The Thursday letters page doesn’t think AAA games on smartphones have much of a future, as one reader admires A Boy And His Blob.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Being direct
Can I just give some praise to Nintendo? They make great games, everybody knows that, but this is about something different. While Sony has turned into an antisocial hermit and Microsoft keeps bending the truth so far it slaps them in the face, Nintendo are just sitting there quietly, releasing great games, doing regular showcases. and allowing previews of their games. There were hands-on previews Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom but I can’t remember the last time there was one for a Sony or Microsoft game.

It shows how topsy-turvy everything has got when Nintendo are the open and communicative one, and the other two are the ones that refuse to properly engage with fans and the press.

I doubt we’ll see the Switch 2 revealed in this week’s Nintendo Direct, but I imagine those rumours about a new Mario Vs. Donkey Kong and a F-Zero 99 game are probably true. They sound like small budget games they could slip in as a surprise at the last minute and that’s great. (Plus, Another Code remasters? Who was asking for those!)

You can bet Sony or Microsoft don’t have anything similar up their sleeves and that’s a shame. You can also bet that Nintendo won’t have to hide behind slickly made trailers to get their games looking good. Although, frankly, their name on the box/download is all I need to know at the moment.

Nintendo rarely lets me down and lately that’s been true of more than just the games.
Onibee

Exciting day
Funny to hear that the Nintendo Direct rumours were true, again. I remember a time, not so long ago, when there were almost no Nintendo rumours and even when there were they never came true. Now it seems like they’re quite common, I guess because Nintendo are the only ones actually putting out new games at a decent pace? How times have changed, eh?

I’m not hoping for any big announcements on Thursday but I do expect a lot of smaller reveals and probably a few shadow drops – Nintendo seems to quite like those at the moment. Excitement, in other words, which has not been forthcoming at all from Sony this year.

I hope they have a State of Play this year as well but I’m not holding my breath. They are though and if they don’t come up for breath soon they risk doing themselves some serious damage.
Poste

No Man’s Starfield
I don’t necessarily want to add to the Starfield beatdown but I have to say that in terms of the space exploration, No Man’s Sky is a much better game. Starfield seems to be trying to copy it to a degree, with all the scanning and mining, but No Man’s Sky has so much more variety and depth and its planets and animals are lot more varied and interesting. Maybe they’re not as realistic – although I’m not sure how anyone could know – but they’re definitely a lot more interesting to explore.

To be honest, considering the budget and number of developers that Bethesda has I’m not really sure how they managed to make a game that was so behind No Man’s Sky, especially in terms of the whole space-to-planet transition.

Surely they should have had the time and money to do everything No Man’s Sky does and then add their role-playing stuff on top. Heck, they probably could’ve bought Hello Games and have them do it, with some pocket change Microsoft left in the sofa. Either that or they should’ve made sure their game couldn’t be compared to it.
Rosti

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Fantasy business
That news about Square Enix does not sound good, I’m not going to lie. $2 billion and a 30% drop in value is not small beans. If Sony really does want to buy them then this is the perfect moment, and if they don’t then I imagine Microsoft does.

Or maybe they already feel that the company is too far gone and not worth the trouble? I’m not sure how big Dragon Quest still is in Japan but it’s never amounted to anything in the West. Final Fantasy is still reasonably big but I feel interest has been waning over the years, with Final Fantasy 7 Remake not being nearly as big as you would’ve thought.

I certainly wasn’t interested in Final Fantasy 16, due to the Game Of Thrones influences and I don’t think I was the only one. Square Enix need to prove they’re still a player and I don’t think even more Final Fantasy is the way.
Gadfly

Paging Jeff Goldblum
It was already pointed out but I don’t see how AAA games on iPhone are ever going to work if they charge full price for them. Nobody’s going to pay that and yet if they are substantially cheaper then console and PC owners are going to have a riot.

It’s kind of a moot point given how expensive the iPhone 15 Pro is but even so, it just seems like a publicity gimmick more than anything else. The number of people that will own that phone, pay something close to £60 to buy a game, and then sit and play it with a Bluetooth controller (surely no one would want to do it on a touchscreen?) must be tiny.

It’s interesting that it can be done, but I’m not sure why you’d really want to.
Slash

Speak plainly
Saying Bethesda haven’t done anything since 2011 was a sweeping statement based on my own opinion and not the best choice of words.

But were Fallout 4 and 76 as good as 3? Not for my money they weren’t. 76 had a notoriously bad start, it may well be fixed now but too little too late.

Fallout 4 was a sequel that was ironically inferior to what came before it.

What I should have said is Bethesda have been going downhill since Skyrim in 2011 and if the next Elder Scrolls sees release in 2028, that will be 17 years between the last instalment. So I stand by the gist of my last Inbox letter, the Microsoft buyout wouldn’t have happened in 2011/12 when Bethesda were at the height of their power.
Mitchell

Mr Blobby
I watched a video on A Boy And His Blob, which I never had seen before. Now I know it was remade for the Wii but it really got me thinking how cool this idea would be now in the hands of the right developer.

It made me think of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom in the limitless things you could create with your blob to solve puzzles and traverse a landscape. Are there any other games more recently that have used a similar idea?
Phil

GC: The blob’s shapes weren’t limitless but you’re right, it’s a great game. A remaster of the Wii remake is available on most formats.

Don’t kick yourself
With all the talk on Starfield, I thought I’d write in to put in my twopenn’orth. I have to be honest, but I’m really enjoying it. It might have helped that I haven’t played a Bethesda game since Skyrim (many years ago when it had just been released), so I haven’t really been burnt out on Bethesda.

I finished Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom just in time for Starfield’s release and the change in narrative has been really enjoyable. I must admit I am a science fiction geek, so that obviously helps. Having tried No Man’s Sky (after all the patches) I gave up because there was not enough of a coherent story. I get that the story in Starfield may not be perfect (I’ll have to judge that after I finish it) but the side quests have taken on my own journey, which feels individual.

I have never been the sort of gamer that wants to 100% any game, so with Starfield I am just going with the flow on where the game takes me. I don’t feel the need to visit every barren planet and start mining, but I’m more than happy travelling around if I pick up on an interesting story line and go with it. I have just stumbled on a side quest about terrormorphs, essentially a rip-off of the Alien franchise, and I am really enjoying it. It could possibly be a story in its own right and is surprisingly good for a mere side quest.

Yes, there are bugs, some actually quite funny, and if you just accept that they are there, you can still have an enjoyable experience. I guess if you have a particular interest in this type of genre, then you’ll likely get a kick out of it.
Subzero Radio

Inbox also-rans
Having re-read your Starfield review again after two days, I’m surprised it wasn’t a 5/10!
Anon

GC: We did consider it, but there’s enough we liked to rate it a little above average.

Here’s an exclusive Switch 2 rumour for you. One of the launch games will be Super m-AR-io Bros. using the already rumoured AR camera to allow you to play AR levels in your own home. I’m a big fan of AR gaming, maybe more so than VR so am excited at the prospect of this.
Mark Matthews

GC: We don’t know if you’re joking but we can totally see Nintendo using that name.

This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Onibee, who asks what new games would you like to see released for the Switch 2 in its first 12 months?

Rumours about Nintendo’s next console are gathering pace, with reliable sources claiming it will be roughly as powerful as a PlayStation 4 – or perhaps even more so. There has been some vague talk of new games, such as a new 3D Mario, but nothing substantial, so what would you like to see most in terms of first and third party games?

Try and keep things realistic – Nintendo isn’t going to release all its heavy hitters at the same time – but feel free to imagine your dream launch line-up, as long as it’s also reasonably believable.

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
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MORE : Games Inbox: Starfield disappointing Microsoft, Forza Motorsport GOTY, and Baldur’s Gate 3 frustration

MORE : Games Inbox: Starfield being worth the hype, Naughty Dog’s next game, and Switch 2 power

MORE : Games Inbox: Whether Starfield has too many bugs, Gravity Rush, and Baldur’s Gate 3 on PlayStation Portal

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GameCentral reviews the third entry in The Crew franchise and an open world racer that borrows an awful lot from Xbox smash Forza Horizon 5.

Film sequels usually, but not always, degrade in quality as the number next to their name goes up. In games it’s generally the opposite. Technology improves, developers learn new tricks, and the industry as a whole finds new ways of making something that used to be only okay into something wonderful.

The arc for The Crew has so far had more in common with film sequels. It’s made by French outfit Ivory Tower, many of whose staff came from Eden Games, the studio behind 2006’s Test Drive Unlimited. That game was, like The Crew Motorfest, an open world racer set on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, making this something of a spiritual sequel.

The Crew 2 was set in a microcosm of the entirety of the US, so this is a tighter and more realistically scaled experience, with races that once again mix cars and bikes with a sprinkling of powerboats and light aircraft. As in earlier games, you can switch vehicles at any time, turning your plane into a car that then plummets from the sky, or indeed changing your car into a boat, which just sits quietly on the tarmac.

Provided you transform in the right substrate, you can undertake specialist plane and boat races, but while they have their own distinct look and feel, their handling models and sense of competition are nowhere near as evolved as those of the game’s cars and bikes, instantly rendering them sideshow curios rather than anything resembling the main event.

That would be driving, with the game’s more than 600 cars making for a visually varied bunch. If you played The Crew 2 you can import your car list and drive them straight away, although there’s not really much need to, given that almost all events force you to use a predefined loan car anyway, making the collection in your garage only really useful for driving around the island and engaging in multiplayer races.

Those come in one flavour only. Taking place over three separate events, each of which uses a different car from your collection, you start with a field of 20 players. Races are cross-play, so PC gamers can race those on console, and while PvP cars can’t be modded, you’re at liberty to choose the fastest you own in each of the three racing categories.

Perhaps Motorfest’s biggest surprise is that it abandons the last two games’ theme of racing point-to-point across a large landmass in favour of copying every single thing that the Forza Horizon franchise does. On the one hand, if you’re going to rip anyone off, it may as well be the king of your genre, which Forza Horizon 5 fairly unambiguously is. On the other, when you’re trying to be like something that’s already so close to perfection, you tend to find that the only way is down.

Framing itself as a festival of car culture, its graffiti strewn, EDM-suffused presentation is so similar to Forza’s we’re surprised there hasn’t been a copyright issue. They’ve even somehow managed to make Oahu look a lot like Forza Horizon 5’s miniature Mexico, its beaches, mountains, and green fields all appearing eerily familiar.

Motorfest’s announcers also have a problem: they just never shut up. They keep interrupting races to tell you how mind-blowing the scenery is – the volcanoes! The beaches! – until you just wish they’d let you experience it for yourself. Like someone at the office telling you how hilarious they are, if you feel the need to say it out loud, it’s almost certainly not true, and the game’s continual, needy reminders that it’s exciting and beautiful just makes it sound desperate.

The vehicle handling model has been improved a little since The Crew 2, which had an unabashed arcade style. Motorfest stops shy of anything resembling a simulation, but its cars and bikes at least lean further towards realism, their drifts and cornering physics proving to be somewhat less fantastical than the game’s predecessors.

That still leaves them feeling undistinguished though. Yes, you can spot the difference between driving an American muscle car and a Lamborghini, but most cars feel about as differentiated as branches of Starbucks, their handling clean and predictable, but lacking any sort of character. The bikes are worse, turning in a performance that might charitably be described as vanilla.

Aping Forza’s semi-pornographic approach to automotive photography, panning longingly along cars’ curves in extreme close-up, it also nicks the endless stream of bonus XP. ‘+10 Near Miss’, says the game every time a car goes past in the opposite lane, despite you having been nowhere near it, both of you staying well inside your own sides of the median. The over-enthusiastic accolades are rendered meaningless and annoying.

While Forza Horizon gets away with being an open world game through its sheer panache and the range of micro-activities available on its motorways and side roads, in Motorfest it comes across as tedious padding. Having to drive 20km on dull, lightly curving roads to get to the next race does not feel like time well spent.

Motorfest does have a couple of good ideas though. For one, its GPS-based directional line, guiding you to the next event, hovers three metres above the road surface, making it much easier to anticipate upcoming bends. Its playlists are also quite cool, bringing together a set of races around a theme. That can be electric cars, Japanese street racing, vintage, or a variety of other ways of dividing the automotive kingdom.

Unfortunately, though, what emerges is a middling racing game that’s been stuffed to the brim with filler. Despite all the driving around between races, inane voiceovers, over-the-top decorations, and bonuses for doing literally everything/nothing, it doesn’t distract you from the fact that the handling model is nowhere near as nuanced as that of its leading competitors.

If you’re a PlayStation owner who, for some masochistic reason, feels starved of racing games where you have to spend half your time travelling between events, then this is apparently what you’ve been waiting for. It may look, sound, and play like a Tesco Value Range Forza Horizon 5, but since the real thing is never coming to a Sony console you may feel it’s better than nothing.

