Category: Video Games

How the Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster devs Nightdive Studios enhanced the classic FPS

Last year, it was revealed that the masters of remasters at Nightdive Studios have taken on the task of bringing the beloved 90s classic Star Wars: Dark Forces to modern audiences. The remaster is set to release February 28 on PS5 and PS4, nearly 30 years after the release of the original game from LucasArts in 1995.

Similar to Nightdive’s previous endeavors with titles like Quake II and Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion Remastered, Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster honors the strong foundation of the original while updating it for modern consoles through the studio’s proprietary KEX engine, allowing the game to run at up to 4K resolution at 120FPS on PlayStation 5.

With this, fans of the original as well as a whole new generation of gamers, will be able to experience Star Wars: Dark Forces and appreciate what made it such an essential title within LucasArts’ (now Lucasfilm Games) impressive catalog. Further honoring the work that went into its initial development, it’s been revealed that Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster will feature a special Vault jam-packed with never-before-seen content from the making of the 1995 original!

With improved spritework and remastered cutscenes, those looking to dig deeper into a truly unique story within the Star Wars galaxy will be able to enjoy a visually pleasing narrative experience as they join protagonist Kyle Katarn, a defector turned mercenary for hire working for the Rebel Alliance, in foiling the Galactic Empire and its secret Dark Troopers Project.

As much as we’d love to continue gushing over why this has been such an exciting project for Nightdive and must-play title for fans and newcomers alike, let’s dive deeper into the fascinating history and behind-the-scenes work of breathing new life into Star Wars: Dark Forces with Nightdive’s Project Lead and Producer, Max Waine.

Exploring The Vault

PlayStation Blog: What was the most exciting challenge you faced while working on Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster?

Max Waine: For me, it was bringing something new and worthwhile to existing fans of the game. Our way of tackling that was by bringing in The Vault. It was imperative that I find and present interesting snapshots of the development of the game. From there, it was a lot of coding to make it all work, conversion of various assets to be able to load in the remaster, and a great deal of text to write for the titles and descriptions; balancing being informative of what I did know from the development files without drifting into speculation proved exceptionally difficult.

When diving into the Remaster, what details about the original LucasArts spritework stood out to you from a historical development perspective?

From a development perspective, Dark Forces seemed to have a relatively typical way of approaching sprites for the time and genre. A combination of touched-up scanned models, hand-drawn sprites, and rendered 3D models (from 3D Studio) are ordinary fare. The software they used for spritework, DeluxePaint Animation, was also seemingly pretty standard. One interesting detail is that many of the human sprites seemed to be mostly hand-drawn but would use incredibly basic models to provide things like poses and such.

Design and assembly

What about the game’s cutscenes? Can you share insight into the work Nightdive has done to remaster these?

I integrated the new cutscenes into the game itself, with the help of Daniel Albano to allow for supporting different languages within the cutscenes. Outside of setting up the video player, I created a text-based format that could change the music in-sync with the video the same way the original did.

I’ll be paraphrasing Brendan McKinney here, who was our 3D maestro on the cutscenes. Beside Brendan, development was done with paintings of the new characters by Ben Chandler, ship models by Daniel Andersson, and guidance from Lucasfilm Games’ David Yee.

Due to the original cutscenes blending of different types of assets, the process of updating the cutscenes proved difficult. Initially the approach was to try to recreate the same cutscenes at a higher resolution, but this resulted in greater scrutiny being drawn to the differences in the disparate types of assets that could be provided in a cutscene.

The approach that was ultimately taken was to embrace the mixed medium spirit of the originals while still narrowing the divide so that, even at higher resolution, everything fit comfortably together.

This is where Ben Chandler came in, doing painted versions of characters like Crix Madine and Jabba, who were based on or fully taken from stills of the films respectively for their depiction in the original. Brendan recreated the environments in 3D, painting over them afterward to bring the composition nearer to Ben’s character work. The space sequences were approached with the intent to keep things simple, matching the feel of the original work.

