#241
J U N E 2012
EDGE-ONLINE.COM
Prophet returns to stalk Manhattan 20 years after the events of Crysis 2. On p44 we learn how Crytek has rediscovered many of the series’ roots: open hunting in an overpowered Nanosuit
hYPe
EPIC MICKEY 2 RESIDENT EVIL 6 DMC: DEVIL MAY CRY LOST PLANET 3 NI NO KUNI
PRINTED IN THE UK
CRYTEK BRINGS JUNGLE WARFARE TO NEW YORK CITY
JUNE 2012
US$10
ReVIewS
US $10
#241 J U N E 2012
DRAGON’S DOGMA AWESOMENAUTS TRIBES: ASCEND FABLE HEROES BOTANICULA PROTOTYPE 2 FEZ
At heart, some game makers are engineers In 1960, architect and engineer Buckminster Fuller proposed erecting a geodesic dome over Manhattan, promising it would reduce energy wastage and shield the city from the elements. For all his theorising and calculations, the scheme was never realised. Until Crytek came along, that is – if only through bleeding-edge gaming technology and science fiction. Would Fuller have appreciated Crytek’s twisting of his utopian vision for a decidedly early-21st-century one of alien invasion, corrupt private military contractors and biological warfare? Maybe not. But we’d like to think that a man who documented almost every element of his life in an archive called the Dymaxion Chronofile could only be fascinated by videogames, which were blinking into life as he worked on his Manhattan project. As it happens, he’d soon go on to design a dome for Brookhaven National Laboratory, where Tennis For Two had been created in 1958. Crytek shares with Fuller a love for engineering and system design, as well as for spectacle. At the core of Crysis are the rendering power of CryEngine and the athleticism of the Nanosuit, fundaments that naturally lead to the series’ famous open spaces and organic, flowing play. So when Crytek’s art team rather than its designers set Crysis 2 in New York, the series took a detour, one that relied on scripted encounters, heavy storytelling and close-quarters combat. But for the third in the series, as Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli reveals in our report beginning on p44, the design team has won out. Crysis 3’s vision of a domed Manhattan being torn apart by rampant foliage is a case of story supporting design and technology rather than the other way around, a good sign that Crytek has restored the series’ essential balance. It’s an added bonus that the dome also marks a return to the contained world building that helped make Far Cry’s tropical island so iconic. As we discover, Crysis 3 feels like Crytek has returned to its guiding principles.
3
games
70
hype
Play
44
Crysis 3
106 Dragon’s Dogma
Resident Evil 6
110 Fez
Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch
114 Awesomenauts
52 56
360, PC, PS3
360, PC, PS3
PS3
60
Epic Mickey 2: The Power OF Two
360, Mac, PC, PS3, Wii
64 68
DMC: Devil May Cry
360
360, PS3
116 Tribes: Ascend PC
118 Prototype 2 360, PC, PS3
360, PS3
120 Fable Heroes
Medal Of Honor Warfighter
122 Skullgirls
Tekken Tag Tournament 2
124 Botanicula
360, PC, PS3
70
360, PS3
360, PS3
72
Lost Planet 3
74
Krater
360, PC, PS3
PC
360
360, PS3
PC
126 The Splatters 360
126 Fibble: Flick ’N’ Roll iOS
126 Mario Tennis Open
4
Super Mario 64
123
3DS
Follow these links throughout the magazine for more content online
116
142
sections #241
132
J UNE 2012
knowledge
dispatches
10 Game saved
30 Dialogue
Game is back in business, but where next for videogame retail?
