Home//PLAY/July 2024/In This Issue
PLAY|July 2024WelcomeGaming has come a long way since Pac-Man [gunshots heard]. For many of us, the first gaming worlds we could truly get lost in were in RPGs – world exploration mixing with constant combat and character progression to give the impression of scale like little else.It’s a genre that’s definitely worth celebrating, and 2024 seems to be shaping up to be a remarkable year for it. Our cover feature for Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance (p42) kicks things off in style as the legendary series makes its long-awaited return to PlayStation. It’s the series that spawned the mega-popular Persona games, which we detail as we take you through the series’ long and complex history all the way from PS1 to PS5 (p50).It’s not the only saga that’s sprouting anew: the…3 min
PLAY|July 2024Endless pulp fictionOver the years, there have been many different approaches to gamifying the detective story, but they often ended up either not managing to balance player satisfaction with busywork, or skewing so cinematic they were hardly mysterious.With Shadows Of Doubt, ColePowered Games’ solution is to sit back, take its hands off the wheel, and let you steer the investigation. You’re given a sandbox containing a procedurally generated world of suspects, murder weapons, apartment buildings, and businesses, so you never know quite what you’re in for. In this Blade Runner-like future, it’s up to you to create a pinboard of evidence from literally any object or person you look at.“Identify the murder weapon or handcuff the culprit where they stand and you’ll earn extra money.”Which doesn’t mean there are no rails to…2 min
PLAY|July 2024Brits1 EVERYBODY’S GONE TO THE RAPTUREIt’s nice to get out of the city to visit England’s remote rural areas. Except, that is, when some mysterious incident has caused the locals to disappear. The Shropshire setting of this walking sim is a rarity, and despite the sinister occurrences, it is a lovely day.2 TOMB RAIDERLara Croft might spend much of her time in Himalayan ruins or Amazonian jungles, but she’s as English as tea and chips. Besides, what could be more quintessentially British than a minted aristo heading off to far-flung countries to steal their cultural treasures? Dame Lara is surely one of our greatest exports.3 STREET FIGHTER 6In case you’d forgotten that brawler Cammy hails from the UK, Street Fighter 6 places her in a stage that resembles the contents…3 min
PLAY|July 2024Monster Hunter Stories 2:Wings Of Ruin“THERE MAY BE A LIGHTER ANIME AESTHETIC… BUT THESE MONSTERS CAN STILL SLAP YOU INTO NEXT WEEK.”i FORMAT PS4 / ETA 14 JUN / PUB CAPCOM DEV CAPCOM, MARVELOUS / PLAYERS 1-4To quote a famous line from our sister magazine Edge, in its 1994 review of the then-new Doom: “If only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them.” People scoffed at the idea then, but here we are with Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings Of Ruin, in which you do indeed befriend monsters you would be hunting for their skin and bones in the mainline series.Taking the form of a story-focussed creature-collecting RPG, this spinoff will be belatedly arriving on PlayStation next month. Its predecessor is coming to the console at…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Arrangeri FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2024 / PUB FURNITURE & MATTRESS DEV FURNITURE & MATTRESS / PLAYERS 1“YOU DON’T MOVE HEROINE JEMMA AROUND SO MUCH AS REARRANGE THE WORLD.”Have you ever wished for a videogame based on a lattice pie crust? Us too! Well now, our dreams are coming true; sort of. This is a game world made up of interconnected horizontal and vertical lines, which you push and pull like tabs in a pop-up book. Only rather than popping up, things slide up, down, or across.As much as we enjoy talking about delicious pies, and thinking about delicious pies, and eating delicious pies, perhaps a crossword puzzle would be a more suitable thing to compare this to. Arranger is a puzzle adventure, after all, and it’s important to note…6 min
