Games review

I've occasionally been asked for my comments on video games. Are they art? My quick answer, when asked, has always been a fairly curt "No".
And then guess what – Santa brought a PlayStation. Plus a variety of games, old and new. So am I all turned around on the joys of virtual play?
I certainly know (slightly) more. I am no expert (honestly, Lara Croft, I thought you could jump off that cliff without a scratch). But do I still suspect these computer game thingumajigs are the devil's mind candy? Well, no. I think they're a fantastic pastime.
The great defence of video games is that they are not the internet – no offence intended – with its ceaseless assaults on attention span. While many aspects of digital culture minimise concentration (hey you! You know who you are. Please read to the end of this short article before posting a comment …), games demand absolute attention over long periods of time. They create fictional worlds of great conviction and intensity. Above all, in an age when free online stuff is the norm, games have expensive production values and no one seems to resent paying money to reward those.
So in many ways, the world of computer games is an alternative model of digital life – a more creative, even contemplative, style of interaction. Until you post your scores online and blog about which game is better and the whole noise of random comment starts again.
Which brings me back to that old chestnut … can video games be art? And the answer is still No, or at least, Not Likely. It seems a bizarre and irrelevant question to ask. Like, if I was reading Jane Austen and you said, "But is it sport?" No, it's not sport, it's a novel. Why would it need to be anything else?
Electronic games offer a rich and spectacular entertainment, but why do they need to be anything more than fun? Why does everything have to be art?
Very few things count as Art. I would argue that very little art is actually art – because most of it fails, and failed art is not art. We just politely pretend that it is.
Better to create a good game than a bad work of art. Games give us pleasure and freedom. Art also does that, in a different way. But it is rare. I enjoy games. I hate bad art.

10 indie games to look out for in 2014

2015-10-24T14:14:00.005-07:00

Sword fighting, retro hacking, rioting… if you're looking for something other than military shooters and fantasy RPG, start here

Civil unrest simulator, Riot, seeks to explore the dynamics of public disorder PR

Cara Ellison

Wednesday 8 January 2014 06.00 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.44 GMT

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Welcome! Come through to the parlour of 2014, sir, madam, and taste of the finest delicacies and morsels this year's small developers have to offer. There is much in the way of cyberpunk, horror, and sparking neon, and would you care for a canape of David Lynch with a little Burroughs perhaps? Ah, maybe you are into feeling nihilistically bummed out? Or, you'd rather have this hors d'oeuvres containing a whole crowd rioting?… I see.
There were so many games I didn't manage to fit into this list, so don't feel bad if I didn't include your favourite: 2014 is going to be knuckle-crackingly pleasurable for small budget developers; we'll see less known developers break through and known developers do their best work. And all for only a tiny slice of the cash you'd pay for a big budget shootfest. What a time to game in, my friends.
Well. Let's start with the world's most thrilling sword fighting simulator shall we? No, it's not a rude joke, I promise.

Nidhogg (Messhof, PC)

At laaaaaaast! In fluid movements of skill and half-breath decisions, you swipe your épée low-mid-high at your opponent across clouds, mines, castles and wilds. This long-awaited local multiplayer indie game is an intricate, flowing game of fencing, in which you kick as well as slash opponents through long grass and hallways. It's out on 13 January with a Daedalus soundtrack.

Routine (Lunar Software, PC)

A slowburn cyberpunk horror game where you must find what caused the disappearance of everyone on an abandoned moon base. First-person exploration, permadeath, deadzone aiming, no HUD: it's all full-eyed horror. The game will also be available on VR device Oculus Rift at launch, adding an extra sense of horrible dread. Atmospheric. Futuristic. Dank. Full of tension. And it's the prettiest suitor at the prom. GIVE IT TO ME.

Tangiers (Andalusian, PC/Mac)

David Lynchian stealth game Tangiers is described by its creators as, "a love letter to the avant-garde of the 20th century… set in a world built from the broken prose of Burroughs and the social dystopia brought about by Ballard's architecture." Inspired by classic PC game Thief, it applies Burroughs' 'cut-up' technique to constantly rearrange the environment based on player decisions. I love this game because it seems to emulate old ideas and create new ones, integrating some of the most interesting concepts of literature and art. Strange and dark, it comes to PC, Mac and Linux this year.

The Witness (Jonathan Blow, iOS, PC, PS4)

Whatever you think of philosophising Braid-developing leaf-on-the-wind Jonathan Blow, his next game looks set to reinvent my childhood favourite, Myst, by exploring something Cyan Inc's classic title only dabbled in: the realm of three dimensions. An atmospheric exploration puzzle game on a remote island is promised. I bet it will be good, and everyone will be upset because it will be good.

Video games and art: why does the media get it so wrong?

2015-10-24T14:14:00.002-07:00

Another critic has taken another sideways glance – but the medium is strong enough to resist these withering ovations

Journey – is it fun? Or art? Or both?

Wednesday 8 January 2014 14.20 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.44 GMT

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Here is a good way to tell if a critic is having a moment of madness: they will attempt to define art. The greatest philosophers in history have floundered on the question, many simply avoided it altogether preferring to grapple with more straightforward questions – like the nature of logic, or the existence of God. Art is ethereal, boundless, its meaning as transient as the seasons. When you think you have grasped it, it slips through your fingers.
And yet here we are again (again!), with a respected critic claiming to know what art is or can ever be, and suggesting that video games cannot be included. That critic is the Guardian's own Jonathan Jones, who has been here before, decrying Moma for including a selection of computer games in its design section. Games are not art because there is no individual ownership, he insisted at the time, a contention which appeared to strike out a whole pantheon of collaborative projects from art history.
Now his affectionately expressed objection - prompted by the gift of a PlayStation 3 and a couple of mainstream releases – is that games aren't art and that we shouldn't care. "Electronic games offer a rich and spectacular entertainment," he declares, correctly, "but why do they need to be anything more than fun? Why does everything have to be art?"
Jones is an excellent writer, but as he admits, he knows very little about games – and doesn't really want to. When he last strayed on to this subject matter, I penned a counter-piece, in which I showed how generations of art critics have reacted against emerging artistic forms by immediately dismissing their worth. The shock of the new, and all that. But I ended with something along similar lines to Jones' argument:
"Are games art or aren't they? Nobody need answer. Games are beautiful and important, we can leave it there and know that we are right."
There is a key difference here though. For me, games transcend the question because they are so wonderfully complex: they are emergent and system-led, but also narrative and directed; they amalgamate electronics, audio and visuals, but also often rely on text; they need user input, and yet are authorial. But for Jones, they are mere toys, they are playthings. "Why do they need to be anything more than fun?" he asks, and though I respect my colleague, I can't help but see in this a certain amount of condescension. It is the critic's equivalent of ruffling a child's hair and sending them on their way. Why do they need to be more than fun?
So here's another question: why do films need to be more than just fun? Why does art?
Countering Jones' argument is a basic truth: games are an expressive medium. They are a form of communication. Naturally, Jones won't see that so much in the mainstream action adventures that Santa brought him; just as a movie reviewer won't see much art or meaning in a Michael Bay flick. But deeper communication is clear in the more thoughtful games that he may not have seen. In Journey, in Cart Life, in Papers Please, in Device 6, in The Stanley Parable – games that have more to say than blam, blam blam.

