A technician climbs a tower to locate lightning strikes in the study area on Panama's Barro Colorado Island. Evan Gora / Cary Institute of Ecosystem StudiesGetting struck by lightning might not sound like a very wise idea to us, but for one tropical tree species, an occasional zap is a good thing. The almendro trees found in Panamas forests can get a boost from this electrical jolt and have perhaps even evolved to act like lightning rods, according to a new study published last week in the journal New Phytologist. Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, became interested in the impact of lightning on the trees after noticing they seemed to survive being hitand sustained little damage. Seeing that there are trees that get struck by lightning and theyre fine was just mind-blowing, Gora recalls in a statement.So, Gora and his colleagues tracked 93 trees that were struck by lightning at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. They used a system of lightning strike-locating instruments to pinpoint which trees had likely been hit by bolts. Between 2014 and 2019, the researchers would check in on the trees to assess their condition, two to six years after the strike. Nine of the trees were from the almendro species (Dipteryx oleifera)and they all seemed to be doing much better than their lightning-struck peers.How some trees benefit from being struck by lightningWatch on Within two years of being hit, 64 percent of the other trees died. Meanwhile, the almendro trees thrived. They gained space as the electricity traveled through their branches, their leaves or the air into nearby trees, killing them. In fact, the study found that trees living near a large almendro tree are 48 percent more likely to be killed by lightning than those living near another species. Any tree that gets close essentially gets electrocuted, says Gora to Erik Stokstad at Science.Lightning strikes also reduced the number of parasitic vines, called lianas, on the almendros by 78 percent. These vines would ordinarily grow on top of the tree and steal light from its leaves, but they died back after lightning. Without these benefits, Gora says to Gennaro Tomma at Scientific American, the almendro trees would not live as long.All of this, the researchers suggest, points to the trees having adapted to attract lightning. The trees unusual heightthey can grow roughly 165 feet talland wide crown make them up to 68 percent more likely to be struck by lightning relative to other similar trees, according to the paper. The almendro tree's fruits and the almond-flavored seeds within them are a crucial food source for animals. Evan Gora / Cary Institute of Ecosystem StudiesAlmendro trees are considered a keystone species in Central Americas tropical forests. Their fruit supports more than 100 animal species during the areas dry season. Some of the trees electrical resistance might come from moisture in their wood.The new study challenges our idea of lightning as simply a force of destruction. Its a really creative piece of work that changes our perspective of how we think about lightning as an agent of disturbance, Tommaso Jucker, a forest ecologist at the University of Bristol in England who was not involved with the research, says to Science.The findings of the study are quite novel and make a significant contribution to our knowledge of plant evolution, says Allan Carroll, an ecologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada who was not involved in the research, to Scientific American.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Biology, Central America, Ecology, Evolution, Forests, New Research, Panama, Plants, Rainforest, Smithsonian, Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Trees, Weather

Three head-to-head conversations, tackling the AI apocalypse, direct-to-player marketing and sales, and the state of the game industry.Read More

Brendan McGetrick, the creative director of Museum of the Future, came to Austin, Texas, with a traveling exhibit for the first time recently.Read More

EA's former senior director of global commercial strategy Adolf Kristjansson is taking charge of Payday developer Starbreeze.The Starbreeze board confirmed Kristjansson will begin his tenure as CEO on April 1, 2025. The new boss will work to turn the company in to a "true multi-title studio."His appointment will see interim CEO Mats Juhl return to his role of chief financial officer.The news comes around a year after Starbreeze ousted then-CEO Tobias Sjgren with Payday 3 underperforming following a torrid launch.At the time, Starbreeze claimed it needed "different leadership" to bolster the performance of key franchises and execute on a strategy centred around "creating attractive games on our own and licensed IPs."The company board will hope Kristjanssonwho spent 13 years at EA working on franchises like FIFA, Battlefield, and Apex Legendscan rise to the challenge."I join Starbreeze with great enthusiasm for the companys current and future projects, not the least the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons title. I look forward to continuing the work of expanding the Payday franchise further and building Starbreeze into a true multi-title studio," said Kristjansson in a note to investors."Most of all, I look forward to working closely with our talented teams and engaging with our passionate player community as we build the next chapter of Starbreeze together."Related:Starbreeze recently suggested Payday 3 is on the road to recovery but recorded a full-year loss of $18.5 million during the full-year ended December 2024.That came after net sales associated with Payday 3 tumbled dramatically year-over-year.Starbreeze, however, feels the threequel and broader franchise will benefit from "brand extension" initiatives with PUBG and Roblox and a promotional campaign that saw it become the Monthly Game in February on PlayStation Plusletting subscribers claim it for free.

