Xbox UK - April 2014

THE ESSENTiaL GUiDE TO XBOx 360 aND XBOx ONE
Issue 110 April 2014 www.totalxbox.com
THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

BE THE BEST AT TITANFALL
ESSENTIAL TIPS REVEALED
An XBLA classic is reborn on next-gen
tRIaLS IS BaCK!
FIRST PLAY
BATMAN ARKHAM KNIGHT

Rocksteady heads to Xbox One for its final trip to Arkham
The man who built the Xbox One
REVIEWED
PlaNTS VS ZoMbIES DarK SoUlS 2 / ThIEF SoUTh ParK / STrIDEr CaSTlEVaNIa: lorDS oF ShaDoW 2 / MORE
Issue 110 April 20145.99
WORLD EXCLUSIVE
WOLFENStEIN
Hands-on: why this shooter reboot is a surprise hit
A NEW HERO FOR NEXT-GEN
Welcome
Ive said a lot about how exciting it is to see new worlds and new experiences arriving on Xbox One. This issue, we get to see how the old guard does it. Rocksteady Studios has built an incredible reputation with its first two Batman Arkham games, going from little-known London studio to guardian of one of the biggest heroes in modern gaming, and its taking that responsibility seriously. Batmans debut on Xbox One is the biggest, best-looking version of Gotham to grace gaming, and the fact that its seemingly the studios last XBOX ONE HAS BEEN visit makes it all the THE SHOT IN THE ARM more noteworthy. Meanwhile in THAT WEVE ALL Helsinki, RedLynx is BEEN WAITING FOR doing great things with Trials on Xbox One, and even Wolfenstein is starting to impress after a lacklustre early showing. Its starting to feel like next-gen is the shot in the arm that the industry has been waiting for, and thats good news for everybody. Enjoy the issue.
BATMAN FACES HIS BIGGEST THREAT YET ON XBOX ONE

Our resident Bat-fan visits Rocksteady to see a new, truly open-world Gotham (p30)
HOW REDLYNX REINVENTED TRIALS

The perfect arcade game gets better (p40)
INSIDE XBOX ONE: THE LAUNCH STORY

How Microsofts all-new approach paid off (p44)
EMAIL jon.hicks@futurenet.com LIVE OXM Jonty TWITTER @MrJonty
SUBsCRIBE AND GET A FREE GAME! SEE P66
Everything you need to get started on Xbox 360s free-to-play hit (p99)
THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO WORLD OF TANKS
WHY WE WANT TO RETURN TO WOLFENSTEIN

MachineGames delivers a perfect blend of shooting & silliness (p52)
@OXMUK
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE / 3
CONTENTS
30
PAGE
#110
This is what Rocksteady was doing while Arkham Origins tided us over.
PAGE
BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT

72
DASHBOARD
NEWS AND INTERVIEWS CURATED FOR YOUR EASY DIGESTION
08 Black Tusk gets Gears

What lies ahead for the planet Sera?
16 Sledgehammers Call of Duty
Activisions big-boy gets a new three-year dev cycle.
64 54
PAGE
PAGE
18 Opinion
Ed stubbornly pines for the game that justifies Kinect.
20 Essential Titanfall tips

Get up to speed ahead of the pack.
XbOX EXTra
GETTING MORE FROM YOUR CONSOLE
118 Now Playing
Games that have stuck in our mind and/or craw.
ThIEF
4 / THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
122 The OXM Replay 127 Side Quest
How The Godfather failed, despite its ambitions. Slobbering longingly over the XCOM tech tree.
Garrett steals back on to Xbox.
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
42
PAGE
Whoever he is , he doesn t appear to be on the side of good , and he s SUBsCRIBE sAVE 23% certainl y no amateur either SEE P66
A new supervillain is revealed in Rocksteadys final trip to Arkham
76 58 81
PAGE PAGE
PAGE
FEaTUrES
Access to the whole of Arkham, unfettered use of the Batmobile, and a brand new villain created by Rocksteady itself: the Arkham Knight.
30 Batman: Arkham Knight
40 Trials Fusion
How do you make a sequel to one of the worlds simplest games, when the community have already built over 600,000 levels? Youd be surprised.
SOUTh ParK
40
PAGE
D&D gets real in Colorado.
We chat to Boyd Multerer about building the software that powers Xbox One. What does Xboxs Director of Development see coming next?
44 The Inside Man
PrEVIEWS
TrIaLS FUSION
48
PAGE
The insanity extends way into the future
48 EA Sports UFC 52 Wolfenstein: The New Order 54 Sniper Elite 3 56 Tropico 5 58 Murdered: Soul Suspect 62 Lego The Hobbit 63 Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes 64 Kinect Sports Rivals
rEVIEWS
PAGE
52 63
PAGE
Replayable gem, or undersized rip-off ?

@OXMUK
METaL GEar SOLId V: GrOUNd ZErOES
68 Dark Souls II 72 Thief 76 South Park: The Stick of Truth 79 Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z 80 Rekoil 81 The Lego Movie Videogame 82 Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 84 Strider 85 The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 86 Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 87 Pac-Man Museum 87 Rambo: The Video Game 87 Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z 87 Far Cry Classic
Meet the
OXM CONTRIBUTORS
Jon Log Blyth
Associate Editor
Live OXM Log Twitter @disappointment Log achieved glory this month by finishing an Inferno level of Trials Fusion in 251 attempts, while a RedLynx employee watched. To that mans credit, he never once screamed oh god just let me do it, you cack-handed tit.
The people behind, and in some senses also under, the UKs biggest games mag
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
Deputy Editor
Live OXM ETBoy Twitter @dirigiblebill Edwin has made the leap to full-blown veganism. This has brought out the worst in everyone, as he struggles to not sound like a pious hippy, and everyone else tries not to pop a cheeky Scotch Egg into his mouth as he works.
Aoife Wilson
Staff Writer
Live OXM Aoife Twitter @AoifeLockhart Reviewing Dark Souls II triggered a torrent of stifled, outraged grunts and explosive moments of jubilant profanity. For a compact lass, she cant half generate a blood-curdling torrent of blasphemy.
Dan Griliopoulos
Contributor
Live GriddleOctopus Twitter @griddleoctopus Dan has been at the location of every major tragedy in human history, silently taking notes. Hes also been at a couple of preview events, which hes written up for a range of gaming outlets. Flexible chap, is Dan.
Philippa Warr
Contributor
Live davenotdave Twitter @philippawarr In an industry where sexism runs rampant, Philippa really isnt helping matters by having a name thats easily shortened to Phwarr. Shes been reliving old Lionhead glories in our Now Playing section. Phwarr.
OFFICE PLAYLIST > WHAT WEVE SPENT OUR TIME ON THIS MONTH
Titanfall Beta Good to see the universally euphoric response to a game that should prove to be a system-shifter.
The Stick of Truth Polishing up those side missions after finishing the main game, just to hear all the dialogue.
RuPauls Drag Race Season 6 Log is convinced that he could pull this off if he just lost another couple of pounds and learned to sew.
Android Netrunner The card game that defies you to understand whats going on for the first 16 games.
TOTAlXBOX.com
Every day we add to the sum total of all that is Xbox on our website, spearheaded by the capable fingertips of the estimable Mr. Evans-Thirlwell. Its a non-stop erotic cabaret of news, features and everything Xbox. Recent highlights: Why Wolfenstein is better than you think / Six ways Microsoft could improve the dashboard / Where to get Xbox One games cheap / What Respawn cut from Titanfall
OXM on iPad
If you like the magazine format, but wish it looked a bit more like it was trapped in the Phantom Zone from Superman 2, the iPad edition is enhanced with video content and is just four quid an issue. Android users? Get onto Zinio, as thats where youll find us. bit.ly/ipadoxm
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
DASHBOARD
XboX NEWs, aNaLYsIs, CULTUrE, oPINIoN & MorE
Couple of big chaps, just enjoying the sticky cover that they popularised.
FENIX fROM THE fLAMES

Whats the future for Gears of War, now that Epic is out of the picture?
8 / THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
G E ar sh I F T
Warner Bros has confirmed that it wont be releasing further patches for Batman: Arkham Origins to fix what it calls the minor glitches that some players have been experiencing. If it doesnt block progression, its staying in, apparently.
Arkham Origins will never be patched
If youve been waiting until Titanfall to get an Xbox One, consider yourself very clever: Microsoft has cut the consoles price by 30 to 399.99, and will be including a free digital copy of Titanfall while stocks last.
Xbox One gets UK price cut
Fergusson: he got BioShock Infinite shipped, and now hes back on the Gears.
ears of War has a new home. Microsoft has bought the iconic Xbox series outright from its creator, Epic Games, and handed it over to its newest studio Black Tusk where itll be overseen by series veteran Rod Fergusson, who we last saw at Irrational finishing off Bioshock Infinite. Revealing the news at the end of January, Microsoft surprised the world when it unveiled its new custodian. Black Tusk Studios (formerly Microsoft Vancouver) is still best known for a trailer, that slick 30-second promo for an unnamed stealth-action game that we saw at E3 last year. What looked like a solid concept for a futuristic spy thriller, however, turned out to be just that. It was something that was done in Unreal [Engine 4] and more of a concept piece, explained Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer. The studios manager, Mike Crump, had previously said that Black Tusk was working on Microsofts next big entertainment franchise, though Spencer suggested that this Splinter Cellmeets-Uncharted teaser wasnt necessarily anything more than a fleeting idea, a way for the fledgling studio to test their creative and technical expertise on the new version of Epics Unreal Engine, on which the new Gears game will run. Not that its likely to be with us any time soon. Following the announcement, Spencer said that the new game would have to reignite the franchise and grow it, adding that it wont be a quick turnaround but he believes weve built the right team to achieve that goal, I just want to give them the time. The discussions to acquire the series rights from Epic had reportedly been ongoing since last autumn, so Black Tusk might have begun preparatory work on the game then. Indeed, there might even be something further to be read from Spencers initial Twitter response, where he referred to Black Tusks first original GoW. Could that potentially mean a stopgap in the form of a remake of the first Gears? Microsoft certainly has previous form with remakes, with rumours still buzzing that were set to see a Halo 2 Anniversary Edition later this year. A tarted-up Gears box set for Xbox One would fit.
SLOW BuRN
@OXMUK
DASHBOARD
New limited-edition controllers out now
Microsoft has launched two new Xbox 360 chrome controllers complete with transforming D-pad in black and purple. Get one for 39.99 in the UK.
Gears is obviously less ripe for an update, though a visual overhaul with a few additions perhaps adding Horde and Beast mode to the original game would certainly be warmly welcomed. Spencers stated desire to reignite the series is understandable in light of the low sales of Gears of War: Judgment. Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly was essentially handed a poisoned chalice, tasked with continuing the story
Well, those colours appear to be confirming multiplayer.
of Delta Squad, whose narrative had come to a natural conclusion in Gears of War 3. Though generally praised by critics, it was received poorly by buyers, and its first month sales of 425,000 copies was barely over a fifth of Gears of War 3s launch tally. In such circumstances, its easy to see why Epic would want to sell: it can now focus its attentions on PC-only sandbox survival game Fortnite (other
Dont take any chances with the range of your shotgun.
games are also in development, were told) while licensing its ever-popular middleware out to publishers Unreal Engine 4 has already been adopted by Microsoft for Black Tusks game and Fable Legends, so it seems to be the companys next-gen engine of choice. At the same time, its easy to see why Microsoft wanted to buy: the franchise was one of the most significant Xbox titles of the last generation, and fans have been clamouring for its return on Xbox One since the console was announced. While Judgment many not have done the numbers, a proper reboot that shows off the power of the new console could be just as popular and possibly as influential as the first Gears was on Xbox 360. The pressure is certainly on Black Tusk. On the one hand, it has to deliver a game that appeals to existing Gears fans, while ensuring that it feels new enough to justify its status as a first-party standard-bearer, something more than a visual upgrade of a last-gen game. Thats perhaps why Microsoft sought the experienced Fergusson, producer of the first two games and executive producer on the third, to take charge of development.
FERgIE TIME
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
Previously awarded to Molyneux and Miyamoto, this years went to Rockstar. Sam and Dan Houser joined other staffers to collect it earlier this month.
Rockstar wins BAFTA Fellowship
THIS MONth COMING UP more in this section WE LEARNED...

p
Sticking to the ruined beauty brief, then.
15
Giving your brain an electric shock might make you better at games.
p
16
How Sledgehammer will be keeping Call of Duty relevant.

p
18
How do you refresh a franchise that was so popular it became an industry standard? Youre going to upset someone...
As for where the series might go under Fergussons stewardship, we discussed potential updates to the franchise in an interview conducted around the release of Gears 3. I think theres more we probably could have done in terms of customisation he told us. Part of it is what your franchise is built for. We cant really do weapon porn, where we add a stock and a scope because our weapons are kind of unique. With contemporary shooters increasingly offering more ways to personalise your online experience, that could well be part of Gears future. Its also evident that he was keen to bring new players into the fray, with more accessible multiplayer elements which would tie into Spencers aforementioned desire to grow the fanbase. Weve tried to make it frictionless so you can be in and playing within ten seconds, said Fergusson, adding that he believed it was important to cater to die-hards and novices equally. Players who
compete in the alpha playlist you recognise as the advocates for your game. Theyre the champions, theyre the people you love dearly and so you make sure their needs are met. But if you end up just aiming towards the hardcore, that audience gets smaller and smaller as you go along, and so you want to keep bringing new blood into the mix. A third possibility is that Gears will follow the example of Fable Legends, becoming a long-term service rather than a traditional boxed product. With an expanded universe taking in multiple novels and comic books, not to mention a long-awaited film adaptation, theres plenty of lore to draw from. Happily, whichever direction Microsoft takes the franchise in, well likely hear more on those plans before too long, with Fergusson confirming hed share more with you all soon. A teaser trailer at E3 is the very least were expecting. Chris Schilling
Why Kinect games are having trouble finding their feet.

p
22
How The Division is an RPG first, and cool gadget-shooter second.

p
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//BLAcK tUsK hAs tO dELIVER A GAME thAtLL APPEAL tO EXIstING GEARs FANs, WhILE ENsURING Its MORE thAN JUst A VIsUAL UPGRAdE OF A LAst-GEN tItLE//
@OXMUK
Whats been going on since Sunset Overdrives awesome reveal.

tEN pRO t I ps
JoRdAN ThomAs oN mAKiNg SoUth PARK iNto A pRopER Rpg

Mechanically, its a huge departure from BioShock, but the common dimension was narrative.
THIS MONTH:
The creator of BioShocks Sander Cohen on how he worked with South Parks creators to fine-tune their ga m e
oriented. It was the game design that I could assist them in building a working model of the rules, so that they could break them strategically. That relationship felt good and correct; it was denitely not to teach them how to tell jokes.
If I played Spock at all, it was on a design axis. I would say: In 2014, this old-school mechanic will be thought of as more frustrating than funny. So there was a lot of back and forth about game design. Matt, Trey and Chris Parker (product director at Obsidian) were incredibly receptive. It was a shockingly healthy collaboration, I felt, for being so three-headed.
But tell them how to make the game better
8
tiNY tRiViA Thomas brief for Thief 3s The Cradle was the single most terrifying first-person experience ever constructed. Seems legit.
I was already a fan of the series. There were denitely moments when I could say: What about this moment; can we make a piece of loot that refers to it?
Be a fan
2 3
Mechanically, its a huge departure, but the common dimension was narrative. Narrative is hugely important on almost all the games Ive worked on, and it was comforting to speak to other writers and to know that they care about the same things.
Its actually a little bit like BioShock
We aimed for multiple paths in dungeons for the player to feel like they chose the way forward that stuff is key to me, and its why Im in games at all. I feel like more of that made it into the game since I came on, and Im proud of that.
Let the player choose their path
BAcKgRoUNd ChEcK
NAmE Jordan Thomas Job titlE Creative Consultant Bio Started out at Psygnosis, but his big moment was creating the legendarily terrifying Cradle level for Thief: Deadly Shadows at Ion Storm. Moved to Irrational where he was lead designer on Sander Cohens Fort Frolic in BioShock; was then made creative director of 2K Marin where he lead development on BioShock 2. Went back to Irrational for Infinite, then went indie - but he found the time to consult on Stick of Truth.
There are Skyrim references, and that stuff came from them. It was more about nding spaces they hadnt already tapped and asking: What about this? Some of those jokes escalate, some are one-offs, some are structural, some are framed by the entire game, and I feel like that was probably where the rest of us could help at all. On the pure storytelling front, Matt and Trey supplied us.
Have Trey Parker and Matt Stone do the gags
5 6
My big push was to integrate free-form exploration where you can use tools, combine them, and mess with the environment. If you experiment with your tools and affect your enemies before combat begins, you can actually neutralise them, imbuing them with a state that will transfer into the combat, making it easier.
Give the player room to experiment
I called it contingent humour what might the player do, and how can we turn that into a punchline? For instance, theres that player archetype of a cleaner who tries to open every door in the game. Rather than having most doors be locked, we turned several of them into jokes, which escalate to the point where you almost dont want to see the last one
Make it funny as well as fun
Youve got one party member whos adventuring with you, and you can rotate them out any time. Rening the way in which characters with incredibly long legacies behave as systemic pawns Matt and Trey had a lot to say about that, and rightfully. That was probably among the most challenging intersections between story and game design.
and make sure its all canon
10
My past experience, not just with BioShock, was action-
Dont tell the creators how to tell jokes
The parody social networking mechanic was one place for that collecting obscure characters is an excellent way of doing a totally arbitrary collectable object thing and give it a soul. The junk loot each of those is a reference to something only the hardest of core fans will get. OXM
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
Cater to the hardcore fans
Call of Duty Elite to close
Activisions paid premium tier closed at the end of February, to be officially replaced with the CoD app. The passing was marked with two hours of double XP.
DASHBOARD
Aoife goes that extra step to be better at Dark Souls.
SHOCK TACTICS
Can an electrical temple-tickler up your game?
o you want to be better at videogames? Well, you could always practice. But one company is offering what it claims is a scientific edge. Its open to anyone who can spare 180 on a slightly cheap-looking red plastic head-brace, that delivers an electrical tingle to your forehead. Scepticism is to be entirely expected, but the technololgy behind the foc.us headset is supported by an impressive volume of real science. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation passing a low current across your brain is actually a bona fide thing, mostly used to help patients suffering from stroke and learning difficulties. tDCS wasnt developed for videogames, and the documented benefits are more general in their
cognitive and learning nature. But its gamers whove been singled out as a market with enough expendable income and hunger for self-improvement. Its nice, being a target demographic. The headset has minimal controls, making it difficult to use unless you have the companion app (iOS-only, at this stage), and the fixed brace made it difficult to fit correctly onto an over-sized head. Our experience? A warm, tightening sensation at the default 1.0mA, stepping up to a prickly pulse at the upper limit of 2.0mA, that lingers for minutes after your session. Its not painful, but its not exactly comfortable, and we
//PROTRACTED USE SHOULD DELIVER COGNITIVE IMPROVEMENT//
didnt notice any particular leap in our Trials Evolution times after a single session. Protracted use is required for measurable benefit, according to a company spokesperson, and we havent been able to spend enough time dressed like a Star Trek extra while playing Battlefield to track its impact on our K/D ratio. Still, recent research by the US Air Force suggests that tDCS can deliver enduring improvements in cognitive performance and even structural changes in the brain. Whether this headset does the same remains to be seen, but if you want to give it a try you can find out more at www.foc.us.
IN NUMBERs > DATAPOINT: NEWs IN NUMBERs > DATAPOINT: NEWs IN NUMBERs >
720p
The resolution you can now livestream videos via the Xbox Ones Twitch app.
@OXMUK
65
The number of new developers recently announced for the ID@Xbox program.
7%
Price reduction of the Xbox Ones official RRP and we saw some going for 370.
D A S H B O AR D
THE BIG PICtURE. ONE IMAGE, ALL tHE INFo
THE LONG CYCLE
Activisions CEO Eric Hirshberg explains the new release schedule: On the twoyear cycle, with the level of content we were putting in the games, it became a real horse race. With next-gen hardware, we want to make sure our developers have the time to innovate and iterate.
Having the honour of developing the new, next-gen CoD is a devs dream come true. The next CoD represents a new era for this amazing franchise. Today is just the beginning, say Condrey and Schofield, as though theres an option to say anything else.
WHAT SLEDGEHAMMER SAYs :
Although were still in the generational transition year, Activisions focus is very much on Xbox One. Its has also addressed performance issues, saying that the tech of the next-gen platforms was still coming into focus last year. Expect better resolutions and rates.
NEXT GEN FIRST
SLEDGEHAMMER Is LEADING THE NEXT-GEN CALL OF DUTY

Will the new schedule be good for the long-toothed franchise?
Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, who made their name with Dead Space, defected to Activision and founded Sledgehammer in 2009 to create a third-person CoD spinoff. That was almost immediately abandoned after the acrimonious departure of Infinity Wards key staff, meaning Sledgehammer had to pitch in on Modern Warfare 3. Now, finally, it gets to do its own game.
Whats Sledgehammer, and why is it making Call of Duty?
Sledgehammer isnt replacing anyone. As the glossier pixels of next-gen require ever more work, Treyarch and the new Infinity Ward have been moved onto three-year schedules. Meanwhile, Activision has confirmed that it considers Ghosts to be an offshoot with legs. So our speculation is that Sledgehammer is working on a Ghosts sequel, while Treyarch and IW deal with Black Ops 3 and MW4.
Why bring in a new lead developer?
Whisper it, but this might be the point at which CoD gets to try something different. If Titanfall is as successful as expected, then therell be fresh pressure for Activisions behemoth to evolve, and thatll be (slightly) easier at a studio that has more than 48 months to get its game made. That said, a new generation means more work for devs, so this might just be Activision running to keep up.
Is there any reason to be alarmed or excited?
Activision is being proudly hands-off with development, claiming its studios have a lot of independence. Sledgehammer has earned that trust with MW3, it says, although details on what its up to are slim. The proof will be in the pudding, is the unhelpful summary.
VAGUE BUT HOPEFUL
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
According to a Tweet from Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid 5 was going to have an 80s filter applied throughout. But the process took too much processor power, and had to be removed.
The unfiltered Phantom Pain
UppERs & DOwNERs

This month s temperature, taken
WHATS HOT?
LAST GEN SECOND
1
DARK SOULS II
Activision didnt get to be a billion-dollar powerhouse by snubbing millions of potential customers. Sledgehammers game will be coming out on Xbox 360, but its making no secret of the fact that this will be a slimmed-down version of the Xbox One game.
You murder us and we scream at you, but underneath it all we know we love each other.
2
EVOLVE
Our first hands-on experiences confirm that this is going to be a big deal.
3
SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH
Its like an hours-long TV episode and we couldnt be happier.
WHATS NOT?
1
BIOSHOCK INFINITE
Snubbed in the Best Game and Best Story categories at the BAFTAs. Harsh, or was the Emperor starkers?
2
ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE
Skyrim meets Morrowind, or an MMO with pretty backdrops? Either way, that subscription fee is going to be pricey.
3
LIGHTNING RETURNS
The best thing we can say about it is that its over now. Its over, and we can move on.
@OXMUK THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE / 17
THERES A KINECt IN EVERY XBOX ONE-OWNING HOUSEHOLD IN tHE COUNtRY NOW, SO WHERE ARE ALL tHE INNOVAtIVE KINECt GAMES?
Ed calls his ow n intellectual wor th into question once again by arguing for m ore m otion control
OPINION
f Gods a gamer, Im not going to heaven. After all, Im a rm, if occasional, fan of games that rely exclusively on the Kinect sensor, and Kinect is clearly a device assembled by Dark Powers to lure the Righteous from the Way of Ironsights. Developers have taken several stabs at the notion of pure gesture control, most of which havent really panned out, and some of which have proven utterly dreadful. Heres why I dont think Kinect-only gaming is a busted ush, and to hell with any bickering about the resilience of your elbow tendons. In a nutshell, the problem with most Kinect games is that they secretly want to be controllerbased games. Deprived of their precious buttons and analogue sticks, theyll sullenly demand that you tackle mechanics and scenarios that were conceived with controllers in mind, thus opening a can of unattering comparisons. Segas abysmal Rise of Nightmares, for instance, wants to believe that the human torso is a giant, latency-free analogue stick, as opposed to (in my case) a bunch of potatoes held together by elastic bands. Far better, Mr Developer, to throw all those controller-based paradigms out the window and start from scratch that way, you wont have to worry about your ungainly motion-controlled shooter being measured against the chilly nesse of an Operation Flashpoint.
Fighter Within a game that makes me want to hoof kittens into a snakepit.
to get stuffed, theyll opt for mechanics like tilt head to lean. Yes, this kind of ne-grained interaction is more palatable now that Kinect has been treated to a power boost, but that doesnt make it any more entertaining. Heres an act to follow: Xbox Live Arcades Leedmees, in which you stretch out your arms to create platforms so that tiddly Lemmingstyle critters can amble to safety. Or how about Lionheads Fable: The Journey? Now theres
MAkING WAVES
Another, related problem is that Kinect developers have been oddly unimaginative, doubtless for fear of deterring the reactionary husks who thought giving Devil May Cry to Ninja Theory was a colossal insult. Faced with the boundless possibilities of being able to stick two ngers up at a videogame character and have her tell you
Heavy Armor isnt about fighting well its about surviving against the odds .
a game that isnt trying to beat a dead horse. The secret to this rst-person caravan em ups success is that much of the time, your character doesnt actually move hes just the guy holding the reins. Thus, any problems of latency or misrecognition can be easily glossed as quirks of equine behaviour. The game isnt a triumph, mainly because it keeps insisting that you wash your horse, but it comes a lot closer to the mark than Rise of Nightmares. It also comes closer to the mark than Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, an immensely ambitious project that appears to have overestimated how accurate the rst-generation Kinect sensor would be. And yet, the most enduring of Heavy Armors problems have nothing to do with Kinect. If
//THE PROBLEM wITH MOST KINECT GaMES IS THEY SECRETLY waNT TO BE CONTROLLER-BaSED GaMES, OPENING a CaN OF UNFLaTTERING COMPaRISONS//
you manage the admittedly rare trick of perfecting the setup, the motion recognition is entirely workable; moreover, the kinks are completely compatible with the ction, which puts you in charge of a cramped, lumbering, ergonomics-averse cofn. Id genuinely class it as an unreservedly Great Game, were it not for the designers habit of continually throwing enemies at you till you memorise the spawning pattern. An Xbox One remaster could be just the thing. Kinect gaming on Xbox One isnt off to a terric start. Yes, Kinect Sports Rivals is highly promising, but theres also Fighter Within to consider, and the horizon is troublingly free of Kinect-only projects. Hopefully, an injection of indie knowhow care of the forthcoming ID@Xbox program will set precedents for larger, more cautious developers to follow. Theres a Kinect in every Xbox One-owning household now, so lets make sure we give the damn thing something to do. NEXt MONtH Why well never get auteur developers in AAA studios.
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Master Chief voice actor Steve Downes has quashed our hopes that Halo for Xbox One will be arrive in 2014. Theres still a chance of Halo 2 Anniversary, though.
Halo 5 wont be out this year
DASHBOARD
NEED FOR SPEED hEADs TO hOLLYWOOD
Director Scott Waugh speaks to us about turning games into movies
As racing franchise is the latest games stalwart to make the jump to the silver screen, with the just-released movie directed by former stunt man Scott Waugh. His experience makes him ideal for the task, he told us. Ive been so lucky in my career, because my life was a real videogame, if you think about it, he says. So with my movies Im always trying to put the audience into the boots of my characters so that they can see what Ive been so lucky to have seen. And I think thats why, maybe, my style works so well for videogame titles. My films are purposefully no CGI, very realistic, and the stunts are all real. Waugh is, by his own admission, not a huge gamer; he spent most of his
formative years on film sets and behind the wheels of various stunt cars. So how could he be sure hed make a film Need for Speed fans would appreciate? When I approach my subject matter in any film, I really try to be very respectful of the fans, he replies. And so when we were making this film, I studied the games a lot. I wanted to be very accurate and authentic to the game. Not just camera angles, but the format and the cars that were used.
//HOLLYWOOD HAS ITS SIGHTS ON GAME TITLES RIGHT NOW//
FAn sERVICE
[EA] originally developed the screenplay, he continues, and then
Dreamworks and Steven Spielberg got involved, and weve been collaborating with them ever since. One big plus for NFS: it didnt have a storyline that was built for the game. When you make a storyline for a different genre, like for a videogame, sometimes they dont make great movies, because the story wasnt made for a movie. Theres a bit of change going on in Hollywood, Waugh concedes; it may finally be waking up to the fact that videogames are hot property. What happened with comic books, and how theyve become huge movies definitely Hollywood has its sights on videogame titles right now.
YoUrE FIrEd! > QUotEs oF thE moNth > bLah bLah > hE saId What? > Yadda
We know we want it and we know it should exist, but we dont know what it is yet. But we are doing things that well announce soon.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, on the possibility of a Borderlands 3.
@OXMUK
There were some things Im not allowed to talk about I was like, Wow! Thats interesting. Why dont you tell people that?
DayZ creator Dean Hall on talking to Microsoft about bringing his game to Xbox One.
It was hard to see the numbers, as they were lower than we wanted. Thats always hard on any game team.
Microsoft Studios Mike Ybarra on Ryses mixed critical reception.
DASHBOARD
WALKING TALL
21
1. ShooT YoUr oWN GrENAdEs 2. UsE ThE TITAN As bAIT
ESSENTIAL TITANFALL TIPS

5. BLoCK sMArT
Try to engage your Vortex Blocker after an enemy player does theirs will expire before yours, leaving them defenceless against your riposte.
The worlds most anticipated next-gen shooter is out now. Heres how you can stand apart on the battlefield
The Smart Pistol locks onto them, allowing you to surgically target the blast wave.
8. UsE A TITAN LIKE A MorTAr
Try dropping yours directly into a crowded battle. Anything caught beneath it will die instantly including other Titans.
12. UsE YoUr doUbLE JUMP To AUTo-CorrECT
Park it in Guard Mode and wait for somebody to Rodeo the thing. Providing they arent cloaked, they should be easy enough to snipe.
6. TUrN A WALL-rUN INTo A sNIPING sPoT
3. RIdE shoTGUN
Youre protected by the Titans bodyshield while perched on its shoulder and you can still use your anti-Titan weapons. Watch you dont shoot your ride in the neck, though.
Ram your knife into a wall with the left trigger, engage your cloak and get busy with that Smart Pistol. Be sure to move on once youve scored a couple of kills youre awfully exposed.
9. ThE SMArT PIsToL Is YoUr GrUNT MoP
Its possible to change direction a bit using the boost. Lets say you want to bounce sideways through a window after a wall-run, for instance.
Smart Pistol bullets kill Grunts in one shot. Run through a crowd of them and youll clean up. This will shave tens of seconds off your Titan clock.
13. SWITCh To SLAVEd WArhEAds
7. BLoW UP ThE droPshIP oN ATTrITIoN
10. CLoAK sMArT
These home-in on your reticule, transforming your Titans shoulder launcher into an effective ranged weapon. Beware of Vortex Blockers, though.
4. USE AUTo-EJECT PLUs NUCLEAr EJECTIoN
Cornered by two or more Titans? Punch randomly till you automatically eject, then watch as your severely beaten attackers expire in a cloud of radiation.
Why let that Epilogue end with a daring escape? Three Titans focusing their fire ought to do it. Youll even get some bonus points in the process.
Just ejected? Cloak while airborne to camouflage your landing. Just fired a rocket? Cloak again. Crossing open ground? You know what to do.
14. EJECT EArLY
11. ChAIN YoUr WALL rUNs
Tap D-pad Up, then mash X to trigger manual ejection a handy trick when you need to reach the dropship on Attrition, or when youre being rodeoed. Equip Nuclear Ejection for extra hilarity.
Your jump boost refills when you run along a wall. Keep stringing them together and you need never set foot on Mother Earth again.
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Waiting for Fallout 4? Youll be waiting a while. Bethesdas Todd Howard says his team are still trying to work out which of our ideas are going to stick, with no announcements planned yet.
Fallout 4 still at ideas stage
Rumour & Speculation

The five biggest bits of gossip this month
//DROP YOUR TITAN INTO A CROWDeD BATTle TO INSTANTlY KIll ANYTHING BeNeATH IT INClUDING OTHeR TITANS//
Bethesda will announce Dishonored 2 at this years E3. Itll release next year on Xbox One.
EXCITeMeNT: 8/10 LIKelIHOOD: 7/10
Nordic Games will reboot the Darksiders franchise with a bit of help from PlatinumGames, creator of Bayonetta.
3
Call it to your side from across the map, and itll probably get blown up on the way.
15. KEEP YoUr TITAN CLosE
19. CoNVErT A SPECTrE
Your Data Knife can hack entire groups of AI-controlled Spectres in one go. It wont turn the tide of battle by itself, but itll help.
Lionheads unannounced non-Fable game is a free-toplay MMO.

