9000 9001

FEBRUARY 2020 THE MAGAZINE FOR ALL THINGS XBOX

ONLY ON HOT NEW

XBOX! GAMES!
Halo Infinite Marvel’s Avengers
Bleeding Edge Cyberpunk 2077
Hellblade II Resident Evil 3
Grounded Dying Light 2
Everwild R E V E A L E D! Overwatch 2
& more! & more!

SERIES X
ALL THE LAUNCH G
PLUS THE 100 HOT
XBOX GAMES OF 2020!
 INTRO

ISSUE 186 FEBRUARY 2020

An X-citing
Future Publishing Limited
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EDITORIAL
Editor Chris Burke burkey13a
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Group Art Director Warren Brown wozbrown
Games Editor Dave Meikleham McMacklespam

year ahead
Production Editor Drew Sleep lunaratlas
Staff Writer Adam Bryant Firebreedpunk
Our Man Down Under Stephen Lambrechts

CONTRIBUTORS
Writing Steve Boxer, Steve Hogarty, Martin Kitts, Aaron Potter, Alex
Spencer, Rebecca Stow, Josh West, Sam White
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CIRCULATION
One this year, from highly anticipated triple-A
Head of Newstrade Tim Mathers Chris Burke
Head of Production Mark Constance Editor
blockbusters to imaginative indie titles – proving
Production Project Manager Clare Scott
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We’ve been talking a lot this Xbox generation has plenty of life yet. By
Production Manager Nola Cokely about the new Xbox, and
MANAGEMENT
Chief Content Officer Aaron Asadi
wishful thinking has led the end of the year, we’ll have the next iteration
Brand Director, Games Matthew Pierce
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us to coming up with of Xbox, which we now know is going to be
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Global Art Director Rodney Dive
our own versions of the
Group Art Director, Games Warren Brown
next-gen console. Xbox called Xbox Series X, and is a sleek black box
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ISSN 2053689

Adam Bryant Warren Brown Drew Sleep Dave Meikleham

Staff writer Group art director Production editor Games editor
Series Bryant comes Warren’s Series Brown Gaze at the tired eyes of The leader of the
with immersive audio looks just like the our prod ed. “My surname resolution revolution has
and plays the sounds regular Series X, but with is ironic,” he grumbles. created the Series Meiks,
of Nemesis’ and Mr X’s a rainbow stripe across His Series Sleep will help which can render things
Future plc is a public company Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne
quoted on the London Stock Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford footprints around Adam’s one corner in tribute to him off to the land of in a whopping 16K. He
Exchange Chief financial officer Penny Ladkin-Brand
(symbol: FUTR)
www.futureplc.com Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244
house. He’s a mad one, his beloved ZX Spectrum nod by gently releasing just needs to wait for TV
our staff writer. retro computer. sleeping gas. tech to catch up.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 003

 STA RT

Everything you can look forward to over the next 100 or so pages

insider
008 BIG STORY:
XBOX SERIES X
012 HOT TOPIC
014 RESIDENT EVIL 3
016 CROSSFIRE X
018 OPINIONS

previews
026 HALO INFINITE
028 MICROSOFT FLIGHT
SIMULATOR
030 ORI & THE WILL OF
THE WISPS
031 EVERWILD
032 LEGO STAR WARS:
008
SKYWALKER SAGA
033 BLEEDING EDGE
034 CYBERPUNK 2077
036 DISINTEGRATION
037 ZOMBIE ARMY 4
026
038 WATCH DOGS:
LEGION
040 DIABLO IV
041 BEYOND GOOD &
EVIL 2
042 OVERWATCH 2
UB I I N
GAMEPAD
OFFER
PAGE 022

004 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

044 ELDEN RING
045 DOOM ETERNAL
046 PSYCHONAUTS 2
048 DYING LIGHT 2
050 DARK PICTURES:
LITTLE HOPE
052 MARVEL’S AVENGERS
053 GROUNDED

featu
056 MATT BOOOTY
062 OXM INV
VESTIGATES:
THE HIST
TORY OF
HORROR R ON XBOX

revie
072 ANCESTORS:
THE HUM MANKIND
ODYSSEY
074 ARISE: A SIMPLE
STORY
076 SPARKLITE
078 CIVILIZATION VI
080 LONELY MOUNTAINS
DOWNHILL
083 THE BRADWELL
CONSPIRACY
084 BEE SIMULATOR
087 SECRET NEIGHBOR
088 CARETAKER The Art of Borderlands 3 is out
089 JALOPY now from Titan Books, priced
090 LIFE IS STRANGE 2

extra
100 £35 (hardback). We’ve also got 3
copies to give away to the first 3
readers to email the name of the
game’s slightly irritating robot to
oxm@futurenet.com!

096 NOW PLAYING: YOUR

HALO REACH
098 CONTROL
099 SEA OF THIEVES
FREE
THE ART OF
100 RETROSPECTIVE: BORDERLANDS 3
BANJO-KAZOOIE: DIGI SAMPLER
*Scan QR
NUTS & BOLTS code to
download
104 WHY I LOVE… MAN
OF MEDAN
106 TOP TEN HAIRDOS
110 DIRECTORIES
114 DISC SLOT:
KIM FORREST
090 http://bit.ly/ArtOfBL3
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Email oxm@futurenet.com

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 INSIDER FEBRUARY 2020

The big news this month is Microsoft’s reveal of the

e
next generation of Xbox console. No longer need w we
refer to it as Project Scarlett. Instead, we have the
Xbox Series X to look forward to by the end of this s
year! Unveiled in all its black-boxy glory at the Gameme 008
Awards in December, we’re now super excited
to see just what it can do. Read all about it from
page 8 this month, and be sure to keep your eyes
glued to OXM for more updates as we have them in
the coming months! Another recent surprise reveal
came courtesy of Capcom. Resident Evil 3 (p14) is 014
being remade by the zombie masters, and following
the success (and brilliance) of the Resi 2 remake,
we’re thrilled it’s going to be with us by April! You
might not have heard of CrossFire X , but this
shooter is absolutely massive in the Far East, and
now that Remedy Entertainment has got on board,
016
doing what the studio does best and creating a
narrative campaign for it, we’re sure we’ll all soon be
hooked too. See page 16 for more! Then we have
Opinions from The Fixer (p18) and The Editor (p20)
rounding up a packed and certainly exciting Insider!
018
006 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 007
 INSIDER XBOX SERIES X
THE X
FACTOR
Next-gen gets
some X appeal
Microsoft finally unveils Xbox Series X for the
first time, with its next-gen console offering 8K
gaming and four times the power of Xbox One X
Sayonara, Scarlett. Never again will
we have to call the next Xbox by its
former codename. Instead, we can
finally refer to Microsoft’s incredibly
powerful new console by its actual
name… hello, Xbox Series X!
Microsoft wowed the world during
last month’s Game Awards, with a
truly startling hardware reveal. Still
scheduled for a Holiday 2020 release,
Xbox Series X is the boldest, beefiest
console the Redmond firm has ever
made. Just look at it… it’s like a little
PC! It’s also comfortably the most
powerful system in Microsoft’s history.
“Xbox Series X will be our fastest,
most powerful console ever and set a
new bar for performance, speed and
compatibility, allowing you to bring
UNITED
your gaming legacy, thousands of
WE STAND games from three generations and
more forward with you,” wrote head of
Xbox Series X lets you Xbox Phil Spencer on the Xbox Wire.
place multiple games
The sheer horsepower Xbox Series X
on standby to allow
you to switch
has under the hood should lead to
between titles much experiences we could only imagine
more quickly. Xbox on Xbox One. “Its industrial design
partner director of enables us to deliver four times the
program management processing power of Xbox One X in
Jason Roland the most quiet and efficient way,”
confirmed the feature says Spencer. Oh, and if you’re a little
to GameSpot. “It’s worried about Series X’s rather ‘large
about ensuring
and in charge’ vertical profile, and
there’s less waiting
and more time
whether it’ll actually fit inside your
playing… that’s what TV cabinet, fret not. “We designed
we want to do with Xbox Series X to support vertical
the consoles and and horizontal orientation,” reveals
services we have.” Spencer. And breathe.
008 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
Spencer also confirmed various
hardware rumours that have been
swirling around for months. Xbox
Series X will indeed have that
much-discussed AMD Zen 2 CPU,
and this next-gen RDNA processing
architecture – try not to get too
hot and bothered now – will let the
killer console deliver a level of visual
fidelity we’ve never seen before,
something Spencer elaborates on.
“From a technical standpoint, this will
manifest as world-class visuals in 4K
at 60fps, with the possibility of up to
120fps, including support for Variable
Refresh Rate (VRR), and 8K capability.”
That’s right: eight-flippin’-K. We’re not
sure our eyes are physically capable
of seeing that many polygons, but our
peepers are still hugely excited.
Hell’s bells
While cold hard numbers are great and
all, the merest glimpse at the recently
announced Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
is worth more than all the words. If
you’ve not seen the trailer for Ninja
Theory’s tormented sequel, free up
two minutes and seven seconds of
time, put down the mag briefly, and
prepare to witness scarcely believable
graphics. Watched it yet? Wonderful.
Captured from in-engine footage
running on Series X, if the final game
delivers the kind of damn near photo-
real environments the trailer hints
at, we could be looking at the best
looking videogame ever made. Hold us.
 XBOX SERIES X INSIDER

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 INSIDER XBOX SERIES X
While firm gameplay details on
ABOVE Supporting Hellblade II are scarce, the debut
footage suggests Senua remains
both 8K res and
framerates up to gravely traumatised. The facial
120fps, Xbox
capture work already looks insane,
Series X is a
future-proofed and if the warrior’s incredibly lifelike
monster. mannerisms look like this in the final
retail release, we could be dealing
with a title that looks ‘Pixar convincing’
in motion. Throw in the fact all 15 Xbox
Game Studios teams are currently
developing “the largest and most
creatively-diverse line-up of exclusive
games in our industry”, according
to Spencer, and we think we need
fanning down.
Next box
Whether you’re a fan of Xbox Series X’s
design or not, you can’t deny it’s a
striking box. A radical departure from
010 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
“The new pad
finally ets a
share button
for your screen-
snappin needs”
the design of Xbox One, it’s a bold,
grown-up piece of kit that demands
attention. According to GameSpot,
which sat down with Spencer shortly
after the console’s reveal, Series X’s
square footprint is “roughly as wide
as an Xbox One controller and (again,
roughly) three times as tall”. Height-
wise, that actually stacks up pretty
closely to the form factor of Xbox
One X – gah, too many X-es! We placed
an Elite Controller Series 2 next to our
X, and Microsoft’s current, soon to be
usurped 4K dream machine is roughly
three times taller than the £160/$180
pad. For reference, Xbox One X is 30cm
tall. Series X is obviously a chunkier
customer than either version of Xbox
One, but then again, it is squeezing in
all the cutting edge tech.
Hopping back to controllers, and
Xbox Series X naturally comes bundled
with an all-new Xbox pad. Introducing
major, much-demanded features, it’s
the sort of sleek, graceful peripheral
you’d expect the world’s most powerful
console to come boxed with. The
biggest addition? An honest to god
share button for all your screenshot-
snapping needs. Rejoice!
“We’re not the first ones to do a
share button,” Spencer admitted at
The Game Awards. “We’re not saying
we invented that, but we’ve heard
feedback that sharing is such a
part of a gaming experience now for
many of our players that I wanted a
dedicated hardware button to share.”
In retrospect, Microsoft really should
have stuck a share button on the
recent Elite Series 2. Grrgh.
As you’d expect, the new Xbox
Wireless Controller is compatible with
both Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs.
It’s also very slightly smaller than Xbox
One’s pad, and to our eye, there are
several key changes to the existing
controller design. Obviously the new
curved D-pad is decidedly different
from Xbox One’s version, but really
peer at the new pad, and you’ll spot
other, less showy revisions.
To us, the ABXY buttons look a little
flatter than their Xbox One equivalents
– like the Elite Series 2, there should
be less travel. The triggers, which still
boast haptic feedback rumble, also
take a cue from Microsoft’s premium
controller. Look closely, and you
can see a mesh-like texture on the
surface of LT and RT. The bumpers
 XBOX SERIES X INSIDER

GRAPHICS GALORE
Xbox Series X should have a killer GPU from
AMD to deliver amazing next-gen visuals

While we already know a decent amount about the

CPU (central processing unit, its ‘brain’) powering Xbox
Series X, the GPU (graphics processing unit) side is
less clear. It seems likely a Navi-based unit from AMD
will handle the next Xbox’s graphics, and in a recent
interview with Gamespot, Phil Spencer talked about
the tech that should allow the next-gen console to
push all the polygons.
“We wanted to have a dramatic upgrade from the Xbox
One base console,” says Spencer. So when we do the
math, we’re over eight times the GPU power of the Xbox
One, and two times what an Xbox One X is.” The idea of
two times the raw graphical power of Microsoft’s current
premium machine is mouth-watering, though the firm
hasn’t talked teraflops yet. Seeing as Xbox One X has six
teraflops, simple maths suggest Xbox Series X could
have a whopping 12. Now, what’s a teraflop again?

also appear to be slightly more raised,

which could result in a more clicky,
more responsive LB and RB. Talk about
Xbox clickbait.

One happy family

Thanks to its back-compat and
cross-save features, Xbox Series
X slots neatly into the existing
Xbox One family.
“Leading the way with our
first-party titles including Halo
Infinite in 2020, we’re committed
to ensuring that games from Xbox
Game Studios support cross-
generation entitlements and that your
Achievements and game saves are
shared across devices,” says Spencer.
The message seems clear: no matter
what flavour of Xbox you play with, no our battered wallets would be pretty
one is getting left behind. happy. Either way, best start saving.
While an exact release date and Aside from Xbox Series X, Microsoft
final RRP have yet to be announced, is also rumoured to be working on
we’re hoping Microsoft will price a second, less powerful console.
Xbox Series X as competitively as Currently codenamed ‘Lockhart’, this
possible. The original Xbox One was supposedly disc-less machine would
a little overpriced when it launched, RIGHT The new be roughly as powerful as Xbox One X
so here’s hoping Microsoft has Xbox is said to and should be a good deal cheaper
be super quiet,
learned its lessons in this regard. with a large top than Series X to reflect the reported
Xbox One X launched at around the fan for cooling… power discrepancy. In the here and
£450/$500 mark when it went on sale that would now though, it’s just great to have a
appear to have a
in November 2017, so if the Redmond green glow to new Xbox to look forward to. You better
giant could match or better that price, it, too. believe X marks the next-gen spot. Q

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 INSIDER DISCUSSION

OXM
DISCUSS
What do we think
of the new Xbox
Series X?
Microsoft surprised everyone by revealing its new console
at The Game Awards. But what does Team OXM make of it?

What a wonderful
start to the year.
Left Just look at Now that Microsoft
that design, you has finally given us
could worship a name for the new
that thing…
Xbox, shown us
Below The beating what it looks like
heart of the
Series X is gonna
and teased us with what it’s capable
produce some of, Team Green is free to dominate the
awesome visuals. whole year with Xbox Series X hype.
This really will be the year of Xbox, and
an exciting one at that, too.

Drew: I like the design, it’s elegant.

It reminds me of an Amazon Alexa or
Google Home. The name, though…

Chris: The name is a little confusing

with the already existing X, though the
important part is the ‘Xbox’.

Adam: I really like it. It’ll grow on people.

Dave: There may be waves of confused

grannies next Christmas. ’What’s that,
little Jimmy? You want the Xbox One
X Series X?’ Some poor tykes may end
up with an Xbox One X over the new
machine. First world problems redefined.

Chris: It’s not going to fit in most media

centres, though I kind of like its PC
aesthetic in a way – suggests power.

Dave: It can lie on its side, Chris. It’ll all

be fine. You (probably) won’t need a
new TV cabinet.

Drew: It reminds me of the Monolith

from 2001: A Space Odyssey, so it’s a
winner for me.

Dave: The Xbox Series X: the official

console of Stanley Kubrick and tool-
brandishing apes.

012 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 HOT TOPIC INSIDER

Adam: I half-expected the Chris: I’m going to need a new telly.

announcement trailer to show
OXM
someone throwing the controller into
the air and for it to cut to a shot of a
spaceship in orbit.
PANEL
Adam: And new eyes.

Dave: I already feel like my peepers are

HOT TOPIC
at maximum capacity with 4K. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF
Dave: Microsoft never quite to stick THE BRAND-NEW XBOX
that first hardware design. The folks at Chris: What about the new Series X SERIES X?
Redmond always get there eventually, controller? At first glance it looks
though. I’m certain the disc-less the same but it has lots of nice little
version will be called Xbox Series S. incremental improvements. “I love unconventional
They’ll want to replicate that S/X console designs… I’m
naming format from Xbox One. Dave: Thank god it has a share button. glad it’ll have
Chris Burke
Editor
From a boring work standpoint, that’s backwards
Chris: Interesting to see what they As excited as Chris going to make taking screenshots so compatibility with not
do with alternate or special editions. is for Xbox Series X, much easier. just games, but also
Although please, never do a white one we’re not sure he’s accessories as well.”
keen on the idea of
because it will look like a mini-fridge. buying a new TV and
Adam: It’s odd the Elite 2 controller Jeshua Derazo
entertainment unit. doesn’t have that nifty share button,
Dave: I’m all about next-gen, but I’ll but I guess you can program one of the “My concern is the
believe a videogame console running other buttons to have that function. price. Another minor
games at 8K after I’ve quickly shot concern is how bulky it
down this flying pig that’s currently Dave: Yeah, you can. I already have… may be and the location
fluttering past my window. because I’m extremely sad. of the extraction fan. It
may hinder where I can
“We finally ot Chris: What do we think the green glow
is all about?
place it.”
Garion Dixon
Dave Meikleham
a limpse at the Games editor
Dave’s mutant eyes Drew: Oh, that’s the uranium. “Loving the design
thin that will rule can see more than
the average human, Dave: I think it’s just a fancy light trick
– different from the
norm. Guess I better
but even 8K might
our lives for the be a little too much
for him.
to draw your eye to that top fan. It’s
another very PC gimmick.
start saving for the ‘day
one’ edition. I just hope
next five years” Chris: Will it be on all the time, or
that Halo Infinite is
bundled with it.”
flashing annoyingly when it needs to Andy Swalwell
Adam: I remember everyone was cool down through too much Halo?
sceptical the Xbox One X would achieve Could we use it as an ambient light “It’s a simple design.
4K gaming at the time, so they might source? That’s what I’ll tell my wife in The cosmetics of the
surprise us again. Possibly… order to justify the outlay, anyway. system isn’t what we’re
paying for but the
Drew Sleep
Dave: 4K/60fps should be the Production editor Drew: It’s mad that we’ve finally got a power it has inside.
standard Series X is aiming for. 8K We’re debating if glimpse at this thing that’s gonna rule Can’t wait to see just
will probably be for future versions Drew will actually our lives for the next five years. I’m so how developers are
of current streaming platforms – 8K play the Xbox Series X excited for the end of the year. going to harness its
or just worship it
Netflix, for example. I have a £1,000 while brandishing a max potential.”
GPU. 8K ain’t gonna happen for a femur bone. Dave: I’m excited for Series X, too. I Jesse Gomez
looong time. want all the graphics, and those next-
gen quality-of-life improvements like “Sounds awesome but
being able to put multiple games into with a name like ‘series’
standby mode is cool. It’s obviously a makes me think there
day one buy for me. are more consoles
coming sooner or more
Chris: It’s still all about the games - but options on this one
Adam Bryant
if that Senua’s Saga trailer is anything when it comes out.”
Staff writer to go by, and if Halo Infinite’s even half Jeff Mallory
Adam’s enamoured as good as it’s looking, next Christmas
with that chonky is going to be amazing. Q
matte black box and
is already wishing
Agree with the above? Have
the year away until Get ready for next-gen. Xbox Series X your own ideas? Tell us at
its release. is due for release holiday 2020. facebook.com/oxmuk

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 INSIDER RESIDENT
THRILLS
AND JILLS
S.T.A.R.S.
in our eyes
Ever the crowd-pleaser, Capcom announces
a Resident Evil 3 remake coming this year
We all knew it
was coming, but
Capcom smashed
through the
window anyway
and announced
the remake for
Resident Evil 3. The best part? We
don’t have to wait long until it’s
sitting in our disc trays as it releases
early April. Resident Evil 2 was the
hot ticket of last year. Using the
impressive RE Engine, it took all the
things people loved about the original
game and subverted expectations to
bring us an experience that was both
familiar and new.
Former STARS member Jill Valentine
is back, alongside mercenary Carlos
Oliveira. Also returning is Brad Vickers,
Nikolai Zinoviev, Mikhail Victor and
of course the monster of the hour,
Nemesis. Taking place 24 hours before
and overlapping with the events of
Resident Evil 2, Jill and crew set out to
escape the zombie-infested streets of
Raccoon City.
We can expect a similar experience
to the Resi 2 remake. You’ll visit
familiar locations and more, with
all-new puzzles, a tweaked story and
whole bunch of new surprises. There
are, however, plenty of questions
still to be answered. Will Carlos be
given a more significant role as his
prominence on the box art seems
to suggest? It’s wishful thinking to
expect two separate campaigns, like
with Leon and Claire in RE2, but we’d
EXCITED? HORRIFIED? LET THE WORLD KNOW AT WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/OXMUK
014 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
EVIL 3 REMAKE
at least expect Carlos to play a much
bigger part than in the original. Will
the devs include the ‘Live Selection’ Collec-
choices from the original, where you STARS
performed certain actions during Edition
cutscenes to progress the story?
During the reveal footage Jill is seen Those looking to flash
having some kind of hallucination the cash will be
where she looks infected. Is this going thrilled that a
collector’s edition for
to be a new take on when she gets
RE3 will be available
infected by Nemesis, or something for preorder. It’ll come
different? Whatever we think we with a standard
edition of the game, a
“We can’t wait
double-sided map of
Raccoon City, a
double-album
to see what soundtrack, a
collector’s art book
much takes this into account as well.”
Even Carlos and series baddy Nemesis
Nemesis has and last but not least,
an 11-inch model of
have had a slight makeover.
Given how terrifying the Tyrant was
ot up those Jill Valentine. It’s the
same height and has in the RE2 remake we can’t wait to
see what Nemesis has got up those
sleeves” a similar aesthetic as
the Leon model from sleeves. “He has more ways than
the RE2 remake’s Tyrant from Resident Evil 2 to track
collector’s edition. down his target Jill Valentine,” teases
know about RE3, it’s anyone’s guess Kawata. Fans of the original game
as to how Capcom will play with our may have spotted during the reveal
expectations like the team did with its footage that Nemesis can be heard
previous remake. saying “STAAARRRS” in exactly the
ABOVE Nemesis same way it did back in the day. It still
Zombody new will make RE2’s gives us chills.
Mr X look like a
Jill isn’t partying like it’s 1999 anymore RE3 won’t be going it alone, either.
cute and cuddly
and is rocking a new look. “If you teddy bear. The game will be bundled with
compare Resident Evil 3 to the second Resident Evil Resistance – AKA Project
RIGHT Jill has
instalment, it leans more towards ditched her Resistance – the asymmetrical 4v1
action,” says RE3 producer Masachika outfit from the co-op multiplayer game announced
Kawata in a message from Capcom. original Resi 3, in 2019. We better start psyching
but we’re pretty
“So we remade everything based on sure it’ll ourselves up for some zombie slaying
that premise. Her new design very return as DLC. when the game drops on 3 April. ■
 P L A Y/ E J E C T INSIDER

PLAY/EJECT
THE THINGS PUSHING
OUR BUTTON (OR NOT)

BioShocked
2K recently
announced the
creation of a new
studio in the form
of Cloud Chamber.
Its current project
has been confirmed
to be the next
BioShock game.

Witchcraft
We’ve been sliding
on our knees all
day with the news
that 4K remasters
of PlatinumGames’
Bayonetta and
Vanquish will arriving
on Xbox One on
18 February.

Brothers in arms
Rebellion
Developments has
recently acquired The
Bitmap Brothers and
its back catalogue of
games. We’re hoping
for a brand-new
Speedball game.

Battledeath
2K’s hero shooter
Battleborn is being
slowly put to bed.
It’s already been
removed from all
digital stores, with
servers shutting
down in 2021.

Ovens on, Guardian

Bungie has
announced a
Destiny-themed
cookbook. That’s
right, you’ll be able to
make your very own
‘Engram Surprise’
– it’s like a Ferrero
Rocher but filled with
mud and lies.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 015

 INSIDER CROSSFIRE X

BARREL
WATCH
GAMING’S FAVOURITE
PROP RATED BY OUR
RESIDENT COOPER

Minecraft
Dungeons
Aww. Would you
look at those
cutesy wee
fellas. Now that
is one cute ass barrel duo. If only

PAYNE
AND GAIN
CrossFire X the boxy buggers weren’t
surrounded by giant spiders.

Borderlands 3

takes control The new Moxxi’s

Heist Of The
Handsome
Jackpot is
betting big on
Remedy oins the world’s most popular barrels. Who doesn’t love a good
radioactive cask? The house/our
shooter to make a new FPS campaign crafty cooper always wins, baby.

You may not realise it, but CrossFire
is a big deal. Actually, it’s the biggest
deal. Literally. Globally enjoyed by a
staggering 650 million people, the
PC shooter series has the highest
player base in the world. And thanks
to a canny collaboration Microsoft is
overseeing, the planet’s most popular
RIGHT Remedy and
FPS is about to make one hell of a
Smilegate teamed subversive splash on Xbox One.
up on Why subversive? Because the
Crossfire X
after a mutual
master storytellers at Remedy are
friend of both partnering with the shooter’s South
studios brought Korean developer Smilegate to
them together.
make a campaign for the upcoming
CrossFire X. On the surface, the moody
monologues of Max Payne and the
gravity-defying smackdowns of Control
don’t scream ‘this is the studio you
want to be making a twitch shooter
primarily played by Chinese gamers’.
Still, the Finnish developer is keen to
get its hands on the FPS colossus.
Shoot for the sky
“We’re implementing everything we
know from the narrative side into
a first-person military shooter,”
Remedy’s Tuukka Taipalvesi tells
Xbox On. “We’re taking the decade Black Desert:
of background work Smilegate has Mystic
been doing and bringing that to life Awakening
as a single-player experience.” With This column is a
CrossFire X promising twitch shootouts cruel mistress.
and a battle royale mode, adding the We’ve had to
sort of intense narrative Remedy is crop out a karate-kicking
known for could have the next Call Of showdown to showcase this rotund
Duty soiling its combat fatigues. chap. Life is so unfair.
With the initial prerendered footage
really only showing some military men Munchkin:
in a skyscraper before it’s levelled Quacked Quest
by an explosion, it’s hard to know What an utterly
what sort of story Remedy is going to reckless state
deliver. Still, we’re excited to see the to keep a batch
results of this odd pairing. Q of barrels in. For
shame, Munchkin. We hope all that
green sludge irradiates any nearby
little trolls. Barrels deserve better.
Age Of
Wonders:
Planetfall
– Revelations
Tsk, tsk.
Standards are
dropping ‘round these parts. Just
clock this unsafe batch of explosive
cylinders in AOW ’s Revelations DLC.

