Author: Game Infliction

Cyberpunk Edgerunners has been named the best anime of last year at Crunchyroll’s 2023 Anime Awards, overcoming the fierce competition of Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, and more.

Announced at the awards show in Tokyo over the weekend, the Netflix series from Studio Trigger and CD Projekt Red overcame Attack on Titan’s Final Season Part 2, Demon Slayer’s Entertainment District Arc, Lycoris Recoil, Ranking of Kings, and Spy x Family.

The show’s official Twitter account posted a celebratory message (below), saying: “We’d like to thank everyone for their support, votes, and for watching our anime”.

Today at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards ceremony, Cyberpunk: #Edgerunners was awarded Anime of the Year and Best VA Performance (EN)!? It’s a great honor! We’d like to thank everyone for their support, votes, and for watching our anime ?? pic.twitter.com/kwq1W8WCp6

— Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (@edgerunners) March 4, 2023

Cyberpunk Edgerunners premiered in September 2022 to high praise from fans and critics. even sparking in a resurgence in Cyberpunk 2077 that saw upwards of one million players jumping in each day. Fans also became enthralled in its story, and added elements like Cyberpsychosis to the game via mods.

IGN gave it a 9/10 in our review, saying: “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners delivers a satisfying return to Night City that does a better job exploring why Mike Pondsmith’s famous location became so iconic in the first place.”

Matching Crunchyroll, we also named it the best anime of 2022, adding that “Edgerunners makes a strong argument that CDPR might have something solid to build on for future Cyberpunk stories”.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Warning: Full spoilers ahead for episode 8 of HBO’s The Last of Us.

HBO’s The Last of Us episode 8 has arrived and this time we see Ellie tangling with David and Joel stepping up his torturing game. But how close does the show compare to the game?

To help answer this question, we’ve gathered images from episode 8 of HBO’s The Last of Us and put them next to stills from Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us game to see how faithful the adaptation is. Check out the slideshow, or watch the video above to see the scenes from both the show and the game in action.

In our The Last of Us episode 8 review, we said “As Ellie reaches her most desperate moment, darkness comes knocking in an outstanding episode of HBO’s The Last of Us. A chapter that explores the depraved depths humanity will plummet to in order to survive, it’s endlessly engaging and hard to turn your eyes away from, even when you want to. Packed full of crucial character moments and flashes of ferocious action, it’s as horrific as this world can get, even when the infected remain firmly below it.”

For more, be sure to check out our similar comparison for last week’s episode.

The PSVR 2 is here and I’ve never been more excited to jump back into a virtual world of reality. Sure, we have our fair share of PC VR headsets and two generations of Meta’s standalone Quest, but it’s been almost seven years since we’ve gotten a console VR headset. PlayStation sure did take its time to bring us this new virtual tech, and as someone who’s been using the Quest since way back when it still said ‘Oculus’ on the box, I noticed quite a few differences that, in my opinion, make the PSVR 2 far superior to its main competition.

Comfort

Let’s start with comfort. The PSVR 2 is by far the best fitting VR headset I’ve ever used. The halo design makes it easy to adjust and the actual visor portion feels extremely lightweight. One of the Quest’s biggest advantages is also a downside: it’s all-in-one, but it’s also all on your head – and the elastic straps do little to help it stay there.

I even avoided wearing glasses with the Quest 2 because I already had a problem with light leakage because there’s nothing to really help block out environmental light. With the PSVR 2, however, it has a built-in rubberized housing fixed to the visor, which blocks out almost all environmental lighting. What’s more, the visor can be adjusted separately to make room for glasses, should the wearer, like me, do so. This is the first time I’ve been able to play VR with complete clarity and that’s huge.

Display

Good-looking games look stunning on the PSVR 2, thanks to its 2,000 x 2,040-pixels HDR OLED display. If you’re looking for vivid images that really pop and showcase the graphical fidelity of the games you’re playing, this is it! The PSVR 2 takes full advantage of the PS5 hardware too, so the games look noticeably better than anything on the Quest 2, with its 1,832 x 1920-pixels LCD display. Of course, you can play higher-end PC games if you tether the Quest 2 to your gaming PC, but you won’t get a crisp picture because its LCD display is simply no match for PSVR 2’s OLED screens.