That Dragon, Cancer

Why can't games just be fun? Because intelligent, thoughtful designers such as Navid Khonsari want to make games about serious issues like the 1979 Iranian revolution. Why can't games just be fun? Because Ryan Green is making That Dragon, Cancer, a game about how he and his wife are coping with the terminal illness of their youngest son. Green has chosen games as his medium of expression, his way of coping, because he is a game designer – it is how he thinks, and partly how he processes the world and what is happening to his family. He also sees in games an accessible way of telling people about cancer, and about hope and faith. Shall we just tell him that's not right? Perhaps you'd like to do that. I certainly don't.
Why aren't games just fun? Because games speak to people, especially young people, in ways that films and books and TV don't.
Games speak to people.
The greatest artists, you see, want to communicate in the most popular media of the time, they want to be heard. That's why Shakespeare wrote for the lice-ridden but packed theatres of London, that's why Bertolt Brecht collaborated with Fritz Lang to bring his theories to Hollywood, that's why Dickens and Dumas had their novels serialised in magazines. Why aren't games just fun? Because video games are now a language and language is a tool of expression and change. A bit like art, yes?
Here is something I feel more and more these days. And this is not so much to do with Jones, a thoughtful and engaging critic – but it is in the sphere of his article. How tired I am, how utterly exhausted I have become with a certain mainstream standpoint on games. That whole nudge and grin approach you often see when games come up on television news programmes or magazine shows, or in the culture section of newspapers; the shrugged shoulders, the grimaces of affable incomprehension. I think it's time this ended because it is really not OK to dismiss what you don't understand. Yet somehow it still happens. It happens because new is shocking and games are out there, everywhere, and they make no sense to some people, and they are closing in.
Defining art is madness, and dismissing a vast, vibrant and creative medium is folly. Here is a thought for all those who think of games in this way. Just a thought. Imagine the future – the future as represented by games, the $60bn a year medium, the most pervasive communication platform of the 21st century – imagine this future as a storm cloud above you. Well, the cloud has burst and your objections are being drowned out amid the tumult. Soon you will realise that you are Lear on the moors railing against the world, and the fool at your side is the only one who nods in agreement.

EA hit with Battlefield 4 lawsuit – but does it have merit?

2015-10-24T14:13:00.005-07:00

US law firm claims publisher mislead investors in runup to release of troubled shooter Battlefield 4

Battlefield 4 – the shooter has been plagued by glitches and server issues since its release

Friday 20 December 2013 14.44 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.44 GMT

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Electronic Arts is preparing for court once again. On Tuesday, law firm Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd filed a class action lawsuit against the publisher on behalf of investors who bought stock in the company between 24 July and 3 December.
The suit alleges that EA violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by allegedly providing "materially false and misleading statements" about military shooter, Battlefield 4. Before the release of the game, Electronic Arts issued strong fiscal guidance to investors, based on the "purported" strength of the latest Battlefield title. "The price of Electronic Arts’ stock steadily climbed on these statements," reads the law firm's statement, "reaching a Class Period high of $28.13 per share by August 23, 2013 and allowing certain of Electronic Arts’ senior executives to sell their Electronic Arts stock at artificially inflated prices."
However, after the launch of the game on 29 October – but most obviously following the arrival of the PlayStation 4 version on 15 November – there have been numerous problems with the software, especially its online multiplayer component. Hundreds of players hit game forums and news sites complaining that they were unable to connect or were being continually booted from servers. Earlier this month developer EA DICE announced that it would put all other development projects on hold until the issues with Battlefield 4 had been resolved.
The lawsuit goes on to point out that after EA's announcement stock value fell, closing at $21.01 on 5 December, "sending the share price down more than 28% from its Class Period high".
The allegation, then, is that Electronic Arts executives raised expectations about Battlefield 4 in October knowing that the game was "riddled with bugs and multiple other problems".
The lawsuit alleges: "With an inflated share value, senior execs were then able to offload shares, selling more than $13.2m of stock at fraud-inflated prices."
"Meritless action"
In a statement issued to US games site Polygon, Electronic Arts has said: "We believe these claims are meritless. We intend to aggressively defend ourselves, and we're confident the court will dismiss the complaint in due course."
So is this a meritless case? "Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd handled the Enron class action," says Alex Tutty from UK law firm Sheridans. "They are a securities law firm, this is what they do. The firm obviously believes there is a case to answer, and in order to take it forward they need to find a plaintiff – someone who has suffered financial harm in this period due to purchasing shares on the basis of the statements made.
"This is a problematic case, and it doesn't look good for EA, simply from a PR point of view. Looking at the fact as presented by Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd, there does seem to be a case to answer. However, we've only seen one side of the argument. Companies do give this sort of guidance, and it is important to be accurate, but it is just guidance based on what they know at the time. You'd have to prove that they knowingly gave false information, and it would be difficult to know about all the bugs that would crop up on the PlayStation 4 version. EA can probably produce a lot of evidence to suggest they didn't perceive the extent of the problem, or didn't have sight of it until after launch."
Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd now has until February to find a lead plaintiff – if it succeeds, court beckons. In the background, Battlefield 4 has not performed as well as its predecessor at retail – according to industry news site, MCV, UK sales are down 69% compared to Battlefield 3. However, several Triple A franchises, including Assassin's Creed and Battlefield's rival Call of Duty have found the transition from current consoles to the next-gen machines difficult, with sales down across the board.
Whatever the case, this lawsuit has the potential to set an interesting precedent in terms of publisher culpability for problematic launch software. Several major titles have similarly suffered from bugs, glitches and server failures this year, including Diablo III and GTA Online, the multiplayer component of Grand Theft Auto V.
This is not the first potentially expensive legal action EA has had to contend with. Earlier this year, the publisher settled on a lawsuit filed against Zynga for copyright infringement concerning the latter's game, The Ville. And in 2012, EA also settled on a complicated lawsuit with Activision over the departure of game developers Jason West and Vincent Zampella from the Activision-owned Infinity Ward to the EA-published Respawn Studios.