Discussion, debate, and a single 3DS console up for grabs
136 Things
On the rise of the QTE, and the exchange of action for spectacle
138 Studio Profile
We talk to the musical dream team making the soundtrack for Halo 4
Steven Poole experiences a more serious take on modern warfare
34 Trigger Happy
Riding rough with Specular Interactive, guardians of arcade fun
16 3DS de resistance
36 Level Head
Bioshock, a deep sea journey that blended plasmids and potent ideals
38 You’re Playing It Wrong
Remedy talks about fashioning Alan Wake’s forest-nestled Bright Falls
14 Halo forte
Miyamoto talks about finding 3DS a new role as the Louvre’s audio guide
18 Scandinavian design
Leigh Alexander wonders who the gamers in the adverts are
142 The Making Of…
146 The Art Of...
The Nordic Game Conference gears up for its ninth year
Brian Howe gets very emotional and conflicted over Journey
20 Launch code
Features
22 Soundbytes
Miyamoto looks to the future after a challenging first year for 3DS
Clint Hocking on threshold issues, the arbitrary quirks of game design
86 Videogames in Hollywood
154 The Possibility Space
A look at Lift Off, the self-published story behind an indie iOS puzzler
Insightful tidbits from Warren Spector, Brian Fargo and more
26 My Favourite Game
Iain Banks talks about the dangers of virtual reality and Civilization
28 This Month On Edge
Some of the things on our minds during the production of E241
78 Handheld hero
An extract from Jamie Russell’s new book, Generation Xbox
92 An Audience With...
Ubisoft’s Chris Early on the interconnected digital future
150 What Games Are
Tadhg Kelly on what we really mean when we use the word “game”
152 In The Click Of It
Randy Smith wonders what Tiger Style should do after Waking Mars
156 Word Play
James Leach discusses the challenge of working humour into games
96 The Psychology Of…
Genres, and how these labels can affect the fortunes of a game
138
Create 132 People
78
We talk to Jennifer Hale about the joys of gaming voice work
134 Places
Why Raccoon City’s police station is the perfect venue for horror
5
knowledge halo 4
halo forte Behind the scenes with the elite UK artists bringing together Halo 4’s soundtrack for 343 Industries
T
Massive Attack, Davidge has quietly he enigmatic character behind the spearheaded much of the band’s creative curtain is an idea I love,” says Halo 4 output. In fact, despite co-writing most of composer Neil Davidge, leaning back in the band’s critically acclaimed 1998 a chair behind the sound desk of his album Mezzanine, he received no official Bristol studio. A slideshow of interstellar writing credits. He’s worked on a number photography – gas-covered planets, star of soundtracks more recently, including clusters, galaxies – dissolves from one Clash Of The Titans. Still, the profile of frame to the next on a wall-mounted the Halo 4 project promises to make plasma screen situated above his head, anonymity a thing of the past for him. and the room itself is filled with various “It’s kind of daunting, and not exciting musical paraphernalia. He necessarily something I’m comfortable has some conventional guitars and a with, coming forward,” says Davidge. keyboard within easy reach, in addition “I’ve been warned that people might end to more arcane items such as a up hanging around outside the door of mysterious Finnish instrument resembling a the studio. I’ve already seen people dulcimer and a curious vintage black box people trying to recreate my Pro Tools that’s covered in knobs and sliders. session [for the Halo 4 Davidge grins while trailer] on YouTube. demonstrating the latter’s “People are pretty reveal So people are pretty potential, dialling in a fanatical. That’s fanatical. That’s cool, and woozy sonic garble that it’s inspiring that people sounds part Theremin, part cool, and it’s are that passionate. ’70s sci-fi epic. inspiring that This game is huge, and Although he’s been the scores that Marty working feverishly on people are that [O’Donnell] did – there’s the game’s score since passionate” a big challenge and a lot returning from his first trip to Seattle to meet with to live up to. So [when I series custodian 343 Industries in took on this project] there was the ‘wow’ factor, but then the ‘oh shit’ too.” December 2010, nobody outside the team had any clue that he was attached to the project before Microsoft announced Davidge knows the enthusiasm of his involvement in mid-April. He was like Halo’s diehard fans all too well, because the Master Chief behind that iconic he’s been an ardent follower of the series reflective visor – faceless and entirely himself going back to its launch in 2001. focused on the monumental task in front In order to help fill the downtime that of him. “I don’t know how many pieces emerged during Massive Attack’s of music I’ve written to this point,” says famously protracted recording cycles, Davidge, “but it’s well over four hours of Davidge bought an Xbox and a copy of music, maybe 300 pieces -– it’s insane.” Bungie’s original sci-fi space marine epic. Davidge is accustomed to operating The storytelling and vividly colourful in the background, though. As the visuals hooked him instantly, reminding producer and co-writer behind the last him of the Alan Moore and Frank Miller three albums by trip-hop pioneers graphic novels he loved growing up.
