FAR CRY PRIMAL REVIEW

It’s hard to imagine any other modern first-person shooter series being able to make a 12,000 year trip back in time and arrive there with its identity still intact, but Far Cry Primal has made it work. The series’ now familiar one-man-versus-a-savage-frontier shtick has survived the transition admirably and Primal remains packed with many of the same great gameplay loops that have come to define the franchise, just with a primitive twist.

Primal’s prehistoric, low-tech version of the Far Cry experience feels surprisingly authentic thanks to the game’s completely bespoke language (the simple dialogue is conveyed entirely with subtitles), its large, convincing environment, and its great character design. It’s overflowing with brutal and satisfying close-quarters combat, and the new ability to tame wild beasts also adds a welcome additional layer of tactical choice to assaults on the enemy. It’s undermined, however, by a startlingly basic plot, some disappointingly uncharismatic villains, and often bland mission objectives. The result is a lengthy and competent game with plenty to discover and conquer, but one that unfortunately contains far fewer memorable moments than its forebears.

 Far Cry Primal’s 10,000 BCE Stone Age setting takes us back into human prehistory, casting us as a hunter called Takkar, who's part of a fractured tribe known as the Wenja. We also know he has a beard because, well, you can see it in his little icon on the in-game map screen. Unfortunately, that’s more or less all we ever learn about Takkar and, as such, he isn’t an especially engaging or interesting protagonist.

Of course, one of Far Cry’s real fortes is its ability (particularly in more recent instalments) to make up for its ho-hum leads with some truly scene-stealing antagonists, like Far Cry 4’s sadistic Pagan Min or, better still, Far Cry 3’s frighteningly unpredictable Vaas. Regrettably Primal falls flat here too; neither of Primal’s main villains are a patch on a character like Vaas. A considerable letdown for a series that’s carved out a reputation for fascinating and nuanced bad guys.

When Three Tribes Go to War

Takkar's goal is to help establish the Wenja as the dominant tribe in the game’s large world, Oros, which is a mixture of rolling plains, lush forests, and inhospitable ice. To achieve victory over two separate enemy tribes (the Udam and the Izila) Takkar must work alongside several allies to gain the abilities he needs to defeat the leader of each tribe. Unfortunately this elevator pitch is also the entire plot synopsis, because that’s pretty much all there is to Primal. Ubisoft has made a move away from Far Cry’s traditionally more linear storytelling but at a hefty cost.

It took me around 20 hours to get through Primal’s main campaign and just some of the available side quests, and the story does retain Far Cry’s now-signature supernatural flourishes, but it lacks any real twists, intrigue, rollicking set-pieces, drama, or depth. Primal simply hums along sedately until culminating in a pair of standard-issue boss fights.

Supporting characters feel largely absent beyond their handful of associated missions and have very little to do with Takkar outside of cutscenes. It’s a shame we don’t see much of them over the game’s duration because I quite like the secondary cast; from the one-eyed guy who expresses his brotherly respect via swift headbutts, to the one-armed bloke who I suspect peed on me just so he could choose my nickname. Even the clearly traumatised woman with the ear fetish grew on me. They’ll happily join your village and mooch living quarters built from your hard-earned booty, but don’t expect to see them out in the wild helping you when things get dire.

The detailed character design and costumes on these allies is uniformly excellent, though, and they’re covered in cracking facepaint and nasty scars and adorned with various furs, bones, and sticks. Their performances are good too in the context of Primal’s credible, ancient feel. Well, all except for the jarringly odd Evel Knievel caveman who appears to have strolled directly off the set of a secret sequel to Encino Man. I know he’s a nod to Far Cry regular Hurk, and I appreciate the comic relief, but the thick American accent may be jumping the sabre-toothed shark.

The detailed character design and costumes on these allies is uniformly excellent, though, and they’re covered in cracking facepaint and nasty scars and adorned with various furs, bones, and sticks. Their performances are good too in the context of Primal’s credible, ancient feel. Well, all except for the jarringly odd Evel Knievel caveman who appears to have strolled directly off the set of a secret sequel to Encino Man. I know he’s a nod to Far Cry regular Hurk, and I appreciate the comic relief, but the thick American accent may be jumping the sabre-toothed shark.

PlayStation Vita review

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PS VITA - INTRODUCTION

The Sony PS Vita price has dropped to around the £200 mark on its UK launch as the company banks on a dedicated mobile gaming console. “It only does everything” used to be the slogan for Sony’s Playstation 3, but it’s a phrase that could apply just as well to PS Vita. It’s a Swiss army knife of mobile gaming hardware, with so much power and so many built-in gadgets and gizmos that it’s hard to imagine any type of game it couldn’t cover and it any type of gamer it couldn’t satisfy. Whereas the PSP simply aspired to being a PS 2 in your pocket, PlayStation Vita wants more. It has the screen, the dual analogue sticks and the graphics power that hardcore gamers demand, but also the touch functionality, cameras, tilt controls and quirky download games to reach those looking for something less traditional. It’s all games machines to all men.