PLAY|July 2024Tales Of The Shire: A The Lord Of The Rings Gamei FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2024 / PUB PRIVATE DIVISION DEV WETA WORKSHOP / PLAYERS ONLINE MULTIPLAYER FEATURESNothing quite like feeling the soil between your furry toes, eh? The studio that hand-crafted many a gnarly creature for the film series, Weta Workshop, is turning its creative vision to a cosier corner of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Nestled among the bucolic, rolling hills of Bywater, you’ll find a Hobbit hole to call your own. As well as making it feel like home through decoration, you’ll need to ensure your pantry stays full through foraging, fishing, and gardening. Bywater offers plenty more to chew on besides, with a landscape that shifts with the seasons as well as friends both fresh-faced and familiar to find out there in the green.Beyond The Ice Palace 2i FORMAT…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Strong rootsi FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA SUMMER 2024PUB SQUARE ENIX / DEV OUKA STUDIOS / PLAYERS 1Almost 18 years will have passed between the launch of Visions Of Mana and the last main entry in the series, PS2’s Dawn Of Mana – a game that didn’t even receive a European release. It may have been a long time, but that’s not to say the garden that surrounds this Mana tree has become wild and overgrown. Rather, the team behind Mana has been taking the time to make sure the soil is ready for something new to sprout.After getting the chance to play the game (see last issue for our first impressions!), we sat down with series producer Masaru Oyamada. His history with Mana stretches back beyond working with Square Enix.…12 min
PLAY|July 2024GroundedThere’s much to like about this game, but one of the best things has to be that your teen of choice, upon awakening with amnesia in a box in the garden to find that they’ve been shrunk to the size of a particularly small ant, acts as surprised as if they’d opened a packet of crisps and found some crisps inside.Grounded was originally released in Early Access back in 2020, and since then has been expanded to a full release with plenty of updates on top. The good news is that as PlayStation latecomers to the party, we get to enjoy the full, polished product from day one, with the bugs the developers didn’t intend to include helpfully eradicated. The bad news is that the game suffers from an issue…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Planet Of LanaType ‘2D puzzle platformer with cute lead moppet who goes on a moving journey’ into an AI and you’ll probably get a photo of a cat with seven arms. But put that into an AI at some unknown point in the future when AI actually works and you’ll get the opening 20 minutes of Planet Of Lana, a game that’s almost impressive in how unashamedly clichéd it is. Tranquil village setting that’s about to be destroyed? Check! Best friend/relative whose kidnapping drives the plot? Check! ‘Puzzles’ wherein you move a box across the screen so you can use it as a platform? Oh, be still our beating hearts…You leap between chasms, swing from vines, hide in bushes until enemies look the other way, and slap yourself awake – we’ve played…2 min
PLAY|July 2024Tales Of Kenzera: ZauSometimes a game has one critical flaw that stops it being an easy recommendation, such as dodgy platforming physics or the publisher accidentally filling the box with angry wasps. At other times you get a game that suffers from a thousand cuts, lots of minor irritations doing a really good job of obscuring the undeniable quality of what you’re playing. Tales Of Kenzera is one of the latter. We’re happy to recommend it, but if you ask us for an opinion after one of its bloody chase sequences, we’ll laugh bitterly in your face while writing a ‘1’ in that box in the bottom-right corner.It starts well, with the kind of appealing graphics you get when EA is signing the cheques. The game is from Abubakar Salim, the voice actor…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Animal WellAha! Oh. What? Hmmm. Yes! If awards were handed out for how often games caused involuntary noises of puzzlement, confusion, shock, and unmitigated delight, Animal Well would absolutely clean up. Inspired as much by Resident Evil as Fez, solo developer Billy Basso’s game is the spellbinding result of spending ages building a world and then stuffing every pixelated inch of it with wild ideas, bonkers mysteries, and brain-boggling secrets. Forget the metroidvania, we’re witnessing the birth of a whole new subgenre: the Well-like. (And if that doesn’t catch on, it’ll certainly be Well-liked.)Playing a small, unassuming blob-like creature – distinguished only by its searching eyes, each just two pixels high – you hatch out of a flower and into a compact, complex labyrinth. It’s not huge but it feels that…5 min