Would DayZ benefit from a touch of humanity?

2015-10-24T14:13:00.002-07:00

n violent online worlds it makes sense for players to shoot first and think later. But perhaps that is not the only way

In DayZ every location like this is a potential shoot-out. One day, could it be just as much about friendship too? Photograph: /PR

Friday 10 January 2014 15.37 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.44 GMT

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The town is just out there in the near distance, a cluster of houses amid acres of flat scrubland. I can't see any movement, there's no sound except birdsong, but the buildings are a two minute run away. If I break cover and another player is nearby, I know they will shoot me. They will shoot me and loot my body. That is the reality of DayZ.
Still only available as an early alpha build on Steam, but already immensely popular, Dean Hall's bleak, utterly unsentimental zombie survival game is unbearably tense and atmospheric. Players are pitched together into a stark landscape, and must survive for as long as possible, ransacking buildings for guns and food and avoiding the undead. But just as in all the best zombie fiction, it's not the rotting monsters you often have to worry about, it's the other survivors. Each server houses up to 40 players, all desperately scavenging for the same meagre supplies. And if you kill another participant, you can take their stuff. There is a clear benefit to adopting a "shoot first" policy.
We see the same thing now in GTA Online, the vast multiplayer spin-off from Grand Theft Auto V. Players hit Los Santos, engaging in criminal missions and tasks, but when they're off duty they just cruise the streets in stolen cars, looking for trouble. And trouble often means being anti-social – chasing down and shooting other players, or camping out near key hotspots like custom garages and ammo stores blasting anyone who walks in. Just for kicks. Rockstar sometimes punishes such players, introducing a "bad sport" scheme to highlight them to others. It's gaming's equivalent of an ASBO – and we all know how effective those have been.
Spawn to kill
There are obvious reasons why this happens. Gamers have been conditioned by a generation of successful online shooters like Call of Duty and Quake to view other participants as targets. In Call of Duty, there is no other motivation beyond killing, that's what you're there for. And from the very beginning of video games we have the intrinsic thrill of the shoot-kill feedback loop; it is the most clear, instant and satisfying interactive sequence this medium has ever produced. Shooting doesn't require realistic visuals or complex game systems – in the great arcade shooters of the late-seventies, you had left, right and fire – those were your interactions with the game world. Even the word 'fire button' has aggressive connotations. That's what it always was – an aggressive act committed on the game world.
Games are enormously complex now – and yet we're still being channeled down this zero-sum interaction channel: shoot or die.
If you consider this at a systemic level, shooting always makes sense in a moment of indecision. It's like the Prisoner's Dilemma, the famous behavioural experiment that shows altruism, trust and co-operation are often unworkable factors when you don't know what the other participant is thinking. In DayZ, you always have more to gain from shooting a stranger: not only are you safe, you also have a resource to plunder. Theoretically, a new player could be a good asset to your squad, but how do you know? In the split second you often have to decide these things, the diplomacy of the bullet makes more sense.
In the past, game designers have often sought to counter the problem by brute-forcing co-operative behaviour. "World of Warcraft kind of solved this issue by making missions where you had to form a group in order to complete them," says game developer Byron Atkinson-Jones, whose shooter, Blast Em is heading to Steam soon . "In this situation, the obstacles – as in things to kill – were just too much for one person to attempt alone. The reward for helping a fellow player then was completing the mission and leveling up."
It looks like this will be the system employed in Bungie's forthcoming massively multiplayer space opera Destiny. Although there will be assigned player v player combat zones, if two sets of participants bump into each other during campaign missions, they'll only be able to work together to complete the task. Battlefield developer DICE has added whole layers of co-operative intricacy into its team modes, introducing squads and commanders to initiate group tactics. But once again, we're only really talking about co-operation on a mechanistic level.
There can of course, be genuine humanity in that. "Team games like Dota 2 and Battlefield semi-force you to cooperate with strangers by putting you on the same team," says game designer Michael Brough. "It is kind of a blunt instrument, but it's still up to the players whether to actually cooperate. Quite often in Dota, if someone dies early on it gives the opposing team an advantage, then people start blaming each other and arguing, teamwork falls apart and you start falling even further behind...
"sometimes the team breaks down completely, someone gives up and disconnects from the game or refuses to play, but other times the team gets over their disagreement and starts pulling together and can even go on to win. When this happens it's quite beautiful."
Social circles
Meanwhile, in most online games, especially MMORPGs, all the really meaty social interaction is effectively outsourced to the players themselves through the guild system. Friends have to get together in meat space, agree to form a team, use microphones and often third-party chat software to communicate, and then enter the game world as a unit. In this way, all the emotional drama is effectively happening between the members of the social group – the game just happens to be where it's taking place. In many ways, online role-playing games are venues of collaborative play not instigators. Certainly, players will meet in the world and form friendships, but the impetus and the heft of the social interaction happens on the periphery of the game experience.
Is there a way for game designers to encourage and reward more advanced social relationships between strangers? Is there a way to balance out the allure of deadly violence? "Generally if you want to encourage some kind of activity in a game, it's not a terrible idea to just try explicitly rewarding it in the most obvious way possible," says Brough. "Like, maybe that won't work and you'll need something more subtle, but it's the first thing to try. So if you want to encourage some kind of cooperative activity, make numbers go up when people do it. When you trade items they get bigger, when you craft items they get a bonus for the number of people involved. Basically, positive-sum interactions rather than zero- or negative-sum."