14
From top: Halo 4’s composer/producer Neil Davidge, arranger and programmer Andrew Morgan, and orchestrator/conductor Matt Dunkley
www.bit.ly/IB4l3b Further discussion with Neil Davidge
During our visit to one of the Abbey Road Studio sessions, what we heard of the strings and brass being recorded felt as lavish and grandiose as anything we’d experienced in previous Halo games. Trombones, tuba and French horns transition seamlessly from mighty chord crescendos to staccato blasts that rattle off like artillery fire. While notable film orchestrator and conductor Matt Dunkley (Inception, The Dark Knight) conducts the session, Davidge offers notes and guidance from the control booth. And he’s flanked by his close collaborator Andrew Morgan, who also works out of the Bristol studio, assisting with arranging and programming duties. “Halo’s always been very melodic,” Morgan tells us during an intermission while the string players exit the studio to make way for that evening’s brass session. “So on one hand, we’ve tried to make the music very modern, electronic, strident beats, really quite full on, but balance it out with this lush orchestral element, these big melodic lines, different melodies connected to different characters. So the music helps tell the story. It’s not just a backdrop.” While Davidge can’t share his deadline for getting the the final elements of the score to 343, he describes it as “looming” and explains that his role is already in the process of shifting from composer to producer. Progress, however, seems to be good. “They might just be saying this to make me feel better, but [Microsoft] tells me that the music is going smoother than anything else. Everything else is so fraught, they’re so frantic trying to build these weapons and these environments and these characters – it’s enormous! But they say the music is actually going very smoothly.” n
The scale of Halo 4’s score requires a small army of musical talent, including a 16-person tenor/bass male choir, ten female Bulgarian vocalists, a 50-piece orchestra and a host of other performers
“Neil’s themes will become just as iconic as Marty [O’Donnell’s] chants were in the first Halo,” says Halo 4’s conductor and orchestrator Matt Dunkley
GETTING INSPIRED
Halo 4’s composer on how he’s getting in character
Recording the strings and brass separately gives Davidge more flexibility to create diverse takes on the game’s recurring musical themes in the post-production phase
“I’ve actually been pretty lucky with the materials that I’ve gotten,” says Davidge of his dealings with 343 Industries. “But they’ve just been scraps. I’ve been requesting everything. For one piece I said, ‘You must have something else that can help me get in character for this piece of music.’ And I got them to send me some of the dialogue that they’d been recording. And just listening to the tone of voice from the actor, it’s like, ‘OK, now I get it.’ So I’m trying to collect all these materials, because I’m trying to stay in character like a method actor. I want what I capture to be poignant, to connect in a graphic way with the player.”
15
knowledge deV dIaRY
LAUNCH CODE
Indie iOS developer self-publishes a chic dev diary for The Last Rocket
With so many indie game development diaries these days being expressed via blog posts, it’s refreshing to see one surface with the production values of a bona fide art book. Shaun Inman’s self-published ebook Lift Off details the joys and travails of wrestling his charming iOS puzzle- platformer The Last Rocket into existence. With humour, candour and insight, Inman chronicles the game’s genesis via page after page of journal entries, concept art, notebook sketches and frame-by-frame animations. “I think any creative will see a lot of themselves in my process,” says Inman. “False starts, unrealistic expectations, almost giving up: there is no secret sauce. You just keep working until you’re happy with the result. Maybe that’s encouraging?” The result is also an unintentionally funny read. For instance, a diary spanning almost 140 days opens with the line “Over the next 30 days…” Despite receiving glowing reviews, The Last Rocket hasn’t performed especially well in the App Store, so the ebook was partially conceived as a way to recoup the costs of the game’s seven-month development. Just as Indie Game: The Movie appealed to a broad spectrum of film enthusiasts, Inman believes his book will suit anybody who cares about the creative process. “Lift Off is far more personal than technical,” he says. “If it was written for anybody, it was for groggy Tomorrow Shaun who had to pick up where exhausted Yesterday Shaun left off. As a result, it contains very little jargon or code, and should be approachable for anyone with in interest in how games are made.” You can purchase and download the iOS-optimised and DRM-free Lift Off for $10 exclusively from Inman’s Web site. Head to http://store.shauninman.com. n
20
h Y P
e
Tekken Tag ToURnaMenT 2 Tekken’s take on the tag fighting genre returns to console with over 50 characters Publisher Developer Format Origin Release
RIGHT The game will feature over 50 characters, such as Jun here, with at least 40 open from the beginning. The rest will be unlocked as the game progresses
www.bit.ly/HZ9ilr Screenshot gallery
70
W
Namco Bandai In-house PS3, 360 Japan July (Japan), September (EU, US)