Is there a weapon design unique to Dark Forces that you specifically like? What makes it interesting from a development POV?

It’s gotta be Kyle’s trusty sidearm, the Bryar pistol. The weapon just really looks the part. A lot of the weapons were rendered out from 3D models, and for some it can chafe against the technical limitations of the time, but the Bryar pistol just looks absolutely perfect as-is.

Adding to this, what can you share about the Phase 02 Dark Trooper character model from a developer standpoint?

The Phase 02 Dark Trooper as a character seemed to go through a fair bit of iteration from initial conception to what ended up present in the final game. Renders of the character model definitely appear to be what is used in both the original cutscenes and as a basis for the spritework. I can’t be exactly certain how they animated pre-rendered cutscenes with the Dark Troopers though, as we don’t have a significant amount of the 3D-related assets.

Honoring the original Dark Forces

What’s the most impressive feat accomplished with this game based on the time it was created?

Dark Forces is greater than the sum of its parts, and while I will point out key impressive aspects of the game, I want to emphasize just how strong it is as a cohesive whole. There are two things that jump out at me the most for the time period: support for 3D environments that allow for room-over-room, which was something that the Doom engine was not capable of; seamless integration of fully 3D objects within the environment (like Kyle’s ship, X-Wings, Mouse Droids, etc.).

Lastly, what do you think Dark Forces did to move the budding FPS genre forward during its time?

At a time where FPSs were largely abstract in locales, Dark Forces pushed the tech forward enough to be able to successfully realize familiar and more realistic environments. In addition to that it was able to tell a cohesive story, complete with fully voice-acted cutscenes. The sum total of this is a game that really pushed forward just how immersive FPSs could be.

We want to thank Nightdive’s Max Waine for the blast from the past experience we’ve had learning about the work being put into Star War: Dark Forces Remaster, including how it features The Vault, which packs in a wealth of behind-the-scenes visual content from the development of the 1995 original!

Additional features fans can look forward to with Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster are visual improvements, including advanced 3D rendering with realistic lighting and atmospheric effects, and up to 4K at 120FPS on PlayStation 5. Not to mention action-packed, first-person ground combat with 10 weapons and 20 enemy types!

Can’t wait to play the Remaster? Keep an eye out for Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster later this month when it releases on PS5 and PS4 on February 28.

‘Stop F**king Firing My Friends’ – DICE Award Winners on the Industry’s Biggest Challenge Today

Earlier this month, the games industry gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada to celebrate the 27th annual D.I.C.E. Awards, honoring the best of video games in 2023. It was a great time, and a lot of really excellent games won well-deserved prizes.

But it’s also been a rough year for the games industry. We’ve written about the current upheaval elsewhere, and it didn’t go unremarked upon onstage, either. Even in a time of well-earned joy, a number of developers onstage were there having lost fellow team members who should be celebrating with them. Even those lucky enough to have avoided layoffs were accepting their awards in front of an audience of peers rocked by job loss, funding uncertainty, and apprehension.

Backstage, we had the opportunity to chat with almost every person who accepted an award that night. And while we asked them a number of celebratory questions and cheered with them on their victories and incredible games, we also asked them, candidly, what they felt the biggest challenge facing the games industry was in the year ahead. Overwhelmingly, the mass layoffs were the most common answer, but it also wasn’t the only thing we heard. Some developers brought up other struggles that they have been reckoning with at their own studios, or even smaller causes that ultimately have lead back to the larger industry struggles we’re seeing play out week after week.

So, from the developers of the best games of 2023, here are the biggest challenges the games industry faces in the year ahead:

Scott Hanau

Senior score producer for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition

“I would say all the layoffs probably, a lot of restructuring, reorganization, trying to keep all the teams together as best we can and go forward and make great games. It’s pretty daunting sometimes.”

