Prey for the Gods was revealed in 2015 as a Shadow of the Colossus-inspired game about a "lone hero sent to the edge of a dying world" to investigate the cause of an eternal winter that's gripped the world. Last year, it earned more than $500,000 on Kickstarter, even as developer No Matter Studios did its best to keep a lid on sky-high expectations.
Work has continued apace since then: Topics in the latest newsletter include the ongoing push toward a closed alpha release, changes to the control setup, and a more robust fire system. There is also, thanks to a trademark dispute with Bethesda Softworks, a new name—it's now called "Praey for the Gods."
"We could’ve fought this and we did think about it for quite a while. Something like a trademark opposition can be long and depending on how far someone wants to fight it can be very expensive," the studio explained. "We didn’t want to spend our precious Kickstarter funds, nor did we want to have to ask for additional funds to fight this in court. Using backer money towards something that doesn’t go towards the development or backer rewards felt horrible to us. Even if we did win we’d have to spend a solid chunk of our funds and in our opinion it wasn’t worth it."
No Matter said it gave thought to calling the game "Præy for the Gods," which as a Kickstarter backer pointed out looks a little less like a typo than the obviously-not-a-word "Praey," but ultimately decided that it would be too troublesome for users to enter in things like Google searches. (Let's see you produce "æ" without either a copy/paste or Google.) And as it turns out, Bethesda also opposed that implementation of the title, because it looks too much like "Prey."
The good news is that the agreement gives the studio the right to continue using the logo, which features a woman kneeling in prayer in place of the "e" in "Prey." More importantly, it puts the matter to rest, so the developers can direct their full efforts toward actually making the game.
"It was something that kept me up many nights, and no doubt shifted our focus from our game frequently. Worrying about the outcome if we went to trial, if we’d lose our fans or walk away from the mark and still potentially get sued for millions on trademark infringement. This is really something no starting company should have to deal with let alone a tiny team of 3," it wrote. "So the fact that we came out the other end intact still developing the game was a win. One that will no doubt shape our company moving forward."
No Matter also shared some "pre-alpha footage fun," demonstrating a wild-looking ride aboard a great, beastly bird, which you can check out below. Pre-alpha or not, it looks pretty great. Praey for the Gods doesn't have a release date yet, but you can catch up with what's what at praeyforthegods.com.
Sometimes it’s obvious. Would there really be a treasure chest in the middle of such an unremarkable room, just begging you to open it? Please. Other times it’s almost impossible to tell. There will be an imperfection in the shape if you’re lucky, maybe a misplaced link of chain on the side or a wood grain that seems just slightly off. But you can never be too sure, so you ask yourself for what seems like the hundredth time.
Is it a mimic?
These days we just want to know if a treasure chest is going to sprout teeth and swallow us whole, but more than 40 years ago, identifying a mimic was a much harder problem. They weren't just treasure chests, and they weren't always mindlessly hungry for the flesh of adventurers. Some could speak and even bargain. Others would attack anything on sight. Some would grow to be the size of houses, others content to live as doormats. Or walls, floors or clothes. Toilets.Mimics have appeared in hundreds of videogames since the 1980s, usually as nothing more than a hungry chest. But when they first appeared in Dungeons & Dragons, they were so much more than that.
Making a murderer
D&D co-creator Gary Gygax coined the mimics we all know and love (and see in our nightmares) in 1974. Three years later, he gave players a clearer picture of mimics with D&D’s Monster Manual, but questions still needed answering. So, in 1983, Ed Greenwood—creator of D&D’s Forgotten Realms campaign and many of its monsters—wrote The Ecology of the Mimic, which compiled information from scattered lore into one definitive bestiary. He also made up a lot of new details to fill in gaps in player understanding.
“That was and is the fun in D&D for me, making stuff up,” Greenwood tells me over email. “In ways consistent with existing lore, so as to weave new portions of an existing tapestry.”
Before the Ecology, mimics were just shapeshifting subterranean creatures that didn’t like sunlight. Incredibly flexible hermits, basically. But Greenwood delved into everything from how mimics transform to what potions you can make from their innards (polymorph, obviously). He outlined the two basic types of mimics: big stupid killers and small intelligent fiends. He shared the story of one bold mimic which spent two years as a statue sat square in the middle of town, curiously near a sewer vein “filled to a depth of more than 60 feet with human and animal bones.” It’s no exaggeration to say he changed the face of mimics forever.