For everyone else, it’s a tough game to recommend. There are moments of fun to be had, albeit only driving cars rather than the distinctly lacklustre boats and planes, and even then only in races rather than the endless tarmac of Oahu. But those moments are buried under a mountain of feeble, superfluous content.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £59.99
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Ivory Tower
Release Date: 14th September 2023
Age Rating: 12

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MORE : The Crew Motorfest confirmed with first trailer

MORE : Immortals Fenyx Rising 2 and The Crew 3 underway at Ubisoft claims rumour

MORE : Far Cry 5 and The Crew 2 delayed, as Ubsioft raise profit predictions

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For some reason, the PS Plus catalogue is getting no less than five Star Ocean games, amid another lacklustre batch of retro games.

While PlayStation fans are still waiting for Sony to announce that rumoured September State of Play, the company has officially revealed which games it’s adding to the PlayStation Plus catalogue for Extra and Premium subscribers this month.

The ever reliable billbil-kun already leaked six of them a couple of days ago, all of which have proven to be correct.

The full line-up, however, consists of 16 games in total, although it remains to be seen if subscribers think this helps justify the recent price hike for PS Plus.

Looking at the line-up ourselves, it’s a pretty good one. The number of games wouldn’t matter if none of them were good, but the leak set things up strongly with the likes of NieR Replicant and Civilization 6.

The full reveal throws in other solid choices like Planet Coaster, one of the best theme park sims of recent years, and the daring if incredibly bleak This War Is Mine.

There are a couple of less enticing picks, though, with a tie-in game for the Paw Patrol movie and the absolutely dreadful Contra: Rogue Corps.

Also, for some reason, Sony is going all in on Star Ocean this month. Aside from including the most recent entry, Star Ocean: The Divine Force, it’s adding 2016’s Star Ocean: Integrity And Faithlessness… which would be fine if either game was any good.

On top of that, the additions to the Premium-only classics catalogue continues to mystify us, as three out of four of them are just more Star Ocean games. Those being:

• Star Ocean First Departure R – the PlayStation 4 port of the PlayStation Portable remake of the first game
• Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time – the PS4 HD conversion of the 2004 PlayStation 2 game
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope – the PS4 remaster of the 2010 PlayStation 3 game

The only other addition is Dragon’s Crown Pro, another remastered PlayStation 4 port from 2018, as opposed to any fan favourite retro games from the PlayStation 1 days.

All the aforementioned games are scheduled to arrive next week on September 19.

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MORE : PS5 sales dominated in August as Starfield sees minor increase for Xbox

MORE : Sony trademarks PlayStation 6 name – and all the way up to PlayStation 10

MORE : PlayStation Portal portable gets November launch date and fake gameplay footage

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The leaks were spot on: a new Nintendo Direct has been announced for September, but don’t expect it to unveil the Switch 2.

Seemingly everyone was predicting Nintendo would announce one of its Nintendo Direct showcases this month, even after it held a short one just a couple of weeks ago, to share new details on Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Aside from the company traditionally holding meaty showcases in September, reliable leakers recently began teasing announcements for such a showcase. Nate The Hate even confidently said the next Direct will be held this Thursday, on September 14.

Turns out he was absolutely right, as Nintendo has formally confirmed a Direct will air tomorrow at 3pm BST and it will run for a hefty 40 minutes.

As you’d expect, Nintendo hasn’t even hinted at what will be shown, only saying the focus will be on games launching this *winter* (which is technically December, January, and February, but we don’t think that’s necessarily what they meant).

Some safe guesses include trailers for the likes of WarioWare: Move It!, the Super Mario RPG remake, and the final batch of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC, but it wouldn’t be surprising if Nintendo has at least one more winter games it hasn’t unveiled yet.

Plus, it’s unlikely that Nintendo will only be discussing imminent launches. It’ll probably have some new info for games planned for 2024, such as the untitled Princess Peach spin-off.

As for what’s rumoured to be in the works at Nintendo, recent teases point to a new Mario Vs. Donkey Kong game, a F-Zero battle royale, and separate remakes of a DS and a Wii game – possibly Another Code: Two Memories and Another Code: R – A Journey Into Lost Memories.

There have also been long standing rumours of more modern Zelda ports (The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, specifically) as well as remasters of Metroid Prime 2 and 3.

It was previously claimed that the Metroid Prime 2 remaster will arrive before the end of the year, as well as something Zelda related. If so, no doubt both will make an appearance at this Direct.

You can rule out any Tears Of The Kingdom DLC, though, as just last week producer Eiji Aonuma admitted there are no plans for any sort of expansion.

The big Nintendo talking point, though, is the Nintendo Switch 2… or whatever the next console ends up being called. While it too has been rumoured for years, recent chatter suggests it was shown off in secret at Gamescom last month.

While a 2024 launch is commonly claimed/speculated, no one has suggested dates for when Nintendo will publicly unveil it. It certainly hasn’t been rumoured for this upcoming Direct, so don’t get your hopes up for an annoucement.

The Christmas period is coming up and Nintendo is already advertising a new Mario themed Switch OLED, plus new bundles that come with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Announcing new hardware now would only undermine sales, since people would be encouraged to wait for the new console rather than buy the current Switch for Christmas.

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MORE : Nintendo Switch 2 targeting late 2024 to avoid stock shortages reveals new report

MORE : Nintendo Switch 2 will launch with 3D Mario in late 2024 claims leaker

MORE : Nintendo Switch patent plans to end Joy-Con drift

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PS5 owners looking for an alternative to Starfield has led to a major boost in interest for the recently updated No Man’s Sky.

Just last week, Bethesda revealed that more than 6 million people have been playing Starfield, making it the company’s biggest launch ever.

However, it turns out that’s not the only space-faring video game to be enjoying a successful September. No Man’s Sky, which launched seven years ago, has also seen a deserved surge in popularity.

Sean Murray, managing director of developer Hello Games, hasn’t shared any hard player figures, but he said on Twitter that No Man’s Sky is having ‘its biggest month in the last few years’, across all platforms.

While there’s no way to check player stats on consoles, we do know how many people are playing No Man’s Sky on PC via Steam.

Steam Charts reveals that, in the last 30 days, there has been a nearly 96% increase in players, bumping it up to an average of 12,580 people.

The obvious explanation for this is the newest update, No Man’s Sky: Echoes, which arrived towards the end of August, just a week before Starfield’s early access launch.

It’s the biggest update the game’s had all year, adding new story content, a new race of robots, enemy pirate freighters, and a whole lot more.

Unsurprisingly, this has attracted direct comparisons with Starfield, as some have suggested that disappointed Starfield players have jumped ship to No Man’s Sky.

Perhaps the biggest point of comparison is how No Man’s Sky allowed you to seamlessly take off from and land on planets back in 2016, whereas Starfield – a modern launch with Microsoft money behind it – doesn’t allow that.

Unsurprisingly, these comparisons have drawn flack from others who argue that Starfield and No Man’s Sky are completely different games since the former is a traditional role-playing game and the latter is a survival game.

That’s pretty disingenuous though, as the exploration in Starfield is extremely similar to No Man’s Sky, including scanning flora and fauna, and collecting rare minerals for use in crafting.

Much of the increase is likely to be PlayStation 5 owners looking for a similar experience to Starfield and, thanks to all the many expansions, No Man’s Sky is an arguably superior experience.

However, Starfield’s average player count is roughly 206,931 according to Steam Charts, roughly 16 times more than No Man’s Sky’s – although it does seem as if Starfield has already peaked.

Regardless of what’s caused the boost in players, Murray and Hello Games are clearly grateful for it, and fans of the game seem just as happy to hear it’s doing well.

No Man’s Sky is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

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MORE : No Man’s Sky PSVR2 review – another VR game better than Horizon Call Of The Mountain

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MORE : Over 1 million people played Starfield at the same time on Wednesday

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Things are not looking good at Square Enix, as Final Fantasy 16 disappoints and they become an increasingly easier target for acquisition.

Despite a big marketing push by Sony and Square Enix, it seems Final Fantasy 16 hasn’t been the sales juggernaut they hoped it would be.

There were already rumours of Square Enix being worried about low pre-order numbers and although the company was apparently ‘delighted’ with the game’s three million sales in its first week, that trailed behind previous entries in the series.

Square Enix has yet to share updated sales figures, and a PC version is still on the way, but it’s reported that the company has lost nearly $2 billion (around £1.6 billion) since the game’s launch. As such, it’s been suggested by both investors and employees that Square Enix is allowing producers too much power, leading to poor project management and budgetary control.

Final Fantasy 16 isn’t just a one-off; a number of Square Enix projects have proven financial disappointment recently. Prime examples include its live service Avengers game (which is ending support and being delisted later this month, after just three years) and Forspoken back in January, which fell out of the UK sales charts after its first week.

Square Enix’s new CEO Takashi Kiryu has already said to improve profitability, he plans to bolster development for big budget games, meaning there’ll be less focus on smaller projects, since resources are ‘being spread too thin.’

However, it sounds like some aren’t confident that this strategy will improve things. Anonymous current and former Square Enix employees told Bloomberg that the real problem is it allowing games to become a producer’s personal fiefdom.

With these producers having full reign over a project’s development, there’s less of a team structure and proper documentation. Contractors add that project goals can often shift with no warning, which is why the results tend to vary so wildly from game to game.

Square Enix also hasn’t been seeing much success in the mobile market. Several of its mobile games have shut down after barely a year (e.g., Bravely Default: Brilliant Lights and Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier) and sales of its latest release, Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis, have reportedly fallen short of investors’ expectations.

The company’s stock has dropped by around 30% since it’s last peak earlier in the year, and is on track to close at its lowest since May 2022.

One contractor says Square Enix is overhauling how it assigns producers and while analyst David Gibson says it can fall back on established franchises like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, there are genuine concerns about the company’s long-term future.

‘Rebuilding the storied maker of role-playing games would take years and there’s little hope of large upside potential on earnings in the near term,’ says Kenji Fukuyama, an analyst with UBS Securities.

‘Even if we look five years ahead, there isn’t much that can make investors confident about the company’s future.’

Macquarie Capital Securities Japan analyst Yijia Zhai told clients, ‘We remain concerned with the company’s game development structure and game quality control, which could limit the longer term performance.’

Such a large drop in stock value is going to make Square Enix a prime target for acquisition, with rumours last year already suggesting that Sony is interested. After all, the same thing happened with Activision Blizzard, whose fall in value, following the controversy over work conditions, made them cheap enough for Microsoft to make a bid for.

This means there’ll be a lot riding on Square Enix’s upcoming games. It has a few smaller scale ones to close out 2023 with, such as its Star Ocean: The Second Story remake, but its next major launch isn’t until early 2024 with Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth.

After that, it has Dragon Quest 12 and Kingdom Hearts 4 in the works, but neither has so much as a launch window.

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MORE : Square Enix is ‘considering’ more remasters after being asked about Xenogears

MORE : Final Fantasy 16 is okay and that’s why it’s such a disaster – Reader’s Feature

MORE : Dragon Quest 12 targeting adults is causing ‘a lot of trouble’ for Square Enix

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A lot of Starfield plans were abandoned pre-pandemic, including hints that would imply it was set in the same universe as Fallout.

If you’ve been playing Starfield since its early access launch, you’ve likely come across at least one Easter egg referencing a previous Bethesda game. The most obvious example being the adoring fan from The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion making an appearance.

As it turns out, though, despite being advertised as Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years, Starfield was at one point planned to be a pseudo-sequel to the Fallout series or at least be set in the same universe.

That’s not how things turned out but director Todd Howard has admitted there were a lot of ideas that wound up being cut, partially thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

Is Starfield set in the same universe as Fallout?

This story does involve some light spoilers for Starfield, as it involves visiting Earth – something that can be done fairly early into the game.

If you have visited Earth already, you’ll know that it’s a complete wasteland, barring the occasional landmark, and all of humanity has long since evacuated it.

In a recent interview with Howard, The Washington Post’s Gene Park remarks how they scoured Earth to see if they could find the nuclear wasteland from Fallout 3’s depiction of Washington, D.C.

Howard admits they ‘talked about it’ within Bethesda, suggesting there could have been plans to imply Starfield’s Earth and Fallout’s Earth were one and the same.

Howard doesn’t go into any specific detail, unfortunately, only adding that a lot of plans for Starfield ‘went out the window’ over the course of development.

‘We knew we were going to rewrite parts of the engine, so we started building technology for the planets and the outer space stuff on our previous engine and renderer,’ explains Howard.

The team soon realised that they’d have to port years of work to the studio’s new game engine, Creation Engine 2 (Starfield is the first Bethesda game to make use of it), but the pandemic soon hit, forcing people to work from home.

This is also what led to Bethesda delaying the game past its initial November 2022 launch date as production became ‘very, very slow.’

Howard admits that when it chose that 2022 date, ‘We had lots of buffer and we felt really good about it’ but ‘As things moved on, we were off by a percentage, and a percentage when it comes to the scale of this game turns out to be a lot of time. We felt it was the right thing to do to give us the time we required.’

Starfield is available for Xbox Series X/S and PC.

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MORE : PS5 sales dominated in August as Starfield sees minor increase for Xbox

MORE : PS5 sales dominated in August as Starfield sees minor increase for Xbox

MORE : Starfield voice actors: Meet the Bethesda game cast – from Sarah Morgan to Heller

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EA has revealed that it will keep adding DLC and updates to The Sims 4 even after its sequel, Project Rene, launches.

