Wars franchise to work on a open-world game. Because we'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: 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 Disney allowed the trademark for the Star Wars 1313 name to lapse. 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, said in a 2015 interview that the company loves the concept art and work done on Star Wars 1313 and that none of that production 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 hints we've been getting from the developers' social media postings. 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. 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 appearance 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 appeared 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, don'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 and 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 Wars game 

EA previews upcoming Star Wars games - including Battlefront 2, more Old Republic, and Visceral's adventure

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

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

Visceral Star Wars game 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 everything you need to know 

When it comes to VR, we tend to ask the wrong question. It’s not a matter of ‘Will VR take off?’ but ‘What will it be when it finally does?’ VR in general, and PS VR in particular, is at the start of a ten-year curve. Developers are finding their feet and discovering the rules of this new tech. We’re in uncharted waters, and that should be cherished.

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 since 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? Controllers 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 fully 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 movies, animation, and music – it’ll be all this combined.

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

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

Update: The Witcher saga is coming to Netflix!

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

***Original article continues below***

The sad truth is that most live-action movies based on video games are awful. There’s the occasional, reassuringly mediocre outlier, but generally: they suck. The news that Netflix is definitely making a show based on Castlevania and probably one on Assassin’s Creed, then, should fill 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, and instead look at the games 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 consultant. He said, “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 reasons 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 these 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 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 Umbrella 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. Badly. The looming threat of the Reapers could also work, with a ragged bunch of aliens 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 Guilty 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 out 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. 

Ever wonder why you spend so much time gathering ingredients for your next meal in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , or grabbing all the miscellaneous junk you find lying around the Talos 1 in Prey ? It's the ingenious way they handle crafting. These systems are more than just a means to an end - they're constantly generating more reasons to keep playing, even though we often take them for granted. When done right, crafting doesn't just supplement other aspects of a game - it can completely change the way you play. At the most basic level, in-game crafting (and by extension, cooking) is as simple as gathering materials that have little to no use on their own, then recombining them into a more enticing reward. Such a seemingly straightforward pursuit can weave through exploration and combat alike, tying an entire world together and creating motivation outside of the main plot.

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 worthless 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 finite resource. Otherwise, without some limitations to the quality and quantity of what you can create, crafting would obliterate game balance and ultimately 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 variables 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 out massive amounts of value 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. Fallout 4 is centered on exploration and combat, and 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 explore new areas, challenge 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.

Image source 

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 tedious 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 pursue 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 reward 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 simple, intuitive crafting grid is fuel for the imagination, letting you experiment to your heart's content in the pursuit of logically laid-out recipes.

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 mindlessly 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'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 entire 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. Through 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, brewing potions is a complex and seemingly unpredictable process. You can make multiple vials of the same 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 the 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.

When Spike Chunsoft announced Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak Academy - the final act of a story that had spanned three games - would be an animated series, Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka told Famitsu (via Gematsu) he believed the story would be best concluded through an anime, rather than another video game.

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 Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

Shifting mediums to tell a side story isn’t uncommon in the games industry. Developers of series 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 upon 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 several 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 player 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 Despair managed to recreate this scenario and make way for the gameplay that followed, but it had to stage its killing game 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 Danganronpa 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 create 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 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 trying 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 through his own mind, solving puzzles to collect his lost marbles and unlock memories. What appears to be another portable puzzler eventually reveals one of 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 competition, 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 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 finally 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 around the world.

Dead Head Fred

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 saddest sales numbers for any game on any console.

Dark Sector

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 freaky 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 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 can 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. 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-top 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. 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, cartoony 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, one 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 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 visuals. Whats not to love?

Asura's Wrath

In 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 dramatics 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 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 Civilization: Revolution as an exercise in boring spreadsheet management and moved on to the latest sci-fi or WWII shooter. 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. 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 celebrity 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. Trouble in Paradise had an extended co-op multiplayer mode, 28 new pinatas, new desert and snow environments, and the power to scan 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 Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth , which put more of a focus on investigating crime scenes than battling in a courtroom, and the result was a fun new take on the series.

Condemned: Criminal Origins

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 with 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 Fragile Dreams. This post-apocalyptic story follows Seto, a 15-year-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 puzzles 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 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, including DmC: Devil May 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 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, the 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 system 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 Advance 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 Eternal Sonata sold in scant numbers on both Xbox 360 and PS3. Anyone looking for a gorgeous, light role-playing game will be well served by checking it out today.

