Author: Game Infliction

This is the first in a series of regular guest columns from Push Square, the world’s biggest independent PlayStation website. We’re the voice of the PlayStation community, offering passionate, in-depth coverage and insight into the world of Sony. Our goal is simple: to keep you informed, engaged, and part of the conversation surrounding all things PlayStation.

Launching at an astonishing $700 on 7th November, the PS5 Pro already faces significant scrutiny from fans: an enormous 89% of Push Square enthusiasts deemed the mid-gen machine “too expensive” in a poll this week. Sony now faces the unenviable task of convincing its most engaged consumers that the console is worth the investment. But with many feeling the PS5 generation has yet to really get started, the PS5 Pro’s problems appear to go beyond price.

This was perhaps best evidenced by Lead System Architect Mark Cerny’s decision to spotlight The Last of Us: Part 2 Remastered during his PS5 Pro presentation – a re-released version of a PS4 game from 2020, albeit an undoubtedly handsome one. While it’s good to know the game will run at an unflinching 60fps in its full 4K fidelity mode on Sony’s new supercharged system, there are few who will feel the astronomical $700 price point is justified by an enhanced last-gen title.

Let’s be honest: quidditch is not a good sport – or at least it’s not one that was ever designed to actually be played. Its role in the Harry Potter series was just to show off how special Harry is, to the point where you might as well call it “Harry Potter the Seeker and Some Other People on Broomsticks, I Guess.” So the team at developer Unbroken Studios had their work cut out for them with Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, having to both honor the source material while also adapting quidditch into a real game. Surprisingly, they’ve done a pretty good job at that, with moment-to-moment action on the quidditch pitch that’s actually pretty great. But once you land between matches, Quidditch Champions doesn’t have much off the pitch to keep you coming back.

On the surface, the quidditch in Quidditch Champions is just like the stuff in the books and films. There are still four positions: Chasers grab the Quaffle and shoot it at the opposing team’s goals, scoring ten points if they manage to get it in; Keepers defend those goals; Beaters launch Bludgers to satisfyingly stun members of the opposing team, and when that fails they can whack them with their bats directly; and Seekers chases the Golden Snitch, a small, hard-to-catch winged ball worth a lot of points. But Unbroken has introduced a few rule changes that make things work better – most notably among them, the Seeker is no longer the only one of these positions that ultimately matters.

Matches end either when one team scores 100 points or a time limit is reached, and they don’t just stop the moment someone catches the Snitch. Speaking of, the Snitch itself is only worth a much more reasonable 30 points instead of 150, and it can appear multiple times (usually about twice) per game. That smartly makes the times you can switch to Seeker a fun little (optional) bonus during a match rather than the do-or-die moment of the entire thing. There’s also only one Beater per team, not two, which makes a lot sense given how they can force other positions to play around them.

The end result of all these tweaks is, frankly, a better game. It allows Chasers to matter just as much, if not more, than Seekers, while keeping the hunt for the Snitch important, especially in tight games. It lets the Beater, who can incapacitate a member of the other team if they deal enough damage, be a strong and strategic part of a whole match without entirely dictating how it plays out. It makes every shot on goal matter, and, most importantly, it ensures matches don’t go on for six months.

So yeah, smart changes make for a better, more fun version of quidditch, but what kept me coming back was the way the on-field action feels. Flying around the pitch is awesome, especially if you master Quidditch Champions’ movement techniques. Managing your boost meter and learning how to dodge and drift properly are the differences between accidentally blowing past the other team as a Chaser and faking out a Keeper to land the perfect shot or keeping up with the Snitch during tight turns and taking a Bludger to the skull before contemplating your choices while face down in the pitch for the next twenty seconds. Mid-match commentary will chime in alongside those plays either way, though it’s unfortunately pretty stilted and generic – whether it’s Lee Jordan at Hogwarts or Rita Skeeter during the Quidditch World Cup, there’s good lines here and there, but they’re usually reserved for the beginning and end of a match while the mid-game stuff is… dry, to say the least.