16. UsE GrUNTs for rECoN
They arent that tough, but they will expose or distract other Pilots. Try escorting a pack of them from on high.
20. UsE YoUr TITANs LANdING shIELd
Itll last a few seconds long enough for you to kill another Pilot before boarding your Titan, perhaps.
Neither The Division nor 4 Halo 5 will

17. TAG-TEAM A TITAN
Rather than fighting one-on-one, leap from the cockpit, engage your cloak and flank the other Titan while it attacks yours.
21. TITANs doNT LIKE bUILdINGs
release in 2014.
Titan weapons dont splash damage through walls, so Pilots inside buildings can be hard to kill. Try to catch them in the open. Our Titanfall review is available now on totalxbox.com, and will be printed in the next issue of OXM.
18. STAY CLosE
Titanfalls maps are big theyre built for Titans, after all. If youre hurting, finding a safe area should be easy enough.
Far Cry 4 will be announced this year. Itll be a new story with a new cast, and set in the Himalayas.

D A SHBO A R D
UPDaTES NEW iNFO ON THE BiG GaMES
A world of survivors, hostile AIs and competing squads will offer a broad range of challenges.
UPDaTE
THE DIVIsION
Its neither confirmed nor ruled out. Its an ambitious open-world experience, with a persistent environment that feels new. But beyond the graphical strain of building convincing virtual tech, theres the simple fact that the Snowdrop Engine is designed to take advantage of Xbox One. Ubisoft may yet buckle, but an Xbox 360 version would be pretty pared-back.
PUBLIsHEr UBIsOFT / DEVELOpEr UBIsOFT MONTrEAL / FOrMAt XBOX ONE / ETA TBC 2014
Tom Clancys posthumous poster-boy for the post-apocalypse

So theres no Xbox 360 release, then? Whats so cool about Snowdrop, then?
It shows up mostly in the screenshots. Weve seen a spectacular day-night cycle, but after GTA V, were not terribly impressed by just sunsets. More striking is the weather cycle, which shows crisp, fresh snow being warmed to a glistening sludge in the sunlight. It looks amazing, but we havent seen it in-game, so it may still be screenshot smoke and mirrors. An RPG with shooting. The emphasis for the game is on skill specialisation and picking appropriate talents. Getting gear, levelling and weapon mods will all be important. Are you a silencer type, or an incendiary ammo kinda soldier? And if you play solo, the game will tailor the enemy AI and special challenges you face to test you to the right degree.
So is this a shooter or an RPG?
Scuttling seeker mines and turrets aside, our favourite is the watch that projects a scale map of the area onto the floor around you. Its a smart system that doesnt snap you out of the action. Because this is a squad game designed around online play, you dont want to be lost in menu screens on the hostile streets, and the watch solution is equally awesome and elegant.
Whats the best gadget?
During a demo, when a player was using a car for cover, the soldier placed one hand on the car door, and gently closed it. In terms of combat, it affected nothing. Its just that Ubi thought to elegantly introduce and solve a car door obstacle, all in the name of cool realism. It was basically code for we really, really care. Please care too.
Whys everyone excited about a car door?
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These crops wont be worth dusting after weve finished doing donuts in them.
UPDaTE
Will your map appear on another players screen? If so, thats great for planning and communication.
THE CREW
Why not? The creative director called it a roleplaying game, and there seems to be the same seamless multiplayer. Theres also the same next-gen ambition, led from the top by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. The only difference between the two games, and to be fair, its a big one, is that The Crew puts you in a car, instead of a virus-sodden apocalypse. And youll be able to leave New York and nip over to San Francisco in a 90-minute drive.
PUBLIsHEr UBIsOFT / DEVELOpEr IVOry TOwEr/UBIsOFT REFLECTIONs FOrMAt XBOX ONE / ETA AuGusT 2014
Another update, another persistent open-world from Ubisoft

Are you really comparing The Division to The Crew?
Reflections, which made Driver: San Francisco, and Ivory Tower. Its the latter developers first game, but the studio heads have open-world racing experience with Test Drive Unlimited. The maps will feature densely-packed cities Ubisoft claims that its New York will be just as big as Liberty City from GTA IV. The idea, and its one that we remember well from Skyrim, is that if you can see it, you can go there.
So when is it coming out?
Well, no. But this is a team-based competitive joyride, not a 55mph plod over a long, straight Interstate. Its a collaboration between Liverpools Ubisoft
Those numbers dont add up, captain.
Well, its already been delayed once, and the studio seems to have gone into a months-long period of press hibernation. We wouldnt be surprised if the game gets delayed again Ubisoft can be a bit of a perfectionist. But then again, it also churned out Fighter Within, so who knows whats going on?
You can see the sun, but you cant drive into it. Caught you in a lie, Ubisoft.
DA S HBOA R D
UPDAtEs NEW iNFO ON tHE Big gAMEs
The city puts us in mind of Jet Set Radio. Good work, Insomniac
UPDAtE
SUNSET OVERDRIVE
Is it an MMORPG?
Absolutely not, says Insomniac. Its got an open world, yes, and theres a lot of cloud-based stuff and multiplayer washing around, but you wont have to be online to play it, and there will be a campaign of sorts. Were fairly confident youll be better off playing with friends, though. This feels a bit like co-op Crackdown.
PuBLisher MICROsOFT STUdIOs / DeveLoper INsOMNIAC GAMEs / Format XBOX ONE / ETA 2014
Insomniacs Xbox One exclusive has its head in the cloud

Anything else to report?
Well, rumour has it that the game is set in the future, and that the cause of the mutant outbreak is an energy drink called OverCharge Delirium XT. A vaguely credible internet source also claims itll release in October, and that theres enough postrelease content stacked up already to last the game for an entire year. Its a third-person action adventure, which appears to move like Assassins Creed would if you dressed it up like an MTV video extra. There are melee weapons and guns that can be accessorised with, for instance, underslung energy cannons. The weapon effects certainly fizz were eager to get to grips with them.
How does it handle?
Whats the story?
The game takes place in a city that has been overrun by weird orange mutants. Thats bad news for humanity in general, but good news for your character a worn-down blue collar worker in need of a lifestyle upgrade. It looks like theres more than one playable character either that, or youll be able to create your own.
Its quite userdriven, then?
This is one of several possible leading men and women, we hope.

The sheer volume of pop culture crammed into the look is a bit jarring.
Seemingly so. Its not just that you get to climb up and jump off pretty much everything skyscrapers, billboards, parked cars, rooftop cafes, and so forth. Insomniac also wants to introduce things to the world on an extremely rapid basis in response to player behaviour. So if everybodys getting a little complacent about visibility, for instance, the developer might warp in some nasty weather. This will apparently extend to riffing on the latest internet memes, thus allowing players of Sunset Overdrive to be 110% hipper and smugger than ordinary Xbox Live members. Cant wait for the first took an arrow to the knee gag.
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
XBOX T O-D O L IS T
tHE GUIDE
S AV E T H E D AT E S
Ti m e M ar ches on, as does our lis t of things to do this m onth
FOR SPEED: tHE FUtURE THE MOVIE At GDC 02NEED 03SEE

The long-running racing series gets a film of its own starring Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) in the drivers seat. Can it usurp Fast & Furious from the podium?
14TH MAR
17TH MAR
The Game Developers Conference starts today in San Francisco. Keep an eye on totalxbox.com for the news and reveals coming out of the annual event.
01
26TH MAR
CAPtAIn AmERIcA 2: THE WIntER SOLDIER
MEtAL GEAR SOLID V: 04 GROUnD ZEROEs
21ST MAR
CLEAnInG WItH DUstFORcE 05SPRInG

The yearly spring cleaning ritual can get a little dull, so why not swap your real broom for the one from XBLAs Dustforce and score yourself a clean sweep?
23RD MAR
The Cap is back, and this time hes joined by Black Widow from The Avengers and new boy Falcon, to face-off against The Winter Soldier who may or may not be a face from the Captains past. We darent say any more than that in fear of Aoifes spoiler-rage.
Is Ground Zeroes an overpriced tutorial, or an essential introduction to Metal Gear Solid V proper? Well find out today.
nEW XBOX sOmE OnE FEAtUREs nEW FRIEnDs 06UsE 07PItY tHE FOOL 08MAKE
The first major update to Xbox One has now arrived, retooling the Party system and fixing TV judder. Find out how to use the new features at totalxbox.com.
@OXMUK
31ST MAR
1ST APR
3rD APR
This time last year, we were sure Ubisoft was pulling our leg when it announced Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. It wasnt. More surprises like this today please, devs!
Looking for someone to play Titanfall with? Sign up to the totalxbox.com forums, and join in with the regular gaming nights held by our friendly community.
30 09WREstLEmAnIA
6TH APR
Its been 30 years since Hulk Hogan and Mr T teamed up in the very first Wrestlemania, which suddenly makes us feel incredibly old.
Messages
Official Xbox Magazine, 2 Balcombe St, London, NW1 6NW
Love letters, death threats, and some stuff about games your comments on the mag and on Xbox
W
Star
CONTACT US f facebook.com/oxmuk t @oxmuk e oxm@futurenet.com w totalxbox.com yt youtube.com/officialxboxmag
ere up to our neck in mechs and we couldnt be happier. Now all weve got to deal with is the post-Titanfall hype void. What will we look forward to with a sense of breathless anticipation now? How will we ever drool again? And what if were like those sharks that die if they stop swimming? Thank God for Arkham Knight our newest reason to never sit down and behave like sensible humans. Anyway, letters!
Youre free to disagree, but no one listens to a dick.
Proud Mrs Doyle
Letter
Prize: Battlefield 4 on Xbox 360

The best piece of correspondence wins a game from Jons swag bag
Eyes on the prize
Thank you for printing my letter about how difcult I found your magazine to read. You asked for comment on your redesign, and Im pleased to let you know that the new layout is a big improvement. (And the purchase of new reading glasses helped even more!) On another subject, thank you very much for your Telltale feature (Issue 107) it was very enlightening. The image of Clementine would make an awesome poster, in my opinion. How about it? Robin Kuipers You mean to say we redesigned our entire magazine for you, and all you needed was a new pair of glasses? Our art editor is going to be furious! And in response to your poster request, we agree that is a great image. Well see what we can do.
I couldnt help but notice a multitude of peculiar things in Issue 108. Like how much the man behind Clementine on page 21 shares an uncanny resemblance to Handsome Jack out of Borderlands 2 just without the staples keeping his face on. Could this be the person he stole that face off? Another thing in the Alien: Isolation feature, you mention the Aliens top speed is eight metres per second. Well, Usain Bolt can run at 12.27 metres per second. Just thought Id tell you. And if you print this letter, can I just say hi to my mum? Josh Doyle Thats Bigby, from The Wolf Among Us and yes, he does look a bit like Pandoras bad honcho. Itd be great if there were a parallel universe, where games characters interact with each other away from the gamers eye. Ah, hang on. Were describing Wreck-It Ralph, arent we? As for relative speeds, did you know the Pacific Leatherback Turtle swims at 9.8 m/s? If you imagine an Alien holding a knife and fork and chasing a turtle down the river, suddenly it seems less threatening. And yeah, hi Joshs mum!
completely agree with Aoifes review of Ghosts, and David is a plonker. Im a woman who happens to like Call of Duty, but I wont stand up for a game series that has failed to do anything innovative for years. The last two campaigns have been naff to say the least. I keep buying it simply because I am addicted to the multiplayer, which is probably the case for many players. I also noticed nobody has mentioned how appalling the whole Xbox One interface is. The Xbox 360 seems miles ahead in terms of tidiness and ease of use. Kim Bowes Thanks for the vote of confidence, Kim, and we humbly concur with your assessment of our correspondent. As for the Xbox One, the interface has just had a bit of a functionality makeover (see The Annotated). The teething troubles might be over soon.
No looking back
Aoife madness
Just read Februarys Messages page while waiting for Skyrims loading screens. I just wanted to say I
I just want to say thank you. I have been going online asking friends, asking in stores and buying magazines all so I can nd out if the Xbox One will play original Xbox and Xbox 360 games. You answered my questions, and while it wasnt the answer I wanted, I was reassured by your condence that Xbox 360 will be around until the end of 2016. Michael Wood I barely remember anything from Halo 2, so Im looking forward to the HD remake. Halo 3 with Halo 4 visuals would make me wet myself, though! Johnbhoy69 gets a little too excited
FROm THE mOUTHS OF TOTaLXBOX.COm

*First day at school issue rucksack.
Excerpted comments from our web site
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
Early adopters are impatient pioneers and they suffer for their spirit of itchy adventure. They pay more, they deal with the teething problems and, without backwards compatibility, they dont have an existing catalogue to fall back on. This feels like a big deal at the moment, but itll fade as the spotlight slowly shifts.
Social Services
Your best/least libellous Twitter and Facebook replies
Evidence that goodlooking games arent automatically better.
Meanwhile, on iPad
I have recently changed to the digital version of OXM. The free videos and screenshots make it even better. However, it would be nice to see more from the writers in these videos rather than just game ads. Are there any plans to include interviews or reviews with this in the future? Billy Wiggins Recently weve included Log and Aoife chatting over Lightning Returns, Jonty playing XCOM, and Edwin playing Titanfall. But this is something were definitely planning on doing more of. Lets face it, the world needs more of us, spanning every format like media behemoths.
//Old, blocky games are just as great as the technically overwhelming epics of today//
old daughter was mesmerized by it! But lets remember this isnt a new generation to replace the old. No games console has ever been forgotten about (except the Philips CD-i). Old, blocky games are just as great as the technically overwhelming epics of today. Bust out those old, dusty consoles and give them a bit of love from time to time. Craig Evans While they may not be entirely legal, PC emulators are a great way of providing access to games that might otherwise get forgotten. When we finally decide to have an office baby, were going to give it an accelerated console course, starting with Pong and moving up a generation every Christmas. Sure, its geography and chemistry education might suffer, but when was the last time you talked about tectonic plates and covalent bonds in the pub?
Tell me absolutely anything and everything about Titanfall. I am so hyped for this game. Give me beta info! @RoccityRoller1 Final Fantasy should spend less time on cutesy costumes and more on making a game with some semblance of character depth. Paul Thunderbolt When Im in a Titan, will it give me points and a fanfare every time I extravagantly stomp on a spider? @godoflemmings Id love to see a new TMNT game. And a new Double Dragon. Mike McKelvery Erm, weve just had two rubbish TMNTs and Double Dragon Neon. Keep up Mike. When will Xbox One get a notification system for when friends come online? @hamovtan I dont care how long Ground Zeroes is I played all of the MGS games over and over collecting everything. Its going to be amazing! @toastedsoldier Bummer that Warface isnt coming out on Xbox One. I could really be doing with that game. @SavageWolf Titanfall shouldnt be released on Xbox 360. The same for Battlefield 4 these games were meant for next gen. Shane Bewarder Id love to believe Take Two about GTA Onlines microtransactions, but I cant. They cut the mission money rewards in half that said it all. @Thunderflap Im all for SmartGlass support but Titanfalls fast, and looking away would be suicide. Maybe youll use it while you wait for a respawn? Kamil Bazydlo
Old pixels dont die
For the rst time in my life, I bought a brand new console on the midnight of its launch. Sure it was expensive, but its the price I pay as a gamer to nally feel the excitement of a new piece of technology on its release day. Xbox One is just incredible it has blown me away already. I sat on my sofa laughing when it recognised me and signed me in, and the voice commands are totally responsive. Even my two-year-
The Annotated Dashboard Update

Not really a fan of the Windows 8 Interface thing. Its bearable for Xbox, but functions like a brick on PCs. Sexualchocolate Nice to see theyre separating Games and Apps. I can see the current list becoming a slog in the future, otherwise. Plamsa Wing
The forums respond to the changes in the Xbox One Dash

I hope one of these updates lets us get rid of the black UI. And I cant wait for a fix to Party Chat. Its the worst part of the Xbox One. XB1
Is it me, or does it look exactly the same other than the battery indicator? (Which Im glad to see back!) Mantequ1lla
Battery Indicator and the ability to see and manage hard drive storage excellent. Those two small things will make a difference. dfused
Square needs to go away and do some non Final Fantasy RPGs for a little while, play some classic FF then give us a proper sequel. Abe Hikura agrees with us
Voice chat in Dark Souls 2 wont appeal to me. The charm is the slow, oblique journey. Chatting would ruin the immersion. Baryonyx is not to be disturbed
Theres one thing that bothers me about Dead Island: if the place is deserted, whos charging you for repairs? Metalrodent smells a rat
@OXMUK
FE AT URE
BrINgINg HOME THE BaTS

Panic on the streets of Gotham as Rocksteady completes its trilogy
30 / tHE oFFIcIal xbox maGaZINE WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
Words: Aoife Wilson
B AT M A N: A R K H A M K NIG H T
@OXMUK
tHE oFFIcIal xbox maGaZINE / 31
FE AT URE
ts raining in Gotham City tonight. On the streets and the skyscrapers, on the cops and criminals, and on the one man whos gone further to protect its citizens than anyone else. Tonight, he faces his greatest threat yet. Rocksteady has been working on Arkham Knight since its previous game, Arkham City, shipped in 2011, and its due for release in the not too distant future of winter 2014. Itll feature an open-world map roughly five times the size of Arkham City, it wont have any kind of multiplayer mode (we wanted to focus on creating the best single-player experience that we possibly could), and Rocksteady confirms former co-writer Paul Dini is no longer attached to the script this time
around. And one last bombshell: Arkham Knight will serve as the final entry to Rocksteadys Arkham series. Set approximately one year after the events of Arkham City, and again taking place over the course of a single night, Arkham Knight begins with Gotham in the midst of a full-scale evacuation. Rocksteady wont be drawn on many story particulars right now, but it will say that this is Batman at the very peak of his power and physical prowess. The Joker is dead (as far as we know), and crime in Gotham is at an all-time low as the other supervillains have been quietly planning their next move: a huge, coordinated, personal assault on Batman himself. This is the biggest Arkham game weve ever made, says game
Good knight
Rocksteady promises that the Batmobile is incapable of causing fatalities, but that doesnt mean it cant pack a punch.
THIS IS THE BIGGEST ARKHAM GAME WEVE EVER MADE, BUT ITS ALSO THE MOST PERSONAL
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sequencer, revealing a series of director Sefton Hill, as he introduces messages in which Scarecrow personally Arkham Knight to us at Rocksteadys vows to take revenge on both Batman London HQ, but its also the most and the entire city. personal. This is an attack on Batman; Gothams supervillains are trying to destroy him and everything he stands for. Welcome home We begin our hands-off demo at the Yesterday there were 6.3 million start of the game, in the very heart of people in Gotham City, growls Arkhams Gotham City. Scarecrow is on the loose opening voiceover from Commissioner again after his apparent death at the Jim Gordon, as criminals run amok on the hands of Killer Croc, streets. Today, not and hes preparing to Game over? so many. It took just Hill told us that Arkham Knight would launch a full-scale 24 hours for us to lose be the conclusion of the Rocksteady chemical weapon control of the city. Arkham trilogy. Its unlikely that attack on the citys Tonight, Gothams this will mean the end of the series populace. Vigilant relying on one man to altogether WB Montreal could be detectives may have charged with carrying on the story save us all. already spotted We pan up for the of Batmans early career, having hints towards hero shot; Batman created last years Arkham Origins. Cranes imminent standing tall on attack during Arkham City, where a the edge of a skyscraper, silhouetted hatch on an old, presumably abandoned against the night sky and overlooking boat moored in the North Gotham Docks the entire city sprawled below. Batmans could be unlocked and accessed using suit has undergone a bit of a makeover the passcode cityofterror, to reveal a since Arkham City. Its darker, more sizeable shipment of fear toxin stored menacing, and has much heavier armour. below deck. Not only that, but a series It suggests a more hardened Batman of coded messages in the game could one wholl be able to push further be deciphered using the cryptographic and fight harder. The Dark Knight is at
@OXMUK tHE oFFIcIal xbox maGaZINE / 33
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the absolute top of his game, having had another year to hone his combat skills, and he means business. Hes also brought to life once more by veteran Batman voice artist Kevin Conroy, who inadvertently let slip the existence of a new Arkham game last summer. From this opening reveal, its a nearseamless transition from CG cinematic to gameplay. Even before Rocksteady later confirms it, its immediately obvious that Arkham Knight is a true Xbox One game; nothing has been held back or compromised by the need for simultaneous development on Xbox 360. This isnt a cross-generational game, confirms Hill. Its a game designed purely to get the best out of the new consoles. As soon as control of the Caped Crusader is handed over to Hill, were treated to a swoop down and over the city it looks incredible. We cant help but ogle the way the rain patters off Batmans cape as he glides, or how the city lights twinkling through the rain bounce from the puddles collecting on the slickened streets. As Hill shows off some of the improvements made to gliding faster
34 / tHE oFFIcIal xbox maGaZINE
grapple boosts, 180-degree flips and the like the wind roars, the night envelops us, and were itching to get our hands on the controller. The act of getting around the city seems more effortless than before, thanks to Batmans new suit and superior gadgets. And from the air at least, Gotham looks more vibrant and alive. Its a bit of a shame that itll once again be populated almost exclusively by thugs, without any normal everyday citizens, but it does look like a real city this time, and not a smaller, closed-off version of one thats been left to rot. Gotham proper, the main setting for Arkham Knight, is a far more built-up and densely populated area than Arkham City. Because of that added height, at any time while youre gliding above Gotham, you can press the left trigger to have Batman fire out his line launcher between two buildings, thus creating a stationary perch to keep an eye on the streets from on-high. On top of that, Batman can now use certain gadgets while gliding. You can throw Batarangs just as youre swooping in on a crowd of thugs, for example the
Batman is stronger than hes ever been, and that translates directly to Arkham Knights combat.
game will helpfully go into slow-motion while youre targeting. Once youre fully into combat, things will feel familiar, but there are a few new systems being introduced to ensure that the classic Rocksteady combat still feels fresh. For example, when youre countering, you can push the thumb stick in the direction of the thug attacking you, and Batman will throw him, rewarding you with double damage. You can also pick up and smash your victims into other enemies if youre fast enough. After a quick introductory tussle with a crowd of goons, we save a police officer and get a lead on the vehicle weve been chasing on behalf of Commissioner Gordon. Theres no way well ever catch it on foot, but luckily Bats has a plan. With the full-throated roar of an engine, the Batmobile thunders onto the screen. In a first for the series, youll be able to take control of one of fictions most iconic vehicles and drive it around the streets of Gotham. Its a beast of a thing, looking a bit like a cross between the Tumbler of the
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Belt up
Where they were once divided, Gothams supervillains are now working together to beat the Bats.
FOR THE FIRST TIME, YOU CAN TAKE CONTROL OF THE BATMOBILE AND DRIVE IT AROUND GOTHAM
R etur N I N g
r O gue S
the VILLaINS cO mINg back fOr batS fINaL fLIght
Two-Face: Harvey Dent has apparently escaped his incarceration at Arkham, and is teaming up with Penguin and the other villains to make sure Bruce has a night to remember.
Penguin: Cobblepot has a way of enduring almost anything, and despite being one of the weaker villains, something would be amiss if he didnt make one final showing for Rocksteadys big send-off.
Harley Quinn: Rocksteady confirmed that Mister Js former lady love will make an appearance. We imagine shes still upset about that whole Batman contributing to the death of her boyfriend thing.
Riddler: Where would we be without Riddler driving us to distraction with his smug, self-satisfied gloating? He returns with new challenges to test motor as well as mental reflexes.
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Christopher Nolan Dark Knight films and the more classic-looking Batmobile models of old. Rocksteadys aim, Hill says, was to create a game that featured the ultimate car. Were told the team spent a lot of time working out how the Batmobile could comfortably integrate into a Batman: Arkham game after the Dark Knight had been hoofing it for so long. We want it to feel like the Batmobile has always been there, ready for Batman to use, he explains. It does dovetail neatly with the man himself and his updated get-up like the car and the suit evolved naturally side by side. The Batmobile is available to you at any time while youre exploring the city, by way of a simple button press that will call it to you. Hill takes us on a joyride through Gothams Chinatown, as we chase down a car full of thugs in order to
quiz them on Scarecrows whereabouts. The Batmobile has the ability to lock-on to other vehicles with a specialised, non-lethal rocket launcher called the immobilizer, and the car itself can smash through pretty much any obstacle or material from stone and steel to street lamps. And we wont lie theres something oddly thrilling about watching someone do donuts in the Batmobile. Its clear the team have spent a fair amount of time and effort on getting every aspect of the Batmobile just so, from the squeal of the tyres which have been customised with little Batsymbol treads, naturally to the crack and burst of nitrous flames from the exhaust every time you use the cars rechargable boost to accelerate. While youre inside the vehicle, theres no world mini-map a deliberate design
Rocksteady claims that the Arkham Knight is an original creation. Is that the whole truth?
WE WANT IT TO FEEL LIKE THE BATMOBILE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE, WAITING TO BE USED
choice, were told, as Rocksteady wants you to be paying attention to whats going on around you, rather than using a map display to navigate. Weve done a lot of work to ensure that the information for the objectives is within the city, Hill reassures us. You can, however, set waypoints, and tyre tracks will periodically appear on the ground to highlight the way ahead. And if youre wondering as we certainly were how Rocksteady could possibly ensure players wouldnt break Batmans one rule by chasing down bad guys in a vicious hit-and-run killing spree, it has got that covered. Pedestrians will always jump out of the way of the car, Midtown Madness-style, even if youre ploughing towards them at top speed. Its also fitted with a taser system so that if anyone comes up to it or does get hit, they will be knocked away, unconscious but relatively unscathed. One of the nice asymmetric things about the Batmobile, Hill says, is that, generally, thugs are terrified of it. Its invulnerable to machinegun fire, so while some criminals might fancy their chances with Batman mano a mano,
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THE CITYS FULL OF DIFFERENT, CO-ORDINATED ATTACKS, MADE TO PUSH BATMAN TO HIS LIMIT
Gotham all lit up at night and glimpsed from a Bats eye view is really a sight to behold.
none of them are brave enough to mess with him when hes safely inside his motor. However, picking and choosing when to use the Batmobile and when to just use Batman on-foot is a big part of the game. The car may be practically invincible, but Batman on his own has a superior stealth advantage, as well as that added element of verticality for getting on top of buildings. That said, gliding and driving dont have to be mutually exclusive. At any time while speeding through the streets in the Batmobile, its possible for you to forcefully eject from the vehicle and use the generated velocity to glide further up and over the city. To show us what the machine can do, Hill briefly takes us off the main mission path to one of the Riddlers many hideouts, where he has constructed an underground racetrack of sorts to test the Great Detectives grotesque ego mobile. Over three increasingly challenging laps, the Batmobile is able to perform jumps and barrel rolls, drive on walls and even, momentarily, drive upside down. It can also turn on
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Rocksteady is eager to ensure that Batmans suit and the Batmobile are stylistically similar, like they share a symbiotic bond with the man himself.
the spot, for when youve invariably managed to wedge yourself into a lonely Gotham side-street. Rocksteady also implies, though wont confirm, that youll be able to upgrade the Batmobile later in the game.
Familiar faces
With the Riddler temporarily bested, we return to the original objective of checking in with Oracle at her Clocktower hideout. Technically, this
is part of Arkham Knights main story mission, but Hill claims the game has been designed so that there wouldnt be just one main storyline and a lot of optional side objectives. The city is full of all these different, co-ordinated attacks by the various supervillains, he says. Theyre all designed to push Batman to his limit. We wanted it to feel like there isnt one key main path and [then] all these side missions; all of these different components and attacks
Driving Batty
Take a spin through the archives of one of the most iconic motors
The Batmobile debuted in May 1939, in issue 27 of Detective Comics. A simple, red sedan, it wasnt quite as high-tech as it is today. It wasnt referred to as the Batmobile until years later in 1941. Over time, the vehicle evolved to feature more Bat-centric designs and gadgets. In later storylines the car ended up more closely resembling a tank, with firepower to match though sentry guns were always loaded with rubber bullets, naturally.
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Wally Wingert, Troy Baker and Nolan North all return to voice Gothams various rogues.
as youd expect her to be. There are by the supervillains have their own really some brief references to The Killing interesting story that you can follow. Joke during Babs and Bats back and Series stalwarts Penguin and Twoforth, but before long were on our way Face appear briefly in our demo during again, with the intention of repurposing the opening cutscene, and Rocksteady an antenna in the confirms that Harley Falcone Ship Yard to Quinn will also be track Scarecrow. returning (fans who While attempting found a certain Easter to gain access to the egg in Arkham City guarded antenna, may remember that Hill talks us through shes apparently a few tweaks that pregnant with Jokers have been made to child). The developer the games Predator isnt talking about Jokes on him mode. You can now any other villains or Those who completed Arkham City enter combat in a characters at the will know that Batmans arch nemesis spectacular fashion moment, but it does appears to be gone for good. From by smashing through concede that certain what we saw, it seems Scarecrow glass into a room full storylines begun or (and probably the mysterious of hostiles. Batman teased in Arkham Arkham Knight) are stepping up to also now has quicker, City such as Hushs fill this position. Is it possible that long-range access Identity Theft sideJoker is truly dead this time? Surely to floor grates one missions or Azraels Rocksteady wont be able to resist button tap and hell mysterious prophecy resurrecting him for one last laugh. move towards the that Gotham will burn will likely be further explored and nearest spot automatically without you having to fumble at close quarters. You concluded in Arkham Knight. also now have access to a skill called Inside the Clocktower, for the first the Fear Takedown, whereby Batman time in the series, we meet with Barbara can instant-takedown groups of up to Gordon, aka Oracle, face-to-face and three isolated enemies simultaneously. shes just as feisty and razor-sharp
Were hoping to see plenty more of Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon in Arkham Knight. Bats could probably use the help.
The catch because theres always a catch is they need to be in close proximity, and you need to creep up to them while remaining completely unseen and undetected. Its an impressive display, and we free the cop they had been holding hostage, appropriating the antenna at the same time. As we leave the room theres a gunshot, and suddenly Batman is on his back, knocked down by some unseen force. Youre not going anywhere, a voice growls. This ends tonight. A figure stalks into view. Hes wearing a kind of robotic Batman-like cowl
The Arkham Knight
Unusual suspects
The unconfirmed characters were willing to place money on making some kind of return in Arkham Knight
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Thanks to the throw mechanic, Batmans chucking thugs around like rag dolls.
that covers his entire face, and theres a stylised A symbol emblazoned on his heavily armoured chest. There are shades of Prometheus and Wrath about him, even a touch of Jason Todds Red Hood in the pseudo military get-up he wears. Apparently, though, hes an original Rocksteady creation a first for the franchise. His name is Arkham Knight, and hes clearly modelling himself as a kind of anti-Batman figure. Whoever he really is, he doesnt appear to be on the side of good, and hes certainly no amateur either, judging by how he managed to get the drop on Bats so easily. And there, tantalisingly, our demo ends.
THE ARKHAM KNIGHT DOESNT APPEAR TO BE ON THE SIDE OF GOOD, AND HES NO AMATEUR
All told, we havent seen a huge amount of Arkham Knight aside from the very broad strokes. Theres a huge new area of Gotham to explore, Batman comes with a heap of new skills and gadgets, including his awesome new car, and Rocksteady has said that it will continue some of the storylines hinted at in Arkham City. Its perhaps not quite as ambitious as the long-rumoured Justice League game, but Batman: Arkham Knight looks like its focusing its efforts on the aspects that have made this franchise great making them bigger, better and even Battier than before. Rocksteady hasnt disappointed us yet. Lets see if that rain cant finally wash this city clean.
AZraeL This mysterious figure stalked Batmans every move in Arkham City. If you found him enough times, he warned you that: Gotham will burn, and you will burn too. Not the kind of thing that gets ignored in a sequel.
HuSh Tommy Elliot was a childhood friend of Bruce Waynes. Canisters of Scarecrows fear gas can be found in Elliots hideout, suggesting a partnership between the two villains.
CaLeNdar MaN Hes not all that smart or intimidating, so Julian Day has never been a major player in Gothams criminal underbelly. But to his credit, he is one of the few rogues known to have escaped Arkham City.
BLack MaSk Roman Sionis also escaped Arkham City after Jokers death, and its unlikely that hes just been sat around licking his wounds since. If, or when his revenge does come, expect it to be brutal.
CatwOmaN Selina was a playable character in Arkham City, but its possible Rocksteady will want to play down her involvement here, after it came under fire for her heavily sexualised portrayal last time.
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TRIALS
fusi O N
CLEVER REVVER
PUb: UBIsOFT DEV: REDLYNX RELEASE: 16 AprIL FORMAT: XBOX 360 & XBOX ONE
Trials Fusion brings one of Live Arcades earliest blockbusters to next-gen

