Play Game Reviews

Sniper Elite 4 review

2017-03-10T17:28:00.011-08:00

Whether rightly or wrongly, Rebellion - one of the UK's longest standing indies, something the Oxford-based studio is understandably proud of - has a bit of a patchy reputation. Perhaps it's the frayed edges found in work-for-hire such as the brilliantly conceived but poorly executed NeverDead or the poorly conceived and poorly executed Rogue Warrior (a game which still demands to be held in high regard for its end credit sequence alone).

Sniper Elite 4

Publisher: Rebellion
Developer: Rebellion
Platform: Reviewed on PS4
Availability: Out February 14th on PS4, Xbox One and PC

When Rebellion's been able to work on its own terms the results have often fared much better, as with the recent self-published Sniper Elite series; knockabout action stealth games with delicious period WW2 trappings, they've quickly risen from guilty pleasure to something much more commendable. The end result of the quickfire iteration that comes from a series that's seen five games since 2012 is Sniper Elite 4. And it's kind of brilliant.

Sniper Elite 4 doesn't deviate from the formula laid out by its predecessor, nor does it make any profound additions, but that's all for the best. In placing a focus on the fundamentals - as well as keeping this to current generation consoles, unlike Sniper Elite 3, so that compromises aren't so commonplace - Rebellion has been able to tease out all the potential that's been bubbling under the surface for so long. And if you haven't played a Sniper Elite beforehand, this is most definitely the right time to get acquainted.

There's a levelling system in place, but XP is doled out so regularly and the tech tree is so insignificant it all kind of fades into the background.

At this point in the series' evolution - and as part of its continuing spread to ever more open levels - this is essentially a stealth game with a vaguely open world framework. It's Metal Gear Solid 5 with Reggiane fighter planes droning across azure Italian skies as you're crouched in an olive bush with a bolt action rifle slung over your shoulder. Who wouldn't want to __play that?

While Sniper Elite 4 lacks the polish and poise of Metal Gear Solid 5, feeling at times like a direct-to-video counterpart, it has a plucky spirit and a schlocky flair that's all its own. The series' signature feature of being able to see a bullet fly in slow motion across a map before entering an enemy soldier and bursting an eyeball, shattering a spine or popping a nut returns and is as disturbingly satisfying as ever. It's a repeating moment of Grand Guignol that wouldn't be out of place in any self-respecting VHS action epic that's grown fuzzy from one too many rentals from your local rental store. This is the video game as raw, naked and unashamed entertainment, and it's all the better for it.

Not so lone sniper

Apologies for shunting multiplayer to a sidebar all of its own, but in truth competitive online here feels more like a welcome appendage rather than an integral part of the package. It's perfectly serviceable, and once again it's No Cross in which a impassable No Man's Land is placed between teams that shines brightest. Rebellion's been smart enough to promise all future modes and maps coming post-release will be free for all players, with the season pass granting access to the likes of premium skins. It's frustrating to see so much by way of weapons and skins locked out when playing the game, though it hardly seems essential.

The suite of missions that make up the campaign (at about 90 minutes to __play through each, this is a fairly generous adventure you undertake) are broad and varied. They're coherent playspaces, and finely crafted too; Sniper Elite 4's Italian setting allows for some exquisite backdrops, from wooded outposts to towns tumbling down the side of a bay, and each one offers a multitude of paths and opportunities. There are night-time missions now too, such as a harborside base that offers plenty of dimly lit warehouses and walkways to prowl as you take out a series of AA guns and searchlights any which way you choose. The amount of freedom each area affords can be intoxicating.

Enemies react more believably to an errant or unmasked shot of yours, triangulating your position while giving you time and room to adjust your tactics.

This is stealth on an altogether different scale than seen before in the series, and it's helped by a slight broadening of your repertoire - you can drop out of windows, hanging off ledges to either escape an escalating situation or to sneak up on enemies. Adaptability is key here, and you've now got the tools to go from sniping to close quarters action and back again.

Indeed Sniper Elite 4 is nicely adaptable throughout, offering a suite of options that have accumulated over the years. On one hand it can be a viciously exacting simulator, where you have to take bullet drop, wind speed and a more authentic ballistics system into account with each and every shot. Take it down a few notches, though, and it's an enjoyably pliable action romp. Co-op's even supported throughout the campaign, a welcome touch even if it feels like Rebellion has made few concessions for team play.

There's no right way to play Sniper Elite 4, in other words, and in the tradition of all fine stealth games it's just as entertaining to klutz your way through levels as it is to ghost them, waiting patiently for the sound of passing planes to mask each and every one of your shots. The AI has been fine-tuned since Sniper Elite 3's notoriously thick-headed enemies, and while it's certainly improved - troops seem to be more in sync with one another, something that can be wonderfully exploited by taking down an officer and instilling panic - it's still fallible. There are exploits aplenty, and it's easy enough to corral an entire army into a small corner of the map to their slaughter.

I'm not going to tell you whether or not it's okay to punch a Nazi in the face. I'll let you know it's okay to shoot them in the balls though.

Rough edges such as these seem to be part of the territory when it comes to Sniper Elite, and while it's a smoother ride than what's gone before this is still far from a premium product. The writing is uniformly horrendous (doge references aren't particularly welcome anywhere in 2017, least of all in mission text for a WW2-themed video game), while the character models show the age of Rebellion's Asura engine in their leaden creakiness. Good thing, then, that the storyline here is entirely forgettable, each cut-scene being eminently skippable.

Such blemishes aren't enough to mask the brilliance that shines through here. Rebellion has folded in the essence of stealth greats such as Splinter Cell and Metal Gear while keeping the characterful flavour of Sniper Elite itself, and for the first time it's not necessary to make any excuses on its behalf. Sniper Elite 4 is a really good video game. It's as simple as that.

Steep review

2017-03-10T17:28:00.009-08:00

This mountain has stories. That's what someone in Steep told me early on in the adventure, although I may be paraphrasing.

And I thought: Sure, stories, blah blah blah. The time I spun off that jump at a wonky angle and landed, inelegantly, in the open embrace of a tree. The time I found the only patch of rock on a smooth downhill run and landed, inelegantly, in the open embrace of a tree.

But this is Ubisoft, remember? So the mountain actually does have stories. I found one on a night jaunt in my first hour or so playing, already deep inside the game's astonishing open world, a huge map filled with peaks and valleys and absolutely no loading times between them. I was following a skier down a slope, and the mountain started talking to me, spinning up a veritable Kate Bush lyric about how it was ancient and primal and would speak its truths if it I asked it to. Steep, then, is not SSX or any other winter sports game I might have imagined it would be at first. Steep is weird. And it's often wonderful.

In fact, Steep is entirely wonderful on paper - wonderful to me, at least, and anybody else in the mood for a big, daringly aimless game set in a vast stretch of wilderness. Ubisoft's latest drops you onto the side of a massive Alpine range, a huge and surprisingly diverse landscape over which is spread a pleasantly simple-minded extreme sports game. There are four varieties of sport to choose from - snowboarding, skiing, wingsuiting and paragliding, and they can be switched pretty much on the fly via the Sports Wheel as you take on different challenges or just explore. Because this is Ubisoft, there are plenty of competing progression methods to steer you through the thicket of possibilities: there's an XP system at the core, and a variety of different fields of expertise to boost stats in beyond that. (These are essentially different player archetypes, ranging from Explorers, who just want to see everything, to Bone Collectors, who just want to get hurt in amusing ways.)

There are tricks offered across some sports (they're pretty basic, mind, and they seemed wooly until I understood Steep's peculiar sense of timing), and there are those challenges to unlock everywhere, forming the spine of the campaign, from simple downhill races to trick-runs and opportunities to float through glowing hoops in the sky. And if you needed any more of a reminder that this is Ubisoft, you open up fast travel hot spots around the mountain, called Drop Zones, by tagging them with your binoculars once you're close enough. Throw in specific missions that help define each peak, unlocked by hitting the level requirement, and you have a game that offers a friendly muddle of things to do - and a mountain that, once you pull back, has been heavily carpet-bombed by the Ubisoft map machine, icons and doodads littering the landscape, timeless natural beauty buried under a sharp-edged UI. In screenshots, it is almost self-parody, but it's a generous self-parody at least.

Some sports are more interesting than others. Snowboarding is clearly the king here, with a lovely downhill momentum, an elegant way with curves, and tricks which provide a little spectacle. Wingsuiting is similarly good as you leap from the roof of the world and then duck and dive, juke to the left and right to slot yourself through pylons or rock arches, or hug the ground to score points. (It's great when it goes wrong, too, and you ragdoll down an entire mountain until your skeleton, presumably, resembles the gritty dregs at the bottom of a Cornflakes packet.) Skiing is fine, but why bother skiing when you've got a board? Are you Prince Charles or something? Do you want to be Prince Charles? Does he seem particularly happy to you? Paragliding feels like a bit of a dud. It's a real gear-change compared to the other treats on offer, and even the stunts can't really jolt it back to life for me. Still, it is nice to dial the clock forward and go for a gentle float at sunset. A park bench in the sky. Steep is like a box of chocolates.

Those sunsets are worth seeing. Despite a lingering blandness to the detailing, Steep is very beautiful, maybe because the world it is capturing is so unavoidably beautiful in the first place. The slopes allow for a surprising range of sights, from thickets of spindly silver-skinned trees set on lofty peaks, to snow-clogged villages and dark ravines where huge slabs of blue ice rise out of the ground. The snow crunches beautifully beneath you, carved into lines and abstract tangles, and the time of day is yours to control, shifting from the smoky greys of night rides under a full moon, to the candied orange snow of sunrise.

All of this, the bespoke races and trick runs, the open mountain, yours to explore, can be experienced with other people. You can save any stretch of mountain you've traversed and turn it into a challenge to share with friends, or you can partner up with the randoms you find spotted around and tackle things together. Weirdly, neither of these options is entirely convincing.

Here's the thing, though: multiplayer isn't really the focus in a game like this anyway. Steep's so big that it's easy to assume you'll want to explore it with other people, but the best moments here are all solo affairs. It's at its best when you're on your own, either racing to beat a time or score and leaning on the instant restart, or simply blasting around this huge, craggy wilderness, maybe stumbling across something great out there in the depths, and maybe not. Steep's best multiplayer moments are not team races of trick challenges, incidentally. They're actually when I've been on my own for an age, and I've just spotted someone in the distance, doing their own thing.

At its worst, Steep's everything that's slightly naff about some Ubisoft games: there's a micro-transactions shop - it's not very intrusive, thankfully - and sponsored events by the usual suspects. Throw in a bit of odd physics - sometimes too arcadey, sometimes too eager to leave you landlocked on a piece of jutting rock - and some fiddly, over-conceived menus and it can sound like a right pain. But Steep isn't a right pain, and it's rarely at its worst. Instead, it's strange and lonesome and deeply transporting. It gives you genuine freedom, even if that's the freedom that comes from developers who are not quite sure what to do with the landscape they have made.

Often it sings. Where it truly comes alive is a freerider event, say, with seven minutes on the clock for a bronze and no checkpoint gates between you and the simple instruction: reach the finish line. A lone bar of orange light rises on the distant horizon, and you suddenly realise that you have a destination, a snowboard, and a huge expanse of mountain ahead of you with no set way to cross it. Glorious.

Or maybe it's a moment when you wingsuit through a craggy canyon, darting around spikes and spits of jutting rock while the gentle rumble pebbling through the pad tells you that you are close enough to the ground to be earning major points all the way.

Or it's a long run down into a glacier. Clear ice pokes through the thick snow as you go deeper and deeper, further than you can imagine this channel reaching, multiplier knocked up to its maximum so you're being rewarded gratuitously for doing even the quietest of tricks while you just lean forward to see what comes next.

That's Steep. Early on, I was told by Steep's intrusive narrator to pretty much ignore the unlockable challenges and carve the mountain up in search of hidden lines and lonely spaces. This was good advice, even if the narrator immediately contradicted it, and now I pass it on to you. Again and again, it's quietly thrilling to leap from the mountainside and the board beneath my feet, up to the overhead view of the entire mountain range, in which my rider is suddenly a dot, lost amongst the rumpled whiteness, and then instantly warp to a distant drop zone. As an extreme sports game, Steep is fine. As a place, it's frequently amazing.

Space Hulk: Deathwing review

2017-03-10T17:28:00.007-08:00

I can't see it much myself, but Deathwing is supposed to be Warhammer 40k's take on Left 4 Dead. Sure its multiplayer game is co-op only (and its campaign fed by AI bots), with you and up to three others up against relentless hordes of skittering horrors, but Left 4 Dead's clever narrative framework, its dynamic stage direction and cast of sarcastic characters are hard to make out in Deathwing's grim darkness of the far future. What you get is more of a glorified survival mode stretched thin over nine large levels, with you and your Terminator Space Marine buddies under regular assault by waves of Alien-inspired creatures as you stomp a steady path from one distant objective to the next.

If that all sounds underwhelming and rather tedious, don't be put off just yet. There are plenty of reasons to be cagey over the current state of Deathwing, but the game's lack of Left 4 Dead DNA isn't one of them. In actual fact Deathwing's flimsy structure and plasterboard systems can, to a degree, be seen as a virtue; you can almost see the influence of the original board game underneath the first-person shooter design. Not enough to have compromised the action too much, but just hints here and there (to reassure the faithful) that developer Streum On Studio hold the source material in suitably high regard. As in, they properly get that 40k is more than just Lord of the Rings in space, or, in the case of Space Hulk, James Cameron's Aliens rampaging through the Mines of Moria.

Beaming Nigel Farage becomes first British politician to meet Donald Trump since election.

An example are the spawn points and "blips" that are highlighted on the in-game map, from which the Genestealer hordes commence their attacks. Conventional design wisdom might suggest not revealing such things to the player, especially when doing so highlights the fact that they can't be taken out. But then a knowledge of where the enemy might spring from, and that it will never stop coming for you was always integral to the original game. In Deathwing, as implicit in the ancient text of the first edition Space Hulk rulebook, you have to keep moving forward lest your incomparable space knights become overwhelmed by the demon swarm.

Deathwing draws inspiration from deeper sources than dioramas of carefully assembled flock and figurines, from the Black Library for its fiction to decades of 40k-themed gothic architecture glimpsed from box art, dust jackets, flourishes in rulebooks and the pages of White Dwarf. There are other aspects of the game worth shouting about too - which I'll get to in a moment - but they all boil down to one thing: authenticity. From the gruff mission preamble to the iconic weapons and through every groaning bulkhead of the space hulk itself, Deathwing is dripping with 40k credibility. It's literally coming out of the goddamn walls.

Deathwing's space hulk sits alongside Vermintide's Ubersreik as one of the better realisations of a Warhammer setting that does justice to the established lore.

The infested hulk to which your squad is sent to investigate and purge is the ultimate source of Deathwing's appeal - so much so that I can't recall a more faithful environment for any Games Workshop-endorsed title in all my years of playing them (and I remember Tower of Despair, so I've played a few). Essentially a tangle of dead ships fused together in the timeless malignancy of the Immaterium, space hulks are malevolent contortions of metal and stone; reminiscent in parts of the claustrophobic corridors of sunken U-boats, in others as vast dilapidated cathedrals, but at all times uniformly oppressive with failing lights, groaning metal and the constant threat of ambush from any and all directions.

I'm not going to claim Deathwing is the best 40k game of all time, because the best should appeal to more than just those that get what space Warhammer is all about. It is the one with the most rigorous backdrop, though. A shame, then, that as a tactical shooter Deathwing is far less impressive. Superficially, everything is present and correct, from the lurching mech-like movement of the Terminator-suited Marines to the heft of their venerated weapons, but the extent of the gameplay is undeniably limited, with you leading your troops from point A to point B, with one eye looking out for red wedges on the minimap and one ear listening out for the telltale hiss of incoming attack.

When an attack comes, it's very often glorious: weapons burn hot, the corridor erupts and the body parts - torsos, claws, heads - pile up as each whole falls under a hail of lead and plasma. The problem with each attack is that there's only one way to really deal with them; fire everything you've got, reload and fire again until the deck is awash with deboned Xenos cadavers. You can switch loadouts up to three or four times per level, but can only effectively carry one weapon, often with a power weapon for close encounters. That's how Terminators conduct their business of course - no flimsy sidearms for them - but aside from knowing when best to order your Apothecary to administer a health boost to avoid an unpleasant restart, there really isn't much else to master. I mean, there are Psyker abilities to unlock and you can order your AI wingmen to take up defensive positions, but there's little point in bothering: the tactical interface is a faff and using it doesn't provide any noticeable advantage anyway, so why bother.

There's no friendly fire to worry about (not by default), ammunition is unlimited and while the game enforces a checkpoint save system, it's quite a generous one that is augmented by automatic saves whenever you use the Psygate (teleporter) to refit and rearm.

Deathwing isn't an easy game, certainly not at the outset when the Genestealer horde is relentless and your standard Storm Bolter less than effective at keeping it at bay, but as new weapons become unlocked and the game's workings reveal themselves through repetition, even when a new variety of 'Stealer takes to the field the balance has already shifted in favour of the player, undermining the initial challenge and bringing on a sense that you're doing the same thing over and over. Time your heals correctly and acquire the right mix of weapons (I can wholeheartedly recommend Lightning Claws for Brother Barachiel, the Storm Bolter / Narthecium combo for Brother Nahum and a Flamer for yourself) and you can tank an entire map quite easily.

It doesn't help in holding firm the game's early tension that mission objectives often seem to have been arbitrarily placed at the extremities of the map to drag the game out and inflict the maximum amount of ambushes on the player as possible, perhaps because that's the only trick the game has up its sleeve.

It's a fine trick though and is what Space Hulk is all about, after all - a looped homage of all Aliens' combat scenes, played again and again. Framing the action are typically sententious monologues, while the carnage during each encounter is brutal and relentless, and which is only amplified by the backdrops. But when it becomes second nature to know how the game ticks, the challenge becomes less about desperate survival and more wondering instead what new toy or ability will be unlocked next. At the very least a little weapon rebalancing would seem to be in order.

Although they tend to make a beeline for your squad Genestealers will often try to flank you. They can also run up and down ladders, which is something beyond the capability of a Terminator, which rather goes against the rules of the board game as well as good sense.

More of an immediate concern than the transparent gameplay are some widely-reported performance issues. For some reason I've not been plagued by too many problems, but then I'm a forgiving sort anyway (as those of us that used to load games from tape often are) - but I've experienced more than a few crashes to desktop when trying to join a multiplayer match and been inconvenienced in others when players have failed to materialise beside me. There are also considerable optimisation issues in both single and co-op games, with frame rates taking a tumble even during quiet moments between the action, suggestive that there are some memory holes that need plugging. There are less critical issues too, mission objectives failing to update, for example, plus a few annoyances such as turret hacking being a chore rather than an option, and switching out from the in-game map irritating when it should be a breeze. In other words there are too many technical issues exacerbated by minor niggles that combine to suggest, that for most people, holding fire on a purchase is probably for the best.

Clearly not a wholehearted recommendation for shooter aficionados then, but as a lifelong fan of Space Hulk who's been eagerly awaiting a 40k shooter that plays to the strengths of the lore rather than tries to fit the lore into the standard shooter template, I'd probably ignore my own advice and buy the game anyway. At the very least Deathwing deserves to go on your wishlist and an occasional eye kept on developments to see where Streum On takes its efforts over the coming few weeks. If performance can't be stabilised and gameplay rebalanced reasonably quickly, Deathwing is in considerable danger of being deserted.

Then it really will be left for dead.

Dead Rising 4 review

2017-03-10T17:28:00.005-08:00

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands review

2017-03-10T17:28:00.003-08:00

Wildlands is that familiar glossy contradiction, the "gritty" quasi-realistic open world blockbuster - a work of great craft and care that's also a work of macabre war tourism, wowing you with its geography even as it casually up-sells the bankrupt fantasy of playing global policeman. Aside from being another Ubisoft love letter to icon-studded map screens, it reprises the fond Tom Clancy daydream that the answer to every festering international dilemma is a squad of all-American roughnecks armed with a list of names and a relaxed definition of collateral damage. It's a game about extrajudicial murder whose creators have taken the time to animate children playing hopscotch in schoolyards, a realm of soothing splendour in which you'll kick in the door of a village church to retrieve a laser sight accessory from the altar. It is by turns plodding and vivid, entertaining and abhorrent.

I can't quite bring myself to loathe it, but it says a lot that I keep trying to escape it - or at least, to escape the part Wildlands expects me to __play in reshaping its coked-up appropriation of Bolivia (whose government has lodged a formal complaint with France over the country's depiction in the game). While crossing the landscape I typically eschew fast travel in favour of a helicopter or plane, seizing my chance to slip the surly bonds of yet another bloody mass of Ubi-brand emergent distractions - resources and gear items to gobble up like plankton, convoys to pester, patrols to waylay or be waylaid by. Up there, all you have to worry about are power lines and the impetuous handling. And the occasional surface-to-air missile.

Vehicles extend from pick-ups and homely two-seater planes to helicopter gunships and APCs.

On reaching the majestic salt flats that extend beyond the world's northwestern perimeter, I immediately leapt aboard a nearby dirtbike and roared off towards the horizon - hoping to break free of both the game's effective but desperately routine activity design and the Clancy franchise's moribund obsession with grizzled wetworkers changing the fates of nations by knifing anybody with a funny accent. Perhaps there is something outside of all this, I thought. Perhaps it'll be like that scene at the end of the Matrix 2 - a burst of radiance, a room walled with television screens and a chair swivelling to reveal the avuncular figure of Yves Guillemot, there to explain the Ubiworld's ultimate purpose. Alas, I was rewarded only with a loading break and a trip back to the nearest campsite, where I spent five minutes painting a rifle pink, tossed a grenade at a passing minibus, then climbed into my chopper and smashed it repeatedly into the ground.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands' premise reads like a 5am Trump tweet: Bolivia has been overrun by a fictitious Mexican drugs cartel, the dastardly Santa Blanca, and it's your job as leader of a four-person Ghost squad to pick off the senior players, one by one - working your way up from regional kingpins through caricatured lieutenants to the organisation's mournful overlord, El Sue�o. This translates to scouring each district for intel to unlock nearby missions, completion of which triggers an encounter with the local bigwig. Take out four regional bosses and you'll be able to have a crack at an underboss, then one of El Sue�o's lieutenants, and finally the top dog himself - a procession of bloody takedowns that makes a mockery of the concept of a surgical intervention.

In between carrying out story objectives, you can pootle around in search of new weapons, accessories and skill points to bestow on a slimmed-down upgrades tree, or conduct a range of relatively simple escort, area defence and objective capture missions on behalf of Bolivia's initially toothless rebels. Bolstering the latter confers a range of support abilities - vehicle and ammo deliveries, mortar strikes, a pop-up detachment of guerrilla fighters - besides increasing the number of allied troops roaming the neighbourhood, and helping to decide which ending you unlock.

The map is gigantic even for an Ubisoft open world, good for a few dozen hours of __play if you're particular about hoovering up the side missions.

Save for a couple of structural tweaks - there are no radio masts, thank the maker, and you're given a choice as to what kind of side-mission or collectible you want to flag up when you scan a document or interrogate a VIP - it's business as usual for an Ubiworld, and soon becomes monotonous. But as superficial as it may sound, the vistas are some reprieve. Where the likes of Horizon: Zero Dawn dazzles at a glance, Wildlands offers up a quieter kind of beauty, made up of exquisite regional variations and carefully layered effects - the way a summer thunderstorm blackens one half of the sky even as sunlight bronzes the road underfoot, the flamingos that shoot up as you swoop low over a lake's surface, or the spectral blue of a snowfield in the shadow of a peak. However compressed and selective in its recreation of the country's human and physical geography, this is a portrayal that deserved better than to be reduced to another map-full of things to kill, collect or conquer.

The backbone of the game's mission design is our old friend the fortified outpost, a publisher staple since the days of Far Cry 3. Outposts come in all shapes and sizes, from humble roadside checkpoints through clifftop communications arrays to rusty prisons squirrelled away in canyons, but each boils down to a familiar, dependable clutch of combat props and hazards.

There are mounted guns and mortars, lookout towers that always boast a sniper or two, alarms you can trash to stop the residents summoning reinforcements, lights you can either blow out or disable by shutting off a generator, captives you can free to even the odds and, of course, a multitude of things that explode when shot. Whatever the precise contents of each base, the player's tactics are broadly identical - mark everything on the HUD using either your binoculars, a rifle scope or your trusty quadrotor drone, then work your way through the opposition as efficiently and discreetly as you can, cutting down sentries with synchronised sniper shots (Ghost Recon's signature trick) before moving inside the walls to mine chokepoints and stuff all the vehicles full of C4.

The drone has a short battery life and range to begin with, but you can upgrade it. Optional drone abilities include an EMP emitter, an exploding payload and an audio lure.

It's still an engaging balance of predictability and chaos, an endlessly varied stealth puzzle that boils over naturally and elegantly into a firefight, but if you've played a Far Cry game since the third you'll have seen everything Wildlands has to offer here a hundred times over. The missions are also a little rough around the edges in places - you can expect the odd frustrating stealth escapade which fails you when you're detected, made all the more unbearable by a mystifying shortage of mid-mission checkpoints. The controls are a bit shonky, too - the command wheel on right bumper is a chore to manipulate, and the game's context-sensitive cover mechanic is annoyingly floaty, never quite managing the feel of slamming your shoulder to a wall under fire.

In theory the Ghosts themselves, consummate infiltrators overshadowed by the antics of their Rainbow Six rivals, are well-placed to add a few layers to these concepts. In practice, this is less a Ghost Recon game than one haunted (sorry) by Ghost Recon, in which Advanced Warfighter's taut teamplay struggles to assert itself against a world bubbling with trivial pop-up activities and a tidal wave of customisable tat. The character editor sums up this clash between epochs - in addition to choosing and tinkering with your gun stats as in other tactical sims, you'll be scratching your head over whether the tinted lenses you've taken a shine to match your stonewashed jeans, or whether that eagle tattoo is OTT when paired with a 10-gallon hat.