hile Street Fighter has been the primary recipient of fighting fans’ attentions in recent years, it looks like Tekken is clawing its way back into the consciousness of virtual pugilists. Street Fighter X Tekken has, of course, contributed to this rise in awareness, and March also saw an update to 2011’s arcade version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2. The forthcoming home version of the title will include all the features of the Unlimited update, plus intriguing extras. Most importantly, it will include Unlimited’s new match-up options. As well as pairs of characters against each other, one vs one and two vs one matches are also possible. For the latter scenario, the single character gets a boosted life gauge and will do more damage with attacks. This fighter will also only have to beat one of their opponents to win the bout, making the tactics all about pummelling a foe without giving them the opportunity to tag out. However, if the tag player manages to swap characters, then all the deadly tag combos come into play, as well as the Tag Assault, which uses both characters for a simultaneous life-gauge-zapping attack. Fighters also have to bear in mind the familiar recovery gauge – the red portion of an opponent’s life meter that slowly replenishes over time. Tag combos batter this down
The animation is smooth and detailed, and the stages are suitably ostentatious. According to Harada, though, load times are roughly half the length of those in Tekken 6
quickly, deepening the strategic element of each match. In practice, the asymmetrical approach is a genuinely engrossing, highly tactical experience, and an interesting way of enticing solo Tekken players to try out the whole tag experience. The key exclusive addition to the home console version, however, is the Fight Lab, an evolved amalgam of the familiar Tekken practice option and minigame modes such as Tekken Ball from Tekken 3 and Tekken Bowling from Tekken Tag Tournament. Series producer Katsuhiro Harada apparently didn’t want it to be called a tutorial mode, because he believes that even inexperienced players don’t like to think of themselves as novices, while advanced users wouldn’t go anywhere near it. Fight Lab, then, sets players a series of short challenges, each sneakily teaching a
specific element of the game – a tactic used to great effect by Sega’s Virtua Tennis series. The section is still early in development, but among the increasingly outlandish tasks there will be sidestep missions that ask you to avoid flying sushi as it whizzes across the
The asymmetrical approach is a genuinely engrossing, highly tactical experience screen, and air combo games, which see you juggle a character until they inflate like a balloon and explode. For expert players, these challenges are all timed and scored, so there’s room to compete with other gamers for bragging rights.
don’t tell me the odds
The game allows a lone player to take on a tag team – surely a balancing nightmare? According to producer Katsuhiro Harada, data from the arcade version of the game suggests that the win rate is roughly equal between solo and tag players. Apparently, however, skilled tag players who know how to use tag attacks and the Tag Crash option (which immediately tags your current fighter out if they are in mortal danger), and who can take advantage of the environments effectively have a slight advantage. Meanwhile, switching to solo can be a good way for less able tag fighters to improve their online score ranking.
Fight Lab also has its own plot, following Violet as he attempts to create a new Combot, one superior to his robotic fighter from Tekken 4. Each minigame is a component of Violet’s testing process, framed by a series of comedic cinematic sequences. Also, to teach his ’bot how to fight, Violet is gradually inputting key moves from various fighters – which become selectable as you progress – as well as some visual customisations. This allows each participant to create their own personal Combot, loaded with special moves from throughout the roster. It also looks as though the robots will also have access to a rapid button pressing finishing move that’s unique to this mode. These fighting machines can then be used in Arcade mode, or online against friends (but not in ranked matches). It seems there will be several more modes in the final version, including the hectic Pair Play, which enables four players to duke it out in two teams. Harada has also hinted at revealing some further home exclusives soon, possibly at E3. Selling a new version of the more specialised Tag Tournament series to a mainstream audience is going to be a challenge, but with Tekken X Street Fighter at least a year away, fans of the series who have had their interest piqued by SFXT will surely be tempted to give it a try. n
71
PlaY
Prototype 2
M
