Category Archives: Games

Steam Deck: is it the Nintendo Switch for nerds?

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Valve’s newly announced handheld console promises to put the latest PC games in your pocket. But do they belong there?

It looks like Valve has done it again. The company that surprised everyone by pivoting from game developer to digital shopkeeper with the launch of Steam, then leapt into virtual reality with the HTC Vive and Valve Index headsets, is now taking on Nintendo with a powerful handheld games console.

Announced on 16 July and due to launch in December, the Steam Deck features a 7in LCD touchscreen, an array of analogue and touch-pad controls, a gyroscope for motion detection, wifi connectivity and a base station so it can be hooked up to a monitor. Tech-wise, it’s built around a custom Zen 2 AMD processor, AMD RDNA 2 GPU and 16GB of memory. In a recent deep dive on the machine’s specs, Eurogamer found it compared to the Xbox Series S console in terms of performance.

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Think, fight, feel: how video game artificial intelligence is evolving

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AI in games has long been geared towards improving computer-controlled opponents. Will it soon create diverse characters we can talk to instead of just shoot?

In May, as part of an otherwise unremarkable corporate strategy meeting, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida made an interesting announcement. The company’s artificial intelligence research division, Sony AI, would be collaborating with PlayStation developers to create intelligent computer-controlled characters. “By leveraging reinforcement learning,” he wrote, “we are developing game AI agents that can be a player’s in-game opponent or collaboration partner.” Reinforcement learning is an area of machine learning in which an AI effectively teaches itself how to act through trial and error. In short, these characters will mimic human players. To some extent, they will think.

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No cults, no politics, no ghouls: how China censors the video game world

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China’s video game market is the world’s biggest. International developers want in on it – but its rules on what is acceptable are growing increasingly harsh. Is it worth the compromise?

In the years after it was founded in 1999, the Swedish video game company Paradox Interactive quietly built a reputation for developing some of the best, and most hardcore, strategy games on the market. “Deep, endless, complex, unyielding games,” is how Shams Jorjani, the company’s chief business development officer, describes Paradox’s offerings. Most of its biggest hits, such as the middle ages-themed Crusader Kings, or Sengoku, in which you play as a 16th-century Japanese noble, were loosely based on history.

But in 2016, Paradox decided to try something a little different. Its new game, Stellaris, was a work of sprawling science fiction, set 200 years in the future. In this virtual universe, players could explore richly detailed galaxies, command their own fusion-powered starship fleets and fight with extraterrestrials to expand their space empires. Gamers could choose to play as the human race, or one of many alien species. (My personal favourite dresses in a lavish golden cape and has a head like an otter’s, with soft reddish-brown fur, dark eyes and a black snout. Another type of alien is a sentient crystal that eats rocks.)

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From Cuphead to Super Meat Boy: 10 of the most fiendishly difficult games

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Roguelike shooters, punishing platformers and brutal, sword-heavy RPGs … not all great games have to be a walk in the park

If you want to try and enjoy beautiful 1930s-style animation while being so frustrated that you nearly throw your controller at the wall, Cuphead is your game. It’s a run-and-gun cartoon caper that looks non-threatening but is actually evil. I had nightmares about one of its bosses (the transforming wedding-cake castle), but when I beat it I felt like an actual god.
Consoles, Mac, PC

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The 15 greatest video games of the 1990s – ranked!

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It was the decade Sonic the Hedgehog, the original PlayStation, the Nintendo 64 and so much more entered the world – here are the 15 best games of this golden age of gaming

Of all LucasArts’ memorable, quip-fuelled point and click adventures – from dark afterlife comedy Grim Fandango to the surrealist Day of the Tentacle – it’s Monkey Island 2 that gets the most love nowadays, and justifiably so. The puzzles were just on the right side of deliberately obscure, the characters were strange and colourful, and the music unforgettable. And that ending still sparks discussion, 30 years on.

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The best video games of 2021 so far

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Hostile alien planets, giant vampire women and a jazz age murder mystery – plus some old favourites, rebooted – are among the best games released this year

PC
A gentle, board game style town building sim, which has you matching hexagonal landscape tiles to craft unique locations, laying on further puzzles and pleasures as you go.
What we said: “This is game-playing at its most thoughtfully relaxing, with that rare chance, in video games, to be the architect of a world, rather than its conqueror.” Read the full review.

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Bake Off to Inside No 9: what to watch instead of the Euros

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A football-free cultural guide to the week ahead, from comedy podcasts to Sean Bean dramas

Listen, I’m with you. I have no interest in Euro 2020 either. But luckily, over the years I’ve perfected the art of finding other things to do. Here’s a day-by-day alternative viewing guide for the first week of the tournament (after that, you’re on your own).

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Why I started streaming video games on Twitch at the age of 43

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Over lockdown, comedian, mother of two and former games journalist Ellie Gibson took up livestreaming, loved the community – and learned to love playing again

Like so many things in my life, it began as a daft experiment. I love learning new stuff, and over the course of my 43 years I’ve tried all sorts. Some things have stuck, like comedy, running, and having kids. Some haven’t, like kung fu, olives and holidays in Germany. To be honest, I thought that livestreaming games on Twitch would fall into the latter category.

For those who aren’t familiar (I wasn’t until this year), Twitch involves playing video games live on the internet while providing a running commentary. People watch you, and chat to you via a message window, and sometimes give you money. It’s sort of like exotic dancing, but with fewer breasts.

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Subnautica: Below Zero review — life begins at minus 30

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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.

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Resident Evil Village review – nerve-shredding descent into horror

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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.

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Gaming in colour: uncovering video games’ black pioneers

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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.

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New Pokémon Snap review – chilled photography game could be snappier

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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.

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

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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.

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Three days of pain: how I built a gaming PC

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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?

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Nvidia’s new gaming software puts brakes on mining cryptocurrency

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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.

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

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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.

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