At this years’ E3, Nintendo announced the introduction of Fortnite (probably the biggest game ever launched in the multiplayer arena ever) to the Switch. Which includes cross-play with Xbox & PC players. But notably, not with PS4 players.

Even more dubious, PS4 players that had an Epic login that originated on a PC are unable to bring their account over to other consoles. That includes character progression, in-game purchases, etc.

From Sony’s perspective, this is fine. Think of Sony kind of in the same vein as Apple. They’ve built a walled garden. They’ve never not had this. And they’re the dominant force in console gaming — if not gaming entirely given the prohibitive cost of PC GPUs these days — which leads their business model. They don’t want to “share”. They want to keep people locked into their ecosystem because on one hand, they can. On the other hand, because competition isn’t going to benefit Sony at all.

Also keep in mind that Sony is a Japanese company. In Japan, it’s very common for large companies to become as large a conglomerate as possible. I visit Tokyo regularly for work, and our office is inside Mitsubishi Banks building. Did you know Mitsubishi has a bank?!

With the Fortnite case specifically, though, I think Sony was probably caught off guard. I would be surprised if there was a meaningful meeting between Epic, Nintendo & Sony that outlined the difficulties. In fact, I would have been surprised if Epic, Sony or Nintendo expected the outrage that occurred. And that’s because Sony’s business models would never predict a large overlap between Switch & PS4 owners.

This isn’t a technical hurdle for Sony to get over. It’s a business priorities one. Sony blocks cross-play with Rocket League & Minecraft, for example. The Trello list of jobs-to-be-done by PSN devs might actually include enabling cross-play or even opening up PSN API’s to developers a bit more than they do today. But that Trello card is going to be very low on the priorities list.

The flipside of this is empathetic.

Imagine being a parent of a kid, and your kid is friends with another kid. Those parents bought their kid a Switch for her/his birthday, and you got a PS4 for your kid. Those two kids can’t play against each other in Fortnite. They won’t understand why that’s the case. And I would wager most parents don’t understand it either. A child might cry out “it’s not fair,” and that’s a fair point to be made to Sony.

Ultimately Sony has a very specific business model and this drama shouldn’t surprise anyone. I would be surprised if they change. They might bend on this one specific issue. But neither Nintendo nor Epic have been particularly vocal, either (keep in mind Epic stands to double their money on loot that players re-buy on other consoles). Pressure from Twitter folks who might own both consoles is going to fall on deaf ears. Sony is a Japanese company, and they don’t bend the way Western companies do when social media blows up. Also, Sony spending money on opening PSN APIs up for Fortnite costs them resources that they probably would rather be working on other things.

Fortnite cross-platform & the PS4 was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When this game popped into my inbox I was excited. Not because of the hype, per se (although that helps). But because it was something that felt like it was going to scratch an itch.

You see, I never really took to former Quantic Dreams games. The technology and ability to be as close to a movie as a game could be was always impressive. But I never got hooked. The quick-time event type mechanics never sat with me.

But I felt that Detroit could have been a departure for me, emotionally. This is because I knew the story would be gripping to me; given it nestles itself firmly in a near-future (about 15 years from now) dystopia featuring artificial intelligence. Something I’m very curious about.

What’s interesting is that, like all Quantic Dream games, Detroit has managed to polarise it’s audience in a very red-state/blue-state kind of way. No one seems to be on the fence. They either love or hate it. I’m on the side that loved it.

Yes, it has flaws. The story is good, very good in fact. The characters are well played, well scripted and engaging enough to drive each of their three distinct arcs to a close with enough tenacity to keep the player paying attention. But it’s all very surface-level stuff. The easy comparative is modern day racism, which you could have gotten from the box art. Unfortunately, the story never really peels that many layers from the onion as it goes forward.

Detroit follows three main characters: Conor, an android detective; Kara, an android housemaid in an impoverished house & Markus, an android caregiver to a wealthy artist.