As charmingly goofy as the bling can be, the arsenal beneath is quite pedestrian - sniper rifles, assault rifles, submachine guns, light machine guns, pistols and shotguns, most bristling with customisation slots for new stocks, barrels, scopes and the like, plus a handful of grenade types and vision modes. There's a gentle satisfaction to derive from tweaking each weapon's stats, and higher difficulty settings put more pressure on you to eke out the desired balance of recoil, accuracy and damage, but much of the time, as long as you have at least one silenced scoped rifle to hand you can more or less forget about the rest of it.

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The game's stealth approach to visibility is more sophisticated than this image may suggest - go prone, avoid sunlight and/or lurk in the undergrowth for best results.

Like many a Tom Clancy story before, Wildlands makes a show of interrogating its obnoxious premise via the odd self-conscious platitude in dialogue - examples include "it feels like we're the bad guys" or that all-time favourite, "there is no easy answer". If there's any genuine ambiguity to be found in the game, however, it quickly evaporates before the all-importance of Getting The Job Done Whatever The Cost. There are also moments of astonishing bleakness. One cluster of missions sees you tracking down the foreign-born operators who trained up Santa Blanca's elite footsoldiers, many of them former US servicemen. In the process, you might hear a comrade express disgust at the idea that any veteran would sink to helping drug-runners wage war. To which the protagonist curtly responds: "Fighters fight, geldings graze. What are you?"

After banter like that, you might relish the thought of signing up a few potty-mouthed online randoms in place of your AI squad - and multiplayer is definitely Ghost Recon's strongest suite, with match-making a button press away everywhere in the world. The game uses peer-to-peer connections rather than dedicated servers, which means you can expect the occasional freeze when a player disconnects; I've also encountered the odd co-op-specific glitch such as a story mission that refused to complete, or a helicopter that flew without animating, as though gripped in the fist of a giant, invisible toddler. For the most part, though, the networking is slick and robust, allowing players to range through the world freely, spawn on each other, share HUD information and form a squad to complete missions.

This essentially leads to two types of experience. Firstly, there's the kind in which everybody has a mic, everybody knows what they're doing, and you tear through missions like throwing knives through bath foam - one player methodically tagging foes from a hilltop while another snipes every last light source and the other two weave through interiors with silenced pistol and SMG, sweeping ankles and collaring VIPs. Somebody's always around to revive you if you're shot down, and when you all pile into a helicopter, you can rest assured that the pilot won't fly straight into a cliff. This side of Wildlands co-op is a subdued waltz of sightlines, go-orders and orderly retreats, of crawling through cornfields in formation and parachuting to pre-agreed vantage points around an airfield.

You're free to pay as much or as little attention to the host in co-op as you like, but beware - you might be kicked if you stray from the task at hand.

And then there's the other kind of co-op, where you bleed out in a tangled mass of flaming car hulks because the nearest squadmate has decided to re-spec his shotgun in the midst of mortar bombardment, and the other two come hurtling over the ridge in a tractor. Later, you're sneaking up on a mission-critical NPC when a friendly lobs a flashbang at you. Then somebody else decides to create a diversion by getting an eight-wheel APC jammed in a doorway. You fail the mission, needless to say, but that's all fine and dandy, because there's a busy road near the spawn, and nothing washes out the taste of defeat like rolling a milk truck to the bottom of a scenic hillside. It's the choice, in fewer words, between a deft team stealth experience and a giddy open world free-for-all - and a decent fit either way for any Grand Theft Auto Online player looking for a change of air.

It's easier to ignore the game's fundamental toxicity and hand-worn elements in co-op, but all that's still there at the back of your mind, like the smell of something burning in a crowded room. Earlier in the week I asked whether the Ubisoft open world had run out of steam. After a few days in the Wildlands I think the answer is a hesitant 'no' - few development studios are capable of landscapes as grand yet delicately worked as this, but the methods by which we traverse and uncover them are overdue a rethink, and the concept of a godlike special operator killing without undue compunction is rotten to the core. Wildlands is an environment worth lingering over, but the mechanics and themes it propagates are wearing extremely thin.

Super Mario Run review

2017-03-10T17:28:00.001-08:00

Is it a spoiler to say there are ghost houses in Super Mario Run? If so, my apologies. Consider yourself spoiled. And yet, because this is Mario - and because these are ghost houses - the spoiler does not really spoil very much. I only mention the ghost houses at all because the first one - level 2-1 - was the moment at which I first sat up and started really paying attention. It's the first level where you glimpse once again what makes Mario special: not that he basically invented the trappings of the platformer, to the extent that playing through the opening few levels of his new iPhone autorunner puts you into a kind of cognitive tailspin as you realise how much it reminds you of all other iPhone autorunners and, in turn, how much all other iPhone autorunners remind you of Mario. What makes Mario special is that, even deep within the clutch of genre conventions that he created - a clutch so few perfectly good games ever escape from - he wriggles free and shows you something new.

The best example of this sort of thing - other than 2-1, which I'm going to get to in a minute - comes in one of the New Super Mario games for the 3DS, a series that Super Mario Run takes many of its cues from. I can't remember which of the old New games I'm thinking of, and that's probably part of the point. Anyway, Mario's travelling upwards inside a Koopa castle of some kind, stuck on an elevator that rises through a tower, passing coins, passing platforms, passing enemies. And then a spiked boulder falls onto the screen from the left. It rolls towards Mario. You jump. He jumps. And then it rolls off the right-hand side of the screen. Phew!

Except because this world wraps left-to-right, the boulder's back. It rolls in again. Mario jumps again. And then it disappears again. And then it returns again. This is the gimmick of this level: a boulder, an elevator, an old trick of platformers where every exit stage right is an entrance stage left. Mario, this late in his career, still has the imagination to turn all this into a sort of perpetual motion machine. The boulder keeps rolling through the hard interior of the Mario Pinball table you're apparently stuck in, the passing level furniture making each new journey it takes fresh and surprising and playful.

So, really, wringing a ghost house from this kind of set-up is no big deal.

Until 2-1, Super Mario Run felt constricted to me. A side-scrolling autorunner in which your only real control of Mario is to tell him to jump - and, measured by how long you touch the screen with your finger, to tell him how high to jump. It's weird with Mario to have most basic freedom of movement removed. It's weird that the screen is set to portrait rather than landscape, too, so that your view of the road ahead is limited.

And then 2-1, and it all clicks. That jump? That jump counts for far more than it usually does in Mario. Crazy as it sounds, it's grown in range and scope as a traversal option, encouraging you to view each level as a stack of tiers you must move between to avoid dangers, to snag the best trinkets. And the portrait orientation? It's working double-time for you. It's enforcing a kind of attentiveness, as you react to things that are flung at you with little notice, and it's also - this is brilliant - allowing for moments when the world wraps around left to right, and you're not so much moving from one side of the screen as you are from the bottom to the top.

2-1. A ghost house. A screen filled with platforms at different heights, doors on different platforms, and jump pads to send you up and down. Go to the right, reappear at the left, and none of the doors seem to actually take you somewhere new. How do you get out of this mess? You start by playing with the level's height, with the jump pad's willingness to deposit you at different elevations, at which point Mario's autorunning becomes a kind of programming challenge in which you can pretty much work out where you're going to drop from one platform to the next, and then reverse-engineer the moves you need to make to get to the places you want to visit. Mario often feels like a timeline in these 2D games, sweeping across beautifully choreographed worlds, triggering the things around him and bringing them to life as he goes. That's never been truer than it is here: Mario is moving, and rather than control him in the traditional sense, you have to keep up with him and make the most of his pathfinding.

Again and again, Super Mario Run surprises you in interesting technical ways. More than any Mario in memory, it's very clearly two different games folded into one. (This split personality is always present, but here it's really, really obvious.) The first game is the breezy throwback platformer even a lapsed fan can race through in a single lazy morning. 24 short stages, four of which are available for free, the rest of which come with a simple one-off payment of �7.99 - and that's all you'll be spending on this game as far as I can tell. The stages are filled with familiar sights - deserts, mushroom mountains, floating pirate ship armadas - and they refuse to outstay their welcome, 100 seconds on the clock most of the time, with double-speed audio clicking in for the last 10 seconds alone. There are a few new moves - mantling is new, as is a mid-air brake sort of deal that allows you to lose momentum and pick a landing spot - and there are a few new blocks. Pause blocks to give you a breath, extra time blocks to give you a few extra seconds. Nothing special. Grab coins, jump on enemies (there's a neat twist here, in that you'll typically vault over foes automatically now, so you need to jump again at just the right moment to score a kill; it feels fantastic) and make it to the flag. Mario 101.

Except it's not. Race through Super Mario Run and it's a breeze, but you'll be missing more than you're seeing. These levels may not have great breadth, but they have serious depths, and if you __play this game as it truly wants to be played you'll find it's perhaps the most immediately exacting Mario in recent memory.

Even scraping through levels you'll see this stuff lurking in there: an unspoken demand that you return at some point and ace all of this. Coins will appear in seemingly impossible-to-reach places. Different paths will be hinted at, and yet, how would you even get there? Occasionally you'll trigger a fountain of coins whose unfolding movement suggests that you'll have to be travelling backwards to reach them, but there are no apparent means of travelling backwards here.

Look deeper and it starts to click. Those new moves, like the mantling, and a fresh emphasis on the wall-jump, reinforce the real gimmick - that you're not controlling Mario here so much as using his skillset and the beautifully designed environments to short-circuit the auto-running forward momentum of the game and reach new parts of the world. Tantalising coins and a friends leaderboard are all it's taken to make this work: Mario has finally turned his attention to autorunning, and first time out he's decided to subvert the autorunning core.

That's Mario. So is the Toad Rally mode that supports the campaign, in which you race through remixed levels, chasing the ghost runs of your friends as you compete to grab the most coins and earn the most applause from Toads for performing stylishly. Mario Parkour, in essence, and the Toads you collect for besting your friends unlock new buildings that you can place in the Kingdom Builder. This in turn is a nice bit of compulsive downtime in which you rebuild the Mushroom Kingdom as you see fit, finding new playable characters as you go.

All of this stuff's great, but that short campaign is enough for me anyway - a short campaign that turns out to be anything but short, of course, as you return, again and again, to repeatable stages that grow more fiendish as the doodads you're collecting become increasingly inaccessible. It's the obvious effortlessness of the design, the clarity of Mario thinking, that gets to me here. Restaging a classic mini-boss from Mario 3, for example, except this time you're stuck running left to right and changing direction once you hit a wall. It's practically boss against boss, both of you trapped in their open patterns. Then, restaging it again, except this time a tiny addition - flamethrowers in the corners of the room to prevent lurking - make it an entirely different kind of challenge, and requiring an entirely different kind of mastery. That's just two moments in just two levels. Imagine what the ghost houses are like!

And throughout this, the lingering thought: I had Mario on a watch once. A simple LCD thing with four chunky buttons under a tiny screen. Clearly not the work of Nintendo itself, it was a dud, albeit a dud I loved messing around with on the school bus. Still, it was not Mario. Not really.

Super Mario Run? This is Mario, for the first time in an age, running on hardware that was not designed by Mario's people. And you know what's frightening? When Mario's people are involved, they make the hardware feel like they designed it anyway. Super Mario Run's not just ingenious and demanding and infuriating and delightful. It's a game born of a deep understanding of its platform.

Samsung KS7000 4K TV review

2017-03-09T18:27:00.007-08:00

Our recommendation for Xbox One S and PS4 Pro owners with a bit of money to spare.

When we first tested Samsung's KS7000, the all-important game mode wasn't available when viewing HDR material, instead limiting the display to movie mode and a mammoth 117ms of input latency - and that was a massive shame. Samsung's display technology is excellent, its HDR implementation has much to commend it, and in many other respects, both the KS7000 and its nearest US equivalent, the KS8000, are best in class in the mid-range market sector. Well, the good news is that game mode is now available with HDR via a recent firmware update, which means that you get all the benefits of Samsung's technology with a class-leading 23ms of lag, regardless of whether you're in HDR mode or viewing standard material.

Our experience suggests that there are still a few random firmware bugs that addressing - such as HDR sometimes being displayed as SDR. And there's also the matter of the user having to manually adjust various settings when using game mode in combination with HDR to display this format correctly, making set-up more difficult than it need be (something we've addressed in a video further down this page). But in terms of price vs performance, the KS7000 now moves ahead of our previous mid-range pick - the Panasonic DX750.

Beyond these teething problems the KS7000 is a superb 4K display that offers up an enticing entry point into getting a quality HDR experience. In fact, for the money you are getting superb all round performance with low input lag no other manufacturer can match with their 2016 ranges when displaying HDR. As expected there are some caveats at the sub-�1000 price point, but these are things that apply to most TVs in the mid-range bracket, and can only be avoided by spending considerably more money on a flagship high-end display.

Samsung KS7000 specs

Here's a short run down on the specifications of the KS7000. Low input lag, deep black levels, high peak brightness, and a wide colour gamut are the key selling points. The TV is certified UHD Premium, which means it hits the standards required for achieving accurate HDR playback.

Game mode latency: 23ms
Movie mode latency: 117ms
Panel Type: VA
Peak Brightness: 1000 nits
Black Level: 0.035 nits (at 138 nits)
Colour Gamut: 96 per cent DCI P3
HDR Support: UHD Premium
24p Support: Yes (judder-free)
Motion: 350 lines, minimal ghosting
Backlight dimming: Yes, edge-lit local dimming (ten vertical columns, five always active)

The Samsung KS7000 is available in 49-inch, 55-inch, 60-inch and 65-inch variants.

First impressions reveal a sleek minimalist design with a super-slim bezel and glossy panel. The two-piece stand smoothly slots into place and matches the design of the bezel, although as both feet are located towards the edge of the display it may be difficult to fit the KS7000 on many AV racks. Materials also feel solid to the touch, though upon close inspection it's clear that build quality could be better. For example, the back of the panel is glued to the front bezel instead of these parts being screwed together. This can lead to some separation between the two leaving a small gap (something that is starting to happen on our review model). It's not something we'd expect to find on a mid-range display and the issue also appears on the considerably more expense KS8000 as well.

Gallery:

Buy the Samsung KS7000 from Amazon

Panel uniformity is also somewhat mixed on our unit, with the left side appearing visibly brighter, particularly when viewing HDR content - as the ramped up backlight makes it easy to spot these issues. However, the problem doesn't stand out noticeably when SDR content is displayed due to the reduced light output. It's worth bearing in mind that panel uniformity is random, and isn't indicative of the performance for this TV across multiple sets, so your mileage may vary.

In terms of connections, most of the inputs are located on the One Connect box - a breakout hub that features 4x HDMI, 2x USB 2.0, and 2x RF inputs, along with an optical output. There's no SCART, component or composite AV connectors to be found, so adaptors are required to hook up legacy sources.

Moving to the back of the TV itself, we have inputs for the One Connect box, USB (just the one), and LAN for hooking up the TV to the internet via ethernet. We really like what Samsung has done here, as it allows us to hide all of the cables down the back of an AV rack, rather than having these dangle out from the sides of the TV. This also makes it easy to add and remove devices from the set if it is wall mounted. It would be nice to have some extra HDMI inputs on the TV itself, but for the most part the One Connect box is a good 'catch-all' solution.

Here is a full breakdown of the settings on the 2016 Samsung range, with recommendations on which options you should use to get the best picture for gaming.

Picture quality

After a basic set-up, game mode provides a decent image with good colour accuracy, though whites feature a cyan tinge that imparts a cooler look to the picture. Movie mode is more balanced in this regard, and if you're not calibrating your display, this is the best preset to use for watching films and TV shows. However, when gaming it's arguable that you don't necessarily need completely accurate images to get an enjoyable experience and for most people game mode delivers a suitably natural image after some basic tweaking (our settings video above has you covered there).

Display jargon explained

Nits/cdm²: Measurement of light output. Used to show performance in terms of brightness and black levels on displays. Nits and cdm2 measurements are the same and are interchangeable. Cdm2 is most commonly used, but the as the UHD Alliance specify metrics in nits it's likely that this measurement will be more used more often in the future.
Rec 709: The colour gamut that 1080p content and regular Blu-Rays are mastered to.
Rec 2020: The colour gamut standard chosen for UHD content, which covers a large part of spectrum visible by the human eye. However, as no consumer display is close to hitting this colour space in the near future UHD Blu-Rays are mastered to DCI P3 instead, which is then held within a Rec 2020 container.
DCI P3: A wider colour space than Rec 709. This is used as the mastering standards for cinema production and for UHD Blu-rays.
Panel bit-depth: 8-bit/10-bit. Most HDTVs use 8-bit panels, which provides 256 shades for every primary colour, while 10-bit panels can reproduce 1024 shades, delivering more gradients and tones throughout the entire range.

That said, game mode calibrates to a high standard, with the KS7000 delivering a natural picture free from any visible inaccuracies - an improvement clearly visible when playing games and watching movies in standard dynamic range. Performance here is also backed up by deep black levels (0.03 nits @ 114 nits brightness) and solid motion handling for an LCD. While motion resolution is limited to around 350 lines, there is less ghosting compared to our Panasonic DX750 and Samsung's own KU6400. Smearing is reduced and as such there is more clarity to moving images compared to other 4K HDTVs we've tested so far.

Motion clarity can be further improved in movie mode too, via black frame insertion and frame interpolation - the former producing more plasma-like motion, though at the expense of introducing visible flicker. However, due to high levels of input lag in this mode we cannot recommend using this feature when gaming.

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On the other hand, viewing angles suffer from washing out the picture when viewed off-axis - a common trait of VA panels. So, to get the most accurate image you'll need to view the display head-on otherwise images lack depth and colour saturation. Unfortunately, this is a compromise that is required to enjoy deep black levels and high contrast on an LCD display. You'll need to go for an OLED in order to have wide viewing angles while preserving deep black levels.

Whether we are gaming or watching UHD Blu-rays, the KS7000 delivers impressive 4K images with plenty of depth and detail across both bright and dark areas. Samsung's PR agency sent us the 49-inch model for review, and as such, details on the KS7000 didn't pop out quite as much on our larger 58-inch Panasonic DX750, though games still exhibit a clear upgrade in clarity and resolution over a similarly sized 1080p screen. Titles like ReCore and Forza Horizon 3 really shine on this display when running at 60fps on a high-end PC, with decent motion handling and balanced images creating a very immersive experience. Likewise, PS4 Pro titles such as The Last Of Us Remastered also look great.

The good news is that accurate images don't need to be sacrificed in order to enjoy a virtually lag-free experience when using game mode. Here input lag is around 23ms in standard and high dynamic range modes, resulting in crisp controller response where we simply cannot detect any delay during gameplay. Button presses and turns of the analogue sticks feel instantaneous, and this makes the KS7000 ideal for fast-paced games that require crisp controller response.

The HDR experience

It's great to see such a low level of input lag on offer and performance is also available when playing HDR content. The HDR presentation on the KS7000 is excellent given the limitations of the TV using an edge-lit panel. There is plenty of impact across bright highlights, with the display's ability to resolve 1000 nits of brightness while accurately displaying information up to 4000 nits (via tonemapping) providing a naturally punchy and detailed experience that you won't find on entry level 4K TVs. Dark scenes also turn in a solid showing due to the panel's ability to provide inky black levels whilst retaining plenty of detail in the shadows. The company's backlight dimming solution works well here with night-time and dark scenes featuring decent black levels.

There are limitations with an edge-lit solution, but the KS7000 generally does a very good job at controlling the amount of haloing and light pumping that is usually present on displays featuring dynamic backlighting. The KS7000 uses a pseudo local dimming implementation that consists of 10 vertical columns, and at least half of those are always on. This helps to reduce blooming and allow for more precision than basic global dimming would allow. That said, in demanding scenes with mixed images, darker elements of the picture do wash out as brighter elements appears on screen, which takes away some depth from the affected areas.

Gallery:

Thankfully, Samsung's dynamic backlight implementation is more refined than Panasonic's, so there is less light pumping on the KS7000 when compared to the DX750, and the HDR experience is better as a result. It doesn't come close to matching true local dimming displays like the Samsung KS9500, the Sony ZD9, or self-emitting displays like LG's B6 OLED, but the results are very good given the limitations of an edge-lit display.

In the �1000 price bracket, the KS7000 easily delivers the best HDR experience where low latency gaming, colour accuracy, and preserving highlight details are concerned. Games look and feel wonderful to __play in HDR and at 4K resolution in general. That said, there are a few annoyances when using game mode and HDR. For example, when a HDR signal is feed to the TV the backlight automatically ramps up to maximum in movie mode, allowing for the full dynamic range to be display.

However, with game mode the backlight must be manually increased to its maximum point to display HDR correctly. Smart LED also needs to be set to high, and colour space to auto to get the most accurate HDR experience. It's also worth pointing out that UHD Colour needs to be turned on for HDMI inputs before external sources will recognise the KS7000 as a HDR capable display.

Here we cover everything you need to do for the optimal HDR picture on the 2016 Samsung HDTV range. We also recommend setting up two HDMI inputs - one for HDR, one for standard video output. This is a lot easier than changing the settings every time you switch format.

The situation here is far from ideal, and it's not possible to simply 'plug and play' and get an accurate HDR experience. In fact, HDR is disabled by default and this will cause confusion for casual users who aren't clued up on what to do. Annoyingly, some of the changes made to game mode when viewing HDR will have to be reversed when displaying a SDR source, as settings for game mode are currently not saved independently for HDR and SDR, unlike with movie mode. We understand that Samsung are looking into resolving this in a future firmware update, but right now getting HDR to work with low input lag on the KS7000 is more complicated than it needs to be.

Scaling quality

While the KS7000 looks its best when fed a native 4K signal, the vast majority of content available is still at 1080p resolution or below. As such scaling quality is very important, and it's one area where Samsung does a very good job. The KS7000 resizes images with slightly more refinement than the KU6000 series, showing up fewer artefacts across all resolutions. 1080p appears crisp and clear from regular viewing distances, and even up close artefacts are kept to a minimum. Samsung's smooth scaling algorithm ensures that jaggies and unwanted stair steps are nowhere to be seen. As expected, the KS7000 doesn't match the raw sharpness of a native 1080p TV displaying full HD content (even with overscan enabled), but this is less perceivable when viewed at range.

Lower resolutions don't hold up so well, and while both 720p and standard definition appear a little sharper than on the KU6400, games using these resolutions look visibly worse than on a 1080p screen. 720p looks acceptable enough (though soft) and the smooth scaling means that the usual pixel popping and roughness seen in lower quality scaling solutions are avoided here. The results aren't massively better than on the KU6400 we have in the office, but it is a mild step up that is appreciable on a 49-inch screen and it's some of the best scaling we've seen on a 4K screen so far.

Screen photography isn't ideal but gives you an idea of how the KS7000 scales resolutions below 4K. 1080p sources are well handled with minimal artefacts. 720p looks rather soft compared to the same resolution displayed on a 1080p screen.

Here's a closer look at scaling factoring in the most common resolutions. 1080p looks excellent, and 720p is fairly decent, but standard definition is very poor. 720p and 480p are displayed far more sharply on a native 1080p panel, although the KS7000 handles these sources to a higher standard than the Panasonic DX750.

Samsung KS7000: the Digital Foundry verdict

At the sub-�1000 price-point, it's hard to find a 4K screen that does HDR justice, especially while catering to gamers' needs by featuring low input latency. Many displays lack a high enough level of peak brightness, or struggle to display a wide colour gamut, and even lack backlight dimming altogether. Coupled with potentially high levels of input lag if game mode isn't available, the choice is pretty limited for those on a budget, or who are looking at smaller screen sizes. The Panasonic DX750 is a solid choice, but Samsung's KS7000 is a step up in several areas, with super low input lag, wider colour gamut and superior backlight dimming. With game mode now working with HDR content, it's our first choice for those wanting an excellent introduction to 4K and HDR without paying a premium price.

The excellent tracking of DCI P3 in the Rec 2020 gamut allows for accurate HDR images when gaming and watching movies, with saturated colours that appear natural, while the TV's ability to hit 1000 nits peak brightness adds plenty of impact to specular highlights - especially as details up to 4000 nits are resolved on content mastered with this peak brightness level. The clincher here is the super low level of input lag - just 22ms. With game mode now working across both SDR and HDR, it's possible to have a great experience whether you're playing at 4K or 1080p resolution. The edge-lit dimming has limitations in demanding mixed-brightness scenes, although the implementation is still generally very good.

Overall, available for around �1000 the KS7000 is the best HDTV available for 4K gaming and HDR, taking point over the Panasonic DX750 we purchased for the office back in August. There are better performing displays available, but if you want to make that jump you'll need to spend considerably more for a high-end model - and at �1800 and more, these aren't cheap. Retailing for as low as �799 in the recent Black Friday sales, we'd highly recommend picking up the KS7000 if you're looking for display that features great all-round performance combined with extremely low levels of input lag. Our only major complaint here is the convoluted way of setting up HDR to display properly in game mode, but hopefully this will be resolved sooner rather than later. Aside from that, the KS7000 is a great 4K display for both gaming and movie enthusiasts with an attractive price tag to match.

Final Fantasy 15 review

2017-03-09T18:27:00.005-08:00

Final Fantasy has always been at its best in its more personal moments. Apocalyptic meteors, time-travelling sorceresses and fishy floating physical manifestations of your sins are all well and good, but they mean little if the story doesn't give you something a bit closer to home to relate to. Finding out it's who you are rather than where you came from that matters, learning to trust other people no matter their background, navigating tricky love triangles and attempting to get the girl even when she's busy conjuring monsters out of living statues - those are the story beats to remember. Stopping the bad guy and saving the world are rarely the most memorable moments from a Final Fantasy game. Characters like Vivi, Nanaki, Cyan and Galuf are the beating heart of these fables, characters in whom we see a nugget of truth or a moment of kinship, whether they're a talking, tattooed wolf-lion thing or not.