Greenwood’s Ecology is probably the closest thing to science to ever come out of D&D, but what’s even more interesting is how the characteristics it laid out influenced the mimics in videogames. Look at the ones in the original Ultima, released in 1980. These are aggressive monster chests that pounce when the player gets close. Sounds remarkably faithful to the Monster Manual, doesn’t it?
For early PC games like Ultima, creativity was measured in bytes.
Now look at Luggage from Discworld, released in 1995—after Greenwood’s ecology. Luggage is most definitely a mimic, but he’s also your companion. He’s a little disobedient, but sentient, almost dog-like and kind of cute. If nothing else, he’s far more intelligent than Ultima’s mimics. In fact, Luggage is one of the only ‘smart’ mimics in videogames. But why? Greenwood said that mimics are often intelligent enough to speak. So why are most mimics automatically enemies? To paraphrase a certain Doom review, wouldn’t it be something if we could talk to them?
Despite Greenwood's definition of the mimic giving them the power to take any shape, mimics are almost always enemies in games largely because of technology. D&D players have the luxury of interacting with as many NPCs as they can imagine, but for early PC games like Ultima, creativity was measured in bytes. With an Apple II’s specs, there was barely enough room for a fantasy world, let alone rich dialogue. So, to meet gameplay needs, ‘the mimic’ was colloquialized to ‘the monster chest.’
Discworld had a little more wiggle room. Computers had improved since the ‘80s and it wasn’t a fantasy RPG like Ultima; it was a point-and-click adventure game, and those are popular because of their writing and charm. Thus Luggage was born, intelligence and disobedience intact. Hardware and genre influenced the design of both games’ mimics, but both ultimately echoed the then-current standards set by D&D.
Jump to Baldur’s Gate in 1998. There wasn’t a shred left of the intelligence Luggage displayed; mimics were back to being regular old monster chests. Considering Baldur’s Gate’s wealth of dialogue and how faithfully it emulated D&D’s other systems, you’d think it could have made good use of a wise-cracking mimic or two. But while Baldur’s Gate didn’t have an easy time cramming an isometric RPG into a disc, its mimics were a result of design philosophy more so than technical limitations. Again, the focus here was on exploring a world, and to that end mimics were most useful as a clever way to liven up dungeons. And really, aside from the whole eating people thing, that’s what mimics have always been about: meeting the unique needs of games.
“Mimics are the workhorse shapeshifting critters, the most ubiquitous, versatile and yet low-powered,” Greenwood says. “Unlike, say, [werewolves], they have few strings attached to their shifting abilities, and lack the restrictions on form that most other shapeshifters have… Mimics can be anything, can have any degree of cunning a [dungeon master] requires, and the [dungeon master’s] desired patience, too,” Greenwood says.
Even when videogames are cherry-picking D&D canon, they’re still following it in spirit. Dungeon masters and game designers alike have always used mimics as plot devices and gameplay challenges as needed. So, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Conventions of mimicry
After a while, the mimics of early RPGs like Ultima started to influence other videogames as much as D&D did. For starters, focusing on a chest form led videogames to associate mimics almost explicitly with greed and treasure, and they were a convenient way of introducing risk/reward in dungeons. Why do you think mimics usually drop rare and valuable items? Look at Dragon Quest 3’s canniboxes and pandora’s boxes from 1988—alternate variants of the game’s vanilla mimics which appear later and drop better stuff. Look at Avarice, a boss in the more recent Titan Souls that not only is a gilded treasure chest but guards a roomful of treasure.
Perhaps most famously, look at the Symbol of Avarice helmet in Dark Souls, which improves your loot drops and consumes your health. It’s a sister item to the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring, which also ups your loot. Dark Souls treats mimics as symbols of greed on par with snakes, which have been used to represent gluttony for centuries. That’s saying something about how stigmatized mimics have become. I almost feel sorry for the greedy bastards.
Early RPGs established a relationship between mimics and greed, but they also essentially codified them as chests, which may be why they appear so rarely in other genres or other forms. Toejam & Earl is a rare example from the early 90s, where the mimic took the form of an angry mailbox, attacking you instead of giving you presents. Again, greed is the throughline.