PS VITA - DESIGN

The physical design is an evolution of Sony's PSP Slim and Lite, the front dominated by the whopping 5-inch screen, with the dual analog pads to either side, the D-Pad on the left and the face buttons on the right, in a layout that will immediately seem natural to anyone famiiar wth a dual-shock 3 controller. Of course, PS Vita has only two shoulder buttons, modelled in clear pespex to maintain the unit’s elegant lines, but - as we’ll see later - this is less of an issue than it might seem. The Vita feels light and comfortable in your hands, and while the position of the sticks takes a little getting used to, it’s a very easy handheld to use for long periods - much more so than the rather cramp-inducing 3DS. At 280g, it’s comfortably light as well.

PS VITA - CONTROLS

The physical controls work perfectly. We had some minor doubts about the accuracy of the right analogue stick while trying to aim in Uncharted: The Golden Abyss, but in other titles it doesn’t seem to be a problem, and the feel is just right; arguably one step closer than the 3DS analogue stick in giving you what you’re used to from a full-scale controller. For FPS games it’s going to make a massive difference. And while you might miss the L2 and R2 buttons in some games, it’s unlikely to be a huge problem, for the simple reason that PlayStation Vita has what you might almost call a surfeit of other controls.The most obvious is the capacitive front touchcreen, which is fast, responsive and multitouch aware. Uncharted and many of the PS Vita launch titles use it regularly, both to provide handy onscreen buttons or menu controls, and as a means for swiping or pinching gesture controls. Then there’s the rear touch panel. Prodding it without seeing what you’re doing feels a little unintuitive at first, but once you’ve used it to push ridges in the landscape to roll a pint-sized monster around in Little Deviants, the potential starts to become clear.

Then there’s the Playstation Vita's tilt controls. You can use them in the expected way, tilting to steer in Wipeout 2043 for example, but they become useful in other games as well, allowing changes of view in the Pool game Hustle Kings, or providing an excellent means of fine-tuning sniper shots in Uncharted. Most of all, they come into their own in the Augmented Reality shenanigans of Little Deviants or Reality Fighters, with the former having you rotate physically on the spot to blast alien invaders from the real world skies that surround you, while the latter uses them to control the view of the bout happening on your floor or coffee table.

PS VITA - AUGMENTED REALITY

And it’s augmented reality that makes the most sense of PS Vita’s dual cameras. With a 0.3 megapixel resolution they were never going to be much cop for photography, and low light performance is predictably poor. Yet Sony’s initial efforts at making AR gaming work are great, bite-sized chunks of silly fun. Reality Fighters, for example, allows you to digitise your face, map it onto a CGI body, and then whack ten tons of stuffing out of Vita-owning friends or CPU-controlled opponents in the real-world environment of your choice. The fighters sit quite convincingly within the landscape in front of the lens, and while it’s a novelty act, it’s certainly a good one. The same goes for Little Deviants, where the action in the shoot-em-up segments takes place in the space around you.

All is forgiven, however, when you see that PlayStation Vita screen. An OLED number with a 960 x 544 resolution, it’s a beauty; crisp, clear, with vibrant colours, deep blacks and brightness to spare. If it doesn’t have a true 720p resolution or quite the intense clarity of the iPhone 4’s Retina display, it still goes way beyond the sub-SD resolutions we’re used to in gaming handhelds, and - at the 5in screen size - it’s hard to tell that it’s not HD. It’s an exceptional screen for watching movies or playing games on, and about as good as you’re going to get without moving up the scale to a tablet device.

While you might have expected PlayStation Vita to embrace the XMB interface of the PSP and PS3 (not to mention numerous entertainment devices), Sony has gone for a new user interface. It’s based on the LiveArea a series of vertically scrolling screens with large smarties-shaped icons, which summon odd post-it note launchers that you literally peel off the screen to shut down. When more than one launcher is open, they stack in a 3D view across the screen for easy access. It’s all a little odd, but it fits PlayStation Vita’s touch-friendly approach perfectly, and makes it easy to switch from app to app when you need to.

Hitman Review

Hitman Review

code : MAKRAM

Agent 47 never takes this long. The 2016 version of Hitman plays like the longest assassination of the chrome-domed killer’s lengthy career, thanks to developer IO Interactive’s decision to issue the game via six chapters released roughly from spring to fall. But I’m certainly not complaining about the marketing, given that the final package showcases some of the most enthralling exploits of gaming’s most infamous murderer-for-hire. Sprawling levels, tremendous attention to detail with both graphics and sound design, and countless assassination options make this an engrossing experience that includes some of the best replay value ever seen in a game.