016 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 INSIDER OPINION
Steve Hogarty is...
The Fixer
Steve puts on his Sunday best to address collectible outfits
Good morning! Or is it
the evening? I can’t
tell from here, trapped
inside the timeless
Fixer dimension where
I live and carry out
my work, where there
is nary the break of dawn nor the fall
of dusk by which to gauge the passing
of the hours. One could truly descend
into madness, here in this featureless
expanse of soundless nothing.
The alabaster-white sand stretching
out to the horizon in every direction
would snap a weaker mind in two, yet
I carry on my journey undaunted, and
steeled by my never ending assignment
to fix gaming’s most stubborn clichés. My
trailing footprints are my only compass,
and occasionally I have to make toilet
by digging a little hole in the sand. Last
Tuesday I thought I saw a bird, but it was
just a piece of sand in my eye. It’s frankly
depressing here in The Fixer dimension
and I’m sorry I even mentioned it.
Welcome to The Fixer, the monthly
column in which I address everything
wrong with games, from those times
when you almost deplete the health bar
of a boss, only for him to come back
with a different coloured health bar and
some new, faster attack patterns, to
those times when you’re told to go visit
Kruger in the armoury to get yourself
kitted up, and inevitably Kruger is this
wise-cracking old dude with a cigar
and an eye patch and he makes you do
target practice with a pistol, then says
something lame like “now for something
a little bit, shall we say, spicier ” before
letting you throw precisely three frag
grenades through a prop window and
sending you on your way. Honestly,
sometimes I swear there is only one
game in existence, and we’re all playing
it over and over again.
The problem
This month’s problem is clothes. More
specifically, the growing trend for games
018 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
“There are lots of
enres in which
playin dress-up
makes sense”
to allow us to dress and change our
characters’ outfits as we please, a weird
obsession of developers scrambling to
inject a bit of low-effort customisation
into their games. There are lots of genres
in which playing dress-up makes a lot of
sense – MMOs are a fine example, where
the clothes and armour you wear are tied
to your attributes – but fashion is now
creeping into almost every new release,
regardless of whether it makes the
slightest bit of in-world sense.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a game
in which you play an all-powerful warrior
of the ancient Jedi religion endowed
with mastery of unfathomable psychic
powers, has you backtracking through
frozen caves on distant exomoons to
find new ponchos like some kind of a
fashion-conscious space hippie. And
because no game developer has ever
been to London Fashion Week, these
collectible clothes are all uniformly awful
in their design, the kind of thing that
would make Meryl Streep in The Devil
Wears Prada look down her nose and say
something absolutely withering. I won’t
guess what that would be, because if I
could I would be a Hollywood scriptwriter
and not here, complaining about
ponchos to you. No offence.
The solution
While it’s very tempting to solve this
issue by having all protagonists wear
absolutely nothing, I feel that this
would place undue pressure on game
studios’ physics programmers to ensure
everything flops and wibbles about in a
believable manner.
Instead, we should abide by the
old adage that the clothes maketh
the person, and entrust all sartorial
responsibilities back to the character
designers alone. Because whether in
games or real life, clothes tell stories,
about where their wearer has come
from, and how they wish to present
themselves to the world. If we take
control of the wardrobe out of a
designer’s toolbox by letting the player
change into a limited edition Christmas
jumper or an EA baseball cap, we
undermine their ability to tell stories. And
we look pretty stupid while we’re at it. n
Steve also writes for City A.M.
 INSIDER OPINION
Chris Burke is...
The Editor
Chris says goodbye to the 2010s and ushers in a new decade
Hold page 20! I just
realised it’s January
and we haven’t even
mentioned that it’s a
new decade anywhere
in the mag. This could
be because I’m actually
writing this in December, so team OXM’s
heads are literally in a different year, and
somewhat slightly sozzled with eating too
much of Grandma OXM’s booze-soaked
Christmas cake. Also, we’re frankly in
complete denial that it could possibly be
another decade already. I mean, we’re
already a full five years into Back To The
Future 2’s future. We’re feeling so, so old.
Still, there’s no denying, it is a
brand-new decade, and at this point
it’s traditional to either look back upon
the last ten years of gaming, or forward
to the next one. Like a simple narrative
choice in a so-so RPG, I’d like you to
dictate where this column is going by
mentally pressing B to look backwards or
X to look forwards. Or, because there’s no
real consequence and I’m going to talk
about it all anyway (told you it was only a
so-so RPG), you can just choose both.
Cast your minds back ten years, and
Microsoft absolutely bossed the gaming
landscape thanks to the incredible
success of the Xbox 360 console. At
the beginning of the decade, we had
games like Halo 4, Red Dead Redemption,
Mass Effect 2 and Skyrim. Remember
how we laughed when the dragons flew
backwards on that other console? Yep,
the 360 was great. When the Xbox One
launched half way through the decade,
despite it being an incredible console,
Microsoft managed to lose its sure
footing in the console wars. Perhaps
we could bemoan a lack of exclusives,
but come on – I’m still rounding out the
decade playing Red Dead 2, Gears 5 and
Resi 2 on my beautiful Xbox One X. Me?
I’m in a good place to start 2020.
Now, press X – because now I want
to talk about the exciting new decade.
There are so many good games coming
020 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
“Series X will be
four times more
powerful than the
Xbox One X”
in 2020 alone that we may have to give
up other things, like work, bath times and
our own families, in order to play them
all. And that’s before next-gen arrives.
By this time next year, we’ll have Xbox
Series X. Phil Spencer’s already got one,
and is using it as his main console. Until
last month, we knew this only as Project
Scarlett. Now we’re slightly scratching
our heads at the announcement that
all future Xboxes will be called ‘Xbox’.
Wonder what Mr Spencer calls his brand
new console? If I had one, I’d be calling it
‘darling’ by now. I’m already in love.
Future perfect
You can finally see this PC-like beauty in
all its glory on page 8. Microsoft is calling
Series X the future of gaming, and you
know what? We’re believers. For starters,
Series X looks exactly like the weird black
obelisk that those monkeys got all excited
for in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Secondly, it’s
quite a bit bigger than the bijou Xbox One X.
Which means they must have put loads
and loads of really good stuff inside it. Like
AMD’s shiny new Navi graphics architecture
and a Zen 2 CPU, and an SSD to eliminate
load times and get you into games as
quickly as possible. Hell, there’s even a
widget (that’s a technical term) that lets
you keep several games lined up, in case
you can somehow multi-task seven games
online at once. It will be four times more
powerful than the Xbox One in terms of
teraflops. Those may sound like a scary
clown’s oversized shoes, but they are in
fact a measure of a console’s power. So
even if you don’t know your teraflops from
your flip-flops, safe to say that Series X is
going to be a lot more powerful than we
can currently even imagine.
And we can imagine quite a lot. On a
very basic level, think of the best games
you’re playing right now, particularly
if you’re an Xbox One X gamer. Imagine
those pretty, pretty 4K visuals, and the
size of the world within the game. Now
think about just how no load times, plus
worlds that are more than twice as big,
looking twice as sharp, will enhance your
gaming. Exactly. Now think about how
all the games are going to be on Xbox
Series X, with most of the best ones for
free on Game Pass. Yeah, you’re feeling
warm and fuzzy now, right? Bring on the
roaring ’20s. It’s going to be epic! Q
 Get a six-month
subscription and
receive your
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 2020 PREVIEW

NOT ONLY DO WE HAVE A NEW SUPER-POWERFUL

NEXT-GEN CONSOLE TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN THE
COMING YEAR, BUT XBOX PLAYERS ARE GETTING
ALL THE GAMES TOO. 2020, HERE WE COME...

024 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 2020 PREVIEW

WORDS:
CHRIS BURKE
ADAM BRYANT
DAVE MEIKLEHAM

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm

 2020 PREVIEW
Halo
INFINITE
THE CHIEF TAKES AIM AT SERIES X
ETA HOLIDAY 2020 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEVELOPER 343 INDUSTRIES
f you’re currently saving
I
all your pennies for an
Xbox Series X, it’s
almost certainly for this
shooter. Acting as a soft
reboot, Microsoft hopes Master Chief’s
latest adventure will help it sell a
shedload of next-gen consoles. With
the weight of winning back fans after
Halo 5: Guardians’ misfiring campaign,
and the responsibility of being the star
of the next Xbox’s launch lineup, 343
Industries has a lot of shooty boxes to
tick. No pressure, guys.
Despite being less than a year away,
Halo Infinite is still shrouded in
mystery. Concrete plot and gameplay
details are virtually nonexistent. One of
the only firm bits of info we have? 343
is building Chief’s latest FPS using the
next-gen Slipspace engine. Regardless
of whether you plan to play at 1080p
on Xbox One S or 4K on that shiny new
Series X, Infinite will be the most
technologically advanced Halo ever.
While the tech powering 343’s latest
shooter is future-facing, thematically
the game takes cues from Halo’s past
to help define the look of Master Chief.
In a nod to Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn,
John-117’s new suit heavily recalls his
Mjolnir Mark IV armour. His helmet also
looks retro, with a design that’s
RIGHT Chief gets
woken from
cryosleep for the
17,000th time in
Infinite.
reminiscent of Halo 2’s Mjolnir Mark IV.
Looking good, Chiefy baby.
BOTTOM LEFT Our It also sounds like 343 Industries
brief glimpse at
the Slipspace wants to lean on the franchise’s best
engine almost moments to help shape a less divisive
blew our eyes up, story than Halo 5’s campaign. Writing
we can’t wait for
the final on Halo Waypoint, studio head Bonnie
release. Ross is keen to take pointers from
Chief’s past. “It draws significant
inspiration from the most iconic and
historic parts of the Halo franchise and
your feedback, all while modernising
and taking advantage of the full power
of the Xbox One family. The new Master
Chief helmet directly showcases our
new art style.”
Sensibly, 343 is doubling down on
the Chief after Halo 5 cut his screen
time. Unlike its predecessor, big John
is the sole focus of Infinite, with a plot
that’s likely to focus on the warrior’s
fractured relationship with a now
megalomaniacal Cortana. Let’s not
forget the unstable AI tried to use
those bionic buggers the Guardians to
help enforce a universe-wide
disarmament plan at the end of the
last game. Or, in more basic terms,
‘Operation: Kill All The Folk To Ensure
Peace’. Yeah, Cortana and Chief have a
lot of issues to work through.
There could also be more focus on
the series’ titular rings this time out.
While the legendary Forerunner
structures have taken a bit of a back
seat in 343’s Halo titles, the cliffhanger
from Halo 5 showed Cortana booting
up a new Halo structure. Even the
most casual of Master Chief fan knows
that never leads to anything good.
In less cataclysmic news, at least
Infinite’s voice cast is being bolstered
by a huggable new four-legged
addition. While we’re pumped Steve
Downes is lending his velvety larynx to
Master Chief once again, we’re even
more excited about the presence of
Gyoza: 343’s team pug and the cutest
member of the shooter’s cast. The
studio has already revealed the
pooch’s grunts and whines are being
used to bring certain enemies to life.
Halo Infinite is going to be the most
visually spectacular of all Series X’s
launch titles. Seeing as it’s been over
four years since we last stepped into
Chief’s boots, we are beyond ready for
the intergalactic icon’s return. n
 2020 PREVIEW

LEFT E3 2019’s
trailer showed
Chief teaming up
with an adrift
UNSC pilot.

BOTTOM
Multiplayer
details are still
MIA, but we’re
hoping Warzone
is back.

“Thematicall SLIP
takes cues from Halo’s SHAPE
Infinite’s Slipspace
past to help
p p define the Engine is going
to have some

look of Master Chief” graphics. Hell, it’ll

probably have all
of them. 343 has
worked on the new
tech for years,
and, judging from
the shooter’s first
trailer, said tech
is exceedingly
good at rendering
grass. Slipspace
also contains parts
of the existing
Blam! engine,
while its name is
derived from Halo’s
in-game FTL mode
of transport.

THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 027

 2020 PREVIEW

MICROSOF T
F L I GH T S I M U L AT O R
XBOX’S AMAZING AVIATOR PREPARES TO JET OFF

ETA 2020 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEVELOPER ASOBO STUDIO

orget 8K, HDR and

F
virtual reality: this is the
sky-high future of
videogames. Asobo
Studio’s epic sim is
absurdly ambitious. It literally
generates our entire flippin’ planet by
pulling topographical data from Bing
Maps, then brings our spinning rock to
life with Microsoft’s Azure streaming
tech. Where most open-world games
struggle to render a single convincing
city, Asobo is recreating Earth in its
entirety. We told you it was ambitious.
Just trying to get your head around
the sheer scale of Microsoft Flight
Simulator is dizzying. When you have
the entire globe at your pilot’s
fingertips, the options are near
limitless. For the most hardcore of
aviation enthusiasts, Asobo even
includes the option of chartering any
flight you want in real-time. Fancy
jumping in a cockpit and flying from
London to Tokyo? We hope you can
carve out 12 hours of free time. Yeah,

bargain. Believable physics and

“The numbers are insane. Over ABOVE Be honest
weighty handling unite to create a
captivating sense of momentum that
two million cities and towns
– you’re totally
going to fly to truly makes you feel like you’re piloting
your town and a cutting-edge aircraft. After all,
pick out your

feature with 40 000 airports” house, right?

that might be a weekend job. The
sprawling sim even uses up-to-the-
minute weather info and real-world air
traffic control data to create the most
faithful flight experiences possible.
Even though we’ve only piloted a
quick flight between Redmond and
Seattle in a preview build of Flight Sim,
the amazing level of fidelity on show
quickly shines through. By using Azure
to pull in photogrammetry data, cities
and the surrounding countryside look
super accurate. Based on past Team
OXM press trips, we can already tell
you the Emerald City has been
recreated in staggering detail. From
the Space Needle to Pike Place Market,
CenturyLink Field to the Amazon
Spheres, Lake Union to the crystal
waters of Elliot Bay, it’s all there and all
rendered in scary detail. Now, take all
those sights and replace them with
landmarks from your home city or town
that you’re vastly more familiar with.
Excited yet? Flight Sim is going to offer
unparalleled virtual tourism.
The numbers are insane. Over
2 million cities and towns feature
thanks to two petabytes of cloud-on-
demand data, while the simulator
packs in a scarcely believable 40,000
real-world airports. Suffice to say, your
virtual pilot won’t be lacking for
destinations to touch down at.
Thankfully, the actual flying part of
Flight Simulator holds up its end of the
what’s the point in having a
painstaking recreation of the planet to
zip around if the actual aviation
controls aren’t up to the task?
While the most dedicated players
can buy an absurdly advanced setup
with a dash, control stick, pedals and
yoke control wheel, you don’t have to
empty your bank balance on expensive
peripherals to achieve an authentic
experience. Flight Sim works perfectly
well with a pad, with a flight model
that’s in-depth enough to squeeze
tonnes of agency from, but also simple
enough that the cloud-cutting action
is completely at home on a no-frills
Xbox One controller.
Whether you’ve racked up the air
miles or haven’t stepped on a plane in
years, be excited for this amazing tech
showcase. Microsoft’s aviation epic
can’t arrive soon enough. n

028 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 2020 PREVIEW

BAT TLE TOA DS

PUB XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEV DLALA STUDIOS, RARE

Despite making us feel old by

reminding us the last Battletoads
ETA was released 25 years ago, we
2020 can’t help but be excited about
this beat-’em-up’s return, which channels
old-school Saturday morning cartoons with
beautiful hand-drawn animations.

ABOVE Thanks to
photogrammetry
MOSAIC
data, landscapes PUB RAW FURY DEV KRILLBITE STUDIOS
look stunning.

BELOW Flight
controls can be
tweaked to fit
your skill level.

Krillbite manages to take the

monotony of everyday life and
ETA turn it into an atmospheric and
2020 compelling narrative adventure.
You play an unnamed protagonist and explore
the strange things that might happen should
SKY you do things a little differently.
HIGH FIVE
To add to the CARRION
authenticity Flight
PUB DEVOLVER DIGITAL DEV PHOBIA GAME STUDIO
Sim is aiming
for, Asobo is
partnering with
real-world aircraft
manufacturers. The
game’s roster of
airborne vehicles
spans airliners,
business jets and
smaller planes, with
Airbus, The Boeing
Company, Daher
and Textron Aviation
The elevator pitch on this
all represented.
That’s quite the
gruesome little retro indie is ace.
ETA You’re not hunting the monster;
line-up, though 2020
we’d still like to you are the monster. Reversing
see some Wright clichéd survival horror tropes, you play an
brothers DLC. evolving tentacle beast that stalks (and
murders) the humans who imprisoned it.

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 2020 PREVIEW

O R I
& THE W ILL OF THE W I SPS
GET READY FOR ANOTHER STUNNING ADVENTURE

ETA 11 FEBRUARY 2020 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEVELOPER MOON STUDIOS

ri And The Blind Forest’s

O
combination of
beautiful art,
spectacular soundtrack
and emotionally
engaging story set it apart from most
side-scrolling platformers and helped
it become one of the best-loved
adventures on Xbox. So with the
imminent arrival of its sequel, we
couldn’t be happier. Finally, a chance
to discover the true destiny of the
guardian spirit Ori. Just like the
previous game, WOTW takes the form
of a metroidvania whereby the abilities
you acquire as you progress help you
reach previously inaccessible areas.
More variety has been added to the
combat with a selection of new
abilities. The Spirit Edge is a melee
weapon that lets you attack enemies
head-on, while the Spirit Arc bow and
arrow is used for your long-range
attacks. There’s also a regeneration
ability, as well as a hammer-like ability
called Spirit Smash.
Three of these abilities can be
equipped at any given time and
mapped to the X, B and Y buttons.
There are also permanent abilities for IT’S A “Some of the NPCs may offer
you to learn; one we saw called Burrow
allows you to pass through sand as if
SHARD LIFE
The new Spirit Shard
side-quests while others may
have things you can purchase”
you’re swimming through water.
system allows
More of the world is open for you to you to further
explore than in the previous game. One customise how
of the new areas shown off is the sun- you play. Shards
scorched lands of the Whispering found throughout
Wastes, a somewhat dry and desolate your adventure ABOVE On
area full of sand. It’s in these new can bolster your reflection, Ori
attacks, offer wished he’d picked
areas that you’ll meet many new on someone his
interesting characters. protections or
own size.
passive abilities.
As well as allowing you to learn more
For example, the LEFT Beware of
about the land and its people, some of Barrier shard gives wood-dwelling
these NPCs may offer side-quests, you extra damage Weebles bearing
while others may have things for you strange gifts.
protection, while
to purchase. One character sells you the Spirit Magnet
maps that detail many of the secrets shard increases
hidden in the area. the radius at which
It won’t be long now until we get our you collect spirits.
hands on this beauty, and with Moon These can be
upgraded using
Studios promising an emotional story,
Spirit Light dropped
it’s guaranteed to pull on our from fallen enemies.
heartstrings. What better than an
excellent game and a good old cry? n

030 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 2020 PREVIEW

Everwild
GAME OF THE DEER CONTENDER?
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEVELOPER RARE

Rare’s artful fantasy certainly serves up purdy deer beasties.

Concrete gameplay details are thin on the ground, but this looks
to be another online shared world in the mould of Sea Of Thieves.
Granted, there’s probably going to be less swigging of rum and
more gentle coexisting with ethereal fantasy beasts.
Everwild’s engine looks wonderful and should ensure Rare’s
latest will be a 4K phenomenon. From what we’ve seen, hunting,
platforming and stealth all play a part, with predators to avoid and
herbivores to mingle with. At various points in the footage your
explorer and their online chums sneak past critters resembling
warthogs. This creature feature looks sensational. n

Biomutant ABOVE We’re

always up for
more unique
A FURRY NICE WORLD TO INHABIT experiences from
the creative devs
at Rare.
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER THQ NORDIC DEVELOPER EXPERIMENT 101
LEFT “Stuck.
Again. Great.
This open-world RPG from Experiment 101 had us the minute Damn this
we realised we could play as kung-fu cats. Like an epic tale infernal hand!”
of Chinese mythology, played out by anthropomorphic
BELOW There
mutant furries, Biomutant ’s huge ambition is matched only isn’t a fire
by the broad vistas of a vast, beautiful world. extinguisher in
sight. Health and
The game has been in development for ages, but that’s
Safety are going
almost certainly down to the fact that the team is small, and to have a field
creating a world this alive is no small job. It’s not all kung-fu day in here.
cats, actually – a broad amount of customisation will be on
offer, with different looks, play styles and classes, so you
could probably play as a gun-toting badger, for example. n

Oddworld: Soulstorm
START A MUDOKON REVOLUTION
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER ODDWORLD INHABITANTS DEVELOPER ODDWORLD INHABITANTS

Abe is back with a bunch of new tricks up his loincloth. Rather

than a simple remake, Soulstorm is a complete reimagining of the
original Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus. In this side-scrolling platform
adventure you’ll follow the alien Abe on his journey through
Soulstorm Brewery and beyond as he seeks out and attempts to
liberate 300 fellow Mudokon slaves.
Crafting comes to the franchise, and using the junk you find on
your travels you can fashion your own weapons and tools. Wrap
elastic bands around a flammable bottle of Soulstorm Brew, for
example, and you’ve got your very own bouncing napalm grenade.
Or for a less lethal approach, cover a jawbreaker in rolls of sticky
tape to tie up your enemies. We can’t wait to do both. n

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 2020 PREVIEW

Lego Star Wars:

The Skywalker Saga
THESE ARE THE BLOCKS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER WARNER BROS DEVELOPER TRAVELLER’S TALES

This next entry in the Lego Star Wars franchise isn’t far, far away
at all and will be jumping out of hyperspace in 2020. Traveller’s
Tales has managed to reinvent its action adventure formula to get
us closer to the action with a new over-the-shoulder camera,
brand-new lightsaber combat and a non-linear adventure.
Built brick by brick from the ground up, you’ll be able to
experience the whole of the Skywalker saga from The Phantom
Menace all the way to The Rise of Skywalker in any order, meaning
you can travel between planets at any time and get caught up in
random battles. We’ve got a good feeling about this. Q

Moons Of
Madness ABOVE Sending
R2D2 out to
bargain with the
Jawas was a bold
move, we admit.
ELDRITCH HORROR BLASTS OFF
LEFT We’re
suckers for
ETA 21 JAN 2020 PUBLISHER FUNCOM DEVELOPER ROCK POCKET GAMES
tentacled
beasties in
Lovecraft… but on Mars! If you’ve dried off from the space.
disappointment of last year’s The Sinking City, this intergalactic BELOW Whatever
horror may lift your spirits… then shred your nerves. you say about the
With creepy outposts that remind us of Prey ’s Talos 1 kart, it
certainly isn’t
station, and tentacle beasties ripped straight from a certain compensating for
weird fiction author, this Red Planet fright-fest would do well a small… head.
to take all the pages from Arkane’s space spookster.
The PC version has gone over well, so we’re quietly optimistic
about this spook-’em-up, which is adding yet another
terrifying page to what should be a huge year for Xbox
horror fans... Q

KartRider: Drift
BIG HEADS? BIG KARTS? WE’RE IN!
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER NEXON DEVELOPER NEXON

Who needs a portly dude in dungarees when you have a series of

blimp-headed karters? Alright, so Nexon’s colourful kart game is
never going to be as recognisable as a certain Nintendo
franchise, but it’s certainly garnered quite the following on PC.
Now it’s time for these racers to tear up the tarmac on Xbox One.
Despite its cutesy looks, KartRider: Drift is actually packing
some serious tech under its bonnet. The Xbox One X version of
the racer supports 4K, HDR and spatial audio, while Nexon has
worked with data-gathering firms to deliver a sophisticated and
streamlined matchmaking service. With customisable karts and
decals, this F2P speedster could be a rubber-burning winner. Q

032 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 2020 PREVIEW

Bleeding Edge
BLOOD DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
ETA 24 MARCH 2020 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEVELOPER NINJA THEORY

verwatch had better…

well, ‘watch’ its back.

O Ahem. Team Ninja’s riff

on the MOBA genre
takes the studio’s
talent for creating killer combos then
squeezes it into an arena shooter
that’s gunning for D.Va and chums’
crown. This could get messy.
With a cast of wild characters who
fit into assassin, support and heavy
categories, Bleeding Edge mixes
ranged attacks with intimate melee
moves. Showing some of the same flair
that illuminated the screen in Ninja
Theory’s DmC, the chaotic 4v4 battles
for control points will be ace.
Arenas are also dotted with traps to
spice up the action. Want to yank a foe
into an electric fence? Have at it! Wait,
you want to push them in front of an
oncoming choo-choo? Hey, you do LEFT “Go on. Say
you. Add in customisable hoverboards it. Insult my
and this homicidally hectic arena cute teddy bear
helmet one more
blaster should deliver thrills and kills time. I dare you.”
when it hits Xbox Game Pass. Q

WAY TO
THE WOODS CRI S TA LE S 12 MINUTES
PUB TEAM17 DEV ANTHONY TAN PUB MODUS GAMES DEV DREAMS UNCORPORATED, SYCK PUB ANNAPURNA INTERACTIVE DEV UIS ANTONIO

Too. Much. Cute. This gentle
adventure sees a deer and a fawn
ETA exploring the remains of an
2020 abandoned world bereft of pesky
humans. Whether evading wolves,
investigating derelict tube stations or trotting
through a town run by cats, the simple art
style and endearing central pairing warm our
cynical cockles. The interplay between dark
and light seems to play an important role,
with the deer illuminating their surroundings
by rubbing snouts. If there’s a more adorable
mechanic in 2020, we’ll be shocked.
We can safely say that we’ve
ETA never seen a game like this. A
SUMMER love letter to classic turn-based
2020 JRPGs, you play as Crisbelle, a
young girl with an extremely special gift. With
the powers of time manipulation you can
access the past, present and future
simultaneously in order to help you save the
world from the clutches of the malevolent
Time Empress. Recruit an eclectic cast of
characters to help you on your dangerous
quest and see how the changes you make in
the past affect the future.
There’s a knock at the door. A
police officer storms in accusing
ETA your wife of murdering her father.
2020 Without any time to process
what’s going on all chaos breaks loose. Both
you and your wife are on the floor with your
hands tied behind your back. Then suddenly
you wake up, there’s a knock at the door.
Groundhog Day meets detective mystery,
you’re stuck in a 12-minute time loop and
you’ll need to make sense of what’s going on
and use everything you’ve learned from the
previous loops to unravel this conundrum.

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 2020 PREVIEW
RUST
PUB FACEPUNCH STUDIOS DEV FACEPUNCH STUDIOS
Despite hitting Steam Early
Access around the time man
ETA whittled his first wheel, this
2020 successful survival sim has yet to
appear on consoles. Until now. Six years on
from its PC release, this gruelling multiplayer
effort finally comes to Xbox One.
YA K UZ A
COLLECTION
PUB SEGA DEV SEGA
Kaz Kiryu’s karate-kicking,
ETA
whiskey-sipping, extra chatty
quests are headed to Xbox Game
2020 Pass, marking the first time his
action series has hit a Microsoft machine. The
collection includes the first two titles in the
series alongside prequel Yakuza 0.
TRIFOX
PUB GLOWFISH INTERACTIVE DEV GLOWFISH INTERACTIVE
George Clooney’s bushy-tailed
Mr Fox may be fantastic, but he
ETA couldn’t lay down portable
2020 flamethrowers and turrets to lay
waste to armies of scuttling crabs. This
twin-stick shooter sees the titular fox craft
imaginative weapons to vanquish his foes.
034 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
Cyberpunk 2077
THE FUTURE IS NEON-BRIGHT
ETA 16 APRIL 2020 PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO DEVELOPER CD PROJEKT RED
XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
here are a few reasons
this game has us as
T excited as a puppy
that’s just done a poo
and wants to show you.
For starters, it’s CD Projekt Red’s next
game after The Witcher 3. It’s a huge
first-person adventure RPG set in a
cyberpunk dystopian Californian city,
so it’s like Blade Runner, sort of. And,
just in case you were off-world for last
year’s E3, it’s got Keanu bloody Reeves
in it. So unless it’s a videogame
version of Point Break, what could
possibly be better than that?
When OXM last got behind-closed-
doors with the game, we got a really
sweet taste of CDPR’s ambition and
came away positively drooling. While
this game’s world is technically not as
big as The Witcher 3, Night City has
verticality as well as intrigue in every
automated doorway and neon-lit alley.
With six districts to explore, each
controlled by different factions or
gangs, your character needs to duck
“There are multiple ways to fight
fulfil job contracts and make dosh”
and dive to make a living and survive.
Fully role-playing as your customised
male or female character (either way
you’re called V – get used to it) will
involve cybernetic enhancements and
different classes and skill trees
depending on how you choose to play
– and there will always be multiple
ways to approach a fight, fulfil a job
contract, make some dosh or achieve
an objective. A substantial narrative
would appear to be at the game’s core
too, and how you choose to negotiate
its twists and turns promises to be a
unique experience. As a Netrunner, for
example, your hacking ability and tech
skills are what you’ll rely on to hack
systems, override security and open
doors. If your cybernetic
enhancements involve augmented
strength, you’ll be using those cyber-
muscles to find a less subtle solution.
For all the narrative choices and
role-playing knobs and whistles,
Cyberpunk 2077 is also a first-person
shooter, with V engaging in frequent
 2020 PREVIEW

THE FALCONEER
PUB WIRED PRODUCTIONS DEV TOMAS SALA

Soar through the air in this

open-world fantasy flight RPG as
ETA a skilled Falconeer. Explore the
2020 vast ocean of the Great Ursee to
discover its secrets and take on rival factions,
dragons and manta rays to rule the skies on
the back of a heavily armed falcon.

RAINBOW SIX
QUARANTINE
PUB UBISOFT DEV UBISOFT MONTREAL

This three-player strategy

survival game is shooting for an
ETA intense co-op PvE squad
2020 experience, during what looks to
be a zombie outbreak. The angle is co-
operating to stay alive. We’re itching to find
MORE out more. But itching is how it always starts…
HORSE POWER gun battles. While in lesser games you
might expect that some core elements TOP Night City
Crea-ture Studios
Getting around the are perhaps less finely tuned at the looked so much SESSION
world of CDPR’s new expense of things like the size of the better in the
brochure. PUB CREA-TURE STUDIOS DEV CREA-TURE STUDIOS
game looks to be a open world or breadth of RPG options,
lot more comfy than we can happily report that the INSET You think
riding a pony called Dexter DeShawn
shooting is impressive. During a tense
Roach. Cars and got that golden
bikes can be used in
gun battle at the Grand Imperial
mperial Mall in arm f l i
from playing
first or third-person the district of Pacifica – in
n the control nice? Come on!

to traverse the six of a gang called The Anim mals – we got BOTTOM Nobody had
districts of Night City to experience just how flu uid an FPS expected a game
and the Badlands Cyberpunk will be. As the bullets fly, V of tag to turn
this ugly.
beyond with, it’s deftly slides into cover and proves his
promised, no load superiority, taking down gang
times between members with firearms that feel
areas. Vehicles have
weighty and have just the e right It seems like a gaming ice age
an autonomous
function which
amount of kick. since Xbox had a decent skating
All this and a hugely atmmospheric ETA title, so we’re pleased to see this
means they can be 2020
summoned, a bit like setting, from designers who have Kickstarted ollie expert grinding
Roach but with less clearly studied all the besst works of its way over the horizon. Presented through a
clip-clop. cyberpunk fiction, makes us positively fish-eye lens POV, Session’s lo-fi home video
giddy. Roll on April 2020! Q look is certainly unique.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/ox m THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 035

 2020 PREVIEW

Disintegration
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER PRIVATE DIVISION DEVELOPER V1 INTERACTIVE

rom the co-creator of

Halo comes a sci-fi

F first-person shooter
that mixes in real-
time strategy. The
future is bleak. In order to survive a
disease that almost wiped out the
human population, people perform a
process called Integration, in which
the human brain in transferred into
robotic armatures.
An oppressive faction of the
Integrated, the Rayonne, sees this as
the future and sets out on a global war
to force Integration and kill anyone
who refuses to comply. You play as
Romer Shoal, one of the Integrated
looking to liberate humanity, who
pilots a heavily armed grav cycle.
As well as an in-depth and
sprawling single-player campaign,
you’ll also be able to enjoy a separate LEFT It had been
5v5 squad-based PvP multiplayer a close fight,
mode. Choose from an eclectic mix of but that wooden
shack wouldn’t be
grav cycle teams and fight to dominate bothering anyone
the battlefield. Q for a while.

CROSSFIRE X STREETS THE RED

PUB XBOX GAMES STUDIOS OF RAGE 4 LANTERN
DEV SMILEGATE/REMEDY ENTERTAINMENT PUB DOTEMU DEV LIZARDCUBE, GUARDCRUSH GAMES PUB TIMBERLINE STUDIO DEV TIMBERLINE STUDIO

Asia’s most popular shooter gets
a western spin, as the supreme
ETA storytellers at Remedy jump on
2020 board to make a single-player
campaign for this online colossus. Previously
only released on PC, CrossFire has been
capturing Chinese gamers’ imaginations for a
decade – a staggering 650 million people
have played SmileGate’s FPS. If Remedy can
spin the sort of subversive tale that worked
so well in Control, and somehow make it fit a
twitch military shooter, this could be one
seriously interesting game.
We were prepared to turn to the
streets ourselves and start a few
ETA brawls if we didn’t see a new
2020 Streets Of Rage soon. Thankfully,
publisher Dotemu foresaw the public outcry
and decided to bring us a new entry. Series
stalwarts Axel Stone, Blaze Fielding and Adam
Hunter return to do what they do best: beat
up the criminal underworld. Helping them
clean up the streets is new guitar-wielding
crime-fighter Cherry, daughter of Adam. All
heroes brought to life like never before with
an exquisite hand-drawn art style.
There’s something tranquil about
the idea of riding a sled pulled by
ETA huskies across the Alaskan
2020 wilderness, but this rogue-lite
narrative adventure is no easy ride. You play a
musher who’s always dreamed of competing
in the Iditarod sled dog race. After setting off,
however, you soon get lost. There are
hundreds of random events that can occur to
steer you off course, or even kill you. You’ll
need to keep your wits about you to avoid
being mauled by a bear or dying from
hypothermia and make it back home.