Suikoden Tierkreis

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 monsters spirits from their still-beating carcasses in a way that was deliciously Ghostbusters-esque.

House of the Dead: Overkill

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 treasure.

Jeanne d'Arc

Jeanne d'Arc isn'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 system'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 machine capable of HD output.

Kirby Canvas Curse

How is the best Kirby adventure on Nintendo's handheld also the worst selling? 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 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

Stuntman Ignition puts you in charge of every 180, ramp jump and expensive pyrotechnic that goes into the typical Hollywood blockbuster. And if 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 story? 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 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, The Club is a fun little bit of blood sport. 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 action 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 adoration 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. 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 right. Even its motion controls feel great.

Splatterhouse

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 both 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: 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, 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

 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 combat and Michael Jackson style dance offs. If all that sounds too weird to handle, it was for most people, but El Shaddai is a singular game worthy of anyone's time.

Sonic Generations

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

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 created 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 in 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. 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 game a second shot, but the teased sequel at the end has never materialized. Heartbreaker.

Chromehounds

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 nothing 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.  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 Manufacture'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

Henry Hatsworth looked like the sort of kid game schlock that glutted the Nintendo DS. You would never know that one of the most teeth 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

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 Final 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 ground. 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 - Zack & Wiki is a hardcore 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 motion control implementation in the Wii library. 

We joke about Wii now. Oh, the waggle! Oh, the dumb mini-game collections! Oh, the Ninjabread Man. Years after Nintendo’s gamble on unusual controls and underpowered hardware dominated the video game world in terms of sheer popularity, the machine really does seem like the fad that so many people said it would be. We do the Wii a disservice, though, by laughing at it. Yes, the motion controls were not everything they could have been and good games were drops in an ocean of cash-in shovelware the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Atari 2600 days, but its best titles were immortal. Super Mario Galaxy’s dizzy glee, Wii Sports’ elegant simplicity, the bananas slapstick of WarioWare Smooth Moves; the Wii’s best transcended the console’s gimmicks. The games were there, but Nintendo’s little box didn’t exactly make it easy to get to them. Even the people who absolutely loved the Wii will be familiar with these problems.

• 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 dispensary 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 cleaning out your refrigerator.  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 the 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 Konga 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 with 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 connected 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 center, 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 no 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 have 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.

Have you ever held a PS Vita in your hands? Here was a well designed, sexy piece of hardware that offered something that seemed too good to be true: PS3 quality triple-A games on the go. I’ve rarely taken hold of a piece of hardware that felt more at home in my mitts than a Vita, in truth. It screamed class, it screamed invention, it screamed Sony at its best.

Jump forward six years 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 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 bizarrely) 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 screams...well, you know where I’m going with this. Switch does have one big problem, 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 of 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 company’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 them. It was about as close to a revolution as we’re ever likely to see in the world of games.

Nintendo’s problem ever since, however, has been finding a way to take that new blood to the 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 have 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 out, that’s a certainty.

That’s the crux of the issue with Nintendo’s Switch. Every time someone has utilised the technology available at the 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 Super Mario Run be a sign of better things to come? As commentators having been suggesting for decades, going multiplatform could yet be the real ‘switch’ Nintendo needs.

Like a stick of TNT exploding in an unlucky miner’s hand, Rockstar blew up social media this week. The impressive thing wasn’t that the Grand Theft Auto publisher wowed us by teasing what was eventually announced as Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s that it garnered more than 100,000 retweets and 200,000 likes with a single image featuring a stylized version of the company’s logo.

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, the 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 need 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 across 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 can’t easily be defined as “good” or “evil.”

Marston’s history as a bandit gang member is what lands him 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 wife 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 with 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 momentary 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.

Sadly, 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 would 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 Marston 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. Speculation suggests that Red Dead Redemption 2 could pick up with the rest of Jack Marston’s story. Alternatively, it could be a prequel, with the seven-member posse a glimpse back at John’s time in Dutch van der Linde’s gang.

The first teaser doesn’t reveal too much, unfortunately. We have a long time to go before Red Dead Redemption 2 arrives in Fall 2017, and we’ll certainly learn more along the way.