Rod Fergusson

General manager of all things Diablo including Diablo 4, winner of Online Game of the Year

“I think we hear a lot about the notion around how you continue [growing the industry]. We can have great games and we still have to have industry growth, and so finding ways that we can expand our reach. It’s one of the things that people don’t realize, that the majority of people are playing on mobile and we don’t talk enough about that. And the idea of, how do you bring your IPs and your games to that mobile audience and reach people who maybe don’t have those platforms to be able to play? There’s three billion gamers out there, how do we reach them all? Getting to those three billion gamers I think is the biggest challenge.”

Ramone Russell

Product development communications and brand strategist for MLB The Show 23, winner of Sports Game of the Year

“I think the challenges always remain the same, it’s just a different day. I think every video game development team just wants to make great games, but it is a business. At the end of the day this is a business, so one of the challenges that we continue to face is attrition and being able to get the yeses for the things that we need to do to be able to make those games great. But it could also be worse. It could be a lot worse. It could also maybe be a little bit better. We’re just happy that we get to come to work and play in the sandbox and do what we love to do and dream about doing all the time, which is make video games.”

David Walgrave

Head of production at Larian Studios for Baldur’s Gate 3, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Story, Role-Playing Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction

“Following up on ourselves. As a company, there’s a lot of challenges that we are facing, because we’ve grown vastly over a few years. I think we, from the team that worked on Original Sin 2, we quadrupled, I think. So first of all, we need to make sure that all these people can still work on the next games. We should not overhire because then we will end up having to fire people. That is not what we want. So it’s again about finding that balance of how can we still keep on making the same type of game as this one without actually growing or overgrowing or bloating.

A video game is a thing that you buy once and it’s not a shell with all sorts of buttons that buy you more sh*t.

“Then for Larian, I don’t think it is a challenge, because this has always been our priority, is to think about the player first and the fun first, instead of how much money is this going to make. To us, it’s going to sound cliché, we want to make games that we want to play ourselves. We want to treat the player the way that we would like to be treated by publishers and game developers. So to us, a video game is like a thing that you buy once and it’s not like a shell with all sorts of buttons that buy you more sh*t. That’s not what games are. So I don’t know if that is a challenge for our company, but it’s a challenge for the industry, to treat people like they should be treated.”

Mike Fitzgerald

Director of Core Technology at Insomniac Games for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Technical Achievement

“I think just finding ways to work together, support each other. Studios who have wins, try and share those with other studios in the industry and raise each other up to be better together. That’s the Spider-Man tagline. Better together.”

Bryan Intihar

Senior creative director on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Technical Achievement

“I think we all understand it’s a little bit of a volatile time for the industry, and we’re all hoping that we can be there for each other. I think the most important thing is, how can we support each other in this, what can be a tough time for some people.”

Tim Garbos

Creative director at Triband on What the Car?, winner of Mobile Game of the Year

“That a lot of other people are also making games. There’s just so many video games out there.

I play video games. I played all the demos in this Steam Next Festival. I got through seven [of them] and then I didn’t have any more weekend. That’s amazing. It’s also a challenge but it’s amazing.”

Hella Schmidt

Studio director and general manager at Guerilla Games on Horizon: Call of the Mountain, winner of Immersive Reality Technical Achievement

“When I was up there, I was thinking, am I going to make a statement or not? I think we’re in challenging times where you really want to keep up our creative freedom, whilst being challenged with delivering games on budget and on time. And I think that gives an extra challenge to an industry that’s already hard. It’s hard to make great games. So, I do [hope] that when financial decisions are being made, that they realize that the power of making creative games is you need to keep the spirit alive, so that would be my answer.”

Matt Kramer

Studio creative director at Sanzaru Games on Asgard’s Wrath 2, winner of Immersive Reality Game of the Year

“I think it’s people. Our studio is about people. It’s about the game designers, the audio engineers, the producers, everybody that makes these games. There are so many players in it and it’s really sad to see what’s going on right now with all the layoffs and stuff. So hopefully we can turn that around and set it on the right trajectory because games are what sells hardware. And we need more games. We need more high caliber games, like Asgard’s Wrath 2. So for everybody that’s a designer, producer, engineer, anywhere, thank you so much for all your hard work on every game that was shown tonight. You guys are awesome.”

