1979’s Akalabeth: World Of Doom, eventually renamed Ultima 0, is the first commercial game by Richard Garriott (himself aka’d Lord British), and one of the very first roleplaying video games to enter the market. It’s also a precursor to Garriott’s Ultima series, introducing many elements that formed the core of the following games. But everything that Akalabeth invented would eventually be abandoned, first by its sequels and then the entire RPG genre.
From Ganondorf to Ganondoof.
We’ve all had the weekend to sit and stew over the final pre-launch trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (meaning, watching it another 100+ times) and it is fair to say that we are pretty jazzed for this game now.
We’re excited to see the changes made to Breath of the Wild‘s Hyrule, Link’s new abilities, just what the heck is going on with the story, but most of all, we’re excited to see more of this new take on Ganondorf which, after being officially revealed last week, quickly got the internet a little, erm, hot under the collar.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Just days ahead of Earth Day, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the work that we are doing to protect our planet and share opportunities for our community to celebrate alongside us.
At Microsoft, we have set the commitments to operate as a carbon negative, water positive and zero waste company by 2030. Microsoft strives to empower the world to do more, and driving positive, transformational change requires thinking beyond traditional boundaries. Gaming provides an incredible platform to drive cultural change on a global scale and encourage players to explore, experiment, and connect with the world and with each other in new ways. Sustainability is a team sport—and we are excited to see how far we can go when everyone plays together.
Last year, we shared an update on our sustainability efforts. Here is what we have been up to since:
Reducing Waste:
The Xbox Wireless Controller – Remix Special Edition takes us one step further in our journey towards our zero-waste commitment, featuring recovered plastics with one-third of it made from regrind and reclaimed materials. By incorporating regrind materials, post-consumer recycled resins, and including the Xbox Rechargeable Battery Pack – Xbox is exploring ways to use less new plastic and reduce waste. Check out the unboxing video below to learn more!
More things we are doing to reduce the waste we create and use as a business, and help Microsoft achieve our goal of operating as a zero-waste business by 2030:
Carbon Reduction:
At Game Developer Conference (GDC) this year, we announced that Xbox is the first console to release dedicated energy and carbon emissions measurement tools designed for (and with) game creators. Using these tools, studios and game developers have found opportunities through game design to lower their carbon emissions without impacting the player experience. To learn more about the Xbox sustainability toolkit, watch the video below!
At Xbox, we hold ourselves accountable to the emissions created by our products in our players’ homes—here are some additional things we are doing to reduce those emissions.
Collective Action:
We are always looking for opportunities to partner with players, industry partners and external organizations to make gaming a better industry for the environment. To learn more about these partnerships, watch the video below:
Learn About Ocean Conservation on Twitch this Earth Day with Xbox Plays and the Seattle Aquarium
Please join Team Xbox on our Twitch livestream channel on April 22nd at 8:00am Pacific Time as the team shares a behind the scenes tour of the Seattle Aquarium, a conservation organization working to regenerate the health of our one ocean. You’ll meet special guests like Barney the harbor seal, get an inside look at the Aquarium’s work to save endangered species, and see a demonstration of a remotely operated vehicle steered via Xbox controller that is being used to research the depths of Puget Sound. Marine conservationists and experts will join us live to answer your questions about the species you’ll find in the Sound and beyond, as well as the steps you can take to help protect our world’s one ocean.
New Xbox Gear products features recycled content as well, check out the latest collection featuring colors and topographical lines pulled straight from the Xbox Wireless Controller — Remix Special Edition
Check out the latest Xbox Gear featuring colors and topographical lines pulled straight from the Xbox Wireless Controller – Remix Special Edition. This collection features a selection of premium, ECOLIFE cotton garments. The garments are made of 50% recycled yarn and 50% BCI (Better Cotton Initiative– the world’s leading sustainability initiative for cotton). The raw materials are cut & sewn in Los Angeles, garment dyed to match the special edition Xbox controllers, printed with eco-friendly inks and packaged with biodegradable poly bags. These ECOLIFE cotton garments are available as a t-shirt, pullover hoodie and sweat shorts.
