Table of contents for Issue 266 in Hyper

DEVELOPER NetherRealm PLATFORM PS4, XB1 RELEASE DATE May 2017 There’s something refreshing, almost bold, about a sequel that eschews the title colon subtitle formula. Injustice 2 is simply Injustice 2. Gone is the clumsy subtitle, Gods Among Us, that pulled all the punch from the original. This is Injustice - only now there’s 2 of it. Built on the foundations of NetherRealm Studios’ expertise with the recent Mortal Kombat renaissance, Injustice was an incredibly solid bout of DC-themed biffo, presented with the kind of spectacle that suited its superhero roster. Injustice 2 might seem like a conservative sequel - in addition to promising the standard new superheroes and supervillains to fight as, NetherRealm seem really keen to tell us all about the “epic” new storyline - yet the ability to…

DEVELOPER Playtonic Games PLATFORM PS4, XB1, PC, Switch RELEASE DATE April Releasing just a few weeks after we send this magazine to print, Yooka-Laylee rewinds nearly 20 years to a younger, simpler time where games consoles each had their own character mascots and running around collecting things was all any bright-eyed and bushy-tailed gamer wanted to do. Developer Playtonic Games knows a bit about it, too; many of their team cut their teeth at Rare and worked on multiple iterations of the Banjo-Kazooie games. Yooka-Laylee was successfully crowdfunded with a vow to make a new Banjo-Kazooie except we can’t call it Banjo-Kazooie because we don’t own the rights to that name. But yeah, Yooka is Banjo and Laylee is Kazooie and they inhabit an open world chock full of platforms,…

DEVELOPER Supergiant Games PLATFORM PS4, PC RELEASE DATE 2017 Following up Bastion and Transistor with a sort of post-apocalyptic sports game might not seem the next logical step, but you can rely on developer Supergiant to not care for tradition or where one genre gives way to another. Pyre has you control a three-person team trying to shoot an orb into the opposing team’s pyre. The individual character holding the orb is vulnerable while when not in possession they can attack the opposition. It’s fast but tactical, relying upon considered use of each character’s unique abilities. But it’s only one part of the whole game. Elsewhere this is a narrative-heavy RPG where you travel across the wastelands, managing resources, talking to people, levelling up your stats. Supergiant wanted an RPG…

I spent my 1999 school holidays trying to pull all-nighters with friends. It was very important to us (‘us’ being the rotating group of me and Matt and Sam and Dan and the other Matt) that we play Mario Party, San Francisco Rush, and Goldeneye for as long as possible. Our goal was always to forego sleep entirely, and damn the consequences. We never quite made it – typically we’d be protesting that we weren’t tired at 3, and asleep by 3:30 – but the ambition to play multiplayer games for as long as we could manage was pure. Years later, when online services had expanded to the point where even Nintendo, somewhat begrudgingly, had to start offering them, the company was still focusing a lot of its energy on…

DEVELOPER Bungie RELEASE DATE 2001 After management was cruel enough to take away our couch, we had to move everything into a back room. Originally the room was for the capture PC, so we could play games in private and capture footage and hope to find a few uninterlaced frames to use as screenshots. Trying to grab screenshots that way was an exercise in futility and frustration – only the occasional frame would be usable, maybe one or two every half hour of footage – so after a while hands were thrown in the air and the room was quietly repurposed. We had a few Xbox consoles in-house, and some of the staff had consoles as well, so the back room was set up as our own dedicated Halo multiplayer…

There’s been an influx of small, pre-built gaming PCs making their way across my test bench in recent months, and it’s all thanks to the miniaturisation of components, as well as today’s hardware requiring less energy than ever to churn out fluid framerates. From shrinking SSDs to power-supping GPUs, these technology evolutions have allowed the creation of miniature gaming PCs that are just as fast as a full-sized desktop. Their small size makes them perfect boxes to live in the loungeroom, hooked up to your huge 60 inch screen, controlled via Bluetooth control pads. However, this reduction in size has come at an increase in price; most pre-built miniature PCs offer inferior performance than a mid-tower or full tower gaming desktop of the same price. I’m going to show you…

John is telling me about the day he purchased a Mega Drive. “It was around 1991. I’d sold my old Commodore 64 to help get the money together. I still remember walking into the store to pick up the launch system with Altered Beast.” We’re at the Video Game & Pop Culture Market in Stones Corner, Brisbane, and he’s browsing through the classic Mega Drive titles on offer. John says his collection includes everything from a Panasonic 3DO and Atari Jaguar to a Japanese Sega Saturn plus a few hundred games. “I don’t really play them as much these days, but there’s something comforting about having them around. They remind me of different times and places.” TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD According to Dr Rebecca Spelman, a psychologist writing for…