Having come into this season of Hitman only after it was complete, I can’t render a judgment about how the game was released in an episodic format. I’m glad that I got to play through it as a complete experience, and I can’t imagine having to wait weeks to go on my next assignment. But at the same time, I see the appeal of tackling each of the game’s six separate assignments (plus the opening training missions that flash back to the beginning of Agent 47’s career) one by one, given just how much gameplay is jammed into each of them. The individual missions here send you jetting all over the globe like a bald James Bond with a barcode on the back of his head. Everything is linked via brief cutscenes that focus on a figure from Agent 47’s past. But the levels are so big and so packed with details that they take on lives of their own, much like separate movies in a franchise.

The long-running international flavor of the Hitman series has been spiced up here with unique locations that take place in virtually every corner of the world. You prowl a Paris fashion show, sneak around a luxurious villa on the Italian coast, venture into mobs rioting in Moroccan souks, stalk a rock star at a five-star hotel in Thailand, assault the leaders of a militia on a compound in Colorado, and finally explore a private hospital atop a snowy mountain in Japan. Each level looks fantastic and is stuffed with all sorts of nooks and crannies to explore and hundreds of NPCs to interact with--many of whom come with dialogue and specific routines and behaviors that can be figured into your assassinations. The only drawback with the overall presentation is the quality of the NPC dialogue, which is nicely varied and well acted but virtually all spoken with a standard American accent that can kill your suspension of disbelief. Hearing Italian thugs and Cuban soldiers all speaking like average American Joes really takes you out of the moment, at least until you get accustomed to this oddity.

The attention to detail is otherwise superb, though. I typically took a good hour or two wandering around each level, listening in to conversations, and just generally getting the lay of the land before deciding on a course of action. The game offers dozens of ways to kill every target--and even more routes to take to get to them before you shoot them, garrotte them, drown them in toilets, blow them up, poison them, blast them out of an ejector seat in a jet plane, and so on. Every assignment also comes with loads of different people in loads of different professions, which provides even more routes to your victims via the outfits you can remove from their corpses for use as disguises. Want to stay in a secret-agent tux? Or even a snazzy summer suit? Sure thing. But you can also ditch the formal outfits for the garb of a security guard, a male supermodel, a scientist in a hazmat suit, a plague doctor, a chef, and many, many more.

Granted, all of the above makes Hitman more of a funhouse ride than a grim series of contract killings. While it’s fun to encounter switches that drop chandeliers, a hookah that can be poisoned, convenient wire-and-puddle combos that can be turned into electrocution traps, and murderous random accoutrements from bombs to scissors to swords to bricks to fire extinguishers to pretty much everything but the kitchen sink, everything goes well over the top. The game is more of a cartoon than any sort of authentic exploration of the world of contract assassinations--which is certainly a good thing, both for the way this lightens the mood (any game where you can blow up a guy who’s puking into a toilet isn’t one that takes itself too seriously, despite the body count) and also how it provides so much room for murderous creativity.

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with so many options to reach its goals. The first time through a level is just the beginning. Replay value is spectacular, and maybe even unprecedented for a Hitman game, given the massive size and scope of the levels, the number of NPCs, the number of murderous gadgets and weapons littering every room and corridor, and also because of the added options that open up after an initial run-through. Completing mission challenges unlock frills like new weapons, disguises, and starting locations, which of course offer up new ways to get to and finish off your marks.

And then there is Escalation Mode, a new feature that adds requirements to existing levels. It basically creates new missions that involve you offing multiple new targets in specific ways. Difficulty goes up with each successful assassination assignment. Escalations start with things like murdering a few people in specific ways, say by explosives, and then move on to more complex goals like killing while wearing a specific disguise, finishing off all of your targets in a tight time limit, dumping all the bodies in one location, and so forth.

Elusive Targets is a timed mode that lets you go after special victims (who can’t be seen on the map) with just one chance at success before you lose the contract forever. IO releases these victims into the wild at set times and leaves them up for limited periods of time until they vanish, never to be heard from again. It’s a great added incentive to keep going back to the game, even long after the standard missions and their added challenges wear thin. And Contracts Mode (brought back from 2012’s Hitman: Absolution) allows you to mark random NPCs as targets and set kill requirements, creating missions that can be shared with other players.

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MINECRAFT REVIEW

At this point, Minecraft is such a well-known game that reviewing its content in 2017 seems redundant. (For that, you can check out our reviews of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions and of Minecraft: Pocket Edition.) But with its recent release on the Switch the question that needs answering is how Nintendo’s portable console handles building these fantastic blocky worlds, and the answer is: pretty well.