PLAY|July 2024THREE TO PLAYEvery month, loads of games come to the PS Store. We’re looking at some that didn’t quite make the cut for full reviews. This month we’re having a ball with titles that serve up backhands, duels, and shuffles. We may be looking at the discard pile, but it’s still a stacked deck.After we’ve made such a racket with that volley of puns, it may not surprise you to learn that first up is TopSpin 2K25. What is surprising, though, is that this is the first time we’ve seen this series on court in 13 years – the last entry came out on PS3 – and, judging by that name change alone, publisher 2K most likely has designs on it becoming a yearly sports release. Serena Williams, Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka,…2 min
PLAY|July 2024PS4 Hall of fame01 Red Dead Redemption 2You won’t find another open world quite like this, the streets of Los Santos paling in comparison to this gorgeous, realistic western sprawl. Arthur Morgan’s wild west adventure is epic, emotional, and has enough teasing mysteries on every horizon for no two cowboys’ journeys to feel the same. With train robberies, tootin’ headshots, and racists to kill, there’s never a dull moment in Rockstar’s greatest.02 Grand Theft Auto VLaughing in the face of other cross-gen ports, GTA V on PS4 is more than a mere HD remaster. Upped to a glorious 1080p, it weaves together everything that made the PS3 original great, with new music, more dynamic weather, and a game-changing FPS mode.03 God Of WarA departure in some ways but a resounding return in others,…6 min
PLAY|July 2024WHAT’S NEW PLUS-SY CAT?May is a time of deep lore, with certain internet weirdos such as yours truly prompted to do their best Justin Timberlake impression at the mere mention of the month’s name, and others holding out the whole year just for the fourth so they can say The Thing.As such, May’s PS Plus offered four titles with worlds dictated by similarly arcane rules. On PS5 and PS4 there was footie game EA Sports FC 24 and the Lightfall expansion for online science fantasy shooter Destiny 2, and then only on PS5 was speed running cyberpunk slasher Ghostrunner 2.In this column, however, we’re going to attempt to decode charming action adventure Tunic, available on both consoles. This is more than a throwback to isometric titans of yore, dev Andrew Shouldice leveraging the…2 min
PLAY|July 2024Sleeping DogsYou can’t overstate just how formidably open-world games dominated PS3. In addition to iconic Rockstar sandboxes GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption, we got to enjoy a breathtaking mix of competitors and copycats. There were the Batman romps of Arkham Asylum, the island escapades of Just Cause 2, and the compendium of carnage called Saints Row: The Third. Often lost in discussions of that heavyweight mix is the most underrated of them all: Sleeping Dogs.That this Hong-Kong-based brawler even became a contender is surprising given the development hell it endured. Initially conceived in 2008 as a sequel to cop sim True Crime: New York City, it would take four years, a name change, and a switch of publishing rights – from Activision Blizzard to Square Enix – before Sleeping Dogs…4 min
PLAY|July 2024In the ring with Japan’s fighting pros“It’s pure fighting games overload as you can catch a cracking match whichever way you turn your head.”For more than two decades, the Evolution Championship Series, better known as Evo, has been the most prestigious event for the fighting game community. While the tournament’s roots are in the US, the organisers decided to honour the genre’s birthplace when they introduced Evo Japan in 2018. With new titles Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 featuring in this year’s event, we spent three days in Tokyo’s Ariake Gym-Ex soaking up the fast and skilful competition.The fighting was fierce for the duration; day one saw 350 players vie for Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes’ championship title, while Top Six finals were held for King Of Fighters XV, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and…5 min