Words: Jon Blyth
ts ten years since a physics-based motorbike game pushed a Swiss telecom company way past its bandwidth limits. A free Flash game on Miniclip. com became fatally viral around the Netherlands, Belgium and the Ukraine. The secret was a combination of simple controls, and the ability to use those controls to pull off stunts that ten minutes ago seemed impossible. The problem was how to make money out of it. This was before Half-Life 2 came out, so PC gamers had yet to have an elegant digital distribution platform forced onto them. And the nascent Xbox Live Arcade had yet to attract much in the way of credible titles. So for a few years, Trials suffered from epitomising a mid-price game tier that didnt yet exist. Trials is now a two-wheeled juggernaut, but the essence is still the same as that Flash game. Go faster and slower, and lean forwards and back. The grey factories have exploded into a world of blue, red and black skies. The physics
have been refined to make every bounce on the suspension more believable, and every ragdoll crash more absurd. And one of the industrys most generous and surprisingly flexible track editors has tested the creativity of the community, whove proved themselves to the point where more than one RedLynx fan has become a RedLynx employee. But with that excess of player-created levels, and the fact that Trials is such a tightly-defined game, its natural to question what purpose a sequel could add to the current tally of 650,000 levels. Theres no bunny-hop or switch jump we havent achieved, and no steep incline we havent desperately lunged forward on, praying that our back wheel doesnt come off the track, sending us plunging backwards into a packet of C4. But Trials Fusion offers more. More spectacle, as dams burst and planes swoop overhead. More skill games, that use the physics engine for leaderboard-led party games. And bizarrely, for a game about just riding on a bike, theres more story. Thats not to say there are cutscenes, beyond the spectacular nonsense
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Tricks are powered by physics: watch your momentum.
INcreAsINGlY rIdIcUlOUs fAtes BefAll OUr HerO At tHe eNd Of tHe levels
that happens in the background of the levels. And youll be reassured to hear that no ones going on an emotional journey. But RedLynx has always given players layers of hidden depth Trials Evolution involved a ridiculously involved meta-game that will only be resolved in 2104, when the people who discovered four keys in the real world meet under the Eiffel Tower. So expect more in the way of meta riddles, scene-building commentary, and tongue-in-cheek philoso-psychology in phrases like when you wake up, are you the same person who went to sleep? If youre not playing the game, youre in a position to enjoy the background action, as dams explode, fighter jets sweep overhead, and wind-farms collapse. The sense of humour has been nailed, with increasingly ridiculous fates befalling our hero at the end of the levels: hes minced by fans, carried away into a furnace, and set upon by five cruise liners. This is a team that knows how to ride the sine-wave of repetitive comedy. Three would have been good. Four wouldnt have been funny at all. Five ocean liners landing on a mans head is comedy genius. Trials Evolutions secrets were mostly in the form of well-hidden squirrels. For Fusion, RedLynx is testing the limits of how much you can legitimately conceal in a 2D plane. Each of the tracks has three unique challenges attached. From the limited tracks we played, a
pattern emerged: one challenge will be something acrobatic, such as trying to pack in a certain number of flips. Other challenges are more involved, with greater rewards. One secret involves falling into a hot spring, where youre investigated by a group of penguins who look suspiciously like theyre wearing penguin suits. Better still, Darkside involves finding a button on the map, and reversing onto it for ten seconds. Do so, and youll find yourself on a much tougher night version of the map. Its on this level, and the Inferno levels, that youll be thankful RedLynx has upped the maximum number of tries for a level from 250 to 500. Dont laugh. Youll probably need them. When RedLynx announced that Fusion would include tricks, an alarm bell sounded in our twitchy souls. Tricks are something that you do in a spare moment, and on the toughest levels,
Tricksy trouble
they just dont happen. Thankfully, RedLynx seems to be aware of that. The team may be sadists, but theyre eminently sensible sadists. Tricks are confined to certain skill games and FMX tracks. These levels are filled with long ramps and big air, giving you plenty of time to pull off a couple of tricks, before snapping your over-confident spine on the ground. Thumb the right stick on these levels, and youll begin a trick. What one you do depends on the angle of the bike, and the direction of the stick. Its fairly intuitive: on an upright bike and a leftward stick, youll do a self-explanatory Superman. Hold it to build your score, or combine it with a flip for another boost. If youre feeling particularly rude, you could even try to pull off a second trick. These animations are powered by the same physics engine as the bike, so while theyre intuitive, it also means that its possible for an unwise trick selection to send you into an unstoppable flip equivalent of a black spin. Its another new and totally nontransferable motor skill that you can add to your bank. A new vehicle joins the motorbikes and that sad little pushbike a heavy quad bike. With the regular bikes, all the propulsion comes from the back wheel,
TiMe Trials From flash game to world-straddling colossus

2000-2005 - Trials Legends With enough money to start being generous, RedLynx released Trials Legends for free, in exchange for liking its Facebook page. Even as an oldschool 2D platformer, the appeal is there. Sadly, its only on PC. 2008 - Trials 2: Second Edition Digitally distributed before there were simple channels for delivery, Trials 2: SE still managed 200,000 sales. Putting the 2D play into a 3D world, the toughest levels were dynamic, with collapsible physics objects.
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TRIALS
In Fusion, the future is just beginning to fall apart.
fusi O N
so landing in a gentle wheelie lets you gather a bit of bonus speed. These four-wheel drive monsters benefit from flatter landings, giving them four times the traction that offsets their bulkier nature. Quads can hold their own against bikes in the local multiplayer sessions but if you choose to ride the pedalpowered pushbike, then youll have to be prepared to drift back from the pack. Theres a single game mode, tucked away inside a late-game chapter menu, that gives an insight into how flexible the editor is. Trials Infinity is an unending series of extremely short, very tough platforms, conjured in a simulated environment. After the first level, which is always the same, these are generated algorithmically. Chatting to the lead level designer, we learn that Infinity is something of a misnomer there are, in fact, just half a million tracks that can be generated on these short runs. But heres the impressive thing: as in Trials Evolution, every level in the game was made by the team in the same track editor that you can use. Making a track is as simple as you want to make it. You begin by plotting a start point on the world map, choosing a few waypoints that change the direction
Four-player multiplayer returns. Just dont race pushbikes against quads.
Cup of infinity
of your 2D plane, then dropping on an end point. And thats enough play your track once, prove its not impossible, and you can publish it. The next step is adding ramps, explosives, and environmental objects, which the editor automatically blends into the world with a little local flavour. But its the world of triggers and impulses that make the more advanced stuff possible a Trials-specific programming language that creative players have used to create homages to Super Mario Bros. Even if the immutable physics of Trials makes for an extremely floaty platformer, the fact its possible is testament to the flexibility of its editor. We ask the co-founder of RedLynx, Antti Ilvessuo, whether he looks at Project Spark, and thinks pfft! We did all that years ago!. He replies that he thinks RedLynx has the best level editor around, but declines to put that phrase into a sentence that openly insults Project Spark. Thats a shame, because
it would have made an excellent fakescandal headline on the internet. The support of Ubisofts vast collection of development studios has been a boon for the game. With teams around the world who specialise in porting, netcode and multiplayer, RedLynx has been free to focus on what makes Trials the compulsive, instant, elegant, and supersmooth 60fps title that came to define Xbox Live Arcade back in 2009. Honing its physics engine. Adding nonsensical amounts of secrets, spectacle, and comedy touches. And making sure its fans are empowered to make levels that will eventually dwarf their own in terms of number and offbeat creativity. With a busy schedule of post-release content, features and events, Trials Fusion may be more of the same. But when you hit on a formula thats as endless replayable as Trials, it genuinely bears repeating.
Always expanding
tHe MAXIMUM NUMBer Of trIes HAs BeeN Upped frOM 250 tO 500. dONt lAUGH. YOUll prOBABlY Need tHeM
2012 - Trials Evolution With a track editor revamped to allow more involved situations, and a less claustrophobic outdoors experience, Evolution was just that: a welcome refinement of a formula, empowering the creative player. 2014 - Trials Fusion A next-gen-honing process thatll benefit most of all from the Xbox Ones lack of backwards compatibility. Luckily, those clinging to their Xbox 360s will get the same game, and all versions will run at 60fps.
2009 - Trials HD This is the point where Trials became a legitimate moneyspinning phenomenon. Over Steam and XBLA, this revamped version kept the factory location, but introduced an easy-to-use and integrated track editor.
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THE INSIDE MAN

Words: Jon Hicks
Xboxs Director of Development, Boyd Multerer, talks screen resolution, what it was like to drop alwaysonline, and why Xbox One was built to make life easier for indie developers
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oyd Multerer is a tired man. Hes currently jetlagged, sat in a deserted box in Chelseas vast Stamford Bridge stadium, on a brief break from demonstrating Xbox One to independent developers interested in signing up to the ID@Xbox program. Its the final stop in a long, long journey to Xbox Ones launch, and itll be followed by a sabbatical in which he finally gets to leave the office and spend more time with his family. But despite working seven days a week for almost six months straight, hes still cheerful, enthusiastic, and very keen to talk about Xbox One, the development of which has been his daily job for several years. The last time I met him, in Microsofts Redmond offices two weeks before the Xbox One was first announced, he spent a fascinating hour discussing the architecture of a system designed to run games and apps side by side. Eight months later, hes still just as enthusiastic, despite the consoles early stumbles and the increased workload they created for his team. Part of the reason hes so engaging is his obvious proximity to the nuts and bolts of development. With a greying ponytail, days of stubble and a detailed technical answer for every question, hes very obviously from a development
background rather than the marketeers Microsoft usually sends out to bat, and his CV stretches all the way back to 1997, conceiving the first building blocks of Xbox Live. He then moved on to develop XNA, the programming language that spawned the Xbox Live Indie Games on Xbox 360, before moving on to develop the software for Xbox One. Hes now in a position to look back on what hes happy to admit is the hardest project I have ever worked on. It was a total slog to get it done. Already ambitious, the console architecture changed dramatically following the poor reception at last years E3. The always-online requirement was dropped, requiring major changes to an already considerable workload getting the machine ready for launch. It wasnt fun, he says. But actually, now that Im past it and I can look back I think that it actually vindicates one of the strategies that we had. One of the goals was to create an architecture that can change over time, so as those changes were happening, we could roll with it without
it dramatically effecting the kits we were giving to game developers. We were able to keep that train running and keep the games in development while we were scrambling to adjust to policy changes and business changes over at the other side, and it actually helped to make all that manageable. He holds that the app-based interface, on top of a Dashboard thats just a lightweight shell has proved its worth too. The shell itself is quite thin, and it was a design goal to put as much of that functionality into those apps. We want people to be writing apps themselves, right? So we said hey, lets use the exact same thing. That allows us to continue working on those apps and update them individually without having to do the giant 360-style rolled-up update. This has already manifested itself in this months improvements to the Party system and other elements of the interface. Other updates will doubtless follow. I ask him if he could address a personal bugbear, the Achievements
App it up
THE xbox oNE IS THE HARdEST PRoJECT I HAVE EVER WoRKEd oN. IT WAS A ToTAL SLoG To GET IT doNE
Years of research and development went into the creation of Xbox One.
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The first interface updates have arrived ahead of Titanfall; others will follow later this year.
Nearly every Xbox One feature is an app that can be updated separately, rather than having to upgrade it all at once.
WE FoCUSEd A LoT oF oUR ENERGY oN FRAmERATE WE REALLY PUSHEd HoW FAST THE CPU RUNS
do those things in the really, really fast RAM thats in the back of the pipeline, and you end up with an image that looks significantly better in some ways, and its becoming less clear whether this is a number of pixels count story or whether this is a quality of pixels story. Both matter, but its not all about one number or the other number. Its a noble sentiment, but one thats been lost on the howling wastes of the internet, where early adopters have raged over every pixel. Its not a problem Multerer expects to last; now that developers have had time to get used to the architecture, theyll be able to get more out of it. I fully expect that to happen, he says. The GPUs are really complicated beasts this time around. In the Xbox 360 era, getting the most performance out of the GPU was all about ordering the instructions coming into your shader. It was all about hand-tweaking the order to get the maximum performance. In this era, thats important but its not nearly as important as getting all your data structures right so that youre getting maximum bandwidth usage across all the different buffers. So its relatively easy to get portions of the GPU to stall. You have to have it constantly being fed. If that sounds complicated, it gets worse: getting your Xbox One game to run smoothly requires shuffling data between different components with absolute precision; even the smallest delay can hold up the entire process.
app not working offline. I dont know. Achievements have always been closely associated with Xbox Live. They make the most sense in a social context, and when youre dealing with friends. So that may continue to make the most sense, to be in the context of Live. But hey theyve got the ability to change their minds, so if its not right, and it does not redo the whole thing in the process. The other, arguably bigger task is getting devs used to the architecture itself. Early Xbox One games struggled to hit full 1080p resolution, particularly cross-generation titles that had to run on multiple formats, the cause of which Multerer describes as complicated. Part of it is the obvious one where everyones still getting to know this hardware and theyll learn to optimise it. Part of it is less obvious, in that we focused a lot of our energy on framerate. And I think we have a consistently better framerate story that we can tell. On the CPU side, we really pushed how fast the central processor is running, so youll see much smoother framerates, youll see much less hitching on the Xbox One, and thats a big deal in these games: you really want them to be smooth. On the number of pixels side, theres also a kind of change in the conversation whats the right one to be focused on? Is it number of pixels or is the quality of pixels? And this gets into the way that the game engines run. Theres a whole bunch of posteffects that you can run. We do the right kinds of anti-aliasing, you can do shadow rendering and all that, and you
Big picture
Multerers team worked on every element of the Xbox Ones internal software.
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This is a effectively a super-computer design, he says. This is a design out of the super-computer realm. So I expect that were going to continue to see fairly large improvements in GPU output as people really tune these data sets. It isnt surprising that most publishers, running flat out to release games on every available format before Christmas, didnt have the time to sort this out. Xbox One was a crazy launch. All console launches are crazy. Me and the team, weve all worked seven days a week from June until November, and were all really tired and all the game companies; they were there too. So in a lot of cases it was Okay, weve got to get the game running and then theres not a whole lot of time to do the tuning. Now that developers have had time to tune the big engines, like Frostbite and Unreal, to make the best use of Xbox One, things will pick up. And then theres the indies that hes here to demonstrate to, who will go on to sign up for ID@Xbox in large and growing numbers. I think that the Indies are going to find the Xbox One to be a fantastic platform. I ran XNA, and I care tremendously about the indies and as we were designing the Xbox One, one of my goals was to bake in support for independent developers really deeply into the operating system. The console itself is terrifying mathematics aside a lot more welcoming to developers than Xbox 360, too. The basic box is definitely easier to develop for, and that goes a long way. We spent a lot of time making sure
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Generation game
that if you know how to write a game in DirectX in Windows, you already know how to write a game in Xbox One, and the games that are being written for Windows 8 that are using DX are porting really quickly to Xbox One. Like often in a day, maybe two. Yes, you have to tweak for the specific performance characteristics of this box but you basically already know how to do it, if youve developed for Windows. Its more complicated than that, but yeah. On the subject of what comes over the next few years, Multerer is delighted to say that he has no idea. The first thing I admit is I have no clue! We designed for that. If there are areas that we cant know, then the most important design feature you can put in is the ability to change. Thats the biggest reason why I like the different operating systems: so we can do those updates without hurting the games that have already shipped. This project has had a larger than average number of curveballs, ranging from the CEO of the company deciding to retire to much smaller ones that we dont necessarily talk about, and after a while it was just (inhales) okay... lets figure this one out! And you do, you roll with it, and we had a team that really believed in the product. With a design that is made to change... Okay, maybe
we had to take advantage more of that than we expected but I was very happy with the team. For me personally, the part Im most proud of is the app switching and just how well it works. In a general-purpose OS like Windows we take things like multi-tasking for granted. But weve got these games that I want to make sure run ten years from now on the same box, so we have to isolate things, and that was really, really, really hard and it works really well, and thats the piece Im super-happy with. Even after months of unending work, reams of internet hostility and fierce market competition, hes a man whos still very pleased with the product his team has built, and relentlessly upbeat about how itll fare in the future. Weve passed through a very difficult moment in time where these boxes have been built and they were changing a lot, and some of the requirements changed late in the game, which of course caused churn all through the system. But we rolled with it, and we got it done and now we will continue to improve and not just for the consumers but also for the game developers, and I think very quickly theyll start to see some of the benefits of those improvements. So Im just completely not worried about that.
I HAVE No CLUE WHATS NExT. bUT WE dESIGNEd FoR THAT WE GAVE THE CoNSoLE THE AbILITY To CHANGE
Every athlete has been body scanned at EA, so their ornate tattoos will appear in-game exactly as they are in real life.
EA Sports UFC
PUBLISHER EA / DEVELOpER EA SPORTs CANADA / FORMAT XBOX ONE
So you want to be a fighter?
ow far the Ultimate Fighting Championship has come. In its inaugural showcase in 1993, a man called Art Jimmerson fought with one boxing glove, and a skinny Brazilian in a karate gi beat everyone by ghting on his back. Some 20 years on, the UFC and Mixed Martial Arts is now the worlds fastest-growing sport. Big enough, in fact, to have its own EA Sportsbranded videogame. After THQ ogged the license during its unceremonious clear-out a couple of years ago, the UFC got into bed with EA, the very company that UFC president Dana White swore hed
never, ever work with. Uncle Dana, as hes affectionately known, makes promises like this about twice a week, though, and as always, money talks. So now the heralded Fight Night team are on board and looking to create the nest digital recreation of cage ghting yet seen. And you certainly cant fault the way it looks. During a recent handson event in Central London, EA Sports UFCs creative director Brian Hayes keenly showed off the quite remarkable graphics engine thats powering his new game. You can see from the images on these pages how lifelike Jon Jones, Alex Gustafsson and Anthony Pettis look, but seeing them move in-game is something else. This is EAs rst next-gen-only project, and it shows. Hayes threw
Bluffers Guide
The nextgen-only UFC game from EA, featuring around 100 fighters and incredible visuals.
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PReVIeW
@OXMUK
Fighters show real signs of exertion muscles flex, veins pulse and skin discolours.
Fighters faces change expression during the fight grimacing at body shots and snarling when they throw heavy leather.
The most realisticlooking six pack in videogame history? Could well be.
Cover star Jon Bones Jones is the youngest champion in UFC history.
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PReVIeW
around terms like sub-scattered lighting, but all that really matters is how they look in the cage. They move like real ghters skin contorts, veins pulse, esh actually moulds around esh. Its phenomenal technology, truly. Saying that, the game could be more handsome than UFC ghter GSP in his speedos, but none of that would matter if it didnt capture the aggression, technical mastery and raw athleticism of this most incredible sport. While the code on display was shaky, with myriad bugs and glitches, a creaky framerate and a few key features missing (including the ability to rush a fallen foe and nish them on the ground), its easy to admire EA Sports UFCs potential.
Stand and bang
If MMA bouts take place in three positions standing, the ground, and the clinch the game has all bases covered. No surprise there. What the team has worked hard on though, is managing the transitions between those three areas how kickboxing moves into jiu-jitsu, or how wrestling becomes dirty boxing (scrapping in the clinch). The stand-up ghting is already very competent, as it should be from the team who built Fight Night and the creative director of Round 4 and Champion. Each face button represents a limb, Tekken-style, and triggers modify your strikes. Every ghter has his or her own arsenal, but in our demo we took time with Jon Jones and his lengthy jabs, standing elbows and irritating oblique kicks. Theyre all present and correct beautifully animated in fact and allow you to actually role-play the ghter youre in charge of. Quick jabs of the stick let you leap in and out or move laterally with pace, and you can bob, weave and slip by holding down the left trigger. Catching your foe with a wellplaced counter shot after theyve swung is the key to scoring heavy damage, and its tremendously satisfying to watch your opponents knees buckle after a awless counter uppercut to the dome. Sadly, the clinch game was barely working in this build, so we couldnt test fence-ghting and dirty boxing. But it was still possible to take the ght to the ground with a well-timed takedown and start working on the oor like a black belt. The ground game is probably the most difcult aspect to program, and in EA Sports UFC, probably the most impressive part. Recreating the subtleties of Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a thankless task this is an art based around leverage and timing, small movements and near-innite positions. Unlike THQs games and EAs own prior MMA effort, EA Sports UFC allows a
@OXMUK
contorts, flesh moulds around flesh. / Its phenomenal technology, truly/

much subtler grappling exchange on the oor. There are multiple guard passes (getting past your opponents legs), hip escapes for the guy on the bottom (a fundamental jiu-jitsu manoeuvre that has never been captured properly in a game before) and the ability to shrug off submissions before theyre locked in. As for the subs themselves, well, theyre a little odd at the moment. They involve a mini-game that hugely distracts from the on-screen action, as the attacking player has to play a Simon-says lightmatching game, while the defender uses the right stick to move a cursor around an Octagon on the HUD. If the Metadata attacker wins, the submission advances a stage, if the defender is victorious he or she escapes. Its very complicated and makes the subs look rather daft (anyone who trains or even watches a lot of MMA will baulk at the half-locked in kimuras and armbars), but its still the main area Hayes and company are ne-tuning before release. If everything does fall into place as it should before EA Sports UFCs nebulous Spring release, then theres no reason this wont be the strongest MMA game yet. In around an hours play, the game showed glimpses of greatness that suggest this could sit alongside Fight Night at the top of the sports-cumghting game pantheon. A Benson Henderson knee clattering into Pettis sternum as he attempted a Capoeira kick; a perfectly-timed Jon Jones takedown against an over-committed Gustafsson; a crushing Johny Hendricks left hand. These are the moments UFC fans want to recreate and experience for themselves. EA Sports UFC has the potential to bring the ght to the competition. Just like Uncle Dana. Jon Denton
/ /They move like real fighters skin
EA has completely overhauled the ground game, though the subs could do with a little more fine-tuning.
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Takedowns are currently dispiritingly binary they either succeed or fail. Real battles are more unscripted, with neither ever truly in control until one is on top of the other, or they separate.
Off the wall
He ran off the cage like a ninja!

At the final WEC show (a smaller, now-defunct promotion, owned by the UFC), in the last minute of the last fight, mixed martial artist Anthony Pettis springboarded off the cage and landed a high kick on champion Benson Hendersons face, winning the round, the fight and the belt. You may have seen it. It was truly incredible. EA Sports UFC allows (a few) fighters to bounce off the cage with kicks, superman punches and knees if they can time it just right.
PREVIEW
It looks magnificent, thanks to the id Tech 5 engine. Its smooth and surprisingly clever.
Wolfenstein: The New Order

We were expecting the blood - we werent expecting the soul
ouve been asked to create a Wolfenstein game. Great, you think: all Ive got to do is make it ridiculously over-inated, highly explosive, and ll it with Nazis. Basically, make a game Hindenburg. But you know its not going to be that easy. After all, you mess with beloved titles at your peril. Duke Nukem Forever didnt go too well for Gearbox, thanks to a tone-deaf interpretation and update of the Dukes original appeal. And EA Mythic felt the sharp end of radical middle-aged gamers when it devolved Dungeon Keeper into a cash-circumvented network of countdown timers on iOS. To MachineGames innite credit, its done something unexpectedly magical with Wolfenstein. Its preserved that pure, unsophisticated core of rstperson blasting, where a muscular man slides unbobbingly through rooms and reacts to all movement with an unthinking shoot. And beyond providing some of the most satisfying singleplayer shooting since RAGE, Wolfenstein pulls off two hard-to-dene strokes of genius. First, its just-true-enough to the classic. For instance, while regenerating
PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS / DEVELOpER MACHINEGAMES / FORMAT XBOX 360 & XBOX ONE
Bluffers Guide
The first recognisable FPS is back, and its equally familiar and stunningly different.
health is contrary to everything the 90s held dear, Wolfenstein compromises, by regenerating to the next multiple of 20. So while youll never have to relive that impotent dread of entering a set-piece with three per cent health, you will feel threatened. On the middle difculty, this isnt an easy game. Its dense with secrets, too from bookcases and paintings concealing less direct paths through the levels, to codes scrawled on the walls. Theres always a good reason to explore, beyond the stunning locations chucked up by the id Tech 5 engine. Second, MachineGames has added everything weve come to expect from modern shooters, without ruining that
feeling. Theres the chance to express your stealthier side. Explorable maps dont just squirrel health and ammo down dead ends they also offer multiple, meaningfully divergent paths. You get stronger, not just through a constant beeng up of your portable arsenal, but through perks unlocked by your actions. Kill 10 people while duel-wielding, for example, and youll be able to reload more quickly with two weapons. It all feels effortlessly natural, in a way that you know was anything but effortless for the developers. The bare minimum for a Wolfenstein success is competent shooting. But get ready for a genuine shock: the story
Another return
Not the first, but it could be the best

Wolfenstein 3D may have been eclipsed by the scalable sprites of Doom, and then its polygonal sister, Quake. But its never really gone away. 2001s Return to Castle Wolfenstein used Quake III tech to update the graphics, and the 2009 Wolfenstein by Raven was reviewed decently, even though the sales were abysmal. Bethesda must be praying that the Wolfenstein name still has some resonance in the world.
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Many ares can be stealthed. You dont power up by sneaking alone, though grab a few silent kills on the way.
PREVIEW
Metadata
THE PRESENTATION
We played the first three chapters, which covered BJs WWII exploits, his escape from a 60s hospital, and his first steps towards revenge. This demo segued with the last preview, in the Nazi space museum and lab.
is great. Or rather, the story is good enough to not distract you from the characters, script and acting. Over the course of the rst few hours at least, these are all great. A prickly air of menace exudes from the Nazis, and your Plucky Squad of Multinational Good Guys are given enough personality in the rst chapter to make you care about their fate something most games dont manage over their entire duration.
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BJ is the games deadpan narrator, solemnly serving up a Max Payne-style commentary about his grim resolve to do the right thing, and deal with the corruption and cruelty that hes experienced. But BJ is just the noire background, on which the Nazis act out a tense cartoon pantomime. Your unarmed encounter on a train with a sadistic female Obergruppenfhrer is
23 May
excruciating, and as you discover the work of Wilhelm Deathshead Strasse, you feel like youre in a Tarantinodirected Saw movie. And yet, inside those polar opposites, theres room for unexpected moments of humanity and sentimentality. Watching years pass as Blazkowicz loses a decade in an insane asylum. Handing a restrained Nazi to the mother of one of his victims, and watching her wracked slaps bounce off him. When a game lunges for my emotion gland so blatantly, Im usually prepared to bat it away with rolled eyes and a tut. But Wolfenstein broadsided me. Im ashamed to admit that I felt things. Cleverer still, these moments are understated, and woven sensibly into the game. Which, after the last few paragraphs, I feel I should remind you is a game where youll dual-wield shotguns, shiv robotic dogs, rip turrets out of their
The sound is intense in the trenches: gunfire mixed into alien thrzumming makes your neck tighten.
moorings, and score headshots thatll replace your enemies heads with a picturesque fountain of arterial spray. Its a committed single-player experience, which will offer some comfort to anyone whos complained about tacked-on multiplayer. And this preview ended where our last one began, so weve built a good idea of the rst ve or six hours. No new Wolfenstein game can ever match the impact of the original, but MachineGames has built a game thats so well-judged in its pace, tone, humanity and monstrousness, that we cant wait to see where it ends up. Bring on the Hitlerbots. Jon Blyth
while adding everything weve come / to expect from modern shooters/

@OXMUK
/ /Its just-true-enough to the classic,
P re V iew
Rebellions smart tessellation means textures will appear smooth no matter how far you zoom.
Sniper Elite 3
Bluffers Guide
Win WWII from a distance, as a sharpshooter. Its entirely third person until you actually take out your scope, and successful hits show eyewatering 3D views of the bullet damage.
PUBLISHER 505 GAMES / DEVELOpER REBELLION / FORMAT XBOX 360 & XBOX ONE
Is a change of scenery enough to keep this sniping shooter sharp?

teady, squint, squeeze. If you thought that was the sum total of sniping, youd be wrong at least according to Rebellion. The hands-off reveal for its latest game, Sniper Elite 3, transports us to the early 1940s and Halfaya Pass, on the North African border between Libya and Egypt. Once were dropped into the map as returning protagonist Karl Fairburne, its time to go to work and disable the enemys artillery. As the game is running on a devkit, the team taking us through everything is able to enter a free camera mode, zooming out to show us the full lay of the land. Its vast. Some of the levels, were told, are up to three times the size of those presented in Sniper
three times the size of / those in Sniper Elite V2/

/ /Some levels are up to
Elite V2. These new sandbox-style areas, Rebellion claims, are designed to allow for more organic environments, different playstyles, and multiple routes in and out of combat. For example, if youre playing things carefully, youre encouraged to tag enemies using your binoculars a la Far Cry 3 to mark them out on the map before engaging or bypassing them. This methodical approach also extends to tools, which can be mixed for varied results. Fairburne can combine int and tinder with a stick of dynamite to create a timed charge, allowing him to set large explosions to take out multiple enemies, large-scale vehicles or heavy weaponry before escaping. To further up the ante, V2s recharging health mechanic has been done away with. Instead, players must now scavenge for bandages and med kits to replenish lost health on the battleeld. Keeping a close eye on your heart rate is also crucial; as you progress,
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itll drop or increase depending on physical exertion or the amount of pressure your character is under. Ideally, itll stay at a steady 60 BPM, but should it go higher than that you could be looking at drastically decreased reaction times for movement and shooting. SE3s most signicant new feature, however, is its relocation mechanic. When in combat, youll now have two or three shots to make from one spot before enemies realise where you are. After this, theyll come down heavily on you unless you can move quickly to a new sniping location. Its a neat solution to the usual stealth game tedium of getting caught in a tight spot and having no option but to murder your way out. Killcams, too, have been redesigned. The bone-crunching slow-mo money shot is still there, only now you can also see how a targets musculature and circulatory system react to a bullet passing through their face. Also, vehicle
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Q&A
Smart snipers can do a little oddevening with vehicle takedowns.
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Despite the loss of automatic health regen, Karl Fairburne is uneconomical with bandages.
Sniper Elite 3s producer on relocation, sniper scope reflection, and enemy AI

niper Elite 3s new mechanics havent just been thrown in for the hell of it. As producer Andrew Shenton explains, theyve all been designed around the creation of a more authentic World War II sniping experience. named the new system Axom, which is to do with the parts of the nerves that join them together. The idea is that in V2, the AI was robust, but wasnt very human it felt robotic. It was quite punishing, so we wanted to give it a more believable, more human side. So, you could see the AI thinking, you could see them go through their decision process. I think weve been successful in realising that. wanted to discourage and move away from in more traditional shooter titles is the run-and-gun approach. Basically, the player needs to be able to control their heart rate, and there are a number of ways you can do that. For a lot of the demo, I was moving reasonably slowly and being quite patient. That was because keeping my heart rate down meant that I would be able to shoot more quickly.
Andrew Shenton
Theres a quiet satisfaction in masking the sound of your gun with the regular chug and choke of a backfiring generator. Its like we were never there
takedowns will grant you a surgeons eye view of how a tiny gob of metal can vaporise a trucks engine. SE3 isnt reinventing the formula that served its predecessor so well, but V2s impressive sales gures mean it doesnt really have to. Utilising the Xbox Ones tech to build onto those original blueprints with new mechanics and features may just be enough to keep franchise fans gunning for more. Aoife Wilson
The relocation mechanic sounds interesting it seems like its all about taking back control when things go wrong. Absolutely. In Sniper Elite V2 we had the same sort of situation, so you could plan your approach and make your preparations. But once things opened up, there really wasnt much agency for the player; they were under fire and they had to fire back. We wanted to change that, because its not the way that snipers necessarily operate. So playing around with that gives the player more room to produce interesting results. What about the AI? Its been rebuilt from the ground up. Weve
//We wanted to move
away from the traditional run-and-gun approach//

