Edge issue 339 (opens in new tab), which goes on sale in print and digital forms Thursday, November 7, crowns the dozen games that we believe define gaming’s most transformative decade to date. This is not a ‘best of’ list; it celebrates the games which have impacted the industry in ways that go far beyond their mere quality. Spelunky, for instance, is here not just for being brilliant, but also for birthing the Roguelike. Amnesia: The Dark Descent didn’t just redefine video game horror; it also gave us the Let’s Play. 

A 12-cover split run means each title is given the prominence it deserves; inside, in-depth analysis gives (we hope) proper context to each inclusion. Here’s all 12 covers, which have been randomly sorted at newsagents’ and in subscriber letterboxes up and down the land.

Limited-edition ‘Games of the Decade’ box set

For collectors, we’ve produced a limited-edition box set containing all 12 covers, available from Thursday, November 7. You can get your hands on that here (opens in new tab), although you should act fast before it sells out. 

For more industry-beating access to the very best that the video game industry has to offer, why not subscribe to Edge? You’ll save on the cover price and have your copy delivered to your door (or device) each month, complete with exclusive subscriber covers.

You can subscribe to the print edition (opens in new tab), digital version, or save even more with the print/digital bundle – whatever you choose, you can rest easy in the knowledge you’re getting the full story before anyone else.

The post Edge magazine issue 339 celebrates the defining games of the decade across 12 collectors edition covers appeared first on Game News.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent helped kickstart a new wave of horror games about meticulous exploration and heavy atmosphere as opposed to shooting monsters in the face in spooky environments. It tactfully mixed jump scares with crushing dread and looming threats, and now Frictional Games is giving it a hard mode that doubles down on these elements and makes surviving even more difficult. Per the studio’s latest blog post (opens in new tab), the hard mode update will arrive on Xbox One on Friday, September 28, and on PC shortly after. It will come to PS4 later this year. 

Hard mode makes several stress-inducing changes. For starters, it disables autosaves and makes saving manually cost four tinderboxes, meaning you’ll have to sacrifice light sources if you want to save your progress. On top of that, hard mode ensures fewer tinderboxes and oil refills are available every level, so light is going to be extra scarce.

Lord knows you’re going to want all the light you can get, because hard mode also sharpens Amnesia’s iconic slack-jawed monsters. They’ll move faster, deal more damage, find you more easily and stick around longer once you’re discovered. Not only that, you’ll no longer hear any warning music when the monsters draw near. The disturbingly bloody cherry on top is hard mode’s change to the game’s sanity meter: if your sanity drops to zero, rather than merely panic like normal, you’ll just up and die. 

In other words, as Frictional put it, “the environments are harsher, the monsters more unforgiving, insanity is deadly, and death is final – unless you pay a toll.” If you want to take on this challenge, you can enable hard mode when you start a new game, but you can’t change the difficulty once you start. If you manage to beat the game on hard mode, you’ll receive the aptly titled Masochist achievement for your efforts. 

Looking for other good scares? Check out our list of horror games that don’t rely on jump scares (opens in new tab). 

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