Thankfully, every position has a fun role to play. I loved playing Keeper because I enjoyed the chess match between myself and the opposing Chasers, reacting to their shots, and dropping Playcalling Rings that restore my Chasers’ energy and give them speed boosts; Chasers are constantly tackling each other to steal the ball, moving up and down the pitch, and testing themselves against the Keeper; a well-played Beater can pick apart the other team, disrupting a Seeker at the last second or taking the Keeper off the board to allow a game-winning goal; and because Seekers can’t just grab the Snitch — they have to stay close to it and fill a meter before they can finally snatch it — every fight for those bonus points is essentially a race with another Seeker. And since you can switch positions on the fly, you can spend as much (or as little) time in each role as you like. It’s great.

It’s even better, of course, when you’re playing with friends. You can play cooperatively with two other players or take on human teams in 3v3 action online, though switching positions there works a little differently. In that case, you choose a pair of positions — Chaser and either Keeper, Seeker, or Beater — and swap between those. What you lose in position flexibility you make up for in the ability to coordinate with your team. In my first online game, I mostly played Keeper, making saves, using the Playcaller Rings to set up shots on goal, and passing to my friend so they could score as a Chaser. It was a close game, but we won because we worked together.

So Quidditch Champions is great on the field, but unfortunately it’s pretty mediocre off it. There’s really nothing to do besides play these straightforward quidditch matches, be that online or alone. You’ve got a limited career mode with four Cups to win, with the opening Weasley Cup serving as a (very good) tutorial. The other three are the House Cup at Hogwarts, the Triwizard Quidditch Cup, and the Quidditch World Cup. After a series of preliminary matches, you’re seeded into a single-elimination bracket, winner-take-all – and while that may sound like it could be exciting, there are a couple of issues here.

First, the Triwizard Cup and the House Cup only feature three and four teams, respectively, so the bracket stage is pretty short (and in the case of the Triwizard Cup, only consists of one match because a team is eliminated in the prelims). Second, while you can play Career in co-op (and the menus encourage you to do so), Quidditch Champions doesn’t actually track your progress if you do, meaning I ended up playing the House Cup three times to unlock the Triwizard Cup. My first two attempts, made in co-op, weren’t saved. I didn’t get credit for any games I played on my Challenge screen either, which tracks your daily, weekly, and career-wide progress across games and offers rewards once you complete them, which meant I missed unlockable cosmetics as well. That feels bad.

Beyond career, multiplayer, and an obligatory practice mode, there just isn’t much to do in terms of modes, which leaves the whole package feeling thin. The character customization, however, is at least quite good. You can customize your team, allocate per-position stat points, and upgrade the several brooms you can choose from, all of which have different stats. This tinkering is welcome; there are a lot of options for your custom characters, letting you choose their look, how commentators refer to them, and plenty of cool bits and bobs like robes, wands, emotes, and such, though it’s a bummer that the co-op progression problems mean you will have to grind single-player games to unlock a decent chunk of those items.

Don’t want to use custom characters? You can unlock Harry, Ron, Hermoine, Cedric Diggory, Draco Malfoy (ew), Cho Chang, and the rest if you save up enough currency or, say it with me, level up your battle pass. While your eyes might already be rolling upon reading that, the good news is it’s totally free so far, and you earn everything just from playing. There are no microtransactions in Quidditch Champions; at least, not right now. After all, this is Warner Bros. – do you trust it to build an in-game shop and not ask you to open your wallet at some point down the line? I don’t.

In inZOI, Krafton’s ambitious all-in-one life simulator, you aren’t a God but rather an omnipotent office worker performing HR for miniature worlds under the tutelage of an adorable cat overlord. In addition to managing the needs and relationships of customisable avatars called Zois, you can build a metropolis with bespoke homes, businesses, and public parks. A slew of complications, like citywide mood sliders, weather conditions, and the potential for wild animals, juice up your all-seeing agenda, leading to a sumptuous simulation full of moreish chaos. It’s a gorgeous, formidable, system-filled world that, as of right now, still feels a little hollow.

Before jumping into the deep end on my first day on the job, inZOI ushered me in with a slick, hyper-realistic character studio that, if time permitted, could have easily swallowed my entire preview session. There was plenty of pushing and pulling as I warped my avatar’s facial symmetry with incredible freedom, like a kid making a beautiful monster out of Play-Doh. But any sincere attempts to create a stylish virtual self disappeared as I stumbled onto all of the Zoi Presets crafted by other creators – nightmare-fuel recreations of cultural icons like Shrek and Handsome Squidward. “We want to give (players) as much agency as possible,” explains Hyungjun Kim, director and producer of inZOI. “I grew up making custom content, and I made a lot of custom content when I was playing The Sims”, they continued. “I know what the players are feeling, and I’ve been in their shoes, so I wanted to give them as much agency as possible so they can make things as easy as possible.”