The Switch Edition of Minecraft takes the appealing portability of Minecraft Pocket Edition and adds the precise, comfortable controls of a console. The convenience of playing Minecraft on the go and easily jumping into online multiplayer with friends on their own Switch devices would make it hard to go back to other versions of if it weren’t missing an essential feature: voice chat. That makes playing with friends who aren’t in the room with you much less fun, since there’s no way to coordinate your efforts with the up to seven other players in a game. You can get that human interaction locally by playing two-player split-screen mode, but this works much better when the Switch is docked, because the screen is a little too small to play in handheld or kickstand mode with multiple people. It’s possible, you just might not be able to see very well.

Like the current PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions (1.5), the Switch’s Minecraft lacks some other features that are on the PC’s 1.9 version, like the reworked combat system. And, unfortunately, Minecraft doesn’t use the Switch’s touch screen for faster inventory management – or anything else – so it’s not quite the best of both the console and Pocket Edition worlds. It does include a bunch of exclusive Super Mario-themed skins, though.

Lastly, I didn’t experience any noticeable slowdowns either in docked or portable modes, though it’s worth noting that Minecraft runs in 720p even while docked. Not that the resolution of these intentionally blocky graphics matters much, of course.

QUALITY

There's an adage that, in life, you'll only get out of it what you're willing to put into it, and that's completely true with this creative adventure. You're literally dropped in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than your wits. Starting off, you'll pick up some wood from a tree, which you'll use to make a batch of sticks. Then you'll attach some more wood to those sticks and make a pickaxe. Using that pickaxe, you can mine some stone to help build a house. And so goes the cycle of the game. You'll spend your time exploring the world around you and harvesting what you can to help create what you need. Over time, you'll learn more about how to find and build more complex materials and tools, combining them to craft new, intricate creations. It's a heavy investment of time and research, and it's likely to cause even the most hard-core gamer some frustration from time to time, but the payoff can be fulfilling. The newest version, on the Nintendo Switch, includes a formidable tutorial that's likely to confuse as many new players as it helps, but by and large the best way to learn Minecraft is to just start playing Minecraft. If you are new to Minecraft, the Nintendo-specific touches help it feel less unfamiliar: The Switch edition bursts with an extra Super Mario texture pack, a set of Super Mario skins for your characters, and an entire Super Mario-themed world to explore with Mario themed music and huge statues of Mario himself.

Minecraft does its best to be all things to all people. If you're the type of person who wants a gaming experience with heroes fighting villains, the game's Survival and Adventure modes offer a classic adventure with players battling the forces of evil while trying to maintain their homesteads. Zombies, skeleton, creepers, endermen, and more come out in force when the sun goes down, forcing the players to craft strong defenses if they hope to see the next sunrise. For those gamers who are less about using an arsenal and more about using a toolbox, there's Creative mode; this is essentially the game's God mode, where you get full access to everything in the Minecraft wheelhouse without having to worry about such things as hostile mobs, hunger, or other things that might cut short your time in the world. Here, players can build to their hearts' content, crafting and testing extravagant projects before sharing them with the world. One thing to keep in mind, though, is the fact that, at any given moment, there are thousands of other people thinking up things to build as well. For every intricate, highly detailed re-creation of some building, game, or other such massive undertaking, there's going to be someone who has used the tools at their disposal to make something juvenile, obscene, or otherwise offensive. And unfortunately, there's no way to really know what you're getting into until you've joined another player's game. This is definitely one time parents should keep an eye on where their kids are visiting online. But once you know what you’re doing, you'll be hard-pressed to leave your computer without placing just one more 

Rainbow 6: Siege review

Available on Xbox One (tested), PS4 and PC

Only a week or so on from launch, Rainbow Six: Siege has become a game that people love or hate with a passion. The fans love it because it's tough, skill-focused, smart and distinctive; a thinking man or woman's shooter that doesn't take all its cues from Call of Duty. The haters hate it because it's neither the Rainbow Six that they remember nor the Rainbow Six they wanted to see. Well, team thumbs down have some very good points, but if you join team thumbs up you'll realise that while Siege might not be a faithful update, it’s a fantastic reinvention.

True, the lack of planning makes for a more action-oriented, less tactical Rainbow Six, though there's more of a tactical dimension to the minute-by-minute gameplay than this implies. You could also argue that there's as much Counter-Strike in Siege's DNA than Rainbow Six, and you'd arguably be right. The lack of any serious single-player content is disappointing, and the graphics can be underwhelming. There's a lot of generic, boxy architecture, flat-looking furniture and bland décor in the world of Siege, while the lighting is a little flat to boot.

Related: Rainbow Six Siege tips and tricks guide

Terrorist Hunt is fantastic, with a powerful ‘just one more go’ factor that’s only amplified by the desire to unlock more operatives and then more weapon mods and customisations for each operative – this all costs a lot of renown. The real meat of Siege, however, is the competitive multiplayer mode. This is a slightly tougher sell.

