Pokemon Go developer Niantic and Capcom have announced Monster Hunter Now, a real-world action RPG mobile game that is set to be released in September 2023 on iOS and Android devices that will allow you and your friends to take down iconic monsters like the Rathalos and Great Jagras on your next walk around the neighborhood.
IGN and other members of the press were able to attend a hands-off presentation of Monster Hunter Now and the team made it very clear that they want to keep the best parts of Monster Hunter intact during the transition to the mobile space. Additionally, Monster Hunter Now is meant to be accessible to newcomers and veterans of the franchise alike.
Some of these veterans and newcomers will be able to test that promise for themselves as Monster Hunter Now’s closed beta will begin on April 25. Players can register for the beta on MonsterHunterNow.com and the team confirmed that those accepted will be able to battle monsters with the Sword and Shield, Great Sword, and Light Bowgun. Now, on to the game itself.
Much like Pokemon GO, Monster Hunter Now will have players encountering monsters as they walk around the real world. However, it differs from Pokemon GO when the battles take place as it becomes an action RPG that is reminiscent of its console counterpart, if a bit simplified. Via taps and flicks, players will be able to use their favorite weapons to take down massive monsters in a stylish and powerful way. Niantic also teased that there will be a story of sorts in Monster Hunter Now and that new and familiar faces will show up along the way.
Players can adventure alone or with up to four friends, and there will be an option to team up with other hunters that are near you that are also playing Monster Hunter Now. Niantic wasn’t ready to get into all the details about how you can play with friends, especially those who may not live near you, but the multiplayer experience is a huge priority for the game.
As for the battles themselves, they will last up to 75 seconds and are aiming to be as fun and chaotic as a traditional Monster Hunter battle is. Parts will be flying off the monsters as you attack them, and the weapons and combat look similar to what fans are used to. Players will also have the choice to battle in vertical or landscape modes.
With the Paintball mechanic, you can tag a monster and then finish that battle once you get home or whenever it is more convenient for you.
Rewards from those battles will be resources and monster parts that, in traditional Monster Hunter fashion, will let players create and upgrade gear that they can then take with them to battle to become more powerful and repeat that loop again.
Two other integral parts of Monster Hunter Now are your Palico companion and the Paintball mechanic. The Palico, which fans of the franchise will recognize as the wonderful cat-like creatures, will accompany each player on their adventures and will also be able to utilize the aforementioned Paintball mechanic.
Monster Hunter Now encourages players to get out and walk around their hometowns, by their work, on their travels, and much more. However, things may pop up that will prevent you from finishing a battle or encountering a particular monster. With the Paintball mechanic, you can tag a monster and then finish that battle once you get home or whenever it is more convenient for you.
Furthermore, Palicos will hunt monsters even when you aren’t playing the game and will tag them with Paintballs so you can challenge them when you are home, at work, etc. Alongside this being a very useful feature for not missing monsters, it will also give friends and family more chances to fight together when the time is right.
As for how you find the monsters to fight, there will be Wayspots/landmarks around the game world that will offer players resources when they are found. Monsters will spawn around these, but they will also appear randomly in the wild, which will be helpful for those who live in rural areas or places without a ton of landmarks.
There will also be an option use AR to see these monsters come to life in your town. In a short video shown during the presentation, we saw a player running up to meet his friends in a city and, when the camera panned up, we caught a glimpse of a massive Rathalos hovering above them with the skyline in the background.
We have opened an official Twitter account for Real-world hunting action RPG “Monster Hunter Now” from Niantic and Capcom which announced today! Service is scheduled to begin in September 2023!
As previously mentioned, Monster Hunter Now will be released on iOS and Android devices in September 2023 and will be a free-to-play game with items to purchase at an additional cost. The team wasn’t willing to go into too much detail about the monetization strategy, but it was promised that there will be a “good balance” between the free experience and the one “enhanced” by the purchasing of items.
We also want to remind those interested that the Monster Hunter Now closed beta will begin on April 25 and registration is now open at MonsterHunterNow.com.
Monster Hunter Now has been in the works for about four years and it’s a project that garnered a ton of excitement right from the start. In fact, Ryozo Tsujimoto, a director and executive corporate officer at Capcom and the Monster Hunter series producer, said he can “still remember the first meeting. I immediately replied, ‘Let’s do it!” without a second thought.”