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Atkinson-Jones agrees: "It's strange to think about having to reward being friendly but it's certainly possible. You could provide an achievement for being around a fellow player for a certain period of time without killing them. That could actually lead to hilarious situations where you get a group of players all hugging together, trying to get that achievement – although once one of them has gotten it, they would probably start opening fire - almost a 'who blinks first' situation from a Tarantino film."
The key then would be in incentivising positive group behaviours rather than allowing violence to be at the tip of every interaction tree. A group could receive a health or XP boost by taking on newcomers. Perhaps designers could introduce certain resources that can only be shared rather than looted from dead bodies. More violently, there could be a sort of self-destruct item, which destroys a player's inventory when they're killed by another human participant.
Selfish genes
Of course, this is a very mechanical way of thinking about things – but perhaps that's necessary. We need to be realistic: altruism is rare in nature – animals that appear to be behaving selflessly toward each other are merely indulging in mutually beneficial, highly reciprocal relationships. Lions form prides, not because they totally love each other, but because unless your prey is old and weak, you need more than one hunter to bring down a wildebeest. Ant hives aren't social institutions, they are machines. Even in the most intelligent species such as apes and dolphins, totally altruistic acts are exceptional; protecting the group usually makes sense from a survival perspective. As for humans, we see from the logic of the Prisoner's Dilemma that although self-interest has its costs, it often carries far lower risks.
But it's sort of sad to think of games – and gamers – in this way. DayZ is a thrilling evocation of zombie fiction, but what it can't capture in the same way as linear media like The Walking Dead or Day of the Dead, is the interplay between survival groups – those tense moments when one set of desperate people meets another. In the TV series The Walking Dead, much of the emotional depth comes not from the shoot-outs, but from those first meetings and negotiations – the myriad opposing forces working on every encounter. In this world, it is not always best to shoot first – and that provides the cathartic thrill. And really, if Walking Dead was simply about shooting, it would be be pretty unwatchable. It's the relationships that form between, say, Maggie and Glenn or Michonne and Andrea, that keep us engaged. Amid the slaughter and the fear, the narrative requires human interaction and emotional drama. It's how we invest.
And it's not just the game systems that prevent this in titles like DayZ and GTA Online, it's the paucity of interaction depth. Visual limitations mean we can't read the body language and eye movements of our fellow players, and these are the vital unconscious clues to intent that we pick up constantly in real life. Few games expand their gesture sets beyond taunts, and even fewer provide amiable collaborative ventures. In GTA Online, there's not a whole lot you can do with another player once you've decided not to shoot them. You can't communicate, you can't do anything except launch a mission together and work side by side. You can't take them on a date, you can't make promises and plans, you can't develop. DayZ allows microphone chat, which at least adds verbal communication, but this can be horribly jarring. Hearing a 12-year-old drawl at you through earphones while their muscular twenty-something avatar idles on screen doesn't do much for your suspension of disbelief.
The heart of the matter
So really, can we encourage emotional interplay between strangers in online games? Because that's obviously the key; that is what provides the complexity of human relationships in the real world. One way is to remove violence altogether. Thatgamecompany did this beautifully with Journey, distilling interaction down to the ability to follow and lead, and to make one simple sound. No names were visible and there was no vocal communication. Yet even with such limited materials, players were able to build profound relationships, even if they were fleeting and ethereal. We don't need much to get along.
But DayZ isn't Journey – there's no such thing as a mystical zombie art-game (though, dammit, I sort of wish there was now). Killing is a vital part of the experience – as it is with GTA Online. So we're back to this one apparent requirement: the commodification of friendship. The introduction of systems that make the prospect of collaboration a beneficial one. The next time I'm outside a small town in DayZ, I want to know I can wander in there, meet another player and have a bargaining chip or two. Already, players are using a raised arm gesture as one of friendship, or they're yelling "peaceful" down the microphone – but these simple digital acts are open to abuse and without visual complexity, it's all meaningless. Which is a shame because from listening to more experienced players, some of the most profound and enjoyable experiences have come out of hooking up with strangers and exploring together.
This isn't going to be popular, but I wonder if some form of bio-input is the ultimate answer. Valve Software has experimented with biometric feedback in the past, looking into peripherals that read your heart rate and alter the game accordingly. We know that Kinect can trace fluctuations in skin colour to monitor your heart rate too. Perhaps one day that data will be available to other players. You're approaching a group of survivors with your arms raised, but the camera sees you sweating; a message comes up on the other player's screen: "heart rate rising". What they do with that information is up to them. But they have it.
And that's the underlying truth, I fear. Emotion is about information; friendship and love are governed by data – you need to collect enough to trust someone. I think the first game that really truly figures this out will be the biggest game in the world.

DayZ hits 1m downloads one year before launch

2015-10-24T14:12:00.004-07:00

Following Minecraft's footsteps, open-world zombie thriller DayZ is the latest title to make gamers part of the development process

DayZ: unfinished and unforgiving, but a huge success already

Tuesday 14 January 2014 15.50 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.44 GMT

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It's hard as nails, it's bug-ridden, and it has no tutorial – but online zombie adventure DayZ has now been downloaded 1m times, barely a month after its 'alpha' launch on PC gaming service Steam. Its creator, New Zealand-born game designer, Dean Hall, has become the latest independent developer to release a new project before it is finished, allowing gamers to contribute toward its completion. Potential customers are warned via a series of titles screens that the game is a work in progress and that bugs and crashes are commonplace. But this hasn't stopped hundreds of thousands of PC gamers from pouring hours into the taut, exciting multiplayer action.
Originally written by Hall as a "mod" – or unofficial add-on – for the popular military shooter ArmA II, DayZ places gamers into the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Surrounded by unfamiliar landscape and with no tools to survive, they have to ransack houses to find guns and food, while avoiding the ravenous undead. The important part is that the game is online and there are up to 40 other players in the world with you – you'll either have to compete for resources, usually with deadly force, or team up to form clans of survivors. Brilliantly, the game supports in-game chat via headsets and microphones, so players are able to communicate with each other, plotting their fraught hit-and-run missions on other gangs. But every once in a while, the game glitches out or crashes altogether. You just have to re-boot and go back in, reporting your experiences on the game's packed forums.
Launch and hope
DayZ is far from alone in this 'release then adapt' approach. Although indie coders have often launched new projects in unfinished formats for fans to download and test, it was crossover smash hit Minecraft that really transformed the concept into a workable business model. Markus 'Notch' Persson's ingenious construction game was original launched in an early 'alpha build' state in 2009 but quickly attracted an enthusiastic community, who feed back on the game's faults and features. Now available on PC, console and smartphone the title has sold over 33 million copies. "The benefits [of early release] are that you don't have to rely on a publisher, and that you can get people passionate about the game early on," he told Gamasutra last July. "The added pressure of people already having paid for the game can help motivate you to work on it as well."
So far, the model has worked particularly well for simulation titles, that can offer up stable gameplay experiences without the need for advanced visuals or complex narrative sequences. UK developer Introversion was effectively saved from closure in 2012 when it made its latest title, the compulsive jail design sim, Prison Architect, available for online purchase in an early alpha state. The title is yet to receive a full, complete launch, but has raised over $10m from its community. Speaking to VG247 last year, the studio's co-founder Mark Morris explained both the financial and creative advantages: "I liken the process to steering a oil tanker – we have our own vision for Prison Architect and we know the path we are heading in, however we keep a close eye on the forums, Twitter and Facebook accounts, and the thoughts and views of the community kind of act like tug boats nudging the tanker in one direction or another."
The approach has become so successful that key digital gaming service Steam now has an Early Access section, allowing gamers to select and support unfinished titles. As with the Kickstarter revolution which has seen hundreds of games funded to completion via crowds of fans, there is a sense of ownership over the project. Gamers aren't just 'pre-ordering' an interesting new title, they're potentially contributing toward its growth. In many ways, there's the same appeal as discovering and supporting a new band from their days gigging in flea-pit pubs; it's that sense of getting in there first with something cool and exciting.
Fear and freedom
DayZ, which was apparently inspired by Hall's survival training while in the New Zealand armed forces, still has over a year of development left. The big test for 'early access' games like this is whether the creators can maintain development momentum under the pressure of user expectation. While community expectations can no doubt provide impetus to a small development team, there's always the danger is can be creatively stifling – especially if a large vocal community has a wide range of opinions on where the design should go.
But it's a problem most indie studios would be happy to face. The smartphone app stores are flooded with game content, and Steam houses something in the region of 3000 titles, so visibility is now the key challenge facing smaller developers. Building a proactive community is, then, a vital part of the development process – indeed, to gain a slot on Steam these days, developers have to go through the Greenlight system in which gamers vote on which new titles should get into the store.
The interesting thing about DayZ's success is that this is such an uncompromising experience. It is not a nice welcoming simulation title, it is a raw, bleak and almost entirely emergent survival horror game. The community is the experience. And with a million players, the lesson it appears to be teaching is – provide a compelling universe and let participants build from there. Is this the future of traditional game design, or the end of it?