Multiplayer Siege can be hard to get to grips with. Even more than Terrorist Hunt it requires real teamwork, and without some kind of strategy in place the going’s tough. When Steve originally reviewed the game he would have been playing with other journalists and they would all, likely as not, have been wearing headsets. In post-launch games with regular players, this simply isn’t the case. As a result, synchronised assaults are few and far between, it’s not uncommon to see attack player after attack player blunder into a defence killzone, while team-kills are not as unusual as they really should be. Throw in the odd griefer or the wag who kills the hostage on the way to extraction, and Multiplayer isn’t always what it can be.

But when it comes together, blimey, it’s about as good as team-vs-team action gets. There’s a palpable tension as players hustle to improvise and ambush or a breach, along with plenty of breathless moments where there’s just one man standing against two or three foes. You could argue that the different objectives don’t actually make an awful lot of difference, or that certain weapons or operatives could do with balancing, but there’s something brutal and unpredictable about Siege Multiplayer that just works. Maybe it’s that no wall is really safe (even the toughest can be breached by specific characters) and that your enemies might even burst through the ceiling or blast through the floor, but there’s an energy here that leaves many rivals looking tame.

With time some of the silliest players will leave for other things, while the more committed fans will hone their teamwork and expertise. This will be for the good, but it’ll also make Siege an even more brutally challenging game than it already is. The trick is to stick with it. When you die, you die for a reason. Sometimes it’s because the other player has a better vantage, sometimes it’s because they’re just faster and more accurate. Sometimes you were just clumsy, thoughtless or stupid, blundering into the room with the objective in without a flashbang or smoke. You can spend too long focusing on the sights, or playing with your operative’s gadgets. Lose situational awareness and you’re often dead.

Related: PS4 vs Xbox One

Outlast 2 vs Resident Evil 7: Which Horror Game is Scarier?

   Outlast 2 vs Resident Evil 7

Outlast 2 and Resident Evil 7 are both doing a good job with scaring their respective audiences. The question is, which does it better?
Two of the scariest games this year are upon us. Resident Evil 7 and Outlast 2 appear to be terrifying just about everyone who plays them and while it has been out for a few months already, Resident Evil 7's scare factor definitely hasn't waned just yet. However,Outlast 2 is looking to be the epitome of horror gaming. With the two titles still very fresh in people's minds, the question still remains -- which game is scarier? Is there even a definitive answer? Let's delve a little further.Outlast 2 is the hot release right now. Streamers are peeing themselves, people are frantically searching for guides on how to do just about anything, and reviewers are making themselves heard. While certain design decisions have been received negatively, like the outdoor setting where getting lost is all-too common, the selling point of the title is where the game shines -- it's a scare fest. Gamespot's review of the game hits the nail on the head:

"Tension is what Outlast 2 does best. Its gameplay may stumble, but you're always deeply, inescapably immersed in its atmosphere.

The stumbling gameplay is due to weapons not being a viable option here. Running and hiding is the only way in which you can escape death so it may cause some frustration in that regard. On the other hand it means that tension and atmosphere are front and center.

While Outlast 2 has no weapons of which to speak, Resident Evil 7 gives you a few toys to play with. Weaponry in horror games can either be incorporated very well, or very badly, but fortunately RE7 sides with the former. Threats will always remain threats, no matter how armed to the teeth you may appear to be. So setting a flamethrower on Marguerite doesn't guarantee a smouldering corpse, no matter how singed you think she is.

The true horror of the title stems from the tension that is created rather than the in-your-face chaos, similar to that of Outlast 2. Again, coming back to another Gamespot review, they summarize it in a nutshell:

"The textures, details and sounds are, without exception, utterly gross in the best way. And impressively RE7 relies far more on its atmosphere than cheap jumpscares."

Atmosphere is indeed king in horror games, and it's what both of these titles pull off so well. It's been a dwindling genre in recent years but goosebump inducing horror games still rear their heads from time to time, as we see here.

The general consensus is that both games are mutually scary. Outlast 2 and its ban on weapons helps to up the ante from what was established in the original, and Resident Evil 7 deviates completely from a lot of the series tropes while still keeping itself embedded in the Resident Evil franchise. The atmospheric similarities are clear, but the games are also very different.

The original Outlast was a smash hit, and once the seventh iteration of Resident Evil was upon us, fans took the forums and asked that golden question -- is it scarier than Outlast? The answers given only cement what we know even further, but an interesting point was also raised. Outlast and its sequel rely on the atmosphere and the scares to keep you engaged, but Resident Evil 7 has more gameplay to back it up.

The gameplay of Resident Evil 7 helps to add different flavor to its atmosphere. You have more control over the outcome, whereas Outlast 2 regularly boils down to "attempt to sneak through here, get spotted, run for your life to here." That isn't a bad thing in Outlast 2's case, but the inherent similarities of the two titles were created through slightly different means. The same result can often come from several methods, and these two games are an indication of that fact.