Dark Souls's mimics are gangly, chest-headed monstrosities, easily the most creative and terrifying to appear in a game. They also illustrate how some qualities in Greenwood’s Ecology evolved into gameplay mechanics. From Software held off on making ladder mimics (to the delight of a grateful universe), but Dark Souls’ mimics hide their true bodies and may be bipedal or quadrupedal, which is a subtle remnant of the true shapeshifting of old. The Ecology said mimics are sensitive to heat; Dark Souls’ mimics (and plenty of others) are weak to fire attacks.
Then there’s the “glue” that D&D mimics use to trap victims in place before mauling and eventually eating them. There’s no glue in Dark Souls, but if you get grabbed by a mimic, you likely aren’t going anywhere but a bonfire. In D&D, you have to pass a strength check to escape a mimic; in Dark Souls, you have to have a lot of vitality to survive the bite.
JRPGs like Final Fantasy offer another fascinating example: they don’t technically glue players in place, but you usually can’t escape from encounters with mimics, either. Many JRPGs also streamlined mimics even further. By viewing the fundamental idea of ‘player expects loot, gets a fight instead’ through the lens of random encounters, they created the ‘box of enemies.’ The chest itself isn’t even a monster anymore, just a trigger for a random encounter. Does that make it a mimic? No, but it’s still a different means to the same end, and it’s still hardware dictating design. Random encounters were instituted to free up memory, after all.
Mimics have started to show up more often outside the RPG genre in recent years, though they're almost always still chests. Games like Borderlands 2 and Magicka treat them as easter eggs. Terraria and Enter the Gungeon split mimics into tiers to suit their progression-based combat systems. Torchlight loves to hide mimics in groups of chests.
Others still feature distant ancestors. Shovel Knight’s angler fish boss uses a treasure chest lure to draw in players. The ‘maneater’ in Dragon’s Dogma uses treasure chests like a hermit crab does shells. "Definitely not a mimic," Greenwood said of the maneater. "This is an ‘ambush predator."
Then again, the truest characteristic of mimics in Greenwood's Ecology is that they can take any form. Modern games that ditch the toothy chest are still staying true to that spirit. These things are everywhere if you really look. In other words, stay suspicious, because it’s probably a mimic.
Update: There's no explanation as to what exactly went wrong, but Rockstar has confirmed that the problem has been fixed, and the clerks are back on the job on all three platforms. You may now resume your usual life of crime.
Original story:
Something very strange is afoot in the world of GTA Online. As reported by Kotaku, all the clerks in the game's convenience and liquor stores have simply disappeared. They've apparently been missing since yesterday, May 2, in fact, and nobody knows why.
Now, you might be inclined to see this as a net positive. GTA Online is not the sort of game that rewards good behavior and upstanding citizenship, after all, and stores being left unattended means there's nobody around to stop you from doing, and taking, anything and everything your little heart desires. Except this is a videogame, not real life, and so in order to get the things you need, you need a clerk.
Their absence is vexing for players whose daily missions include robbing a convenience store, but it's even worse for new players, because no store clerks means the tutorial can't be completed. It can be skipped, but why should you have to do that?
Kotaku also noted that players are encountering other technical issues including an inability to set bounties and organize the cars in their garages. It's not clear how widespread the problems are, but reports of missing store clerks had appeared in the GTAV subreddit less than an hour prior to this post. I've reached out to Rockstar for more information about the problem, and will update if and when I receive a reply. In the meantime, if you're roaming the streets of San Andreas, how are things looking?
I can still remember the first time I set foot in Skyrim. Everything seemed so big—its map, its trees, its mountains, its townships—and I spent my first couple of hours aimlessly wandering around its world. Having completed not one quest beyond the game's de rigueur introductory exchange, my under-powered hero was often left pegging it across the plains from far stronger foes and, of course, I revelled in the occasions where I rode my luck and came out on top.
One particular battle of note saw me going toe-to-toe with a tenacious bandit. It was a tiresome affair as we fought back and forth, exchanging trivial single blows from Windhelm all the way up to Winterhold. By the time I'd run out of potions of minor healing, I threw caution to the wind and went in for the kill/valiant defeat. At the time I remember being amazed by how good close-quarters combat felt—how important each weighty jab felt, and how satisfying it was to see the beleaguered bandit finally fall before me.
