When I asked Tango Gameworks creative director John Johanas whom he'd give Hi-Fi Rush's Best Audio trophy away to at this year's GDC Awards, he said he'd split it between the game's audio team and "the person who taught me everything I know" - Shinji Mikami, Tango's founder and one of the erstwhile Capcom and Platinum big brains behind Resident Evil, Vanquish and much more besides. I confess, I found this response annoying - partly because I was hoping Johanas would bring up some obscure indie composer I could then namecheck at parties, and partly, because I have spent years waiting for Tango to escape Mikami's shadow after essentially announcing themselves as a Mikami fan project back in 2010.
]]>Microsoft are shutting down multiple game studios including Redfall developers Arkane Austin and the creators of Hi-Fi Rush, Tango Gameworks. The news was delivered via an email to staff from Xbox boss Matt Booty which has since been seen by IGN. Booty calls the decision a "consolidation of our Bethesda studio teams, so that we can invest more deeply in our portfolio of games and new IP."
]]>UPDATE: Bethesda have now confirmed the news in a statement posted on Twitter, saying, "We thank him for his work as a creative mentor to young developers." They continued to say, "We wish Mikami-san well in the future and are excited by what lies ahead fpr the talented developers of Tango."
Original story: Tango GameWork’s co-founder and studio head Shinji Mikami is reportedly leaving the Evil Within company “in the coming months.” This comes courtesy of TrueAchievements who saw and verified a company-wide email sent to employees by Bethesda’s VP of development Todd Vaughn. "I am writing today to let you know that studio head Shinji Mikami has decided to leave Tango Gameworks in the coming months," Vaughn said. "Mikami-san has been a creative leader and supportive mentor to young developers at Tango for 12 years through his work.”
]]>You can grab free games from every corner of the internet these days. Well, that's if you consider 'at no extra cost' free. One such place is Amazon Prime, where members can claim and keep six free games from now until the end of the month, with 2017 horror The Evil Within 2 leading the pack. The other freebies are Elsewhere, Breathedge, Beat Cop, Faraway 2, Lawn Mowing Simulator, and Chicken Police - Paint it RED!
]]>There's a bit in The Evil Within 2 where you walk into a large residential area with lots of houses, garages and shops to explore. Up until this point the game (and the series) has been entirely linear, so having the ability to roam is immediately daunting. You pick a building, head inside and hope for the best. What you'll find ranges from fairly normal zombie-killing fare to genuinely horrible miniature horror stories involving force-feeding mothers and shouty poltergeists.
]]>This is of less note to us PC types, but still worth a mention. A surprise patch for The Evil Within 2 adds an official first-person mode to the enjoyable, semi-open-world survival horror. If you want to appreciate the detailed environments without also appreciating the back of Sebastian Castellanos' head, you're in luck, as you can now play through the entire game in such a fashion.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>If the prospect of spending time with your family this holiday season isn't horrifying enough you can always download The Evil Within 2's free trial, which is available now on Steam. In her The Evil Within 2 review, Olivia White called the game "a definitive, well-produced classic survival horror experience" so it's worth a go if you fancy a spooking.
]]>I liked the original The Evil Within, but I can't deny that it was flawed, so I was very pleasantly surprised when the sequel was well received among horror fans. Our own Spookologist Olivia White called it an "extremely fitting follow-up", and it seems that the PC version of the game might have one gruesome last trick up its sleeve.
While monkeying around with the developer console (easily unlocked, thanks to the game's Idtech-variant engine), various eagle-eyed players have noticed a command to lock the game into a near-permanent first person perspective, and it works better than you'd think. Just to add some icing to an already deliciously scary cake (it has little chocolate spiders on, I'm sure), this isn't flagged as cheating, so achievements are still tracked in full.
]]>Who's your worst nemesis? This week the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, is talking about our most reviled enemies, against whom we hold deep, lasting grudges. Matt harbours a lasting bitterness for Silencer, the magic-cancelling war jerk of Dota 2. Adam is fuelled by a dark hatred for the final boss of Ancient Domains of Mystery, a giant '@' symbol called Andor Drakon. And I still maintain a grievance against an entire electricity company in Final Fantasy VII. They killed my friends.
And speaking of nemeses, we've had plenty of time to play Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the icon-hoovering game of anti-establishment orcs, which has us divided. The Evil Within 2 also gets some attention, as Adam runs from spectres and fails to stealth-kill hideous monsters, and I am publicly shamed in Tekken 7 by a robot who takes off her head and throws it at me.
]]>You probably know what to expect when you load up a game called The Evil Within [official site]. There will be a bunch of logos before you get to the menu and at least one of them will involve barbed wire, splattered blood and sinister fonts. The logo for the first game turned some of the letters of the title into a nail that was variously plunging toward an eyeball or piercing a brain. Of course it did. That's what horror games do.
When the horror games in question are made by Tango Gameworks, though, there's something else in between all that noisy violence. A cheeky cartoon snail...doing a poo?
]]>Wotcha gang. Your old chum Alice here for this week's charts, as everyone else has been fired. Out of a cannon. Blown into a jillion little pieces. Hence the Apocalyptic yellow tone to the skies today. Hold your breath when outside, and hold your breath while we count down last week's top ten of the top-selling games on Steam.