PLAY|July 2024PLAY INVESTIGATESFor the playersThe Game Music Festival, organised by a passionate group of game music fans from Poland, made its London debut in 2022 and was held at the Southbank Centre this year. While the previous festival was a little subdued, possibly as a result of being post-pandemic, and featured a lot of music from indie games (though highly acclaimed ones, such as Cuphead), this year’s sold-out event centred on music from two huge PlayStation hits: ‘The Sounds Of The Fireflies’ was dedicated to The Last Of Us, and ‘The Symphony Of The Realms’ to Baldur’s Gate 3.It’s no surprise that tickets sold out. Concerts dedicated to game music are more common in the calendar these days, but this day-long celebration is the only festival dedicated to the art form. What’s more, there’s…4 min
PLAY|July 2024“ALLY OR GENUINE VILLAIN? GAMES NEED MORE MAJOR PLAYERS LIKE RAPHAEL.”“Raphael is what he is, and can be either adversary or ally.”After my first encounter with Raphael, when he briefly whisks you off to a lavish dinner spread laid out in his House Of Hope, I was enthralled. He unexpectedly set up camp in my brain, worming his way in like my Tav’s tadpole. I also didn’t expect to explore morality with such breadth via one NPC – let alone the rest of the game.While there are obvious overarching story limitations in Baldur’s Gate 3, very few things are off-limits in terms of how you engage in various relationships with your companions and beyond. Exploring relationships with villainous characters in-depth is especially challenging to balance, with many game narratives leaning toward binary good or evil choices – or a predetermined…3 min
PLAY|July 2024Knights In Tight Spacesi FORMAT TBC / ETA TBC / PUB RAW FURY / DEV GROUND SHATTER / PLAYERS 1Look, if you want to make lurid jokes about medieval romantic encounters, that’s up to you; we’re here to talk about a videogame. Specifically, the spiritual successor to deckbuilding brawler Fights In Tight Spaces (there’s a clue in the name that you may have picked up on). If you know it, much will be familiar here – with a few significant twists.The basics remain the same. It’s still turn-based combat, the spaces are indeed still very tight, and you still build a deck of virtual cards that are used for attack, defence, and even movement. It’s not, therefore, taking a traditional approach to card games. This is much less poker and more poking people…3 min
PLAY|July 2024HELL IS EMPTYWe’ve done it! The summoning circle we laid out worked, and Shin Megami Tensei will return to PlayStation at long last on 14 June. However, as is so often the case when things are plucked from the other side, the fifth instalment has come back different. Previously only available on Nintendo Switch, this expanded rerelease is making its PS5 and PS4 debut with a fresh thirst for revenge as Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance.Shinjiro Takata, the producer of that original Switch release as well as Vengeance, tells us, “After the great response it received [on Nintendo Switch], we were excited to expand the reach to more users with additional platforms. Therefore, we started to develop the best SMT V possible by carefully improving the game system and adding in new…13 min
PLAY|July 2024Topjobsi FORMAT PS5, PS4 ETA SUMMER 2024 PUB SQUARE ENIXDEV SQUARE ENIX CREATIVE BUSINESS UNIT IIIPLAYERS MULTIThe Dawntrail expansion is getting close now, with only a few more weeks before launch in July. We’re excited for it to pull into port, but while we wait the dev team has given us a quick peek at the upcoming jobs and how all of our favourites will change with the new level cap after the recent benchmark test. It was only the tiniest of teases, though, so we asked the producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV, Naoki Yoshida, about everything that goes into making and continually polishing the MMORPG’s job roster.Currently there are 19 different battle jobs to choose from, one special job, three gatherers and eight crafters, with Dawntrail adding…8 min