Years before PS4 enabled players to snap and share high-quality screenshots with a few button presses, I was balancing my two megapixel Casio camera on a stack of Harry Potters and pointing it towards my finger-smudged telly. Why? Because taking pictures of games is the best.

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 stimulus provided by pictures prevents any sensation that the hours you’ve invested have been wasted.

Secondly, they can become testaments to your gaming skill – they’re visual records of incredible achievements. Capture the moment you 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 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 pretty background blur).

Character blocking the way? In Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Life Is Strange, I get around this by moving my avatar up against the wall and rotating the camera until they disappear. 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, 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 in 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: photosofphotos.imgur.com.

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

Just keep playing

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 than 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 School of Movies 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, folding in audience recollections and occasional, impressive industry guests.

The enthusiasm behind that combination of analysis and nostalgia makes the show shine. Their Crazy Taxi 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.

Listen here.

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), embraces 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 of 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.

Listen here.

5. Crate and Crowbar

C&C are a PC-only show but, 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 their 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 anywhere. There’ll be something you love in every episode.

Listen here.

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 each evolution as it hits. As a newbie, it’s sometimes a struggle to catch up but persevere, it’s worth it.

Listen here.

3. Guardian Radio

Go Team Space Barbie! I love Destiny but it sometimes feels a lot like a gorgeous sandbox filled with incredibly 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 are 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 group, listen to this.

Listen here.

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 episode (Episode 48) is a particular standout as is their open and honest ongoing discussion about depression.

However what makes 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.

Listen here.

1. The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast

And finally, for something completely different. Board games 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 ‘Where do I start?’ Here.

Hosts Jamie Keagy, Tony Topper, Brian Moore, Chris Miller, 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.

Listen here.

Kojima's been talking about Death Stranding at San Diego Comic Con and apart from Ludens' origins and a new Kojima Production logo trailer,  it sounds like it's all super early prototype days for whatever the game ends up being. 

This is what Kojima said in a livestream,  which I'm going to put up in full for clarity. Key points: the trailer wasn't in-engine, there's no real script yet and its all sounding like a rough concept stage:  

"Right now we’re making several tests. We almost have the engine. The teaser was something we did through experiments through visuals. Aside from that, in a different engine we’re doing tests for gameplay. The teaser, it is a cutscene, but when you stop it you can move the camera around and walk inside Death Stranding so it rendered in real time.

I was trying to come up with what kind of world we would be able to visually express. And also, at the same time, I had my concerns of how many of the gaming elements we would be able to put in there. It’s looking like it’s coming together. We’re reaching a point where I can see where this is going, so we’re just about to settle on an engine and from there start fully on development. And that scene will be in the game.

I’m working on the plot. I’m doing tests. I’m trying to figure out what the settings for what the story will be; some character design. [I] was about to say something [I] shouldn’t say. I don’t have the script quite just yet. I’m in a preliminary stage of the script because there are elements that I don’t know yet how much I will be able to put in there. I’m not working on the details, on the specifics yet. No dialogue yet, the plot... there’s no real plot. I’m working on the setting and what things will be be. Day on day they keep changing. The terminology keeps changing. So let’s say in the plot we have scene where a tsunami comes and takes away the city - and by the way there’s no scene like this in the game - I’m trying to figure out technologically how big a tsunami we can make, we can render. How much city I can make and be washed away. The speed of processing. These are the kind of tests we have to do before we know can make scene like that".

Now, that doesn't mean it won't be brilliant eventually, but if you're thinking that an amazing game already exists the you're being optimistic. There are some ideas, the rest is going to take time. 

Seen something newsworthy? Tell us!

Kojima's at San Diego Comic Con because that guy can't stay in the office for more than five minutes. However, while he's there he's been tweeting out some pretty cool pictures of his studio's mascot as an action figure. 

The first is this 1000toys' version: 

It looks like you'll be able to strip that thing right down, as Kojima's also tweeted shots of the "original body base", alongside designer Yoji Shinkawa. 

There's also a smaller, less complicated version as well: 

And, if you like 'em cute, then there's a couple of Nendoroid versions as well. 

That's quite a lot of merch considering we still don't know exactly who or what Ludens is. We've seen Death Stranding (and Walking Dead) star Norman Reedus inside the suit, but talk from the studio seems to suggest this isn't a character in any game it's working on. 

Seen something newsworthy. Tell us!

At the risk of sounding like a dangerous wizard, I'd like to take you back in time. 