036 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE


Round-up
SLAY ZOMBIES, SAVE HUMANITY AND EXPLOIT THE HELL OUT OF A PLANET
ZOMBIE ARMY 4
PUB/DEV REBELLION DEVELOPMENTS
Zombie Army returns from the
ETA dead with its fourth entry. Despite
FEB kicking an undead Hitler into hell,
2020
he has returned from its depths to
unleash his zombie horde on the world once
more. Team up with up to three other players
in intense post-apocalyptic zombie slaughter.
A focus has been placed on a meaningful
sense of character progression this time
around, with the chance to unlock abilities
and weapons to customise your character and
their loadouts. It’s time to F-up the Führer!
L I T T L E N I G H T M A R E S II
PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV TARSIER STUDIOS
You play a young boy called Mono
in this disturbing and unsettling
ETA horror platform adventure sequel.
2020
The world in which you find
yourself trapped is being distorted and
corrupted by a signal emitted from a strange
tower in the distance. The yellow raincoat-
wearing protagonist from the previous game,
Six, returns and is fading due to the tower’s
signal. You must work together to uncover the
mystery of this tower and survive long enough
to find a way to escape.
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
SURV I V ING THE
A F T E R M AT H
PUB/DEV PARADOX INTERACTIVE
Much like Paradox’s Surviving
Mars, Aftermath puts you in
ETA charge of building a colony in a
2020
hostile environment while
attempting to keep a growing population
alive. Set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, you’ll
build bases and gather resources such as
water, food and building materials while
keeping your colonists safe from bandits and
meteor showers. Surviving The Aftermath is
available on Xbox Game Preview now. Can you
bring civilisation back from the brink?
THE RIFTBRE AKER
PUB/DEV EXOR STUDIOS
A mash-up of base building and
isometric action, The Riftbreaker
ETA wants to get you home, and
2020
doesn’t care how badly you exploit
a beautiful planet in order to do it. Stranded
space commando Ashley pilots a mech suit
that can also fight fierce indigenous creatures
angry because she must build mines,
refineries and power plants to get enough
juice to open a rift back to Earth. Still, by the
time she’s finished, Galatea 37 will be fully
colonisable and have a Starbucks.
2020 PREVIEW
RESIDENT EV IL 3
PUB CAPCOM DEV CAPCOM
The most committed stalker in
ETA videogame history returns in this
3 APR rebooted nightmare. The original
2020
Resident Evil 3 was never
released on Xbox, so we’re delighted to see
Nemesis show up in what’s sure to be another
fab and frightening Capcom remake. Using the
same stellar RE Engine that brought Resident
Evil 2 to such vivid life, the fact the
asymmetric online game Project Resistance
is included should make this reboot quite
the killer package.
INERT I AL DRIFT
PUB PQUBE DEV LEVEL 91 ENTERTAINMENT
Xbox One has been starved for
old-school racers, but that could
ETA change with this blistering indie.
2020
Set in a ’90s retro-future where
neon sunsets and reckless driving are the
order of the day, Inertial Drift’s unique controls
could distance it from the pack. With steering
handled on the left stick while the right stick
is used for drifting, this glitzy speed demon
shows absolutely zero respect for gravity.
Let’s hope that it can capture some of
Onrush’s chaotic charm.
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 037
 2020 PREVIEW

WAT C H D O G S :
LEGION
LONDON’S CALLING IN PHONE-HACKING HIT

ETA 2020 PUBLISHER UBISOFT DEVELOPER UBISOFT TORONTO

bisoft, can we make a

U
suggestion? Change the
name of your latest
hack-‘em-up right this
second. Sure, ‘Legion’ is
kinda snappy, but if you want to
convey the real heart of this systems-
driven sandbox, you really should call
it ‘Watch Dogs: Kickass Granny’s Big
Night Out’. Rolls right off the tongue.
Not only is this the game where you
can whoop all the ass with a
pensioner, but it’s also an open world
with near limitless possibilities.
Watch Dogs: Legion’s elevator pitch
is a showstopper. Explore and liberate
a decidedly post-Brexit-y sandbox
London, taking control of almost any
one of its thousands of NPCs whenever
you wish. That’s right: this is an open
world where you can pretty much
control every single character in the
game. And we thought GTA V’s trio of
playable felons was ambitious.
“At the core of everything is a
relational database called Census,”

with the nefarious Albion PMC, but your

“Liberate a decidedly Brexit-y ABOVE Bet their
actions may then change when you
find out this person was merely
sandbox London and control
insurance doesn’t
cover damage playing along to pay for their dad’s
caused by operation. Ubisoft has recorded
gun-toting, punk

one of its thousands of NPCs” motorcyclists.

creative director Clint Hocking tells
PCGN. “You see a bin man on the
street… when you profile him we’re
able to look into that database and go,
‘Well, he’s wearing the clothes of a bin
man, so that’s his job. It’s three o’clock
in the afternoon, so he works between
noon and 8pm.’”
Legion’s underlying technology is so
sophisticated that it will crunch a
variety of algorithmic data then decide
what specific areas of London an NPC
can afford to live in, based on their
income and a number of other
contributory factors.
It’s wildly ambitious, genuinely
pioneering stuff for a series that was
once merely about reading people’s
texts as a moody bugger skulking
about in a trench coat.
Clapham crew
The scenarios Census spits out have
an effect on every fabric of Legion’s
DNA. As you enlist a makeshift army of
passersby to the cause of hacktivists
DedSec, the sandbox’s procedural
systems cook up all kinds of curated
stories. The random personas
characters inherit can change the
context of a mission, what section of
the city it takes place in and what their
specific motivation is.
Granny Taser from last year’s E3
demo may be asked to assault and
interrogate someone who’s working
multiple differing lines of dialogue for
almost every scenario, meaning every
playthrough of Legion should be highly
distinct. Alongside the incredibly
ambitious flights of fancy seen in
Microsoft Flight Simulator, this is the
sort of envelope-pushing tech that
feels truly next-gen.
Watch Dogs 2 and its likable take on
San Francisco threw up plenty of silly,
throwaway thrills. In Legion, though,
Ubisoft Toronto could legitimately have
a game-changing open-world effort
on its hacking hands.
Clint Hocking says the third Watch
Dogs is capable of generating
meaningful differences that “approach
the infinite”, and with a cast of
characters that could swell to the
thousands, we believe him. Hurry up
and get on the blower, London. We’re
desperate for your call. n

038 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 2020 PREVIEW

CYBER SHADOW
PUB YACHT CLUB GAMES DEV MECHANICAL HEAD STUDIOS

This particular side-scrolling ninja

adventure has captured our
ETA attention. Reminiscent of 8-bit
2020 games of old, Cyber Shadow has
you dashing and slashing your way at speed
through the synthetic hordes of Mekacity in
your attempt to rescue your kidnapped clan.

ABOVE Jumping off

from a body makes
DESTROY ALL
parkour easier on HUMANS!
the feet. PUB THQ NORDIC DEV BLACK FOREST GAMES
BELOW Who needs
armour when you
have a branded
leather jacket?

Who’s ready to step back into the

probe-happy shoes of
ETA Cryptosporidium 137… anyone?
2020 Alright, so the original games
were dumb, but at least this third-person
remake won’t take itself seriously. Who wants
TOUCH to shoot some humans with the Zap-O-Matic?
OF CLASS
Though Legion’s EMPIRE OF SIN
‘play as anyone’
PUB PARADOX INTERACTIVE DEV ROMERO GAMES
concept is
compelling, it’s
not quite limitless.
While you can
recruit almost any
NPC, the character
you choose will
be assigned one
of three classes:
combat, stealth
or hacking. But
considering the
central conceit is
This gangster strategy game from
so cool, we can
understand Ubisoft
Brenda and John Romero (he of
ETA Doom fame) casts you as a
limiting this. After 2020
all, asking for wannabe crime kingpin in
72,000 class types prohibition-era Chicago. You’ll need to
would be pushing it. manage your various rackets and keep your
mob happy. Wiseguys need love too.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 039

 2020 PREVIEW

DI ABLO I V
THESE ARE DARK TIMES INDEED

ETA 2020 PUBLISHER/ DEVELOPER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT

lizzard returns to its

darker roots for the

B fourth entry in its

isometric dungeon
crawler series. Taking
place decades after the events of
Diablo III, Lilith, the mother of creation
and the daughter of Mephisto, lord of
hatred, has been summoned to the
world of Sanctuary and is wreaking
havoc once more. It’s down to you and
your crew of demon slayers to send
her and her evil forces back to the
depths of hell.
We’ve seen three of the five classes
you’ll get to play as so far. First up,
Druids return from Diablo II. These
shapeshifters can transform into
werewolves and werebears and
perform devastating attacks using the
power of earth, wind and storm.
Sorceresses also return after
moonlighting as Wizards in Diablo III.
These casters command the elements
of ice, fire and lightning to unleash hell
on… well, Hell. The Barbarian has seen
a few changes that make them even
more unstoppable, most notably the
ability to wield four different weapons
at once and freely switch between HORSING “During your travels you’ll
AROUND
them during battle.
On the progression side of things,
In Diablo IV, you will
come across other players
the Rune system for abilities is gone.
In its place are skills that can be
be able to explore
much more of the
and take part in world events”
improved by spending points on them. world of Sanctuary
A talent tree has also been added to than you have done
let you customise the way you play. in the past, but you
The linear four-act format for the won’t need to do ABOVE We’ve got
campaign has been ditched in favour it on foot. If that fingers crossed
thought is making for a Necromancer
of a more open world. The five areas class reveal.
that you explore can be tackled in your legs ache,
don’t worry too LEFT Blizzard is
whichever order you choose. It will also
much. Mounts have drawing on the
be a shared world, and as such is been added that let look of the first
online-only. During your travels you’ll you swiftly travel two Diablo games.
come across other players and take from one location
part in world events. Dungeons, to another. Sadly,
however, will remain instanced and there won’t be any
playable only by yourself or whoever mounted combat,
you have partied with. but you will be able
Crawling through dungeons in to launch yourself
from your trusty
Diablo is always a thrill, but with the
steed and straight
darker tone and return of beloved into combat.
classes we can hardly contain
ourselves. Bring on the darkness. Q

040 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 2020 PREVIEW

Beyond Good & Evil 2

CARVE YOUR OWN DESTINY ACROSS THE STARS
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER UBISOFT DEVELOPER UBISOFT MONTPELLIER

Prequel to one of the most beloved action adventure games

around, Beyond Good & Evil 2 has you rising through the ranks of
the space pirate social ladder and seeking adventure across the
galaxy with your very own ship and loyal crew.
In a departure from the first game, Ubisoft has added an RPG
spin to proceedings. The sequel has also moved away from the
original’s platforming roots and is now an open world. You’ll be
able to travel across the breadth of System 3, picking up missions
either alone or cooperatively with a friend. There’s also an
opportunity to create your own character, too, with extensive
customisation options that combine human and animal features
to create something truly unique. n

Disco Elysium ABOVE Despite the

big number two in
the title, this is
HOBOCOP: THE ROLE-PLAYING GAME a prequel to the
original game.
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER ZA/UM DEVELOPER ZA/UM LEFT Disco
Elysium lets you
approach
You’re an amnesiac alcoholic detective trying to crack a situations in a
murder case, but first you’ve got to solve the mystery of your number of
missing shoe. Crime waits for no one, however, and after different ways.
waking up in your underwear on the floor of a sleazy hotel, BELOW The thought
with no memory of who you are, you find yourself wrapped up of stalking
Seattle as a
in the investigation of a hanged man.
vampire has got
Each action you take in Disco Elysium will require you to our blood
pass a skill roll, and depending on how you develop your 24 pumping.
skills – each representing a different element of your psyche
– the outcomes can be wildly different. Can you solve the
case, or will you die trying? n

Vampire: The Masquerade

Bloodlines 2
WE’RE SUCKERS FOR THIS SORT OF THING
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER PARADOX INTERACTIVE DEVELOPER HARDSUIT LABS

Promising a deep vampire role-playing experience, this tabletop

RPG adaptation offers big narrative choices that properly impact
your world, sprawling skill trees and a nighttime Seattle setting
that looks as lovely and enticing as a throbbing jugular.
From the extensive gameplay time we’ve had so far, this looks
like it will be the game to finally slake our thirst for playing as a
bloodsucker. There’s a rich vein to draw from when it comes to the
lore and we’ll stake our reputations on this being the best
vampire game ever, with all others out for the Count. n

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 2020 PREVIEW
BLESS UNLEASHED
PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV ROUND 8 STUDIO/NEOWIZ
Set in the realm of Lumios, this
MMO sees elves, humans and
ETA other fantasy folk uniting against
2020 scheming gods. In gameplay
terms, this essentially just involves hitting
monsters with swords and staffs. The recent
open beta showed promise, so we’re hopeful.
DARKSIDERS
GENESIS
PUB THQ NORDIC DEV AIRSHIP SYNDICATE
Departing from the Darksiders’
ETA
third-person action RPG roots,
Genesis takes inspiration from
2020 isometric RPGs. In this prequel
you play as War and, for the first time in the
series, Strife. Here the hellish Horsemen will
be bringing the fight to Lucifer himself.
ATL A S
PUB GRAPESHOT DEV GRAPESHOT/INSTINCT
This online pirate adventure
sailed onto Xbox Game Preview a
ETA couple of months back. Sadly, it
2020 wasn’t in shipshape. Rocking
some of the blurriest visuals we’ve seen on
Xbox One, let’s hope Grapeshot polishes this
shared world buccaneer before release.
042 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
Overwatch 2
SETTLE DOWN FOR STORY TIME
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT DEVELOPER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT
XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
veryone’s favourite
squad shooter has
E always been a blast to
play, but the one thing
it lacks is a campaign.
Blizzard is looking to remedy this with
its sequel. Overwatch 2 takes place
following the ‘Recall’ event from the
first game in which the Overwatch
members are called back into service
after being outlawed. The team has
reassembled to take on Null Sector, a
group of terrorist robots causing chaos
and destruction all around the world.
There are two separate modes for
the campaign: Story missions and Hero
missions. The former are a series of
globetrotting adventures where you
play as fixed squads that change
depending on the mission. One
mission set in Rio De Janeiro features
Lucio, Reinhardt, Tracer and Mei as
they take on the Null Sector forces.
“As you progress you’ll level
up unlocking new skills at
level one ten and 20”
Hero missions on the other hand will
let you play as whichever character
you want, and will also enable you
to customise your fighter’s abilities. As
you progress you’ll level up, unlocking
new skills at level one, ten and 20.
Reaching level ten with Tracer, for
example, will give you the option of
acquiring either ‘Flash’, which lets
you damage enemies by blinking
through them, or ‘Chain Reaction’,
which lets you cause a secondary
explosion with your Pulse Bomb. All
of these campaign missions will, of
course, be playable in up to four-
player co-op.
PvP is still a big focus and the first
of the new PvP game modes to be
announced is the tug-of-war-style
‘Push’. In this showdown two teams go
head-to-head in guiding a huge robot
that pushes a barrier from the centre
of a symmetrical map over to their
 2020 PREVIEW

OVERPA S S
PUB BIGBEN INTERACTIVE DEV ZORDIX RACING

Are you a fan of MudRunner? Then

ETA your battered suspension should
FEB be excited for this equally mucky
2020 off-roader. Placing you in sturdy
buggies, Overpass asks you to overcome
steep slopes and other perilous terrain. It’s a
mud, mud, mud, mud world.

MINECRAFT
DUNGEONS
PUB XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEV MOJANG

This is basically Mojang’s take on

ETA Diablo… only way cuter. The iconic
APR sandbox’s brick-busting action is
2020 transformed into a dungeon
crawler in this likeable spin-off, with frenzied
top-down brawls that will knock your block
FRIEND off. We crack ourselves up.
INDEED opponent’s side. The team that shunts
the barrier closest to the enemy’s TOP Characters
You can reasonably portion of the arena by the end of the have had small DE ATHLOOP
expect a bunch of game is crowned the winner. tweaks to their
designs. PUB BETHESDA SOFTWORKS DEV ARKANE STUDIOS
new characters Blizzard is going to let players of
to join the already both Overwatch and Overwatch 2 INSET Winston
huge Overwatch is the gorilla
play against each other with zero
roster for the scientist leader
sequel. The first
restrictions. That means all of the new of the Overwatch
to be revealed is characters, multiplayer maps and team. Don’t make
him angry.
former Overwatch game modes will be available across
member Sojourn, both games at no additional cost. LEFT You can
who is expected to You’ll even be able to carry over all of modify Tracer’s
teleport ability
play a pivotal role your vanity items, such as character to do damage in
within the story skins, victory poses, emotes etc. Only solo play.
itself. Sojourn wears the story campaign is exclusive to
a red maple leaf on
Overwatch 2. Say hello to a much stabbier take
her shoulder, so
it’s a fair bet she’s
Blizzard managed to nail PvP to on Groundhog Day. Arkane’s latest
create an unforgettable experience in ETA project pits two assassins
Canadian – which 2020
would make sense Overwatch. If it can combine that with against each other in an endless
since there’s a new spinning a good yarn, just like it does battle on the lawless isle of Blackreef.
Toronto map. with its animated shorts, then Considering how cool Dishonored 2’s time-
Overwatch 2 will blow us all away. Q tinkering was, we’re super excited for this.

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 2020 PREVIEW

ELDEN RING
THRONES AND SOULS COLLIDE

ETA 2020 PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO DEVELOPER FROMSOFTWARE

here are two main

things you need to

T know about Elden Ring.

Thing the first: it’s being
made by FromSoftware,
meaning it will most likely be so hard,
you’ll want to lie down and have a little
cry at regular intervals. Thing the
second: George RR ‘Where The Hell Are
The Last Two Game Of Thrones Books!?’
Martin is collaborating with From on
the story. Best prepare yourself for all
of the sex, surprise deaths and maybe
the odd albino wolf.
Firm details may be in short supply,
but at least we know of the
unquestioning pedigree the masterful
Japanese studio brings to the table.
With the peerless Dark Souls trilogy
and last year’s cracking samurai
adventure Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
under its belt, there’s every chance
that Elden Ring could be another
stone-cold classic. The dark fantasy
setting falls into the developer’s
specialist wheelhouse, and legendary
game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has
already stated the game will be a
“natural evolution” of the Souls series.
From a story perspective, BLING “There’s every chance that
RING
FromSoftware isn’t following Sekiro’s
lead with a clearly defined protagonist.
What exactly is the
Elden Rin could be another
Instead, you control a custom-built
character à la Souls, which leads us to
Elden Ring? Judging
from the only piece
stone-cold classic”
suspect much of Elden Ring’s story will of footage From
flow from extended lore and item has released, it
descriptions. And hey, there’s no seems to be a
better studio when it comes to fantasy McGuffin ABOVE GRRM
penning ludicrously detailed worlds. As that’s going to act collaborated with
as your created Miyazaki to help
for Martin’s involvement, Miyazaki has create the world.
taken suggestions from the famous character’s primary
motivation. “That LEFT That
novelist to help form the basis of the
which commanded macabre image
game’s core story, describing George’s the stars, giving life just screams
notes as a “dungeon master’s its fullest brilliance: FromSoftware.
handbook in a tabletop RPG”. Soo… the Elden Ring.
dragons and boobs, then? Oh, the Elden Ring,”
While Elden Ring will probably show says the debut
far fewer naughty bits than Game Of trailer. “Shattered
Thrones, you can bet your bottom by someone or
(probably bloodied) dollar that something… look up
at the sky. It burns.”
FromSoftware’s latest RPG epic will
Well, erm, that
have an impeccable combat system to clears things up.
fall back upon. We can’t wait to jump
into this brutal world. Q

044 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 2020 PREVIEW

Doom Eternal
TO HELL AND BACK AGAIN
ETA MARCH 2020 PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS DEVELO ER
E ID SOFTWARE

iscover the origins of

the Doom Slayer as he

D drives back a hell that’s

spilled over onto Earth.
Expanding on the ‘push
forward’ combat from the previous
game, the marine is packing extra heat
and abilities that give you more ways
to tear through the demonic hordes.
A wrist-mounted blade lets you
unburden demons of their limbs, and a
new Super Shotgun, complete with a
meat hook, allows you to pull yourself
toward enemies. In order to survive
you’ll need to rip and tear what you
need from your enemies. Chainsaw
demons to liberate them from ammo,
set them ablaze to get armour, and
destroy them with a Glory Kill to regain
health. With double the variety of foes
there will be no end to your domination
of the dark realm. The multiplayer is LEFT That’s the
heating up, too, with id bringing in a Doom Hunter, a
new 2v1 mode where a duo of player- new enemy for
Eternal. We’d
controlled demons hunt a marine. better fire up
Sign us up for this slayer sequel! Q our BFG…

DRAKE
TWIN MIRROR LAST STOP HOLLOW
PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV DONTNOD ENTERTAINMENT PUB ANNAPURNA INTERACTIVE DEV VARIABLE STATE PUB XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEV THE MOLASSES FLOOD

Poor old Sam can’t catch a break
in this episodic narrative
ETA adventure. Already down on his
2020 luck after a recent breakup, he
returns to his hometown to attend a friend’s
funeral. But that’s the least of his worries
after waking up in a hotel room with a bloody
shirt and no memory of the night before.
Worse still, he’s constantly bothered by his
inner voice,‘The Double’. Like a schizophrenic
Sherlock Holmes, you’ll enter your own ‘Mind
Palace’ to gather clues and piece together
your fractured mind to solve this mystery.
Body swapping! Giant birds!
Sexting! Trust Annapurna to follow
ETA the wonderfully odd Virginia with
2020 this gleefully bizarre tale. Unlike
its last mystery thriller, Last Stop is hugely
chatty, with an abundance of voiceovers.
Described as an ‘anthology drama’, the
disparate lives of a London schoolgirl, baldy
everyman and a mysterious woman collide in
Sliding Doors-style, ‘what-if?’ fashion.
Promising to show how magic can be found in
the mundane, this could be one of the year’s
most intriguing indie titles.
If you’re the sort of (awful) person
who asks for seconds when it
ETA comes to Christmas dinner
2020 sprouts, you’re probably going to
love this cutesy village builder. From the team
behind the roguelike The Flame In The Flood,
Drake Hollow sees you team up with pals to
protect, nurture and feed a species of
vegetable folk known as – drum roll, please –
the Drakes. Not only must you grow food to
keep these critters happy, you also have to
fend off inky monsters who want to make the
Drakes their dinner.

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 2020 PREVIEW

Psychonauts 2
BACK FOR ANOTHER MIND-BENDING ADVENTURE
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEVELOPER DOUBLE FINE

Despite the current-gen sheen this hilariously bizarre platform

adventure sequel has lost none of the charm of its predecessor.
Raz is back alongside many other returning favourites.
This game follows the events of the VR game Rhombus Of Ruin.
Raz has achieved his goal of becoming a Psychonaut but trouble
strikes the agency on his first day on the job. You’ll need to dive
deep into the minds of others and explore their interwoven
memories to prevent the evil Dr Loboto from bringing the
murderous Maligula back to life. Think Inception if Leonardo
DiCaprio was three feet tall, and instead of elaborate gunfights
you’ve got corporate espionage and psychic powers. n

West Of Dead ABOVE In this

mind-bending
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE DEAD sequel Raz is now
a fully fledged
Psychonaut.
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER RAW FURY DEVELOPER UPSTREAM ARCADE
LEFT If anyone
was born to play
This fast-paced and hectic twin-stick cover shooter looks
an undead cowboy,
like something straight out of Hell, but in a good it’d be Ron
vanquishing-the-undead sort of way. The man with no face Perlman.
and fetching poncho that you play as is William Mason, BELOW Frosty
voiced by the one and only Ron ‘Hellboy’ Perlman. mechanoid insects
You find yourself in Purgatory, Wyoming, 1888, back from sound horrible.
We better pack a
the dead with only the memory of a figure in black. Blast flamethrower.
away witches, wendigos and undead outlaws as you make
your way through procedurally generated hunting grounds in
an effort to save your soul. Each crypt run starts with you
picking your weapon of choice, be it a revolver or shotgun,
with other weapons being found throughout the levels. Get
ready to raise some hellfire. n

Wasteland 3
IT’S LIKE HELL HAS FROZEN OVER
ETA MAY 2020 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEVELOPER INXILE ENTERTAINMENT

Despite InXile now being a Xbox Game Studio its next game is this
non-exclusive post-apocalyptic threequel. The isometric RPG
series has enjoyed a loyal following, and this latest entry moves
the action to snowy Colorado, where players will face some
difficult choices in the name of survival.
Having Microsoft’s support has enabled InXile to add more
polish to Wasteland 3 – its delay from 2019 to March this year
should make this a well-executed strategy RPG. The studio
promises a huge story with plenty of depth as you explore the
wastelands, fighting raiders and taking on giant mechanical
scorpions in the snow. n

046 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE


Round-up
FORGE AN EMPIRE, EXPLORE THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND NAVIGATE A COMA
AGE OF EMPIRES I V
PUB XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEV RELIC ENTERTAINMENT
The legendary RTS series hits
Xbox for the first time in an epic
ETA campaign that spans multiple
2020
eras. All the coolest armies are
getting in on the act, with Roman
Legionnaires, British Redcoats and Native
Americans looking to square off against each
other. The destruction on show is also
impressive, with bases that can be obliterated
with trebuchets – we’ve already seen the
ramparts of a medieval castle crumble
convincingly. Ain’t war grand?
K ERB A L SPAC E
PROGRAM 2
PUB PRIVATE DIVISION DEV STAR THEORY GAMES
Everyone’s favourite space-flight
and construction simulator is back
ETA once again with even more ways
2020
to cause chaos across the solar
system. Redesigned from the ground up
with the inclusion of colony building and
interstellar travel, you’ll be able to navigate to
the furthest reaches of space and show off
your rocket-making expertise. You’ll also be
able to enjoy deep-space exploration with the
long-requested addition of multiplayer. It’s
almost time for blast-off!
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
C I R C U I T S UPE R S TA R S
PUB SQUARE ENIX DEV ORIGINAL FIRE GAMES
This Micro Machines-style
top-down racer has a cartoony
ETA aesthetic but pays huge attention
2020
to motorsport detail. The vehicle
physics feels accurately weighted, which
makes tearing round the well-designed
circuits with toy box cars a joy. Handling is
also solid, with none of the oversteer
sometimes found in arcade racers. The devs
at Original Fire are genuine motorsport fans,
so you know that both visually and under the
hood it’s going to be perfectly tuned.
YOUNG SOUL S
PUB THE ARCADE CREW DEV 1P2P
Your adoptive father has been
kidnapped by goblins and you’ll
ETA need to traverse the goblin
2020
underworld in order to save him.
Play as twin brother and sister Jenn and
Tristan in this side-scrolling narrative-driven
RPG beat-’em-up. Kit yourself out with a
variety of weapons and stylish armour and
battle your way though over 70 different
dungeons. What starts as a quest to save
your father quickly turns into a mission to
save the world from a goblin invasion.
2020 PREVIEW
DRAGON BALL Z:
K AK AROT
PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV CYBERCONNECT2
After years of going through
ETA fighting game after fighting
JAN game, we’re finally getting
2020
treated to a full-on Dragon Ball Z
RPG. With a huge roster of characters to play
as, including Goku, Gohan, Vegeta and
Piccolo, you’ll be adventuring through the
entire Dragon Ball Z story, from the arrival of
Raditz all the way up to the Buu Saga. With
the help of series creator Akira Toriyama you
will also be exploring some completely new,
never-before-seen storylines.
WA K I NG
PUB TINYBUILD GAMES DEV JASON ODA
As we’re big fans of anything
Souls-like, it was inevitable that
ETA Waking would catch our eye.
2020
You’re stuck in a coma, wandering
through a surreal mindscape battling your
inner demons. As you explore the far reaches
of your mind you’ll meet remnants of the
people you love and confront your darkest
memories. You can summon these loved ones
to help you in battle, or use your memories to
conjure up sentimental items from your past
and deploy them as weapons.
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 047
 2020 PREVIEW
OUTRIDERS
PUB SQUARE ENIX DEV PEOPLE CAN FLY
From the creators of Bulletstorm
and Gears Of War: Judgement
ETA comes a dark sci-fi shooter.
2020 Create your very own Outrider
and take on monstrous creatures in up to
three-player drop-in, drop-out co-op as you
search for the source of a mysterious signal.
ROLLER
CHAMPIONS
PUB UBISOFT DEV UBISOFT MONTREAL
ETA
A free-to-play, amped-up roller
derby game, you say? Sure, why
the hell not. Ubi’s unholy roller
2020 pits two three-player teams
against one another. How do you score? By
skating an entire lap without being banjaxed
by an opponent. This looks endearingly daft.
SC AV ENGERS
PUB/DEV MIDWINTER ENTERTAINMENT
Led by a former member of
343 Industries, this online survival
ETA shooter aims to be the spiritual
2020 successor to Halo 5’s ace
Warzone mode. Combining team tactics with
tense survival elements, this could be one of
2020’s more interesting co-op titles.
048 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
Dying Light 2
LIVING LIFE ON THE EDGE
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER TECHLAND PUBLISHING DEVELOPER TECHLAND
XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX
hoice is everything in
C
this horror action RPG.
Developer Techland is
offering up more
freedom than ever
before by letting you shape the world
how you see fit. Through your actions
you’ll have control over both the
narrative and the world, watching
them change before your very eyes.
Dying Light 2 takes place 15 years
after the events of the first game in
which an infection ravaged the globe.
You play Aiden Caldwell, an infected
survivor. You arrive in ‘The City’,
believed to be the last settlement on
earth, seeking a cure. Instead, you find
a population in dire need of your help.
Due to the infection, society has
collapsed and humanity has regressed
into a modern dark age. Through your
actions, you’ll be able to help or hinder
the people residing in The City.
“The three gameplay pillars that
held up the first game all return
with improvements”
The three gameplay pillars that held
up the first game – natural movement,
brutal first-person melee combat, and
a day and night cycle – all return with
improvements. You’ve got double the
amount of parkour moves this time. No
longer are they bound to just one
button, so they will require more skill
to master. You’ll also have access to a
grappling hook and a glider, to help
you traverse larger distances.
Combat is even more brutal due to a
focus on melee fighting. There are also
more customisation options for your
weapons. Each one can be upgraded
to have additional functionality, for
example a machete can be modified to
electrocute enemies.
Much like the Infected that you go
up against, the day and night cycle
has also evolved. During the day the
infected stay within Dark Zones, areas
devoid of sunlight. When night falls,
 2020 PREVIEW

TELL ME WHY
PUB XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEV DONTNOD

The devs behind Life Is Strange

are teaming up with Xbox to bring
ETA us a tale of twins Alyson and Tyler
2020 who return to their childhood
home to confront their past. The game is
notable for starring the first playable
transgender character from a major studio.