There’s still no sign of a launch date for The Sims 5 – or Project Rene as EA calls it – although fans were treated to a behind the scenes look of some prototype footage back in June.

Not long after, a job listing at EA gave away that Project Rene will adopt a free-to-play model from the get-go, unlike The Sims 4 which only went free-to-play less than a year ago.

Lyndsey Pearson, The Sims’ vice president of franchise creative, has since admitted this in another Behind the Sims video, although she specifically describes it as free to download.

‘We intend for Project Rene to be a free download, and that means that when it’s ready and fully open to our players, you’ll be able to join and play and explore Project Rene without a subscription, without core game purchase or energy mechanics,’ explains Pearson.

This is so the game is much easier for everyone to access and play with each other, but Pearson admits that it won’t start with everything currently present in The Sims 4.

However, Pearson says the team is aiming to create ‘something strong and cohesive from the start’ and that there’ll be a mixture of free updates and paid DLC to expand Project Rene.

‘We will sell content and packs, but we want to change that mix a little bit,’ Pearson continues, using a weather feature as an example.

‘In The Sims 4, the only way to experience any weather was if you purchased seasons. Now, in Project Rene, we might introduce basic weather to the core game free for everybody. And then a pack for purchase might be focused on winter sports…

‘It’s important for us to lower those barriers to play and give everyone the broadest shared systems because that feels like the best foundation to grow from.’

Multiplayer appears to be a big focus of Project Rene, with developer Maxis eager to ensure there are as few barriers as possible preventing friends from playing the game together.

Pearson wasn’t able to go into too much detail on multiplayer, but what she could say was that the new game won’t replace The Sims 4 and the two will coexist.

In fact, The Sims 4 will still receive new content even after Project Rene launches. This does make sense; players have invested so much time (and money) into The Sims 4 that they’ll be hesitant to immediately jump ship to a less content rich game.

The Sims 4’s monetisation, however, has been a sticking point for some players. The small DLC kits, for example, have routinely been criticised for offering too little content and appearing to replace more traditional content packs.

Time will tell whether this is something EA will address with Project Rene’s paid DLC offerings.

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MORE : The Sims 4 bug terrifies fans by turning horses into bipedal monsters

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MORE : EA reveals The Sims 4 Grunge Revival and Book Nook kits

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AAA games like Resident Evil and Assassin’s Creed are coming to the iPhone 15, but the phone itself isn’t exactly cheap.

While the likes of Fortnite and Honkai Star Rail are perfectly playable on Apple devices, as well as consoles and PC, you don’t really see many AAA games being ported to mobile.

Big franchises will get mobile spin-offs designed specifically for the platform, like Mario Kart Tour and Assassin’s Creed Jade, but no one expects the next mainline entry in a series to pop up on the Apple store.

That looks to have changed with Apple’s upcoming iPhone 15, which the company has revealed can run some of the biggest games around, including the Resident Evil 4 remake and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Mirage.

These aren’t cloud versions that you need to stream to the phone; they will run natively on both the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models (but seemingly not the non-Pro versions).

The line-up includes Resident Evil Village and Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding, plus Ubisoft’s upcoming mobile exclusive The Division Resurgence.

The two Resident Evil games and Death Stranding will be available by the end of 2023. Assassin’s Creed Mirage will come out in the first half of 2024, which is much later than the console/PC version, which arrives on October 5. The Division Resurgence, however, has no launch date.

Considering Sony has a vested interest in mobile games, it wouldn’t be surprising if it launched some of its mobile projects for the iPhone 15. Maybe it’ll even port console games like God Of War and The Last Of Us.

However, while having AAA games running on the new iPhone is impressive, and a good selling point for Apple, it’s too soon to tell how these games will perform or their effect on the device’s battery life.

Not to mention the price tag. The iPhone 15 Pro is £999 on Apple’s website, practically twice as much as a standard PlayStation 5. The Pro Max model is even more expensive at £1,199.

There is a cheaper standard iPhone 15 model at £799, but this model isn’t designed to run the aforementioned games.

The other big question is how much the games themselves are going to cost. Most are around £70 on consoles and yet it seems impossible to imagine that mobile users are going to pay that on a platform where most games are free or mere pennies.

Pre-orders for the new phones open this Friday on September 15, with the phone scheduled to launch next week on September 22.

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MORE : Football Manager 2024 moves to Netflix in bidding war with Apple

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The Wednesday letters page questions what the Switch 2’s hardware specs will be, as one reader offers a solution to pets chewing cables.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Second best
Excellent review of Starfield, GC, and dare I say it, worth waiting for? I have an Xbox Series S and I’ve been playing it a little, but it failed to grab me at the start and little has happened since to change my mind about it. After reading your review I’m inclined to go with my first impressions and not return.

The game’s Metacritic score is already down to 84 on Xbox and I’m sure it’ll go down even further once Eurogamer and Edge render their verdict, as I’m certain they won’t be any less negative than at least the IGN and GameSpot reviews. Which will mean all the most trusted reviewers gave the game a critical review.

So far, everyone has said it’s at least a little above average but you can bet that’s not what Microsoft was hoping for when they started hyping this thing. Bethesda obviously expected it though, as why else deny review copies to these sites?

Sales seem to be doing okay so the game’s release is clearly no disaster but I’m sure Microsoft must be disappointed that it’s not going to be winning any game of the year awards. In fact, I think it’s almost certain it won’t even be the most highly rated Xbox exclusive of the year, as Forza Motorsport will likely review better.

That’s a game made by a long-term studio that they’ve nurtured over more than a decade, rather than some company they just bought for a stupid sum and immediately expected to start laying golden eggs. If they didn’t have second thoughts about spending all that money on Activision Blizzard before I’m sure they are now…
Olliephant

GC: Thanks.

Last go
Pretty sure I’ve just turned Starfield off for the last time, not because of the fast travel, nor the enemies that spawn in front, beside or behind me mid-battle; it wasn’t even the multiple times that characters spoke over themselves when talking to me. In the end (seven hours in) it was just boring.

To be honest, I didn’t have to buy it to play and only did so as it was on Game Pass, as I never got on with Skyrim, Oblivion or the Fallout games, despite having tried them several times across the years. Ultimately, its simply not for me and I recognised that were I to once again become so encumbered that my character would die if I dared to move just a tiny bit faster than a snail, I’d have lost my cool entirely.

Not everything’s for everyone, nor should it be. Hope those playing it are having a blast.
Ranny2011

Never in love
After all the fantastic reviews I really wanted to love Baldur’s Gate 3 but it’s just so overwhelming and complicated. I don’t know what companions to pick, I struggle with every battle (yes, on the easiest setting) there are so many quests and when I try to complete one I end up with another three without finishing the one I’m doing and I’m only 10 hours in.

Too many choices, unforeseen consequences, and missed opportunities; I find myself googling every conversation and not actually playing the game.

I think I’m going to have to leave it for now, hope an easier mode is introduced and buy Mortal Kombat 1 so I can just beat up characters without thinking about everything too much.
Keith Stratford

GC: At least you gave it a go, there’s many that wouldn’t.

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Pay to win
Well, who would’ve thought Starfield would have been given middle of the road review scores from places that were refused review copies?

Now your review is in, perhaps we can look at things more objectively. I remember that in your review statistics that 7/10 is an average game review, so 6/10 isn’t all that bad by your own metric but neither is it Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. Looking things over, it appears to be Fallout 4 in space with very little improvement over that game and almost no improvement in the way you interact with non-player characters.

Now, I actually enjoyed Fallout 4, but more as an evolution of Fallout 3. The same game but with bells on, so to speak. But this is Bethesda’s marquee production for Microsoft since they bought them for £7.5 billion and it had to exceed expectations and that is where it appears that Starfield falls flat on its face. Have Microsoft wasted their money? Only time will tell.

Going beyond this, it makes me feel that Microsoft’s £75 billion purchase of Activision is deeply flawed. You cannot buy the games market has now been proven by the purchase of Bethesda. Talent moves about studios and you can’t nail that down. Rare was a great example of that, as under the stewardship of Nintendo, but not full ownership, they flowered and became highly respected. Once Microsoft came in, they withered and produced mediocrity until Sea Of Thieves, which has rendered them a games as a service studio.

If Bethesda and its studios cannot improve on their glory days products then they too will wither on the vine. Starfield required an evolution. It needed to be No Man’s Sky x Elite Dangerous and, from your review, it’s not and that’s a shame. Ultimately, the real question to ask is whether the game would’ve been worth £60 if it wasn’t on Game Pass and from the state of your review, I’d have said many people would’ve waited for it to hit the bargain bin.
ZiPPi

GC: What review statistics? 6/10 means exactly what it always should mean: a little above average. Also, Starfield is £70.

Never recovered
I was just thinking of the time I played FIFA 2015, maybe, and I played in career mode as a single custom player in midfield. I was the best player in the Premiership for a few seasons and it was all leading up to me getting selected for the England team in the World Cup. I couldn’t wait to show the world what I was made of.

And then the game just sort of skipped the whole World Cup. It let me play the qualifications but the World Cup was totally skipped. I read it was a bug, but I have never been so upset with a game. I’ve not bought a new FIFA game since.
TommyFatFingers

When animals attack
To anyone that suffers animal chewing syndrome (ACS). Try to fix the cables. My sister had her Alexa power cable, and one of the kids’ headphones cable, chewed up by an escaped rabbit. I was able to get both working again with a bit of wire stripping and soldering. The headphone wires are like fine hairs. I’m certainly no tech expert but if I can get those things going again, I’d recommend having a go. I even got my Xbox One controller shoulder button working again.

If it’s a choice of binning a £500 headset, the VR one or splicing some wires together, I know which I would try.

YouTube and ifixit.com have loads of tutorials.
Bobwallett

Objective reality
To follow up on Marc’s letter regarding the possible power of the Switch 2. I agree with him after hearing John from Digital Foundry make a great point. He said that if you had heard before the release of the first Switch that they had Doom 2016 and The Witcher 3 running on it, you may have had higher expectations of what the Switch could do.

I believe that’s what is happening with this Matrix Awakens demo talk on Switch 2. It may have looked comparable from a quick look but when it’s actually analysed it’s not going to live up to those higher expectations.
Niall

GC: If it already looks and plays well, how is analysing it somehow going to undermine that?

Hybrid optimisation
The recent Digital Foundry Direct Weekly discussed the potential Switch 2 hardware specifications and I think they asked a very interesting question:

If you were told before it was released that the Switch 1 could run The Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal natively what would you imagine the specs of the machine to be?

You would imagine specs far higher than what the Switch actually has but it does indeed run those games natively.

That is broadly where we are with the Switch 2. We have been told it can run Final Fantasy 7 Remake (a PlayStation 4 game) and The Matrix Awakens Unreal 5 Tech demo but nobody currently speculating on what this means saw the demonstrations themselves. There is a huge risk of Chinese whispers and people getting overexcited.

From Epic’s (and Nintendo’s) perspective getting Unreal 5 running on the machine would have been a priority. Nintendo will want to spec the Switch 2 above the minimum requirements for that engine to make it possible to port future third party games to the console.

Epic will have highly optimised the demo for the behind closed doors reveal and will probably have made sacrifices, like The Witcher 3 Switch port, to get it running on Switch 2. For example, the traffic density is probably vastly reduced and some effects will have been turned down or removed but people in the room would not have noticed without seeing it side by side with the PlayStation 5 version, as even with some compromises it would look very impressive.

Nvidia’s DLSS technology is the market leader in AI performance improvements and as they are highly likely to be providing the Switch 2’s internals it follows that they will use a bespoke chip this time. One that can offer DLSS improvements at lower power.

With all that said it pretty much puts the Switch 2 somewhere between PlayStation 4 and Xbox Series S performance wise but with a superior (more optimised) upscaling/frame generation solution to the current generation of home consoles.
PazJohnMitch

GC: That’s exactly what the rumours say it is?

Inbox also-rans
Interesting RE: Starfield. RE: sci-fi role-playing games, I’ve been playing Wasteland 3 for the past two weeks or so, having got it on sale. So far, I really like it’s blend of turn-based combat and grey choices.
Half_empty80

GC: The original Wasteland was essentially the first Fallout game, but EA owned the name so the team made Fallout instead of Wasteland 2.

For anyone who has PlayStation Plus, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is an incredible game that is worth playing, especially for free. One of the few games I wish I could wipe from my memory so I could play it for the first time, all over again!
Michael, Crawley

GC: It has its problems but it’s perfect for PS Plus/Game Pass, we strongly recommend everyone giving it a try.

This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Onibee, who asks what new games would you like to see released for the Switch 2 in its first 12 months?

Rumours about Nintendo’s next console are gathering pace, with reliable sources claiming it will be roughly as powerful as a PlayStation 4 – or perhaps even more so. There has been some vague talk of new games, such as a new 3D Mario, but nothing substantial, so what would you like to see most in terms of first and third party games?

Try and keep things realistic – Nintendo isn’t going to release all its heavy hitters at the same time – but feel free to imagine your dream launch line-up, as long as it’s also reasonably believable.

