Category Archives: Games

Subnautica: Below Zero review — life begins at minus 30

Posted on by

PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC, Mac; Unknown Worlds
Survive under the waves on a frozen planet in this freeform adventure where following the instinct to explore is the real goal

I’m planning a trip. I’m going to load my sea truck with provisions, pick a direction and travel as far as I dare before pitching camp on an iceberg. First up, I need to craft a compass; while I’m doing that, I might as well make a bunch of beacons to mark points of interest for later. I could also do with some sea truck storage compartments (you know, for all the beacons). I pin the recipes to my heads-up display and go for a dive, hoping to pick up some crafting materials, but as I explore deeper, the sentient AI that has taken up residence in spare bits of my cerebral cortex (don’t ask) notifies me that there’s something interesting nearby. Topping up my oxygen regularly to avoid suffocating as I crawl over unexplored parts of the seabed, I stumble upon an abandoned underwater science outpost and start picking through it for salvage and intel. There’s an interesting crafting recipe here… wait, wasn’t I planning a trip?

Subnautica: Below Zero is an underwater survival game where best laid plans, like my theoretical sea truck escapade, are often diverted toward interesting distractions. As scientist Robin Ayou, we descend on planet 4546B to search for her lost sister, Sam, but the more immediate priority is staying warm, fed and hydrated (and making beacons). Starting out from little more than an aquatic linen closet with a fabricator and a tiny storage locker, the early hours are spent scavenging for fish and scraps to stay alive and fashion basic tools. There is no combat, just survival.

Continue reading...

Resident Evil Village review – nerve-shredding descent into horror

Posted on by

PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X; Capcom
The action careers superbly through spooky gothic castles and underground complexes where monsters and a bloodsucking femme fatale lie in wait

It has been four years since Resident Evil 7 rescued the series from its action-heavy nadir and returned to the roots of survival horror: jump scares, and elaborate puzzles involving unattractive oil paintings. Now, Village seeks to bring back some of the gunplay introduced in Resident Evil 4 without losing the tension and dread. The result is a delightfully schlocky survival horror adventure that makes constant references to earlier games – and will bring much joy to fans.

Things start on an eerily domestic note, with Resident Evil 7 protagonist Ethan Winters and his wife Mia attempting to recover from their horrific experiences in isolated rural Louisiana by moving to … isolated rural eastern Europe. After a gruesome opening, in which Mia is shot and their baby kidnapped, Ethan must set out to discover what fresh hell he has landed in this time. You start out exploring the village of the title, a squalid, diseased little place, all cackling crones and mad-eyed yokels with shotguns, like some nightmarish Borat remake directed by Eli Roth. Most of the inhabitants have been slaughtered by four monstrous local lords at the behest of a cruel demigod. To save his daughter, Ethan must track these bizarre aristocratic sociopaths down to their lairs and kill them.

Continue reading...

Gaming in colour: uncovering video games’ black pioneers

Posted on by

Jerry Lawson led the invention of cartridges, Ed Smith made a hybrid console/PC, and designer Muriel Tramis won France’s highest honour for bringing history into play. How many more names are forgotten?

In the 1970s, in the fledgling days of the video games industry, an engineer named Gerald “Jerry” Lawson designed one of the earliest game consoles, the Channel F, and also led the team that invented the game cartridge, a defining innovation in how games were made and sold. His son, Andersen Lawson, recalls that he was often working on gaming projects in the garage of their family home in Santa Clara, California. “There have been conversations recently about the struggles he might have had that were related to his colour,” he says. “Was it difficult [for him]? Yes, I’m quite certain. But I never heard any grumblings from him. And I’m also certain that he earned his respect … My father was a person of colour and I think that would inspire young people today to jump in and help move the industry along.”

Black people, and especially black women, are still underrepresented in the video games industry. The Independent Game Developers’ Association records that only 2% of US game developers identify as black; in the UK, meanwhile, according to UKIE’s 2020 census of the entire industry, 10% of its workers are black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME). But black innovators such as Jerry Lawson have been present and influential since the earliest days of the video games industry – and there is not enough recognition for their achievements.

Continue reading...

