4 GAMES TO PLAY ...
PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS
PC, Xbox One
Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is an Xbox’s Game Preview, giving early access to works-in-progress. Future updates promise improvements to stuttering frame rates and janky visuals, the regular lag and the unresponsive controls, but right now it’s half broken.
It’s also revolutionary. In each bout of PUBG,
100 unarmed players drop on to an abandoned island, scavenge hardcore military equipment and kill the other 99 in a last-gun-standing deathmatch, the action heightened by a shrinking ‘safe zone’ that each survivor must reach within a time limit. Do you run or hide? Search or settle? Defend or attack? This dynamic simplicity creates an experience unlike any other, a thrilling, always shifting game of cat and mouse that, amazingly, blinds you to the many technical flaws.
OKAMI HD
PC, Xbox One, PS4
The HD-revamp works wonders for Okami and its cel-shaded visuals. You’d never know it was a 12-year-old PS2 game.
You are the Sun God, Amaterasu, but both your divine memory and powers are in disarray following 100 years of well-deserved sleep after the last time the world needed saving. Now darkness rises again and you set out to recover your strength. Okami serves up a Zelda-style adventure, with rich environments and zany characters, yet it has a glorious trick all of its own – a magical brush that can rebuild bridges, slice’n’dice enemies or raise the sun in the night sky, and the game makes brilliant use of such an unusual feature, blending it into the beguiling action.
LEAGUE OF WAR: VR ARENA
PS4
The use of VR to create a tabletop wargame without the need for a table is inspired, but League Of War doesn’t do it justice. The mobile gaming ancestry is glaringly obvious in the small arenas, and though the “pick up and place” gameplay is engaging, you’re fighting skirmishes, not wars. At this intimate scale, the unit designs ought to be more distinctive and interesting to stop them fading into the lacklustre green and brown of the battlefields. Most disappointingly, there’s no attempt to offer online multiplayer, though you can draft in a local non-VR opponent to use the TV and a controller. Sadly, it’s hardly worth the effort.
LOCOROCO 2 REMASTERED
PS4
First released on PSP back in 2008, LocoRoco 2 was a great handheld puzzler. You bump and nudge a gaggle of warbling jelly baubles through a Fisher-Priceesque world, merging into one big blob, or splitting up again to tackle obstacles like tight crevices. The simple controls (left and right shoulder buttons tip the world and roll the blobby Locos around) and peppering of rhythm action (tap in time to the beats to earn extra collectables) really suited short escapes of on-the-go gaming, and levels were designed to take full advantage of the PSP’s superwide screen. It’s still fun, but when tethered to your living room, rather than killing time on a commute, this
PS4 revamp can’t recreate the original magic.