THE S TA NLE Y
PARABLE
PUB GALACTIC CAFE DEV GALACTIC CAFE

One of PC’s weirdest walking sims

finally comes to Team Green. With
ETA clever, fourth wall-breaking use
2020 of narration and a labyrinthine
office to go utterly loopy in, The Stanley
Parable is one of the funniest, most
HOST personable indie titles of the last few years.
PRIVILEGES however, The City becomes an even
more dangerous place with the TOP You can ally
Dying Light 2’s Infected spilling out onto the streets. yourself with key XIII REMAKE
campaign will be Performing certain actions, such as players within
The City. PUB MICROIDS DEV MICROIDS
playable in a co-op using a particular weapon or ability, will
mode with up to reward you with proficiency points that INSET The
three other players. Infected have
you can spend to unlock more skills.
You’ll be able to mutated during
join a friend’s
You’ll also come across Inhibitors the 15 years
game and see scattered throughout the world that since the first
Dying Light.
how their choices permanently increase your stamina,
and decisions health or immunity to infection. You’ll BOTTOM That’s the
have affected The also be able to craft and improve your face of someone
who is out of
City, or have your own weapons and equipment. Some of their depth.
friends join your these, however, will be locked behind
world to help you decisions you make in the game.
on a few jobs. As
Dying Light 2 is a hugely ambitious Fess up. We know you’ve probably
each choice has
an impact on your
game offering up an unprecedented forgotten this cultish, cel-shaded
level of control and freedom over the ETA Ubi shooter. First released for the
surroundings, only 2020
the host of each world you inhabit. If Techland can pull original Xbox back in 2003, its
game can make it off, this zombie-slaying sequel stylish art style makes shootouts look like
decisions. might just be one of the most exciting they’ve just popped from the pages of a
and rewarding games of 2020. n comic book… albeit a super gory one.

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 2020 PREVIEW
Round-up
DICTATE THE WEATHER, STOP DEMONIC NAZIS AND TRAVERSE A DESERT
ARY & THE SECRET
OF SE ASONS
PUB MODUS GAMES DEV EXIIN
What we wouldn’t give to be able
ETA to control the seasons at will.
MARCH Imagine it – sunshine all the time.
2020
In this unique-looking game,
protagonist Ary goes against tradition in this
charming action adventure to be the first girl
to become the Guardian Of Winter. The world
of Valdi is in crisis with all the seasons out of
whack. Using your newly obtained seasonal
powers you’ll need to manipulate the world
around you to defeat your enemies and solve
puzzles to save the day.
NINE W I TCHES
PUB BLOWFISH STUDIOS DEV INDIESRUPTION
Strange things are afoot in this
comedic fantasy adventure. Set in
ETA WWII, the Nazis are messing
2020
around with the occult in an
attempt to turn the tide of the war.
Wheelchair-bound supernatural scholar,
professor Alexie Krakovitz, and his assistant,
Akiro Kagasawa, are sent to investigate and
stop them. To do so, the professor makes use
of his supernatural abilities to traverse the
astral plane and commune with the dead. He
also possesses weak-minded people.
050 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
DARK PIC TURES:
LI T TLE HOPE
PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV SUPERMASSIVE GAMES
The rules of horror, part 1,038:
Open with a deserted road into a
ETA forgotten backwater, the sort of
2020
place you end up by accident. And
have trouble escaping. Take a haunting folk
song like ‘Scarborough Fair’ and slow it down
with a sad, winsome vocal. Have a weird child
fashion a creepy doll out of sticks. Shiver.
Show claw-like hands grabbing legs from out
of the darkness. The second Dark Pictures
Anthology game Little Hope brings all that and
Will Poulter’s in it, plus it looks proper scary.
SABLE
PUB RAW FURY DEV SHEDWORKS
The self-taught indie developers
at Shedworks have been working
ETA away feverishly to bring us their
2020
spectacular coming-of-age
adventure, Sable. If the striking art style
doesn’t grab you then the sense of adventure
certainly will. As the eponymous Sable you’ll
navigate the sandy dunes of a strange alien
world either on foot or on a variety of vehicles
to learn about its rich history, the fascinating
people who live there, and, most importantly
of all, discover yourself.
D E A D S TAT I C D R I V E
PUB FANCLUB DEV FANCLUB
It’s the end of the world as you
ETA know it and you’re really not fine.
FEB Instead, you’re on a road trip of a
2020
life-time with strange eldritch
creatures coming at you from above and
below ground. You’ll need to do whatever it
takes to stay alive in this survival horror
adventure. Steal cars, befriend other survivors
(the alliances you make will be absolutely
crucial) and stop off at desolate diners to
scavenge for supplies like your life depends
on it because… well, it really does.
UNTO THE END
PUB BIG SUGAR DEV 2 TON STUDIOS
There’s more than meets the eye
with this cinematic action
ETA adventure. After stumbling down a
2020
crevasse, you’re separated from
your wife and child, and you’ll do anything to
get back to them. There’s a complexity to the
combat reminiscent of Dark Souls that
requires patience and determination. Not all
encounters need resort to conflict, however.
Some can be bypassed entirely or even allow
you to help the enemy, which in turn can
result in some unexpected outcomes.
 2020 PREVIEW

M A R V E L’ S
AV E N G E R S
THIS HEROIC MMORPG IS LOOKING SIMPLY SUPER

ETA MAY 2020 PUBLISHER SQUARE ENIX DEVELOPER EIDOS MONTREAL, CRYSTAL DYNAMICS

amala Khan, aka Ms

K
Marvel, is getting the
Avengers back together RIGHT Ms Marvel
is on a mission
after a bit of a bad day to reunite the
when they accidentally Avengers team…
broke quite a lot of San Francisco. Give BELOW …and her
her a big hand. Oh wait, she has one ‘Embiggen’ power
already, and can punch really hard with is sure to come
in handy.
her stretchy weird fists.
While she’s not anyone’s idea of a
mainline Avenger, her pivotal role in
Crystal Dynamics’ superhero MMO does
speak to the ambition of the game’s
devs to include as many playable
superheroes as they can, and is way
more inspiring than the ‘off-brand
Avengers’ initially showcased at E3.
To be fair, this game was never
meant to be a videogame tie-in to the
MCU, and when OXM got hands-on
playing as Thor, Black Widow, Iron Man,
Captain America and Hulk, we were
impressed by the game’s fluidity and
unique moves exhibited by these
movie-staple heroes - the solidness of
Mjolnir returning to Thor’s hand was
really something.
Beyond that introductory bit of
gameplay that culminated in a scrap
with Taskmaster, we know that most of SUIT UP “The solidness of Mjolnir
the game will be directed from the
Avengers’ reconditioned Helicarrier,
Crystal Dynamics is
promising a walk-in
returning to Thor’s hand
was really something”
where our disgraced band of heroes wardrobe of outfits
are striking out, still trying to do some for every hero, both
good. Both main story ‘Hero Missions’ new for the game
and any-character ‘Warzone Missions’ and taken from the
are accessible from here – the latter in entire history of that
particular are MMO offerings designed character across,
for up to four heroes to tackle. in some cases,
So far so excelsior, but as any true decades of comic
book appearances.
believer will tell you, what we Marvel
It’s an important
fans really want is to be able to play as cosmetic detail,
any cape-wearing victim of a and we’re not clear
metabolism-changing workplace yet whether you can
accident who’s ever been an Avenger, unlock those outfits
as Crystal appears to be promising us. in-game or from
Whether it’s Spidey or The Wasp, Luke microtransactions.
Cage or Wolverine, Black Panther or Either way, once
Mockingbird, the devs have said that, if you’ve picked your
favourite hero, you’ll
not at launch then soon all your
likely be more than
favourite Avengers will be playable. Our happy to invest the
personal favourites are Doctor Druid time or moolah.
and the Two-Gun Kid. So let’s see if
they turn up any time soon. n

052 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 2020 PREVIEW

Grounded
BUG SENSE OF SATISFACTION
ETA 2020 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEVELOPER OBSIDIAN ENTERTAINMENT

t really is a bug’s life,

I
isn’t it? Which is a
problem in Obsidian’s
survival sim, seeing as
your teeny explorer
makes the average ant look like a
rhino. This micro adventure combines
crafting and base building, then spices
up affairs by making you battle spiders
that might as well be eight-legged
dinos to your small survivor.
Played in first-person, every object
in Grounded’s garden is daunting.
Whether it’s a mishit baseball the size
of a meteor, a series of murderous
bugs that could swallow you whole, or
flowers that would tower over London’s
Shard, even the most mundane of
objects become colossal obstacles in
this cartoon adventure.
Obsidian promises its handcrafted
sandbox will feature strong storytelling LEFT Bees are
elements, but we’re currently more nice. You can
concerned with staying out of an stroke a bee…
probably. Wasps
arachnid’s belly than being served a though? They’re
tiny War & Peace tale. n the worst.

CONAN CHOP GODS &

CHOP MONSTERS SPIRITFARER
PUB FUNCOM DEV MIGHTY KINGDOM PUB UBISOFT DEV UBISOFT QUEBEC PUB/DEV THUNDER LOTUS GAMES

After fooling everyone into
thinking this was an April Fools’
ETA joke, Conan Chop Chop cut its
2020 way onto our list of most
anticipated games of 2020. Taking advantage
of the Conan The Barbarian licence, Mighty
Kingdom is bringing us a four-player co-op
roguelike adventure. Plough through a brutal
world and delve deep into dungeons on a
mission to stop the wizard Thoth-Amon from
resurrecting an ancient evil. Or just collect the
plethora of weapons, trinkets and legendary
items up for grabs. Conan would be proud.
Do you have an irresistible urge to
ETA stab big-boned Gorgons? Then
FEB this is your lucky deity-saving
2020 day! Tasked with protecting the
12 gods of Olympus, your customisable hero
Fenyx must battle the mythological cronies of
the monstrous Typhon. Taking part in a more
cuddlier adventure across Ancient Greece
than what Assassin’s Creed Odyssey served
up, Fenyx is armed with a sword, bow and
various telekinetic powers as he explores
dungeons and completes Herculean feats.
Medusa and co don’t stand a chance.
This beautifully hand-drawn ‘cozy
management game’, is giving us
ETA the warm and fuzzies. Prepare
2020 yourself for an emotional and
rewarding experience as you play as Stella, a
ferrymaster to the deceased – or Spiritfarer.
Build and maintain your ferry as you explore
this mystical world and befriend many spirits
to assist them in passing over to the afterlife.
Learn how to say goodbye as you form bonds
with these characters. You can even have a
friend join you in co-op with the other player
controlling Daffodil the cat.

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 2020 PREVIEW
Round-up
FACE YOUR DEMONS, RETURN TO FABLETOWN AND ROLL FOR INITIATIVE
S E N U A’ S S A G A :
HELLBL ADE II
PUB XBOX GAME STUDIOS DEV NINJA THEORY
The announcement trailer for this
dark fantasy action adventure
ETA sequel gave us our first real
2020
glimpse at what the shiny new
Xbox Series X is capable of. Ninja Theory’s
pioneering motion capture and facial
animation is on full display, and boy does it
look spectacular. Little is known about the
journey that the titular warrior Senua will take
this time around, but it’s likely the studio will
further explore the complex themes of
psychosis from the previous game.
DARK ALLI ANCE
PUB WIZARDS OF THE COAST DEV TUQUE GAMES
A spiritual successor to Baldur’s
Gate: Dark Alliance set in the
ETA Dungeons & Dragons world of the
2020
Forgotten Realms. This third-
person hack-and-slash action RPG puts you in
control of the legendary dark elf, Drizzt
Do’Urden. Travel alone across the unrelenting
icy tundras of Icewind Dale, or with up to
three other friends in couch or online co-op.
Take on iconic monsters from across the D&D
universe playing as Drizzt or one of three other
heroes: Catti-brie, Bruenor or Wulfgar.
054 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
THE WOLF
AMONG US 2
PUB TELLTALE GAMES DEV ADHOC STUDIOS
By the hairs of our chinny chin
ETA chin! Adhoc Studios - formed of
MAY former Telltale staff - revealed the
2020
sequel to the episodic fairytale
detective noir adventure with a sweet synthy
teaser trailer. The original voice actors from
the first game, Adam Harrington and Erin
Yvette, will reprise their roles as Bigby Wolf
and Snow White respectively. After putting a
stop to the incredibly sinister Crooked Man,
the duo are back once more to solve a new
case in Fabletown.
M A NE AT E R
PUB DEEP SILVER DEV TRIPWIRE INTERACTIVE
Being chased by a gigantic shark
ETA isn’t that much fun, but it is
MAY when you’re the one doing the
2020
chasing. In this action RPG you
start out as a poor baby bull shark tasked
with trying to stay alive. Don’t worry though,
killing people and other dangerous creatures
will help you evolve to become the ultimate
killing machine. The prospect of terrorising
awful human beings and tearing them limb
from limb as a deep sea Megalodon has never
been so appealing.
WEIRD WEST
PUB DEVOLVER DIGITAL DEV WOLFEYE STUDIOS
From the co-creators of
Dishonored and Prey comes an
ETA action RPG set in a strange
2020
fantasy version of the Wild West
where you’re just as likely to see wicked
witches and foul demonic beasts as you are
old men out in the wilds panning for gold.
Take a group of roguish heroes or head out
on your own in these treacherous lands to
etch your name into history. Every decision
and action you make alters the narrative to
create your own unique journey.
FA S T & FURIOUS
CROSSROADS
PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS
If fast cars, explosions, and death
ETA defying stunts get your blood
MAY racing then look no further. The
2020
Fast And The Furious regulars
Michelle Rodriguez and Vin Diesel reprise their
on-screen roles to take driving to the next
level for this spin-off. Before you roll your
eyes, it looks like the game is in great hands.
Project Cars creator Slightly Mad Studios
(which was also behind Need for Speed: Shift)
is handling development. May is the release
date, to coincide with the 9th F&F movie.
 2020 PREVIEW

AND
BEYOND
LOOKING INTO THE DISTANT FUTURE…

Elder Scrolls VI has already been teased,

and thanks to the power of Series X,
Tamriel should be absolutely huge.
Meanwhile Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG Starfield
is still in orbit // We know Playground
Games is working on an Xbox exclusive
RPG, likely to be Fable 4 // Daedelic’s Lord
Of The Rings: Gollum will follow Smeagol
after he finds the One Ring // BioWare’s
fantasy RPG Dragon Age 4 should be with
us by, um, 2022 apparently, while a new
Mass Effect game is in ‘early development’
// Phil Spencer himself has said Final
Fantasy XIV is definitely coming to Xbox //
GhostWire Tokyo caused a stir at E3 2019,
but the atmospheric horror may be a little
ways off still // A new Warner Brothers
Studios Batman game is said to feature the ABOVE Lord Of The
Rings: Gollum.
Court Of Owls, but details remain just as INSET Starfield.
shadowy // Sooner, in 2020 we can expect RIGHT GhostWire
Tokyo certainly
a new Call Of Duty while Assassin’s Creed looks intriguing.

will be back in 2020 after a sabbatical… BELOW Dragon Age

will return…
will it be Vikings this time? // Left 4 Dead
devs Turtle Rock Studios are working on
new zombie co-op shooter Back 4 Blood
//2K just announced its new Cloud
Chamber studio is working on a BioShock
game // We’re beyond excited for a next-
gen Grand Theft Auto game obviously…

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 THE BIG INTERVIEW
Before he got into games, Booty earned a Master Of Fine Arts in Computer Engineering at Purdue University

Matt
Booty
Booty AS XBOX ENTERS ITS MOST IMPORTANT
YEAR FOR A DECADE WE SIT DOWN
WITH HEAD OF MICROSOFT STUDIOS
MATT BOOTY TO CHAT ABOUT THE NEXT-
GEN XBOX HOW MUCH LIFE THE XBOX
ONE STILL HAS LEFT AND WHY GAME
PASS IS CHANGING THE INDUSTRY
DAVE MEIKLEHAM / JOSH WEST

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 THE BIG INTERVIEW
Booty helped develop the Minecraft brand while working as corporate VP at Microsoft Studios between 2015 and 2018
orget what the Chinese od ac says. astern
calendars will tell you 2020 is the Year Of The
Rat, but any clued-in Xbox fan knows it’s
really the 366 Of Xbox Series X. This is perhaps
the most important year in Xbox history, as
Microsoft juggles the launch of its next-gen
console with existing hardware commitments.
The Redmond giant also has a stream of new
IPs in development, not to mention the never-
more-ambitious Xbox Game Pass to nurture.
Take all these demands into account, and
it’s no wonder Matt Booty is the busiest man
in the biz. The head of Xbox Game Studios
started his 25-plus-year career as sound
department manager at Williams Electronics
Games before rising through the ranks of
Midway. Now he’s in charge of running all of
Microsoft’s first-party studios, and we caught
up with Booty to talk Scarlett (before the
announcement that it would be called Xbox
Series X), the future of Xbox One, and just
how much Xbox Game Pass could change the
industry going forward.
Since 2018, Microsoft has acquired seven
studios and created two others, growing the
Xbox Game Studios portfolio to 15 first-party
teams. You’ve said now’s the time to start
delivering on that growth – how strong is
Microsoft’s position as we head into 2020?
This will maybe be a bit nerdy, but you know
how a nuclear reactor works, right? You take
all this uranium and put it together, and then
at some point it starts to just spontaneously
put off energy, right? When we think about
these 15 studios that we now have – we’ve
been on this journey of working with new
creators. We’ve been on this journey of
bringing them into the fold. At some point,
you wake up one day and realise we have got
this critical mass, this nuclear reactor, now,
that’s starting to glow, right? How do we make
sure that we get behind that, to deliver going
forwards? We feel really good heading into
058 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
2020. We’ve got a goal of being able to deliver
a game roughly every three to four months.
We have a bit of work to get there… it’ll be
lumpy, but we’re closer than we were. And so
we feel good going into 2020, and the run-up
to Scarlett, with our content line-up.
Integrating new teams into an existing
corporate structure is no easy task. How do
you balance the investment of time required
and the eventual results you hope to achieve?
There’s just a reality that acquiring a studio
requires focus, because we want to make
sure that [the devs are] well supported and
have the resources they need. So that’s just
been a reality of where we’ve been spending
our time. But it’s really exciting to see we’ve
now got this collection of leaders. I think I
mentioned at some point that if you stop and
add up how long Tim Schafer’s been in the
industry, and Nina [Kristensen], and you’ve
got Bonnie Ross and Alan Hartman – it’s like
several hundred years of experience, right?
And they’re all based around studios that
were really set up around game design and
ABOVE Minecraft
Dungeons plays
out like a
family-friendly
Diablo.
LEFT Matt has
spoken recently
of his desire to
deliver a new
game “every
three to four
months”.
the creator. There’s ways you can have a
business leader, a finance leader, a market
leader – but most of our studios started
out from a creative leadership approach. So
we feel excited. I feel like we’ve got a good
critical mass of content, and a critical mass
of studio capacity. And now we’ve got this
thing running, the job is to make sure that
they’re supported going forward.
How has Microsoft’s strategy changed with
respect to investment in first and third-party
studios? It feels like Xbox was putting more
focus on third-party relationships at the
beginning of the generation but now the
inverse seems true.
I think we’ve certainly felt more confident
and proud to be able to talk about first-party
lately. However, I think it’s super important to
remember that content comes under Xbox
through three avenues. So there’s Xbox Game
Studios – our first-party. There’s third-party…
we’ve got a tremendous, tremendous volume
of content coming in through third-party. That
includes things we announced at X019, with
games like Yakuza, Kingdom Hearts and Final
Fantasy coming to Xbox. No one, at least in
Redmond, would say: ‘Oh, we’ve shifted focus
from third-party over to first-party.’ Because
Sarah Bond, who leads our third-party team, is
just out there, day in and day out, working with
our third-party partners. And then, remember
that there’s still this third avenue that can
come in, which is our ID@Xbox programme,
which you saw – you know, I’m always amazed
that ID@Xbox, they put these sort of montage
trailers up that go on for like 20 minutes. It’s
like, ‘And that game, and that game, and that
game, and that game, and that game.’ And
so much content comes in through our ID
program… If you were to sit in a meeting back
at Redmond, I think you would hear an equal
amount of talk about first-party and third-party
and ID@Xbox. We take that altogether as our
content stream. I think it’s just that lately we
felt a little more proud about talking about
what we’ve got going on with first-party.
How has Microsoft been able to work
with the its studios to be supportive of
the development of brand-new titles like
Grounded and Bleeding Edge?
Well, I think there’s different categories, right?
So something like The Outer Worlds is a game
that has taken obviously multiple, multiple
years to come together and was really for
most intents and purposes, wrapping up as
we did the acquisition. So mostly what I say
to Obsidian is, ‘Congratulations. Great work.
And we’re glad the acquisition didn’t cause
any hiccups in that project.’ But at the other
end of the spectrum, I think you could look
TOP Halo
Infinite is
going to be the
poster child
for Project
Scarlett’s
launch.

THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 059

 THE BIG INTERVIEW
“Our goal is that
any game that
runs on an Xbox
One will also
run on Scarlett”
at something like Wasteland 3 coming out
of inXile, where the acquisition absolutely
impacted what we were able to do with that
title, because they had that in development
before the acquisition, but we were able to
give them more resources and more support.
And really, more stability and time. Because a
studio like inXile has to spend so much of its
energy thinking about what the next project
is, and what’s the next deal – because it’s
always sort of chasing ‘the one game’ before
it’s even finished the last one, right? We can
say, ‘Wow. This thing looks great. You know
what? Let’s settle into it. Relax and take the
time you need. Let’s make this thing cool.’ I
think that seeing it close the show here with
that last trailer... I love that trailer. I think it’s
got such an atmosphere and a mood to it. It’s
a good example. If you were to talk to Brian
[Fargo, founder of inXile], he would talk your
ear off about how we’ve been able to come in
and help them parse that out.
You mentioned there would be more games
announced before the end of the year. We
think many people were surprised to see
Microsoft announcing new Xbox One games
with Project Scarlett launching Holiday 2020,
imagining that the Eye Of Sauron would have
shifted to its new target. Why continue to
support Xbox One?
It’s interesting you bring that up. I think we
want people to feel comfortable investing in
Xbox. And whether that means that this holiday
you’re going to go buy an Xbox One S, or next
fall you’re going to go buy a Scarlett – you’re
going to feel comfortable either way. And that
content library that you invest in is going to
go forward, so that you don’t have to feel like
you’re making a choice between generations,
right? I think that’s important to us. I also
think that, you know, gaming to some extent
is starting to become an activity in people’s
lives that isn’t so seasonal. When you think
about services like HBO and Netflix that make
major content drops, it’s year-round. There’s
certainly different kinds of content for different
times of the year. I think we can safely say
that Marvel movies mostly come out in the
summer… Although it’s interesting to see,
now, how Star Wars movies have moved from
the summer to the winter. There is kind of this
060 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
thing in the industry where we all used to say,
‘Okay, everyone’s going to compete for the
best launch window in October.’ Then it was
like, ‘We didn’t want to get lost in October.’ So
now some games moved to February. And now
February is so crowded, there’s a window in
May. ‘And now October’s so crowded, maybe
we can do December and August?’ By the time
you’re done, the whole year becomes available
to launch titles, because I think that’s how
people play their games.
Speaking of launch windows, you’re
committed to the Xbox journey moving
forward. This commitment to backwards
compatibility, plus all of these new titles… do
you think Scarlett will have the largest launch
line-up an Xbox console has ever had?
I love that you phrase it that way, and I
think that’s how we think about it. We want,
when you invest in Xbox, to know that you
are bringing that legacy content library
with you. It’s why we think we have got an
advantage with Project Scarlett, because our
goal is that any game that runs on an Xbox
One will run on Scarlett. You’re not porting
to a different operating system; you’re not
porting to a different graphics API; you’re just
running an Xbox game, right? So we hope
that’s a big advantage in terms of our initial
content library.
So can we assume that, for example, titles
like Grounded or anything else from Xbox that
is announced before the end of the year will
run on Scarlett?
Yes. Yes. 100 per cent.
Does that go for third-party titles too?
Third-party titles – I can’t... I don’t want to
answer for them, because they may choose
to do some different things. That’s why I think
it’s so important that we have Xbox Game
Studios, because it allows us to take content
that predictably and consistently will line up
with our other services and line up with our
hardware. The fans, again, who invest in Xbox
– you have something you can depend on in
terms of your content and hardware.
With regard to building these games ahead of
Scarlett, making them forward-compatible,
does that provide any strain on studios?
We’ve all heard how powerful this machine is.
It’s a great question. It does add more things
to do, right? But I think in the era where
you’ve got PC games, and even, to some
extent, mobile games, it is more common
these days that devices have a family. Just
think about the iPhone. You have the iPhone
XS, and there’s people walking around here
with an iPhone 6. If you’re going to go and
make a game like Minecraft, it’s better to
know how to work on all of those, right? If
you’re going to go and make a PC game like
Age Of Empires, you have no idea if someone
is sitting on some eight-core machine that’s
got 64GB of RAM and a 20ADX video card, or
if someone’s running it on a five-year-old
laptop, right? So you just don’t know. And
we’ve had to think about how we architect
our games. And the advantage of that is that
it also sets us up to make sure that we run
smoothly up and down the Xbox family.
What do you think Game Pass brings to Xbox
One, Scarlett and the types of games that you
are able to bring to the Xbox platform?
I think one of the most daunting challenges
for anybody launching a service-based game
is to say, ‘I have to go create and manage a
community that I need to bring onto my game,
to start to get the flywheel going.’ And the
fact that Game Pass provides that, it really
opens up a lot of options for us to just focus
 THE BIG INTERVIEW
Booty has been kicking around the games industry since the early ’90s

LEFT A thumbs up
is pretty
optimistic
considering this
crew is now
pocket-sized.

BELOW LEFT Sea

state: rough.
Weather: rain.
Visibility: poor.
Chance of a
watery grave:
fair to
middling.

BELOW RIGHT
Flying with a
budget airline
was beginning to
feel like
something they’d
probably regret.

on making the g ga And then the inverse is
ings a really wide audience to
a new game… one title over the last year that
I’ve really followed is how State Of Decay 2
is in the top ten in terms of number of hours
played inside the Game Pass service, which
is great, because I think that game has found
an audience inside Game Pass. And the fact
that the game doesn’t have to worry about
trying to build that and find that – you know…
there’s a ready-made community there. I think
that’s one of the big advantages.
We know Microsoft has a new first-
party studio called ‘The Initiative’ on the
backburner right now. I was just curious, we
see so much industry…
It’s not on the back burner [laughs].
It feels like it to us.
To you, it probably does to you. To me, the
amount of emails I get… it’s not a back burner.
We don’t know what they’re working on yet,
but can we assume this is a studio that’s
been positioned as a pillar, next to, say,
Playground, 343 and The Coalition?
So there are things that you can know
publicly. First is, we’ve been pretty open
about some of the talent we’ve hired, which
is really senior, experienced talent that
comes from a triple-A background. I think
they are attracted to what Darrell Gallagher
is doing there. He’s got a great pedigree and
I would just say stay tuned. Because that’s
something we’re going to be talking about
more as we go forward.

Last question… Will we be playing Halo

PSI-OPS: THE
MINDGATE CONSPIRACY
MAGIC 2004
While working as VP of
MOMENTS product development at
Midway, Matt was partly
responsible for getting this
cherished cult gem made.
Its brutal telekinetic battles
were a decapitating delight.
MORTAL KOMBAT:
ARMAGEDDON
2006
When at Midway, Booty
helped oversee this early
revival of the classic
fighting series. Armageddon
features almost every
fighter in series history.
That’s a lot of Fatalities.
SEA OF THIEVES
2017
With that surname, it’s
no wonder Matt is such
a cheerleader for Rare’s
online buccaneer. In the
time Booty has worked with
Rare, the studio seems to
have refound its passion for
creating new IPs.
Infinite in 2020?
[Microsoft PR interrupts to tell us we’re not
going to talk about release dates today.]
Matt Booty: Yeah, we’re not talking about
release dates today [laughs]! Q
Microsoft’s Xbox Series X will be arriving
Holiday 2020.

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 OXM INVESTIGAT ES

THE

GAMES
ON XBOX
Horror games and Team Green consoles make the best of (petrified) bedfellows. Be it
Manhunt’s demented stalking, FEAR’s horrifying little girl, or the forthcoming Resident Evil 3
remake’s newly terrifying Nemesis, we run you through Xbox’s history with survival horror
DAVE MEIKLEHAM /CHRIS BURKE

We all love a good Xbox bump in the
night. Horror games have been chilling
and thrilling fans of Microsoft consoles
for almost 20 years, with an enduring
appeal like few other genres. After all,
who doesn’t love being scared silly?
Whether being creeped out by the
wails of coffin-dodging cops in last
year’s Resident Evil 2 remake or fretting
over Silent Hill 2’s gnawing brand
of psychological dread, the history
of survival horror on Xbox is bloody
terrifying. Join us as we look back on
it… then immediately hold us.

062 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 063
 OXM INVESTIGATES

ideogames have been tingling our collective

spines for decades now. Long before the
original Xbox launched in 2001, twisted,
nerve-shredding games from the East helped
define the survival horror genre, forever
changing the medium in the process.
To trace the precise origins of gaming
horror, you have to go back to the early ’80s.
Over a decade before Resident Evil served up
Jill sandwiches, a Japanese student crafted
a frightening adventure that was indebted to
a certain chest-bursting Xenomorph. Partially
inspired by Ridley Scott’s masterful Alien, and
taking cues from a stealth title called Manbiki
Shoujo, Akira Takiguchi’s cheekily named
Nostromo saw players trying to escape the
gaze of an unseen extraterrestrial. TOP Resident
Evil 3 remake.
Released for the Commodore PET 2001
in 1981, it was years ahead of the undies- ABOVE Alien:
soiling curve. Nostromo somehow squeezed Isolation

in elements of resource management long LEFT The Thing.

before it became such a well-worn mechanic;
the spaceship’s survivor forced to collect key
items to escape the vessel. Looking back,
you can probably blame/praise Nostromo for
Resi ’s divisive item box system.

