PlayStation 5; Team Asobi/Sony Fun-packed and brimming with personality, this full-length Astro Bot outing pays tribute to PlayStation history while pushing the console’s capabilities When I say that Astro Bot reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy, I could pay it no higher compliment. It’s not that it’s derivative: indeed it’s the very abundance of new ideas that places it up there with Nintendo’s best 3D platformers. It has taken me around its own small galaxy of planetoid-style levels, from bathhouses to diorama-sized jungle temples to rainy islands, each host to a brilliant one-shot idea, such as a pair of frog boxing gloves or a backpack monkey or a time-stopping watch that lets you freeze giant zooming darts in place so you can jump on them. It is splendid to witness this development team’s creativity let loose. Team Asobi has previously made a couple of short-form Astro Bot games – one for the PSVR, Rescue Mission, and another that came packaged with the PS5 at launch, Astro’s Playroom – but this one is full-length, complete with challenging bonus levels that play out like electrified skill-check gauntlets for the generation raised on 3D platformers. It is supremely funny and characterful, thanks to the titular chibi blue-and-white robot and his crowd of friends, many of whom are dressed up as characters from the most obscure crevices of PlayStation history. The attention paid to these bots – their animation, their mannerisms, their dance moves and little cries for help when they’re stuck up a tree being menaced by malevolent octopuses – fills them to the brim with personality. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Fuelled by a backdrop of sexist culture, alarming censorship guidelines and ‘anti-woke’ ire, the summer’s biggest hit has become a lightning rod in the video game culture wars • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here A Chinese game called Black Myth: Wukong has been the biggest hit of the summer, selling 10m copies in just three days, according to its developer Game Science, with over 1 million people playing it every day on games marketplace Steam. China’s homegrown games industry is absolutely massive, but concentrated almost entirely on mobile phones: this is the country’s first successful blockbuster console and PC game, which makes it very interesting in itself. It’s also a massively successful single-player game arriving on the back of a few high-profile multiplayer flops, which suggests there is still more of a market for this kind of adventure than video game execs like to believe. But Wukong has been grabbing headlines for other reasons, too. Back in November, IGN put together a report compiling crude, vulgar public comments from a number of Game Science staff, some of whom are very well-known in China’s games industry. IGN also spoke to several women who expressed their disappointment and despair over omnipresent sexism in games and in China more broadly. It is a very interesting and well-researched article that doesn’t so much point the finger at Game Science specifically as set it within the context of a bigger Chinese feminist struggle. But of course, it attracted the ire of an increasingly vocal swathe of “anti-woke” gamers that has found a gathering-place on YouTube and social media, some of whom accused IGN of trying to sabotage Black Myth: Wukong by making things up. Continue reading...

This seemingly minor addition allows players to sprint and dive in every direction so crunch moments can feel like a ridiculously fun John Woo shootout Here is a statement of fact that I am not entirely proud of: I have played every Call of Duty game since the series launched in 2003. I’ve been there through the extremely good times (Call of Duty 4) and the extremely not good (Call of Duty: Roads to Victory). And while I may have cringed at some of the narrative decisions, the casual bigotry rife on the online multiplayer servers, and the general “America, fuck yeah!” mentality of the entire series, I have always come back. In that time, I’ve seen all the many attempts to tweak the core feel of the games – from perks to jetpacks (thanks Advanced Warfare!) – but having spent a weekend in the multiplayer beta test for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, I think developer Treyarch may have stumbled on the best so far. It is called omni-movement. Continue reading...

Following extraordinarily low sales and player counts, Sony has removed its latest shooter from sale on PC and PS5 Sony has announced that new PlayStation 5 shooter Concord, which released on 23 August, is to be taken offline just two weeks later, with refunds issued to every player who bought it. The game is a team-based hero shooter in the vein of Activision-Blizzard’s hit Overwatch, pitting teams of five against each other in tight combat arenas, and its launch has been one of the most high-profile flops of the gaming year. It has recorded player counts in the mere hundreds on Steam, the most popular PC marketplace, and is estimated to have sold fewer than 25,000 copies, according to analysts at GameDiscoverCo. Continue reading...

Autumn and winter are the best time for gamers, and if your set-up is looking a little stale, here are the key ingredients for a serious seasonal upgrade With summer gone and the skies already greying over in preparation for six months of uncontested rain, you may well be thinking more seriously about video games. September and October tend to see the biggest releases of the year, so you can expect many evenings spent hiding from the world while playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 or Mario Party Jamboree. If your gaming set-up is looking a little tired and you want to treat yourself to a serious seasonal upgrade, here are some suggestions. Continue reading...

