PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Treyarch/Raven/Activision If you think you know what to expect from a Call of Duty game, well … you’re probably right, but Black Ops 6 does its thing with panache Whoever thought of constructing this game’s campaign around a safe house resembling a haunted mansion on an abandoned country estate deserves an immediate pay rise. After each foray into shoot-’em-up carnage, your team of militarised misfits is deposited back into this sprawling country pile, which for some reason is filled with intriguing mysteries and puzzles: what happens if you play the piano? Where does that passage lead? What is this, scrawled in invisible ink on the wall? It’s like Scooby-Doo crossed with Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca – a comparison I never imagined making about a Call of Duty game. Lead developers Treyarch and Raven have had four years to work on this title and boy does it show. The multiplayer mode is both familiar and fresh thanks to its “omni-movement”, which lets you run and leap in every direction, radically altering the feel of movement and tipping the balance of lethal encounters in favour of people with spatial reasoning skills rather than lightning-fast trigger fingers. The small maps, taking in derelict radar stations, strip mall forecourts and penthouse apartments, have been intricately built to provide combinations of labyrinthine corridors, long sight-lines and sneaky cubby holes. The weapons, including 12 newcomers, are designed to exploit varying playstyles from quick-scope super snipers to Red Bull-guzzling SMG teens – and the gunsmith allows myriad ways to modify each one, with genuine tangible effects on your play. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; Bioware/Electronic Arts There is lots to do in this huge and beautiful fantasy world, but inconsistent writing and muted combat dull its blade Developer Bioware was never going to have it easy with Veilguard. It’s been a decade since the last Dragon Age game, a decade for fan theories to percolate and expectations to rise out of control – and that’s not to mention all the strife that’s gone on at the studio after the disappointing Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Veilguard is by no means a bad game, with plenty of charming characters to meet and new places to see. But the writing, the heart of previous games, is surprisingly mediocre, while the new combat style gets repetitive fairly quickly. You play as Rook, an associate of Varric, who served as companion and storyteller in the previous games. Varric and Rook have been on the hunt for elven god Solas for the better part of a year. Just when it looks as if you can stop him from tearing down the Veil between the physical and nether worlds, unleashing hordes of demons in the process, a magical mishap leads to the release of two other, even worse gods. These new villains are comically evil, but they are a disappointment compared with the compelling character of Solas, who is, after all, right there. Veilguard tells his side of the story, too, through side quests. Continue reading...

PC, PS4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox; Cozy Game Pals/Blumhouse Games Its expertly retro, low-poly visuals are a nod to Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but this horror game has an emotionally resonant story at its heart For those who remember the dawn of the survival horror genre, its aesthetic renaissance in the independent gaming scene has been a spooky delight. Crow County, The Closing Shift, Murder House – are all modern supernatural adventures that use low poly 3D visuals and blocky textures, not just as a visual hook but as a means of reconnecting with what made the likes of Silent Hill and Clock Tower scary and engaging in the first place. Fear the Spotlight, the debut title from Cozy Game Pals and new horror-specific publisher Blumhouse Games, is another wonderful, warmly chilling example. Two girls break into their high school library late at night, looking for one particular item: a spirit board, locked in a display case as part of an exhibition on the occult. Vivian is kind of a nerd, a star volunteer at the library, while Amy is a fascinating outsider, interested in the supernatural. When the two decide to hold a seance in the empty building, they make contact, not only with the dead, but a tragic event from the school’s recent past. And then Amy mysteriously disappears. Continue reading...

The series’ return was heralded by a Tears for Fears song – an unexpected tone for its chainsaw-guns and gore. We revisit how a splintering marriage gave birth to gaming’s saddest shooter At the Xbox Games Showcase this June, Microsoft debuted a trailer for the eighth game in the violent, grandiose and unexpectedly maudlin Gears of War series: a prequel. The sight of series heroes Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago as younger men is “an emotional homecoming like no other”, as Microsoft’s Xbox blog put it. But the real tug at the heartstrings comes with the first notes of a slow, instrumental rendition of Tears for Fears’ Mad World. “As a 41-year-old man, that piano got me tearing up,” wrote one YouTube commenter. It’s a throwback to the original, iconic Gears of War trailer from 2006, in which a lonesome Fenix picks through his ruined world to Gary Jules’ plaintive cover of the same song. And you can’t blame Microsoft for leaning on nostalgia. As Mad Men’s Don Draper once said, it’s delicate, but potent. Eighteen years on, that Gears of War trailer is still some of the most effective video game marketing ever. It really spoke to the melancholy heart that beats within this superficially macho game. Continue reading...

Rebellion’s game imagines the aftermath of a UK nuclear disaster that mixes folk horror and 50s sci-fi with a dash of Last of the Summer Wine When Atomfall was first revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase in June, it led many to ask: is this the UK’s version of Fallout? “In some respects, yes. In some respects, no,” says Ben Fisher, associate head of design at Rebellion, the Oxford-based studio behind Atomfall, as well as games such as Sniper Elite 5 and Zombie Army 4. He explains that Rebellion head Jason Kingsley’s initial idea was to look at the freeform, self-guided experience of Fallout and think how it could be applied closer to home. The difference with Atomfall is in the structure. “It’s a much denser experience,” says Fisher. “One of our reference points has been Fallout: New Vegas in that it’s a more concentrated experience than, say, Fallout 3 and 4, and largely builds one story that’s interconnected and has layers that are influenced by the choices the player makes.” Rather than taking place on one giant, open-world map, Atomfall features a series of interconnected maps, similar to the levels of the Sniper Elite games. “That’s the kind of map that we excel in,” says Fisher, adding that many of the game’s most interesting secrets are buried in bunkers deep underground. Continue reading...

