regular fixture at the Game Developers Conference, and this year I spotted some properly incredible creations from its largely student-led group of exhibitors. There was a big focus on co-op games and time trial demos in this year’s cohort, with nearly every stand having some sort of whiteboard pinned up that was constantly being scrubbed out with new fastest lap times and corresponding visitor names. There was also lots of friendly hooting emanating from them as well, as mates and strangers attempted to co-ordinate their gaggles of limbs to steer various game characters in the right direction.
It was excellent fun, and I sampled a bunch of games that used toasters, intricate pulley systems, papier-mache tree stumps, bike wheels and more in place of your typical controllers and mice and keyboard. There were also plenty more I didn’t get to try out, mainly due to time, and you can see the full list over on GDC’s website. For now, though, here are some personal highlights of what I saw, including the largest bowler hat I think I’ve ever seen in my life.
statement about their upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, clarifying rumours about the project’s release schedule and sales expectations. Last week, Polish site Bankier spoke with Bloober Team’s CEO Pitor Babieno in an interview that was mistranslated and began to circulate online. The mistranslations mentioned the remake was “technically ready” for launch, but Bloober Team have clarified these “statements have been taken out of context, due to inaccurate translations.”
Square Enix and Luminous Productions have revealed the story expansion In Tanta We Trust will be released for Forspoken on May 26.
The DLC expansion takes place 25 years before the events of Forspoken, with Frey continuing on her quest to eradicate the Break from Athia permanently. She follows a mysterious voice and ends up being transported into the past during the Purge of the Rheddig, the battle that destroyed Athia and led to its current state in the present.
Frey will team up with Tanta Cinta as well as unlock brand-new magical abilities to fight off the invading Rheddig forces and save Athia again.
Forspoken: In Tanta We Trust launches May 26th for PS5 and PC.
The DLC shows that Square Enix is still supporting Forspoken despite its underwhelming sales and the fact Luminous Productions is being folded back into Square Enix on May 1. The studio was made up of developers at Square Enix who worked on Final Fantasy 15 and was responsible for creating new projects using the Luminous Engine, the same engine utilized for Forspoken.
In IGN’s Forspoken review, we said: “Forspoken’s flashy combat and parkour can be fun, but they aren’t enough to make its cliche story and barebones open world very interesting to explore.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
Rejoice, sinners, for redemption is on its way. Saga of Sins puts players in control of Cecil, a battle-weary cleric who has recently returned from the Crusades. Rather than receive a joyous reception when he arrives, he sees his home village of Sinwell has become infested with plague and its citizens consumed with their sinful ways.
Fortunately, Cecil’s master, Ulrich, has a solution to the crisis gripping Sinwell. He grants Cecil the power to enter people’s minds and battle the sin within them — first as a Werewolf that shoots fireballs from its mouth, and later as a flame-breathing Gargoyle and, eventually, as a winged Griffin. By taking these forms and diving into the hearts of those indulging in sin, Cecil can battle the demons and free the people from their influence.
The first thing you need to know about Endless Dungeon is that it is not your standard roguelite. There are familiar components in how you play, but this isometric sci-fi shooter requires you to strategize your defence just as boldly as your offense. I found out exactly why in a recent hands-on with the upcoming game.
Endless Dungeon is a follow-up to 2014’s Dungeon of the Endless, but it is described to us as a “spiritual successor” rather than an all-out sequel. It looks and plays a lot differently, with a more vibrant 3D aesthetic and a new control system for players. The first game unfolds primarily in a turn-based style, whereas Endless Dungeon puts you in direct control of your characters’ movements and attacks. But that change is only part of what makes Endless Dungeon a fascinating new experiment in the genre.
