DISPATCHES JULY

Not feeling Blue

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Like apparently quite a lot of Edge readers these days, I am a parent. I was quite prepared for what having kids would do to my leisure time, and it was a bit of a challenge early on, but now that my son and daughter have got a bit older they want to spend lots of time playing videogames together as a family. The latest version of Mario Kart has proved just as entertaining for us as it did for me and my friends playing the original Super Mario Kart together at college. It is amazing to me that we're still playing what is really the same game after all this time, but it feels like the definition of a 'winning formula', and I am not surprised that Mario Kart World is a Switch 2 launch game. In this way, it feels great that games aimed at young people are still relevant to me, which is more than I can say for Fortnite, which I try to play with my son and always end up performing quite badly, much to his embarrassment and also amusement.

At least I can understand the mechanics of it, though, which is more than I can say for Blue Prince, which I recently downloaded to play in my limited amount of solo gaming time. I must admit that I don’t have much experience with Roguelikes, but the review scores made this one seem unmissable. However, do all Roguelikes force the player to rely on sheer luck in order to progress? I’ve been playing the game for over ten hours, and I feel like I am bashing my head against a brick wall. At first I thought I was missing something, but after reading user reviews on the Internet it seems that randomness is just how it is.

As I have been playing Mario Kart with my kids, has gaming just moved on without me while I was not looking? My gaming skills were honed on the Mega Drive, learning patterns in games like The Revenge Of Shinobi, and patterns are extremely important in learning the layout of courses in Mario Kart, but with