Gaming and Impact with Microsoft Rewards: World Wildlife Fund, Water.org, and The Nature Conservancy
Microsoft Rewards members in the United States can earn and donate points to support select environmental organizations with Xbox. The below organizations will be featured on console throughout April:
Xbox players can earn Microsoft Rewards points in various ways, such as playing or purchasing games after downloading the Microsoft Rewards app on Xbox. Earn points and redeem them for real rewards. Join us today and donate through Xbox.
To learn more about our continued Sustainability Efforts at Xbox, visit the Xbox Sustainability Hub.
To explore more ways Microsoft is celebrating Earth Day, visit aka.ms/EarthDay.
When I think of quintessentially British games, a few highlights come to mind. Fable‘s fairytale world of stocky goblins and poverty-stricken orphans with Victorian-era voices is definitely very British, as is Banjo-Kazooie’s dry wit and sarcasm. A decent bucket of contenders, but the crown has to go to the Greggs Simulator, a free shop sim that tasks you with managing a Greggs pasty shop that’s a staple of every UK high street.
Naughty Dog has finally released The Last of Us Part I onto PC. The launch did not go without a hitch, but is this really as bad of a port as the internet would lead you to believe?
Context first: the game & engine were designed around the unique architecture of the PlayStation 3, a powerful yet complex piece of hardware with unique requirements. Although it was ported to the PS4, the core engine underneath was a modified version of that same PS3 design, based on mass Asynchronous work. Even Naughty Dog itself had severe issues getting the game to run at 60fps, which required maximizing the CPU and GPU with a triple buffered rendering pipeline, and suffice it to say that porting to PC is an even greater challenge than that PS4 port.
Many of the problems at launch would cause crashes – often. I counted 12 separate crashes from starting the game until meeting Ellie, and this was on an AMD GPU which, unsurprisingly, this game favors. Nvidia players had it worse, or at least based on my testing with an RTX 2070. The main cause stems from memory limitations as you exceed the VRAM requirements, which then bleeds out into the shared graphics memory within your system RAM, causing hard page faults, reduced performance, and increased CPU demands alongside other memory related issues. This effectively leads to the modern day equivalent of the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), killing the executable mid execution.
The options Menu is exceptional, offering a clear breakdown of each setting from a dynamic visual perspective, demonstrating what the setting will change and/or a clear split of the impact on CPU, GPU and VRAM. As we get further into the performance section, keep in mind that the PS5 relies on a key architectural element: shared pools of data between the CPU and GPU, which is highlighted as a moving bar that shows the impact on VRAM when you draw close. This is a key differentiator and challenge for PCs, which also rely on system RAM. The game reserves approximately 20% of total VRAM space, which is a standard requirement for all games, as some space is needed for OS and driver operations in addition to the game’s demands. The visual settings offered by this game far exceed those of most PC games, with features such as reflection resolution, frustum range, raymarch range, and animation quality.
The visual quality and presentation of the game is also up with the best of this generation, and if you have the hardware, a PC can scale above the PS5. Visual clarity, effect quality, and even framerate can all exceed the PS5, but it’s a big if – and not just the GPU. This is a very data-driven, dynamic engine and game, and this can affect demands across your entire build, with the CPU likely the most obvious wall that you hit, closely followed by VRAM and then system RAM.
The scalability within the engine means you can achieve a locked 60fps, and even higher on a range of hardware, even scaling down to the Steam Deck and my older RX 580 GPU. So the options all allow a broad spectrum of hardware, well below and above the PS5, to run the game at 30+fps frame-rates. This is bolstered further with both FSR2 and DLSS offering increased visual and performance choices across a huge swath of GPUs, and even at 1080p both solutions offer better image quality, by and large, over the native choice on PC. This is something the PS5 does not have, as it uses native 1440p or 4K rendering in both of its modes.
While the game unfortunately launched with some major issues that negatively impacted its reception, many of those issues have since been alleviated via patches. Most of this analysis is based on the second of those two updates, Ver1.0.1.6, which resolved many of the most egregious problems. We did test Ver1.0.1.7 just as this review was complete, which mainly improved some UI/UX bugs, alongside an Nvidia Hotfix driver to resolve crashes on RTX 3000 cards, and performance and visual quality is unchanged since patch 1.0.1.6. The biggest issue at launch was crashing, and this is now resolved for AMD and Nvidia players for the most part, so long as you remain within your VRAM memory limits based on the menu UI bar. Nvidia does still present more bugs than AMD players, which highlights the split quality that each GPU player will get. By and large, even on my RX 580 GPU, the game scales well, has very minimal visual bugs, and runs well within the expectation of the hardware (CPU and RAM notwithstanding).
