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The Guardian
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Lost Records explores the joys and dangers of our cultural obsession with nostalgia
I finished Lost Records: Bloom and Rage several days ago, but I'm still thinking about it. Developed by Don't Nod, the creator of the successful Life Is Strange series, it's a narrative adventure about four girls in a town in Wyoming, who meet one summer, form a band, discover a strange supernatural force in the woods and then meet up 30 years later to dissect what exactly happened to them. It is about growing up, growing apart and processing trauma, seen through a nostalgic lens. We meet the lead characters as adults, and join them as they scour their shared past, revisiting old places – a shack in the woods, their teenage bedrooms, the local bar – and exhuming old feelings. Lost Records has an excellent feel for the mid-90s when the girls were 16: you can explore rooms and pick up artefacts such as game carts, diaries and mixtapes and, if you were around at the time, you absorb the nostalgia as keenly as the characters themselves. While playing I was struck at what a vital role nostalgia plays in video game design. I don't mean in the extrinsic sense of playing and remembering old video games, and I don't mean games that call back to old titles. I mean nostalgia as a central theme and a motivational force for characters. So many role-playing adventures are about unlocking the past through narrative archeology. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, Avowed, Journey, Outer Wilds and Heaven's Vault are all games in which your primary aim is to discover what happened to some ancient civilisation and, through it, your character's own legacy and identity. It's nostalgia that infects the landscape of The Last of Us as much as the deadly fungus – Ellie's love of old comics, songs and joke books; the repeated use of ruined museums, theatres and playgrounds as key locations – that Naughty Dog wanted to tap in to by repurposing our own nostalgia for lost childhood pleasures. I'm reading Agnes Arnold-Forster's excellent book Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion, which looks at the origins of the concept and how it was first considered a fatal disease of the mind, a sort of mortal home sickness. In Death Stranding, this idea is made physical in the shape of the Beached Things, the smoky tar-like spirits that haunt the game's ruined landscapes. Nostalgia is the perfect theme for video games, because we have the freedom to explore and discover in them. They immerse us in landscapes and provide countless objects for us to observe and interact with. They also allow us to collect our own mementoes – most major titles now have photo modes where we can capture specific scenes, composing and editing the footage to our specific emotional requirements. In Lost Records, you can record video footage on lead character Swann's camcorder; you do this throughout the game and then there's a lovely payoff, which reminded me a little of the unforgettable climax to Cinema Paradiso. What is particularly absorbing about Lost Records, however – and it has been one of the game's most controversial aspects – is that it deals in the inconsistencies of nostalgia as much as the comforts. It is unapologetically ambiguous, with its central mysteries remaining largely unresolved. There is no comfortable catharsis, no shock reveal – what the lead characters learn when they reunite is that memory is unreliable, perhaps even duplicitous. In this way, it reminded me a lot of independent genre cinema – We're All Going to the World's Fair, Skinamarink, It Follows. It is elusive and non-compliant. We often think about games as power fantasies, but they are equally fantasies of reconstruction and remembrance. Games make us yearn for worlds that were never there. Perhaps one day, some sort of brain-computer interface will allow role-playing adventures to be set in our own memories, our own nostalgic kingdoms. It sounds idyllic, but what video games have been trying to warn us is that our brains are unreliable narrators. Nostalgia is a door, but it's also a trap. If you were playing PC games in the mid-1990s, the chances are you were a fan of the real-time strategy genre. Dune II, Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation … how the hours flew by as we harvested resources, built war machines and set out to destroy the other side's bases. Tempest Rising is a shameless paean to that era, set on an alternate 1990s Earth ruined by nuclear war and now housing two battling factions. The core loop of exploring, gathering, building and fighting is tight and compulsive, and the detailed visuals lend a modern sheen. Now let's have a new Advance Wars title for the Nintendo Switch 2. Available on: PCPlaytime: 20+ hours I love that Polygon has written a guide on how to take physical notes of the hit puzzle game Blue Prince. As someone who spent his childhood making maps of Commodore 64 adventures, I approve of this most tactile way to navigate games. Last year, I used multiple sheets of graph paper (complete with little flaps for hidden areas) to map Lorelei and the Laser Eyes and it was so fun to be back. The games industry can breathe a sigh of relief – it turns out Assassin's Creed Shadows has performed well, despite manufactured outrage over its use of a black samurai in the leading role. has a good opinion piece on the subject. Amid endless layoffs and studio closures, here's a piece from Eurogamer about how institutional memory helped make Indiana Jones and the Great Circle such an assured and entertaining game. It turns out that experienced teams who have worked together for years make good games together. Who'd have thought? Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape Two) – love, grief and self-recrimination as the girls reunite | ★★★★☆ Now Play This 2025 – the end of an era of experimental game design | Simon Parkin 'It's allowed me to see through his eyes': Super Mario, my dad and me Piece of the action: entering the British puzzle championship Super spicy! Jack Black's Minecraft song Steve's Lava Chicken becomes shortest ever UK Top 40 hit Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion This week's question comes from Andrew Wilcox, head judge and founder of the Cuprinol shed of the year competition, who asked via Bluesky: 'Why are there lots of sheds in games but no games about shed-building?' Considering how big the cosy games market is, you'd think some clever indie studio would have attempted a shed sim by now. Imagine pottering about in your own virtual wooden den, perhaps doing a spot of carpentry or sorting seeds to plant. You can build sheds in The Sims 4: Cottage Living and Farming Simulator, but these tend to have very specific utilitarian uses, such as grain storage. Anyway, I put the question to game designer and keen shed botherer, Will Luton, who has worked at Sega and Rovio and now runs the consultancy Department of Play. He said: 'There are two problems to consider here: what is the main action (AKA the core loop), and what are the ways you move through the game (AKA the progression vectors)? 'There are multiple ways you could address these. Is the main game more about designing the shed? Or are you making it to a specific design? This defines if it's more open-ended and creative (like Townscaper) or more systematic (like Car Mechanic Simulator). This decision also likely defines the type of interaction: isometric drag and drop v first-person traversal. 'Once you've made one shed, why do you want to make more? There must be some kind of 'unfolding' where new mechanics or possibilities unlock. So, for example, when you complete your first shed, you unlock a nail gun, which means you can assemble much quicker and more sturdily. Maybe now you can make sheds over 10sqm. Or perhaps you install electricity, which unlocks lighting and power tools. Maybe you have a shed yourself that you can constantly upgrade and add new tools to, which allows you to then make bigger and better sheds for clients. 'So to answer the question: there is no reason why someone hasn't made this game. Indeed, if the reader happens to have £500k, I'd help them to bring it to market.' If you've got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – email us on pushingbuttons@
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's divisive weapon durability is getting a workaround, but it's locked to the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition app
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were a massive departure for the series in loads of ways. They were the first open-world Zeldas, the first that properly let you tackle the game in any order, and maybe most controversially, the first games with degradable weapons that could break. The Nintendo Switch 2 Editions now seem to let people repair equipment, but only via the new mobile app function. In case you somehow missed the next-gen console-handheld's reveal, Nintendo is making dedicated Switch 2 versions of both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and letting people pay for an upgrade pack that unlocks access to tech improvements and Zelda Notes, which is included in the Nintendo App. The Zelda Notes app adds a heap of extra features to the two beloved games - like achievements, a GPS map that directs you to secrets, and the ability to share contraptions in Tears of the Kingdom - though you'll have to stare at a second screen to use them (welcome back, Wii U). YouTuber Zeltik noticed one other pretty huge feature in Zelda Notes, however. (Good spot, VGC.) The app basically contains a daily bonus, too, which gifts you random boons like health recovery or an extra item. Most interestingly, one of the daily bonuses seen in the slot-machine-like wheel was 'Equipment Repair.' Weapon decay and durability has long been one of the more divisive parts of two otherwise universally loved games. I'm a fan since it actually forces you to keep exploring, poke at the corners of the map, and scrappily experiment with every tool at your disposal. Introducing weapon repair could probably mess up the game's steady balance, but there's only a chance you'll be able to repair anything once every 24 hours anyway. Nintendo clears up online confusion, confirms physical Switch 2 Edition games come with the original game and next-gen upgrade on the same card
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nintendo announces upgraded Switch 2 editions of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom
Nintendo won't let you escape two of its most critically-acclaimed games ever. It's announced there will be Switch 2 versions of both Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Both titles will benefit from the next-gen console's increased power, with enhanced framerates and resolution during play, as well as HDR support for deeper colors and contrast. Nintendo wasn't specific on the difference between handheld and TV play just yet, but we know the new console will feature several resolutions for play, from 1080p through to 4K. The Switch 2 is also capable of up to 120 FPS, so you're likely to see a difference. For reference, Tears of the Kingdom on the original Switch was locked at 30 FPS in both the Switch's handheld and TV modes. Also, the new mobile Switch App will have new Zelda-specific features for these new editions. It can turn your smartphone into a (sort-of) Sheikah Slate. It'll guide you around maps with voiced directions, and you'll be able to share your creations with QR codes so that others can create your Mad Max destruction machines in their games. And if you're a Switch Online subscriber with the Expansion pack, you'll get both upgraded iterations for free, provided you own the originals.
