STACK #169 Nov 2018

GAMES REVIEWS STACK

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Out now at JB Hi-Fi RECOMMENDS

GENRE: racing PLATFORM: XBO MULTIPLAYER: YES FORZA HORIZON 4

Bittersweet as it may be that Forza Horizon is no longer set in our very own backyard, it still brings a smile to our face to see how obvious it is that the game's developers, Playground Games, have had an absolute ball recreating their homeland of Britain in Forza Horizon 4 . The Horizon Festival is now a year-long event (instead of being held solely over summer), which

means you're going to need to adapt to the new driving conditions of four seasons on a weekly rotation. It's quite different trying to navigate a warm, straight road in a McLaren Senna than it is trekking up the side of a hill in some deformed Subaru WRX in the snow. Arguably, you could say you're getting four times the content for the price of one, with seasons changing the look and feel of almost everything in the game.

Being a Horizon entry, you'll of course be able to drive in all the different disciples – street to dirt racing and everything in between – and even take up a job and work hard for the money to keep your Horizon Life afloat. You'll be able to buy a house, and hoon around in over 450 different cars. Racing and performing stunts will attract influence, which you then use to level up in each specific racing discipline and progress through the game. You can tell Playground Games had the time of its life making Forza Horizon 4 . Beautiful, historic Britain is gorgeous, the cars brilliant, and the sheep always just out of reach of your front quarter panel. Alright?

GENRE: MMOFPS PLATFORM: PS4/XBO/PC MULTIPLAYER: YES CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS IIII

This year’s Call of Duty is all about getting online, with multiplayer, ‘Blackout’, and of course ‘Zombies’. Multiplayer is the traditional meat and spuds CoD, and the mode many will find the most tactically solid. The Specialists make their return, each toting their own key abilities, and with 10 of them this time around ready to hit 14 maps. Some twists have been applied, most notably manual

health regeneration and an emphasis on weapon customisation. The very tweakable Zombies brings three campaigns out of the box, with IX plopping you in an ancient Roman arena filled with ancient Roman zombies, while Voyage of the Dead has you aboard the RMS Titanic facing rampaging undead on iceberg day. Rounding things out is Blood of the Dead, taking us back to Alcatraz and the ongoing Aether storyline. With no single-player, something had to be added, and that something is Blackout – the CoD take on battle royale. The setup’s familiar: be the last one standing of 100 combatants tossed onto a huge island that gradually becomes less embiggened as the body count mounts. Finally, a small nod to those who want something offline and solo: the Specialist HQ. Here you can basically ‘practice before you breach’, familiarising yourself with the Specialists’ strengths and weaknesses before you hit multiplayer. Black Ops IIII sees Activision breaking with long-held tradition while bolstering the strengths of the Call of Duty franchise, which has really always revolved around multiplayer. If you can live without a go-it-alone story mission, then there’s a lot here to love.

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NOVEMBER 2018

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