DEVELOPER Nintendo RELEASE DATE 2005 With the exception of Mario Kart DS and Quake O’Clock, all of our other multiplayer obsessions were relegated to two to four players. With the advent of the dual screen handheld, wireless LAN play and one of the best iterations of the venerable karting game ever released allowed eight of us to race against each other. Even better, thanks to a download and play function, only one person in the office technically needed to own the game, as other players could wirelessly download necessary parts of the game for multiplayer races. Of course, being fans of karting and the vast majority of first-party DS titles, most, if not all of us owned a copy of Mario Kart DS. What made the game so perfect for…

DEVELOPER Deep Silver/Codemasters PLATFORM PS4, XB1, PC RELEASE DATE April 2017 HYPER has of course had numerous “Golden Ages” throughout its radiant 24-year history, but perhaps the most brilliant of all spanned the first half of 2005 when Cam, Wilks, Staines, Malky and The Ghost of David Wildgoose, among others, would gather round the HYPER couch day after day to play Mashed. Rivalries were forged in the heat of point-based, top-down racing, friendships skated across the thin ice of The Greatest Video Game Race Track Of All Time, Polar Wharf, and magazine publishing deadlines were forgotten in favour of revenge. Mashed was really just a superb update to 16-bit era classic Micro Machines, and so we’re hopeful that Micro Machines World Series will in turn be a superb update of…

DEVELOPER Forged by Geeks PLATFORM Boardgame RELEASE DATE May 2017 Funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign and based on the hugely popular PC tower defence game of the same name. While the single player experience of the videogame may not seem like a particularly easy fit for a boardgame, Forged by Geeks has made some clever design decisions that look to be able to transpose the frantic action of a tower defence videogame to a slower, more tactically minded multiplayer tabletop experience. The boardgame revolves around a modular board that allows players to construct a large variety of maps with between one and three lanes for the enemies to move down. Alongside the lanes the board has spaces to place tower miniatures. The flow of the game should be much…

DEVELOPER Nintendo PLATFORM Switch RELEASE DATE Late 2017 Okay, so, maybe we’re cheating a little bit here. You got us. We don’t actually know for sure that Super Mario Odyssey will include a local or same-screen multiplayer mode. But hang on, hear us out. Every single recent Super Mario platformer has some sort of local multiplayer option, yeah? Go on, name one that doesn’t. (We’re pretty sure Super Mario Sunshine was the last to offer no multiplayer at all.) Whether it’s full-on four-player same-screen multiplayer as in Super Mario 3D World or hey-player-two-can-shoot-stars-at-the-enemies as in Super Mario Galaxy, there’s gonna be at least an option in Super Mario Odyssey. And, hey, even if there isn’t, we feel justified including it here because Super Mario Odyssey looks amazing. It’s set in…

“THE THREE FACTIONS AVAILABLE - ELVES, WEREWOLVES AND ROGUES - ARE EQUALLY ENJOYABLE AND STRATEGICALLY VARIED” DEVELOPER Games Lab PLATFORM Trading Card Game RELEASE DATE Onslaught available, expansion packs incoming Onslaught is but the stepping off point for Australian made TCG, Final War, an interesting mix of army player versus player and player versus environment play with a unique randomising twist. The starter set comes with three folding game boards, three playable faction decks and their associated Commander cards, a Fate deck, numerous tokens and a number of d12 needed to resolve any battles. It all looks a little overwhelming at first, but in play the game is actually surprisingly straightforward. Each player has a deck of 50 faction cards face down on their play board. From that deck…

THE BIGGEST MARIO KART EVER Mario Kart 8 Deluxe includes all the previously released DLC, including 16 extra tracks. That’s 48 in total, the most tracks ever in a Mario Kart game, and they’re all unlocked from the start. There are 42 characters to choose from, including the newly added Inkling Boy and Inkling Girl from Splatoon 2. King Boo, Dry Bones, and Bowser Jr. round out the roster, and there are more vehicle customisation options than ever before! 200CC mode makes a return as well, offering an intense challenge for Mario Kart experts – and now if you manage to beat all the cups you’ll unlock Gold Mario to race with. NEW AND IMPROVED BATTLE MODE Battle Mode is back, with eight new courses and five modes to compete…

