Risky business

‘Who dares, wins’ is fine if you’re in the SAS, but most of us are just trying to get through life unscathed. Developers aren’t in the business of jumping out of the proverbial plane to sell a videogame: one gamble too many can spell disaster for a studio. Indeed, many of the titles in this month’s Hype seem positioned to mitigate risk.

You’ll probably like VR gangster caper Blood & Truth (p40), for instance, if you enjoyed PlayStation VR Worlds; Sony London Studios sold you the demo for it via The London Heist. Doubtless spurred on by the positive reception – you could waggle a revolver threateningly with one hand while huffing a Cuban with the other, for god’s sake – this is Heist cranked up several notches, with a longer runtime and even some smart new ideas for the moments in which you’re not manually slamming magazines into guns like a headsetted Keanu Reeves.

The creators of Guacamelee 2 (p44) have had much the same idea. Luchador brawling’s gone down smooth as mashed avocado (especially with the young ’uns. Less teeth, we suppose) in the past. Why not give them some more? Again, it’s a case of iterating on the tried-and-true. Juan Aguacate’s precisely designed moveset has even remained the same. It’s the sequel’s world that has expanded and improved, with the devs’ recent blog post promising “More varied and interesting chicken gameplay” and “No memes”. More of this sort of thing please, everyone.

And then there’s Battalion 1944 (p50). Having Kickstarted its homage to the shooters of yore, Bulkhead Interactive has already secured a modest – but passionate – playerbase: a small team and budget means it doesn’t have to pray for a runaway success. If we were David Cage, however, we’d start putting in a word with the big man for Detroit: Become Human (p36). The more we see of it, the riskier it looks.