eet Sergeant James Heller, Prototype 2’s leading man and one of the most prickly anti-heroes in modern gaming. During boss fights he growls taunts like, “I’m going to rip your spine out through your mouth!” Nearly every line of Heller dialogue drips with cartoonishly exaggerated menace – the ‘rage quip’, to coin a phrase. He’s Kratos in a leather jacket, leaving a trail of corpses and smoking tank husks in his wake as he stalks Alex Mercer, whom he blames for the death of his wife and daughter. You know that righteous fury schtick that actor Samuel L Jackson has reprised in countless films? Heller is what you’d get if you bottled the collective bile from all of those performances in one man, and then set his fuse burning. Despite all the chest-thumping bravado and apocalyptic dourness of New York Zero’s urban rot, Heller’s quest for payback sets the stage for some of the most cheerfully destructive sandbox play since Just Cause 2. You’ll hoist passing vans and cars overhead like The Incredible Hulk, and hurl them at helicopters swarming about your ears like gnats. In addition to godlike strength, the virus Heller’s infected with means that his arms can morph into a variety of death-dealing instruments, much like Terminator 2’s T-1000. Options include Wolverine-style claws, Juggernaut-esque hammerfists and tendrils that stretch out like Mister Fantastic’s arms, leaving fleshy threads behind that snap nearby debris towards your targeted foe as if attached to rubber bands. Why offer just one superhero game when you can create a template flexible enough to encompass a vast range of them at once? In terms of the setting, theme and core gameplay, Prototype 2 is basically a more polished and featurepacked retread of Crackdown 2, all murky big brother conspiracies, supersoldiers, mutants and viral outbreaks set against the backdrop of a battered metropolis. Crackdown 2 had a shady pharmaceutical giant called Shai-Gen, while Prototype 2 has Gentek. Crackdown 2’s desperate antidote measure was called Project Sunburst; Prototype 2’s equivalent is Project Whitelight. Both are set in analogues of New York. One has freaks, the other has so-called infected. Likewise, Heller’s gliding soar is all but indistinguishable from Crackdown 2’s wingsuit, and both games have an achievement for scaling the highest skyscraper in their worlds. They also employ the same gravity-defying leap, although Prototype 2 invites you sprint up the side of structures first, indulging the fantasy of locomotive freedom. The major difference is that in James Heller, Prototype 2 dares to have a lead with personality, even if he’s the irascible, foul-mouthed sort. There’s a dazzling seamlessness to every aspect of Prototype 2. You feel it as you traverse the world, sprinting powerfully up buildings, bounding high into the air just as you reach the lip of the roof and then
118
Publisher Activision Developer Radical Entertainment Format 360, PC, PS3 (version tested) Release Out now (360, PS3), July (PC)
In James Heller, Prototype 2 dares to have a lead with personality, even if he’s the irascible, foulmouthed sort
transitioning with a tap of the right trigger into a glide that will take you to the next rooftop. Combat uses subtle tricks to keep that same kind of fluidity. When you jump to stage a mid-air attack, the game slips into slow motion nearly imperceptibly to give you a chance to rotate the camera to target your enemy and cue up a finishing move of your choice. It doesn’t get much better than jumping off the edge of a skyscraper, spinning the camera to catch a helicopter in your sights, then deploying your tendril attack like some grappling hook reimagined for an Evil Dead movie.
Progression through the game involves completing a series of missions that are designated on your mini-map by the first letter of the character at the centre of each one, à la recent Grand Theft Autos. You typically have a couple of story-based mission options at any given point, which makes it feel less like the campaign is funnelling you through a pipe to its conclusion. Navigate Heller to the small column of light and the mission triggers automatically. Unfortunately, since Heller winds up slaughtering almost everybody he meets, the game has to keep pulling new sacrificial rabbits out of its hat to keep the plot barrelling forward across its six- to eight-hour span. After several hours, so many character names have come and gone that they all blur together. Some were Blackwatch officers. Some were Gentek scientists in lab coats. Each new name will soon be discarded from your memory like a body cremated to make room in the morgue. The more bodies that pile up, the less consequential each new character becomes. As in the first Prototype, you piece together the narrative by consuming key characters, thereby absorbing their memories. In part, this allows Heller to tell one character, without irony, that he looks forward to eating his brain (who’s the real zombie here, eh?). When you grab a person, options appear. Do you want to hurl them at an enemy? How about infecting them and making a living ‘biobomb’ out of their body? Or you can consume them, which restores a sliver of your health bar. It’s hard not to chuckle aloud when you’re low on health and start rampaging through fleeing crowds, grabbing civilians and devouring them like so many shrieking, stumbling Mars bars. A handful of ill-advised missions later on require you to pilot a slow-moving helicopter, which feels all the more prosaic given how accustomed you’ve become to the charms of your mutant appendage toybox. But don’t worry, you won’t be sitting in a helicopter cockpit when you finally square off against that hoodiesporting creep – that sneering, under-dressed Ezio. You’ve played this game before, no question, but don’t miss the chance to experience the current 8 apotheosis of the ‘one-man apocalypse’ subgenre.