New Pokémon Snap review – chilled photography game could be snappier

Posted on by

Nintendo Switch; Nintendo
Trekking through forests and meadows in search of quirky creatures to photograph is a serene but repetitive experience

Pokémon is nominally about collecting and battling cute monsters, but, like most children’s fiction that has stood the test of time, these games draw you into an interesting and believable place – one where kids can live their dreams and humans exist in harmony with quirky creatures. It’s a universe that has captivated a few generations, and for adults who grew up with it, their fondness runs deep. Even on a tiny, black-and-white Game Boy screen, what Pokémon has always offered is a world.

New Pokémon Snap has you looking at that world through a camera lens, as you glide serenely through different fictional habitats in a cheerful yellow observation pod. The Pokémon go about their business – a Machamp poses on the beach, Sawsbuck struts gorgeously around a forest, Combees doodle about in a meadow of flowers – and you line up the perfect shot. You need to be quick with the shutter to catch fast-moving airborne creatures, and patient to capture a dawdling Charmander in the perfect pose.

Continue reading...

‘In the game, I knew myself as Hannah’: the trans gamers finding freedom on Roblox

Posted on by

37m people use the gaming platform every day in search of adventure – and for teenagers exploring their gender identity, it is also a place of liberation

When she was a child, Hannah discovered two portals to other worlds. The first was her Nintendo 64, which could transport her to the dark dungeons of Zelda and the chaotic battlefields of Super Smash Bros. The second was her mother’s wardrobe in their Devon home, full of clothes she longed to try on, even though this was forbidden. Hannah had been assigned male at birth and raised as a boy; she feared her mother would not approve of her son trying on dresses. It wasn’t until a decade later that Hannah would come out as transgender, identify as female, and adopt her current name.

She vividly remembers the first time she explored that wardrobe, at the age of nine. Her mother was at work, her father asleep downstairs in his chair. Hannah crept into their bedroom and tentatively opened a drawer. She took out a silky nightgown and shrugged it on, feeling the instant, giddy rush of something she would later learn to call “gender euphoria”, though it was tempered by fear that someone would walk in. As if on cue, her mother returned from work unexpectedly and caught Hannah in the act.

Continue reading...

Three days of pain: how I built a gaming PC

Posted on by

For an enthusiastic computer nerd, it should have been a fun, fulfilling, money-saving distraction during lockdown. Then the error messages started

It’s just like building Lego, they said. Enjoy the process, they said. You’ll have such a feeling of accomplishment when it’s finished. This is what friends and colleagues told me when I set out to build a PC. It did not quite go that way.

It seems more and more people are choosing to construct their own gaming machines rather than buying them already made. It’s cheaper (in theory), you get to choose the exact specifications, and it’s something to do while you’re stuck at home in lockdown. Even Superman actor Henry Cavill has been getting in on the act, making a video of himself constructing his new machine while wearing a really tight vest. I thought it would be a fun thing to do with my 13-year-old son as a sort of Easter holiday treat. We’re both nerds – what could go wrong?

Continue reading...

‘We needed to rescue the nation from despair’: culture’s year of Covid

Posted on by

Comedians went virtual, Ai Weiwei went to Portugal – and Bake Off pledged the show would go on. In the first of a two-part series, cultural figures look back on a year that shook their industry

Continue reading...

From keep fit to sex: how Guardian readers have boosted their mood during the pandemic

Posted on by

Everyone needs a release from the stresses of lockdown life. Readers share the ideas that work for them

We bought some solar-powered garden fairy lights and set them up on our garden shed. We can see them when we are having dinner or letting the dog into the garden. It means that, during the day, we have the fun of the flowers and, at night, twinkling lights. They remind me of the stars, another mood-lifter – stargazing puts everything in perspective. Nicholas Vince, actor and YouTuber, London

Continue reading...

From Monument Valley to Minecraft: 10 of the best mobile games

Posted on by

Revisit tortured first loves, explore a deserted town and make your daily plod around the park more exciting with Pokémon Go

Given that we are all sitting at home staring at our phones anyway, it’s a good time to take a break from the doomscrolling to broaden your phone game palette. Nobody has really bettered this Escher-esque puzzler about guiding a wee girl through levels full of optical illusions and cool perspective changes. The calming colours and minimalist style offset the fiendishness of its architectural conundrums.

Continue reading...