The Banner Saga – review

2015-10-24T14:12:00.001-07:00

The sun is frozen in The Banner Saga's sky, but its beams are yet to melt its ice-capped landscape. It has, however, thawed a video game genre that has somewhat languished in recent years: the Tactical RPG. Extravagantly funded by a ravenous crowd of Kickstarter patrons, designed by a team of ex-Bioware designers and artists, and scored by the Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory, this is exquisitely produced fantasy, marrying Game of Thrones-esque medieval war fiction with the intricacies of a Chess-like combat board game.
Off the battlefield, the team's storytelling heritage is clear. These vast, Nordic landscapes share a whisper of DNA with Star Wars' nether-planets, which the team previously crafted while working on Star Wars: The Old Republic. But the stories that fill them more closely share the family likeness. The game takes place under a broad sweep banner narrative involving nations and races (the canny humans, the hulking Varl giants and their common enemy, a dead-eyed statue people known as Dredge) on the verge of war. But the wonder is in the close-up vignettes, the pressures of leading a marching army of cold, hungry recruits, and the ever-present weight of having to make seemingly small decisions with unforeseeable consequences.
Man management
As you move your soldiers from place to place you watch as they inch across beautiful, hand drawn landscapes. The view is interrupted every few seconds with a narrative interlude, some problem or other than must be attended. One of your men may drink too much mead and brawl. You must intervene, choosing whether to force an apology from the aggressor or laugh off the scuffle. Or you might come across a ragtag band of men, seemingly lost in the woods. Do you allow them to join your ranks and gain a potential valuable asset, or turn them away?
You accept food from a benign merchant, but what if it turns out to be spoiled or, worse still, poisoned? Some video games dole out a handful of these multiple choice decisions per chapter. The Banner Saga is an endless flow of questions demanding immediate answers. The consequences must not only be lived with, but also open up further avenues of choice. Your men may fall. Do you discard the supplies or wait to see if something else is causing the sickness? Do you force the men to fight in the next battle, weakened by stomach cramps, or send them back home? Journey is story. Never has this been made clearer than in The Banner Saga.

The burden of leadership is made keener by the fact that you are free to make poor choices: enter a battle in which you are vastly outnumbered and your troops will fall. Rather than being booted to the melancholy purgatory of a Game Over screen, the story adapts to your failure, which the narrative then bears like a scar, forever altering its trajectory. It takes a little getting used to. But rather than reaching for the 'load' button to undo your mistakes, there is benefit to living with them. In time the story feels fully your own. You are no longer a video game player, pretending to be an active participant in a pre-set narrative. Instead you are a complicit protagonist, and the game bends to your will – good or ill.
On the battlefield this is a finely tuned yet somewhat traditional tactical RPG. You choose a selection of warriors and take turns with the AI to move them one-by-one about the gridded board. First you choose where to position a unit according to its range. Then you choose to attack an enemy, targeting either its armour or its health. The former indicates how many points of damage a character can deflect while the latter represents the amount of damage they can do, a number that ingeniously doubles for their health points. In this way, as units sustain damage, they are simultaneously weakened.
Different characters specialise in different classes: sheildmasters have high defense and are useful for forming a defensive wall in front of weaker characters; archers can attack from a distance yet are weak at short range; spearmen can attack foes two squares away and so on. Your characters earn Renown points every time they defeat an enemy and this currency can be used to increase their abilities or, alternatively, to buy stat-enhancing accessories.

Battle tactics
The strategic element to fights is rich. "Willpower" points can be used to increase a unit's range or its offensive potency (and this limited, move-enhancing currency can instantaneously turn a battle's tide). Strategic arrangement of your troops is key to success – the Varl take up four squares on the grid each, and will block both their comrades and competitors' movements. In larger fights there's even an option to continue the battle after it's won, with the potential to defeat more of the opposing army's soldiers, albeit with the increased risk of fighting with already weary and wounded men.
However, the consequences to actions on the field feel less keen than they do off. If one of your troops falls in battle, they resuscitate as soon as it's finished, requiring only a few days "off" to recuperate to full health again. You cannot lose the key players in the drama on the battlefield, even if a few can be lost quite easily by making the wrong decisions elsewhere. This is, nevertheless, a game with a strong sense of place and the ambiance elevates it beyond the immediate competition. The illustrated 2D art is expressive, while Wintory's score is nothing short of extraordinary – evocative, unusual and rousing. The designer Sid Meier famously said that a game is a series of interesting choices. It's a maxim fully embraced by The Banner Saga, which stitches those choices into its very fabric to form a tapestry that is wholly your own.

Luigi's death stare: are you enjoying Mario Kart 8?

2015-10-24T14:10:00.004-07:00

New weapons, new courses, end-of-race highlights and an ice-cold Luigi. How are you finding Mario Kart 8?
Mario Kart 8 has been out in the UK for a few weeks now, leading to a large increase in sales for the Wii U console. It's even seen the birth of its own meme: the Luigi death stare, a celebration of the lesser-heralded Mario brother's ice-cold reaction to the administration of shell-based justice.