You’ll choose a character’s gender expression, age range (child, young adult, adult, middle-aged, and senior), and personality before getting stuck into inZOI’s holistic anatomical putty parlor. “At first, we were looking at the option of stylising like The Sims, but we thought that making it realistic would help players become more immersed,” says Kim. “I wanted people to look at life in a more serious light, and if I have one vision for this game, it’s that I want people to live meaningful lives and really think about life in general.”

inZOI’s fashion suite is a tour de force of customisable streetwear and abundant accessories. I could pick a cute top or skirt and adjust its length and colour using a rainbow palette, recreating some of my favourite archival fashion aesthetics like McBling and Indie Sleaze with ease. inZOI’s sizable wardrobe is refreshingly modern and mostly androgynous, too. “When making the game, we asked for help from clothing companies and brands,” explains Kim. “We asked a clothing designer who’s worked with a lot of Korean singers and K-pop artists to help us, so with their help, we were able to make our own style,” they finished.

There is an unfortunate elephant in the room, though, and that’s inZOI’s integration of Generative AI. Players can upload a custom design to apply to their avatar’s clothing or toy with the plentiful built-in settings. However, a separate button opens up a prompt box where you can input word salad and receive a synthographic digital pattern based on your request. While it’s not all that surprising to see, given current technological trends, it does put a damper on what I feel is a compelling and inspiring character creator. It would cultivate a better community for inZOI if everyone were compelled to flex their unique visions, design skills and cultural milieu to make and share cool textures for other players to use rather than allowing a machine to speedrun creativity for them and produce shabby work.

Once I had completed my household, I was thrust into inZOI’s Seoul-inspired city, Dowon, ready for my digital me to embed themselves in this impeccably dressed world. It’s here that I could start seeing the seams of this ambitious project. inZOI’s open world is enormous but feels very early. It’s chock full of intersecting people, places, and activities, but despite having so much to do, a haunting emptiness persists in the background, one that needs remedying before the game’s full release.

Starting in my Zoi’s brand-new apartment, they pottered around their gorgeous digs, cooking a frittata and chatting with their roommate. Communication in inZOI is divided between Love, Friendship, and Business, and as you start to talk, you can cycle through the different categories, prodding the relationships in your desired direction. Throughout, the Zois bantered in a Simlish-adjacent style of speech that was made especially for the game. “We have a language for inZOI, for the Zois,” Kim says. “We have a language for Dowon, and then we have Bliss Bay, which is based on America, and we need language for that. But the problem is, if you use English or Korean, you need to get voiceovers and actors.” they continued. “ And if you localise English to Korean, there might be a lot of difficulties, so that’s why we made our own language. It’s written in Korean, but the voice itself is just independent. It’s just a language that exists in inZOI.” Kim explains.

It’s a convincing package of interactions at first glance, even if the movement sometimes feels abrupt and goofy between activities. The physicality of a Zoi’s animations often makes up for this, though – I was enamoured by the way they took and cracked the viscous eggs into a bowl. As my Zoi meandered around the house, they took a few selfies before spending a lengthy amount of time on the toilet – perhaps that frittata was a mistake. Either way, it was time to take my Zoi on the road, so I left the apartment to see what was outside. In the open world, my Zoi could walk the length and breadth of the city with barely any barriers. I could also instantly tinker with the environment’s settings, turning my pristine and sunny landscape into a post-apocalyptic nightmare with a few clicks. Even with the occasional bout of texture pop-in, I was thoroughly impressed by how free I was to mould Dowon and torment the people of my world – and how intuitive it felt to do so.

To balance out the complete freedom you’re given, friction in inZOI stems from the Karma system, which tallies your Zoi’s actions and punishes them when they do bad things. Performing a social faux pas like littering or theft could cause your social standing to drop, with other Zois starting rumours about your misdeeds. I also ‘secretly farted’ in the kitchen next to my imaginary husband, which almost definitely made an impact, too. Much of inZOI feels borderless and determined to get out of your way, so I was pleased to see explicit boundaries to consider, even if the specifics of these systems were still a mystery to me.