Discoverability is just as much of a challenge in the User Generated Content (UGC) space as it is on Steam, console marketplaces, and many other parts of the video game industry. Sometimes it can be seen as even more of a challenge on emerging platforms within games like Fortnite, Roblox, and Eggy Party. These platforms are still developing features that are commonplace on popular platforms in other mediums like YouTube and Twitch. Since these platforms also rely on user-submitted content, they can be defined as UGC platforms as well.How can UGC platforms learn from the functionality of YouTube and Twitch? Netase data mining engineer Xingchen Zhou explored the UGC landscape and the specific ways the Eggy Party developers have adjusted their recommendation system to appeal to its massive audience of players during a talk at the 2025 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.Eggy Party, according to Zhou, is the most "popular competitive casual game in China." The party game, which shares similarities with games like Stumble Guys and Fall Guys, surpassed 40 million daily active players during Lunar New Year in 2024. Eggy Party has surpassed 100 million user-created maps as of last March.Recommendation algorithms are key to UGC platformsRelated:Zhou covered a common thread among other UGC platforms outside games, arguing that their uniting element is an effective distribution system. He compared them to Vine, a popular short form video platform that shuttered at the beginning of 2017, saying the Twitter-operated video app failed due to its lack of "personalized recommendations and a lack of innovation" which led to a loss of content creators."TikTok, Google, Netflix, Spotfiy - having a strong distribution capability is key to achieving market leading position," Zhou said, also alluding to non-UGC platforms like Netflix. "They all share one advantage - a powerful distribution system with algorithmic recommendations."Games are far more complicated to distribute effectively than short videos. In a game like Eggy Party, players will need to play a map for at least 5 minutes in order to "truly experience a map," according to Zhou . Short videos only take a matter of seconds for a user to understand what they are watching, and then decide if they want to continue watching for the full duration of the video. Despite the difference, the main factors in the success of a UGC platform are similar."Although the product forms are different, the core always lies in the interaction and connection between users and the platform," Zhou said.Related:Zhou went into detail about Eggy Party's "digital DNA bank," which helped the platform create a portrait of players in "1000 dimensions." These portraits include thousands of tags that identify personal attributes of players, including what sort of content they enjoyed in the past and what they might enjoy in the future. Tags included a player wanting more challenging maps, multiplayer experiences, and genre-specific maps like puzzles.Outside a recommendation system, Zhou emphasized the importance of first impressions during discovery. The Eggy Party user interface includes titles, cover images, and statistical data highlighting the number of players and likes a map has at a moment's glance. Players need to get an idea of what a map is and how popular it is in seconds, making those first few moments in front a player crucial for success."High rated maps receive more exposure opportunities," Zhou said, talking about how player interaction is also important for discovery.Zhou also covered some mistakes the Eggy Party recommendation system made, including recommending what he called a "female-oriented dress up" map to male college students, which led to dissatisfaction for both the players and the creator.Related:Missteps like that can prevent creators from building more experiences for other players and can dissuade players from using a games' built in recommendation systems, both problems that could harm the overall health and reputation of a UGC platform.Eggy Party's recommendation system can also lead to rapid success. Zhou pointed out another use case where a creator had a critically low player count on their maps, but integration within the system led players who enjoyed similar maps to this specific user. It led to a huge uptick in interactions with players.NetEase has been running an incentive program that rewards players who create popular with cash prizes, which has brought in a large number of creators to their UGC environment. Zhou didn't bring this up during the talk, but did mention the importance of not falling into the trap of the "Matthew Effect," which refers to certain users gaining an advantage over others, leading to a wider gap between those who have resources and those who do not.That result has become common on some UGC platforms, where some users have the advantage of more time in the space, publisher favoritism, monetary resources, or something else giving them a leg up on the competition. Creating a system that can bypass any of those advantages and lead players to maps they would enjoy naturally is a key to success.