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 dogshit 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 today - 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, but 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: green-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 that 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.

Back in the heyday of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, when your Bionic Commando Rearmeds and your Rush 'N' Attack: Ex-Patriots were a dime a dozen, Wild Guns Reloaded would still have been an oddity. Retro remasters and remakes of Japanese 16-bit classics were common then and still made today, but none have taken the approach Natsume has with Reloaded. Both a remaster of the original but also a sequel with brand new playable characters and levels, Wild Guns Reloaded actually retains the sprite graphics style of the Super Nintendo original.

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 like 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 like a sparking dynamite wick. 

E3 is basically Games Christmas. The week leading up to it is Christmas Eve. You see your presents under the tree and prod gently, trying to guess what they are. Occasionally, like this year, some asshat will unwrap a few early and destroy the surprise. But there are always presents left. When Christmas morning comes, you scamper downstairs, eager to discover what Entertainment Santa has delivered. Sometimes it’s everything you hoped for. Shenmue 3! The Last Guardian! Miyamoto with the Master Sword! Other times, it’s Ridge Racer. Riiiiidge. Racer. 

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 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 goddamn mannequin finger is 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. 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 swinging. 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 character 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 that 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 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 were 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 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 ooze. 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 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 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 of 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 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: Imaginators. 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 typified 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 catastrophe.

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). 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 conferences feel shitty about themselves.

Disappointment

This entry is dedicated to all 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

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 Kojima 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

David Cage’s new game has a SWAT team. David Cage couldn’t make a risotto without 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. 

Let It Die is what you get when you drag Dark Souls back through time, fill it with cheap booze, and knock it out on the floor of CBGB after a long night of dirty punk shows. That’s unsurprising given its developer is Grasshopper Manufacture, the studio founded by Goichi "Suda51" Suda. When you fire up the E3 demo and your nude brawler starts wandering through a bombed out theme park, picking up bats and nail guns, putting on clothes he finds on the ground, and getting stomped by enormous monsters made of dirty, discarded mannequin limbs, it makes sense. Yes, this is what it would look like if the guy who made Shadows of the Damned remade Bloodborne.  

Playing a game this dirty requires refreshment. That’s why I asked Suda and Let It Die composer Akira Yamaoka, the famed musician 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 a 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 Yamaoka, 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. The 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 enjoy 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 logo. 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 rock 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 single 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 James Sunderland’s world in that game. "Silent hill 2 is a red wine. Very dry."

No kidding. 

Silent Hill 3

"Silent Hill 3 is beer," said Yamaoka very simply.

Sounds about right. Douglas agrees. 

This interview was conducted by Official PlayStation Magazine following the Game Developers Conference in March 2016

From the moment we again donned the headset and dove into the kaleidoscopic magic of PlayStation VR, at this year’s GDC event in 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?

Fortunately, we found ourselves 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 “mistake” – 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... 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 to 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 electronics hardware.

Whether it’s designing in an 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 what Sony does.

This is a big part of Sony’s DNA. It’s sometimes easy to 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 on 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 and 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 you 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’re 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 relevant 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 worried 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, functional enhancements to the device. That will definitely continue – we have a roadmap. Much of this 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 things start 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 last 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 which 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 subscribe here.

You’d struggle to find a more solitary pursuit than rallying. Often with no other cars on the track, taking to the road with the sole goal of posting the fastest time is an unashamedly lonely experience. It’s also one that, from Dirt Rally’s opening menu screens right through to the deep and dirty action itself, Codemasters has looked to replicate in a manner that hasn’t been attempted for a decade or so.

Dirt Rally is a racing sim that recalls an era long gone, before tutorials and hand holding. It’s curious that Codemasters has decided to attach its latest rally sim to the Dirt brand - a series that, along with its sister franchise GRID, was famed for allowing players to rewind time when they made a mistake, as well as decorating the action with something as close to a storyline as you’re ever likely to get in a racing sim.

No such measures are taken within Dirt Rally. Within 20 minutes of picking up your first car, you’ll take to the track in the snowy slopes of Switzerland and the plains of Finland. Before long, you’ll be having a splash in the muddy fields of a damp and dreary Wales. DiRT Rally never lets you take a ride on a test track, or flash scores of instructions across the screen. You belt up, listen to your orders from your co-driver and go.

