Another year, another Call of Duty. The always-successful series appears in three subsets in 2013; Modern Warfare, Black Ops, and most recently Ghosts, each one alternately released every year with minor tweaks to a now-legendary winning formula.
 By now, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting, which will be enough for some to have already decided whether or not to invest. However, for any looking to indulge for the first time, there’s little to recommend in this installment over older editions with more solid single-player offerings to balance the crazily intense online multiplayer.

Large set-piece battles, that are one-step away from being totally on-rails, guide you through a shooting gallery of opponents with constant explosions and collapsing scenery dulling your mind enough to enjoy the ride. Although the game injects your mute protagonist into situations that exist solely to force emotional beats more fleeting than a reality TV romance, it is a constant reminder that single player is not the focus of this game. In the first 10 minutes, you’ve gone from a campfire-light family conversation, to an erupting volcano, all the way up to an orbiting space station, and back to a more familiar-looking dusty war zone. Make no mistake, Ghosts’ campaign is extremely short, and with the bangs existing in abundance throughout this short period, you’ll have to decide whether or not that is worth your buck.

One thing Call of Duty does very well is playing with your perspective, and rappelling down a skyscraper as you’re poppin’ off headshots is a highlight.

Where it falls down is in the attempted execution of a family-focused narrative, delivered with minimum dialogue as the world literally crumbles around you. There really is no drive or motivation to anything that happens around you or the characters, outside of the game assuming that if they mention a plot-point or family tie, by virtue you’ll put your all into the following mission regardless of establishing context. You’re literally thrust from one set-piece to the next, with all and sundry being demolished around you, trying frantically to justify who you’re firing at and why. Occasionally, you will have the “Wow, that was bad-ass!” reaction, as with the likes of roller coaster-style ‘strap-yourself-in-for-the-ride’ thrills, Call of Duty does succeed on an immediately visceral level, providing that is all your after.

Meet Riley, the first motion-captured dog to be put into a videogame. Aside from some subtle animation flourishes to bring him to life, his exhaustive implementation is nothing to write home about.

What is a slightly new take on an old formula are the sections where you control your dog, Riley. You have full control over him to run up to platoons of soldiers and take them out, throat-rip style. By implementing the new system with Riley, standard slow-motion door-breaching, and occasional vehicular combat, Call of Duty could create a pretty varied gameplay structure that would place the element of choice in the hands of the player. You could argue that is where the appeal of oppositional series Battlefield lies, yet for all the trading of mechanics between the two franchises, any semblance of non-linearity would go a long way in future Call of Duty games.

Over to the multiplayer side of things and it’s still the same experience you’ve grown to love (or struggle with) every year. Coming at COD’s online mode and expecting anything less than being seared to ribbons within seconds is still par for the course, although the new Squads mode does present an A.I-powered alternative to let you practice somewhat before diving in. There are a variety of sub-modes on offer that allow you to slowly build up your reaction-times and load-outs with friends or random online buddies, before taking on the big leagues. The essence of successful, regular Call of Duty playing is born out of creating a bond with your teammates, and newcomers can find solace in the fact that such a mode exists to foster those relationships in a slightly more relaxed setting.

The main draws are classics like Team Deathmatch or Capture-the-Flag, with standout addition Blitz offering up a mode that takes the idea of running for a touchdown to new levels. Each base has a zone they must protect, alongside heading out to touch the opposing sides for points. However, as soon as you enter the enemy base you’re teleported back to your own, offering up the perfect mix of risk/reward gameplay, balancing the instant-death nature of your average match with the new incentive to leave the comfort of cover. This is in addition to Cranked, a mode where buffs and perks are liberally thrown out based on how many kills you can rack up, speeding the games up even more if you’re a regular annual player. That’s all alongside grounding the usually overhead UAVs so they can be taken out easier, alongside the inclusion of a canine companion in the form of a one-hit-kill buff you’ll obtain after five successful kills, ensuring all the motion-capture work the team did carries into matchmaking.

Another new mode is Extinction, Ghosts’ answer to the regular-featured zombie-survival mini-game. What’s required of you is to lug around a large drill to various alien spawn-points, set it up, and then defend from the hordes until it’s done. It does provide some variety at least aesthetically to the standard zombie-horde, yet mechanically aside from designating one person to be the carrier of the drill from one point to the next, there are not any fantastical alien weapons to get your hands on, although the visual thrill of things like exploding bullets and contextual actions like road-wide towers of flame to keep the hordes back are a fun inclusion.

In the end, Ghosts is more of the same, the entire spectacle looking as exhilarating and engaging as always, yet a lack of single-player substance this time round makes the campaign feel completely forced. It serves its purpose well for those expecting nothing else, and will be subsequently nourishing fodder for the online die-hards, finishing up another solid entry to the series.

This review was based on a review copy of the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty: Ghosts provided by Infinity Ward, distributed by Activision.

Upon finishing Beyond: Two Souls for the first time, or perhaps during various points in its haphazard scatter-shot narrative, you’d be forgiven for thinking Quantic Dream’s Lead Designer David Cage has lost his mind.

Whilst the underlying (and extremely praiseworthy) idea of fully unrestrained artistic vision is something to be cherished, there comes a point where guys like Cage really need to have their work put through some form of editing process. If not for the sake of honing in on whatever particular thematic message Cage is trying to get across, but also for the sanity of the people attempting to uncover them.

Beyond is a mixed bag, and if you’ve played past Cage-titles Heavy Rain or Fahrenheit you’ll at least be mentally prepared for the cacophony of nonsensical faux-philosophical quandaries and exposition, so on the nose, you’ll suffer something of a head fracture trying to understand it. Even though the question around Beyond should be one centered around human’s flirtation and interaction with ‘the other side’, it instead remains if Cage is relishing in Western cinematic tropes and having fun with them, or taking the overblown shtick seriously. It appears to entirely be the latter, and the game is much worse because of it.

The likenesses captured in game are nothing short of astounding.

Two Souls is the story of one Jodie Holmes, a girl born with a unique literal connection to the spirit world; a floating entity-friend Aiden (pronounced ‘eye-den’). The game attempts to tell a lengthy story comprised of extremely jarring narrative decisions, taking Jodie and Aiden on a journey that is equal parts incredibly moving emotional tale of a girl forever-bound to something no one else can fully understand, and many action set-pieces that would put Michael Bay to shame. ’That sounds like a recipe for success’ you might be thinking, and it would be if David Cage’s backhanded execution for his own story didn’t suffocate the telling of it.