Amazon has launched a new AI model, Nova Act, which is designed to perform tasks like online shopping in your browser. For now its only available to developers in a research preview, but Amazon is also expanding access to its other Nova AI models through a web portal, making them easier to find and use.Nova Act is a new model whose function sounds similar to OpenAIs Operator agent. Amazon says Act can carry out web searches, make purchases, or answer questions about whats on the screen, including the option to perform tasks on a schedule. It can also recognize more detailed instructions such as telling it dont accept the insurance upsell while making a purchase. Act is currently only accessible to developers, but Amazon says its already being put to use carrying out some online tasks in the upgraded Alexa Plus assistant.Act is the first product to be released by Amazons Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Labs, which says its dream is for agents to perform wide-ranging, complex, multi-step tasks like organizing a wedding or handling complex IT tasks to increase business productivity. Amazon and OpenAI are far from the only companies chasing AI agents right now, in the hope that people are willing to pay for AI assistants capable of performing tasks rather than simply answering questions or generating Ghibli art.An Amazon demonstration of Nova Act using Google Maps to check biking distance to a train station. Image: AmazonAct joins the other five Nova models first announced in December 2024, which include a trio of understanding models, along with image and video generators. Rather than claiming to offer the most powerful AI models around, Amazon has instead emphasized the speed and value of the Nova suite, which it says are at least 75 percent less expensive than comparable rivals.Amazon is now adding a way for developers and other people in the US to more directly access these models: a website that lets them use the models to answer queries or generate content. The models were previously only available through Amazon Bedrock, an AI model platform within Amazon Web Services that offers access to Nova alongside third-party models from DeepSeek, Anthropic, Meta, and more. Rohit Prasad, SVP of Amazon AGI, says the site is meant to let developers quickly test their ideas with Nova models, and then implement them at scale in Amazon Bedrock.See More:

The Echo Show 8 is one of the devices Alexa Plus is currently available on.Amazon has officially launched its AI-powered Alexa Plus but its only available to a small number of customers to start, Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt confirmed to The Verge. As shown on its early access page, Alexa Plus also doesnt come with all the features Amazon showcased during its recent devices event, like the ability to brainstorm gift ideas, order groceries with your voice, or access Alexa Plus in your browser.There are some other missing features that dont yet meet Amazons standards for public release, according to a report from The Washington Post. Alexa Plus still cant order takeout from Grubhub using context from a conversation, nor can it identify family members around the house and give them reminders to do chores. You wont be able to access Kids Plus features, such as Stories With Alexa, either.For now, Alexa Plus is only available on Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 devices. Amazons Alexa Plus early access page shows that the assistant can currently do things like order an Uber, identify objects, draft emails, and search for particular products.Alexa Plus can also summarize uploaded documents at launch, but Amazons early access page notes that its still working on rolling out the ability to delete these files. In the meantime, you can always contact Customer Service to have original attachments deleted, Amazon says. Amazon announced Alexa Plus in February, which is available on most Echo devices for $19.99 per month, or for free through Prime. You can sign up to be notified about early access for Alexa Plus on Amazons website. Were releasing a bunch of features to start, and well continue to launch new features in waves, Schmidt said

Toon Boom, the creators of the Toon Boom Harmony (and other) 2D animation packages have just announced a new product in beta format, Toon Boom Jump! Toon Boom Jump! takes the animation tools they are known for, but integrates the open-source Godot game engine. Toon Boom already offering a gaming orietned version known as Harmony Gaming, but Toon Boom Jump takes it one step further by actually integrating a game engine. It does appeal from URL naming, Jump! may have been previously referred to as Game Studio.Details of Toon Boom Jump! from the documentation:Toon BoomJumpis a game asset management and game development application.Jumpintegrates with the Godot game engine for game programming. It integrates withAsset Editorfor game animation and art creation and integrates withGame Storyboardfor game storyboard creation.Asset Editoris a 2D animation software used to draw and animate video game assets such as characters, enemies, and backgrounds. These assets may be exported for use in your game