The story arcs around the idea of androids becoming “deviant.” Which is to say, they break out of their AI programming construct to attain some form of free will. And, of course, how the world reacts to it (somewhat predictably).

The story plays out in Detroit, as you might have guessed. And Quantic Dream have done a stellar job of creating a believable, and absolutely beautiful world to narrate a story within. The sci-fi tones aren’t overdone, making everything really believable & relatable.

The gameplay is the story. You have a huge amount of choices to make as the story progresses. And at the end of each chapter, the game will show you how you did in a linear progression bar, also revealing the other threads you could have pulled in the story. This gives the game some repeatability, as you can go back to chapters to replay them, giving yourself different choices.

These choices make a big difference in the story. And they change the dynamic of the characters in-game. In some cases progressing their stories faster, in others killing off important side characters.

Controlling these choices is mostly done through the right stick. Quick-time action events (which don’t happen too often) are done by pressing your standard control buttons, and some sequences rely on some mild dexterity as you press multiple buttons together to complete some task. I don’t know why these mechanics never sat well with me in past games. I’m actually putting a lot of it down to age. I’ve grown up, and possibly out of only wanting COD-style action. A relaxing game with an engaging story requiring some mild input from my end is far more appealing than a movie or COD of a Sunday evening.

Overall, this is a great game. It’s my favourite Quantic Dream game so far. But given my past experiences and my current mood, I’m definitely going to revisit Beyond: Two Souls (a current freebie for PS+ members). No, Detroit: Become Human isn’t perfect. But it’s worth the time investment. [8]

Detroit: Become Human was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last year the folks behind Bastion & Transistor — Supergiant Games — released a new game called Pyre.

People looking at the Supergiant titles in the past looked forward to a similar game. Good writing, decent story tying everything together but the cream that rises to the top is the audio, music and visuals. The mechanical & emotional draws in Bastion & Transistor were never at the same level as the dream visual & audio components on show.

Pyre is set in a mystical world, as other Supergiant games are. But instead of relying on turn-by-turn combat, it has a really interesting sporty twist that apes some sort of Basketball/football type of game. Each round moves the story forward, is set in a beautiful looking world and allows you enough freedom to choose your ever-expanding cast to change the matches you part-take in.

The narrative involves an ever expanding cast of antihero, exiled characters that part-take in a league against various adversaries in this basketball type game.

I tended to pick each character based on how affable they were for me, rather than their skills. It didn’t really matter, but the fact that you can change the game based on your preference is new to this type of game. Moreover, Supergiant’s past has always involved a fairly apathetic view of their characters. In Pyre, everyone is really likable. And they all have their own twists that have something culturally additive to the story.

As expected in these types of games, there is a point-and-click area that allows you to dig into the lore of the story as well as the background of the characters. It ties things together nicely, but as the player you need to actually want to dig in.

Overall, this game is hugely satisfying. Yes, the music & visual cues are stunning — especially on a 4K screen. But this is a whole new area for Supergiant Games. It must have been a risk for them to take such a departure from their prior catalogue. A real-time sports game in their style is fantastic. It’s not without flaw, but it is a brilliant game and I found myself enamoured with it when I spent time with it.

Yes, this has been out for a year now. But if you’ve not already given it a chance, please do. This is a stunner that’s worth a few hours investment of your time.

Pyre was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Wolfenstein starts with a bunch of plot that sets the tone for the rest of the game. No, the plot isn’t focused on the war, nazi’s or mechanical killer robot dogs. Instead it focuses on the protagonists life and motivations. His father is a racist prone to outbursts of domestic violence, and his mother is a compassionate woman who gives BJ Blazkowitz heart and motivation to heal the world from the ill of the nazis.

From his mother he got the desire to help the world and free the people from oppression, but from his father he got the courage and will to use violence (and big guns!) to get what he needs. The metaphor isn’t particularly subtle, but this is a game that includes mechanical killer robot nazi dogs.

And that’s the weird contradiction that comes throughout the game: BJ cares for his partner, Anya. But his only way to express himself is through hyper violence.