Heavy Rain was a game only held back by a plethora of bad voice-acting and occasionally questionable scenes involving character deaths or motivations. Beyond, whilst being a genuinely jaw-dropping graphical achievement, and one is the closest a video game has come to literally being a controllable movie, never hits home with its various themes relating to interaction with the other side, or the tale of Jodie herself. As the game enters its middle-third, it appears Cage had a few years worth of different project ideas, to which he decided to throw every single one in one game, regardless of how fleshed out they may have been at the time.

While that does provide one incredible life for Jodie and a huge amount of variety in terms of level design, being that her existence encompasses a globe-spanning trip of self-discovery and real-world placement among her fellow humans, you’ll go from the relatable stress of attending your first house party as a teenager, to battling skyscraper-sized sandstorm demons, to preparing some chicken for a first-date, to stealthily infiltrating yet another war-torn Somalian locale.

As you can tell, this is less Heavy Rain’s serious tale of intertwined character-arcs and multiple threads, and more Fahrenheit’s back-half where main protagonist Lucas Kane suddenly realized he was ‘The One’, and had to battle increasingly crazy antagonistic forces between the more grounded emotional scenes.

Fahrenheit was roundly regarded as a failure, yet with a spectacular premise and weighty first half, it’s exactly the same with Beyond. David Cage seems incapable of finishing a story with any science-fiction element in a way that stays in-keeping with the tone he originally set off with, instead letting his inner 12-year old take over.

Jodie’s tale is one of a wondrous variation, and one that will take you from science-labs through deserts, frozen tundras and even the streets of an unknown city.

That’s not to mention the misleading trailers that showed the much more action-heavy set-pieces in the game, conveying the element of Aiden as a controllable element that would be an integral part of the games levels. Instead, while you are free to switch to Aiden whenever you like, his range of abilities from possession, suffocation, bullet-shields and telekinesis etc. are wholly contextual to the story, therefore it’s only at prescribed moments in the tale that character’s will glow different colors to indicate they’re ready to be taken care of. A hint? You kill the bright red ones.

All-in-all, Beyond is more of the same David Cage-craziness and as much as all his extremely lofty ambitions have created a project that ultimately fails, the fact that a man like Cage exists in the position he does is something to be applauded. Depending on your worldview, you’re either going to love or hate the likes of Cage, Peter Molyneux, Jonathon Blow, Ken Levine etc., or you’ll relish that there are still game developers out there not bound by outside influences, instead content in creating luxuriously elaborate passion projects.

Cage at this stage resembles a high-school drama student, ardently performing his pretentious work to a roomful of people who still believe he can produce great things. Yet after many hours of putting up with the questionable elements and threadbare narrative out of sheer goodwill and hope for a resolution that makes all that time worthwhile, Beyond is a divisive title that is only going to appeal to those who can forgo a total lack of tonal consistency for the sake of some beautiful visuals and a story that is overflowing with scope but utterly lacking in substance.

This review is based on a retail copy of the PlayStation 3 version of Beyond: Two Souls developed by Quantic Dream, published by Sony

Well, it’s a fully immersive 3D headset capable of ‘tricking’ your brain into believing you’re actually ‘in’ any given digital world or game .

With a screen inside fully encasing your peripheral vision alongside head-tracking technology that mimics movement in real time, the Oculus is set to be revolutionary when it hopefully launches in the next few months (The developers are still working out the kinks to make sure you don’t go cross-eyed as soon as you put it on!).

There has been a wealth of preview coverage around the internet as headsets are mostly only available to game developers and journalists all fervently seeing how much potential this impressive piece of kit can capitalize on. Until the inevitable lawsuits emerge when the first virtual stabbing occurs, how about a cerebral cortex-wetting list of experiences that are sure to be phenomenal when totally immersed in sensory overload?

5) Getting your blur on whilst driving a Koenigsegg

Before we move onto the juicier stuff, imagine a game as fine-tuned as Forza with you literally in the driver’s seat. Whilst developer Turn 10 tried to implement motion controls into Forza 4 through the first Kinect, only a fraction of people, if any, actually thought that turning their head partially away from the screen to look ‘into’ a corner upon approach was a good use of that technology. However, if the Rift is as believable as many have reported, you would have full control over exploring the inside of your favorite roaring sports car, as well as (in tandem with PS4’s motion tech or the new Kinect) literally taking the wheel in your leathery digital mitts and hurtling around the Nurburghring at 200mph.

4) Attending virtual E3 & Google Streetview’ing the World

Sony once had the beautiful idea of hosting virtual conferences and panels through their ultimately forgotten service ‘Playstation Home’, yet again through under-utilization and support the service never fulfilled its ultimate potential. However with PS4 developers reportedly being shipped Oculus kits and Sony themselves confirming a rival headset, we could all be walking around a virtual E3 or Comicon, complete with demos and a guaranteed seat putting you up the front for all the big conferences.
 Alongside this potential is a surefire definite: Google Streetview (shown left). As one of the most popular demos already available in beta online, if you want to witness anything from the neon-soaked Las Vegas strip to the Amazon rain forest by way of having a float down the river, any overseas locale will be just a few button presses away.

3) Driving a Warthog full of your best friends in Halo
In a COD-dominated world where increasingly rote game mechanics are trotted out year after year, the Oculus could provide some much needed reinvigoration for the series, not to mention other genre stalwarts Halo and Battlefield. From gliding over the battlefield in one of Halo’s Banshees to parachuting out of a Black Hawk helicopter in Battlefield, if the Rift has the capability to accurately keep up with the level of play online, it could reinvent how the whole genre is played.
With the multiplayer-only Titanfall demoing, it’s shaping up to the be the next big thing for online shooters, and due to the game’s aesthetic leaning heavily on mech suits and future warfare, the addition of Oculus support would prevent the somewhat repetitive nature of the FPS genre from bringing down the overall experience.

2) Exploring RPG mountain ranges before having your own ‘Gandalf moment’ with Balrog-type creature
In a similar vein to the Streetview idea, the notion of exploring another world from the comfort of your own home becomes infinitely more exciting if you add on the ability to fly, swim or just do anything other than sitting in your pants. All it would take is a mod for something with a world as well realised as Crysis, Far Cry 3 or Skyrim and you’re off exploring caverns, jungles and forests filled with wildlife and bandits. Add to that something like Far Cry’s iconic climbable towers and soaring hang-glider sections, and you have a winning formula for crossing the line of avatar projection immeasurably further.