PLAY|July 2024Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising TideFun in the sun is what you’re in for with this second, meatier batch of DLC – even if it takes place while Clive and company are in dire straits. It’s set right after Echoes Of The Fallen, as the fate of Valisthea hangs in the balance, just before the main game’s final confrontation. All the crystals and Eikons have been mastered… or have they?With news that the conspicuously absent Leviathan has resurfaced, Clive ends up leading the party across the bay to Mysidia, the blighted land from which the sea serpent hails. However, it turns out to not be as blighted as once thought, instead kept healthy and hidden thanks to a witch’s ancient glamour.WATER RIDEThe tropical clime and lush jungles mean this DLC’s awash with vibrant colours. It’s…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Sand LandOne of the saddest things about the recent passing of manga legend Akira Toriyama is that he didn’t quite get to see Sand Land’s modern resurgence reach its peak. Far less well known than Toriyama’s legendary Dragon Ball series, Sand Land is the perfect candidate for an open world videogame thanks to its sprawling setting, interesting characters, and instantly recognisable tanks.You play as Beelzebub, son of Lucifer, and you’re accompanied by a demon named Thief, plus a human sheriff called Rao. You’re soon joined by the mysterious Ann, making for a pleasantly varied core team who grow to feel like friends (and fiends), as you set off to find the ‘Legendary Spring,’ a water source of which the people of Sand Land are in dire need. Activity-wise this translates to…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Dave The DiverSome games just flow. You go from task to task with a sense of accomplishment, and each accomplishment unlocks something fresh for you to explore. This is the best way to describe Dave The Diver, because any comparison to the likes of Stardew Valley probably wouldn’t do it justice – not least because this game’s idea of farm-to-table involves shotguns.Professional diver Dave receives a call from his friend Cobra about an exciting business opportunity: dive into the Blue Hole, a mysterious part of the sea that can somehow house marine creatures from oceans all over the world at once, to stock the up-and-coming sushi restaurant Mr Bancho. The taciturn Bancho can turn any fish into sushi, but he doesn’t have any interest in management, which is why you don’t only…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Let’s! Revolution!The logic puzzles of Minesweeper have been given a glow-up in Lets! Revolution!, a turn-based strategy adventure that takes the rules of the PC legend and punches them up. It’s a colourful roguelike puzzler in which you need to use the art of deductive reasoning to flip tiles and find the dastardly king. There’s plenty of strategic depth here, together with gorgeous animation.Each level tasks you with hunting down the king, who is hiding somewhere in the map. Maps are made up of tiles that are placed face-down, and your task is to flip them until you find the crowned coward. When he’s been exposed, he’ll flee into the next level in a cycle that will keep repeating until you end his reign once and for all.The tiles come in…3 min
PLAY|July 2024TAYLOR MADE DEALSStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order£16.95 approx (PS5, amazon.co.uk)This is the price you’re looking forWith The Acolyte nearly on Disney Plus, it’s impossible to remain immune to the Star Wars bug. But in an Extended Universe stuffed to the brim with more hits and misses than could fit in a Jawa’s sandcrawler you’ve got to be selective about which media you spend your time on. Thankfully, Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi titles are among the best tales in the galaxy. It helps that Cal’s journey to reclaim a piece of his Jedi legacy is tremendous fun to play, with each planet giving you ample reason to ’saber and force it up. This PS5 release runs smoothly as butter.Atelier Sophie 2£14.15 approx (PS4, amazon.co.uk)Cut-price cauldronsDon’t let the number on the box throw you…2 min
PLAY|July 2024PrototypeWarning: mild spoiler for Marvel’s Spider Man 2 ahead. Ready? Sure? Right… Isn’t the bit where you get to play as Venom brilliant? Peter Parker and Miles Morales are both wonderful good boys, but sometimes you just want to cut loose and become a terrifying, tendril-covered monster.It’s a nasty fantasy that Radical Entertainment nailed perfectly with Prototype. Playing as Alex ‘Grrr’ Mercer, you’re a science experiment with superpowers such as the ability to consume NPCs to regain health, arms that can turn into claws and blades, and the wonderfully named ‘Tendril Barrage’, which allows you to shoot (yes!) a barrage of tendrils.“I want a new one NOW,” demands reader Peters Nathan, a man so passionate about this he seems to have flipped his surname with his first name in protest.…3 min