With my time running out, I took a minute to try the build mode, filling my Zoi’s space with indiscriminate assets. Cycling through a collection of menus, I could easily shift the position of doors, build new walls, and add premade furniture. You can also modify the open-world environment in a similar fashion. “Right now, our Build Mode isn’t complete—it’s only 80% complete—but our rendering is pretty good,” says Kim. “I have big ambitions for Build Mode. I want the player to be able to build high-rise buildings with dozens of floors.” they continued. “Maybe later, we’re going to add the ability to edit terrain.”

You can tweak almost every detail of a piece of furniture, too, from the wood type to how glossy you want it to be, or, if you wish, upload one of the aforementioned custom textures instead. It feels like an excellent foundation for criteria-based building challenges, and I’d love to try outfitting a low-budget or tiny-square-foot home with the available mechanics. Going forward, Kim told me that the team would observe what players were doing with the tools and try to nurture that however possible. “We have Unreal Editor that you can download from the shop, and you’re going to be able to mod using that,” Kim said. “And we’re not going to insert ourselves in any way.”

Kim is also thinking hard about the contentious topic of DLCs and add-on packs and how Krafton will support inZOI. “I think we might have to release DLCs, but we want to be careful around that,” Kim says. “I bought a lot of add-ons [for The Sims], but when you make DLCs, what’s important is that when you buy it, you need to feel that it’s really worth it. You want to feel that it’s a cool addition to your game.”

But before we think about the future, we need to focus on the experience of playing inZOI right now. The game’s world is extremely beautiful but somewhat empty in motion, permeated by a lack of grounding lore. It can sometimes feel like a playable version of a high-end real estate render or a picture-perfect Pinterest board. It does paw towards a playful narrative with its cat mascot and AR company framework. Still, it doesn’t transfer that same magical realist charm to its more minor interactions to imbue them with a sense of meaning or humour. But we’re still a while off the full game, and I’m hopeful it can carve out a chaotic corner for itself in this ever-fascinating and difficult genre, a space ripe for innovation which inZOI plans to evolve.

A group of around 20 developers formerly of Ascendant Studios, including its former CEO, have joined Dan Houser’s Absurd Ventures to form a new studio in San Rafael, California: Absurd Marin.

In a press release today, Absurd Ventures announced its new studio would be led by Ascendant Studios founder and former game director on Immortals of Aveum Bret Robbins. The team will work on a “story-driven action-adventure” game that will be separate from Absurd Ventures’ other projects, which collectively take place in the A Better Paradise universe.

Absurd’s addition of around 20 Ascendant employees comes after Ascendant was hit with dramatic layoffs last fall, following the launch of Immortals of Aveum. Nearly half the studio was let go, around 40 people total, due to poor sales of Immortals of Aveum. At the time, the cuts were said to have been necessary to keep the studio open. However, earlier this year, reports circulated that nearly all of the remaining staff at Ascendant had been furloughed as well, just months after Robbins told GamesIndustry.biz that the “story of Immortals isn’t written yet.”

It is unclear whether or not Ascendant Studios still exists now that its CEO and most of its employees have seemingly moved on. The studio and game’s official X/Twitter account’s last post was on August 13. IGN has reached out to Ascendant Studios for comment.

Absurd Ventures was founded by Rockstar co-founder and GTA writer Dan Houser after he left Rockstar back in 2020, working alongside radio host and former GTA writer and producer Lazlow Jones. We spoke to Jones back in August about the venture, including his exit from Rockstar, his partnership with Houser, and how A Better Paradise will explore themes of artificial intelligence and addiction.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

No More Heroes developer Goichi Suda, aka Suda51, believes the gaming community “cares too much” about review scores on sites like Metacritic.

The Grasshopper Manufacture CEO opened up about his grievances during an interview GamesIndustry.biz conducted with him and Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami. Suda explains he’s concerned that game creation is becoming formulaic as a result of desires to reach higher scores, adding that many companies might not be interested in projects that don’t fit in with that formula.