‘I learned about storytelling from Final Fantasy’: novelist Raven Leilani on Luster and video games

Posted on by

Drawing on her own cathartic relationship with role-playing games, Leilani uses gaming as a narrative device and an inspiration in her acclaimed debut

There is an extraordinary and telling moment in Raven Leilani’s acclaimed novel Luster, about a young black woman who has an affair with a middle-aged white man and ends up living with his family. The woman, Edie, is heading back to her lover’s house with his adopted black daughter, Akila, when the pair are stopped and questioned by two police officers. Although Edie is compliant, Akila – younger and much less worldly – challenges the cops and gets thrust to the ground and restrained. The confrontation is rife with fear and tension, and when it’s over (diffused when Akila’s white mother intervenes), the first thing Edie and Akila do is go inside, sit down and play a video game.

Much of the fervid discussion around Luster has focused on Leilani’s astute and witty analysis of sexual politics and racial power structures in the 21st-century US. But a key part of her acutely realised portrayal of a millennial protagonist coping with crappy jobs and crappier love affairs is Edie’s natural relationship with digital culture and technology. At a time in which video game references are still mostly consigned to YA and sci-fi books, Leilani has made them a central component of a literary novel.

Continue reading...

Nvidia’s new gaming software puts brakes on mining cryptocurrency

Posted on by

Artificial constraint highlights struggle to keep up with demand from cryptocurrency miners

The newest graphics cards from the gaming processor designer Nvidia will be artificially constrained in their ability to mine cryptocurrencies, the company has announced, as it desperately tries to manage a year-long inability to satisfy demand.

The RTX 3060, a high-powered PC peripheral designed to let gamers get the best performance from their machines, will ship with software that makes it half as effective at mining the cryptocurrency Ethereum as it could be.

Continue reading...

‘You can smell the sweat and hair gel’: the best nightclub scenes from culture

Posted on by

Writers and artists including Róisín Murphy, Tiffany Calver and Sigala on the art that transports them to the dancefloor during lockdown

There have been many notable nightclubs in film history. The Blue Angel in the Marlene Dietrich movie; the Copacabana in Goodfellas, accessible to privileged wiseguys via the kitchen; the Slow Club in Blue Velvet, with the emotionally damaged star turn Isabella Rossellini singing the song of the same name.

Continue reading...

10 short video games to play with your partner (or housemate)

Posted on by

From detective missions to prison breakouts, playful puzzles to cosy diversions, here are some great games perfect for two

As the long, boring Covid winter drags on and sitting in front of Netflix together has long since lost its appeal, video games remain one of the few social pleasures allowed to us. Though most of the best multiplayer games are online – meaning you need two consoles at home if you want to join someone you live with – there are still plenty you can enjoy together on the couch. Some of these recommendations are two-player games you can play cooperatively, others are shorter story-based games that are fun to play with company, and all will happily fill an evening or two.

Continue reading...

Comfort and control: video game recommendations for the ongoing lockdown

Posted on by

From lonely birds to legal eagles, our critics share their favourite digital diversions to combat the boredom and uncertainty of the Covid era

I’m not sure why I keep going back to Cloudpunk (PS4, Xbox, PC, Switch). The sprawling, dystopian city of Nivalis is every bit the future imagined by the cyberpunk fiction of the 1980s, a technocracy full of staggering inequality and endless skyscrapers rising into the clouds, embroidered with neon. I finished the game, in which you play a driver delivering packages in a flying car, months ago. And yet I keep returning to race aimlessly across its gleaming airborne highways and luxe high-rises, soothed by the hum of my engine.

Continue reading...

‘All that mattered was survival’: the songs that got us through 2020

Posted on by

Butterflies with Mariah, Bronski Beat in the Peak District, Snoop Dogg on a food delivery ad … our writers reveal the tracks that made 2020 bearable

When it came to lockdown comfort listening, there was something particularly appealing about lush symphonic soul made by artists such as Teddy Pendergrass and the Delfonics. But there was one record I reached for repeatedly: Black Moses by Isaac Hayes, and particularly the tracks arranged by Dale Warren. Their version of Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You is an epic, spinning the original classic into a nine-minute dose of saccharine soul. But their cover of Going in Circles, another Warren exercise in expansion, is their masterpiece, reimagining the Friends of Distinction original as a seven-minute arrangement with stirring strings and beatific backing vocals that builds into a story about lost love that transcends the genre’s usual parameters. A perfect, if slightly meta, balm for the repetitive lockdown blues. Lanre Bakare

Continue reading...

