MULTIPLAYER MODES PUT
THROUGH THEIR PACES
online tests BY OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS
what we’re
playing nowLETHAL LEAGUE
BLAZE
Jess Kinghorn has
joined the Renegades
I have to wait a bit for a
matchup but it’s always
worth it. Besides the fact
there ain’t nothing like the
funky beats on this batty
baseball beat-‘em-up’s
soundtrack or the style
oozing from each and every one of its
pores, there’s plenty compelling me to
keep those balls in the air. A classic
example of ‘easy to pick up, difficult to
master,’ it really comes into its own
online... or on the couch. Let me tell
you, there’s no greater feeling than
hearing Candyman’s cackle after each
of your wins... and no worse moment
than hearing it in defeat.TEKKEN 7
Oscar Taylor-Kent is
feeling lucky, punk
Still riding the high from
this year’s EVO, I’ve been
doing my annual bounce
around all the fighting
games, trying to
remember how to play
them. Dusting off my
Lucky Chloe outfit,
hopping back into Tekken
7 has been a ton of fun, and I can still
pull off her hard-to-predict dance
steps. These always annoy the
lower-ranked players around my own
skill level and bring me much delight.
Especially if I don a goofy deer-head
mask outfit. One! Two! Luckyyyy Chloe!WRECKFEST
Ian Dean suffers
a blood drive
The rest of the OPM team
accuse me of having an
appetite for destruction,
but I’ve nothing on
BunkerBuster75, who has
been hounding me all
race. Every time I switch
cameras to rear view
there they are, nudging
my bumper and nipping at my wheels. I
can’t seem to get away. My time in
Wreckfest feels more like a sequence
from horror film Maximum Overdrive
than the car carnage BugBear was
aiming for. This car wants my blood. It
doesn’t want to win the race, or make
me lose it, it just wants to smash the
*blorp* out of my car. Wreckfest is the
game of my nightmares.96
review
T
hough sadly not a crossover
between Hello Games’
spacefaring sandbox and
Quantic Dream’s Ellen Page
vehicle, No Man’s Sky Beyond
does at least represent the most
feature-rich and coherent version of
the game to date. With a list of additions
and improvements equivalent to a sci-fi
Domesday Book, it’s not only a big step
forward for multiplayer, but the best
way to start your journey into the great
beyond – sorry, Beyond.
That’s in part due to some sensible
overhauling of the opening tutorial,
which has grown and morphed into
something totally different than the few
hours of floundering new players were
met with at launch. Not only is it easier
to get your head around the core
systems of resource gathering and
crafting now, it’s also that touch more
enjoyable. Funny what a few nourishing
lines of narrative text can do, even ifthey’re being dispensed
by hunks of space junk
and abandoned ships.
Broadly, the journey
from clueless moron to
grizzled galactic survivor
is simply more pleasant.
Even if the first four –
four – planets you settle
on have poisonous
atmospheres and are
prone to terrifying toxic
storms every night. And
that graduation is
marked by your arrival at
the Nexus, where you’ll
now find more uniquetravellers dispensing
additional mission types,
including base building. If
that sounds like another
way of saying ‘it feels
more like an actual game
now’, that’s exactly right.NO MAN’S HI!
The headline feature on
the giganto-patch list,
though, is expanded
multiplayer. The player
count’s expanded to 16
in the Nexus, and eight
out in the universe. Given
that the universe is – youNo Man’s Sky Beyond
Another step for Hello’s ambitious space sim
THE JOURNEY FROM
CLUELESS MORON TO
GRIZZLED SURVIVOR IS
SIMPLY MORE PLEASANT.
INFO
FORMAT PS4
PUB HELLO GAMES
DEV HELLO GAMES
REVIEW #127, 8/10