DEVELOPER Capcom Production Studio 1 RELEASE DATE 2001 Back when Next Media was located in Redfern, PC PowerPlay and Hyper occupied cubicles at the oppose ends of a wall. Next to Hyper, Nintendo Gamer plied its wares, and between Nintendo Gamer and PCPP was an empty cubicle. This was set up as a games area, technically for the console mags (We also had a Playstation magazine and Total Gamer, what was ostensibly a kids gaming mag but was in reality a wonderfully subversive comedy mag put together by Dan Staines), but in actuality for the teams on each mag to take out their frustrations on their counterparts in fighting games. We played some Streeties in the games area, and some Tekken, Mortal Kombat and some Bloody Roar: Primal Fury, but…

Checked out a TV manufacturer's website lately? Buzzwords like X-Reality Pro, Triluminos, Quantum Dots, UltraSmooth Motion, ColourPrime, HDR and more litter the pages. It’s as if the marketing team at these TV companies ate rancid food at their last ideas shower then spewed buzzwords and jargon all over the place! How's a regular person supposed to know what's worth spending the cash on and what's just marketing dribble? RESOLUTION High Definition, Full HD, 4K, UHD - these terms denote how many pixels are on the screen, which is called resolution. The more pixels, the sharper the image – if the image broadcast is the same resolution. Full HD and HD generally refer to 1080p resolution (1080 horizontal lines of pixels) and UHD (Ultra High Definition) or 4K, refers to 2160p…

Sometime last year a guy known as Steambot came down with ‘space madness’. This was quite a feat; since he was at home, in his living room, and sat on the couch when it occurred. It all started when he decided to circumnavigate a planet in No Man’s Sky on foot. As he explained in an interview with Kotaku, “Word had gotten out that the centre of the galaxy was a bit underwhelming, so I was kind of at a loss as to what I wanted to do next.” What was initially supposed to be a bit of fun soon turned into a 40-hour death-march across a strange alien landscape. As the kilometres began to mount, the waypoints that had guided his journey flickered and disappeared from view, and his…

DEVELOPER Konami RELEASE DATE 2002 FIFA 16 cover star Tim Cahill might tell you otherwise, but Konami’s long-running football sim had the edge over EA’s officially licensed FIFA throughout the PS2 era. Sure, in several iterations of PES (or Pro Evo, as we called it) the entire Dutch national squad were named “Oranges001”, “Oranges002” etc, Ryan Giggs was called Gigsi, and Arsenal were known as The Wengerboys (or something like that) while FIFA got every player and club name correct like the boring class nerd it was. But it didn’t matter. Pro Evo played a game of football like we’d never seen before. From PES2 in late 2002 through to PES5 in late 2005, there was more Pro Evo played in the HYPER office than any other game. I can’t…

DEVELOPER Nintendo PLATFORM Switch RELEASE DATE May 2017 Like launch title 1-2 Switch, Arms feels like Nintendo stretching to design a game that maybe just falls short of being possible only on its new hardware, but definitely makes very specific use of some of its more unusual features. It’s a 1-on-1 fighting game that takes advantage of the fact the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers can be separated and held independently. The idea being that each Joy-Con becomes, in essence, an extension of your arms; swing your fist and your ridiculously costumed avatar will do likewise, only they have arms like coiled springs and can launch their fists halfway across the colourful arena to smack their opponents from 20 feet away. Arms definitely looks fun and possesses a Splatoon-esque exuberance, but there…

DEVELOPER Messhof PLATFORM PC RELEASE DATE 2017 The original Nidhogg remains one of our favourite same-screen multiplayer games of recent years. Its simplicity was key: a tug-of-war with swords where a one-stab-kill lets you advance one screen closer to victory. Get stabbed yourself and your opponent pegs you back. Nidhogg 2 looks, well… more complicated. Gone are the monochromatic characters and basic block-coloured backdrops and in comes a more detailed - if not exactly conventional - art style. The first game’s single sword is now supplemented by a bow and arrow, an axe and throwing knives, which will hopefully expand rather than obscure your tactical options. Messhof’s a smart developer, though, so we’re not worried. We’re just not quite sure what to expect at this stage.…

DEVELOPER Ubisoft PLATFORM Vive, PSVR RELEASE DATE May It’s still the early days of virtual reality gaming, of course, but it already seems like developers have decided that movement can be a major issue in VR games and that often the best solution can be to make it so (sorry) the player is doing something that involves sitting down. Cockpits, for instance, are great - you’re sitting down but you’re most likely piloting something cool like a car or spaceship that’s moving around. But what if your cockpit was, I dunno, the bridge of a starship from Star Trek and your crew consisted of other players also wearing VR helmets and you had to coordinate with your helm, tactical and engineer officers as you explore an uncharted sector of space…