Game of Thrones video game tycoon dies in suspected poisoning

Posted on by

Police in China detain colleague of Yoozoo Games founder Lin Qi on suspicion of involvement in death

Shanghai police have detained a man in relation to the suspected poisoning death of the wealthy founder of a video games company.

Lin Qi, 39, died on Christmas Day, eight days after he was taken to hospital with “acute symptoms of illness”, according to his company, Yoozoo Games Co, known for the Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming strategy game and as the producer of a forthcoming Netflix adaptation of the science fiction hit The Three-Body Problem.

Continue reading...

Cyberpunk 2077: how 2020’s biggest video game launch turned into a shambles

Posted on by

Starring Keanu Reeves and hyped to the heavens, Projekt Red’s dystopian but glitchy romp has been pulled from sale. What went wrong?

Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most-anticipated video games of the year was released last week. A dystopian romp around a Blade Runner-inspired city, it had all the ingredients for a perfect storm of hype: it’s been nearly a decade in the making; its creator, Warsaw’s CD Projekt Red, was behind one of the greatest games of the last decade (The Witcher 3 – think Game of Thrones but grimier); it stars Keanu Reeves, who is as popular with gamers as he is with everybody else. Eight million people had pre-ordered and paid for the game before it came out. But since 10 December, it’s all gone horribly wrong.

On launch day, the reviews were good – great, even. Many critics praised the fictional Night City’s realism, its striking skyscraping architecture and grubby alleys; they loved the invigorating gunplay, ballsy characters and neon swagger. Some expressed reservations about the game’s rather adolescent tone and its eagerness to objectify women’s bodies – neither of which were a surprise to anyone who’d been keeping an eye on the game’s marketing.

Continue reading...

Cyberpunk 2077 review – could it ever live up to the hype?

Posted on by

PC (version tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PS5, PS4; CD Projekt
Blade Runner meets Grand Theft Auto in this sprawling hellscape of a role-playing game, which is extraordinarily immersive but let down by misogyny and xenophobia

So here we finally are, in Night City. Almost a decade after it was first announced, CD Projekt’s massively ambitious role-playing game has launched into a swirling maelstrom of hype and controversy that befits its salacious, histrionic setting. Like the technological MacGuffin at the centre of the plot, Cyberpunk 2077 is highly advanced and ingenious, but also bug-ridden and irresponsible.

You play as V, a cybernetically enhanced street hustler looking to make their name on these squalid, vicious streets, taking infiltration and assassination jobs for the gangs who’ve carved up the criminal underworld. While attempting to steal a cutting-edge biochip from a powerful corporation, you implant it in your own head, unknowingly infecting yourself with the digital ghost of dead rocker and anarchist Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves, essentially playing Theodore “Ted” Logan’s asshole brother). If you don’t get him out of your brain, you’ll both die.

Continue reading...

Eat, drink, play: the recipe for memorable food in video games

Posted on by

You can’t taste it or smell it, but food and drink play a big role in video games, providing everything from sustenance to secret weaponry

Food has always played a vital role in video games. From Pac-Man’s bonus fruits to Mario’s magical mushrooms, it has provided everything from sustenance to supernatural abilities – and in games such as Cooking Mama and Overcooked, food preparation became a genre in its own right. Game developers, like the creators of cooking programmes and recipe books, have discovered that well-presented food is irresistible – even when we can’t eat it.

In the modern games industry, where detail and authenticity are paramount, the depiction of food has become an art form. Kaname Fujioka, executive director on Capcom’s fantasy adventure, Monster Hunter: World, says: “We design the ingredients and recipes based around the grade of the food, as well as any seasonal events it may be tied to. Since we’re unable to showcase the most important elements of food (taste and smell), we have to alter, exaggerate or potentially deform the visuals in a way that conveys that as best as possible. In order for players to believe that the visuals look ‘delicious’, a lot of fine-tuning is done on details like the colour, lighting and softness.”

Continue reading...