Devil’s Third

Six years, four game engines and two publishers later, Tomonobu Itagaki’s latest could generously be said to have endured a problematic gestation. And yet, setting aside the fall of THQ and the shift to a new console, it’s always seemed to be a game built upon precarious foundations. On a fundamental level, its combination of FPS gunplay and thirdperson melee combat simply doesn’t work. And when you shoot the leg of a man standing a good five feet away from the nearest cover only to stifle a chuckle as his head inexplicably pops off, you’ll wonder if Devil’s Third would have been much better under ideal conditions.

Satellite Reign

Driving rain. Neon skies. The hum of plasma in the air. The warmth of a nostalgia stretching back to Syndicate (the 1993 game that introduced a generation to the joy of cities as playgrounds, not the quickly forgotten 2012 shooter). On the surface, Satellite Reign looks like the sequel fans have been waiting for since 1996’s Syndicate Wars, and in many ways this Kickstarted spiritual progeny is just that. In execution, though, something fundamental has gone missing – and it’s not just the adverts for Ghost In The Shell.

Until Dawn

Horror’s a fine fit for a Heavy Rain-style game, and teen slasher horror seems to fit the mould even better. While Until Dawn was beaten to the whole jump-scares-and-QTEs thing by The Walking Dead, tension in Telltale’s game comes from the fear of a known quantity: shuffling undead that bite and kill indiscriminately. In Until Dawn, the fear stems from ignorance – you don’t know what’s out there, what it wants, or what form the attack will come in, if it comes at all. The fear of the unknown is a powerful thing.

Heat Signature

Gunpoint’s creator still has a way to go before signing this off

Spinning through the vacuum of space in a recently extricated urinal block isn’t a situation we planned for today. It’s the stuff of Douglas Adams-fuelled nightmares and came about as a result of being a little too bold at the helm of what was, until recently, a considerably larger vessel. Luckily, our personal pod can be remotely controlled, so after leaping clear of the space lav, we’re soon back in an oxygenated environment.

Scalebound

Xbox One’s exclusive action-JRPG doesn’t want for scale

Hideki Kamiya starts his presentation of a pre-alpha Scalebound by stressing that, even though the session will focus on combat, this isn’t a traditional action game, but an action-RPG. The game channels Kamiya’s work on Okami as much as it does Bayonetta, then, and we’re promised a vast world in which to showboat.