The core dungeon loop is still present in Endless Dungeon; your character is dropped on an abandoned space station, and the only way to escape is to escort your Crystal_bot to The Core. While we’re unsure what is in The Core, we do know that’s absolutely imperative to reach it unscathed. Unfortunately, there are waves upon waves of monsters in between you and The Core, and it’s up to you to take them out while, crucially, making sure your fragile robot companion remains safe. That constant back-and-forth is what marks this game out as different from its peers. Endless Dungeon is a dance between blasting forward to discover as much loot as possible, while making sure your defenses are top notch and capable of protecting your Crystal_bot, research stations, and — if you’re playing with a group — fellow teammates.
Endless Dungeon stands out from the roguelite crowd because your defenses require forethought and proactivity; you’ll need to be prepared for threats before they even arrive. A room full of bugs will benefit from a deftly placed flamethrower, or a swarm of robots can be kept in check with electrical EMP blaster turret. However, you’ll need to research how to build these, and make you have enough resources to dedicate to it before the waves begin. All of this makes this the rare roguelite in which skill isn’t just about the moment-to-moment combat, but in learning how enemies work, and countering them.
You’ll progress through the station room by room in classic roguelite fashion, clearing the area while hunting for resources that’ll aid you in your journey. This can be offense inventory such as devastating elemental guns; it can be revelatory, in the form of new lore; or you can add upgrades to the turrets than can be placed as defenses in any area you’ve previously been to during your current run.
Your team’s resources are also shared, so if components are scarce, you’ll have to collaborate on what to spend it on. Perhaps the decision to push on into another room will turn into a fatal mistake if your resources are misplaced – collaboration is truly a necessity, and sticking together can sometimes be more important than progressing.
It’s this blend of tower defense, tactical gameplay and roguelite that makes Endless Dungeon feel unique. The primary objective is to blast your way through the station room by room, while mowing through the hordes along the way, while crafting a safe path to escort the Crystal bot out of the area and into the next one. Some rooms contain monster spawners, and the more you unlock, the more overwhelming these waves will become. Even opening doors requires strategy; if you enter a new room that’s too close to your Crystal bot, it might allow swarms to reach and chew it apart faster. If you’re unlucky, you’ll trigger a rare, deadlier wave with much tougher enemies. This is an extremely rare occurrence, (although we encountered this on our third wave, making for some extra chaos).
Once your character dies (and they will) you’ll be transported back to a hub world known as The Saloon, which is oozing with space western appeal. Creative Director Jean-Maxime Moris tells us that this area draws inspiration from the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars’ Cantina scenes to create a space that attracts a humdrum of oddballs.
Here, you can switch up your character’s look, grab a drink at the bar that will give you a selection of enhancements, or check out the library to read up on the monsters you’ve encountered. While you don’t necessarily need prior knowledge of this world to jump into Endless Dungeon, existing fans will also find connections to previous instalments in this loosely connected universe. And, of course, the more you know about your enemies, the better equipped you’ll be to take them down, and help your team survive just that little bit longer in the next run.
It’s all the more motivation to get stuck back into another round, and if our playtime was anything to by, there will be many, many more rounds of Endless Dungeon when it launches May 18.
Pre-Order ENDLESS™ Dungeon now and get your hands (or tentacles) on exclusive content!
– Standard Game
– ‘Pioneer Elite’ Skin Pack (3 hero skins, 4 weapon skins, 1 Crystal Bot Skin) (Early Adopter Bonus)
WE GOT TURRETS AND WE GOT GUNS
You’re stranded on an abandoned space station chock-full of monsters and mysteries. To get out you’ll have to reach The Core, but you can’t do that without your crystal bot. That scuttling critter is your key to surviving the procedurally generated rooms of this space ruin. Sadly, it’s also a fragile soul, and every monster in the place wants a piece of it. You’re going to have to think quick, plan well, place your turrets, and then… fireworks! Bugs, bots and blobs will stop at nothing to turn you and that crystal into dust and debris. With a large choice of weapons and turrets, the right gear will be the difference between life and death.
RIDE SOLO OR GIDDY UP WITH FRIENDS
You can face the horrors of the Station riding solo, or squad up and run the gauntlet in 3 player co-op. Once you’ve got your posse, plan your moves. Pick their weapons from a wide choice ranging from flamethrowers to poison snipers. When you’re set, enter the Station to take on a character’s quest, take a stab at escaping, or just go loco on the locals. You’ll likely die trying, but hey, that’s the way it goes in this space dungeon!