As you increase resolution, all other aspects scale accordingly, which can have an extreme impact on performance. The PS5 shows this, with it likely being GPU-bound most often in its 4K Fidelity mode when unlocked to 40fps+. The same is true on all my GPUs here with the RX 6800 at 4K FSR2 Quality Ultra settings running between 40 and 60fps. You can reduce CPU cost by reducing animation quality, object detail, shadow cascade and real time reflections to Medium or Low. On this machine at 4K FSR2 Quality, we are fully GPU-bound and struggling to stay north of 50fps in action. Dropping resolution by 30% to 1800p, still using FSR2, we now shift to the CPU being the bottleneck, but we gain 25% higher performance. With my Zen 3 5600X CPU becoming the main anchor once we reach around 75-85 fps, similar to the PS5 in unlocked performance mode. The parallelism within the engine I mentioned at the start is incredible, being one of the best I have tested, though I am not sure it would scale so well over 16 threads and beyond.
Most of the bugs doing the rounds, and even ones I have had, are a result of simply exceeding the limits of your VRAM, causing page faults along with the API and driver changes. This can result in missing textures, assets, and other data-related problems. The engine uses a deferred render pass with a fat G-buffer and uber shader for all materials, decals and more. Meaning on PC the distance to the data, through the PICe channels, split pools of Ram, DX12 API, split vendors, add up to a ton of complexity mirroring some of the visual bugs we saw in the early Spiderman and Uncharted review code. This is an area the team needs to and I am sure will be working to improve. But a brand new memory management and data allocation code for PC will take time, as Nixxes did for its Spider-Man port on PC. As such the solution now is to lower the Memory requirements and resolution to mitigate these high demands. That said, don’t expect your 8GB GPU to run the same textures and quality as the 16GB PS5, as memory allocations will always be higher on PC than console. Simply put you cannot fit 10 gallons of water into a five gallon tank.
Scalability & Performance
The RX 6800 can exceed the PS5, with better-than-PS5 fidelity mode at Ultra settings, but these are minor. Volumetrics, image sharpness and texture details can see clear but small increases over the PS5. But, the game does not scale significantly, visually, beyond the PS5 version. The 16GB of VRAM my RX 6800 has is needed here though, with a 12GB card likely being worse than the PS5, and backs up what we have stated here for a while. 16GB of VRAM is going to be required to match or exceed the PS5 this generation and The Last of Us only reinforces that. We have seen these demands grow in recent games such as Uncharted, Spider-Man and even Forspoken.
What about performance then? Using my RX 6800 paired with 32GBs of DDR4-3600 RAM and a Zen 3 5600X at 4.8Ghz, setting the game at 3840x2160P using FSR2 Quality at Ultra settings, the PC cannot lock to 60fps but it can flip flop between GPU-, data-, and CPU-bound, meaning a faster GPU and/or CPU would likely get us to a locked 60fps and beyond. But that would require top-end hardware that I do not have to test. As such, I recommend dropping to the High preset (including textures) at 1800P FSR2 Quality. We can then cap the game at 60fps if needed and gain as close to a lock on that throughout play with better image quality and similar performance over the PS5 in its Performance mode. Both machines will be CPU/Data-bound at this point, which really shows how well balanced the engine is for CPU/GPU targets.
My overclocked RTX 2070, with 32GBs of DDR4-2666 with a Zen 2700X at 3.8Ghz, cannot achieve 1800p, even using DLSS, without dropping textures to medium, which degrades image quality severely. The best choice is to run 1440p via DLSS Quality with a mixture of High and Medium settings, but setting environment or character textures to High and FX and minor objects to Medium/Low. This manages to stay within the 8GB VRAM space and reduce if not stop crashes and bugs, as these are caused or exacerbated by running out of heap space. Using these recommended settings for machines around this specification you can achieve a variable 40-60fps at lower than PS5 Performance image quality and frame-rates, but still good enough to cap at 40fps. We can and do become more CPU-bound at these settings on this Zen 2700X but tests in fully GPU-bound moments set expectations once further patches reduce the CPU/RAM cost.