I spent the weekend getting to grips with the latest Mario Kart iteration, sunny weather eschewed in favour of relentless four-player action.
Early impressions are positive. The karts drive, glide and slide like a dream, and as our review points out, the new weapons are a satisfying addition. And there are little pleasing tweaks that make logical sense: if you plunge off the course into a cute ravine, lakitu returns you to the track much more efficiently than before, power-up boxes reappear a touch more quickly, and there is now a means of combatting the blue shell. At last.

And, as the Luigi death stare indicates, the end-of-race highlights (which you can edit and upload to Youtube) are an absolute joy. We almost enjoyed watching each hit, in glorious high-def slow-mo, as much we enjoyed playing the game itself.
As many have mentioned, the only bugbear is battle mode, which now takes place on the standard courses rather than ready-made arenas, and this is a real step backwards. "I can't find anyone," and "it's taking ages, isn't it?" were standard responses when we tried it.
Now it's over to you. How are you finding Mario Kart 8? Is it the best one, or do you still pine for the SNES or the underrated Game Cube versions? Share your thoughts - and links to your own killer videos, if you've made any - in the thread below.

The 30 greatest video games that time forgot – part one

2015-10-24T14:09:00.002-07:00

From early rhythm action to weird puzzlers, discover the best games most players have never heard of

Lost survival horror classic, Eternal Darkness – a title that handily describes what many of these games have been consigned to PR

Monday 20 January 2014 07.00 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.44 GMT

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History is not always kind to great games. Titles once heralded as masterworks are often lost as console cycles turn. Alternatively, there are the offbeat outliers completely shunned during their own lifetimes, only to be quietly ransacked by later generations of designers.
Over the next three days, we'll be remembering 30 brilliant, idiosyncratic, challenging or just plain weird titles that have been erased from the gaming annals, or at least criminally overlooked. Each one of these did something interesting with gaming, but not interesting enough to be endlessly recalled in misty-eyed retro articles or on Charlie Brooker-fronted TV shows (which are otherwise excellent and include really great interviewees).
Here then are the first ten. Come back for the others, and add your own favourites in the comments section.

3D Deathchase (Micromega, ZX Spectrum, 1983)

Public domain

Written by lone coder Mervyn Estcourt (who also produced a PC remake almost 20 years later), this remarkably progressive 3D chase game gets the player to ride a futuristic motorbike through dense woodland, attempting to track down and shoot enemy riders. The first-person view and smooth sensation of movement were astonishing at the time (especially considering it ran on the older 16k Spectrum), and it no doubt prepared the way for future variations on the free-roaming driving game.

Aliens: The Computer Game (Software Studios/Electric Dreams Software, C64/Spectrum, 1986)

Public domain

Activision developed a higher profile tie-in with the movie, but this version is far superior and has lasting significance in game design terms. It's essentially a prototype first-person shooter, complete with moveable targeting reticule. Players have to guide six of the film's characters through the colony base, toward the queen's lair. Although movement is essentially limited to left and right (firing at doors lets you pass through them), the action is tense, and the importance of quick accurate aiming hints at the FPS genre to come. There's also a brilliantly unsettling take on the movie's motion tracker sound effect that ramps up the scare factor considerably. And when the face huggers leap at you it is TERRIFYING.

Alter Ego (Activision, C64/PC/Apple II, 1986)

Public domain

Designed by psychologist Peter Favaro and released by Activision, this fascinating life simulation gave players control over either a male of female character as they progressed from childhood to grave. Designed around a series of key decision points, the mostly text-led experience was based on hundreds of interviews conducted by Favaro, and was hugely critically acclaimed at the time. Alongside David Crane's Little Computer People it laid the groundwork for modern era 'virtual soap opera' The Sims. Alas, the sparse presentation and offbeat concept meant that the sim sold poorly and a proposed sequel, based around rearing a child, was scrapped. You can play the original game online.

Astal (Sega, Sega Saturn, 1995)

Public domain

Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Altered Beast... Plenty of Sega's classic side-scrolling beat-'em-ups have gone on to become legends of the genre. But somehow this beautiful early Saturn release has been over-looked, perhaps thanks to the console's untimely demise. Banished from Earth by an angry goddess, the eponymous hero must return to rescue the girl he loves. Okay, forget the horribly trite story and revel in the gorgeous hand-drawn artwork and interesting attacks, which allow Astal to blow his enemies over or wrench trees out of the ground to chuck at them. There's also an innovative but tricky co-op mode which puts player two into the role of Astal's bird sidekick. Watch this playthrough for a taste of the wonderful character and landscape designs.

Bioforge (EA/Origin, PC, 1995)

Public domain

The 'interactive movie' genre of the mid-nineties brought us plenty of nightmarishly unplayable dross as game developers fell in love with the idea of using full-motion-video to create, ugh, 'cinematic' experiences. But there were some fascinating examples, too, like this cyberpunk adventure, set on a moon base governed by religious maniacs who believe man must evolve toward a machine hybrid state. The player awakens as a cyborg and must escape the lab, piecing together the plot from PDA diary entries and using security and computer equipment to hack defenses. Elements of Deus Ex, Bioshock and Dead Space all combined to create a tense and interesting adventure. It was so expensive to produce, however, that low sales ensured a planned sequel never arrived. Edge later published an excellent 'Making of' feature.

Bust A Groove (Enix/Metro Graphics, PlayStation, 1998)

Public domain

This formative rhythm action game allowed players to pull ridiculous disco moves by following onscreen direction prompts, in a similar manner to Sony's revered PaRappa The Rapper. The difference here was the head-to-head competitive dance fighting element, which allowed players to knock each other off the beat with special moves. featuring an excellent old school electronica soundtrack, bizarre characters and super-smooth animation, the title helped build the 'post-pub gaming' credentials of the PlayStation, and spawned a sequel. But then Konami's all-conquering Dance Dance Revolution strutted in and kicked it from the dance floor.

ChuChu Rocket (Sega/Sonic Team, Dreamcast, 1999)

How this frenetic combination of Pac Man, Bomberman, Lemmings and Hungry Hippos failed to become a continually updated gaming staple is beyond us. Designed by Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka its a fast-paced maze puzzler in which players have to place arrows on the floor to direct a line of mice into rockets so they can escape the giant cats. In the four-player mode, participants can also use arrows to direct the feline enemies toward competitors, making for fraught, hugely tense encounters. Given away free to European Dreamcast owners, the game would later surface on GameBoy Advance and iPhone but should – if there were a whiff of justice in the universe – be on every single console released from 1999 to the end of time.