1) Being a Superhero

What have we all wanted to do at least once in our lives? What’s the reason The Avengers slaughtered all previous box office proceedings and the likes of Spider-Man, Batman and Iron-Man dominate the psyche when the word ‘superhero’ is mentioned?
EVERYONE at some point has wanted to don the cape of Superman, the cowl of Batman, the web-shooters of Spidey or the mighty hammer of Thor. 
Again a failed similar attempt exists in Kinect’s back catalogue with Avengers: Battle for Earth, yet with new technology refining detection and graphic ability, you’d be lifting cars over your head as The Hulk, saving falling citizens by swinging in at the last minute as Spider-Man, or taking to the skies as anyone from Thor to Green Lantern. For some, the very idea of thwipping out a web or tossing a batarang at a bunch of thugs will make them go all fuzzy inside, and for good reason.

So there you have it! The possibilities for placing you inside any game world are nigh-limitless, and until sensationalist media tries to hamper potential with the never-ending violence debate, with any luck the scales of rationality will tip in the favor of progression, and we can enjoy our first-person questing in peace.

So Nation, can you think of any other awesome uses for such a futuristic piece of kit that aren’t featured? Get commenting below and let us know!

There’s a change coming, can you feel it? It’s in the air, albeit the nearest thing to ‘air’ the vast majority of us all interact with online anyway, in that games are reaching a cultural tipping point. As was more than evident at PAX this year through their Indie Megabooth, smaller development teams are dominating the fallout and chatter amongst the interwebs following the annual exhibition, bringing about a shift in the games media towards titles that have smaller voices with lots to say, as oppose to the deafening wail of the triple-A blockbusters.

One title that has enabled the fervor to build so palpably is The Fullbright Company‘s minimalist masterpiece Gone Home, a ‘game’ in the most literal interactive sense. Placing you in the shoes of returning gap-year student Kaitlin Greenbriar, it’s a first-person affair that’s soaked in the atmospheric tendencies of something like the recently released Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, yet with none of the overblown horror tropes distracting you from it’s intensely driven narrative focus.

Coming across your little sister’s reports on ghost activity around the house is an absolute joy.

Said focus is derived from an absolute masterclass in withholding key parts of information to the player, yet giving the impression rather like Telltale’s Walking Dead series that the story is unfolding uniquely for you, although the strings are eternally held by Fullbright’s puppet masters the entire time.
The game features no cutscenes or introductory sequences of any sort, save for plonking you outside the Greenbriar’s family home, suitcase at your side, with a note from your sister attached to the front door alluding to something that seems to have gone awry whilst you were away. In another masterstroke, the game is set in 1995, and makes the most of those explosive, digitally-flirtatious times by including hundreds of high-resolution art assets such as period-appropriate magazines, hand-written notes from family members, playable mix-tapes, and a whole host more that pad out every room of the labyrinthine mansion you find yourself in.

To delve into why Gone Home is such a unique experience would require story elements to be highlighted and dissected, and if you’re one of the people who has only felt the ephemeral aftershock the ending of this has released online, but is yet to check out the full package, please do so immediately and experience the Greenbriar mansion the exact same way main character Kaitlin does; all alone, driven intently by an explorative purpose.

Yes, that’s a prompt to insert a random tape you’ve just found and listen to the music contained therein!

What really sets the experience apart is the constant reliance on video gaming as a medium, forever playing with the bygones of influence and expectation from more technically accomplished games by instilling an utterly bare-bones control scheme that forces an information-heavy intake. So resolute is its reliance on interaction with the game world by way of picking up every item you see, that said controls are a mainstay of the pause menu.

The only way you’ll be able to assemble the full picture is to constantly check dates on documentation by zooming in and rotating every object. A cross-reference with a diary entry here, or a note left on a shelf there, and you begin to put together in your head an idea of what has gone down in your seemingly abandoned family home.
Another narrative trope of first-person storytelling in 2013 is the audio log, something we’ve seen used to great effect in the System Shock/Bioshock franchise. Here it’s less an actual item that’s playing away as you walk around, and more a voice in your head relaying the written notes of your sister. It’s a simple system of storytelling that feeds perfectly into an immensely satisfying denouement, and in a game where the sound design is comprised of floorboard creaks, thunder claps and pouring rain, a friendly voice in your ear is a welcome accompaniment.

The final few minutes of the game definitely have the most impact on those of us who have played horror games in the past, or have a firm grasp of general first-person exposition, as without giving anything away, it can be said that as with games like the aforementioned Walking Dead, it’s the subsequent self-reflection you feel after backtracking over all the facts and figures as the credits roll that many post-game revelations come flooding in.
For many, the will to dive back in with the hope of finding more items to back up theories will be strong. If that sounds vague, let’s just say there are more stories to be told inside this house than just the most obvious one, and leave it at that.

Gone Home is a wondrously enjoyable experience, and one that has paved the way for videogames to be taken much more seriously as unique artistic endeavours. As a game of systems and goal-setting it’s serviceable, but as a piece of interactive storytelling told through the medium of gaming, it’s nigh-unparalleled.

This review is based on a retail copy of the Mac OS version of Gone Home by The Fullbright Company, distributed by The Fullbright Company.

Suspension of belief is a fascinating concept, routed solely in that unique act of balancing just enough exposition to warrant exploration and discovery, yet keeping the juiciest revelations at a certain distance until the big finale. Sequel to first-person horror Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Pigs attempts to walk this line with varying degrees of success, predominantly failing to illicit any lasting response other than mild confusion midst a general feeling of nausea upon completion.

That’s not to even begin to say that this is a bad game, or an ineffective one, far from it. Pigs‘ sound design is utterly exquisite for one, as is the voice acting and atmosphere, but firstly it’s important to touch upon the bare-bones narrative that exists to push you through the increasingly dank and disgusting locales developer The Chinese Room have put together. This review will remain spoiler free, as Amnesia does not have much else going for it outside of creating a very compelling drive to explore, thus the requisite answers that come with drip-feeding the player information about their surroundings is the sole recommendation for this installment of the franchise.