What can be deemed from this is that there is no clear winner as to which of these two games is scarier. Of course, subjectivity may come into it, as gamers will favor one title over the other, but on the whole, both have been praised for how well they manage to pull people in with their atmospheric focus.

What's next for both series? Only time will tell. Let's hope we see something that will continue to scare us senseless. Have you played Outlast 2 or Resident Evil 7? Which one did you find scariest? Let us know in the comments below! 

RESIDENT EVIL 7

                       RESIDENT EVIL 7

Available on PS4 (version tested), Xbox One, PC

The best Resident Evil game is hotly-contested, though often the same few crop up. The Gamecube remake, 2 and 4 often form the backbone of any discussion about Capcom’s best, and I think Resident Evil 7 now belongs in that conversation.

The long-overdue return to survival horror is just what the series needed and, though the move to first person may seem a drastic change, Resident Evil 7 still plays like a Resident Evil game. A great one at that.

 Whereas the tank controls of old used to induce fear through a sense of powerlessness, playing from the perspective of Ethan as he battles the Bakers to save his girlfriend, Mia, carries that same fear but in a different way. While more liberated in my movement thanks to much sharper controls, I’m now more fearful of what lies around the next corner, as the first-person perspective makes the scares feel all the more personal.

This is done by some of the greatest sound design of any game I’ve ever played. Seemingly innocuous noises suddenly become utterly terrifying the deeper into the game you get. Capcom is very intelligent in how it scares the player. It doesn’t simply go for the cheap thrills in a way that games like Until Dawn: Rush of Blood do, instead it allows the player to get comfortable through repetition. Moving through the same corridors, solving puzzles (much like the Spencer mansion, the Baker household is designed in such a way where you’ll explore every room multiple times) and every time I THINK a scare will come, it doesn’t.

The times when I’m sliding through a narrow passageway, the music rises and rises as if Jaws is approaching so that I begin to expect Jack to grab me by the throat as I reach its end, or open a door to a new room expecting to be thrown through its walls by him, it doesn’t happen. Now, I don’t know what to expect, so rather than build myself up to the scare, I’m left in constant dreaded expectation, meaning any sudden sound has me on edge.

While moving around a corridor, the simple noise of a bottle hitting the floor, a door closing upstairs or rusty pipes means I’m constantly spinning Ethan 360-degrees to the point where he must start feeling ill. Capcom has done a fiendish job in driving me mad with the torture of a scare that never comes, that is of course until it comes and somehow manages to still be terrifying.

The first half of Resi 7 feels like I’m playing a teen slasher horror movie in the best way possible. It’s me versus whichever member of the Baker family is particularly pissed off, it’s incredibly thrilling. Hiding behind sofas and boxes as Jack stomps around yelling obscenities searching for Ethan is truly intense. Then, as I progress through each room, there comes some of the greatest and most creative boss fights in the series to date. I won’t spoil them here, but just know you’re in for a treat.

One new combat mechanic is Ethan’s ability to block. Blocking significantly reduces the damage taken from strikes, and you’ll quickly learn how vital this mechanic is during combat, and for a player like myself I suffered some initial growing pains combining blocking and running. With previous Resident Evil games the strategy was always to turn and run to relative safety before turning to shoot the enemy. Now, turning your back presents serious vulnerability, so it is now more strategic to absorb a blow while blocking before fleeing. With resources being so scant I often found myself dying because I failed to remember how useful blocking is, with my flight instinct kicking in far too soon.

There will be many nods to fans throughout the game: from the use of simple herbs to even the sound of pressing buttons on a keypad being taken directly from the original games. It’s clear that every facet of this game has been built by developers with a true affection and understanding for this franchise’s history.

The gameplay and sound are complemented by stunning visuals, too. Resi 7 includes PS4 Pro support with full 4K and HDR, and is one of the best games to take advantage of the tech. The step up in visual fidelity is immediately noticeable on what is an already gorgeous game. Candles flicker with brightness that can hurt your eyes to look at for too long but the flame can be surrounded by pitch darkness, a burst of the flamethrower in a dark room will light it up with blinding light. It finally made me feel justified in spending an outrageous amount on a new TV in last year’s Black Friday sales.

The superb sound and looks would only be window dressing if Resi 7 wasn’t compelling to play, and thankfully it is thanks to incredible voice acting coupled with a compelling story. As the story unfolds and this new form of infection causes its subjects to deteriorate further it leads me to want to discover more. The T-Virus has been around for decades to the point where veterans can detail its lineage, but this new virus is different, giving us plenty of questions to find answers for. Resident Evil has always done a great job of telling the story beyond cutscenes and that continues in 7 with newspaper clippings, diary entries and other things littered in the map further embellishing the Baker’s already compelling story.

However, there comes a time at the midway point where the landscape of the game completely changes, all hindered on a critical narrative plot point. Unfortunately the moment that it is built on significantly lacks the narrative punch Capcom thinks it has, meaning rather than be left with my jaw dropped I was instead left with my eyebrows raised in confusion.