My RX 580 8GB GPU (other machine specs the same as my RX 6800 test) still runs the game well, achieving a variable 60fps with High textures on characters and environments, and others a mix of Medium and High. The big reduction here is resolution, relying on FSR2 at its Quality preset at 1080p presents a better image than native 1080p due to increased sharpening and temporal reconstruction, though shadows and reflections can show more dithering due to this. The overall image quality is better and you gain approximately 20% better performance over native 1080p. Once you remain within these VRAM limits and settings the image quality is very good, with sharp, detailed textures in most areas – but still expect some low quality and sub-60fps gameplay due to the GPU limits on such a machine. Still, this is a more than viable way to play the game at a capped 30 or 40fps rate.
Bringing up the lowest rung is the Steam Deck. The engine can scale, and I am sure the team has a focus on getting the game certified for Steam Deck, which it currently is not, but right now even if we drop to the lowest settings, 800P FSR2, we cannot lock to a stable performance level, even 30fps. The same issues covered above impact the Steam Deck, particularly CPU load. During gameplay, you may experience 100ms stutters that can become fully memory bound, causing 50ms limits per frame.
This issue can also occur on the RX 580 in certain sections of the game, which may be due to a bug within the engine. The engine uses many sector points to load in enemies, assets, set-pieces, and other elements, and this process can cause the entire machine to lock up at 20fps. However, once the process completes or you force the engine state model to shift to attack, the loop is broken and the game resumes at a variable performance rate. As you can imagine, with the current build all of these issues are significantly worse and more impactful. Yes, the Steam Deck will run the entire game, but I simply cannot recommend doing so right now. Visually it still looks good on the Deck’s screen, but performance simply isn’t there.
At launch, The Last of Us Part I was a bad and broken release on PC, and had we reviewed it before then my recommendation would have been to avoid it. The issues that plagued it, including crashing, game breaking bugs, and general quality, were far below the quality PC players should accept or that Naughty Dog should have delivered. But with subsequent patches and some sensible settings changes, the game is in a much better state. But as the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression and it may be a tough mountain to climb for the great Naughty Dog studio to claw back the trust from the PC market.
Wonky launch woes aside, The Last Of Us Part 1’s PC release is a net positive. A new audience can now experience one of PlayStation’s best exclusives, but even better, modders can get their hands on Joel and Ellie’s trek, rejigging a familiar story in new ways. There aren’t too many exciting ones available to download just yet, but one “in-progress” mod reimagines the game in first-person, and it’s stunning.
Fans have likely spent endless seasons in the comfort of Stardew Valley, and now the chill life sim is getting even bigger. Stardew Valley’s creator Eric Barone (otherwise known as ConcernedApe) is “taking a break” from working on his highly-anticipated Haunted Chocolatier. Barone will instead work on Stardew Valley’s upcoming 1.6 update, which focuses on improvements for modders, alongside some new content as well.
Update: New details shared by The Pokémon Company.
Update : The Pokémon Company has now shared details of the “newly discovered Pokémon”, which will be making its debut in The Hidden Treasures of Area Zero DLC.
Here are all of the details of the mysterious new turtle:
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Today we’re happy to reveal the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for April 2023. All games will be available on Tuesday April 18. Let’s dive in.
Immerse yourself in a story-driven action-adventure set in a charming world rich with exploration and fast-paced combat. Play as Kena, a young Spirit Guide travelling to an abandoned village in search of the sacred mountain shrine. Find and grow a team of tiny spirits known as the Rot who maintain balance by decomposing dead and rotting elements. Enhance your companions’ abilities, create new ways to manipulate the environment and uncover the secrets of a forgotten community hidden in an overgrown forest where wandering spirits are trapped.
Hell’s armies have invaded Earth. Become the Slayer in an epic single-player campaign to conquer demons across dimensions and stop the final destruction of humanity. The only thing they fear… is you. Experience the ultimate combination of speed and power in Doom Eternal – the next leap in push-forward, first-person combat. Armed with a flamethrower, wrist-mounted blade, upgraded guns, mods and abilities, you’re faster, stronger, and more versatile than ever. Use demon takedowns tactically to keep yourself equipped for battle: Glory kill for extra health, incinerate for armor, and chainsaw demons to stock up on ammo to become the ultimate demon-slayer.