“My father’s house has many rooms, and as for mine…well, it also has its secret chambers”

You are Oswald Mandus, 19th Century Victorian England-era businessman, and you awake in a dilapidated mansion awash with creaks, distant footsteps and echoed screams. You have your journal, a very soon-to-be-acquired oil lamp, and the ability to jump, crouch and sway, yet this is all you will ever have. It quickly becomes apparent that Mandus is a father missing his two children somewhere inside the house, and as you venture deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ancient chasms that run underneath, the game opens up to reveal there is much more going than two children playing hide-and-seek.
That being said in the latter half of the game, the built-up atmosphere of broken doors, steam-cloaked streets and open hallways gives way to a much more industrial environment, and with the inclusion of yet another sewer level (what is it with game designers including sewer levels?) progressing through the games’ defined levels becomes something of a slog.

It’s a slog exemplified by the fact that Amnesia does not play particularly well, with the overall movement behind Mandus feeling somewhat sluggish. Although such an approach is most likely intentional for the genre, forcing you to amble through the environments breathing in the wretched underground stench of decay and effluence, it does take you out of the experience when all you want to do is turn tail and run. As the games’ sparse amount of enemy encounters become more commonplace whilst you delve deeper and deeper towards the titular Machine, engaging in any meaningful way outside of awkwardly shuffling away for your life is the order of the day.

What’s that darting off into the alleyway? Do you want to find out?

Back to the exquisite sound design, and overall level design, as Amnesia takes it’s time to reveal its hand, letting all manner of creatures and demons fill your mind as you explore deserted rooms and factories. Personally though, when the reveal does come and you’re free to let the enemy approach, whilst this was genuinely an unsettling experience, the ‘Nearly-Man‘ as it is referred to, is very poorly animated. It’s possible this reinforces the somewhat abstract nature of the story, being that Mandus is often slipping into a dreamlike state, yet the fact remains that for what is such an unbelievably effective buildup, the grand reveal remains a bit of a stumble if the time is taken to actually watch the creature in motion.

However with a bit of distance between you and the enemy, the game makes perfect sense. Nearly-Man‘s sounds and screams echo all around in the many encounters where suddenly you find yourself stuck in a room with ‘it’, shrouded in darkness with nothing but your flickering lantern to light the way forward. Turn the lantern off and you can potentially pass unheeded, yet quickly ignite its all-seeing flame to make sure you’re heading the right way, and all hell descends upon you once again.

Something isn’t right about this room.

In these instances, Amnesia is horror personified.

With a supremely detailed graphics engine that sheds just the right amount of light from your little lantern onto rusty gates, cobbled streets or decommissioned machinery, often paranoia sets in as you’re SURE you saw something flicker in the distant darkness, only to turn around and be confronted by the very thing you were trying to avoid. For that alone, whatever quibbles you may have with the story’s resolution, rest assured the path towards it is paved with jump-scares and sleep-depriving imagery.

A Machine For Pigs tells its tale via a small alternating selection of outputs. Alongside the plethora of notes you’ll stumble upon, Mandus makes frequent journal entries to guide himself on his quest should you get stuck. As well as this you’ll often receive random phone calls, and have the ability to flick on gramophones that have some key conversations recorded, all serving to whet the mysterious nature of your actions and their surroundings.

It’s not a particularly long or arduous game to get through, instead in a similar vein to Gone Home, this is most definitely a ‘quality over quantity’ experience. Amnesia is a game most suited to horror fans or those with a penchant for the alternative story-wise, and with Slender Man dominating the genre, it’s about time someone stood up and took him on.

This review is based on a review copy of the Mac OS version of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs developed by The Chinese Room published by Frictional Games.

Are videogames art?

Chances are you’ve started to see that question pop up around the internet, with varying degrees of seriousness applied to tackling its conclusion. It’s a rather contentious topic that many major figures from within our industry have weighed in on over the last few years, and it’s one that strives to find an objective conclusion through a swathe of subjectivity.
As with all great debates that involve mediums we frequently indulge in (See our Violence in Videogames series for example), pulling at the threads of the discussion can bring about a greater appreciation for video games overall. The topic had been bubbling away ever more ferociously with each major landmark title delivering the next benchmark in narrative storytelling, graphical immersion, or just through general subject matter. Yet it was when TIME magazine critic Roger Ebert cast his gaze over our precious pastime and labeled the likes of Flower and Braid ‘pathetic’ that the entire conversation reached boiling point, and views started spilling over from all sides. Whilst Ebert retracted his views in response to the public nature in which he first declared them, he still maintained he did not believe games could qualify as art, and the battle he made public has been raging ever since.

UK newspaper The Guardian’s art critic Jonathon Jones wrote an incendiary piece relating to the New York Museum of Modern Art’s depiction of 14 specific games as an art exhibition, where he took the snobby, ‘Oh, look at them with their toys,’ approach. Cementing his ignorance were the use of terms relating to how he was, ‘too old and too intelligent’ to be even considering a video game as art, and speaking in absolutes when stating that, “A work of art is one person’s reaction to life. Any definition of art that robs it of this inner response by a human creator is a worthless definition. Art may be made with a paintbrush or selected as a ready-made, but it has to be an act of personal imagination”.

Journey on PS3 is exquisitely beautiful aesthetically, but does that make it a more worthy candidate for the artistic label?

Clearly, Jones hadn’t stepped into Janet Cardiff’s ‘The Forty Part Motet’, a modern art piece consisting of a set of speakers encircling a room, each producing individual instrument sections of a full orchestra. The listener can stand in various parts of the room to take in particular parts or stand dead-center and listen from ‘inside’ the composition to the full composition. Does said placement of the individual impact the artistry present in the work? Or is the work there to be explored, conforming to certain rule-sets applicable to the medium of music, yet taking nothing away from its overall execution in this unique way? You decide.

Hundreds of people within Jones’ comment section disagreed with him on the basis that he himself stated works of art should be measured through their levels of subjectivity. It is very apparent that pretty much every generation except the most current still thinks of video games in terms of archaic, pixellated graphics akin to Pac-Man, Tetris or Donkey Kong.
The constant scapegoating of video games as society’s undoing doesn’t help matters either for newcomers. Couple that with the exponential growth within the mechanics of games themselves, the playing of which is regarded very much as an ‘underground’ folly somewhat akin to the (also awesome) comic book world, and it becomes immediately apparent why this somewhat overlooked medium has within it a screaming sense of self-worth that tends to go unheard or misrepresented.
Whilst it is more common that whenever the latest quirky indie game comes out, the artistic label is slapped on due to the game’s less rigid mechanics and overall abstract nature, in 2013 we’ve seen the likes of Bioshock: Infinite and The Last of Us cross over into mainstream appeal, providing very involving, thought-provoking, big-budget stories that have real weight, consequence, and above all, a unique identity within the gaming realm.

