STACK J#165 Jul 2018

GAMES FEATURE

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Days Gone

Spider-Man

SONY W hile we can see why folk were baffled by the structure of the PlayStation press conference this year, it was hard to understand the hostility aimed at the briefing, when, to be fair, the company clearly laid out its modus operandi weeks before E3 started – a focus on four main titles with a few surprises thrown in; and that’s what we got. The Resident Evil 2 remake was a nice surprise and we managed to get a little bit of time on this one at the Capcom booth after navigating an unsettling zombie-filled maze/ ghost house armed with nothing more than a torch to get to the demo. Nestled in behind Sony’s expansive booth at E3 this year was the media section where

of years? Yeah, well try playing it. Our demo begins with a large group of freaker hordes contained in a pit in what looked like a scrap yard. From a vantage point, we tossed in a couple of Molotovs to heat the party up, and then, like greyhounds out of a trap, the hordes were on us. On two attempts we didn’t manage to escape them, but keeping them at bay with a shotgun and machine gun whilst running backwards and frantically trying to reload your weapon is both thrilling and terrifying. On VR we tried out and thoroughly enjoyed Blood &Truth from the same studio that produced the The Heist demo back in ’14, which is essentially an extended movie version of the game. The wonderful yet weird 'Déraciné , developed by Bloodborne studio, From Software, is an intriguing game in which you play a faerie that we’re still trying to get our heads around. Finally, we squatted down on a beanbag with Media Molecule to take another look at Dreams . We first played this back at Paris Games Week in 2015; it’s a game that feels like it’s been in development for years – and it has. Showcasing a level the dev constructed on a 30-hour-long train journey, he told us that, incredibly, he’d actually been working on Dreams for seven years. As he explained through our 30 minute demo, the only restrictions users will encounter here is the reach of their imagination. It has a tentative 2018 release date – just don’t hold your breath.

Swinging into action in Los Angeles. Words Paul Jones

accessibility to the titles – other than the VR demos – is simply dictated by queuing and a little hustling when time was getting short. Since its announcement two years ago, Spider-Man has been on the top of our list to play and our first port of call on the booth visit. The open world NewYork that Insomniac Games has created here is breathtaking and controlling Spidey – a veteran crime fighter at this point in his career – through the city, utilising an array of anchor points, is thrilling. Combat is a little tough to begin with until your fingers adjust to the buttons and special moves, but jumps, rolls and little blasts of web that momentarily stun all play their part in taking down the seemingly incessant waves of enemies. While

Release dates of note:

Spider-Man - September 7, 2018 Days Gone - February 22, 2019 Dreams - TBC 2018

there’s an undeniable Rocksteady Games influence here, fans of Spider-Man, or Marvel in general, will thoroughly enjoy this game. Disappointingly, the theatre presentation for The Last of Us Part II was the same gameplay demo shown at the press conference, although we knew we were unlikely to get hands-on; it's rare cusp of release. The best part of these small presentations are always the sometimes banal but often entertaining questions that journalists pose afterwards; in our group, one accused the Naughty Dog dev conducting the demo of using a video and not actually playing it, even though he was. Remember the anxiety you experienced watching the Days Gone demos over the last couple that you get to play Naughty Dog titles until they're on the

Days Gone

08

JULY 2018

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