We have the option for the player to be able to sprint and get out of the environment, but that spikes your heart rate up quite high. The arteries that run down from the neck can cause a shot to be less predictable, and as a result youre shooting in a wider area, and youre not necessarily going to be able to pinpoint. Its much better for you if youre calmer.
Does the sunlight play into that at all? Its glaring sunlight; would that reflect off the scope? Yeah, so we have exactly that mechanic, which is particularly useful in multiplayer. The direction of the sun gives you a stronger glint from your sniper scope. How important is the heart rate? Massively important. One of the things we
@OXMUK
PREVIEW
Its all very pretty now, but just you wait til the warships show up.
Tropico 5
ts all well and good being a despotic ruler, but to really have staying power you need a despotic dynasty. Raising a family to nurture your thriving democracy/ totalitarian labour state after youve gone is the only way to ensure you get the [Your Name Here]: A Warning From History Discovery Channel biopic you really deserve. So goes the thinking behind Haemimonts newest addition to its dictator-based city-building franchise, following a muted response to more conservative updates seen in 2011s Tropico 3. More complication and more consequence is the order of the day:
PUBLISHER KALYPSO / DEVELOpER HAEMIMONT GAMES / FORMAT XBOX 360
Raise a family. And taxes. And your own personal death squad
Bluffers Guide
Surprisingly compulsive, slightly amusing series about running your own banana republic gets a lick of paint, a grander timescale, and some more stuff to do.
you start out in the colonial era with little but a fabulous mansion, some ramshackle huts and a list of expected tributes from the King of England. Juggling the demands of the Crown and the burgeoning resistance movement is key to advancing rst to independence and then to international signicance. At rst youll need to extend your mandate while tempting the locals towards revolution. Once thats out of the way you have to focus on expanding your nation, fending off attackers using the newly-added combat system (its still city builder rather than real-time strategy, were assured, but attacks from pirates
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and other nations are a new challenge to face) and managing the aforementioned family. Earnings previously stashed in your Swiss bank account can now be spent pimping your progeny, whose stats may be buffed by sending them to military academy, the monastery or the Grand Tour. While in previous Tropicos you could easily slip into agricultural sluggishness, pruning and sculpting your island as it grew, this is more like feeding a nest of chicks: theres a constant ow of things to address, from international trade to social unrest, and as the years tick by your society has to grow in with the times.
AgE
COLONIAL
oF
pl U nd E R
INDEPENDENCE COLD WAR PRESENT DAY
Tropico changes as years pass, paddle steamers and thatch being superseded by container ships and nuclear power plants.
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PREVIEW
You can switch your approach from democratic to despotic depending on national need or personal mood. Current problem: pirates. Future problem: dwindling revenue of pirate museum.
/ /Its still a city-builder rather than
an RTS, but attacks from pirates and / other nations are a new challenge/
Soviet lunatic, either as technology develops, you have to use it, so our hopes of making it into NATO while half the nation is still living on mud and palm leaves were dashed early and the ability to redraw the constitution for personal gain is restricted to a handful Metadata
Staying on top of your trade routes will keep your colony solvent.
Youll need to build forts to defend against pirate attacks in the early years; later, youll convert them to tourist attractions. Huts need upgrading and eventually razing to be replaced with tower blocks. Different factions blossom and squabble, requiring careful attention. All the while, you have to keep Tropico as a player on the world scene; keeping friendly with both Allies and Axis during world wars, shipping rum to the US during Prohibition and generally keeping yourself on the CNN news ticker.
Or trY
By the books
Slightly disappointingly, world events play out as the history books dictate theres no opportunity to swing World War II the other way thanks to devious restrictions of Churchills cigar supply. Its unlikely that youll make it all the way into the Cold War as a proper post@OXMUK
CIVIlIZatIon REVolUtIon Real-time strategy on a grander scale with a grander budget. Still unbeaten on Xbox 360.
A KIngdoM FoR KEFlIngs XBLA city-builder in which your scaled-up Avatar can stamp around the map tossing citizens aside.
of preset options for things like voting rights and secularity, so we couldnt build a state religion around Twiglets. Entertainment value is instead provided by the ippant approach to government established by the series. Researchable upgrades for your settlement start with Table Manners and extend through things like Small Print and Naive Foreigners, and theres still the Sacha Baron Cohen-esque gure of El Presidente at the heart of it all. Its not split-your-sides stuff, but its nice to have a less po-faced spin on the spreadsheets that power the genre. Its certainly been enough to win us over in the last two games, and that plus the ever-evolving to-do list of the modern despot is likely to prove similarly compulsive despite its looks the graphics have been tarted-up, but this is clearly built on the ageing foundations of the previous games, and there are no conrmed plans for it to come to Xbox One. But given the studios prior form, itll likely hold our attention and the twists and turns thrown up by all those systems bouncing off each other mean it should stand a lot of replaying, too. Jon Hicks
Ronans got a lot to work through before he can rest in peace.
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PrEVIEW
Murdered: Soul Suspect

PUBLISHER SQUARE ENIX / DEVELOpER AIRTIGHT GAMEs / FORMAT XBOX 360 & XBOX ONE
Reports of your demise have been in no way exaggerated. Question is, whodunnit?
Getting gunned down by the bad guy oure standing in would bring most games to a stuttering an empty street. halt, but in paranormal adventure Darkness quickly Murdered: Soul Suspect, death isnt swallows the eerie just inevitable, its necessary. After light emanating from an ancient streetlamp witnessing his own violent end during as a thin fog descends the campaigns opening moments, protagonist Ronan OConnor a gifted on the surrounding but reckless detective must solve his brownstones. At your own murder from beyond the feet you nd a body. Your body. Bluffers grave. We wanted to create Suddenly you remember, in Guide an investigation game, but fragments and ashes: a serial we didnt want to go along killer at large, reports of a Think LA the same sort of patterns or suspect nearby, an altercation Noire, but precedents that had been set in the upstairs apartment... the instead of to this point, explains design sound of shattering glass. interrogating people and producer Eric Studer. And Youre trying desperately whats the best way of doing to merge your spirit back into reading their that? Taking the detective out your mortal esh when you see faces, youre of the physical realm. a hooded gure standing over possessing them and While Ronans spirit retains you, your gun hanging from reading his corporeal form, he now his right hand. Seven shots ring their minds. exists within a realm called the out. Each one rips a piece of Dusk a sort of limbo layered remaining life from your chest, on top of the living world. Inhabitants and a pale blue aura begins to blossom of the Dusk are able to watch and listen in their place. It crawls from your chest to events in our world, but they cant to your ngertips until it consumes you communicate or interact with the living entirely, and with a nal convulsion, except in highly specic, limited ways. death seals its icy grip. So begins the last They also cant escape at least, not until case youll ever have to crack.
they resolve whatever trauma trapped them between this life and the next. Immediately after his death, Ronan sees his deceased wife surrounded by radiant light. While he cant reach her, she does provide some cryptic advice: Something about your life isnt nished yet, she tells him. Save yourself. The obvious solution is to track down his hooded killer, but given the life Ronan has led, it might not be so simple. His parents were both criminals, reveals Studer. He rejected that lifestyle and walked away from his own family legacy. And then for him to become a police ofcer, it really puts him at odds not only with his roots but also for the people that he spends most of his days with.
Dead eye
While Ronan cant physically shake down a suspect anymore, he can walk through walls, see ethereal objects, talk to other spirits, and even possess living beings. This wont allow him to control his subjects movements, but he will be able to read their minds, look through their eyes, eavesdrop on their conversations and, on occasion, inuence their memories.
Who is the mysterious hooded figure who ended your life so abruptly?
@OXMUK
Murdered promises some creepy vibes, but according to Struder, its first and foremost a mystery.
Ronans not the only soul lost in the Dusk. Others need his help before they can move on. Youll have an unlimited amount of time to explore. Although Ronan cant control living beings directly, he can trigger their memories to provoke a reaction.
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PrEVIEW
Making Ronan a ghost lets us take familiar crime scenes and explore them in different ways, says Studer. So rather than examining evidence, checking for ngerprints, or looking for forensic data, youre discovering who has information by possessing them and reading their mind. So what kinds of clues will you encounter? Well, that depends. During an examination of Ronans own murder scene, we observed a few examples of varying complexity. Possessing an ofcer at the scene and selecting the eavesdrop option produced a quick cutscene conversation. Possessing a different cop let us read his notepad. When Ronan jumped into a witnesss mind, he was able to extract previously unrevealed information by selecting the right memory from among several options and using it to trigger a reaction. As the game progresses, these investigation mini-games promise to grow increasingly more demanding, and yes, you can get them wrong. The risk stems from Murdereds currently unnalised experience system, which doles out XP for expert sleuthing. Not only does the XP serve as an implicit ranking system, it also allows you to enhance Ronans supernatural abilities, possessing people at a greater distance, exerting more inuence over the living world, and so on. The idea is to give players as much information as possible so they feel like they have a bunch of options, explains Studer. While all the clues you uncover reveal more details about the world, only a handful from each crime scene are actually necessary to reach that scenes conclusion.
your humanity the longer you stay, / the more corrupted you become/
Helpless souls like the girl in the laundry room arent the only ghosts Ronan will encounter, however. The Dusk also contains malevolent demons intent on stealing whats left of his humanity. The longer you stay, the more corrupted you become, warns Studer, and if you dont solve your unnished business, this is your ultimate fate. These demons represent Murdereds action portion, but Ronan actually seems better off dodging them than ghting them. What we really want from the player is to be building Metadata strategies, says Studer. Its denitely not a shooter. We really want the player to be thinking about whats going on. While straightforward attacks are futile, Ronan can dispel the demons if he successfully sneaks up behind them. In order to accomplish that, he can take cover by possessing living beings, jump between inanimate objects, teleport short distances, and possess special objects that distract or disable the demons. According to Studer, the demon gameplay could still change prior to release, but were intrigued by any big-budget title from a major publisher that chooses to focus on storytelling and puzzle-solving over cinematic action not that we didnt enjoy the occasional panic-induced adrenaline rush those demons gave us during our hands-on time. In fact, we came away from our experience with a strong sense of cautious optimism. Were hoping for a bit more personality in the writing and denitely some greater complexity in the puzzles, but playing as a ghostly badass who can walk through walls gave us a feeling of voyeuristic power unlike anything weve experienced before. Scott Butterworth
/ /The Dusks demons want to steal
You can actually lose your own sense of self in the Dusk, warns Studer.
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bIG IdEA
Phantom menace
Because Ronan cant exactly strike up a conversation with whomever he pleases, he mostly interacts with other ghosts... so you never quite know what to expect. One well-dressed apparition simply scolded us for startling him. Elsewhere, a far more sinister spirit sat haunting a young girls closet and refused to leave even when we confronted him. Most curiously, a small schoolgirl kept popping up for some cryptic conversations complete with branching dialogue trees. Some ghosts arent looking for mere conversation, though. Some actually require Ronans help. At one point we found a young murder victim who felt she couldnt move on until she knew what had happened to her body. After eavesdropping on the elderly couple a few rooms over, we gured out they had accidentally killed her and hid her body in a quarry. Armed with this knowledge, we could help the victim get closure.
@OXMUK
Murdered started off with a lot more supernatural action and combat, says chief creative officer Matt Brunner. But as it evolved, we realised that investigation was more unique, and also worked perfectly with the kinds of things a ghost can do. We started out with a ghost gun and immediately you just went, Hmm, no. It just looked and felt wrong.
One of a Kind
Stepping into the unknown

Though originally announced for Xbox 360, Murdered is now in development for Xbox One as well. When we started, we wanted to focus on platforms that we understood, explains Studer. But when the new systems came out, we felt it was a reasonable leap to take the ideas and build a more nextgen experience. So whats new in the Xbox One version? Were doing things like higher poly counts on the characters, sub-surface scattering, better high-res visual effects things of that nature.
PREVIEW
The Goblin King takes ages to throw these crates, giving you ample time to drop them on his head.
PUBLISHER WArNEr BrOS. / DEVELOpER TT GAMES / FORMAT XBOX 360 & XBOX ONE
Lego The Hobbit

Bluffers Guide
What Lego Marvel did for super heroes, The Hobbit does for dwarves but using dialogue recorded from the films instead of stand-in sounda-likes.
Thorins dwarven company continues mining gold from the same old Lego formula
ego The Hobbit is a Lego game based on The Hobbit. Stop us if you need time to piece your blown mind back together. Sure, there are a couple of new mini-games and some cursory new mechanics (including our personal favourite: having one member of Thorin Oakenshields dwarf party pick up another and use them as an impromptu club), but like a delicious new Ben & Jerrys avour, the new dwarf swirls and goblin clusters are still buried in lovely old Lego ice cream. But not in a horrible, tooth-chippy way, like that sounds. According to associate producer Tim Wileman, the game will feature a Metadata
hub system like the one in Lego Marvel Super Heroes, that will let your company potter off and explore a wider Middleearth and pick up various side-quests along the way. But what were shown in our hands-off session are two linear sections that have been lifted straight from the rst Peter Jackson lm (the game will cover both An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug when it launches, with the There and Back Again to be released as downloadable content).
ETA
A smashing party
PrEVIOUSly IN
LEGO MaRVEl SUpER HERoEs Dozens of heroes and villains clash over missing Cosmic Bricks in an open, plastic NYC.
LEGO StaR WaRs: ComplEtE SAga All six episodes in one bundle, from a time when LEGO characters spoke in winks and arched eyebrows.
The rst encounter, which is set during Bilbos surprise dinner party for Gandalf and the dwarves, serves as the games tutorial. The dwarves arrive and immediately get to work smashing up all of Bilbos furniture for Studs, the in-game currency, while Martin Freemans Bilbo grumbles at them in the background. There are a couple of new mini-games introduced here a rhythm-matching round of plate juggling and a new system for building objects out of Lego
12 APR
pieces in 3D but in wider gameplay terms, everything here is blocky business as usual. The second stage drops the party into the more impressive Goblin Town, with Gandalf and the dwarves using their complimentary powers to solve puzzles and bash plastic goblins to bits before squaring off against a Big Fig Goblin King. This is Lego game classic: waves of enemies to bump off and strategic interplay of different characters abilities, like using a bow-and-arrow dwarf to ping switches and raise a platform, or Gandalfs magic staff to release a boulder that rumbles through a goblin horde like an oversized bowling ball. Nothing in Lego The Hobbit surprises or shocks us, but for a series built on iteration, thats not a bad thing. If youve already nished scouring Lego Marvel Super Heroes New York of crime, Lego The Hobbit looks like another x of trusty Lego comedy to keep your inner child grinning. Richard Wordsworth
/ pick up side quests along the way/

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/ /Youll be able to explore and
PREVIEW
The facial animation, courtesy of the Fox Engine, is second to none. Kojima defended Ground Zeroes length, saying that the levels arent linear, and also include replayable Trial Records which let you compete against others online.
PUBLISHER KONAMI / DEVELOpER KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS / FORMAT XBOX 360 & XBOX ONE
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

Bluffers Guide
A slimline prologue to proper sequel The Phantom Pain, this explains how Big Boss fell in to a nine-year coma during a 1975 sneaking mission.
Stunning visuals and open-world sneaking but does Kojimas prologue lack substance?
ast month we watched a man nish Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, on the hardest difculty level, in less time that it takes to skim through this magazine. Admittedly, the player in question was one of Kojima Productions most expert playtesters, and he played through just the games main story mission. But the striking speedrun made one thing perfectly clear; that Ground Zeroes really is designed as a slimline prologue to the real Metal Gear Solid V (thats Phantom Pain) a no-frills sandbox where replays and score chasing are the main attraction.
On top of Ground Zeroes opening mission (which for normal players will last far longer than Kojimas stealth ninjas) the 29.99 Xbox One release (19.99 on Xbox 360) is comprised of ve additional SideOps, all of which are set in the circa-1975 Cuban black site Camp Omega. The military base, Metal Gears rst foray into the open-world genre, introduces a welcome evolution to the series traditional stealth gameplay. The affably rugged Big Boss now voiced by Kiefer Sutherland is able to approach targets within the fortress from any angle, steal and drive vehicles and even
ETA
20 MAR
/ /Its a more strategic take on the / once-punishing sneaking series/

DayOps
Taking Boss out of the shadows
Ground Zeroes SideOps missions replace the darkness and drizzle of the main game with bright daylight or eerie dusk. Enemies can spot you from further away and new objectives demand you stay out of sight (or at least leave no witnesses behind). One mission tasks Boss with taking out a pair of wanted assassins located somewhere on the base, and theyll escape if the alarms go off. Its here that driving (and hiding inside) vehicles becomes and a crucial part of the strategy.
call in a support chopper for covering re or a quick lift to another area. Using his binoculars, Jack Baue erm, Boss is able to mark patrolling guards and track their movements using his futuristic iDroid device. Its an approach that feels more familiar to Far Cry than Metal Gear but also facilitates a welcome brand of strategic freedom, and a exibility to how players approach objectives. Stealth clearly takes priority and its the most satisfying way to play through Ground Zeroes missions but for arguably the rst time in the series a shoot-rst approach doesnt automatically equal disaster. This is thanks to generous health regeneration and a new Reex mode, which literally initiates bullet-time when youre spotted. Its possible to turn all of these systems off, and they are absent from the harder difculties, but in default mode they equate to an experience that, while not quite run n gun, certainly makes escaping from reghts far more forgiving. Our time with Ground Zeroes certainly indicated a less stressful, more strategic take on the once-punishing sneaking series, but the length of the campaign remains an eyebrow raiser especially for those who value the Metal Gear series for its narrative above all else. Andy Robinson
@OXMUK
PREVIEW
Kinect Sports Rivals

Kinects best ambassador will be here next month
ts all pretty skin-of the teeth with Kinect Sports Rivals. The release date was only sussed out eight weeks in advance, and its only now that were being let in on the true meaning of the title. Meanwhile, as Kinect proves itself increasingly capable at helping us navigate and record video clips for our uploads, our only evidence of its use as a motion controller its original raison detre has been Fighter Within. And if you nd yourself in court and your defence attorney is Fighter Within, prepare for the death penalty. Metadata
PUBLISHER MICROSOFT STUDIOS / DEVELOpER RARE / FORMAT XBOX ONE
Bluffers Guide
Motioncontrolled sports game built on chasing high scores, and the first Xbox One game to really use Kinect.
THe PreDiction
Along with Tetsuya Mizuguchis Child of Eden and Dance Central, the original Kinect Sports proved that even the old Kinect was capable of controlling an appropriate game. So with a proven formula and better hardware, Rivals is going to be good. Whether its great, well have to see.
So, what are the Rivals all about, exactly? Well, its not just alluding to you and your Xbox Live friends, battling it out for the top spot on the leaderboards. It refers to three tribes, wholl try to recruit you for their teams. Each will offer a different personality, along with specic equipment, cosmetic bonuses, and perks. Will you choose to be part of the Viper Network, headed by the ercely competitive Zara and her gadgetloving sidekick, Max? Maybe youre more attracted to the erce Russian accents of the wild Wolf Clan, headed by the chuckling slab of eccentric madman, Vargu, and his considerably less insane daughter Eve. Perhaps youre the kind of person who turns their Xbox off if they accidentally do something naughty in Fable. If youre painstakingly nice, you should try the Eagle Legion, which is led by Blake and Carmen. Quite why youd want to identify with a noble hero and a loyal free spirit is beyond us, though. Perhaps youre young, and havent learned to despise the world yet.
ETA
11 APR
/ /Each Rival tribe will offer a
different personality, along with / specific equipment and perks/

How games have been using the new black box so far
In a clever and subtle function, Killer Instinct uses Kinects camera to load your control preferences, and Zoo Tycoons mini-games are as charming as they are shallow. Tomb Raider Anniversary lets you tilt the camera with your head every now and then. The only game to opt for full motion control, Fighter Within, managed to make even navigating menus a horrible chore. Rare have got something to prove, here.
ONLY KINECT
The sports can be split into two sections. In the rst group, weve got the three brand new sports. First, theres Target Shooting, a sport which is as much a mystery to us, as it is to you its not been shown at any of the previews. We have, however, played around with the Rock Climbing game, which combines the response of gripping and hauling your imaginary bulk up a wall, with punching your opponent down from their own. Its here that we can most imagine the much-talked about Drivatar-style cloud AI in action. While Shooting could just involve simply playing against a friends ghost, Rock Climbing is interactive, so your aggression and speed will be used to determine your cloud AIs behaviour. It wont be quite as detailed as Forzas cloud AI, but it doesnt need to be. Everyone with an Xbox One has probably tried out Wake Racing, as one of the tracks formed the free Preseason download that was available on Day One. So far, this has been the best reason to hold the faith, showing off a motion-control system that was responsive and, according to the most begrudging review weve read, surprisingly not terrible. The truth is, it works pretty well, and its the reason were hopeful that the delays to Rivals are a matter of adding the nal touches, rather than frantic xing-up. Then there are the returning sports from the original game: Soccer, Tennis and Bowling. This is where Rare will really need to pull off something spectacular, and ensure that the new Kinect is used to its full potential. Because lets face it, this is a big deal for Microsoft. Its a rst-party title, from a team which has established itself as one of the few that can make a completely absorbing Kinect game. Voice controls for app switching are nice enough, but this is where Microsofts sensor can prove its worth as a gaming device. Jon Blyth
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
PREVIEW
Openly promoting the ginger agenda. The ginger mafia get everywhere.
The Viper Networks perks seem to include floating balls. Bowling makes a comeback. Everyone loves bowling. She cant begin to tell you how important this is. Join Team Eagle, and well have sincere emotions together.
Excuse me, I think your sweatband has slipped a bit.
@OXMUK
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RE VIE W S
The most important Xbox releases rated
The number of deaths wed accumulated in Dark Souls 2 before reaching the Shady Woods.
214
THIS MONTH IN NUMBERS
Time Spent In South Park: The Stick of Truth

25% Fighting 30% Laughing 15% Flinching 5% Wincing 25% Accepting a future in Hell 0% Grinding
DARK SOULS 2
Joined the Bell covenant p68 Stolen a letter opener p72
POLAR OPPOSITES The best and worst of the month
Aoife takes her tentative first steps into the treacherous world of Drangleic (p68)
THIS MONTH WE HAVE
BEST DARK SOULS 2
WORST RAMBO: THE VIDEO GAME
Performed needless surgery p76
Lashed out in anger p82
Given peas a chance p86
@OXMUK
REVIEW
Some enemies are pushovers alone, but are deadly in groups as repeated hits inflict dangerous and debilitating status effects.
Dark Souls II is more onlinefocused than its predecessor, and youll be glad of the help.
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REVIEW
DARK SoULS II
PUBLISHER NAMCO BANdAI / DEVELopER FrOM SOFTWArE FoRMAT XBOX 360 / RELEASE dATE OUT NOW
Can it match the magic of our first hundred deaths?

system, which returns with a few new f all the things to adore tweaks. Bonfires are linked, which means about the Dark Souls you can fast-travel back to ones youve universe, its the empty already rested at, and also use them as spaces I love most of all. an item box for storing equipment you Its the quiet kind of pride dont want cluttering up your inventory. that crackles as you pass You can also burn certain items in the through the scene of a bonfires flames to evoke a desired status past and deeply personal battle, unhindered and en route to a new effect or activate permanent stat boosts. Burning Sublime Bone Dust, for example, and greater challenge. will strengthen Estus Flasks, increasing As I begin to clear through areas in the amount of HP replenished per use. its sequel, Dark Souls II, defeating its You no longer level-up at bonfires either, first major figures the monstrous but must instead journey Last Giant, the silent Pursuer, back to Majula and speak the stoic Ruin Sentinels and with the mysterious Emerald the relentless Lost Sinner Herald, who will do it for you I realise that some of that with a flick of her magic wand. feeling has been lost. The REVIEWER This friendly figure will also fact that Dark Souls II has a AoIfE WILSoN gift you further Estus Flasks fast-travel mechanic unlocked if you find and return the from the off means that theres Live OXM Aoife @AoifeLockhart required Shards to her. no need to pass through Youd be wise to make these abandoned monuments, THE KNoWLEdGE full use of this favour too, leading to a lessened sense of WHAT IS IT? as Flasks are not quite as discovery and danger as I set A second helping plentiful as they were in the out to explore Drangleic. of the notoriously original game. In Drangleic, That said, however, you will unforgiving RPG. you start out with just one, experience far more empty WHATS IT LIKE? spaces in Dark Souls II. From Getting kicked when and in the place of additional Software has introduced a new youre already down flasks you have consumable and begging for more. items, lifegems, which enable mechanic whereby standard you to regenerate health over enemies disappear after youve WHoS IT foR? time. Though the amount of defeated them a certain number Thrill-seekers who arent put off by its HP they restore is minimal of times. This is, apparently, to bleak visual style. when compared to a glug of prevent players from grinding an Estus, these gems can souls and farming certain sometimes be more beneficial during items to make their journey easier or to lengthy boss battles, as they allow negate later dangers. It certainly makes your character some small freedom of things unpleasant when youre stuck movement while theyre being used. on a boss fight, with no alternative but Consumable Humanity is now gone, to carry on with your current strategy in too. In its place, you can use a Human the absence of extra souls to spend on Effigy to restore your humanity no matter helpful items or upgrades. The upside, where you are. Its only in this form that however, is that repeated traipses back youll be able to summon NPCs like Mildto the fog gate of a boss fight that has mannered Pate and Lucatiel of Mirrah you on the ropes will get easier over to aid you in battle. But theres another time, as the enemies standing between reason to keep your humanity intact: you will gradually fade away. each subsequent death you endure while Other major changes to the Dark Souls hollowed will restrict your HP, until up formula relate to its central bonfire
A shield is a warriors best friend, but for maximum damage, try dual-wielding swords.
@OXMUK
REVIEW
Areas like Majula provide much-needed moments of respite from the usual grind. Mind you dont get too complacent though.
to half your life bar has been locked off. Only using a Human Effigy will restore lost life at this point, but these can be hard to come by, especially in later stages of the game. This dwindling health makes the game all the more difficult, and the pressure to perfect your fighting technique all the more pronounced. Returning players might think they know how combat works by now, but From Software knows they know it, and seeks to punish the over-confident. How does the developer deal with warriors like me, for example, who continually circle an enemy, shield up, forever inching for a critical hit to their back? It adds enemies with no back and two duel-
Old gods, new tricks
wielding fronts, of course, and heavily armoured enemies that fall backwards on top of you as soon as you try to flank them. Familiarity with how the universe operates will only get you so far, and in many instances, the game will actually use your assumptions against you. Yep, this is Dark Souls all right. But though combat is similar, the setting and story have changed somewhat. Your purpose is vague at first; youre an undead drawn to the dreary land of Drangleic with the goal of lifting the rotting (and rotten) curse that plagues you. To do that, youre to seek out King Vendrick a man who stared into the essence of a soul and apparently holds the secret to sorting your mortality-related troubles. To reach
Covenants like the Blue Sentinels will keep the game fresh long after the end credits have rolled.
Misery loves company

Our debug review code was absent online components, which From has said will include optional voice chat and friend summoning. While we remain sceptical, publisher Namco has said these changes are designed to keep players immersed long after the final boss has been slain. Well report back on that next issue.
him, youll have to confront four ancient beings with giant souls a task thatll no doubt have you sullenly dying a thousand times over before you see it through to its conclusion. To match the oppressive mood, the first ten hours or so can be overwhelmingly grey. After the striking starting area Majula, youll toil through seemingly endless rubble and ruined steel. It all changes, thankfully, as soon as you earn your spurs and reach areas like Heides Tower of Flame. This location, set on a jagged coastline at magic hour, houses a huge cathedral, relics crowned with stained-glass windows glinting in the sun, giant hawk-headed statues, and the Tower of Flame itself a huge construction whose uppermost windows are constantly alight and glowing. After so many hours staring at crumbling castle walls, its a revelation, and after this point, locations get steadily more fantastical. Theres a subterranean pirate bay hidden beneath a gleaming monastery, a fogged wood where wicked eyes watch from the shadows, and moss-covered ruins where cursed pottery haunts your every move, and a giant basilisk one of the most universally
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Early stages and boss fights may feel familiar, but several enemies and areas in later levels will test your skills and favoured strategy.
REVIEW
Each death will restrict your HP, until half your life bar is locked off
despised foes from the original game taunts you with bulbous, hateful eyes. Basilisks arent the only familiar faces that fans of the first Dark Souls will run into. Players who sign up to the Bell Keepers covenant might find themselves embroiled in a somewhat familiar fight, for example, and hidden behind a drawbridge in an enormous cathedral, youll come face to face with the ghost of an old friend against more evened odds. This battle, in particular, may give some a satisfying sense of closure over what was no doubt one of the originals most gruelling moments. There are new introductions were less convinced by. The presence of more traditional game-speak in various item tool tips breaks the illusion of Dark Souls existing as a world apart from its RPG contemporaries, untouched and untroubled by gaming lexicon. The
Walk softly, and carry a big sword. Unfortunately, your enemys sword is often bigger.
Praise the sun
availability of fast travel from the start has also cost the game that sense of trepidation when resting at a bonfire that existed in its predecessor. In Lordran, once you rested, you knew there was no going back until the area had been conquered, and that was a terrifying and thrilling feeling. What Dark Souls does, more than any other game, is make challenges that once felt utterly impossible, possible when the only thing that has changed is you and your understanding of the situation. It may take ten passes at a foe before you even begin to feel out its defences and formulate a strategy, but when that glorious killing blow finally comes, youll know youve earned it. And thats an incredible feeling. OXM
PROS/CONS
The OXM Verdict

COMPLETION CLOCK
Locations can err on the drab side Fast travel makes the world feel a little too disjointed Online features could be trouble
PRo TIp
OVERaLL
It changes the formula of its predecessor just enough to keep things interesting, yet retains the sense of spoon-fed accomplishment that keeps the dedicated coming back for more.
Utterly engrossing combat, still Literal air-punch moments aplenty Theres beauty to be found in even the ugliest enemies
50+
HOUrs
Warriors, get a Bastard Sword and level it up as early as possible itll serve you well.
@OXMUK
REVIEW
The City gets progressively more dangerous as the plot wears on.
REVIEWER
EdWIn EVanS-THIRLWELL Live OXM ETboy @dirigiblebill
THIEF
PUBLISHER SQuArE ENIX / DEVELOpER EIdOs MONTrEAL / FORMat XBOX 360 & XBOX ONE / RELEaSE datE OuT NOW
tHE KnOWLEdGE
WHat IS It? Flashy reboot of an iconic PC stealth franchise. WHatS It LIKE? Dishonored without spells, or Thief: Deadly Shadows plus fingers. WHOS It FOR? The underhand, and those who havent played the originals.
Theres greatness in Garretts return, but its very well hidden

Theres an iPod-ified version of the stealth-assisting Light Gem, which brightens your surroundings. Its complemented by a new HUD mechanism, the shroud, which wreathes the view in mist when youre in shadow. Garrett can now swoop to cross small distances without attracting as much notice, and has a Focus ability that paints interactive objects and enemies a spectral blue. So where does it all go wrong? Your first clue is the return of the Rope Arrow, which now only works on bits of conspicuously bundled scaffold. Theres also the new grappling line, which is only used during the linear third-person climbing sequences that ill-advisedly book-end certain chapters. Garrett cant jump these days, either hes got an Assassins Creed-y high-profile mode instead, which auto-jumps or autoclimbs where the level design allows. The new Thief wants you to explore, dangling the lions share of collectables away from the beaten path. But as these mechanical refinements suggest, it also frequently insists that you walk that path, narrowing the options till theres no room to breathe. Too often, youre given no more than one or two ways to pass through an area. Too often, chapters build to brain-dead escape sequences or confrontations some boss battles make those of Deus Ex: Human Revolution look impressive, though thankfully theyre nowhere near as abundant. Its a shame, because when things do open out, the game can be marvellous. As in 2004s Deadly Shadows, the City is your hub environment, packed with side areas and things to pinch. Some of the smaller item drops feel a bit scattergun silver goblets in beggars hovels but others arrive care of worthwhile micronarratives, either handed to you as secondary quests by your fence, Basso, or stumbled upon by listening to NPCs converse or picking through diaries. If youre committed, you can happily play housebreaker for hours after cleaning out the main quest. Story levels may also be replayed to complete secondary objectives or search for loot perhaps once youve saved up for new tools like the wirecutter, which is used to disable traps, or the screwdriver, which is used to break into ventilation ducts.
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tourist walks through a city and sees only scenery picturesque architecture, souvenirs. But a Master Thief, like the permanently behooded Garrett? A Master Thief sees objectives, options. Scratch marks denoting walls that can be climbed. An opportune sinkhole of shadow in the middle of a well-lit room. Eidos Montreals Thief reboot is a valiant effort, but it feels more like a tourist in original developer Looking Glass Studios world than a thief. The ingredients are all there, at least. Garrett returns with most of his old tools intact: water arrows with which to extinguish torches; lockpicks with which to open doors and strongboxes; fire and blast arrows that ignite pools of oil; gas arrows that now briefly incapacitate rather than down their targets; and, of course, Garretts trusty blackjack, only effective when wielded against an unaware target from behind.
Neither seen nor heard
IN FOCUS
Hit the Y button to plunge Garrett into a supernatural fugue, during which door handles, valuables, traps and enemies are shrouded in blue fog. You can also call on unique skills while in Focus mode, given the right upgrades a fleeting spell of invisibility when in the light, and the ability to see sonar rings from footsteps.
Not all NPCs will attack on sight but they may alert those who do.
REVIEW
Too often, chapters build to braindead escapes or confrontations