PLAY|July 2024Worth a stabi FORMAT PS3 / PUB KONAMI / DEV VATRA GAMES / RELEASED 2012You’re Murphy Pendleton, a convict being led down to the prison showers. The guard gives you some advice: if you turn on the showers, the steam fogs up the security cameras. He’s also left you ‘a present’ on one of the benches, and it’s not a nice fluffy towel.You enter, try the trick with the showers and suddenly the first signs you’re in a Silent Hill game emerge, with the clouds of steam imitating the series’ famous fog. A brilliant touch. You go to the bench and find a knife. Then another prisoner arrives. At first he seems merely confused. “You don’t recognise me, do you?” asks Murphy, eerily calm. “We used to be neighbours.”The other prisoner pounds…2 min
PLAY|July 2024Bohemian rhapsodyWarhorse Studios’ 2018 debut introduced us to the trials and tribulations of Henry, a mediaeval peasant living in the kingdom of Bohemia during the 15th century. When a mercenary army razes his village, Henry’s everyday existence ends and his quest for revenge begins.But a man can’t subsist on white-hot fury alone; Henry needs to eat and sleep just like anyone else. In fact, the first game takes such a manual approach to RPG mechanics that at launch you could only save your progress by finding a bed and tucking Henry in for the night. As he sleeps (or looks for trouble in first-person duels, or gets sloshed at the nearest public house), the world keeps on turning, with questlines progressing whether you’re there to see them unfurl or not. Vengeance…3 min
PLAY|July 2024What do we want from this summer’s showcases?MILFORD COPPOCKMANAGING ART EDITOR“I WANT TO SEE MORE TRIPLE-A BLOCKBUSTERS FROM SONY’S FIRST-PARTY STUDIOS.”I’m not the first person to say this, but where are the all-singing, all-dancing PS5 exclusives? We’re fast approaching the console’s fourth birthday and I still feel we haven’t had a game that harnesses the untapped potential nestled under its not-so-sleek bodywork. The first-party studios have been particularly quiet, so I’m hoping we see our first glimpse of a Ghost Of Tsushima sequel or footage from Insomniac’s Wolverine title. Either way we’re well overdue a title that truly pushes PS5.“Where are the all-singing, all-dancing PlayStation 5 exclusives?”MIRIAM MCDONALDOPERATIONS EDITOR“BRING ON SOME FASCINATING INDIES, AND COMMUNITY DISCUSSION.”Recent studio closures have annoyed me enough that I’ve resolved only to buy indie games for the next year – I’d rather…3 min
PLAY|July 2024“EPIC NARRATIVES ARE FINE, BUT WE NEED ROOM TO BREATHE AND DISCOVER.”“The tranquil approach takes the pressures away.”Let me be the first to admit that I’m pretty awkward when it comes to the games I enjoy; I’m not one for a space odyssey and I really don’t enjoy first-person shooters. I always say I have no patience, but I clearly do given the games I enjoy come out once in a blue moon – cheers to you, Naughty Dog – but still I’ll wait patiently for them.And so waiting for my next triple-A fix led me to look into some of the indie titles on the PS Store. It’s just a shame that many aren’t as discoverable as the big hitters, when they sometimes convey stronger, more thought-provoking narratives than games from larger studios.Although I’m late to the party in my…3 min
PLAY|July 2024Vampire Survivorsi FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA SUMMER 2024 PUB PONCLE / DEV PONCLE / PLAYERS 1-4Hell’s the hottest spot for all that goes bump in the night – but it’s kicking out time at the bar and the devils have nowhere to go save your back garden in rural Italy. The horde’s drink of choice? Oh, that’s all you.Thankfully, you’re far from defenceless in this roguelike shoot-’em-up. You attack automatically, leaving you to focus on cutting a path through the throng of oh-so-bitey foes. You start the fight with one character-specific attack, which can be anything from straightforward whips and blades to less predictable weapons such as splashes of holy water and rippling waves of lightning. Cutting through weaker beasties, the way forward is paved in shiny gems. You won’t…2 min