Devil Dice (Sony/Shift, PlayStation, 1998)

Public domain

A modest success on its release and followed by two sequels, this ingenious puzzler was briefly revered, but has somehow slipped from wider memory. Players must navigate a grid by stepping on and turning dice cubes – when the numbers match between two adjacent cubes, they disappear. It's sort of a numerical match-three puzzle, bringing in some of the deeper mathematical reasoning of Area/Code's masterful iPhone title Drop 7. Originally created using Sony's home programmable console, the Net Yaroze, it was one of the few 'homebrew' titles to see release on the PlayStation.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (Nntendo/Silicon Knights, GameCube, 2002)

Resident Evil 4 wasn't the only standout survival horror experience on Nintendo's under-rated GameCube system. Developed by Canadian studio Silicon Knights and originally meant for the N64, Eternal Darkness is a fascinating Lovecraftian romp following student Alexandria Roivas as she investigates a book known as the Tome of Eternal Darkness. The powerful artifact provides a portal to a selection of previous lives, all of which must be experienced by the player in order to prevent an ancient evil from re-surfacing. The narrative and locations are creepy and unsettling, but the best part is the sanity meter which drops when you encounter enemies, causing visual disturbances and even tricking you into believing your TV has broken. Critically acclaimed, but with its mature rating, Nintendo fans weren't quite sure what to make of it. A proposed sequel never materialised, despite Nintendo renewing the trademark as recently as 2012. Meanwhile, many of the original development team went on to form Precursor Games and planned a spiritual successor named Shadow of the Eternals which sadly failed to hit its crowdfunding target last year.

Freedom Fighters (EA/IO Interactive, GameCube/PS2/Xbox, 2003)

On a break from the highly successful Hitman series, Danish studio IO Interactive launched this innovative third-person squad-based shooter, getting to the whole America-invaded-by-Communists plotline years before Call of Duty. You play as a regular Joe running round New York taking on Russian troops – and the more you kill, the more your 'Charisma rating' goes up allowing you to recruit followers. That's right, it's Homefront meets Twitter. Great controls and smooth squad commands ensured a thrilling yet surprisingly tactical experience. Maddeningly, it seems a proposed sequel was put on indefinite hold so that the studio could work on... Kane & Lynch. Wha... why?!! Anyway, Eurogamer has a nice retrospective on the game right here.

Tetris is back - for the PS4 and Xbox One

2015-10-24T14:08:00.002-07:00

Publisher Ubisoft is bringing the 30-year-old game to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. But can the original be improved?

A section from the Windows Phone version of Tetris

Friday 17 January 2014 12.35 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.44 GMT

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During the summer of 1992, between my first and second years at university, I was working at a video game studio in Leamington Spa. We were supposed to be coding a game called Tank Commander for the PC, a long forgotten battle simulation – but one day someone brought in a Game Link cable, which allowed the connection of two Nintendo Game Boy consoles together. Of course, we immediately loaded up the Tetris competitive mode, in which any lines you cleared on your own screen would be cruelly transferred on to the bottom of your opponent's stack. Work ground to a halt and didn't really start up again for several days.
Most gamers have Tetris addiction stories. Since Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov first developed the falling shape puzzler while working at the Moscow Academy of Sciences, it has sold hundreds of millions of copies on more than 50 different hardware platforms. Scientists and designers have pondered over its incredible appeal, the extraordinary compulsion people have to fit variously shaped tetriminos into a bucket. The beauty of Tetris is its simplicity – you need to understand no archaic conventions or rules of gaming. It is also essentially about something that we all find intrinsically satisfying: tidying up. Tetris is about imposing order, even if the task is Sisyphean, because the shapes don't stop falling until your stack reaches the top of the screen. And then it's all over.
Tetris in the brain
The purity and popularity of the game have made it one of the most researched and analysed on the planet. Countless papers have been written on its cognitive effects. In 2009 research published in BioMed Central suggested that playing Tetris could strengthen the neural networks in the brain, perhaps even improving memory. In the same year, researchers at Oxford University found that Tetris could help reduce flashbacks in sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of us just joked about the "Tetris effect", the worrying after-image of falling blocks behind our eyes and even in our dreams.
Since the original prototype was developed by Pajitnov on an ancient Electronica 60 computer, the rights to the concept have been swapped, fought over, brought and more-or-less stolen dozens of times. The publishing history of the game is a complex puzzle in its own right (and to find out more you should immediately watch the documentary Tetris: From Russia With Love). There have been various attempts to update the recipe. 1989's Super Tetris added a smart bomb, 2001 title Tetris Worlds brought in a story mode(!), and introduced "hold" and "easy spin" mechanics. Later, Electronic Arts toyed with the brand for a while, producing the decent Tetris Blitz (which bought in an against-the-clock dynamic) before blotting its copybook entirely by trying to add a subscription service to its iOS Tetris port.
Tetris unbound
These were sort of interesting, but most players saw them for what they were – rather desperate attempts to re-sell a concept that worked fine in its cheaply and readily available traditional incarnations. Although, if we're going to to get really into this, the four-player mode in the Nintendo 64 title, Tetris 64, was pretty special, as was crossover classic Tetris With Card Captor Sakura, by longtime Street Fighter developer Arika. That company actually produced some of the finest Tetris spin-offs in the form of its Tetris: The Grand Master series. Here is expert player Jin8 besting Tetris Grand Master 3. It is pretty incredible:

There were also lots of very good rivals, including Jay Geertsen's Columns, later licensed by Sega for various platforms including the Game Gear, the manufacturer's rival to Game Boy. Better though was the gloriously kawaii Puyo Puyo series, originally from Japanese studio Compile. Even Mario got in on the scene with 1990 title Dr Mario, which replaced all the shapes with differently coloured pills in what was clearly a tribute to acid house culture. (I'm kidding.)
Now another giant publisher, Ubisoft, has announced that it is working with the Tetris Company – the organisation co-founded by Pajitnov that now owns the right to the brand – to produce new versions for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. So far it has given nothing away about what these games will look like or what new features will be added to take advantage of these ultra powerful machines – but surely new modes and functions will appear. What will they look like? Will it make use of the console's connectivity to offer vast global leaderboards like Tetris Zone? Will we see cloud support? A persistent massively multiplayer Tetris arena, thousands of blocks wide, which a global audience must keep from spilling over?
Perhaps there will be Tetris Kinect, where you shout, "turn it left, no LEFT, now drop it, no not there, THERE!" Maybe Ubisoft will bring in some of the epic narrative sweep of the Assassin's Creed series. It turns out that this version of Tetris is being played in a vast national security mainframe, and players have to hack the code to escape the distopian nightmare. Are we going to get Tetris Rayman, the unlikely combination of block-falling puzzler and Ubisoft's invisible-limbed platforming mascot? Is there something in the Geneva convention that could stop this from happening?
One thing is certain, while there are computers to play games on there will be Tetris. It defies barriers of language and culture, it is interactive entertainment in its purest form. Somehow, Pajitnov discovered a hotwire to the brain; an experience that talked to the central processing unit of human cognition in its own machine language. And like the rest of the industry, despite following up with several sequels, the puzzle-obsessed coder has not repeated the brilliance of Tetris. But of course we should be reminded of the apocryphal story about Joseph Heller. When told by an interviewer that, since Catch 22, he had never managed to write anything as good, he replied, "No, but then neither has anyone else". Pajitnov can quite securely make the same claim.