Andy Beaudoin

Game director for Forza Motorsport, winner of Racing Game of the Year

“As games have gotten more complex, they’ve gotten bigger, we’re adding more and more value to players. If you think about what you spend today for a game versus what you did…I’m kind of old, sorry to tell you, but back in the day, it was 50 bucks, 60 bucks for a game, and you maybe played it for eight hours. Now we’re providing games that have hundreds of hours. And to do that, the size of the team has grown, the amount of talent we’ve brought to the team has grown, the complexity of the worlds, the complexity of all that. And we’re still offering incredible value for the money.

We’ve got to figure out a way to make our games in a way that’s sustainable.

“I think the challenge would be to continue to add value, to make bigger worlds, more immersive worlds that players can spend more and more time in and still provide it at a cost that’s affordable for people. There’s a challenge there. We see lots of studios laying off teams. It’s horrible to see that happen. We’ve got to figure out a way to make our games in a way that’s sustainable so we don’t have to let go of teams, but we can still provide hundreds of hours of wonderful entertainment for our players.”

Sam Lake

Creative director at Remedy Entertainment on Alan Wake 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction

“It’s been quite a year, like last year, here we are celebrating and obviously so many wonderful games, but obviously a lot of hardship and bad news for so many talented people working in games. So yeah, really, really from the bottom of my heart, hoping that as many people as possible find new homes and can keep making great games.”

Karen Read

Director of audio management on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design

“Oh, there’s a lot of challenges facing us, right? And I mean, we’ve all seen how the industry has had a lot of layoffs and a lot of financial cutbacks, so it’s challenging. It’s challenging keeping people together and creative and motivated when everybody feels like there’s this dark storm coming. But it’s in that creative space that we are really able to do things, right? When we focus on the games and we focus on the things that we love, I think when we come together as a community, that’s really how we handle it.”

Jerry Berlongieri

Senior audio director on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design

“Games are always a challenge. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and it’s always a challenge. There’s new technology, there’s new genres to figure out, and that’s part of what’s thrilling, I think, is we reset, we figure out how to do it differently, how to do it with new technology. And it’s, as a field, sort of embracing the change and figuring out how we can be creative with it, how do we work with it? That’s always kind of been… Games are challenging in that way and I think that’s also what’s thrilling about it. So that’s game dev, right?”

Michael Douse

Director of publishing, Larian Studios for Baldur’s Gate 3, winner of Game of the Year

“Stop f**king firing my friends. Jesus Christ…I mean, everyone is talking about how the rules are changing. We’re in flux. Nobody really knows anymore what to make, how to get it funded, if it’s going to work, if they’re going to meet their projections, what those projections should be… Without that predictability, you can’t plan. And this is an industry that typically requires a certain amount of planning. And I know everyone has plans, but that’s very different to planning for what the future is. We don’t know what the future is. So the biggest challenge is figuring out what the fuck everyone is going to do. And that’s going to take a combined effort. And really it’ll be hindsight 2020. If it’s good, it’ll work. If it isn’t, it won’t.”

The most important thing is to figure out how to make it all sustainable. Because our mistakes will create victims.

“But I think for me, the most important thing is to figure out how to make it all sustainable. Because our mistakes will create victims. And trying to reduce that as much as possible, I think, will ultimately be what makes this industry continue to be successful. We need people to be able to be employed to make the games that people like. And that’s going to be tough. It’s tough now. It always was tough and it’s going to get tougher. So that’s the biggest challenge. How do we keep everyone f**king employed? Which I think is a challenge for everyone right now, but that’s our industry.”