ASSEMBLE YOUR RECKLESS SQUAD
Prepare to meet a cast of colorful heroes all gunning for the same goal: to get the hell out! Each brings their own cards to the table. There’s tanky Bunker who’ll soak up damage, fiery Blaze who loves to blow stuff up, or maybe Shroom who’ll heal her squadmates with her “unusual” incense. Select your heroes to build the team that works for you. As you get to know them, you’ll learn that they all have their own particular motivations and secrets…
MONSTERS, DANGERS, SECRETS AND TREASURES, OH MY!
Escaping means overcoming all the dangers of the Station. Yup, all of them. Deadly robots, merciless monsters, loot, and giant beasts await you at every corner. The deeper you delve into this scrap heap, the more you’ll discover its tragic history. Why does the Station reel in any ship that flies too close? Why do you come back every time you kick the bucket? No matter how familiar you are with the ENDLESS™ Universe, the Station has more stories to tell.
THE MORE DYIN’, THE MORE GROWIN’
Hate to break it to you, this won’t be easy and you might die… a lot. But that’s okay, because every time you do, you get reloaded back into the Saloon. Think of it as your center of operations (and beverages), where you can upgrade your heroes and weapons, unlock new paths to The Core, chat with the locals, listen to tunes, and drink boosting (and delicious) libations. Then, jump back into the Station and try to get out — again.
The three million number references worldwide sales of the highly anticipated remake, and also across all consoles (PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series) and PC.
In our 10/10 review, IGN said: “The Resident Evil 4 remake is the series’ most relentlessly exciting adventure rebuilt, refined, and realised to the full extent of its enormous potential.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
The world of Horizon is vast and majestic, featuring lush landscapes crowned by seemingly endless skies. When the team at Guerrilla began creating this world, developers of various disciplines considered how to bring an immersive level of life to the world. For Guerrilla’s Atmospherics team, this meant populating the skies with lifelike clouds.
This work was evolved for Horizon Forbidden West. And now, in Burning Shores, Aloy will soar through more breathtaking, realistic skies than ever before.
The approach
“When we think of a horizon, we imagine vast expanses like the open ocean and how the clouds and the sun arc down to touch them at some immeasurable distance,” says Andrew Schneider, Principal FX Artist at Guerrilla. “Open-world games present developers with metaphorically similar challenges. How do we push the experience so that the player feels that they are in an environment that could be endless?”
It was one thing to ask the question but another to break it down into technical tasks.
In the early 2010s, feature film and animation VFX started using volumetric rendering to create clouds. For video games, this technique took too long to render with high-quality results at interactive framerates, but developers knew it held game-changing potential.
With innovations in hardware, this began to change. At the nexus of the PlayStation 4 in 2015, Andrew partnered with Nathan Vos, Principal Tech Programmer at Guerrilla. Together, they developed the highly efficient open-world volumetric cloud system that can be seen in Horizon Zero Dawn. The intricately detailed clouds framed Aloy’s world as a hopeful, beautiful one. It supported changes to the time of day and realistic animations, creating the sense of a fully living, breathing world.
This established the foundation the team would build upon for Horizon Forbidden West.
The evolution
In video games, clouds can help convey a mood. Along with the abundance of green, clear waters and cragged cliffs, the clouds of Horizon punctuate the world with emotion. To achieve this, they had to be more than white wisps far above the Aloy’s head; they needed movement, variety, and definition.
“We looked to artists who were part of the luminism movement for inspiration, like 19th-century painter Albert Bierstadt. These painters had mastered the interplay between clouds and the land beneath, using light and detail to create space, producing truly dramatic landscape paintings.
“To recreate this effect in 3D, we had to develop a way to model clouds. For Horizon Zero Dawn, we’d explored various methods for creating cloudscapes. Voxels are blocks that can build volumetric 3D clouds. We’d actually made a cloud simulator and experimented with rendering three-dimensional ‘voxel’ data in real time.”
