Issue 1404 73
GAMING
ships strewn across the ground;
left untouched, it’ll gradually rust
and decay, though debris can also
be sifted through for loot.
Like Hello Games’ forthcoming
No Man’s Sky,Worlds Apartopts
for a painterly aesthetic over
photo-realism. Its procedurally
generated forests and hills having
pleasingly soft edges, and the
game also shares the free-form
quality of Hello Games’ space
sim. Players seem to be left to
approach the game in a way they
see fit; the game’s central focus is
the construction and battling of
flying ships, but how you actually
go about this is up to you.
Gameplay footagereleased
last year showed a pair of players
building a huge dirigible together,
which looked both fiddly and
fun. Starting with a basic metal
frame, players add components
(i.e. engines, cannons and panels)
from a pop-up menu, and attach
them to the frame piece by
piece. IfMinecraft’svirtual Lego,
Worlds Adrift’sclosestreal-world
analogue appears to be kit-
bashing – the act of taking bits
of model tanks and planes and
sticking them together to make
something new and fantastical.
How much fun this will be
in practiceremains to be seen;
a recent update to the game’s
alpha build, saw a protection
system added to prevent rival
damage to ships before they’re
out of dry dock, which sounds
like a wise move.
Once finished,World’s Adrift
could prove to be a nail-bitingexperience; can you imagine
spending hours crafting a huge
ship with your friends, only to see
it go down like the Hindenburg
during a screaming air battle? It
sounds brilliant and heart-rending
at the same time.
Find out more about over at
http://www.worldsadrift.com.Incoming
You mayremember that, when
Fallout 4launched last year, it
did so without any mod tools.
The reason, Bethesda’s Pete
Hines explained, was that the
game’s developers wanted to
concentrate on getting the game
itself out of the door before they
worried about the construction
kit element. Thanks to game
designerTodd Howard, though,we now know when theFallout
4 edition of GECK (or Garden of
Eden Creation Kit) will appear–
sometime in April, “Between the
first two DLCs”.
“People are beta testing it,”
Howard adds. Of course, the lack
of official tools hasn’t prevented
players from tinkering with the
game already – the hundreds
of mods uploaded to Nexus
Mods so far include higher-res
textures, a flamingo companion
and a home defencerobot. But
GECK’s flexibility will mean that
completely overhaulingFallout 4
will be in thereach of PC users
everywhere. Once GECK’s out
in the wild, expect to see some
ingenious (and very strange)
Fallout 4 conversions to follow in
due course.iBuild airships. Blow up airships. Or just roam the landscape, chopping
down trees. Just some of the pastimes in Bossa’s online game,Worlds Adrift
iWaiting excitedly for the Fallout 4 edition of GECK?You’ve not much longer to
wait: Bethesda says it’ll be out in April