It is true that many games strive to emulate films through their cutscenes, set-piece battles, and archetypal character portrayals, but it is the playing of the game that elevates the likes of Bioshock and Last of Us to new heights.
Could the relationships between Joel and Ellie or Booker and Elizabeth have been done as effectively on the silver screen? Or would the final events of The Last of Us be so harrowing had ‘that scene’ played out with no direct input?
With a passive audience forced only to witness their relationships develop or events play out instead of fostering these feelings through direct control, the immersion garnered from actively partaking in catching something Elizabeth throws to help out during a battle or actively saving Ellie from the clutches of one of the Infected cannot be replicated.

If art at its most basic, broadest form is expression of any degree through intent, then you could apply the above rules to any game from Journey to Call of Duty, Don’t Starve to Gears of War. However, a common criticism levied at this debate is that the players ‘author’ the content they partake in through controlling the elements on screen, thereby taking away from the original source behind this form of art.

Does Gears qualify as art in the same way as something as abstract as Flower or Braid?

The counter would surely be that said malleable elements are still programmed into the game in the first place. Such was the stance argued by game developer Clint Hocking back in 2007 in response to Ebert’s initial blog post, where he stated something applicable to Cardiff’s Motet; “Interacting with a work does not shape the work: it only reveals it”. With increasingly immersive technology providing tighter and more-engaging experiences within game worlds that walk the line of linearity, this point is only thoroughly strengthened over time as we explore the likes of Columbia or the apocalyptic streets of the U.S. in Bioshock and The Last of Us respectively.

At no point can you circumvent Uncharted star Nathan Drake’s abilities to instead make him fly or instantly produce a grappling hook when you may require it. Instead, you are forced to experience the game in the way the designers intended, with every animation and art asset carefully designed to be interacted with in a certain way.
Uncharted is one of a handful of games that can be scrutinized through one of Hocking’s terms: ‘Ludonarrative Dissonance’ (the analysis of player-controlled character action during gameplay that contests the depiction of said character built up throughout the other aspects of the game). Whilst this is one of the biggest caches of ammo that those who play the authorship card can pick up, it still remains that game worlds have an initially defined authorship through their developers, and even with the greatest disregard for the mechanics of the game, a player must abide by these limitations to even interact with the game at all.

We are at a point within the evolution of videogames where developers have acquired a sense of ‘auteurship’, where we can say, ‘This feels like a Naughty Dog game’, or, ‘This has Rockstar’s trademark all over it’, and this is a position only available in the last few years. Anyone who has stumbled across the cinematic Metal Gear Solid series knows of creator Hideo Kojima, and with Bioshock making the transition from cult-favourite to blockbuster franchise, narrative mastermind Ken Levine has been picked up to pen the script for the new Logan’s Run remake.
Games now run the gamut from the minimalistic to the grandiose, and whether a ‘game’ can be defined as bleeps, bloops, and reward screens, or just making it through the night in Don’t Starve because you just want to survive, these experiences are most definitely some of the most engaging, rewarding, and ultimately unique forms of media you can engage with.

Any thoughts? Madly in agreement? Staunchly opposed? Let us know in the comments!

After a frankly stupid amount of pre-release trailers and press-baiting teasers, the new Splinter Cell is finally here amidst the weeks where the industry kicks back before the run-up to Xmas.

Was it worth the wait? Oh, hell yes.

For any of the uninitiated, check our overview of the franchise so far to get caught up to speed; for the rest of you, this is the Splinter Cell you’ve been waiting for ever since those press shots emerged in 2007 of main man Sam Fisher looking disheveled and outcast. Blacklist sees a triumphant return to the Splinter Cell of old by way of injecting fun, arcade-style scoring mechanics to a gameplay system built on the pendulum swing of adrenaline thrills and shadow-stalking tension. There are a few moments where the game forces you down either route for the sake of narrative, but rest assured, the overall execution of these set-pieces along with the laser-tight control you now have over Sam’s every movement pump a renewed sense of adrenaline into the series’ stealthy heart.

Missions are accessed from a central, interactive hub-world taking the form of the Paladin, Sam’s aircraft HQ. You’re free to explore the Paladin as you see fit, Mass Effect-style, talking to long-time fan-favorite Anna Grimsdottir (this time voiced by Kate Drummond) alongside your fellow Cell operative Isaac Briggs, data-analyst Charlie Cole, and a certain returning criminal you bring onboard, all unlocking further equipment options that flesh out your tactical options in the field. 
The level of customization is pretty mind-blowing when you first take a scroll through everything from customizable sticky-cams and different suit types that are split into specific body parts, to changing the colour of the lights on Fisher’s goggles (however, anything other than green is just plain wrong!).

Immediately, this should refill your sneaking gland with nostalgia juice!

Controversially, Sam Fisher is now voiced by actor Eric Johnson instead of long-time series regular Michael Ironside. Whilst you may have had a certain attachment to Ironside’s handling of the character with his trademark growl and witty remarks, it has to be said that Johnson fits the new bill perfectly, projecting a Fisher consumed in his professional work to the point of detriment.
Setting aside the incongruous chronology the series has put upon itself by refusing to age Sam appropriately, what’s on offer here is a mix of the most white-knuckle scenes from 24 complimented by a big dollop of Mission: Impossible’s gadgets, all wrapped up in a surprisingly engaging narrative.

Taking on board the likes of Johnson and Drummond has allowed Ubisoft to essentially film a mini-movie, wrapping all their favorite action tropes into one awesome package of super-villainy and espionage, complete with ‘the comic-relief-nerdy-support-character’ and ‘the-gruff-badass-with-a-heart-of-gold’. Whether or not you just groaned at that description will be the determining factor behind your overall enjoyment of the main campaign, but it has to be said that this is a tale driven by great characters that moves at a hefty pace, and it’s a marked step up from anything that’s gone before.

Another huge step up is that of tighter controls that compliment the new score-system reminiscent of the one in Hitman: Absolution. Each hidden route, gadget-use, and lethal/un-lethal kill earns you points for each mission, a total that is bulked up by going out of your way to find hackable laptops or capturing certain ‘high value target’ NPCs. At the end of each mission, you’ll receive a debrief of how well you fed into each of the newly implemented play-styles: Ghost, Panther or Assault. Ghost is your vintage style of avoidance and essential guard knockouts, and the one that reaps the richest rewards, but if you have a penchant for throat-slicing and tear gas, Panther is your mix of the two. Assault, however, favors all-out warfare by letting you kick doors in and leave proximity mines on guard patrol routes. Whilst this is a huge amount of fun and a perfect stress-reliever when best laid plans go skyward, Splinter Cell is best played in its original vision, and Ubisoft has found the perfect mix of old and new, instilling that ‘one-more-go’ mentality amongst a plethora of worthwhile approaches and expositional drive.