Awards from Award Winners

As a bonus question, we also asked everyone we spoke to backstage: if you could give an award to any other game for any reason, what award would they give to what game? This is what they came up with:

  • Scott Hanau – Dave the Diver – Most Fulfilling Fishing Fantasy
  • Rod Fergusson – The NHL franchise “for continuing to disappoint me by not allowing me to play the playoffs in co-op.”
  • James Ham, associate animation director at Insomniac – Kingdom Hearts 2 – Most Heartfelt Game
  • Erwin Kho, art director for Cocoon – Most Amazing But Forgotten Game – Fragile Allegiance
  • Jakob Schmid, audio director and programmer, Cocoon – Best HR Giger Adaptation – R-Type
  • Tim Garbos – WarioWare – Most Inspirational Game for Being Okay Being Wacky
  • Ben McCaw, studio narrative director at Guerilla Games – Mass Effect Trilogy – Award for Pinnacle of Storytelling and Cinematics
  • David Walgrave – The Coolest Mathematics Award – Turrican
    • “I’m very much in love with the way that people worked with systems and computers 10, 20, 30 years ago. If you’re wondering very often, why did Larian do it like that or how did they do it? We still use a lot of the systems and systemics that they used in the eighties and the nineties to make stuff run.”
  • Mike Fitzgerald – Tetris – Best Multiplayer Game
    • “I have very fond memories of being in the backseat of a car next to my brother with our Game Boy Pockets plugged into each other, playing Tetris against each other, clearing lines.”
  • Jeannette Lee, project director for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and Bryan Intihar both wanted to award games for “Best Sound Effect that Embeds in Your Brain and You Can’t Get Rid Of”. Lee gives the award to the Sonic the Hedgehog ring collection sound, and Intihar gives it to the Zelda “secret found!” sound.
  • Ramone Russell – The Last of Us – Best Storytelling
    • “The Last of Us really showed the entire world and the entertainment industry that video games are not just a play thing. It’s not just a participatory medium, it’s a medium that can tell stories. And one of the things we did this year is really built off of the back of that is that it’s not just interactive. You can tell really impactful emotional stories in this medium, and you can also educate in this medium too.”
  • Andy Beaudoin – Alan Wake 2 – Greatest Passion Project Ever
    • “I worked with those guys back in the days on Quantum Break, and just that team has been so passionate about storytelling and so consistent for so long.”
  • Mike Grodin, director of engineering, Motorsport gameplay at Turn 10 Studios – Hi-Fi Rush – Most Creative Idea
    • “We were sitting next to them and I was just in amazement that they created that game and how unique that game was.”
  • Michael Douse – BAFTA – The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
    • “Because it’s fucking brilliant and nobody’s acknowledging that fact. Do we have a spare BAFTA?”

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

Official Elden Ring Book Tells the Story of Two Co-Workers Who Become Friends Through the Game

The parent company of Elden Ring developer FromSoftware is releasing a novel based on the beloved fantasy role-playing game, but its subject isn’t necessarily what you’d expect.

As reported by Siliconera, Kadokawa Corporation is releasing See You At That Grace After Work in Japan, a novel telling the story of two co-workers who get to know each other by playing Elden Ring. The title references the Sites of Grace locations throughout Elden Ring’s world of The Lands Between.

The novel follows a Japanese office worker and gamer who enjoys Elden Ring but has only played solo. After spending his workbreaks looking at guide websites, a senior colleague notices and, as a fan of Elden Ring themselves, speaks to the worker about it. The two interact more and more both at work and online as they play Elden Ring together.

The novel arrives on March 29, 2024 in Japanese only, with no word on an international release. Keiichi Hikami, the author of several Monster Hunter novels, is writing this one too.

It’s not the first time a somewhat bizarre book on Elden Ring has been released, as Kadokawa previously released a manga. Instead of being a dark and dramatic fantastical story, however, as is told in the game, it followed a naked Tarnished called Asea as a comedy.

While it’s been more than two years since Elden Ring launched and a wave of wild and wacky content and creations around the game emerged, a similar situation may unfold soon as FromSoftware has announced a June 21 release date for its expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree.

Elden Ring proved somewhat of a cultural phenomenon upon its launch, with players finding a ton of different ways to interact with the game. Fans played it using a Fisher Price toy, the Nintendo Switch Ring Fit controller, and someone even made a working VR version of the game.