Thief – hands-on in the city of stealth

2015-10-24T14:07:00.004-07:00

Eidos Montreal's reboot of the respected stealth-'n-steal series is out in a month. Here's what is right – and wrong – with the return of Garrett, the master thief

Thief – the murky streets are filled with unexpected treasures. And also violence, of course. Photograph: /PR

Nick Cowen

Tuesday 28 January 2014 10.25 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.44 GMT

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As obvious as it sounds to say so, in Thief you nick things. You nick a lot of things. Broaches, necklaces, wallets, candelabras – anything valuable that’s lying around, really – all disappear into lead character Garrett’s bottomless sack. You find some of these trinkets in the oddest of places. One would expect to find a golden bracelet or two in a wall safe behind a painting, but who on earth leaves a goblet on a rooftop or a couple of coins at the edge of a pond?
It’s possible Eidos Montreal has left these treasures scattered around its game in order to put players into the headspace of its protagonist. If that’s the case, it’s an absolutely brilliant piece of game design because stealing stuff in Thief isn’t just fun, it’s addictive. After you’ve snagged your first five or six baubles, you turn into a veritable magpie, filled with the need to obtain any shiny object that catches your eye – even if it means potentially exposing Garrett to danger in order to do so.

Victorian architecture and glowing lamps dominate the cityscape. Photograph: /PR

This compunction to loot is backed up by the game’s open-ended structure and its seductive visuals. Thief is set in a gloomy urban sprawl where the architectural schools of Gothic Europe, Victorian London and Steampunk Sci-Fi seem to have collided in a mass of fog and iron. Garrett, the antihero of the series since its 1998 premier, it back, returning to his home town, which is now in the grip of both a horrendous plague and a tyrannical ruler, The Baron. A palpable sense of foreboding drapes over the city’s gas-lit streets and shadowy rooftops, an effect that's bolstered in no small part by the flashes of lightning that briefly throw Garrett’s shadow onto the walls and pavements around him.
As sinister as all of this sounds, it becomes apparent early on that the city’s darkened alleys and rooftops are Garrett’s natural turf. His almost superhuman ability to move noiselessly through his surroundings turns the skyline into his thoroughfare and makes every shadow inviting. Garrett also has the ability to ‘swoop’ in and out of pools of light quick enough to avoid detection and he’s armed with a decent array of equipment including lockpicks, arrows and a crowbar to force open the odd window.
Stolen moments
From the evidence of the preview build I had a hands-on with, Thief contains the odd brief linear passage, which helps move the narrative along, but once Garrett is in view of a building that houses a valuable item he’s after – whether it’s part of a side task or a story mission – Thief’s structure opens up. Couple this loose framework with the kleptomaniacal impulses instilled in the player early on, and the world in Thief simply begs to be explored.
A great example of this came in a passage of play that occurred after the game’s tutorial level. Following a bungled robbery, Garrett has to flee back to his headquarters through one of the city’s mercantile districts. As I picked my way across the rooftops, noticing one of the streetlamps below me was on the blink, I heard a couple of guards remarking on how beautiful a golden mask in the window of a jewelry shop looked.
Well, I thought, since it’s on my way…
The jewelry shop raid showed there’s no set way to successfully pull off a burglary. It was possible to enter the premises by observing the nightwatch guards, taking note of their patrol patterns, timing one’s movements to reach the shop’s door undetected and then picking the lock. Alternately, I found after circling the emporium that one of the back windows was open and it was possible to enter by shimmying up to the
rooftops.
Once inside, I found that the open-ended nature of progression extended to the style of play, too. To wit, players can proceed as loudly or as quietly as they wish, although, they’ll find that playing to Garrett’s strengths – moving stealthily and hiding from view – will prove easier in the long run.
In my run-through I found one guard on patrol in the front of the shop, but incapacitating him was easy enough. Once I’d helped myself to everything that wasn’t nailed down on display, I picked the lock of the window display case and found that the mask in the window that had so impressed the guards was actually gilded glass – and thus, worthless. At this stage I could’ve easily made my exit but I decided, since I’d gone to the trouble of breaking and entering, to explore more of the shop.
Waiting game
I’ll neither reveal what else I found, nor will I reveal any details I uncovered about the game’s plot. Believe me when I tell you I’m doing you a favour. The less one knows about the game’s story and its hidden gems, the better time one will have when it’s released at the end of next month. That is, if the developers manage to sort out a couple of issues that, while not deal-breakers, are irritating nontheless.
Garrett’s inventory, for example, is mapped to the touchpad on the PS4’s controller, but the way it’s been implemented renders it virtually useless. Selecting items involved hammering the touch pad and while this is irritating enough during sections of the game where players have a lot of time to consider their next move, it would be potentially infuriating if they’re under duress.

A plague threatens the clearly otherwise joyous city.

Second, I can report that Thief has a lot of beautiful loading screens, and it's a good thing that they're beautiful, because players will be staring at them for an awfully long time. Loading times feel interminable and when they appear after a dramatic cutscene, they manage to break the atmospheric spell the rest of the game is so successful at weaving. Facial animations also look positively last-gen, which is strange because the environments surrounding the characters are fantastically detailed and beautiful to behold.
Here’s hoping Eidos manages to tighten up these flaws because they’re sizable chinks in Thief’s armour. Without them, there’s a lot in this game to admire and the pull of its world is intoxicating. Thief puts players into the headspace of a light-fingered ne’er-do-well and drops them into a city filled with trinkets to steal and houses to break into. Even with its niggles Thief accomplishes what the best adventure games set out to do – it surrounds you in a world you could get lost in and then encourages you to do just that.
• Thief is released on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on 25 February (US), 27 Feburary (Aus) and 28 February (Europe)

Video games, Down's syndrome and my brother – a personal story

2015-10-24T14:06:00.003-07:00

Playing with my brother is one of many ways he reveals himself not as a 'disabled' person – but simply as his own person

Tekken 5 – under no circumstances trust another player when they say: "Come here, I want to show you something".

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Saturday 1 February 2014 09.00 GMT Last modified on Thursday 5 February 2015 10.36 GMT

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