Eidos Montreals appreciation of the flexibility afforded by classic Thief is manifest in the spread of difficulty settings. Besides the generic options, youve got a range of sub-settings such as Game Over on detection or No Kills. Its also possible to turn on or off any combination of HUD elements and abilities: you can play without waypoints, a mini-map, control prompts or Focus mode if you prefer. Alas, for every opportunity presented to the player, another is torn from your avaricious fingers. The cramping of choice might be acceptable if the plot were worth your time, but its nonsense a wooden tale of rich versus poor versus Supernatural High Jinks. None of the characters are interesting, and youll see the twists coming as you would see a herd of elephants crossing the sky. Most dispiritingly, the areas that host the story missions rarely feel like they have a history, littered though they are with bespoke furnishings and artefacts. Eidos Montreal has, at least, put together its own reasonably compelling alternative to the dreaded Shalebridge Cradle from Deadly Shadows, albeit with one-tenth of the finesse in terms of audio design. And then there are the minor blemishes. Its occasionally difficult to gauge whether you can jump to an object, in the absence of a manual
option. Theres a mechanic that makes Garrett stop before dropping off ledges, but confusingly, this isnt applied to all of them. Its harder, somehow, to get a read on what constitutes a shadowed area, for all the beauty of the new lighting system. The AI has its moments of unfeasible idiocy guards notice things like open doors and extinguished torches, but will ignore dead comrades once the initial alert period is over. But there are times when everything comes together. Towards the end of the game, I spent 15 minutes circling a storeroom in the company of a single guard, gradually divesting it and him of every trinket. I was discovered when another guard walked through the area below: the light of his torch shone through cracks in the floor, illuminating me. During such moments, its obvious Eidos Montreal could make a masterful Thief game. Given a few more months in the shadows, this might have been it. OXM
Guards wont turn a blind eye to a suddenly extinguished brazier.
WoRSE tHAn
The OXM Verdict

DISHOnOREd Arcanes stealth actioner, can be summarised as kind of like Thief, only with inventive spells and lots of butchered whales. This seems oddly conservative by comparison.
COMPLETION CLOCK
PROS/CONS
Visually sumptuous Nice spread of options at times A few worthwhile areas to be found Often rushed and constrictive Rubbish, nonsensical plot Boss battles fail to impress
OVERALL
A decent but sadly cramped and wayward take on a classic stealth franchise. Garretts never looked better, but hes never felt worse to inhabit. Still, how about those twitchy fingers?
HOurs
15
@OXMUK
REVIEW
If it isnt obvious to you whats going to happen next, watch more South Park.
REViEWEr
JON BLYTH Live OXM Log @disappointment
SOUTH PArK: THE STiCK OF TrUTH
PUBLisHEr UBIsOFT / DEVELOpEr OBsIdIAN ENTERTAINMENT & SOuTH PARK STudIOs / FOrMAT XBOX 360 / rELEAsE dATE OuT NOw
THE KNOWLEdGE
WHAT is iT? A good, long episode of South Park, with fighting and exploring. WHATs iT LiKE? Obnoxious, intelligent, unrelenting, unapologetic. WHOs iT FOr? Anyone whos interested enough to be reading this page.
Where being a gentleman means never farting on someones balls

f you dont like South Park, theres very little for you here. This is a game for fans of a euphoric mix of intelligence, tempered with puerility and pointed whimsy. And the schedule of game development means that its not about current events, so The Stick of Truth gets to pull back the zoom, and not respond to whatevers happened in America this week. The Stick of Truth exists in that classic South Park place where the imagination of children takes substance, breaking character only to discuss whether Power Points being abbreviated to pee-pee is a good idea, and what the guy dressed as Spock is even doing there. And like the best TV episodes, the game of Dungeons and Dragons jigsaws seamlessly into the even more offensive and bizarre events unfolding over three days in the real world. In the childrens world, Cartman leads the humans against Stans elvish faction in an unending battle for possession of the Stick of Truth. Oven lighters become flaming wands, tampons become poison grenades. Find a toilet, and you can take a QTE dump, fish it out of the bowl, and hurl it at another kid to gross him out so he cant eat food to heal. You have to respect the effort thats gone into making that kind of thing feel logical. Meanwhile, the adults and shadowy government agencies conspire to deal with a green alien substance that turns everyone it touches into oh, just play the game. It looks perfect a genuine replica of the show in look and animation. Combat is an odd blend of pure turn-based combat, boosted by QTEs. As you make friends, you get to choose one ally from a small collection of buddies. Butters is the paladin, who can heal the new kid, but tends to get attacked more often, because well, because hes Butters. Jimmy Valmer is the bard, giving a free PP boost every turn, and singing songs of buffs and debuffs. And Cartman? Well, he lobs panty pads and lights his farts. Lets just call him an assassin-hole. Your own skills include melee and ranged weapons, a set of class-specific abilities powered by PP, and mana-fuelled farts. PP regenerates after every fight, but mana has to be topped up by flatulent foodstuffs. Sadly, its not a brilliantly balanced system power up the Mages very first power, Dragon Breath, and youve got an armour slashing, shield-busting, burn-inflicting multitool of a weapon that can be deployed pretty thoughtlessly to a quick and easy victory. This imbalance isnt fatal to the game, though. Youll easily hit the level cap without having to grind, so with the constant new powers, it never gets dull. Also, there are other, more interesting ways of dealing with enemies. Many of the fights can be avoided, with
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Respect my authoritah
Friend Request
The measure of any mans success is how connected he is on Facebook, and life in South Park is no different. The reward for many side quests is a friend request. Other collectibles include Chinpokomon, weapon-boosting badges, underpants, kindergartners basically, theres plenty of hidden stuff.
This is one of several scenes censored in the EU version.
REVIEW
Is it possible to be racist against Mongolians?
Princess Kenny can also charm wolves, by lifting up her top.
full XP benefits, by shooting at or farting on the environment to burn, stun, distract or electrocute them. While the basic map might seem limited, South Parks overwhelming strength is in its density. Density of the secrets and side missions on the map, which give you a chance to speak to everyone. The density of script, which keeps pace so casually that you genuinely feel like youre playing an episode. Every mission is a multipart excuse for jokes, and while the turn-based tactics dont even begin to approach basic JRPGs, no opportunity is missed to squeeze in an observant, filthy, and laugh-out-loud moment. One question: do you have a humourfail button? Chances are The Stick of Truth will press it. Theres no shame in
No opportunity is missed to squeeze in a filthy, laugh-out-loud moment

it: it hit one of my own. Take Mr Slave, a character built around the notion that gay men will stick anything up their arse. Its an eye-rollingly easy shot punching down at best, and comforting to homophobes at worst. But its all saved, to my ridiculous flinching brain, by where these stories go: places so wilfully absurd that you have to throw off your social justice garb and enjoy the musical ride. When you find a doctors outfit in the Unplanned Parenthood clinic, and notice that it has attack buffs for a very particular kind of enemy, your heart sinks as you realise whats probably coming. Again, when it happens, its done with such a defusing sense of knowing that youd have to be a huffing Daily Mail reader to take offense. Its a difficult game to score, because while the overall experience is utterly great, the mechanics sometimes feel stifled by the understandable need to be a joke or a reference. A longer game might have suffered from that: South Park leaves you grossed out and hungry for more. OXM
Button mashing prompts have never been more forgivable.
The OXM Verdict

PROS/CONS
It looks like a South Park episode Its as funny as a South Park episode Its much longer than a South Park episode It will probably offend you at some point But maybe it isnt the games fault? Actually, it definitely is
COMPLETION CLOCK
KEY INFLUENCES
OVERAll
20 10
If you want perfectly honed systems, this isnt your game. If you want to be entertained by a game that knows how to keep changing, never lose pace, and leave at the right time, this is the perfect guest.
HOuRs
70
70% The South Park TV Series 20% The South Park Movie 10% Final Fantasy
@OXMUK
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Yaiba takes on Ninja Gaidens Ryu at the games opening, and is quite rightly thumped.
REVIEW
Probably best not to attack an electrified zombie with a metal sword.
REVIEWER
STEVE HogARTy Live misterbrilliant @misterbrilliant
YAIbA: NInJA GAIDEn Z
Pub TECMO KOEI / DEV SPARK UNLIMITEd/COMCEPT / FoRmAT XBOX 360 / RELEASE DATE 21 MAR
THE KnoWLEDgE
WHAT IS IT? Hack-and-slash spin-off pitting a ninja against a zombie horde. WHATS IT LIKE? A neutered Ninja Gaiden, pared down and stripped of decent combos. WHoS IT FoR? Do you laugh and slap your thighs when you hear the F-word? This is for you.
A hack-and-slash Ninja Gaiden spin-off thats dead on arrival
aiba is a staggering asshole. Not the good, Larry David kind of asshole, hes not strolling around a zombie-infested futuristic city being ostracised for his hilariously ill-timed outbursts of etiquette-piercing honesty. No, hes the genuinely unlikeable kind a clumsy mash of painfully uninventive swearing, one-note euphemism and straight-up misogyny. Yaiba is essentially a 13-yearold boys idea of a foul-mouthed ninja, living in a seven-year-olds doodle of a zombie apocalypse. Hes not ironic, hes not post-ironic, hes simply bad. Which would be fine were it not for the fact that he also stars in a less than fantastic game. Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is an offshoot of the acclaimed Ninja Gaiden franchise, but rather than focusing on the intensely technical combat of its namesake, it instead places you in the less immediately challenging and more
fodder-led environment of a zombie outbreak. Hordes of the undead fall to your frantically slashing dual blades, powerful mech-fist and spinning chain, feeding into your combos and building up your Bloodlust meter. Carrying out executions is key to success in Yaiba. Once youve smacked a zombie hard enough hell pop out an icon signifying his preparedness to be executed, at which point you hit the left trigger to carry out a gory kill cutscene. These icons are fairly forgiving in their lifespan, barely challenging the reaction times of even novice players, and appearing frequently enough that your health bar, which these executions regenerate, will stay reliably topped up. Difficulty spikes hugely when special zombies appear, but combat options are shallow enough, with no parrying or clever
Undead Bored
skill-based timed attacks to speak of, that tactics devolve into button-mashing and running away. The by-the-numbers fighting is broken up by the ability to wrench arms and other parts from the defeated corpses of these enemies, briefly granting you their abilities. Hardly game-carrying stuff though. Woeful camera direction during some encounters renders the game nearunplayable at times, as Yaiba is reduced to a few distant, obscured pixels while the camera attempts to fit the entire scene into view, while interminable and frequent load screens make death a patience-sapping chore. This is an average action game that hoped to be carried by its appealingly crass, bloody art style and audacious main character, but instead Yaiba feels strategically basic and tonally childish. The character may find redemption in the games plot, but youll find no such payoff as a player. OXM
tHE RIVALS
The OXM Verdict

PROS/CONS TRy THIS InStEAD
SHAnK 2 Even though it has one fewer dimensions, this XBLA side-scrollers combat systems still boast far more depth than Yaiba: NInja Gaiden Zs. And at 6.75, its much cheaper too.
OVERALL
Attempts to play the main character off as an unlikeable rogue immediately fall flat. Yaiba the ninja is awful to be around, while Yaiba the game is uninspired and technically shallow.
NInJa GaIDEn: RaZOrS EDgE LOllIPOP CHaInSaW DMc: DEVIl May cry
6 6 9
Attacking zombies with clowns arms A bumhole of a main character Undemanding combat requires no timing or skill
@OXMUK
REVIEW
If this were Rekondite mode, thered be a likely confused, nearly invisible player on the other side of this bullet barrage.
Having to tweak your weapons layout and player class/ model selection before every match is a drag.
REKoIl: LIBErator
REVIEWEr
ANDrEW HaYWarD Live deja andyroo @ahaywa
PUBlIShEr 505 GAMES / DEVElopEr PLASTIC PIrANHA / Format XBOX 360 / rElEaSE DatE OUT NOw
thE KNoWlEDGE
What IS It? Antique first-person shooter thats confused retro with awful. WhatS It lIKE? Going to a five-star restaurant and being served cold gruel. WhoS It For? Anyone who wants to know how bad things were back then.
An old-school online shooter thats learned nothing

across an equal number of maps, and seems perfectly content to be a nondescript entry in a done-to-death genre. Without player progression or saved customisation, youll start every match by fumbling through menus to choose player class, character model and weapons. The deathmatch, domination and capture the briefcase (read: flag) modes are all standard fare. The one slightly noteworthy mode is Rekondite, which pits everyone on the server against a single, nearly invisible player except that youre almost helpless as the hunted, without a firearm, and its unclear whether youre even earning points for staying alive while camouflaged. Even if you find a game mode that you like, playing it consistently isnt really possible unless its with friends. Rekoil lacks public playlists of any sort, so aside from setting up a custom match that searches for both map and mode in tandem (which never matched us with a single other player), your lone option is to hit Play Now and get dumped into a random game, mode and map. The rudimentary gunplay is adequate, aside from tricky aiming and overly abundant headshots. But on a platform with eight years worth of excellent shooters, simply being playable isnt enough. Rekoil feels like a relic from deep in the past, and it looks the part as well, with muddled, ultra-generic locations and ugly, poorly animated player models. Nothing about the experience stands out. In eschewing modern enhancements and conveniences, the developer hasnt crafted a purer or more to-the-point shooter just a much less interesting and impactful one. OXM
his game harks back to a simpler era for first-person shooters a time without persistent player levelling and equipment unlocks, saveable weapon loadouts, killcams, or basic thematic framing. We will charitably consider these to be intentional deficiencies, but the list continues and gets progressively harder to forgive. For example, Rekoil will often spawn your character with the wrong (non-primary) firearm in hand perhaps directly into a firefight plus all of its controller layout options lack a single button for tossing a grenade while holding a gun. But what this dead-simple entry is missing most of all is a compelling reason for anyone to spend time in its world. Plastic Piranhas multiplayer-only release serves up ten-person shootouts
PROS/CONS
The OXM Verdict

Ignores ten years of genre improvements Utterly devoid of style or personality Too crude to sustain a community
Well, its got all the basic modes Just enough variety in the maps A useful educational tool to terrify the young
DId YoU KNoW?
thE WoRst BIt

Saddling its nonwhite characters with stereotypical tags like urban and tribal. A white guy in generic military gear? Doctor. Sigh.
OVERALL
An atavistic throwback to early first-person shooters that adds nothing and removes much. To recoil is an entirely correct and unavoidable reaction when playing this game.
Despite its dated appearance and small development team, this game still cost three million dollars to develop.
3
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A wrecking ball mech vs. a bunch of AT-STs. Eat it, WWE.
REVIEW
For the first time in a Lego game, all the environments are completely made of Lego.
REVIEWER
JoE SKREbElS Live Mr P Valentine @2plus2isjoe
tHE KnoWlEDgE
WHAt IS It? A game of a movie of a brand of Scandinavian building material. WHAtS It lIKE? The Lego game you knew, sort of loved, then forgot. WHoS It FoR? Smaller children, their long-before bored parents and completists.
Lego puts its brand on Travellers Tales brand of their brand. And?
ext-gen, the Xbox owners Great Liquid Black Hope, should be an altar for developers to place their now-eonic franchises upon and declaim this is how it should always have been. Shooters, long held back by aging, coglike chipsets, suddenly burst into furious new life. Platformers positively leak movement, vitality and precision doublejump mechanics. And yet Travellers Tales Lego series suddenly feels out of place less elevated, more exposed by this move to new hardware. What gives? The answer, for The Lego Movie Videogame at least, lies somewhere in the step back TT Fusion has had to take in making the thing in the first place. Where Lego Marvel Super Heroes traded on a name, this licensed crossover is based entirely on a single story. That means ditching the formers open-world New York for a series of mini-hubs, each punctuated by some roughly approximal missions that help lead you to the next cutscene. It means retaining the number of playable characters but reducing how many unique abilities they have, making most of the unlocks less interesting than the four you earn in the first couple of hours. And it means taking away TTs trademark comedy in favour of clips from the film itself, making the game seem more like a buffer between jokes than the set-ups for them. Its a Lego game as we came to expect it in the mid-Noughties segmented, bound by the source material and as simple as kids games get, built for notears co-op with an adult. The combat, stiff and one-note as it is, is satisfying enough, the puzzles retain that 4x2 block in 4x2 hole charm and there are even a couple of new features. The films Master Builders minifigs freed of their Lego City-style sets can build items from scratch as ever, but instruction followers like lead character Emmett use found instruction manuals to create pre-set items in timed minigames. Alongside a lovely, fresh take on the Lego look, it almost seems worthy of a step up in technology. But it niggles after a time. This is a game not just built on the foundations of the last generation, but using its blueprints and sleeping in its bed. Theres so little new here that your console seems wasted on it. Lego might be the undying kids toy, but its videogames are looking to be getting on a bit. OXM
THE LEGO MoVIE VIDEogAmE
PUblISHER WARNER BROs./ DEVElopER TT FUsION / FoRmAt XBOX 360 & XBOX ONE / RElEASE DAtE OUT NOw
Brick in the wall
The OXM Verdict

THE DIFFERENCE ON XBOX 360
Negligible. While you lose a little of the brick-y splendour from the backdrops, the game is entirely unchanged which, in a strange way, makes it feel a bit better, all told.
thE bEst bIt

Realising that using the wrong character to build a context-sensitive structure results in an abortive, futurist abomination. They then shrug sadly.
Videogames Morgan Freeman is played by Josh Robert Thompson, best known for car insurance shill, More Than Freeman.
DID YoU KNoW?
OVERall
Funny enough, easy enough and familiar enough to feel like an old friend, but this doesnt offer the excitement we expect from a series taking its second step onto a new platform.
@OXMUK
REVIEW
Dracula has a quiet moment with the weapon he used when he wasnt the living incarnation of all that is foul.
Reviewer
JON BLYTH Live OXM Log @disappointment
CASTLEVANIA: LORDS OF SHADOW 2
PUBlisher KONAMI / Developer MErCUrySTEAM / ForMat XBOX 360 / release date 28 FEB
the Knowledge
What is it? An overblown saga of piousness, blasphemy and the in-between. Whats it liKe? Fighting, stealth, navigation and multiple goings-on. Whos it for? If you enjoyed the first game, theres much more here.
The grand finale solves the old problems, and adds some new
dirty, Gothic city, demonic employees who resemble Chaos Marines, and a castle that is alternately ruins, Chinese theatre and dungeon hellscape. Its less luscious, but no less intricate, and the world is still transporting enough to feel like an industrialised fairy tale. The story begins with a flashback tutorial, where Dracula is at the height of his powers. In this state, he wins a battle with an animated church by puking hell-blood right into its holiest bits. But something happened between then and now. The next time we see him, hes a withered recluse. Zobek, his fake best friend and chief Lord of Shadow from the first game, recruits him for one final battle: Satan and his acolytes are unleashing poison and chaos into the world, to prepare it for his return. Zobeks promise, after his treachery? To kill Dracula and end his immortal curse. But Draculas also plagued by his own familys tragic saga: his son, Trevor, whose humanity survived being turned into a vampire, and his wife, Marie, who he killed under the control of Zobek. And theres more to the Belmont saga than weve already learned. Combat is the heart of LoS, and the place where the systems run deepest. Combos, perfectly-timed blocks and dodges all merge into a zipping frenzy that doesnt quite reach the pure, freeflowing joy of Ninja Theorys DmC, but gets close. Even the normal levels are challenging enough to kick your arse if you forget to watch whats going on. Youre encouraged to experiment by the mastery system: use a combo, and youll slowly master it, eventually helping to boost the overall performance of your weapon. This system stopped me from settling into a Rising Whip/Guillotine combo that was a little too devastating and a little too comfortable. Confusingly, the most complex and numerous combos are on your secondary weapons: the Void Sword and Chaos
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ive credit to MercurySteam where its due: it knows how to hide loading times. Platforms shift, powered by bungalow-sized cogs. Intricate mechanisms fire, transforming the room around you. A wolf leads you through a bloody, chattering mist. These could all have been a loading screen, but after the this isnt Castlevania! criticisms levelled at the first game, Lords of Shadow is determined to keep this world intact and explorable. The answer is some short waits, filled with feats of architecture and arcane engineering. This is the final chapter in Gabriel Belmonts saga of lost piousness and the temptation of redemption. Gone are the Pans Labyrinth nature-sodden stylings of Del Toro, replaced with a
Lord and master
IDOL DOWN
Six artefacts will drop from enemies. These range from combat basics, like restoring health, boosting blood, and slowing enemies, to odder options like taking Draculas dragon form, and releasing a secret-hunting Dodo. You cant carry many, so dont be afraid to use them or theyll go to waste.
The most ornate fast travel room ever, triggered by Dracula pressing his hand onto an orange juicer.
REVIEW
Classic Castlevania tropes surface, like the Toymaster and his puppets...
Its the perfect blend of po-faced gravitas and solid-octane nonsense

Claws. As the default weapon, it would have made more sense to have given the deepest skill tree to the always-on Blood Whip. You dont get as much of a chance to experiment with the other two. How has MercurySteam dealt with the complaints made against the first game? The plot will still lead you on a linear path, and youll get teleported to where the game wants you to be fairly regularly. But you can navigate the map entirely under your own steam. LoS 2 isnt openworld in the Skyrim sense, but there are so many opportunities to veer, that the illusion of choice is well maintained. Another complaint was the platforming. This is now fixed: traversing the environments is a matter of finding and following the paths, but its relatively fast, and designed to let the scenery sink in. The enragingly checkpointed Titan battles of the first game have also been fixed, mainly by removing Titan battles after the opening tutorial. This is a shame but then again, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to imitate Shadows of the Colossus once may be regarded as homage. To do so twice is beginning to look like idealessness. So, youd think thered be nothing left to complain about, right? Wrong. This time, well all be complaining about stealth. Its admirable that LoS seeks to change its pace so regularly, and thats why the stealth isnt too ruinous. But the systems dont feel satisfyingly emergent. Its a matter of identifying how the developer wants you to solve the problem, and discovering that
Its tough at regular settings, and a beast on hard.
other approaches can lead to invisible walls. Similarly, with combat, art design, strong acting and a great orchestral score providing drama and melancholy with such confidence, its odd that the game seems neurotic in other ways. Dont forget youve unlocked some artworks! is a frequent appeal that leaves you thinking, do you mind? Im trying to play your actual game. Worse are the moments when basic puzzles are instantly solved with a pop-up message. Focus on the complaints, however, and youre in danger of forgetting what a magnificent beast of a game this is. It pushes 30 hours of constantly squirming and evolving combat, has satisfying traversal across obscenely detailed worlds, and the storyline comprises the perfect blend of po-faced gravitas, camp light relief, and solid-octane nonsense. If this game had made the same mistakes as the first one, it would have been frustrating. But MercurySteam is to be commended for making entirely fresh mistakes, in a game thats excellent enough to make forgiveness easy. OXM
The OXM Verdict

THE WoRst BIt
COMPLETION CLOCK
PROS/CONS
It looks and sounds majestic It still has the same great combat Its possible to turn off the Quick Time Events The games stealth sections arent great Meagre rewards for collectibles Its over now, theres no more
OVERALL
While this does suffer a little from the stellar expectations created by the first game, Lords of Shadow 2s huge finale is its own creature, and easily does MercurySteams saga justice.
HOUrs
A grudge match with an old allys brother that tests your stealth patience to breaking point.
25
@OXMUK
REVIEW
The particle effects are glorious, particularly the games comic-book-styled puffs of smoke.
One of your early abilities gives you a pair of orbital drones, wholl protect you from missiles.
StrIDEr
REVIEWEr
STEVE HOGARTY Live misterbrilliant @misterbrilliant
PUBlIshEr CApCOM / DEVElopEr DOUBLE HELIX / Format XBOX ONE & XBOX 360 / rElEasE DatE OUT NOW
A classic 80s side-scroller gets the Metroidvania treatment
thE KnoWlEDgE
What Is It? Remake of a classic 80s Mega Drive side-scroller. Whats It lIKE? Fans of Metroidvania explorers like Shadow Complex. Whos It For? Not just fans of the original, but anyone who can stick the challenge.
he original Strider came out over four hundred years ago in 1989, back when having more than one jumping animation per game was considered ostentatious. But it was these fancy jumps, as well as the ability to climb walls and scuttle along ceilings, that made Strider special. Here was an impressively tactile ninja platformer, arming you with an iconic, high-tech laser sword that sliced through the air in a dramatic arc of sharpness and death, before pitting you against an army of devious robo-Soviets. This remake bottles that wide range of motion and the fatality of those sword arcs and pours it into a 21st century mould, a 3D side-scrolling platformer that mixes the free-roaming exploration of Shadow Complex with the gradually unlocking and expanding skillset of
Metroid. Strider is faster and flashier than its grandfather, but it retains the most important parts of its genetic code. You can swing your cypher-sword as fast as you can hammer X, allowing you to glide through levels like a razorblade dervish, leaving robotic enemies halved at the waist. Later enemies demand a more considered approach, requiring charged attacks and neat dodges to evade rockets and giant metal fists. The slowly escalating challenge turns from an optional to essential side-objective of enlarging your health bar by seeking out hidden power-ups in difficult to reach locations. Carelessly straightforward and secrets-avoiding play, somewhat unfairly, can leave you facing nearimpossible boss fights later in the game.
Ninja theory
New skills are drip-fed over the course of many hours of play, meaning the game unfolds at a gratifying pace, each time stepping further from the classic original and becoming a quality, and distinct, game in its own right. Plot and script are deliberately of the originals era, which is to say theyre ridiculous, but more welcome is the soundtrack, a remixed selection of original Strider tracks that jab a hot audio needle into the most nostalgic lobe of your brain. The addition of a Survival mode and reams of unlockable concept art and costumes might be of interest to the most ardent fans, but its not rose-tinted thinking that gives Strider its sharpness. This is a masterful, demanding and retro-feeling side-scroller that takes just enough cues from the Mega Drive classic while leaving the dregs behind. OXM
BEttER tHAN
The OXM Verdict

BIonIC CommanDo Another recently rebooted Capcom classic, Bionic Commando was developed by Grin, which went on to begin work on an eventually scrapped version of a Strider reboot.
WoRSE tHAN
ShaDoW ComplEx Chairs fantastic, Nolan North-powered Shadow Complex approached Metroidvania perfection in 2009 with its perfectly measured backtracking and snappy gunplay.
DId YoU KNoW
OVERALL
An understated slice of retroexcellence, Strider leans just heavily enough on its 1989 forebear before catapulting itself into its own uniquely spectacular style of energetic side-scrolling.
In the Japanese version of the original, Strider made a hyah! sound with each swing, an effect deemed too irritating for the European release.
8
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You can take a passive or a more violent approach to this episodes interrogation scene.
REVIEW
REViEwER
AoiFE WiLSoN Live OXM Aoife @AoifeLockhart
tHE KNowLEDGE
WHat iS it? A fairy tale crimescene thriller. Think CSI meets Cinderella. WHatS it LiKE? The Walking Dead, but with decidedly more Noir-ish overtones. WHoS it FoR? People with a hankering to roleplay as the big bad wolf.
THE WoLF AmoNG US EPiSoDE 2: SmoKE aND MiRRoRS
PuBLiSHER TELLTALE GAMES / DEVELoPER TELLTALE GAMES / FoRmat XBOX 360 / RELEaSE DatE OUT NOw
Heed the title, and dont believe everything you see

My own Bigby is a gruff asshole; hes got a nasty temper, zero tolerance for perceived insults and doesnt suffer fools lightly. But hes also, secretly, a doomed romantic, with a need to protect those more vulnerable than himself. The games many dialogue options give you enough scope to allow for a dozen different variations on the character, although at points I did yearn for the chance to launch myself into a real and justified ruckus. The main antagonists of Smoke and Mirrors are detestable pimps and low-lifes, for sure, but none worthy of my Bigby fully losing his temper and unleashing the big bad beast within. One thing becomes abundantly clear as you get a better sense of this world and its inhabitants: the politics of this game are nothing like The Walking Dead. There, your choices hinged around basic survival in an uncaring world where everyone, more or less, was on a level pegging. In Fabletown, Bigby and his closest cohorts already have a fair bit of clout over other inhabitants. You can exploit Bigbys position of power to get what you want without actually lifting a finger. For instance, you can choose whether or not to step in on behalf of a horribly mistreated exotic dancer, or to go easy on the husband who, quite understandably given the circumstances, suspects you of seducing his wife. Youll probably arrive at the episodes creeptastic conclusion long before Bigby does, but it wont dull your appetite for the next instalment. This is still gorgeously atmospheric stuff, and though the wolf lies dormant for now, Im guessing it wont be long before were forced to fully unleash the beast. OXM
m staying as far away from spoilers as I can, but lets just say this second episode of The Wolf Among Us comes with a rather apt title. Things arent quite what they initially seemed in Fabletown, and Telltale does love to pull the rug out from under you just when you think youve got it all figured out. In Smoke and Mirrors, there are fewer seedy bar brawls and more crime scene investigations. The pace is slower, and yet it feels as though far more is at stake, particularly after a gut-punch of an opening revelation. This is more about role-playing than decision-making. There are none of Telltales trademark split-second-to-make-a-major-plotbranching-choice moments, but the subtler interactions on offer allow you to really get to know both your own Bad Wolf Bigby and the supporting cast.
The OXM Verdict

PROS/CONS
Fabletown is a real delight Who kissed the girls and made them cry? Like a surreal episode of CSI Not quite as exciting as the series opener Some dialogue options are unclear No opportunities for physical violence
COMPLETION CLOCK
KEY INFLUENCES
OVERAll
30
It lacks the intensity of the opening episode, but keeps things interesting with a deepening central mystery and plenty of nice character beats that are kept open to player interpretation.
HOURS
35
35% Bad Lieutenant 35% The X-Files 30% Brothers Grimm
35
@OXMUK
REVIEW
The games zombie characters have all been designed from scratch.
PUBLiSHER EA / DEVELOpER POpCAp / FORMAT XBOX 360/XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE OUT NOw
REViEwER
EDwiN EVANS-THiRLwELL Live OXM ETboy @dirigiblebill
PLANTS VS ZOMBiES: GARDEN WARFARE
THE KNOwLEDgE
WHAT iS iT? Vegetable and gangrene-based third-person shooter spin-off. WHATS iT LiKE? Apocalypse Now by way of The Magic Roundabout. WHOS iT FOR? Any socially active entity who enjoys punching flowers.
PopCap demonstrates that green fingers and trigger fingers go extremely well together
of single player the solo options are limited to a variation on Horde for one to four players, in which the Plants seed a garden and defend it against ten randomised waves of cartoon corpses.
ve seen things you peapods wouldnt believe. Parsnips on fire over a bed of caramelised onion. Green beans glimmering in the dark near a homemade irrigation system. But enough with the movie references already. This is War, not one of your silly Hollywood fables. Garden War. There are two kinds of vegetable in this godforsaken world, ladies and gentlemen: hardy perennials and (hawk, spit) biennials. Which are you? Tell me: do you love the smell of phosphate fertiliser in the morning? Nobody was really asking for Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, a whimsical yet savage third-person shooter modelled on PopCaps iconic tower defenders for PC, but most players should love it nonetheless. Among those who might not are diehard fans
Grassroots action
There are no bots to round out playerdeficient parties, which makes the mode incredibly difficult to complete with ranged or support-oriented character classes though you can plant defences such as goop-spitting mushrooms or sunflowers that cough up healing stars in pots around each map. Undead adversaries run the gamut from shambling, expendable browncoats through zombies clad in sturdy coffin armour, to bosses like the nimble Disco Zombie or the Yeti-Zombie, whose claw
ZOMBOSS MODE
On Xbox One, Garden Warfare supports a top-down strategy view thats much like Commander Mode in Battlefield. Here, you can collect sun drops or brains in order to wield special abilities, such as the power to resurrect allies or flag enemies. Its inessential, but a nice break from the action.
swipes freeze the plants solid. Youll also encounter AI-controlled zombie classes from the competitive multiplayer, which is where the concept of a vegetable-oncadaver punch-up really takes off. For a game Id have no reservations about handing to an eight-year-old, Garden Warfare can be startlingly bloodthirsty. Chlorophyll-thirsty, if you will. Thats particularly apparent during Gardens vs Graveyards, a mode ripped straight from Battlefield: Bad Company, in which the zombies must conquer a series of sun-bathed allotments before the clock runs down. Raise a tombstone over all of them, and youll be able to mount an assault on the Plants heavily fortified main base, contending with sweetcorn artillery and giant rolling Tallnuts. The modes structure ensures that all 24 participants are seldom further than a few dozen metres from one another, and the result is basically the Normandy landings scene from Saving Private Ryan, as reimagined by the Jolly Green Giant. The aesthetic and audio design strike a wonderful, flabbergasting balance between grisly and cute. Sunflowers yelp ecstatically as theyre shredded by machinegun fire; Chompers waddle complacently back to cover
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Catch a Chomper at range and you can take it down easily. Just dont get Gooped.
REVIEW
The Plants can seed the ground with defences in Gardens & Graveyards mode.
For a game so child-friendly, this is surprisingly bloodthirsty

after swallowing a zombie whole. Tubby cyclopean Garlic Drones spit threads of red death at undead Soldiers, who promptly toss purple gas grenades to cover their advance. Every few seconds theres the shriek of a thermonuclear Chilli Bean, triggering a geyser of ragdolling corpses, or the daze-inducing BRAINZ! of a loudspeaker grenade. If it all looks and sounds chaotic, theres actually a fair bit of calculation bubbling away beneath the surface, thanks to some nicely nuanced class and ability balancing. Each side gets four to pick from the Chomper, Sunflower, Pea Shooter and Cactus versus the All-Star, Soldier, Engineer and Scientist. The most exotic Plant on the battlefield is the Chomper, which can tunnel for a short time in order to one-hit a zombie from below, or spit gloop to paralyse zombie abilities. Its undead counterpart is the Engineer, which is inedible while speeding around aboard its powerdrill. Many of the classes will be familiar if youve played other shooters. The zombie Soldier, for instance, is your assault goon, armed with a rifle, rocket launcher and the ability to jet-blast out of harms way. The All-Star, meanwhile, is a tank equipped with a nasty melee dash and the ability to drop barricades, and the Cactus is a sniper who doubles as a demolitions expert, much like the Recon class from certain Battlefield games. Theyre characterful takes on those old themes, however, and importantly, each can be used in at least a couple of ways
Engineers are best used to disrupt dugin plants or tunnelling Chompers.
Apples to oranges
depending on the situation. The Sunflower may be most useful as a healer, lassoing other plants with streams of nourishing daylight, but at the tap of a button, you can turn her into a terrifying ray turret. On the other side of the lines, the Scientists teleport ability makes it both an effective combat medic and a really nasty shock trooper. Theres plenty of tactical depth to bite into here, providing you vary the order of the ingredients, and thats before you consider the effects of unlocks: semi-randomised Sticker Packs are bought with in-game credits between battles in certain modes. Its said that war never changes. It certainly takes you to some familiar places. Lack of single-player aside, Garden Warfares biggest downfall may be its threadbare map list, though the maps in question are both large and pleasantly complex. Still, 20-odd isnt bad value for one of the few proper shooters that seems genuinely open to players of all ages. Nobody asked for a Garden War, but you could do worse than spend a few afternoons winning one. OXM
The OXM Verdict

WoRSE THAN
GeaRs of WaR: JUdgmeNT Last years sadly underloved coverhugger from People Can Fly. Garden Warfare has no single-player mode, you see.
WhAt hAppEnS nExt?