Evil incarnate
Skip ahead 15 years, and the most important
moment in the genre’s history would occur
with the release of a game that defined jump
scares like no other… Resident Evil. Shinji
Mikami’s masterpiece was originally conceived
as a remake for Nintendo’s NES classic Sweet
Home, before evolving into the Spencer
Mansion spook-‘em-up it was always destined
to be. Campy yet captivating, it helped coin
the phrase ‘survival horror’, helped rocket
the PlayStation into the sales-breaking
stratosphere, before spawning a genre-
defining juggernaut that endures to this day.
Twenty four years on, Capcom’s constantly
morphing franchise continues to terrify,
with Leon and Claire’s Raccoon City remake
deservedly claiming OXM’s Game Of The Year in
2019. How our shattered nerves love Resident
Evil 2. Capturing the collective imagination of
a generation of players like few titles since,
the original Resi made an indelible impression
“Campy yet captivating, Resi helped
to coin the phrase ‘survival horror’”
on ‘90s gaming. The moment that undead
Doberman smashed through the most famous
window in games, a horror icon was born, and
the roots of a truly iconic series cemented. As
this landmark spookster predated Xbox by 15
years, Team Green fans were forced to wait for
2015’s excellent Resident Evil HD remake to
finally get in on the zombie-whacking act.
Launching within a year of the original
Xbox, Konami terrified gamers with an entirely
different breed of horror. Whereas Resi was all
silly lines and obvious ‘gotcha!’ scares, Silent
Hill 2 was more insidiously upsetting. Telling
the story of the emotionally distraught James
Sunderland, it dealt with themes of guilt, grief
and sexual violence in a way few games have
the guts to address even now. The Japanese
publisher had an instant classic on its hands.
It’s just a pity the series has skulked into the
shadows in the intervening years, with its
last proper appearance on Xbox coming with
2012’s crummy Silent Hill: Downpour.
These early days of Xbox horror also
featured one of the most pleasantly
surprising movie spin-offs to ever surface.
Coming two decades after John Carpenter’s

064 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

body-morphing horror hit, Konami’s tardy
tie-in The Thing delivered frostbite frights as
it made you question the every move of your
AI squadmates. Were they really themselves?
Did they just give you a funny look? Were they
in actuality a scuttling alien parasite who’d
taken the form of one of your permanently
parka-covered pals? Sowing seeds of
terrifying doubt, this paranoia-laced horror
captured its movie’s chilling spirit long before
Creative Assembly nailed the mood of Ripley’s
universe in Alien: Isolation.
Killing time
The twilight years of the original Xbox
produced a number of horror titles spanning
the entire spooky spectrum. Taking a short
break between GTA titles, Rockstar made
Manhunt in 2003: a gruesome interactive
snuff flick that remains hugely unpleasant.
Brutal yet brilliant, the ghastly antics of James
Earl Cash toy with the notion of violence and
voyeurism; Brian Cox’s director taking almost
erotic pleasure in Cash’s murderous cat-and-
mouse clashes against gangs of thugs as he
hisses instructions through a mic.
That same year, two very different horror
titles hit Xbox, in Dino Crisis 3 and Fatal Frame.
While the original T-rex terror was in thrall
to Resident Evil, DC3 blasted the series to
space – no, really – subsequently making the
cult franchise extinct. Fatal Frame’s approach
to survival horror was a little more subtle,
with unnerving ghost hunts that involved
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
capturing spectres through the lens of an
antique camera.
With the arrival of Xbox 360 in 2005, horror
games evolved to match this more advanced
tech. Hitting shelves alongside Microsoft’s
new console, Monolith’s Condemned:
Criminal Origins has to go down as the most
unpleasant launch game of all time… and we
mean that as a compliment. Heavily inspired
by David Fincher’s serial killer thriller Seven,
this grizzly horror is part first-person melee
brawler, part the most disgusting episode
of CSI you ever did see – its clever forensic
puzzles are repellent. A year later, Monolith
ABOVE Left 4
Dead pit four
human players
against
AI-directed
hordes of
undead.
LEFT The sight
FEAR’s Alma
still makes us
wet our pants to
this day.
would release FEAR: a trippy, time-bending
horror shooter where your soldier is plagued
by hallucinations of a sinister girl.
2008 was another big year for horror, with
a number of ghastly titles gracing Xbox 360.
Alone In The Dark launched in June to spook
up the summer, though its horrible dialogue
and glitchy puzzles failed to do justice to
the pioneering 1992 original. Thankfully,
horror fans didn’t have to wait long for a
true terrifying great. EA released the brilliant
Dead Space that October, with Isaac Clarke’s
fraught battles against beastly Necromorphs
capturing the over-the-shoulder tension
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 065
 OXM INVESTIGATES
of 2005’s game-changing Resident Evil 4.
Even if no one can hear you scream in space,
they can damn sure watch you get torn to
shreds – Dead Space’s limb-lopping ‘strategic
dismemberment’ was a revelation. Rounding
off a truly frightful year was Valve’s Left 4 Dead:
a tight co-op shooter that promoted selfless
teamplay like few other games. A 2009 sequel
would again capture the zombified zeitgeist,
with Valve’s undead firefights proving to be the
must-have Xbox Live experience of the era.
Sadly, the next few years for Xbox horror fans
were downright chilling for the wrong reasons.
Capcom sadly stunk out the joint with Resident
Evil 5 in 2009, starting a downturn for the
franchise. Somehow 2012’s Resident Evil 6 was
even worse than Chris and Sheva’s confused
African adventure. Throwing all the undead
s**t at the fan, its trio of try-hard, interlinked
campaigns marked a real low point for the
iconic series. It would be a full five years until
Capcom released another mainline entry Resi.
Meme machine
At least fright fans could cheer themselves
up with Deadly Premonition amidst all this
Umbrella-sponsored sadness. Alright, so
Hidetaka Suehiro’s twee horror looked awful
by 2010 standards, but its dark, Twin Peaks-
inspired mystery at least lit up the interwebs
with a thousand coffee-sipping memes. A year
later, Isaac Clarke would return to kick oodles
of undead ass in the incredible Dead Space 2.
“Within Xbox One’s first year on
sale, a trio of horrors would chill
Team Green players to the bone”
066 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
ABOVE Resi 5
felt more like
an action game
than a terror
fest, but at
least its
Mercenaries mode
was pretty fun.
If there’s a creepier enemy in
the history of survival horror
than those peekab boo Stalkers,
they’ve yet to invadde our
sweaty night terrorrs. It’s just a
pity Clarke soiled the
he space linen
in 2013’s Dead Space 3; a lackluster ice world
threequel that sent the Xbox 360 horror series
out with the weediest of whimpers.
Six months after Isaac’s frosty frightener put
Dead Space into stasis, Xbox One launched,
ushering in a new era of videogame horror.
Within Xbox One’s first year on sale, a trio of
high-profile horrors would chill Team Green
players to the bone. Found footage fright-fest
Outlast is a squirm-inducing chiller; a short
and sharp indie that terrifies through its barely
visible environments and upsetting amount
of exposed wangs. Next time you film footage
on your camera phone, definitely don’t take a
trip to a mental asylum crawling with starkers
inmates. Happily, The Evil Within had fewer
virtual schlongs. Despite being riddled with
tech woes, Shinji Mikami’s gruesome 2014
horror kept Resident Evil’s spirit alive while the
series was on hiatus.
That
T same month one of the all-time great
survival horrors would slither onto Xbox One. In
Alien: Isolation, Creative Assembly didn’t just
Alie
deliver one of the most terrifying games ever,
it created arguably the greatest licensed game
of all time. Amanda Ripley’s hide-and-seek
survival sim acts as a mesmerising spiritual
successor to Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror opus.
Stalked by the relentless Xeno, HR Giger’s
ultimate movie monster hunts Ripley with all
the determination of a slavering Terminator
– its procedurally generated AI making it the
ultimate survival horror menace. Six years on,
our tattered nerves still haven’t recovered.
Over the next few years horror games would
take increasing stylistic and thematic chances.
Psychological chiller Layers Of Fear managed
to eke terror out of ink in 2016, as a disturbed
painter tries to finish his masterpiece while his
slowly decaying mind gives way to horrifying
visions. SOMA served up underwater terror
the likes rarely seen since a certain Spielberg
shark movie put bathers off large bodies of
H2O. Inspired by both BioShock and System
Shock, its thoughtful tale of AI gone awry
poses uneasy ethical questions wrapped up in
a seriously creepy shell.
 LEFT Rockstar
courted
controversy with
its murderous
Manhunt.

BELOW Space
dinosaurs might
sound cool, but
they killed the
Dino Crisis
series.

The likes of Friday The 13th: The Game and

Dead By Daylight also proved scares could
be sociable. These recent(ish) asymmetric
multiplayer outings revel in the power fantasy
of making one player an unstoppable movie
monster, while the rest of the poor saps on the
map run for their lives. We’re betting you’ve
now got Jason Voorhees’ theme music stuck in
your head. You’re welcome.
More recently, Resident Evil turned things
around with a terrifying first-person seventh
instalment, and in 2019 the Resi 2 remake
introduced Xbox players to the delightful
horrors of the Raccoon City Police Department.
Speaking of 2019, Man Of Medan proved to be a
fine support act for RE2, with the story-driven
nautical horror setting sail for dread. Too bad
The Blair Witch Project frustrated more than it
frightened. Good dog, though.
The history of horror on Xbox has been
paved with chills, many a lost night’s sleep,
and maybe some poo. While there are plenty
of petrifying sights in the rear view mirror,
the future looks shockingly scary. This year
alone GhostWire: Tokyo, Little Nightmares II
and Remothered: Broken Porcelain all want
to shred your wits. Not to mention a certain
hulking Nemesis. With rebooted Resident Evil 3
leading the charge, the months ahead should
be monstrous fun for horror hounds.

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 OXM INVESTIGATES
Xbox’s best horror games
THESE TEN FRIGHT-FESTS CAN ALL BE PLAYED ON XBOX ONE
10
THE EVIL WITHIN 2
You can feel Resident Evil’s lineage running
through the Evil Within like words through a
stick of rock. The 2017 sequel is, of course, a
third-person action/survival horror game that
oozes ooze, drips blood and provides plenty
of jump scares, as your dozy protagonist
searches for his lost daughter in everytown
America, where everyone’s become a monster.
While it’s not terribly original, Evil Within 2
has so many perfect horror environments to
explore that it’s hard to fault as a survival
horror experience. A terrifying treat.
07
SILENT HILL
HD COLLECTION
Silent Hill 2 was the first of the series on
Xbox, and the best of these remasters.
When the sirens start up and the town
goes to the ‘Otherworld’ (see Stranger
Things’ upside-down for its obvious
influence), your disturbed hero conjures
up nightmares from his own deranged
guilt as the world becomes an ash-
snowing husk of reality. And let’s face it,
even ‘normal’, there’s enough creepy in
its foggy streets and empty hospitals to
send shivers up any spine.
068 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
09
SOMA
The Little Mermaid lied to us. Not only is
it not better down where it’s wetter, it’s
way more homicidal. Naughty Sebastian!
Frictional Games’ underwater horror takes
plenty of cues from BioShock as it spins
a disorientating, drenched tale of dread.
Set on the PATHOS-II research facility, the
waterlogged horror house straddles the
ocean bed of the North Atlantic. Using
thematic tricks like an unreliable narrator
and disturbing moral quandaries – its
‘human souls trapped in badly damaged
bots’ concept is horrid – SOMA is a wet
and wicked survival horror jaunt.
06
RESIDENT EVIL 7
Resi ’s move to a more intimate first-person
perspective was the right one for our
encounter with the Baker family. Horribly
reminiscent of the family in Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, these Louisiana loons are a far
cry from the safer, more shootable B-movie
monsters of previous Resi games. No zombies
here, only those goo monsters, the Molded –
menacingly slow lumps of shambling fungus.
A hugely tense experience, whatever Capcom
learned from its (one-off?) experiment, it
applied to 2019’s incredible Resident Evil 2.
08
OUTLAST
All we want is a gun. Just a teensy little pistol.
But no, Outlast provides no such comfort while
we’re cowering in a toilet stall hoping it’s not
suddenly going to be yanked open by the
murderer that’s chasing us. Well, it’s our own
fault for going into that old hospital in the first
place. As a reporter we should just have stuck
to covering village fetes, but we just had to
go and root around a big dark building on our
own, consequently finding ourselves pursued
by homicidal inmates. Rattle, rattle. ‘Go away,
it’s occupied.’ Well, at least we’re in the right
place for what just happened in our pants.
05
FRIDAY THE 13TH
Jason Voorhees is one of the most iconic
movie killers ever, yet still it’s taken 40
years to get a decent Friday The 13th
game. This asymmetrical online effort
has one player randomly spawn as
Jason, who must then try and kill seven
camp counselors. Jason can teleport
about the place to provide the necessary
jump scares, while the other players
work together to outwit the hockey mask
psycho. With several maps based on the
movie’s locations, this is one of the best
horror experiences currently on Xbox.
04
ALAN WAKE
Our favourite ever game starring
someone called Alan, Remedy’s
psychological drama plays principally
on our primeval fear of the dark. Its main
mechanic is the use of light – Alan’s
weapon is a torch not a gun, and until
this Xbox 360 exclusive illuminated us,
we never thought our survival in a horror
game would depend more on battery
life than bullets. That Remedy chose to
structure Alan’s investigations more like
a TV show was one of many things that
set the game apart. You could cut the
atmosphere with a butcher’s knife.
03
DEAD SPACE 2
When it debuted on Xbox 360, Dead Space
was a bit like Resident Evil in space, but those
eerie-looking Necromorphs and the satisfying
limb-severing of said space-zombies has
proved hugely influential. The second outing
ups the dismemberment and deep space
chills, as you take on another Necromorph
outbreak aboard a space station. Alongside
increasingly inventive ways of parting limb
from walking corpse, tech enhancements
allow you to telekinetically chuck stuff at
the Necros to stop the beasts in their tracks.
Atmospheric, gory – even in space you can
definitely hear us scream.
02
ALIEN: ISOLATION
As great as it was, being able to fight
back made Aliens less scary than the
original movie, no matter how many
Xenomorphs were lining up to be flamed.
The Creative Assembly successfully took
Alien’s pure horror concept and gave us
one of the scariest Xbox One experiences
ever. Thanks to its nerve-shredding
atmosphere, the simple premise of
survival against a highly-evolved beast
that can’t be reasoned with is genuinely
horrifying. Mommy said there were no real
monsters, but there are. And they mostly
come out at night. Mostly.

01
RESIDENT EVIL 2
Two decades after Capcom’s undisputed
pre-Xbox survival horror titan, this return
to classic over-the-shoulder third-person
action does more than just scratch our old
gamer’s nostalgic itch. Faithfully following
the story and settings of the original, Claire
and Leon’s brilliantly realised adventure in
and around the Racoon City PD station house
is one of our favourite games of any genre on
Xbox. A masterpiece of pacing, the remake
adds narrative depth and extra emotional
pull to the original story, as well as extra-
HD viscera to the zombie takedowns and
drooling chops of the wall-climbing Lickers.
But nothing in horror games has had quite
the same impact on our frayed nerves as the
heavy approaching footfall of Mr X. This
fedora-wearing abomination is more or less
unstoppable, and knowing you can only run
away and hide – rather than stand and shoot
his leathery face off – is where our sanity ends
and our nightmares begin. n

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 REVIE W

Your gaming month sorted with

our definitive reviews
070 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
 REVIEW
Ancestors is from the original creator of Assassin’s Creed. It was originally going to be called Assassin’s Creed: Oo-oo-ooh. Probably

We love monkeys, but only stuffed ones. Real ones

and their oh-so-human behaviour just freak us out.
Especially when they grin. But as our closest mammal
How we relatives, our evolution from apes is undoubtedly
score:
Can’t make sense of
our out-of-ten rating
fascinating, and our first game this month is a truly 072
system? Then see
below for your
unique adventure involving evolving early man. Find
at-a-glance guide.
10 A gaming
out what we make of Ancestors: The Humankind
masterpiece
9 An essential slice of
Odyssey on page 72. Staying with prehistory, Arise:
brilliance
8 Give it a whirl and A Simple Story follows the journey of a dead tribal
you won’t regret it
7 Some minor flaws leader revisiting his memories in the afterlife. Find out
but still good
6 Solid, but not
setting any
if this emotive story moved us on page 74. Top-down
loins aflame
5 Average. Not
good, but not
monster-bashing dungeon crawler Sparklite (p76) is 074
terrible either next up for review. Its adorable cartoon visual style
4 Honks just a bit
3 Look away, lest
ye be tainted
belies its roguelike gameplay. Civilization VI (p78) is
2 Angry-makingly bad a world-building strategy game that’s just come to
1 Just... no...
ß Titles with this Xbox, while mountain-biking sim Lonely Mountains:
symbol are on Game
Preview, so while they
aren’t finished, you Downhill is reviewed on page 80. Not enough
can still find out if
they’re worth playing. reviews for you? Well we’ve also rated The Bradwell
Conspiracy (p83), Caretaker (p88), Jalopy (p89) 084
and the final episode of Life Is Strange 2 (p90). In
fact our reviewers have been such busy bees this
month, they’re still buzzing from it. Or is that just
EDITOR’S
CHOICE because we’ve also been actual bees as well, thanks
Irrespective of score,
the Editor’s Choice to Bee Simulator (p84)? We’d like to tell you that
award is given to
games with the
quality, ambition or
we’ve reviewed Secret Neighbor (p87) too, but it’s,
uniqueness to stand
out from the crowd. you know, a secret. Enjoy! 087

KEEP UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST OXM REVIEWS AT WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM/OXM

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PUBLISHER PRIVATE DIVISION / DEVELOPER PANACHE DIGITAL GAMES / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £32.99/$39.99
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
A CULT CLASSIC GOD GAME HIDES BEHIND AN IMPENETRABLE INTRO
You’ve got to admire
any game that has an
intellectual agenda,
and that is certainly
true of Ancestors:
The Humankind
Odyssey. Which shouldn’t come as
a surprise to anyone aware of its
provenance: developer Panache is
headed by Patrice Désilets, who was
creative director of the first Assassin’s
Creed game and two of its successors.
Ancestors is nothing less than a
human evolution simulator, backed
up by impressively rigorous (or at
least very convincing) scientific
underpinnings. So there’s no way
anyone could accuse the 35-strong
indie studio Panache of lacking
ambition. Frankly, you can see why:
the word ‘compromise’ clearly isn’t in
Désilets’ vocabulary. Ancestors kicks
off with a bravura opening cutscene in
which a fish is scooped up by various
predators, before being picked up by
a primitive ape (your raw material for
eventually breeding humans) with a
baby on its back. The pair are then
072 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
attacked by a giant bird, and the baby
ape falls to the rainforest floor.
You are then given control of that
infant, and told to find somewhere it
can hide. In the spirit of rigour, you’re
met with an interface which offers
very little by way of assistance. You
can activate the baby ape’s senses
of smell and hearing (which produce
pretty abstract visual effects), and
via standing still and looking around,
you can use its innate intelligence to
identify objects of interest.
Monkey business
When you safely stow the offspring,
your control is transferred to an adult
ape in the clan’s base on safe, level
ground up a cliff overlooking the forest
floor. You’re tasked with finding the
missing baby: a trickier task than it
sounds the first time around, when
you have no mind’s-eye view of local
geography and very basic cognitive
skills. Predators lurk in the woods, but
at least you can swing around the
trees with abandon (although a quirky
press-and-hold jump mechanism
STEVE BOXER
makes transferring between trees
something of a lottery).
Get the baby back to camp and the
short game starts in earnest. However, the
cut ball is still very much in your court:
there’s a vast amount you can do, but
WHAT IS IT? Ancestors refuses to give you almost
Nothing less than a
anything by way of assistance. As you
simulation of the
explore, you find plenty of food and
evolution of apes
into humans. water, along with assorted types of
rocks. The game instructs you to build
WHAT’S IT LIKE? a sleeping space, introducing one of
Head-scratchingly its most important mechanics.
hard at first, but
At a sleeping place (an arranged
utterly absorbing
when you work it out.
pile of leaves), you can procreate
and expand you and your species’
WHO’S IT FOR? intelligence. As you explore and
Gamers with plenty of experience new things, they open up
persistence and the
the possibility of acquiring new skills
intellectual curiosity
to match.
in areas like dexterity, intelligence,
communication and constitution,
and you can imprint them into the
species’ overall consciousness.
From a sleeping place, you can skip
a generation and, when you feel
ready, you can embark on a spot of
evolution, advancing the odd 100,000
years or so at a time.
 REVIEW
Once you evolve into a new species in Ancestors, you can start again from there, rather than its origin point

LEFT Bang enough

objects together
and you’ll
eventually find
something to use
in a fight.

“Ancestors FAR LEFT Don’t

presents amers explore too far

from your home,
or fear will
with a very tryin set in.

RIGHT The way

experience in its members of your
clan interact

early sta es” with one another

feels authentic.

At first, you acquire basic but vital GOD GAME OR

new skills, such as the ability to hold
items in both hands and alter one with
the other, and to assemble piles of
objects. Every evolution changes the
landscape thrillingly, along with the
vegetation, while the local predators
become even more fearsome.
Scare tactics
Ancestors is very difficult to get into:
before you’ve managed to evolve
much, it discourages you from
exploring too boldly by employing a
fear mechanism which can escalate
into full-blown hysteria, but you will
still die a lot, and when your entire
clan has died out (you always switch
to another clan member when you die,
and you can shift between existing
ones whenever you want), you must
restart the game. But as long as you
have the persistence to teach yourself
SURVIVAL?
Ancestors has billed
itself as a survival
game, but we would
contend that it’s
actually a god game.
not straying too far when exploring, at first, it certainly does when you
You certainly feel like
a god when you work collecting the right plants and learning fathom out how to approach it. As
out how to play it. It to intimidate lesser predators, in long as you aren’t afraid of games
offers a graphic order to start instilling human-like that make you work hard before
depiction of how hard intelligence and dexterity in apes. yielding their rewards, you’ll find that
mankind’s It’s a pity that in its pursuit of rigour Ancestors comes closer to letting
evolutionary route – after all, it is trying to emulate the you play god, while still entertaining
towards intelligence experience of being a primitive ape – you, than any game we’ve ever come
must have been. In an
Ancestors presents gamers with a very across previously. How’s that for
age in which mankind
trying experience in its early stages. vaulting ambition? ■
seems to be reverting
to a more primitive, It’s a hurdle that will tax your patience,
dumbed-down state but once you clear that, you will find
rather than evolving a wealth of gratifying experiences
further, Ancestors on offer as your clan increases in
feels particularly sophistication, evolves and begins to
apposite. Patrice dominate its surroundings.
Désilets’ ambitious Ancestors contains all manner OXM VERDICT

7
opus deserves to Once you get past
what to do, you’ll reach a point at of intellectual joys – whenever you
acquire a cult the early stages,
which it has you completely hooked. launch an evolution, for example,
following as a result.
By the third or fourth attempt at a your efforts are rated against what Ancestors offers a
playthrough, you’ll have learned to science projected – and while it rigorous take on
focus on elements like procreation, might not feel like much of a game the god game.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 073

PUBLISHER TECHLAND PUBLISHING / DEVELOPER PICCOLO STUDIO / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £15.99/$19.99
ARISE: A SIMPLE STORY
BE KIND AND REWIND THIS TIME-TINKERING INDIE
This is going to
sound like an odd
comparison, but
Piccolo’s ethereal
indie adventure
reminds us of
Batman: Arkham Knight. Oh sure,
you won’t find a billionaire beating
up clown-faced felons or joyriding
around in a million quid tank. Yet
Rocksteady’s heroic sandbox and this
gently taxing, often affable quest do
start in similar fashion. Namely, they
both roast a key character’s corpse
within seconds.
Arise: A Simple Story starts with
your death. As a stout grandpa who
looks like a weirdly stacked Santa,
you take control of this wistful old
fellow post-cremation. That sounds
fairly depressing, right? Fret not: the
following four-hour adventure is a
surprisingly cheerful jaunt through the
afterlife as your muscular Kris Kringle
recalls key moments from his past.
In gameplay terms, Arise is a little
like the Xbox Live Arcade puzzler Braid.
This indie’s big party piece is its time-
074 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
fiddling puzzle system. With a simple
rotation of the right stick, you can
wind time backwards and forwards like
you’re scrubbing through a YouTube
video. Albeit a YouTube video starring
a reflective OAP who occasionally rides
around on giant snails.
Rise and repeat
Contorting time to your will is a lovely
central mechanic that’s elegantly
explained and artfully executed. Within
seconds you intuitively understand
how Arise wants you to bend time to
solve its gentle puzzles and navigate
its cheerfully colourful worlds. One
second you’ll ping time forward to
thaw out a frozen lake, the next you’re
sending the world around you back a
few seconds so you can hookshot a
giant bee to give you a lift between
skyscraper-dwarfing flowers. With
such a simple, easy-to-use central
mechanic, there’s a refreshing
simplicity to Arise’s streamlined
conundrums. Alright, the odd scenario
may flummox you – ‘Wait, we’re
supposed to do what with that giant
DAVE MEIKLEHAM
boulder that’s careening towards old
grandad Santa!?’ For the most part
though, progression through this brisk
short adventure is a time-bending breeze.
cut As you play through the key
moments of your life, from an early
WHAT IS IT? childhood romance to an upsettingly
A gentle adventure
stark family tragedy, Arise’s mechanics
that combines
time-meddling
evolve in satisfying ways. Each of its
puzzles with slightly ten themed levels introduce a new
naff platforming. wrinkle to time manipulation. One
stage may usher in a time-freezing
WHAT’S IT LIKE? feature to help you jump between
A 3D Braid minus the
falling bits of debris, then the next
adorable dinos and
late-game creepy
could ask you to skip time to the
stalking antics. precise moment a lightning bolt
strikes to fend off dozens of shadowy
WHO’S IT FOR? grandpa clones. Turns out, being
Fans of wordless
stalked by inky pensioner spectres is
stories who don’t
mind having a little
super unsettling.
cry for a pensioner. Arise looks lovely throughout. With
soothing lighting you can almost feel
tanning your skin, to strong, striking
colours that make the adventure look
like a watercolour come to life, it’s the
graphical equivalent of a big ol’ hug.
Artistically, it’s one of the prettiest
indies around.
 REVIEW
Arise: A Simple Story is Piccolo Studio’s first ever videogame. We’re excited to see what the small Barcelona outfit do next

LEFT Being
chased by
shadowy clones
is creepy as
heck. Bad
shadow clones!

“There’s enou h FAR LEFT The

oyful wonder man’s entire life

is summed up in
moving scenes
here to lift Arise involving little
stone statues.

above platform RIGHT The best

level sees the

problems” OAP hitch rides

from bees. It’s
a bug’s life,
ain’t it?

It’s a pity the platforming is slightly CO-OP

borked. There’s a real soupiness to
how Arise handles. While controlling
Old Man Time Tinkerer generally feels
fine when you’re jogging through the
game’s painterly worlds, jumping is
a little broken. There’s a distracting
sense of lag every time you leap
between objects, with the beardy
codger often falling short of where
you need him to land. It’s never hugely
offensive, but there are definitely
sections – especially a later level that
revolves around giant peaches, of all
things – where the unreliable jumps
elicit the odd naughty swear from us.
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time,
this really ain’t.
Time after time
Pacing is also a problem. There’s
no question the first half of Arise is
far stronger than its latter acts. The
A FEEL
Arise comes up with a
fairly inventive spin on
a co-op mode.
Channelling that
‘share a pad’ spirit of
to make large lily pads swirl around a Despite its issues, there’s no
old, playing with a
friend sees one of you huge pond. It’s here those unreliable question a lot of love has gone into
control the old man’s jumps smack you down repeatedly Arise. This is a deeply personal story
movements while the as you trigger restart after restart of love and loss, a point hammered
other fiddles around just because the old chap falls a few home by affecting end credits where
with the flow of time. inches short of the next lily. the team leave little messages of
It’s a cool little Thankfully, there’s enough sense gratitude for their loved ones. Though
system, though it of joyful wonder in Arise to just this pumped-up OAP may stumble
does demand pretty
about lift it above these platforming along the way, his time-tweaking
much constant
problems. Climbing towards the peak quest ultimately rises above. ■
communication with
your time-bending of a sun-dappled mountain between
partner, so make sure main acts, the growing sense of
you buddy up with cathartic completion as you help this
someone you can old soul reach his final destination
work with. is palpable. With only a single word
ever uttered throughout this wistful
adventure, Piccolo delivers a more OXM VERDICT

7
gigantic garden level with elephant- moving affair than many ultra chatty, A soulful story of
sized escargot is brilliant, but three of try-hard triple-A tales. It goes to hope, loss and
the game’s final five levels are slight show that when you genuinely have regret that twists
duds. There’s a particularly frustrating something to say, you don’t always time to tug on your
section that involves tweaking time need words to vocalise your point. heartstrings.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 075

PUBLISHER MERGE GAMES / DEVELOPER RED BLUE GAMES / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £19.99/$24.99
Sparklite
ALL SWEETNESS AND LITE – UNTIL YOU GET TO KNOW THE ROGUE UNDERNEATH
Roguelikes, with
their permadeath
and unpredictable
randomness, are
one of the most
unforgiving genres
in all of videogaming. If you’ve never
played one before, even a roguelite
– like the Diet Coke to the full-fat
real thing, with most of the same
ingredients but an unmistakably
different taste – can be pretty
daunting. Sparklite, though, does
everything it can to take out some of
the sting, and make this tough little
subgenre more approachable. Even,
dare we say it, friendly.
This is obvious at a glance. Just
look at this game, with its soft pastel
colours and nostalgia-tickling pixel
art and big-headed, wide-eyed chibi
characters. It’s flipping adorable. Even
the supposedly corrupted creatures
you bash with your wrench mostly look
like they could be seen off with an
especially vigorous cuddle.
Sparklite’s efforts to soften the
genre even extend to its single most
076 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
sacred element: death. When you die,
the game does that typical roguelike
thing where it pulls the world away
from you and reshuffles it into a new
shape while you’re contemplating
what went wrong with your run – but,
technically, you don’t actually die
here. Instead, you’re plucked out of
danger at the very last moment by a
crane, a huge person-sized version of
that claw all the weird aliens worship
in the original Toy Story, and then
plopped down safely into bed. We
could do with one of those at the end
of a long day, honestly.
Head in the clouds
Head out of bed and onto the floating
island that serves as your hub and
you’ll start to see how the game
is sanding off some of the genre’s
sharper edges, in terms of mechanics
as much as its presentation. This
island is packed with places to spend
sparklite, the game’s currency. You
can buy upgrades, unlocks, or even
develop the base itself with new
buildings and annexes.
ALEX SPENCER
This is nothing new for roguelites –
over the years, everything from Rogue
Legacy to Dead Cells has found a way
short of working permanent progression
cut into that wipe-clean format – but,
vitally, when you die in Sparklite, you
WHAT IS IT? get to keep your earnings. All of them.
A top-down
Meaning, even if you get clobbered by
adventure game of
the first enemy you meet down on the
monster bashing and
dungeon crawling. ground, you’ll probably have gained
a little pocket change to spend – or
WHAT’S IT LIKE? at least add to your savings – once
What if The Legend you’re back up among the clouds.
Of Zelda and a
So dying means you lose your
roguelike had an
adorable child?
place in the world – a bit like realising
someone’s quickly tugged out your
WHO’S IT FOR? bookmark and then, when you go
People who like just a back to find your page again, finding
little bit of perma in
your steamy romance novel has
their death.
been replaced with a thesaurus. But
that’s the only real penalty you pay
for getting bonked on the head a few
times too many.
On paper, it sounds like a change
that should suck out all the life
from the genre, which is founded
on a meticulous balance of risk and
reward, but Sparklite manages to
 REVIEW
Roguelikes are named after the original Rogue – the Gambit-romancing southern belle from X-Men – true or false?