LEFT Heller’s diverse range of mutant abilities might as well be a game of ‘name that superhero’. Most iconic are the Wolverine-style claws that dismember with savage grace, especially when Heller unleashes his lethal pounce attack. BELOW Though the silverback-like Juggernauts are initially foes, the game eventually gives you the chance to possess them and direct them to attack other enemies
Battling a horde of mutants (above) would be bad enough without military forces bombarding you. Still, while there are limits to how large a vehicle you can lift, Gentek vans (right) make handy projectiles to fight back with
119
CReaTe INSIGHT
Word Play JaMeS leaCh All in good pun
W
e all like a laugh, don’t we? The odd pun, the risqué doubleentendre, poking fun at authority, or a perhaps simply a video depicting the accidental removal of someone’s hand via the injudicious manipulation of a homemade firework. We are a nation defined, among other things, by our sense of humour. And so it is with games. If the brief allows it, I’m rarely one to pass up the insertion of a moment of humour into a script I’m working on. If one thing categorises my fellow games writers and me, it’s the desire to make jokes. That and a slightly lax approach to sartorial matters. I’ve always doggedly maintained that humour works in games, too. Done well, it’s a little reward – something not dissimilar to an Easter egg. It’s a nod from the developer to the player, a way of saying, ‘Here, you’ve got this far, so if you’ve been paying attention then this will make you laugh.’ But let’s consider that for a moment. Unless you’re making a game that’s specifically marketing itself as funny, what you’re doing by inserting humour is dropping the player out of the immersive experience. It may even seem like you’re stopping the flow to make your undoubtedly hilarious joke. But this isn’t the case with humour in most other media. Many books, films and TV or radio shows are little but jokes, and they rattle on quite happily without this apparent breaking of the fourth wall. The reason might be that players are aware that games are constructed. At the back of their minds, there’s always the thought that they’re wading through a situation created by a team of guys with Lego Minifigures stuck to the top of their monitors in a room full of cardboard standees. People say of games: ‘They’ve made it really funny,’ or ‘They’ve put a great joke in it,’ in a way that you’d never talk about a film or show. It’s more how you’d react if you found humour in a textbook, or in the small print of a credit card application. The jokes might not be that good, but there’s a little frisson of joy when you find them. If you examine the packaging of Innocent smoothies, you’ll find they’re emblazoned with all manner of rib-endangering mirth. Actually, they’re not really that funny – what’s great is that the Innocent people have bothered to do it, and must
156
It’s as if funny games can’t deal with serious issues. This is precisely the opposite of what comedy really is, however therefore be great guys. And we’ve spotted that they’ve done it, and so must be great guys as well. So it is with the spits and spots (as weather people would have it) of humour in videogames. Humankind just doesn’t expect to find humour in games yet. Cuteness, silliness and amoral violence including graphic scenes of significant simulated peril, sure, but not gags. It’s just not a games genre and so it stands out, either for good or ill. It’s clear why. A funny game would be seen as light, childish, quirky, inconsequential. You might as well put a brightly coloured smiley face sticker on the case and wave goodbye to the segment of your potential market that no longer receives pocket money. It’s as if funny games can’t deal with serious issues. This is precisely the
opposite of what comedy really is, however. It’s frequently focused on the worst excesses of the human condition. It’s simply wrong to think it concerns itself solely with trivia and fluff just because that’s what we lazily perceive having a laugh to be all about. Perhaps the question is more about the global nature of games. If I had a pound for every time an American parent company has commented on the ‘English sense of humour’ in a game I’ve worked on, I’d be able to buy one of those giant burgers that you, in fact, get for free if you consume it all within 90 minutes. Maybe humour just doesn’t travel well. The migraines suffered by the members of localisation teams indicates this might be part of the problem. Don’t, after all, mention the war; any of them, in fact. It could be that the problem lies with the insertion of the comedic sidekick or incidental character. But no, Tails and Yoshi and Diddy Kong were never the Woody Allen, Peter Cook or Armando Iannucci of their day. And funny sidekicks? In a smarter, better post-Godzuki and Scrappy-Doo world? No, we’re back to including something for the littlest kids and that’s suicide. (The previous sentence could have been written better, but you get the idea.) Banter in games is another easy insertion point for gaggery. But – and it pains me to say this, because I do enjoy my banter – it’s never done more than raised a few smiles and, at the very best, an extremely short-lived meme on a tiny part of the Internet. No, the truth is that when you play a game, you’re really in that world. If people are making jokes around you, if the world itself is funny, you can’t join in. You can’t make anyone laugh, and ripostes, timing and spontaneity are not part of the developer’s arsenal. You expect to laugh passively at films or books or TV, but if you’re part of a game, you want to be integral to it. Games require immersive interaction and control, and humour simply requires an audience. Games that make people laugh can and do exist, though, and I’ll fight to create more of them while there is breath left in my body. It ain’t easy, though. James Leach is a BAFTA Award-winning freelance writer who works on games and for ad agencies, TV, radio and online