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

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MORE : Games Inbox: Starfield being worth the hype, Naughty Dog’s next game, and Switch 2 power

MORE : Games Inbox: Whether Starfield has too many bugs, Gravity Rush, and Baldur’s Gate 3 on PlayStation Portal

MORE : Weekend Hot Topic: The best co-op video games

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The release date for Football Manager 2024 on PC and console has been announced for November but the mobile version has moved to Netflix.

While most big name games sell themselves on their high tech visuals, for the majority of its life the Football Manager series has barely had anything in the way of moving graphics – and yet it’s consistently one of the biggest games of the year.

Its newly announced release date of November 6 is pretty much when it always comes out, so that’s not a surprise, but the fact that the mobile version will be exclusive to Netflix is.

According to Sega, the mobile version of Football Manager, which has been one of the most popular iOS downloads for years, is now exclusive to Netflix, which must have involved a hefty transfer fee.

Netflix isn’t saying how much it paid for the deal but developer Sports Interactive seems very happy with the new arrangement, with studio director Miles Jacobson saying: ‘More than 230 million people around the world will now have access to our already popular Mobile series through their Netflix memberships.’

Confusingly, there are four separately named versions of Football Manager 2024 but they’re all coming out on the same day:

• Football Manager 2024 on PC and Mac
• Football Manager 2024 Console on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5
• Football Manager 2024 Touch on Nintendo Switch
• Football Manager 2024 Mobile on Netflix

After a public falling out with Sony, who wouldn’t initially give the developer a PlayStation 5 devkit, this is only the second time the game will be available on the console, so this is a big year for the series as a whole (also, it’ll be the first time it’s released in Japan).

There’s not much detail on the new game yet, beyond the release date, but you will be able to transfer careers from last year’s PC and console versions, but not the mobile version.

There’s also a roadmap at the end of the announcement trailer below, that explains when new features will be explained, so you know what to look out for over the coming months.

This will start next week, when Sports Interactive will talk about ‘smarter transfers, squad building, and finance’, as well as ‘introducing intermediaries and offloading players.’

You can pre-order the console and PC versions from today and you’ll receive a 10% discount for doing so, although you’ll have to be a PS Plus subscriber to get the money off on PlayStation 5.

Pre-ordering also gives you a chance to play early access on PC or Mac, which will be available around two weeks before launch via Steam and the Epic Games Store. Any progress you make there can be carried over to the final release version.

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MORE : Football Manager 2023: Release date and women’s teams leak

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If you’ve ever wondered exactly how much a streamer makes, Mizkif has accidentally revealed how much they earn in just one week.

We all know the biggest streamers make good money by playing games online, discussing hot topics, or just hanging out in an inflatable pool all day. But they rarely let on as to exactly how much they’re making.

You got a clue when xQc left Twitch for Kick in a whopping $100 million deal this summer, while Amouranth made the same move for an undisclosed fee that was also assumed to be in the millions.

On the rung below, in terms of success and notoriety, we find streamers like Mizkif, who’s been popular for years and is also making a huge amount of money every week.

In a Twitch clip seen by over 60,000 people, Mizkif is reacting to an unexpectedly large number of interactions on his Just Talking stream, when he accidentally shows the wrong page on his PC screen.

If you’ve a keen eye, you’ll spot the number $13,168.32 (£10,500) at the side. The number was under the revenue tab and displays how much he’s made so far this week from Twitch.

‘Oh, I just leaked my revenue,’ he said before swiftly changing the page.

This is far from the first time Mizkif and co. have accidentally (or is it?) leaked something.

There was the time when he clicked on the wrong document and leaked the entire roster for an upcoming Valorant tournament, and its Discord server.

Or that time when his then-girlfriend and streamer, Maya, took control of his PC and showed his ‘bounty’ payments of $39,456 (£31,500), which publishers pay him to play specific games.

As this shows, Twitch revenue is only one fraction of how streamers can make money. Other income streams include external sponsorship, merchandise sales, affiliate marketing, and more.

Rather than a slip-up Mizkif was probably stealth bragging about how much money he makes and in a sense it’s not hard to see why.

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MORE : Twitch streamer plays Elden Ring and Halo with actual mind control

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British streamer Perrikaryal has used an EEG headset to play games better than some of us can manage with a joypad.

While holding her hands to her chin, to prove that she’s not using her keyboard or mouse, Perrikaryal dodges swords in Elden Ring and shoots down enemies in Halo.

We’ve seen Elden Ring beaten by a controller made of bananas before, as well as a goldfish and a dance pad. Everything from a guitar to a drumkit and bongos has been used before but never… the power of your mind.

With the use of an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset connected to her PC, Perrikaryal has found a way to use her thoughts to take on games in proper Jedi fashion, and it actually works.

During a recent stream, the psychology graduate explained that she uses her head and eyes as two separate joysticks. Her head moves the character and her eyes move the crosshair.

Simple enough, right? Well, she then describes how she uses the other buttons, like attacking and jumping:

‘I’m tilting my head to move the character and I’m looking around the screen to move the eye tracker. But I’m using any buttons and triggers with mind control.’

Essentially what that means is she has to think a certain thought to create a certain brainwave, that then goes through the EEG headset and into the game.

In a YouTube video she further explained that in some games she uses the thought of a plate spinning to the tune of pop classic, You Spin Me Round as an attack mechanism. To dodge attacks while playing, she thinks of pushing something heavy.

It doesn’t always work, though. At times she’s staring her opponent down without being able to fire. Or the attack is a bit too late. But sometimes it works perfectly as she mows her enemy down with the power of thought.

Later in the video, Perrikaryal concedes that it’s still a work in progress but she’s planning on adding more mental commands, expanding on the gyroscope controls, and incorporating facial expressions and motion recognition, to better slay dragons in The Lands Between.

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MORE : Elden Ring cancelled a season pass to have just one giant DLC expansion claims source

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The developer of Spider-Man 2 has said they’re in ‘awe’ of this year’s crop of big name video games and doesn’t resent the competition.

Despite how heated exchanges get between fans, rivalries between video game developers are almost unheard of. If there is any bad blood, it’s never obvious publicly and developers are usually more than happy to praise games from other companies.

In a recent interview, the senior creative director of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, at Sony studio Insomniac Games, was asked what he thinks of 2023 so far and its bumper crop of high profile, high quality games.

Bryan Intihar said that he’d never seen anything like it in his 20+ years in the industry and stated that, ‘There are a lot of talented freaking developers out there and they’re doing some really cool stuff. I’m sitting here in awe – and also jealous! – of what they’ve been able to create.’

‘The amount of games that are getting these great review scores … it’s incredible,’ he added, when speaking to website Inverse.

‘Having a lot of great games only makes this industry stronger. It’s not something to be fearful of, it’s something to be proud of. It’s only going to make us, our games, and any games that come out in 2024 and 2025 that much better.’

It’s coming out at the same time as other titles that’s the main problem for competing games – and something that the games industry is traditionally terrible at avoiding, as evidenced by this year’s week of death in October.

Although a number of games have subsequently moved out of each other’s way, Spider-Man 2 is still coming out on October 20, which is exactly the same day as Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

They are two very different games, and exclusive to their respective systems, but people have still only got a finite amount of money in their pocket, so choices have to be made.

Elsewhere in the interview, Intihar praises the sandbox elements of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom and how that level of gameplay freedom is becoming more common in recent games, with the new gadgets in Spider-Man 2 allowing for multiple ways to deal with different situations.

He also muses on the willingness of games to comment on divisive subjects like politics and religion, although it’s unclear whether Spider-Man 2 itself deals with either.

‘I’m wondering how games are going to touch on topics that we shied away from over the years, because the topic was quote-unquote ‘controversial,’ or something we don’t talk about,’ he says.

‘We’re seeing more and more games tackle topics and themes that we wouldn’t have done 10 years ago. And I hope that only increases.’

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MORE : Insomniac fans think Spider-Man 2 studio has a third secret project

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We now know who the top 24 players will be in EA Sports FC 24, as Haaland shares the top spot while several greats are left out.

EA has kept football fans in the dark about the player ratings for EA Sports FC 24, right up until only a couple of weeks from release day.

Unproven leaks have circulated on social media for a while but the annual revelation, the first since EA stopped making FIFA games, is finally here.

The best rated players have earned a 91 total rating, just like FIFA 23. This accolade is given to four players, including Erling Haaland (to no one’s surprise), as well as Kylian Mbappé, Kevin De Bruyne, and Alexia Putellas.

Lionel Messi and Karim Benzema’s ratings have dropped by one from FIFA 23, slipping down to 90. Harry Kane’s rating was boosted by 1 and is now also at 90.

EA Sports FC 24’s best goalkeeper will be Thibaut Courtois at 90, while the bragging rights for best defender will be shared between Rúben Dias, Mapi León, and Virgil van Dijk.

Pace is perhaps the most overpowered ability in FIFA and, just like FIFA 23, the quickest player in EA Sports FC is Kylian Mbappé, who has a speedy 97 rating for pace. The best shooters are Haaland and Harry Kane, both at 93.

Some top players didn’t make the cut, like Son Heung-Min, Luka Modric, Joshua Kimmich, Jan Oblak, Ederson, Jude Bellingham, and five-time Ballon d’Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo.

Unlike FIFA, EA Sports FC 24 will add female players to their Ultimate Team mode for the first time.

You can now look forward to unpacking the best from the woman’s side of the game too. Eight of the top 24 players are woman. Among them are Putellas’ Barcelona teammate Aitana Bonmatí rated at 90, as is Chelsea superstar Sam Kerr.

The odd number of players released in this batch (24) may suggest that EA are purposefully revealing all players rated 89 or above now, and players rated 88 and below will be next.

Either way, more ratings are expected to be released in the days to come.

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It doesn’t look like Sony is planning a name change for their next console, as they register trademarks for PS6, PS7, PS8, PS9, and PS10.

For Microsoft and Nintendo what to name your new console has always been a difficult question. Xbox has never settled on a satisfying formula and for Nintendo there’s a big question as to whether their next machine will be called the Switch 2 or something more unique.

For Sony, though, there is no question. As long as their consoles continue to be as successful as they are it’d be madness to call their next one anything other than the PlayStation 6.

And now they can, without fear of legal complication, as they’ve just registered the names PlayStation 6 through 10 in Japan, to make sure no one else can ever use them.

This doesn’t mean the PlayStation 6 is imminent, as Sony has a long history of registering new console names long before they use them.

According to Gematsu, they registered PlayStation 5 in 2006 and it didn’t come out until 2020 – so these new trademarks don’t mean a surprise early release.

These are obviously only very rough calculations but assuming a seven year gap between the release of each console (which was the length between both the PlayStation 3 and 4, and the PlayStation 4 and 5) then the PlayStation 6 will be out in 2027.

2028 was already predicted by Microsoft in the recent FC court case and indeed you’d expect a year or two to be added to the usual length of a generation, given the supply problems at the start of this one.

Using 2028 as the launch date for the PlayStation 6 you can then expect to see the PlayStation 7 in 2035, the PlayStation 8 in 2042, the PlayStation 9 in 2049, and the PlayStation 10 in the space year 2056.

Of course, by that point it’s very unlikely that traditional, physical consoles will still exist. At the very least you’d expect everything to be streaming, if not being pumped into your brain or some sort of holodeck.

Let’s just hope the planet makes it that far, although if does we’re willing to bet some thing will still be the same – like games releasing half broken and console warring with the Xbox Series Omega.

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Hardware and software sales for the UK in August were driven by temporary price cuts of the PS5, as Armored Core 6 did surprisingly well.

August is never one of the busier months of the year for gaming but thanks to price cuts for the PlayStation 5, it saw hardware sales increase by 22% over July, even as software sales fell by 2% – if you don’t count Baldur’s Gate 3.

Starfield early access didn’t start until September 1, so it’s difficult to say how much affect it had on Xbox sales before that, but according to the latest UK hardware data it was fairly minimal.

PlayStation 5 sales increased 42% in August, compared to just a 7% increase for Xbox Series X/S, and 5% for Nintendo Switch. That means that for the whole year so far, the PlayStation 5 is up 60%, Switch is down 10%, and Xbox is down 23%.

There have been signs, such as sales charts on Amazon, that Starfield is positively affecting Xbox console sales but apparently they didn’t rise that much in the weeks immediately before its launch.

The major increase in PlayStation 5 was due to price cuts, so if they hadn’t happened its performance may have been closer to that of the other consoles.

Although Sony has not announced anything, it’s believed that the cuts were to clear out the majority of current inventory, before the release of a new PS5 Slim model. Which means the discounts are unlikely to be repeated once that’s out.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, the top six accessories of the month were all PlayStation 5 related – further showing the dominance of the console, despite Sony’s continued silence and the lack of any major new exclusives.

Software sales were down 2.2% on July but although Baldur’s Gate 3 was almost certainly the biggest seller of the month Larian Studios does not provide sales data and so they aren’t included in the charts at all.

That meant FIFA 23 took the top spot (driven by discounted sales of the eShop Switch version) and Armored Core 6 took second place, which is an excellent result for such a niche series and clearly a knock-on effect of the success of FromSoftware’s Elden Ring.

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The Tuesday letters page is excited at the prospect of F-Zero returning, as one reader prefers Armored Core 6 to Starfield.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Impossible standards
Although I accept there’ll never be any agreement on the quality of Starfield I do think there’s one thing that most people can agree on and that is that it has not lived up to the hype. Even if you enjoy the game, it’s not what most people expected when it was first revealed, and it does have some pretty obvious problems.