Rather than taking you directly to the game’s showroom to pick up your first car, Dirt Rally trusts you and lets you buy one at your own pace. It’s a small point, but one that sets the tone for everything that follows. On the track, Dirt Rally is a particularly unforgiving beast. Every bump, every puddle, every patch of ice has an impact on your vehicle. That’s especially true during your first championship, when you only have access to a batch of cars from the 1960s - cars which sometimes drive like an old tin bath with four pram wheels stuck to the bottom.

It was when attempting to scale the heights of the Swiss alps in the now 50-year-old Lancia Fulvia, wheezing as it does like a 40-a-day smoker, that Dirt Rally’s true intent became clear to me. This is not an arcade racer, or even a rally sim for the fans of the popular but comparatively simple Colin McRae. Dirt Rally is a genuine, blunt simulation of rallysport. If you think you’re going to get an easy ride in the first contest or two, you’re mistaken. You’ll be lucky to even finish.

Fortunately, however, Dirt Rally gives you plenty of races to recover. Championships, which make up the main thread of play, are broken down into multiple events, which in standard rallies consist of four separate time trials. With no indication as to how you’re doing other than split times comparing you to the race leader, success in Dirt Rally is a case of keeping your car on the straight and narrow, pressing your foot down when you dare and listening to the ceaseless commands from your co-driver. Throughout play, he is your one consistent aid, although listening to his calls - which rarely leave room for breath - feels like cracking a code Alan Turing would be proud of. There’s no “easy left” or “hard right” here. Every bend is graded from one to six, with 90 degree turns or hairpins highlighted with particular caution. Crests, bumps, and hazards all tumble from your co-driver’s mouth like a foreign language. Visual aids stream across the screen at the same time, in an attempt to keep you up to speed.

At first, attempting to follow commands in any meaningful fashion seems like an impossible task, but it soon starts to feed into your subconscious. Focusing on the vanishing point and delicately snaking your way through its stages starts to become second nature. The variety of these stages is arguably Dirt Rally’s greatest strength. Speeding through the forests of Finland is a distinctly different thing to successfully scaling the icy heights of one of the game’s many mountain passes. Jumping from one event to the next constantly keeps you on your toes. With its narrow, perilous tracks, Dirt Rally never allows you to feel comfortable.

Crashing into a stray tree or clipping a stone wall not only slows you down, but also has an impact on your car. Tires burst, radiators overheat, and you can frequently find yourself hobbling over the finish line with a slack time simply because you’ve lost control of your car once in an otherwise clean and competitive race. Veering off track or recovering your car after flipping it will trigger a time penalty. A bigger concern is the ease with which you can write your car off altogether. Repairs can be carried out in between races, but major incidents in the middle of a challenge can be fatal, with restarts chipping away at the credit you pick up for completing an event. It's perfectly fair, but devilishly unforgiving.

As an aside to the standard rallies, Codemasters has also spiced up play with hill climbs and official FIA World Rallycross Championship challenges - the latter enabling you to race other cars directly on the track. These rallycross events are split into qualifying heats, semi finals and a final encounter, with a 'Joker lap’ - a trickier, longer stretch of track you have to deviate down at least once in a race - adding a smart tactical element to proceedings. The better you perform in these rallycross encounters, the more credit you pick up at the end.

It’s this credit that enables your progress. Success in Dirt Rally’s championship lets you to purchase new cars in additional classes (15 classes available in all, with 46 cars on offer in total) and upgrade your existing vehicles. Switching off all driving aids rewards you with additional credit at the end of each event, and you can also alter the sensitivity of your drive to suit your tastes, softening the suspension or switching the brake bias to fit your driving style. For dedicated players, fiddling with these settings is a time consuming but rewarding sideline which, once mastered, can shave vital seconds off your best time.

Dirt Rally seems designed to ensure that you get the most out of the cars you already own before taking the step up to more powerful beasts. As your ability increases, your engineers become better equipped to deal with each car the longer you drive it. In a game where success intentionally feels like a hard earned treat, the knowledge that sticking by the four wheels you own - rather than racing ahead to something more lethal - is a comforting one.

There are opportunities to drive Dirt Rally’s more advanced cars sooner rather than later, however. Online daily challenges enable you to race cars already in your collection, or those still locked away in the main game. They also contribute credit to the main pool, enabling you to keep progressing through championship after championship while breaking play up with a fresh challenge at the same time. It’s a balance that enables Dirt Rally to stay varied without diluting it with any short-term arcade thrills.