Final Fantasy 15

Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
Platform: Reviewed on PS4
Availability: Out November 29th on PS4 and Xbox One

Final Fantasy 15, in many crucial ways, understands this. Central to every smaller story it wants to tell is friendship; the kind of coming-of-age friendship that feels like, and often is, the most important thing in the world to those bound by it. It was a brilliantly underrated stroke to frame this Final Fantasy so decisively as a road trip - of course that's what Final Fantasy games always have been - but it proves to be a compelling device that fits this more modernised take on a Final Fantasy universe particularly well. It provides a moreish loop during the open-world sections; roll up to a new outpost, chat to a local tipster to uncover nearby side quests and monster hunts, and then turning in a couple of bounties before settling down for the evening, cooking up some stat-boosting meals with your boys at camp and cashing in the day's EXP.

The open world section, where you're tooling around in your car with your best buds and taking on assorted tasks at your leisure, is where Final Fantasy 15 is at its best. The world, while perhaps smaller than some fans may be expecting, crams an impressive number of activities into its imposing peaks and murky depths. Seek out hidden dungeons in the far-reaches and you'll take on unique bosses to unlock Noct's 13 ancestral Armiger weapons, and in your downtime you can spend some quality one-on-one time with your friends, getting up early in the morning to help Prompto with an impromptu modelling session, or assisting Ignis in stealing his specs back from a naughty black Chocobo hoarder. Different locales come with their own ecology and weather forecasts, and though you'll soon tire of driving the car (GTA this isn't - you have such little control it's often just simpler to have Ignis drive for you), cruising from town to town, spotting nostalgic series references and watching the wildlife pass by with an early Final Fantasy soundtrack twinkling over the car stereo is a cathartic experience for old-school fans.

Combat is, on the whole, a pleasant surprise - at turns deeply satisfying while frequently frustrating. Noctis' ability to summon weapons from mid-air, switch them out at any moment and zip around the battlefield by way of warp-striking is fast-paced and empowering, and that the development team have created an action-based battle system that still feels true to the Final Fantasy spirit is an achievement in itself. There's a spectacle in seeing your party working together to perform Link Strikes and Blindsides, but a totally unreliable lock-on button and a camera that simply cannot keep up with you - particularly where boss battles are concerned - often try their best to spoil the fun. A more intuitive way of keeping your team healed than frequently pausing the action to administer individual curative items would have been welcomed too - take a tip from me and acquire Ignis' Regroup Technique early on to save yourself a fortune in Hi-Potions.

What up YouTube it's your boy Prompto, here in Hammerhead with some jam!

Magic, however, is under-utilised. Your lack of control over where the other characters will be at any given moment in battle means that throwing a spell into the mix is often not worth the risk, given that it negatively affects anyone it hits. And since spells are finite, equipping them to a character that isn't Noctis is finicky business - you won't be notified when those spells are depleted and you have to craft and equip more, for example. I focused almost exclusively on switching weapons and just incorporating those with elemental effects when necessary, and never felt at a strategic disadvantage.

Other, more character-led additions to gameplay are where Final Fantasy 15 shines brightest. The cooking feature, while simple, is brilliantly engaging, and I often found myself going well out of my way to harvest new ingredients or track down new recipes for Ignis to master. The stat boosts that these meals provide are almost incidental to the opportunity of salivating over new, painstakingly realised concoctions. Prompto's photography skill, while not as interactive, is similarly endearing and is genuinely quite moving later in the game, as new modes become available for the guys to take procedurally generated cute selfies that just happen to be prior to important, emotional scenes. It's a clever touch that these photo collections are reviewed at the end of the day, too, as it means that you're often looking at these moments of light-hearted innocence with the benefit of hindsight. That the characters look over the photos together with you also adds touching little voiced insights to their thoughts and feelings at key story beats.

It's harder for fully voiced, realistically rendered characters to be quite as endearing to players as the pliable party members of old, but all four of Final Fantasy 15's main party members are both likeable and familiar, bolstered by surprisingly well-scripted dialogue and voice acting that make light of their fantastical surroundings in a deliciously self-referential way that feels fresh for an FF title. You believe in their friendship, and you believe that suddenly freed of their responsibilities in the city and given a badass car to cruise around in, they're having the time of their lives.

Prompto's love of taking photographs at random intervals makes the experience feel all the more intimate. Who wouldn't want a Chocobo selfie?

A drawback of having all four of the main party members so thoroughly fleshed out, however, is that every other individual introduced in the game feels one-dimensional by comparison. None of the supporting cast are given anything that even remotely resembles a satisfactory story arc, and characters originally touted to be important in the endless promotional materials and trailers for the game are completely dropped later in the story, long before we're given a chance to care about or even properly meet them. No-one seems to have any motivation for doing the things that they do, other than furthering the plot, and that goes double for the utterly unremarkable antagonist, who lacks even a fraction of the magnetism of a Kefka or Sephiroth.

Final Fantasy 15's biggest problem is that despite a strong core cast it's all far too vague, lacking the messy, human appeal of previous titles, which could distil celestial struggles and global plights down to something much more real and relatable. Final Fantasy 15 talks in sweeping generalisations and barely stops to tally up the human cost. When it does, it fumbles; there are several moments later in the game when you're given an important bit of information regarding a major character, but the wider context is never addressed and, in one instance, it's never brought up or mentioned again. It's disappointing how 15 creates some of the most well-rounded characters in a Final Fantasy in a long time time, but seems entirely unsure about what to do with them.

The plotting is quite bafflingly bad; nothing of note actually plays out in front of you for most of the game. In fact, most of the inciting events take place either off-camera or in Kingsglaive, the full-length tie-in feature film. Having watched both that and the Brotherhood anime, which also serves as a prequel to the game, I was able to follow what was going on, but I have a strong feeling anyone who doesn't go in armed with all that exposition will be at a distinct disadvantage. It seems as though Square Enix sensed this too, making a last-minute addition of quick cuts of Kingsglaive and the Omen CG trailer to a few key cutscenes, which truthfully feel like they will only confuse things further for anyone unaware of their origins, as they very clearly do not belong in the game. These moments of exposition should have been a priority and a case of show, not tell within the main event itself, surely?

The machinations of rival realm Niflheim are left largely unexplored, and you'll tire of seeing these same enemies by the game's closing.

That's the main, repeating issue with Final Fantasy 15; it never lives up to the grandiose expectations it sets for itself. Boss fights become gruelling battles of endurance against towering HP sponges - and nothing dulls the sheen of an an epic moment quite like dragging it out for far too long. Summons, despite their size, __play a smaller role than you might expect. You can't call upon them at any time you like, as with previous titles; instead certain conditions must be met before they become available. This means that you can go through an entire major boss fight, where an Astral's help in whittling down a health bar would have been heartily welcomed, without ever having the option of calling upon them, but then later they'll make an appearance during some small-fry skirmish with a handful of imperial soldiers out on the open-world map. Granted, it certainly makes their presence all the more impressive when they do decide to show up, but it isn't the most practical of systems.

And yes, Final Fantasy 15 does become pointedly linear in its later stages. Yet it isn't the end of the world; there's still plenty to do away from the main questline, and the opportunity is there to pursue other challenges both before and after the final credits roll. While still taking time to indulge in a fair amount of side quests and hunts, I wrapped up the main storyline in just under 30 hours, and 10 hours after that I'm still finding plenty of other things to do back in the open world. Let me be clear, though - that the latter stages of the game are weaker is not because they are linear, but because they are disappointingly sparse, with several hours dedicated to Noctis moving through boring, cramped, windowless corridors of repeating assets and enemies. It feels counter-intuitive for Square Enix to have created such an engaging and beguiling world for players to care about, only to completely isolate you at a crucial story juncture. You could argue that this is intentional, that by stripping everything back players are forced to focus on the main narrative (and Square Enix itself has claimed this), but the fact is that this long stretch simply isn't fun, and accompanied by an omnipresent villainous voiceover which regularly repeats lines, the whole sequence feels rather rushed and cheap - an afterthought to the lush, exciting open plains of Leide and Duscae. It's one of the few times throughout Final Fantasy 15's running time that the tortured, ten-year development cycle makes itself painfully obvious.

This troubled history is one of the reasons Final Fantasy 15 is so difficult to pin down. For a series universally known and loved for its emphasis on storytelling, can I recommend a Final Fantasy game despite its unsatisfying story? Instinctively I'd say no, but even as someone who prized the narratives of previous games I still found myself going back to 15's early stages to seek out new challenges after I'd concluded the main campaign. And it's clear that Final Fantasy 15 benefits from a vision, one that emboldened its developers to try new things and reinvent a series while reclaiming the scale that its most ardent fans are used to. In chasing that scale the bigger picture can sometimes get a little obscured, but importantly Final Fantasy 15 retains that love of smaller stories, the ones that often prove to be so much more memorable.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti review

2017-03-09T18:27:00.003-08:00

On a platform with near infinite levels of configurability, just how do you demonstrate whether a new GPU really has the power to deliver a quality, native 4K experience at 60 frames per second? In our testing with the new GTX 1080 Ti, we established a very simple test criteria: if the new card's performance at ultra HD matches up to the 1080p prowess of GTX 970 at the same settings, we have a winner. We're perhaps one generational step away from a complete match, but Nvidia's new GPU king gets astonishingly close. In some cases, it's actually even faster - a remarkable turnout bearing in mind the 4x increase in pixel-count.

And for us, that's the comparison that really sets out what this product is capable of. It gives users an idea of 'real world' performance based on an experience many PC gamers can relate to, but there's another important yardstick too - whether Nvidia really has handed in a performance uplift over its last GPU king - Titan X Pascal. Across the years, the tinkering Nvidia has carried out on its 'big chip' Titan products to create consumer-orientated cards has involved halving RAM and cutting CUDA cores, with barely perceptible results. GTX 1080 Ti's cuts are even more of an irrelevance.

In fact, Nvidia has boosted GPU frequency by 50MHz, giving the new card a very slight performance lead over the Titan X Pascal in terms of shader throughput (similar to the Titan, the specced boost clock is way lower than its real-life performance, where it regularly hits over 1850MHz). Memory cutbacks vs Titan this time around are limited to the omission of a single module of Micron G5X RAM, giving the Ti 11GB rather than 12GB. This has the knock-on effect of dropping ROP count from 96 to 88, with a small drop to L2 cache, while the Titan's 384-bit memory bus is cut down to a 352-bit interface instead. Nvidia mitigates this with faster G5X modules with 10 per cent more bandwidth than the Titan's, so even memory throughput sees a very small increase.

The bottom line is this - the only real difference between GTX 1080 Ti and Titan X Pascal is 1GB of VRAM: memory that will likely remain completely untouched for a long, long time. Nvidia has even retained Titan's integer compute performance in its entirety - even though its gaming applications here are basically non-existent. In effect, Titan X Pascal is now an irrelevance to all potential GPU consumers, whether professional or gaming. In effect, the same product is now $500 cheaper.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti specs

Based on the same GP102 processor as the Titan X Pascal, there's the same CUDA core count in GTX 1080 Ti, along with increased clocks. However, we lose 1GB of VRAM which has a knock-on effect on other areas of the spec. The move to faster 11gbps G5X modules offsets the loss of bandwidth incurred by the removal of the memory module.

CUDA Cores: 3584
Base Clock: 1480MHz
Boost Clock: 1582MHz
Texture Units: 224
Texel Fill-Rate: 331.5 Gigatexels/sec
Memory Clock: 11GHz
Memory Bandwidth: 484GB/s
ROPs: 88
L2 Cache Size: 2816KB
TDP: 250W
Transistors: 12 billion
Die Size: 471mm²
Process: 16nm FinFet

The $699/�699 price-point of the GTX 1080 Ti is clearly a significant price-cut compared to the insane excess of the Titan X Pascal - and while both of these cards offer superb 4K performance, it is worth pointing out that you're still paying a premium for the product. Essentially, this card is 40 per cent more expensive than GTX 1080, for 31 per cent more performance. [Correction: The initial version of this review had incorrect pricing information - this has been corrected]

GTX 1080 Ti has further improvements too, specifically a redesigned cooling set-up that sees airflow improve by 2x compared to the Titan. We did have issues keeping the more expensive card cool while overclocking, so this is a welcome improvement, but it comes at a cost: the dual-link DVI port on the rear is removed, leaving three DisplayPorts and an HDMI 2.0 output. Out of all the inputs to drop, DVI is the obvious choice - it can't output 4K at 60Hz - but there's still a lot of DVI monitors out there and we hope that this doesn't become a standard for more mainstream-oriented GPUs.

Rich presents his video review of the GTX 1080 Ti. There's a super-abundance of graphics power here - but what's the best way to use it?

Side-by-side with GTX 1080 Founders Edition, the new Ti looks and feels identical otherwise, but the good news is that Nvidia doesn't feel the need to charge users any extra for the privilege of owning a reference card this time around. And that's just as well: GTX 1080 Ti might be a cheaper Titan, but $699/�699 is still a massive chunk of change for a graphics card. With that in mind, it's all going to come down to performance, and we had a couple of questions going in. Firstly, does the GTX 1080 Ti really out-perform Titan X Pascal, and secondly, can the card deliver the promised 35 per cent uplift in frame-rates compared to the standard GTX 1080?

We're going to kick off our performance metrics with a look at 4K - where the Ti performs best - but based on our existing Titan X Pascal testing, the previous performance delta with GTX 1080 certainly didn't tally with Nvidia's claims. On paper, the Ti represents a 28 per cent bump in shader performance, but memory bandwidth rises by a much more impressive 51 per cent.

Looking at Nvidia's reviewer's guide, the benchmarks that deliver the biggest improvements are all at 4K, and there's also a tendency to ramp up anti-aliasing. This fully maximises memory bandwidth, producing some terrific gains up against GTX 1080 - but it also results in some very low frame-rates. It's not the way we'd prefer to game or how we'd like to benchmark the hardware. Instead, our tests favour post-process anti-aliasing - lighter on the GPU and more conducive to smoother performance overall. As things stand though, our tests still reveal an average 30.8 per cent uplift in performance. This is entirely in line with what we would expect from a generational leap.

And just one more note before we dive into the benches. All GPUs tested here have been re-benched with the latest drivers from Nvidia and AMD, throwing up some interesting conclusions - first of all, there is a small performance bump across the board and some more significant increases too. GTX 1080 Ti at launch is actually a fair bit faster than Titan X Pascal when the card made its debut - but actually both products now benefit from driver optimisations.

Secondly, Nvidia has clearly put a bit of work into getting Ashes of the Singularity and Hitman DX12 performance up to snuff. Traditionally, AMD sped ahead on equivalent hardware (in this case, GTX 1070 vs R9 Fury X), but no longer. For its part, AMD's R9 Fury X also sees across the board improvement. The Fury's sub-par performance at lower resolutions has been improved in several cases, but it is still the weakest card tested here. Vega can't come soon enough.

It's at 4K where the GTX 1080 Ti really stretches its legs. It's here where the gap between Ti and vanilla 1080 is most pronounced.

3840x2160 (4K)	GTX 1080 Ti	Titan X Pascal	GTX 1080	GTX 1070	R9 Fury X
Assassin's Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA	45.4	42.2	33.0	25.9	23.2
Ashes of the Singularity, Extreme, 0x MSAA, DX12	76.8	76.2	60.2	48.7	48.8
Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x	53.3	51.9	40.3	31.9	32.1
The Division, Ultra, SMAA	52.3	51.3	40.3	32.1	33.3
Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA	55.2	56.1	42.3	33.8	35.1
Hitman, Ultra, SMAA, DX12	75.9	77.0	60.9	48.4	48.4
Rise of the Tomb Raider, Very High, High Textures, SMAA, DX12	60.5	61.8	46.2	36.1	34.0
The Witcher 3, Ultra, Post AA, No HairWorks	64.1	62.8	47.6	37.4	37.6

Assuming a two per cent margin of error in benchmarking, there's very, very little to tell Titan X Pascal and GTX 1080 Ti apart, though there is a pleasant little bump here and there that reflects the additional 50MHz of GPU frequency Nvidia has added to the GTX 1080 Ti. Assassin's Creed Unity, Crysis 3, The Witcher 3 and Rise of the Tomb Raider all post increases of 30 per cent or higher up against the standard GTX 1080, while Far Cry Primal and Hitman show more conservative gains in 25 per cent territory. This kind of distribution is standard fare when we move up from one GPU tier to the next, and represents a decent jump in performance - enough to make 4K gaming at 60fps a reality with only minor tweaks in many modern titles.

Unfortunately we didn't have time to re-bench the GTX 1080 Ti's direct predecessor, the Maxwell-based GTX 980 Ti. However, the GTX 1070 is a touch faster and there's simply no competition between the two cards at 4K resolution: gains range from a minimum of 57 per cent to a maximum of 75 per cent, with the average across all eight games coming in at 65.1 per cent.

There's an unspoken rule that GPU upgrades generally work out best when you skip a generation. Perhaps that will also be the case here, but at 4K resolution, the difference between GTX 980 Ti and 1080 Ti is easily apparent - if you're looking to lock at 60fps at 4K, the new Pascal card gets you there with the less fuss and less compromise. Running both GPUs side by side on a 60Hz screen, the difference is easy to see.

GTX 1080 Ti's performance at 4K is sensational. Watch the video review and you'll note that running our test suite with the new product at 4K vs GTX 970, GTX 1060 and RX 480 at 1080p on ultra settings or equivalent shows performance in the same ballpark on challenging titles including The Witcher 3, The Division and Far Cry Primal. Other titles do fall short though - sometimes dramatically so - requiring further compromise. Compared to GTX 1060, the GTX 1080 Ti has around 3.3x the shader power but only 2.5x the bandwidth. A further bump in computational power, plus a more sizeable boost to memory bandwidth via HBM2 looks like the route to ironing out the kinks on more troublesome titles. We'll be fascinated to see what the next Titan revision holds as a taste of the next-gen GPU power to come.

GTX 1080 Ti offers a 27.3 per cent boost over the standard 1080 across all eight titles tested here. Tomb Raider and the Witcher 3 post the biggest increase at just over 30 per cent.

2560x1440 (1440p)	GTX 1080 Ti	Titan X Pascal	GTX 1080	GTX 1070	R9 Fury X
Assassin's Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA	83.3	83.1	65.1	51.8	42.0
Ashes of the Singularity, Extreme, 0x MSAA, DX12	92.9	94.6	76.0	63.1	64.4
Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x	108.2	107.4	83.4	66.9	66.1
The Division, Ultra, SMAA	90.9	90.9	71.3	57.8	55.7
Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA	100.1	100.8	77.3	62.3	58.3
Hitman, Ultra, SMAA, DX12	127.1	125.5	103.4	83.8	82.9
Rise of the Tomb Raider, Very High, High Textures, SMAA, DX12	116.7	112.5	89.5	69.7	62.0
The Witcher 3, Ultra, Post AA, No HairWorks	109.5	107.0	84.1	68.0	61.4

The GTX 1080's performance bump vs the standard 1080 drops a few percentage points across the board at 2560x1440 resolution. Across the eight titles tested here, we peg it at 27 per cent - although this differential is likely to widen if you're a fan of heavy anti-aliasing solutions such as super-sampling or MSAA. The average here is held back by only relatively small increases in performance in Ashes of the Singularity and Hitman (20 per cent and 23 per cent respectively) - and certainly in the latter, our tests suggest that the GTX 1080 Ti is actually so fast that performance is limited in some scenarios by the CPU, not Nvidia's hardware design. Bearing in mind that we test with an i7 6700K overclocked to 4.6GHz, this is quite an achievement.

It's testament to just how fast GPUs are becoming that the GTX 1080 Ti is capable of running one of the Witcher 3's most demanding scenes pretty consistently at over 100 frames per second (but we're still not going to invoke HairWorks!) while titles that absolutely soak graphics power - like Assassin's Creed Unity and The Division - remain well north of 60fps. GTX 1070 and 1080 remain our 'go to' cards for 1440p gaming, but the additional overhead on offer here is still covetable.

While the raw numbers show the GTX 1080 Ti performing best at 4K, intermediate resolutions between 1440p and ultra HD should show superb results from GTX 1080 Ti - out of all the tests carried out here, only The Division posts a lowest recorded frame-rate under 60fps. This is a point worth bearing out - many PC engines now include high quality upscalers, which can come in handy for stabilising performance on 4K displays. An 85 per cent resolution scale, for example, resolves at 3264x1836, with 90 per cent offering 3456x1728. Both look excellent on ultra HD panels, owing to the extreme pixel density these screens offer - especially in the desktop space.

Yes, of course you can game with GTX 1080 Ti at full HD resolution. However, even an i7 6700K overclocked to 4.6GHz holds back the Ti here.

1920x1080 (1080p)	GTX 1080 Ti	Titan X Pascal	GTX 1080	GTX 1070	R9 Fury X
Assassin's Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA	124.8	121.7	99.3	81.0	66.8
Ashes of the Singularity, Extreme, 0x MSAA, DX12	98.8	99.8	85.5	71.2	75.5
Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x	161.6	159.1	129.1	106.7	102.3
The Division, Ultra, SMAA	125.3	127.3	98.6	81.6	73.7
Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA	134.4	132.3	107.7	90.4	75.9
Hitman, Ultra, SMAA, DX12	153.3	152.1	133.4	112.6	106.4
Rise of the Tomb Raider, Very High, High Textures, SMAA, DX12	173.3	167.0	133.9	107.7	86.5
The Witcher 3, Ultra, Post AA, No HairWorks	138.9	136.8	114.6	95.1	79.2

We're including these 1080p results for a couple of reasons - but we simply can't recommend GTX 1080 Ti for gaming at what is now a relatively low resolution. GTX 1060 and 1070 make much more sense for full HD gameplay - beyond that, you're leaving a lot of performance on the table by using anything more powerful. However, users of 120Hz 1080p displays may be looking to this product to deliver gameplay performance more in line with their screen refresh, so the numbers are worth running. And with the average frame-rates here settling well above 100fps in many cases, it might seem like a good pairing - but the raw benchmarks do not reflect the reality of what it actually feels like to game like this.

In short, many of our test titles lose a big chunk of their performance very suddenly, at any given point. Typically, the more the CPU has to calculate - for example, intense physics in Crysis 3 or a detail-packed vista in Far Cry Primal - the more we see the processor becoming the limiting factor, resulting in a sudden lurch downwards with in-game frame-rates.

Some games do scale better than others: for example, dropping down from the ultra to the high preset on Frostbite titles can help stabilise performance beyond 100fps, but otherwise, minimums are often in 80-90fps territory, even with a modern overclocked i7. In this scenario, we'd rather stabilise at the lower frame-rate and eliminate the stutter - and put simply, this does not require a card with the raw brute-force offered by the GTX 1080 Ti.

Perhaps not surprisingly then, the average performance uplift vs GTX 1080 is at its lowest here - just 23 per cent across all eight titles, and a reasonable chunk of that could be extracted from the vanilla GTX 1080 by overclocking. Two titles in our suite do buck the trend to a certain extent - The Division with all of its graphical features ramped up reports a 27 per cent bump vs GTX 1080, while Rise of the Tomb Raider hits 29 per cent. CPU scaling in DX12 with the latter is actually quite impressive - it's one of the few titles where a six or eight-core i7 can log a big increase in performance over a quad, so it's nice to see a resultant bump in performance with GTX 1080 Ti.

This scene from Crysis 3 is easily repeatable and incurs a heavy, sustained load on the GPU - good for testing overclock stability and for measuring power draw. We retain our Core i7 6700K here, but disable its overclock.

	GTX 1080 Ti	GTX 1080 Ti OC	Titan X Pascal	GTX 1080	GTX 1070	Titan X Maxwell	R9 Fury X
Peak System Power Draw	384W	410W	384W	303W	263W	361W	385W

The GTX 1080 Ti's power consumption falls directly into line with Titan X Pascal, despite the small frequency boost and faster memory modules. Coincidentally, it's also on par with the old 28nm-based Radeon R9 Fury X - with the new GeForce card offering a 70 per cent boost in performance on aggregate. Also noticeable is that there's only a small increase in power consumption compared to the last-gen Titan X Pascal, despite a big leap in gameplay frame-rates. The new cooling arrangement certainly pays off, with 1080 Ti able to stay cooler under load, significantly so when pushing beyond factory clocks.

Overclocking in our test area adds 26W to the tally - our efforts in boosting out-of-the-box performance sees a reasonable increase of 170MHz to the core clock, which sees the GTX 1080 Ti's GP102 processor hit and often exceed 2GHz. This is a stunning achievement bearing in mind the size and complexity of the processor.

However, memory overclocking potential is minimal - at least with the sample we have. We could only retain stability with a 150MHz boost to G5X clocks - a far cry from the 600-700MHz we could extract from our GTX 1080 and Titan X Pascal. We'd suggest that the move to 11gbps modules has significantly reduced OC headroom here, and we wouldn't be surprised if the faster G5X in GTX 1080 Ti is simply of cherry-picking the best of the current modules and applying a factory overclock.

Regardless, Titan X Pascal can achieve higher memory throughput when overclocked compared to GTX 1080 Ti, but we've never been able to get the Titan's GP102 core to hit 2GHz before, giving the new card a small edge here. As things stand, the end result from our efforts is a general uplift of 10 per cent to gameplay frame-rates - clearly the days of the stupendous overclocking we saw from the Maxwell cards is a thing of the past. We no longer see stunts on par with GTX 970's ability to overclock beyond GTX 980 stock performance, but at the same time, if the aim here is to stabilise 60fps target performance at 4K, that additional overhead could prove useful.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti: the Digital Foundry verdict

The sudden jump from 2.5K desktop displays to ultra HD 4K screens created an overwhelming challenge for GPU manufacturers - the sheer pixel-count could not be matched by scalability in performance from what was then top-of-the-line graphics hardware. Indeed, right up until the launch of GTX 1080, we had real trouble running the latest games at ultra HD without undue compromise in visual settings, reduced frame-rates - or both.