LEFT The art

style is lovely
and reminiscent
of Nintendo’s
Zelda games.

“When you die FAR LEFT Find

in Sparklit you enough Beats,

and they’ll
perform a song
et to keep for you.

RIGHT Pushing
your earnin s. back the fog of
the world map is

All of them” compelling, even

if it will all
return for your
next run.

make it work – perhaps because GENEROUS

roguelikes aren’t the only tradition it’s
drawing from. And it is at this point we
must leave behind the Xbox’s familiar
waters, and chart a course instead to
the shores of Hyrule
. when you succeed. Also among these
Linking to the past
Yep, there’s an awful lot of The Legend
Of Zelda in Sparklite. Look at those
screenshots again – with a little
squinting, they could be straight out
of the SNES era. But more to the point,
it borrows the overworld-and-dungeon
shape of those games. You move from
screen to screen, bashing enemies
and finding secrets, until you come
across one of the landmarks dropped
randomly onto the map when you die
and respawn in your airborne bed.
If you’ve played Breath Of The Wild,
you’ll recognise the sinkholes and
vaults and furnaces as Sparklite’s
TO A VAULT
The best thing to be
found in Sparklite’s
overworld is
undoubtedly the
vaults. Like a classic
layer. Take it slow and you’ll likely
Zelda dungeon, these
hand you a shiny new landmarks are boss encounters, one find upgrades to help you face pretty
gadget – a per area, each unlocking the next much any challenge. Decide to rush,
remote-control blimp world when beaten. and you’ll discover enemies that’ll
or a shrink ray, for Here’s the genius bit: you only need flatten you in a second and obstacles
example – and a few to beat each boss once, but it doesn’t you have no way of navigating yet.
puzzles to solve with automatically skip you to the next You’ll find that, for all it might show
it. But there’s a twist: area. No, you begin each run right a friendly face to the world, this
escaping the vault
where you always did, in the starter roguelite still has plenty of bite – and
doesn’t automatically
area, and you will have to explore we wouldn’t have it any other way. ■
net you the gadget.
No, this was just a its edges to find the gates that lead
test drive, and now into the desert, or the swamps, or
you need to return to any of the other pretty generically
the great hub world in themed worlds. You can access every
the sky and buy it area from this first one, meaning it’s
with those up to you whether you want to keep
hard-earned chips of pushing ahead or see what the newly OXM VERDICT

8
sparklite. We’ve never Solid proof that
answer to that game’s shrines: reimagined version of an earlier, easier
been more eager to roguelikes can be
tiny dungeons that present you biome looks like.
die. Err, in the game.
with a couple of puzzles or combat This lets you set your own accessible without
encounters or maybe even some light challenge, your own pace, as you sacrificing the
platforming, and a neat little reward peel back Sparklite’s world layer by genre’s spark.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 077

 REVIEW
Throughout the entire series, India’s Gandhi has always dropped more nukes than any other leader
PUBLISHER 2K / DEVELOPER FIRAXIS / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £44.99/$69.99 FOR BASE GAME, £32.99/$49.99 FOR EXPANSIONS
Civilization VI
EDITOR’S MAKE YOUR OWN HISTORY IN THE SERIES’ EXCELLENT XBOX DEBUT
CHOICE
All of human history
makes an irresistible
premise for a
strategy game. And
yet, somehow, it has
taken Civilization
almost 30 years to properly migrate to
consoles. Sure, there was Civilization
Revolution, but we don’t talk about
that; it wasn’t the full, authentic
experience. This, however, really is.
First up, a note. Civilization VI can be
augmented by the game’s two major
expansions – Rise & Fall and Gathering
Storm – and both make fundamental
changes to the core tactical
experience. They add all new leaders
and mechanics, while embellishing the
existing ones with greater depth.
It’s therefore disappointing that it
doesn’t automatically come to Xbox
One bundled with both. Rather, 2K
has opted to sell the game and its
expansions separately – just under
£33/$50 for the expansion bundle.
Sure, the base game is still fantastic,
078 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
a deeply addictive and colourfully
dynamic strategy game, but is not the
complete picture as it exists in 2019.
In control
Nevertheless, this is a conversion
that’s intuitive, mapping all of the
series’ convoluted systems to the
Xbox One pad. It’s not just supremely
impressive to fit all of these different
functions into the compactness of a
controller; it’s even more remarkable
that it actually feels good to play this
way. It’s nailed the ‘Civ on the sofa’
dream, and that’s magic.
A campaign of Civ is best summed
up as a series of decisions of varying
sizes. The first is immediately and
obviously important: picking which
of the game’s 46 leaders you want
to play as. All the others, some
minor some major, play out along the
journey, including which technologies
and cultural civics to invest in, which
buildings to construct, which wonders
to build and where to place your cities
SAM WHITE
in order to avoid – and take advantage
of – the natural disasters introduced
in Gathering Storm.
short The leaders are all fantastic, and
cut broad in styles too. Big hitters like
Genghis Khan and Queen Victoria are
WHAT IS IT? all present; all the way to lesser known
An engrossing and historical figures like Wilhelmina of
addictive 4X strategy
the Netherlands and Lautaro of the
game from a
long-running
Mapuche. Every leader is different in
classic PC series. the benefits and weaknesses they
offer, some more distinctly than
WHAT’S IT LIKE? others, and it’s a huge amount of fun
Occasionally peaceful
specialising with each new campaign.
and sometimes
stressful, but always
Firaxis packs every historical
satisfying to get period with dozens of decisions to
stuck into. ensure you’re rarely, if ever, without
something to think about. Older Civ
WHO’S IT FOR? games struggled to keep momentum,
Anyone who loves
but both of Civilization VI’s expansions
history, decision
making, or something
do a good job of making a campaign
that will eat up your more consistent throughout your
evenings. alternate history.
You are always working to unlock
new abilities on the game’s two main
trees of progression – the tech tree
“A campai n is
best summed
up as a series
of decisions of
varyin sizes”
for science, the civics tree for culture.
But every step on each now has
unique mini-objectives that halve the
time needed to research, which offer
constant tasks and challenges to
undertake to maximise efficiency.
World domination
Overall victory comes in five forms:
science, culture, domination, religion
and diplomacy, that last one is new
to the Gathering Storm expansion,
and has you engaging with the World
Congress to navigate your way to
diplomatic greatness.
The other victories are all equally
fun to muck around with. Culture sees
you creating rock bands to tour the
world and building as many Wonders
as possible to generate tourism;
science has you pursuing the a race
to reach space, the Moon, and Mars;
religion has you creating unique gurus
and missionaries to spread the word
of your chosen gods; while domination
has you flattening enemies with
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
FAR LEFT You’re
free to expand
your empire how
you like. Make
sure you have
the resources.
ABOVE If you’re
lacking in
certain goods,
try smooth-
talking a rival
nation.
LEFT At certain
points you can
decide whether
your nation will
enter a dark or
golden age.
ART OF spears, muskets, machine guns and, board game-esque mix of wonders
THE DEAL later on, laser rifles. both natural and man-made.
Much of Civilization’s Every leader has unique The combination of all of these
interplay between specialisations, boosts, weaknesses decisions is a wonderfully rich
rivals is played out on and agendas (think of the latter like strategy game. One that revels in
the diplomacy screen,
interesting personality traits that colour and vividity. It feels like a
where you’ll negotiate
affect the way they react to other history lesson without the boring bits,
trades, establish
embassies, agree leaders) so it’s important to aim full of charm, and it’s great to see it on
certain rules, form toward a victory that your leader is consoles with such an intuitive control
alliances and start best suited to. Spain’s Phillip II is a scheme. Its best form is expensive,
wars. Diplomacy is the hugely powerful religious power, for yes, but for hundreds if not thousands
best it has ever been example, while you’ll want to rely of hours of play spanning the entirety
in the series in Civ VI, on someone like Scythia’s Tomyris if of mankind’s past and future, that’s
but the system is not you’re a warmonger. still undeniably great value. ■
without its quirks. It
Whichever leader you pick,
can be a frequent
expansion is essential. Every city has
occurrence to find
leaders reacting a centre, but now sprawls out into
weirdly or without surrounding tiles with unique districts
obvious reasons. and more transient upgrades like
Firaxis does a decent farms, mines, pastures and more.
job of making the AI’s Expanding your empire is one of the OXM VERDICT
9
decisions as clear as most fun and enjoyable parts about Intuitively designed
it possibly can for Civilization VI because it gives you and thrilling,
the most part, but it Civilization makes
such a sense of personalisation over
isn’t perfect. Just like
what your civ looks like on the map – a brilliant move
real life.
a colourful and beautifully designed over to console.
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 079
 REVIEW
The world’s longest mountain bike trail runs from Alberta to New Mexico spanning 3,000 miles
PUBLISHER THUNDERFUL PUBLISHING / DEVELOPER MEGAGON INDUSTRIES / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £17.99/$19.99
Lonely Mountains: Downhill
A LONG WAY FROM WHEELIE TERRIBLE
Few games ride
such a fine line
between serenity
and fury as much
as this delectably
simple downhill
romp regarding one person and their
mountain bike. At times, it can prove
infuriating, the many obstacles often
at odds with the pure satisfaction that
should arise when taking a turn or
navigating a narrow ridge perfectly.
When all you want to do is lose
yourself amongst the beautiful
low-poly landscapes, it’s genuinely
disheartening to crash into an evilly
placed tree that halts your attempt
at a perfect run. Nevertheless, with
enough time and patience, Lonely
Mountains: Downhill becomes a
fulfilling test of skill set against the
scenic outdoors.
There are 16 different trails located
across four distinct mountain peak
ranges to tackle in total, each one
tasking you to reach the bottom
as fast and with as few crashes as
possible. However, while these two
objectives might be at the heart of the
experience, what’s most impressive
about Lonely Mountains is how it
encourages you to play your own
way. You see, before undergoing a trail
you’re offered a list of challenges that
can be switched on or off, making it
easy to set your own goals. Want to
perfect a course with a certain bike
class to unlock a new component? You
can do that. Think you can beat a trail
in under X number of crashes? Set the
challenge and find out.
Each challenge spans various
difficulty levels, all of which will gift
080 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
AARON POTTER
RIGHT Lonely
Mountains breaks
its trails up
into checkpoint
sections, making
it easy for you
to see where you
need to improve.
“Factors like The trails themselves are an
absolute highlight. Just when you
short stability and top think you’ve seen everything that
Lonely Mountains: Downhill has to
cut
speed depend offer in terms of level design, you’ll
find a new route that lets you shave
WHAT IS IT?
A tough but fair
polygonal time trial
on the bike” off precious seconds to secure a
lower completion time. Whether your
take on cycling. cycle setup and skill level is up to the
you either a cool cosmetic item, task of taking that route, however, is
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
bike part or one of the six new cycle up to you. There might be 16 bike trails
Like if someone took
a Trials game, flipped classes once completed. Cleverly, to take on overall, but the number of
the perspective, and though, Lonely Mountains does well paths through them is easily triple
replaced its chaos to give you a fair chance of success that, perfect for score hunters seeking
with ambience. before fully letting you off the leash, a place on the global leaderboard, as
only allowing you set challenges after well as curious folk wondering what
WHO’S IT FOR?
Those craving the
you’ve finished a trail fully as a tour. they’re missing.
joys a mountain bike While this might annoy players eager Lonely Mountains: Downhill offers so
brings but can’t be to put tyre to road amidst the great much freedom, both in its mechanics
bothered with all of unknown, it’s a sensible way to ensure and environments, that it’s hard to
the upkeep. that every stumble and crash is solely complain whenever a great run ends
down to your performance as opposed horrifically. This is a Trials type game
to the trail’s unpredictability. for those that don’t typically like Trials,
reducing your frustration by telling you
On your bike that it’s okay to approach challenges
All these customisation options would at your own pace. ■
mean nothing, though, were it not for
how great Lonely Mountains: Downhill
feels to play – and even that can be
customised due to how differently
each bike class handles. RT is used
for acceleration while LT works as your
trusty brake, but factors like stability OXM VERDICT
8
and top speed depend entirely on A tranquil trip
the bike. All six options allow you to through the great
take on trails in a way that suits you, outdoors, rich in
upping your capabilities in certain atmosphere and
areas while lessening them in others. fair challenge.
 New issue on sale now
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PUBLISHER BOSSA STUDIOS / DEVELOPER A BRAVE PLAN / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £14.99/$19.99
The Bradwell Conspiracy
THE SCIENCE GOT DONE AND THEY MADE A NEAT GUN
Stonehenge:
prehistoric place of
mystery and wonder,
or a wallet-emptying
photo opportunity
next to a busy road.
Whether or not those ancient druids
were onto something beyond fleecing
tourists, it’s probably the last place
you would expect to find a massive
high-tech research lab.
But that’s what’s there in The
Bradwell Conspiracy, in which a tech
giant somehow got permission to
demolish all the English Heritage
stuff and erect a vast concrete
office complex around the crusty old
monument. The lab extends deep
under the stone circle, where sinister
and implausible research is underway.
When an explosion rocks the
building during some sort of open
day, you find yourself trapped in the
visitor centre and unable to speak due
to smoke inhalation. The only way to
communicate with Amber, inexplicably
the only employee left on-site, is by
taking pictures of stuff for her. Send a
pic of a door and maybe she’ll suggest
a way to open it.
It’s more than just a hint system,
as the only way to get through certain
areas is to take pictures of various
items. Amber will use the information
to activate lifts and doors, but only
if you take the right picture at the
right time. You might find something
that looks like it’s important, but if
there’s something else that needs to
be snapped first, your picture will only
generate a dismissive response.
There’s also a special piece of
Stonehenge tech in the form of a
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
A family ticket to Stonehenge costs about £50 and you can’t even touch the stones
MARTIN KITTS
“We’re stru lin
short here because
cut
we’re fi htin
WHAT IS IT?
Escape a secret
laboratory using only
the massive la ”
a 3D printer and a
webcam. gun that lets you scan objects and
print out copies. It sounds extremely
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
A tribute to Portal promising, in an organic, creative sort
without the excellent of way, but it’s actually very strictly
gameplay hook. limited. Very few objects can be
scanned, and they can only be used in
WHO’S IT FOR? the exact way the devs have intended.
People with high
tolerance for simple
puzzles made harder Lab rat
by shonky controls. Forget trying to stack replicated
items to get to out-of-reach areas or
otherwise improvise a route across a
room. If you need to cross a gap and
there’s a plank nearby, you have to
sample that plank and use it to form a
bridge in the designated spot. There’s
no jump button, so it’s not like you can
even get onto any items that might
lead you off the beaten track.
Trying to get items into the right
spot is quite fiddly, and the controls
are often unresponsive. You might
know exactly where you’re meant to
be going, but the difficulty comes
from battling the game’s chugging
framerate as you wrestle objects into
position, and not knowing whether
you’re actually just meant to snap a
picture. There’s no elegance to it.
REVIEW
LEFT This is
exactly the sort
of building the
druids would
have made if
they’d known
about glass and
concrete.
The game’s product banner on the
Xbox store, showing a man wearing
glasses silhouetted against an
orange background, could easily be
a piece of Valve-related fan art, and
the developers’ admiration for all
things Portal is evident throughout.
But The Bradwell Conspiracy, like so
many other homages, only serves to
demonstrate how brilliant Portal was,
and how difficult it is to imitate.
The acting isn’t bad, but hearing
the same jokes and taunts over and
over isn’t a lot of fun. We’re struggling
here because we’re fighting the
massive lag in the game’s controls,
not because we can’t figure out the
solution. Just shut up for a minute!
It shouldn’t take more than three
hours to complete, and that’s with
hanging around to listen to exposition.
The background story, shown in
panels in the opening area, before
you even get the 3D printer gun, is
probably the most memorable part.
That’s Portal all backwards. ■
OXM VERDICT
5
A puzzler homage
to Portal that’s
arguably better to
read than it is to
actually play.
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 083
PUBLISHER BIGBEN INTERACTIVE / DEVELOPER VARSAV GAME STUDIOS / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £34.99/$39.99
Bee Simulator
THE BUG QUESTION: SHOULD YOU MAKE A BEELINE FOR BEE SIMULATOR?
Planet Earth needs
the honeybee. Crops
depend on worker
bees to pollinate
them, yet our tiny
allies live difficult
and perilous lives. Bee Simulator puts
you in a worker bee’s busy shoes and
pits you against all that’s threatening
the honeybee’s humble existence.
The main goal of Bee Simulator is
to do what bees do best: collect lots
of nectar before returning to the hive
so it can be processed into delicious
honey. Luckily, the city park around
your avatar’s hive is overgrowing
with bright, nectar-filled flowers, all
of differing types and rarities. Each
variant of flower is sorted into distinct
categories which can be seen by
activating Bee Vision, with different
colourations signalling which nectar
is the premium variety. By pressing
the right stick you’ll trigger your
first-person Bee Vision, allowing you
to take in what is an impressively
detailed world through much smaller
eyes than you’re used to.
084 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
In fact, Bee Simulator’s world is
so vast and plentiful that traversing
it as a tiny bee is a tall order. Flying
back and forth between the hive,
flowerbeds and the urban sprawl can
be time-consuming, but thankfully the
developers at Varsav Game Studios
have considered this and incorporated
‘Beetro Boost’ to speed up travel time.
Keep an eye on the blue meter at the
bottom of the screen, and when the
bar is full you can hold down RB to
receive a boost that will allow your
bee to zoom through the air. Over
time your Beetro Boost will deplete,
so it’s important to save your limited
acceleration power for important trips
and challenges, or to top it up with the
odd sip of nectar.
Earning your stripes
As you spend more time with the
game, you’ll become dependent on
exchanging messages with other
worker bees in order to locate the
rarest flowers, or even to pass on
a warning about potential dangers
threatening the hive. Just like
REBECCA STOW
honeybees do in real life, you’ll need
to communicate through waggle
dancing. By pressing the directional
short buttons on the D-pad you can
cut emulate the movements of your
fellow drones, with each movement
WHAT IS IT? meaning something specific, and
A simulation game
mistakes are comparable to a garbled
that sees you
sentence. Waggle dancing also earns
controlling a brave
honeybee in a you Knowledge Points, which you
dangerous world. can spend back at the hive to better
understand the world around you.
WHAT’S IT LIKE? Sadly, some of your interactions
Goat Simulator but
within this world won’t be as pleasant
with more insects,
nectar and some
as others. There are several insects
aerial combat. sharing your airspace and not all of
them are friendly. Your most common
WHO’S IT FOR? enemy will be wasps, and you’re going
Anyone who’s
to need to battle them for supremacy.
interested in biology
Fighting consists of blocking and
or is up for a
macro-scale attacking according to a small bar
adventure. at the bottom of the screen which
counts down to quick time events. Hit
each mark perfectly and you’ll have
no trouble using your stinger to ward
off opponents, but miss your cue and
you’ll lose a good slice of your HP. You
don’t actually have an HP bar in the
 REVIEW
Bee Simulator’s score is composed by Mikolai Stroinski, who also worked on The Witcher 3

LEFT Bee
Simulator’s
aerial combat is
built around
quick time
button prompts.

“It should be FAR LEFT There

noted that the is so much to

interact with in
your honeybee’s
educational verdant world.

RIGHT The
potential of this library offers
pages of

ame is hu e” information
about other
insects.

overworld, so any damage taken is

meaningful to battle situations only.

Busy bees
There are also a nice plethora of
mini-games to engage with around
the overworld. As you travel between
each cluster of flowers your attention
may be drawn to coloured beams,
and each of these beams signals a
specific challenge. A few of these
trials are present in the main game
(dancing, fighting, etc), but some
unique quests include special airborne
races, popping balloons and even
stinging a human bully. It’s all good
fun and serves as a nice distraction
from the main game.
Back at the hive, the library keeps
track of your feats, both in terms
of the main game and side-quests.
Completed tasks will reward you with
yet more Knowledge Points, and there
HIVE
MENTALITY
Bee Simulator is well as purchasing trophies, you can It’s a relatively minor gripe, though,
perfect for family read in-depth scientific analysis about and overall Bee Simulator is a fresh
gaming. Not only is it each creature that your honeybee and innovative experience, one
educational, but it encounters, and it should be noted that consistently delights during
also boasts a that the educational potential of this its succinct four-hour playthrough.
split-screen co-op game is huge. Bee Simulator would The idea of completing a worker
mode. This mode certainly be a great resource for any bee’s everyday tasks may seem like
unlocks new
budding biologists out there! busywork, but the thought, love and
free-roam maps and
comes with no
The game isn’t perfect, however. attention that has clearly gone into
significant drop in Bee Simulator has a few control crafting this game shines through. ■
performance. In fact, issues that can mar the experience
playing Bee Simulator slightly. While gently buzzing around
with other people only the overworld the control scheme is
heightens the fairly smooth, but when you’re taking
experience. The fact part in races and you want to utilise
that the game can be your full speed, the handling begins to
completed in just a
feel a bit oversensitive. Frustratingly, OXM VERDICT

8
few sittings is also a Delivers an
are several places to spend your plus for younger
you will find yourself bouncing off
points, including the trophy room walls and slamming into objects as experience that’s
gamers who might
which is the perfect place to learn struggle with you try to right yourself, sometimes as sweet as honey
more about the honeybees’ world and something longer and resulting in a botched race or even a and buggy in all the
the other insects that inhabit it. As more demanding. dreaded rage-quit. right ways.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 085

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About to enter its 35th year, Neighbours is the longest-running series in Australia… wait, what do you mean that’s a different thing?
PUBLISHER TINYBUILD / DEVELOPER HOLOGRYPH / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £16.74/$19.99
Secret Neighbor
THAT’S WHEN BAD NEIGHBOURS BECOME BAD FRIENDS
It’s one of the very
best setups for a
horror story. A small
group in a tight
location, aware that
one of their party is
not who they seem. One of them… is
the monster in disguise. If you’ve ever
seen John Carpenter’s The Thing – or
played one of the many board games
that operate on this idea – you’ll know
it’s a fantastic recipe for paranoia
and suspicion. A recipe which Secret
Neighbor completely bodges.
Here, it’s a group of kids, sneaking
into the house of the neighbourhood
creep to find the basement where
he’s keeping their friends. If that
sounds familiar, it’s likely because
of Hello Neighbor, the 2017 stealth
puzzle game this is a spin-off from.
The difference is Secret Neighbor is a
multiplayer game, assembling five kids
and one randomly-chosen creep for a
15-minute match of hide-and-seek.
It’s basically a more kid-friendly Dead
By Daylight – although, to be perfectly
honest, we’re not sure a middle-aged
man pulling children into his hidden
dungeon is any more appetising than
a slasher flick gore-a-thon.
The kids are here to turn the house
upside down, looking for the six keys
that unlock the basement door. The
neighbour is here to stop them, either
by running out the clock or by grabbing
them and, um, making them disappear.
But vitally, he’ll start the match among
all the other players, hiding behind the
face of a child. As the neighbour, you
can play along, pretending to search
and hiding anything useful you find,
or reveal your true nature – either the
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
REVIEW
ALEX SPENCER
LEFT Getting
grabbed by the
neighbour,
especially when
they’re unseen,
is successfully
scary. It
definitely made
us jump a few
times.
“Character It feels like a waste of a great
concept. The whole hidden identity
short desi ns are idea doesn’t actually contribute much
to the way matches play out. Perhaps
cut
burstin with it would be different playing as a
dedicated group of friends, but with
WHAT IS IT?
An asymmetrical
multiplayer game
personality” a party of silent strangers – the way
most of us will play most of the time
pitting five kids – everyone quickly disperses, and
against a hidden standard neighbour, or a variant in full there’s no way of communicating if
murderer. clown make-up. you do suspect a player of being a
WHAT’S IT LIKE? double agent. Or, honestly, of doing
Hello Neighbor, plus Child’s play anything meaningful about it, because
added players. The Over on the kids’ side, there are half once uncloaked the neighbour is
Thing times Monster a dozen classes to choose from, but practically unstoppable, a sweater-
House, minus all of really you’re picking which archetype wearing Terminator.
the tension. you want to fill. The gawky tall kid We think back to the times where
WHO’S IT FOR? with the glasses and the cowlick. The we have sat around a table, playing
People who are really kid just back from summer camp, her board games that run on a similar
suspicious of that scout uniform bristling with badges. concept, pointing a finger at someone
one guy down the The nervous kid who’s always asking who five minutes ago was our friend,
street. Or, secretly, the others if they can’t just turn trying to get the mob to turn on
are that guy. around and go home. All of these them while the real traitor hides in
character designs are bursting with plain sight. Secret Neighbor never
personality, like they’ve been pulled generates any of this social tension –
out of an animated film. so really, what’s the point? ■
Unfortunately, these visuals often
fall apart once you’re in a match, with
bits of level and character popping
in and out of existence if you get too
close to them. It’s just one sign of the
game’s shoddiness. Menus haven’t
been redesigned for a controller, OXM VERDICT
4
meaning you have to drag a mouse Secret Neighbor
cursor around with your thumbstick. has great core idea
Typos are rife, and matchmaking will for a co-op horror
often fail to find a game, even when game but it totally
there are plenty of players online. misses the mark.
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 087
 REVIEW
To craft a more immersive horror experience, the developer deliberately chose not to use cutscenes
PUBLISHER PULSETENSE GAMES / DEVELOPER PULSETENSE GAMES / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £6.69/$7.99
Caretaker
THERE’S SOMETHING NOT QUITE FRIGHT WITH THIS HORROR GAME
Caretaker begins
with you standing
alone in a fierce
storm outside an
abandoned industrial
complex. Stepping
into the shoes of a journalist, you’re
eager to uncover the truth behind a
series of killings. It’s quickly revealed
that responsibility for the murders
is attributed to ‘The Caretaker’, a
madman who attacked his co-workers
with no motive or explanation. Looking
for clues, you venture deeper into
the compound, unaware that The
Caretaker himself has returned.
This is a first-person horror game
that tasks you with exploring the
various warehouses and offices
surrounding a grisly crime scene.
Atmospheric horror is the developer’s
aim and, at least at first, tension
is built nicely through use of an
enigmatic colour palette and strong
sound design. Both elements work
together to unnerve the player as the
scares slowly build to a crescendo in
the classic horror genre style.
The game never leaves the
industrial complex setting, and each
building reveals more neglect and
gore. Through use of empty space
and menacing visual hints at what
is to come, Caretaker does a good
job of crafting an eerie sense of
unease throughout its early stages.
As the game approaches its halfway
point the killer finally reveals himself
and the pacing begins to struggle. The
Caretaker is a frustrating AI opponent
and a foe best avoided. Engaging him
in combat is impossible (there are no
weapons in the game), and any direct
088 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
REBECCA STOW
RIGHT A creepy
atmosphere
combined with
strong lighting
and weather
effects suggests
that the game
could have been
so much more.
“With limited limited understanding of what exactly
it is you’re doing wandering around a
short places to hide warehouse in the dark. And even if you
do root them all out, the story revealed
cut
stealth is rarely is a very basic one.
Even worse, the game goes
WHAT IS IT?
A first-person horror
game revolving
feasible” as far as adding anger-inducing
new features without satisfactory
around a spooky killer explanation to try and liven up the
and an industrial contact with him always ends in your gameplay. During the final quarter of
crime setting. death. With limited places to hide, proceedings, a new element is added
WHAT’S IT LIKE? stealth is rarely feasible, so you’ll that presumably intends to make the
Alien: Isolation in a need to run, and run fast. game more challenging, but instead
warehouse without makes no sense, almost to the point
the guns or gadgets… Killing time of feeling completely forced. For a
and nowhere near as While your first meeting with The game that’s only a couple of hours in
enjoyable. Caretaker is likely to terrify you, he very length, this sort of bolted-on addition
WHO’S IT FOR? quickly becomes a generic antagonist, is wholly unnecessary.
Anyone looking for a one that is tiresome to encounter. Caretaker certainly has potential,
quick horror fix and a Unlike the best horror baddies, The and it’s clear that the developer
very simple story. Caretaker is very one-dimensional, understands the horror genre. But
with a lack of character making him there’s a lot missing here. With
feel like an obstacle rather than unsatisfactory investigation and
an interesting villain; he is simply a frustratingly generic villain at its
something in your way. His character core, Caretaker raises more questions
design isn’t particularly inspired either, than it answers. ■
with his 3D model giving off a kind of
Silent Hill reject vibe.
However, Caretaker’s biggest
downfall is its lack of an engrossing
narrative. Playing as an investigative
journalist you expect much more in the
way of investigating. There are several OXM VERDICT
4
collectables hidden in darkened This has promise,
rooms and, if you delve deeper, but it’s ultimately a
environmental storytelling does hint at frustrating,
a backstory. Sadly, it’s all too easy to sub-par horror
miss these clues, leaving you with a experience.