Sneaking through levels with a pal as you mark targets for each other is still a standout moment.

Rejoining the gameplay mixing pot is Conviction’s ‘Mark and Execute’ mechanic, a gauge that fills up with either a combination of distance takedowns or one melee kill, allowing you to tag another three guards and take them out with one button press. Combing rooms through surveillance equipment and marking guards before busting in affords you just the right amount of power in the face of a varied opposition who will use dogs and drones to snuff you out.

With such refined mechanics, they’ll be tested to the absolute limit in the excruciatingly hard side-missions that accompany the main thread. There’s everything from stealth-focused ‘get-in-get-out’ data-hacking missions, where discovery means game over and a teeth-gritting restart, to a Gears-aping horde mode, where you survive waves of guys by either going all guns blazing or utilizing some very fast stealth tactics to drop in and out of the shadows.

Each mission outside the main thread can be tackled with a friend either locally or over Xbox Live, and with certain paths and missions being co-op only, partnering up to have each other’s back is another returning feature that’s great fun. 
It has to be said these missions are very hard, primarily because on the former stealth missions, you only have one checkpoint for the entire level, meaning that traversing crisscrossed laser grids and rooms of patrols is an exercise in remembering to breathe. That being said, it’s refreshing to see a big-budget game pull no punches in reminding everyone what made Splinter Cell so damn enjoyable in the first place, and like the olden days, you’ll be pushing the ‘Restart Checkpoint’ button over and over, muttering to yourself about how you, ‘can do that better this time’. This aspect may put off newcomers to the franchise, but in a world where developers are continually curtailing advanced gameplay to appeal to the lowest common denominator (Hey there, Mass Effect 3), this is a game made for longtime fans of the franchise, presenting a learning curve that veterans will love to get stuck into, yet may dissuade the rest from ever going anywhere near the stealth-only levels.

One of those rare gigs where the support is just as good as the main event – the return of Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer!

With guard patterns changing and different units being deployed upon any retry, Blacklist provides a constant challenge and keeps you on your toes, but rest assured, these controls were built for advanced play. Every time you react with lightning proficiency to dispatch a room full of guards in a cloud of sleeping gas and champagne-cork-popping headshots, the resulting collective clump of bodies hitting the floor is nothing short of euphoric.

The final crowd-pleaser of the night is the return of the asymmetrical multiplayer ‘Spies vs Mercs’, rounding off the package nicely. For those who want to take all the enhancements of the main game and pit them two on two against two heavily armed infantry guys, the beauty of this mode is Mercs play first-person, Call of Duty-style, whereas Spies are essentially the same as Sam, sans marking and executing targets.
Multiplayer in past Splinter Cell games Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory ate up a whole lot of evenings for fans, and it’s re-imagining here is sure to do exactly the same for a whole new generation.

With so much going on, however, Blacklist does suffer on a technical level, as even with the optional HD texture pack installed (on the 360 version), the game still shows low-res contextual button-prompts and texture load-in, alongside some pretty glaring screen-tearing during cut scenes. Luckily, the frame rate is solid as a rock during even the most frantic combat scenarios, saving the whole game from being bogged down under too lofty an ambition.

Overall, this feels like the next ‘proper’ installment in the franchise, as Double Agent was developed during the last console-crossover, having mechanics divided between both versions, and Conviction’s action-heavy aesthetic didn’t sit well with longtime fans, nor was it committed enough to attract new ones. 
Blacklist acknowledges all past failings by re-appropriating them into a game that allows you full creative freedom over how you approach levels and rewards you accordingly. With robust, fan-favorite multiplayer options and a strong narrative that leans on established, crowd-popping plot points and brainiac jargon, this installment challenges Chaos Theory as the best stealth-action game out there.

This review is based on a retail copy of the Xbox 360 version of Splinter Cell: Blacklist by Ubisoft Toronto, distributed by Ubisoft 

*Squeeeee* Hopefully you read that as Splinter Cell’s iconic ‘goggle noise’, a sound almost as instantly recognizable as rival series Metal Gear’s ‘FRING’ alert soundbite.

The franchise rocketed to success in 2002 by taking the most combat-lite sections of MGS and refining them through the overall tonality of a real-world setting, placing the player in the rubberized shoes of Sam Fisher, a gruff-voiced, neck-snapping professional badass thrust into a world of terrorist threats and espionage. Whereas Metal Gear always had a blockbuster heart underpinning its louder moments, Splinter Cell had (until recent installments) always remained the quieter of the two, developing a dedicated fanbase along the way.

SC was that scene in Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise precariously dangles from a ventilation shaft, hacking a computer surrounded by lasers and sensors, whereas MGS is that same character leaping out of a skyscraper in the sequel. Both scenes are undeniably cool, but for those of us who always wanted to be the type of gadget-equipped superspy that infiltrates, executes, and disappears without a trace, Splinter Cell was our game.

With 6 games under Ubisoft’s belt, each subsequent release constructs a juggernaut hype machine, and with the series’ third installment Chaos Theory being widely regarded as its best back in 2005, the legendary French developer has struggled to reclaim those lofty heights ever since.

Before Uncharted 2 redefined levels-in-motion, this was AMAZING.

CT took the questionable up-close combat of the previous games and introduced a double-trigger system of lethal and non-lethal takedowns, allowing for encounters to have just the right amount of powerplay between NPC’s and the player. They may have guns, and there may be four times as many of them than you, but when you can dart between the shadows setting off distractions to lure patrols apart only to dispatch them in a blur of blades and knockout punches, Chaos Theory was perfect.

However, 2010’s Splinter Cell: Conviction ditched these mechanics, giving the series its most noticeable shakeup in gameplay by injecting a total animation overhaul alongside a ‘mark and execute’ mechanic that allowed you to target groups of guards and eliminate them instantly.

Badass? Certainly, but with a franchise predicated on carefully executed infiltration tactics and guard-baiting patrol patterns, it was a move that divided the fervent fanbase the series had built up. Whilst you could hang back, scout your environment, and people-watch as per the Cell norm, there was a very pertinent sense of ‘get up and go’ that permeated Conviction due to its introduction of a more driven narrative. As well as making the aging Fisher move much faster than he had in previous games, the most noticeable absence was the iconic triple-light goggles that every fan had come to know and love. Whilst Sam would reacquire them later in the story, coupling this lack of traditional gadgetry with the overall new direction the series seemed to be going in left fans feeling sour.