Marking the anniversary, the creators of the rap beef beat-em-up sequel share memories of transforming Flavor Flav and Snoop Dogg into legendary video game characters ‘I remember we visited Ghostface Killah [of the Wu-Tang Clan] and he was mad at us!” recalls Daryl Anselmo, former EA employee and art director for 2004’s landmark hip-hop-fused beat-em-up, Def Jam: Fight for NY. “Ghostface had a four-pound solid gold eagle bracelet and he insisted his character’s finishing move should be this bird coming to life and pecking out all the other rappers’ eyeballs. The limitations of the PlayStation 2 technology and our violence restrictions meant we couldn’t pull it off. It was impossible.” The game’s producer Josh Holmes interjects: “When Ghostface first asked me about the eagle, Lauren [Wirtzer Seawood, another one of the game’s producers] told me just to nod along and smile. When we saw him again in the studio for the sequel, I apologised [for misleading him] and we quickly moved on to recording his character’s expanded insults for the new game. I remember one was: ‘Go home and cry to your momma. And, while you’re at it, tell her I’m hungry!’” Continue reading...

(KeelWorks; Konami; PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox) The Scottish studio’s debut game is a fiendishly innovative take on the classic space battle genre Years before Star Wars, video game designers had begun to explore galactic dogfighting. In 1962, Spacewar!, the first formal computer game, was a rudimentary but influential attempt: two narrow triangles swirled around the gravity well of a star, launching torpedoes at each other. Having established the medium’s first principles, hundreds of developers attempted to refine and perfect the genre, which rose and dived in fashion but never fully warped away. Cygni is, perhaps, the highest production attempt yet, a debut from a tiny Scottish studio that answers the improbable question: what if Steven Spielberg had directed Space Invaders? A lone fighter, you streak across an alien planet attacking swirling flocks of UFOs and purplish space jellyfish as they pipette across the screen. Stylistically reminiscent of the polarity-swapping arcade classic Ikaruga, Cygni is a technological masterclass, your spaceship sweeping over distant robot battlefields, buffeted in the blast of a thousand fireworks. An orchestra, one moment frantic, the next melancholic, provides complementary backing to the action, which ebbs and flows with moments of respite between the flurries of activity. Continue reading...

This queer emancipation story is set in a cosy pixellated art world but all is not what it seems. You’ll tend your flock, pick some flowers – and also have to dethrone God The realm of Hus is a rural idyll, where happy villagers wander the marketplace and young shepherdess Ren tends to her flock while her partner, Tyra, fixes up their cottage. It’s almost as though they are all living in a cosy farming simulator, created by a benevolent game developer. But are they? Or is it just an illusion cast by an evil deity, trapping them in a horrifying pixellated facade? This is the delightfully “meta” setup to Quantum Witch, a pixel art platformer by lone developer Nikki Jay. Heavily inspired by old LucasArts adventures and the legendary Dizzy series on the ZX Spectrum, it’s a comedy game with a serious autobiographical heart. Jay grew up in a right wing religious sect based in the north-east of England with an incredibly enclosed perspective. “They were obsessed with the end of the world,” she says. “They believed it could happen at anytime and that all the wicked people would be destroyed: so I had to be good. It was extremely oppressive.” Continue reading...

The collection comes from a mysterious (and fictional) 80s video game company and includes puzzles and platformers, RPGs and category-defying hybrids, all in 8-bit splendour When it comes to video games, one thing is universal: releasing one is tough. But releasing 50? At once? That’s another boss level entirely. This is the challenge for the team behind UFO 50. This much anticipated 8-bit anthology of retro-styled games is finally due to release this September, seven years after its announcement. With 50 games included, the wait is justified. UFO 50 is a jumbo variety pack of complete video games, each with its own title, genre and story. “They’re not minigames,” asserts developer Derek Yu and creator of 2008 platformer Spelunky, named one of the greatest games ever made. “Every game could exist as a full release on some 80s console or computer.” Continue reading...

Years ago, I could confidently beat my kids at Earth’s ultimate multiplayer game, but those days are gone. Or are they? I am dying. Either aged 84 or 54, according to the two extremes of life expectancy calculator I found online, which is worrying because I am 55 in December. I’m running out of time to do the things I dream of: see Machu Picchu; find a good vegan sausage; beat my kids at Mario Kart again. It was our number one family game until they started massacring me so gleefully I was forced into acts of petty revenge: namely, taking things of theirs they loved and secretly giving them to charity shops. They still miss that cat. Continue reading...