Developer Greg Pryjmachuk worked on the Formula One franchise for six years before starting Jalopy
PUBLISHER EXCALIBUR GAMES / DEVELOPER MINKSWORKS / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £12.49/$14.99
Jalopy
YOU DON’T MIND GIVING YOUR UNCLE A QUICK LIFT TO ISTANBUL, RIGHT?
A nice drive through
the countryside is
one of life’s simple
pleasures. So
wonderful in fact,
it’s something that
developer Minksworks have tried
to replicate in videogame form with
driving sim Jalopy. However, the big
question is: does the game deliver
that same tranquil feeling you get
when you’re behind the wheel?
Set not long after the fall of the
Berlin Wall, Jalopy sees you driving
your uncle from East Berlin to Turkey
in a beaten-up Laika 601 Deluxe
(a fictional car based on the East
German ‘Trabbie’). Your car will require
constant repairs, upgrades and lots
of tender loving care to keep it rolling.
‘Jalopy’ actually means a dilapidated
or ramshackle motorcar, and it’s
certainly true that transforming the
601 into something that’s properly
roadworthy is quite a task.
Sim-wise, you’ll have to keep an eye
on the amount of fuel left in your tank,
the state of your tyres, the colour of
the smoke pouring from beneath the
bonnet and lots of other visual clues
too. Various conditions will affect the
lifespan of the 601’s parts, including
the weather, cargo weight and the
quality of your fuel. Because things go
wrong so often, you’ll need to make
regular stops to tweak and upgrade
the engine. Thankfully, buying and
upgrading car parts is an enjoyable
and compelling system, and one that
really gets you thinking about which
parts you should be purchasing.
But how will you and your uncle
afford these upgrades? Well, during
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
“Tradin for
short components is
cut
the best way to
WHAT IS IT?
A road trip driving
simulator with your
improve the 601”
uncle starring as
backseat driver. your journey you come across boxes
left abandoned on the roadside.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Any of the F1 games These containers are filled with
but with much less equipment, scrap and items that you
speed and a lot more can sell in the next town. Trading
exploration. for engine components is the best
way to improve the 601, which at the
WHO’S IT FOR?
In theory, anyone who
beginning of the game is a lumbering
enjoys relaxing road mess. Additionally, you can also buy
trips and tinkering items in one city to sell in the next for
with old cars. a profit. If you’re feeling adventurous
you can even try to smuggle
contraband past border control.
Road rage
When it comes to the actual driving,
procedurally generated roads pass
through towns and checkpoints, and
cruising along them is nice and easy.
Unfortunately, parts of the visual
landscape are often repeated every
few seconds. Combined with the
low-poly art style, this means that
long drives quickly become extremely
dull. Especially during the early game
when the 601 crawls at a snail’s pace.
While this approach to gameplay
is clearly meant to create a relaxing,
leisurely experience, Jalopy falls short
REVIEW
REBECCA STOW
LEFT The Laika
601 Deluxe would
be the perfect
car to road trip
in if it, or the
game, actually
worked.
in that aspect because of the massive
amount of bugs present in the game.
Whether it be inexplicably losing items
you’d previously stored safely in your
inventory, or getting the 601 stuck
on an invisible obstacle, there are
a lot of issues that cause immense
player frustration. And when you’re
frustrated, it’s hard to stay as relaxed
as the game intends. Additionally,
there are also a few game-breaking
glitches which, if encountered, will
force the player to restart the entire
game. And that turns frustration into
nothing short of full-blown fury.
Certain bugs also hinder Jalopy’s
narrative, which, although simple, tells
an intriguing family-themed tale with
your uncle’s backstory at its core. It’s
all a real shame because the beautiful
low-poly graphics combined with a car
you really start to care about hint at a
much more enjoyable experience. As
it is though, Jalopy is a game that –
just like the old banger of a car at its
centre – is falling apart. ■
OXM VERDICT
5
Numerous bugs and
frustrating glitches
cause Jalopy to
stall, splutter and
conk out.
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 089
 REVIEW
The original title for Life Is Strange was supposed to be ‘What If?’
PUBLISHER SQUARE ENIX / DEVELOPER DONTNOD / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £32.79/$39.99
Life Is Strange 2
DONTNOD OUT-DOES ITSELF WITH ANOTHER EMOTIONALLY GRIPPING TALE
With the first Life
Is Strange Dontnod
showed the world
its own unique way
of telling a fantastic
story. For the sequel
the studio examined that formula,
learned what worked well and what
didn’t, and improved it to make one of
the most emotionally engaging stories
we’ve experienced in a long while.
Life Is Strange follows the tale
of two brothers, 16-year-old Sean
Diaz and his nine-year-old brother,
Daniel. Sean is your typical teenager,
concerned with little more than asking
out a girl and not getting busted
by his father for having a cigarette.
Daniel, on the other hand, is playful
and mischievous and doesn’t seem to
have a care in the world.
Tragedy soon strikes, however.
Following a confrontation that
escalates outside their suburban
home and a gunshot rings out.
Immediately after, an explosion erupts,
090 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
killing a police officer. Waking up
confused and surrounded by bodies,
Sean sees no other choice but to
grab Daniel and make a run for it.
The brothers then agree to escape
to their father’s hometown of Puerto
Lobos in Mexico, all the while being
chased by the authorities. This is the
driving force behind their long and
arduous journey.
Wolf brothers
Initially Daniel is unable to recall the
events of what happened back home,
but when he finds out the truth he
loses control and discovers that
he possesses telekinetic abilities. It’s
also revealed that he was responsible
for the police officer’s death. In order
to protect Daniel, Sean is forced to
navigate the complexities of being
both a father figure and a big brother,
a situation he’s not immediately
equipped to handle. He also
understands that as well as protecting
his brother from the dangers of the
ADAM BRYANT
wider world, he must safeguard him
from his own powerful and destructive
ability. Despite this huge responsibility
short laid upon his shoulders, Sean’s
cut unfaltering love for his brother means
that he will do whatever it takes to
WHAT IS IT? keep him safe.
An episodic Like the previous game, you explore
adventure of two
a variety of environments and interact
brothers trying their
best to survive in a
with the objects and people within
harsh world. them to unpack the story at your own
pace. Meanwhile, the narrative is
WHAT’S IT LIKE? steered through conversations and
Much like other
dialogue options. The first LIS gave you
narrative adventure
the power to rewind time, giving you a
games but with a
more mature story. chance to reverse your decisions, but
here you don’t have any such ability.
WHO’S IT FOR? Only at certain times are you able to
Fans of the first game direct Daniel to use his powers. This
looking for another
places a huge importance on each
engaging episodic
adventure.
action because you’ll be stuck with
the consequences.
Not only do your actions and
choices drive the narrative, they
also influence Daniel’s personality.
The younger Diaz brother is still
“The Diaz
brothers come
face to face with FAR LEFT Moments

racial pre udice

where you can
drink in the
visuals and

and profilin ” music are a

highlight.

ABOVE Daniel is
paying attention
to you at all
times, and what
you do impacts
how he grows up.

LEFT The
brothers are on
the run, but
they find places
to settle down
now and then.

learning about the world, and you
are instrumental in shaping his
understanding of it. If you make poor
choices he might replicate them.
You’re forced to make tough decisions
in order to protect him, but at the
same time you’re aware that you
want to raise your brother to be good.
There’s a conflict in knowing that
stealing food will feed you both for the
night, but that it might also convince
Daniel that theft is okay. As a result
your decisions are more impactful and
memorable because you have to think
about how they’ll affect both of you.
Strange days
Life Is Strange 2 isn’t afraid to tackle
the sociopolitical themes of modern
America, approaching subjects such
as sexuality, religious cults and
IN THE MOOD uncomfortable, but they’re supposed What lies at the heart of this story
The game features a to be. It can be easy for subjects such is the bond shared between two
spectacular original as these to be handled poorly, and brothers. As they journey south from
score and several although there are a few on-the-nose Seattle to Mexico, they’re shaped by
licensed tracks that
references, overall Dontnod manages their experiences – good and bad.
manage to elevate
the narrative to an
to treat them with the proper respect. From the eclectic cast of interesting
almost film-like At several points during the story characters they meet, to the events
quality. The selected there are places you can rest and that they invariably get caught up in.
tracks help drive let the world pass you by. These Who each brother eventually becomes
home the emotional moments give you an opportunity to is almost unrecognisable from who
impact of every scene process everything that’s transpired they were when they started their
in which they’re up to that point. They also allow you long journey, and it’s a wonderfully
included. One to appreciate just how beautiful the rewarding and emotional experience
particular scene at
game looks as music starts to swell to join them for the ride. ■
the end of Episode 3
plays a track infused
and the scene is shot from different
with melancholy as it camera angles. Given the frequency of
moves through a dramatic events, these moments offer
series of shots only to a welcome pause to proceedings.
reveal a devastating Thanks to a combination of a
accident that fantastic script and exceptional
permanently changes performances from the cast, each OXM VERDICT

9
racism. At several points throughout one of the characters. character feels authentic and An emotional and
the story, the Diaz brothers come relatable. The dialogue in particular is heartfelt tale of
face to face with racial prejudice and superb and never feels forced or out brotherhood that
profiling due to their Mexican heritage. of place, something the previous title keeps you engaged
These situations can often be had trouble with at times. throughout.

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 Get more from your Xbox

094 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 extra

It was always our favourite entry in the brilliant

Xbox sci-fi shooter series, thanks to its utterly
compelling and beautifully paced narrative and
superior gameplay, and so we’re thrilled that
Halo Reach (p96) has finally come to Game Pass as 096
part of the Master Chief Collection. It’s looking ace,
remastered in 4K, too. So what else could we do
but don our Spartan helmets and dive back into the
game for the first of our Now Playing features?
Control was undoubtedly one of our favourite
games of 2019, and there’s so much to love about
it – not least the game’s refreshing approach to 099
boss fights. Read our boss-free Now Playing on
page 98! Arrrrr, it’s a pirate’s life for us, savvy? But
what’s this? One of Team OXM’s band of salty
writers turns out to be a landlubber, and has never
put to sea. So obviously we press-ganged him into
service aboard a Sea Of Thieves galleon – see how
the scurvy bilge rat fared on page 99! Staying with
Rare, we talk to the British developers about another
100
PLAY NOW of their great games for our Retrospective feature
ON XBOX ONE
BACKWARDS
this month, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (p100).
COMPATIBLE
Switching back to a nautical theme, we explain why
Keep an eye out for
this badge over the
next few pages: it
we love Man Of Medan and its take on the horror
indicates when a
game of old can be genre over on page 104. Then finally we round up
booted up in shiny
Xbox One-o-vision. the Best Hairdos On Xbox on page 106! 106
CHECK OUT OUR VAST LIBRARY OF XBOX FEATURES AT WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM/OXM

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 extra

With Halo: Reach now reborn in 4K, memories of

painful cheevo hunts come flooding back DAVE MEIKLEHAM
PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS / DEVELOPER BUNGIE / FORMAT XBOX 360 / RELEASE DATE SEPTEMBER 2010
NOW PLAYING
Looking back, I
probably had too
much time on
my hands in late
2010. How else
could you explain
my horrendously
misguided attempts to nab every last
one of Halo: Reach’s Achievements? At
the height of my lunacy, I can vaguely
recall staying up until 2am trying to
nab the ‘If They Came to Hear Me Beg’
cheevo. In case you were wondering,
said pretend reward unlocks by
‘Performing an assassination against
an Elite to survive a fall that would’ve
been fatal’. Hoo-boy was that painful.
Why am I looking back with red-
faced shame at this obsessive,
utterly silly pursuit a decade on?
Because Halo: Reach recently made its
debut on Xbox Game Pass, complete
with an Xbox One X enhanced patch
that transforms the downbeat shooter
prequel into a 4K Spartan sensation.
I will get to why playing this newly
prettied up version of Noble Team’s
shooty adventure has so vividly
reminded me why Reach is hands-
down my favourite single-player Halo.
In the meantime, back to that stupid
bloody Achievement.

Non-Elite clause
First up, Elites are tough. Be in no
doubt of that. These mid-tier Covenant
cronies act as battlefield lieutenants,
using their Predator-esque, oh-so-
slimy mandibles to bark out orders
at packs of hapless Grunts. They’re
also really hard to ding in the heat
of battle. Constantly fidgety and
aware, they never stay in the same
spot for long. That’s what makes the
airborne assassination Achievement
such an outrageous pain. Dropping
onto the shoulders of an Elite with
the monosyllabic Noble Six, then
subsequently shanking the brute, is
akin to knocking out a blue bottle fly
with your pinkie… blindfolded… with a
litre of rum rotting in your gut.
There’s a precise moment at
the beginning of Halo: Reach’s last
mission – called ‘Tip Of The Spear’
– where the odds of nabbing the
Achievement become a teensy bit
more favourable. You suddenly go from
lotto-winning long shot to a merely
extremely difficult task you have to
repeat dozens of times before you nail
the very specific technique. The task
involves hurling Noble Six off a cliff
edge before aligning your trajectory
mid-fall to land squarely on an Elite’s
shoulders some 150 feet below.
It’s an utterly maddening, horribly
haphazard challenge that still turns
my grey matter into a bubbling mush
even ten years on.
I can still remember the exact
moment I finally got that Achievement.
It was the only one that had eluded
me up to that point, and after
sinking dozens of hours into both
Reach’s excellent, never-bettered
campaign and its enjoyable online
firefights, I considered it an affront
to my very existence those piddling
25 Gamerscore points weren’t mine.
So at some incredibly antisocial
hour, after kamikaze-ing myself off
a steep hill roughly 173 times, my
battered Spartan eventually stuck the
landing in extra-precise, thoroughly
murderous fashion. Down went the
Elite, up went the Achievement
notification, and thus ended one of
the darkest sagas of my Xbox career.
Oh, and to the totally random late-
night reruns of The Biggest Loser I
watched on my tablet, which somehow
kept my sanity in check while I hurled
Noble Six to his death dozens of

096 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

times, you have my heartfelt, slightly
ashamed thanks. “Replayin Halo: Reach’s drum-ti ht ABOVE If you love
Now that we’ve addressed my
questionable back-in-the-day cheevo campai n on Xbox Game Pass is a Halo and own an
Xbox One X, you
need Ultra HD
hunts, let’s talk Halo: Reach in the
here and now. Long story short: it’s fab 4K ood time” Reach in your
life right now.
still utterly ace. Ten years ago it was FAR LEFT
the tightest, most thoughtfully paced Chief… there are six of them. Between and messy motion blur combined to Spartans may be
the solemn sort,
shooter Bungie had ever produced. the hulking, ever-hopeful Jorge-052, create soupy, hard-to-read battles, but that doesn’t
Now, at the beginning of a sarcastic assault specialist now Ultra HD, incredibly crisp Covenant mean they can’t
brand-new decade for Xbox, Emile-A239 and the fatigued shootouts light up my flatscreen give you the 4K
feels.
and with two up-and-down Kat, you’re given more TV. Jetpack around a dying city in
Destiny campaigns in the WHAT IS IT? reason to care about ‘Exodus’. Enter into large-scale
rear view, that’s still very A great but gloomy on-screen Spartans than smackdowns with alien forces on the
much the case. prequel that leads Chief has managed in battlefields of ‘Winter Contingency’.
Reach is an directly into the events five outings. That each Blast spaceships in the luminous light
of Halo: Combat Evolved.
undisputed single- A 4K version recently hit member of the unit is of Reach’s upper atmosphere in the
player triumph. Sombre, Xbox Game Pass. so readily dispensable surprisingly brilliant ‘Long Night of
reflective and filled hammers home the sense Solace’ level. No matter the mission,
with memorable Spartan of futility that underpins replaying Halo: Reach’s drum-tight
setpieces, it comfortably Reach’s story. This is the tale of campaign on Xbox Game Pass is a fab
outguns 343 Industries’ subsequent trying to save a doomed planet, of the 4K good time.
Master Chief adventures. Actually, unflinching sacrifices soldiers make Even if you don’t own Microsoft’s
that’s precisely why Reach can be in the heat of battle, and ultimately, supercharged console, you should
so bold and varied when placed to uniting a sassy AI companion with a absolutely revisit Reach on a normal
John 117’s more vanilla recent efforts: near-mute Xbox icon. Xbox One. Noble Team’s doomed
blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo aside, quest now runs far more sm moothly
this is a Chief-free experience. With Six appeal than it did on Xbox 360,
nary a hint of the infuriating Flood or I’ve long accepted I’ll never save and after Halo 5:
those underwhelming Prometheans, the planet Reach. I know Noble Six’s Guardians’ ham-fisted
Halo: Reach serves up ten hours of doomed last stand is always going to campaign, you deserve
non-stop Covenant slaughter dished end with Elite swords in my Spartan to remind yourself what
out between an entire squad of spleen. But futility be damned! a great Halo story mode
badass supersoldiers. Because hot damn is Bungie’s prequel looks like. Just promise
A huge part of the appeal of Reach’s a pleasure to replay in 4K on Xbox me you won’t chase that
story is that there’s no single Master One X. Where once muddy textures damn Elite-offing Achievem ment. Q

PLAYED ANYTHING GOOD RECENTLY? COME SHARE IT AT WWW.FACEBOOK.COM XMUK

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 extra

For gamers with an aversion to authority, Control has

a refreshing attitude towards bosses MARTIN KITTS
PUBLISHER 505 GAMES / DEVELOPER REMEDY / FORMAT XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE AUGUST 2019
NOW PLAYING
I like feeling
powerful in games.
Give me guns,
superhuman
abilities and
regenerating
health, and I’ll
happily lay waste to legions of bad
guys without a second thought for fair
play. Let me turn out the lights and
sneak around in the dark, murdering
them unseen, and I’ll feel like a total
badass, even though the reality is
probably more like creepy old Buffalo
Bill from The Silence Of The Lambs.
I spent the whole of Red Dead
Redemption II depopulating the Wild
West like an incurable, bullet-spraying
plague, and only lost a fight right at
the end, when it was totally rigged for
story purposes. I felt cheated by that, “Every new ability is an opportunity
but what’s worse is games where you
spend 90 per cent of the time having to add some special sauce to your
fun thrashing enemy goons only to be
confronted by some inexplicable bullet combat recipe”
sponge at key points.
Basically, I don’t care much for busted-up chunks of scenery, it’s a probably want to take the challenge
bosses in games. Sure, there are ballet of brutality. Every new ability is when you feel able to, but they aren’t
some good ones from time to time an opportunity to add some special shoved in your way like the roadblocks
but in general, after I’ve become sauce to your combat recipe, like they are in most other games.
accustomed to killing bad guys with throwing bigger items or possessing That’s not to say there aren’t a few
such ease in the preceding level, it’s a stronger enemies. Who’d have difficulty spikes in Control. I had to
jarring blow to my immersion to come guessed a forklift truck could be so cheese my way through the approach
up against someone who can satisfyingly explosive? to Hedron by triggering enemies to
take dozens of headshots What I really love about spawn, then flying away and sniping
without falling over. Control is that once it’s them from a safe distance, but in
Control doesn’t WHAT IS IT? given you the illusion general it does an excellent job of
go in for any of that An interdimensional of being overpowered, turning you into a superhero and
psychic government
nonsense. It builds you conspiracy third- it doesn’t knock you keeping you that way for the duration
up until you’re incredibly person adventure – like back down again by without making it seem stupidly easy.
powerful, and while The X-Files without the confronting you with a I died a lot in this game, but those
the toughness of the sceptical one. boss who doesn’t play moments of failure aren’t the parts
enemies does scale up by the rules. At least, not that stick in my mind. It’s the best kind
as you become a levitating, unless you want to. The of power fantasy. Q
corpse-flinging, rocket-launching bosses in Control are optional, and
angel of death, you’ve almost always not in a ‘press B to skip this part’ sort
got the upper hand. Fights are of way either. You have to seek them
about how stylishly you can empty out via side-missions, which is a most
a room full of bad guys, rather than brilliant piece of game design.
being a desperate struggle against
overwhelming odds. Like a boss
At first I tried playing it like a cover Leave them until you’ve grown more
shooter, which was entirely the wrong powerful, or just skip them altogether
way to go about it. If you stay still and concentrate on the largely boss-
you get squashed, but if you dash free main story. The reward for beating
and fly and make weapons out of them is often a new ability, so you’ll

098 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 extra

The diary of a novice pirate, braving the waters of

the Sea Of Thieves for the first(ish) time ALEX SPENCER
PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS / DEVELOPER RARE / FORMAT XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE MARCH 2018
NOW PLAYING
Should this
message ever wash
ashore, let it be
known that I was
never destined for a
pirate’s life. Except
for one baffled
half-hour with Sea Of Thieves a year
or so ago – and that one period in
the early ‘00s where LimeWire was all
the rage – my journey began with no
prior pirating experience. But thanks
to all the positive buzz about how
the game has grown since launch,
and with it sat right there on Game
Pass, I decided to dip a toe into Sea
Of Thieves once more. What follows is
the full and complete confession of
the Dread(ful) Pirate Alex Spencer.
I hit the character generator button
at least four times, just to marvel at “It’s a real Mary Celeste situation
the faces it turns up. Everyone’s so
brilliantly ugly, like they were moulded a mystery which I have little time to
out of clay then left over a radiator. I
settle on a woman chugging grog from ponder because we’re under attack”
a tankard – exactly the kind of salty
sea dog I’m looking for. ship, emptying its not-so-spectral to land without causing a shipwreck.
I gulp down my starting banana, cannons into our port side. Or possibly As I swim ashore, there’s the distant
peel and all, then work my way starboard. I fumble below decks for a thunder of cannons, followed by the
through the introductory quests. Grab cannonball, light the fuse, carefully ping of an Achievement – apparently
chest, run to shopkeeper, spend some line up my shot… and miss completely. the skeleton ship has been brought
doubloons on a hat which immediately ‘Maybe I’ll fare better with different down by more competent sailors, and
makes me feel more like a proper ammunition,’ I think, as I clamber my efforts count as helping out. This
pirate. It’s time to join a crew. inside the cannon and launch is, without a doubt, the highlight of my
I find my new shipmates myself at the other ship. pirating career to date.
already aboard their It’s all of 30 seconds In the sands, there’s a message in
galleon, waiting for me WHAT IS IT? later that I wake up a bottle: something about merchant
to complete my little Rare’s online Jack on the ferry of the alliances and crates and the North
Sparrow simulator lets
sartorial adventure. you engage in exploits damned. The captain Star Seapost. I have no idea where this
Everyone stays silent, of nautical naughtiness of this vessel confirms is but, back behind the wheel, I chart
so I mute my mic and with your pals or a bunch that, yep, I’m dead but a course for the general direction of
communicate with of randoms. helpfully points me in the north. If this is the last you hear of
emotes. They seem friendly, direction of the door that me, at least know that I went out like a
but more to the point, they leads back to the world of true pirate. Well, sort of. Q
seem to know what they’re doing. the living, and my beloved crew…
After a few minutes of following me who are, by the time I return, nowhere
new hearties around, playing a sea to be seen. It’s a real Mary Celeste
shanty on the accordion, I’m starting situation, a mystery which I have very
to learn the ropes. I’m not quite ready little time to ponder because we’re
to batten down the mizzen and hoist still under attack.
the anchor just yet – there are limits
to what you can learn via the medium Wind in yer sails
of charades – but I do feel like I’m Luckily, I picked up just enough
starting to get my sea legs. knowledge that I can raise the anchor,
At which point, the skeletons rig the sails, and steer the ship to
attack. A whacking great ghost safety. I even manage to find my way

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RETROSPEC
BANJO-KAZ
NUTS & BOLTS

100 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 extra

Gregg Mayles tells the story behind the honey

bear’s daring, divisive sandbox DAVE MEIKLEHAM
PUBLISHER MICROSOFT GAME STUDIOS / DEVELOPER RARE / FORMAT XBOX 360

“I think, in some old school platforming tropes of its

small way, we predecessors, Nuts & Bolts booted
invented Minecraft triple-jump antics for a series of
first,” jokes Rare’s inventive racing challenges. PLAY NOW
Steve Maplass. “I’m The real twist? The vehicles you ON XBOX ONE
sure someone owes used to tackle these objectives BACKWARDS
me quite a lot of could be entirely of your own design, COMPATIBLE
money. [Laughing] Sorry, I can’t say with Mumbo’s Motors acting as a
that, can I?” Even though Maplass was ludicrously in-depth creation suite. In
clearly having a bit of fun during this this garage, the only real limit is your
extract from a Rare Revealed vid-doc imagination. With vehicle parts always
back in 2015, he’s got a point: Banjo’s in plentiful supply, and missions that
rebooted car constructor was ahead give you plenty of leeway with the kind
of the curve. of clapped-out contraption you can
A pioneering sandbox that arguably use, few other games on Xbox before
paved the way for Mojang’s block- or since have ever given players so
breaking mega hit, Banjo-Kazooie: much agency.
Nuts & Bolts is often seen as the
black sheep of the trilogy. Looking Nuts and scrapes
back, the bear and breegull’s 2008 At the time, many hardcore Banjo fans
caper was probably a bit too quick saw this radical redesign as a bit of
out of the blocks. After all, just three a middle finger. Nuts & Bolts wasn’t
short years later, Minecraft would the warm and fuzzy ball of nostalgia
change the way we look at they thought they were signing
videogames. It’s obviously on for. Where the original
pie in the sky thinking JOKE’S ON US N64 platformers cu utely
to suggest that Nuts Nuts & Bolts regularly riffed on cheesy genre
g
pokes fun at Banjo’s
& Bolts could have past, with the bear staples, this reboooted
spawned a billion-dollar starting the game as an racer danced to the
t
franchise, yet perhaps overweight has-been. beat of its own (ppretty
Mojang did take cues Rare do like to tickle daft) drummer. “There
your funny bone.
from the duo’s rebooted were players who didn’t
d
vehicle-builder. see it as a ‘real’ Banjjo
It’s a thought that game,” Mayles tells us. ““In my
occasionally crosses Gregg Mayles’ opinion, it was – it applied the same
mind to this day. “The initial version design thinking and tone as previous
of Minecraft that appeared a year outings, but maybe it was too rradical
after Banjo realised the potential a departure.” Twelve years on, Gregg
of creating things out of blocks, even suggests it should have b been
and Rocket League later bought a new IP. “Perhaps we should h have
‘vehicles playing football’ to a much taken an even bigger risk by removing
wider audience than we did. Both the game from the Banjo world and
were simpler, more accessible building it as something else.”
experiences.” Now creative director at Considering the heart of the game
Rare, Mayles acted as lead designer focuses on smashing blocks to ogether
on Nuts & Bolts. Though it’s a passion to create contraptions, you can n
project that’s still dear to his heart, we probably guess what inspired its core ABOVE Mumbo’s
pick up on a slight sense of regret as concept. “Tim Stamper (co-founder of Motors acts as
an insanely
Mayles talks us through the making of Rare) had the idea of an interactive in-depth car
this misunderstood reboot. Lego set,” recalls Steve Maplass. workshop where
“I think it was the right idea but the The team at Rare quickly warmed to you can create
all sorts of
wrong application in terms of realising Stamper’s idea, and as Mayles goes custom rides.
what its potential could have been,” on to tell us, he was only too happy to
Mayles tells us. Missed potential or move away from existing platforming
not, there’s no denying this was one staples. “I’d spent a bit of time
seriously brave project. Ditching the exploring a couple of approaches to

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a ‘new type of platformer’ that I didn’t
feel were right, but when I saw Tim’s
‘block building’ concept, I believed I
could use it to make exploring and
travelling between scenarios in 3D
platform games fun.”
If Mayles and co’s mission was to
simply make getting from A to B in
both the hub village of Showdown
Town, and the game’s self-contained
worlds, a pleasure, then mission very
much accomplished. Whether using
the selection of rickety rides Rare has
prebuilt for you or your own custom-
made, four-wheeled wonders, getting
around in Nuts & Bolts is a real hoot.
“I’d always felt this part [travelling
between objectives] was often the
weakest element of previous games in
the genre, so it started as a travelling
mechanic and grew from there.”
While zipping between points in
Showdown Town can be a blast –
just try not to mow down those poor
ambling rhinos – more impressive is
the fact Banjo’s main missions work at
all. Giving players so much control over
how they tackled objectives was a
gutsy move, one that required a lot of
forethought on Rare’s part. “We knew
that players’ ability to create vehicles
would vary,” says Mayles. “Some
people would find it easy, but othe ers
less so. Some would create technical
marvels; other creations would be,
ahem, more basic.”
If you’re in any doubt as to just how
h whhen we replayed the game on
daft vehicles can be and yet somehow
still function, let us run you throug gh
an early mission from Mumbo’s Farm
world. Tasked with collecting a certain
number of coconuts in speedy style as
“In order to nab
b the kitty’s
k tt s top prize you must
construct an utterly ludicrous i antic flyin
shoppin trolley. You heard us”
A RARE
BREED
DEAD GOOD
Nuts & Bolts is definitely
an odd customer, but it’s
GRABBED BY
THE GHOULIES (2003)
not the only quaint gem Rare’s first Xbox game is a
Rare has pumped out. daft haunted house jaunt
Let’s run through some of that involves beating up
the studio’s weirdest hits. mummies. Naturally.
102 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
extra
part of a time trial for Trophy Thomas
ABOVE Rare is the tiger, you’re required to transport
fond of talking a hell of a lot of fruit in a oner if you’re
animals. We bet to beat the clock. Repeat trips will
the studio is
pumped for RDJ’s stop you getting the gold medal, so in
new Doctor ord
order to nab the overgrown kitty’s top
Dolittle
e flick. prize, you must construct an utterly
lud
dicrous gigantic, flying shopping
tro
olley. You heard us.
Hell, that’s exactly what we did
Xbox One a couple of months back.
Our ultimate, coconut-carrying
moonstrosity was essentially a car that
had several huge trays attached to its
body in order to ferry the fruit. To this
GO NUTS POWER PLAY
CONKER: LIVE KAMEO: ELEMENTS
& RELOADED (2005) OF POWER (2005)
A remake of N64’s potty- Xbox 360’s oddest launch
mouthed Conker’s Bad Fur title stars a 15-year-old
Day, this X-rated tale of a elf who can morph into a
sauced up squirrel is mad. boxing Venus flytrap.
we then added a couple of wings –
flying is infinitely preferable to cutting
around the hills of Mumbo’s Farm
– before sticking a couple of sturdy
exhausts on the back to ensure the
fully loaded abomination had enough
juice in the tank to get off the ground.
One (semi) quick trip with 26 coconuts
precariously rolling about our plane’s
storage trays later, and we’d delivered
the hairy fruit to the ‘not as dirty as it
sounds’ Mumbo’s Nuts shack. Ahem.
Mumbo’s the word
Looking back, we’re immensely proud
of our grotesque coconut creation…
even if catering for this car is exactly
the sort of horribly specific scenario
that caused Mayles and his team
so many headaches. “When you
know what a player is capable of,
because it’s under your control as a
designer, it’s relatively straightforward
to set objectives and balance them.
Most games fall into this category,”
Mayles tells us. “When you don’t know
what the player can do, because
you haven’t got full control of their
capabilities, it becomes a bit of a
nightmare.” Alright, now we feel guilty
about our coconut-mobile. Alright,
maybe not that guilty.
“Some people would ace the
objectives first time, while others
would fail many times,” Mayles
continues. “The final boss battle with
Gruntilda was the ultimate version of
this scenario. You could build a vehicle
that made it almost laughably easy
to beat the witch, but construct the
wrong thing and it could be virtually
impossible to finish.”
Thankfully, skilled Nuts & Bolts
players could avoid such pitfalls by
creating vehicles that were versatile
enough to serve many masters. “We
found that good players could create
a small number of ‘optimal’ vehicles
that allowed them to complete pretty
much any objective. This was good as
it rewarded creative skill, but it wasn’t
so great in terms of gameplay variety.”
To ensure these ace mechanics didn’t
use the same vehicle to complete
every mission in the game, Rare
introduced more structured events
that handed the studio more creative
control. “To add variety (and a whole
lot of fun) we limited players in some
objectives to only being able to use
a specific vehicle we provided them.”
We’re still furious we couldn’t use our
cobbled-together coconut copter for
certain races. No fair, Rare!
Banjo this sick filth
In many ways, Nuts & Bolts is a game
that would be much more suited
to today’s climate. In an era where
canny problem-solving in a game can
lead to videos that garner millions of
views on YouTube, the bear and bird
combo could have been a smash in
the streaming age. “I wanted to find a
way to reward players who deliberately
made the objectives harder or more
amusing by building vehicles that
weren’t based purely on efficiency,”
says Mayles. “Ultimately, we never
did anything with this, but I think
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
have been right at home on Xbox
One. “We wanted players to share
their creations, so if you didn’t have
the skill or time to build vehicles you
could use someone else’s,” admits
Mayles. “Sadly, online policies at the
time drastically limited what I wanted
to do with creating communities and
sharing expertise.”
Whether you think it arrived too
early or too late, there’s no question
Nuts & Bolts still looks sensational. If
you’re lucky enough to own an Xbox
One X and a digital copy of the game,
a recent(ish) X-Enhanced patch turns
Banjo’s car-crafting jaunt into a 4K
‘this could be a playable Pixar film’
sensation. That the game’s visuals
hold up so well is testament to Rare’s
artistic approach. “I set a direction
of creating a ‘unique and timeless
look that wouldn’t age’,” says Mayles.
“It’s pretty much the same approach
used recently on Sea Of Thieves. So,
we’re still getting mileage out of an
approach that’s over a decade old!”
it would have really found a place So what does Mayles think is the
TOP Knocking with how content creators stream game’s legacy? Did bolting on the
together a entertainment today. Mmm… maybe Banjo licence hinder it? Is he proud
stable aircraft we should have waited another ten of what Rare achieved on a game
requires a
couple of sturdy years before making the game?” that, in retrospect, feels unfairly
rear engines and In many ways, Nuts & Bolts really misunderstood? “Ultimately, I’m
the odd prayer. was a game caught out of time. extremely proud of Nuts & Bolts and
ABOVE As the Annoying certain fans who longed for its team. The power to create and the
bear and gull the 64-bit heyday of platformers by freedom of play... I consider that one
explore Showdown
Town, the odd
being too forward-thinking, it arguably of our greatest achievements. A few
piece of old arrived a few years too early. When more sales would have been nice,
school, 64-bit you think of how easy it is for online though!” It might not have been a
era platforming
pops up.
communities to share creations in chart-topper, but we still appreciate
modern games, Banjo’s builder would this barmy build-a bear. n
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 103
 extra

WHY I LOVE...
MAN OF MEDAN
Ev
Everyone has their own point of view, and Man Of Medan
exploits this fact to haunting effect REBECCA STOW
PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO / DEVELOPER SUPERMASSIVE GAMES / FORMAT XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE AUGUST 2019

RIGHT The Ourang

Medan was a real
ship that was
wrecked under
mysterious
circumstances.