But at the beginning it addresses a really weird issue: he’s fatally injured at the end of the prior game, and is saved only by some nazi technology. But instead of the game turning him into a super human, it actually constantly reminds you that he’s weak and very close to dying. So much so that the first action scene is set from Blazkowitz in a wheelchair. Then, there’s a twist where the story effectively kills him off, but the team can save his head and, well, he becomes more machine than man.

The metaphor isn’t particularly subtle. As soon as he loses the soft, vulnerable shell of his body and becomes a superhuman robot… thing, he ends up being more emotionally capable. He even gets engaged to Anya only when he’s a robot, because we’re meant to believe he’s now stronger. In every way.

And the cast around BJ is absolutely brilliantly written. You want to spend time with them. There’s a great birthday party scene where nothing really happens, but it’s great fun to watch everyone interact. Again, because it’s so well written. And that’s also a bit of an issue, because it feels like Machine Games had two entirely different departments working on the story of the game and how that story is played out in the action sequences. There’s too stark a difference, and not enough humour to blend it all.

Because of that, the game isn’t all smart. It manipulates you with an emotional draw, but also ruins any emotional compassion you might have by constantly dumping you into brutalist architecture filled with nazi NPC’s that you feel justified in romping around blowing them up with new and interesting (and bigger) guns. There’s sincerity in this game, but as much as it’s very good and sincere it also has to pit itself against the violence and tonality around naziism.

And then there’s the gameplay. It’s fun. A lot of fun, but also just as contradictory as the story and tone. It still retains the franchises ideology that you can switch between guns-blazing action fun and stealth. But the arenas never really allow you to properly stealth your way around hunting officers. It almost always seems designed to ensure you have to get ammo and shoot everything in front of you.

It’s not stealth action in the way it pretends it could be. It always works as a run & gun scrap. You run out, shoot things, run into things and then go hide to hope you find some health to go back into the arena to continue. When the game forces you down narrow paths (like a train sequence), it ends up being quite frustrating because without health packs you’re going to constantly die until the game gives you a saving grace; or you simply run away from the problem, hoping not to get caught as you run to the next sequential area of the map. That’s because this feels like an arena shooter but your character was built to be as vulnerable as possible because he’s meant to be stealthy. And remember, the original Castle Wolfenstein was a stealth shooter first & foremost.

The game is also a commentary on modern America. The narrative (mostly expanded through diaries you can find around maps) tells a story of an America that bowled over to the nazi regime. There was no initial resistance. And people are too jaded after 15 years of the regime to give enough heed to go against the foreign rulers. People also get reward for playing ball. Including BJ’s own father who gets a ranch for being cozy with the nazis. There’s even a scene in a 1950’s style town where Americans walk around in KKK garb openly while happily greeting nazi troopers.

And the game leans into that theme throughout. In fact, the idea is that this rebel group brings in the tired, poor, huddled masses. Including nazi traitors, black panther style revolutionaries and other such groups. The game is literally named after the poem that coined the phrase “give me your tired, poor & huddled masses” by Emma Lazarus.

The New Colossus is an attempt to comment on American ideals of freedom being wrong. America isn’t good versus evil, it’s both and it’s torn by that duality. Of course, using nazi rule to tell a story and being a big fantastical shooter makes it too blunt a force to really draw conclusions. But this isn’t Doom. Doom is a better shooter, but a dumber story. Wolfenstein isn’t the best shooter because it’s not sure what it’s meant to be, but the story is great. The writing and cast is too good to pass up, and that almost forgives all of the thematic issues. But it is still a first-person shooter that tries to be a deep thinking comment on modern America. Not Trump’s America per se (the script is probably from a pre-Trump era), but the modern duality of being free and open as a society, but also having a swathe of that free society that’s outright racist and happy with the status quo.

And so there’s the micro-duality of a character dealing with relationships, death and a rough past powered by a harsh father. But then there’s the fact that the story brings you to the moon to kill Hitler in a huge scene that’s meant to remind you that this is a successor to Castle Wolfenstein.