DEVELOPER Namco RELEASE DATE 2000 Say what you like, but when it comes to arcade racing games, nothing beats the feeling of a perfectly executed power-slide. That’s the truth, and if you can’t trust the opinion of a 40-year-old guy who has never had a license or driven a car, who can you trust? When Cam Shea took over from Eliot Fish as editor of Hyper, and I stepped in to be his deputy, we both accepted this universal truth of racing games. Power-sliding was all, so we spent a lot of time – arguably way too much, and we were rivals in the realm of the power-slide. Our battleground was Ridge Racer V (and later 6). It was an uneven field to begin with, as Cam had more experience…

In a bygone era, gamers looking to get their fix would have to visit their local arcade, pockets sagging with loose change, to patiently wait their turn to play the latest games. Although the nostalgic novelty of playing on an arcade cabinet remains for many, the revolution of home video game consoles forever changed the interactive media landscape. Despite recent technology advancements focusing on online interaction, multiplayer on the couch with good company is still one of the purest gaming experiences available. IN THE BEGINNING Although many people point to Atari as pioneering the first home gaming experience with Pong, technology commentator Tom Chatfield writes this is not the case in his 2010 book Fun Inc. Why Gaming Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century: Pong was neither the first commercial video…

DEVELOPER Supersonic Software RELEASE DATE 2005 Let’s go back in time, all the way to the halcyon days of the early noughties. It was a simple time, a happier time. For the gaming sector of Next Media, it was a golden age. Helmed by the dreamteam of Cam Shea, Malcolm Campbell, and Daniel Wilks, Hyper commanded the industry’s respect with a potent mix of absurd humour and penetrating insight. In the next cubicle over, David Wildgoose, Darren Wells, and Amos Hong crafted Australia’s best-selling games mag – PC Powerplay – and across from them, in the cubicle decorated with Street Fighter figurines, Patrick Alexander and I worked on a little A5 rag called Total Gamer. An unintended but by no means unwelcome consequence of having so many gamers in close,…

DEVELOPER id Software RELEASE DATE 1999 If you walked into a renovated warehouse in Redfern in 2004, past a delightful receptionist named Kate, past the fishbowl offices occupied by boring senior management types, through the flood-prone production farm, ducked out the back door and squeezed along a tiny, freshly watered alley that lead to a second less-renovated warehouse that HYPER once shared with half a dozen other games magazines, a handful of kids magazines, and a non-regulation-sized indoor cricket pitch, you would hear, as the time ticked over to 5pm, someone call out. “It’s Quake o’clock!” Who are we trying to kid here? It was often well before 5pm. Back then Next Media (which, to clarify for the Nextmedia lawyers reading this, was a totally different company to the Nextmedia…

DEVELOPER Nintendo RELEASE DATE 2006 Have you ever given yourself an injury playing a videogame? Well, the Next Media crew did playing Wii Sports Bowling. Nobody hit another person with a Wiimote, or hit themselves in the face, or jammed their hand through a TV. Our injuries were of the repetitive strain kind. More precisely, a few of us got Bowler’s Elbow. It’s similar in most ways to the better known Tennis Elbow – an inflammation of the tendons in the elbow caused by repeated strain on the tendons, usually through grip and sudden movement. Rather than our injuries being caused by holding a weight at the ends of our arm, causing the tendons for grip to be strained, our injuries can from the lack of weight. Swinging our arms…

For people who really, truly love games, it’s not enough to simply own a chunk of code on a disc or a hard drive. We want to showcase our love for the games that have helped shape our hobby and ourselves through means that go beyond the monitor (or headset). That’s where collectibles come in. By giving our favorite gaming icons a third dimension and a physical presence, we not only come to appreciate the design and care that went into these characters even further, but we get to have super awesome looking display pieces that’ll turn the heads of nerds and non-nerds alike. The field of gaming collectibles has expanded immensely over the past few years, and many companies have been keen to capitalise on it: EB Games now…

DEVELOPER Harmonix RELEASE DATE 2005- Fun fact – no Hyper editor, including Eliot Fish, an actual professional and recorded guitarist, has ever been particularly good at Guitar Hero. Deputies, on the other hand, seem to all be masters of the art of five button plastic guitar thrashing. Both Maurice Branscombe and Darren Wells were masters of the plastic guitar, effortlessly playing master level versions of songs that had the rest of us troubled at normal difficulty. They could play all the chords, sliding between three button combinations with ease, but despite all that, there was one mountain that both had difficulty climbing – getting to the end of Free Bird without hand cramps. While some people saw Through the Fire and Flames, the ridiculous speed metal track by DragonForce as…