Jump into the massive multiplayer playground! Grab your bike, skis, snowboard or wingsuit and squad up with your friends to compete in a wide range of multiplayer modes. Feel the rush of downhill races, dominate maps in team vs team competitions, or give it your best shot in epic mass PvP races with more than 50 other players. Live out the rider’s fantasy as you roam free in a huge, vibrant open world, always buzzing with other players around you. Immerse yourself in iconic American national parks including Bryce Canyon, Yosemite Valley, Mammoth Mountain… all mashed up for you to shred!
An exhilarating adventure brought to life by the industry-leading id Tech 6 sends players to Nazi-controlled America on a mission to recruit the boldest resistance leaders left. You are BJ Blazkowicz, aka “Terror-Billy,” member of the Resistance, scourge of the Nazi empire, and humanity’s last hope for liberty. Only you have the guns and gumption to return stateside and spark the second American Revolution. Fight Nazis in iconic American locations, equip an arsenal of badass guns, and unleash new abilities to blast your way through legions of enemy soldiers in this definitive first-person shooter.
Developed by Shinji Mikami and Tango Gameworks, The Evil Within embodies the meaning of pure survival horror. Highly-crafted environments, horrifying anxiety, and an intricate story are combined to create an immersive world that will bring you to the height of tension. With limited resources at your disposal, you’ll fight for survival and experience profound fear in this perfect blend of horror and action.
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a standalone prequel to the first-person action-adventure shooter, Wolfenstein: The New Order. The adventure, which spans eight chapters and two interconnected stories, features the hallmarks of MachineGames – thrilling action, immersive story and intense first-person combat. As war hero B.J. Blazkowicz, arm yourself with new weapons such as the bolt-action rifle and grenade-launching Kampfpistole as you attempt to thwart the advancing Nazi war machine, and take advantage of duel-wielding pipes that can be used for wall climbing – or for vicious take-downs of never-before-seen Nazi adversaries.
For the first time ever, compete as or challenge 10 pro anglers from the Elite tour across 8 different real-world venues. Climb the ranks, earn your sponsors, and progress through your B.A.S.S. career to become the Bassmaster Classic Champion. Or take to the water and compete with other players in a variety of all-new massive multiplayer modes to conquer the global leader boards.
Iconic PlayStation hero Sackboy bursts back into breathtaking action with a huge, fun and frantic 3D multiplayer platforming adventure. Go solo in an epic race against time stuffed with danger and peril or enjoy local or online party play, creating teams of two to four adventurers as you work together to overcome nefarious tasks however you can imagine, including unmissable co-op only levels.
PlayStation Deluxe | Classics
First released in 1993, Doom introduced millions of gamers to the fast-paced, white-knuckle, demon-slaying action the franchise is known for. Relive the birth of the first-person shooter and experience the demon-blasting fun that popularized the genre. This version includes expansion, Episode IV: Thy Flesh Consumed, local 4 player deathmatch and local 4 player co-op.
To save Earth, you must descend into the depths of hell, survive demon hordes, and take part in the fiercest battle ever. This beloved sequel to the groundbreaking DOOM (1993) gave players the brutal Super Shotgun to bear against deadlier demons, and the infamous boss, the Icon of Sin. This version includes the Master Levels, 20 additional levels made by the community and supervised by the developers, local 4 player deathmatch and local 4 player co-op.
Fight against demons in your crusade to hunt down the Mother of Demons and stop Hell’s invasion. As you battle through more than 30 action-packed levels, be on the lookout for enhanced weapons and secrets to help you put an end to the demonic threat.
In this critically acclaimed action-horror re-telling of the original DOOM, players must battle their way through a demon-infested facility before entering the abyss to battle Hell’s mightiest warrior – and put an end to the invasion.
This version includes the Resurrection of Evil and The Lost Missions expansion packs.