Titan X Pascal and GTX 1080 Ti build on the vanilla 1080's excellent performance, adding the additional overhead required to get the job done on a range of the latest games. It's possible to enjoy full native 4K resolution with 60fps gameplay on the likes of Forza Horizon 3, Battlefield 1, Gears of War 4, Titanfall 2 and Watch Dogs 2 with only minimal tweaking - and the experience is nothing short of epic.

In this sense, the 31 per cent performance uplift we measured here translates into a feeling of much more when you're actually sat at your PC playing games on a 4K display. It's so much easier to hit the 60fps threshold, and in many cases, sustaining this super-smooth frame-rate requires no more tweaking than achieving a 1080p60 lock when gaming with GTX 970. Some titles do prove more troublesome though and we suspect that upcoming Nvidia products with HBM2-level memory bandwidth may well be the final piece of the puzzle required to truly get the job done.

But in the here and now, the GTX 1080 Ti is the best GPU companion for maximising gameplay results on a 4K display. However, while ultra HD costs have tumbled (40-inch UHD TVs make for great desktop displays), the price premium remains very high, even with the massive price-cut compared to Titan X Pascal. However, as always, we should consider these products as previews of the more mainstream products to follow a year or so download the line. 2015's Maxwell-based Titan X spawned 2016's far cheaper GTX 1070, after all. The notion of this level of power in a �350 GPU a year or so ahead is tantalising to say the least.

The arrival of PS4 Pro and Project Scorpio will also inevitably result in smarter rendering approaches, which may open the door to less capable PC GPUs handing in perfectly good 4K experiences, even if pixel count isn't - strictly speaking - a native 4K. But if we're looking to run those console-level 4K titles at full-fat 60Hz, we're still going to need raw power, and for now at least, the GTX 1080 Ti is the only card worth considering.

Super Bomberman R review

2017-03-09T18:27:00.001-08:00

Some comparisons can cut both ways. Super Bomberman R, an unlikely revival for Hudson Soft's classic series as it celebrates its 33rd anniversary, feels like the product of another age. In its power pop colour and with its kernel of proven multiplayer brilliance, it's every inch a forgotten Dreamcast classic that's been freshly unearthed. With its blunt simplicity, though, it can be left a little exposed in these less forgiving times.

Super Bomberman R

Publisher: Konami
Developer: Hexa Drive/Konami
Platform: Reviewed on Switch
Availability: Out now on Switch

There's a weight that's been placed on Super Bomberman R, one that it's not always able to shoulder. First, its profile has been raised by one of the few physical retail games accompanying the launch of Nintendo's Switch (with a sizable price-tag to boot, something at odds with more recent Bombermans, such as DSiWare's Blitz or Xbox 360's Live: Battlefest). Secondly, it's the first game to showcase Nintendo Switch's online offering. And in that regard, it's not pretty at all.

Whether blame lies with developer Konami (who bought out Bomberman's creators Hudson Soft in 2012) or with Nintendo's own service or hardware isn't exactly clear, but playing Super Bomberman R online can be horrendous. Even when you've fiddled in the settings to make sure you're only playing against people with decent connections there's a sluggishness that often devolves into a stuttering mess. It's early days, of course, but there's a real danger that most players will have moved on by the time Super Bomberman R gets its act together. Needless to say, if you're out for a replacement for the sturdy and enjoyable Bomberman Live: Battlefest, you're best off looking elsewhere, and here's hoping Nintendo's own online debut with Switch in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is on firmer footing when it comes out towards the end of April.

Earning gems in-game can be tough - they're easily acquired in online matches, but seeing as online's a mess at the moment that's not really an option.

A small shame, as elsewhere Super Bomberman R fares much better. Bomberman's formula remains exquisite, and in paring it back to basics Konami serves up a warming reminder of its charms. Gone are the more hyper power-ups of latter Bombermans, and absent are the Louies, the kangaroo mounts that have been a series' staple since Bomberman '94. This is a throwback to Bomberman when the series' popularity was arguably at its peak, and when four people would huddle around a SNES with a multi-tap to enjoy the knockabout thrills of one of the era's finest multiplayer games.

Super Bomberman R does a great job of delivering on that nostalgia, leaning on the Switch's ability to host local multiplayer on the go. You can hook up to eight different controllers to a single unit, falling short of Saturn Bomberman's high score of ten players but more than enough to fit around a screen. The online might falter, but this is how Bomberman's surely meant to be played; jostling for position on the sofa while chipping through blocks as you size up your quarry, devouring power-ups as you go. It's as entertaining now as it was back in 1993.

Super Bomberman R is well served for local multiplayer too, even if it's still a little slim. There's only the one game mode - though it's easy enough to argue that, when it comes to Bomberman, there really only need be just that one mode - with eight maps available from the off. Another 10 are available via the in-game shop, a feature not fueled by microtransactions but rather through the currency you earn as you play.

There's a slight sluggishness to the controls offline as well as online, which while not a deal breaker is something of a shame.

It ties neatly enough into its campaign, where you earn continues by pumping in some of that same currency. For a series that never really found a foothold in the arcades in all its years, there's a punchy heart to Super Bomberman R's story mode that harks back to bar room classics; across its 50 levels, there's a readable simplicity to the enemies you clear off the screen, while the deliciously complex mecha boss designs bring to mind some of Psikyo's work at the turn of the century.

Super Bomberman R's story mode is also playable in co-op - and, indeed, it's much more fun when played with a friend in tow, where you can see it off over the course of an afternoon. It's light, it's breezy and it's fun, bookended by cutscenes from a kid's TV show take on Bomberman I'd happily share a hangover with on any given Saturday morning. You certainly can't fault it for its enthusiasm.

There's plenty else to find fault with, whether that's with its price tag, it's online or how slim it all feels. Or, for that matter, how Unity doesn't seem capable of providing the gloss in what's a technically limited showcase for the Switch. For all that, I've got a huge soft spot for Super Bomberman R; it's a gentle throwback to simpler times, and a welcome revival for a local multiplayer classic for what's set to be an outstanding local multiplayer machine. An effective slice of nostalgia, then, albeit one that comes at a considerable price.

Islands: Non-Places review

2017-03-08T20:26:00.003-08:00

Islands, as its titular addendum 'Non-Places' insinuates, is a game about those non-descript patches of no-man's land through which we all pass en route to where we're going. It's the baggage carousel in the airport, with its melancholy conga of luggage. It's the bus shelter, with its plastic seats, bathed in the white light of an advertising screen. It's the hotel lobby, with its deep chairs and bowed pot-plants. This is a surrealist study of architecture's supporting cast in which you're forced to consider and prod, at length, at the places that nobody ever cares about, or thinks about, or notices.

The presentation is as utilitarian as the subjects. There are ten scenes, visited in sequence. Each one is a dusky, tonal diorama, around which the camera can be rotated on a fixed circular path. As you wheel around the scene, you gain new perspectives on the objects, which, like a surrealist study, can allow you to reflect on the familiar in an unfamiliar context. In tactile terms, the extent of your interaction, beyond rotating the camera, is the option to click on light sources (lamps, laptops, televisions and so on) in order to produce interesting effects, unexpected animations, or pleasing snippets of audio. When you've clicked enough lights to finish the scene, it's on to the next one. So it ever was, when you get down to it, in video games.

Despite the mundane fa�ade, Islands is in fact playful, humorous tour. Its most interesting and curious effects come from its juxtapositions, between the bizarre and the ordinary, between the fabricated and the natural, the city and the forest. In once scene, a bus pulls into a stop and deposits a line of bouncing eggs. As the vehicle descends, on a previously hidden elevator, into the ground, the eggs congregate in the shelter, whose sides rise to form an incubator. Another reveals a gaggle of palm trees riding an escalator, reaching the summit then cluttering up the exit point. Some scenes infuse everyday objects with fantastical behaviours: the carry cases that rise and fall through the air, like horses on a carousel; the detonation of bank notes, freeze-framed alongside the ATM, like butterflies frozen in flight.

There's menace here, too. In one diorama you must nudge an unseen businessman through his evening's routine, helping him to park his car in the garage, flicking between the TV channels (tapped at through a gap in the window), brushing his teeth (and finally switching off the bedroom light. The eerie way the next car trundles up to the neighbouring house thereafter speaks to the jarring asynchronicity of modern life; the cloistered way in which we live in cities, so close, so apart.

The ambience is not only heightened by the game's soundtrack but is often swayed by its own sonic juxtapositions. The whisper and footsteps of the hotel lobby are first mingled with a rainstorm, then obliterated by an air-raid siren. There's the repeated note on a piano, mixed with the idle chug of a stationary car's engine. In audio, as in pictures, Islands combines unlikely elements to create unexpected effects.

A few years ago, when Jonathan Blow was in the early stages of developing The Witness, he complained to me about Sony and Microsoft's unwavering stipulation that every game must feature trophies and achievements. These extraneous incentives, Blow argued, forced a certain and limiting definition onto games, specifying that they must all have clear, winnable goals, and obvious ways in which players can excel over others, and be rewarded in ways that allow us to show off that excellence. Islands supports Blow's argument that not every game must work in the same way; that the ultimate goal of __play should not always be victory, but can, at times, be something else.

Undeniably Islands sits to the far left of the sliding scale that runs between digital art installation and Call of Duty. That only adds to its transgressive appeal. It expands the definition of what games can and might be. The obvious, uninteresting criticism is not only that this is a game that cannot be 'won' (and therefore is not a game in the formal sense) but also that its vocabulary is too limited, its rules too flimsy and malleable (sometimes clicking on a light source does nothing at all). But that's to misinterpret the author's goals. Islands is a brisk study on the simple pleasures of human engineering and nature's eagerness to unpick that endeavour. Enter with an open mind, and you'll leave with renewed certainty that there is wonder to be found in the mundane, if only you take the time to uncover it.

Snipperclips review

2017-03-08T20:26:00.001-08:00

In many ways, Snipperclips is the perfect proof-of-concept for Nintendo's Switch. It isn't much of a technical showcase, but it's a wonderful advert for the console's flexibility as a multiplayer and social device. It's easy to set-up (just split the Joy-Cons and go) and perfect for an impromptu gaming session: you don't need a lot of space, it's simple to explain, and the inviting aesthetic works well on both TV and portable screen.

Snipperclips

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: SFB Games
Platform: Reviewed on Switch
Availability: Out now on Switch

Snipperclips' real strength, though, is its elegantly expanded core idea and its canny understanding of the joys of structured social play. There's an immediate appeal to its slightly daffy, ad hoc brand of collaborative puzzle solving, and its central paper cutting mechanic can be explained and understood in 30 seconds, ensuring there's a wonderfully low barrier to entry. And that's important, because you'll want to experience Snipperclips with others if possible.

Snipperclips features 66 physics-based puzzles, 45 of which can be played alone or co-operatively with two-players, and 21 co-op puzzles designed for two to four players; there are even three competitive mini-games to round things out. Each single-screen puzzle has a unique objective - fill a tank with water, get a frog to a pond - but rarely an obvious one. That elusiveness works a treat, immediately opening each stage up to vigorous scrutiny and, in multiplayer, frequently lively discussion.

Some of this might be familiar - Snipperclips first appeared on the showfloor at EGX 2015, before being picked up by Nintendo.

Always central to each solution, however, is Snipperclips' compelling paper-cutting core: to clear each stage, you'll need to hack away at the game's two on-screen characters to create specific shapes that can be used to manipulate the environment (a hook to hold a platform in place, perhaps, or a spike to pop a balloon), with success demanding imagination and a willingness to experiment.

Creating specific, and progressively more complex, shapes is simply a matter of positioning yourself over your partner and hitting a button to snip away any overlapping areas. You can fashion more precise shapes by adjusting your height and body rotation. Paper cutting is a delightfully satisfying anchor for the game; the expressive animations (and faintly erotic moans and giggles) make it consistently amusing, and the convincing paper physics gives the whole thing a pleasing tangibility.

It's a wonderfully adaptable central idea too, lending itself to all sorts of creative applications. Snipperclips' sense of progression is expertly judged throughout, and its increasing cerebral and organisational demands never overwhelm. Early on, solutions merely require a few basic snips - fashioning a groove in your partner's head to carry a ball, for instance - but as things escalate you'll need to start thinking in multiple layers of subtraction, cutting out shapes to carve other shapes, and so on.

What's admirable about Snipperclips' design is that, even as the difficulty ramps, it never obfuscates the simplicity of its core. Rather than muddying the paper-cutting action with needless contrivances, it escalates the challenge simply by placing greater demands on your creativity. It remains accessible for its entire duration, and that's crucial to ensuring that it holds its multiplayer appeal.

If you're after Snipperclips at a snip, it's being bundled with an extra pair of Joy-Cons right now. They do still cost a fair bit, mind...

As a solo experience, Snipperclips never quite comes into its own. It's engaging enough as you puzzle out solutions and experiment with different forms, but it's just a little too mechanical to feel properly joyful. It doesn't help either than the basic solo setup (which forces you to control two characters at once) can quickly lead to frustration. It's far too easy to confuse characters and make a mistake - which, with no level-wide undo function, can be deeply irritating during the more time-consuming stages.

Gather a few friends together though and the niggles around solo __play are largely alleviated. With more people involved, Snipperclips' focus moves away from inward contemplation and quiet precision toward rowdy collaboration. It's not quite a party game in the traditional sense, but it's certainly more knockabout than you'd normally expect a puzzle game to be.

As a multiplayer experience, Snipperclips is less about finding solutions and more about constraining the communal chaos long enough to execute your plans. Success demands strong communication, with laughs ensuing when it inevitably breaks down. It's not easy to operate effectively together, especially when the screen is a jumble of toppling bodies and confetti, but there's a real sense of accomplishment when your scattershot experimentation and flabbily synchronised coordination eventually bears fruit.

The only real shame is that there's not more of it. You can easily blow through Snipperclips in a couple of hours, and even less time if you're playing solo. And that's a problem because the game really struggles to incentivise return visits, largely due to its unexpectedly restrictive puzzle design. While Snipperclips' freeform central premise suggests a more open-ended puzzler, it isn't as flexible as you might think.

Snipperclips shines brightest in its opening levels when your objectives are at their simplest; here you've a reasonable degree of freedom in the way you complete tasks, and the game's potential as a sandbox puzzler is best met. As things progress though, solutions become more rigid, allowing for only very minor deviations along the way. As such, it's pretty much a one-and-done experience, and even the rowdy multiplayer loses its thrill when all you can do is repeat the same process over and over.

That leaves Snipperclips' competitive Blitz mode to bolster the game's longevity. Here, the basic paper-cutting core is given a more aggressive twist, and each mini-game - hockey, basketball, and sumo wrestling - gains a more frantic edge as you attempt to undermine your opponent's efforts by hacking them to pieces. It's all fine and fun, with each game's inevitable descent into frenzied snipping good for a few giggles - but these aren't the kind of activities that you're likely to return to again and again.

While it lasts, Snipperclips is unquestionably worthwhile, both as an imaginatively designed puzzle game, and as a strong showcase for Switch as a hub for ad hoc social gaming. Snipperclips is smart and witty, and its focus on on-the-fly creativity makes for an inclusive, unexpectedly engaging multiplayer game. It's a little insubstantial, and rather too limp as a solo endeavour, but there's real heart to its raucous, collaborative core. If Switch's underlying ethos inspires more games like this, then there'll be no complaints here.

Double Dragon 4 review

2017-03-07T22:26:00.003-08:00

'Keep your politics out of our games.' Behind the fretful plea (one which has recently become something of a placard slogan, waved at game developers by those who want games to offer only retreat from the real world, not a reflection of it), is the belief that a video game can stand apart from the context in which it is created. The argument collapses when you consider the myriad ways in which time and culture infuse every aspect of a video game's design from a technological standpoint.

Double Dragon 4

Publisher: Arc System Works
Developer: Arc System Works
Platform: Reviewed on PS4
Availability: Out now on PS4 and PC

Take the Double Dragon series' trajectory through the years. Its debut, which features American twin martial artists, Billy and Jimmy Lee, mowing their way through oncoming ranks of shuffling street thugs, appeared in arcades in 1987. The game's design and challenge was a result of this specific context: a two-player (designed to physically fit a two-player cabinet) beat 'em up which ramped up the difficulty after the first stage or two in order to maximise the machine's profits - albeit while letting players feel as though, with time, effort and enough financial investment, mastery was within reach.

Sequels followed, each one blossoming with yet greater numbers of colours, sprites and animations, as the underlying technology grew deeper and more fertile. In 1994, as the scrolling beat 'em up genre's popularity began to wane, the fifth game in the series, Double Dragon 5: The Shadow Falls, became a one-on-one fighter -- an attempt to mimic the success of Capcom's Street Fighter 2 (closely followed by another one-on-one fighter for the Neo Geo). At each step, the series was being nudged, not by an artist's vision, but by the external influence of market force and fashion. By the time of the 3D revolution in video games, some believed that the scrolling beat 'em up was due its first nostalgic revival. Technos, however, had gone out of business, leaving other companies to test the theory (as Square Enix discovered, with its lavishly produced The Bouncer, the appetite was mild).

Billy and Jimmy travel to Japan where they visit a hotel decidedly like Trump Tower.

By 2012, indie games had made 2D pixel art fashionable again. Sensing an opportunity, WayForward released Double Dragon Neon, a self-parodying take on the series, rendered in pristine, high-resolution sprites. And now, five years on, we have Double Dragon 4. The high res sprites are gone, as is the millennial sense of irony. This is, by contrast, an earnest sequel to the NES original: not a remake that takes the original material and stretching it to fit contemporary technology, but a 'demake' that intentionally overlooks the scope of contemporary technology. There are the fat sprites. There is the limited palette of moves. Bringing together the original game's designers, Yoshihisa Kishimoto and Koji Ogata, and its composer, Kazunaka Yamane, it is an attempt to revisit a lost era. It is an attempt to Make Double Dragon Great Again. It is, in other words, a very 2017 interpretation of Double Dragon, one that cannot be divorced from the context in which it was made.

There are some restrained concessions to modernity. In the mid-1990s, when Daisuke Ishiwatari developed Guilty Gear series of fighting games at Arc System Works, the developer of Double Dragon 4, he would draw the game's sprites with four times the number of pixels than any other game at the time in order to give the impression of high definition, before high definition was a thing. The trick is replicated here. To give the game the blocky feel of an NES game, each 'pixel' block is comprised of many actual constituent pixels. In this way, the game looks sharp but also antiquated. It's an elegant and effective way to give the impression of NES sprites running on a TV screen that was never intended to run NES sprites.

Other than the soundtrack, which uses many more sounds than the NES chip would allow for, this is an authentically simplistic game. There is no parallax scrolling, to give a sense of depth and horizon to the 2D backdrops. The hitboxes that determine where a character's body starts and ends appear to be chunky rectangles, invisibly superimposed onto the sprite. Enemies patiently wait for you to get to your feet after a knock down, with mannequin-challenge-esque stillness. If you walk through a doorway holding a knife, it will be gone by the time the next room loads into view. Like Oscar-nominee LaLaLand or, more precisely, Oscar-winner The Artist. Double Dragon 4 adopts not only the aesthetic but also the techniques of a disappeared age.

This is not the first Double Dragon 4; in strict terms, 1994's Super Nintendo game, Super Double Dragon, was the fourth game in the series.

There are two foundational attacks: a punch, which can be strung into a jabbing combo, tailed with a haymaking uppercut and a shunting kick. These basic attacks can be combined with the jump to create either a flying or spin kick. If you're knocked to the ground, you can launch into a rising knee, or, if the bad guy is behind you, a backwards elbow, to prevent your character from being summarily pummelled on stand-up. Loose and littered objects - tyres, rocks, dagger and the lick - can be picked up from the ground and hurled at enemies, but, apart from a few arcanely executed moves (a jack-knifing head-butt; a corkscrew lunge) this is the extent of your pugilistic repertoire.

The economy, too, is lifted from another time. You have four lives and a stash of five credits. This is your allowance. Once spent, it's back to the title screen, with no level select option to skip the early sheets. The game's challenge is calibrated, not by the intelligence of the opponents you meet as you tour the docks, the hotels, the mean streets, but by their weight in numbers. Toward the end of the game you'll face off against multiple enemies at once, who can easily overwhelm. The strategy, such as it is, is to do with spacing. You knock a mid-boss to the ground on the left so that you can deal with the pair of nunchuck-wielding karate champs over on the right. You zip. You crowd manage.

Each stage is bookended with some storyline, delivered via pixelated stills and snippets of 80s action movie-dialogue. Every time you finish a stage you unlock a new character or characters to use in the game's main extra curricular mode: a two-player fight arena (where, alas, you can only face off against another human player; no AIs here). It takes a while to acclimatise to Double Dragon 4's wilfully archaic rhythm. Some players will submit to the charm spell it is trying to cast. Yet, stripped of the context of time (the 1980s) and space (the amusement arcade, where every life has a financial cost attached), that spell has been severely weakened.

Stories Untold review

2017-03-07T22:26:00.001-08:00

Editor's note: Emily discusses the premise of each Stories Untold episode below. If you'd rather not spoil things for yourself, __play before reading.

We're nearly two decades into the new millennium, but so much of our cultural identity is still lodged somewhere in the latter half of the 20th century - the retro synths of Kavinsky and Cliff Martinez invading Hollywood through Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive in 2011, the 16-bit carnage of Hotline Miami. Even for me, most of my memories from the first decade of the Noughties are inexorably linked to that French opiated dancefloor aesthetic which penetrated my radio during my early 20s. It's almost as though a wormhole keeps opening up between the 1980s and the 21st century, creating a strange fusion of both periods. Whether this kind of nostalgia is unique to our particular moment in time or not, it's become something of a recurring theme in the work of designer Jon McKellan.

Will future generations look back on plasma screens as wistfully as we do CRT boxes?

McKellan's distorted-VHS aesthetic will be familiar to you if you've played Alien Isolation, the 2014 release that recreates the analogue visual style of Ripley Scott's 1979 film right down to vector distortions in the title sequence. As the game's UI designer, McKellan helped to formalise the method for making digital look analog - including weird experiments like running game footage through a battered old VHS player for authentically ancient-looking results.

Now heading the Glasgow-based indie studio No Code, McKellan has translated his experience as a maker of creepy, lo-fi science fiction environments into a new digital anthology of retro, tech-centered horror stories called Stories Untold. The series is presented as a game within a game - or possibly a game within a game within an episodic TV series - which exists in a universe that is like this one but not exactly. Tonally, think Black Mirror or Welcome to Night Vale. Something is wrong but you can't quite put your finger on it.

McKellan and his team came up with the idea as a Ludum Dare entry in August of last year, resulting in the exquisitely creepy interactive horror game The House Abandon (available for free on itch.io). Now, with publisher Devolver Digital, the studio has remastered its earlier release and expanded it with three additional episodes, each less than an hour long.

The game straddles genres in a way that keeps you on your toes.

The episodes all start like something you'd find on cable TV late at night, with opening credits that dreamily bob between family photos and the technology of an alternate 1980s universe. There's a tape recorder, a TV display encased in a circa 1986 faux-wood veneer, and a keyboard-integrated personal computer that bears a striking resemblance to the now-classic ZX Spectrum 2. The camera eventually rests its gaze on a stack of video games, with in-game box art designed by Kyle Lambert, an illustrator whose previous work includes the poster for Netflix pop culture phenomenon Stranger Things.

The House Abandon marks your arrival to your old bedroom desk with a sinister Speccy loading game screech. Once the in-game game is loaded, the player uses the wood-veneer monitor to explore in a familiar text adventure style. You've arrived back at your family home after some time away. It's empty, but your father leaves a note saying he's left you an old computer to occupy yourself with. Why not go upstairs and put it together?

As with the Zorks and Hitchhiker's Guides of the early 80s, you rely on clunky text commands to navigate. You unlock the door. Read the letter. Look in your sister's bedroom. Don't worry - you're not expected to be fluent in the arcane grammar of text adventures in Stories Untold, and exploration is, in any case, pretty minimal. The House Abandon is more comparable to flipping through family photos - with all the sense-memories and emotional baggage included in that territory - than it is wandering through a haunted house.

Four stories, one on-going nightmare about the perils of data entry.

As the in-game narrative twists back into the primary storyline, thunder cracks through the silence of the house and the electricity snaps off. This is a great test to see if you are wearing your headphones or not. Stories Untold is so purposefully developed to be played alone in the dark that they even make a point of telling you to turn the lights off in their system requirements.

After a few moments of darkness your computer reboots. The House Abandon title screen loads in on your monitor - chug chug chug - upside-down. The parser text now introduces your old happy family home as a derelict building. Type command "Open door" and a door creaks open in the room below you. Type command "Go up stairs" and footsteps thump up to the landing behind you.

The interactive fiction genre has a long history as a pulpit for weird, experimental meta-narratives. The immeasurably gifted Emily Short used text command and multilinear dialogue trees to tell the story of love between man and AI in Galatea. Likewise, Jack Welch and Ben Collins-Sussman would go on to turn the text adventure format into an experiment in meta storytelling, piling up several layers of reality in the XYZZY-nominated game Rover's Day Out.

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Stories Untold is so much more than its Stranger Things-esque packaging suggests.

No Code has similarly experimental instincts. In Stories Untold the text adventure structure serves to obscure the world as much as it describes it. Text commands like Look Around, for example, will trigger some nice introspective prose about your surroundings. But you'll quickly come to realise reality isn't what it seems and your senses can't really be trusted.