Despite what the Reader’s Feature said at the weekend I don’t think it’s the fact that the game is mediocre which is causing the arguments but that it was clearly overhyped. It was basically advertised as one of the best games ever and I don’t think anyone is claiming it’s that or anything close to it.

As many readers have already pointed out, even those reviews that give it high marks end up saying most of the same things as GC and others. It can be a good game and still a disappointment and I think that’s at the heart of what’s causing so much argument.
Teflon

Still waiting
Just wanted to write a quick note on how disappointed I am with Naughty Dog and the lack of multiplayer for The Last Of Us Part 2. The game was released in 2020 on the PlayStation 4, for goodness sake, and there’s still no sign of it.

I did read some rumours about it not being very good but don’t know if those are true. As a fan of the original multiplayer, which I still play, I would have been happy with the same game simply with new maps. Surely not too much to ask, is it?

I guess I’m just frustrated as even the original PlayStation 3 release of the first game had the multiplayer.

Do you know what Naughty Dog are even up to these days?
Steve

GC: They’ve just started a new game, which probably isn’t The Last Of Us Part 3, and there’s rumoured to be a The Last Of Us Part 2 PS5 edition coming. Nothing has been heard about the multiplayer spin-off in months, so the rumours of it being put on the backburner may be true.

Power speculation
Nintendo could have the Switch 2 positioned quite well come next Christmas if the rumours of what it can do are true, however people really do need to keep their expectations in check with it, as the recent Reader’s Feature shows. The Tegra chips in it have been rumoured for some time and they provide PlayStation 4 power upscaled using the some custom Nvidia DLSS tech.

That would lend it enough juice to run something like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, as suggested, and potentially a much stronger line-up of third party titles given how many PlayStation 4 games are still being released, from Elden Ring to Resident Evil 4 Remake, Street Fighter 6, and Armoured Core 6. Nintendo and Nvidia would be smart to build tools to allow developers to port over their PlayStation 4 titles as quickly and cost effectively as possible.

Then when it comes to The Matrix Awakens tech demo in Unreal 5… only the invited guests have seen what it looks like or how it runs. Mortal Kombat 1 in Unreal 4 is launching this week on PlayStation 5 and the Switch and they’ll be quite the variation in the visual experience between the two versions (wonder is GC will look at both?). I’d expect The Matrix Awakens could similarly be sliced back to run on a more powerful Switch 2 at lower resolutions, frame rates and reduced effects, with the console still being significantly less powerful than a PlayStation 5.

Not to be a downer though. PlayStation 4 output would still be a noticeable generational leap over the current Switch and give Nintendo a lot of oomph to pour into sequels to its own franchises, a new Mario Kart and 3D Mario would look terrific. But I wouldn’t expect more than PlayStation 4 with some clever modern tricks, it’s still a portable at heart remember.
Marc

GC: We mean… maybe, but you’re just speculating. The rumours, from multiple different sources, all say The Matrix Awakens looks comparable to the PlayStation 5 version; it’s not unreasonable to imagine they’re correct, even if that is through using DLSS.

Shopping list
Can anyone recommend any games to get before the Xbox 360 Store closes next year, please? I was going to add the games to my wishlist and then buy them when they are on sale. I have Xbox Gold and I have been claiming the Xbox 360 games since they gave away Toybox Turbos.

I have added Split/Second recently to my wishlist and I also have Double Dragon Neon on there too. I left it to the last minute for the Wii U Store buying games, but I want to buy the games gradually on sale for Xbox 360, as suggested by MagicSquirrel with the Wii U store.
Andrew J.
Currently playing: Somerville (Xbox Series X)
PS: Just seen that Amazon are selling the PlayStation VR2 for £499.99! £30 saving.

Voice of experience
I’ve been reading a lot of negative press about Starfield and whether it’s a good game or not but after playing it now for a few days I have absolutely no problem with it and love it. I come from that generation of gamers who grew up in the 1980s Speccy era, where we had Atic Atac in place of Resident Evil and the open world city in Turbo Esprit in place of GTA 5.

I was there playing Space Invaders and the black and white Gun Fight in the 1970s, so I’ve had my fair share of gaming experiences. To me a game should envelope the player in the illusion of that world and to my mind Starfield absolutely does. Yes, there are lots of loading screens and the graphics, while they look great, look like they could have been done on a PlayStation 4 but to my mind it immerses me completely into that world.

Growing on a diet of Speccy games, where something takes sometimes up to eight minutes to load I didn’t have a problem suspending my disbelief and filling in the reality gaps in-between. I’m not a big Bethesda fan but loved Oblivion and Skyrim, which I didn’t even start playing until 2019, but didn’t see what the fuss was about with Fallout 3.

Yes, it was a little naughty withholding review copies of Starfield from the likes of reliable sources such as yourselves and Edge but the game is by no means terrible or boring. Art is subjective by nature, so I think we can only draw our own conclusions but I myself as a long-time casual gamer am completely engrossed.
Anon

Doesn’t count
Starfield was never going to live up to all the hype, especially when it wasn’t the game everyone, including myself, thought it was going to be. I thought it would be Bethesda’s take on Elite and I was salty when the news broke that Microsoft had bought them out.

The Elder Scrolls 6 being an Xbox exclusive didn’t sit well with me either but what FromSoftware did with Elden Ring blows everything Bethesda has ever done clean out of the water. I have an insane amount of hours in it. More than Skyrim and Oblivion combined.

The non-player characters quests have aggravating fail points if you play blind but they aren’t bugged. As far as I know there are no quest breaking bugs and I know there are no game-breaking bugs. I stopped playing just before the penultimate boss on New Game +3, so if there was I would have run into them.

When you think about it, the Microsoft buyout of Bethesda was only possible because they have done nothing since 2011, The Elder Scrolls has pretty graphics but at the core it’s just a Skyrim MMO.

I couldn’t care less when The Elder Scrolls 6 eventually sees the light of day, likely on the next gen Xbox. But what FromSoftware come up with as the follow-up to Elden Ring is a very different matter.
Mitchell

GC: What do you mean nothing since 2011? Are you not counting Fallout 4 and Fallout 76? You mentioned The Elder Scrolls Online yourself.

Zero chance
Normally I wouldn’t believe any F-Zero rumours, as there have been so many over the years and none of them have panned out. A free game in the style of Pac-Man 99 I can believe though.

That does sound like just the sort of thing Nintendo would do to test the waters and hopefully it means they can get back to the glory days of F-Zero X and GX. If the game isn’t mind-meltingly fast then it’s already failed.
Brucy

33% success rate
At the start of this summer, as a parent and generally time short, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with three AAA games I was interested in: Diablo 4, Starfield, and Armored Core 6.

However, I feel like only one of these games met or surpassed my expectations (Armored Core) whilst the other two were disappointing.

Firstly, Diablo 4. I haven’t even finished the campaign which (as a big Diablo 3 player) I appreciate many could say, ‘You’ve not even started yet!’. Whilst I appreciate that is perhaps true, I just found it all a bit dull and repetitive and just sort of a meh feeling.

Starfield, I’m only five hours in so barely scratched the surface. It is OK so far. I imagine I’ll play it a lot more, but equally it just feels a bit low budget. Some really poor bugs which ruin the immersion. Like last night, I was trying to talk to a character and she was just kind of hovering on top of a table, and then teleported about a metre away to stand on the ground. It just reminds you this is a video game. Not to mention I’ve found the travel system pretty poor and even on the planets the navigation menu is terrible?!

Armored Core 6 on the other hand: sublime game design, well balanced difficulty, good story and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The mech designs are also fantastic and I’ve had great fun making some unique mechs – just made one which looks like G1 Starscream! And I also found some of the art design great, so not sure where the criticisms of it looking dull come from. I’ve captured some awesome shots in the photo mode which are now backgrounds on my Xbox.

I am now wondering about going back to Starfield, although I am actually more interested in Sea Of Stars of New Game+ on Armored Core!
Tom

GC: Armored Core 6 and Sea Of Stars are great.

Inbox also-rans
Rather than eating my cables, my cat likes watching F1 23. I’m not sure if he realises it’s a game or not.
Spenf

Meet Mittens, seen here just after a prolonged assault on my PlayStation 4 controller! He loves wires, sitting on my PlayStation 4 and the motions my thumbs make when moving the analogue sticks! On more than one occasion I’ve come home to find he’s managed to switch the console on.
Rob

This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Onibee, who asks what new games would you like to see released for the Switch 2 in its first 12 months?

Rumours about Nintendo’s next console are gathering pace, with reliable sources claiming it will be roughly as powerful as a PlayStation 4 – or perhaps even more so. There has been some vague talk of new games, such as a new 3D Mario, but nothing substantial, so what would you like to see most in terms of first and third party games?

Try and keep things realistic – Nintendo isn’t going to release all its heavy hitters at the same time – but feel free to imagine your dream launch line-up, as long as it’s also reasonably believable.

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

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GameCentral completes its review of Bethesda’s new sci-fi epic and explores why Starfield fails to live up to its full potential.

While it’s not unheard of to be reviewing a game well after it first came out, it is unusual to be doing so after other outlets have already rendered their verdict. Thanks to Bethesda’s refusal to send review copies to multiple UK websites, seemingly in an attempt to manipulate the Metacritic score prior to launch, we’ve been playing catch-up. We’ve avoided reading any reviews, but we have seen the general reaction, which is understandably mixed.

That lack of agreement is not because Starfield’s failures and accomplishments are particularly nuanced, it’s more how willing you are to put up with its many foibles. What complicates Starfield’s evaluation is its status as Microsoft’s most import first party release in a generation, with many Xbox and Bethesda fans having convinced themselves of its excellence long before they had a chance to play it for themselves.

In trying to look at the game objectively it’s an experience that’s hard to feel passionate about one way or another. Despite its many and obvious failings, it’s not a disaster. Instead, it’s main problem is that, at a conceptual level, it’s not nearly different enough from Skyrim and Fallout to take full advantage of the outer space setting. It’s trying to be two completely different games at once and, predictably, it fails to do either particularly well.

We’ve already previewed Starfield, and started a review in progress, so between that and the game’s general ubiquity at the moment, it feels as if it needs no introduction. And yet the central disappointment of the game is the huge gap between what people thought it was going to be, when all the slickly edited gameplay trailers were doing the rounds, and what it actually is.

Starfield is, for better and worse, Skyrim in space. Or rather Fallout in space, since both games involve guns and have you spending an awful lot of your time litter-picking, to use your collected bric-a-brac for crafting. You can explore space and get into dogfights, but this never feels like more than an aside, as if it was dropped into the game relatively late in its design.

We don’t think it was but the fundamental problem with Starfield is that it doesn’t fully commit to its premise. Rather than space exploration being at the game’s core it’s merely window-dressing for Bethesda’s familiar ground-based action role-playing. Except, instead of a single open world, densely packed with secrets and side quests, everything in Starfield is spread out across a whole virtual galaxy, with many planets having nothing of interest to discover.

Beyond Bethesda’s previous work, the two obvious influences on Starfield are No Man’s Sky and Mass Effect. The former comes from a long tradition of British-made space exploration games, stretching back to the early 80s, almost all of which allowed you to seamlessly fly between space and a planet and yet, incredibly, Starfield does not. Here, space is one open world and each planet surface is another, with the only connection between them being cut scenes and loading screens.

That’s such an off-puttingly restrictive way of doing things it’s baffling that the game ever got past the design stage with that decision intact. Not only does it mean there’s no planetside flight, but there’s almost nothing to do in your ship beyond space combat. And while getting into a dogfight is fun at first it never evolves beyond its first principles and quickly becomes a sideshow.

Rather than feeling like an explorer or dangerous space pirate, questing amongst the stars, all travel is handled on a dull little map screen, your destination chosen automatically by just selecting a mission from a list.

That’s not the only thing that runs on autopilot, as your ship computer seems to have read the game script ahead of time, as it always knows exactly where to send you before you or it could ever possibly know. Waypoint markers appear the instant a subject is brought up, and often beforehand, with no need to think or look for anything yourself.

That sort of approach works well enough for Rockstar Games but the problem with Starfield’s missions is how unforgivably dull they are. This is partly a mechanical problem, given that the movement system and combat is mediocre and the artificial intelligence weak (laughably so for your allies, who vacillate between hyperactive and utterly disinterested).

Although the story missions are incredibly repetitive (we’ll get to the story later) the side quests are impressively varied and unpredictable. For example, there’s one set on a luxury liner in space where you’re trying to get the login details of a bank executive, either because you’re an actual pirate or you’re just pretending to be one as a mole for the military.

It’s all set up like a cross between Ocean’s Eleven and an Agatha Christie novel, with high society guests to charm, love affairs to discover, corporate corruption to expose, and a starship captain that secretly wants to be a space pirate. The setting is completely unique and a huge amount of effort has gone into everything. The only problem is it’s completely boring and barely interactive.

The writing and characterisation throughout Starfield is flat as a pancake, with dialogue that’s usually competently written but persistently banal. Nothing anyone says or does is in any way interesting and the only small bit of colour is the amusingly bad accents that Bethesda has the voice actors perform.