Alien has a long history with shooters, but not so much with RPGs. Obsidian tried to change that in the 2000s with Aliens: Crucible, an early Onyx engine game published by Sega described as “Mass Effect but more terrifying.” It was ultimately shelved with little explanation and subsequently forgotten until this past weekend, when Pentiment director Josh Sawyer talked about some of what he described as the “dysfunction” around the project.
“I got to work on an Aliens RPG for SEGA from 2006-2009. Obsidian didn’t have directors at that time, just leads who were all considered peers. It resulted in a lot of dysfunction when the leads didn’t agree on how to do something,” he explained.
There were a lot of cool ideas in the works, but you don’t ship ideas! The biggest lesson I learned from the experience is that if you don’t have playable levels, you don’t have much of a game (there are some exceptions, of course).
In the thread that followed, Sawyer said that progress on Crucible was “slow,” and that Obsidian had “a lot of cool ideas in the works, but you don’t ship ideas.” One of those purported ideas, which has been described elsewhere, is that squadmates could get impregnated, whereupon you would have to decide whether to mercy kill them, put them in a sleep chamber and use them sparingly, or simply let them pop.
Ultimately, Sawyer’s biggest takeaway was that if you don’t have playable levels “you don’t have much of a game.” Thus, Obsidian moved on to Alpha Protocol, its secret agent RPG that retains a small but fervent fanbase to this day.
If you want to see some of Obsidian’s ideas in action, though, Sawyer does say there’s an alternative.
“I was happy to play Aliens: Fireteam Elite because the overall setup was similar: small team, 3rd person, with an emphasis on deployables and support actions. The similarities ended there, but it was nice to see the idea could actually be fun in practice. RIP, squad,” Sawyer wrote.
Sawyer also opened up about Aliens: Crucible in an interview for IGN Unfiltered back in 2018, where he talked more about his ideas behind the game while admitting that it was “too little, too late.”
Frank O’Connor is the latest longtime Halo developer to depart the series, with Xbox confirming to Axios in a statement that the longtime franchise director has departed after two decades with the series.
“We thank Frank for his numerous contributions to the Halo franchise and wish him well going forward,” Microsoft said in a statement.
Rumors of O’Connor’s departure began when fans noted a Linkedin update showing that he was no longer with the company. He began as a content manager for Bungie in late 2003, where he wrote the Bungie Weekly Update. He joined Microsoft Studios in 2008, which allowed him to stay with the franchise even after Bungie split.
Microsoft confirms the departure of longtime Halo franchise director Frank O’Connor, who worked on Master Chief’s games for two decades: “We thank Frank for his numerous contributions to the Halo franchise and wish him well going forward.”
He was a familiar figure among Halo fans, appearing in Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn as Beamish the Janitor and co-authoring Halo: Evolutions – Essential Tales of the Halo Universe. He subsequently rose to the role of development director on Halo 5 and Halo Infinite, frequently serving as a spokeperson for the franchise.
As for O’Connor, his next destination is currently unclear. O’Connor’s last tweet was in January, and he offered no hints of leaving Microsoft.
Wherever he ends up, it seems that much of the old guard has left Halo, and with Halo Infinite struggling to meet its high expectations, it’s unclear where the series will go next.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
“I feel like it’s been long enough now to come out and say Star Wars Battlefront III was gonnae [sic] be legit incredible and the fact it got cancelled 2 yards from the finish line is an absolute crime,” former Star Wars Battlefront 3 developer Michael Barclay tweeted over the weekend.
Barclay was referring to Free Radical’s Star Wars Battlefront 3, which was in development until it was canceled in 2008. His statement came in response to a simple question posed at developers: “Alright #gamedev folks, what’s your ‘one that got away?’ It can be an IP you wanted to work on, a studio you wanted to work for, anything of the sort.”
Barclay, who now works as a lead designer at Naughty Dog, shared his own story and added, “Gamers don’t know what they were robbed of.”
I feel like it’s been long enough now to come out and say Star Wars Battlefront III was gonnae be legit incredible and the fact it got cancelled 2 yards from the finish line is an absolute crime. Gamers don’t know what they were robbed of. https://t.co/zZUu8JR3iV
Barclay’s claim isn’t a new one. Way back in 2012, Free Radical cofounder Steve Ellis also claimed that Star Wars Battlefront 3 was “99 percent done.” This prompted a former LucasArts employee to lash out at the studio, which has since undergone multiple iterations before reopening under Deep Silver in 2021.
They went on to claim that Free Radical continually missed milestones and that the game didn’t work in 2007, but that LucasArts was “desperate” for what was then a next-gen follow-up to Battlefront on Xbox 360 and PS3, not the least because Star Wars Battlefront and its sequel sold extremely well on PS2 and Xbox.
The claims led to a war of words in the press, with Ellis posting a lengthy statement claiming that Battlefront 3 being “75 percent of a mediocre game” was “false” while pointing to leaked footage that he said backed him up. He went on to say that “LucasArts was a company with problems in 2008.” Shortly after Ellis’ comments, LucasArts was shuttered by Disney, which had acquired Star Wars the year before.
IGN reached out to Barclay to see if he had additional context to add, but did not receive a response.
Gamers don’t know what they were robbed of.
Plenty of footage and even a playable build would emerge in the years that followed, allowing fans to decide for themselves what they were missing. Much of that footage would ultimately be pulled, with Battlefront III ultimately being lost to history.
EA would later reboot the series, though with notable differences from the original LucasArts games, such as how it handled space battles. The original Battlefront games remain beloved fan-favorites for the way that they combined the prequel and original trilogy eras, pitting players against each in large-scale space battles where they could board and attack enemy capital ships. It included an extensive single-player game, which EA’s games would not get until the sequel.
You can still play the original Star Wars Battlefront 2, though it requires some setup to work properly. It was voted the fifth best Star Wars game ever by IGN readers, with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic coming in at number one.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Diablo 4 has gone gold, but there are currently no plans for a quality-of-life feature that’s been a series staple. On Twitter, the official Diablo account confirmed that the game has gone gold ahead of its June 6 release date.
#DiabloIV has Gone Gold. Can you feel her presence now?
However, it seems the launch of Diablo 4 won’t include a fan-favorite feature that makes exploring more convenient: An overlay map. When asked on Twitter if a TAB overlay map will eventually get added to Diablo 4, Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson simply replied, “No plans at the moment.”
Overlay maps allow players to look at the map while still maintaining control of their character. They’re perfect for a top-down multiplayer game like Diablo where you’ll likely want to examine your surroundings without pausing the game entirely.
It seems that the developers at Blizzard want players to instead focus on the world they’ve created, rather than just constantly following icons on a map. With the absence of an overlay map, Diablo 4 players will have to adjust to using the minimap or pausing to view the entire map.
Fan reactions from Fergusson’s announcement have been mixed, with one Twitter user saying the overlay map, “used to be the default ideal way to play and brought a decent amount of clutter as a result. No harm in trying new things!”
But many fans are resistant to the change, with one reply saying, “This should definitely be an option. A minimap in the corner isn’t sufficient and opening your map constantly while moving is a hassle.”
It’s entirely possible Blizzard could eventually implement an overlay map If the demand for the feature is strong enough. Blizzard has already made a ton of changes to Diablo 4 based on fan feedback from the game’s betas. We also know Blizzard will be working on this game for quite some time, as the developer recently detailed its battle pass plans.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
Warner Bros. Games has announced a “standalone Quidditch experience” called Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, and playtest signups are now open.
According to the game’s FAQ page, Quidditch Champions is will allow players to partake in the Wizarding World’s iconic sport and “other broomstick adventures alongside friends in a competitive, multiplayer setting.” Playing the game requires constant internet connection, hence Warner Bros. Games is holding a limited playtest for people to try out the new Harry Potter title.
During the playtest, you can either play the game by yourself or you can team up with friends and other people online. You’ll also be able to create and customize your character to your liking.
Quidditch Champions has been in development for several years at Unbroken Studios, which is also lending a hand in developing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Warner Bros. Games released the following statement about Quidditch Champions’ connection to the Harry Potter franchise alongside Portkey Games, which is publishing the game:
“While Portkey Games are not direct adaptations of the books and films, the games are firmly rooted in the magical universe of the Wizarding World. While remaining true to J.K. Rowling’s original vision, Portkey game developers chart new territory by creating fresh ways for fans to immerse themselves in the Wizarding World.”
The announcement of Quidditch Champions comes on the heels of the release of Hogwarts Legacy for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, which sold over 12 million copies two weeks after its launch in February despite controversy surrounding the Harry Potter author. The game will release on PS4 and Xbox One on May 5, while the Nintendo Switch version comes out July 25.
You can sign up for the playtest on the official Quidditch Champions website if you wish to get a first look. To learn more about the game, join the game’s Discord server. The playtest will run on April 21-22.
Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications, including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions, and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.
Wuthering Waves is a multi-platform free-to-play action RPG by Kuro Game. Wuthering Waves emphasizes freedom and exploration in its fast-paced Player-versus-Enemy (PvE) combat. If you’re a fan of free-to-play games that offer deep gameplay mechanics, you should keep an eye on Wuthering Waves’ upcoming closed beta.
A Story of Catastrophe and Recovery (and Catastrophe)
The world of Wuthering Waves was bombarded by an apocalyptic event called the “Calament” over a century ago. Strange beings arrived and sowed havoc and violence across the lands, leaving the dregs of civilization to tremble on the edge of annihilation.
But peace was forged between the surviving peoples, all of whom pitched in to rebuild cities, homes, and factories from the ruins left behind by the violent invasion. There’s a dreamlike serenity hovering over Wuthering Waves, but it’s deceptive; some unnamed threat still lurks in the shadows. Your sudden, mysterious arrival to the land where you’re only known as “Rover” inexplicably lines up with the growing unease. Expect the Resonators of Wuthering Waves to keep a close eye on you–but the upside is they’ll stay close by your side and watch your back as you fight a host of strange, twisted monsters.
Easy to Play, Easy to Look At
Wuthering Waves‘ graphics aren’t yet developed fully, but already feature large cities and settlements nestled amongst overgrown structures and towering, lush hills and mountains. Both characters and enemies alike are animated while in combat, with dashes, hits, and dodges all showing off as many details as possible while each one dives in and out of each other’s attacks.
Wuthering Waves is a full-bodied RPG that emphasizes interaction in the world. Additionally, you and your Rover will have several battle styles at your disposal via the varied Resonators. With plenty of skills to learn and weapons to master, gameplay might sound intimidating but
Wuthering Waves‘ onboarding process is engineered to make newcomers comfortable. This is good news if you’re rusty at action RPGs because you shouldn’t have trouble finding your footing. If you’re an old hand at action RPGs however, there are plenty of fierce opponents and meaty quests for you to seek out in Wuthering Waves‘ wide world.
Running Up that Hill
Thankfully, cliff faces and heights aren’t blockades or mere hazards in Wuthering Waves. You can scramble up a sheer rock wall by simply running up it–provided your stores of stamina will hold instead of sending you tumbling back to the ground for another try. Climbing these hazardous sentinels is worth it when you’re rewarded with the view of the landscape, not to mention a perfect jumping-off point for your glider.
Exploring and fighting occasionally rewards you with Echoes, spirits of felled monsters that can be summoned to aid in battle or exploration. Mixing-and-matching these monster skills adds new layers to Wuthering Winds‘ combat. Plus, chasing after monsters for collection purposes is always a draw!
Closed Beta
If sprinting directly up cliff faces after executing big sword combos sounds like your kind of fun, sign up for the closed beta test of Wuthering Waves that starts on April 25. Wuthering Waves is slated for PC and mobile, and multi-platform testing will be conducted during the beta.
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?
Crashing onto PC
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 Good, the Bad and the Demanding
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.
If you have the hardware, a PC can scale above the PS5, but it’s a big if.
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).
Losing My Memory
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 are a result of simply exceeding the limits of your VRAM.
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
High End Machine
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.
Medium Range Machine(s)
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.
Low End & Portable
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.
Summary
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dark and Darker developer Irongate is being been sued by Nexon for copyright infringement following a DMCA takedown in March.
As reported by Eurogamer, Nexon’s lawsuit highlighted similarities between its own P3 and Dark and Darker, and also claimed some of Irongate’s employees, who previously worked for Nexon, had signed a one-year-non-compete clause that stopped them from taking “Nexon’s trade secrets” straight to a new developer.
The lawsuit added that “condoning the defendants’ conduct would threaten Nexon, the video game industry, and all of the consumers who enjoy playing sophisticated video games. Video game developers would not be able to invest years’ worth of person-hours in developing video games if their employees could simply transfer their employer’s project files to their own personal servers and start a new company.”
Nearly half of Irongate employees are made up of former Nexon staff, though the lawsuit only names two (Ju-Hyun Choi and Terence Seungha Park) as former staff who signed the one-year-non-competitive clause in their contracts.
In terms of similarities raised, Nexon highlights that both games feature chests opened by the player character moving their hand in a circular motion and that both games feature glowing potions worn on belts around the player character’s waist.
The situation escalated as one Dark and Darker development team member shared a GoFundMe page asking for $500,000 to pay for legal fees, which was initially thought to be a scam but later uncovered as genuine. Irongate had planned a fundraising drive to launch at a later time if needed, but the one developer had prematurely released it.