In the second episode, called The Lab Conduct, you find yourself once again at a desk in 1986, only this time in front of a computer display which reads in ominous DOS-green text: U.S. Department of Experimental Science. A voice crackles over the PA, complete with in an authoritative yet reassuringly calm English accent: You are to follow the step-by-step procedure from a manual on the terminal, no questions asked. This is perhaps more Milgram Experiment than traditional text adventure - No Code likes to __play loose with the genre's limitations, introducing things like visual and audio-based puzzles and even a first-person walkabout later on.

Like a good radio play, The Lab Conduct squeezes tension out of a scene through its audio design: a deep wheeze from an old x-ray machine, the high-pitched whistle of a frequency gauge that rises in time with each ominous action. Episode 3 takes this same idea but transports you to a monitoring station on a Greenland research base, where unseen broadcasters radio in about strange things lurking in the snowstorm outside. Here, you'll be must find distress calls hidden in obscure radio frequencies, or listen intently to simplified Morse code and translate its message.

As fanciful as the game can be, the technology feels unnervingly true to its period - right down to the inherent awkwardness of microfilm readers. This might be the game's most powerful effect - if you're a child of the 1980s, it will feel as though it's lifting directly from your memories. The first time you saw John Carpenter's The Thing; your old IBM; the brown-yellow vertical-stripe wallpaper that decorated the suburbs of North America. Like the best interactive fiction, it erodes the distinction between player and protagonist, albeit by bombarding your senses with signifiers of your childhood.

Which brings us to the dangers of nostalgia. Perhaps it's just me, but I have a suspicion that nostalgia in the new millennium has a quality all of its own. Our parents and parents-parents were energised during the post-world-war years by the idea that a better and brighter future lay ahead of us. Now, having reached the 21st century we find we live not in a gleaming dream but a world of radical uncertainty, a world that can do nothing but ruminate on the past.

Nostalgia can soothe the homesick, but ultimately you can't go home again. Where Stories Untold is at least partly a genuflection at the altar of old stuff, it touches on another idea: the way nostalgia distorts reality, and how it can be used to hide reality from yourself.

Nioh review

2017-03-07T00:25:00.003-08:00

Team Ninja's new demon-slaying samurai epic has one hell of an elevator pitch: this is Ninja Gaiden meets Dark Souls. Nioh takes the silky smooth colourful Japanese texture of Team Ninja's storied hack-and-slash affair and merges it with the light RPG structure and methodical combat of From's dark fantasy series. Yet mixing these two diametrically opposed takes on the third-person action game isn't easy and Team Ninja has done a commendable if occasionally unflattering job of cribbing From Software's most influential design tropes, all while retaining the distinctly ludicrous comic book flavour that's always been central to the Ninja Gaiden dev's DNA.

Nioh

Publisher: Koei Tecmo/Sony Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Team Ninja
Platform: Reviewed on PS4
Availability: Out on February 8th on PS4

Nioh tells a highly embellished tale of western samurai William Adams, a real-life historical figure who arrived on Japanese shores in 1600. This folklore-heavy fable isn't particularly well told with an abundance of convoluted exposition and cackling tattooed villains taking centre stage, but storytelling has never really been Team Ninja's strong suit - something made especially clear when William spends hours cutting his way through demonic hordes only to arrive at a boss' introductory cutscene where he's inexplicably joined by a party of allies. It's best not to think about this one too hard.

Your grey matter will instead be focusing on Nioh's extravagant combat systems where Team Ninja's work really shines. On the surface, the Dark Souls influence is obvious with its slowly recharging stamina meter determining your actions and a respawn mechanic offering one chance to reclaim your lost XP where you last fell. Yet Team Ninja handles the fisticuffs differently than From. Your moveset in Nioh is drastically more complicated than anything seen in Dark Souls, a complex skill tree offering throngs of unlockable manoeuvres that give each weapon type an incredible depth and flexibility. Your move list may not be quite as expansive as something like Ninja Gaiden, but it's definitely closer to the hack-and-slash upgrade trees of yore, before stamina meters prioritised timing and energy consumption over complicated combo inputs.

From Software cribbed Team Ninja when it made Ninja Blade. Now Team Ninja is cribbing From's Dark Souls. And thus it's all come full circle.

Yet you don't have to explore this to its fullest potential. In fact, you could simply stick to a single weapon type and just a handful of moves and still have more than enough immediate actions to juggle. The key to all of this is well, Ki, Nioh's spiritual take on stamina. By squeezing the right trigger at just the right time after launching an attack, you'll perform a Ki Pulse, which recharges your Ki meter quicker and grants an extra damage buff for the next few seconds. It's essentially Gears of War's seminal active reload mechanic manifested in melee combat and it's brilliant.

This single step is entwined heavily into the game's combat, especially as pretty early on you can upgrade the Ki Pulse so it's performed by dodging at the right time rather than absorbing energy while stationary. Furthermore, larger foes often spawn pools of Ki-sapping fog in their wake that can only be cleansed by performing a Ki Pulse in their midst. Doing so is a risky proposition, however, as mistiming your Ki Pulse could leave you panting for breath when facing these hazardous obstacles. In short, Nioh requires a degree of focus that even From aficionados will find demanding.

Nioh's multiplayer

Nioh's multiplayer cribs a lot from Dark Souls, with options to co-op missions. Summoning a companion uses up a valuable resource, however, so it's not intended as a crutch to mainline the whole game.

When summoned as a visitor you can't examine glowing bags of booty or open doors, but you can pick up items that the host player has unearthed. Testing such modes were limited due to few having pre-release copies, but Nioh co-op seems like a fun bonus, if too limited in scope to be the main draw. And unlike Dark Souls, there are systems in place to __play with your friends.

Outside of co-op, Nioh's other major multiplayer component comes from the fact that you can fight phantoms of fallen players. These optional AI adversaries can be resurrected at the spot where the player they're based on fell (with a tiny obituary noting their cause of death). These phantoms come equipped with whatever gear their source material had on them, so fighting high level phantoms is a great way, albeit risky, way to snag good gear early.

Tecmo Koei has previously stated that a PvP mode will arrive post-launch as a free update.

This Ki system doesn't just affect the player's ability to move either, as enemies (including bosses) are also beholden to the idea. Tire a foe out through effective dodging, parrying, and repeated attacks and they'll get as winded as you, leaving them vulnerable for a few glorious seconds of cathartic wailing. Sometimes you can even perform devastating critical attacks, presented as glorious close-up executions, on exhausted foes. Different attacks effect opponents differently, so there's plenty of strategy as you determine whether you want to focus on depleting your adversary's Ki or go straight for their HP.

As you'd expect from Team Ninja, Nioh's comically brutal boss fights are a highlight, ranging from deceptively difficult humanoid villains to a demonic centipede comprised of sentient segments that toggle between linking together and scuttling apart. Every boss provides a seemingly insurmountable challenge at the off. Many of these big baddies will no doubt slay you for dozens of attempts before you can even get to the more devious second stages of their duels. It's that steady, sadistic climb from thinking a particular boss is a fool's errand to finally figuring it out and conquering the impossible that offers Nioh's most exhilarating moments.

One advantage Nioh has over the Souls series is that load times are mercifully brief, lasting only a few seconds after each failed encounter.

While the combat system and bosses offer a worthy successor to Souls and Gaiden fans, there are a few ways that Nioh falls short of the modern masterpiece it strives to be. The most troublesome problem with Nioh is its repetition. For all it does right, its padding is obvious and often obnoxious. Several side missions are set in the recycled maps (often condensed versions of the main stages portrayed during a different time of day) and the game's bestiary is a little on the light side. The first time you face off against a giant ogre it's exciting; by the 30th time, it's a bit of a drag.

Furthermore, the maps don't contain a lot of secrets. You can occasionally find some sweet loot and upgrades, but there are never any NPCs to talk to, puzzles to solve, or other mysterious objects to interact with. Nioh is set in a mystical, magical world, yet when it comes to prodding these labyrinthine innards, what you see is what you get.

Nioh has a somewhat questionable relationship to loot, too, where Team Ninja prioritises quantity over quality. There are lots of weapon and armour drops, but the problem is there's so much loot that sorting and selling it quickly becomes a chore. By the game's second half I was frequently not picking stuff up because I was too lazy to comb through my cluttered, overcrowded inventory to sell it. That's not the reaction to have when acquiring new gear. This abundance of gear drops made sense when Team Ninja released Nioh's alpha and there was a weapon degradation mechanic, enforcing players to switch up their strategy. But people found these constant switch ups irritating so the weapon degradation system was removed. Its shadow, however, remains.

Nioh isn't a masterpiece then. It's not quite fresh or original enough to be. But it is a return to form for Team Ninja, a studio many feel had lost its way after the departure of its founder Tomonobu Itagaki in 2008. Nioh's loot-heavy hack and slash doesn't fire on all cylinders - though to be fair its aims seem more singular than that of its competitors - but it's a refreshing reminder of just how thrilling a solid Team Ninja combat encounter can be. Primarily single-player games are on the decline right now, but Nioh is a strong argument for the merits of this withering form.

Nier: Automata review

2017-03-07T00:25:00.001-08:00

If there was ever a game that didn't need a sequel it's Nier. The cult classic sci-fi fantasy fever dream by masked madman Yoko Taro did a lot to endear its niche but dedicated audience. Its peculiar blend of open-world adventure, hack-and-slash combat, and bullet hell shmups supplanted into a strange and harrowing world that refused to conform to usual sci-fi fantasy tropes was among the most audacious and surprising retail releases in ages. Yet as much as I adored Nier, it felt like a complete story. It had a beginning, middle and end. Then another end. And another.

It wasn't the most technically accomplished game, but its hodgepodge of influences blended together to make something wholly original. There's never been anything like it since. Until now.

The question, of course, is whether Taro would be able to make lighting strike twice. His follow-up to Nier, Drakengard 3, was a fascinating failure; a game with tremendous ideas and abysmal execution. With Bayonetta and Vanquish studio Platinum Games certainly there's promise of a more polished product (or at least a more refined combat system), but the concern remained that it might come at a cost. Would this big(ish) budget sequel to an aggressively off-kilter curio be too dumbed down? Too safe?

Long story short, it's not, though it may feel that way initially. Where Nier kicked off with the heartfelt story of a grizzled older man caring for his sick daughter (which, before The Last of Us, felt kind of novel), Nier: Automata's leads are harder to identify with. Set tens of thousands of years into the future, long past when Nier took place, Automata stars two stylish gothic androids, 2B (as in "or not to be") and 9S, who are just a couple of pawns in an endless war between man-made androids and alien-crafted machines. (Indeed, the fact that androids are machines does not go unnoticed.) 2B may be wearing a frilly getup, but her outlook initially comes across as distant and dull, while 9S's wide-eyed optimism seems a little hackneyed.

2B's gothic Lolita outfit is briefly touched on in the narrative, though whether you accept its explanation is sure to be divisive.

The early hours also dip heavily into Nier's well of motifs, which inherently feel less fresh a second time around. We've got another abandoned factory, another field grazed by boars, another desert wasteland, and a multitude of fun camera tricks that transform this open-world third-person adventure into a series of arcade mini-games. It's all well and good - and will certainly seem inventive for those who never played Nier - but these opening hours suggest a dispiriting return to Nier: it's bigger and smoother, but lacking the soul.

Stick with it, though, as what may initially seem like a return to the well gradually expands into something bold, ambitious, and surprising - even by the standards of its bonkers predecessor.

For the uninitiated, Nier and this sequel's biggest charms are predicated on a sense of surprise. The aesthetic style, mechanics, structure, and even UI are carefully crafted to ensure that the player is always engaging in something new. Where too many open world games start off strong but quickly peter out once the player has a handle on its core loop, Nier: Automata negates the whole idea of a loop entirely, ensuring that players don't become too complacent with its systems.

Even the most basic missions mix things up at an alarming rate. Ploughing through a factory overrun by renegade robots, you're sometimes hacking and slashing your way through a third-person action game, then you're engaged in a 2D side-on platformer, and suddenly you're thrust into a minimalist arcade twin-stick shooter for a dozen seconds. Even after 40 hours Nier: Automata is constantly throwing in quirky new surprises and secrets.

And that's just the mechanics! The real showstopper with Nier: Automata is its setting. An extraordinary ghost world where androids enact the will of humans while machines seemingly try to emulate them is filled to the brim with stories both big and small. There's the inhabitants of an abandoned amusement park who endlessly patrol its main avenue, adorned with enigmatic names like "Machine with a Dream"; a twisted cult of wayward robots panicking over a crisis of faith; and my favourite, the sand-swallowed derelict apartment dwellings now occupied by droids pantomiming cunnilingus, endlessly repeating "Love. Love. Love."

Due to legal reasons Japanese media can't show genitalia. But there's no law against robots emulating sexual congress.

The art direction is every bit as inspired as these scenarios suggest, with truly wondrous vistas conveying a sense of ruined beauty. Factories are oppressive monuments to the industrial era, all rusted copper pipes and hazy grey skies. The machines offer an impressive range of form that all center around the same moonlike spherical noggins. The bosses too are memorable, offering a range of foes that vary from colossal metal monstrosities to androgynous human dopplegangers with a nihilistic sense of what makes one human.

Like the first Nier, the graphics can be a little lacking on a technical level with some muddy textures and craggy landscapes, but the sheer variety and scope of Nier: Automata's adventure more than makes up for its less stellar production values. Plus whatever detail is lacking in the scenery is more than made up for by composer Keiichi Okabe's marvelous soundtrack.

Taro and company wisely understand that the key to crafting such evocative worlds isn't in fleshing out the details, but rather in what it doesn't explain. Aside from a few clumsy pieces of dialogue here and there, Nier: Automata shapes its world through cryptic clues that only hint at cohesion. Taro is more interested in creating a sense of awe and intrigue rather than demystifying this convoluted tale of a world gone mad. This deliberate lack of exposition can make the plot hard to follow by the end, but this matters surprisingly little. You don't need to understand the specifics of how Nier: Automata's eclectic world hangs together to feel the crushing weight of its deranged AI denizens spiralling out of control.

When it comes to surprises, Nier: Automata simply never lets up. Taro has already stated in interviews that upon rolling credits in Nier: Automata, you've "not even seen half of the story." He's not wrong. Not since Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has a game so audaciously hidden away nearly half of its content behind a false ending. I'll try to stay spoiler-free here, suffice to say that Nier: Automata's New Game Plus offers a lot more changes than you'd expect, and - wink, wink - there's even more new content beyond that! A lot more. And it lays claim to some of the best moments in the entire series. In fact, I'd argue that the game only gets weirder and more interesting after the credits roll, though it's certainly no slouch before that.

Replaying Nier: Automata to unlock the proper third act may sound like a tedious chore (it certainly was in Ghost 'n' Goblins anyway), but it seldom feels like that due to a wealth of new mechanics and setpieces in the post-game.

While Nier: Automata is filled to the brim with variety, it does come at a cost. The combat mechanics are definitely an improvement from its predecessor, but not up to Platinum's usual standards. Part of this is due to ambition - as noted above, Nier: Automata is a whole lot of genres rather than the more focused action affairs the Revengence studio typically pumps out - but the end result is feels looser and lacking in the precision we're used to from the studio behind Bayonetta.

Nier: Automata isn't the most elegant title on the market, but it's the most captivating game I've played in ages. You don't need to look far to find its glaring flaws, but those searching for an endlessly imaginative dreamlike journey will find Nier: Automata too mesmerising to look away from. There's nothing else quite like it - and that includes the original Nier.

Hitman: The Complete First Season review

2017-03-06T02:25:00.001-08:00

Ratlike cunning, glacial patience, a truly bloodthirsty capacity for improvisation - all definitely components of Hitman 2016's brilliance, but the secret ingredient here may well be just a teeny-weeny dash of class envy. The game's sixth and final downloadable map, a high-tech mountaintop spa in Hokkaido, is my second favourite after the amazing second episode set in Mediterranean beauty-spot Sapienza. The map descends from a surgery overlooking an exquisitely tended Zen garden to a sushi restaurant and, glory of glories, an open-air hot spring where you'll gaze out at prayer lanterns drifting along a distant valley.

Hitman The Complete First Season

Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Io Interactive
Platform: Reviewed on PS4
Availability: Out on January 31st on PC, Xbox One and PS4

I'd love to spend a weekend in a spa like that. I doubt I'll ever have the pleasure, and that's why all of the map's residents need to die so urgently. Striding through crystal-clear water whose warmth I could all too readily imagine, I glanced at the billionaire playboys and power-brokers lounging on the rocks nearby and felt a sense of resentment no cackling villain has ever provoked. Look at you all, you lucky bastards. Look, at you all - happy as pigs in slurry. Well then, let's see if you're still smiling after I set off this landmine in the sauna.

She forgot to flush.

Hitman is a game for the times because it's essentially about taking revenge on the impossibly rich - not just by killing them outright, but by breaching their sanctums, winding your way into their routines, impersonating their most trusted confidantes or protectors and, in general, hollowing their lives out until the final blow comes to seem like an act of mercy. It's not just a question of murder, but dethronement, as you sniff out various bankers, generals, celebs or black market gun-runners at the height of their affluence and bring them rudely crashing earthwards.

The key break from tradition in this, the sixth game in the series, is its episodic release strategy, which has helped developer Io Interactive and Square Enix introduce a new generation of players to the age-old practice of replaying maps to slaughter different targets in ever-more underhand, gruesome or just plain stupid ways. With months to burn between map drops, and a wealth of optional objectives, more challenging "Escalation" hits and player-created Contracts to carry out, there's never been greater reason to dip back into a chapter.

If you're worrying that you've missed something by waiting for this week's on-disc release, however, know that Hitman holds up superbly as a traditional all-in-one package, and remains a tremendous return to form for the series. The maps are larger, busier and, with the possible exception of 2006's Blood Money, more entertaining to abuse than those of previous games - each studded with secret routes, distractions, hazards, disguises and sequences of interactions you might trigger, then gently steer to a lethal conclusion. If each map's greater scale and bustle may daunt, the initial approach is much as it was in previous titles. You fumble your way around the outskirts of restricted areas, searching for outfits (most of which must be "borrowed" from an unconscious bystander) that allow you to enter those areas unchallenged, and gleaning clues about your target's location, activities and weaknesses as you go.

Some of the environmental kill methods are frankly unbelievable, but all are fun to figure out.

Io has reworked Hitman's social camouflage system following 2012's unwieldy Hitman Absolution - it's a lot less ambiguous, but still capable of surprising you. Optional HUD aids - white markers over heads, and a rising note like a boiling kettle when you're attracting attention - make it easy to spot characters who can see through a particular disguise. Even without them, though, there's a consistency to the world's behaviour that older instalments have occasionally lacked. It makes sense, for example, that a hotel's head of staff would notice that one of her flunkeys has been supplanted by a weird bald guy with eyes of frozen steel, whereas the waiter folding sheets in the laundry might just assume you're a new hire.

Should you be caught doing something disreputable, it's thankfully often possible to retreat and replan without reverting to an auto-save - there's a grace period in which disturbed NPCs are curious but not actively hostile, and breaking line of sight for a while is usually all it takes to lull suspicions. You'll want to avoid a gun-battle, if you can - Agent 47 can lock to cover and peek-shoot, but he's a strangely lethargic duellist, and you'll be swiftly overwhelmed if you try to dig in.

There's a decent spread of spy gadgets, from silenced pistols and poison syringes to bulkier toys such as sniper rifles, but the choicest implements of death are those you discover (or in a handful of cases, unlock for use in subsequent playthroughs) - be it a nicely hefty cowboy bust, a garage car lift, an antique cannon on a cliffside fort or just a humble screwdriver, plucked from a shelf as you close in on your victim. Many of the more esoteric killing implements are tethered to Opportunities, which see your trusty radio contact Diana Burnwood walking you through a hit, waypoint to waypoint. The heavy-handedness with which Opportunities are introduced continues to be Hitman's biggest blemish, robbing scenarios of their intrigue, so you'll definitely want to turn off some or all of the associated prompts on the first attempt at least.

The same goes for certain pieces of incidental dialogue - I've sometimes congratulated myself on noticing some minor detail, only for nearby NPCs to bring it up relentlessly in conversation, reminding me that I'm following a script. These overheard chats are just as often charming or amusing, however - one of the joys of the Bangkok hotel map is listening to hard-pressed kitchen and janitorial staff moan about your quarry, a hipster rockstar who insists on eating apples that are no more than "25 per cent green". And if certain lethal variables and set-ups are shoved down your throat, there are dozens more per map that are vastly less obvious to the eye.

The overarching plot does a fairly weak job of tying the game's chapters together - it's a muddle of illuminati references in which cadaverous men glare at each other as though trying to assign blame for a fart. The maps themselves form a robust arc, however, paying out the game's core concepts in ways that suggest this was a fully-integrated campaign before it became an episodic series. The first one's Parisian fashion show is a grandiose yet unambiguous statement of intent, its layers of security spread readably across the floors of a massive palace. Sapienza is just as packed with detail, but more relaxed and diffuse - a district rather than an event, with apartments, shops and catacombs to poke through away from the fortified manor where your initial targets are found.

Agent 47 is one of two people who can terrify in a bathrobe, the other being Eurogamer's Jon Hicks.

Marrakech cranks the intensity up a few notches in the form of a crowded, colourful urban centre on the brink of civil war, its sense of imminent chaos cleverly amplified by in-world TV coverage, while Bangkok's luxury getaway mixes the structure of Paris with Sapienza's more placid ambience. The Colorado paramilitary camp is probably Io's least impressive offering so far - too flat, too open and with relatively few secrets - but Hokkaido is a great end to the season. Spa facilities aside, it's home to a building-wide AI whose wits you might scramble for the sake of a particularly hideous assassination.

It seems a very long time ago now that we were worried about the Hitman series. Io has resurrected its flagship property with astonishing grace and dexterity, creating its own, particular genre of episodic gaming in the bargain - one other stealth sandbox offerings such as Arkane's Dishonored might well learn from. If this Hitman has a design limitation, it's that maps don't evolve as much in response to assassinations as they could - it strains credibility that you can bump off three of four targets in Colorado without plunging the fourth into a panic. That aside, this is among the most expertly-made, engrossing stealth simulations of recent years, and a tale of A-listers meeting their comeuppance to give any Fortune 500 member the shivers. Agent 47 is back with a vengeance, and vengeance has seldom tasted sweeter.

DF Retro Hardware: Analogue Nt Mini review

2017-03-05T04:24:00.001-08:00

The Analogue Nt Mini is a contemporary interpretation of the Nintendo Entertainment System, housed in a block of aluminum. It starts at $449, supports both digital and analogue video output and plays the entire library of NES and Famicom games with remarkable accuracy. However, if you dig a little deeper you'll find an 8-bit wonder-system of sorts with capabilities that go far beyond recreating Nintendo's original grey box alone.

Let's begin with the beautiful exterior. The Nt Mini is built inside a unibody anodised aluminum shell with a hefty weight and a beautiful finish. Flip it over and a transparent cover showcases the lovingly crafted motherboard housed within. The 'Mini' moniker stems from the slight reduction in case size compared to its bigger brother, the Analogue Nt. It's available in silver and black and feels like a genuinely premium product. The console also ships with an 8bitdo wireless controller and receiver that can also be used on the original Analogue Nt or the NES itself.

The Nt Mini features four controller ports, support for accessories such as the Famicom Disk System and can __play games from all regions, while offering analogue and digital audio output. The cartridge slots are improved from the original Nt and now featured smooth, rounded edges to avoid any potential scratching of your cartridges. This hefty console is both well-constructed and highly functional.

While the case is ever so slightly smaller, the real difference between the Nt and the Nt Mini is under the hood. The original Analogue Nt motherboard relies on original NES chips that required the manufacturer to remove parts from cosmetically damaged Famicom/NES hardware - destroying them in the process. Considering the increasing scarcity of such consoles, this was never going to work long term and as a consequence, the original Analogue Nt only saw a limited release.

Analogue Nt Mini specs

Here's the complete low-down on system specifications - but note that it is possible to flash new firmwares opening up a range of support for different 8-bit systems.

Compatibility: NES, Famicom, Famicom Disk System - region free, worldwide PSU
Video: HDMI 1080p/720p/480p, RGB, Component, S-Video, Composite, NTSC/PAL support
Audio: 48000Hz 16-bit, digital via HDMI, analogue via RCA, Famicom Expansion Audio Support, full panning/volume support for all channels
Special Features: Original NES controller ports, four-player compatibility, Famicom Expansion Port, Everdriver/Powerpak compatibility, Famicom Microphone support, USB port for controller charging, SD card firmware updating, transparent polycarbonate baseplate
Other Features: Scanline options, scaler options, colour palette options, video cropping, horizontal position adjustment, horizontal stretch

Inside the box you'll find the Analogue Nt Mini itself, an 8Bitdo NES30 controller, the Retro Receiver for NES, an HDMI cable, a USB cable and a worldwide power supply supporting both 50Hz and 60Hz mains.

This episode of DF Retro focuses on the Analogue Nt Mini in all its glory while also highlighting impressive games from the 8-bit era.

For the Nt Mini, Analogue took a different approach by contracting the services of Kevin "Kevtris" Horton - one of the most experienced members of the NES modding community. The system in the new machine is based on an entirely original design using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip technology. Unlike a traditional chip making process, generic FPGA chips can be programmed to perform any number of functions including those necessary to __play NES games. Unlike software emulation, an FPGA can attain perfect timing and accuracy in a way that allows it to behave exactly as the original hardware does. As more consoles are lost to time, FPGA could become the future of preserving consoles of the past.

Aside from the FPGA itself, perhaps the most important feature included with the Mini is support for both analogue and digital video out which makes it possible to use the unit with both an HDTV or a CRT television. The original NES only offers composite video output but mods have been made available enabling both digital HDMI output and analogue RGB output - but never in the same unit. This includes the original Analogue Nt itself, which forced buyers to choose between HDMI output or analogue RGB support. By supporting both, the Nt Mini is much more versatile and fits into a variety of retro setups with ease.