A free update is due this month. You can also expect DLC, which may put a PvZ spin on ideas from other thirdperson shooters.
PROS/CONS
Savagely brilliant class balance rewards experimentation Funny and charming Modes and maps work well But are in short supply The whole thing is based on very familiar ideas Single player is only of interest to Horde fans
OVERALL
A lovely, surprisingly clever reinvention of Plants vs Zombies for shooter fans of all ages and persuasions. A little short on content, but the sub-30 price makes up for it.
@OXMUK
Ready to play many slightly different versions of the same game?
REVIEW
ALSO RELEASED
Condensed criticism of the other new games in shops and on Xbox Live
PAC-MAN MUSEUM
ac-Man Museum is a disorientating mix of the classic, the needless and the forgotten. A perfect emulation of Pac-Man will remind you how far weve all come, freed from the shackles of 1980s circuit boards. Then itll snare you, briefly, with its deviously programmed and (at the time) revolutionary AI and worldsfirst cutscenes. Pac & Pal complicated the formula, before Super Pac-Man kinda pulled it back. Then Pac-Mania went insane with a horrible transition to a skewed 3D maze and unpleasant jump button. Occasionally, Pac-Man would take a break from his maze. Pac Attack tried to cash-in on a new twist on Dr Mario, but despite being designed as a console game, it suffers badly from the arcade-cabinet disease of getting too hard, too fast. Puzzle Mode is a good break in pace, though. Theres plenty here, but its all very Pac-Man, and the 16 price tag for so many pre-released, and fundamentally similar games feels a little steep.
FORmaT XBOX 360 / ReVIeWeR JON BLYTH / PRIce 15.99
FORmaT XBOX 360 / ReVIeWeR ANdREW HAYWARd / PRIce 39.99
RAMBO: THE VIDEO GAME
hat do on-rails light-gun-style shooters need? If you said thumbstick controls!, congratulations: this game is for you. Ach, were kidding no one. Its so terrible it nearly transcends its own boundaries and becomes something jaw-droppingly incredible but it never makes that final surge into being memorably crap. It even looks enough unlike Sly Stallone to make you wonder if they had image rights. A full-priced box product? Jog on.
DRAGON BALL Z: BATTLE OF Z
ontroller-based Dragon Ball Z has been away for two years, but it still feels as shallow and monotonous as ever. Youll drop into large, open arenas and unleash a barrage of melee and energy attacks against iconic foes from the series, the occasional towering boss, and waves of easily crushed goons. The buzz of blasting random fools with a well-timed Kamehameha proves short-lived in this otherwise humdrum adaptation.
FAR CRY CLASSIC
ts strange to play this a game that was, for so long, used as a benchmark for PC retailers. It established Cryteks reputation as a company which aimed its games at tech that wasnt yet commercially available. Its a testament to its skills that ten years on, it still looks okay. Unfortunately, its not as much fun to play, with enemy AI thats simply too observant, too responsive, and too accurate, making the stealthy first half of the game ripe with frustration. This is one unnecessary relic that can be safely re-buried.
DO nOT play SAVING YOU FROM THE WORsT RELEAsEs

@OXMUK
We thought we were safe. We thought wed had our inoculations. Now a Flappy Bird clone has appeared on XBLIG, we feel compelled to write a navel-gazing thinkpiece about what the success of a simple one-touch game means for the industry, and whether we, as critics, are too remote from the gaming public. You made this happen, Flapping Avatars. Its on YOU.
FlappIng AVaTaRs Oh, no. Oh God, no.
ONLINE
47s rainbow flower mural was proving to be the perfect distraction for Chicago PD.
REVIEWS
HITMAN: ABSOLUTION
PUBLIShER SQUARE ENIX / DEVELOpER IO INTERACTIVE / FORMAT XBOX 360 / ORIGINAL SCORE 9/10
Contracts mode: should you sign on the dotted line?

REVIEWER Laurie Blake Live blakestationone @blakestationone WE SAId The characters are great, the levels are fantastic, and the incidental humour is deliciously dark.
O Interactive has never been stingy in delivering a myriad of ways to murder; the coroners that encounter Agent 47s work have had to write-up the cause of death as everything from the slip of a garrote to an unfortunate barbecuing accident. But Contracts mode in Hitman: Absolution finally put the players in charge of the hit list. A brief-but-elegant tutorial introduces you to the idea: you play a mission to create your own hit, then post it for other players to try. So, if you think the receptionist at the Terminus hotel is insufferably rude, start up the mission, mark him as the
target, take him out and suffer him no more. Everything from which weapon you used to what disguise you were wearing is saved and becomes part of the challenge you can send to other players. Each contract you complete earns you money, which can be spent on new disguises and new weapons to spice up your death-dealing. A year on from release, IO has revealed that 9.5 million Contracts have been played and $2.2 trillion in in-game cash has been earned. A
glance at the leaderboards will tell you that the most prolific players have totted up 7,000 successful hits and maxed out their bank accounts the NSA is definitely watching these guys. The sheer volume of contracts the community has churned out has fixed one of the major issues with the campaign, namely that too many missions did not involve hits at all. Policemen, scientists and stir-fry chefs who had bit parts in the main story all have starring roles now and, often, snappy bits of backstory written into the Contracts description, normally along the lines of they said something unkind about your mother.
9.5 million Contracts have now been played and $2.2 trillion has been earned
Playing eenie, meenie, miney, mo to decide who dies today. Why is nobody playing this anymore?
Not every level from the campaign can be played in Contracts mode. For instance, you cant put out a hit on 47s tailor (and why would you the mans a genius). But this is more than made up for with a dossier full of inventive hits to carry out on Kane & Lynchs Lynch, who makes an appearance in the Gun Shop mission. Suit only challenges, where 47 is not allowed to change disguise, seem to be the murder of choice for Absolution players with refined tastes. Fortunately, these technical tests of pure predatory prowess are thrown into relief by crazed axe rampages (one we played had over 30,000 likes), so its a good mix overall. As with all user-generated content theres still plenty of room for duds. There are huge numbers of hits created by Achievement-
ARE WE hAVING fUN YET? Our first hour rendered as a wavy line
AMAZING ENJOYABLE ANNOYING RAGE QUIT Minutes 0
Tutorial done. My mind is racing with possibilities. Plotting the murder of every Sheriff in this town.
10
hEARd IT ON VOICE ChAT What an a**hole thing to do man? Whats the deal?
AN AFFRONTED ONLOOKER WHO spOTTED Us GIVING A GUY A NEW HOLE IN HIs NECK.
20
How on earth did they kill this guy Dressed as a with a bottle of chipmunk in hot sauce? the middle of a research facility. 30 40 50
60
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
Bulletstorm has some of the most amusing ordinance in any shooter.
REVIEW
With the cops on his tail, 47 would have to risk everything for the delicious deli meats. 47 pitied the brave-but foolish police officers who brought guns to a knife fight.
BULLETSTORM
PUBLIShER EA / DEVELOpER PEOpLE CAN FLY / FORMAT XBOX 360 / ORIGINAL SCORE 9/10
The fragfest that absolutely refuses to die

REVIEWER Nick Cowen witenoyze @witenoyze WE SAId Not as tight a package as wed hoped, but it at least makes a genuine effort to be different.
hungry players where you pop the first person you see and walk straight out the door you came in. Plus, some of the challenge of using specific weapons to carry out your kills is lessened by 47s magic pockets, from which he can produce anything from katanas to hula girl statuettes like a murderous Mary Poppins. While you can usually filter out the rubbish, you cant escape the fact that the community seems to have dropped off. It leaves the mode feeling rather isolated, as pinging challenges back and forth to your friends is what makes Contracts vibrant, but its still fun to tinker with the wealth of content players have created. Just start playing in the knowledge that, regrettably but appropriately, this community has been killed off. OXM
od Almighty. Really? That was the wordfor-word reaction from the editor of this very publication when it was suggested that Bulletstorm was worth investigating for this segment. Its understandable: Bulletstorm was a flop. It was a triple-A title that sold less than a million copies on release, which pretty much ensured that its developer, People Can Fly, would never quarterback a new IP ever again. If it hadnt been owned by Epic, People Can Fly probably wouldve been swept into the dustbin of history. Instead, it was tasked with making Gears of War: Judgment, which is arguably one of the tightest and best entries in that series. Heres the thing, though: slam Bulletstorm into your
Xbox 360 and select multiplayer mode, and you will get a game. More than three years after its release in spite of the fact that it didnt sell by the truckload Bulletstorm is still attracting players to its online lobbies. The reason being that Bulletstorms multiplayer hinges on style. You earn points by mixing up weapons, attacks and teamwork. All of these aspects score points. If you dont tally up enough points, you repeat the round you just played. Since your ability to progress hinges on your fellow players, heres what happens, nine times out of ten: you join a match, you have fun for about three or four rounds and then you realise that not only do you need a decent score to move forward, but the players in your lobby are so inept and so
disconnected, theres no chance of that happening. Unless you are communicating with them through a headset, you have no chance of forward progression. Once in ten tries, heres what happens: you find players on your wavelength, you hammer the living excrement out of the AI for about seven rounds and then the difficulty spike kicks in and you and a bunch of strangers suddenly start investing in each other as competent players. Or partners. I wouldnt say friends, although 15 rounds in Bulletstorm has been enough to net me a new mate on Xbox Live. Of course, you can bypass the above concerns by simply buying a bunch of copies of Bulletstorm and setting up a private lobby with your mates. In fact, you should: its by far and away the most underrated shooter of the last generation. If you doubt that, buy a copy and try to find an online match. You wont be waiting long OXM
The OXM Verdict

Contracts mode is so full of hits theres barely any room for misses, its just a shame nobody is playing it.
The OXM Verdict

Best played with mates, Bulletstorm is all about killing with style. Its compulsive, addictive fun.
Keep an eye on the style counter. If you dont rack up enough impressive kills, you arent progressing.
@OXMUK
On THE DOWnLOaD
Latest add-ons and indie games rated
Your Nick Ramos stats inexplicably carry into Adam Kanes quest, meaning fisticuffs may be an actual offensive option.
From best to worst, the latest additions to Xbox Live Marketplace
Also RElEasEd
1 SAINTS RoW IV: BLING BLING PACK

Like money? This will boost your economy with a set of cash-themed superpowers. Price: 2.39
DEfIANCE: 7TH LEGIoN PACK
As a member of the 7th Legion, youll fight to liberate Paradise with new weapons, armour, and other bits and pieces. Price: 7.99
DEAd RISING 3: OPErATIoN BroKEN EAGLE
PUbLISHEr CAPCOM / DEVELoPEr CAPCOM VANCOUvER / ForMAT XBOX ONE / rEVIEWEr DAvE RUDDEN / PrICE 7.99
3 FAbLE SMArTGLASS STrATEGY GUIdE CoNTENT

Hardly essential, but a nice - and dare we say it, worthwhile - use of SmartGlass. Price: 2.39
Flying low but steady

ead Rising is fun in both large and small doses. While weve enjoyed just about every 20-plushour retail-released sandbox slaughterfest, theres no denying that the more confined spaces and playtimes of the series standalone Xbox Live Arcade titles were nice too. However, there are exceptions to every rule Dead Rising 2s 2011 spin-off Off the Records large-scale recycling was offputting to the same degree as the new Operation Broken Eagles complete lack of ambition. Dead Rising 3s first DLC ditches the main games protagonist, Nick Ramos, and instead has you assume the role of Special Forces agent Adam Kane. Under orders from a powerhungry commander, Kane must capture a high-profile political target in Los Perdidos. That
means youre dealing with more than just zombies other armed factions await. Its good that Operation Broken Eagle drops you in at the deep end, since the DLC ties into the main quest most elements carry over between the core game and the Untold Stories umbrella that all of Dead Rising 3s addons will fall under. Youll start with the same stats and combos you had accumulated during Nick Ramos core campaign, and if you return to Nicks sandbox, youll bring back whatever goodies you scored in the DLC (including a handful of new weapons and a new vehicle). While we were impressed by the military blades and guns at
Dead ahead
/ /It delivers one of Dead Risings most intense shootouts to date/ /
Kanes disposal, and the final approach on the target delivered one of Dead Risings most intense shootouts to date, we found ourselves disappointed by Operation Broken Eagles shortcomings. The whole thing is over far too quickly (we explored a bit and finished the DLC in roughly 90 minutes) and its missing two major Dead Rising staples by omitting co-op play and psycho boss battles. While the single-player focus applies to all of the upcoming Untold Stories, after playing this one, were left hoping that the other three heroes of Los Perdidos promised for further DLC episodes (a biker, an infected survivor, and a military operative) have some longer, crazier adventures in store. OXM
LEGo MArVEL SUPErHEroES ASGArd PACK
Add a whole host of Asgardians, including Malekith, Odin, Sif and the Warriors Three. Price: 1.29
LIGHTNING RETUrNS ToMb RAIdEr oUTfIT
Dress Lightning as Lara with this rather pricy costume pack. Our advice: dont. Price: 3.19
The OXM Verdict

A decent story introduction with an intense shootout, but its far too short and short on new features, too.
Operation Broken Eagles new weaponry is largely firearm-focused and suitably destructive.
DEAd or ALIVE 5 ULTIMATE TroPICAL SExY SET

Is it just us, or is Tecmo Koei really scraping the bottom of the skimpily-dressed barrel now? Price: 11.99 WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
Well, thats something you dont often see on the battlefield.
rEvIEW
CALL of DUTY: GHoSTS ONSLAUGHT
PUbLISHEr ACTIvIsION / DEVELoPEr INFINITy WARD/RAvEN/NEvERsOFT / ForMAT XBOX ONE & XBOX 360 / rEVIEWEr ANDREw HAywARD / PrICE 11.59
Another violent season begins to bloom
hosts DLC kicks off solidly with a variety of new maps and weapons. The BayView map is the highlight a square, Californian boardwalk filled with stores, close-quarters encounters, and a trolley that covers a lot of ground. Ignitions missile launch site is another quality addition; Containments elevation diversity is nice, but not very memorable;
while eerie nighttime map Fog disappoints. Ghosts alien-blasting Extinction mode is expanded with Nightfall, the first of a four-part series set in an abandoned Alaskan base. It quickly turns relentlessly tough, but is also potent fun with pals in tow. Its one of the DLCs brighter spots, but serious online players neednt shrug off a welcome injection of variety. OXM
The OXM Verdict

Some decent maps and an overpowered weapon keep up Call of Dutys competent-butuninspiring streak.
forMAT XBOX 360 / rEVIEWEr JON BLyTH / PrICE 2.39
ForMAT XBOX ONE / rEVIEWEr AOIFE WILsON / PrICE 3.99
BordErLANdS 2: MAd MoxxI ANd KILLEr INSTINCT: SPINAL ix-up character Spinals normal attacks havent got THE WEddING DAY MASSACrE great range, and hes slow at walking and back-
he holiday-themed Headhunter packs continue in the Bad Omen Bowl, where the rival Zaford and Hodunk families feud. Its another hour for a couple of quid, but if youre well into your Level 50s, prepare to be overpowered and under-rewarded. Basically, come along for the laughs. OXM
dashing. The key to his success is his shield and skulls. Hold his shield out and hell absorb hits from special attacks, and with each one hell acquire a skull his own unique resource. This skeleton packs a totally unique skillset, and hes the breath of fresh air KI desperately needed. OXM
Indie Roundup / The latest hidden gems and DIY disasters
*****
AbdUCTIoN ACTIoN! + Surprisingly competent game where you pilot a spaceship, abduct cows and splatter birds.
*****
TIME VIKING!!!!! AND SPACE RAPTOR Epic opening and theme music, but some hints as to how to actually play the game might be nice.
*****
UNrEAL LANd A simple little platformer that looks as though its come straight from the mind of a pre-schooler.
*****
VITAL ForCE Creepy, atmospheric Fatal Frame homage, where you use a smartphone instead of a dusty camera.
*****
ESCAPE Pod Looks as though it should be played via floppy disc at the back of your primary school classroom.
@OXMUK
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PAGE
With Black Tusk taking over Gears of War, who else do we want taking over what?
096 OXM Investigates 118 Now Playing 122 OXM Replay
We return to Far Cry 3, AvP, Fable 2 and the franchise-saving Black Flag. Dan Griliopoulos returns to The Godfather, and wonders why he bothered.
124 Community Spotlight 126 Entertainment 127 Side Quest 128 Must Buy
Dipping back into the online communities of Battlefield 4, FIFA 14 and GRID 2. Why not try out some of these less respectable media? Books? Theyll never catch on. We nose around in the XCOM tech tree, and see how soon we can expect those exotic devices. The Xbox 360 and Xbox One games youve got no place not owning.
4 124 BATTLEFIELD Is it still broken? We go back and find out.
PAGE
130 The Final Countdown
The 12 top landmarks that havent yet been blown up in a videogame...
120
@OXMUK
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XBOX
EXTRA
OXM INVESTIGATES
Uncovering the other side of Xbox gaming
Dream Matchups
Tired of the same old teams working on your favourite games? Heres how wed shake things up...
DEVELOPER ARKANE STUDIOS SHOULD DEVELOP: THE NEXT BATMAN ARKHAM GAME
Why? Arkane proved itself capable of juggling a broad inventory with a rich skill tree in Dishonored, so it could easily widen Batmans utility belt as it opens up the avenues for adventure. And, when you think about it, Dishonoreds blink is really just a supernatural grappling hook so its obviously a match made in development heaven. Killer feature A more gothic... Gotham. Arkanes artists would revive the eerie Burtonesque beauty of the Michael Keaton era. Without Prince, obviously.
DEVELOPER FIRAXIS GAMES SHOULD DEVELOP: STAR TREK

Why? Firaxis proved its Xbox chops with its unique brand of strategy-action in XCOM: Enemy Unknown (and its semi-sequel, Enemy Within). Its fusion of research, development and exploration make the studio our top pick for a Trek revival following Digital Extremes fumble last year. Killer feature A plethora of fan-service side-quests in each map. Picards hair follicles degenerating in real-time, for example, making the quest for a cure a crucial secondary objective.
DEVELOPER EPIC GAMES SHOULD DEVELOP: THE SPLINTER CELL SERIES

Why? Ubisofts franchise has gone from sneak em up to carvery, and we think its high-time Sam Fisher was put in the hands of team who can give him the bloodletting and bulging biceps he clearly longs for. Epics take on Splinter Cell feels like the next logical step for the series, as its mechanics and set-pieces already feel more relevant to a cover-shooter than a game of shadow-tag. Killer feature Fishers melee attack combined with Epics taste for the theatrically gruesome.
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
//Telltale could flesh out and fix the Resi series now hokey and hilarious narrative//
96 / tHe official xbox magaZiNe
XBOX
EXTRA
DEVELOPER PLATINUM GAMES SHOULD DEVELOP: THE ASSASSINS CREED SERIES/ASSASSINS CREED V
Why? There are two things Abstergos world of virtual tourism and assassination would benefit from: a deeper, snappier combat system and some speedier locomotion. As a team that specialises in lightning-fast kills and complex battle systems, Platinum fits the bill like no other dev. As a Japanbased studio, it could also take the series to a location weve always dreamed of: a futuristic Japan. Killer feature Athletic executions. Expect shoeblades to feature prominently.
DEVELOPER KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS SHOULD DEVELOP: A BOND GAME

Why? Kojimas Metal Gear series is a brand built of borrowed parts, riffing on Die Hard, Escape From New York, First Blood and (Mecha) Godzilla to name a few. The James Bond series however, with its eccentric power-mad villains and sultry femme fatales, is the inspiration wed like Kojima Productions to return the favour to with a game worthy of the 007 moniker. Killer feature Kojimas use of Kinect. From Martini-shaking minigames to rating you on your appearance (tuxedo: A+, PJs: Xbox shuts down).
DEVELOPER ROCKSTEADY SHOULD DEVELOP: A ROBOCOP GAME

Why? The team behind State of Emergency, Arkham Asylum and Arkham City games about crowd control and crime waves in cities on lockdown should make the definitive Robocop game. We imagine an open-world cop simulator like Crackdown, with Robocops armour and abilities upgraded as you progress and secure more regions of an out-of-control Detroit. Killer feature Taking the fight to the OCP HQ in the final area, as you scale the citys tallest building floor-by-floor. Think Die Hard with an Iron Man suit.
DEVELOPER GEARBOX SOFTWARE SHOULD DEVELOP: CALL OF DUTY

Why? The condition of CoDs sense of humour is critical. So lets hand the brand over to the kings of FPS comedy and satire, the folks who brought us the silly, trigger-happy Borderlands 2. Gearbox would continue CoDs gun-porn legacy while injecting some much-needed laughs. Killer feature A gun crafting system that lets you personalise your firearms. Duct taping a rifle, pistol, bazooka and shotgun to make a four-barrelled weapon wheel of misfortune sounds about right.
DEVELOPER UBISOFT MONTPELLIER SHOULD DEVELOP: THE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG SERIES
Why? With the exception of Sumo Digitals output, Sonic hasnt yet had a fast, fun, furious game live up to his early Mega Drive hits. We envisage Ubisoft Montpellier which delivered one of last years very best titles in Rayman Legends taking the series screaming back to its 2D glory days. Killer feature A remix of Legends music stages, swapping out Raymans tunes for Sonics iconic theme as you endlessly out-run the competition.
DEVELOPER TELLTALE GAMES SHOULD DEVELOP: RESIDENT EVIL

Why? The developers work on The Walking Dead put us in mind of its next project being a muchneeded revival of Capcoms ailing survival horror series. Wed love to see Telltale tackle a remake of Resi 2 before taking the series in a fresh new direction; fleshing out and fixing the series now hokey and hilarious narrative. Killer feature Showdowns with the undead that are tense and traumatic, harkening back to the series roots in horror.
DEVELOPER CRITERION GAMES SHOULD DEVELOP: THE MADDEN SERIES

Why? For the players on the field, American football is about momentum, velocity, timing and impact. With Burnout and Need For Speed, Criterion has built its brand on these very core pillars and, on top of that, its hopped genres before with great success remember stunning FPS Black? Killer feature Slow-motion takedowns of rival players. Replace Burnouts crumbling metal chassis with the NFLs skull-crushing tackles and... ouch.
@OXMUK
DEVELOPER PROJECT ACES SHOULD DEVELOP: A SUPERMAN GAME

Why? No-ones yet succeeded in delivering the sensation of a man flying through the air at supersonic speed, lasering and walloping powerful foes out of the Metropolis skies, but Project Aces of Ace Combat fame has made a career out of a similar experience in its long-running flight-sims. Killer feature Ace Combat: Assault Horizons Dogfight mode applied to airborne battles between supergods; latching onto the tail of fleeing fellow tightslovers as you trade blows into the stratosphere.
DEVELOPER DICE SHOULD DEVELOP: A SPIDERMAN GAME

Why? Imagine Mirrors Edge-style parkour over the rooftops of New York before swinging from the spire of the Empire State as you do battle with The Sinister Six as Manhattans rush hour gawps below. DICEs best-in-class use of particle effects, physics and motion capture would all be pushed to the limit, and wed queue up to see its Frostbite Engine render a to-scale New York with real time day/night and weather cycles. Killer feature The sheer freedom and empowerment.
tHe official xbox magaZiNe / 97
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P R E S E N T S
THE ULtIMAtE GUIDE tO
WORLD
OF TANKS
Maps, armour and upgrades: everything you need to master Xbox 360s free-to-play hit
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P R E S E N T S
World of Tanks enables you to play in vast multiplayer battles without spending a penny. Heres how to get started
MakInG TraCks
02
/ /FInanCE YoUr LIfE
All free-to-play games are deliberately confusing when it comes to how much realworld money you might actually have to pay. World of Tanks, mercifully, is less obtuse than most. The most obvious way to spend your money is on a Premium account, which acts as an XP doubler as well as letting you grab hold of some otherwise unobtainable goodies.
01
/ /GEt ClUEd UP!

World of Tanks is a simple game masquerading as a complicated one. You may be overwhelmed by tech trees and tank types, but dont be. In your garage youll have three tanks from three basic classes. Pick one, get matched up, and shoot the other tanks. Strategy comes later. Its nowhere near as intimidating as a Russian-built free-to-play World War II tank simulator sounds.
03
/ /Control PanEl
If youve never controlled a tank in an Xbox 360 game before, World of Tanks might feel a little unusual. Battlefield vets, though, will have no trouble. Unlike a typical FPS, you actually steer and accelerate on the left stick, with the right analogue reserved for spinning and raising the turret. Pay attention to your tank outline diagram if youre not sure which way youre facing.
04
/ /Class SYstEm
Now things start to get a little more complicated. Well go in depth on the classes later, but for now and during the early stages of the game, work out what type of player you want to be. If you are coming from an FPS background, a faster tank might seem tempting. Dont do it. Youll be destroyed in seconds, Stick with a nice slow fella at first.
05
/ /REar GUard ACtIon
06
/ /LEVEl PlaYInG FIEld

Your turret can look up, but it cant look very far down. This makes topography extremely important. Early on, youll lose plenty of one-onones because you slipped down a tiny ditch and now all you can aim at are some distant clouds. By the time youve righted yourself, youre a flaming ball of twisted metal and broken dreams. For now, stick to flat ground.
Again, if youre an FPS player, you might be tempted to charge headlong into battle. Dont. Or do, and die. Hang back, stick with a team-mate or two, and scope out the battlefield. World of Tanks is a game of slow attrition, not pacey slaughter. Youre a tortoise, and those noobs scatting across the frontline are a bunch of dead hares.
< / THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE PRESENTS THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO WORLD OF TANKS / >
OXM
PROMOTION
07
/ /SIdE WIndEr
08
/ /PlEasE And Flank YoU

As you improve and start strategising with your team-mates, youll soon realise the key to victory as it always is in war games is flanking. Setting up a pincer movement with three or four team-mates can be tricky, but if you can leave one back at base then start to move around your opponent, youll reap massive, tank-killy rewards.
09
/ /BUsH Patrol
Tanks are heavily armoured at the front, so to do any meaningful damage whatsoever, youre going to have to get around to the side, or hope that someone saunters past you without realising what theyve done. Hitting the side of an enemy tank will score big damage, but hitting the rear is devastating. So never turn around and run away!
Hiding in a bush might feel a little stupid, but theres no denying it works. World of Tanks utilises an unusual cover system, and glitching through its low-poly shrubbery renders you near-invisible from the enemy. The best way to do this is to nudge slowly into the bush and make sure you dont poke out of the front. Then youll get your camouflage bonus.
10
/ /VIsUalIsatIon
11
/ /KIll CrUsH DEstroY

While World of Tanks does employ objective game types, youll likely find that most matches end because one sides tanks all blew up. So turn yourself into a killing machine by investing that lovely XP in making yourself faster and more powerful, or buying a tank that will do that job for you. Those tech trees arent as daunting as they look.
12
/ /PatrIotIsm Is dEad
In real life, tanks arent invisible. In World of Tanks, they are at least until someone on your team spots them through their long-range scope. One team member should always hang back and scope out the battlefield (probably from a bush) to ensure their team-mates are in the best possible stead. You dont want to be stopping to spot when someones shooting you.
You might want to stick to your country of birth when selecting a tech-tree to advance down, or play it safe and choose the Russians given the games heritage, but if you want fast, reliable tanks that offer a good range of every statistic, youre best off playing as the good old United States of America. They offer a nice variety of well-rounded beasts.
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P R E S E N T S
mAKING THe GrAde

LIGHT TANKS
Designed for speedy romps over enemy frontlines, Light tanks tend to have lower armour rankings than their heavier counterparts, making them less than ideal for one-on-one combat. Tricky to master. LeICHTTrAKTor> Affectionately known as the LolTracktor, this little fella has become synonymous with WoT noobs all over the globe. Its actually a decent starter tank with a nice balance of speed and power. ELC AMX> An incredibly fast French number thats ideal for flanking slower foes and packs a decent punch. However, its turret doesnt fully circle, so youll need expert control to fulfil its potential. T71> An autoloading, very nippy American tank, that only ever existed in the real world as a wooden prototype. Not one for battle its too weak but a decent and lightning-quick scout.
MEDIUM TANKS
The all-rounder. These strike a good balance of speed, power and defence, meaning you can use them for all facets of combat. However, their lack of specialisation might cause slower XP gain in the long run. M4 SHermAN> A very popular tank, the M4 Sherman has decent mobility of a Medium, and can hold its own in a firefight. Its also on a good tech tree, so well worth grinding. Cromwell> The British Cromie may have weak armour, but it moves very well and has good range on its ballistics, making it a solid choice for flanking and longdistance sniping. T54> This Russian Tier 9 is actually the most-produced tank in the world, and is a fantastic high-level all rounder. It will take out most opposition soundly, yet has decent speed and range.
HEAVY TANKS
A strong attacking presence and powerful weapons make these ideal for headlining an attack in enemy territory or composed base defence. Good for beginners still learning World of Tanks systems. KVI> This Tier 5 Soviet tank marks the first real steps into the world of the Heavies, and separates the real pilots from the also-rans. Its tough to kill and tough to move around, but worth the effort. T29> An American Tier 7 that is a heady combination of firepower, armour and surprising mobility for its size. Some even consider the T29 overpowered, which is all the more reason to grind towards it. E 100> A beast of a German Heavy thats almost immovable when it sets itself in place. Its a Tier 10, so one hell of an effort to get there, but youll do immeasurable damage on the battlefield when you do.
TANK DESTROYERS
These might lumber and lurch, but they pack a hell of a punch. Their incredibly powerful weapons make them perfect for defensive work and orchestrated ambushes, but theyre not ideal for players new to the game. T110-E4> An American Tier 10 and not one for the faint of heart or light of pocket. Almost impossible to damage head-on, hence its narrow turret circle, but capable of utter destruction in the right hands. FoCH 155> Savage damage, little manoeuvrability. This Tier 10 monster might as well sit still, but if you get within its fire range, you can say goodnight. They dont call them Tank Destroyers for nothing. JAGdPZ E 100> A German Tier 10 with an absolutely ferocious level of power in its shot, making enemy tanks cower in fear at its one-hit killing ability. It was never built in real life probably for the best.
SELF-PROPELLED GUNS
Artillery fire, basically. These have the option of bringing up a birds eye view of the map, and picking out spotted enemies with pinpoint mortar fire. If your team decide to camp and not spot, though, youre near-useless. GW PANTHer> Another tank not built in real life, the GW Panther is still a very solid Tier 7 German SPG. It has a wide arc, great accuracy and a quick reload. Nicknamed Dracula for its cape-like hood. GrIlle> Good damage and camouflage define this German Tier 5, which players often like to keep in their garage even after surpassing it, thanks to its usefulness in a team of Mediums. Hummel> The Tier 6 along the same line as the Grille and GW Panther. Trust us this is the best line for SPG players. Effectively an improved Grille, with better accuracy and damage.
< / thE OFFiCial xBOx MagaZiNE PRESENTS THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO WORLD OF TANKS / >
OXM
PROMOTION
TOP OF THE CLASS 04
01 02
Looking for something with style? You wont want to miss these
T34 An American classic. This Tier 8 Heavy is extremely strong from the front, with a near-impenetrable front turret, and capable of very decent damage in its own right. Its also unusually quick for a Heavy, making it popular among experienced tank commanders.
05
RAM II A neat, aggressive American Tier 5 thats actually of Canadian heritage. It has a very high rate of fire and great HP for a Tier 5, meaning it can put some holes in enemy defenses before they know what hits them. A strong, fairly inexpensive Medium.
03
122-44 A speedy and dangerous Soviet Tier 7 Tank Destroyer that can cause calamitous damage from distance. Its a favourite among highlevel players thanks to its propensity for high credit yields, and has good angled armour for defensive success. One to work for.
06 07
IS-6 Widely considered one of the best tanks in the game for grinding credits, this Soviet Tier 8 Heavy causes serious damage and has well-angled armour at the front and sides. Its also surprisingly mobile for a big boy keeping pace with some Mediums.
PzII AusfJ Only a Tier 3, but the PzII AusfJ is very sought after. Its incredibly quick, even for a light tank, and has enhanced armour making those scouting and flanking missions that little bit safer. It also looks extremely cool in its tight, compact form.
TOG II A long, lean British Tier 6 Heavy that has high HP and a powerful and penetrative gun. It was originally designed for Trench Warfare and it shows, with very strong front armour thats capable of bouncing a few shots before anything makes a dent.
E25 This tiny little Tank Destroyer kind of looks like a metal burger box, yet its very fast, fires a round off every three seconds, and is incredibly accurate. Its a German Tier 7 Premium effort, and easily one of the coolest vehicles in the game.
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P R E S E N T S
OXM SPEAKS TO VICTOR KISLYI