“But technologically, it was too early for this,” Andrew recalls. “The hardware and software just weren’t at the right stage of development. So, we settled with modeling clouds in an efficient-to-render way that still yielded high-quality results, but with more modeling effort than simulation.”
The solution was to paint fixed layers of clouds rather than individual formations. But this process would need to be expanded to support the addition of flying mounts in Horizon Forbidden West.
For the sequel, Andrew and Nathan upgraded the rendering quality of the base system used in Zero Dawn, expanding it to support a new fog-like cloud that the player could fly through at low altitudes. This allowed for awe-inspiring atmospherics, like a superstorm with sinister vortex motion and internal lightning effects. Now, the clouds were a character of their own, rumbling with atmospheric tension.
The next technical challenge
Naturally, the next step was to continue innovating this system for Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. For the expansion, the team has elevated the experience using voxel technology, among many other technical improvements throughout the world.
“The cloud systems that we developed for Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West were fast because they didn’t store clouds as 3D objects, but rather instructions on creating 3D clouds from limited 2D information. The PlayStation 5 can handle larger datasets. So, after Forbidden West wrapped, we set to work writing a voxel cloud renderer prototype that could live up to our standards for quality, and actually allow the player to fly through highly detailed cloud formations.”
Achieving the balance between performance and quality when the player can be on the ground, and high up in the air was an ambitious challenge. Yet the prototype paid off, generating dense, dynamic results at low and high altitudes, a feat made possible by hard work, as well as the increased power of the PlayStation 5.
But creating a single cloud was a long way from building an entire cloudscape.
Andrew had created what he called “Frankencloudscapes” — large cloud formations so that the sky could be treated like as a landscape would by a terrain modeler. As a result, the cloudscape acted as both a background element and an environment to explore.
To make this work at the scale needed for Burning Shores, a strike team at Guerrilla tackled the challenge of flying through clouds – the real test of performance and quality. Andrew teamed up with Nathan and brought in Hugh Malan, a Senior Principal Tech Programmer.
The first hurdle they encountered was deeply technical: how do you handle a huge quantity of volumetric voxel data?
“Hugh and I divided this issue to conquer it. I developed a way to take low-detail voxel data and add detail during rendering. Meanwhile, Hugh worked on compressing the data so it could be accessed faster from memory. Together, these processes made rendering Volumetric Voxel Clouds exponentially faster.”
“But it still wasn’t fast enough,” Andrew recalls. “The costliest part of this process was calculating cloud lighting, which, in itself, is complicated. To get around this, Nathan engineered a method to reduce rendering time to a speed that would work for both standard and high frame rate modes.”
“This was also one of those rare situations where an optimization produced a better visual result. It allowed us to cast cloud-to-cloud shadows over a much larger distance, improving realism. At this point, we had a method to render volumetric clouds from the ground and in the air, right up next to them.”
The second challenge was balancing. “There is a dance that real-time graphics engineers do to balance quality and performance,” Andrew continues. “Quality usually comes at a ‘cost’ in terms of processing. So, every time we improve the quality of our clouds, we need to do so in a way that costs either as much as, or less than, the current cost of the cloud system.”
To find this balance, Senior Principal Tech Programmer and graphics engineer James McLaren helped the team understand how the code behaved at a low level on the PlayStation hardware itself. His expertise allowed them to take full advantage of the hardware by optimizing code for the PlayStation 5. “James’ contributions were fundamental in the early stages of development, allowing Guerrilla to push the boundaries during production,” recalls Andrew.
In the end, the pieces add up to give the player the awe-inspiring feeling of soaring through and around a cloudscape as accurate and varied as the land below. All on the back of their Sunwing.
What awaits in Burning Shores
When heading to the Burning Shores, Aloy will run into familiar machines and faces. But she will also discover new ways to explore her world.