Once you power on the system, you're greeted by a menu system where you can choose to load a cartridge or adjust any number of additional options. For purists, you can opt to boot straight to cartridge rather than the menu. The options menu also allows users to adjust the colour of the LED power light, modify your video preferences, customise the audio and select the colour palette of your choice. NES games did not define colour values in a way that translates directly to higher quality video output, so special palettes are defined to produce accurate results. The Nt Mini ships with several different choices but it's also possible to load custom palettes via an SD card. There's even an option to increase the number of sprites per line, eliminating flicker in many games.

Housed in a block of anodized aluminum, the Analogue Nt Mini is one sexy console.

When using the HDMI video output, a rich assortment of options are available. You can choose between 480p, 720p and 1080p at both 50 and 60Hz, for starters, while also enabling scanlines or various filtering options. If you're looking for crisp pixels, the 1080p mode is the best choice but for scanline users, 720p works better. All modes offer users an option to adjust scaling height and width. We recommend a 5x height and 6x width for 1080p to avoid distortion which can appear when using the actual 4:3 option. For 720p users, it's best to go with 3x height and 4x width.

Analogue video output is handled via a DE-15 port on the back of the unit. The Nt Mini does not ship with the required cables but sites such as Monoprice or Retro Gaming Cables can supply what you need. The console supports the full suite of analogue video output options including composite, s-video, ‎YPbPr component and RGB. You can even manually select the type of sync you want when using RGB, which will vary per display device. The entirety of the menu system remains available when using analog video output but most options are disabled. You can still select a desired palette, at least.

Both options produce exceptional results that far exceed what you could achieve on a real NES. Being able to play the Nt Mini on an HDTV is convenient and it looks excellent, but the option to enjoy the system on a CRT monitor is great too. There is zero input latency added when using either option so the responsiveness of each game is determined by your display.

The console offers full support for both analog and digital video output.

We tested a wide range of games and found the system to be remarkably accurate. Sound is notoriously tricky to get right but the results here are exceptional. Just keep in mind that games using additional chips to enhance audio require the user to manually adjust the "Cartridge Audio" option within the menu. Every single game in our library worked without any detectable issues but even in the face of problems, Kevin and Analogue have responded very quickly eliminating problems in the process.

Out of the box, the Analogue Nt Mini provides the best, most flexible NES experience you can buy. Cheaper FPGA based machines, such as the RetroUSB AVS, are available but lack many of the options available here including analog video output. As is, the system is a great choice for enthusiasts, but thanks to the availability of custom firmware, its capabilities can be extended far beyond.

Since its release, Kevtris has made available a custom jailbroken firmware designed to expand the available features of the system. Analogue itself does not support the use of custom firmware but insists that using it will not void your warranty. The firm considers the system as unbrickable, you'll be covered if you run into problems.

The jailbroken firmware opens up a range of functionality including support for additional 8-bit consoles.

Once you load the custom firmware, the first notable feature is enhanced NES support. A CopyNES function is made available allowing users to duplicate their original cartridges - a key feature for preservation of software. You can also load ROM files directly from the SD card and listen to NSF music files allowing you to enjoy NES soundtracks without jumping into a specific game.

Beyond that, the custom firmware also includes several addition cores that enable the FPGA to duplicate the functionality of other 8-bit consoles. This enables support for the Sega Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Atari 2600 and Colecovision with the promise of additional cores in the future. Based on our testing, these systems all behave as you would expect, though the Game Boy Color core is still a work in progress. The option to play all of these systems via RGB or HDMI with such accuracy is a remarkable feature and greatly enhances the value of the Nt Mini. The cores currently load ROM files from the SD card but there is the possibility of cartridge adapters being made available enabling users to play real carts from these systems.

Analogue Nt Mini - the Digital Foundry verdict

Overall, the Analogue Nt Mini is a highly capable machine with top-notch build quality and a wealth of options. The FPGA design allows for an accurate presentation of NES and Famicom games as well as full accessory compatibility. Support for both analog and digital video is also a tremendously important feature that allows the system to exceed any other machine on the market in terms of flexibility. When coupled with the ability to play games designed for other 8-bit system, the value proposition only increases.

While the $449 price is certainly steep, it's worth considering the cost of a modded NES with similar functionality. An HDMI or RGB video mod costs at least $100 while an Everdrive N8 or Powerpak costs a minimum of $118. You'll need an original console as well, a core component that continues to increase in price if you don't already own one.

The Nt Mini resting on its bigger brother - the original Analogue Nt.

These prices assume that you'll be doing the modding yourself but if you want a pre-modded system with comparable functionality to an Analogue Nt Mini, you're looking at a comparable price. Since a modded console cannot offer digital and analog video output in a single unit nor offer support for other 8-bit consoles, the $449 asking starts to sound even more reasonable for the die-hard retro enthusiast.

Ultimately, this is a premium product for the more affluent enthusiast but with the increasing popularity of retro gaming, it's likely to find a sizeable audience because the sheer level of functionality on offer here is best in class. The Analogue Nt Mini does more than any competing product and offers a long-term solution for playing 8-bit consoles well into the future. For our money, this is the best console ever made for playing 8-bit NES games.

Intel Kaby Lake: Core i3 7350K review

2017-03-04T06:23:00.001-08:00

We've been waiting for one of these for a long time. We know that Intel's Core i3 technology is good for gaming - up until recently, the Haswell-based Core i3 4130 has been at the heart of our budget PC build - but what if we could overclock it? Could a dual-core i3 operating within striking distance of 5.0GHz work as good, or indeed better, than a locked Core i5 quad-core processor? With the release of the Core i3 7350K, we can finally find out.

On the face of it, the i3 7350K follows Intel's established precedent for its unlocked K chips. The firm takes the top-of-the-line product in the range, bumps up frequency a little and unlocks both base clock and multiplier for overclocking. In the case of the i3 7350K, this is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, you get the fastest i3 ever made out of the box - it runs at 4.2GHz locked, and you also get the benefit of 4MB of onboard cache (the cheaper i3s and Pentiums have only 3MB). But the bad news is that the 7350K is relatively expensive for what it offers. It's a dual-core chip that cost around �170-�180. That's perhaps too close to the lower-end locked i5 quad core chips out there.

In effect, Intel is asking us to make the comparison: which is better, a stupidly fast dual-core chip, or a more modestly clocked quad? Muddying the waters somewhat is that the lower-end i3s tend to be more reasonably priced - a good �60 to �70 less for an i3 6100 or i3 7100. And then there's the elephant in the room: the Pentium G4560. Intel's Kaby Lake offerings may have underwhelmed in terms of value at the top-end, but there's a quiet revolution occurring in the budget sector. The G4560 shaves off clock-speed and some features, but it's essentially a 3.5GHz version of the i3 - and we picked one up for just �63.

Our test system, featuring the MSI Z270 Gaming M3

We tested the Core i3 7350K on an MSI Z270 Gaming M3. Sitting in the entry-level sector of enthusiast-level motherboards, the Gaming M3 retains many of the same features as the more expensive M5 and M7 boards, specifically in terms of overclocking functionality for both the processor and DDR4 memory. In tests, overclocking performance on our Kaby Lake and Skylake K chips was identical to both the MSI Z270 Gaming M5 and the Asus Maximus 9 Code.

Memory overclock support up to 3800MHz is included, along with RGB lighting and 'twin turbo' M.2 SSD support. Killer LAN and Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic 2 support is also a part of the package, just as it is on the M5. Compromises come in the form of reduced 'armour' support for some on-board slots, slightly reduced storage interface support and no Nvidia SLI functionality (AMD CrossFire is included, however). Overall, for our needs, the Gaming M3 proved just as worthy as the M5 - with only the lack of SLI support likely to impact any purchasing decision.

We paired this board with four sticks of Corsair Vengeance LPX at 3000MHz, with 15-17-17-35 latency and ran everything from an OCZ Trion 100 SSD. Corsair's RM1000i supplied power while the firm's H100i GTX closed loop cooler sat atop the processor for the duration.

The value proposition is going to cause problems for the i3 7350K. To overclock it at all, you'll need a premium-priced Z170 or Z270-based motherboard. And as we've demonstrated on multiple occasions across all of our processor reviews, CPU-bound gaming scenarios see big performance leaps when the chip is paired with faster memory. Factor in all of this expense and you can't help but wonder whether you shouldn't just increase your budget by �50-�60 and buy the excellent Core i5 7600K instead.

Rich gets to grips with the Core i3 7350K in this in-depth Digital Foundry video review.

Buy the Intel Core i3 7350K [?] from Amazon with free shipping.

First up, let's talk test methodology. We retained the Corsair Dominator 3000MHz DDR4 modules used in our prior Kaby Lake reviews, and paired the Core i3 7350K with an MSI Z270 Gaming M3, the aim here being to match the processor with an entry level overclocking board. As it happens, the M3 is extremely close to the excellent M5 we used with the Core i7 7700K - a few top-end features and storage options are removed but the BIOS is effectively the same, and overclocking capabilities are identical. And in this respect, the 7350K possessed the same top-level as the other K chips we received - 5.0GHz is possible but once you push beyond 4.8GHz, the heat becomes a real problem. We opted to remain at 4.8GHz for our overclocking tests for this reason. Even though our cooling set-up - a Corsair H100i GTX - is a top-tier thermal solution, temperatures hit 90 degrees Celsius at 4.9GHz.

A look at basic benchmarks (below) highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the Core i3 7350K. In single-thread tasks, it's an absolute monster - as fast as the Core i7 7700K out of the box. However, its performance in multi-threaded tasks shows a performance deficit against the locked Core i5 6500 we had on hand (even when overclocked) while it's simply not at the races compared to the i5 7600K and of course the top-tier i7 7700K. It's also interesting to note that the Pentium G4560 hands in fairly reasonable results. Of course, it's the slowest processor in the line-up by quite a long chalk but the fact is that the Core i3 7350K is over �110 more expensive. The HEVC media encoding results impact the Pentium significantly - perhaps because AVX2 instruction support is completely removed from the budget offering. For reference, a Core i3 6100 with just a 200MHz speed bump offers a 40 per cent speed increase in HEVC encoding.

However, as we know from prior CPU reviews, benchmarks and media encoding tests (we use Handbrake to re-encode a 4K Rise of the Tomb Raider clip available here) don't reflect gaming results. For that, we run a series of games with our test set-up paired with a Titan X Pascal overclocked, and running at 1080p. This methodology ensures that the CPU is processing the most complex scenes possible within each game engine, while at the same time mostly removing the GPU as the primary limiting factor. It brutally exposes both CPU power and system memory bandwidth.

Gallery:

	Core i3 7350K Stock	Core i5 7600K Stock	Core i7 7700K Stock	Core i3 7350K 4.8GHz	Core i5 7600K 4.8GHz	Core i7 7700K 4.8GHz	Core i5 6500	Pentium G4560
XTU Benchmark	760	1244	1490	859	1394	1552	1055	336
Cinebench R15 Single-Core	184	173	187	198	203	207	144	145
Cinebench R15 Multi-Core	450	654	963	503	774	1050	537	365
Handbrake 0.10.5 x264	6.37fps	9.6fps	13.10fps	7.28fps	11.50fps	14.8fps	8.12fps	5.11fps
Handbrake 0.10.5 x265/HEVC	2.82fps	4.84fps	6.20fps	3.52fps	5.80fps	6.90fps	4.06fps	1.92fps

In our first spread of gaming benchmarks, we wanted to put the Core i3 7350K into context with the i5 and i7 K chips Intel has unleashed in its new Kaby Lake refresh. The 7600K and 7700K represent the most expensive quad-core chips in their respective market sectors, but there is the sense that the i3 7350K may be over-priced for what it offers. There's a �50-�60 price differential between i3 and i5 K chips, and the feeling we had going into testing was that a true quad-core processor would offer a significant performance lead.

The Division and Assassin's Creed Unity benchmarks are still somewhat dominated by GPU restrictions - even with the insane level of graphics power we are throwing at these titles in our tests - and this explains relatively close groupings across all results on these titles. Elsewhere, we're looking at clear steps between the performance of each processor and generally speaking, an overclocked i3 running at 4.8GHz can't match stock performance of the Core i5 7600K. However, two results stand out here: first of all, Far Cry Primal sees some excellent results from the i3 - a product of its engine design which sees one single core power much of the engine, hiving off tasks to other threads. Also intriguing is the Witcher 3 result. The stock i5 is faster of course, but the result is very close for an engine that thrives on as many threads as you can throw at it.

While all of the results can look pretty close, these are average frame-rates. Lowest recorded frame-rates are where you really notice the differential in CPU performance. The Core i3 7350K is a very fast processor, but even with an overclock in place it cannot maintain 60fps in Crysis 3's jungle stage and it barely manages to sustain 60fps in Rise of the Tomb Raider's Geothermal Valley, even at 4.8GHz. For the record, even the i5 at 4.8GHz has issues with Crysis 3 - though it proves perfectly capable in the Tomb Raider stress test. So with all of this data in mind, what happens when we stack up the i3 K chip against less challenging competition more in its price range?

A gaming benchmark overview of the Core i3 7350K in both stock and overclocked configurations, stacked up against the i5 and i7 Kaby Lake K chips.

1080p/Titan X Pascal OC	Core i3 7350K Stock	Core i5 7600K Stock	Core i7 7700K Stock	Core i3 7350K 4.8GHz	Core i5 7600K 4.8GHz	Core i7 7700K 4.8GHz
Assassin's Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA	104.9	121.4	132.2	110.0	125.4	132.9
Ashes of the Singularity, DX12, CPU Test	22.9	29.6	41.9	25.6	33.1	44.1
Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x	80.5	99.4	138.2	89.6	108.6	145.5
The Division, Ultra, SMAA	124.4	132.0	133.8	129.8	134.6	133.9
Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA	104.4	117.2	137.9	115.2	137.4	140.1
Rise of the Tomb Raider DX12, Very High, SMAA	68.2	89.7	126.5	75.2	97.8	131.0
The Witcher 3, Ultra, No Hairworks	84.1	97.7	139.4	92.1	114.9	145.2

In our second collection of gaming benchmarks, we retain the i3 7350K results, along with the Core i5 7600K stock results (these essentially offer us top-tier, non-overclocked i5 metrics). We don't have the 3.0GHz Core i5 7400 to hand, but we do have the slightly faster Core i5 6500, built on the very similar Skylake architecture, and with the same 3.6GHz boost clock. The Core i3 is generally considered a budget option, so we've also stacked it up against a processor many consider to be the new budget king - the Pentium G4560. Like the i3, it has two cores and four threads, but its clock speeds are limited to 3.5GHz - but that's fine as it costs just 36 per cent of the retail price of the i3 7350K. We picked one up for �63, and it's pretty amazing for its price.

The single-thread king - Far Cry Primal - sees some excellent results for the i3. Whether in stock configuration or with the overclock in place, it handily beats the Core i5 6500. And across the board, some of the results at 4.8GHz see the i3 get very, very close to the locked Skylake i5. Ashes of the Singularity and Crysis 3 even record wins against the locked quad-core processor. However, Far Cry aside, there is no 'killer blow' for the i3 7350K. Essentially, we've pushed a dual-core, quad-thread chip to its limits, throwing power efficiency out of the window and requiring a solid thermal solution to provide mixed results against the i5 6500. Meanwhile, the Skylake quad quietly goes about its business, handing in solid performance and requiring no specialised cooling apparatus - the minuscule heatsink and fan you get out of the box will do the job perfectly fine. And if you have the right Z170 motherboard and load up an older BIOS, the i5 6500 can be overclocked too.

And that's the real issue with the Core i3 7350K. It's about the same price as a locked i5, but to get the most out of it, you'll need an overclocking motherboard and a meaty cooler. Last year, what excited gamers about the Core i3 6100 was the fact that a locked, cheap dual-core chip could be overclocked to 4.5GHz and beyond: a sub-�100 chip could provide some great overclocking returns. By opting to unlock its top-tier i3 instead, the �170-�180 price-point doesn't really offer the same value. Meanwhile, the Pentium G4560 might be the weakest seventh-gen Intel Core processor we've tested, but it's offering 70 to 80 per cent of the i3's performance for just over a third of the price. Kaby Lake does indeed revolutionise the dual-core processor line, but it's the addition of hyper-threading to select Pentiums that proves to be the game-changer.

A fascinating benchmark comparison that pits the Core i3 7350K in stock and overclocked configurations against a locked Core i5 6500 Skylake chip, and the new budget king - the Pentium G4560.

1080p/Titan X Pascal OC	Core i3 7350K Stock	Core i3 7350K 4.8GHz	Core i5 7600K Stock	Core i5 6500	Pentium G4560
Assassin's Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA	104.9	110.0	121.4	113.2	87.6
Ashes of the Singularity, DX12, CPU Test	22.9	25.6	29.6	24.8	18.2
Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x	80.5	89.6	99.4	86.2	66.9
The Division, Ultra, SMAA	124.4	129.8	132.0	131.6	114.0
Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA	104.4	115.2	117.2	97.7	87.3
Rise of the Tomb Raider DX12, Very High, SMAA	68.2	75.2	89.7	77.3	55.4
The Witcher 3, Ultra, No Hairworks	84.1	92.1	97.7	92.3	68.6

Intel Kaby Lake: Core i3 7350K - the Digital Foundry verdict

The Core i3 7350K is a fascinating experiment. By and large, it validates the notion that the i3 (and by extension) hyper-threading punches above its weight, more so in gaming applications than basic benchmarks and multimedia applications. But the bottom line is that the days of games being driven mostly by single-thread performance are now a thing of the past. Multi-core aware game engines are now the norm and the end result is that in most scenarios, a locked Core i5 processor barely breaking a sweat can offer much the same experience as an i3 pushed to its limits.

We achieved a solid 4.8GHz overclock with the i3 7350K, and while 4.9GHz is also viable on our sample, the heat generated is pretty intense - even when paired with an expensive Corsair H100i GTX closed-loop water cooler. Higher overclocks may be possible depending on the silicon lottery, but a game-changing experience from an extra 200-300MHz is unlikely. Put simply, there are only limited returns in terms of performance. Similar to every Intel CPU we've tested, performance also scales in line with memory bandwidth - as this table demonstrates - so to get the most out of the processor, regardless of how far you overclock it (or not), there's extra frame-rate there for the taking by pairing the CPU with faster memory.

While the Core i3 7350K is a great toy to __play with, it's challenging to find the value here. What we want from an overclockable i3 is a genuine value proposition for a budget build - but the fact is that a pricey Z170/Z270 board is required, along with fast memory to get the most from the overclock, plus a decent cooler. Rather than spend the extra money on a heavy duty thermal solution, you can actually save some cash by opting for a Core i5 7500 - which won't require any additional expense on a heatsink and fan and should outperform the Core i5 6500 we used for our locked quad comparisons in this article.

But the genuine surprise from our testing is just how impressive the Pentium G4560 performs bearing in mind its tiny price-point. Historically, Intel's Pentiums and Celerons have been limited to just two threads, leading to major in-game stutter on modern game engines - the main reason it's hard to recommend the overclockable Pentium G3258. This is not an issue with the hyper-threading enabled G4560 - initial results look highly promising and we'll be stacking it up against the other budget processor options in a full review soon.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard review

2017-03-03T08:23:00.001-08:00

Two decades since players first stepped over the threshold of the Spencer mansion, Resident Evil has rediscovered the peculiar thrill of opening a door. Among the original game's most distinctive flourishes are its unearthly, cutaway room transitions: doors gliding through darkness, their jaws creaking open to engulf you. Resident Evil 7 draws on vastly different design traditions - many of which it sadly struggles to build on in any significant sense - but at least to begin with, its doors give off a comparably eerie vibe.

You'll nose against them tentatively, feeling for the chink of a lock, the pickled paintwork glistening under your flashlight in a way series creator Shinji Mikami could only have dreamed of back in 1996. You'll nudge them ajar and pause, ears pricked for a reaction, eye trained on a sliver of mantelpiece or desktop. If you're making use of the game's slightly ramshackle but quite impressive PlayStation VR support, you might physically crane your neck around the frame. Then - after checking your ammunition and, perhaps, reshuffling the weapons you have mapped to the D-pad - you'll sag forward into the room, angling to place your back to a wall as you scan its invariably grim contents: the fizz of a CRT screen in a corner, flyblown pans of meat, the frayed aurora of a bloodstain. Encountering nobody, you'll spin on your heel to appraise the corridor you've just left. Nope, no obvious signs of malicious intent. Returning your attention to the room, you'll take another few steps forward and slowly breathe out. Then the door will swing shut behind you with the gentlest of clicks, and you'll throw the controller at the ceiling.

Resident Evil 7 is, in its way, as much a grab-bag of influences and themes as the would-be series capstone, Resident Evil 6, a game that set out to merge every form Resident Evil has taken over the years into one, ungainly whole. The first-person perspective and lumbering character movement evoke F.E.A.R. and Condemned (narrative designer Richard Pearsey's credits include two of the former's expansion packs), while the dreadfully greasy and emaciated art direction calls to mind the Amnesia series and Resi's ancient rival, Silent Hill. Resident Evil 4's crowded encounters are a distant memory, but there are shades of its frenzied risk management in combat - you can target the limbs of certain enemies to stall their attacks, or aim for the head (or whatever most resembles a head) in the hope of a swift, ammunition-conserving finish.

The firearms include three varieties of pistol, an SMG, remotely detonated explosives and a flamethrower, which comes in very handy indeed against the insect swarms that suffuse one area.

Where the sixth game couldn't decide which of its strands to prioritise, however, the seventh has one unifying goal: to revive something of the original's haunted house, that baroque labyrinth of statue puzzles and blind corners which was among the first videogame environments to really __play with the possibilities of a 3D plane. In this regard, Capcom is onto a winner. Resident Evil 7's setting is the Spencer mansion with a hearty dash of Southern Comfort, a dilapidated manor sweltering in the haze of backwater Louisiana. It's a delightfully textured backdrop, with its peeling wallpaper, rickety balconies and corridors laced with rot and memorabilia, but the key draw is that it's a single, believably joined-up environment that encloses the majority of the game's 12-hour plot. That's a recipe for intrigue and suspense, whereas Resident Evil 6's scattershot global tour was merely a recipe for confusion.

Virtual insanity

Resident Evil 7's PlayStation VR support is imperfect, but quietly gripping. The game's heavy-footed character movement and preference for smaller-scale, one-on-one encounters help it stave off the disorientation and queasiness that often go hand-in-hand with VR - I was able to __play for around 40 minutes without experiencing any serious discomfort, using a combination of head-tracking and the ability to shift the camera by fixed increments using the right analog stick. The environments and lighting also scrub up very nicely indeed in VR, at the cost of some noticeable pixelation. There are a few awkward bits, however. The game spun my perspective 180 degrees a couple of times for no obvious reason, and the sense of immersion is hilariously sabotaged by the fact that your character doesn't have a visible body - just a pair of floating forearms. Moreover, you can actually lean sideways out of your character's invisible flesh during certain scripted tussles, which is at least a nice way of distancing yourself when the action gets too intense. Appreciate the gesture, Jack, but I'm going to let my buddy Frodo Baggins handle this one. Unintended hilarity aside, if you're looking for a proper campaign-length demonstration of PSVR's capabilities, this is a reasonably solid pick.

There are a couple of chapters that take you beyond the grounds of the Baker estate, but for the most part you'll be exploring the mansion itself - a two-storey pile with a sizeable basement - and a few smaller outbuildings, including the guest-house from the game's Beginning Hour demo. The story sees eminently forgettable lead Ethan travelling to the mansion following a message from his wife, the rather more charismatic Mia, who has been missing for several years. On arrival he soon makes the acquaintance of the Bakers themselves, a family of undead bumpkins who spend their days abducting people and somehow transforming them into various flavours of mutant monstrosity. Jack Baker, the dad, is an implacable and seemingly unkillable butcher. Marguerite, his wife, is a screeching harridan with a retinue of oversized insects. Their son Lucas is a twitchy amateur inventor who'd rather trap you in a maze of laser tripwires than tangle with you in person - Resident Evil 7's take on the popular motif of the malevolent game designer. And then there's Evelyn, the obligatory spooky little girl, whose origins are the plot's biggest revelations.

While they spend plenty of time off-screen, the Bakers are never far from your thoughts. As with the Nemesis of Resident Evil 3, there's the continual threat - heightened by a wealth of sinister ambient noise - of one or other family member dropping in on you as you comb rooms for the emblem keys and object puzzle pieces you need to access the mansion's darker recesses. Jack in particular is an unrelenting foe, smashing through layouts with scant regard for his own property.

Honk if you're heartily sick of Scary Little Girls in horror fiction.

Another cause of ongoing tension is our old friend, the Resident Evil inventory, which has a way of filling up just before you stumble on a quest item, though you can make space by dropping items in gear boxes for later recovery. The game's stripped-down crafting system adds to the pressure - it sees you mixing sachets of chemical fluid with various raw materials, and you'll always have more of the latter than the former, which creates some pleasant quandaries. Is it worth topping up your supply of grenade launcher rounds, or should you hedge your bets and craft another healing spray?

Perhaps Resident Evil 7's most intriguing quality is how it plays around with the idea of retracing your steps. For starters, it deploys the classic Metroid tactic of surrounding you from the get-go with doors you can't yet open or rewards (including that eternally coveted prize, the shotgun) you can't quite reach - a straightforward incentive to backtrack that helps entrench the mansion's crumbling layout in your mind. On top of this, you'll find the odd cunningly oblique photograph of a room furnishing that hides a treasure (such as the adrenaline shots that permanently increase your maximum health), which encourages you to attend to the fine details of every interior, however grisly.