In our 10/10 review, IGN said: “Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Nightingale is “not officially supported” on the Steam Deck, and it shows

Nightingale’s dapper cast of cross-dimensional pathfinders are right about one thing: realmwalking is dangerous business. Attempt to tele-portal between realities on the Steam Deck, for instance, and you may find yourself trapped in the Stygian void, naught but a frozen loading screen tip for company and suspended hopelessly for all eternity. Or until you hold down the power button.

This crashing tendency alone means that while Nightingale can technically run on the Steam Deck, even without resorting to rock-bottom graphics settings, the current early access build isn’t yet ready for regular handheld play. That’s nothing developers Inflexion Games won’t tell you themselves – they’re “not considering [the Deck] officially supported at launch,” after all – but if you were thinking of giving this gaslamp fantasy survival sim a portable whirl, you might want to let that call to adventure go unanswered.

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Tekken 8 Sells Over 2 Million in a Month

Tekken 8 has sold over two million copies in the first month after launch, publisher Bandai Namco has announced.

The fighting game launched on January 26 across PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, and sold one million on its first day of release, then hit the two million sold mark in the first month. This “greatly outpaces” the sales of Tekken 7, Bandai Namco said. Tekken 7, which is still being played, has the series’ total highest sales record of over 11.8 million copies sold worldwide.

Tekken 8 appears to be selling at a similar pace to rival fighting game Street Fighter 6, which also shifted two million copies after a month on sale. Capcom’s Street Fighter 6 went on to sell three million copies in seven months. NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat 1, on the other hand, sold three million copies just over a month after going on sale.

Bandai Namco said support for Tekken 8 will continue “through various content updates, esports events, music and licensing announcements.” To that end, the Tekken World Tour 2024 kicks off on April 13, with the Tekken World Tour Finals the culmination of the game’s first year of esports.

Bandai Namco also mentioned Tekken 8’s controversial Tekken Shop, which has drawn complaints from some players. “This in-game shop will provide customisation items such as costumes from previous installments, character skins for avatars, and licensed items from our collaborations, letting players put their own touch on their favorite Tekken characters,” Bandai Namco said.

Tekken 8’s Year 1 pass is set to add four additional playable characters as DLC. The first of these is Eddy, who sports a new high-top dreads hairstyle and a new outfit for Tekken 8, although his capoeira fighting style is present and correct.

IGN’s Tekken 8 review returned a 9/10. We said: “Tekken 8 is an incredible evolution for the series, with tons of single player content, an excellent suite of training tools, a great online experience, and exciting new mechanics that make Tekken more dynamic than ever.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Dungeons Of Hinterberg’s latest trailer shows off Alpine mountains, glaciers and, yes, a swamp (poison not yet confirmed)

Austrian developers Microbird released a new trailer for their upcoming Alpine dungeon-crawler Dungeons Of Hinterberg over the weekend, giving us a closer look at some of the eponymous dungeon environments we’ll be biffing monsters in come its release later this summer. In addition to the previously revealed mountainsides and glacial snow peaks, it looks like Hinterberg will have a big green swamp to travel to as well. Question is: will it be a poison FromSoft variety of swamp? Or something more innocuous? Hard to tell with that searingly green water on display, but one thing is certain: with Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree and its confirmed poison swamp launching on June 21st, this summer won’t be short on big bog energy.

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New Metroidvania From CERN Physicist Focuses On The Wonder Of Science

Yeah, science!

Do you like Metroidvanias? Do you like science? You do?! Well good news, because the two are combining in Exographer, an upcoming adventure title from Abylight Studios and SciFun Games.

Imagined by CERN physicist and sci-fi author Raphael Granier de Cassagnac, Exographer is a Metroidvania that ditches combat for science-based puzzles in which you utilise four distinct powers to uncover secrets hidden within the strange, atmospheric environment.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Foamstars new season Groovy Disco begins on March 8

Foamstars released on February 6 as a PlayStation Plus Monthly Game, and we’re elated that so many players have tried out the game. It’s not too late for PlayStation Plus members to add it to their library before March 4.