PLAY|July 2024Still Wakes The Deepi FORMAT PS5 / ETA 18 JUN / PUB SECRET MODE / DEV THE CHINESE ROOM / PLAYERS 1Creepy mansions are great settings for horror, but when you think about it, oil rigs are even better suited to it. It’s surprising that they’re not used more often: a rig is a huge but claustrophobic industrial complex in the middle of the sea, many miles from land, with little means of escape. In short, it’s not where you want to be if something goes wrong. And something goes very wrong here.We’re still not sure precisely what that something is, but thanks to an extended look at an early section of gameplay, we now have a clearer picture than ever before of what’s going on. Still Wakes The Deep takes place on…5 min
PLAY|July 2024CATHEDRAL OF SHADOWSLike other titans of the RPG genre, Megami Tensei has been around since the 1980s and the 8-bit console era. The first game in the series was released in 1987, the same year as Final Fantasy and only a year after Dragon Quest. Yet while those contemporaries took a while to reach English-speaking audiences, Megami Tensei had an even slower start, not really flourishing until PS2 despite having its beginnings on PS1.To add to the confusion, while its contemporaries have often led to spinoffs and sub-series, what constitutes the mainline of Megami Tensei, or indeed, Shin Megami Tensei (they’re different) can be much less clear. Rather than each numbered entry being discrete, Megami Tensei was divided into distinct sub-series from early on. For example, Shin Megami Tensei II and Shin…17 min
PLAY|July 2024Stellar BladeJust a little bit of thirst never hurt anyone. Unfortunately, here, we are absolutely parched. You play as Eve, a sword-wielding… android? Cyborg? Augmented human? It’s not immediately clear, and the story spends a considerable amount of runtime playing keep away on this point. Anyway, Eve descends to what’s left of Earth in a futuristic catsuit to face the threat of the encroaching Naytibas. Naturally, the mission proves anything but straightforward, but you’ll probably guess how it’ll all shake out long before Eve ever enters the atmosphere.Essentially, this is a science-fiction action RPG, but its combat blends clear influence taken from the Souls series as well as the hack-and-slash genre. Fights see you both studying enemy attack patterns, looking for your opening, and letting loose on some extremely flashy (in…7 min
PLAY|July 2024Another Crab’s TreasureCataclysms often form the backdrop for soulslikes, but they usually have a fantastical bent. The genius to Another Crab’s Treasure’s premise is that the doom that comes from above is all too real: trash tumbling down into the deep as ever more rubbish is dumped into the ocean.Disastrous? Absolutely. But it’s a slow boil for the denizens of the deep who make their homes in discarded waste, use wrappers to create fashion, and trade in microplastics. That is, until the poison accumulates too much and they lose themselves to it – settlements like an entire milk carton village turning on anyone who wanders in.Sheltered in the tide pools, Kril has to come out of his shell when it’s stolen in the name of taxes by a strange, talking, shark-headed grabber…3 min
PLAY|July 2024Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred HeroesGiven it’s the latest in a series of popular RPGs created by a strong development team, you’d expect this to have some pizzazz or at least be comfortably familiar. However, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes lapses instead into the disappointingly familiar, feeling much more like getting stopped at three traffic lights in a row.You know the drill: an evil empire wants to use a magic item as a weapon of war, leading to archetypal characters with nothing better to do joining your merry band in a random-encounter-addled, dismal-dungeon slogfest. It’s not Eiyuden’s fault everything has been done before, but that’s no excuse for not having learned from any of the games that came before it.It’s bloated with unnecessary dialogue every few steps through its generic dungeons. The attempts at banter suggest…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Umurangi Generation VRYou would, perhaps, expect a game that hands you a camera and asks you to do nothing but take photos to be about photography. And to an extent, this one certainly is. Yet as we progress through what turns out to be a story, it quickly becomes obvious that this is about so much more than the art of taking pictures.Umurangi Generation’s premise is so perfectly suited to virtual reality, and its implementation so superb, it’s genuinely surprising that a VR version of the game has only been made available this year (the non-VR game was first released on PC in 2020). The camera is your ever-present friend. When you want to take a photo – which you can do at any time and any place – you just reach…5 min
