from purple forum
Romeo is a Dead Man is this issue's cover story including interviews with Suda51 CEO Goichi Suda and game director Ren Yamazaki. The issue's out officially on Christmas Eve.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is crowned EDGE's GOTY, being the only game to achieve a perfect score this year. The top 10 are:
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Hades II
- Blue Prince
- Donkey Kong Bananza
- Elden Ring: Nightreign
- Lumines Arise
- Despelote
- Two Point Museum
- Absolum
- Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders
KNOWLEDGE
Machine learnings - What does Valve's Steam Machine mean for gaming hardware's future?
Checks and balances - How a new wave of games has dared to change the rules of chess
Bonding exercise - From page to playable: author Raymond Benson talks 007
Family at war - Seizing the throne in style with Thunder Lotus's
At Fate's End
Soundbytes - Game commentary in snack-sized mouthfuls, featuring Dan Houser
DISPATCHES
Trigger Happy - Steven Poole strings garlic around his neck to go hunting for vampires
The Outer Limits - Is Alex Spencer the ideal kind of audience for comedy and games?
FEATURES
Anything Goes - But soft, what fight through yonder breaks? We find out in the delirious
Romeo is a Dead Man
The Edge Awards - Time to crown 2025's greatest games - along with the silliest sausages, naturally
Critical Hit - Sandfall Interactive explains how it created our game of the year,
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
The Making Of... - How Bethesda transformed Interplay's beloved RPG series with the creation of Fallout 3
Studio Profile - Meet 8-4, the Shibuya company on a mission to ensure that nothing gets lost in videogame translation
Time Extend - Thirteen years on, in what sort of shape do we find Rockstar's bullet-spewing
Max Payne 3?
The Long Game - Settling in for a history lesson with
Simogo Legacy Collection
REVIEWS
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond [4]
Platforms: Switch 2 (tested), Switch
And this constant criss-cross is nothing compared to the padding ahead of the game's finale - a series of torturous plot stunts which surpasses Wind Waker's infamous Triforce hunt for inconvenience. With that, a largely flat Metroid is further degraded, from disappointing to a little embarrassing. Nintendo games have tested our patience before, but rarely in so many ways at once, and not without a core brilliance that makes such transgressions forgivable. Whatever ideas swirled in your mind back in 2017, you can't have been dreaming of this.
Routine [8]
Platforms: PC (tested), Xbox Series
Outside of these sequences, however, for most of its runtime, Routine is an extremely well constructed horror game where even the tiniest detail has a big impact. Even if you've been following since 2012, it has been worth the wait.
Skate Story [6]
Platforms: PC (tested), PS5, Switch 2
There are certainly times when Eng pulls it all off - when the visual aesthetic, the music and the level design come together perfectly to complement the game's esoteric skating mechanics. Yet the writing in Skate Story is rather less entertaining or enrapturing than that fragile partnership of demon and board. The game feels somewhat tormented by its turgid dialogue and a one-note plot, both given preference over the raw thrill of doing kickflips in Hell.
Kirby Air Riders [5]
Platforms: Switch 2
To put it in gastronomic terms surely familiar to Air Riders' star, we're left with the feeling of having visited an all-you-can-eat buffet. There's an array of options available, but tucking into any one of them is unlikely to satisfy, because at the game's core is a soggy souffle that collapses almost before we can get the fork in. After two decades in the kitchen, was it too much to hope that this otherwise talented chef might have come up with something a little less...lightweight?
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 [4]
Platforms: PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Round-based matches were part of the original Zombies mode in Call of Duty: World at War in 2008; survival maps were in Black Ops II in 2012. If we're at a point where one way to make COD feel 'new' is to revive ideas from more than a decade ago, that is perhaps a sign that the series needs a break, or at least a hard reset.
Demonschool [6]
Platforms: PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series
We're left to wonder what Demonschool would have been like if its plot had been compressed into six or seven weeks instead of 11 - could more focus on a shorter period have brought the core cast and scenario writing up to par with the superior script that enlivens the incidental moments? The island and its minigames, side conversations and beautiful backdrops hold their charm, and part of us yearns to remain in Demonschool's world. Unlike Eve, thougn, we begin to resent that demons keep tearing us out of it.
Hotel Infinity [8]
Platforms: PSVR2, Quest 2, Quest 3 (tested), Quest 3S
Along with our recommendation, then, we should include a warning. It may not just be furniture you want to clear out from your play space before beginning. Between the noises this game wrenches out of us - acrophobic gasps and loud cackles of disbelief - and the fact that its core navigational trick has you moving like a dog tied to a post, you will want to ensure any potential witnesses have been removed too. At its best, to play Hotel Infinity is to draw out a magic circle (or square) in the middle of familiar space, and the last thing you want is for external reality to intrude on that, whether it's the fear of ridicule or the sharp corner of a sofa you didn't move quite far enough.
Dispatch [5]
Platforms: PC (tested), PS5
Dispatch is stylish, dynamic and at times, has us laughing out loud, thanks in particular to Travis Willingham's performance as Phenomaman but it feels impossible to get past the fawning fantasy at its heart. Comic and game culture have been thematically richer than this, and narrative games are able to do a great deal with very little interactivity. So why, despite jokes about this not being the golden age of comics any more, does Dispatch feel like a retrograde step?
Sleep Awake [6]
Platforms: PC (tested), PS5, Xbox Series
Just like a dream, Sleep Awake is far less capable of narrative coherence than in providing strange places to get lost within. Even so, its sights and sounds are entrancing enough to stop anyone dozing off.
Octopath Traveller 0 [8]
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2 (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series
The story can feel episodic, with more than one quest marked 'finale' before it becomes clear it's anything but - evidently the result of adapting a narrative that's been drip-fed through a live-service title over five years. But since Square Enix has now transferred the mobile game's rights to NetEase, it's worth celebrating this particular path, in which that entire saga has been preserved unabridged, enhanced with voice acting, and without a gacha pull in sight.
Horses [7]
Platforms: PC
Horses only feigns minor stabs at interactivity, offering the illusion of branching paths while corralling you down a predetermined lane....Still, Horses is a fascinating work, capable of moments that lodge in the memory, such as the late-game sequence when the projector's whirring finally stops and the tired clomp of foosteps registers to our ears like the sound of freedom.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion [7]
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5 (tested), Switch, Switch 2, Xbox Series
If the nostalgic, arcade sensibilities of Cosmic Invasion may not hold us as long as Absolum's roguelike depth, then, mastering our favoured dynamic duo - to borrow a phrase from a rival universe - just might.