There are also a few flashback sequences, triggered by playing back VHS cassettes, in which you explore locations through the eyes of another character, hours, days and, in one case, years before. Entertaining in themselves - there's a ghastly episode that casts you as a man trapped in one of Lucas's inventions, tarnished a little by an obvious designer's kludge to ensure you don't accidentally break the puzzle - these flashbacks create a fun balance of predictability and unease when you return to the present. It's impossible to know how much of what you've just seen on-tape corresponds to what actually lies in the shadows ahead.

Some of the puzzles involve rotating an object under a projector to cast a forbidding silhouette. There are attempts in-game to explain the presence of such weirdly ornate mechanisms in the manor, but they're not all that convincing.

If Resident Evil 7 is a return to form for the series in terms of environment design, and a pleasantly atmospheric exercise after the chaos of the past few outings, it never quite matures into a terrific horror game. There's a dispiriting reliance on scripted jump-scares - at one point, I actually caught the game spawning one of the Bakers around a corner - but what this needs, above all, is a higher class of monster. The Bakers may daunt when not in view, but they're too conspicuously mashed together from genre staples to seriously unsettle when they are, and the eventual boss fights vary in quality.

One of the better ones sees you hurrying through a ruined house, grabbing ammunition from shelves while your adversary clambers around the exterior, bursting through boarded-up windows to snatch at your ankles. The boss spawns smaller threats if left undisturbed for too long, so at some point you'll have to grit your teeth and muscle in. Less impressively, there's a battle in the mansion's fetid underbelly which involves using the environment to stagger your opponent, before venturing into melee range. It's at this point that Ethan's sluggish handling stops being a source of agreeable stress, and starts being plain old annoying, as you strain to line up objects correctly and feel your way around your enemy's defences.

The Bakers aside, there are three types of enemy in Resident Evil 7, collectively known as the Molded: fungal bipeds crowned with lamprey-like teeth, agile quadrupeds who can be dangerously easy to lose in the undergrowth, and waddling bullet-sponges who explode when they die. As far as zombie variants go, they're more than usually revolting, but the revulsion is skin-deep - especially during the story's final third, when you should have firepower to spare. It doesn't exactly add to the sense of peril that the game's block feature is so effective on normal difficulty, the highest setting available when you first play the game; Ethan's forearms are sturdy enough to withstand blows that look like they should tear you in half.

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As with the PS1-era Resident Evils, the HUD leaves how much health you have left open to question - you'll always know when you're on the point of death, but the difference between �getting by� and �a couple of blows from toast� is hard to nail down.

Simultaneously Capcom's most inspired and its most counterproductive decision with regard to Resident Evil 7 was to release one of its locations as a demo, updated in the months before launch with side areas, new conundrums and new terrors. In the process, it has created a rival and, in some respects, a more adventurous version of the title - a sort of potted horror game-as-service that, like Konami's much-mourned Silent Hills teaser PT, embraces the notion that one and the same place can be an object of perpetual dread, providing it's not quite the same place each time.

Via its VHS cassette flashbacks, Resident Evil 7 does toy with the concept of locations that mutate, and its conclusion does take you back to square one in an intriguing way, though the final battle is more whimper than bang. But at heart it's a fairly pedestrian species of bogeyman - a series of peekaboo jolts and serviceable gun battles strewn across a sumptuous, cohesive environment, constructed with no shortage of craft but not a whole lot of real imagination. Those doors may unnerve at first glance, but once you've acclimatised to Resident Evil 7's tactics, it seldom gives you much reason to be afraid of what lurks beyond.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review

2017-03-02T10:22:00.003-08:00

Here's an unusual admission for a reviewer to make. I haven't finished The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I've yet to uncover swathes of its vast map. Much remains for me to do and discover, and my game is still rife with rumour, mystery and surprise. This is partly because my life is no longer compatible with monstering a giant open-world game in a week, even when it's work. But it's also because of the kind of game that Breath of the Wild is.

The reason I feel comfortable telling you this is that this isn't a game that any one player can just know. You can map it out, sure - spend weeks or months enumerating all its components and secrets. But the game's magic resides in its combination of sheer size with sheer openness, with apparently freewheeling yet meticulously interlocked systems, and with a scarcely credible level of detail and craft in its making. When a game world like this meets players, alchemy happens. My meandering and half-complete run, full of digressions and doubling back, feels as meaningful as the game of a completist, or of a player who skipped the main quest to take a run straight at the end boss with armour and weapons scavenged from the map's darkest corners, or a player who chose to ignore the storyline altogether in favour of unlocking the mysteries of Hyrule's most elusive Shrines, or of a player who simply headed north to see what lay there. Rarely has a game been so tempting to restart while you were still playing it.

Our hero Link awakes on a high plateau in the middle of Hyrule's rugged vastness. Sheer cliffs drop off all around, which conveniently confines us here until we've learned the ropes and earned the paraglider that will guide us safely down to the world below. But those cliffs are also there to give us an unhindered and honestly breathtaking view over the world we're about to explore, from cursed castle to hazy wetland, boiling volcano to parched desert. Amid the misty watercolour washes of this fantasy landscape, you can pick out the sharp glow and alien forms of ancient Sheikah technology: towers that fill in the map, and Shrines that house combat tests and physics puzzles. It's an incredibly promising view, and not a misleading one. Nintendo's first open world is up there with Azeroth and San Andreas as one of the greatest game worlds ever created.

Link, it turns out, has been asleep for 100 years, having failed with Zelda to defeat the apocalyptic evil known as Calamity Ganon. Ganon is contained at Hyrule Castle - as is Zelda - but it's up to Link to take a second stab at him. If he wants help, he must journey to the four corners of Hyrule to rehabilitate the Divine Beasts, giant mechanical creatures originally created to defeat Ganon that have now run amok. This is what you would consider the meat of a regular Zelda game - yet, while strongly advised, it's entirely optional.

On your travels you will meet the charming and familiar tribes of Hyrule: the aquatic Zora and avian Rito, the tubby rock-munching Gorons and the fierce Gerudo matriarchy which excludes all men from its desert city. The Korok - cute, rattling woodland sprites that first appeared in The Wind Waker - are here too, and they are vital to the tapestry of Breath of the Wild. But you won't be guided to their well-hidden homeland by any quest marker; you'll have to follow rumours and suggestions to find it and know its importance. That is as good an example as any of the remarkable confidence Nintendo's developers have in their world to draw players in, and the trust they have in those players to explore it freely and inquisitively. Few games in this waypoint-infested genre have that courage.

Visually, Breath of the Wild finds a perfect balance between expressive cartooning and epic lyricism, rendered in rich, painterly colours.

You'll also learn about the Sheikah tablet you're carrying, a sort of fantasy iPad that summons bombs and ice blocks, and commands the forces of inertia and magnetism. Although you can upgrade it, its core abilities are all unlocked by the time you leave the starter area. Gear-gating - using the acquisition of new items to manage the player's progress through the game - is one of many 30-year Zelda traditions that Breath of the Wild bravely discards, in favour of giving you pretty much all the tools early on and sending you off to find your own path. Bombs aside, the power-ups you get aren't the ones you're expecting, and they upgrade in unpredictable ways, branching off in new directions rather than simply getting stronger.

You'll also learn more about what happened 100 years ago (Link is an amnesiac, of course) in a series of cutscenes. If Breath of the Wild has one weakness, it's as a story. The grand events of the past seem remote from the teeming world around you, not to mention rather hackneyed, while the English voice acting - sparingly used, thankfully - is stiff and cheesy. Unlike such soulful adventures as Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Breath of the Wild isn't unduly interested in ordinary people and their stories, and it musters neither the poignant little vignettes nor the strong emotional tenor of those games. It doesn't have the memorable characters and simple, pure narrative purpose of The Wind Waker, either. It's a shame - but it doesn't need these things.

Arguably, a stronger storyline wouldn't have been compatible with Nintendo's decision to grant the player so much freedom. You really don't get this level of openness anywhere else this side of a Bethesda role-playing game. (The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is an obvious inspiration.) You can do whatever you like, and go wherever you feel, greatly assisted by Link's ability to climb almost any surface. This is a game that wholly rejects artificial barriers. The further away you get from the centre, the stronger monsters are, but there's no grind to meet their level and the means to match them can be found just through exploring. Breath of the Wild also rewards your curiosity with constant and dazzling inventiveness. It's dumbfounding that such a vast space should be so packed with things to find, observe and do.

You find and tame horses out in the wild: their varying stats and temperaments, and the way they respond to controls, give them strong personalities.

The designers are squarely focused on keeping you out in this world, and for Zelda traditionalists, that means one major and potentially painful casualty: dungeons. There isn't anything you would describe as a classic Zelda dungeon here, no huge and devious labyrinth of locks and keys, boss fights and puzzles. The gameplay survives in the Shrines, which house the cleverest puzzles in chambers tinged with Portal's austere lab aesthetic, and out in the world, where boss monsters roam and elaborate combat gauntlets await. The Divine Beasts are relatively compact but extremely intricate and rewarding challenges that are probably the closest thing to a dungeon per se. Some Shrines take much longer to complete than others, and are introduced by involved and mysterious quest lines.

Underpinning the whole game is an extremely strong and multifaceted suite of linked systems, including weather, stealth, cooking, and a fantastically fun and convincing physics simulation. (Even item drops from enemies are fully physically modelled.) Cooking, which provides useful buffs as well as refilling your health, isn't the recipe list you'd expect; it's a system where the same dish can be conjured from different ingredients and at different potencies. It's not about collection or rote learning, it's about understanding the rules and then improvising with what you have.

This is true of the game as a whole, especially in combat, where all Breath of the Wild's tools and systems meet. There are so many variables in a fight - what you happen to be holding, what your enemy is holding, if there are any fires or boulders around, if you're in the eye of a lightning storm and so need to unequip everything metal - that it's almost always better to wing it and try new tactics on the fly than to settle into a groove. This is a game that can __play like Dynasty Warriors one minute and Metal Gear Solid the next.

A wonderful soundtrack channels the plaintive melodies and lush arrangements of the great Joe Hisaishi's work on Studio Ghibli films.

Food buffs can help you out hugely if you're under-equipped - and being over-equipped isn't always a good thing. Breath of the Wild's disposable weapons may prove to be the most controversial aspect of its design; weapons wear out fast, and only a few very special ones can be repaired. You're even encouraged to throw them away as they get worn down, as a well-placed lob will earn you a critical hit. It starts out stressful, but it's ultimately a liberating change that's reminiscent of Halo's weapon-swap philosophy. It also has brilliant consequences for Breath of the Wild's sweeping reinterpretation of role-playing game convention.

With no experience points to grind, Link's progression is entirely dictated by gear: clothes for defense and weapons for attack power. A great weapon find is doubly precious for being temporary, so you won't want to waste its short life on weak enemies, and it's always good to have one or two lesser pieces on hand. Thus you're voluntarily scaling your power to the situation at hand, which makes you feel smart and still gives you a strong sense of advancement, without the deadening effect of a level-balancing set-up such as Skyrim's. (Plus, all the equipment looks really cool, and collecting and upgrading Link's outfits is quite compulsive.)

What this all adds up to is superb sandbox game design, free of fiddle or bloat, unencumbered with preconceptions, and executed with the rock-solid reliability, tactile feedback and arcade brio for which Nintendo is justly celebrated. In other words: a total marvel.

The map and soundtrack are littered with references to many past Zelda games, from Ocarina of Time to Link's Awakening. As much as it moves away from their template, Breath of the Wild seeks to synthesise what made them all special.

In case it isn't clear, this is a very different Legend of Zelda game. Until very recently, Nintendo has made its games in a bubble - not that this was necessarily a bad thing, as its priorities were unique, and its standards were uniquely high, but it seemed quite unconcerned by what other game makers were up to. Zelda, one of the most widely admired, finely honed and carefully iterated designs in gaming, was a bubble within this bubble. Its recurring plots about the hero in green echoed its well-worn, smooth patterns of play: get the boomerang, hookshot and bombs, do the dungeons, save the girl. It was a ritual incantation, a myth that ticked like clockwork.

All that has been either swept aside or remade from first principles. It's hard to overstate the courage and conviction with which producer Eiji Aonuma, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and their team have rewritten their own work, and the size of the risk Nintendo has taken with a beloved property. Breath of the Wild isn't just the most radical departure from the Zelda tradition in its 30-year history, it's the first Nintendo game that feels like it was made in a world where Half-Life 2, Halo, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Skyrim happened. It's inspired by those greats and others, but it doesn't ape them any more than it rests on its own laurels. And if we're talking inspirations, we have to recognise one game above all others, an uncompromising adventure from 1986 that dared to take gaming off the rails, that put a whole world beyond the TV screen and invited the player to explore it: the original Legend of Zelda.

1-2-Switch review

2017-03-02T10:22:00.001-08:00

In hopeful pitches delivered to panels of drab-suited, stern-mouthed men, game-makers will refer to their games as being 'platform agnostic'. It's a way to make a game more attractive to publishers; the fewer features unique to a particular console a game utilises, the farther it can travel and the greater the potential audience. This commercial incentive has flattened video game design in a sense. Most game-makers want the technology on which a video game is built to be as invisible as paper is to books.

Nintendo has always had a fundamentally different perspective. For Shigeru Miyamoto, innovation in video game design stems from technological foibles and idiosyncrasies as much as anything else. The tactile joy of scratching out the answers to sums in Dr Kawashima's Brain Training is only made possible via the Nintendo DS touch screen. Those joyous games of multiplayer hide-and-seek in Nintendo Land are only made possible by the Wii-U's supporting, clandestine screen. The era-defining wonder of swinging a Wii controller in order to bat back a tennis ball in Wii Sports was only possible due to that remote control. Focusing R&D on merely improving frame rates and polygon counts is, for Nintendo, a gross misdirection of effort. Technology is not the blank, identikit canvas onto which games are painted. It is the topography that defines what kinds of __play are possible.

The presentation, while clean and graceful, is anodyne when compared to, say, Bishi Bashi Special or WarioWare.

1-2-Switch is, like Wii Sports, Nintendo Land and WarioWare before it, a game that sketches out the boundaries of playful possibility on Nintendo's freshest console (though unlike Wii Sports and Nintendo Land, 1-2 Switch is sold separately). It presents 28 minigames, each one interrogating the hardware's features in different ways, groping around to find what's possible on this slab of plastic and glass, with its weirdo detachable bits. It is the antithesis to platform agnosticism; 1-2-Switch could only exist in this moment, on this machine.

Take Telephone, for example, the first game in the suite, and arguably the best. After sliding the two Joy-Con controllers from their snug housing at the sides of the screen, each player sits their controller on the floor in front of them. You then wait, till the 'phone' rings. The winner is the first player to pick up their controller and bark "Hello" into its microphone. Peril is added (and authenticity somewhat undermined) by the fact that you must only pick-up when you hear the correct ring. Answer a 'ding-a-ling' when you're waiting for a 'brrrrring', say, and you're immediately disqualified. The minigame elegantly makes use of the Switch's various hardware quirks.

Like all of the other games in the collection, 1-2 Switch also reveals Nintendo's understanding that, when it comes to local multiplayer games, the fun is often found, not on the screen, but in your opponent's eyes. In almost every instance, the game implores you to look at each other. In Samurai Training, for example, one player holds the Joy-Con over their head, as if ready to bring a sword down. The other player must clasp their hands together in order to 'catch' the invisible sword at the correct moment, and in doing so survive to the next round. The game takes place, not on the screen, but in the reading of each other's flinches and fake-outs. Like Johann Sebastian Joust, indisputably the greatest tech-facilitated parlour game of the past decade, the hardware is fundamental, but also manages to get out of the way to allow for the richer, more satisfying interplay of human intimacy.

Each player must first click the trigger on his or her respective Joy-Con to ensure that the game doesn't start playing before everyone's ready.

The screen cannot quite be dispensed with entirely, however. Hover over a minigame and, after a couple of seconds, a slickly produced explainer video plays out. While most of the games are easily understood, you'll need to watch these snippets the first time through, an interruption that breaks the flow of excitement in the room - at least until every player is familiar with the 'how to' of every game. The structure is, beyond this, pleasingly straightforward. To begin with you only have access to five of the minigames. Once you've played these a dozen or so times, the full roster opens up, along with a Team Battle for between 2 and 20 players, and a shuffle mode, for those who'd prefer to not spend time arguing over whether to milk a cow next or crack a safe.

The best minigames are those that make use of the hardware features that are entirely novel. Ball Count is the supreme example, in which each player holds the Joy-Con as if it were small wooden box containing between one and nine ball bearings. Using subtle tilts you feel the tip and clop of the bearings, before making your guess as to how many balls are in the box. It's simple and ingenious. Other games feel less unique, but no less enjoyable. In Zen each player must replicate a Yogic pose shown on the screen and then attempt to hold the Joy-Con as still as possible. The first player to sway or shudder is the loser. Likewise, Quick Draw, in which each player must, when given the signal, draw the controller like a Texan six-shooter, firing a shot within the correct sweep of an angle in order to shoot down their opponent. In another you must cradle the Switch as if it were a sleeping baby. Sudden movements will wake the child, causing stressful flashbacks for any parent.

All of these games could, feasibly, have featured on the original Wii (or, at very least, less precise versions could have). Nevertheless, the diminutive size of the controllers, combined with their tactile precision, makes the games feel fresh and contemporary. Switching between a specific game and the selection screen is quick and responsive, minimising the load-time lulls that can scupper any game-party.

1-2-Switch is at its least effective when you have to rearrange the hardware in order to __play a specific game. For example, in Hold the Baby, you need to attach the controllers to the Switch, a process that takes a good 30 seconds. Likewise, in Telephone, you have to remove the Joy-Con strap. These interruptions provide manageable, if irritating bumps to the flow. Nevertheless, as a pithy tour of the Switch's capabilities, it is an entertaining suite. And like WarioWare and Rhythm Tengoku before it, 1-2-Switch shows off the ingenuity of Nintendo's designers, and the way in which imagination seemingly passes from one generation to the next without dilution.

Nintendo Switch review

2017-03-01T12:22:00.001-08:00

Nintendo Switch is the most powerful dedicated gaming handheld ever made, but the challenges facing it are considerable. It's a hybrid device battling on three fronts: firstly, as a successor to the ill-fated Wii U. Secondly, as a pricier, high-tech sibling to the portable 3DS. And finally, as Nintendo's first, perhaps understated attempt at a stand-alone tablet. It's an ambitious concept, but can it hit the mark in all three area?

The Switch's main party trick is its ability to transform from a home console to a fully portable handheld. At the heart of this is a smart and adaptable tablet - in every way a leap in quality over its immediate predecessor, the Wii U and its satellite GamePad. The fundamental change is that all graphics processing is handled natively on this unit, whether docked under your TV, or out in the wild. The fact that Switch is a self-contained handheld makes it feel more like a successor to the 3DS in this respect. And despite all the technology packed into it, it still feels comfortable in the hand, weighing just 297g in tablet mode - 40g less than a 3DS XL. That rises to 400g with controllers attached, but still, it never feels fatiguing for long __play sessions.

Physically, every part of the Switch tablet is a step up from the Wii U spec. The screen size stays at 6.2 inches, but moves from the GamePad's 480p TN panel to a higher quality 720p IPS panel - now with a 10-point capacitive touch-screen. Crucially, the bezel is much narrower, barely a centimeter in all directions, and the device is just over centimeter in depth. It's sleeker all round, and simply more effective as a portable device than the Wii U's cumbersome tablet. Nintendo's move from a scratch-prone glossy material to a silky matte plastic on Switch is also a very welcome touch.

Looking at its edges, we have a recessed power button at top-left, a volume rocker, and a long air vent at its centre that reveals a small fin array inside. You also get a 3.5mm headphone jack, and finally a tiny slot for game carts at the far end. At the bottom is a single USB-C port. This is key: an all-in-one input that you can use for charging, but also serves as the primary interface with the bundled dock. One curious omission here is some sort of LED array - at least some indicator of power status and WiFi activity would have been useful, similar to what we have on 3DS.

Nintendo Switch specs

Here's an overview of the official specs for the Nintendo Switch, as found on the device's official site. There's a fair bit about the system that the platform holder is keeping quiet for now.

Processor: Nvidia customised Tegra Processor
Display: 6.2-inch 720p with ten-point multi-touch
Dimensions: 102x239x13.9mm (Joy-Cons attached)
Weight: 297g (398g with Joy-Cons attached)
Battery: 4310mAh, 16WHr
Internal Storage: 32GB
Networking: WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, dock compatible with USB LAN adaptor
Max TV Output: 1080p/60Hz
Audio Output: 5.1 Linear PCM via HDMI on dock
Internal Speakers: Stereo
USB: Type-C terminal on unit, 2x 3.0 USB and 1x 2.0 USB on dock
Other Features: Cartridge slot, MicroSD/SDHC/SDXC slot, accelerometer, gyroscope, brightness sensor, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack

Our own investigations have uncovered that Nintendo Switch is likely using a mildly tweaked version of Nvidia's Tegra X1 processor, featuring ARM CPU technology combined with 256 CUDA cores in its GPU. The four ARM Cortex-A57 cores run at 1020MHz in both docked and undocked modes.

Fully unlocked GPU performance when docked is rated at 768MHz, while other modes designed for handheld performance see the GPU running at 307.2MHz or 384MHz (the developer chooses - not the user). Switch's LPDDR4 memory runs at 1600MHz in docked mode and 1331.2MHz undocked. Memory bandwidth is rated at 25.6GB/s over a 64-bit interface.

Tom Morgan offers up a comprehensive video review of the Nintendo Switch hardware.

Buy Nintendo Switch [?] from Amazon with free shipping.

Last but not least, there's a microSD card slot sneakily hidden underneath the kickstand. That supports up to the UH Speed Class 1 cards for up to 104MB/s throughput. However, the kickstand itself is an area that disappoints; the hinge has more flex to it than you'd expect. It doesn't instill confidence when snapping it out fully, and it's a far cry from the firmness of the Microsoft Surface stand, for example. It's certainly functional in that it does prop the console up, but the build quality here is at odds with the rest of the device. It does the job, but feels flimsy and insubstantial: an accidental brush against the unit, or a light tap, is enough to cause the machine to tip over.

As for the specs, much has been said of the move to Nvidia's Tegra technology here. There's strong evidence it uses an updated Maxwell-based Tegra X1 chip and while this chipset might be relatively old based on the breakneck pace of mobile technology, its performance is still excellent - and paired with a low-level API, we can finally see what this silicon is capable of. As a home console, it's a big departure from the IBM PowerPC architecture Nintendo used from the GameCube up until the Wii U. It's a fresh start, but an exciting one. And crucially, this technical break in favour of a power-efficient mobile chipset gives Nintendo the ability to condense everything it needs into one small device. Home console and mobile are now one, with the full force of Nintendo's creators focused on one platform.

Switch's display: a perfect match for its technology

In practice, how do games hold up on the Switch's 6.2-inch screen? Initial impressions are glowing, and you can expect the best quality LCD panel Nintendo has produced in a handheld so far. The display oozes quality, giving a vibrant, clear image that fits the console's high launch price. Contrast levels are excellent out of the box - a league away from the dull, low contrast TN panel used on the Wii U. Colour accuracy also carries its content well, featuring only a very slight blue push when compared with a calibrated MacBook Pro panel.

For a Nintendo handheld, this sets a new high watermark. Even in motion, pixel response times are surprisingly strong, and certainly better than the 3DS XL. Simply put, there's no obvious trace of ghosting on grey-to-grey transitions. For dull colours on the lowest brightness setting, smearing and trails behind objects are imperceptible.

The pros and cons of IPS technology are still in line with recent iPhone models or the Vita slim. Black levels are decent in brightly lit rooms, but certainly pale in comparison to OLED devices when viewed in the dark. There's also an obvious gamma and colour shift when tilting the device around, washing the screen out when moving up and down especially. Viewing from side angles isn't as big a problem here, which is a relief for multiplayer sessions on the go.

The 720p IPS panel isn't exactly the state of the art in mobile technology, but it's a great match for the Tegra processor, colour reproduction is excellent and it works fine outside.

For outdoors use, the Switch is again very usable. For reference, the screen hits a higher brightness level than either the 3DS XL or Wii U GamePad on their peak settings, but falls short of the latest cutting-edge smartphone displays. There is a glossy finish on the panel too, meaning you're going to be angling it at times to get a view without glare. But as a general turnout, it's very comfortable overall, and the Switch ramps its brightness up high enough to use effectively in broad daylight - though there are battery life consequences as a result, as we shall discover.

The decision to give Switch a 1280x720 panel is also on-point for a handheld, balancing nicely with the capability of its internals. Of course, the smartphone space is moving to audacious numbers here - Sony has just announced a 4K HDR panel in its latest device - but in practical terms for a gaming handheld, 720p is a comfortable rendering target, and there are enough pixels per inch on-screen to deliver a sharp, clean image. It also means Switch's Tegra X1 GPU should comfortably hit native 720p in major games, limiting the need to upscale from lower resolutions with all the visual artefacts that entails.

The dock, Joy-Cons and accessories

Switch is Nintendo's most sophisticated handheld to date, but for better or worse, the tablet on its own looks much like any other smart device on the market. Thankfully, the Joy-Cons give the Switch some much-needed character. Using the rails at either side of the tablet, these slide down smoothly to a satisfying, echoing click. The metal rail attachment is robust, with five screws fixing the bracket to the tablet's edges. It's a reassuringly sturdy connection once clicked in, and only unlocked by two small buttons at the back.

Really, the two Joy-Cons are the stars of the show: wireless, motion controlled, with a tight vibration for feedback, built-in shoulder buttons, and even an IR remote on the right-hand controller. The 525mAh battery in each has a long lifespan too, rated by Nintendo at around 20 hours apiece, and they're recharged directly from the Switch tablet. One criticism is they can be a little cramped when held sideways for makeshift two-player sessions, with tiny buttons that match the 3DS's - but you soon get used to it. And at last on a gaming handheld, we have proper, raised, clickable thumbsticks this time.