Wargaming.nets CEO talks anti-war games and how he owes it all to Civilization
efore 1998 Victor Kislyi was but one of a clique of military strategy gaming fans. That year they took it upon themselves to set up Wargaming.net to make their own games, and Kislyi became CEO. He still holds that position today, having steered the studio to become a giant with World of Tanks. But spend some time with the colourful executive, and you might mistake him for a PR for Sid Meiers Civilization. Its the game he claims taught him all he needed to build a globe-spanning game development studio, and together with World of Tanks, he thinks it might just save the world from an alien invasion. As the man behind Wargaming.net and World of Tanks, military games have obviously played a significant role in your life. How much have they influenced you? Speaking about me personally, chess is one of the two games that changed my life, including my business life. My father really lifted me and put me in front of a chess coach at school when I was seven years old. In the Soviet Union chess was a religion. We had a lot of good coaches, a lot of people playing chess from an early age and a lot of champions. The game really taught me to think. To win you had to be ready to spend hours and hours, and even weeks, months or years. Players like Kasparov were an inspiration. The other important game was another more or less military title called Civilization. Its about civilisation building, and there are many nonmilitary aspects of it like mining, constructing roads, handling religion and so on. Ive played Civilization for 20 years now. In fact, right before
Wargaming boss Victor Kislyi (who still plays Civilisation every day) at his recent studio party.
this interview, if I am honest, I was playing Civilization for an hour over lunch. I think people that play these kinds of military strategy games enough are and I stand by this the most peaceful people. I have never heard of anybody who plays chess, or Civilization, or Command & Conquer, going on a killing spree in a supermarket or killing kids in school. At least, I dont know of any such case. So playing those games really made you start Wargaming.net and the journey towards World of Tanks? I always say that my Masters of Business Administration education was through
Civilization. I did graduate in physics my father insisted I would become a physicist, so I entered my universitys physics department and majored in laser physics. That was very good for my thinking and understanding of many things but lets face it, Civilization is what taught me to run Wargaming.net. It so happens that I have managed to establish a relatively successful developer and quite an impressive business with Wargaming. net. There are 2,200 staff with 16 offices around the world from Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, all the way through Eastern Europe and Cyprus, to Paris, Berlin, San Francisco, Seattle, Texas and Chicago. So its a big business to manage
OXM
PROMOTION
I tHinK peopLe wHo pLAY MiLitArY strAteGY GAMes Are tHe Most peAceFUL peopLe
The Xbox 360s answer to the antiwar film? Believe it or not, World of Tanks might be just that.
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P R E S E N T S
Whatever the weather, World of Tanks sensational success shows no sign of slowing.
CIVILIZATION HAs ALLoweD Me to trAin MY MinD in A wAY tHAt worKs For BiG BUsiness
with lots of facilities, money, paperwork and very fierce competition from small and medium companies, and theres the constant economic crisis all around the world. But we are relatively successful. So how come? Yes, I read a couple of books, but I never studied at Harvard, Princeton or Oxford. I truly believe that this game Civilization and this is my utter recommendation to anybody that wants to do business; that I say both privately to friends and publicly it pretty much allows you to build an empire in the real world. An empire and a business are pretty much the same thing. This game teaches you how, at any turn as with chess, to see what is going on in a business, and that things are balanced. I will repeat that I played Civilization today. I played it yesterday and I will play it tomorrow, really and literally. And that has allowed me to train my mind in a way that works for big business. If somebody comes to me and asks about getting an MBA or starting a business, I tell them that before they start they must get a copy of Civilization, and play it for a week or even a month. If you can handle those virtual empires, you can see if you are capable of
handling and solving hundreds of different problems at the same time. Could it not be that you are an exception in so far as the impact of these games is concerned? No, not at all. All my founding colleagues at Wargaming.net were always crazy about World of Warcraft, Civilization, Command & Conquer and those good strategy games. What about games ability to explore war and conflict? Often a great war film is described as an anti-war film, but games are often portrayed as glamorising war. Do you think games deserve that? Could World of Tanks be an anti-war game? Again, looking at a game like Civilization its balanced in a way that means waging a war is very difficult. At times you are forced to go to war, for example if you are attacked. But have you ever attacked a 25-point city in Civilization? It is painful. So if the enemy shows up and wants to make peace, you say hell yes, because Im not tolerating this anymore. Games about war can teach you to avoid everything to do with real war. I can only hope
World of Tanks could do that. And games can certainly be powerful anti-war experiences. This may sound a little bold, but thinking back to those wars in the mid-1990s and 2000s, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even Napoleon getting involved in Russia and Spain a very long time before; I think that if some of those leaders had played Civilization like myself, I feel some of their decisions would have been altered for the ultimate good of all the people, including their own people. It sounds like a joke, but the reality is this: if some big leaders played Civilization, they would look at more war differently and possibly make different strategic moves in their wars.
Thinking about war more seriously is one thing, but could games like World of Tanks really help put an end to war? There will always be wars of a kind, like the war on cancer or hunger. It would be naive to hope, as some people do, that if we all hold hands the skies will be bright around us. They will not. And some challenges, like the huge rocks flying through space, and global warming and global freezing, they are very important. There is a lot of aggression against us, whether we like it or not, and if we want to survive, we must have people who treat those threats as enemies. We must fight them, such as viruses like Aids. It is killing millions of people, and in Africa it is a complete disaster. The only way of getting rid of Aids is to fight back as Aids attacks us. Fight is the word, so that is a kind of war. And to end more humorously, aliens might come down and attack us now. We have to be prepared for anything.
OXM
PROMOTION
A mainstay of PC tournament gaming, World of Tanks has declared the Xbox 360 its new battleground.
GAMes ABoUt wAr cAn teAcH YoU to AVoiD reAL wAr. i onLY Hope worLD oF tAnKs cAn Do tHAt
Capturing the flag is just the start. This game might save you in an alien invasion, says Kislyi. Really.
www.totalxbox.com
P R E S E N T S
Get the edge on the battlefield with our guide to dominating each of the maps that come with the game
CLIFF
No huge surprise why this map gets its name. The large cliff overlooking proceedings also connects both teams thanks to a sizeable valley, where its easy to get caught in crossfire if youre not paying requisite attention. Sneaky sorts will move round to the far east, where a large rock formation lets you wage war away from the hustle and bustle of the regular battlefield. This is a green and verdant map, so make sure you camo up appropriately. And given the name, watch out for those perilous drops no one looks pretty with a crumpled turret.
MASTERING THE MAPS
3 4
valley road connects the two bases, but it takes a ballsy driver to just careen down there without a care. Control of this road will lead to victory, but its best fought over in the late game.
1 This lengthy
why its so dangerous? Not only is it a cast choke point, its also overlooked by the cliff. Laugh as new players teeter off the edge. Cry as experienced SPG players rain hell fire from above.
2 Want to know
ground with scattered buildings here, making for a battle of attrition. Come hard with tank destroyers or scout ahead with Lights, or you could end up crushed before youve had a chance to plan properly.
3 Largely flat
players will gain control of the boulder outcrop, which can provide a quiet flanking run to the enemy base if well managed. Dont rush hang back and scout, because there might be an ambush waiting for you.
4 Clever, patient
OXM
PROMOTION
4 2
MInEs
Thankfully not named after hidden explosive devices, but underground tunnels. This map is decent for Tank Destroyer players who want to control the central hilltop, but beware as the battle to actually get there could leave you in serious trouble. Expect some good destructive firefights in the village to the north east, which will often provide a camping point for the team that manages to get there first. A map where role-definition is vital, then. Dont try and take on that hill in a Light tank, will you now. Thats not going to end well.
provide a great sniping spot if you can control it, but its open enough to make it a dangerous place to hold. Its often the site of early-game battles, especially among those who overvalue their kill tallies.
1 This hill will
village is called Pagorki, and it makes for an excellent battleground for cat-and-mouse creepers. The team that controls it often ends up winning the game.
2 This little
actually reach this island as its only surrounded by knee-deep water. It has just enough cover to make it a tidy ambush spot. Its good for flanking folks on the hill, if youre feeling brave.
3 You can
an excellent place for a team to provide crossfire against those on the hill. Just dont get caught trying to sneak across on the sand. Certain death awaits those who do.
4 This can be
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P R E S E N T S
MaLInoVKa
This large, open map is a real slow burn and requires strong teamwork and a good range of tanks in order to succeed. Lights will have some joy on scouting missions deep into enemy territory, and you can set up some nice ambush counter-snipes in the bushes that sit atop low hills. The map is also focused around a large central lake which can be a fun site for potshotting at the other team, and provides a natural flanking point for those crafty enough to circumnavigate it without being taken out first.
forces two playstyles on this map. You can sit at either side of it taking potshots, or you can use it to flank your opposition but doing so can leave you exposed.
1 The lake
trees gives natural cover. This is crucial for flanking, as two or three tanks well used here can give the impression of more, as speedier vehicles use a pincer formation around either side.
2 This set of
as a one-person killing machine? Then lead the charge across this flat, open ground and see how long you survive. If you have new players on your team, watch in horror as they die in record time.
3 Fancy yourself
good cover and hiding places. One of World of Tanks most typical attacks uses a tank as bait, while more powerful allies lie around the corner. Tempting an enemy tank into certain death never gets old.
4 Houses provide
OXM
points and should only be traversed when youre fully aware of your surroundings.
PROMOTION
1 The two bridges on this map are hellish choke
2 1
A very open desert map with little in the way of objects or debris littered about the place. Those who find respite hiding behind buildings and trees will struggle here, but there is plenty of natural cover thanks to the sand dunes that undulate throughout the map. Bring desert camo and a tank with good manoeuvrability if you want to survive in Sand River, as it isnt well suited for campers. Sand River is one of the Xbox 360 version of World of Tanks more unique maps, and one that almost always produces exiting matches.
Sand RIVEr
both bases, making this a good map for base-happy tank destroyers and accurate SPG players. Seeing a full line-up of tanks spread across here is intimidating for even experienced World of Tanks vets.
2 Ridges protect
very open and dangerous map, there is scope for some building-based camping. Its often too far away from the action to cause any real concern, though, and is heavily covered by the first base.
3 While this is a
strong buildings to the north make it a tough fight regardless. Most teams will look to control this space.
3 An easier hill for the southern team to climb, but
A fairly simple map designed for introducing players to the game. A wide, open area in the middle is surrounded by hills, and the map is largely symmetrical, making it easier for players to understand World of Tanks tactics and utilise them without fear of advanced players defeating them with their superior knowledge. The scattered buildings make for good cover, while scouts can use the high ridges to spot for enemy tanks without fear of immediate destruction. Province isnt a classic map once you get used to the game, but its a great place to start.
ProVIncE
is a little open to the south, so northern players will have an early advantage here. But it is great for surprise assaults, as few expect the southern team to charge through such a narrow gap.
1 The western hill
straight into this open section in the middle of the map and you will die quickly. This is not a place to creep around in if you have to go through the middle, make it as fast a trip as possible.
2 Venture
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P R E S E N T S
WEstFIELd
A lush, green map filled with variety. The bounteous trees and villages make for fantastic ambush opportunities, while there is plenty of cover. Sneaky players will easily outfox newcomers with the amount of hiding places, while those in strong communications with their team-mates will find plenty of ways to trick their enemies into dangerous traps. If you fancy testing out your snipe ambushes and your baiting manoeuvres, then this is a great place to start. And even if youre just a hapless noob, you can still have fun smashing up the villages under your caterpillar tracks.
settlement thats a good place to start scouting missions from. Creep in between the buildings and set your copes for the enemy base in order to capture a few red diamonds on your map.
1 A small
destroyed bridge hosts many a final stand, and is often the final resting ground for tanks young and old. Only the foolish move under it alone, as enemy sights are often fixed on this choke point.
2 This partially
skilled teams operate baiting ambushes and on-the-fly cat-andmouse tactics. Use the narrow alleys to lure unsuspecting Lights into a nasty mismatch, or shatter enemy cover in a charge for the base.
3 This is where
and tiresome campers will use these trees to wreak havoc in either direction. Theyre good for slaughtering those careless enough to charge through the middle, and so dense as to hide multiple tanks.
4 Patient flankers
3 2
< / THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE PRESNTS THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO WORLD OF TANKS / >
OXM
PROMOTION
4 1
MountaIn Pass
This is a very large map with a long trek between bases. Its also tricky to navigate because of rough terrain, so dont bring in Light tanks and expect to bolt around like you would in some maps youll likely take an irritating tumble and damage your armour. The central bridge forces some choke points that can be taken advantage of with good teamwork, while there are steady sniping points at the cragged ridges for anyone smart enough to find cover. An excellent map for more advanced players, but pretty nasty for newcomers.
a firefight, head towards this bridge. Its almost always a nightmare filled with burnt out bodies and peppered with artillery fire. Make it across here in a Light and you deserve a medal.
1 If you came for
Pass offers good sniping points for the northern team, but little room for manoeuvre if cornered. Control it to wreak havoc, but lose it and youll likely lose as its too near the northern base.
2 The Mountain
base is tough to assault if you decide against the mountains, then this nightmarish choke point is your only option. Matches on Mountain Pass often finish without a base capture as theyre so easy to defend.
3 The northern
open ground makes assaulting the southern base an easier prospect in theory, but its lack of cover means anyone holding firm in the safety of home camp will light you up like a Christmas tree.
4 This stretch of
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P R E S E N T S
Credits are essential to buy new tanks and equipment. Heres how to build up a decent stash
The single most important factor in World of Tanks when playing for credits is damage. This isnt like Call of Duty where your Kill/Death ratio means everything youre rewarded for all the damage you cause to your opponents. So fear not if someone is nicking your kills, all that carnage still gets you what you need.
CREDITS
Deal daMaGe
01
Get Kills
On the flipside, you will get a tidy bonus for kills. Quite often tanks will battle one another and find themselves very low on health but stuck in a reload cycle. If youre a nippy tank, you can finish the job off and pick up a bonus. And no one will mind you stealing the kill.
SPot eneMies
This is just good practice anyway. Spotting is fundamental to success in World of Tanks, and youll be rewarded handsomely for spotting enemies leading to team-mate kills, and doubly so for spotting and then killing them yourself. Keep on that scope and never get caught out by some sneaky turret-jockey hiding in a bush.
02 03
While actually capturing a base is tricky, defending is more feasible and will be rewarded appropriately. If youre commandeering a Heavy or a Tank Destroyer, hang back at base and ambush misguided attackers. Not only will team-mates be eternally grateful, but youll also be racking up the XP.
Defend Bases
Four tanks are always more dangerous than three, regardless of their health, so when in hard firefights, make sure your team concentrates its fire on a single target to rapidly thin out the opposition numbers. More damage, more control, more credits.
Concentrate fire
While there are definite times you should sacrifice yourself for the greater good, you will receive a credit reward for sticking out a round and staying alive. This can lead to less-thanexciting matches as you back up behind houses cowering for your life, but its worth it.
SUrViVe
It can be easy to forget that World of Tanks is an objective game as so many matches end with slaughter, but the systems underpinning the credit scoring do massively reward those who can capture enemy bases. If you see the opportunity then seize it; credits and glory await.
CaPtUre Bases
04
05 06 07
Be conserVatiVe
Your credit score is a convoluted calculation comprising of multiple factors, one of which is how much ammo you have left at the end of a battle. Its therefore wise to make every shot count and ensure you keep as many shells in reserve as you can to maximise your gains.
Sell YoUr Tanks
The uglier side of the game, but if you really have your heart set on a new tank or a particular tech-tree upgrade, you might want to sell a couple of tanks from your garage. Its generally not an advisable tactic as it can hamper your silver multiplier opportunities, but sometimes needs must.
If you cant be dealing with any of the above, then its possible to skip it all with the magic of capitalism: you can buy credits from Xbox Live Marketplace. If you absolutely must have that new tank right now, this is the quickest way to make it happen.
JUst BUY soMe
08 09 10
NEW GENERATION
NEW LOOK! N K! EW O LO
NEW GAMESMASTER!
ON SALE NOW
! OK LO
BIGGER REVIEWS! IMPROVED FEATURES! EVERY TOP GAME!
! OK LO
NEW LOOK! N EW K! O O
NEW LOOK! N EW
O NEW L OK! NE W
ISSUE 110 / APRiL 2014 Future Publishing Ltd, 2 Balcombe Street, London, NW1 6NW, UK Tel: 020 7042 4680 Fax: 020 7042 4689 Email: oxm@futurenet.co.uk Web: www.totalxbox.com EDiTORiaL Editor: Jon Hicks jon.hicks@futurenet.com (Live: OXM Jonty) Deputy Editor: Edwin Evans-Thirlwell edwin.evans-thirlwell@futurenet.com (Live: OXM ETBoy) Associate Editor: Jon Blythjon.blyth@futurenet.com (Live: OXM Log) Staff Writer: Aoife Wilson aoife.wilson@futurenet.com (Live: OXM Aoife) Art Editor: Curtis Phillips-Cozier curtis.philipscozier@futurenet.com (Live: OXM DJ Coziee) Production Editor: Jenny Meadejennifer.meade@futurenet.com (Live: OXM RockOn) DiGiTaL TeaM Video Producer: Gavin Murphy gavin.murphy@futurenet.com Technical Manager (Online): Kornel Lambert kornel.lambert@futurenet.com Technical Support Assistant (Online): Andrew Taylor andrew.taylor@futurenet.com Digital Designer: Luc Pestille luc.pestille@futurenet.com CONTRiBuTORs Design: Patrick Minnikin, Al Parr Writing: Jon Denton, Scott Butterworth, Rich Wordsworth, Andy Robinson, Andrew Hayward, Steve Hogarty, Joe Skrebels, Dave Rudden, David Valjalo, Philippa Warr, Dan Griliopoulos, Matthew Gilman, Sam White, Richard Meade, Rosie Fletcher, Gary Cutlack, Chris Schilling, Ben Borthwick, Nick Cowen ADveRTisiNG aND MaRKeTiNG London Ad-Sales Director: James Ranson (0207 042 4163) james.ranson@futurenet.com Sales Director: Nick Weatherall (0207 042 4155) nick.weatherall@futurenet.com Digital Advertising Manager: Andrew Church (0207 042 4237) andrew.church@futurenet.com Trade Marketing Manager: Colin Hornby Senior Product Manager, Subscriptions: Adam Jones International Licensing Director: Regina Erak Group Marketing Manager: Sam Wight Senior Marketing Executive: Tilly Michell Marketing Executive: Antonella Matia RiGHTs Rights & Asset Management Director: Katherine Bebbington-Taylor PRODucTiON Production Manager: Mark Constance Production Co-ordinator: Marie Quilter SeNiOR EDiTORiaL Group Senior Editor, Games: Tim Clark Group Art Director, Games: Graham Dalzell MaNaGeMeNT Managing Director: Nial Ferguson Deputy MD: Clair Porteous Head of Games: Lee Nutter Head of Digital: Keith Walker DisTRiBuTiON Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT (020 7429 4000) ABOuT THe MaGaZiNe Xbox: The Official Xbox Magazine is published by Future plc, under licence from Futures US subsidiary. In the US Future has a licence to publish Official Magazines in all territories, excluding Japan. If youre interested in becoming a licensee, contact regina.erak@ futurenet.com Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 logo are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine is published under licence from Microsoft, and is an independent publication not affiliated with Microsoft Corporation. The ABC combined print, digital and digital publication circulation for Jan-Dec 2013 is 37,519 (Print 35,961 Digital 1,558) A member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations Want to work for Future? Visit www.futurenet.com/jobs
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<TOTALXBOX.COM>
ExclUSIVE fEatURES oNlINE tHIS moNtH
<1>
Get started with Twitch on Xbox One.
<2>
The road to E3: Microsofts secret Xbox exclusives and platform announcements.
<3>
Complete Titanfall review and guide: loadouts, maps and levelling up.
<4>
Indies on Xbox One: the best ID@ Xbox games so far.
<5>
Is Modern Warfare ancient history? The future of Call of Duty.
All contents subject to change. @OXMUK
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NOW P L AY I N G
The games were still going back to, and why
All telescopes should have built in statisticsensors.
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Jon Denton is playing
Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag

BECAUSE It reminds me why videogames matter
LOviNG Shanties, rogue waves and salt-crusted beards
HaTiNG Being on land
ideogame fatigue is a very real affliction an ennui that creeps in when you drown yourself in mediocrity or me-too monotony for months on end. For some, it can be enough to jack the whole gaming thing in completely. Ironic, then, that the title thats shaken me out of my latest bout of gaming-greyness is the sixth iteration of a franchise that appears year-on-year like clockwork. The thing is, though, Assassins Creed IV isnt actually an Assassins Creed game. Not really. Its a Black Flag game.
as a youngster and why they still inspire me after a decade of writing about them. Videogames, for me, have always been about other places, other lives, other experiences. Where can I go today? Who can I be? What can I do? During the PS2 and original Xbox era it felt like this question was being answered almost weekly a deluge of ideasdriven experiences piling on top of each other in a pre-recession marketplace. Recently, though, there have been a lot of games about shooting people. This, though, is fresh, its genuinely new, and its big. Wrenching the wheel as the Jackdaw crashes against huge waves in the fearsome Caribbean South, listening to the spray spatter on the deck as your crew valiantly roar about
dETails
Released Nov 2013 Dev Ubisoft Montreal Pub Ubisoft Format Xbox One Score 9/10, OXM #106 Recap A vast world, dozens of diversions and characters that you can genuinely warm to. The sea-faring is spectacular, and familiar problems are much more forgivable when youre really enjoying the ride.
At least, thats why Im still playing it, and will be for the foreseeable future. While the on-land sections are probably the best theyve been, theyre still hackneyed and old. On the sea, though, Black Flag reminds me why I love videogames, why I obsessed over them
The great escape
//It transports you to a place youve never been before a highlight reel version of a life you could never lead//
Liverpool Town or Rio Grande, battling rogue waves and tornados and giant ships... its stunning. It transports you to a place youve never been before a highlight-reel version of a life you could never lead. Escapism it may be, but its escapism of the most intoxicating order. So good, in fact, is Black Flags seafaring, that I cant help but feel the game almost pulling itself in half at times. The freedom of the ocean is at odds with the restrictive, clunky scripting on the land. The riotous naval battles clash against the tedious eavesdrop missions. Its a strange game one both defiantly brave yet struggling for identity. To enjoy Black Flag, Ive had to abandon my usual completist nature and just set sail for the unknown. This truly is a game where you can leave the story behind and craft experiences of your own, whether its hunting white whales and legendary ships, or just enjoying the marriage of systems and spectacle. At its best, this is magic, a genuine glimpse into another world. All together now, I dreamed a dream the other night
@OXMUK
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Unlock Jasons arsenal first and you can stroll through the game like a walking tank.
Far Cry 3
Rich Wordsworth is playing
BECAUSE I have self-esteem issues
LOViNG Blowing up tribesmen
HATiNG Having my combat prowess endlessly questioned
dont feel the natives of Rook Island respect me. Not the roving bands of pirates and privateers theyre all gratifyingly panicked whenever my snipers bullet whistles from the treeline, running for cover as I pick them off unseen. Theyve even given me a nickname: Snow White. Bit racist, maybe, but at least they get it: I rule this kingdom. Its the yokels Ive got the hump with. I dont mind so much that the native Rakyat tribe turn up late to every firefight, arriving in their beaten up Jeep just as Im daubing the last of the pirate blood off my machete. I dont even mind helping them out with their tedious island chores when I should be looking for my kidnapped friends.
But what hurts is their lack of gratitude. Ive always played Far Cry 3 backwards. Instead of following the trail of my kidnapped girlfriend, I pootle about completing side-quests, and unlocking every weapon and upgrade. As my arsenal beefs up, I start stopping by pirate outposts, bumping guards off quietly with a suppressed rifle and cleaning up with an RPG if things get messy. I forget all about saving my friends and fall into a murderous rhythm of emptying one stronghold then driving on to the next. And what recognition do I get from these feckless tribals in need? None. Having restored the island to these ingrates, its back to the nascent story I abandoned
dETAils
Released Nov 2012 Dev Ubisoft Montreal Pub Ubisoft Format Xbox 360 Score 9/10, OXM #94 Recap Jason Brody, college boy everyman, is stranded on a tropical island turned pirate haven. While searching for his kidnapped friends he battles mercenaries, wildlife and his own creeping insanity.
Heart of darkness
//I kill my first Rakyat warrior when he scares away the pig I am hunting. From there the floodgates are open//
ten hours ago, with characters flapping on about what a great warrior I could make some day. I picture Jason standing in front of them, painted head-to-toe in dried blood; scuffed, burned and wildeyed. Im in over my head, they insist. What could this pampered Californian white boy know about killing? Eventually perhaps inevitably I snap. I kill my first Rakyat warrior when he scares away a pig I am hunting. From there the floodgates are open. I hide in the trees and ambush Rakyat patrols with C4. I experiment with tossing grenades into their stupid fairylit village. I have given you everything! I howl. We could have rebuilt this island together, if youd had just one kind word for me! But it wasnt to be. The crushing indifference of the Rakyat changed my Jason Brody into something too dark for salvation. Now he stalks the jungle, tracking and hunting not for love or justice, but for the rhythm. This is his island now and he paid for it in blood.
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Edwin is playing
Aliens vs. Predator

LOVING Biting heads off, rocking a Smart Gun HaTING Getting my spindly bits stuck on door frames
BECAUSE Im fed up of waiting for Isolation
lien: Isolations problem isnt just that Gearbox has nuked the Alien license from orbit, thoroughly extinguishing all love for it across vast stretches of the Earths surface. Creative Assemblys game also has to survive comparison with Rebellions trilogy of Aliens vs Predator titles, which are probably the finest 3D Alien games available at the time of writing. The third game is the least adored, but if youre worried that youll never fear a Xenomorph again in the wake of Aliens: Colonial Marines, Rebellions human campaign should help. There are guns, yes fat, greasy, far-future boomsticks that tear through Alien chitin as quickly as the resultant acid eats through flesh but the cluttered environments dont exactly lend themselves to precision shooting. Nor do the Predators, because theyre invisible to everybody save the
Aliens. They have better weaponry, too razor discs, spears and that infamous homing shoulder cannon. Its a bad day to be descended from apes, in short. Fortunately, you dont have to be human. There are also Alien and Predator campaigns, though they cant rival the tension of the Marine offering. The Aliens are hyper-agile, able to scamper along any vertical surface when you hold down
dETaIls
Released Feb 2010 Dev Rebellion Pub Sega Format Xbox 360 Score 8/10, OXM #57
a button, but the interiors are so gloomy and weirdly broken up that its easy to forget which way down is. Predators feel too much like regular FPS heroes for comfort though stalking spongy idiot bipeds from behind a veil of holographic gauze is an undeniable thrill. Id like to play a Predator-only game one day. Perhaps Batman dev Rocksteady has a few hands to spare Bruce Waynes skillset isnt worlds away from that of Arnies ugliest sparring partner. Id also like to play another Rebellionmade Aliens title a properly funded crack at the idea that isnt as troubled by environment reuse, with a decent storyline and characterisation that amounts to more than heres your gun, dont lose it. Gearbox may have left the franchise for dead, but if theres one thing any member of the Corp well knows, its that you should never turn your back on a corpse.
Fable II
Philippa Warr is playing
BECAUSE Baby, they can ring my bell. Perhaps literally