It was then that I was equally amazed by something else: this bandit was carrying gold, two minor stamina potions, a secondary sheathed weapon and an apple. And as if that haul wasn't surprising enough, my character—who could barely swing a sword at this point—was able to determine the fallen enemy's concealed inventory instantly. Sure, the shield and the sword and the fur armour were readily recognisable, but how the hell did my hero know this dude had a piece of fruit tucked away in his pocket just by looking at him?
Despite Skyrim, BioShock and Dishonored being among my all-time favourite videogames, one thing that inherently annoys me in their self-acknowledged quests for seamless realism and 'immersion' is how unbelievable instantaneous looting is. Even with x-ray vision, it would take decidedly longer to ascertain what's on our foe's person than the respective lightning-fast evaluations of the Dragonborn, Jack and Corvo.
Hinterland's survival exploration game The Long Dark does things a little differently. In a game where weapons are a curious luxury—and where your ability to use them is almost nonexistent—scavenging and looting is not only central to its makeup, but is also key to whether or not you make it through the night alive. A simple 'Searching' meter dictates how quickly you're able to case containers, shelving units, supply crates, corpses and more—and its speed in doing so reflects how quickly, or slowly, you might expect to sift through an old drawer or a frozen, lifeless body's pockets in reality.
At first you'll shrug off the searches that wield nothing, as you quickly move onto the next stuffing your pockets with whichever treasures you happen upon. But before long, when you're starving, dehydrated, injured, sick, freezing, or, as is often the case, all of the above, a single search can be the difference between life and death. Suddenly, an instantaneous search doesn't seem so bad, as that once innocuous 'Searching' bar takes on a whole new level of urgency and importance: whereby the closer it gets to completion without spoils, the further your heart generally sinks.
And yet, conversely, that extra wait can result in flashes of unparalleled joy. During one venture into the icy wilderness, I'd become slightly over-encumbered and, of course, stumbled upon a pack of blood-thirsty wolves. I spotted an ice lodge up ahead and decided to try to circumnavigate the mob by going wide into the encroaching trees. Or so I thought. Before I knew it I was being hunted down at speed and the forest in front of me that I'd attempted to use for cover did nothing but impede my beeline for safety. I wound up on the deck with a ravenous wolf gnawing at me. After shaking the beast off I was gravely injured, bleeding out and carrying entirely more than my weakened body could handle.
I tried ditching a few bedrolls to lighten the load, but it was clear my priority was sourcing medicine and fast. I hobbled along to the lodge leaving a trail of blood at my back, only to discover I had a wolf bite on my head of all places that had a 50 percent chance of becoming infected. Carrying just one dose of antibiotics, I was equipped to stave off the infection, but without any bandages I wasn't going to last much longer.
After a quick scour of the room, I spotted a locker, two drawers, a plastic container and a first aid box. Rejoice! Over to the first aid housing. Searching… a flare! Okay! Not the most useful item, but back to the search. More antibiotics. Search over. Shite. Onto the container. Nothing. The first drawer. A chocolate bar and a pair of worn gloves. The last drawer. I'm done for. Searching… Another chocolate bar. The search drags on. A bandage. A F****ING BANDAGE! I'm saved!
And of course by 'saved', I actually mean 'able to treat my wounds, sleep, and leave the cabin only to be mauled to death by the pack of wolves who'd camped outside my door overnight'—but let's not split hairs, eh?
That urgency, that forced and uncomfortable searching pause, and that moment of elation when a game that's otherwise brutally unforgiving throws you a bone is nothing short of marvellous. I've of course had umpteen useless searches end my life in The Long Dark as I fight against the clock, but the anticipation of each scramble is a thing of beauty—which can equally relate to discovering food when you're starving, firewood when you're freezing, or, if you're especially lucky, a firearm when you want to get your own back on that blasted wolf pack.
A few weeks back, The Long Dark launched a mysterious counter which we're almost sure is tied to its much-anticipated and as yet absent Story Mode. That timer expires tomorrow—stay tuned for our coverage once we know more.
China recently passed a law requiring games which offer randomized loot for money—like Hearthstone's card packs—to publish drop rates so that players know exactly how likely (or unlikely) they are to get rare items or cards.
Regarding the Dota 2 Asia Championships Treasure, Eyes of the King has a 6 percent drop rate, and the Armor of the Shattered Vanguard has a 2 percent drop rate, if Google Translate can be trusted to get numbers right. (I especially love how Armor of the Shattered Vanguard becomes "disillusioned pioneer armor" by Google's estimation.)