Introducing interrogation sequences that were glorified cutscenes was an attempt to give weight to Sam’s motivations, and although the story told was a very personal one, as the series was never one that revolved around a narrative to get players involved, it ultimately fell flat.
 Although the mechanics were solid, fans still clamored for a return to the contemplative style of old. Many remember the CIA level from the first game, or the mind-blowing sequence aboard a moving train in the second installment Pandora Tomorrow, yet for all the bolstering-on of action-heavy mechanics and set-pieces in Conviction, few of them hit home.

The Mark and Execute technique sped up gameplay considerably, but was that a good thing for the series?

Enter Blacklist.
With the newest edition of the game, Ubisoft is trying to satisfy both sides of the fan spectrum, offering gameplay that identifies the more traditional Cell experience whilst retaining all the effort they put into Conviction to spruce up the game mechanics for your more average player. They’re calling the styles Ghost, Assault, and Panther, the former being the invisible ‘who turned out the lights?!’ approach, and the latter two featuring all out warfare, or a blend of the two.

Chaos Theory featured a watered-down version of this, allowing you to choose different loadouts at the start of a mission under the labels of ‘Stealth’ or ‘Assault’, yet you’d still be hard-pressed to find anyone who tackled that games’ missions with the shotgun as oppose to the trusty SC-20K multi-purpose sniper/assault rifle. However, all this seeming return-to-form is slightly offset by the developers ditching longtime Fisher voice-actor Michael ‘Throat-full-o’razors’ Ironside, instead going with the younger actor Eric Johnson. Why they couldn’t have retained Ironside as Fisher on the other end of a comms link advising a rookie Cell agent into the fold we’ll never know. Instead, Ubisoft balanced their initial goodwill by mimicking Metal Gear’s replacement of David Hayter with Keifer Sutherland for the sake of more emotive cutscenes, calling for further questioning into how far across the Hollywood blockbuster line they were again attempting to cross.

A slightly humorous look at the evolution of Sam Fisher’s arsenal across the 6 main games in the franchise.

Only time will tell if this potentially potent mix of the most well-received past ingredients will actually prove to be the series’ saving grace, but for now, all we can do is gather up our resources and wait until the end of the month.

Oh, and the best thing? The goggles are back in full force!

Splinter Cell: Blacklist will be released on August 20th (NA), 23rd (EU) and the 5th of September (JP).

Get used to screen, this is your whole world.

On a bitterly cold, stoically grey Soviet Russian morning in the fictional province of Arstotzka, a tightly-packed group of immigrants band together, ID cards and work permits in-hand, as they face the wrath of the border checkpoint patrol. There are mothers and fathers crossing to meet long forgotten sons, husbands travelling separately to wives, those in need of medical care, and the few who will do anything to get across. All of the responsibility of checking the documents of these people falls to you.

Papers, Please is a ‘dystopian document thriller’ developed by indie-mastermind Lucas Pope, responsible for hidden gems 6 Degrees of Sabotage and The Republia Times, the latter of which forced you into a journalistic role torn between your allegiances to either the people or the state. Thus, in Papers, Please, Pope has crafted a carefully unravelling narrative that revolves around the core balancing act of allowing a menagerie of foreign citizens into the ‘glorious’ Arstotzka. All major threads are channeled through you, the passport-checking, fingerprint-scanning hardass.

Or are you a kinder soul?

Perhaps when somebody fails to produce appropriately in-date documentation, stating they were in a rush because they need urgent medical care or they’re meeting up with their partner across the border, you decide to let them through? Doing so means repercussions for your family at home should your philanthropic tendencies get the better of you. They may go hungry for the evening, or be without medicine should one of them fall ill in your government-issued ‘Class 8 dwelling’. With the game pulling no punches in regards to neglected family needs leading to permanent death, do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

With 20 different endings all playing out depending on surviving family members, terrorist/state allegiances, and other story elements best discovered yourself, Papers, Please is a phenomenally intricate piece of art. One that instantly asks a very personal question: could you sacrifice members of your own family to allow for others to flourish? Or would you deny entry to those without adequate papers (even going so far as to detain them for extra cash), so that your loved ones can live more comfortably, or at the very least, survive?

Memorise regions, seals and districts, then hit the red button to highlight non-matching information

These are but a few questions laboured over by the player with each ‘level’. You see, words like ‘game’ and ‘level’ serve to somewhat lessen the experience, as at no point when you’re in the midst of interrogating immigrants and fact-checking do you ever ponder labeling this as just a piece of entertainment. It seems video games are genuinely maturing and evolving to a new standard in recent years, and with works such as Papers, Please breaking through to the wider gaming audience, it can only mean richer experiences in the future.

Mechanically, PP is solid, presenting you with an external view of the never-ending queue of people, as well as a first-person desktop made up of a plethora of your own papers. In addition to your daily-updated regional news leaflet, you have a rulebook consisting of everything you’ll need to highlight should any entrants’ documentation or stories not match up. As you progress, you’ll be given easier access to the different parts of your booth by way of keyboard shortcuts, as well as fingerprint cards, more revealing statistics about the people in front of you, and story-related items that you’re free to handle any way you see fit.

To talk about the story in any real depth would be to spoil one of the most immersive experiences of the year. Everything within PP serves to create an atmosphere of downtrodden, ‘all-hope-is-gone’ dystopia, slowly engorging you within its minimalist menu aesthetics and the industrial clicks n’ clacks of your equipment. Over time, you find yourself pausing to exhale before opening your booth, before clicking the tannoy button that ushers in a very depressed ‘Next!’ soundbite whilst you read through your daily rulebook updates and ponder how many people you need to process so that you and your wife can make it through the night.

With a roof over their heads and some heat for the night, you only have enough money to afford medicine for one family member. Which is it going to be?

There’s something slightly primitive about the art style present throughout the actual gameplay as well, as not only is the game set in 1982, but the pixellated graphics serve to let you focus on the reality of the situation without distracting you through over-animated facial expressions or unrealistic movement. Each border-crosser has with them a set of papers and an audio transcript that you may pull up should you need to. Do you put your head down and do your time, safe in the knowledge that there is an eventual endpoint to your term, or do you do what you can to aid certain elements in the surrounding areas?