More than anything, it’s Codemasters’ decision to chase realism that will both entice and repel players. This is the rally sim that Richard Burns fans have been waiting the last ten years for, but Dirt Rally’s remorseless tracks, designed to punish the faintest of mistakes, will mean many quit before they’ve truly started. It’s hard to imagine Dirt Rally scaling the top of the charts for too long, if at all, but for dedicated rally fans this is as true an incarnation of the sport as you’re likely to encounter

This game was reviewed on Xbox One

Want to play something but finding yourself pressed for time? Is work/school/childcare taking up most of your day? Not been able to start The Division yet because you’ve still got other games on the go, even though you really want to? Hey, we’ve all been there (I still haven’t even gotten close to finishing The Witcher 3 yet), but I’ve been doing some research on how to make the most of the precious few hours I do have. Here are some tips I’ve picked up on how to make the most out of your gaming time.

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 interested 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 during 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 in 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 precious hours you need to see everything in your game of choice.

Stick to one game at a time

It might seem like a good idea to cover more 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 tried juggling 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 raid one by one. Make a list if that helps you focus 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’re 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 hours 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 instead.

Yes, there’s probably hundreds of hours of potential game that you’re missing 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 many cultures, 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 optional 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.

Image credit

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 appropriately 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 subjects (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 Scrooge 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 Moon Theme.

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 launch off cliffs for sweet jumps on their Sparrows. As a Hunter, you can even attempt the seemingly impossible: jumping over the enormous Hellmouth chasm.

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 Buddhist-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 looks 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 Moon Presence, the true final boss and a tentacled horror beyond reasoning. Also, in case you were wondering, here's a compelling case for why Yharnam's Moon and Earth's Moon are, in fact, one and the same.

GameStop is diving into the publishing business with Song of the Deep, a new underwater adventure from Insomniac Games, best known for its Ratchet & Clank series. The game stars Merryn, a 12-year-old girl searching for her father beneath the sea in an underwater labyrinth inspired by Irish and Gaelic mythology.

According to Brian Hastings, chief creative officer at Insomniac, Song of the Deep is "a journey of courage and discovery in a haunting and lonely environment." I played a brief slice of the game at an event earlier this week, and it was interesting to see how the team creates challenge in a game with complete freedom of 2D movement.

Instead of timing jumps over gaps and deadly spikes, Merryn can go where she pleases in her makeshift submarine. The challenge comes from solving various environmental puzzles, such as timing boosts to push through shifting water currents, and in fending off the wildlife. Merryn's aquatic world is fraught with dangers - from electric jellyfish to prickly urchins - but it's tempered with a sense of whimsy, the kind you might see through the eyes of a child.

"Merryn is a different kind of hero," explained Hastings. "She's not sexy badass or a bounty hunter. She's kind and smart and resilient and willing to risk anything to help someone she loves. She's also a reminder that we sometimes lose sight of what's best about ourselves. Too often we value ourselves based on our accomplishments or our appearance instead of valuing the things that make us truly heroic."

Insomniac's Ted Price and GameStop's Mark Stanley introduced their new partnership at the same event. Price described GameStop as a non-traditional publisher, noting that Insomniac still has complete creative freedom over the game. Stanley revealed that his company is already working on a full line of Song of the Deep merchandise, starting with a young adult novel that will be released alongside the game.

You'll be able to download Song of the Deep for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or PC starting this Spring, but if you want the physical version that is a GameStop exclusive. Both the digital and physical versions will be available for $14.99.

The word ‘SPOILERS!’ triggers an innate fear in people. I bet you got scared reading that just then. SPOILERS! See, I did it again. It’s a warning that must always be written in caps and followed by one or more exclamation marks, such is the power of SPOILERS!

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 in 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 slightly, 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 world, then SPOILERS! the actual real world. Are they even spoilers? I don’t know, but for each one a little part of me dies.

Sometimes 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.

There's been a definite sea change across the world of gaming when it comes to the prospect of virtual reality over the last six months or so. While debate once raged amongst gamers and developers alike regarding the potential future of strapping a pair of blacked out goggles to your face and wandering around the house stumbling into furniture, now there's a general acceptance that, like it or not, VR is going to happen. The long and short of it is, the industry has simply invested way too much in the tech behind it to let it fail.