Snap back to (virtual) reality ✨I’m checking out for a minute #PSVR2 pic.twitter.com/Te4OMRnu88

— Akeem Lawanson (@geekheavy) February 23, 2023

Immersion

PSVR 2’s rumble feature really adds to the overall immersion while you’re playing and is very similar to what PlayStation has been doing for years with its controllers. And with PSVR 2’s eye tracking, visuals are optimized in your direct line of sight thanks to its foveated rendering technology, which is a fancy way of say it reduces pixel count in your peripheral vision. I really noticed it while playing Horizon Call of the Mountain and navigating the in-game in-game using my eye movements is a nice touch.

Additionally, I used PlayStation’s Pulse 3D headset to really push the immersion, because the audio is isolated. Quest 2 has 3D audio but for me, audio immersion was ruined since you can still hear outside sound. You can of course plug in your own set of headphones, but the PSVR 2 comes paired with a set of earbuds, which is quite useful.

A lot of skeptics might hold off on the PSVR 2 because of its current library of games, but the truth is it’s only just getting started. Right now the majority of games coming out for PSVR 2 are ports of Quest 2 games, but the few you cannot get on the Quest 2 are well worth the investment if you’re interested in VR. Resident Evil Village is an amazing VR experience, and one that’s only on PSVR 2 right now. And some of the games you might’ve already played on Quest 2 are further enhanced thanks toPSVR 2’s OLED display and PS5’s hardware.

PlayStation has major plans for the PSVR 2 and I’m sure game devs will take advantage of its capabilities. So if you’re passionate about VR, or are just plain curious about how far virtual reality has come, PSVR 2 is the best experience. PlayStation has single-handedly made me excited about the future of games in VR, and I’ll be slipping on the headset every time a new release comes out.

While its important to take all this with a grain of salt and wait for official confirmation, there have been some rumors circulating that Counter-Strike 2 may be on the way very soon.

Richard Lewis, a notable journalist and caster within the Counter-Strike community, claims to have received evidence from sources that Valve is getting ready to release a new version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in the near future and that a beta may arrive as early as this month or in April.

This project is said to have a working title of Counter-Strike 2 and to have been in development “for some time.” Lewis mentions that Counter-Strike 2 has been a priority for Valve and is one of the reasons why the current version of CS:GO has been “largely unattended to for some time.”

According to these sources, Counter-Strike 2 will run on the Source 2 engine and that move “should improve the optimisation and graphical fidelity of the game.” It is also said to have, much like Valorant, 128-tick servers, which is a number that describes how fast a game’s server can process information.

Matchmaking will also be improved in this new version and Valve appears to be hoping that third-party services won’t be necessary to put players together in a more efficient way.

According to the sources, Counter-Strike 2 is “about ready to go,” but it is said to be unclear what this new version would mean for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and its competitive scene. As Lewis mentions, Dota 2 moved to Source 2 with a new version called Dota 2 Reborn and it lived alongside the original. Eventually, the two versions merged into one.

Another piece of evidence that may hint towards this rumor being true comes by the way of Gabe Follower 2, who noted that the latest NVIDIA drivers “introduced support for unknown app executables called ‘csgos2.exe’ and ‘cs2.exe.'”

Gabe Follower 2 also says that they have “fairly reliable information that Valve has been testing CS:GO on Source 2 with the help of third-party QA companies in the US and EU since at least early December. I can’t confirm this 100%, but it’s decent enough to share.”

They also say that this new version “won’t be new game, it won’t be Counter-Strike 2, it won’t be even a rebrand, just CS:GO Source 2. And your skins are fine, they will be available in new version.”

Something weird just happened. Latest NVIDIA drivers introduced support for unknown app executables called “csgos2.exe” and “cs2.exe”. Why project is called Counter-Strike 2 and what are you cooking @csgo? https://t.co/U9YKlAjwgy pic.twitter.com/PU8Op9uGLq

— ‎Gabe Follower 2 (@gabefollower) March 1, 2023

Once again, it’s important to take all of this with a grain of salt and wait for official confirmation, but at least it appears we won’t have to wait long to see if this is true, unlike some of the more nebulous “I heard so and so is in development” rumors out there.

Despite being released in 2012, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive remains one of the most-played Steam games, and is currently sitting at 583,156 concurrent players, according to SteamDB. The next highest game, Dota 2, has 262,745 players.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.