Papers, Please draws you in and establishes a world of people relying on you to survive, it cements the level of personable immersion that the more technically-impressive L.A. Noire failed, and all by simply stripping back aesthetics and animation, thereby letting your mind fill in the blanks as your hands and eyes dart across the keys.

Criticisms could be levied at PP for not providing very much hand-holding, even in the earliest stages of the game, yet as the opening titles dictate, you are plucked from obscurity into this role and must perform as your state demands. Therefore, initial fumbling and incurred penalties are part of a learning curve that’s as sharp as Russia’s iconic sickle. There’s no way a game such as Papers, Please is going to be liked by a mass audience, but for the most part, it’s not meant to be. There are sure to be those that will take one look at the screens present or overhear a ‘game about passport control’, and turn away.

Yet, for those who stick with it, what awaits is one hell of an enriching experience that forces you to evaluate your fellow man by way of the disconnect offered through administrative processes. It’s an experience we’ve all been on the receiving end of at some point in our lives, and it’s something you owe it to yourself to check out.

This review is based on a review copy of the Mac OS version of Papers, Please by 3909 LLC, distributed by 3909 LLC.

Klei Entertainment has only been going for the last 7 years, yet within the last 3, they’ve seen a stratospheric rise into the cream of the indie developer crop through the likes of games such as Shank, Mark of the Ninja, and, most recently, Don’t Starve.

We had the opportunity to get in touch with Klei founder Jamie Cheng in regards to what it’s like having a community-fueled development process, what principles the team live by, and what does this all mean for the next generation?

Building a base to live off is one of the most satisfying things in Don’t Starve…until something goes horribly wrong.

When you have a selection of memorable franchises in front of you to choose from, it begs the question as to whether a developer will continually push themselves to create new worlds, or find safety through the relative ‘ease’ of sequelization. Having that ‘one game’ that propels you into the minds of the mainstream gamer means you’ve essentially ‘made it’, but then comes the idea of having to deliver on past successes again and again.
“There’s always some healthy paranoia,” says Cheng. ”When we’ve focused on the idea, it becomes more about whether we can truly build that idea out rather than comparing it to our past successes.”

Don’t Starve is such a game. Their latest work is as far a cry as can be from their first work, Eets, a small object-placing puzzle-platformer with a cutesy art style reminiscent of Sam & Max. Instead, Don’t Starve connotes the most darkly playful Tim Burton pieces, dropping the player into a world with no tutorial or stringent narrative and just asking them to survive the days that come. “[It's] a game that’s a huge departure from Mark of the Ninja. We dedicated ourselves to build a game where players set their own goals, and were intrinsically rewarded by the gameplay, rather than us doling out rewards as you went along”.

Shank’s primal blend of guns n’ pointy things appealed to fans of visceral thrills young and old.

It’s a fascinating concept, and one that harkens back to a time before achievements or trophies, back to a time when a game could ONLY be enjoyed for it’s existence alone. Players entering the world of Don’t Starve know they are going to die eventually, but the lands explored, creatures befriended, and structures fortified along the way prove that is where the true beauty of the game lies. Cheng is very steadfast in his approach to progressing the gaming medium by taking risks such as this, and although this decision to reward the player through the very act of gameplay itself had to be bandied about the team a bit, “once we decided we were doing that, it was about how we were going to make it happen rather than how people will perceive it based on what Mark of the Ninja was. We’re not specifically opposed to sequels, but I think it has to explore meaningful new experiences.”
One of Klei‘s only titles to be granted a sequel was Shank, a side-scrolling slasher with super-tight controls that featured the ability to shoot, stab, grab and throw a wide variety of enemies throughout it’s single and co-op campaigns. Whilst Shank was the game that made heavyweights EA take notice and decide to publish, it was the refined mechanics and originality of Mark of the Ninja that really started to set Klei apart from the rest.

The simple-yet-hard-to-master gameplay of Mark of the Ninja has proven to be one of Klei’s greatest successes.

MotN proved to be one of the biggest draws to the company in terms of combining their unique visually-arresting art style with gameplay mechanics that were a brilliant blend of old-school side-scrolling, spruced up through fluid animation techniques. It looked absolutely stunning, and with Creative Director Jeff Agala again lending his impressive skills to the games cut scenes and art direction, MotN turned into three-quarters badass stealth ‘em up, one-quarter slickly produced cartoon.

“Don’t Starve was actually in production alongside Mark of the Ninja,” says Cheng. ”One of the reasons we have such a great team is because we invest in our creativity. Klei is a place where we experiment with lots of different things, including technology, process, art, and design. And that process of experimentation is core to our culture”.

In regards to outside influences, Cheng states there are far too many to list, yet makes it clear that he “love, love, love[s] Miyazaki. I recently watched ‘Only Yesterday‘, which was never released in North America, and it’s simply wonderful. From a design perspective, I tend to get my inspiration from a collage of places that are hard to pinpoint. I think the Fables comic has probably seeped into a lot of my subconscious these days.”
It’s no surprise then, that looking forward to the next generation and technologies such as the Oculus Rift can play a part in bringing to life a creative vision; “I see software as a way to support the core concepts of the game, rather than the other way around, but I do see the value in deciding the box you’re going to be creative in,” says Cheng.

This is one of a very small amount of release materials surrounding Klei’s next game Incognita, how do you think it’s going to play?

When developing Don’t Starve, many different iterations of the game were put out, with community feedback helping the team tailor specific aspects to what fans did or didn’t like. In an age where social media has created a constantly connected bond between creators and consumers, the question of how much an original vision can be changed to suit the public instead of its intended form is a poignant one.
“Ultimately we need to be bold in our design in order to push the medium. We spend a lot of time discussing with our community and being clear what our vision is, and we’ve found the community to be very supportive of that. If we can focus the discussions around the core concept, then the suggestions also become more focused and we work together to make a better experience,” states Cheng.

With one of of Klei’s core principles being unbounded creative freedom, this extends into their relationship with the fans, “I’m a big fan of seeing the best in people, and by and large, I’ve found the Don’t Starve community to be some of the friendliest, most thoughtful people around. It’s awesome.”

With Shank, Mark of the Ninja, and Don’t Starve all putting two feet squarely in the ‘definitely-worth-your-time’ category, Klei are also hopefully about to unveil more details surrounding their stealthy, ‘turn-based tactical espionage’ game Incognita very soon.

One thing’s for certain though: with a community as fervent as Klei‘s, it won’t stay hidden for long.