Despite it’s obvious flaws, this was still an incredible game. And if the themes are even slightly interesting to you, it’s worthwhile.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And when it was released, it was a hot mess. The game wasn’t full price, but it was pricey enough for something that didn’t feel full featured. It looked and felt great. In so far as it looked & felt like Gran Turismo, anyway. But it didn’t have the breath & depth of the past games. It felt like a long con. We were duped into investing into this title that carried the weight of expectation, but never delivered on that expectation.

But, all that has changed. A few months down the road and the game feels a lot more fleshed out. There’s an actual career mode. No, it’s not as fully featured as GT6 was, but it’s got enough to keep you busy for a few days. Same goes for the old school style licenses. But, as you play through the normal mechanics of yesteryear, you end up dipping into the online “Sport” mode. Which, for the most part, is fun.

The game forces players to watch two videos on racing etiquette which feel a lot like a teacher wagging their finger at a bold student before the student has actually done anything wrong. But once you’ve consumed some of the most boring video ever created on racing, you can get into the action.

And the online play is pretty good. You can hop into future race events to set a lap time before racing, which gives you decent odds of placing well since it seems a lot of players don’t do this yet. The back of the pack are people hopping into races a minute before the race starts, so those folks tend to be more reckless drivers, crashing folks off the track if possible. Meanwhile, the front is all about smooth, fast times.

Overall, I would have said this would be a poor investment when it was released. But with persistent updates and the old GT vibe being re-instated, this is well worthwhile. I’ll gloss over the other features of the software (“Scapes” picture mode is pretty cool, but not at the core of what GT:S is all about), but know that hopping into this game today will reap reward. And if you ditched it in anger a few months ago, get back in now. It’ll reward you.

Gran Turismo Sport was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Paris Games Show this past week, Sony decided to tease fans for the second time with a clip from their hyper-anticipated atmospheric zombie thriller, The Last of Us part two.

The clip, to be blunt, was horrific. It was violent, aggressive and for many, distressing to watch. So much so that Sony executive Jim Ryan felt the need to respond to the controversy, saying that “[this] is a game made by adults, for adults.” (more here)

What I find interesting in the zoo of hysteria online is that this isn’t the first time this has happened. And by “this,” I refer to the idea that people are wildly offended by video game violence. Consider the 90’s, when Tekken garnered a similar response from audiences when the “realistic” bloody scenes were first screened to audiences.

Tekken still gets gasps when a clip of Subzero ripping another characters’ spine out is shown. But Tekken doesn’t draw the same internet ire because it has a history of being that violent. A game by Naughty Dog doesn’t carry that weight of expectation when it comes to such violence.

And remember, the first trailer contrasts drastically with the second. The first featured the two protagonists of the first game in a relatively calm environment. Most notably a more teenage Ellie, playing guitar and proclaiming her distain for someone.

Which leads to my personal issue with the second trailer: Ellie and Joel don’t feature. This is a marketing blunder because the reason I want to play this title is that I fell for these characters. I loved their story, their relationship and the way they interact to survive in a dystopian zombie future horror show. The zombies themselves are a challenge, but not the draw to the game.

However, complaining about video game violence in 2017 feels naff. It feels like controversy for the sake of it. Maybe in our post-Trump world this is the norm; people get easily offended and can’t contain their hate for something featuring violence, even if it is an 18-rated video game featuring zombies.

The Last Of Us II’s violent trailer was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

During the 2017 E3 Forza Motorsport 7 presentation we were promised a franchise that would be ‘reborn’. It went on to show us three very different cars on three different tracks all in different weather conditions. And it was impressive. A Porsche, a muscle car and a super car all raced through the dawn, sand and the rain. What Turn 10 Studios were hinting at was a huge variety of vehicles to choose from including buggies, trucks, formula and rally cars amounting to over 700 in total. It also gave us a glimpse at the dynamic day/night cycle and weather system. All these things combined with a very robust and lengthy career mode and multiplayer that keeps you earning tiers and credits amounts to a game, albeit familiar, that is way ahead in production values than any other racer aside from the Gran Turismo series on Playstation. But with GT Sport’s release looming, can Forza stay as the undisputed highest rated racing game of it’s generation?

