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Tom Orry, Editor – Doom, Xbox One
I’m still working through Doom, as ever making slow progress with about 20 minutes of play time each night. I’ve just encountered a Cacodemon for the first time, which was cool. I haven’t got much more to say. I’m enjoying it. It looks great. I’m looking forward to playing more.
Steve Burns, Deputy Editor – PES 2016, PS4
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Yes, yes, I’ve been playing PES again, but this time for a work-related reasons. I simmed Euro 2016, you see, to gain an insight into how well England will do. You can read it all here, but I can say the tournament progresses in the most (or second-most) England way possible. Say what you like about Pro Evolution Soccer, but you can’t say it’s not accurate.
What else? Not a lot, really. I did try to play Doom on PC, and while it looked great, there were no gunshot noises. Which is a bit weird. I’m told it’s some problem to do with 7.1. I’ll fix it later. Can’t play Doom without the gunshot noises, it’d be like football without the, erm, ball. Oh, I did play Hitman again. Man, that is the game of the year. Keep your Overwatch nonsense.
Dave Scammell, News Editor – Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, PS4
Was it worth the wait? First impressions suggest possibly not, but I’m still enjoying Catalyst more than I had been expecting to after last year’s disappointing hands-on.
I think it’s the collectibles. I’ve only played an hour but I can already see myself climbing high and low across Glass trying to track down every last chip or swirly gold… thing. That isn’t particularly high praise, of course – I was the guy who decided to spend hours hunting down the flying comics in The Amazing Spider-Man – but it’s a plus point nonetheless.
Still, the running, climbing and falling works, even if the open world nature doesn’t quite make it as free-flowing as the tight, linear paths of the original. I just wish it had more personality, more atmosphere, with early impressions pointing toward a fairly static – and sadly a little dull – game world. I’m definitely looking forward to playing more, but the jury’s still out on whether I’ll get anything more out of it than an enjoyable collectathon.
Alice Bell, Junior Staff Writer – Gone Home, PS4
Gone Home is one of the free PS Plus game this month, so I spent a couple of evenings playing it (which is good, because it gave me something other than Overwatch to put in here for the third week in a row). Gone Home got a bit of flack when it was released, because some people claimed it was a s*** game and only got praise because there are lesbians in it – which is technically untrue, the lesbians aren’t actually in it, they’ve just left a bunch of notes where they’ve been. Possibly following emotional notes is how you track and hunt teenagers, but you’d have to check with a gamekeeper.
Anyway, it’s not a s*** game. It’s actually rather clever. It used a lot of tropes and techniques to imply it was a horror game, with any one of a number of possible antagonists: standard evil ghost, author who snaps and goes on a rampage, weird next door neighbour teen, spurned lover, etc. It was actually quite frightening for a lot of it. The story unravels bit by bit and a lot of it you have to tease out yourself, with no help from the game – post it notes and hidden letters unrelated to the main plot. I found out after I’d finished it that I’d missed an entire subplot by accident or my own idiocy. Gone Home is good. I liked it.