engine when they are complete. You may access this application directly fromJumpLauncher application by double-clicking the asset in the Project Details page.TheJumpOnline Help will help you get familiarized withAsset Editors extensive set of features and answer any questions you may have about the applications functionalities. It is divided in the following major sections:The Getting Started Guide contains introductions and basic steps for using the most important and basic features inAsset Editor. Among other things, this short guide will introduce you to the user interface and get you started creating a basic game storyboard.The User Guide contains introductions to the concepts behind every feature inAsset Editorfollowed by step-by-step guides on how to accomplish their intended tasks.The Reference Guide documents in detail each button and option in each view, toolbar, menu, and dialog box in the user interface. It is the go-to section if any specific area of the application raises a question.The Keyboard Shortcuts guide is simply a handy list ofAsset Editors default keyboard shortcuts, which is a great document to have around when you want to learn how to optimize your production speed.The Launcher application houses several templates that you may build from as a starting point when developing your game in Godot.For each asset in the template such as characters, backgrounds, and sprites, you may make modifications to the art and character animations by opening itsAsset Editorproject from the Launcher interface.Toon Boom Jump! is currently available in beta form, although it requires agreeing to an NDA to continue.Click and join ourDiscord CommunityAccess the #get-jump channel, open a ticket, and sign our NDAExplore Beta Build:Dive into the tool, explore its functionalities, and start creatingProvide Feedback:Share your experiences, report bugs and suggest improvements via our dedicated feedback channels in DiscordKey LinksToon Boom Jump Beta SignupToon Boom DocumentationYou can learn more about the beta Toon Boon Jump! with Godot Engine integration in the video below.

If youve been on Steam, Twitch, or gaming YouTube lately, youve probably seen Schedule I. Its an indie drug dealer sim thats currently the top-selling game on Valves platform, with more players than big hitters such as Monster Hunter Wilds, GTA 5, and Marvel Rivals after going viral across social media.Schedule I launched last week and quickly made its way to the upper echelons of Valves best-selling and most-played charts. Heres the official blurb:From small-time dope pusher to kingpin - manufacture and distribute a range of drugs throughout the grungy city of Hyland Point. Expand your empire with properties, businesses, employees and more.Its developed and published by TVGS, aka Tyler, who took to reddit recently to sum up Schedule Is explosive launch.Honestly its amazing but pretty overwhelming, Tyler said. I never expected this kind of response! At the moment Im just trying to stay focussed and get patches out ASAP. Also looking forward to getting started on content updates as soon as all major bugs are patched.To that end, Schedule Is Post-launch Patch #4 was released on March 29, fixing a number of employee bugs and multiplayer issues.PlaySo, just how much of a success is Schedule I? After coming out of nowhere, its the top-selling game on Steam, ahead of everything from The Sims competitor inZOI to Assassins Creed Shadows. Valve sorts its top-selling chart by revenue, which means the budget-priced Schedule I is selling so well that its bringing in even more money than its full price, triple A rivals.As for how many people are actually playing Schedule I, it hit a peak of 414,166 concurrents on Steam over the weekend. Thats enough to get in the top 30 most-played games ever released on Steam. At the time of this articles publication, more people are playing Schedule I than Monster Hunter Wilds, GTA 5, and Marvel Rivals.And the people playing Schedule I are loving it. On Steam, it has an overwhelmingly positive user review rating. Currently, 98% of user reviews are positive. Here are a few of them:"A woman came up to me and asked for weed, didn't like the price I offered, proceeded to stab me with a broken glass bottle. 10/10""Love this game"I was dealing drugs in an rv and it blew up"Got a motel and sold some weed"Created a meth empire"Then hopped on the game""Really great and hilarious game. Fun game loop and hilarious fun when playing with friends. I know it is in early access but I'd like the police to be a bit more active (They could search your place, look for you even after escaping, run speed greater than the players) as well as gang warfare and a larger map. Still in its current state its brilliant. Defo a 10/10"Schedule I is obviously a meme game, so it remains to be seen if it has legs. But developer Tyler certainly wont care. Clearly, their life has been changed forever, and substantial content updates are coming down the pipe.If youre playing Schedule 1, be sure to check out IGNs Schedule 1 Cheats and Console Commands guide, and Schedule 1 Multiplayer: How to Play Co-Op guide.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.