In what should be a sandbox style space heist, where you chose whether to rely on stealth, violence, or charm, you just go where the waypoint markers tell you and pick through the dialogue options, desperately looking for something interesting. You never find it though, as even the options to sweet talk someone just start a silly mini-game where you pick potentially persuasive phrases and hope the RNG decides they work.

At the same time, you’re forced to suffer the fact that Bethesda remains well behind the curve in terms of facial animation and still insists on having only one person on screen at once when they’re talking to you. The way they stare straight into the game camera only highlights how unnatural and outdated everything in the game feels and how little has changed since Bethesda’s Xbox 360 days.

The other mission example that stood out to us also has an interesting set-up and starts with an apparently routine visit to a research facility, where you suddenly start flipping to an alternative universe version that’s been infested by facehugger-like scorpions. You soon learn how to flip back and forth via the old light/dark world mechanic from Zelda: A Link To The Past, which seems like it’s finally going to offer a bit of variety and fun.

Except in Starfield everything is much more linear and there are no real puzzles, so you’re never really working things out, just moving between the only points available. Not only is this vastly less interesting than a 32-year game running on prehistoric hardware but it goes on and on forever, so that your initial excitement at this unexpected novelty slowly seeps away until you can’t wait to see the back of it.

This is a consistent problem with Starfield, where so much seems like a good idea in theory but in practice proves underdeveloped and unexciting. Starfield is so undercooked it’s probably a danger to pregnant women.

We need to emphasise, though, that nothing about it is terrible. Although the steals from Mass Effect and No Man’s Sky are very obvious there’s something about it which is also reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed, in that the game has a huge amount of things to do but never anything of substance. The normal difficulty mode offers very little challenge and yet almost every action is rewarded by a shower of loot – in an attempt to hide the fact that you’re just going through the same actions again and again in a slightly different context.

The game’s less generous with the experience points but the skill tree is one of its best features. At the top level it doesn’t function much differently than Fallout but while you can unlock the first level of each ability with a skill point, the others aren’t available until you’ve completed an achievement-liked task related to the skill, like winning X number of persuasion attempts or using a jetpack in combat. It’s a shame you can’t re-spec though, considering how long it takes to level up.

As sci-fi and astronomy fans we managed to enjoy the way the alien worlds are portrayed, even if a lot of the alien creatures are just minor variations of each other. There are some nice landscapes, as well as some cool sci-fi interiors, but otherwise the tech for the game is very unimpressive, especially the constant loading pauses. Every sizeable building requires a two second loading wait to enter and there are often more inside as well, with even caves needing them.

This combined with the abuse of fast travel, where the game encourages you to use it at every opportunity, means you end up staring at a blank screen, and the little circular loading indicator, for seemingly half the game. Bethesda were a rich company even before they got bought by Microsoft, they should be able to do better than this, but all sense of immersion or continuity is shattered by how low-tech the game is, as it just becomes a disjointed sequence of unconnected events, with no sense of place.

Nevertheless, we’re sure lots of people will get into the ship construction and the outpost building – which works very similarly to Fallout 4. The problem with these, though, is that not only are they completely unnecessary to complete the game on normal, but the game rarely ever brings them up. If we didn’t know the options were there already it’s possible we could’ve missed them entirely. And even then the game is terrible at explaining how they work.

Many of these issues are common to previous Bethesda titles, but they become increasingly hard to bear the more time goes on and Bethesda does too little to address them. This includes their long-running bug problem and while there are no serious performance issues the game still has far too many glitches for something this expensive. Most are minor graphical or AI faults, but we also had several crash bugs and freezes that had to be reloaded.

Everything in Starfield seems like a good idea in principal and yet nothing works nearly as well as you’d hope. This includes the plot which, again, is so underdeveloped we were genuinely shocked when it ended, in the most anticlimactic way possible, as we would’ve sworn we were only halfway through. You can spend hundreds of hours exploring every corner of Starfield, but the story missions can probably be rushed through in a dozen hours or less.

It’s just a fundamentally uninteresting fictional universe, with no new ideas of its own and too many obvious steals from famous sci-fi games and movies. It doesn’t help that the story missions are the most repetitive and uninspired aspect of the whole game. With only a few exceptions they simply have you going to a new planet and acquiring a mysterious, seemingly alien, artefact from a cave.

With each new artefact you get a new superpower (the game’s equivalent to Skyrim Shouts) but that also involves doing the same repetitive task every time, just on a different planet. That wouldn’t matter so much if the story had any kind of depth but there’s almost nothing to it and while Bethesda is clearly trying to evoke the philosophical musings of 2001 the only real similarity is that they hired one of the same actors.

Despite all the many problems, we wouldn’t discourage anyone from giving Starfield a go on Game Pass, where you don’t have to pay any additional fee for it. There’s absolutely no depth to the game, and zero invention, but even with the bugs there’s nothing ruinous in terms of either the game design or mechanics (although the lack of a ground map does beggar belief).

Starfield isn’t a broken game, it’s just a dull one. Exploring the unknown depths of space is one of the most exciting concepts possible for a video game and yet Starfield has managed to make it all seem so unexciting and repetitive. Rather than reaching for the stars this lets a golden opportunity, to make the definitive space adventure, slip through its fingers.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed) and PC
Price: £69.99*
Publisher: Bethesda
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Release Date: 6th September 2023
Age Rating: 18

*Permanently available on Game Pass

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MORE : Starfield bugs include missing faces, missing torsos and invasive aliens

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A Starfield player has shared a guide for reaching level 100 as fast as possible – but it does require an awful lot of busy work.

It’s not even been two weeks since people started playing Starfield (read our full review here) and somebody has already discovered an exploit to quickly acquire a lot of experience.

It’s only quick in comparison to the rest of the game (some may even find it incredibly boring) as it requires lots of prep work and a good understanding of the game’s mechanics.

However, YouTuber Maka91Productions claims that by following their instructions, you can get all the way to level 100 in about five hours.

Before you start, you need to have unlocked the Outpost Engineering skill and have researched power generation and resource extractors at a research laboratory.

You’re also going to need a spaceship with around 1,500 to 3,000 cargo space and enough money to buy a surplus of resources; all of which are handily listed in the tutorial’s video description.

Following the guide, you’ll want to visit Andraphon (one of the moons for the planet Sumati) and build an outpost at a specific spot to extract iron and aluminum.

The end goal is to accrue enough iron and aluminium to craft a lot of adaptive frames since doing so earns you a base 99 experience points for every 99 you make. You’ll need to sleep to expedite the process, but it also nets you bonus experience as a result.

You’ll later need to repeat the same process on the planet Venus, only instead you’ll farm nickel and cobalt to craft isocentered magnets.

If you do this correctly, you should be earning 5,000 experience points per minute.

That’s just a very quick summation; if you want to make use of this method, we recommend watching the full video.

It does sound very tedious but if you want to break the level 100 threshold ASAP, it might be worth putting aside a weekend to pull the trick off.

Starfield is available for Xbox Series X/S and PC.

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Published by the makers of Detroit: Become Human, but thankfully not written by them, this is one of the best story-based games of the year.

There are innumerable books, films, and video games set deep under the sea, and it’s fair to say that life beneath the waves has a distinctly different flavour depending on which property is depicting it. That means Ariel’s purview in The Little Mermaid makes for quite a contrast to, say, Jason Statham’s character Jonas in The Meg 2 or Michael Biehn’s ruthless Navy SEAL from The Abyss.

Games are, if anything, even more varied in their approach to subaquatic living. Where ABZÛ is an easy-going, Journey-like adventure, Bioshock is the polar opposite. While Subnautica and its sequel have you exploring, but also building and maintaining intricate underwater structures. Although it shares their deep sea setting, Under The Waves isn’t quite like any of these games.

Set in a retro-futuristic reimagining of the 1970s, where there are Internet-connected amber-screen computers and undersea drones, you’re Stan Moray, a diver with a deep-seated emotional trauma from his recent past. Heading to the seabed for his solo work posting, he’s there to earn his keep but also to enjoy the space and solitude.

On the seabed you’re completely alone. The only voice you regularly hear, other than Stan’s self-narration, is that of Tim, your surface-based controller who gets in touch with work-related reminders. That sense of isolation, with human companionship over the radio, has more in common with Firewatch than it does other underwater games. It also shares that game’s somewhat melancholy emotional resonance, although quite a lot more happens in Under The Waves.

Stan works for UniTrench, a fictitious North Sea fossil fuel drilling company with an all too realistic lack of environmental concern. While you’re busy fixing oil leaks and picking up plastic bottles and other flotsam from the ocean floor, your employer is polluting on a monumental scale. With frequent nods to real world eco-NGO, the Surfrider Foundation, Under the Waves includes copious information about its aims and work.

A bit like building a game around the strict rules of a licensed IP, crafting a story around a message, no matter how noble the cause, can lead to problems. Under the Waves’ environmental campaigning is a bit heavy-handed, although its focus on seaborne pollution doesn’t entirely subvert its themes, which are as much about processing sorrow as cleaning up oil spills.

And it doesn’t take long to show you why Stan’s grieving. Its other plot devices, which appear to be pointing towards some sort of dalliance with the supernatural, never go anywhere. Maybe that’s just as well given how many other games use survival horror elements to create tension, which Under the Waves delivers through claustrophobic underwater spaces and a gradually dwindling oxygen supply.

Taking to the seas in a mini-sub, which you frequently disembark to collect floating rubbish for crafting; to interact with Jo, your pet seal; or to pick your way around confined interiors, exploring the ocean depths is just as relaxing as Stan hoped. Everything moves slowly and deliberately underwater and your sub comes with infinite oxygen, even if it does need occasional repairs and refuelling.

Piloting your sub works well in open water, but swimming and walking around more cramped interiors highlights the mild clunkiness of its controls. Exploring feels good though, a quick sonar ping showing you the contours of the seabed, along with local resources and points of interest. It makes tasks that involve finding and fixing things a great deal less frustrating than they otherwise would be, although you will still sometimes find individual crafting materials hard to locate.

Those materials – mostly rubbish you collect but also algae and other naturally occurring flora – can be made into useful items, decorations for your living quarters, and upgrades for your equipment. You rarely come close to running out of anything, making the crafting system overgenerous rather than entirely superfluous. You’ll also find stickers you can use to decorate your wetsuit; an outfit that Stan not only wears for work, but also sleeps in.

The gentle pace of jobs for UniTrench, and Stan’s lowkey, halting verbal interactions with his controller, and more intermittent conversations with his wife, make for a pleasing if slightly downbeat experience. Under the Waves is probably at its strongest when you’re simply pottering about the seafloor fixing broken equipment, using your waterproof Polaroid camera to take snaps of sea life, and tidying up plastic waste.

Things are less rosy when your tasks take you to more confined spaces, where it’s clear the developer’s main concern isn’t the action so much as the emotions continually boiling away just under the surface. Stan’s clearly not in a good way mentally, even if he’s not at all keen to discuss that with Tim or to think things through for himself. Instead, he’s come to the ocean floor to forget for a while.

From its Ridley Scott-inspired slow rotating fans, and scuffed up, industrial-looking interiors, to playful interactions with Jo the seal, Under the Waves uses the solitude of its setting to explore the way humans deal with personal tragedy. It creates an excellent ambience and sense of place, even if its gameplay can sometimes get bogged down by its mechanical shortcomings.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £24.99
Publisher: Quantic Dream
Developer: Parallel Studio
Release Date: 28th August 2023
Age Rating: 16

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The September Nintendo Direct has been shared by a reliable insider alongside more info about the company’s next console.

A number of reliable sources have already claimed that the Nintendo Switch 2 had a secret showing at Gamescom in August, and now a third has added their corroboration and some additional details.

Eurogamer and VGC both claim to have heard of the Switch 2 running Zelda: Breath Of The Wild at a higher frame rate and resolution, which alone sounds very intriguing.

Now, a previously reliable Nintendo insider, Nate The Hate, has parroted these claims while adding a few other details he’s heard, including how Nintendo has managed to reduce load times almost to zero.

Nate The Hate says that the new hardware had Breath Of The Wild running at 60 frames per second at a 4K resolution. However, he says that the real focus of the tech demo was to ‘illustrate improved load times.’

The example he uses is the load times for booting up the game from the main menu. Whereas loading a save file could take somewhere around 30 seconds on the original Switch, Nate The Hate claims it was practically instantaneous on Switch 2: ‘Load times had been erased.’

He goes on to corroborate that The Matrix Awakens tech demo was running on the hardware too, adding that it featured ‘very advanced ray-tracing’ identical to what the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S are capable of.

That doesn’t mean the hardware itself, which is only a prototype, is literally as powerful as the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 though and instead Nate The Hate suggests that the Switch 2 is somewhere below the Xbox Series S in terms of raw power.

‘It’s going to have more modern technology and that’s where it can put up a fighting chance to compete with those more powerful systems, when it comes to resolutions and maybe even frame [rate] performance in some cases,’ he claims.

New tech such as DLSS (deep learning super sampling) allows lower powered devices to simulate 4K resolution in a way that is almost indistinguishable from native 4K, at far less cost to the performance.