The guts of the game lies in it’s single player campaign. There are six progressive sections to all the races, each with an increasing number of events. As you buy new cars to race in these events, your car tier will increase allowing you to buy more elaborate cars to race. Not every race has to be completed in each section though. When you have earned enough points you will progress but it seems a shame not to participate in all that the career mode has to offer. The more races you complete and the higher you place will determine the amount of credits you earn. It’s a bit of a double edge sword as more races means more money but there will always be those events that require you buy a new car. And when you reach the third or fourth section some cars can cost over a million credits so it is important you keep a close eye on your money or you may have to replay some races over and over. There are also prize crates to contend with which, when purchased, can give you new cars, new driver gear to show off and mods that increase the difficulty but earn you some money. Eventually I gave up buying these crates as the loot you obtain from them does not warrant the amount of money you spend on them and I would rather buy a new car with what I’ve earned anyway.

In comparison to Forza 6 and it’s career, Forza 7 has way more variety in its choice of vehicles you drive. It’s nice to see that later on in the game you’re not just in the seat of a super car but you can be driving a classic Dodge or Chevrolet. It’s the variety of track and car choice along with the dynamic weather system that really sells this title. And the prospect of picking up that Forza Cup at the end of the campaign really compels you to finish all the races and compete to the best of your ability. There are over 30 tracks in total but it does seem like some tracks are being used a lot more than others and it can seem a little repetitive. The real life locations have all been scanned to give us the most accurate track layout yet. Even the puddle locations have had laser treatment and as with Forza 6, there is always a risk of your car hydroplaning and spinning off.

It’s a far cry from the arcade feel of Forza Horizon. In fact, down through the years, with all it’s installments, the Forza Motorsport franchise has aimed at becoming more and more of a racing simulator. And they have really pinned it with this one as the handling of the vehicles really differs depending on what your driving and the conditions you’re driving in. You will have to reverse steer the faster of the cars around those challenging corners even with stability control turned on. With the right amount of assists turned off though, there is a real skill in driving and placing on the podium. Seeing as you don’t have to win every race, I set the drivatar setting to expert. Just enough difficulty for cause for celebration when you cross that finish line first. On most events there are six races to complete and more times than not the same driver will finish first, making it even harder to place in the top three. The other drivers are wonderfully aggressive and will not only ram you off the track but deliberately go off track themselves just to see you fail.

It’s really the game’s production values that stand out. The sound of the engines roar in accelaration and the exhausts sputter when you slow down for a corner. The handling of the cars is the most realistic to date and the visuals are extremely impressive. The car models themselves are finely detailed and put other racing titles like Playstation’s Project Cars to shame. Although the Horizon series is a lot of fun there’s something quite compelling about racing other cars around a track. Especially when the sun is just about to set and a heavy downpour starts impairing your vision and laying down a shiny coat on the track surface. Forza 7 is as photo realistic as you can get on this generation of consoles. All the extra features that we are used to from Forza are here as well. There’s a highly detailed tuning mode that I steer clear of and you can design your own paint jobs for the cars. There’s free mode where you can drive at your own leisure and drivatar mode where you can set your best laps in any of the tracks and cars for other player to try and beat. There’s an endless amount of content to explore after you have completed the career mode.

I don’t believe there has ever been a release of a Forza Motorsport and a Gran Turismo title so close together. From what I’ve seen of the GT Sport, it looks impressive but for now Turn 10 have really laid down the bar for what racing sims can do. The evolution from Forza 6 is pretty big and with GT Sport confirming it has no dynamic weather conditions it will have a tough job topping the physics and the visuals of Forza 7. With the few exclusives Microsoft have had recently they rely heavily on titles like this to sell their consoles and Forza 7 is one great reason to own an Xbox one at the moment.[8]

Forza Motorsport 7 Review was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (SWBF2) is released next month. But now you can jump into a free public beta to get a sense of the game, and allow EA DICE to stress test their servers.