The last thing I expected Doom: The Dark Ages to remind me of was Halo 3. And yet, half way through a recent hands-on demo with id Softwares gothic prequel, I was mounted on the back of a cyborg dragon and unleashing a salvo of machinegun fire across the side of a demonic battle barge. With the vessels defensive turrets destroyed, I landed my beast atop the ship and proceeded to charge through its lower decks, turning the entire crew into a few gallons of red slop. Seconds later, the warmachine was toast and I burst through its hull, leaping onto my dragon to continue my crusade against the machines of Hell. Those familiar with Bungies landmark Xbox 360 shooter will instantly recognise the shape of Master Chiefs assault on the Covenants scarab tanks. The helicopter-like Hornet may have been swapped for a holographic-winged dragon and the giant laser-firing mech for an occult flying boat, but the core of the experience is all here: an aerial assault that transitions into a devastating boarding action. Surprisingly, this wasnt the only moment in the demo that reminded me of Halo. While the combat core of The Dark Ages is unmistakably and singularly Doom, the campaigns design seems to have a very late-2000s shooter spin thanks to its love of elaborate cutscenes and a greater push for gameplay novelty. A dragon assault on Hell's battle barge. | Image credit: id Software / BethesdaAcross two and a half hours I played four levels of Doom: The Dark Ages. Only the first of them, the campaigns opener, resembled the tightly paced, immaculately mapped design of Doom (2016) and its sequel. The others saw me piloting a colossal mech, flying the aforementioned dragon, and exploring a wide-open battlefield dotted with secrets and powerful minibosses. Its a big departure from Dooms usual pursuit of mechanical purity, instead feeling akin to the likes of Halo, Call of Duty, and weirdly old James Bond games like Nightfire, all of which thrive on scripted setpieces and novelty mechanics that guest star for a mission or two. This is a fascinating direction for Doom to head in, because once upon a time the series made something of a U-turn away from this. The cancelled Doom 4 was set to resemble Call of Duty, not only due to its modern military aesthetic but also thanks to an increased emphasis on characters, cinematic storytelling, and scripted events. After years of work id Software concluded that such ideas simply werent a good fit for the series, scrapping them in favour of the much more focused Doom (2016). And yet, in 2025, here they are in The Dark Ages. The campaigns rapid pace is punctuated with new gameplay ideas that are reminiscent of Call of Dutys biggest novelties.My demo opened on a long and elaborate cutscene, (re)introducing the realm of Argent D'Nur, the opulent Maykrs, and the Night Sentinels the knightly brothers-in-arms of the Doom Slayer. The big guy himself is depicted as a terrifying legend; a nuclear-level threat on two legs. While all of this lore will be familiar to Doom obsessives who poured over the prior games codex entries, the deeply cinematic approach with which its now presented feels very new. Very different. Very Halo. That continues into the levels themselves, with NPC Night Sentinels scattered about the environment akin to UNSC Marines. While they dont fight alongside you (at least not in the levels I demoed) theres certainly a greater sense that youre part of an army like Master Chief, youre the invincible spearhead of a large force. Theres a lot of character work in the introductory cutscene and it remains to be seen if this is something Doom really needs. Im a big fan of the prior games slight approach to story, and part of me would rather The Dark Ages continued to tell the Slayers tale through environment design and codex entries, reserving cinematics only for the big reveals la Eternal. But while I have my reservations, the cutscenes thankfully know their place: they tee up a mission and are never seen again, refusing to interrupt Dooms signature intense flow. There are interruptions in other forms, though. After that opening mission, which starts with pure shotgun slaughter and ends with you parrying Hell Knights using the Slayers incredible new shield, I was thrown into the cockpit of a Pacific Rim-like Atlan mech and asked to wrestle demonic kaiju. After that, I was soaring through the skies on that cybernetic dragon, taking down battle barges and picking off gun emplacements. These tightly scripted levels create a significant gear shift, punctuating the campaigns rapid pace with new gameplay ideas that are reminiscent of Call of Dutys biggest novelties, such as Modern Warfares AC-130 gunship sequence or Infinite Warfares dogfighting missions. The Atlan is slow and heavy, and the skyscraper-high perspective makes Hells armies look like Warhammer miniatures. The dragon, meanwhile, is fast and agile, and the shift to a wide-angle third-person camera results in a very different experience that feels a dimension away from classic Doom. The mech battles are Pacific Rim-scale punch ups. | Image credit: id Software / BethesdaMany of the best FPS campaigns thrive on this kind of variety. Half-Life 2 and Titanfall 2 are