Nate The Hate’s sources suggest that the console supports DLSS 3.5, but that the tech demoes didn’t use more advanced features like frame generation.

He still can’t say whether the Switch 2 will have backwards compatibility or when there’ll be a formal reveal/launch. A March 2024 date was thrown around a lot, but he doesn’t know whether that’s the reveal date, the launch date, or something else.

What he could say, though, is that the next Nintendo Direct will air in ‘about three days’, which is a bit vague but seems to mean Thursday, September 14. Most Nintendo Directs are on a Thursday.

The Switch 2 is not expected to be announced during the Direct but another reliable leaker, Pyoro, has recently been teasing announcements that will be made. The last time they did this in June, a Direct happened that same week.

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At least six games have already leaked for this month’s PS Plus Extra catalogue, with the full line-up coming this week.

It’s been less than a week since Sony bumped up prices on PlayStation Plus. Not across the board, but 12-month subscriptions across all three tiers are notably more expensive than they were before.

The initial announcement came alongside the September line-up of free downloadable games but considering the headliner was last year’s Saints Row reboot, it didn’t exactly offset the price hike.

Sony hasn’t detailed which games will be added to the PS Plus Extra catalogue this month, though, and like clockwork, a good chunk of them have managed to leak online prior to a formal announcement.

The source is, of course, billbil-kun from Dealabs, who has consistently and accurately leaked new PS Plus additions for years now. So, you can safely assume the listed games will indeed be made free for PS Plus Extra and Premium subscribers.

While billbil-kun names six games in total, they say that there are more that they don’t know about yet. However, they stress that these are the headliners so don’t go expecting anything more prestigious to be revealed by Sony.

Based on the first two games, it looks as if September will be a good month for role-playing game fans as the catalogue is getting remaster NieR Replicant and Star Ocean: The Divine Force… though we can only recommend the former.

After that is a pair of strategy games: VanillaWare’s intriguing 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and Firaxis Games’ strategy classic Civilization 6. Both are very good and nicely different too, so you’re getting a good diversity of genres.

The final two are tactical shooter Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 (easily the weakest link of the bunch) and much loved indie puzzle game Unpacking.

Although billbil-kun doesn’t mention any retro games for the Premium tier, considering Sony’s track record on that front, it’ll probably be another underwhelming batch… if any are included at all.

They also add that a proper announcement from Sony will arrive this Wednesday on September 13.

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After managing to stream for nearly a week without sleep, GiftedPrime stresses that no one else should try and copy him.

Streaming megastars like Amouranth might be able to make money from people just watching them sleep but the same is also true of streamers who do the opposite, by trying to stay awake for as long as possible.

That’s precisely what Kick streamer GiftedPrime (real name Anthony Valentin) did recently, aiming to break the world record for the longest stream with zero sleep breaks.

Said record was set two years ago and came in at 162 hours. GiftedPrime, however, managed to last roughly 164 hours, falling just shy of a full seven days.

This is something he’s been trying to do for a while now, having attempted it for the past two years. So, he’s naturally thrilled to have finally pulled it off.

The previous record holder, ThisFudginGuy, has already congratulated GiftedPrime for his achievement, and plans to try and take the record back.

It’s worth noting that ThisFudgingGuy’s record was never officially recognised by the Guinness World Records, with ThisFudgingGuy claiming it’s because ‘they wanted me to pay for someone to review the 162 hours of footage which I wasn’t doing out of pocket.’

It’s unclear if GiftedPrime plans to have his record formally recognised, since he says he only ‘did this for me and no one else, I like challenging myself and I felt I could do it.’

While several have shared congratulatory messages, many others are genuinely concerned given the health risks involved. Staying awake for that long is extremely dangerous, with side effects include hallucinations and an increased likelihood of developing type-2 diabetes.

In fact, it’s because of these risks that Guinness apparently won’t recognise the record, according to GiftedPrime.

He adds, ‘I without a doubt hold the record for longest livestream without sleep, you don’t have to see it that way but nonetheless it is the truth.’

GiftedPrime acknowledges the risks involved, though, calling his self-imposed challenge ‘unhealthy and dangerous’ and recommending nobody else try and attempt it.

In addition, he says that he already suffers from severe insomnia, which he claims is why he didn’t need to take any prescription drugs to keep himself awake.

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A report on the Assassin’s Creed samurai game explores its two playable characters and how it’ll borrow stealth elements from Splinter Cell.

Fans have less than a month to wait until the next mainline Assassin’s Creed game, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, launches on October 5.

While it’s advertised as a return to the series’ roots, sharing DNA with the very first entry, Ubisoft still plans to stick with the more modern open world role-playing formula for future games.

The next one in that line-up is Assassin’s Creed Red (aka the one set in Feudal Japan) and while Ubisoft itself has shared nothing since the initial teaser, a lot of info has been leaked, including details about its two playable characters and a claim that the game features destructible environments.

This all comes from reliable insider Tom Henderson, who also provides a more specific launch window for the game.

Ubisoft inadvertently gave away that it’s aiming to have Assassin’s Creed Red out in 2024. Henderson says that it’s tentative launch date is around Christmas time.

This is perfectly believable considering every other mainline entry, stretching all the way back to the first game, launched either in October or November.

In an Insider Gaming report, Henderson reiterates what he’s heard about the two playable characters: a male, African samurai and a female shinobi (aka kunoichi).

That description already makes it obvious that they’re distinct characters and not just different versions of the same one, like in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

Henderson now claims that they’ll also play differently and boast their own unique weapons. The samurai is described as the brawler of the duo, making use of heavier attacks.

Henderson has little to share about the kunoichi, but she’ll presumably be more agile, although both will still be capable of approaching enemies stealthily. It’s unclear if both characters are playable throughout the story or if you choose to only control one.

Henderson also describes stealth as being more akin to Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell games, where you can extinguish torches to keep yourself hidden in the dark (much like shooting out lights in Splinter Cell).

Plus, the game will allegedly contain destructible environments, meaning objects like screen doors can be slashed through with a sword. However, Henderson adds it’s not quite comparable to the destructible environments seen in EA’s Battlefield games.

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A newly discovered patent from Nintendo talks of a new type of controller; one that sounds like an attempt to mitigate drifting issues.

There’s still no telling when Nintendo will properly unveil its next console, known by fans as the Nintendo Switch 2, but there are plenty of rumours surrounding it.

In just the last couple of weeks, it’s been claimed to be capable of pushing graphics comparable to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and will include a new camera with AR functionality.

Now, there is some speculation that the new console will feature upgraded Joy-Con controllers, thanks to a newly discovered patent.

Said patent was filed back in May but was only made public on September 7, before being discovered and shared over the weekend.

It obviously doesn’t directly mention the Switch 2, or any such console, but what it does show is Nintendo’s interest in coming up with a new type of joystick controller.

In this instance, it posits a joystick that makes use of a magnetic field, meaning it can read player input without the stick needing to come in physical contact with the surrounding borders.

Hypothetically, this could be Nintendo’s answer to the notorious Joy-Con drift. As a reminder, that’s an issue where the controller reads player input even if you aren’t touching the joystick.

Aside from helping mitigate wear and tear (since the sticks shouldn’t have to rub against anything), it should mean that the sticks will revert to the centre when not being used. So, there’s less worry of it being a bit off and reading inputs that aren’t there.

You can read the patent for yourself here, but there is some debate on Reddit over whether the idea makes use of magnets or just motors embedded in the axis of the joysticks.

One user, Scorcher646, claims it’s the latter, adding that since the idea requires more consumable parts, any such controllers would be more expensive.

‘These joysticks are also going to be more expensive because they’ve got a complicated control circuit and they also have this rather expensive fluid in them,’ they write.

As this is just a patent, there’s no guarantee Nintendo is going to use this for its next console, but it makes sense that it’s looking into more long-term solutions for Joy-Con drift.

After all, the situation’s become so bad that the company now offers to fix drifting controllers for free, even without a warranty.

It’s also the case that joystick drift is common on all modern controllers, including those from Sony and Microsoft – although how easily they can get round the patent, if it does prove cost effective, remains to be seen.

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More Nintendo Direct leaks from a reliable insider have people thinking the new F-Zero’s actually a battle royale.

According to rumours, there’s going to be a new Nintendo Direct this month but while nothing official has been announced the surprisingly detailed leaks keep coming.

The last time Twitter user Pyoro predicted one, a Nintendo Direct happened that very week, and more recently they’ve been teasing announcements for a new F-Zero and Donkey Kong. Over the weekend, they shared a bit more info on both, as well as a claim that the Direct will feature remakes of a DS and a Wii game.

They give no hint as to what these remakes are, only following up by saying that they’re related and the DS one doesn’t involve Donkey Kong.

The replies on Twitter are filled with attempted guesses (some less serious than others), but it’s suspected that the two games in question are the Another Code duology, a pair of point ‘n’ click adventure games.

Aside from fitting the criteria (the first game was for the DS while the sequel was for the Wi), Pyoro liked a tweet predicting the Another Code games, sparking assumptions that it’s correct.

As for the F-Zero game, while Pyoro hasn’t shared any explicit information, it’s speculated that it will be a continuation of the Tetris 99 and Pac-Man 99 battle royale games.

Pyoro makes a point to remind people that Pac-Man 99 is being discontinued next month on October 8, implying that something will take its place. Plus, they liked a couple of tweets guessing F-Zero 99.

F-Zero has always had an unusually large number of racers competing at one, even if it’s never been quite as much as 99. It may be that the new game is inspired by the Death Race mode from F-Zero X on the N64 – which saw you trying to destroy, rather than just outrace, the 29 other competitors.

The Donkey Kong game, meanwhile, rather than the 3D adventure that was rumoured two years ago, is now believed to be a new entry in the Mario Vs. Donkey Kong series.

That’s because Pyoro’s initial tease, which consisted of just a GIF of DK from the Super Mario Bros. Movie, was followed up by another GIF from the same movie, but of DK holding Mario down on the ground, implying both characters will feature.

When asked if it will feature the Minis (little toy versions of characters like Mario and DK), Pyoro said yes, although technically that doesn’t mean it’ll be a 2D puzzle platformer like the previous games.

The only other tease Pyoro shares is a tweet written in Japanese that, according to Google Translate, says ‘It’s finally Princess Peach showtime.’ This presumably refers to the untitled Peach game that Nintendo announced in June.

Pyoro’s solid track record means these rumours should be taken seriously, although it’s unclear whether the Donkey Kong game is the 3D one first rumoured years ago or merely a prelude to it.

All that’s left now is for Nintendo to announce a date for the Direct, so don’t be surprised if that happens in the coming days.

In fact, there may be an additional clue that one is imminent, given that Gotham Knights has just been rated for the Nintendo Switch by the ESRB age rating board – which could be announced as part of the Direct.

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The new Mass Effect is going to back to the format of the original trilogy rather than Andromeda, but there’s still no sign of a release date.

Given there’s still no clue as to when Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will be released, it’s clearly going to be an even longer wait till the new Mass Effect – much like it will be for Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5.

Officially, we know next to nothing about the new game, which is still in pre-production, but a new report claims that it is purposefully moving away from the open world approach of Mass Effect Andromeda and back towards the smaller, more detailed areas of the original three games.

According to Window Central’s Jez Corden it’s an ‘industry rumour’ that developer BioWare is going to ‘ditch open world and go back to classic format.’

The term open world is much more nebulous than many acknowledge. The strict definition is that the whole game takes part on a single map, with no loading pauses or breaks, that you can travel around however you like, whenever you like.

But that would mean that while Metroid from 1986 is open world the classic The Witcher 3 and the recent Starfield are not. From a design perspective, Pokémon has always been open world but only the more recent 3D games have been described that way.

While the original Mass Effect didn’t have much in the way of open plan areas to explore – just tightly designed but open-ended maps – it was non-linear in a way that many modern games still aren’t.

2017’s Andromeda leaned more on the open world fashions of the time, but that aspect was not what fans disliked about, with the weak story and characters being far more of an issue.

Although the new Mass Effect is known to feature returning character Liara T’Soni, almost nothing else has been revealed about the story or setting.

However, given how much Starfield borrows from the game, EA may now view the new sequel as more of a priority. Even if BioWare still have to get Dragon Age out the door first…

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GameCentral takes a look at the month’s best smartphone games, including new portable versions of both War Thunder and Samba De Amigo.

After a long summer it’s finally back to school. Whether or not you’re celebrating probably depends on whether you’re a parent or pupil, but in either case it’s good to know there are plenty of mobile distractions to help shore up your mood. From the peculiar charms of Vampire Survivor-alike Pizza Hero to the unexpectedly wonderful City Gridlock, or the completely free pixel art RTS Tiny Pharaoh: Pixel Strategy, there’s a lot to enjoy on touchscreens this month.

Darkrise – Pixel Action RPG

iOS & Android, Free (Roika)

Playing as a mage, warrior, archer or rogue, this 2D side-scrolling hack ‘n’ slash has you exploring its cute, pixellated landscapes in search of monsters to slay and loot to ratchet up your gear score.

Combat is basic, involving holding down the attack button, running away, then repeating – inserting special moves when you can; a description that could equally well apply to Diablo 4.

