Worlds worth getting lost in are the bread and butter of gaming. This month is all about celebrating that, kicking off with a look at FromSoftware’s hefty expansion for their unique take on open worlds, Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree.
But that’s not all, we give our final verdicts on Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Rise Of The Ronin, talk to developers about the secrets behind creating worlds, and chart the history of the genre from PS1 to PS5. Plus, loads more, of course.
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Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree
FromSoftware is one of the best in the business when it comes to their expansions. Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree is different only in the fact that it seems to be their most ambitious yet, well deserving of the long development cycle. We dig into why this new region to explore isn’t just substantial, but will change the way you think about Elden Ring forever.
CD Projekt Red, Larian Studios, HoYoverse and more on the secrets of world design
So what goes into making your favourite gaming worlds? We sit down to chat to the world-crafting masters at Larian Studios, Techland, HoYoverse, CD Projekt Red, and Billy Goat Entertainment about it. That’s a whole lot of different genres and approaches, but one thing’s for sure, it’s not easy!
Open World evolution: from PS1 to PS5
And how did open world gaming get here? To chart the course, we return to PS1 to pick apart the roots of the genre, then follow that through each console generation to take a look at how it’s evolved over time, how you define an open world, and what’s moved things forward.
Dragon's Dogma 2 soars into Reviews
But what about new open world games? Our hefty reviews section is led by two games: Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Rise Of The Ronin. Perhaps the biggest games in the genre to launch on PS5 this year, both of these huge reviews dig into these landmark releases down to the finest details.
Plus: Harold Halibut, Planet Zoo, Unicorn Overlord, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League - Season One, and more!
From San Fran with games: the GDC report
You’ve heard about worlds in games, but what about the wider gaming world? We report back from the annual Game Developers Conference, look at the future of Monster Hunter on PlayStation, look at the re-reveal of Marvel 1943, and more in our Insider section.
Previews get dangerous
We also shuttle off to a dangerous world in Synduality: Echo Of Ada, where our mech mastery is the only way to survive. Plus we also take a look at System Shock, Asphalt: Legends Unite, Multiversus’ return, Visions Of Mana, Kunitsu-gami: Path Of The Goddess, and more!
RetroStation
And who can forget about the all-star world of baseball? In this months’s RetroStation we rewind the clock to a classic season: MLB 11: The Show. A landmark release for Sony, it remains a definitive sports sim to this very day. Plus, the brief history of reboots, Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier comes to PS5, and more!
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The Star Wars Outlaws creative team weighs in on what it's like to work within a galaxy far, far away: "Initially, it felt like we had been let loose in the toy factory"
Open-world dress-up game Infinity Nikki feels like the perfect chilled out adventure, and I already worry about how many hours I'm going to spend in its photo mode