Foamstars new season Groovy Disco begins on March 8

In Foamstars, each season will last about 5 weeks, so we’d like to share details on the new season, Groovy Disco, which begins March 8.

New Foamstar – Coiff Guy

Groovy Disco features the new Foamstar, Coiff Guy. Coiff Guy can use a rocket launcher-style foam gun to take down enemies from a distance, while his skills include an up-close body slam inspired by his background as a pro wrestler.

Coiff Guy can be unlocked by progressing the Season Pass to Tier 31. He may also be unlocked immediately for users who purchase the Premium Pass.

New season Groovy Disco – Season Pass details

Earn XP via online matches, completing missions or clearing Challenges to progress through the Season Pass tiers and unlock new items. In the Groovy Disco Season Pass, on top of the new Foamstar Coiff Guy, Foam Gun skins for multiple characters and a Character skin for The Baristador are also available for free.

By purchasing the paid Premium Pass, you can unlock even more glorious rewards. Players will immediately unlock any rewards up to their Season Pass Tier at time of purchase.

New Solo Missions added

Missions 4 through 6 will be added to the current Foamstar Missions.

In Mission 6, Dark Ramzey will appear, offering a harder challenge compared to the previous bosses.

Please try to use what you’ve learned thus far to beat it!

Ranked Party – Compete for World Rankings

Compete solo in Ranked Party Lonestar or with a team in Ranked Party Tribe-Vibe. Both events will be available to play in Groovy Disco.

Ranks in Foamstars are categorized into seven tiers: Bronze Star, Silver Star, Gold Star, Platinum Star, Diamond Star, Superstar, and Party Legend. Once enough Rank Points (RP) have been attained, you will be able to partake in Rank Up Trials which if completed successfully, allow you to progress to the next Rank.

The Ranked Party Lonestar action kicks off starting March 11 PST (March 12 UTC), and Ranked Party Tribe-Vibe begins on April 4 PST (Aril 5 UTC).

Extreme Party – New limited-time events

Extreme Party will be held twice during Groovy Disco. In the first event – All Coiff Guy Party – every player will join the fun as Coiff Guy.The second event, Super Duel Party, will introduce intense 1-on-1 battles. Please see below for the schedule and join these events!

The All Coiff Guy Party kicks off on March 22 PST (March 23 UTC), and the Super Duel Party begins on March 30 PST (March 31 UTC).

All PlayStation Plus members can redeem, download, and play Foamstars at no extra cost until March 4 on both PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag Players Rise 200% Upon Skull and Bones’ Release

The number of people playing Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag has risen 200% on Steam after the release of fellow Ubisoft pirate game Skull and Bones.

As reported by PCGamesN, the player numbers of 2013’s Black Flag have floated either side of 1,000 for years. According to tracking website SteamDB, however, this number spiked on February 16: the day Skull and Bones finally released after years of troubled development.

Black Flag rose to 1,679 players upon launch, followed by 2,600 on February 17, and 3,226 on February 18. That growth has continued, not dipping below 2,401 since reaching a new peak of 3,594 on February 25. Skull and Bones has yet to launch on Steam, with Ubisoft favouring a PC release on the Epic Games Store and its own storefront, so player numbers are unavailable.

Announced in 2017, Skull and Bones initially looked set to provide players with more of what made Black Flag so popular: intense and dramatic ocean adventuring and combat. Six delays seemingly caused excitement to dwindle, however, and Skull and Bones has finally arrived in 2024 to little fanfare. “Skull and Bones is a maritime RPG with a strong foundation, even if it feels like a live-service first draft,” IGN said in our 7/10 review.

Ubisoft’s marketing for the game has seemingly inspired a few thousand players to return instead to Black Flag, even with an eight-hour free trial of Skull and Bones available.

In our 8/10 review of the former, IGN said: “Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is a gorgeous, fantastic sequel that gives you the freedom to make your own fun.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.