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 of the first hardware - or if the true kicking off point might still be half a decade or so off in the future.

It's 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 will 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 always 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 only a work in progress, what does a good, ‘proper’ VR game look like?

“I honestly 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 one, 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 actually in the world they're playing in.

“It's a pioneering field, so for sure we're all going to make a bunch of 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 relatively low investment.

As Helgason's speech indicated, however, there's now a general acceptance amongst those in the know that, if you're asking 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 hoping 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 video. 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 adventure 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 Grand 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,” offers 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 feature quite heavily in early releases, with bespoke games built from the ground up faring far better than goggled-up ports of first-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.”

Best of the best

We threw a lot of shade around with our 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 Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection elegantly captures the essence of Uncharted. The distressed look of the text, coupled with 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 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. The intricate designs set against a decaying suit of armor establish the faded glory that permeates this series.

22. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a mean game, so it's only fitting the cover to this 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 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, well, sometimes such ancient impulses are difficult to control.

20. Xenoblade Chronicles X

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) the 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 blend 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 Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. cover. It's piping out of the guns, the title - it's everywhere. This entire thing just screams steampunk, right down to the tiny little gears denoting the S.T.E.A.M. acronym.

17. Dying Light

These days, zombies convey all the excitement and freshness of wet cardboard. But Dying Light stands apart with the unique artistry of this particular brain-eater, with the way he bleeds into the frame like a downpour of darkness on a sunny day. The hands reaching up 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 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 genius is making the lower 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. Life is Strange considers these questions of identity, and its cover puts similar emphasis on the self: the splash 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 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 emanating from this shadowy everydriver evoke the same artisty as the unmistakable Every Extend Extra 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 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 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 deeper 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 Rise of the Tomb Raider. This heightens the sense of danger while also downplaying 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 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 Rainbow Six: Siege tell 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 Bloodborne's setting.

7. Star Wars Battlefront

There's some excellent David and Goliath imagery going on with the 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 clenched and blaster drawn. The ruined Snowspeeder hints at the battle thus far, and the incoming Stormtroopers tells us there's still plenty more to come.

6. The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes

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 how 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 back from perfection.

4. Batman: Arkham Knight

It's telling that 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 night.

3. Until Dawn

What an ingenious way to present a teen slasher. Typically, horror movies - which 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 of snow on your remote cabin, the time-rippling consequences of your choices 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 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 large-scale tactics game set in feudal Japan, the Nobunaga's Ambition cover has my rapt attention whenever I spy it. The lavish gold bordering magnetizes the eyes, pulling you towards the overwhelming imagery at its center.

Everything you could ever want is here: a dashing, 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 picked 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.

As many a former child star will readily admit - in between huffs of an overtaxed crack pipe - having lots of stuff isn't actually the same as being contented. Not that you'd know that from the way in which we all go about obsessively collecting. For some that might mean seeking out rare stamps, for others, old-school vinyl records. When it comes to video games, the term 'collect-a-thon' has long been applied to the kinds of title that actively indulge these compulsions. But do their efforts go too far?

Recently, GamesRadar+'s very own Justin Towell made the case - during an otherwise ringing endorsement of 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 compelling. 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 padding 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 far more credit than it's really possible to give them - but I’d venture that the type of player 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 preclude 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. Because 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 Fallout 4. Objectively it’s a junk-hoovering simulator with no equal, but the 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 are suitable, let's continue to include more meaningful items in their stead - important artefacts, lore-rich scraps and other world-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.

If the seasonal chill is becoming a nuisance during your rooftop prowls, Ubi Workshop has crafted a fitting way to keep warm while staying out of sight. The store is introducing a pair of hoodies inspired by Assassin's Creed Syndicate's sibling protagonists, Jacob and Evie.

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 embroidered 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 could also protect 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

Ten years ago, it seemed like the Wii remote would change everything. Of course, it didn’t. In fact, most of the time it was a pain in the ass to use for even the most basic games. Even now, though, that sleek controller remains remarkable. Strange as it is to think after that mind-boggling reveal, the Wii remote’s real contribution to gaming came from the restrictions it placed on designers rather than the freedom it offered them.

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 use 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 introduced 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 in 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 controls 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 where 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 first 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 not 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.