The Guardian
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Why bloated budgets mean open world games are starting to think small
For more than 20 years the action adventure genre has been dominated by open-world games. They started in quite a constrained way, with titles such as Shenmue and Driver offering miniature cities to wander about, but during the 21st century, they grew to encompass whole kingdoms. Now we have titles such as Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring and Death Stranding that contain vast and highly varied environments; Minecraft worlds are reportedly 60,000km wide. And let's not forget space sims such as Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky, which effectively contain whole galaxies. This whole design model, however, is starting to seem a teeny bit unsustainable. Not only is it astonishingly expensive to build giant worlds (it's rumoured that the forthcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 will cost in the region of $2bn), but the market is also saturated with competitors all promising many hundreds of hours of exploration. Is there really an unlimited supply of players willing to buy and play more than two of these a year – especially now that we're being incentivised to stick around through live service features, such as regularly updated costumes, missions and locations? As a result, major studios are beginning to rethink their approach to map design in large single-player adventures. Released in February, Avowed is the latest epic role-playing fantasy from Obsidian Entertainment, and instead of an open structure, the landscape is divided into a series of smaller segments, which open up consecutively as the story progresses. According to narrative designer Kate Dollarhyde, a key part of this decision was being able to provide a cogent narrative that allowed for more player choice. 'Pacing is really tough in open-world games,' she told Xbox Wire. 'You never know where the player is and what they're doing at any given time. So having these zones that happen in sequence means we always know what content you've just come from on the critical path.' In short, what the player loses in terms of being able to wander about wherever they like, the developers gain in taking control over how the story proceeds. I enjoyed the structure too because it gave me a very clear idea of how far I'd come – it made a very ambitious title feel manageable. Another recent example is Atomfall, apocalyptic postwar thriller from Rebellion Developments in which the player must escape the quarantine zone placed around a disaster at the Windscale nuclear plant. Again, there are four main landscape areas for the player to discover, some of which are subtly locked behind narrative prompts. These spaces are fully explorable – you can wander the woods, explore a little village, clamber down into winding caves – but they're comparatively small, so it feels like wherever you go, you're going to find something interesting and relevant. Added to this is the lack of fast travel: you get everywhere on foot, so you really become embedded in these rich spaces – part of the pleasure becomes taking new routes between familiar locations, checking out ruined country mansions, or hidden gorges leading down to trickling streams. It reminded me of how fun it was to play last year's excellent role-playing adventure Dragon's Dogma 2, which was more open in design but similarly restricted fast travel across the map, providing only a few teleport sites. In this way, every quest really felt like a quest – something time-consuming, unpredictable and dangerous. The sorts of things games are really about. I wonder what effect the arrival of GTA 6 will have – whether other publishers will feel they should compete or if they'll just throw their arms up in surrender and head the way of Obsidian and Rebellion. I hope it's the latter. There's still so much innovation to be made in contained explorable environments – look at how much interactive variety has been teased from the wonderful Hitman titles: the way that interlocking gameplay systems involving player-character abilities, enemy AI and environmental factors combine to produce rich procedural narratives. I've forgotten a lot of the landscape I saw in the Horizon titles but I'll never forget knocking out a millionaire tech bro with a giant fish. The variety that open-world titles boast about doesn't just have to come from sheer expanse, it can be much more granular. I'd take an intricately authored village over a vast wilderness any day, because I like to get to know a place. I knew the little town of Silent Hill, I knew the docks of Shenmue. It's like famous game designer Chappell Roan once put it: I don't want the world, but I'll take this city. If Balatro has got you really into weird poker games, can I point you toward Cave of Cards? A little browser-based game by the brilliant designer Adam Saltsman, it's essentially a 'match-three' puzzler mixed with a poker game: you clear the cave by digging up playing cards and making a decent hand. You can play on your PC, Mac or phone and it runs on the online virtual console Pico-8, which has dozens of other excellent little games to try. Available on: PC, Mac, smartphone Estimated playtime: 2+ hours Very relevant to our essay above, Nicolas Doucet, the director of Sony's beautiful platformer Astro Bot, said at a talk at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco: 'From the start, we were in the mindset that it's OK to make a compact game, and I think it's really important – especially going into this year – it's OK to make a small game.' Eurogamer has the rest of the details. Oh and look: here is writer Sam Howitt with an excellent article on Mass Effect: Andromeda and the idea of games that respect your time as a player. It's a really nuanced piece with lots of examples, and I like the way Howitt neatly sums up the Ubisoft school of open-world game design as 'travelling to points on a map to build up progress meters'. If you're waiting for the TV adaptation of The Last of Us Part Two, Variety has a decent interview with the actor Pedro Pascal, who portrays Joel, about how he prepared for the five-year gap in the narrative timeline between the games. It's an interesting insight into his grasp on the character and the world itself. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Why video games can't escape their role in the radicalisation of young men UK watchdog bans 'shocking' ads in mobile games that objectified women Video game music has arrived on the festival circuit – and it's only going to get bigger An important question from reader Natalie this week: 'It's taken me many games played and unfinished before I've realised that, although I enjoy gameplay, puzzles, strategy, defeating bosses and the like, all of my favourite games have compelling narratives. Can you recommend some of the best storytelling in video game history? I'm a Nintendo Switch gamer but I'm up for hearing broad recommendations for future reference.' This is a tough one to answer because I'm extremely critical of video game narratives that rely on overly complicated world-building and endless environmental lore drops – and those are often the ones on lists of the best video game stories. There are a bunch of classics I'd recommend, though: the indie title Firewatch, Valve's classic sci-fi opus Portal 2, the beautiful Ico, the immense God of War. The Resident Evil Remakes are strong on schlocky horror narratives, too. For the Switch, try a bingeable quartet of Undertale, The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, To the Moon and Outer Wilds – all gripping in different ways. If you've got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@