These rates for rare items may only apply to this particular Treasure, and may not be the same everywhere outside of China—for all we know Perfect World has its own rates that differ from Valve's. But as more Treasures are added to the Chinese Dota 2 store and have their drop rates published, we may be able to make some deductions about how these items are handled outside of China.
ZeniMax Online Studios can now help you answer that question, having revealed the minimum and recommended system requirements needed to revisit the land first conceived some 15 years ago.
"With The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind launching in just a few weeks, we want to make sure you'll be ready to dive straight into the action," says ZeniMax on the game's official website. "Below you'll find the minimum and recommended system requirements to play on PC and Mac. Please note that we aren't changing any of the requirements at this time from what's currently needed, but merely clarifying exactly what's necessary to play."
For PC players, you're looking at the following:
Minimum
Windows 7 32-bit
Intel Core i3 540 or AMD A6-3620
3GB System RAM
85GB free HDD space
DirectX 11 compliant video card with 1 GB of RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 460/AMD Radeon 6850) or higher
DirectX compatible sound card
Internet broadband connection
Recommended
Windows 7 64-bit
Intel Core i5 2300 or AMD FX4350
8GB System RAM
85GB free HDD space
DirectX 11 compliant video card with 2 GB of RAM (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 or AMD Radeon HD 7850) or higher
And for the Mac users among us, you'll want to come equipped with:
Minimum
OS X 10.9
Intel Core i3 540 or higher
4 GB System RAM
85 GB free HDD space
AMD Radeon 5870 (1GB of VRAM) with OpenGL 4.1
Internet broadband connection
Recommended
OS X 10.11
Intel Core i5 2500S or higher
8 GB System RAM
85 GB free HDD space
AMD Radeon HD 7870 or higher with OpenGL 4.1
The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind is due June 6, 2017.
League of Legends goes through its fair share of metagame shifts. There was the age of wombo combos, where you’d grab Amumu and Karthus and Galio and just wait for the poor enemy team to group up. In darker days, there was the out of control Blade of the Ruined King, an item so good everyone would buy six of them and then proceed to dish out obscene amounts of damage. AD carries used to swear that there was a meta where they were allowed to shine, free of the oppression of the other classes, but everyone ignores them these days. Then, of course, there’s the infamous tank meta.
In the new patch, three of League’s tanks are getting an overhaul that should allow them to shine once again. Sejuani, Zac, and Maokai have all gotten little reworks that bring them up to date... and, incidentally, make them a heck of alot stronger.
Fury of the North
Sejuani is, by far, the most interesting rework. She received a minor tune up with her 2013 visual update, but this modern changeup goes way deeper—and starts with her ultimate. Her old ultimate had a strong case for being the best team fight ability in the game. It was a ranged skillshot that was very generous at determining when it hit that encased everyone around the explosion point in ice, and slowed everyone outside of the detonation area. That is, in a word, ridiculous... and it kept the rest of her kit relatively simple, so that she didn’t become overlord of the jungle.
Sejuani is now built around the frost mechanic. Her new passive, Fury of the North, basically turns her into even more of a tank if she hasn’t been hit in a while. Her resistances spike, and she’s immune to slows. Small monsters and minions don’t remove this effect, so Sejuani can come out of the jungle as an unslowable, tanky-as-heck beast. Her passive has a second component, where her first basic attack against a target she’s stunned chunks them. This becomes important later.
Here’s how it works: Frost is no longer just a passive slow that Sejuani applies to people and they quickly shrug off. Now, her abilities (and those of her allies) apply Frost, which stacks. When a target is at full Frost stacks, she can apply Permafrost, which does damage and stuns. Her ult now stuns and damages the first person it hits, but she can have it do AOE damage if it travels 400 distance over the Rift. In short, she can still lock down an entire team through Frost, and then her ult is reserved for really screwing over one guy. Not only does she stun her unlucky enemy, but she also uses her passive to hit them for a massive chunk of damage.
Add in a little extra mobility on her Q, and a less clunky W, and Sejuani’s looking to be more of a warlord than a borelord.
Strengthening Zac’s stick
Zac lives and dies by his Elastic Slingshot, and it’s by far his most iconic ability, but otherwise he just kind of swings his arms together. Even his ult, Let’s Bounce!, is a Wukong ult with a different coat of paint. Zac still gets a little bit of play, and he’s still a prized pick for junglers like Meteos, but he’s missed a little oomph. As more tanks come out, each with increasingly unique skillsets, Zac basically has his passive (which is unchanged), his elastic skillset, and then he just throws his limbs around until he dies.