But the game is broken. Fundamentally. Let’s get into why in a moment. First, though, it’s worth lavishing some praise on the game.

Compared to the first game (which, technically, is a reboot of an old game) SWBF2 has far better gunplay. And since this is an FPS, that’s a vital ingredient in the overall mix for this title. Each weapon feels unique, distinct and worth learning. The overheat mechanic (since ammo is useless in a laser-powered future past) feels more considered in the context of the game, and something more manageable.

Unlocks add features worth working towards, rather than being fairly rudimentary buffs that give you additional XP (to spend on more unlocks). Weapon modifiers and what-not are genuinely useful..

And a lot of these improves are brought about by the fact that DICE added classes. Properly. This feels far more considered than the previous Battlefront. Finally, DICE have put all their Battlefront military might into the Star Wars universe, and it really does work. Each class is totally unique, and an unbalanced team is likely to lose. Because unlocks and weaponry are important in the arching mechanics of the game objective.

A huge bug-bear for me was the vehicles, which felt deliberately awkward in the same way Halo’s vehicles always felt awkward to me. They were made awkward so that only the elite can play with them properly, while the rest of us mere mortals perished within seconds of grabbing a flying vehicle and kamikazee’ing into a mountain. SWBF2, though, reworks the vehicle mechanics to feel far more like the manageable and useful Battlefield vehicles. Yes, anyone can hop in and feel like they’re contributing. But even better, it still takes time to master them and become truly brilliant.

So here’s my point: DICE & EA put a lot of effort into this title to make it as brilliant as it deserves. A good Star Wars game can easily become legendary; something people look back upon in the future and define a console generation by. KOTOR springs to mind here. But DICE have also made some poor decisions to push for micro-transactions which makes the whole thing feel more hollow than it needs to.

The cards concept never sat with me in the first Battelfront. But in the second, it’s far more forced down your throat. It feels like if I put more money into the game, I’ll get rare cards that give me huge leverage on the map. Which isn’t a fair game, given the whole thing is a multiplayer FPS.

EA have decided to make future content (maps, etc.) for this one free. Which is astonishingly mature for EA. But the “cards” system is their route around that to make cash on an ongoing basis and really knock lumps out of the community. I do not want to play against someone at a similar level to me who’s absolutely beefing me on the battlefield because they paid more. It’s not fair, not good business and most importantly not fun. This is why I backed away from Overwatch in the last few months; all those cosmetics became important and ruined the gameplay.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is broken was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With no Left 4 Dead sequel in sight, can Warhammer Vermintide fill the gap?

I’ve not been a Warhammer fan in the past, but while playing Playerunknowns’ Battlegrounds, a friend and I needed to unwind and fill some time before jumping back into the Battle Royale. I’ve no idea how the Warhammer licence is supposed to be working any more. Half a dozen different companies seem to own either Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40,000 licences, with Sega being the only major publisher involved. All the other developers are much smaller and some unknown, but the other games tend to be on much lower budgets and with that, not very good. I was happily surprised when we found out that Vermintide was actually pretty good. We had both received Warhammer Vermintide in the latest Humble Bundle via Steam, and now it has since been released on PS4.

If you are not aware of the Warhammer franchise, have not played the previous games, neither know nor care what Warhammer is then don’t worry, because Vermintide has a very simple game to get into. As the cover images would suggest, it’s a fantasy version of Left 4 Dead. There’s very little to the story, which also helps if you’re not a Warhammer fan, and all you need to know is that the city of Ubersreik is under siege from an army of Skaven (rat-men creatures) and they are not here for a friendly chat.

