Setting sun

The tail end of a generation can be a rich time for game developers. With hardware installed bases about as high as they’re ever going to get, the risk of new IP is dramatically reduced. If there’s ever a time to take a punt on something brand new, this is it. Not that you’d know it, admittedly, from the sequels that front-load this month’s Hype.

Yet there is another opportunity this late in a console cycle. It allows creators to put into practice all they have learned about their craft during the generation. Yes, we all crave innovation. But iteration can delight us, too.

And so to Doom Eternal (p34). The series reboot, released in 2016, did the hard work in redefining what the most revered FPS of them all should look and feel like on modern hardware. Eternal has the luxury of merely building upon those marvellous foundations, but it does so with style. Transporting the action from Mars to Earth, expanding the arsenal and adding a crucial mechanical twist to proceedings, it’s textbook sequelmaking – but when it’s printed on such lavish stock, only a fool could complain. The same applies to its Bethesda stablemate, Wolfenstein: Youngblood (p42), which shifts the focus from protagonist BJ Blazkowicz to his teenage daughters, transports the action from the US to France, and adds some series-first online co-op. Sign us up.

Yet it’s possible to make a sequel while still taking a risk. Psychonauts 2 (p38) arrives two generations after the original, and must tread a careful path – meeting the expectations of fans of the first game, while also keeping pace with the advancements in technology and game design that have occurred during its hiatus.

That’s no concern for the developers of Yooka-Laylee And The Forbidden Lair (p52), who after paying homage to Banjo-Kazooie are now doing the same to Donkey Kong Country. The beauty of retro revivalism is that time stands still, and progress is a matter of taste.