PLAY|July 2024Sker RitualMaid Of Sker was a first-person horror game that didn’t even have guns when it was first released. So naturally this new game in the Sker series is… a round-based zombie FPS? It’s a bit like finding out The Last Of Us Part III is going to be a cosy farming simulator. Still, it’s a spinoff, not a straight sequel, and we’re never ones to discourage a developer from trying something new.Hmmm, but how new is it, really? This plays a lot like Call Of Duty’s Zombies mode, only made on a much smaller budget and with enemies wearing funnier hats. You spawn in some horrible location and have to complete missions while wave after wave of nasty monsters attack. Gunplay is fine, you move at a decent speed, and…2 min
PLAY|July 2024PLAY ONPentiment isn’t just worth paying attention to because of its gorgeous, medieval-inspired visuals – it’s also one of this generation’s most compelling murder mysteries thanks to a commitment to allowing you plenty of freedom. And if you liked that, try these.InkulinatiGet inkedIf Pentiment left you longing to leaf through an illuminated manuscript or two, but its freeform flow overwhelmed you, look no further than this strategy title. With the power of the Living Ink in your palm, you’ll conjure quite the menagerie for turn-based bouts. Frogs with jaunty little hats, cats of the clergy, and even farting donkeys can lead the charge across the page. Playful presentation and a very silly sense of humour disguise what is, in fact, a brain-tickling roguelite with joyful depths hidden in the margins.Return Of…2 min
PLAY|July 2024PSVR2 Hall of fame01 SynapseTelekinesis and guns make a wonderful combo in VR. With one mapped to your left hand and the other to your right, you feel like a conductor of chaos as you blast your way through a rogue colonel’s mind to uncover secrets. Eye-tracking is wonderfully used to target your telekinesis, meaning you can slam enemies all over the place as you reload your arsenal. It’s got a roguelite structure, so you’ll keep coming back.02 Horizon: Call Of The MountainManages to make level after level of climbing compelling with different environments to pull yourself up through, the Sense controllers allowing for neat player expression. Just make sure you take a break, or all that spider monkeying will make your arms throb.03 Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s EdgeWho shot first?…6 min
PLAY|July 2024Shadow The HedgehogWith Knuckles cemented as Sonic’s ally, the hedgehog hero needed a new rival come the big tenth anniversary game, Sonic Adventure 2. Enter Shadow The Hedgehog. Originally sealed away by Dr Robotnik’s own mad scientist grandfather, when he’s freed he works with the doc to fulfil Robotnik senior, Gerald Robotnik’s, posthumous destructive machinations.But it’s not evil for evil’s sake. Nor is Shadow really working for either Robotnik. His real goal is to avenge Maria Robotnik, who he was raised alongside on the orbital Space Colony ARK. When the colony was raided by the government, she was gunned down as she helped Shadow escape. His memories of her final words are muddled – but the event isn’t. The extrajudicial war crime literally occurs in a Sonic game. It adds a lot…2 min
PLAY|July 2024Alone In The Dark: The New NightmareDespite doing the whole ‘survival horror with fixed camera angles’ thing years before Resident Evil, Alone In The Dark has always been its less popular little brother. But The New Nightmare does one thing well that Resi was, arguably, struggling with at the time: even today it has effective jump scares and unsettlingly creepy moments. Not as powerful as they were back in 2001, but still impressive.Mind you, it really highlights the need for Sony to make more of an effort with its emulators. Being able to save at any time is a blessing,1 as is the rewind function. However, the ability to remap the controls would give this experience a real boost. We adapt fairly quickly as we play, but they never feel great.2ALONE SHARKThe game has flaws, but…2 min