]]>The Evil Within 2 begins by wearing its heart on its sleeve; here’s a burning house, and oh no, the protagonist’s daughter is inside it. From the outset, it yells in your face that this is going to be a Tragic Dad story, the most beloved of videogame narrative tropes. And it never really rises above this familiar narrative conceit as Sebastian Castellanos explores a horror world filled with bad science and twisted terrors in pursuit of his kidnapped daughter. It’s predictable. In other hands, it could’ve been trite. But The Evil Within 2 revels in its horror b-movieness. It embraces it, telling a surprisingly heartfelt and sincere tale of a man who just wants the best for his loved ones. Even if he has to descend into actual hell and face off against some of the most hideous monsters ever conceived in order to achieve this.
]]>Today, Friday the 13th of October, is the second-spookiest day of the year and therefore a fine time to start a horrorshow. The Evil Within 2 [official site] launched over night, continuing the ch-ch-ch-chills from Tango Gameworks. We have a review burbling through our pipes at the moment, burping slime up the sink and making blood run down the walls of the RPS treehouse, but it's not ready quite yet. For now, here's word that the game is out and the launch trailer. And heck, you can still watch an hour of Alec playing from last month.
]]>Let me qualify that title statement, for fear it merely conjures images of a game in which you're supposed to be endlessly surprised to find more zombies lurking behind the next hedgerow. A good (or, indeed, bad) b-movie is not someone sprinting aimlessly around and being constantly jumped by monsters, but rather it's scene-by-scene situational. What fresh horror awaits in the basement, what tricksy traps and obstacles must be overcome to make it out this house alive, and oh no what just happened to that helpful man in the sensible pullover?
In an hour spent playing Bethesda's upcoming survival horror sequel The Evil Within 2 [official site], I found a game that was striving to be a cat's cradle of micro b-movies, spun across a freely-explorable, monster-blighted town. I also found a game that was trying so hard to be scary that my only true fear is that it isn't scary at all.
]]>Last week I popped off to play Bethesda and Tango Gameworks' upcoming survival horror sequel The Evil Within 2, which adds open world elements to its stomp through a town filled with science-gone-wrong monstrosities. You can read what I thought about it in my Evil Within 2 impressions here, or alternatively you can watch what I did and how many times I got killed by snickering things in the hour-long video below.
]]>It’s the maggots and the split in the skin of the forehead, it’s the creak of a rope and the crack of a bone. In an hour with a couple of chapters of The Evil Within 2 [official site] I saw all kinds of gore and dismemberment, but the most horrifying sights and sounds were all in the quietest moments. One scene in particular ranks among the most disturbing I’ve seen, whether in a film or a game.
]]>Let's all go on holiday! To a twisted horror-world that exists solely as the manifestation of a fractured and agonised mind. Sure, the walls will probably bleed and that clock over there is definitely screaming about the severed threads of temporal stability, but there's so much to see and do. And let's not forget all the wonderful people we'll meet as we hike from one attraction to the next.
There's Stefano Valentini, for instance. He used to be a photojournalist but now he's an artist who likes nothing more than creating tableaux of peoples' dying moments. And because it's not every day you stumble across someone's dying moment, he's taken to creating some magical moments of his own. By murdering people. The Evil Within 2 [official site] looks as gruesomely and gloriously daft as the first, and I am totally on board with this nasty disciple of Sander Cohen.
]]>Oh my lord, somebody needs to defeat this notorious E3 war machine once and for all. The RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, have gathered their forces to take on the monster. We'll be tackling all the big news: Beyond Good and Evil 2, Wolfenstein 2, Sea of Thieves, Anthem, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm and lots more. We've so much news to talk about that we've recruited news editor Alice O'Connor to come help us. We've also sent Adam behind enemy lines to Los Angeles, but have only been able to recover a handful of his communiques.
This week's special extra-long episode also features some chat about Alice's murderous efficiency in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Pip's floundering in Football Manager 2017 and my doomed piloting in Everspace. We also discuss the origin of the name "E3" and discover a patchwork quilt of possible etymologies.
]]>Each year E3 rolls around like a giant evil worm, crushing all that's good and pure. BUT that worm also announces lots of exciting gaming news as it wreaks its carnage upon the Earth. Here we have gathered every announcement, reveal, and exciting new trailer that emerged from the barrage of screamed press conferences over the last few days. And lots of it looks rather spiffy.
A rather enormous 47 PC games were either announced, revealed, or updated upon, with new trailers, information, and released dates that will all be missed by at least three months. We've collected the lot, with trailers, in alphabetical order, into one neat place, just for you.
]]>The Evil Within [official site] clicked for me the second time I played it, which makes me regret my slightly sniffy review when I read it back. It’s a schlocky tour through all kinds of horrors, riffing on director Miyakami’s own Resident Evil past as well as a host of other subgenres and tropes. Even though there’s a central plot underneath all the reality shifts, it almost feels like an anthology.
Yesterday's cgi-heavy reveal trailer didn't tell me a whole lot about what to expect from the sequel, but today's "gameplay trailer" gives a better idea despite using some of the same scenes. It looks gorgeous, in that grisly, grimy sort of way.
]]>Bethesda continue to prove that they're the kings of lyrically-relevant, stylistically-incongruous music choices. Wolfenstein 2 used Wayne Newton's Danke Schön, while The Evil Within 2 [official site] uses a Duran Duran cover in the reveal of its grisly horror sequel. Watch the trailer below.
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