It’s a pain having to compare each individual looted weapon or piece of equipment with what’s in your inventory, and the action’s a bit mindless, but the gradual expansion of the map and drip feed of new powers is just as compelling as you’d expect.

Score: 6/10

City Gridlock

iOS & Android, £2.99 (Short Story Games)

City Gridlock is a game of traffic management. Starting with an empty road network, your job is to look at the most frequent routes taken by drivers and use signs and traffic lights to make their journeys as efficient as possible.

To complicate matters you’ll also need to direct cars past shopping areas and bear in mind what lane cars are in. It’s incredible and counter-intuitive how large a difference seemingly minimal changes to signage or traffic light sequences can make.

It’s fascinatingly complex, and even though its music is a bit hectic and its interface a little unrefined, it’s a dream for enthusiasts of cautious trial and error, which can deliver staggering and unexpected breakthroughs.

Score: 8/10

Samba De Amigo: Party-to-Go

iOS, included with Apple Arcade subscription (Sega)

Based on the much-loved arcade and Dreamcast classic, this looks and sounds just like Samba De Amigo, but rather than clutching a pair of comedy plastic maracas, you’ll be tapping circles on a screen.

As well as virtually shaking your maracas, you’ll need to slide your thumbs across the screen, and press and hold to strike poses as each song demands, it’s insane generosity with ‘perfect’ ratings making that accolade very easy to come by.

The iPad’s screen size makes the interface a bit awkward, but it works well on iPhone, even if it doesn’t come close to recapturing the joyous silliness of the 1990s original.

Score: 6/10

Pizza Hero

iOS, Free (Astrohound Studios)

The easiest way to describe Pizza Hero is that it’s essentially Vampire Survivor but instead of being a vampire hunter, you’re a slice of pizza with a friendly Labrador assistant that occasionally gathers collectibles on your behalf.

Like its inspiration, your job is to avoid waves of incoming enemies, your slice of pizza auto-aiming at nearby groups and stragglers, while you artfully duck back through the crowd to collect the goodies they posthumously drop.

Monetisation is a touch more forceful than you’ll be used to from Vampire Survivor, but it’s still a well-balanced and involving game.

Score: 7/10

War Thunder Mobile

iOS & Android, Free (Gaijin Distribution)

War Thunder, the free-to-play console and PC war game, has enjoyed a decade of success, making it all but inevitable that its publisher would bring its clanking, military delights to mobile.

You can play either tank driver or ship’s captain in games of relatively quickfire 5 vs 5 rounds. We say relatively because driving a tank or sailing a hulking destroyer is a ponderous task, that involves plenty of forward planning in terms of where you expect the enemy to be heading.

It’s fun in an oddly slow-mo way, but the constant entreaties to spend money and the fact that after a few hours you end up as cannon fodder for players that have, means you quickly end up being priced out of the fun.

Score: 6/10

Tiny Pharaoh: Pixel Strategy

iOS & Android, Free + no microtransactions (Richard Andrysek)

Tiny Pharaoh casts you as a master builder in Ancient Egypt, commanding your people to raise structures, fish, farm, and praise the gods at religious shrines and pyramids.

There’s no military component, letting you concentrate fully on real-time resource gathering, which has unexpected depth thanks to building interdependencies and interactions with various geographical features. Think The Settlers but in the desert.

There are online leaderboards for each level and natural disasters to recover from, and it’s absolutely free with no in-app purchases or advertising to spoil your fun. It’s worth remembering that sleeper hit Polytopia arrived with a similar lack of fanfare.

Score: 8/10

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MORE : Best new mobile games on iOS and Android – August 2023 round-up

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MORE : Best new mobile games on iOS and Android – June 2023 round-up

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The Monday letters page prepares for an influx of belated Starfield reviews, as another reader reveals their destructive, anti-gaming pet.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Above average bugs
So, I’m playing Starfield at the moment and… I wouldn’t want to review it, I tell you. I think the Reader’s Feature saying it is mediocre is probably the closest to my feelings. I think some people take mediocre to be some great insult, but it just means average, which is really no crime. I’d even say Starfield was a little above average, if only because it’s something a bit different, but from what I’ve seen so far it doesn’t do any one thing especially well.

The other reader was right too, in saying that it’s boring. Maybe not the most boring of the decade, or whatever, but it’s pretty repetitive and a lot of the missions drag on for far too long.

Bethesda can play all that off as being intended, and that’s their prerogative, but the one complaint that cannot be hand-waved way is the bugs. Okay, it might not be Fallout 76 or Cyberpunk 2077, but this is a buggy game, that has well above average the usual number of glitches.

I’ve had it crash on me multiple times (on Xbox), the enemy AI frequently just sits down and has a picnic, the companion AI is either stuck in panic attack mode or completely disinterested in what’s going on. Objects will float in the air, the physics engine often throws a wobbly, and dialogue sometimes doesn’t appear when it should.

I cannot help but think of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, which is a vastly more complex game on a vastly less powerful console and I didn’t see a single bug in that game in the 200 hours I was playing it. That wasn’t Nintendo magic, that was because they put aside a whole year for spit and polish. Bethesda need to switch off the hype machine put in more work on these problems.
Grant

Power matters not
My first game was operation Market Garden on the 48K Spectrum in 1985. Since then, I have brought probably close to a thousand games including the Fallout series and Skyrim.

My Machine is an 11th generation Intel Core i7-11700 @ 3.60GHZ, NVidia GeForce RTX 3070, and 32GB DD4 RAM installed on a Samsung SSD using a BenQ EW3270|U monitor.

Starfied freezes and stutters, the audio is not synched, and when I have sold items, my credits reduce rather than increase. I am sorry but this game should never have been released in this condition and Bethseda should be ashamed of themselves.
Kevin

Drunk reviewing
Well, Starfield is here and loads of people on my friends list are playing it. I myself have had about two hours so far and it’s been impressive. There’s so much (it seems) that you can do. I’m hoping to get many hours of gameplay out of it.

I read your early impressions. I’ll be interested to read your full review when it’s released. I’m optimistic the end of the game will be outstanding, and you’ll give it a 9. And no, I’ve not been drinking.
Manic miner 100 (gamertag)

GC: That was going to be our first guess.

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Out of stock
With the recent comments about physical vs. digital, I’d like to say I still prefer discs myself. Main reason being the option of trading or selling them on.

I am, however, finding it more difficult getting them from the shops.

My latest experience was last week, with the release of Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot: The London Case. My usual places to buy from are Asda, Smyths, or GAME. Now I know that this game is a bit more obscure compared to the big releases but I did still expect to find it no problem at GAME. After all, they are supposed to be the video game specialists.

So on release day I went up the three floors of my local Sports Direct. Couldn’t find the game and was told by a member staff to try again in a few days. So I did but they still hadn’t got it and advised me to buy it online instead. I did this in the end but from Argos, as GAME charge P&P.

I do think sadly this is the way it is going and eventually the only titles in the shops will be the AAA games.
Tony- -1975 (PSN ID)

Cat Sith
I feel r-s-w’s pain. I was happily immersed in the Star Wars universe, playing Star Wars Squadrons, a couple of years ago when my headset suddenly switched off. On removing said headset, I was greeted by the sight of my cat chewing the cable. ‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ doesn’t even come close.

I ended up buying a second-hand headset and wrapping the cable in protective trunking, which I then wrapped in masking tape just to make sure.

It’s a good job she’s cute.
Coinslot-

Unsaid assumption
For the Hot Topic, can’t believe (and kicking myself for not writing in, which is likely a good prod) that the Lego games weren’t mentioned.

They are classic co-op games. One player uses this power on that, the other goes over and moves the thing, etc.

In my opinion, the best console to play them on was the Wii U. Being able to play one player on the TV and one on the pad was amazing and set it apart from the other formats’ split-screen gameplay.

Performance wasn’t as good as other formats (probably a feat to get the later ones working) but the two-screen mechanic made it play so much better.
Si

GC: As we always say, if everyone assumes everyone else will write in about something then nobody ends up doing it. Although we suspect the oblique reference to a co-op Star Wars game was probably Lego.

Sliding scale
I had been enjoying Gravity Rush 2 for a couple of weeks, for the most part, taking a break from it now that I’m going through the World Tour in Street Fighter 6. The side quests are, barring only a few exceptions, pretty dull, but what has so far prevented me beating it – despite the fact that I’ve nearly done so – is a bugbear I have with platform games of this type.

It is a platformer, right? I mean if NiGHTS Into Dreams is, then so is this, yeah?

Anyway, what really sucks the joy out of this game for me – and is a problem for the Psychonauts games and even Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time – way too much emphasis on combat. And not just bosses, but skirmishes against the rank-and-file, the cannon fodder, the minions, henchmen, grunts. Yes, even Sands Of Time. The combat system was good (what else lets you block whilst you’re down on the floor?) but far too much of it. By the time you get to running a gauntlet of them in the elevator sequence I was just so sick of fighting. It wasn’t the main appeal of the game.

Same for Psychonauts. And unlike Sands Of Time, Psychonauts had very good bosses. Not that there should be no enemies in platform games, or the only combat should be against bosses – but regular enemies should just be part of the furniture – downed in one or two hits maximum. Like Mario and Sonic, typically.

Now, I’ve gone on record of hating Sonic Frontiers. The combat mechanics are very good, actually. The enemy aesthetics are pretty boring, but the thing is… why is it here? Why does a Sonic game have lengthy combat encounters that stop the flow of the game? Why is that a good idea?

I’m reminded of a line from Transformers: The Movie, where Hot Rod and Kup are trying to get back into Autobot City before it closes up. The Insecticons are trying to literally eat their way through the city walls.

‘The Insecticons are in our way!’ says Kup.

‘Wrong!’ Hot Rod replies. ‘They’re our way in!’

The point being, in a platform game the pleasure should mainly be in navigating the world the developers have made for you. Small time enemies should be primarily there to help you create a better momentum for when you become more experienced with the game. Well, I think so anyway.
DMR

GC: That’s a very dogmatic view of platformers. The sub-genre of action platformer existed even before the likes of Castlevania.

Mean streets of Cydonia
I haven’t played Starfield yet but one thing I can comment on, is that it was a good idea of the developers, leaving the planets as empty as stated recently. With its intended purpose of being vast yet balanced. Like Mars and other planets in our solar system.

And of course, they can make planets in the future as well, with more detail, and make changes based on criticism. But only on criticism in which the developers can make a change. And don’t take any offense, think like a creator before posting comments.
Jonas

GC: Mars is heavily industrialised in the game; it and its moons are used as shipyards.

Post-game review
With a bunch of mixed reviews for Starfield, and debates regarding the reviews, which Bethesda did not seem to help by delaying reviews of some gaming critics known for being very precise and hard with their subject matter, it’s no wonder that normal gaming folk could be confused about the whole situation.

The irony of it all is that the game is pretty much what you’d want a game of this calibre to be like. Obviously, I am talking to folks who know what the game’s basic premise is and how this type of game plays out.

Starfield is relatively bug free and a joy to play. Not quite sure what these spoilers are all about by completing the game for New Game+ mode and starting the game again, that just seems kinda like a weird thing for a game like this to do. I like doing the main quest and being distracted by doing the many side quests. There are more smaller missions than I had expected and these are very good for the most part, and just so darn fun and intriguing.

I’ll be reading the reviews from delayed websites soon, as I’ve been so caught up with the game and a review is not going to sell me a game that I’ve already gotten! So if a 7 out of 10 is going to be the score on average, then I do get games quite regularly throughout the years with these scores and quite frankly Todd Howard seems to have been good to his word.
Alucard

GC: New Game+ has some neat twists but it doesn’t change anything that radically.

Inbox also-rans
RE: PlayStation VR2. Yes, it is only six months old but the terrible act that occurred was not covered under the warranty conditions, hence an out of warranty fix was the only option left. By the way, is it worth running a Hot Topic on pets vs. gaming?
r-s-w

GC: We would’ve said we didn’t think there’d be enough, but we’ve already had another one today.

I don’t play video games on the big TV anymore. But I have been thinking about purchasing the portable PlayStation Portal to play Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m not sure if you can know this before the device is released but do you think the screen size will be too small to play the game properly?
R

GC: That’s an interesting question, because, as we noted in our review, the UI is a lot less cluttered on console compared to PC. We couldn’t say for sure though – Sony hasn’t showed the device off in anything more than a few seconds of video footage.

This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Onibee, who asks what new games would you like to see released for the Switch 2 in its first 12 months?

Rumours about Nintendo’s next console are gathering pace, with reliable sources claiming it will be roughly as powerful as a PlayStation 4 – or perhaps even more so. There has been some vague talk of new games, such as a new 3D Mario, but nothing substantial, so what would you like to see most in terms of first and third party games?

Try and keep things realistic – Nintendo isn’t going to release all its heavy hitters at the same time – but feel free to imagine your dream launch line-up, as long as it’s also reasonably believable.

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

MORE : Weekend Hot Topic: The best co-op video games

MORE : Games Inbox: Starfield review fairness, Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom DLC, and Baldur’s Gate 3 appreciation

MORE : Games Inbox: Starfield launch day excitement, Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5, and Sea Of Stars love

Follow Metro Gaming on Twitter and email us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

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