104 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 I’ve always been a
fan of cheesy horror
movies. You know
the kind I mean; the
sort of films you
watch late at
night on a channel
you’ve never heard of, the sort of
films that involve teens terrorised by
a werewolf/vampire/ghost or maybe
even all of the above. It’s no surprise
that I picked up Man Of Medan on the
strength of its B-movie premise alone
then, but what was surprising was the
rich story and themes I found lurking
below the game’s surface.
The game (the first instalment of
The Dark Pictures Anthology) features
five young adults intent on locating a
plane wreck somewhere in the South
Pacific Ocean. Of course, the gang
find much more than they bargained
for when they end up boarding a
ghost ship, all whilst a group of evil
fisherman terrorise them from the
sidelines. Players must navigate the
ship, discovering secrets, enduring
scares and making dialogue wheel
decisions that will either save or
condemn the cast. There are also
plenty of quick time events which, if
missed, can result in gory deaths.
So far, so horror cliché. However,
once I’d set foot on the SS Ourang
Medan and understood that all the
characters were experiencing the
ship in very different ways, I realised I
was in for much more than a standard
teen horror adventure. As the game
goes on, Man Of Medan slowly isolates
each character, twisting their realities
to create the scares and thrills that
fuel the game. Each character
is subjected to unique
frights, making the time
WHAT IS IT?
you spend on the Medan
Man Of Medan is a horror
incredibly unpredictable. game that employs
Horror games set a unique mechanic
out to unnerve those to terrify and thrill its
who play them, often by audience.
ever quite as it seems.
creating an atmosphere
that radiates dread and
unease. Man Of Medan,
however, takes a slightly different
approach. Developer Supermassive
Games pays more attention to the
ways in which perception can be used
to manipulate the player, making them
question everything to deliver the
best and most effective scares. As
WHAT GAMES DO YOU LOVE? SEND YOUR LUSTY THOUGHTS TO OXM@FUTURENET.COM
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
“We soon learn that
friends can no lon er be
trusted are they still who
they were ust hours a o?”
an example from early in the game,
one character – Julia – begins to
hear strange noises echoing through
the ship’s hull. Confused as to why
no one else is reacting to the sound
of something horrible approaching,
Julia freaks out. The rest of the
teens, unable to hear anything, are
bewildered by Julia’s panic. We as
players never get to hear what Julia
hears because we’re controlling
another character at the time,
experiencing the game from their
perspective. It’s an incredibly spine-
chilling sequence to say the least.
Lost at sea
Man Of Medan messes
with its characters’
perceptions of dark
circumstances, and this
mechanic resonates
Nothing is strongly with a real-life
fact: different people
often see and experience
the same situation totally
differently. Because Man Of
Medan’s cast features a plethora of
characters with different personalities
and behavioural traits, every creepy
phenomenon on the ship is perceived
uniquely to their individual life
experience. One character might see
something so horrible they feel the
need to empty a handgun clip into it,
whilst all another character might see
in its place are empty shadows.
Some horror games quickly become
predictable, relying far too much on
the quiet, quiet, BANG scare mechanic
to elicit reactions from the audience.
This dynamic gets stale fast. But by
letting you take control of multiple
characters, slowly isolating them from
the group and bringing to light their
deepest fears, Man Of Medan keeps a
feeling of dread alive throughout the
whole game. Nothing is as it seems
and we soon learn that friends can no
longer be trusted; are they still who
they were just hours ago?
However, the greatest trick that
Man Of Medan pulled was convincing
me that I was dwelling in the realm
of total fiction. A little bit of research
ABOVE Fliss is a
courageous shows that Man Of Medan is, in fact,
skipper who gets based on a ‘true’ story. Apparently, the
stranded with Ourang Medan was a real ship carrying
the rest of
the cast. a strange cargo off the coast of what
is now Indonesia in the ’40s, a real
FAR LEFT If you
don’t like a
ship that was desperate to avoid the
character in Man authorities for an unknown reason.
Of Medan, you The crew perished under suspicious
can go out of
your way to try
circumstances, and there are various
and get them theories and explanations (none of
killed. them completely substantiated) as to
why this happened.
So, just like the characters in Man
Of Medan, it seems playing the game
I never really knew which parts of it
were real and which parts weren’t.
Perception is an ingenious thing to
toy with in a horror game, and I can’t
wait to see where The Dark Pictures
Anthology goes next. Q
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 105
 10 BEST
HAIRDOS IN
XBOX GAMES

As part of our long-running campaign to make hair in games

better, we present our favourite ever hairstyles on Xbox, from
the stylish to the frankly ridiculous… CHRIS BURKE

106 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 extra

RAYMAN – RAYMAN
It’s all well and good spending hours on your hair before leaving the house,
but there’s just no way it’s ever going to be as good as Rayman’s. At first you
might think he doesn’t take much time over his ‘do, but consider this. Ray’s hair
doesn’t just look funky, it helps him fly. Yep, winding up a couple of fronds of
head-hair, he is able to helicopter his way through vertical levels of Ubisoft’s
cheerful platformer series. Can Leon S Kennedy do that with his curtains? No. Can
Handsome Jack from Borderlands travel by quiff? No, he cannot. Our mums were
always on at us to get a ‘practical’ haircut, and nothing could be more practical
than helicopter bangs. Suggested barber’s shop name: British Hairways.

CLOUD STRIFE – FINAL FANTASY VII

One of the long-established JRPG’s most beloved
entries has recently, finally, come to Xbox One, and
so that means we can now all enjoy Final Fantasy VII
protagonist Cloud Strife’s heroic hair arrangement.
When we say ‘enjoy’, we do of course mean laugh our
asses off because it is completely stupid. For FF ’s
sake, it looks like a galaxy of a blond starfish have
attached themselves to his head. The Final Fantasy
series actually contains all of the best and worst
coiffures ever to have been put into videogames,
from Lightning’s perfectly styled pale pink hairdo
to the hairdressing snafu that is Seymour Guado’s
blue hair-antler thing. Suggested barber’s shop
name: Dye Hard.

FURY – DARKSIDERS III

The third Horseman Of The Apocalypse to appear in the Joe Mad-inspired
Darksiders series may not actually have a horse or anything, but she does have
long floaty hair that indicates the Hollow power she’s currently rocking. There are
four Hollow Forms that Fury can pick up throughout the game, which affect her
combat style as well as her hairstyle, including Flame, Storm, Force and Stasis
powers. Being literally flame-haired is totally cool and super-intimidating, though
we would urge you not to try that at home because Fury is an immortal being, and
presumably has indestructible follicles, so put the matches down. Suggested
barber’s shop name: Apoca-clips Now.

SINDEL – MORTAL KOMBAT 11

One of the latest fighters to return to MK11, Sindel
may once have been the undead bride of Shao Khan,
but she still manages to rock a literally killer hairdo.
Those long black and white streaked locks aren’t
just for show, Kitana’s mom can use her super-long,
super-strong hair to grab her opponents and smack
them repeatedly into the ground. Like an unnatural
cross between Bayonetta and a particularly furious
badger, Sindel’s hair is definitely not to be messed
with – especially as she has her own hair-based
Fatality, which involves her wrapping her prehensile
hair strands around her opponent and spinning them
so fast they explode into chunks of bloody viscera.
Suggested barber’s shop name: Komb As You Are.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 107

 extra

BIANCA BELAIR – WWE2K20

Not, perhaps, the ‘best’, but rather an unpleasant reminder of why so many
game designers eschew long hairstyles. The WWE2K series reached a follicular
nadir here - not only does long hair in the game resemble a paper wig made by
a tantrumming five-year-old, at launch, among other glitches, the hair strands
jerked around with a life of their own, like particularly angry and strangely
textureless Medusa’s snakes. Special mention here must go to Bianca Belair’s in-
game hair representation. Pre-patch, Belair’s trademark super-long plait swung
around wildly like a lion-tamer’s whip, clipping through everything on-screen.
Suggested barber’s shop name: Head Scissor.

GERALT – THE WITCHER 3

Gaming’s premier Silver Fox, Geralt Of Rivia’s
smouldering demeanour, mesmerising cat-eyes
and characterful scars are topped off magnificently
with those lustrous prematurely-white locks. You
can, of course, visit any barber’s shop located
in the continent’s varied and bustling cities, and
alter Geralt’s barnet to any style of your choosing
(any colour, so long as it’s white). But despite this
concession to role-playing customisation, we’ve
always preferred the default style - the classic
half-pony with rebellious strands of snowy white
locks that dance playfully off his sharply angled
cheekbones. Beard optional. Suggested barber’s
shop name: The Mane Man.

RACHEL FOLEY - RESIDENT EVIL REVELATIONS PAUL PHOENIX – TEKKEN

Federal Bioterrorism Agent Rachel comes to a sticky end right at the start of The Tekken series has some excellent hair, but no
Resident Evil: Revelations, while investigating a T-Abyss-infested cruise ship. one’s barnet stands out, or up, as much as Paul
Poor girl, we can’t help thinking she may have lived longer had the game’s Phoenix. The Nakatomi Plaza of hair; a majestic
designers not chosen to give her long hair a fringe that completely covers her towering flat-top, and one that looks capable of
eyes like a blonde blindfold. We mean, come on - how is she supposed to even supporting a UFO landing pad on
see where she’s going, let alone shoot at those Ooze monsters coming for her? the top, like the plateau from
When she eventually mutates into Ooze Rachel, her hair transforms into hideous Close Encounters. At some point
fleshy appendages, including that troublesome fringe. She still doesn’t appear to or other, every single OXM team
have any eyes, though. Suggested barber’s shop name: A Close Shave. member has attempted this style,
and failed to raise more than a
couple of centimetres of Paul’s
16-and-a-half-foot fade.
Honourable mention must
go to Tekken’s Heihachi,
whose crazy shaved-
down-the middle
double-mohawk
inspired Keith Flint
in The Prodigy’s
‘Firestarter’ video.
Almost certainly.
Suggested barber’s
shop name: Upper Cuts.

108 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 extra

LARA CROFT – TOMB RAIDER

Two follicular challenges were addressed
with the design of the original Lara Croft.
To this day most game devs are afraid to
make characters with long hair, because
it’s too hard to get right, without it clipping
and looking a bit crap. So, what you get in
most games is a whole load of unnaturally
rigid shoulder-length bobs. Putting Lara’s
long hair into a plait not only stopped it
from looking too rubbish, it kept it out the
way of all that rolling around shooting
guns and swinging over spike-filled pits.
With the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, Lara
finally let her hair down properly, with
advanced rendering software helping to
create some of the most realistic looking
long hair to ever grace an Xbox. Suggested
Barber’s shop name: Comb Raider.

CEREZA –
BAYONETTA
By some distance the most impressive
hair ever to appear in a videogame. The
Umbra Witch’s long, lustrous raven-black
hair was properly fabulous. Not in the way
that celebrity stylists might describe it -
Bayonetta’s (real name Cereza) hair was
actually magical. Gathered up partly into
a Beehive do, with a cheeky bang swept
to the right, Cereza’s ’do has more than a
little ’50s chic about it. Not only that, her
hair is also her clothes. Wait, what? Yes
indeed, her slinky black catsuit is entirely
made of her own keratin and, somewhat
more inconvenient, is also the source
of her demon-summoning power. Which
means that every time she channels
her mighty hair-raising power against
Heaven’s angelic forces, her clothes very
nearly fall off completely. Suggested
barber’s shop name: Hairway To Heaven.

M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 109

 extra

DIRECTORIES G
Games, films and television – everything you need
ffor the ultimate Xbox One experience
T E N X B OX O N E G A M E S Y O U S H O U L D B E P L AY I N G

games
RED DEAD GEARS 5
01 REDEMPTION II
PUBLISHER ROCKSTAR GAMES
A stone-cold 10/10 classic and the best
06 PUBLISHER XBOX GAME STUDIOS
The Coalition brings us a more self-
assured Gears campaign as new
looking console game there’s ever been, protagonist Kait takes the reins. As for
with easily the most surprising story in multiplayer, a suite of excellent modes will
open-world history. Plays best on X, too. keep you entertained for months.
DEFINING MOMENT That incredible, DEFINING MOMENT Being forced to make
unforeseen twist halfway through. that decision at the game’s climax.

FORZA HORIZON 4 ASSASSIN’S CREED

02 PUBLISHER MICROSOFT STUDIOS
A must-have experience for every Xbox
One owner, not only is the racing excellent
07 ODYSSEY
PUBLISHER UBISOFT
Bigger and more epic than even Origins,
and varied, the open-world playground you this Ancient Greece-set RPG will win your
drive across is one of the most stunning heart whether you play as Kassandra or
places we’ve seen on the console. Alexios in its vibrant, beautiful world.
DEFINING MOMENT Seeing the seasons DEFINING MOMENT Diving through crystal
change for the first time. waters into a submerged Minoan palace.

RESIDENT EVIL 2 MORTAL KOMBAT 11

03 PUBLISHER CAPCOM
Fantastic reboot of the ’90s survival
horror classic that perfectly captures the
08 PUBLISHER WARNER BROS
NetherRealm has pretty much now
perfected the 2D fighter, with a great
essence of the original while offering story mode, characters and really brutal,
something completely new. gory finishing moves.
DEFINING MOMENT Shooting all the arms DEFINING MOMENT Getting a Brutality
and legs off a zombie and realising that without even trying, then feeling a bit
it’s still coming. sick watching it.

THE WITCHER 3: SEKIRO: SHADOWS

04 WILD HUNT
PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO
Hearts Of Stone and Blood And Wine have
09 DIE TWICE
PUBLISHER ACTIVISION
FromSoftware’s samurai epic is a
made an already outstanding RPG fearsome, yet immaculately constructed
unmissable. One of the most authentic, and cleverly refreshed, test of mettle.
entertaining game worlds ever. DEFINING MOMENT Actually managing to
DEFINING MOMENT Geralt in a bath tub. master the game’s hard-as-hell combat
It changed our lives. makes all the frustration worthwhile.

GRAND THEFT AUTO V FORTNITE

05 PUBLISHER ROCKSTAR GAMES
Brutal and beautiful in equal measures,
GTAV is so rich in size, scope and
10 PUBLISHER EPIC GAMES
Fortnite Battle Royale has launched its
second ‘Chapter’, and it continues to draw
spectacle it’s hard to believe it was a huge crowd thanks to genius new
originally built for Xbox 360. features like its creative mode. Save The
DEFINING MOMENT The last heist is a World is brilliant, too.
perfect finale to a game that brought so DEFINING MOMENT Getting your first
many memorable moments. Victory Royale, and doing a dance.

FOR MORE FILM AND TV REVIEWS, VISIT GAMESRADAR.COM

110 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 THE BEST FILMS AND T V THIS MONTH
films
HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U
FOR FANS OF Scream, Groundhog Day
The most fun slasher flick of 2017 gets a
sequel with this likeably fatal follow-up.
Tree Gelbman is back to do a fresh jig of
the Time Warp as she relives the same day
over and over, repeatedly dying in order to
save her chums from a masked killer.
QUIEN A HIERRO MATA
FOR FANS OF Dead Man’s Shoes
Or An Eye For An Eye, if you’re not fluent in
Spanish. This thriller follows the criminal
antics an infamous Narco’s two sons as
they get caught up in sticky business. The
faeces soon hit the fan, and the lads are
swiftly on a path for vengeance.
BOOKSMART
FOR FANS OF Bridesmaids, Ladybird
Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut sees two
high school seniors let their hair down in
seriously unwise fashion in this charming
coming-of-age tale. Beanie Feldstein is on
particular rib-tickling form, deservedly
winning a Golden Globe nom for her role.
THE GHOST BRIDE
FOR FANS OF The Haunting Of Hill House
Based on Yangsze Choo’s novel, this 1890s
thriller stars Golden Bell award winner Chris
Wu. Set in the Malaysian city of Malacca, it
follows the journey of a young woman who
gets mired in the mysterious death of a
business magnate’s son.
BEL CANTO
FOR FANS OF The Negotiator
This should be titled ‘Stockholm Syndrome:
The Movie… But With Singing’. Julianne
Moore stars in this hostage flick that sees
a party of dignitaries captured by guerillas
during a concert. Thankfully, both captors
and captives learn valuable lessons. Aww.
ALL THE FRECKLES
IN THE WORLD
FOR FANS OF Bend It Like Beckham
A young Mexican lad is forced to contract
football fever during the 1994 World Cup in
order to woo a girl. Hánssel Casillas shines
as the young lead… though we suggest
fans of Roberto Baggio give this a miss.
FOR MORE FILM AND TV REVIEWS, VISIT GAMESRADAR.COM
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
OXM TEAM
tv CHOICE
THE BEST GAMES
WE’RE PLAYING AND
THE WITCHER WHY WE LOVE THEM
FOR FANS OF Game Of Thrones
This surprisingly not rubbish adaptation
Chris’
sees Superman play the randy monster choice
hunter. With spectacular choreography and PATH OF EXILE
a great eye for the sort of small details that Started up this
make CD Projekt’s grimy RPG such a classic, isometric action-RPG
this is a must-watch for Geralt fans. again, after finishing
one run-through and unlocking a new
playable character called the Scion.
STAR TREK: PICARD All the hacking and slashing and
FOR FANS OF Star Trek: The Next Generation looting you can shake a magically
Beware 18-year-old spoilers for Star Trek socketed sword at. Free to play, too.
Nemesis. The baldy Enterprise captain
returns. Dealing with the destruction of
Romulus and the death of Data, Picard is in
real pain in this web series. Old Paddy
Stewart is aging like the finest of wines.
SEX EDUCATION
FOR FANS OF Big Mouth
The best kept secret on Netflix returns for a
Dave’s
second season, with the brow-beaten Otis choice
continuing to dish out reluctant sex advice. HALO REACH
After teasing us with their ‘almost romance’ I’m currently losing my
for a full year, we’re willing to declare Otis mind trying to beat all
and Maeve TV’s new Ross and Rachel. the fiendishly tough
par scores in Bungie’s freshly 4K
shooter prequel. I might have stayed
RICK AND MORTY up until 3am trying to hit 30,000
FOR FANS OF South Park points on its Tip Of The Spear
After heisting the universe, chilling with mission. Meiks. Needs. Sleep.
sexual dragons, and trying to squeeze out a
poop in peace, the mad scientist and his
grandson return for the last five episodes of
season four. Let’s hope we don’t have to
wait two years for the next season.
TREADSTONE
FOR FANS OF The Bourne Identity
The shady CIA initiative that turned David
Adam’s
Webb into Jason Bourne gets its own choice
spin-off. Though Matt Damon sadly isn’t STAR WARS JEDI:
involved, this action-packed thriller lifts the FALLEN ORDER
lid on the organisation that created the I’d pick up any Star
deadliest agent ever to wield a biro in anger. Wars game, even a
Holiday Special one, so I’ve been
gallivanting in this galaxy far, far
SABRINA away. I love the saber combat and
FOR FANS OF How to Train Your Dragon little droid BD-1 is the cutest thing
The rebooted teenage witch returns in The ever. He should get his own game.
Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina… to give the
third season of Netflix’s occult hit its
long-winded full moniker. We already know
there’s going to be a season four, as it was
filmed back to back with season three.
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 111
 extra

DIRECTORIES From the best headsets to the best TVs, controllers

and accessories you need for your Xbox One
a
T O P 5 H E A D S E T S F O R X B OX O N E

STEELSERIES ARCTIS 9X
£179.99/$199.99 BEST NEW HEADSET
One of the best headsets available for Xbox One, this
wireless beauty has a clear mic with more than decent
noise-cancelling. These cans’ biggest selling point,
though? Their booming Sonic Spatial Audio. Your tattered
eardrums are gonna love you. Once your hearing has
recovered, there are plenty of other points to love about
this headset. Sound is rich and convincing, with
authoritative bass that makes this a perfect option for
shooter fans – the satisfying thud of a plasma grenade
lighting up the screen in Halo 5: Guardians is glorious. Its
build quality is superb too, with an uncluttered yet sturdy
design elegantly storing the retractable mic.

RAZER KRAKEN SOUND BLASTER X H7

TOURNAMENT EDITION TOURNAMENT EDITION
£99.99/$99.99 BEST VALUE £89.99/$99.99 BEST FOR AUDIO
Best value, with a quality that belies its These pro-level headphones boast
mid-range price. 50mm drivers deliver a upgraded 50mm drivers for crystal-clear
clear, loud THX spacial surround sound surround sound, great mic quality and
that’s great for online play, helping you noise cancellation. Adapts to other forms
accurately pick out enemy movements of media well, perfect for Fortnite as much
and the location of distant gunfire. as for blockbuster movies. Comfy cans too.

TURTLE BEACH ELITE OFFICIAL XBOX

PRO 2
£219.99/$249.95 BEST HIGH-END
We’re all looking for that competitive edge,
and if you’ve got the dosh to spend, this
headset is superior. Its spacial sound is
really something and they’re super
comfortable but hard-wearing and sturdy
too – with a kind of brutalist, ergonomic
yet stylish design.
STEREO HEADSET
£39.99/$59.99 BEST BUDGET
The official Xbox One headset produced by
Microsoft, cheap but delivering a full range
of rich stereo audio. Unidirectional mic for
clear communication, handy controls over
both game and chat audio volumes. Light
too, weighing just 9oz/255g, with fabric
ear cups for comfy long sessions.

W H AT T O L O O K F O R I N A N X B O X O N E G A M I N G H E A D S E T

WHAT PRICE IS RIGHT? SOUNDS GOOD ZONE IN ON COMFORT

Figure out what you want/need/can
afford. Which features are essential?
Where do you sit in relation to your
console? Do you need to be wireless? Do
you talk a lot? If so, you’ll want to look for
a good mic with high levels of clarity and
fidelity. Consider build quality vs price.
Look for sound features like noise
cancelling and positional audio. The
latter will help improve your situational
awareness. How well does the headset
work with music and movies? While good
bass might not be vital for gaming it most
definitely will be for tunes.
Find something you know will be cosy for
extended sessions. You don’t want a set
that feels like it’s constricting your skull
or crushing your ears. Are you a glasses
wearer? How do the cans sit over the
arms of your specs? If at all possible
it’s worth trying them out in a store.

112 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

 GE T THE BEST GE AR FOR YOU
4K TVs
LG OLED77C9 77-INCH
OLED 4K SMART TV
£6,999/$5,999 BEST HIGH-END OLED
The finest TV the South Korean firm has
ever built. The C9 is a masterful set,
combining OLED’s peerless black levels and
amazing contrast performance with far
better screen uniformity than any LED can
offer. The best TV money can buy
LG OLED55B9 55-INCH
OLED 4K TV
£1,299/$1,396 BEST MID-RANGE OLED
While it lacks some of the features of its C9
big brother, this is still one hell of an OLED.
Blacks are as convincingly inky as you’d
expect, response times are competitive,
and contrast is more impressive than any
similarly priced LED.
SAMSUNG QE55Q60R
55-INCH QLED 4K TV
£829/$699 BEST QLED
Hardcore PvP fans won’t find a better panel
than Sammy’s QE55. With input lag that’s
under ten seconds and incredibly vibrant
pictures, we challenge you to find a better
mid-range QLED on the market. Its black
could be deeper, though.
SAMSUNG UE55NU8000
55" 4K TV
FROM £750/$940 BEST LED
A great mid-range option. A respectable
19ms input lag when hooked to an Xbox
One X means it’s better for competitive
gamers than many TVs twice as expensive.
Edge-lit backlight means black levels can’t
compete with OLED screens, though
general screen uniformity is very good.
PHILIPS 43PUS6753/12
43-INCH 4K TV
£430/$540 BEST BUDGET 4K
If you’re looking to spend as little as
possible but don’t want to compromise on
quality then this is for you. Naturally warm
colours lend HDR games and movies a really
nice tone. Considering it’s less than the
price of an Xbox One X, the still-respectable
input lag of 27ms is a small price to pay.
FOR GREAT DEALS ON XBOX GEAR, VISIT GAMESRADAR.COM
M ore Xbox ne w s a t ga m esradar.co m/oxm
ACCESSORIES
XBOX ONE ELITE
CONTROLLER SERIES 2
£159.99/$179.99 BEST CONTROLLER
The best just got better. This is the new
king of pads… even if you have to pay all
the money to become one of its subjects.
Wireless charging, rubberised grips and
adjustable-tension sticks make this the
most customisable controller ever.
SE
EAGATE 4TB GAME
DR
RIVE FOR XBOX ONE
£999.99/$114 BEST HARD DRIVE
This officially branded external hard drive
on Xbox One comes in 2GB or 4GB options.
It’s basically a regular Seagate drive in a
flashier case, so you’re paying about
$15-$20 extra for having the Xbox logo and
official case. Looks nice though.
THRUSTMASTER TX
£388/$385 BEST STEERING WHEEL
We recommend the Thrustmaster TX Racing
Wheel Leather Edition, which comes with the
T3PA three-pedal add-on. The wheel feels
really sturdy and the design is more like a
racing car than a road model. The servo itself
is compact and has a pleasant weight to it.
Clamps easily onto a desk or racing seat.
VENOM TWIN
DOCKING STATION
£14.99/$24.99 BEST RECHARGING DOCK
You won’t break the bank with this
essential bit of kit. With a cradle for two
wireless controllers and a reasonably rapid
recharge rate, it comes with two Nimh
rechargeable battery packs and has
colour-changing LED charge indicators.
RAZER TURRET
£249.99/$249.99 BEST KEYBOARD
The first official wireless keyboard/mouse
combo from Razer, for those who love the
twitch precision of mouse control, The keys’
weighting is good, charge time is excellent
the magnetised mouse tray makes sitting
on your sofa with it comfy. Responsive in
high-framerate games, it looks great with
its customisable backlight.
HOW TO
OPTIMISE YOUR 4K
EXPERIENCE
To make 4K games look their best,
black levels need to be correctly
set. HDMI limited or black-level high
is the option you want. Make sure
the TV’s sharpness slider is set to
no more than ten per cent of the
max value or you could distort the
picture. If your 4K set has a game
mode, switch it on: it slashes
response times, aka lag. To enable
the full gamut of HDR colours,
calibrate the HDMI slot your Xbox is
plugged into to support ‘4:2:2
chroma subsampling’. This might be
called ‘Ultra HD Deep Colour’ or
‘Enhanced’ HDMI – turn it on in your
TV’s HDR settings. Your Xbox One’s
‘Calibrate TV’ option in Display and
Sound settings does a decent job of
ensuring your contrast, sharpness
and colour settings, as well as
black levels, are at the right value.
REMAP YOUR CONTROLLER
To remap any button on your trusted
Xbox One pad, head to My Games
and Apps. From the list of devices
you have paired, select the
controller you want and ‘Configure’.
From here you can remap every
button, permanently invert X/Y
axes, swap the functionality on the
sticks, triggers, the lot. If there are
a few gamers in your home using
the same console, you can link
Gamertags to specific controllers.
Settings/Account, then activate
Controller Sign In… this means that
when a button on a specific
gamepad is pressed, the player
linked to that controller will be
signed in. Sheer witchcraft!
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 113
 OXM OUT

the disc slot

They make the games we love, but what do they play
for fun? We ask developers to pick their faves
from Xbox history. This month: Kim Forrest

The Xbox, from the original to the Xbox One,

has delivered some of my favourite moments in [1]

entertainment. Truthfully, picking my top five is

somewhat of a nightmare... but here goes.
Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay [1]
is a game that came out of nowhere at the time
but is a true classic. A pioneer of, dare I say it,
Kim Forrest visceral gameplay combined with deep character
Head of production,
Mighty Kingdom development and a strong story. A formula that
[3]
Kim has spent most many have followed since. Assassin’s Creed II [2]
of his career as a
designer and worked took mechanics that were groundbreaking in the
on everything from original and expanded them, and again applied a
Dukes Of Hazzard
to Star Wars as well great story and a world depth that really pulled me
as several mobile in. I have great memories of playing Trials HD [3]
games. Now his
focus is the pending with the guys from work into the wee hours, well
release of Conan after we should have gone home. The simplicity of
Chop Chop.
coontrol, fantastic level design and balancing were [4]

soo perfectly frustrating but incredibly rewarding

[2]
when you nailed a run. The Batman: Arkham series,
sppecifically Batman: Arkham Asylum [4] redefined
coombat to create a best-in-class model, not just
for superhero games at the time, but for all action
brrawlers, and pushed them to the next level with
suuperb stories and engaging side-mission design.
[5]
Annd finally, Red Dead Redemption [5] ... the original.
A free-roaming masterpiece with an engrossing
story and so many surprises. When ‘Far Away’ by
Joosé González kicked in as I rode into Mexico... I
hoonestly can’t remember a more amazing moment
in a videogame.

LOVE THIS ISSUE? THE NEXT ONE WILL BE READY FOR YOU ON 7 FEBRUARY

114 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE