Category: Video Games

The second episode of HBO’s The Last of Us series just hit the streamer yesterday, and fans are already criticizing the show for changing certain things from the games.

The episode, titled “Infected,” recreates several of the first few levels of the original game. It sees Joel, Ellie and Tess sneaking through an overrun city to drop off Ellie with Firefly rebels. In a deviation from the game, creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin introduced a new way of spreading the fungal infection. The infected use tendrils from their body and plant a nasty kiss on them, thus giving them the cordyceps fungus.

In the game, one of the major ways in which the infection spreads is through airborne spores; the show’s omission of spores has already caused some fans to feel that the series is being too flexible with its adaptation.

“I’ve learned to expect backlash from sneezing,” Druckman said in an interview with Variety. “I think it speaks to the kind of fans that we have, who are so protective and love the world and these characters so much that anything they see as a deviation, without the full context of what it means, they assume the worst and push back on it. I think that addition is something worthwhile. It’s actually one of those additions where I’m like, ‘Oh man, I wish we had it for the game. I wish we had thought of it years ago, because I love it so much.'”

Mazin added: “That’s all right if people are upset by it — I don’t blame them. Everybody dreams of working on something where the fan engagement is to this level, where people will argue about these things or feel passionate about them. I do feel sometimes, if you just see how it goes, I think you’ll be OK. A lot of that has happened, but there will also definitely be people who are like, ‘You fucked up,’ and I get it. We definitely will not make everyone happy, I know that much.”

The omission of spores makes sense practically for a live action adaptation, as the presence of spores would mean that Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey would have to wear gas masks for much of the shows runtime. However, Mazin insists that the show still has not completely eliminated the spores.

“If you listen carefully, the word ‘spores’ is mentioned,” he said. “I don’t necessarily know if we’re going to see any spores this time around, but to say that our world is devoid of them would not be accurate. We don’t quite know yet: That’s part of the fun of adaptation, and leaving these blurry edges of the map for our characters to discover as the adventure continues.”

The Last of Us series is just getting started, so it’s anyone’s guess as to how the rest of the show will live up to the beloved video games. For now, though, the creators seem to know that backlash is expected when adapting one of the greatest games ever made.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.

Aloft, a “co-op floating island survival sandbox game,” has been announced for PC. A demo is now available on Steam.

The publisher, Astrolabe Interactive, describes Aloft as such: “In Aloft, players must survive on islands floating around an eternal hurricane sitting at the center of their world. After building a base and calling one of these islands home, would-be adventurers can outfit their enclave with sails to travel the winds so that they may discover new territories and collect resources, technologies, and equipment upgrades. On their journey, travelers must cleanse nature of dangerous fungi that contaminate flora and corrupt wildlife in order to free and heal the ecosystem from harm. As they make progress on their expedition through the sky, players will uncover the secrets of a lost civilization and find their origins by soaring to the highest altitudes of this mysterious new realm.” Take a look at the official announcement trailer above, and screenshots from the latest build below.

Aloft also includes an island editor as well as cooperative play for up to eight players. Based on the trailer, it’s got a promising amount of unique hooks to hopefully balance out its familiar elements. Check out the demo and/or wishlist it on Steam if you’re interested.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

If your first real exposure to Ken Block was his collaboration with Codemasters for Colin McRae Dirt 2, released on PC and seventh-generation consoles way back in 2009, you may not have known what to make of him at the time. Pitched as the new face of the franchise in the early promotional materials, Block cut a drastically different figure on screen to the late Colin McRae. McRae had a famous reputation as a madman behind the wheel, but outside of a rally car the Scot always appeared calm, natural, and low-key. Perched behind a set of sunglasses indoors and flanked by Monster Energy models, Block certainly seemed like a contrasting character; a hot dog hand grenade set to blow up Codemasters’ conventions. Scotland’s South Lanarkshire was making way for the Spring Break swagger of Long Beach, California, and Block was clearly being positioned as a core part of Dirt 2’s pivot to a considerably more US-centric, X Games-inspired take on rally racing.

Of course, the sideways shift from a strict focus on traditional rallying was a natural move at the time. Rallying was building steam in the US, and even Colin McRae himself had then-recently been established as a genuine X Games star following his famous duel with extreme sports berserker Travis Pastrana in 2006. McRae and Pastrana had dominated the debut of Rally Car Racing at X Games 12, and McRae looked set to pinch the gold in the final event. That is, until spectacularly rolling his Impreza on the final jump in front of a packed stadium, landing upright in a cloud of dirt, and furiously flooring it over the finish line and securing the second-place silver medal. That Codemasters took notice of his exploits here is a given.

Still, while there’s no doubt McRae’s tragic passing in 2007 left a hole in rallying, as well as in the video games that celebrate it, you’d have probably been forgiven for wondering whether Ken Block was the right man to fill it.

However, there was much more to Ken Block than any of that early manufactured marketing bluster might have ever suggested.

Tragically, Block passed away at just 55 in a snowmobile accident earlier this month. The news sent shockwaves through the worlds of rally, rallycross, extreme sports, and even the video game industry. If you’re unfamiliar with him, his story is a fascinating one.

Ken Block’s motorsport career didn’t actually begin until 2005, during the inaugural season of the Rally America National Championship. Prior to this, throughout the ’90s, Block had been a successful entrepreneur behind the scenes in board sports – from the establishment of Blunt Snowboard Magazine to the co-founding of DC Shoes alongside Damon Way (the brother of pro skater Danny Way). During the rapid growth of DC Shoes Block had busied himself boosting up extreme sports superstars from the worlds of skating, snowboarding, surfing, BMX, and motocross. Many of these athletes remain household names thanks to such promotion. However, after Quiksilver acquired DC Shoes in 2004, Block pulled off a deeply impressive twist: he became a global sports superstar himself.

Block’s childhood dream had been to become a professional skateboarder or snowboarder, but he also loved rallying. At 37 – an age where most racing drivers are over two decades into their careers and rapidly approaching retirement – Block was named Rally America’s Rookie of the Year. He would go on to be a 16-time event winner in the series, behind only regular collaborator Travis Pastrana (19), and David Higgins (26), who replaced Pastrana at Subaru Rally Team USA in 2011.

Block would later make history as the first American to compete and earn points in the World Rally Championship, and the WRC recently announced it would be retiring the number 43 – the digits displayed on his cars throughout his career – as a mark of respect. He also had two-dozen starts in the World Rallycross Championship, picking up a pair of third-place podium finishes. On the world stage Block admittedly wasn’t the fastest in the field, but his exploits in rally would ultimately be just one part of what would make him an international auto icon.

Block’s Gymkhana videos are the defining viral automotive video content, with over a billion views and counting across all 10 short films in the series. Block and his team turned having fun in cars into an artfully mixed package of precision driving, insane jumps, and wild drifting – shot in a dynamic way that no one else seemed capable of matching. He’d basically made a skate video with cars, where the focus was exclusively on expression rather than competition. Few people were going to tune in to see Ken Block win Missouri’s Rally in the 100 Acre Wood, but tens of millions would be instantly hooked on watching him do donuts around a man on a Segway scooter.

The first, DC Shoes: Ken Block Gymkhana Practice, arrived in September 2008 and featured Ken Block shredding a decommissioned airbase in a rally-bred Subaru Impreza WRX STi. While modest by his later standards, the original Gymkhana video exploded on the internet. Gymkhana 2 arrived less than a year later, quickly followed by Block’s first appearance on Top Gear, where then-host James May referred to him as a “gamestation character who has emerged into the real world.” The comment was probably more prescient than May realised at the time.

More followed, filmed in various locations including Universal Studios, France, Dubai, and the streets of San Francisco (which has been watched over 115 million times). Sydney, Australia famously missed out on having its very own Gymkhana video in time for the arrival of Forza Horizon 3; Block and his crew were forced to abandon filming down under following the involvement of NSW Police and the opportunity was missed. Now it’s lost forever.

Block expanded on the Gymkhana concept with Climbkhana – a spin-off that saw him tackle Pikes Peak and resulted in one of the most iconic motorsports images captured this century. The sight of Block’s twin-turbo, 1,400-horsepower, methanol-powered Mustang – the Hoonicorn – perilously close to the edge of the mountain, spraying gravel into an unpictured abyss, is unforgettable. He riffed on it again in October last year with Electrikhana, fully embracing the future of fast driving and shredding the Vegas strip in an all-electric, all-wheel-drive Audi S1 nicknamed the Hoonitron.

Codemasters integrated Block’s Gymkhana into 2011’s Dirt 3, but while Block would later part ways with Codemasters after its follow-up Dirt Showdown, his influence and imprint on video games would continue. Block would go on to appear in Ghost Games’ 2015 Need for Speed reboot as himself, featuring on the cover and briefly within cutscenes. Despite the overt dorkiness of Need for Speed 2015’s first-person fist-bumping attitude, Block was an otherwise perfect fit amongst its cast of auto icons – which included Lamborghini tuner Shinichi Morohoshi and Porsche builder Magnus Walker. For all its faults, Need for Speed 2015 was deeply reverential to car culture and throughout the last decade Ken Block has helped define car culture more than most.

Block’s famous fleet of highly recognisable cars – including the Hoonicorn, the Hoonitruck, and many more – would later go on to make many appearances in the Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon series. If you’ve spent any meaningful time with Forza Motorsport 7, or Forza Horizon 3, 4, and 5, there’s a very strong chance you’ve been behind the wheels of his rides, which are amongst the fastest in the games. In fact, Block and Gymkhana creative director Brian Scotto even put together a special video project with their Hoonigan Industries crew back in 2020 in response to the popularity of the Hoonicorn in Forza, where Block drag raced an eclectic variety of high performance vehicles on a real-life airstrip in a series appropriately dubbed “Hoonicorn vs. the World.” A second series arrived in 2021 – produced in partnership with mobile racing game CSR2 – and continued the concept, only with one twist: Ken Block had stepped out of the driver’s seat for his daughter Lia, who followed her father into motorsport and was just 14 at the time of filming.

This was the Ken Block I most admired and, from the tributes that flowed in from his friends, peers, and other extreme sports stars following his death, this was the real Ken Block. While I greatly respected his creativity and car control in the driver’s seat, Block as a slightly nervous dad who seemed happier being caught hovering just off camera than on it was more relatable. His enthusiasm for seeing Lia succeed against experienced race drivers was simply infectious.

While his most important legacy will be his family, Ken Block also leaves behind a permanent thumbprint on automotive culture, from his impact on rallying in the US to his success in bringing his unmistakable brand of action driving to mainstream social media. His string of savvy video game collaborations, all of which have helped make his vehicles some of the most recognisable race cars of the modern era, will also remain as time capsules for his fans to experience them as Block intended. He will be greatly missed.

Vale Ken Block. #43 forever.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. You can chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.

Dead Space remake’s technical director has admitted that he struggles to play the game outside of daylight hours because he finds it too scary.

As reported by GamesRadar, technical director David Robillard told PLAY magazine in a recent interview that when he plays Dead Space remake at night, he can’t use headphones because the game is extremely immersive and becomes too terrifying of an experience.

“When I’m playing it at night, I can’t play it with headphones,” he confessed. “It’s just too f***ing scary. Just the amount of realism and, again, atmosphere. Not just visually, right? In the way we handle sound, ambience, effects, having systems that will try to spook you.”

Dead Space has been rebuilt from the ground up in EA’s Frostbite engine, with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla game director Eric Baptizat at the helm alongside creative director Roman Campos-Oriola, who promised to deliver “new assets, new character models, [and] new environments.”

The game’s developers consulted diehard fans to help keep them on track with their goal of staying faithful to the vision of the original game while also crafting new gameplay content and improvements, though Robillard admits they have elevated things to a whole new level.

“These things, you know, could have been done [on PS4], but not to the level we’re doing them today,” he explained in the interview. “And they really add a lot to this sort of genre and make the whole kind of experience come together even more.

“We needed to find a way to fill those gaps, so that the player doesn’t feel like ‘Oh, I’ve been here, it’s fine, I’m safe’. No, you’re never safe. Like, you will get jumped,” Robillard added before issuing one final warning: “Somebody wants your lunch money, and they’re not friendly.”

Dead Space remake will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on January 27, and is available to preorder in several editions. Like its predecessor, it finds engineer Isaac Clarke among the last survivors of a deep space catastrophe on the mining ship USG Ishimura.

We recently wrapped up a month of Dead Space IGN First content including revealing the first 18 minutes of gameplay, showing off graphics comparisons with the original, and a deep dive into how the story has been rewritten and improved alongside a hands-on preview.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.