LOVING Every single town crier I can find HaTING How utterly tedious the combat system is
eturning to Fable II, I realise I have absolutely no recollection of the games plot despite having spent dozens of hours wandering around Albion in my original playthrough. This gaming amnesia is entirely the fault of Fable IIs sexy town criers. More on those foxy chaps in a moment, but as I once again work my way through the games opening, Im pleasantly surprised. Fable II is a very pretty game its world lively and
capable of surprise. At one end of the surprise spectrum is a cinematic bird poop sequence, at the other the shooting of your sister by Lord Lucien, which, I now remember, is one of the driving forces of the game. Now to explain the gaming amnesia. You see, halfway through my original Fable II playthrough, I set about romancing a town crier who went by the name of Seth. I danced for him, did sock puppetry for him, bought him gifts of a dubious nature and, when the moment was right, proposed to him. We shacked up in Bowerstone and prepared for a life of tricorn-hatted bliss. Then Town Crier Pete showed up. According to Fable II, a married town crier must hang up his bell and be replaced by another identical-looking gentleman. Thus began my own gamewithin-a-game that of collecting as many town crier husbands as possible.
dETaIls
Released Oct 2008 Dev Lionhead Studios Pub Microsoft Studios Format Xbox 360 Score 8/10, OXM #40
I managed eight before Bowerstone became a marital disaster zone. My husbands had no understanding of private property and would often follow me into another town criers home. It became hellishly difficult to seduce any of them without another walking in and freaking out. I needed to become a town crier sex ninja and thus lost focus on the Lord Lucien business. This playthrough will be different. No town criers, and lots of concentrating on the plot. My resolve lasts until I set foot in Bowerstone for the first time. I will eventually become the hero of Albion (again) and I will deal with Lord Lucien (again). I will also get bored by the stupidly easy combat system (again) and angry at my dogs inability to find treasure while hes standing on top of it (again). But for now I am hiding out in a gypsy camp with Town Crier Philip, the first of my new collection.
@OXMUK
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Luca Brasi (just dont mention the fish fetish).
T H e oxm re P la Y
Revisiting the resolutionallychallenged
The Godfather
Dan Griliopoulos wonders if this game should be sleeping with the fishes
DEtaILS Dev EA Redwood Shores Pub EA Released Sep 2006 Scored 7/10, OXM 360 #13
s a film buff, lets assume its fairly normal for you to spend an evening reading IMDb. Yknow, for fun. Browsing The Godfathers credit list one night, you see all the names youd expect: Marlon Brando, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Abe Vigoda its only after a few minutes of scanning the page that you notice that Al Pacino is missing, his credit as Michael Corleone replaced by a Joe May. It might take you another minute to notice that this Godfather was released in 2006 and is, in fact, a videogame. I think EA did a frankly amazing job in recruiting the cast of the original film for this parallel-world game. It only missed out on two key people. Pacino is the obvious absence understandably, as he was contracted exclusively to do some shouting on the awful Scarface videogame instead. The other is the director, Francis Ford Coppola, who wasnt even asked to be involved and was furious when he found out the game was being made. I went
and I took a look at what it was he said. What they do is they use the characters everyone knows and they hire those actors to be there and only to introduce very minor characters. And then for the next hour they shoot and kill each other... I disapprove, I think its a misuse of film. As even Coppola could tell, despite the money lavished on the cast, The Godfather was neither a good Xbox 360 game nor true to the movie (where most violence happened off-screen). But, despite the absolute brutality of the game in comparison to the movie and the book, The Godfather is as faithful to the plot as Luca Brasi is to the Don, save for your invented character, Aldo Trapani. Its also worth remembering that, in the long interregnum between GTA: San Andreas (2004) and GTA IV (2008), there was room for an open world driving-shooting game on the Xbox 360. Back then, The Godfather was a contender. I particularly love the way your character is weaved into the movies plot. Everything that happens off-screen or between chapters in the other media, happens here and youre involved, bloodily. So when a certain somebody is sent to sleep with the fishes, youre peeking through the window. When Don Corleone is attacked
Take the cannoli
//Its not a great game, but its a great artefact of EAs dominance in the early 2000s//
in the hospital, youre the one defending him. When a horse head needs putting in a bed or a pistol in a restaurant toilet or a bullet in an eye, thats you too. Even when someone leaves the cannoli, its you. Seeing it running again, I do remember one thing about it. Even compared to contemporary early Xbox 360 titles like Saints Row, its exceptionally uncomely, having originally been released for PS2 and original Xbox. Its so strange to be running through totally flat streets with boxy buildings and low-res textures these days that your mind half believes theres a bug and the level hasnt loaded properly. On top of that, despite having a good-sized city to explore, theres very little to do outside of the story missions, save performing hits, bribing cops, fighting the rare mob wars, and roughing up shopkeepers until they come under the Dons wing. That last negotiation/intimidation mechanic is actually the high point of the game. Each shopkeeper has two break points. One where hell give in to your demands, and another where hell fight back. Sometimes you need to talk to him, other times intimidate him, wave a gun in his face, smash him into the fittings, beat up his customers, or destroy his stock. I particularly like hurling bakers into their own pizza ovens.
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From the
Interrogate or negotiate with shopkeepers to get what you want if they refuse to give in to your demands, theyll fight back.
We remember a fond time when the only Halo haters were jealous PC gamers, and the Playboy Bunnies had a game all of their own. Ah, mixed feelings
OXM mUSEUm
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INFLUENcEd BY GRANd THEFt AUtO: VICE CItY Who wasnt inspired by this? INFLUENcE oN SAINts ROw MobFace led to SRs custom faces. Some shops are fronts for rackets. From these you follow other gangs supply chains up to their warehouses, hubs and compounds, eliminating gangsters from the other four factions as you go, with the ultimate aim of taking everything over and making yourself Don of New York. Take too many businesses or kill too many gangsters from a particular family, and youll trigger a mob war. And that means lots of shooting, which is fairly brutal in The Godfather. Enemies dont take many hits, especially if you aim for the legs, head or shoulders, and it gets repetitive very quickly. Plus, the variety of gory executions available to you is definitely a long way away from Mario Puzos subtle, twisty book. So, yeah. Its not a great game. But its a great artefact of EAs ambition and dominance in the early 2000s. That it, at one time, could reassemble a cast like this 30 years later, that it went as far as recording Brando on his deathbed. And, for hardcore fans of the movie, its an offer that you just cant refuse. What happENEd NExT There was a sequel, but nobody bought it. The studio became Visceral, and used the same tech to make Dead Space.
Issue 36 / Date December 2004 / Cover Halo 2
alo 2 Anniversary is in the air, so lets go back to the first review. Spread over ten luxuriant pages, the Chiefs second sortie scored a perfect dix points. Never have I seen a game so polished and eager to give the fans everything they asked for, enthused reviewer Ben Talbot. From November 11, claimed the advert for Halo 2, movies wont matter anymore. If its possible to overplay your hand with a royal flush, Bungie just did it. Meanwhile, 58 per cent of you claimed youd be taking time off work to play it (just 21 per cent said its only a game, Ill play it when I get home). You had your priorities right, well give you that. Away from Halo, of the colossal 20 games that were released that month, the worst was undoubtedly Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes The Neighbourhood. A sequel to a game that scored 3.3, at least it showed some improvement, weighing in at an
//Pro Evo beat FIFA to the top of the Most Wanted poll//
unwhopping 4.0. Winning combos are dependent on continually kicking an opponent in the head when theyre down. Meanwhile, a reader-voted Most Wanted poll reminds us of a very different era in sports games, when Pro Evo 4 was the most anticipated release, and FIFA Football (as it was then known) didnt even make the top five. Another thing thats changed is the standard of adverts in the magazine. Pray for a full frontal assault, grunted the ad for action RPG Sudeki. This unsubtle slogan was backed up by the hero of the game, in a nice revealing bra. This was developed by Climax Studios, which has had some memorable highs (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories) and skin-crawling lows (Bloodforge). Just to back up the sad state of affairs back in 2004, Playboy: The Mansion proudly declared that the bunnies will get frisky with each other, even going so far as taking their bras off for you. Oh, the past. Please stay there.
The game so big, it couldnt be contained by a review section. The Halo 2 review was so important that it even came before the contents page.
Do you want hot, cheeky chat on your mobile? If you didnt answer no, then please consider the range of modern options open to you.
@OXMUK
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LIVE S p O TlIGH T
Reports from Xboxs biggest communities
Player Appreciation Month meant double XP and a Battlepack a day.
Battlefield 4
Getting dicey on the tech side but momentous in motion
Details Dev EA DICE / Pub EA / Reporter Matthew Gilman
Keep tabs on upcoming patches in the Control Room forum thread.
emember when EAs Patrick Sderlund took to the stage at E3 2013 to show off Battlefield 4, and technical problems caused some light tittering from the audience? Yeah. The goodwill tank is running on empty now. Battlefield 4 on Xbox One is still technically bothersome. Forums yet throb with feverish fans desperate to play but suffering from connection issues. For our part, weve been seemingly lucky. Only rarely have we been outright kicked mid match, though theres still a fair amount of lag to contend with, especially across larger maps like Paracel Storm. While DICE beavers away to improve the online experience, its also stumped up goodies for a Player Appreciation Month. That might sound like something thought up by the leader of a rehab clinic, but its clearly aimed at keeping people in the game while the kinks get ironed out. Players that do get in are clearly having a great time. Over on Wikipedia, one
ON THE CLOCK
How we spent our time in the game
enamoured gamer managed to sneak in a reference to Battlefield 4 as being The greatest game ever created in the history of mankind, while other vestiges of the community have been busy filling corners of the official forums with their own only in Battlefield moments (battlelog. battlefield.com/bf4/forum).
Whippity slick
4% Suffering from connection loss rage 24% Mastering the SAW 12% Following players that are better than us 20% Being shouted at by players that are better than us 40% Forcing unnecessary rules on our team (no guns, only speak in whoops...)
A favourite of ours is the Whiplash Challenge posted by YouTuber polylionHD. This intrepid player placed C4 on the supports in the Rogue Transmission map, then managed to take down an enemy jet while free falling from his own plane by using the whiplashing cable from the resulting explosion. We salute you, sir! Looking to team-up with like-minded types? Clan hunting threads for Xbox One players are pretty barren outside of the official forums. Perhaps this is a knock-on effect of our console net code woes. But if the player-showcased moments of awesome were seeing continue, its hard to see Battlefield 4s community do anything other than grow. IF YOU dO ONE THiNG iN BATTLEFiELd 4 THiS MONTH, MAKE iT Use only a knife with each spawn, until you can take down a player and steal their loadout.
More Easter Eggs than Easter Island. Probably.

//Players that do manage to get into the game are clearly having a great time//
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Fill your UT stadium with opposing teams stars and laugh as they cry into their headset.
XBOX
EXTRA
Yeah, it looks nice and shiny now just wait til we hit that first corner.
FIFA 14
Real footballers arent the only ones with gambling problems
GRID 2
Codies circuit sequel started out at breakneck speeds, but the pace has since slowed down
Dev EA Canada / Pub EA Reporter Richard Meade
ootball is a game of highs and lows youll never know the true sweetness of an incredible victory until youve dwelled in the shame of a horrific defeat. However, seemingly unsatisfied with the pangs of emotion currently available in FIFA 14, its community has taken to wagers to raise the stakes. If you fancy a bet on one of FIFAs many fan sites, youll have to put up some serious Ultimate Team coin, or even be willing to gamble one of your best players in a Pink Slips match. The appeal of these wagers is undeniable: a win not only beats your opponent, but also humiliates them youre strengthening your own team by stealing one of their stars. Its so enticing it just needs a few words of persuasion from Ray Winstones disembodied head to make it feel like a genuine gambling campaign. While wagers and Pink Slips arent new to the FIFA community, theyre certainly growing in popularity to the point where it feels like EA may have to consider adding them as a legitimate game mode. Also now prevalent on fan sites are a wealth of tactical setups, custom formations and exhaustive lists of bargain players for both Career Mode and Ultimate Team. However, the game appeals to such a large and broad audience that it is sometimes hard to separate the good advice from the bad. On the field theres been a notable shift since the games release. After a quick divorce, FIFAs back in love with speed and long through balls, following a patch or two. Its a real shame as it means that players who prefer a patient build up can often be caught out by players who are happy to spam high through balls. It was FIFA 13s biggest problem, and after initially alleviating the issue in FIFA 14, EA has recreated it by trying to balance other gameplay issues.
Dev Codemasters / Pub Codemasters Reporter Sam White
//A Pink Slips win not only beats your rival, but humiliates them//
he longer our hiatus from a multiplayer racer, the more terrified we become of that first corner which quite often results in our carguts being splattered across the asphalt like a botched vehicular lobotomy. Hopping back into GRID 2, its instantly apparent how tightly-knit the community is nowadays. We often find ourselves in lobbies with the same familiar faces when looking for different games, and spend a fair amount of time waiting while events come to an end so that we can get going ourselves. This can become very frustrating, so your best option is to make use of the Online Playlist mode to get into a racing rhythm online with a lobby of like-minded racers. While theres not a bustling community swarming around GRID 2 at this stage, it does mean that the players you are racing with are there for a good, solid few hours of play, rather than to get in your way and send you to the car morgue at the first opportunity. Unless youre happy to purchase new cars or new tracks (Spa Francorchamps and Bathurst are decent but inessential additions that you can pick up from the XBL store), the game is exactly the same in terms of content. Not that we really expected a revolution in how cars work during our time away. Sadly, Global Challenges remain seemingly untouched, and looking at the leaderboards reveals a sad absence of any participation from the community. However, the variety of different event disciplines has always put GRID 2 ahead of the game, and the player base has done a great job of embracing the Race, Drift, Time Trial and Checkpoint modes you can pick up the Demolition Derby pack for free, too. When so little attention is clearly paid to the games challenge modes, the video sharing options and everything in between, its a real disappointment that GRID 2s community doesnt feel as exhilaratingly jampacked as that first corner pile-up we so often fell victim to.
//Its instantly apparent how tightly-knit the community is now//
If YOU dO ONE tHiNg iN FIFA 14 tHiS MONtH, MaKE it Gamble a star player and feel a new level of regret after your inevitable loss.
If YOU dO ONE tHiNg iN GRID 2 tHiS MONtH, MaKE it... Get to turn two unscathed, then give yourself a pat on the bonnet.
@OXMUK
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EXTRA
The cars used in the film are actually Formula 3 with fake F1 bodywork.
Rush
c U lT U R E cORnER BOOkS
mOvIES On yOUR XBOX

This month in uninteractive entertainment
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Brhl, Olivia Wilde Price 3.49 (SD) THE ART OF THIEF by Paul Davies WHAT IS IT? A sumptuous assemblage of storyboards, concept art and high res renders for Eidos Montreals stealth adventure. WHYS IT GOOD? Thief might not be this years best game, but its a beautifully imagined world, and this covers everything, down to the jewellery on a guards collar. WILL IT MAKE ME SEEM SMARTER AND/OR COOLER? Mervyn Peake, China Miville and Pans Labyrinth fans will lap it up.
ou dont have to be a petrol-head to be thrilled by director Ron Howards true-life story of the rivalry between Formula One titans, suave British charmer James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and single-minded German grafter Niki Lauder (Daniel Brhl). You dont even have to know who Lauda and Hunt are (though those familiar with their lovehate relationship will be equally transfixed by this movie). Instead, Howards racing thriller is a people piece, hinged on two exceptional performances peppered with breathless, adrenaline-pumping race scenes which manage to convey just how dangerous the sport of Formula One in the 1970s really was. The risk of death turns people on, says Hunt, intoxicated by the fast lane drinking and screwing before he climbs into his car. Whether its that, the scorching dialogue or the heady fumes of two powerhouse sports men fighting from the cockpit, this is one of the best films of 2013 criminally overlooked at this years Oscars.
//Race scenes convey just how dangerous F1 in the 70s really was//
The Fifth Estate

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch Price 3.49 (SD)
Filth
Starring James McAvoy Price 3.49 (SD)
Youre Next
Starring Sharni Vinson, Wendy Glenn Price 3.49 (SD)
Banshee Chapter
Starring Katia Winter, Ted Levine Price 3.49 (SD)
OX M
p I ck S :
S P EE D
DEMONS
Fast Five Blinkbox

Last-but-one addition to the Fast & Furious franchise continues to deliver gleefully ridiculous action.
Drive Angry Xbox Video

Nicolas Cage is an actual demon escaped from hell to rescue his granddaughter. Silly and enormous fun.
Sons of Anarchy: Season 6 Xbox Video

Drama about an outlaw biker gangs get increasingly reflective as it approaches its final season.
Top Gear: Season 20 Xbox Video

Both format and presenters are showing alarming signs of age, but challenges like car vs. yacht still amuse.
Herbie Goes Bananas SkyGo

A cheeky VW Beetle and young thief foil a smuggling ring in South America. Good, clean Disney fun.
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
Jaap Buitendijk, Rush Films Limited/ Egoli Tossell Film and Action Image
Rebel, renegade, revolutionary and alleged sociopath and sexual predator Julian Assange is the centre of Bill Condons engaging biopic which suffers from a reliance on complicated exposition and scenes of blokes typing on computers. It never nails the empathy nor wider picture of comparable The Social Network.
James McAvoy trashes his nice guy image as drunken, morally corrupt, coke-addled copper Bruce Roberson, systematically screwing over friends and colleagues in the pursuit of a career, but also, just because. Hes electric, and director Jon Baird brings outrageous flair to Irvine Welshs material. The new Trainspotting? Its not far off.
A smart twist on the home invasion horror, Adam Wingards indie chiller-com messes with genre and gender expectations as an awkward family reunion is menaced by men in animal masks, and the pretty outsider girlfriend turns out to be a closet survival expert. Gory, funny, clever, its like a low-budget answer to Scream.
Banshee Chapter is a genuinely scary horror about a government conspiracy linked to Numbers Stations (random radio broadcasts of inexplicable numbers, letters or tunes). Ted Levine is enjoyably dishevelled as the reluctant sidekick to Katia Winters journalist trying to track down a missing friend. Unnerving.
s I D e Q U es T
This month: FINDING OUT HOW MUCH SCIENCE FICTION IS FACT with XCOM
THIS MONTHS CHALLENGE:
Find out how much of XCOM: Enemy Unknowns more exotic tech tree is actually real, and could be used on the people and dogs that I love.
When will we be walking down the street like this?
m a happy person. Im not boasting, or proud: its a debilitating chemical issue. For example, James Lovelock says that 80 per cent of humanity will be wiped out by an angry planet by 2100. A better person would be moved to action, but the fear of mankinds imminent demise subsides when I remember Ive got a 40 per cent off voucher to use at Pizza Express. Then theres the idea that some of the most traumatic weaponry in games like XCOM is probably rooted, at least loosely, in reality. Its creepy to think of that, then remember Dick Cheneys unshakable approval of torture. But you cant be scared with a Pollo Ad Astra Romana in your mouth. (And if anyone from Pizza Express is reading this, you can quote me on that). But how real is this tech tree? Plasma Guns, youll probably be pleased to hear, arent actually a thing right now. You can find various instruction guides on how to build a simple plasma rifle on YouTube, but these just use electromagnetism to propel a series of ball-bearings. Theyre not the lethal purple clouds of superheated ionised death that a modern alien demands. However, Boeings brilliantly named Phantom Works division is working on it. One of its ideas requires you to be travelling at eight times the speed of sound, which could affect your aim and cause a long row of personshaped holes in local buildings. But if youre utterly committed to plasma, you might be interested in a piece of technology known as the Pulsed Energy Projectile. This absolute bastard is able to cause unimaginable agony in a person from over a mile away. How does it work? A laser creates a small amount of exploding plasma on its target. The result: excruciating pain, and a bonus stun effect. Basically, miss a turn, lose HP and set morale to minus eight.
cURReNT PLasma GUNs aRe NOT The LeThaL cLOUDs OF sUPeRheaTeD IONIseD DeaTh ThaT a mODeRN aLIeN DemaNDs
XCOMs Ghost Armour works via phase shifts in the hyperwave beacon. The fact that hyperwave beacons are completely made up is the first hurdle: but wait! In 2012, The Daily Mail, Britains most popular antidote to science and scourge of human empathy, reported on a company called Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corp, which claims to have invented a Quantum Stealth blanket that bends light around the wearer. The terrible Photoshop mock-ups provided carry the pungent stink of bullshit, but it does feel like the company is using real tech to lend its claims some credence. In 2011, an invisibility cloak was actually invented at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The synthetic polymer was only good for hiding a small bump on a flat surface. Some use for covering acne, then, but were not at the Klingon cloak yet.
While were on alien tech, what about the Mind Controller? Its a dictators ultimate dream: why bother distracting your idiot populace with celebrities, when you can just turn those subjects into a load of sexy meat robots? Step forward, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, you monster. TMS noodles with the polarities of neurons in the brain. In its paragon path, it can be used to test your head connections, and ascertain the damage from, for example, multiple sclerosis. Take the renegade options, and TMS can be used to turn off areas of the brain, disrupting the ability to count, talk and identify your own body. This was shown pretty convincingly in The Brain: A Secret History on BBC4. But the further you get from the science papers, the more worrying the claims are: link this brain prodding to propaganda, says The Activist Post, and you can sculpt opinions. Even if its true, its not the David Cameron is controlling me with a gamepad that I was after. Still, though. Now Im wondering if my happiness isnt actually real at all. Perhaps Ive just been smothered in government-issued balm waves. Perhaps Ive had my activist circuits snipped by the shadowy scissors of the military-industrial complex. If this pizza wasnt so delicious, Id probably do something about it.
5
NexT mONTh
@OXMUK
THINGS 1 I NOW KNOW
There are no weapons that make you jump into the air, as your skeleton becomes visible through your body.
I am the beneficiary of a cheerful chemical privilege that must utterly infuriate anyone prone to inexplicable sadness.
The logo of Boeings Phantom Works looks like the Hooded Claw. Their motto might as well be Evil LOL.
When the revolution happens, well probably be really impressed at the weapons being used against us.
Mass Effects quantum entanglement isnt anything to do with this, but the Wiki page is actually pretty cool.
Trying to work out the enduring, anthropomorphic appeal of Banjo-Kazooie, Blinx and Spyro by attending a furry convention in Manchester.
XBOX
EXTRA
NEW ENTRY KINECT XBOX LIVE ARCADE
Our shortlist of the finest games currently available

GRAND THEFt AUtO V
FORMAT: XBOX 360
XBOx ESSeNTIALS
Rockstar somehow fits the most impressive open world ever created onto Xbox 360. An unpleasant story, but the settings peerless. 10
DARK SOULS 2
FORMAT: XBOX 360
The teleportation takes some threat away, but this is still a masterpiece of melancholic world-building, and doomed beauty. Stunning. 9
BIOSHOCK
FORMAT: XBOX 360
BULLEtStORm
FORMAT: XBOX 360
Infinite is great, but those new to the series should start here. Rapture still captivates, and the second-act 10 twist offsets the dull end.
Not nearly as stupid as it pretends to be, this packs an impressive Story mode, and still has time to include Skillshots in the mix. 9
PORtAL 2
FORMAT: XBOX 360
XCOM: ENEmY UNKNOWN

FORMAT: XBOX 360
Valve turns sci-fi test chambers into the funniest game youll ever play it has what is probably the most satisfying co-op, too. 10
Intense tactics with a personal twang, XCOM is an oddly emotional strategy game. Tough, deep 9 and surprisingly addictive.
MASS EFFECt 3
FORMAT: XBOX 360
RED DEAD REDEmptION

FORMAT: XBOX 360
Those diving in at the end wont get the same impact, but for fans of the series this is sublime. A brilliant end to the best RPG trilogy ever. 10
Not merely GTA with cowboys, the gripping story, beautiful world and brilliant characters make this 9 the best cowpoke game ever.
DEUS Ex: HUmAN REvOLUtION

FORMAT: XBOX 360
BAtmAN: ARKHAm CItY

FORMAT: XBOX 360
This cyberpunk RPG/shooter hybrid has an unparalleled sense of depth and scope. If youre a sci-fi fan, 10 this is unmissable stuff.
The Dark Knights first open-world outing is a superb smash-hit. Have Alfred iron your very best cape 9 and come and get involved.
THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIm

FORMAT: XBOX 360
FIFA 14
FORMAT: XBOX 360/xbOx ONE
Imagine Oblivion with better levelling, characters and fighting, and a gripping tale of dragonbased apocalypse. Hi, Skyrim! 10
Theres a learning curve, but embrace the more thoughtful gameplay and youll be rewarded with a 9 thrilling football experience.
MINECRAFt
FORMAT: XBOX 360
DISHONORED
FORMAT: XBOX 360
Spend an afternoon making a castle and youll understand what all the hype is about. The split-screen 10 mode is utterly brilliant.
A genuine first-person classic that youll want to play through at least twice. Its a near-perfect blend 9 of stealth and action.
YOURS FOR 10 DISCOUNT GAMES WORTH GETTING
SSX If theres a better feeling than
LEFt 4 DEAD 2
FORMAT: XBOX 360
grinding the rail of a moving helicopter while listening to The Naked and Famous atop one of the worlds highest peaks, we havent found it. Score 9/10 Buy it 6.99, Amazon
Valve has created another zombie-mashing classic. More varied campaigns and new weapons await you.
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
XBOX
EXTRA
RAYmAN ORIgINS
FORMAT: XBOX 360
SKULLS OF tHE SHOgUN

FORMAT: XBOX 360
Sequel Legends is a still more excellent dose of four-player co-op, but if youve played neither, this is cheaper and almost as good. 9
A funny and smart turn-based strategy gem that riffs off classic games such as Advance Wars. Exhausted XCOM? Play this next.
SAINtS ROW IV
FORMAT: XBOX 360
BORDERLANDS 2
FORMAT: XBOX 360
All traces of GTA are now purged, leaving a ridiculous open-world blend of Crackdown, Prototype and overblown sitcom.
A huge world, amazing weapons and excellent script make this one of the best co-op adventures 9 you can have.
FAR CRY 3
FORMAT: XBOX 360
GEARS OF WAR 2
FORMAT: XBOX 360
Take Far Cry 2s scale, remove the checkpoints and set it somewhere beautiful. Youve got yourself 9 an unmissable shooter.
Still our favourite Gears it has the most engaging campaign, and the multiplayer invented the now industry-standard Horde mode. 9
ASSASSINS CREED IV: bLACK FLAg
THE ORANgE BOx

FORMAT: XBOX 360
FORMAT: XbOx 360/XBOx ONE
The naval exploration and combat completely refreshes a series 9 that was showing its age.
The best package on Xbox 360, bar none. Two great shooters and a stunning puzzler: theres no better way to invest your cash. 9
FORZA mOtORSpORt 4
FORMAT: XBOX 360
BAYONEttA
FORMAT: XBOX 360
The best pure racing simulation on Xbox 360. It has everything except a sense of humour, which its 9 licensed from Top Gear.
Segas saucy witch has seduced us, with action that keeps increasing in scale until your head explodes 9 in a shower of confetti.
BAttLEFIELD 4
All is as expected a disappointing single-player campaign, with some of the best MP shooting youll 9 ever play. Gorgeous, too.
BAD BUT GOOD WE SHOULdNT LIKE IT, BUT WE REALLY dO
Why you should buy

I was late to the Trials party, but after a few boozy sessions with friends Im well and truly hooked on beating the scores of everyone in my AOIFe WILSON Friends list long after theyve probably OXM Aoife forgotten all about it. Its the perfect game to load up when youve got minutes rather than hours to spare, and its deceptively simple design hides a system thats easy to pick up but fiendishly hard to master. Trials Fusion is just round the corner, too, so get your practice in early.
TRIALS EvOLUtION
DEAD RISINg 3
FORMAT: xbOx ONE
Youve never bludgeoned, sliced, electrocuted and eviscerated so many zombies. And the endings not bad, either.
8
Its duff but not entirely charmless, and its Rancor Rampage mode was actually quite decent. Sure, its a pretty weak use of the Star Wars license but hey so was Jar-Jar.
14.99 Games on Demand
THE WALKINg DEAD: EpISODE 1

FORMAT: XBOX 360
KINECt StAR WARS:
TRIALS EvOLUtION
FORMAT: XBOX 360
Telltales interactive drama only just counts as a game, but it manages to deliver some of the most 8 powerful storytelling around.
Just as unmissable as the original, but with better tracks and nicer graphics. Its got levels based 8 on Inception and Limbo, too.
MARK OF tHE NINJA

FORMAT: XBOX 360
SOUtH pARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH

Forget other so-called stealth games, this 2D ninjathon is the real deal, and avoids the frustration thats so common in the genre. 9
@OXMUK
Shock-led satire that presses all the buttons. What South Park lacks in combat depth, it makes up 8 for with constant laughs.
12 lanDMarKs not yet DestroyeD in gaMes...

01
SMASHED IN: Rock Band 2017 Nostalgia Reunion Tour HOW: The squad-based musical simulation returns, with the aim this time to make music louder than ever (seeing as everyones deafened themselves by listening to MP3s well above EU safety guideline levels). Can you rock loud enough to rock rocks to their core and smash Stonehenge with the ultimate reverberating note?
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
But theyre going to get it one day, the stupid renowned architectural and historical triumphs once all the famous ones off the telly have been flattened by the alien terrorists. It cant always be the White House. The US is running out of white bricks to rebuild it
STONEHENGE
04
SMASHED IN: 2D puzzle game Puzzle Panic Eurocris HOW: Oh no! European bankers have bankrupted the EU, and local governments are forced to sell off their assets to pay the wages of civil servants. Can you slot these famous European landmarks together to form the most valuable series of architectural gems?
TOWER OF PISA
05 GREENWICH ROYAL
SMASHED IN: TimeSplitters: Paradox Panic HOW: The time warriors return, to smash the human symbols of time and gain immortality. A stopped clock is right twice a day, but a melted and smashed one wont chart the ageing process at all, reasons insane criminal Dr Justin Formen, a man obsessed with staying young and keeping his beard free from grey.
02
OBSERVATORY
SMASHED IN: Mech shooter Sherlock: The Game HOW: The hit BBC drama sets about trashing as many major London landmarks as it can, as a robot Moriarty goes wild. Realising that he needs to ght re with re, Sherlock sets about building a robot version of himself can you, John Watson, pilot robot Holmes and battle robot Moriarty? (Requires Xbox One Cockpit, sold separately).
ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE
SMASHED IN: Halo 6 HOW: Mayor Jobson declares martial law in Londopolis after a mysterious ship blows up the citys historic big wheel. Fortunately, we know a man whos quite good at shooting aliens who live in the vicinity of big wheels.
08
MILLENNIUM WHEEL
09
06
SMASHED IN: Quirky indie physics sim Sea Lurching HOW: You are a young wave, starting out as a ip of a whales tail in the Atlantic. As you grow, you gather strength. Points for breaking other parts of the coastline when you hit land.
03
BRIGHTON PIER
SMASHED IN: ID@Xbox title The Fury of Michael West HOW: This low-budget indie title sees frequent traveller Michael West forced into taking a ight from Stansted. Can you pass four hours here in the wilderness without Wi-Fi or a charged smartphone, and avoid killing everyone?
STANSTED AIRPORT
07
SMASHED IN: Point-and-click adventure Monks Murders HOW: Finally completed in the year 2036, the great cathedral is detonated on its opening night by a group of religious terrorists, angry that some other church is getting all the publicity. You, playing as Father Raffaele Dominguez, must investigate the crime, hunting for clues amid the rubble while seeking spiritual advice from God via the locationaware help system.
LA SAGRADA FAMILIA
11
SMASHED IN: Action adventure Country Deled HOW: The naked man of stone shall rise in Q2 of 2015! Incensed by modern mans insensitive farming methods, the guardian of the soil reawakens to wreak havoc on those who encourage the ruining of our planet. First in line Adam from Countryle. And he has something special planned for Julia Bradbury.
CERNE ABBAS GIANT
12
SMASHED IN: Fighting game Def Jam FIFA HOW: 24 of the worlds toughest footballers have gathered to test their ghting skills in the street-ghting capital of the UK Newcastle. Can you steer Paul Gascoigne to the top of the football ght club, or will he be left sobbing at the feet of his smashed local landmark with a broken shing rod and stamped-on fried chicken?
ANGEL OF THE NORTH
10 NELSONS COLUMN
SMASHED IN: Survival horror The Fourth Plinth HOW: After a sustained period of rain, an enormous sinkhole opens up beneath Londons Trafalgar Square. All those statues get sucked in and come to life. No wait, thats stupid. Demons come out. Thats much more believable. Sexy demons come out and you shoot them in an innite number of levels that are all the same.
SMASHED IN: Free-to-play strategy game Plants vs Humans HOW: A seemingly innocuous packet of seeds is propagated by a trainee gardener, but these are no ordinary seeds. They are the last remaining sample of the genus Homo Eatus, a strain of esheating plants believed to have existed only in the realms of the myth. They grow big. They grow angry. They want meat, and they wont settle for mechanically separated chicken.
EDEN PROJECT
NEXT ISSUE OF OXM ON-SALE 11 APRIL. SUBSCRIBE AND GET A FREE GAME: SEE PAGE 66 FOR DETAILS
WWW.TOTALXBOX.COM
9000
9015

Xbox UK - April 2014

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THE ESSENTiaL GUiDE TO XBOx 360 aND XBOx ONE

Issue 110 April 2014  www.totalxbox.com

THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

An XBLA classic is reborn on next-gen

BATMAN ARKHAM KNIGHT

A NEW HERO FOR NEXT-GEN

BATMAN FACES HIS BIGGEST THREAT YET ON XBOX ONE

HOW REDLYNX REINVENTED TRIALS

INSIDE XBOX ONE: THE LAUNCH STORY

EMAIL jon.hicks@futurenet.com LIVE OXM Jonty TWITTER @MrJonty

SUBsCRIBE AND GET A FREE GAME! SEE P66

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO WORLD OF TANKS

WHY WE WANT TO RETURN TO WOLFENSTEIN

THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE / 3

BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT

NEWS AND INTERVIEWS CURATED FOR YOUR EASY DIGESTION

08 Black Tusk gets Gears

16 Sledgehammers Call of Duty

Activisions big-boy gets a new three-year dev cycle.

Ed stubbornly pines for the game that justifies Kinect.

20 Essential Titanfall tips

GETTING MORE FROM YOUR CONSOLE

118 Now Playing

Games that have stuck in our mind and/or craw.

122 The OXM Replay 127 Side Quest

Garrett steals back on to Xbox.

30 Batman: Arkham Knight

D&D gets real in Colorado.

44 The Inside Man

The insanity extends way into the future

Replayable gem, or undersized rip-off ?

METaL GEar SOLId V: GrOUNd ZErOES

6 / THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

FENIX fROM THE fLAMES

Arkham Origins will never be patched

Xbox One gets UK price cut

THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE / 9

New limited-edition controllers out now

Dont take any chances with the range of your shotgun.

10 / THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

Rockstar wins BAFTA Fellowship

THIS MONth COMING UP more in this section WE LEARNED...

Sticking to the ruined beauty brief, then.

How Sledgehammer will be keeping Call of Duty relevant.

Why Kinect games are having trouble finding their feet.

How The Division is an RPG first, and cool gadget-shooter second.

Whats been going on since Sunset Overdrives awesome reveal.

JoRdAN ThomAs oN mAKiNg SoUth PARK iNto A pRopER Rpg

But tell them how to make the game better

Its actually a little bit like BioShock

Let the player choose their path

Have Trey Parker and Matt Stone do the gags

Give the player room to experiment

Make it funny as well as fun

and make sure its all canon

My past experience, not just with BioShock, was action-

Dont tell the creators how to tell jokes

Cater to the hardcore fans

14 / THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE

Call of Duty Elite to close

Aoife goes that extra step to be better at Dark Souls.

Can an electrical temple-tickler up your game?

//PROTRACTED USE SHOULD DELIVER COGNITIVE IMPROVEMENT//

WHAT SLEDGEHAMMER SAYs :

Issue 110 April 2014 www.totalxbox.com