While Riot have patched up his ult, they also gave his Q some love. Now Zac can grab one enemy, basic attack to pick up another... and slam them into each other. Also, his ult now has a charge system. If he lets it go early, he knocks people back. If he fully charged it, he sucks up all enemies around him and carries them with him to his target direction, and he can travel 1000 direction with this. Goodbye, enemy team, we knew ye well.
Maokai branches out
Maokai is the tank on the list who’s receiving the lightest touches here, which makes sense, as he’s a strong character who is popular in pro play. Turns out that’s the problem: he’s a little too strong. His ult, an AOE damage dampener that explodes based on how much it soaked up, is gone now. The rest of his kit largely remains the same, although there are tweaks and number changes throughout each ability.
Now, Maokai’s ult sends out a wave of five branches that head in a straight line. They can be launched from any point, to anywhere, and any enemy they hit gets caught up in their path. Think Zyra’s E, but on a Nami’s ult scale and speed. The lockdown is a little more appropriate to Maokai’s identity as a tank, and if you’re playing Meowkai, he shoots out springy, murderous kittens, which is always great.
It’s always a risky choice to rebalance a strong character instead of just hitting them with the nerf bat, but Maokai is a good candidate for a rework because he’s been a solid choice for so long. In order to appropriately nerf him, you’d need to hit his numbers so hard he’d be rendered unplayable. Riot have employed this knee-cap method with characters before, but Maokai isn’t as problematic as an old-school Evelynn or Yorick. Hopefully his new ultimate and numbers tweaks make him more of a situational pick, instead of the Ur Tank against which all other tanks must be measured.
Tanks are one of the most dangerous classes to balance in League. Too strong, and you’re begun a new tank meta which feels awful and is characterized by meaty, unkillable monsters wet noodle fighting in top lane. Too weak, and AD carries run rampant over everyone else. These new character reworks seem like a good compromise, focusing on fun hooks over strong base stats. Of course, we’ll have to hold judgement until these reworks are live and hunting all of us down with their new, wild abilities.
Like our reviewer Tom Marks, I wavered between joy and utter despair while playing Yooka-Laylee, but a new patch will hopefully mitigate the latter. That's because, according to Playtonic Games, the patch will allow you to "reduce those pesky gibberish voices", ie, make them go faster or potentially skip them altogether.
The gibberish voices are the game's stand-in for actual voiceovers, a harkening back to the way dialogue was handled in Banjo-Kazooie. Some love it, others hate it. Either way, the patch will let you enjoy it or smite it. You'll also be able to "skip dialogue faster" and "bypass cutscenes too", which is good for speedrunners, but also good for people who just want to fast track to collecting things without the exposition.
The patch will also add a "sprinkling of design polish throughout" and perhaps most importantly, there have been changes to how the camera works. More detail is forthcoming "in the coming weeks" no doubt in the days before the patch releases.
With thousands of games releasing each year, there's more head-bopping, heart-squeezing videogame music than we can keep track of. But we tried anyway, scraping through our libraries (and beyond) to find what we consider the best tunes of the year so far. Headphones and/or the subwoofers in your kid's car are definitely recommended.
If you like the music, be sure to let the artist know—maybe buy a few records on vinyl, invite some friends and family over, get a cheeseboard way above your budget going, and let a track like Intentional Death and Dismemberment Plan direct the evening.
Tooth and Tail
Austin WintoryListen hereTango and latin dance music may not strike you as the best fit for a game about feudal gangs of small animals at war, but Tooth and Tail manages to pull it off. Every song is played with 20th century Russian instruments that blend the dance tunes into something a bit more pastoral, and once the drunken barroom singing comes in, you'll want to start dancing again—just with a battle axe in the hand that isn't busy with beer.
Destiny 2's Hive theme
Michael Salvatori, Skye Lewin, C Paul JohnsonListen hereMost of Destiny 2's music is fine. It's just fine. You get nice orchestral swells that imply drama and hope and a story much bigger than yourself. It's typical Big Game Stuff. But tucked away on Titan, a planet you aren't required to spend much time on, you'll find the creepy-crawly Hive enemies, and accompanying them is the best music in the game by far. With one foot in Quake's Nine Inch Nails lo-fi industrial noise and the other in the punched up, blown out orchestral sounds of a Marvel movie fight scene, the Hive themes in Destiny 2 narrate the action as much as they drive it, providing a stylish soundscape of scraped guitars steady percussion to pop alien heads to. Shame it's hidden away.
