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REVIEW
INFO FORMATPUB THUNDERFUL PS4 ETA OUT NOW DEV MEGAGON INDUSTRIESLONELY MOUNTAINS:
DOWNHILL
An unending cycle of happinessF
irst-person shooter in which you play
a demonic cyborg, hellbent on the
destruction of... ah, course it isn’t.
See that title? You’re a cube-headed biker,
speed-running through time trials amid four
mountains’ worth of picturesque scenery.^1
Obstacles are everything you’d expect:
ginormous rocks; unhelpfully placed trees;
expanses of water; sharp curves bordering
precipitous drops. Now for the part you’d
never expect: it’s bloody fantastic.
By bloody, we mean bloody. You die
often, being kicked back to the most
recent checkpoint in the process, but the
claret-spattered nature of each demise
maintains light relief amid the relentless
competitiveness. Ingeniously, it’s in dying that
you often notice a shortcut to experiment
with on your next run – gradually bringing
your segment times down, unlocking new
runs and faster bike parts, to bring your
segment times down, to unlock... you get the
picture.^2 Suddenly, brilliantly, exhaustingly,
it’s 2am and you’ve no idea where the last
four hours went. Yet you still can’t resist
another 15 minutes customising your ride.
Three buttons. That’s the heart of
the magic: brake (p), accelerate (i),
and boost (q). Masterful split-second
management of these fundamentals in
tandem with the left stick is the key to
spinning round its courses in record time,
and what courses they are: those obstacles
may feel painful to thump into, but they’re
beautiful to race past. The very occasional
framerate stutter aside, LMD is
as much of a joy to stare at as
it is to play, and PS4’s biggest
sporting surprise of 2019. A
wheel good time. Ben WilsonFOOTNOTES 1 Autumnal, with glorious water features, Redmoor
Peaks is the pick of the mountains. 2 Every run unlocks a paint job,
bike part, course, or challenge, with times mapped to leaderboards.INFO FORMATPUB LUCAS POPE PS4 ETA DEVOUT NOW LUCAS POPERETURN OF THE
OBRA DINN
Getting back to basicsD
o you get into heated arguments about
the truth behind the Mary Celeste?
Yes? This is the game for you. It
challenges you to assess insurance claims
relating to the abandoned ship Obra Dinn by
using a skull-emblazoned pocket watch to
step into each of the crew’s final moments
to determine three things: who they were,
how they died, and because of whom.
We already feel like we’re peering into
another dimension thanks to the stylised
visuals, which emulate old Macintosh
systems.^1 Each time you find someone’s last
resting place, you can zip into an explorable
diorama of their final moments rendered
in amazingly stylish detail, accompanied by
an audioscape of the moment. You can even
hop between memories, uncovering other
final moments from within those scenes.
Everything you encounter about the ship’s
fate is put down in a thick notebook, which
you have to fill out as you go. Ingeniously, the
game will only confirm your correct answers
for every three you get right, meaning you
can’t quite fudge it – but also get a sense of
which ones you must have got wrong.
Essentially it’s one gigantic logic puzzle,
which has you piecing together the mystery
of what befell the ship, as well as tracking
down individual members of the crew across
several memories to pick out identifying
features, such as a distinctive tattoo.^2 It
clicks in a way that few mystery games
do, making you feel like you’re doing actual
detective work. The biggest issue is that on
a pad some of the menus feel
a bit too clunky, but it’s a solid
mystery you’ll be chewing
over even when you’re not
playing. Oscar Taylor-KentFOOTNOTES 1 And can be set to different colour patterns to
emulate the look of other old systems too. 2 It’s often a taxing game
of deduction, but almost always feels completely fair.INFO FORMATPUB WIRED PRODUCTIONS PS4 ETA OUT NOW DEV STORM IN A TEACUPCLOSE TO THE SUN
You’re going on a power tripA
lternate history is the perfect
writer’s playground. You get all the
intrigue and texture of a period
setting, without the constraint of the facts.
Close To The Sun is set in an alternate reality
in which Nikola Tesla’s^1 eccentric inventions
have all been built and work, the most
exciting of which is the Helios, the giant
floating laboratory in which this first-person
adventure game is set.
You play as Rose, a journalist boarding
Tesla’s ship in order to find her missing
sister, unaware that she’s about to stumble
across a dead crew and a host of dark
secrets. Featuring no combat elements,
survival on the Helios is all about finding and
solving various puzzles before those hunting
you down can locate you and end your
game. Every room and hallway is scattered
with destruction and death, and the silence
that follows you around the Helios for large
portions of the game only amplifies the
tension and atmospheric horror.
With long periods dedicated to exploration,
Close To The Sun lures you into a false sense
of security before delivering intense jump
scares and chase sequences. The story is
intriguing and well-paced over ten chapters,
often told through beautiful set design
reminiscent of 2K’s BioShock games.
While the atmosphere, scares, and
narrative are successful, the game
suffers from sluggish controls and the
odd confusing puzzle. A bit of tweaking to
the control scheme^2 and some polish to
streamline the more unintuitive moments
would have been welcome. As it
is, this is an electrifying example
of atmospheric horror with a
few annoying issues that zap
the tension. Rebecca StowFOOTNOTES 1 Nikola Tesla is regarded as the father of alternating
electric current and the electricity supply system. 2 Storm In A
Teacup, please give us a faster movement speed!