Then, of course, there’s the support of PlayStation VR. Capcom has tried to make the VR experience accommodating to all players with multiple settings, including a “smooth” option where movements on the right analogue stick are one-to-one and allow Ethan to move as he does in the regular game mode. Unfortunately I found the experience quite nauseating, the juxtaposition of Ethan’s head moving while my head stayed still was something my brain couldn’t deal with, so I switched to the more rigid option, where flicks of the stick left or right sees Ethan turn at sharper angles.

There are multiple problems with VR which make it a far lesser experience than in the TV version. For starters the graphics quality takes a major dip, as you might expect, even when running on the Pro, and considering how amazing the game looks on the TV, the step down can feel a little too steep. Secondly, because of the slightly fiddly movement mechanics, it can lack the dexterity required in the game’s more challenging sequences, making the experience far more frustrating than it need be.

Also – and I’m not afraid to admit this – Resident Evil 7 is far too terrifying to play in VR, especially on a first play through. The nerves I felt while playing even on the TV meant I couldn’t imagine playing it in virtual reality without having at least some awareness of what lies ahead. If you’re a true thrillseeker, masochist or genuinely mental, then go for it, but I certainly didn’t have the heart or stomach for it. I feel like VR should be treated as a means of enjoying the Resident Evil 7 highlight reel rather than using it during intense gameplay moments which require precision.

REVIEW OUTLAST 2

                               *OUTLAST 2*

Outlast 2's maniacal commitment to its core conceit is simultaneously its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Like the original--which helped popularize first-person survival horror when it launched in 2013--Outlast 2 casts you as a hapless everyman with zero fighting skills and no tools beyond a camcorder. Your only option when confronted with grotesque, bloodthirsty murderers is to run and hide.

As a result, every snapping twig, every distant scream, every gruesome corpse grips you with fear even more tightly than it might if you actually had a way to defend yourself. But this also means the core gameplay cannot evolve as you progress--the chase sequences you survive at the start of the game are essentially identical to the situations you encounter near the end. There aren't many new mechanics or scenarios to keep the intervening hours feeling varied and engaging

To make matters worse, the game's most harrowing moments--those sequences where you're spotted by an enemy and must flee to safety--frequently devolve into trial-and-error tedium. Almost invariably, these chases are scripted, meaning you must get from point A to a specific point B as quickly as possible. Problem is, point B is rarely obvious. It might be a tiny opening you have to crawl through or a bookcase you have to move, but you'll only have a few seconds to figure it out before your pursuers catch up and kill you, forcing you to replay most of the chase in order to return to the apparent dead end where you got stuck. At that point, the game stops being scary and simply becomes frustrating.

This was occasionally an issue in the first game as well, but you often had more freedom and could play more strategically--if you're trying to avoid one bad guy in a large area while sneaking from room to room to collect valve handles, you can decide, "Okay, he'll see me when I dart across here, but I think I can make it back to this locker and hide before he catches me." In Outlast 2, you generally just need to run from whatever's directly behind you and hope you figure out the one correct path as you go. At least when you do stay on track, it's unbelievably intense and exhilarating. The fact that the game excels at delivering sudden bursts of panic keeps your nerves on edge at all times. You never quite know when hell will break loose again, but you always know it's coming.

 All of these scare tactics get in your head and, in a way, deepen those skin-crawling lulls between the adrenaline-pumping chases. In most games, walking into a room and grabbing an item is about as simple as it gets, but when you're utterly convinced some new horror's just waiting to rip your throat out, exploring for camera batteries suddenly feels like a harrowing trial. And you'll need those batteries. Just as before, your camera's night vision allows you see in the dark, and the new directional mic also lets you (loosely) track enemies through walls.

However, both of these comforts drain your batteries at an alarming rate, especially on higher difficulty settings. You can keep night vision on even when you run out of juice, but your screen starts to flicker and the camera can't focus. It's almost scarier than being totally blind, so it's important to expend your battery power strategically. I never had a problem finding batteries on Normal, but higher difficulty settings turn this aspect of the experience into a legitimate challenge

Even if you're stocked up on batteries, though, there's another reason to brave exploration: journal entries. As with the original game, there's no traditional story arc with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, you're given a goal--in this case, to save your missing wife--and bad stuff happens as you pursue that goal. The only way to understand your situation is to gather information from, for example, suicide notes and deranged gospel excerpts. The writing is strong throughout, but Outlast 2's primary narrative relies too heavily on trite horror tropes, including sadistic backwoods fanatics, demon babies, and of course, damsels in distress. The ending also falls short of the wild twist that capped the first game.