Ruiner
Various ArtistsListen hereRuiner's somber synth beats feel like a direct response to Hotline Miami's retro club boomers. They're just as loud, have just as much bass, and the melodies are just as catchy, but Ruiner's soundtrack brings a sinister sadness right to the fore rather than bury it as subtext. In Ruiner's dystopian cyberpunk world, everything is awful and everyone knows it, but swaying and lazily bobbing your head is still a reliable way to tread the existential waters.
Sonic Mania
Tee LopesListen hereOK, so Sonic is good again (let's not talk about Forces), but what would we think of Sonic Mania if it didn't get such an excellent soundtrack? It's a surprising return to great level design for the series, but the biggest contributor to what makes Mania so endearing is its flashy, confident style—and the vibrant, energetic, and diverse soundtrack is largely to thank for that. If you weren't in control of the blue blur of a hedgehog zipping across the screen, the temptation to play air piano to the Studiopolis themes would be impossible to resist.
Nidhogg 2
Various ArtistsListen hereThe trend of games with excellent compilation soundtracks continues. Hotline Miami popularized the practice, pulling from a handful of artists to cure an aural identity, but now Nidhogg 2 is the new champ. With a catchy, danceable tracklist, every track supports the physical comedy of its prolonged fights and the wacky new artstyle, but stays just as listenable on the dance floor or on a long commute home. Turn it up.
Cuphead
Kristofer MaddiganListen hereOf course Cuphead was going to make the list. To fit with its Fleischer Studios animation style, Studio MDHR enlisted a big band, a live big band for its recording sessions. The result is a massive soundtrack of toe-tapping hits, each with the ability to get a room up and moving. It might be the most surprising and instantly likable of all the soundtracks released this year.
Prey
Mick GordonListen hereMick Gordon of Doom (2016) fame is back on Prey, but with the fuzz and feedback on his electric guitars (how do guitars work?) turned down, and the reverb on his synths and acoustic guitars turned up. Prey's soundtrack melds the computerized rhythms of '70s sci-fi with the homespun sounds of solo country music, planting a grassroots vibe at the center of its digital sound, firmly anchoring the cerebral story in the realm of possibility.
Dream Daddy
Will WiesenfeldListen hereOK, so most of the Dream Daddy soundtrack is pretty simple, but the theme song will bore itself into your subconscious and never leave. Written and performed by Will Wiesenfeld, who also performs as Baths, the theme song channels the exaggerated romance and humor of one of 2017's most playful dating sims. It's also just a damn good song.
David KanagaListen hereOikospiel’s soundtrack is 100 percent intertwined with the game. Watch Kanaga’s GDC talk from a few years back to see what I mean—and no, you probably won’t understand, but that doesn’t really matter. Just know that Kanaga is a genius composer, treating 3D models and game mechanics exactly like he does music, because really, they’re all the same. Also, hell, Celine Dion has never sounded this good. —James Davenport
Night in the Woods
Alec HolowkaListen hereFor the sheer breadth of the soundtrack alone, Night in the Woods is worthy of praise. Individual characters and locations all have their own motif, and that’s just Volume 1. In Volume 2, things get dark. Motifs change with the in-game seasons where things get super sad and hazy for Mae, our favorite protagonist cat. Over the first two volumes, the soundtrack ranges from quiet and sweet to dark and mysterious with music for parties in the woods and city hall theater. But the real kicker comes in Volume 3, which is the soundtrack from Demontower, a whole game within the game. It’s a rad old school throwback that inspires headbanging of the metal and head-against-keyboard variety. —James Davenport
Nier: Automata
Keiichi Okabe, Keigo HoashiListen hereThe first time I entered the resistance camp in Nier: Automata, nestled among some felled skyscrapers in the game’s ruined city, I stayed for more than an hour. And it wasn’t because it looked good, or because there were lots of NPCs to talk to and items to purchase. It was because of the music. Nier: Automata is widely praised for its score—and count me among the people who think it’s among the best I’ve ever heard—but ‘Peaceful Sleep’ is something else. Its prettiness belies an overwhelming sensation of grief, which only properly sets in after you’ve left and returned to the camp a couple of times. The rest of the soundtrack is sublime too, especially this and this, demonstrating that even the most barren, unremarkable video game landscapes (because let’s be honest: Nier isn’t a looker) can be rendered otherworldly by the right music. —Shaun Prescott