The only downsides? We can't overlook that neither offers a real d-pad. For the sake of symmetry, each Joy-Con instead uses individual direction buttons that we can see being an issue for fighting games. There's also controversy surrounding the Joy-Cons' wireless stability - something we've analysed in-depth elsewhere.

Gallery: The Switch's accessories: included in the box is a pair of Joy-Cons, one Joy-Con grip, two straps, the tablet dock, a HDMI lead, and a power cable. The rather excellent Pro controller is sold on its own.

Overall, the Joy-Cons are at their most comfortable when plugged into the tablet, or connected to the individual grips included in the box. But also supplied is a unified controller grip, combining both Joy-Cons into one wireless pad. This sounds ideal on paper, but the results may not be to all tastes. We found it functional enough, but uncomfortable for long __play sessions. The controller grip doesn't give quite enough space for your fingers at the back, leaving your hands in an odd, clawed position.

For a full-fledged, traditional gaming controller, the Switch's Pro pad really is the way to go. Sadly, it is another expensive Switch accessory, but you do get a proper d-pad this time and a larger battery rated for 40 hours while the analogue sticks are larger and more accurate. In terms of comfort levels, it's a huge improvement over the supplied grip. In short, this is the real deal. If you're planning on using the Switch as a docked home console, and if you can take the price, the Pro controller comes highly recommended, especially for fighting games where the d-pad really shines.

The last part of the package is the Switch dock, an innocuous, hard plastic block, that interfaces with the USB-C port at the bottom of the tablet. Nothing is included in the dock in terms of processing power here; it simply gives the tablet access to more power to in order to tap into higher clocks on the Switch's GPU and memory. Docking also gives you access to three USB ports, and of course, a HDMI output to send the image to your TV. All the wiring is hidden at the back, meaning it's quick and easy to just guide the tablet down, and go from there. But as a side note, you must use the dock to connect the Switch to a TV. A standard USB-C to HDMI converter or cable won't do anything - and yes, we tried it.

One criticism here is the lock-in procedure. There are two metal pins at the bottom to help guide the tablet's USB-C down the middle. It feels slightly inelegant, and there's a lack of insulation between the screen and the dock as you slide it down. All you have are two strips of hard plastic that run against the screen, with a small patch of felt nearer the bottom. Scratches haven't appeared on our unit so far, but for such an expensive device, more padding would have been reassuring.

Everything you get in the Switch package, clockwise from left: multi-voltage power supply, dock, Switch tablet, grip with Joy-Cons (mounted), HDMI cable and Joy-Con straps.

System options and the UI

Booting the Switch to its main menu, it's clear that this is Nintendo's most straightforward system UI to date. The grid layout is gone - at least for launch - and instead you get a long row of tiles that you swipe along with your finger. It's low on clutter, with dedicated buttons for News, eShop, Album, Controller options, general settings, and power at the bottom. And it's here that you realise you can take screenshots at any time, with a tap of the square button on the left Joy-Con, which sends a JPEG straight to the album.

This flags a surprising design choice from Nintendo. The Switch outputs at a maximum of 1080p, with options for 720p and 480p in there too. However, even while docked to a TV, the UI still renders at 720p. When connected to a screen, all the graphics, text, and even the Mii Maker app upscale from 720p to whatever resolution you have set as your output. That's really quite a shame. For the sake of keeping things simple, Switch's front-end seems to keep the native 720p layout used in portable mode, all of which means a less clear image on 1080p or 4K sets. In fact, 4K users will go through two sets of resizing - an internal upscale to 1080p, then the display's bump to ultra HD.

Delving into the settings, there are a few useful extras here. For those who need it, Switch does support USB to LAN adapters out of the box, giving a wired internet connection while docked, while standard WiFi works just fine, of course. You have Amiibo support too, with NFC connectivity built into the right Joy-Con, just by holding your Amiibo over the analogue stick - plus support for the Bluetooth 4.1 standard. And of course there's now a more fleshed out Mii creation tool on Switch, which for those interested, adds more colour options for hair and accessories.

Gallery: A few sample shots of Switch's UI. Curiously, Nintendo has chosen to render its interface at 720p - even when docked with a full HD display.

Beyond that, it's all about what you install to it. With 32GB of pre-installed flash NAND memory, out of which only 25.9GB is usable, you will need to ration your space carefully with digital purchases. For small indie games this shouldn't be an issue, but it's easy to see major releases chewing through this quickly. For example, digital games confirmed so far include Puyo Puyo Tetris at only 1GB. More trying is the 7GB requirement for games Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and up to 32GB for Dragon Quest Heroes 1 and 2. That far exceeds the Switch's default space, and unfortunately external USB HDDs aren't supported with the console, even while docked.

Micro SD cards are the best workaround, and another must for using the Switch long-term. With a day one patch installed, support is there for SDHX cards, in theory letting us hit 2TB down the line. Unfortunately, the eShop wasn't live during the review period, so there aren't any digital copies to test loading speeds yet, but we'll report back on that when we can. However, in terms of pure capacity, the options are clear: 64GB, 32GB and 128GB cards are reasonably cheap, but beyond that, we're looking at silly money compared to conventional hard drives. It's another expense to factor in to avoid cartridges, but the lower capacity SDs aren't wildly expensive, and keep options open for digital-only users.

Thermals, noise and power

Power consumption, noise and thermals are all interlinked parts in the balancing of gaming hardware performance. The Switch packs in plenty of horsepower, with four ARM Cortex A57 cores, and 256 of Nvidia's finest CUDA cores. However, as we've recently reported, clock speeds are adjusted based on whether the console is docked or in portable mode.

To start, the CPU always stays fixed at a speed of 1020MHz regardless of mode. That's a bedrock, making sure game logic always runs in the same manner, whether you're docked or gaming on the go. However, the GPU clocks adapt, with Switch running at 768MHz while docked, but much lower while on the go. Based on our discussions with developers, in portable mode game-makers have a choice to either run the Switch's GPU at 384MHz, or slightly lower at 307.2MHz, in the interest of saving on battery. The same goes for RAM speeds, where memory frequencies are lowered in portable mode, from the docked 1600MHz to 1331MHz.

The good news? Regardless of mode, the Switch doesn't ramp up fan noise to distracting levels, even in top-end 3D games with the volume muted. Put your ear near to the air vent in portable mode, and it's possible to hear its fan ramp up in velocity around five minutes into a game. But it's subtle, unobtrusive, and only channels a gentle flow of air outwards. From a typical playing distance this is trivial, and at room temperature, evidence suggests there's no problem with Nintendo's management of heat or acoustics in the Switch tablet.

On top here, you can see the hottest part of the Switch when running in a stress test scenario across several minutes. On the bottom to the left, we have maximum temperatures of Switch docked and running idle, while on the right we have our maximum measurement - docked and running our stress test.

We put this to the test with a thermal camera. The hottest point is expectedly at the air vent at up top, where leaving the Switch idling at the menu puts it at 30 degrees Celsius, whether docked or undocked. That creeps up during intensive 3D games in docked, and after 20 minutes that same spot goes to 52 degrees maximum. Meanwhile, in portable mode the power throughput is reduced massively, meaning we see thermals peak at 10 degrees lower - 42 degrees Celsius. All in all, it's a comfortable level of heat in the hand - the Joy-Cons are separate from the main unit, after all - at worst giving you a lukewarm touch during play.

Battery life is a more pressing issue. For perspective, while docked the Switch demands 7.5 watts on the main menu, and 16 watts at peak during games. But even with its reduced GPU clocks in portable mode, keeping a lid on power consumption poses a challenge, and a built-in 4310mAh battery has to service it for at least 2.5 hours to meet Nintendo's claims. We used a watt meter to find an area of Switch gameplay that pushes docked power consumption to the limit, then decoupled the unit to run in mobile mode to judge consumption.

The result? Expect just over three hours of use with while playing intensive titles, on either low or 50 per cent brightness, with volume set halfway, and WiFi enabled. Incidentally, this is the same time it takes for the console to perform a full recharge. It's not an impressive number, and at maximum brightness it gets worse still, at two hours and 37 minutes. In fairness, this is one of the most demanding Switch games available. Nintendo claims battery life can stretch to six hours given less taxing software, but it sets the bar for what to expect in major 3D games.

Switch Battery Life	Time
0% Brightness, 50% Volume	Three Hours, Five Minutes
50% Brightness, 50% Volume	Three Hours, Three Minutes
100% Brightness, 100% Volume	Two Hours, Thirty Seven Minutes
100% Brightness, 100% Volume (Powerbank Connected)	Six Hours, Fifty Minutes
Full Recharge	Three Hours, Five Minutes

To solve this, we have the option of plugging external powerbanks into the Switch's USB-C port, giving it extra juice on the go. These are the same as you'd use for a regular mobile phone, so we bought a GMYLE-branded battery from Amazon for just �15. It's rated at 10,000mAh, so even factoring in inefficiency in power transfer, we should get around six to seven hours of battery life. The reality fell far short.

On the positive side, plugging a powerbank into the Switch causes the console to recharge faster than it depletes its own battery even in a stress test scenario with brightness and volume maxed. It's a good start, and means the console power gauge holds at 100 per cent for as long as the powerbank lasts. However, it takes only four hours and 13 minutes to wear through the external battery, before Switch defers to its own solution. In total that combines to six hours and 50 minutes, a decent overall time, but for the extra weight and wiring involved we'd hoped for much more. Of course, results may vary based on brand and quality, and so the search is now on to find a power bank that will indeed deliver battery life from the Switch in line with the rated capacity.

Nintendo Switch: the Digital Foundry verdict

In many ways, Nintendo Switch is what the Wii U should have been, and even reprises some of the best games in its catalogue. It's a better built machine, sporting higher grade materials, an innovative Joy-Con controller setup, and a gorgeous screen. The company's strength in handheld design is clearly tapped into, and while it may be pushed as a home console first, it's more appetising to see it as the successor to the 3DS. Switch rightly takes the crown as the most powerful dedicated gaming handheld right now, but the bonus is its effective, and seamless home console mode.

Certain limitations are clear though. As a hybrid console it has drawbacks on both sides of the package. In a portable state, the battery struggles to hold for over three hours in taxing titles, something even a sizable 4310mAh battery can't avoid. Meanwhile, for the docked, home console experience, the known technical specifications do fall short of competition from PS4 and Xbox One. Don't expect top-of-the-line third party games to reach Switch, and if they do, expect a degree of compromise in visual quality or performance.

There's no denying this is still a compelling piece of technology. Putting aside the controller sync issues and an unconvincing stand, there's a lot to celebrate. The Joy-Cons adapt brilliantly to any situation, and the tablet is ruggedly built in most other regards, with a smart finish, delivering games at a quality beyond anything we've seen on a handheld. It's a clich�, but the value of any hardware rests on great software, and it's Nintendo that will be the one to watch going forward. As the years roll on, we can fully expect the Switch's potential will be better tapped into, and fine-tuned to impressive results

However, as a launch product, the �280/$300 price-point is a big ask compared to the competition, especially bearing in mind a launch title line-up based primarily on Wii U ports. There are also many extra costs too - a larger SD card is essential, the Pro controller is recommended for home use, and an external powerbank is worthwhile on the go. For now, what we have is a strong foundation to build on; it's pricy and not without fault, but we can't wait to see where Nintendo take the concept.

Torment: Tides of Numenera review

2017-02-28T14:21:00.003-08:00

Kickstarter-fuelled nostalgia or not, it takes more than a little self-confidence to name your game after one of the smartest, most beloved, most respected RPGs ever made. That's not a percussion heavy soundtrack you're hearing in Not Planescape Torment: Numenera, just the clanking of its giant brass balls. And yet somehow, against the odds, inXile does it proud. To be clear, Planescape remains by far the superior Torment, but Numenera is as close as anyone's gotten to not just recreating what it did, but the experience of discovering it.

Both games have their roots in pen-and-paper universes, though as with Planescape, it actually helps not to know much about the world so that you can learn along with the main character. You're not an immortal amnesiac this time, but rather the 'Last Castoff' - in brief, there's an entity called the Changing God who likes building himself new bodies every decade or so, then just dumping the old one. That's you this time, though like your brothers and sisters, you retain your consciousness, and are a relatively common sight in the world.

Enough options for you? There's no Journal to remember what everyone's said, unfortunately, though key characters will repeat themselves as often as you like.

It's a fantastic world, too. Numenera is SF rather than fantasy, set on top of eight civilisations' worth of toys and wreckage that range from familiar robots to full-on demonstrations of Clarke's Third Law that any sufficiently advanced technology can be combined with a silly hat to make its user look like a wizard. It's a multicolour world of strange floating doohickies and spinning triangles and particle fountains and ancient clocks the size of buildings, and honestly a real breath of fresh air after the far more traditional settings of recent RPGs like Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny and even The Witcher 3.

It's not just enjoyable for letting the artists __play with the full colour palette, though - it's a great setting for quests and stories. One of my favourites from early on involves the 'Levies'. Like all the best RPG quests, this one is both an assignment and a way of learning about the world in a more active way than just being told the lore. The basic concept is that the first area, Sagus Cliffs, is protected by golem style creatures called Levies, powered by a year of life donated by new citizens. One however has gone horribly wrong and is perpetually in tears. It turns out that its donor was a petty criminal who was planning a big heist that would have ended in tragedy. Instead, after becoming a citizen, he shaped up. However, his Levy remains a product of that year that never happened, complete with all the terrible memories and guilt. Your task is to persuade his creator to gift him a better one.

This approach as much as anything is what Numenera takes from Planescape Torment. There's more overt things, like shout-outs to a past castoff called 'Adahn', villains called the Sorrow that look exactly like the Shadows, and the unnamed main character not usually being able to die, albeit mostly for plot convenience rather than anything really justified in story. However, the interesting parts are invariably the moments it finds more philosophical takes on quests, to wrap the familiar in strange and twisted new imagery, and build a bigger picture of the world through smaller, seemingly isolated nuggets of plot and character.

You do notice the lack of combat after a while. Sections of Sagus Cliffs are supposed to be dangerous, but it's hard to feel that when walking with impunity.

Where it stumbles, it's typically because very few of these details feel as personal as The Nameless One's slow realisation that he's basically behind every scrap of pain he encounters. The Last Castoff isn't completely disconnected from past actions, obviously, but is a big step away from being personally responsible for anything, in a story that often feels afraid to get truly dark, and whose philosophy leans more towards long speeches and debates than the perfect simplicity of Planescape's central question "What can change the nature of a man?" or Mebbeth's exquisite deconstruction of classic RPG fetch quests.

Again though, we're talking about a stone-cold RPG classic here. Working on the same levels is already more than most even attempt, and falling a bit short is nothing to be ashamed of - even if it's impossible to overlook that 'Tides of Numenera' is the real title here, and 'Torment' less a summary of the plot than a general statement of design intent.

It's also worth noting that a lot of the above is mostly an issue in the first couple of thirds of the game, with the third - a genuinely alien place called the Bloom - finally showing real teeth. I'm glad the whole game's not set there, as I did enjoy the sunlight and lighter touch of the Cliffs, but I would have liked more of its lingering menace and threat to kick in a bit earlier, when the Last Castoff doesn't face a whole lot except socially awkward "Hey, haven't we met?" conversations and hunting for the plot in a maze of side-quests.

Mostly, questing is standard issue fare, with a bit more focus on picking text-based options to get things done, and occasional breaks into full-on interactive fiction when exploring the past. The most dramatic break from the norm is what Numenera calls its 'Crisis' system, and it really is a refreshing way of handling more active encounters and retaining player choice.

The Bloom is easily the best location. It's as dark as Sigil, operates on brutally alien morality, and feels oppressive to explore even when there's little going on.

The idea is simple. There's almost no combat in the game, and none of it is the usual ambient goons just standing around, or NPCs going from "Hail, friend!" to "WE MUST FIGHT TO THE DEATH!" at the slightest nudge or insult. Action encounters are sparse but complex, initiated only at key story moments and often possible to cut off before even that by using your party's pool of Might, Intellect and Speed points to intimidate or persuade or slink away in silence. When it does, the world shifts to a turn-based system. Instead of just fighting, however, you can still talk, use items, manipulate the battlefield, and more.

The system often works great, as the first battle showcases. Normally it would be a straight-up fight. Instead, you can __play with light bridges, intimidate the enemies into fighting poorly or straight up giving up, weaponise the arena with the right skills, or simply surrender, be knocked out, and wake up wherever it was they planned to take you in the first place. The second big one takes the system in more of a stealth direction, using musical devices to distract not-immediately hostile enemies and with failure causing a diplomatic incident between two species, rather than simply dropping you back in for a second attempt.

The further into the game you get though, the less inspired these sequences become. By the end there are far too many characters taking forever to take their damn turns and the initial sequences' complicated, interwoven mechanics have been boiled down to stuff like 'kill everyone or hit that crystal three times. Yes, that one just sitting there in the open.' The final really big fight - surviving until a certain event - was so boring, I put on a movie. While there are options to avoid combat at times, having a non-combat build didn't help me avoid taking shots and knocks on the way to these non-violent solutions.

The later sequences aren't helped by the fact that while, technically, you're supposed to be balancing a limited number of Intellect, Might and Speed points to spend on physical challenges and conversations, with the more you spend increasing your odds of success, Numenera never really puts the screws on. You only spend a few of them per choice, most challenges can be given to any member of the party rather than just the Last Castoff (big exceptions being calling back on previous memories) and it rarely takes many to get an almost guaranteed success. The result is that it's almost never worth gambling instead of just straight-up buying a victory. In addition, not only does a full team have points pouring out of every orifice, there are boosters, and while staying at an inn to recharge them is expensive, it's not so expensive that it's ever actually a problem to do that as needed.

Not knowing Numenera as a setting, it's hard to tell how many seeming Planescape shout-outs are part of the setting - the Castoffs having their own Blood War for instance, or the Bloom's voraciously biological take on Sigil's Portals.

I don't want to be too down on either system though, as both are good ideas and preferable to the bland combat and tedious skill-checks they replace. When the Crisis system works, it feels like a GM is controlling the fight, just as the points system has a few clever subtleties, like combining with individual skills such as Persuasion to distinguish between, say, talking a character down versus shouting them down. That guiding touch isn't always there, though, and the longer the game clicks on, the more it feels like the passing of time itself should probably have been listed as co-designer - its razor hands slicing away the early subtlety in favour of brute-force solutions.

In particular, there's a certain awkwardness to much of the world. It's hard to put a severed finger on exactly what it is, because it's not that Numenera lacks for quests, locations or content. At the same time though, you can't go into many buildings on the map, areas are small and fairly sparsely populated, and much of the content on offer is oddly shared out. Take for instance Sagus Cliffs. For all of its quests, in practice you only need to complete a couple to get to the second hub. That's a full third of the game that you could easily spend ten hours investigating, or almost complete by sheer accident- not least because the lack of combat/difficult skill checks removes any sense of how powerful you currently are or need to be at any given time. Your current level really tells you nothing.

Luckily for Numenera, the audience most likely to enjoy it is also the audience most likely to be tolerant of such mechanical things. The obvious comparison is with Pillars of Eternity, a game rooted in the RPG mechanics of Baldur's Gate et al, and the feel of the old Infinity Engine. Torment however, then and now, is a game built on story and narrative; of seeing promises of over 1.2 million words and going "Hurrah!" instead of emitting the kind of groan that normally involves a regrettable curry washed down with a whole cheesecake. If you're the kind to just click through the text, avoid. That's where most of the fun is.

The people of Numenera have no shortage of technology. But usually no manuals for it, no way of replacing it, and often no idea what anything was originally meant to do.

And in that regard, it's successful. Like its predecessor, Numenera may not have invented its world, but it makes it one you'll want to spend time in. Where other RPGs are still content with a dragon or some apocalyptic end of the world boom, here the stakes are personal, as well as both asking and inviting far more interesting questions than how much fire you can fling from your fingertips. It's a far more welcoming game than the original Torment, though a slower burner as far as the main plot goes, and one that never quite has its predecessor's dark confidence. It is, however, as close as we've had in the last 15 or so years, and certainly doesn't invoke the name in vain.

Night in the Woods review

2017-02-28T14:21:00.001-08:00

Video games have cast me as a dapper hitman, an alien garbage collector, a chinless vampire and countless other roles, but this is the first time I've been asked to __play a mess. Infinite Fall's bleak yet sparkling interactive novel is the tale of Mae Borowski, a feline college drop-out in an allegorical America populated by talking animals, who is crashing with her parents for the winter. The fact that she's a cat who plays bass aside, Mae's most distinctive quality as a protagonist is that she's a total liability - lazy, needy and far younger than her twenty years suggest, with a miraculous knack for saying the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.

Rather than imposing her will on the world - in keeping with the worn-out view that escapism in a game means being irresistibly powerful - she bumbles through it, sloping off downtown each day at sundown to clamber up buildings, shoplift and hang out with her best buds after they finish work. This adolescent routine persists throughout the game's six hour length, even following a twist that takes the story into suspenseful whodunnit territory - crawl out of bed, hit the high street, bound over fences, steal pretzels, pester exhausted friends for attention.

Everybody is worth talking to more than once in a row.

Between trips into town you can also chat with your buddies over social media, and maybe polish off a level or two of Demontower, a delightfully grungy 8-bit dungeon-crawler hidden away on Mae's laptop. The plot does throw up its share of excitement eventually - a macabre discovery outside a diner, a giddy chase, a trip to a museum at night - but excitement is not why Mae has returned to the town of Possum Springs. She's basically here to waste time.

Night in the Wood's throwaway sprinkling of platform-puzzle mechanics almost feel like an extension of the character's fecklessness. You'll need to ascend to the rooftops to speak with certain characters, and there's an element of skill to chaining jumps in order to bounce extra-high on the third, as in Super Mario 64. In large part, though, the platform mechanics are there to be indulged, not mastered - sauntering along telegraph wires that thrum like guitar strings while somewhere below, busybodies mither about vagrants and call centre operators complain of needing drugs to get through the 9-to-5. Similar things could be said of your infrequent ability to pick a response in dialogue, which is usually about adjusting the tone of a conversation or shifting the focus ever so slightly, rather than deciding on a course of action. This is a game that, amongst other things, uses a scarcity of "meaningful" interaction in order to make a point about the protagonist's passivity.

Video game characterisation generally works in two directions, as players both assume a role and assume a role in response to the role they're invited to play. In Mae's case, I quickly found myself settling into the persona of a disapproving older brother. I wanted to yell at her to stop ducking her parents' tentative inquiries about what exactly went wrong at college. I wanted to tell her to give her friends some goddamn breathing room, to stop blundering through delicate conversations about childhood abuse or bipolar disorder. I wanted her to stop saying "like" all the time, to quit breaking out in childish ecstasies over crappy horror movies and pizza.

Perform badly in band practice and you'll earn some back-handed reassurances from friends, but there are no major story repercussions.

I wanted, most of all, to tell her to stop wasting her evenings at band practice (a splash of Guitar Hero rhythm-matching) and get a job. It was at this stage that I realised that the game had become less about Mae's waywardness - for which there are Reasons - and more about my own, stuffy ideas of grown-up behaviour. Good stories drop us into the shoes of another being. Great ones teach us something about ourselves in the bargain.

Night in the Woods is a great story, at least till Infinite Fall spoils it with a big, clumsy dollop of exposition towards the end. It's an examination of post-industrial America through the lens of a small group of lovable misfits, a homecoming-of-age yarn that leverages both the autumnal melancholy of a Ray Bradbury novel and the kooky ennui of a Garden State. It's a story about old folk grown bitter and vengeful, youngsters struggling to escape dead-end service jobs, and the mundane gestures of affection and solidarity that keep despair at bay. At its most searching, it's also a story about the coldness of a godless universe, though it does leave open a door to faith in some kind of higher power. This side of the game crops up most prominently in Mae's dreams - chapter-bridging trips through cracked midnight expanses of city and forest to a grim folk band accompaniment, where the game is closest in style to a traditional platformer.

Infinite Fall's art direction is superb, arraigning the decline of a once-prosperous mining town in rich shades of purple, russet and gold. It's a landscape of peeling store displays, neglected war monuments, scuffed-out murals and framed memorabilia, reaching to a faded sky creased by flights of migrating birds. The score is similarly marvellous, a burble of electronica that shifts naturally from background track to in-world ambient music - the stodgy muzak of a junk food store, the murmur of an acoustic guitar at an outdoor party.

The game takes its sweet time delivering on the eerie implications of its title.

The game's chief strength, though, is its writing, which is whimsical without being frivolous and tender without being maudlin. The core cast strike a balance between archetypes familiar from cinema and portrayals that feel like they're drawn from personal experience. Bea is the spiky yet dependable Goth girl whose disdain for Mae slowly thaws. Gregg is a puckish, troubled soul in a rakish leather jacket, and Angus the stoical big brother figure whose asthma performs a function not unlike Velma Dinkley's mislaid glasses in one, spookier scene. The bit parts are worth knowing too - make a point of getting to the bottom of the mystery, and you may overlook the anxious kid on the rooftop who harbours dreams of being a horror director, or the pastor whose kindness is all the more affecting for her doubts.

It's just a shame that - perhaps taking its cue from Mae's less graceful moments - the ending rides roughshod over much of this nuance, tying up certain themes in a hasty, showy fashion and stating out loud what might have been left unsaid. In some ways this simply reflects the difficulty of the subject matter, but it also reveals a game that hasn't quite reconciled the needs of a realist drama and a B-movie chiller. You could also argue that the game is a little too repetitive - Mae might not have a job, but trundling back and forth between home and town every day certainly feels like one. For the most part, though, Night in the Woods is a triumph, comparable to Gone Home in mood and thrust, but with a delicacy and a humour that is all its own.

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