But there is another side to Outlast 2's story. As you progress, Blake starts to experience hallucinations that seem to depict a traumatic childhood event. They reveal new details at exactly the right pace, providing subtle, devastating hints without spelling everything out. It hooked me early, compelled me through the campaign, and eventually delivered an emotional payoff, all while tying together both halves of the game through shared themes of guilt, abandonment, and the exploitation of faith. Altogether, Blake's hallucinations prove to be one of the game's strongest elements.

In truth, Outlast's "no weapons" formula worked better as a shorter experience. Stretched over twice the length of the original game, Outlast 2's gameplay starts to wear thin, especially since too many of its scripted chases funnel you down preset paths. At the same time, however, I admire its purity, and to an extent, I'm willing to accept its shortcomings for the sake of true survival horror. The campaign is scary from start to finish and delivers on its promise of unrelenting terror in part because it never allows you to fight back. The atmosphere and sound design are expertly crafted, and Blake's hallucinations elevate the game's story above that of the first. It doesn't do much to build on the original formula, but it unquestionably provides a more polished version of the same idea.

Think of it as a ride through a really amazing haunted house: you don't have a ton of control and sometimes the ride breaks down for a moment or two, but it's basically guaranteed to leave you scared out of your mind.

PS5: what will the Sony PlayStation 5 be like and when will we see it?

 PS5: Sony PlayStation 5 

Update: PS5 didn't make an appearance at this year's E3 2017, but that doesn't mean it's not in the works. Continue reading for our current thoughts on the console generation and our wishlist for Sony's next system. 

Original article continues below...

It's hard to say when we'll see the PS5, or PlayStation 5 if we're being formal. It could be as early as this year's E3. But chances are good that it will still be a good long while before Shuhei Yoshida announces the next-next-gen consoleSo why are we preparing ourselves for the long haul? 

The console market is in a weird place right now, and this has big implications for what form the PS5 might end up taking. 

A lot of this has to do with Sony's announcement of the PS4 Pro, a mid-generation console upgrade that's expanded the hardware's functionality sufficiently. Sony now has a system that's capable of both HDR and 4K upscaled gameplay which, for most gamers, is more than enough for the time-being.

But, perhaps even more importantly, the console's existence and recent success has called into question whether a proper follow-up to the PS4 will ever be needed. We might be moving towards a more iterative hardware cycle. 

• But just because Microsoft launches a system doesn't mean that Sony will counter immediately – there are good reasons to believe that Sony is less comfortable with the idea of taking a mobile phone-style “upgrade every year” approach to consoles in the future, including comments from Yoshida himself. 
  Also, it boils down to simple economics: it’s well documented that the longer a console can persist on the high-street shelves, the more profitable it becomes, as economies of scale reduce manufacturing costs, while a large installed base means publishers can sell more copies of their latest games.
  What does that mean for the PS5? Will Sony's fifth console come to fruition? What would it do differently? What can it do differently? 
  For right now, at least, we don't have all the answers. 
  But instead of twiddling our thumbs and waiting for Sony to plop the next system on our laps, we've done some digging to try and get to the bottom of the mystery that's kept us up at night: What is the PS5 and when is it coming out?

• We’ve got the TVs: can we have proper 4K gaming?

• The PS4 Pro offers a tantalising hint of what 4K gaming could be like. But the stark fact remains: it still doesn’t have the grunt to do 4K properly. 
  Its “checkerboard” technique of taking single pixels and using each to render four pixels in 4K resolution is clever, but now 4K TV sales are gaining traction, it’s reasonable to expect console technology to advance to a level at which it can display 4K output natively. 
  Chris Kingsley, CTO and co-founder of developer Rebellion, dangles an even more ambitious technological carrot in front of a putative PS5: “Obviously new hardware should be able to support 4K TVs and possibly even 8K TVs at a push!” 
  Native 4K support, surely, will be a basic requirement of the PlayStation 5? And if Sony cracks that particular problem with alacrity, it could even mean that a PlayStation 5 will arrive sooner than anticipated.Sony recently became the first console manufacturer to embrace virtual reality, thanks to the PlayStation VR, but if you examine PlayStation VR closely – and observe how it operates on the PS4 Pro – it invites speculation about how a PS5 might take VR to a new level. 
  Currently, PlayStation VR operates at lower resolution than the Oculus Rift andHTC Vive – but, as it stands, even its current incarnation almost pushes the base PlayStation 4 beyond its limits. Running a PlayStation VR on a PS4 Pro brings improved frame-rates, which are very handy indeed in terms of the overall VR experience, but even the PS4 Pro can’t overcome the resolution constraints set by the PlayStation VR headset.
• So it’s a good bet that, presuming PlayStation VR is successful (and it already appears to be catching on) Sony will want to return to the market with a second, markedly higher-tech iteration: which would provide an obvious selling point for the PlayStation 5. 
  And if a PlayStation VR 2 headset could be sold without an external black box, it should be markedly cheaper, further accelerating VR’s march into the mainstream.
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