the gold standard for it. Halo has endured so long partly because its mix of vehicular and on-foot sequences provides it with a rich texture. But Im unsure if this will work for Doom. As with Eternal, The Dark Ages is once again a wonderfully complex shooter to play every second demands your complete attention as you weave together shots, shield tosses, parries, and brutal melee combos. In comparison, the mech and dragon sequences feel anemic, stripped back, and practically on-rails their combat engagements so tightly controlled they almost resemble QTEs. In Call of Duty the switch to driving a tank or firing from a circling gunship works because the mechanical complexity of such scripted sequences isnt that far removed from the on-foot missions. But in The Dark Ages theres a clear gulf between gameplay styles, so much so its akin to a middle school guitar student playing alongside Eddie Van Halen. And while I know Dooms core combat will always be the star, when Im beating the snot out of a giant demon with a rocket-powered mech punch I shouldnt be wishing I was back on the ground using a mere double-barrelled shotgun.My final hour of play saw The Dark Ages shift into another unusual guise, but one built on what feels like a much sturdier foundation. Siege is a level that returns its focus to ids best-in-class gunplay, but it opens up Dooms typically claustrophobic level design into a huge open battlefield, its geography shifting between narrow and wide to provide a myriad of pathways and combat arenas. The goal, to destroy five Gore Portals, has the same energy as Call of Dutys multi-objective, complete-in-any-order missions, but I was reminded once more of Halo the grand scale of this map versus the tighter routes of the opening level evokes the contrast between Halos interior and exterior environments. And, like Halo, the novelty here is that the excellent core shooter systems are given new context in much larger spaces. You must rethink the effective range of every single weapon in your arsenal. Your charge attack is employed to close football field-length distances. And the shield is used to deflect artillery fired from oversized tank cannons. Were these ideas always a bad idea for Doom, or were they just a bad idea when they looked too much like Call of Duty?The downside of expanding Dooms playspace is that things can become a little unfocused I found myself backtracking and looping through empty pathways, which really does kill the pace. Its here Id like to have seen The Dark Ages veer even closer to Halo by throwing the dragon into the mix and using it like a Banshee; being able to fly across this battlefield, raining down fire before divebombing into a miniboss battle, would have helped maintain the pace and make the dragon feel more integral to the experience. If such a level exists beyond what Ive seen, Ill be very happy. Regardless of the overall shape of the full campaign, though, I am fascinated that so much of what Ive seen feels like a resurrection and reinterpretation of ideas that were once considered an ill-fit for the series. Very little of the cancelled Doom 4 was released for the public to see, but a Kotaku report from 2013 paints a distinct picture. There were a lot of scripted set pieces, a source told the publication, among them allegedly an obligatory vehicle scene. And thats exactly what weve got in the Atlan and dragon sections mechanically simple scripted sequences that hark back to the novelty vehicle levels of Xbox 360-era shooters. Talking to Noclip in 2016, id Softwares Marty Stratton confirmed that Doom 4 was much closer to something like [Call of Duty]. A lot more cinematic, a lot more story to it. A lot more characters around you that you are with throughout the course of the gameplay. All that was scrapped, and so its genuinely fascinating to see so much of it return in The Dark Ages. This is a campaign set to feature big boarding action setpieces, lusciously rendered cinematics, a much wider cast of characters, and huge lore reveals. The question now is: were those ideas always a bad idea for Doom, or were they just a bad idea when they looked too much like Call of Duty? Part of me is just as skeptical as the fans who once decried Call of Doom, but Im also excited at the idea of id Software finally making that approach work by grafting it on to the now-proven modern Doom formula.The beating, gory heart of The Dark Ages unquestionably remains its on-foot, gun-in-hand combat. Nothing in this demo suggested that it will not be centre stage, and everything I played affirms it's another fantastic reinvention of Dooms core. I think that alone is strong enough to support an entire campaign, but id Software obviously has other designs. Im surprised that a couple of the studios new ideas feel so mechanically slim, and I am concerned that they will feel more like contaminants than fresh air. But theres still a lot more to see, and only in time will these fractured demo missions be contextualised. And so I eagerly await May 15th, not just to return to ids unrivaled gunplay, but to satisfy my curiosity. Is Doom: The Dark Ages a good late-2000s FPS campaign or a messy one? Matt Purslow is IGN's Senior Features Editor.