Arkane Studios’ Dishonored, winner of over 100 Game of the Year awards, and all of its additional content come to together in this Definitive Edition! With Dishonored’s flexible combat system, creatively eliminate your targets as you combine the supernatural abilities, weapons and unusual gadgets at your disposal. “Void Walker’s Arsenal” offers unique character bonuses, additional bone charm slots, and more that will aid you in pursuit of revenge. Enter the world of the Outsider in “Dunwall City Trials” where you will put your combat, stealth and mobility skills to the test. Finally, play as the legendary assassin Daud in ‘The Knife of Dunwall’ and “The Brigmore Witches”.
As part of our normal content refresh, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Resident Evil, and NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 will be among some of the titles leaving the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog in May. Members with Game Catalog benefits can still play by May 15. You can always check the ‘Last chance to play section’ on the PlayStation Plus -> Collections page on the PS5 console, or PlayStation Plus -> Games -> Games Catalogue on the PS4 console for titles you might want to play before they leave the service.
We hope you enjoy this month’s Games Catalog lineup. Check back monthly for new games added to PlayStation Plus.
I can’t think of a worse environment for Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle to exist in than firmly in the long shadow cast by its inspiration, the Resident Evil series. Everything about the demo I played, from its bland corridor crawling exploration to its trivial run and gun action, feels like a cheap imitation of some of the greatest survival horror games of all time, maybe even more so these days in a post-Resident Evil 4 Remake world. What’s worse, there’s almost nothing differentiating it from Capcom’s zombie-horror masterpieces save for the setting, which is understandably undercooked as my 20-minute demo was not nearly enough time to build a world or establish likable characters. Nothing about my time with this slice left me with much motivation to see more.
Which is wild because when IGN had a first-look preview of this game a year ago, it still seemed like a Resident Evil clone in a F.E.A.R. costume, doing all of the item inspection, puzzle solving and creep shooting you’d expect. Except it was dressed up with more sci-fi inspired government paramilitary fare, complete with unique secret tech like a freeze gauntlet. In this build, I got none of that. Instead, I solved rudimentary door puzzles, rooted around for a forgettable lore item, and used bog-standard third-person shooter weapons to take down foes. The demo does not put Daymare’s best foot forward.
Stepping into the shoes of Reyes, a member of a Homeland Security strike team called H.A.D.E.S., you’re tasked with slinking through the dark halls of a compromised government facility in search for lost members of Section 8. The building itself is very generic, sterile, and science-y, with only one standout piece of personality in a very easy door puzzle styled like a ‘90s computer program. Towards the end of the demo, things start to show promise, with a giant tanker mysteriously dry-docked in a massive basement, or a shining conduit to God-knows-where gaping out of the wall. But there’s no satisfying interaction with any of it.
In fact, there’s not a lot of interaction with anything at all besides scattered ammo and the occasional button that unlocks the next section of the map. Early on you pickup an item that you have to examine in your inventory to reveal a key, but there’s nothing else you encounter that requires such inspection. Reyes’ glove comes with a scanner that can pull data out of computers without having to physically interact with them, but there’s only one occasion where you can use it and it’s a tutorial. If Daymare: 1994 wants to compete with the titans of the genre in terms of dense environments and lots of reasons to explore them, it’s not off to a great start.
As things start to heat up, monsters appear, with the twist being that the menace isn’t the reanimated corpses of slain soldiers and scientists, but the sentient balls of energy that electrify them back to life. Putting one of the slobbering ghouls down releases the ball lighting from its body, freeing it to find another corpse to possess. This was admittedly very cool in theory, but in practice it was only ever a factor the first time I encountered bad guys. The only other sections, where a handful ran down a hallway to get easily dispatched and at the end where I was encouraged not to fight a group that chased me to the a door, showed little potential for the dynamic race against the light that the first encounter suggests. It also doesn’t help that these were the only enemy type.
If this was my first impression of Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle, I don’t think I’d be very interested in another one. Knowing that this game has more to offer outside of the boundaries of this sneak peek has me willing to keep my optimism somewhat alive, despite how underwhelming almost all of what I played was. Even with the conspicuous absence of some interesting looking abilities shown elsewhere, there was very little opportunity to play with the tools you do have in this 20-minute slice. Here’s hoping that the just-released Resident Evil 4 Remake can inspire Daymare to dig a bit deeper before it’s finally released.