Firaxis Games needed to move on from Civilization 6 because, its developers explain, ‘it was getting too big for its britches’ It’s been eight years since Civilization 6 – the most recent in a very long-running strategy game series that sees you take a nation from the prehistoric settlement of their first town through centuries of development until they reach the space age. Since 2016 it has amassed an abundance of expansions, scenario packs, new nations, modes and systems for players to master – but series producer Dennis Shirk at Firaxis Games feels that enough it enough. “It was getting too big for its britches,” he says. “It was time to make something new.” “It’s tough to even get through the whole game,” designer Ed Beach says, singling out the key problem that Firaxis aims to solve with the forthcoming Civilization 7. While the early turns of a campaign in Civilization 6 can be swift, when you’re only deciding the actions for the population of a single town, “the number of systems, units, and entities you must manage explodes after a while,” Beach says. From turn one to victory, a single campaign can take more than 20 hours, and if you start falling behind other nations, it can be tempting to restart long before you see the endgame. Civilization 7 will be released on PC, Mac, Xbox, PlayStation 4/5 and Nintendo Switch on 11 February 2025. Continue reading...

The creators of the Lego Star Wars and Lego Harry Potter games bring similar energy and humour to this gentle action-adventure Ever since they first clambered into shops in 2010, Funko Pop figures have been an unavoidable part of pop culture fandom, lending their black-eyed large-headed charm to everything from Ms Marvel to Mr Bean. After a couple of minor smartphone releases it was inevitable they’d eventually make it into a major video game. But what could have been a lazy cash-in looks to be a lot more promising. Funko Fusion is the first title from Warrington-based studio 10:10, formed by Jon Burton and Arthur Parsons, the directors on most of the vastly successful Lego titles such as Lego Star Wars and Lego Harry Potter. Their aim is to bring the same energy and humour to the Funko universe. Funko Fusion, then, is a classic cartoon-style action adventure, beholden to the Lego titles naturally, but also to PlayStation favourites Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter. Players get to explore seven themed worlds based around Funko Pop figures and key licensor NBC Universal. As Parsons recalls: “I remember we got sent a spreadsheet, which listed everything that NBC Universal owns from back in the 1920s all the way to current day. And it was like, ‘wow, where do we start?’ That was the fun bit.” Continue reading...

PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series XS, Xbox One; Red Thread Games; Spotlight by Quantic Dream Dustborn tries to be more than just another narrative travel game, but its half-baked focus on serious topics weighs down great dialogue and beautiful character writing The story begins on the road, miles out from a state border in an alternative US. The stakes are clear, even when nothing else is: Pax, the player character, is a Black woman in her 30s, who has just completed a heist with her friends. The border means freedom. The police car telling you to pull over means trouble. Pax and co are Anomals, people who wield manipulative vocal abilities called vox. Pax can bend people to her will by making them feel bad, using abilities named “trigger” or “cancel”. Her ex-partner, Noam, can soothe people with an ability known as “gaslighting”. Dustborn certainly isn’t subtle in what it’s trying to say. Soon you encounter people who get infected by weaponised disinformation. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: We’ve become so used to digitally downloading games now that it’s easy to forget how novel it once was, thanks to places like Xbox 360’s Marketplace • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here The Xbox 360 digital store is the latest to go offline, following the Wii U and 3DS store shutdown in March. It shut down on Monday, taking about 220 games with it, according to analysis by Video Games Chronicle. Preservation activists at the Video Game History Foundation even made a funeral cake. Microsoft is definitely the best of the major companies when it comes to backwards compatibility and game preservation – despite those 220 lost games, a huge percentage of the Xbox 360’s back catalogue can still legally be played on later consoles. And it is remarkable that the Xbox 360 Marketplace lasted almost 20 years (the console was released in late 2005). It wasn’t the first digital store on a console, but it was the first one I ever used, and I assume the same was true for a lot of British players – the Xbox 360 was the most popular console of its generation in this country. In retrospect, the Marketplace was astonishingly ahead of its time. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC; Hollow Ponds/Annapurna Interactive Filling a field guide is the simple goal of this endearingly strange game, in which you float on a giant bird, collect gently surreal sea life, and shave sheep You might expect from the name that this would be a game about herding sheep, but it is significantly weirder than that. There are sheep, but they are fluffy flying sheep that float around after you as you ride the back of a giant, colourful bird. Now and then you shear them for wool with which to knit new jumpers and hats with pompoms, making the sheep look like naked purple hover-sausages with eyes. But the bulk of your flock is actually made up of sky fish. Or are they fish? Some are sinuous like eels, others squawk like chickens, others are feathered whales. As mentioned, it’s quite weird. Your job in Flock is to fill out a field guide full of these wide-eyed flying fishlike creatures, spotting them in the wild and then identifying them from short, variably obvious written clues (“floppy proboscis”, “vertical stripes”, “often mistaken for a loud radish”). They all resemble sea life through a gently surreal pop-art filter, but they’re so well-drawn that I developed a sense for the differences between a Cosmet and a Bewl, Thrips and Rustics. Some camouflage themselves among weeds or leaves, some flee your approach, some just sit there basking on rocks and clucking at you. You find whistles that teach your bird a song, and then you can collect them Pied-Piper-style into a cloud of creatures that trails in your wake. Flock is out on Wednesday; £15.99 Continue reading...