Thimbleweed Park
Steve KirkListen hereThe opening tune to Thimbleweed Park tells you exactly what kind of game it’s going to be. A cheesy, mysterious guitar hook invites you in and the elevator music convinces you to stay. Every character and location has a distinct theme, recalling everything from synth pop to a pixelated Hans Zimmer. There’s drama and jokes abound in Thimbleweed Park, but they would feel hollow with such a diverse, playful score. —James Davenport
Tumbleseed
Joel CorelitzListen here Tumbleseed is a brutally hard roguelike with a deceptively adorable appearance and a soundtrack that’s shockingly good. Every track exudes the 80’s, sounding closer to the soundtrack for Drive than you’d expect out of a brightly colored marble maze game. Frankly, it’s one of the few things that kept me from throwing my controller across the room while playing. —Tom Marks
Crypt of the Necrodancer - Aria Awakened
FamilyJules Listen here Holy shit. The most prolific game music guitarist on YouTube (FamilyJules) teams up with one of our favorite composers (Danny Baranowsky, of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac) for this tsunami of guitar solos. There are a bunch of official, album-length covers of Crypt, including this killer chiptune remix, but Aria Awakened is the only one that will melt your headset. Start with Trial of Thunder. —Evan Lahti
C:\Windows\Media
Austin GreenListen here We loved Austin's rock covers of Windows 3.1 midi songs so much we interviewed him about making this short album earlier this year. They're wonderfully peppy. It's hard to listen to these songs without cracking a smile and tapping a foot. And they're also deeply nostalgic for anyone who remembers the early days of PC midi music. Hear Canyon.mid and be transported back 20 years. — Wes Fenlon
Yooka-Laylee
David Wise, Grant KirkhopeListen hereAs a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie Yooka-Laylee left a lot to be desired, but in terms of music Playtonic knocked it out of the park. Veteran Rare composers David Wise and Grant Kirkhope both contributed to a score that sometimes outshines the game’s own inspiration. Not every song is a masterpiece, but there’s a lot of nostalgia to love in this game’s soundtrack. Plus, it gave us this gem. —Tom Marks
Outlast 2
Samuel LaflammeListen hereMost of Outlast 2 consists of running and hiding, and Laflamme’s score has the percussive highs and lows to keep your heart rate steady whether you’re chilling in a barrel or a god-fearing murderer is nipping at your heels. But underscoring it all are light, sometimes hopeful string accompaniments. There’s a pathos in Outlast 2’s score that speaks to the humanity at the center of the conflict. After all, the bad guys are just looking for salvation. They’re scared too. —James Davenport
Hollow Knight
Christopher LarkinListen here This soundtrack meets Hollow Knight’s gorgeous animated art and silently assembled mythos right at the top. It’s epic, if I’m able to reclaim the word, and whimsical, the perfect accompaniment to an intense boss battle or quiet, solemn exploration. Give Crystal Peak a meditative listen, then go loud with Dung Defender. —James Davenport
Flinthook
Patrice BourgeaultListen hereI hesitate to call Flinthook’s soundtrack simple, but it knows exactly what kind of game it’s playing for. Flinthook’s OST is swashbuckling chiptune majesty, an onslaught of fast, fun, victorious bleeps and bloops. It plays like a cheerleading squad combined with a wholesome, but slightly too competitive, dad screaming at you from the sidelines that hell yes, you got this, that’s my hook-swinger right there. —James Davenport
Back on April 10 we received news that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which entered Steam Early Access on March 23, had sold a million copies. Today we learned the multiplayer battle royale shooter is showing no signs of slowing down, as less than a month later it has doubled its sales to 2 million copies.
Along with the sales news, developer Bluehole has announced that it'll be matching donations up to $100,000 during their first charity invitational. The invitational, benefiting Gamers Outreach, will take place this Thursday, May 4, beginning at 9am Pacific and will feature 32 two-player teams from both North America and Europe. Here's the link to donate, and you can tune into the official Battlegrounds Twitch channel on Thursday to watch.