“It was important to us to make the experience fun and joyful on its own outside of the main gameplay. The clouds are not simply immersive scenery but an explorable landscape in themselves. Among the clouds, players will be able to explore tunnels, caves, and other surprises that make for fun flying,” says Andrew.
“The best part is that depending on when you try any of these features, the experience will be different. As the day progresses, the quality and direction of light change, hiding and revealing some of these features and changing the feel of each journey.
And I don’t want to spoil anything – but we hope you aren’t afraid of a little lightning.”
earlier this month, but it seems Atlas Fallen needs more time to cook. Publisher Focus Entertainment today announced a three-month delay to August 10th – an appropriately summery window for a game set in sandy fantasy deserts.
Command & Conquer. Sure, there’s a touch of Julius Caesar’s ‘veni, vidi, vici’ in there. But less romantically, the title evokes Internet Explorer or Acrobat Reader – sitting comfortably alongside the clearly and sensibly labelled Windows software of the mid-90s. It’s a reminder of just how early Westwood happened upon the blueprint for real-time strategy, right as many PC users were buying their first trackball mice.
Back then, the developer was fresh from Dune II, its unlikely David Lynch adaptation and progenitor of the RTS genre as we know it today. Inspired by the house politics and struggle for resources that consumed the desert planet Arrakis, Westwood had come up with an addictive formula for harvesting spice and converting that wealth into military power, which in turn could be used in the battle to secure more spice. The team was, quite frankly, surprised by how much fun that formula had turned out to be.
The Last of Us Part 1 is finally available on PC… if you can get it to work. Steam have slammed the PC version of the PlayStation classic due to crippling performance issues and crashes.
In fact, it currently has “mostly negative” reviews. “Crashes every 20 minutes,” said one review. “Game is badly optimized. Game looks great just needs to be better optimized.” Naughty Dog is currently investigating the issues, however, and has promised it’s team is working on resolving them.
“The Last of Us Part 1 PC players: we’ve heard your concerns, and our team is actively investigating multiple issues you’ve reported. We will continue to update you, but our team is prioritizing updates and will address issues in upcoming patches.”
The Last of Us Part I PC players: we’ve heard your concerns, and our team is actively investigating multiple issues you’ve reported.
We will continue to update you, but our team is prioritizing updates and will address issues in upcoming patches.
At the moment, only 33% of The Last of Us’ 6,015 user reviews have reported having a positive experience, leaving a staggering 67% underwhelmed.
“I waited for almost 2.5 hours for the game to build shaders while crashing in the main menu every five or so minutes, [it’s] one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had with a game,” said another review. “To clarify, if the game didn’t crash every five mins while in the main menu, it would’ve taken half the time to build the shaders and actually start playing.”
One of the main problems seems to be that shader compiling takes a long time, especially on PCs that only just meet the game’s requirements. That said, users seem to be experiencing issues across the board, and complain that the game simply hasn’t been well-optimized.
One user even reported a massive 14 crashes within 4.8 hours of playtime. The Last of Us was ported to PC by Iron Galax, the same company that recently served up Metroid Prime Remastered on the Nintendo Switch, as well as the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection.
regular fixture at the Game Developers Conference, and this year I spotted some properly incredible creations from its largely student-led group of exhibitors. There was a big focus on co-op games and time trial demos in this year’s cohort, with nearly every stand having some sort of whiteboard pinned up that was constantly being scrubbed out with new fastest lap times and corresponding visitor names. There was also lots of friendly hooting emanating from them as well, as mates and strangers attempted to co-ordinate their gaggles of limbs to steer various game characters in the right direction.
statement about their upcoming 
earlier this month, but it seems 
Command & Conquer. Sure, there’s a touch of Julius Caesar’s ‘veni, vidi, vici’ in there. But less romantically, the title evokes Internet Explorer or Acrobat Reader – sitting comfortably alongside the clearly and sensibly labelled Windows software of the mid-90s. It’s a reminder of just how early Westwood happened upon the blueprint for real-time strategy, right as many PC users were buying their first trackball mice.