Despite there being a lack of plot, the script can actually be quite funny at times, with five very different heroes to play as:
- Witch Hunter
- Bright Wizard
- Dwarf Ranger
- Waywatcher
- Empire Soldier

The characters with ranged weapons or abilities, such as the fireball-throwing wizard or the arrow-firing Waywatcher, play more like Left 4 Dead and other first person shooters. But all of them have both melee and distance weapons, and the first person sword and axe fights actually work surprisingly well. The controls are extremely simple, but there’s a good feeling of weight and damage to the way you wield the weapons. And learning how to block properly is a real skill.

The upgrade system is also unusual, and initially not as easy to appreciate. You earn experience points in the normal fashion, which works independently of any of characters, which makes it easier to switch heroes if you fancy a change.

Completing a mission provides you with a randomly selected piece of kit decided by a virtual dice roll. You can collect items that improve the chances of getting the weapon you want, but they take up an inventory slot used for healing items and even then don’t guarantee what loot you’ll get. It’s obvious been set up as a risk vs. reward mechanic but the game doesn’t explain the system well and it can seem unfair or a game of chance.

I assume it was a fairly low budget release, Swedish developer Fatshark has done a good job with the graphics, both in terms of the level of detail and the variety of environments. Dimly lit city streets and underground sewers look authentically Gothic, but there’s also the likes of swamps and forests that look equally impressive. Although there can be quite a few bugs and glitches in my somewhat short hours of gameplay.

Importantly, the level design is also very good, cleverly creating chokepoints and more open-ended areas, as well as providing a surprising variety in objectives. There’s usually at least two different routes you can take at any one time, where you can be doing anything from simply trying to reach a specific location to gathering barrels of gunpowder.

What isn’t as impressive is the AI for the Skaven, which has them acting exactly like zombies. They see you, they run at you, and that’s it. As an unofficial Left 4 Dead sequel that’s fine, and we don’t imagine the Skaven are supposed to be very intelligent, but they do know how to use weapons and appear to have some form of culture and organisation. Saying that, they should realise that running straight at an axe-wielding dwarf is probably not the most sensible tactic.

The game also shamelessly copies the more specialised enemies from Left 4 Dead, including rat versions of Hunters, Smokers, Boomers, Witches, and Tanks. This in particular makes the game feel more like a mod than an actual separate game, and it’s a shame more wasn’t done to distinguish the two when it came to the enemies. Especially as the one thing Vermintide doesn’t copy from Left 4 Dead is the AI Director, which was able to adapt enemy tactics on the fly and according to your actions, the memories of shooting at the Witch when the rest of team weren’t prepared.

Such was the quality of the original Left 4 Dead games that not being quite as good as a seven-year-old title still seems like a significant achievement. And whether you consider it an unofficial sequel, a talented mod, or entirely its own thing Vermintide is still a great little co-op shooter.

Warhammer Vermintide was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In a week, Destiny 2 will be unleashed on the great unwashed after a huge amount of waiting. And more recently, the introduction of the hype-machine building anticipation.

The beta that ran a few weeks ago proved successful to the hardened Destiny fans, as well as the abandoned, like myself. I ditched Destiny after a few hours of play because I didn’t enjoy the grind. And I certainly didn’t want to continue grinding for more hours before the good bit happens. And so I abandoned the game.

I wasn’t bitter, angry or upset. I was a little disappointed that Bungie couldn’t execute what I wanted. But this year, probably naively, I’m confident (not overly so, mind!) that Bungie can execute something rather special.

What I want from Destiny is fun, action, adventure and a solid story binding it all together. I want social features to make bonds with other players through. I want to feel like I’ve made friends, much in the way that Journey made me feel. But more than anything, I want Destiny to have longevity. I want it to feel like the game that I can come home to every day and put an hour into.

It feels like Bungie, of all companies, is the only one that can execute on this vision, bold as it is. But we don’t have long to wait. And somehow, the hype train is going to get into overdrive. Just look at the trailer, directed by the guy behind the latest King Kong movie:

The game is released next week worldwide. Once I’ve given it enough time, I’ll post some thoughts here. In the meantime, my PSN id is projectmayhem, so feel free to add me there.

What I want from Destiny 2 was originally published in Pixel Attacks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.